Today I’m taking a slight detour around AGW, with a brief visit to one of my own personal hobby horses. I’d like to talk to you about disaster preparedness; why you should think about it, and some of the simple things you can do around the home that could, in the event of an emergency, just possibly save your life.
First, a few justifications. It’s a great temptation to regard disasters as things that happen only on the news, to people in far-off places like Pakistan, Haiti and Chile. This isn’t meant to be patronising: I have run into many people in my own country (invariably in the major cities), whose eyes glaze over should I dare raise the subject, and who clearly believe it’ll never happen here. As I write this, the main news stories in Australia concern hundreds left temporarily homeless by floods in Victoria and an earthquake in New Zealand. On Christmas Eve, 1974, the entire city of Darwin was flattened by Cyclone Tracy, killing 71 and leaving over 30,000 people without water, food or power. Hurricane Katrina, and the events in its aftermath, are merely the most visible reminders that, firstly, none of us are immune from potential disasters, and secondly, we would be naïve in the extreme were we to assume that, in the event of one occurring, the government will come running straight to our aid. No folks, as I have always said here, we have to be primarily responsible for ourselves.
Epic Fail (Town Planning division): would YOU trust the government who designed this to come and rescue you when the inevitable occurs?
For some people, the subject of disaster preparedness connotes the rather more specific issue of survivalism, which usually conjures up images of bands of right-wing nut jobs in camouflage fatigues and web netting, inhabiting armed compounds out in the Texas badlands and plotting to take over the country sometime after World War Three. Survivalism tends to revolve around longer-term planning in the event of a prolonged disaster and on many survivalist websites, you can indeed come across certain characters who are as disturbing as they are undoubtedly disturbed; I may address survivalism in a future thread, however today I’m covering something simpler, and far more practical. Regardless of your political leanings, or beliefs regarding such things as climate change, this subject is for you.
As to the causes of disasters, it really doesn’t matter much if the effects on you are the same, and you can pretty much take your pick, according to your tastes. Terrorism, nuclear war/accident, floods, bushfires, other natural disasters (climate-induced or otherwise), pandemic—it’s impossible to know beforehand, and largely irrelevant afterwards. But you can plan for them. As most of you reading this live in cities or their urbanized hinterlands, I’ll be gearing this advice specifically for those living in urban areas, not especially susceptible to floods, bushfires, earthquakes or cyclones.
*****
Have you ever stopped to consider just what an artificial construct a city is? Prior to the Industrial Revolution, cities or towns existed primarily to service the surrounding farmlands, their size limited by the fecundity of the local soil and the sophistication of available transport systems. Seats of government tended to be located in the most fertile areas, enabling armies, business and public servants—in other words, a non-farming population—to be maintained. Forty thousand or so was the practical limit for the Western world, although a handful of cities in the East (and a couple of Western city-states) were able to grow much larger by dint of brutal emperors, sultans and princes embracing slavery, perpetual wars of conquest and horrendous squalor.
From about 1800 onwards, these rôles were reversed: cities became their own raison d’être, and the countryside now existed to serve them. By 1830, London had overtaken Beijing as the most populous city on earth, and only the second, after Beijing, to surpass one million inhabitants. The subsequent advent of railways, and later electricity and refrigeration, meant cities grew able to far outstrip their own ability to feed, water and power themselves, and dispose of their wastes. Today, there are nearly 400 cities or urban areas—70 in China alone—with populations in excess of 1,000,000, or 25 times larger than can comfortably sustain themselves from within. I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, as cities are one of my personal bugbears, and I’m taking aim at them in an upcoming thread later this year. But the inherent unsustainability of cities is a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all who live and work in them; a fact, unfortunately, which only tends to become apparent when disaster strikes.
2005: Tens of thousands of residents forced to camp in and around the New Orleans Superdome in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, as government response proves woefully inadequate
Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. Most Sydneysiders don’t realise this (because they’ve never looked at a map: the government knows it) but, surrounded on three sides by rugged bushland and the Hawkesbury-Nepean and Georges river systems, Sydney is singularly dependent on just five transport corridors for all land-based transport in and out of the metropolitan area; a terrorist organisation need only blow up nine road and rail bridges (plus a handful of smaller wooden structures) to cut all land-based access, personal and freight transport, in or out of Sydney. Were it to also destroy just twenty power transmission pylons, a dozen or so infrastructure and communication installations and a few airport runways, and the four-and-a-half million inhabitants of the Sydney Basin would be isolated: no food, water, electricity or communication, and no escape.
An organised and well-funded terrorist cell, after several years of planning, executes this attack at 2:30pm on a scorching Friday afternoon in February. Try to imagine what follows:
Sword of Damocles: Seen from space, the Sydney Basin (light green) is connected to the outside world by only a handful of bridges. A determined terrorist could easily cut 4.5 million people off from food, water and power.
The first most people would realise something was wrong, would be when their homes and workplaces are blacked out. Television sets, phones and the internet being inoperable, those with car or transistor radios would start spreading the news by word of mouth, which wild rumour will quickly inflate to a mass panic. Traffic lights, petrol stations and public transport all inoperative, gridlock on all arterial roads, hundreds of thousands of workers unable to get home to their families or even get in touch by phone. Terrified householders descend en masse to the supermarkets in a frenzy of panic buying. Only, when they arrive, they find them darkened, checkouts inoperable, their employees having fled their posts. Looting begins immediately. In any case, with their just-in-time supply chain models, shelves and storerooms are immediately stripped of essentials like bottled water, toilet paper, tinned food and batteries. An overwhelmed police force, much of its command-and-control infrastructure out of action, finds itself completely powerless to prevent the stampedes.
The government’s response is sadly predictable. Competent only in the acquisition of power, petrified at the prospect of losing control, they turn to their senior public servants designated to take charge in times of civil emergency. In former days, these were highly skilled professionals, trained in emergency management, selected for their competence and entrusted with wide-ranging plenipotentiary powers in such situations. But now these, too, are mere political appointments, incompetent dunderheads like this one, and find themselves in completely over their heads. Faced with a real, live emergency in which those around them are looking to them to roll up their sleeves and lead, as opposed to merely preside, their shortcomings are immediately apparent to all. Panic-stricken, with no idea how to even assess the situation, let alone respond, they inform their political masters that they are powerless to act. And that’s when the trouble really starts.
Meanwhile, with no electricity, water reticulation and sewerage systems are out of action. After about 36 hours, sewer mains start backing up into the homes of all low-lying areas, rendering them uninhabitable. In the stifling heat and with a lack of clean drinking water, disease quickly becomes the main killer. Local emergency volunteers establish makeshift morgues in fields and parks; health concerns and the sheer scale of the task quickly compel them to bulldoze bodies unceremoniously into the ground, without the benefit of service or even formal identification. Desperate residents fall to looting to gain whatever they need. Inevitably, opportunists emerge to take advantage of the situation, robbing appliance stores, car dealerships, whatever they can lay their hands on. Social problems long festering beneath the surface, particularly in the south-western suburbs, explode as gangs roam the streets, settling old scores with impunity, invading and robbing homes more or less at will.
Makeshift morge established in the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake; DON'T think this couldn't happen in your part of the world.
