More scawy storwies...not

Haven't been posting much because the past few days have been spent marshalling documents from all over the planet to get to our immigration lawyers before the deadline for applications. That and various upsets have been digging into my time. Mrs S has been more or less monopolising the 'pooter, and to be honest I've not had much to say. That and the apartment looking like it's been bombed with paperwork. However, we now have everything in place and ready for dispatch via UPS tomorrow.

What with all the attendant upsets over details and all I'm emotionally exhausted. Paradoxically too tired to sleep properly yet all I want to do is lie down and rest.

Any old road up; it used to be said that talking about the weather was a 'safe' topic. Nowadays I'm not so sure. Even an innocuous remark about how heavy the rain has been locally for the past couple of days is likely to send some people frothing at the mouth, so I've just been nodding and smiling a lot to avoid being told how the Arctic is melting (It's not), the heat death of the universe is coming unless you return to a neolithic standard of living (get knotted), oh, and we're all gonna die (In seventy or eighty years or so - don't make me laugh). Look chaps, when even expert prognosticators can't make even reasonably accurate weather forecasts for the next ten days, how in the name of good gravy can the ever-voluble doomsayers predict the climate forty or eighty years ahead? I look at all the scary statistics, graphs and stuff, then take a look out of my window and go "Nah." It's all bullshit and hyperbole from people who just want to seem more important and interesting than they really are; which is not at all. As for calling people who disagree 'deniers' and calling for them to be jailed, oh go away and come back when you've grown up a bit and can discuss things properly.

I'm just pleased that the current Harper Government here in Canada is at the back of the queue for such rhetoric, despite the increased and annoying BC 'carbon tax' on gasoline.

The news from the UK was of Government warnings about a 'heatwave' which I think lasted three or four days of nice warm summery weather followed by downpours which shut several parts of the London underground. Sounded like good old fashioned July weather to me, just like we had when I was growing up in England. In fact, just like it's been for most of the 20th century. Had London's storm drain system been operating properly, no doubt the excess water would be flowing down the Thames and not the railway tracks. We get more rain here in BC than they do, yet road washouts tend to happen out in the boonies, not in the centre of town.

In the years before we left the UK, seasonal flooding was routine. In four years out of ten you could virtually guarantee that our home town would be seriously affected by the rising muddy flow in the Spring, Summer and Autumn months. Old photographs I saw in various archives showed more or less the same thing going right back before the 1900's. All right, maybe that's just anecdotal, but it still happened. Never mind all the hysteria based on statistics. The climate does change, but there's bugger all we can do about it but figuratively enjoy the sunshine when it comes and store water for the dry times.

Ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference, there have been attempts to 'talk up' the non-existent 'climate crisis' by telling us that the Coral reefs will all die within 20 years and that class A idiot Gore insinuating that those who do not agree with all the climate hype are comparable to members of the old German National Socialists (Foot, boot, on, the, other, methinks, the). As for Copenhagen, it's just a talking shop for politicians to let off huge clouds of esteem and disinformation about a trace atmospheric gas and enjoy a huge jolly at their respective taxpayers expense. Rather like the G8 talks. Like politicians could actually do something about the climate were the postulations behind CO2 being the culprit being anywhere near true.

Carbon Dioxide only absorbs and reflects light and heat in two specific parts of the electromagnetic spectrum for goodness sake. The climate Elephant in the room is Water Vapour, which is responsible for 95%of the natural 'greenhouse effect' ahead of Methane and other causes; which the politicians don't seem to want to discuss, as you can't tax it. Without said effect the Earth would be a ball of frozen rock, I think I've heard the figure of 33 Celsius cooler mentioned if such an effect didn't exist. CO2 effects? Minimal. You get more climatic effect from large scale particulate pollution events like volcanoes and heavy local smog.

Back in the 1960's and early 70's, there were jokes going round about socialist governments imposing 'sex licenses' and 'breathing taxes'. Looks like those jolly japes might turn out to be a little prescient, and a lot more accurate than all the predictions of CO2 induced climate disaster.