Thursday, September 19, 2013

The Hierarchy

Folks,

Before I continue with my overview of the Freeman movement, I thought it would help if you knew your place in the world.

This is about The Hierarchy. Or more vitally, where you fit in the scheme of things. It is the single most important thing you can, or will, learn. It came to me late in life, but if you are relatively young, as you read these words, it will change your life. At least, I hope it will. Most of us do not know how powerful we are. This is deliberate. We are dumbed down on purpose. If we knew just what we were, instead of what we think we are, we could, and would, run rings around anyone we come into contact with. Primarily I mean the government. The police. In fact, anyone who works for the government. As long as they are, or claim to be, an agent of the government. When they clock off at 5 pm they are just like you and me again. They are human once more. But as long as they wave a badge in your face, you are dealing with the government.

However, once you have worked out where they sit in the hierarchy, the game changes. I am deadly serious about this. I defy anyone to tell me I am wrong.

You ready for this?

Alrighty then.

This is the pecking order:

1. Your God/your Creator. Stands to reason, does it not? Even if you aren't religious, TPTB are. Every oath taken has god in there somewhere.

2. You. Your creator made you. No-one else did. You report upline to him/her.

3. Dogs, cats, birds, cows, horses, dolphins, whales, penguins, aardvarks, skunks, chipmunks, gorillas, lions, tigers, giraffes, two-toed sloths, dung-beetles, flies, maggots, earthworms, amoebas and bacteria. (And every other species living on the planet today).

4. The government. And ALL of its agents. Companies and corporations. And all of its agents.

Did you get that? The government, and all of its employees, like tax collectors, policemen & women, customs officers, prison officers, parking wardens, ministers, prime ministers-and anyone who works for them, rank lower than bacteria. Lower than a simple amoeba. This not an insult, by the way. It is a statement of fact. It is indisputable.

They are agents for an entity made by man. The government itself is a thing. It is an artificial construct. It is a legal entity. It does not have a heart that beats. It does not have eyes that see. It does not have limbs that move. It does not have a mouth that speaks. It does not have a brain that thinks. It does not have blood coursing through its veins. It is inanimate. It has no life. It has no life force.

You have all of these things. Maggots have all of these things. Flies have all of these things. Dogs have all these things. Skunks have all these things. Things that put them squarely in the "living" bracket.

You are supreme on earth. Once you get to your version of heaven the game changes. Or, if you are an atheist, it matters not. You remain supreme, whether you believe in a god or not. On earth, you are at the top of the tree. You outrank every politician, every minister, every judge, and every officer of any company or corporation. They are merely extensions of the thing they made, and what made them can be unmade at the stroke of a pen. You cannot be unmade in this way. To unmake you, your life has to be ended. Likewise, you were not created/made at the stroke of a pen. It took a miracle to make you. I can buy a company off the shelf for £80 in the next twenty minutes. It's that simple. You are not simple. You were not simple to make, and you are not simple to run. You are a complex life-form, with complex needs, wants and emotions. For a corporation to function, all it takes is an idiot or two. (Or a genius or two, depending on your benevolence).

And yet, and yet we allow them to shove us around. To lock us up at a whim. To taser us. To beat the crap out of us. To stop us from travelling whenever they want to. To take over half of our money every week, every month, every year, for decades. To tell us what, and where we can smoke. Or drink. Or eat. To watch our every move on millions of CCTV cameras. To trap and store every personal email we ever typed to friends, to families, to loved ones. To steal and transcribe every telephone conversation we ever have. To tag us. To fine us. To control us utterly. And the worst thing of all? We pay them to "make" us do these things. We pay them willingly enough. We comply. We consent. We permit these atrocities.

Now that we know where they rank on the ladder of life, will you allow them to continue? Will you just roll over, bend over, and will you submit to them, those that rank lower than bacteria, ever again?

Or will you say no? Will you take control, and responsibility, for your life, the only life you're getting, for three score and ten years, or thereabouts? When you think about it, they, the government, need us. Very badly. Without us, they are finished. Without our money, they are finished. Without our consent, they are finished.

Would it be a bad thing, if that thing called government was eradicated? Would we miss it? We'd certainly be richer. We would, finally, be keeping all of our sweat equity. We would decide all on our own, to smoke, or to not smoke, to drink, or to not drink, to eat, or to not eat, to spend, or not to spend. To defend our homes and those we love in a manner we decide to be appropriate. To carry weapons, or not to carry weapons. To create our own courts, to appoint our own judges and juries. To appoint our own peace keepers. To decide for ourselves whether our children can play "tag"  or conkers in the playground. To decide when, if, and for how long our public houses open and serve beer. To decide whether we really need cameras watching us as we walk around our communities. To decide if we wanted to pay the workshy to laze around while we did all the work. To allow, or not to allow people from foreign lands to live and work on our lands. To make war with other countries, or to make peace instead, and to work out our own trade agreements with other communities, or other countries. To allow thugs and villains to roam our streets or to punish them according to the new rules set by our own communities, where everyone in it has a say.