Within the metropolitan area, there are perhaps 72 hours worth of fuel reserves, and no more than twice that of food and many medical supplies; such is the reliance on the supply chain from without. Airborne supply drops on suburban sporting fields by the air force cannot begin to meet a fraction of the population’s need; preventing stampedes at these supply drops becomes the only effective contribution the police force can offer. Temporary replacements to even a few bridges are weeks away, as are sea-borne relief supplies. Were the terrorists to include a further nine bridges spanning Sydney’s internal waterways on their hit list, transport by road is reduced to a few secondary, two-lane roads, dramatically slowing the distribution of relief supplies. As thousands of house fires in the suburbs, and dozens of bushfires on the periphery blaze unchecked, with the death toll climbing into the tens or even hundreds of thousands, social order breaking down, a terrified and incompetent government declares martial law…
You are a resident somewhere in the middle of all this. What are you going to do?
*****
If the scenario I have described above sounds a bit far-fetched to you, start watching the World News each evening. Or substitute earthquakes or swine flu for terrorists. The fact is, a year never passes without disasters on this scale occurring somewhere across the planet, and the fact they are rarely visited upon English-speaking white folks is as much a matter of good luck as it is good management. Sooner or later, disaster will strike your country, and possibly the area in which you live. To assume otherwise is to live in a dream world.
That’s why you should think about disaster preparedness. Now here’s what you need to do.
Make a Plan
Well, duh. To be more specific, make two plans. One to stay put in your home, and one to leave. I’ll outline what you need to do for each. Discuss them with your household, now. Trying to figure this stuff out out on the fly, after disaster has struck, is impossible and too late in any case. I know it’s like making a will—something you’d rather not think about—but you’ve read this far down, so stay with me here.
Stay or go, there are some things you need in common. The first is a transistor radio. In the event of a disaster, it’s quite possible that electricity supply is cut off and your TV and internet won’t work, so the radio is how you’re going to find out what the hell is going on. If you’re out and about, you’ll hear all kinds of rumours, and believing and acting on the basis of these may well get you killed; so it’s important to have a working radio, to at least find out what the official government line is. I’ve actually got a nifty Chinese-made, wind-up rechargeable one I picked up for a couple of dollars at my local Chickenfeed (Tasmania’s bargain-basement variety retail chain store). Know the frequency of your designated emergency broadcaster. Here in Australia the government-run ABC network fulfils the emergency broadcasting rôle, and (despite their long-standing bias in political reporting) is one of the few things they do really well. In the wake of last year’s Black Saturday bushfires, the ABC was one of the few parts of the government response that came out of it with any real credit. In the USA, try here. In Britain, here.
The second thing you’re going to need is clean water. Sounds obvious, but if power is out, or pumping stations otherwise rendered inoperative, you had better have a supply on hand. Shrink-wrapped slabs of bottled water are cheap and easy; filling old plastic drink containers is even cheaper. If you’re staying, you’ll need at least 20 litres per person, per day. Jerry cans are best for this; you can pick them up cheaply at your local Homebase (UK), Home Depot (USA) or Bunnings (Aus). If you’re leaving, plan on carrying 3 litres of drinking water each in your backpack.
Beyond that, seven days’ supplies of whatever you need to survive: medicines, toiletries, non-perishable food, a couple of changes of clothes appropriate to the season. Try to find a wind-up recharger for your mobile/cell phone, as the restoration of the cell tower network is likely to be a priority in the wake of any disaster (a lot of government departments now rely on them completely for day-to-day communications). To plan beyond a week gets us into the realm of survivalism which, as I said above, is a topic for another day. So here are your options:
Stay
Staying put in your own home is always the best option, unless there are genuine reasons to believe your home is in imminent danger. Fire and flood are the main factors here, and in the wake of the Black Saturday fires the Victorian state government has been forced to re-think its long-standing stay-or-go policy (forced in part, I observe, by control freaks who want to be able to make binding decisions regarding my family’s safety on my behalf. But that’s another story). For most of you in urban areas, not particularly low-lying and flood-prone, these are not major considerations. So staying put is probably what you’ll need to do.
The best way to think about this is, ask yourself: if electricity and water were cut off to my home, what would I need inside to be able to lock and bar the front door, and not come out for a week?
Water, obviously. A few jerry cans out the back somewhere, replenished once a year, is all you need. Unless you live high up, consider installing a cut-off valve in your sewer line, for the reason I explained above, and be prepared to dig a pit toilet in your back yard or make other arrangements.
Tinned food is another must, and while you don’t need to go overboard, just picking up a few extra tins of beans, vegetables, stews and other high-nutrition foods when you’re at the supermarket and they’re on special, is all you really have to do. Rotate them, so that you use the oldest ones first and always have a stock set aside. Packet soups, powdered milk (skim only—full-cream milk powder has a limited shelf life as the fat content turns rancid) and tinned fruits are also fine for this purpose. A spare tin opener packed away with this stock is a small investment that could well pay off big-time. Unless you have a barbecue and fuel (and I don’t advise outdoor cooking in your back yard in the wake of a disaster—I’ll explain why another day) a small butane camp stove for use in your kitchen is also handy to have, unless you’re prepared to survive on cold baked beans for a week. And don’t forget about the dog.
Heat. Depending on the season and where you are, you’ll need to consider how you’ll keep warm, particularly at night. Layered clothing (beanie hats, thick socks and gloves) and spare blankets are the best bets here, and I’m fairly sure most of you are well-supplied already. Unless you have solar panels, you won’t have hot water, so bathing may become a rather bracing experience. To conserve water, stick to sponge baths only, but having said that remember that personal hygiene is paramount if you want to avoid disease. On that score, make sure you have decent supplies of soap and disinfectant and that your first-aid kit is up-to-date and in order.
What’s that you say? You don’t have a first-aid kit? Or hold a recognized first-aid qualification? Read my blog’s motto. Or else put your trust in the government.
Light. Personally, I’d like to recommend you get a diesel generator which could power your lights, hot water and refrigerator for a few days at least, but this is really in the realm of survivalism, so plenty of candles (plus matches or lighters), torches and lanterns are the go. Again, a couple of wind-up rechargeable ones are a good idea, and can be obtained cheaply just about anywhere. One important point about candles: if you’re not used to using them, remember that having a naked flame in your home is potentially extremely dangerous: position them so they are no-where near anything flammable, and will not start a fire even if they fall over. Keep curtains and shutters, particularly on street-facing windows, drawn at all times.
Go
The only way you should consider leaving your home as being preferable to staying is if:
Your home is in imminent danger, as I described above.
You have somewhere to go to that is clearly safer than where you already are, you have the means to get there and you know the way. If I had a dollar for every friend or family member who’s airily told me, oh, if the big one ever really did go up Ozboy, we’ll all just head on down to your place, I could probably retire today. Well, I tell them, firstly, if the big one ever really does go up I’m dropping a tree across my driveway, covering up my front gate with bushes and setting the dogs on anyone who sets foot on the place, and secondly, what makes you think you’ll all be able to hop in the car, fill up with petrol and drive all the way down here? In a genuine civil emergency, it’s quite probable public roads will be off-limits to private vehicles, or cut off by the disaster, or gridlocked by everybody else trying to escape at the same time; petrol/gas stations will be closed, or faced with long queues even if open. In short, to head for the hills simply won’t be an option unless you’re well-prepared, ahead of the crowd, and lucky.
