should we hang our enemies?

Whilst we're in the business of hanging everyone we don't like the look of, when will the two characters here find that they're in the spotlight?

If someone can get legally topped just for killing a few hundred thousand of their fellow citizens, how much more serious are this pair's crimes?

You see, they have all the information denied to us. They KNOW the world is heading for climate disaster, they KNOW that there is no serious substitute for oil, their so-called 'religion', christianity, allows them to lie and cheat and simply repent at the last minute to wipe out what they've done.

Whilst we're scrabbling around trying to find the next meal or shelter from the next storm, these buggers will be living in luxury with stores of food all around them. They'll shake their empty heads and whine 'we haven't done anything wrong.'

Anyway, have a great 2007, keep safe, keep making money and suppressing the forces of socialism, kick a foxhunter or two, set fire to a couple of models wearing fur and keep building up your wood and gold stocks, closing your bank accounts, get fit and strong and don't buy crap music!

phew, what a scorcher!

It's been an extraordinary year with the hottest month ever in the UK (July), the warmest year globally and now an almost unique situation in both Europe and North America with temperatures closer to late autumn rather than winter prevailing everywhere. December rain in Moscow, Helsinki and much of the Alps, no snow yet in southern England, almost frost-free ...

The real losers currently are the European ski resorts, basking in unusual warmth with spring flowers already appearing. Only artificial snow on the upper slopes and gloomy rain-lashed villages at the foot of them.

But this may all be very misleading. There may still be a very cold snap this winter which'll catch almost all of us unawares, in the longer term the faltering of the Gulf Stream will probably plunge western Europe into a run of very severe winters.

The Climate Change scenario is worse than anyone has imagined already - the future looks like it's going to be a nightmare of severe weather, economic meltdown and huge population changes. But as always there'll be opportunties as well as sob stories. You read it here first!

freakish? nah ...

(1987 'hurricane', Littlehampton, West Sussex)

The most annoying thing about the London tornado is the way that many newsreaders etc refer to it as a 'freak'. It's anything but. Britain has the highest number of tornadoes (by area) of any country in the world. They're part and parcel of living somewhere where the climate is unstable. True, they're not as vicious as ones in some other parts of the world, but they can still pack quite a punch.

The important thing to remember is that we are still living in relatively quiet times climate-wise. Things are going to get much, much wilder. In the broad historical sweep stable and benign climates are 'freaks'. For much of the time the earth's climate is wild and inhospitable. We need to plan for wilder weather and prepare for it. We can't stop it happening now, we all need to adapt. Tornadoes, heatwaves, floods, blizzards, wildfires and superstorms are going to become part and parcel of everyday life for all of us.

I was in the front line of the 1987 hurricane. It convinced me (a decade before most!) that something odd was going on with the climate. It got me involved in green/Green politics. No doubt the 2006 tornado will do the same for others. 

the economist needs to get real

Like all good economists I take the Economist, but sometimes I despair at its total lack of connection with the real world and particularly the future. Economists used to have a catch-all get out of jail card which blinkered their intellectual rigour - externalities.

One would think in a post-Katrina and Peak Oil world they would have shed this view, if only through natural wastage as old fart journalists shuffle off this mortal coil.

So why the fuck is this week's issue including cover story 'Your Journey to Work? How to fix Britain's transport system'? It is joke journalism at its very worse. Classic laugh out loud line is 'First, roads should take priority over rail'. WTF??
How the fuck will that work? We should be carefully reducing the road network so that Peak Oil doesn't back foot us and send us into economic Depression. Rail is so economically and environmentally superior to road (RIP) that there is no argument to even maintain the current system let alone increase it or - amazingly - put it BEFORE rail. What are the Economist writers thinking of?

But reading the article carefully gives clues as to why they're getting it so wrong. The 'Transport Department' forecasts that road traffic will INCREASE by 40% by 2025. Yes, you read that right, increase, not decrease!! Er, how exactly? Using what fuel?? It's like the idiots forecasting INCREASES in air traffic! It is communist rubbish, and they know it.

But the daftest thing is that the article is pushing for road pricing, which as much as Peak Oil will reduce road traffic substantially. They don't know whether they're coming or going.

Economists, more than anybody, HAVE to be 100% realists because the post Peak Oil world will not be a place for dreamers and thickos. They will be DEAD, and not just metaphorically.

Cancel the Economist? I'm tempted!