Our government steals from us. All of our lives. And not only do we condone that theft, we encourage it! Sure, we'll pay £1.20 for a litre of petrol that costs 3p to make! Sure, we'll pay £3.00 for a pint of beer that costs 20p to make!! Sure, we'll pay £6.50 for twenty smokes that cost 30p to make!!! Keep adding to our burden, and keep easing your own. We'll pay!! And when we want a pension after chipping in to the fund for forty years, sure, you just keep moving that retirement age further away from me! I can work longer! And when I get sick, and that doctor says I cannot have treatment, sure, I'll just wander away like I should, despite paying for the service all my life!

There comes a time when you have to weigh up the costs and the benefits. I just did that, and the burden on me is grossly unfair. I can't complain because I agreed to it all. I agreed because I did not disagree.

I am disagreeing now. Finally, I am saying no. No more. No more will you get.

I say this, and I say it without ego, without arrogance, and without malice: I am in charge of my life from this day to my last day. No more will I submit to a thing.

No more.

My life. My rules. My law.

My choice.

Made freely, in a way only a sentient human being can.

CR.

PS-Some of you may have seen this post before on my old Blogger site.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Should I continue to publish John Cook's Skeptical Science pieces?

I have an apology to make - I think.

On Monday, I commented on David Rose's piece in previous day's Mail on Sunday. His series has been tagged "The Great Green Con" and his contrarianism (with which I have no issue in principle, being awkward myself) has been expressed in a provocative style that may help sell newspapers but doesn't do much for the spirit of liberal debate. In fact Rose seems to go so far out of his way to rile that I mistakenly thought he might be Johann Hari, who did at one time use the name "David Rose"; I am sorry for the error, but I have little trust in newpapers any more and believe some of them capable of taking a black sheep back into the fold if it helps boost circulation. My bad, as the Americans say.

Rose's piece seized on the increase in Arctic ice cover as some sort of touchstone proof that the global warmists were wrong. So I cast about for some alternative explanation for this seemingly awkward fact. And came across a piece written by an Australian academic called John Cook, who described a plausible mechanism whereby ice at the other end of the world might be increasing as a result of global warming. He kindly agreed to let me republish here, and to use other material if I wished - and so I planned a series of his debunk-the-debunker pieces to run for a month or so, with the idea that it would stimulate and inform debate.

I didn't realize that I had gone pogo-sticking into a minefield.

Having left college nearly forty years ago, and only as a student, I had forgotten what I'd heard about how sharp academic controversy and rivalry can be. At Oxford, votes in the election of the University's Chancellor can be checked against the name of the voter, and careers have (it seems) come to a screeching, permanent halt just for backing the wrong candidate. I supported a friend in the last vote and found out from Who's Who that another candidate, Lord Blake, was also head of the Electoral Reform Society, which (I think) is in favour of secret ballots; my friend told me that when he was going round radio stations on the stump they treated him as an entertaining joke until he raised this point, and then he could hear the producer screaming "Cut!" into the interviewer's headphones.

Now it seems that climate change is an issue that can scarcely be discussed at all. Adherents on either side overstate their case and denigrate the opposition - deplorably like some of the politicians that infest our Mother of Parliaments. It was Andrew Neather who revealed that Labour was happy to encourage immigration partly because it would "rub the Right's nose in diversity" (though the implication of that metaphor is quite unpleasant, when you come to consider it).

Anyhow, it may well be that careers in science have also been blighted by backing the wrong candidate (would Richard Dawkins be fair to a Christian graduate student under his tutelage, I wonder; perhaps he would). And there's money in grants and lobbying to be had on both sides, too.

So the odium theologicum rages strong in this field. Alerted by very unhappy (private) comments about John Cook, I looked for evidence that he is considered extremist or over-eager in his advocacy. His site (Skeptical Science) is certainly assertive, just as Rose's articles are, and really I've been brought up to think that science is always tentative and provisional. And so like Rose (who I think is not himself a scientist, though he has chosen a scientific subject) he invites debunkers.

Which is what I was hoping for. A backs global warming, B rejects the theory, C (Cook) tries to debunk the contrarian, D (I would hope) picks holes in the debunking.

It seems it's not quite like that. The temperature of the debate is melting everyone's cool. At a milder level, the site WattsUpWithThat features a number of articles about Cook's claims, including a recent dissection of his assertion that the overwelming majority of scientists believe in global warming; on the same issue, two other writers leap to his defence in The Guardian.

But it can get much, much worse than that. Some of the comments on The Guardian's website, reacting to David Rose, are simply psychotic. There's a lot more mental illness around than we realise; people talking with a mask on lose their humanity, it seems.

Well, I had planned a series of Cook's pieces and let people take reasoned and factual pot-shots; but I didn't intend for anyone to be seriously unhappy. I came from a family that was prepared to argue about everything - Mother voted Labour, Father Conservative (why did they both vote, I wondered) - but retained that sense that anyone can be wrong about anything. We kicked the ball around in the air, but never at anyone's head.

As far as climate goes, either it will stay much the same for the rest of human history, or get warmer, or colder (either of which could have serious consequences for us); the truth matters, even though we may not be able to predict it, and if we are helping make the environment more dangerous, then we should do something about it - if we can; but maybe we're not, and we can't, or shouldn't. But surely honest and mutually respectful debate (from all sides) has the best chance of discovering something like the truth, and helping us make decisions that are less wrong.

