Arctic freeze, Greenland melt

David Rose writes again in the Mail on Sunday, reporting a 60% increase in North Polar ice cover. Ha ha! That's one in the eye for all you global warming experts, etc.

On the other hand, Professor Jason Box continues his Dark Snow researches in Greenland and finds that the melting continues as predicted. About half of it, he thinks, is down to reduced albedo [index of light reflection] because of a soot layer from the burning of fossil fuel and forest, but there are other factors, too, including a secondary partial-melt effect that causes ice crystals to become more rounded.

And Rose's article ignores regional variation in air temperature, even within Greenland. "Heat transport into the Arctic bypassed Greenland to its east. Svalbard [an archipelago in the North Norway region] has had a warm summer."

Meltfactor blog: http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=1222

Greenland had a record warm episode in July (not due to the North Atlantic airstream), but then there was fresh snowfall in the south that brightened the surface more than usual; yet in the northwest the albedo was unusually low.

Journalists, whichever side you take (should you be taking sides?): it's just not that simple. And the polar ice cap cover is only one of a wide range of measures being assessed and discussed in the climate change debate.

I don't suppose Rose is likely to listen - he's doing too well out of incompletely-researched contrarianism. Unfortunately, he's writing in the most-read newspaper in the UK.

He's not the only professional side-taker: look at Matt Ridley, the self-styled "rational optimist", whose home farm promotes organic and traditional farming while the lord of the manor makes a reputation by telling the world that there's nothing much to worry about. Seems like Greenland isn't the only place where it blows hot and cold.

"How they are related" footnote:*

"Environment Secretary Owen Paterson’s wife, Rose, is the sister of Viscount Matt Ridley."

Paterson is the Minister currently championing biodiversity offsetting so the developers can have a clear run at the land they want to build on.

Just so you know.

*Even more interestingly, this information appears to have been recently edited out of the Wikipedia entry, but the same fact appears in this Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2346246/Why-did-Tories-change-tune-GM-food-We-expose-secret-summit-slick-lobbyists-bio-tech-giants-seduced-willing-Ministers.html

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Islamic radicalisation - a straw in the wind

Several years ago I spotted a slogan painted on the door of a box of a building on Highgate Road: "KILL DA JEWS". The "da" was clever, designed to appeal to the would-be South Central LA homeboys. It was soon painted over, of course, but.

I used to work with a project not far from there, that got 15-year-olds off the streets who'd been out of school for some time. We gave them basic maths and English, and practical work in the form of carpentry and joinery (they made some great doll's houses). The idea was to settle them and get them ready for sixth form college so they could get some qualifications and vocational training. It worked well, and still does.

One boy was a very genial lad who wasn't that bright but corrected my bad work when I tried to clean the project's fish tank and filter. He was hooked on cannabis, "bud" or "Bu-ddha" as he would put it. He knew he wasn't going to get anywhere till he kicked it, but giving up was hard. He needed a core, something to surrender to, just as with the twelve-step program. In his case, he decided to get religion.

So he began his daily discipline through Islam, breaking off from study or play to pray at the right intervals. To help him with his meditations, he had an unlabeled recording he'd got from somewhere and we found him a portable player. It was devotional Islamic song and the voice was exquisite, a calm, pure tenor. I listened with him and our minds went into a blue space.

Maybe five or ten minutes after the start, another voice joined in, preaching hatred for the Zionists. The speaker, in his twenties by the sound of it, also had a pleasant voice, and timed the phrases to blend with the hypnotic beauty of the chant. On and on he went.

I was horrified. This decent lad, young, not academic, impressionable, in need of guidance and leadership, was being groomed, I thought. I spoke to the other staff, and they pooh-poohed it - he was such a good-hearted kid that we couldn't imagine him doing any harm to anyone; and they were probably right.

But the intention of whoever had burned that CD was clear. And with a cleverer adolescent, ambitious to get some adult status and respect, it would work, given time. There are many young people without jobs, money or much to do, but they can have coffee at each others' houses, swap recordings, surf the Net. It'll start from where they are, in a teen culture of ghetto-speak and weed, then it'll become more serious and focused, bending the twig as it grows. It's not Hitler's health and exercise bands any more, or the uniformed rallies; it's bedroom fantasyland gradually taking on reality.

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Syria update

Looks as though the West, through the Saudis, is trying to buy off the Russians to clear the ground for an attack on Syria:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10266957/Saudis-offer-Russia-secret-oil-deal-if-it-drops-Syria.html

(htp: Tap blog)

But in that case, why bother?

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. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

404: Democracy not found

In 404 BC Sparta, a militaristic kingdom, defeated Athens, a democracy run by an assembly composed of all its free men. Tyranny 1, Freedom 0.

Syria may not be a democracy in the mould of Athens - Index Mundi classes it as a "republic under an authoritarian regime" - but under its 2012 Constitution it does have (as well as a President) a Prime Minister, a unicameral legislature and multi-party elections.

Now look at the alternative, as illustrated by this Facebook video from SyriaOnline (CAUTION: contains graphic scenes of murder). The putative Al-Nusra Front terrorists in that compilation state cheerfully that they intend to kill the Syrian Alawites (the sect to which the Assad family belongs) and re-establish the Muslim Caliphate - all the way to Spain.