You go early. Again, waiting till the last minute to escape is almost always a worse option than staying put. You risk being caught in a stampede, panic or gridlock, and the figures show that your chances of being killed increase dramatically.
These factors often won’t be up to you; disasters sometimes strike with no warning (as in my hypothetical scenario above), but you will need to think them through now, realistically, and make a judgement call when the time comes.
*****
That’s about it for the moment. Thanks for reading, and I hope it may prompt you to at least think about the issue, and make some basic preparations that could well save the lives of you and your family. Pray to God it never happens to you, but if it does, at least you will be ready.
The more I think about it, I probably will do a thread on longer-term survival issues sometime soon. This is a more complex and somewhat philosophical subject, so I’ll need to do a bit of research first. I’m away next week, but will try to post something if the open threads start getting too long.
Cheers,
Ozboy
Be Responsible - Be Free! 
Well we have New Madrid fault to deal with it can give 8.2 earthquakes and as we are on land that is prone to sand blowouts and liquifaction. My survival plan is to eat my neighbours if worst comes to worst.
I can’t say I haven’t thought about this before. However if war broke out between China and the West, I’m fairly sure I’d meet a fairly swift end at the hands of a lynchmob before the day was out.
Locusts yes horrible thought but you would have a few weeks notice to get out.
When the Americans bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, foreigners here got chased down the streets.
Locusts you live there why?
It helps me think.
Oz,
Great article, I used to read disaster novels, with Armageddon scenarios, post nuclear conflicts etc.
I used to think about survival, then I thought…..what is the f***** point?
May as well be at ground zero and getting pissed.
Who’d wanna be around after that anyway?
OK, your thinking is slightly on a different plane, in Britain – we would be in big sh*t, there are not many places to run and the country has become so lawless – it would come down to survival of the fittest and the bloke with the big gun.
So first priority, arm yourself.
Second listen, read, mark and inwardly digest, try to predict (as far as poss’) and get out of big conurbations asap.
Then water, food, fuel and hope it will only last weeks/months but depends on scenario.
Or if it is bad and I mean really, really bad………………………make careful consideration to the above and administer as appropriate.
Ed.
Locusts
…..’ It helps me think’
running down the street, chased by a lynchmob, would.
Fenbeagle,
It hasn’t happened to me yet, so I’m still waiting expectantly for my epiphany…
Locusts
I can see why you have avoided it so far, you are thinking on your feet. (If the china officers blog, is anything to go by!)
Locusts
ps, if I’m getting under your feet, say so. Its a Beagle thing.
fen
No, not in the slightest. Everyone on that blog is full of theories about how the world really is, and post realllllyy long posts! The China apologist group are rather interesting/worrying, peaceful rise blah blah blah. When they are Chinese, it is understandable, when they are British, a little less so!
Fabian Solutions loves China so much, it’s a wonder it hasn’t shown it’s face yet!
Yet, I think that everybody needs to know about the hate. It will be pivotal if things ever came to a head. Those young generals that Ambrose is talking about. By and large they are born in to the position, have no empathy, and are complete arseholes.
Just a snippet from JD blog
Will
34 minutes ago
Recommended by
4 people
Nigel Farage is a legend…
“Infamous Euroskeptic Nigel Farage Goes Nuts In European Parliament, Tells A Little Too Much Truth” – http://www.zerohedge.com/article/infamous-euroskeptic-nigel-farage-goes-nuts-european-parliament-tells-little-too-much-truth
Nigel Farage back to his best form ……… ENJOY
Nigel Farage is a Legend
This article may be of interest to some:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherhowse/7986222/Every-man-feels-a-yearning-to-live-in-a-shed.html
Evening All, Just grabbing five minutes before dinner, guests staying at the moment.
I always thought Nigel Farage was a bit “strange” but HEY! He certainly socked it to them.
O.K. I agree – a LEGEND.
Oz – Still pondering the survival message. I’ll get back to you when I’ve thought it out.
Oz, an interesting and balanced appraisal of the more basic possibilities the future may hold. A lot of studies have been done of why certain people survive disasters and others don’t. The common denominator is not that they’re smarter, fitter, stronger or more ruthless – it’s simply that they’re a little bit more prepared than the others who perished. They’re the people who check into the hotel that’s going to burn down and noted where the nearest emergency exit from their room is, the ones who notice the emergency exit from the cinema or dance hall. Surviving is always little precautions. Like Julius said, if you want peace, prepare for war.
Pointman
Another upbeat message….
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/9/8/sugata-mitra-on-kids-teaching-themselves.html
In the UK, the first duty on the first morning of every new Prime Minister is to write four letters. Not one of these letter has ever been opened nor have any of the writers made any comment about what’s in them. They’re covering a remote possibility. You can see why our PM’s age so quickly in office …
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/worse-than-ivan-the-terrible/#more-1613
In line with Fen’s upbeat news, I suspect in most cases, they said – don’t fire.
Pointman
fenbeagle,
I just watched that video. I’ve never learnt within the confines of the curriculum, and so can kind of understand where this man is coming from. I learnt a great deal more from books and encyclopedias than I did from teachers, but only in the subjects I was interested in. I suppose if you swapped computer or internet for encyclopedia in his speech, then it is not really very far away from the old geeky way of learning. However, these methods are all a poor substitute for teaching based on human interaction. Arthur C. Clarke’s comment about whereever a machine can replace a human is a bit surprising, but then again, although a brilliant sci-fi writer, it must be difficult to come down from the clouds and deal with the real world.
I remember when Google Translate came out, I was just finishing up my studies at the time. I was not very happy, and am still not very happy about it to be honest. It’ll be interesting to see what jobs in 50 years time will not be able to be replaced by machines.
Locusts have you read the results of google translate not exactly good and I suspect since a lot of languages do not have a one to one corresponding word it comes down to a good translator to actually determine what was actually meant in context.
I just learned my first Aleut word and it is Diika and means Bad.
Yes, Crown, at the moment Google translate is far from perfect, but give it another 10 years and the algorithms should be much more accurate than today.
G’day ya’ll.
Excellent article OzBoy. I always keep a varied fuel supply in reserve. I usually have at least a full cord of firewood on hand. I keep several propane bottles filled (about 4 of the of the 8lb bottles, a couple of 30 lb bottles and one 40 lb bottle). These keep the gas grills and the outdoor burners fired up and provide heat for my garage (it gets damn cold here in the winter). I have both radiant and forced air propane heaters. I also have a kerosene heater and keep a few sealed gallons of kerosene on hand. I also have a portable generator and keep a few spare 6 gallon cans of gasoline on hand.
My house was built in 1977 (Jimmy Carter era) and is all-electric. I have to maintain viable backups at all times. If the power goes out in the winter here you’re screwed. You have to have back up heat generation. In the winter months you also have to maintain a healthy food, water and beer reserve.
One thing that a lot of folks don’t consider is communications. They think their cell phones will be the answer. Not so…or rather, not necessarily so. I’m a licensed amateur radio operator. I have 2m and 70cm FM radio communication capability established in my vehicles. Here in New Mexico we have an interlinked system of about 30 repeaters that allow for 300 mile communication throughout the state with 5 watts of output power (courtesy of mountaintop, solar powered repeater towers. Radio communications can be critical in times of emergency because cell towers go down with the rest of the grid when things really go bad (e.g. 9/11 in the US). Obtaining an amateur radio license is cheap and easy and will broaden your horizons.
