Save the Humans

Greens Under the Bed

There is a good article in the Times Online at the moment: "Blunt warning about greens under the bed".

The idea of red=green is not new, but it is well written:

His band of angry young men would find Gore where once they found Marx

Where once they raged about the fleecing of the proletariat and quaked at the march of fascism, Blunt and his circle, transposed to today’s college bar, would rage about the fleecing of the planet and quake at its imminent destruction. If you squint, red and green look disarmingly similar.

My desire to live a free, mundane life is a fundamental cog in our messy, glorious, capitalist democracy. It is built on millions of such small entrenched postitions. Red-filtered, my desires are despicable and bourgeois and must be beaten out of me with indoctrination or force. Green-filtered, my small desires are despicable acts of ecological vandalism. My house is a carbon factory. My desire to travel, to own stuff, to eat meat, to procreate, to heat my house, to shower for a really, really long time; all are evil.

This last bit is very well put. Environmentalism is all very well until it actually intrudes on our lives. At that point it is really no different from communism in its impact, whether environmentalists are communists or not.

Weeds or Natives

As I read the article saying that global warming will cause weeds to take over the world, I thought of the fact that in Christchurch, this has already happened.

"As habitats change in response to climate change, the species that are most likely to survive are those with short life cycles that can adapt quickly and those that are readily dispersed, common characteristics of most weed species," the trust's senior botanist Peter Weston said.

Long ago the council gave up trying to plant anything exotic. Now we just get flax, dodgy species of grass and other assorted swamp plants. I was rather hoping that global warming would kill these off and we could have our colourful city back, but apparently not.

"We were struck by the conservatism of plants, basically how rarely they were able to adapt and flourish outside of their ancestral environments," Dr Weston said in a statement.

Dr Weston needs to get out more. Most of the decent trees in Christchurch are introduced.

Peak Garbage

Here's an idea for environmentalists thoroughly depressed by the lower oil price: there is a floating rubbish patch in the oceans. According to wikipedia the concentrations are pretty low:

The study found concentrations of plastics of 3.34 pieces with a mean mass of 5.1 milligrams per square meter

But still that's about 20mg per square meter. Over a square km of ocean that is 20 tonnes, which sounds a lot more impressive. Assuming it extends to a depth of 1m there is about a million tonnes of water so that's 20 parts per million. Mercury thermometers have been banned for less!

So there you go, environmentalists, don't say I never do anything for you!

Peak Oil and Peak Water

Anti-Dismal has a pointer to an article about why we are coping with scarce oil, but struggle with water shortages.

But why is there such a contrast? The answer is of course markets. We have them for oil but not, by and large, for water.

This is of course true. We pay the same whether we use no water or lots. Since our rates are so obscenely high, our family tries to get value for money by watering the lawn and having long showers.

Environmentalists haven't even acknowledged that the market for oil can cope with changes in supply and demand. Even with oil at $140 (perhaps especially with oil at that price) environmentalists bleated on that the world was running out of oil. Surely they could acknowledge that at some price, there is plenty of oil. For example, at $1000 a barrel we would all be walking and oil would be viewed only in the museums. Conversely, at that price all the dodgy oil countries would presumably be invaded and their hopeless state-owned oil companies replaced with efficient ones, thus massively increasing oil output, and reducing the price down to $10.

Now that oil is falling below $100 (currently $96), the urgent desperation of companies to massively increase their oil production where possible has presumably subsided a bit, although it will still be important. Were oil to fall to $60 a barrel, then many of the schemes cooked up in the past few years may actually close down.

Anti-Dismal: you need to get out of the university and into schools! It is scary for me to see how much children know about conservation, and how little about economics.

Ticket Quotas Confirmed

Here it is again, the issue that won't go away.

Ticket targets set for each traffic officer per year:
* 560 speeding.
* 130 alcohol.
* 110 restraints.
* 220 dangerous/careless.
* 400 high-risk driving.

"It's simply because a number of people like to speed and they don't like to be sanctioned for it. We've got to remember that the only people who get the tickets are the people who offend."

Yes, I got one recently and it was particularly galling as I spend half my driving life staring at the spedo. No credit for that of course. My ticket was for 61km/h. Disgusting. There is plenty of evidence that this clear policy.

A spokesman for Police Minister Annette King said she had made it clear two years ago she didn't support quotas.

"She believes that police should be policing high-risk areas, dangerous roads where there's lots of accidents ... and obviously alcohol offences."

My ticket was on a quiet residential street only a few months ago. Can I get a refund now? A little more honesty would do police credibiilty a lot of good. This issue is the main reason why police are viewed with growing suspicion by people who should be their greatest fans. It would be very easy to fix.

Go Home Russia

I'm not normally one to take sides (who am I kidding?), but Russia needs to head home. It is not making any friends with its heavy-handed operation in Georgia. It is silly that Russia has been providing the peace-keeping troupes when they so transparently want North Ossetia to gain independence from Georgia (and a little bit more dependence on Russia). Just look at the map:

There is an oil pipeline going right through Georgia, which carries up to 1m barrels of oil a day, and is a key barrier to Russia's energy dominance of Europe. Russia has apparently tried to bomb it.

I'm sorry that Russia has been unable to keep Georgia as part of its dodgy regime since communism collapsed, but not sorry enough to say that they can have it back.

Go home Russia. I hope this conflict also encourages the powers that be to sort out peacekeeping situation.

UPDATE: This just in - there is hope!

In New York on Sunday, the United Nations Security Council entered its fourth day of emergency session. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad condemned Russia for rejecting attempts to end the bloodshed and accused the Kremlin of trying to overthrow Saakashvili.

I get a warm feeling every time I hear that the UN is on the case. No doubt 5 days will do it.

Oh dear I forgot...of course Russia has a veto.