Human rights in Syria have long been a concern. However, consider the challenges of running a country where many people don't "agree to disagree" or consider themselves bound by the will of the majority, but will kill to have their way and glory in the slaughter.

What would you do? It's not like governing Britain or America - not that either of those is slow to use force to maintain internal authority. So, a black-leather-glove democracy versus a violent theocratic revolutionary horde - your choice?

Then there's a fog of conflicting assertions about the use of chemical weapons, the artillery strike on eastern Turkey (from which, allegedly, the Free Syrian Army is waiting to invade) and so on. It seems as though people have become far more skeptical since Iraq - and Libya.

Underneath the fog seem to be economic and geopolitical motives - Qatar wishing to extend the Arab Pipeline northwards through Syrian territory and into Turkey, Assad wanting to refresh the east-to-west Kirkuk-Banias Pipeline, the Saudis and the US keen to complete and make secure the Nabucco pipeline in competition with Russia's Gazprom network in Europe (connected with the alleged 2008 "Pythia" plot against the then Greek Premier Kostas Karamanlis, who was negotiating with the Russians re a branch of the South Stream to cross northern Greece - see the Gazprom site here).

According to a Turkish colleague of mine, Erdogan's out at the next election, having upset so many of the populace - but if Turkey should ever decide to throw in her lot with the Islamists, we might wish Karamanlis had concluded the South Stream deal, after all.

South Stream: http://www.gazprom.com/about/production/projects/pipelines/south-stream/2012/

The old Trans-Arabian Pipeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline

The Kirkuk-Banias Pipeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkuk%E2%80%93Baniyas_pipeline

 

Nabucco and others: http://www.economist.com/node/14041672

Would you send your son to risk his life in a fight there - and what for, and on which side?

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. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Order for the Service of Holy Communication

Collect from the Revised Book of Common Interaction (2013):

ALMIGHTY GOVERNMENT, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Special Advisers, Public Relations and News Media, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name…

Cum privilegio gubernatorum
________________________

http://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-can-crack-almost-any-type-of-encryption-1258954266

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/09/06/nsa-breaks-encryption-here-we-go-again-there-is-nobody-and-nothing-they-have-not-tapped/

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Global warming continues

A new videopost this week revisits the contention that global warming has stopped (htp: Paddington).

Not so, it seems: there are many different measures being used to assess climate change and one of them is the temperature of the upper levels of the oceans, which is rising. The seas are acting as the reservoir for most of the heat gain so far -

(Image from above video)

- and the heat is expanding their volume (a point I hadn't thought of). So it's not just ice melt that will affect sea level rise.

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Spain: "What is 'the crisis?'" - by Brett Hetherington

Brett Hetherington's latest article in Catalonia Today magazine (reproduced with the kind permission of the author):

(Photo: Javier)

This so-called crisis, which would more accurately be called a“depression” is a thousand varied things that need never have happened.

Despite the occasional sensation that life is just continuing on very much as before, the crisis here is certainly the more obvious things that many of us see when we care to look: more beggars on the streets, long queues in shoe repair shops, the recent appearance of solitary men selling tissues or cigarette lighters on the trains and Metro, a greater number of empty shops for sale or rent (or replaced by cheapo-import Chinese shops) and it is also reading more socio-political graffiti on walls.

 

The crisis is a European-wide failure of institutions like the financial system and the pathetic political response to it, but it is also a very immediate, local phenomenon.

In the small town where I live, three years ago there was both a bank and a restaurant – now there is neither.

As well, there are the abstract statistics that simply cannot put a human face to this tragedy - day after day of grim, sullen economic news.

 

Three months ago, a newspaper headline stated that “60% of Andalusian children live in poverty.”

 

This sounds remote and abstract until we learn that there were children in Catalonia who were still going to school in July just to eat lunch, and they had to do this because it is next to impossible for their parents to provide daily meals at home.

But the crisis is about work too.

 

It is hearing that another man has lost his job, or finding that your wife's job has been cut in half and therefore her income has also been halved.

It is thousands of workers still lucky enough to have a job but not being “lucky” enough to get paid for their labour...for yet another month.

 

And it is the insult of "mini-jobs" - (the underpaid mileurista is seeming like the one who is well-off) or it is listening to people at a café talking about the benefits of learning Chinese or German, ahead of English.

As well, the crisis is the news media being full of corrupt, cowardly politicians talking about everything except what could end the crisis.

 

For thousands of people not in the aptly-termed “political class”, it is a rapid or a gradual descent into poverty – what George Orwell called “the crust-wiping,” - that constant search for ways to save money but still ending up unsatisfied after you eat.

 

On top of all this, the crisis is that all-day sensation of being unpleasantly squeezed by the invisible forces of debt, a permanent unconscious burden that is carried by the unemployed and under-employed when a family has no genuine bread-winner.

But what is it that has saved this country from violence, riots and social disturbance on a grand scale?

The family.

The extended family, acting as helpers, carers and givers of money, love, and as many kinds of assistance that you can think of.

 

Without this blood-linked stability across Mediterranean Europe, things would surely be even worse.

Sometimes, when I have thought about the crisis I have been reminded of a Bob Dylan line about how the sun starts to shine on him.

 

But then (in a single phrase that could speak for millions of Europe's economic victims) he sadly sings “but it's not like the sun that used to be.”

 

[A version of the above text was first published as an opinion piece in Catalonia Today magazine, September 2013.]

 

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