Posts by Ilmarinen

Re: Not actually shooting the messanger

RTFH: "The internet is less free than last year. Thanks a bunch, Snowden"

That is all.

Re: Good, measury stuff

What does AGW stand for?

Anthropogenic - i.e. caused by humans.

In order to justify the Zillions (that's a 1 with a squillion 0s after it) of dollars being spent and committed to "de-carbonize" the world, a rational person would need to show that 1) The world was warming, 2) The warming was in fact Anthropogenic, 3) The warming was likely to be Catastrophic (as in "CAGW" - or at least a big enough problem to justify the proposed remedy) and 4) That it was possible to do anything meaningful to prevent the warming. Even then, they would have to show that adapting to any change was a worse plan than trying Canute-like to prevent it.

This is quite a tricky challenge, especially as there hasn't been much/any warming for about 2 decades, despite the continuing increase in CO2 (which is supposed to be the cause). Nevertheless, there are some people who still "Believe" in AGW.

These tend to be anyone who's job depends on maintaining the scare or who makes a nice profit taking the green subsidies, as well as the genuine but gullible folks who just want to "save the world". Most politicians and regulators of course love it as an opportunity to raise taxes, impose ever more laws and regulations and to subsidise their friends.

Re: Planning conundrum

Absolutely Yes !

IIRC, the planning system is one of the last vestiges of the post-war Socialist nationalization program. The government nationalized your right to develop your own property as you saw fit and imposed a planning system that would allocate permissions as needed in the brave new world. Over time, this mutated into a system for saying "no" to most development and has thus created the market distortions that we see today. Why are houses so eye-wateringly expensive? Mainly because we have restricted the supply (that and increased the demand with increased immigration).

My personal experience with council planners is that they have a weird form of jargon-speak (e.g. "harm to the openness of the countryside") and are quite happy to lie and deceive when it suits them in order to reach the desired "no" answer.

(but we did defeat them and got our modest extension approved - Yes !)

Re: Approved standards

Godspeed, little hectograpefruit-sized science 'bot !

Re: Public confidence?

Some Anonymous Coward wittered "the recruitment processes that resulted in Snowden getting recruited also allowed an unknown number of other half wits into the bit barns" to which I replied:

Nope, don't think Snowden can be described as a half wit. He clearly understood that his government had gone rogue and the risks of exposing what was going on. I think better descriptions would be brave, public spirited and patriotic (as someone upholding his country's constitution when his government was trashing it).

Re: Slightly amazed

"What the UK needs is a party that returns to socialism"

I don't think that it ever had one, but the previous nearly socialist ones still managed to run out of other people's money to spend. And the current clowns are still carrying on the same, running up debt and spaffing our hard earned cash on foriegn wars, high speed trains, spying on folks, aircraft-less carriers, diversity outreach co-ordinators, etc, etc.

I think we just need much less government, much smaller Government - EU, central, county and local - and many fewer laws and regulations. These people are not in their trade for our benefit, merely for their own self importance and enrichment or a nice easy job and good pension.

Bring on the tumbrills, that's wot I say.

Re: Nice idea in theory, but...

We may theorise about what a sensible, logical US administration would do, it having considered all options and posible consiquences. That is not the same as what the fools might actualy do.

Re: That was a good article

Disagree - I thought it was two pages of waffle without much of a point. Sorry Andrew, but there it is.

I don't approve of cab licensing (with permits costing BIG sums in the major cities) - it's just a Guild-ish restraint on trade, to advantage of the licensor and the (prety lowly skilled) supplier to the disadvantage of the customer.

Re: Not Good

Hello, I'm from the GOVERNMENT. I'm here to help you...

F O A D !

( I wish they would )

Re: Makes someone happy?

"that still doesn't mean it should be legal."

I think that's the wrong way around - it says that you should need government permission to do stuff: Anything not allowed is illegal.

I think it ought to be that the government should generally mind its own business and only prohibit things as an exception.

Just my 2₵

Oh no!

Mr Anonymous Coward quotes the highly reliable Grauniad and says it's worse than we thought, it's warming I tell you !

Whereas the dodgey data on the CRU Temperature Data page shows some pretty pausey looking graphs - Central England Temperature, CRUTEM4, HadCRUT4 & HadSST3. Have a look and see. I guess they'll have to update that lousy data.

Call me a Denialist, but I can't be arsed to deal with the other two points.

Re: That "pause"

John Hughes said "Central England? That's your idea for a proxy for the global temperature?"

"No, 'corse not" I thought, and scuttled off to the CRU Temperature Data page, where they have graphs of temperature time series called things like CRUTEM4, HadCRUT4 & HadSST3.

"Well, call me a Denialist" thought I - they all look pretty pausey too.

I wondered to myself where that data set is that dan1980 said was the basis for the utter fabrication?

Perhaps John Hughes might be able to point it out?