The only person with any credibility to end this conflict is President Bush. Will he send a battle group? Only if there is no alternative as it would be a hugely provocative move. We will have to wait and see.

Perhaps Georgia should be allowed into Nato immediately. That would give Russia and Iran something to think about.

Will the Aussies Invade?

Worrying rumours on Whaleoil's site, and now this. Having read the emigration figures I was under the impression that we were invading Australia, but I could be wrong.

UN: Useless Numskulls Should Shove Off Back To Mars

Sooner or later everyone loses patience with the UN. What has really done it for me is the situation in Zimbabwe. OK so it wasn't exactly a shining example of a well run country in the 80s, or even 90s, but recently things have headed downhill fairly fast. And the UN has dazzled us with a wondrous display of its uselessness.

Mr Mugabe is a lunatic by many measures, but that alone doesn't disqualify him from office. After all, our own government has announced plans to ban light bulbs next year. But at least we can vote them out. The real problem is that he is also a dictator.

The groups that supposedly leap into action when a leader of a country goes na-na have so far been conspicuous by their lack of leaping prowess.

African leaders, for example:

Some African leaders are growing impatient with the Mugabe government...

Growing impatient? Thousands dead, millions terrorised, an economy ruined and your impatience is growing? The time for that was 5 years ago, guys! You should now be growing daisies over his grave. Perhaps if Mr Mugabe started invading a few neighbours it might get their attention. Wake up!

Tony Blair, to his credit, has spoken out against Mr Mugabe for years. No action though.

Al Gore, the other saviour of the world, too busy trying to keep his power bill over $30,000 and rescuing the planet form an imagined threat, hasn't had time to comment. Environmentalists worldwide no doubt await his declaration on the matter so they will know which way to jump (although our local environmentalists have been clearly on the right side) Gore's actions in Florida perhaps inspired Zimbabwe's partial vote recount.

The socialists can be relied upon to take the wrong side of the argument:

Blair’s attitude towards Zimbabwe is that of a colonial ruler who expects his orders to be followed to the letter. His increasingly reckless policies threaten to destabilise the entire region.

The United Nations takes the cake though. Just last September they invited Mr Mugabe to speak at a UN meeting. He met with the chief numskull himelf:

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Mugabe met with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in an encounter sources said was less than cordial.

Less than cordial? Did Mr Ban give him his death-ray stare? Or did he just refuse to supply a 10th lump of sugar for Mr Mugabe's coffee. The report doesn't say...

And just the other day they met with him, and somehow failed to poison his coffee.

It takes someone with guts to say it like it is:

President Bush said Mr. Mugabe's "tyrannical regime" was "an assault on its people and an affront to the principles of the (U.N.) Universal Declaration" of Human Rights.

But of course, human rights isn't exactly the UN's strong suit. As Kiwiblog says:

However the Human Rights Council is a body we should be avoiding. Even the UN Secretary General has criticised it. Within just months it is becoming as discredited as its predecessor body. This is because they watered down all the reforms.

We can achieve nothing of use on this body. We will just get to condemn Israel several times a day, ignore Sudan, Zimbabwe and Syria and get to join Iran in telling off the United Kingdom for its treatment of women.

Please can someone put us out of our misery and explain exactly what the UN is for?

So here's my message to the UN: yes it is our world, so can you kindly shove off back to Mars where you belong?

Amazing New Energy Source will Save the Planet

A scientist friend of mine who works at CERN was on Skype this evening. He tells me that they have had a huge breakthrough at his lab which will lead to a new form of energy. He was excited that it was hard to understand exactly what it is (and he is French!) but by the end of it I was jumping up and down too.

It seems to be some sort of process which can turn a piece of matter into energy. It will apparently lead to wonderful new things in this area.

The substance they have tested is black in colour and looks a bit like shiny marble in some lights. The process of releasing is nicknamed Crema and apparently it is not even patented as something similar has been done for centuries. However this new process is better because it doesn't involve adding water and the energy released is enormous. From their estimations a tonne of this substance could power 50 homes for a week or more so it is very efficient.

The process is not completely clean, but is getting cleaner all the time, I am told.

If this is what I think it is, it will remove all objections that environmentalists have against energy production.  Spread the word!

My friend has also pointed me to a picture of it here.

The Solution to our Energy Needs at Last

...is Antimatter. All we need is about 3 tonnes of antimatter and a suitable power station to collect the energy, and we could generate more power than mankind uses across the entire planet, including electricity, cars, planes, the lot.

To put this in perspective, 3 tonnes of antimatter should fit comfortably in a small car.

Unfortunately at the moment the cost is around a billion trillion dollars. This would take around 15 million years for the world to pay for even if we made nothing else and didn't need to eat.

But let's be optimistic. Like solar power, the price is sure to come down.

Cheetahs and Dutch Farmers

One of the children at my son's school mentioned that there were only about 12,000 Cheetahs left in the world. This caught my attention because as a child it was one of my favourite animals since it can run faster than a car (up to 230km/h). I always wanted to do that.

But then I thought 'How many Cheetahs do we need?' It seems to me that 12,000 is plenty and in fact even 5000 would probably be enough. My point is that there seems to be a point of view that we must have as many of the endangered animals as possible, often to the exclusion of human life. Cheetahs are killed partly because they kill livestock, on which humans depend for food. They are also losing their habitat and have genetic diversity problems. It must be very tough for them and I'm very sorry.

But I'm more worried about the thousands of humans suffering in Zimbabwe and in particular the sub-species of 'White Famer' which is now down to the last few hundred after a prolonged and deliberate campaign aimed at bringing about extinction. There is some recognition of the wrong, but the Cheetah has its own conservation fund.

Look at the photos and decide who you will support.

Of course there is the other view.

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