You'll see from the Energy and Climate page that the sidebar has links to both camps. But should I continue to print Cook's pieces here on this main page, if all it does is increase heat without light? I'm sorry if that's all it's done.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.

So, You Want To Be A Freeman?

There is a great deal of confusion surrounding this movement. Hopefully this post will clear some things up.

Firstly, the term 'Freeman' covers men and women.

The full term would be Freeman on the Land. This is deliberate. It refers to law, or more specifically, common law and natural law (God's Law, if you prefer).

Why on the "land"?

Research, years of it, collectively, shows us that the UK (and the USA and others) operate on Maritime Law. Maritime Law is comprised of statutes. Statutes are plastic, Natural Laws are solid gold. Natural Laws concern rights, whilst Statutes concern benefits. The difference between the two is monumental. This should be obvious: statutes are created by men, and are therefore much less valuable than God's Law/Natural Law.

Each time a policeman asks you "Do you understand?", and you say "Yes", you just swapped all of your rights for benefits. You also surrender yourself to the bobby and you have just used Contract Law. You have entered into a verbal agreement to 'stand under' his/her authority. You really, really, really should not do this.

Case in point: last year I had cop after cop showing up at my house to deal with a speeding offence. (As explained in my last post, I wanted to be difficult). When they finally decided to read me my rights, after which the cop said "Do you understand?". I said "No". He asks, "Which part do you not understand?". I said, "All of it". He asks me, "Why don't you understand?". I replied, "Because I choose not to". "Ah", he said, "So you know what the phrase means then?". "Yes", said I.

It's a small thing, at first glance. Seemingly unimportant, but it threw the bobby for six. I had gone off their script and he was clearly unsure what to do next. His partner, (the designated 'bad cop') said, "Then we will take you to Fraserburgh police station to continue the questioning". I said, "Let's go. I have nothing else to do today". (Fraserburgh is a good 1.5 hours away. Why they couldn't take me to Banff (8 miles away) I never did learn). The good cop said (to his partner) "There's no need for that. Not in this case".

This, is essentially what being a freeman is all about. It's about not understanding. It's about not consenting. It's about retaining all of your rights. It's about refusing to accept benefits.

How do you go about becoming a Freeman?

Simply research the movement, read up on the do's and don'ts, discover the difference between legal and lawful, send off a NOUICOR* if you wish, and start thinking and behaving like the free soul that you always were. It's an attitude as much as anything else.

This kind of sums it up:



*a NOUICOR is a Notice of Understanding, Intent, and Claim of Right. Your autograph needs to be witnessed by three good men and true, or by one Public Notary. If  it is unrebutted after you send it off to the PM, or the Home Office, or your local Chief Constable, (or you can send it to no-one at all), it becomes law. Your law. Mine has been in force since 2008. In it, I revoked my consent to be governed. No-one disputed my Claim, and in law, if no-one disagrees, they agree.

So you now know that I am in Lawful Rebellion, and you know that I am a Freeman. The two are not connected. I just decided to notify Mrs Windsor that I was in Lawful Rebellion, and I chose to notify one Gordon Brown and later, one David Cameron, that I had revoked my consent, lawfully, to be governed. Neither wrote back to me. Neither of them disputed my witnessed Affidavits.

You can choose either path but be aware that they are quite different.

Freemen believe that their research proves, beyond a doubt, that when we were born, and our parents registered our birth, a legal fiction was created. This is indisputable, and I will explain why later. They also believe that shortly after our birth, a Bond is created. (The average value of the bond would appear to be around 1 million pounds for a 'working man', but considerably more if your anticipated lifetime earnings are themselves in the millions). The government of the day sells the bond to the BoE and is advanced whatever you are deemed to be worth. These Bonds are then traded on the international stock market, and mine, for instance, is said to be worth 70 or 80 million pounds by now.

Caveat: I have found no hard evidence of this Bond. The theory though, makes a great deal of sense.

Freemen know that we have been bankrupt since the Napoleonic Wars. Since then, the UK Debt Management Office, in cahoots with the Treasury, have operated a double-entry ledger system. Money in, money out, no profit shown. What does that mean, in practise?

Case in point: I was sent a demand by HMRC for 5K. It was in the form of a letter with one of those little giro things at the bottom. I filled in the boxes, added my autograph, and sent it back. They sent me a letter saying "You forgot to put in the cheque". I wrote back saying, "No, I didn't. I animated the bill* by adding my autograph. It is made out to cash. Take it to the Debt Management Office, their accountants will know what to do with it". They didn't do as I instructed and they sent another 'bill'. I repeated the process and sent it back to them. They wrote back saying that I hadn't paid. Again. I said "Fair enough. Send me back both giro-slips so that I can destroy them". They either wouldn't, or couldn't. The giro-slips are used to take payment from your 'Bond Account'. When they wrote again demanding payment, I said "I have already settled this account. I have paid you twice". They never contacted me again after that. This method of payment is called "Accepted For Value". Google the term to learn more.

