Donnerstag, Oktober 12, 2006

Here We Go Again...


Well, it looks like the Germans are going to do the best possible thing with other people's monies: the German government is buying into Airbus.

This is, of course, to force a comittment to a continuing German stake in the manufacturing of Airbus planes. Closing down Hamburg is no longer in the works.


But this is a terrible move otherwise.

Why?


Because it just means that good money is being thrown after bad. Not satisfied with state guarantees - no, let me rephrase that: unable to operate profitably without state guarantees - Airbus will now have a major shareholder whose pockets are extremely deep.

Those of their taxpayers.


The German government has no business, as far as I am concerned, being involved in Airbus. If Airbus can't make it on its own - and don't tell me it can't in the face of competition: it did until the idiots in charge put the company at risk for their oh-so-proud plans to completely dominate the market, instead of merely being competitive - then it deserves to fail, as hard as that is on those involved.


Has anyone even thought about what this means in terms of the ongoing dispute between Airbus and Boeing, or rather between the EU and the US in terms of governments trying to manipulate market competitiveness?

We don't know all the details: all I know is from this that they are going to be buying a significant stock package.

But not because it's a good investment and will help widows and single moms with kids.


Instead, it's out of desperation.

War Crimes and Thought Crimes

So it's come to this.

If you don't agree with the "environmentalists", then you're guilty of genocide.

I thought that this couldn't be the case and that there was a misquote, perhaps. Give everyone the benefit of a doubt...


Wrong.

This is the key quote from David Roberts at Grist is found here:

When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.

Maybe rhetoric that is simply over the top? That the author regrets those words?

Au contraire. He emphasizes them here and underscores that he means those words.

So it's come to this: if you don't drink the Global Warming Kool-Aid, you're guilty, guilty, guilty. Anyone who doesn't agree with the "consensus" (hah!) is a denier and should be brought before a tribunal for his crimes. And anyone who dares to disagree with us is an active agent of the coming apocalypse. Disagree that this is becoming mainstream "environmentalist" thought? Then take a look here .

And while you're at it, go here as well: if you don't become an activist according to our Gospel, then you are in denial. In this case, it's not merely a matter of disagreement: if you don't actively change your lifestyle, then you are guilty of a crime against humanity. Think I'm exaggerating? Here is the key quote from that source (George Marshall from Rising Tide):

In the case of climate change, then, we can intellectually accept the evidence of climate change, but we find it extremely hard to accept our responsibility for a crime of such enormity. Indeed, the most powerful evidence of our denial is the failure to even recognize that there is a moral dimension with identifiable perpetrators and victims. The language of 'climate change', 'global warming', 'human impacts', and 'adaptation' are themselves a form of denial familiar from other forms of human rights abuse; they are scientific euphemisms that suggest that climate change originates in immutable natural forces rather than in a direct causal relationship with moral implications for the perpetrator.

In other words, climate change can't be the result of natural forces: it is a crime that humanity is perpetrating against the environment. But not all of humanity, of course: just the industrialized West.

This is the most naked form of political power-grabbing I have seen in the West in 50 years: not merely demonize your opposition, but rather actively try to make their life styles, their very existence a criminal act.

Because then you can punish them. And you can see in both of these points how dearly both of these "environmentalists" want to punish those who dare to disagree with them, the vanguard of those who will save the planet!

Marshall goes further, along the line that David Roberts started:

Environmental campaign organizations are living relics of Enlightenment faith in the power of knowledge: 'If only people knew, they would act.' To this end they dedicate most of their resources to the production of reports or the placement of articles and opinions in the media. As a strategy it is not working.

To quote Lenin, What Is To Be Done?

Again, Roberts:

People will never spontaneously take action themselves unless they receive social support and the validation of others. Governments in turn will continue to procrastinate until sufficient numbers of people demand a response. To avert further climate change will require a degree of social consensus and collective determination normally only seen in war time, and that will require mobilization across all classes and sectors of society.


For all these reasons, the creation of a large and vocal movement against climate change must be an immediate and overarching campaign objective.

In other words, the masses must be led by a revolutionary vanguard.

That's why I quoted Lenin before: this is nothing more than that miserable, collapsed and thoroughly discredited religion of Marxism-Leninism in new clothes.

I'd call this a New Jesuit order, but that would be insulting to the Jesuits.


Here we have people who obstentiously want to do something good - yes, we all want to have nature and baby seals and cute little baby birds - but in reality are propagating nothing less than a complete takeover of society in order to remake it in their vision.


But what really is over the top is the equating of thought crime - of daring to be skeptical in the face of screaming activists who are trying to force their agenda down your throat - with crimes against humanity.


Thank you, but no thank you. Call me a denier if you will - sticks and stones etc - but this choice of "persuasion" means to me that the "environmentalists" aren't really interested in doing good: they just want to control.

