Strawberries in Greenland: the global warming debate hots up

Read about it on World Voices here.

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Greenland: Strawberries and global warming

The first thing Dani noted as a newcomer to Greenland in August 2012 was the extraordinary melting of the ice sheet. The local potato harvest was on course to rise from 40 tonnes to 250; and as predicted five years before, there were strawberries!

The melt here and elsewhere is followed by Jason Box PhD. He says that Greenland is currently contributing twice as much to rising sea levels as Antarctica, and one possible reason is the increase in atmospheric particles from land clearance fires and fossil fuel burning, darkening the ice and absorbing solar energy.

He says the sea is taking in some of the extra greenhouse energy, too, increasing its power to erode coastal areas including the western Antarctic ice sheet. Surface sea temperatures around Greenland have risen since 1990:

Apparently we are not yet experiencing the full impact of global warming, because for the last 30 years it has been partially offset by a temporary reduction in solar output, and there may also be (for thousands of years yet) a cooling effect owing to variations in the Earth's orbit (hat-tip to Dr Box for both links).

- so if and when when the heat factors start going in the same direction we - or our remoter descendants - could see the situation change much more rapidly.

The world's climatic system is very complex and variable. In the past, temperatures have been higher and lower than now, and the Greenland ice sheet has been both thicker and thinner:

"In the beginning of the Eemian, 128,000 years ago, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was 200 meters higher than today, but during the warm Eemian period the ice mass regressed, so 122,000 years before now the surface had sunk to a level of 130 meters below the current level. During the rest of the Eemian the ice sheet remained stable at the same level with an ice thickness of 2,400 meters."

A rise in sea levels could be very disruptive and expensive for millions of people, including those who live in cities like London and New York. And we're not helping ourselves with the way that we develop our land use:

"Along the U.S. Atlantic Coast alone, almost 60 percent of the land that is within a meter of sea level is planned for further development, with inadequate information on the potential rates and amount of sea level rise. Many of the nation's assets related to military readiness, energy, commerce, and ecosystems that support resource-dependent economies are already located at or near the ocean, thus exposing them to risks associated with sea level rise."

As recent events in the UK and USA have shown, flooding is hardly a theoretical matter, and the Environment Agency now has a website to assess the risk where you live:

But scientists are not of one mind on the issue - some say we are facing a mini ice age instead.

Returning to Greenland, climate change may cause difficulties for polar bears, but they haven't been there forever and may have migrated from Ireland. I like to see them on TV and I like even better that they're safely on the other side of the screen.

After all, we hardly want a return of the greater ice ages that made Northern Europe uninhabitable for thousands of years (what is now London was under a three-mile-thick glacier at one point).

If I were a Greenlander, I'd be happy with locally-sourced cod and chips, followed by strawberries and dairy ice cream.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

On positive thinking

"The Last Ditch" has posted an excellent piece on the vital role of aspiration, and parental expectation. I comment:

Excellent article.

Can I suggest that socialism is not the only stifler of initiative? The bankers' economy we now have has buried the populace under debt, and at the same time bought the political class so that they have permitted large-scale economic immigration to keep down wage rates, sustain unemployment among the indigenous population and maintain profits for the owners of large businesses. So it becomes easier for negative thinking among the poor to justify itself. Positive thinking is great, as long as you still have a chance; fewer now have that chance.

The "boom" of the last 30 years or so (with occasional pauses) has been a binge that, while enriching a minority, has left most without the realistic prospect of independence in this country. The "crony capitalism" in the UK and USA is in danger of laying the foundation of socialist regimes in both countries.

Chapman Pincher should update his book "Their Trade Is Treason" to include members of our current plutarchy.

A propos: see A K Haart's insightful piece on social control as a form of business enterprise that like other businesses, seeks to expand endlessly; and The Economic Collapse blog on debt as a form of social control, the crippling personal cost of even moderate debt.