*Bills-If you read (and you should) the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, you will learn what a Bill should look like. I haven't seen a proper bill in years. Perhaps decades. At least, not from the government. Nor have you, probably. In the Act, it clearly states that an offer accepted after 14 days means that the payment is settled. Since HMRC took several weeks, and in one instance, 3 months to reply, according to the BoE Act, the debt was paid. I could (under the terms of the Act) have offered bananas, potatoes, furry hats, or funny balloons as payment and if the offer was NOT rejected in time, then the offer stands as settlement.

Interesting factoid 1: If you should have bailliffs at your door demanding money, walk them to the pavement, take a witness, and ask them what it is all about. No doubt they will mention the amount owed. Make sure your witness heard it and then thank the bailliffs. It is highly unlikely that they will have read the BoE Act of 1882, so you can gently explain to them that the debt is settled. They will look perplexed, until you further explain that according to the act, a private debt spoken of publicly is automatically settled.

Interesting factoid 2: If  you have a Debt Recovery Agent at your door, first ascertain the amount they are after, then ask this question: "Did you/your company buy this debt from XYZ Ltd (the company you allegedly owe)?" If they say yes, simply thank them and close your door. Again, according to the BoE Act, they have settled the debt for you. They chose to pay off your bill. Be grateful, and send them on their way.

The Legal Fiction thing

As our courts operate under Maritime Law, they never see people. They never see human beings. They can only deal with legal fictions and corporations and limited companies. I am none of those. I am alive. I am animated. My heart beats, my lungs breathe, my blood flows, my arms and legs move. A legal fiction/corporation sole/limited company can do none of these things. So when a court calls your 'name', they actually want to do business with the fiction created shortly after your birth. As an experiment, next time you are in court, when they call your name, say "I am acting for that fiction". (It will cause apoplexy, but do persist). The judge/magistrate/sheriff will demand that you step forward (either into the dock or to the counsel tables) but you should refuse, insisting that you "wish to remain on the land". This messes them up entirely. Once you 'crossed the bar' you just left common law jurisdiction and stepped onto the high seas so that they can nail your fiction with Maritime Law.

It is fascinating stuff, but because it is so involved, I will end it here and continue with a second post in a few days time.

Please ask questions, or if you prefer, you can visit www.FMOTL.com and have a look through the various sections they have.

All I ask is that you keep an open mind, for now. It is very easy, having done no research whatsoever, to dismiss this as madness.

If you are fair about it, you will discover a lot of sanity in this fledgling movement.

CR.


All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.

The Armageddon text

Today, Yorkshire people in Easingwold will be the first place in the UK to receive sample disaster warnings by text message to cellphones.

What emergencies can you envisage (the Daily Mail suggests nuclear or terrorist attack), and what would your suggested message be?

Would it be available in dialect, slang, textspeak?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.

John Cook's Climate Change Mythbusters 1

In this daily Broad Oak Magazine series, John Cook answers skeptical objections to climate change. We've taken those raised by 1% or more of online critics - 32 quibbles in all - but for the full list please see his site at http://www.skepticalscience.com/.
______________________________________

What does past climate change tell us about global warming?


What The Science Says:
Natural climate change in the past proves that climate is sensitive to an energy imbalance. If the planet accumulates heat, global temperatures will go up. Currently, CO2 is imposing an energy imbalance due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. Past climate change actually provides evidence for our climate's sensitivity to CO2.
Climate Myth: Climate's changed before
Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. (Richard Lindzen)
If there's one thing that all sides of the climate debate can agree on, it's that climate has changed naturally in the past. Long before industrial times, the planet underwent many warming and cooling periods. This has led some to conclude that if global temperatures changed naturally in the past, long before SUVs and plasma TVs, nature must be the cause of current global warming. This conclusion is the opposite of what the peer-reviewed science has found.

Our climate is governed by the following principle: when you add more heat to our climate, global temperatures rise. Conversely, when the climate loses heat, temperatures fall. Say the planet is in positive energy imbalance. More energy is coming in than radiating back out to space. This is known as radiative forcing, the change in net energy flow at the top of the atmosphere. When the Earth experiences positive radiative forcing, our climate accumulates heat and global temperature rises (not monotonically, of course, internal variability will add noise to the signal).

How much does temperature change for a given radiative forcing? This is determined by the planet's climate sensitivity. The more sensitive our climate, the greater the change in temperature. The most common way of describing climate sensitivity is the change in global temperature if atmospheric CO2 is doubled. What does this mean? The amount of energy absorbed by CO2 can be calculated using line-by-line radiative transfer codes. These results have been experimentally confirmed by satellite and surface measurements. The radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 is 3.7 Watts per square metre (W/m2) (IPCC AR4 Section 2.3.1).

So when we talk about climate sensitivity to doubled CO2, we're talking about the change in global temperatures from a radiative forcing of 3.7 Wm-2. This forcing doesn't necessarily have to come from CO2. It can come from any factor that causes an energy imbalance.

How much does it warm if CO2 is doubled? If we lived in a climate with no feedbacks, global temperatures would rise 1.2°C (Lorius 1990). However, our climate has feedbacks, both positive and negative. The strongest positive feedback is water vapour. As temperature rises, so too does the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. However, water vapour is a greenhouse gas which causes more warming which leads to more water vapour and so on. There are also negative feedbacks - more water vapour causes more clouds which can have both a cooling and warming effect.