As your typical redneck Yank I have a fine collection of firearms and ammunition always at the ready. In over 25 years I’ve never had occasion to brandish a firearm on any living thing. Squirrels and rabbits, however, have fallen prey to a high velocity pellet gun. None the less…be prepared to defend yourself if need be.
Have a good first aid supply. Make sure you have adequate alternative lighting sources. I’ve converted virtually every flashlight in the house to LED (brighter light, lower heat, less power consumption and longer life). I even have a solar electric system set up for my ham radios to use in a pinch and one in my garage to use as emergency lighting in a pinch. Just think ahead.
About 20 years ago I was teaching a pharmacology course at a local college in Amarillo, Texas. Amarillo is smack dab in tornado country. While teaching my evening class a big storm whipped up. Someone from the college said we were to evacuate the room and move to the interior halls. Then the lights and phone lines went out. I didn’t know what was going on so I took out my handheld 2m ham radio and called the weather spotters (who I knew). They told me I wasn’t in the line of anything heavy. Cool. Well…automatically I was the only person in the building with access to the outside world so somehow I was instantly “in charge”. Hell, I was the guy with the radio! It was ridiculous. The people from the college were coming up to me and asking what they should do. How the hell should I know? Until a few minutes earlier I was minding my own business and teaching a class. Authority instantly devolved to the ONE person who had access to the outside world. Trust me…that person should NOT have been me. I can only imagine their response if I had extracted the 9mm pistol from my brief case! Shucks…I might be King of Texas today!
This long, convoluted tale serves no other purpose than to highlight (and perhaps paraphrase) OzBoy’s earlier comments. Maintain the ability to live (water, food), the ability to heal (first aid), keep yourself warm, keep yourself hydrated, maintain communication and defend yourself as necessary. This is good advise.
G’day Dave, always great to hear from you.
The one guy who knew what was going on (or who people thought did) and power devolves on you. Scary, isn’t it? Politicians understand this aspect of human psychology exceedingly well, which is why they’re so prone to treating the rest of us like mushrooms.
Re your final paragraph (great story, BTW), you’ll notice the one item on your list I didn’t include (explicitly, anyway) was the bit about defending yourself. This was because a) as I’m sure you noticed, I was at pains to point out what this article wasn’t about; I don’t want it misrepresented, and b) that issue belongs to the follow-up regarding survivalism. Maybe in a few weeks – Oz
Locusts
Huh learns, that doesn’t wish to learn? I’ve never stopped myself, (which in my case, is just as well) But I’ve noticed that many people seem to show no interest in further learning, after formal education has finished. It’s very puzzling. Although I suppose, when people know it all, what would be the point?
I’ve never doubted your ability to learn new tricks – Oz 😉
I learned a new trick today….
Information I have back from the National Grid about Windfarm energy production and consumption.
Some wind farms are very small and “embedded”, i.e. connected to the lower voltage distribution network rather than directly to the high voltage transmission system which National Grid operates. If they are small and embedded, their metering will not be available to National Grid, and they will therefore not be “visible” to National Grid. They are still available in the sense that they are feeding power into the system at a lower level and supplying demand, but National Grid does not receive any information about them.
Wind farms do consume power for their own use, e.g. for their data and instrumentation systems, for lighting and for motors to rotate the wind farms into the wind amongst other things. Typically this power consumption could be of the order of 1-2% of their total generation and can be visible for the larger wind farms as negative metering when the wind is not blowing. In terms of accounting for this consumption, it is normally just “netted off” the generation. For example, a 100MW wind farm might have a consumption of 1MW and so the metered generation would be 99MW if it was operating at full output with optimum wind conditions. If there was no wind, the metering might show -1MW which would just represent the consumption for its own use.
fenbeagle
Too true!
Hey Ozboy:
Your article — a wonderful, extremely helpful article that people should heed — takes me right back to the two hurricane scares I lived through in Houston (Rita — when I was simply desperate to leave but we knew we couldn’t because the emergency radio and our numerous reccies told us the roads were jammed — want to be stuck on a highway with no gas, AC or water at the hottest time of the year and then wait there for a hurricane to strike?). So we boarded up our most vulnerable windows and hunkered down.
Then came Ike, and we were able to leave, almost at the last minute (the roads were very clear because we’d all been so chastened by the previous experience — which cost lives, if you remember). That WAS a direct hit and I am glad we weren’t there for it. We did buy a generator before returning from San Antonio and it made the subsequent power outage much more bearable. Some people in my neighbourhood had no power for over 2 weeks.
By the way, it cost about $2000 to fix up the damage the hurricane had done, including $600 just to have the debris removed from our property, with further outlays for tree removal, fence re-building etc.
Of all disasters possible to humankind (nuclear explosions are not the most devastating to humanity, I submit based on my experience of others that divorce is the worst disaster, the death of a child or mate a close second) war seems to take the honorary first prize, at least to me, and all the more so as it is intentional.
That being the case, with my most stiff upper lip I am compelled to say that for the sake of the community, and most importantly for preserving that which gives Reason to existence, the creation of a reliable infrastructure which is designed with adversity and reliability under duress is the number one priority in disaster prevention.
Having seen two riots up close, much worse than being chased down the streets by angry mobs but rather sandwiched as a teenager between civilian snipers, enraged black –and white, counting me–Detroiters and the 82nd and 101st Divisions, Southeast Asia back in the day, Panama under Torrijos and the fight for the Canal, Nicauragua after the earthquakes, and Haiti in 2005 (it was an ungodly hellhole before the quakes, please believe me, in some respects worse than Viet Nam but under MINUSTAH’s press censorship), I am a stand and fightist. I will put my skills at the disposal of the local constabulary and or military relief effort in whatsoever capacity that they need me. For me, there is no other option imaginable.
If you will not stand and fight for that which was and is yours, including your future, you do not deserve to keep it.
Maybe I visited too many historical sites when in Boston, but I do not answer to higher powers, I have to answer to my neighbors and myself. G_d can take care of Himself very well, thank you.
Just in from the ladies monitoring the radar, lads, and it is time to scramble our Spitfires and Hurricanes. There is a large formation coming in at 5 o’clock from Calais heading for London at this website:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/earth/future-of-energy/7892642/Shell-Age-of-Energy-aiming-for-a-new-agenda.html?utm_source=tmg&utm_medium=TD_7892642&utm_campaign=shell0909pm
Tally ho, all!
To Fenbeagle, I submit we leave the honour of the kill of the lead Me-109 flown by FlugzeugLeutnant von Huhne.
Walter O’Brian
I have a twisted piece of ME-109 20mm cannon shell casing, in a display case, on my wall here. I inherited it from my father in law, who carried it in his pocket, all his life, after it was removed from his thigh, shortly after the battle of El Alamain. The other, larger piece, went into his mates back, and killed him on the spot. My father in law never forgot the experience.
…..You say von Huhne flies an ME-109?
Noidea and Crownarmourer would smile at your comment, as this is about the 20th or 30th time pointless but benign synchronicity has surfaced in my postings. I’d no idea your brave and noble and equally scarred father in law (mine from what I call the Bartlesby syndrome, too much history lived, and sitting in the dark night after night covered with sweat and insects waiting for opponents who ultimately stopped by to pay their last visit) sustained a hit from an enemy projectile, but I thank him for his service.