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Spanish corruption scandal - the local take

See World Voices here.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

Spanish corruption scandal - the local take

See World Voices here.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

Spain: Corruption - or just "the way we do things here"?

Californian business journalist Wolf Richter reports (htp: Zero Hedge) on the Spanish corruption scandal, which is particularly hot as it comes at a time of general economic pain for ordinary Spaniards.

Actually, a double scandal: allegedly, politicians have been awarding government contracts in exchange for slush money, plus a detective agency has been used to keep tabs - and possibly gather dirt - on a host of prominent figures.

The gaff was blown by an ex-policeman employed by the agency (Método 3) who was left out of pocket when it went bust. He grabbed computers, files and clandestine recordings in lieu of payment.

One of those recordings is of a conversation between the leader of the Catalonian People's Party (PP) and the ex-girlfriend of the son of the former President of Catalonia. The girl allegedly reveals that her boyfriend has been smuggling large cash sums for his family across the border into Andorra.

The PP leader, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, lodged an official complaint when she found out that a secret taping of the talk was among the Método 3 material, and now a monster investigation is under way.

As with the British MPs' expenses scandal of 2009, it's the timing that has sharpened the public response. What might otherwise have earned a cynical shrug of the shoulders is now threatening to claim scalps, including that of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose name appears repeatedly in handwritten ledgers relating to a slush fund in Switzerland.

Brett Hetherington, a freelancewriter who lives in Catalonia, has emailed World Voices the local perspective:

"I would say a couple of things about this reeking, venal scandal. The man at the heart of it, the late Jordi Pujol is a hero to many people here in Catalonia as he largely seen as the main person responsible for Catalonia's post-Franco autonomous powers...

"This part of the world (still) has a lot going for it but institutional honesty is obviously not one of the strong points. Cheating on your income tax and using the "black" or cash-economy is the done thing. In my experience, cheating, in whatever form, is thought to be the clever thing to do. Children do it from a very young age and at a local (wealthy) private school where I used to work, it was completely standard to cheat in tests and teachers knew about it and did not punish it.

"The family is probably the most important single unit in Mediterranean Europe, so favouring a brother, son or cousin is entirely normal. It is not just those at the top of the political pyramid who do this. It is a practise that is as ordinary as drinking a glass of wine here. Having connections is called "enchufe" - literally, 'plugged-in. 'It is difficult living here without some kinds of connections to help you advance your lot, so the common-place act is the one that scratches a friend's back when they will also soon scratch yours."

Interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations last week, Professor Alfredo Pastor of the IESE Business School played it down as a "limited crisis" and set it in the context of Catalan demands for greater autonomy. The EU/bankers' agenda rolls on like Juggernaut, he wishes us to believe.

We shall see.

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Storm clouds over Sark

Controversy rages in one of Britain's smallest islands - see World Voices.

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Sark: I have nothing to say

Looking to expand the World Voices bloglists, I happened upon Sark. Surely there could only be one blogger there, bearing in mind that the island has a population of only around 600? I've taught in plenty of schools bigger than that. Not so. It would appear that even in this tiny community, there is tension and dissent.

Some outsiders are attracted to Sark by its strange old ways - the ban on motorised transport, and the feudal regime that existed until only a very few years ago. This has historical roots, for the Channel Islands, and Sark in particular, have a special relationship with the British Crown: 

"The Channel Islands consist of two Bailiwicks, Jersey and Guernsey. The Channel Islands are Crown dependencies but they are not part of the United Kingdom nor are they colonies. When King Philippe Auguste retook possession of continental Normandy in 1204, King John retained the Channel Islands. His right as Duke of Normandy lapsed, and a separate title grew up by force of occupation, which attached to him as King of England. This was confirmed by the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360. [...]
 