What is the net feedback? Climate sensitivity can be calculated from empirical observations. One needs to find a period where we have temperature records and measurements of the various forcings that drove the climate change. Once you have the change in temperature and radiative forcing, climate sensitivity can be calculated. Figure 1 shows a summary of the peer-reviewed studies that have determined climate sensitivity from past periods (Knutti & Hegerl 2008).

Figure 1: Distributions and ranges for climate sensitivity from different lines of evidence. The circle indicates the most likely value. The thick coloured bars indicate likely value (more than 66% probability). The thin coloured bars indicate most likely values (more than 90% probability). Dashed lines indicate no robust constraint on an upper bound. The IPCC likely range (2 to 4.5°C) and most likely value (3°C) are indicated by the vertical grey bar and black line, respectively.

There have been many estimates of climate sensitivity based on the instrumental record (the past 150 years). Several studies used the observed surface and ocean warming over the twentieth century and an estimate of the radiative forcing. A variety of methods have been employed - simple or intermediate-complexity models, statistical models or energy balance calculations. Satellite data for the radiation budget have also been analyzed to infer climate sensitivity.

Some recent analyses used the well-observed forcing and response to major volcanic eruptions during the twentieth century. A few studies examined palaeoclimate reconstructions from the past millennium or the period around 12,000 years ago when the planet came out of a global ice age (Last Glacial Maximum).

What can we conclude from this? We have a number of independent studies covering a range of periods, studying different aspects of climate and employing various methods of analysis. They all yield a broadly consistent range of climate sensitivity with a most likely value of 3°C for a doubling of CO2.

The combined evidence indicates that the net feedback to radiative forcing is significantly positive. There is no credible line of evidence that yields very high or very low climate sensitivity as a best estimate.

CO2 has caused an accumulation of heat in our climate. The radiative forcing from CO2 is known with high understanding and confirmed by empirical observations. The climate response to this heat build-up is determined by climate sensitivity.

Ironically, when skeptics cite past climate change, they're in fact invoking evidence for strong climate sensitivity and net positive feedback. Higher climate sensitivity means a larger climate response to CO2 forcing. Past climate change actually provides evidence that humans can affect climate now.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Removal of Royal veto and a fishy smell from Fowey

There is worried comment doing the rounds of the internet as people have had their attention drawn to the wording of the proposed House of Lords Bill 15:

“A BILL TO Amend the Sovereign Grant Act 2011; to amend the succession to the title of the Duke of Cornwall; to re-distribute the Duchy of Cornwall’s estate; and to remove the requirement for a Parliament to obtain Queen’s or Prince’s consent to consideration of bills passing through Parliament.”[1]
The last part would remove Royal veto over a Bill’s progress rather than Royal Assent, but it looks like a further power grab by Parliament of the kind that Albert Burgess outlined in his lucid historical conspectus this morning[2].

It’s quite an assault on the Prince of Wales. Who’s behind it, and why?
The Bill is sponsored by Lord Berkeley, a hereditary Baron who was returned to the Lords as a Life Peer after the House was reformed under New Labour. He was a Labour Whip and spokesperson for Transport prior to the 1997 General Election.[3]

He is well-qualified to speak on transportation. Here are some of his offices mentioned in the House of Lords’ interests:
Chairman, Rail Freight Group
Board Member, European Rail Freight Association
President, Aviation Environment Federation
President, United Kingdom Marine Pilots Association
President, Road Danger Reduction Forum
Vice President, Cycling Touring Club

Road, rail, air, sea… quite a list. The marine interest goes a little bit further:

Trustee, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) (sustainability of the marine ecosystem)

and…

Harbour Commissioner, Fowey Harbour Authority, Cornwall

That last is interesting. Lord Berkeley lives in Polruan (see note 3), near the mouth of the river Fowey. He will not be far from various interests of the Prince of Wales, who as Duke of Cornwall

“owns freehold about three-fifths of the Cornish foreshore and the 'fundus', or bed, of navigable rivers and has right of wreck on all ships wrecked on Cornish shores, including those afloat offshore.”[4]


Land and shore holdings of the Duchy of Cornwall


This land ownership also used to include Fowey Harbour, but “the Harbour Commissioners own the fundus and foreshore purchasing from the Duchy of Cornwall in 1933.”[5]

So Fowey is not directly beholden to the Prince and it would seem that there is little opportunity for a direct conflict of interests. 
But the maritime angle has a little more to it than that. In 2011, Lord Berkeley launched another Bill, the Marine Navigation Bill[6], which aimed to make or amend provisions for pilots, lighthouses and harbour authorities. This Bill would have affected the Prince’s interests and so James Whittle, Clerk to the Lords, wrote to Lord Berkeley on 6 September 2011[7] to alert him to the need to approach Clarence House for the Prince’s consent. The Bill never made it.

In the Spring of 2013, the noble Lord called for a “radical overhaul” of the Duchy and said “he wanted to see all money generated by the estate go towards Cornish people and not the heir to the throne,”[8] so setting the common man against the Crown in a manner reminiscent of what Albert Burgess has told us of Asquith’s tour round Britain. It’s been some time since a socialist was so keen to see the people have control over their own money.
Could it be that there is a short-sighted and destructive element of personal pique in this new, constitutionally significant initiative?