Good going, guys: this kind of rhetoric must go over really well with the true believers, just as anti-semitism went over well with the true believers of both communism and fascism.


Mittwoch, Oktober 11, 2006

Two Nails In The Coffin...


I have never been a fan of the Kyoto pact. Nor am I a fan of "environmentalists" whose Idea is to force other people to live according to the dictates of the environmentalists.

But let me tell you first what I am a fan of: I am a fan of those conservancy organizations that put their money where their mouths are, such as the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. They don't try to force life-style changes, instead going out and buying land to ensure that the land is moved from commercial use to wilderness. The actions of such organizations is measurable, quantifiable and concrete. They help ensure that wildness is conserved: living as I do in Germany, where there is no such thing as wildness, I find that the best thing you can do for nature is to leave it well enough alone and simply let nature take its course. After all, it's nature, isn't it?

Not a bad deal for land owners, either: by taking land off the market, it helps land prices stay relatively high through the simple rules of supply and demand. What is there for an economist not to love?


But the point of this post is not that: it is to reiterate what a joke Kyoto has been, is, and will continue to be.

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , as the damned thing is known as, is, as we all know by now, a comittment to reduce the output of certain kinds of gases that result from industrial output.

I will not debate whether these are a problem, nor global warming. This distracts from the real issue.

What I will say here is that the Kyoto Protocol as we know it was, plain and simple, bad policy. Not merely bad policy, but policy enacted in bad faith: by excluding a penalty clause, the protocol has no meaning. Any sort of committment to "action" that has no enforcement conditions means that the committment is nothing more than political bullshitting.

It is political white-washing of the worst kind: it is the moral equivalent of deploring war whilst selling guns to the warring parties indiscriminately.

Why? Here are two more nails for the coffin that the Kyoto Protocol should be buried in, preferabyl sooner than later.

This should give you an idea. As should this.

Fundamentally, the makers of the treaty wanted to do something "feel good" but without any sort of meaning. This is what I mean by political white-washing. All that this served was to take off the political pressure from "green" groups and give them something to be happy about: yay, the planet is going to be saved!

Why is it the moral equivalent of deploring war whilst selling guns?

Because the reductions achievable by Kyoto are basically background noise: a maximum modelled reduction in temperature rise of 0.28° C within a modelled temperature increase of between 1.4°C and 5.8°C. Of course, it sounds better to say a 20% reduction in the best case modelled temperature rise and a 4.83% decrease in the worst-case scenario.

But that's not the real story. The numbes 1.4°C and 5.8°C are the limits to the ranges that the models used deliver: a variance of 4.4°C. Now the middle value of those two is 3.6°C, and when I look at the modelled maximum effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol, we get 0.28°C/3.6°C = 0.0778 or not even 8% change in a modelled result. Given the dire predictions of the "environmentalists," making the commitment to spend billions of dollars - which is, after all, a scarce resource in and of itself - to hope to affect a change that is well within the realm of statistical variance means that you are spending billions to achieve nothing. Kyoto, even if it were to be implemented 100% AND - a very big leap of faith - the most likely scenario - the middle point of the two extremes - were to come about, achieves at best a change that falls within a very narrow confidence level.

That is, as far as I am concerned - feel free to disabuse me of my notions here - meaningless.

Meaningless: that is the core of the Kyoto Protocol.

And who will profit? Well, that second link up above - to carbon trade - shows what happens when you let "environmentalists" set up systems designed to provide economic incentives to achieve political goals. Set things up and then do not fund. Open the door to corruption and deliberate malfeasance, negating the whole point of carbon trade to begin with.

And those who will be laughing all the way to the bank aren't the populations of the lesser developed countries, cashing in on the inability of developed countries to reduce their carbon footprint: instead, the beneficiaries are those who are more than willing to abuse the system, selling promises with no intention of keeping them, coupled with an oversight system that is rife with conflict of interests.

Within the financial community, any attempt to set up such a scheme, where contracts aren't enforced (or even enforceable!) and where the watchdogs are corrupted by their own actions, would end up with massive fraud and ultimately prison time for those who get caught and don't have political friends in high places.

Here there will be massive fraud and no one will care until everyone realizes that the Kyoto Protocol is terribly, terribly flawed.

By then, if the models are accurate and reality unfolds as they expect, the damage will be there, but rather than even try to address the problems then, the money will have been spent now.

But not to address the real problems of a possible future, but rather to assuage political pressure groups and bribe them into supporting corrupt politicians, those who are only interested in achieving power and maintaining their lifestyles without the danger of having to actually work for their money.


What we need instead is to spend the monies dedicated to Kyoto on building dikes in Bangladesh if rising sea levels is the result of global warming; on learning where climate change will occur and what it actually means; on ensuring that there is a minimum of loss of life and suffering.

Instead, Kyoto will come to be seen as the greatest mistake of the beginning of the 21st Century and historians will wonder why the obvious was so long ignored.