"In 1565, acting by letters patent, Queen Elizabeth I appointed Helier de Carteret as the Seigneur of Sark (or Lord of Sark), and granted it to him as a royal fief as a reward for his having secured the island against the French. Inheritance of the fief and any land sublet by the Seigneur is by male primogeniture in the manner of the Crown. The Seigneur has always been free to sell the fief subject to royal consent. The present Seigneur is John Michael Beaumont. His family acquired the fief with Crown permission in 1852. He inherited it on the death of his grandmother Dame Sibyl Hathaway in 1974."
 

Source: background preamble to judgment given by the UK Supreme Court, 1 December 2009.

Sark's quaint charms have caused the island to be featured in a recent human-interest BBC documentary series "Island Parish" (reviewed in a typically slantendicular Guardian way here), as well as being the setting for Mervyn Peake's magical "Mr Pye", televised hauntingly by Channel 4 in 1986 - you can see it again here.

But as the legal case quoted above makes clear, not everyone is a fan of the old ways, and thanks to the European Commission on Human Rights as interpreted by the British courts, democracy has come to this Mouse-That-Roared throwback.

Not quite enough of it, for some, as the Valentine's Day 2013 edition of the Sark Newsletter makes clear:

"For four whole years, Sark’s "democratic" government has been in place and for all that time they have, with no dissent or opposition whatsoever in parliament, been able to do whatever they wanted..."

In the interests of balance, I would add this newsletter to the WV bloglist, but it appears not to have an RSS feed at the moment, so I have added it to the collectives on the right sidebar, where it can sit glaring at the (apparently) Guernsey-based blog of "Ebenezer le Page".

For it is (I hope) safe to say that the editor-publisher of The Sark Newsletter, a property developer called Kevin Delaney, is not universally loved, especially after an article published in January last year that criticised the emergency evacuation by lifeboat to Guernsey of the Seigneur's wife following a stroke. The Newsletter suggested that a helicopter could have been used instead; apparently that is banned under Sark law, according to this piece on Wikipedia, which also says that the billionaire Barclay brothers drive cars and use a helicopter on the Sark-governed sister island Brecqhou, where they have built their castle. The resulting row was heard as far away as New York.

This petition to the Secretary of State for Justice, Lord McNally, gives reasons why the Barclay brothers and what it describes as their "lieutenant" Delaney are resented by some on Sark. It also points out (in effect) that (as perhaps we have found for ourselves on the mainland), democracy in the form of the vote is not in itself quite enough to ensure justice, since economic power (not equally available to all) has the potential to be used to influence decisions and governance, as this Wiki article implies, saying:

"On 11 December 2008, the Barclay brothers were in the news for pulling out their investments (which include hotels) from the island of Sark, causing 170 staff to be made redundant after local voters did not support candidates championed by the Barclay brothers. The brothers had previously warned that if the voters chose to bring back the 'establishment' Sark leaders that are still aligned with the feudal lord then they would pull out of Sark. The Barclays have since reopened all their businesses on Sark and some staff were re-employed."

In fairness, the piece referenced above details the tremendous achievements of the twins, rising from bankruptcy in 1960 to enormous financial success and philanthropy in their later years. But it must be very difficult for Sarkee minnows to share a pond with such large fish.

 A previously-deferred BBC Panorama programme, "The Tax Haven Twins" was broadcast in mid-December 2012, fronted by confrontational journalist John Sweeney, who questioned the personal secretiveness and (perfectly legal) tax arrangements of the owners of the MP-expense-scam-busting Daily Telegraph, as well as the local tension and controversy that led to the island's doctor deciding to get "as far away as possible" from their sphere of influence.

But as a local lawyer reportedly (in that programme) said to islanders who consulted him, libel is a rich man's game, so personally I have nothing to say, except that all this has quite sucked the gilt off the gingerbread for me. I can only hope that there is reconciliation, one day.

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Soothing advice for mollusc-loving dyslexics

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Screaming kids: a treat for parents and teachers

From here (htp: my beloved sister-in law)