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John Cook: Antarctic sea ice increasing because of global warming

The following post is republished with the kind permission of the author, John Cook. Please see the original for the useful comments on it, at http://www.skepticalscience.com/increasing-Antarctic-Southern-sea-ice-intermediate.htm
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Why is southern sea ice increasing?

The skeptic argument...

Southern sea ice is increasing
'Antarctic sea ice set a new record in October 2007, as photographs distributed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed penguins and other cold-weather creatures able to stand farther north on Southern Hemisphere sea ice than has ever been recorded. The news of expanding Antarctic sea ice stole headlines from global warming alarmists who asserted Arctic sea ice had reached its lowest extent since 1979.' (James Taylor)

What the science says...

Select a level... Basic Intermediate
Antarctic sea ice has been growing over the last few decades but
it certainly is not due to cooling - the Southern Ocean has shown
warming over same period. Increasing southern sea ice is due to
a combination of complex phenomena including cyclonic winds
around Antarctica and changes in ocean circulation.

The most common misconception regarding Antarctic sea ice is that sea ice is increasing because it's cooling around Antarctica. The reality is the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica has shown strong warming over the same period that sea ice has been increasing. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean (specifically the region where Antarctic sea ice forms) has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it's warming faster than the global trend. This warming trend is apparent in satellite measurements of temperature trends over Antarctica:

Antarctic temperature trends 1981 to 2007
Figure 2: Antarctic surface temperatures as observed by satellites between 1981 and 2007.

Similar trends are found when combining temperature data measured from ships and buoys. The following figure from Increasing Antarctic Sea Ice under Warming Atmospheric and Oceanic Conditions (Zhang 2007) displays trends over the ice-covered Southern Ocean - this is the region where Antarctic sea ice forms.

Antarctic Southern Ocean surface temperature trends
Figure 3: Linear trend (1979–2004) of surface air temperature over the ice-covered areas of the Southern Ocean (Zhang 2007).

We see strong warming over most of the ice-covered Southern Ocean although there is also some cooling. What is the average trend over the whole region? The overall surface temperature trend over the ice-covered regions of the Southern Ocean shows a warming trend:

Southern Ocean surface temperature trends
Figure 4: Annual mean surface air temperature averaged over the ice-covered areas of the Southern Ocean. Straight line is trend line (Zhang 2007).

Oceanographic data also find that the waters in the Southern Ocean are warming. The waters of the Southern Ocean's Antarctic Circumpolar Current have warmed more rapidly than the global ocean as a whole. From 1960 to 2000, water temperature increased by 0.068°C per decade at depths between 300 and 1000 metres. This warming trend has increased to 0.098°C per decade since the 1980s (Boning 2008).
If the Southern Ocean is warming, why is sea ice increasing? There are several contributing factors. One is the drop in ozone levels over Antarctica. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has caused cooling in the stratosphere (Gillet 2003). A side-effect is a strengthening of the cyclonic winds that circle the Antarctic continent (Thompson 2002). The wind pushes sea ice around, creating areas of open water known as polynyas. More polynyas leads to increased sea ice production (Turner 2009).

Another contributor is changes in ocean circulation. The Southern Ocean consists of a layer of cold water near the surface and a layer of warmer water below. Water from the warmer layer rises up to the surface, melting sea ice. However, as air temperatures warm, the amount of rain and snowfall also increases. This freshens the surface waters, leading to a surface layer less dense than the saltier, warmer water below. The layers become more stratified and mix less. Less heat is transported upwards from the deeper, warmer layer. Hence less sea ice is melted (Zhang 2007).
Antarctic sea ice is complex and counter-intuitive. Despite warming waters, complicated factors unique to the Antarctic region have combined to increase sea ice production. The simplistic interpretation that it's caused by cooling is false.

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"The British Government has committed treason."

Albert Burgess makes the case that in 1972, the British Government committed treason and sedition when it took Britain into the EEC. Our continued membership, he says, is against the British people's Constitutional freedoms and rights. His website is here: http://www.acasefortreason.org.uk/
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Loyalty vs. Treason

What bench marks do we have to help us decide between Loyalty and Treason? What is it to be loyal to one’s country or to betray one’s country?
 
In the United Kingdom we have a Parliamentary democracy headed by the King or Queen.

How does Parliament work?

Parliament is made up of three things:

  • The House of Commons in which our elected representatives sit;
  • The House of Lords in which the Lords Spiritual (the Bishops) and the Lords Temporal (the Barons) sit;
  • The King or Queen, who sits in the House of Lords, being the top Baron in the Kingdom.
It has become convention since 1420 for the House of Commons to start legislation, which then goes to the House of Lords, who vet the legislation, accept it, reject it or send it back to the House of Commons with recommendations for how it should be amended. If it passes through both Houses it is then put before the King for the Royal assent. If and only if it gets the assent from the King can it become law.

The King is born of the Common Law: he is part hereditary, part elected. The King has advisors who were originally the important men in the Kingdom; these developed into the Saxon Witan and the Witan into a Parliament as we now know it. This is how it should work.