I believe that unopposed the damage he will do unnecessarily in thwarting recycling of CO2 into an industrial commodity components when the technology to do so is available right off the shelf through allowing alternative energy consultants to dominate the discourse rather than experienced and licenced hydrocarbon engineers shall result in more deaths indirectly and directly than any number of squadrons of Me-109’s. He figuratively flies an Me-109 more deadly than 3,000 of the real thing, rather like the capabilities of Mr. Neutron of “Monty Python” fame.
So yeah, have at him, sir. I look forward to your victory roll after.
Huhne (and his counterparts in our countries) don’t like CO2 recycling technology Walt, because it buggers up their nice neat little narrative. To them, it’s an unwelcome distraction in their real quest, so it must be extinguished – Oz
Or not. As Amerloque sez, “Now is not the time to let up!”
Many thanks to all, not least of all including the RAF, RAAF and the RCAF.
Walt: not being able to have the one you love is arguably the worst disaster. It’s like death, except that you know life could have been wonderful if only the chips had fallen a different way; and the fact that death has not actually intervened just makes the fate of Tantalus harder….
By the way, Oz, your loo photo reminds me a great deal of a similar pic I took of one in Marin County, just over the Golden Gate Bridge. Why did I take the picture? I dunno, it seemed worthwhile at the time! I was totally amazed at everything there, including the mirrored disco ball hanging from a tree in one of their parks. Nature, culture, architecture, wine: god I love coastal California!
Tantalus aren’t they some kind of big hairy spider?
Is this another brick out of the AGW wall?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/7993367/Ryanair-boss-Michael-OLeary-denies-man-made-climate-change.html
Mike OLeary runs a successful business and sees that the sham of AGW might affect his business for no good reason.
Now is not the time to let up …………We are winning
AGW, aka “manmade global warming”, is a scientific, intellectual, political, financial and moral scam. The climate has been changing for millions upon millions of years.
The IPCC is the biggest perpetrator of scientific fraud that the world has ever seen.
Individuals and organizations involved in this fraud should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Civil suits should be filed to recover grant money and subsidies given to individuals and organizations participating in the fraud.
Now is not the time to let up ! ! !
/// Time to Turn Up the Heat on the Warmists
…/… The Climateers, however, can change as quickly as what they claim to care about. For example, robbed of settled-science sleight-of-hand, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel now states, “We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty [before acting]. . . .”
Ah, that’s the ticket. Before we had to do something because of certainty; now we have to do something because of uncertainty.
…/…
… We have been had. And one question remains: Will justice be done?
Let us be clear on the gravity of the Climateers’ crime: They have used billions of our tax money to fund fraudulent science. And why?
For the purposes of promoting policies that would steal billions more.
And what happens now? Do they just get to say “Oops” and slink away?
…/…
First, we need to adopt an aggressive stance. We should cast from office any politician who facilitated the climate-change fraud. Next, we need to press for criminal investigations into and charges against Climateers whenever possible. And, when such a remedy isn’t, we should resort to civil-court action when feasible.
Lastly … the Climateers should be treated as pariahs and not allowed a moment’s rest. Some may say this is out of bounds, but scorn and ostracism are powerful corrective forces. Besides, if the law cannot hold these elites to account, the peasants with pitchforks must step into the breach.///
http://tinyurl.com/yl7xpbk
K.I.S.S.
http://www.kellykettle.com/ I have the 2.5 pint one, along with the cooking kit. Half a newspaper will boil 2.5 pints in about 3 minutes. Twigs, rubbish, lollipop sticks, pine cones, you name it, and you can cook food and boil water.
How do you boil water to sterilise it, for long enough, without losing all the water?
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/0182674/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CSports+and+leisure%7C14419152/c_2/3%7Ccat_15701428%7CCamping%7C14419397.htm?_$ja=tsid:11527%7Ccc:%7Cprd:0182674%7Ccat:sports+%26+leisure+%3E+camping+%3E+coolboxes+and+vacuum+flasks
Boil the water in the Kelly Kettle, pour a little into the flask to pre-heat it, fill the flask, and fix the stopper. It will stay close to boiling for about 12 hours, and you lose no water.
OR, drill a hole through the cork stopper of the kelly, fit a copper tube condensing coil (easily made from microbore pipe which is cheap in coils) and with a very low heat, use it as a still. OR use a pressure cooker.
To preclean water to get the lumps out (after letting it settle in a container too), shove these in a tube and siphon the water through them http://www.houseofswan.com/SwanPROnARoll.aspx.
A half teaspoon of plain, basic, cheap, unscented bleach, will sterilise a 5 gallon container of water. http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/bleach.htm
If you have a dependable supply of safe water, then dehydrated food can take a far higher priority in your cupboard stocks, and dehydrated food is far cheaper than canned food. In ‘the old days’ when rainwater was gathered for drinking water, water collection would only start after it had been raining for at leats 10 minutes, so that dust and other undesirables were prewashed out of the air.
Now how do you provide yourself with a days supply of hot food? Those food flasks again. Get whatever food you want to cook, up to cooking temperature, and put it in the flask. I use two or three. I may do a meat course in one, and rice or pasta in another, and coffe in a third.
The food slow cooks all day while I am touring, and is still piping hot (scorching hot even) over 12 hours later. The coffee saves me 5 euros a cup at rest areas on the Continent. Two coffees is 100 miles of touring range, for perspective. The only fuel I carry for the Kelly, are some cheap firelighting wax blocks, and some dry kindling, which live up the chimney area of the kettle when packed up.
While in a flask, there is no smell of cooking food, either . . . .
Shelter. When touring I carry two forms of shelter. I wear one (the motorcycle gear, along with its thermal liners), and also carry a tent. AT a rest area in France, up in the Central Massif at about -12C, which had nowhere inside in the warm to be able to sit down, I went out to a bench and parked the bike alongside it, and stretched out for a sleep. Despite being quickly covered in frost, I was toasty warm (and fair play, I had a French Police car parked alongside me while I rested, making sure I was ok, and making sure nobody interfered with my bike – very nice guys).
For the tent, I have small and tough, rather than big and flimsy http://www.thetentteam.co.uk/product/27792/vango-zetes-300.html. I got a black one, because in woodland shadows, it disappears. Or can easily be made to disappear.
It is also small enough to put up inside a room in a house. A Kelly kettle of boiling water, put on a stable heatproof base (a newspaper will do), in the little porch area, will keep the chill off, all night. A small tent is far easier to keep warm, than a big one.
In the sleeping area, my first layer is a Picnic Mat from Tesco’s. It has a waterproof base, and a carpet like top, and fits pretty well inside the tent. It rolls up quite small. If it is wet and I am at a rest area out of the way, I can roll up in it like a bivvy bag, wearing my bike gear. I got it for £4 on a sale.
Next, is a self inflating insulation mat. These are excellent. http://www.outdoorgear4u.co.uk/category/tents-camping/self-inflating-mats/vango-ultralite-matt-full.php. It has a black back, so I unroll it, loosen the valve, and throw it on the grass black sid eup for a few minutes in the sunshine, then seal the valve. Simples. I was tempted by the thicker ones, but even with my joints, the 25mm one is fine for a good nights sleep.
My old 4 season sleeping bag lasted over 20 years (with a lot of heavy use), and I was cosy warm in it down to below -25C. If too hot, I just undid some zips a bit for ventilation. I now have one of these, http://www.outdoorgear4u.co.uk/category/sleeping-bags/adventure-family-bags-/vango-wilderness-450-sleeping-bag.php and must admit the suggested temperature range seems extremely conservative. At -11C it is at least as cosy as my old 4 season bag.
With that bag, I use a silk sleeping bag liner (can be got off Ebay). A silk sleeping bag liner, is itself equivalent to a 1 season sleeping bag. In hot weather, I sleep ‘in’ that and ‘on’ the Vango 450, or just the self inflating nat if it is particularly hot (the little tent does have very good venting, and even in hot weather, being black, it hasn’t been a problem).
When touring, I fill a washed out bright yellow toilet duck container with shower gel. I put ‘one’ containerful of a very good and pleasant smelling shower gel in it, and fill up then with the cheap basic plain showergel from Lifl’s (it’s good stuff but the containers are rubbish, and leak like a sieve). I took the label off the toilet duck container, and wrote in indelible felt tip – Danger! Do Not Drink! – and it hasn’t been stolen yet.
An average of 2 showers a day when touring, sees that container easily lasting about 5 weeks.
Improvise a shower with a bucket and a cup. 2 Kelly Kettle fulls of boiling water, and the rest cold water, seems about ok.
Wet with 1 or 2 cups, lather up, rinse.
For a lot of years, I had to carry spring water in by hand for drinking. 10 gallons lasted fine. If it is hot, don’t do anything strenuous if water is short. You will dehydrate fast, and also lose your essential salt. Take salt, and sip plenty of water.
At a push, you can use the clear plastic 2ltr drinks bottles to sterilise water. Filter the lumps out, and put them out in the sun.
Sunlight (and alchohol, and apparently silver) will sterilise it – I am not sure how long it takes though.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh I did a long post and it disappeared. 😦
rastech
did you use invisable link?
Ok component bits of the long post:
http://www.kellykettle.com/ Brilliant thing, I have the 2.5 pint one with the cooking set.
With the Kelly, these are brilliant for cooking with (treat them like a slow cooker) http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/0182674/Trail/searchtext%3ETHERMOS+FOOD+FLASK.htm
Water can be kept at boiling for hours in a flask . . . . . .
But CHECK stainless flasks as soon as you buy them – make sure they actually work before you need them, as stainless flasks can have a pretty high failure rate (and worth finding out while you still have the receipt).
BRILLIANT small tent that’s been through a lot of severe weather with me, and hasn’t thrown any wobblers (small enough to be easy to heat if put up inside the room of a house too . . . ) http://www.thetentteam.co.uk/product/27792/vango-zetes-300.html
Self inflating insulation mat – very comfy, base is black, turn it upside down in the sun for it to self inflate fast http://www.outdoorgear4u.co.uk/category/tents-camping/self-inflating-mats/vango-ultralite-matt-full.php
Good sleeping bag, which I use with a silk sleeping bag liner (as that is a 1 season bag on its own) http://www.outdoorgear4u.co.uk/category/sleeping-bags/adventure-family-bags-/vango-wilderness-450-sleeping-bag.php
First layer on the tent groundsheet, is a cheap waterproof picnic mat with a carpet type top. Rolls up as small as the self inflating mat, and you can roll up in it as an instant storm shelter, especially in motorbike gear (which is already survival gear). Usually about a fiver.
Oh no the short ‘part 1’ version has disappeared too.
Everyone – more than FOUR links in a post and it’s held up for me to moderate. And remember I’m in a different time zone – Oz
Is it the links to things maybe?
Core item, and I find it indispensible – you can do perfectly good cooking stuff with clay flowerpots and stuff like that though – http://www.kellykettle.com/
Use these as slow cookers, and to keep water around boiling point of 12+ hours:
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/0182674/Trail/searchtext%3ETHERMOS+FOOD+FLASKS.htm
Ok see how that goes, only 2 links
Doh weirdness rools, hehehe.
This is a godsend for insight:
http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/bleach.htm
If you have a dependable source of water that you can make usable, then dehydrated food, which is massively cheaper than tinned food, can make a terrific and cheap addition to your emergency cupboard(s).
Where I live, the prospect of being cut off for 3+ months, is very real (the three miles of lane to the half mile track to my place, doesn’t get snowploughed). I have been snowed in for over a month, in what was supposed to be a mild winter (almost died in a snowdrift even). I also have had to carry in drinking water by hand from a good spring (which makes brilliant tea!).
Unless the wather is very hot, you can get by with a couple of pints ‘ish of drinking water per person, per day. If it is very hot and water supply is very restricted, don’t do anything strenuous while it is hot, because you won’t just burn through precious water at an alarming rate, you will also burn through your equally precious SALT! So stay in the shade, in a cooling breeze, and sip drinks, and take SALT! 🙂
For insight a colleague of my uncle’s, while he was running a clinic in Nigeria, came back to the UK on holiday, on his return to Nigeria, he was playing rugby within an hour of his plane touching down, and 20 minutes or so into the game, he collapsed – he’d got through all the salt in his body in that short a period of time.
Luckily he was surrounded by rugby playing other doctors . . . .
With stainless steel flasks, check them as soon as you buy them. Fill with boiling water, and check the temperature after 12 hours.
There can be quite a failure rate with them (th eworst I have personally had, has been about 50%) , and you don’t want to discover you have a duff one, when you need them, or when you have lost the receipt.
Oh thanks Oz, I didn’t realise that, sorry. 😦
Excellent post Oz …..Held my post back…… but following rastech’s excellent post mine does not seem so ‘way out’
To my mind one of your best since it is clear that one way or another the population of the world is in for a difficult time, whether AGW, Peak Oil, Peak Food, Peak Water or Peak Finance.
Regardless of the views of Joe Public I am afraid the politicians and financiers are determined to destroy our way of life one way or another.
As pointman has already indicated, to be aware and prepared is a key element to survival.
My moor is in a rural countryside setting and so city problems ae not my most immediate concern, however I have invested considerable thought to what might happen not in the face of a natural disaster but in the face of major civil unrest.
In my view such collapse could be caused by
a) A prolonged national strike
b) Collapse of the electricity system
c) Collapse of the petrol/diesel distribution
d) Collapse of the food distribution system
e) A really major terrorist event or WWWIII
In the context of this thinking, I tried to put down a list of priorities as below, based upon a stay put philosophy.
1/ Drinking Water
2/ Shelter
3/ Food
4/ Security
In the case of drinking water, I have identified a natural spring within easy walking distance but only anticipate about 5 litres per day per person.. all other ware requirements based on rainwater collection, stored in a wheelie bin. — A second wheelie bin is used to make a compost toilet in the garden.
My house will provide adequate shelter with open fire, solar supported 12V lighting, and in extreme cold a two man tent pitched in the main room with all the attendant sleeping bags etc. As a keen camper I have numerous items which operate from 12V which I regard as a universal off grid solution.
Food is a problem of storage, date cycling and cost. Normally sufficient food is in store for around 2 weeks survival. The same applies with medicines.
Beyond this time security becomes an overriding factor —- see below.