The different types of law

The oldest is the common law, which started out as a set of rules to allow people to live together in harmony.

Then there is constitutional law. This in large measure is a confirmation of the rules of the common law by the King and by a charter. Such constitutional laws are the Charter of Liberties 1100, Magna Carta 1215, the Petition of Right 1628, and the 1689 Bill of Rights.

Finally, there is statute law. There is a great deal of misunderstanding of statute law. Parliament itself was born of the common law and the common law gave Parliament the right to clarify the common law and as society developed and the common law was unable to supply a remedy, to make law by statute to provide a new remedy. Statute law is real law, but only as long as the statute complies with the spirit of the common law, which can be very basically described as “do no harm”.

What are loyalty and treason?

Loyalty to the King and the Kingdom is a duty imposed on us all in exchange for the protection afforded to us by the King.

Treason is a breach of our duty of loyalty to the King or the Kingdom.

It is important to understand these things if we are going to understand what follows.

The growth of the power of the Commons

Since 1420 when the House of Commons demanded and got the right to initiate all legislation, the Commons has been on a power grab.

In 1609 the Commons wrote to the House of Lords describing themselves as the Knights, Burgess's and Barons, of the High Court of Parliament. The House of Lords replied saying that under no circumstances world they accept the Commons as Barons of Parliament and without the Lords they were no court at all.

In 1667 the Commons told the Lords they could not amend a money bill. A ten-year row ensued but in 1677 the Lords agreed not to amend money bills. This had far-reaching and unforeseen consequences, consequences which have had devastating effects on the Kingdom.

In 1909 the government of Asquith put forward a budget which promised the common man a pension. The House of Lords looked at this and believing they could not amend a money bill, and realising the extra tax needed to fund this pension was more than the common man could afford on top of the taxes they already paid, they rejected the budget.

Asquith told the Lords he was putting a bill forward to prevent the Lords from rejecting a bill. The Lords said they would reject it, but Asquith said he would put 500 new lords into the Upper House and they would vote for its abolition. The Lords caved in.

The bill was put before King Edward VII who rejected it on the grounds that it removed a protection from his subjects and it was unconstitutional. The King ordered Asquith to go to the country.

Asquith and his ministers went around the country telling everyone those horrible Lords would not let the working man have a pension. The Lords felt it was beneath them to out their side. Asquith was re-elected and the 1911 Parliament was passed into law, King Edward saying when he opened Parliament that the only reason he was putting this forward was because his ministers told him he must.

This was the end of Parliament as a democratic body. It placed the House of Commons in the position of being able to do anything it wanted to without any restraint.

The removal of legal safeguards against foreign power

As a result the House of Commons were able to repeal laws like the 1351 Statute of Provisors, which prevented the disposal of English assets to a foreign owner, and the 1351 Act of Praemunire, which forbade the importation of any foreign law into England or for any of his Bishops to excommunicate any of his subjects on the orders of the Pope, or for any of his subjects to be drawn out of England to be tried in foreign courts. These two major laws were designed to protect the Kingdom.

Edward Heath, the EEC, treason and sedition

It was the removal of these two ancient laws which allowed Edward Heath to put through his 1972 European Communities Act. When Edward Heath signed the Treaty of Rome he surrendered our fishing grounds, a very valuable English asset to the EEC; and on that day we imported more law than we had made for ourselves in the previous 700 years: some 2,000 extra laws in one day.

Edward Heath had a duty of Loyalty to Her Majesty and he had taken the oath of a Privy Councillor in which he swore to uphold and defend all Her Majesty's Rights, Privileges, Pre-eminences, and Prerogatives. When he put through the 1972 EEC Act he knew he was surrendering this Kingdom to foreign rule, entirely contrary to the oaths he had taken. Edward Heath had committed high treason against Her Majesty, contrary to the 1351 Treason Act, and high treason against the people of England and the English Constitution. 

Every European treaty since has surrendered more powers to govern to a foreign power. Joining the European Union has been an act of high treason against the Queen and people of this United Kingdom by those in government.  

By doing this Edward Heath had imagined the death of Her Majesty as a Sovereign Queen, which is high treason contrary to the 1351 Treason Act. He had also subverted the English Constitution, the major crime of Sedition at Common Law and at this level of sedition and act of high treason against the English Constitution and Her Majesty’s subjects.
 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Increasing sea ice is an effect of global warming?

That David Rose Daily Mail piece on increased Arctic ice may prove the opposite of what he claims. Far from demonstrating global cooling, it may be a side-effect of warming, plus deterioration of the ozone layer.

This article from Australia in 2011 (I'm asking for permission to reproduce in full) argues a causal chain, which I understand as follows:

  1. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole is cooling the stratosphere
  2. An effect of this local temperature change is to let air drop down and push out, strengthening the winds that circle the Antarctic
  3. The boosted cyclonic winds push sea ice around and create gaps within the sheet, where the water is less turbulent and so freezes more easily
  4. Meanwhile, the warmer air causes more rain and snow to fall on the sea*
  5. This (less salty) precipitation is less dense than the warm saltwater rising from lower layers of the sea, so it sits on top and keeps the surface cooler than it otherwise would be
  6. The lower, warmer water is largely trapped in its own layer, so less of it rises to melt sea ice
*I don't know whether this is because warmer air carries more water vapour and so has more to dump when it meets a front of colder air; or for some other reason.

I've asked the writer if the same thing could be happening in the Arctic.

Also, if the sea is warmer, then presumably there will be more evaporation and so more to fall on the central ice cap of the North Pole and the landmass of the Antarctic, potentially increasing the thickness of the ice at each place.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.

Fukushima: an even bigger danger to come?

Via Zero Hedge, Saturday’s article from George Washington’s Blog[1] recaps the disaster so far – Tepco having no idea how to solve the problem, no-one sure of the state or exact position of the reactor cores, continuing massive leakage of radioactive water that will be taken to California by ocean currents.

But then it caps that with a scarier scenario: if the spent-fuel pools leak enough water and air reaches the stored fuel assemblies, there could be an uncontrollable fire, releasing far more radiation into the atmosphere than happened at Chernobyl – Fukushima was using about 9 times more fuel than the Russian operation[2]
In Mid-August, RT.com reported[3] the operation to remove spent fuel from under the No. 4 reactor; a minor earthquake or dropping a fuel assembly could also trigger a nuclear fire.

Last March, Robert Alvarez of the IPS in Washington gave a presentation[4] explaining the difficulties and dangers of Fukushima – including terrorism. He pointed out that US regulations allow for much larger spent-fuel pools, and that these are rapidly approaching capacity, so a plan for additional (and preferably dry) storage is urgently needed.
The technology is still in its infancy, despite the twisted assurance of some UK nuclear shill years ago who claimed that the industry had 100,000 (or was it a million?) years’ experience, as though 50 yearling babies could be credited with the knowledge of a 50-year-old adult. Yet the implications of shutdown and cleanup are very far-reaching: the half-life of Uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years, longer than the distance between us and the first monocellular life on Earth (see Slide 11 for other examples).

If not nuclear, what? Perhaps, since there is growing doubt about CO2’s contribution to global warming, we should reconsider coal. Maybe Arthur Scargill’s repeated point about the UK's reserves of deep-mined coal was apt, after all. Can they be recovered now?


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EXCLUSIVE: David Rose believes in global warming

David Rose's latest spread in the Mail on Sunday (print edition) begins with a sub-heading revealing the UN IPCC's "astonishing new admission" that, as the inch-high type of the two-page-straddling main headline says, "global warming is HALF what we said."

You know when someone shouts so loudly that you can't hear them? For although his ongoing series on climate change features a provocative thematic label:


- it's not a confidence trick, simply overstatement by a committee who don't appear to understand that science is founded on the rock of uncertainty: the more it's willing to be doubted and tested, the more likely it is to be as nearly right as it can be.

The presentation of the Mail articles - for which sub-editors may have more responsibility than Rose himself - is similarly overdone, and asking to be tripped up by its own brashness. For example, crowing that global warming (of what part or element, exactly?) is only half what was predicted appears to admit an inconvenient truth, i.e. that the globe is indeed warming.

In a highly contentious area like this, there is a duty to consider style as well as content. Rose's piece, when the cross-header shrieking subsides, is more nuanced, showing that the whole issue is far more complex than just a series of forecasts about CO2 and temperature readings.

Mind you, he hasn't helped himself by jumping gleefully on the increase in Arctic ice cover as though to say, "Ha ha! Proved you wrong!" Firstly, there are also places where ice is melting, and secondly, anyone with the slightest knowledge of statistics knows that citing a single instance is no proof or disproof of anything. You have to try to find a trend.

There is a famous example in Bortkiewicz' book "Das Gesetz der kleinen Zahlen" (1898), where he studied the frequency with which Prussian cavalrymen were kicked to death by horses ("all of them", Allied soldiers would doubtless have wished 20 years later). On average it was 0.61 per year, which obviously didn't happen that way (unless the man's legs were left alive).

 
von Bortkiewicz's cavalry example (visually reordered)

One blizzard doth not an ice age make. There are many factors affecting world climate, and that's a vast subject. Even the Met Office's supercomputer can't get today's weather right every time, let alone next week's.

However, it is a scientific fact that CO2 lets through solar radiation but reflects back ground-emitted re-radiation; the way this works is clearly explicable. Similarly, water vapour from aircraft contrails - Brits may remember (coincidence or not?) the clear days we had in 2010 as air traffic was suspended when we had a dust cloud from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull (pronounced "Jones", I understand) volcano.

Okay, there's room for debate on whether humans are largely responsible for CO2 increases; and about how other systems (e.g. vegetation) respond to any such increase; and about all the other things that cool or warm the sea and air. But there's too much yelling on both sides of the debate, and sensational contrarian reporting is not a proper corrective to over-excited AGW campaigners.

There's money being made on both sides, by lobbyists and manufacturers of cars and windmills, solar panel-makers and supermarkets flying beans in from Kenya; and by global carbon trading that seems to favour Chinese industry and American capital. As ever in war, truth has been the first casualty, and we need a more balanced contribution from the Fourth Estate and news media owners.


All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.