In the absence of firearms security is a major problem and begs the question how to remain secure? Once city life becomes impossible the countryside will be invaded and looted and however much planning and preparation is undertaken there seems no way to hold onto stores of food or goods in the face of a mob. Security is only possible if there is nothing to steal or if based on a group commune principle of around 300 people who form a survival group
Staying with security the only possible solutions I have identified is to convert a shipping container into a home or to find some way of surrounding my house with an electric fence — 12V operated of course.
Other considerations are fire, arson, looting and vandalism all a product of mob rule which only a vigilante group commune solution can counter.
I am confident I and my wife could survive if left to our own devices, but there seems no easy solution to finding protection from those who will decide our goods are theirs by right of violence.
Oz, can delete the later ones if it’ll help . . .
Something else really handy, I find, are those new microfibre bath towels. Very light, and they roll up small. I take two when touring, and store the washed one with other washing in a nice mesh bag, which I strap on top of the luggage where it gets sunlight and blow dried while travelling.
Don’t ever wash them with fabric conditioner though, it destroys the microfibres.
Some useful insights here e.g. :
“Children’s stools, in particular, can be a source of diarrhoea infection and need to be buried or put into a latrine.
The stools of children are potentially the most dangerous source of infection.”
http://rehydrate.org/dd/su45.htm
DIY Cooking Oil Lamp:
http://www.judyofthewoods.net/lamp.html
Cheap 80 ltr water storage:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/H2go-holds-litres-watering-wheelbarrow/dp/B003C4E67Y
You can stack at least 8 of these in a bath.
That’s a lot of drinking water . . . . . . . .
Amanda says:
September 10, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Agreed 200% Makes all that comes after a bit of an act on one’s part, especially if you are my type of person who believes that there is The One out there meant for you only and the stars (or more often, relatives) don’t align.
There’s a film with Sir Mick playing a gigolo who falls in love with his sponsor and asks her to marry him in a restaurant, and she laughs in his face and pays him his weekly stipend while he silently smiles at the horror of the fate he had chosen for himself in plying the trade he had chosen, knowing she was The One. Wish I could remember the name of the film. Really astonishing work compressed into two minutes of quiet dialogue. The scene’s on YouTube somewhere.
Something to do with Olympus. I remember that as it is a Rolls Royce aero engine, romantic me LOL
Um, for clean drinking water, take a bottle of Clorox bleach, okay? Halizone and other little jungle scientific fixes are not worth two weeks of diarrhea. Only drawback is you can smell it city blocks away in the bush, but I daresay if the worst happens in the way of a public disaster, you won’t be locking horns in the dark with strangers out to do you harm that often.
Foot maintenance is also a very high priority when one is getting back to Nature. Two pair of dry clean socks at all times on, and mind the condition of the shoe heels. Bleach does wonders for that too, and plain old bars of lye or camphor based soap. The stress of exposure can also be well offset by lots of B complex vitamins if you have folic acid along with it. C you can get from fruit, and the A and D from your canned meats and veggies. B you run through at warp speed. Makes a big difference.
I also think the Why of survival is at least if not more important than the How, based on my experience. Tis not to survive but to live, right? As an example, do you really want to physically survive in a thoroughly Marxist totalitarian state along the lines of Mad Max and ThunderDome and other silly films which were also not far off the mark of what folks turn into when you peel off the veneer of middle-class comfort?
‘Is this science, or literature?’
MPs mull ‘climate enquiries’ that failed to enquire
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/10/oxburgh_science_select_committee/
Looks like the whitewashes aren’t quite sticking …
Pointman
Walt you speak of finding the ONE meant for you, what if you have say SEVEN?
Zims alabim, Sahib Crownarmourer. Why not 72 ? Decisions, decisions.
This sky pilot in Florida nattering on about torching the Koran is a larf and a half. You don’t even want to know what red-blooded American Marines used lovely rice-paper handout Bibles for in the bush after a few sorties to get to know the neighborhood.
Talk about survival skills in action LOL The National Lawyers Guild leftist flunkies used to hand out Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. The I Ching worked pretty good, too.
I bought the I Ching and felt short changed …
Pointman
Truth to tell, half the volunteers joined to escape politics. The US military once had a tradition of being defiantly apolitical. It was refreshingly respectful and good-natured in the face of our unrelenting blasphemous attitude.
Let the pols fight their own damned wars while the troops sit home and pontificate while swiving the politicians’ wives cradled in the arms of comfort. That’s the key to national survival, IMHO.
Pointman says:
September 11, 2010 at 6:55 am
Good un, Pointy.
OT, I have always wondered about the sexual dynamic of the Confederate side of the US Civil War. Col. Beauregard Kumquat and the 123rd Beulah Brigade march off to oblivion whilst leaving them there wimminfolk alone surrounded by nothing but huge nubile black field hands.
Come on, KKK! You can live with being third cousin twice removed from Eldridge Cleaver or Muhammed Ali! Them wimminfolk didn’t spend 4 years embroidering. Bet they had a lotta fun.
Probably had a lot of explaining to do when their husbands came back, too.
Walt, they explained it away to Beauregard by quoting Darwin, southern kids were evolving a darker integument to protect themselves from the sun. Simple ruse really …
Pointman
Col. Kumquat probably laughed and fessed up to having a go at them, too.
It would make for a fun musical.
Those southern Belles would have had nothing to do with a Col. whose name began with that syllable. The musical should be called the Kong and I but we couldn’t get away with that one …
Pointman
Walt: I’d like to say that I’m glad you understand, except that if you do, I can’t be glad!
Amanda says:
September 11, 2010 at 10:16 am
Understood, schweetheart. That’s why Paul Westerberg wrote this song. Play it again, Sam:
Survival tip: don’t grab an electric livestock fence in a rainstorm unless you want a three-metre diameter smoking Afro haircut.
Survival tip: get whomever you are with to grab the fence and hey presto, you not only double your food supply, you get the heat to cook it by.
Survival tip: if telepathic powers are needed, urinating on said fence will enable one to see all the way to Warsaw.
Survival tip: beware of those suffering from Too Many Cartoons disorder.
Hello Everyone ! (grin)
The Cap’n is taking flak on JD’s current blog. Probably a good idea to post this exchange here since it’ll probably fall into Disqus oblivion” ! (grin)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
From “jeffgazzard”
“A little web research of my own regarding “sherlockcaptain” – I would be very grateful if posters “johnmcevoy”, “realityreturns” and “hctroubador” take note.
And the moderators might like to consider his, shall we say, general outlook.
Poster “sherlockcaptain” is also known as Captain Sherlock. In real life he appears to have been a fighter pilot and commercial airline captain called Field McConnell who does indeed contribute to the website Abel Danger.
His educational claims are completely bogus – just look at his work history on his own website under the Captain Sherlock banner. It’s easy to find.
Please note: I’ve not insulted him nor will I but he really needs to desist.
Jeff Gazzard”
_ _ _ _ _
Amerloque’s reply:
“Hello jeffgazzard !
You should really try to get up to speed about “Abel Danger”. Perhaps you are young, or simply a bit too credulous. (grin) Or, perhaps, you simply have no idea of what you are rattling on about.
Whether or not “Field McConnell” – and/or her/his bona fides – are authentic is immaterial (by the way, have you called his phone number ?). His bio on his website (which you have so kindly indicated to us !) contains the line “Retired early 3-5-07 due whistleblowing 9-11”, which should start ringing a few alarm bells, tout de meme . (grin)
Do you know what “Abel Danger” is/was ? No ?
You really ought to find a bit more information. Wiki can help you out, at: http://tinyurl.com/cramf with a (heavily footnoted) lengthy entry.
One para from Wiki says:
“The Department of Defense investigation concluded:
…/…
Able Danger members were not prohibited from sharing intelligence information with law enforcement authorities or other agencies that could have acted on that information. In fact, Able Danger produced no actionable intelligence information.
The destruction of Able Danger documentation at LIWA and Garland was appropriate and complied with applicable DoD regulations.
The Able Danger program was not terminated prematurely. It concluded after it had achieved its objective and its work products were used in follow-on intelligence gathering efforts at USSOCOM.”
Gosh, could the word “actionable” be crucial ?
Can the dots be connected ? (grin)
Best,
L’Amerloque
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100911 13h00 Paris time (CET)
I do second Amerloque’s view, with the qualifying caveat making generalities out of a specific that it strikes me fair odd that we Yanks seem always, in the face of an external threat, to turn against ourselves often to the exclusion of the still-active external threat, in our search for revenge and retribution.
This is not limited to 9/11 by any means. Viet Nam and all other foreign incursions since then by our military offshore get the same treatment. It always struck me as bizarre and acutely myopic that in 10 years of conflict, not one Vietnamese was ever on “Face The Nation” nor any other talk show on current affairs, anymore than Karzai nor the Iraqi regime has ever had the opportunity to put their case before the US public directly.
As I recall, as a boy and young man I do not recall any Russians, refugee or Soviets, on the telly on any talk show or in print putting their case or being subjected to cross-talk in the press.
Maybe this is a Buddhist nation now where all speak only to their navels, but it surpasses absurd. I do not even remember a single reference anywhere to http://www.centcom.mil during the entire period of the Iraq conflict in the press, even though CENTCOM was and is HQ for the entire Middle East circus and beyond. During WW II, if you were a Yank, your neighbor would think you were a complete idiot if you did not know what SHAEF was or who Alanbrooke and Monty were.
At least it seems the UK and the Commonwealth press are more perspicacious.
I also think if anything goes amiss in the form of vigilante action against US Muslims takes place, it will be more due to almost ten years of former alcoholic pedophile ex-convict mall cops who got Jesus and a free education out of prison in police science having the liberty to conduct full cavity searches on Americans of all complexions for no reason other than for jaywalking or tearing the Federal notice on mattresses off their Sealy Posturepedics. If naught is done to undermine this unrelenting cosmic miasma of negativity and fear engulfing the English-speaking world, I daresay people will go berserk eventually at the least collective provocation. It’s to the point a lot of folks won’t go to public events out of nerves over what might go wrong, or over the nuisance of too much security.
The key to survival to me has always been to not anticipate eventualities which obviously shall not occur and instead framing contingencies within what is truly known. Spending time asking “What if” and exhausting all possible options of what may happen next or what had happened is a surefire one-way ticket to Prozacville when what one has at hand to deal with is immediate reality. Survival is not a competition to determine who is most clever, anymore than do astute diagnoses cure diseases. Find the solution to what’s really wrong then get on with living.
OMG Pointman! Nice link!
“When I asked Oxburgh if [Keith] Briffa [CRU academic] could reproduce his own results, he said in lots of cases he couldn’t.
“That just isn’t science. It’s literature. If somebody can’t reproduce their own results, and nobody else can, then what is that work doing in the scientific journals?”
Still cleaning the coffee off the keyboard . . . . . . .
Rather than the I Ching, I got the Ka Ching.
It makes a much nicer noise.
The last sentence in that article Pointman linked:
“A university – ultimately funded largely by the public – has had serious allegations levelled against it, while its own enquiries have failed accept that structural reform of scientific may be needed”
is either really interesting, or utterly fascinating, depending upon which words have been left out . . . . . .
Walt:”The key to survival to me . . . ”
Always look on the bright side, is mine. 🙂
Worse things happen at sea, after all. 😉
Hello Big Bruin alias Kodiak Engineer alias Walt O’Bruin
on September 11, 2010 at 11:30 pm
/// It always struck me as bizarre and acutely myopic that in 10 years of conflict, not one Vietnamese was ever on “Face The Nation” nor any other talk show on current affairs, anymore than Karzai nor the Iraqi regime has ever had the opportunity to put their case before the US public directly.
As I recall, as a boy and young man I do not recall any Russians, refugee or Soviets, on the telly on any talk show or in print putting their case or being subjected to cross-talk in the press.///
Well spoken, Bear !
The only Vietnamse “leader” that I remember being interviewed on US network TV was the vile Madame Ngô Dình Nhu, supposed First Lady of South Vietnam. Remember her ? (grin) It must have been in 1962 or 1963 – I remember it well because those around me couldn’t stop laughing about this real-life “Dragon Lady” who seemed to have leapt directly from “Terry and the Pirates”. (wider grin)
I also recall –very- grainy black and white images of a TV interview featuring Soong May-ling, one of the three (Chinese) Soong Sisters. She was married to Chiang Kai-shek. It was in 1951; my father had only purchased his first TV for Christmas 1950. The screen was very, very small. That was back when TV programs came on at 6pm or 7pm. None of this newfangled 24/7/365 stuff. (wider grin)
Harry T had just sacked MacArthur and Madame Soong was very, very unhappy. (widest grin)
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque says:
September 12, 2010 at 4:20 am
Nice one about Madame Nhu. Having chewed up a few books on the Asian theatre during WW II, seems to me Chairman Ho would have much rather been President of the United States of Vietnam as he and Gen. Donovan, his bankster and intel guru courtesy of the OSS were good pals, and Chairman Ho wanted no more than the US Constitution as the model for his revolutionary government.
THEN Truman decided civilians were actually competent to run intel organizations, which has yet to be proven, THEN Ike bankrolled Dien Bien Phu as a useful tool for slaughtering the last of the Third Reich’s SS (who had en masse joined the Legion Etranger), THEN Kennedy thought he would help make the world safe for heroin and the Golden Triangle, and you know the rest.
The whole mess could have been settled over coffee in a bistro in Paris in 1947 and 20-30 million people would still be, in not alive, at least would have enjoyed the dignity of expiring in their beds.
I’m good pals with a certain Colonel Tanh who still maintains regular contact with the various resistance factions still fighting however they can throughout the region. I expect all of it to go kabloomey again once everyone is properly budgeted and our dope interdiction cooperation efforts in the region become too successful LOL.
G_d would quit his job if he could find a replacement, and I’d buy the first round for Him if He did.
Amanda, to pick up where we left off on missing out on The One Destiny Made Just For You, if you are in the mood for a good weep, this is easily one of the best 2 minutes and 23 seconds of cinema I have seen in the last decade:
How does one survive this? A part of one doesn’t.
Walt you are right about Chairman Ho he was very pro USA but getting the shaft from the USA he turned to the Russians and Chinese for help. They did an amazing history on the whole subject for TV in the UK in the 80’s being done in the UK it didn’t have a bias for a change. The most interesting point was the Japs armed Ho to the teeth before they left as a parting gift for the French. The UK ran the place briefly in 1945-46 as part of the Jap surrender, we told the French don’t bother coming back it would not be worth it.
As for Madame Ngo well that could be a potential inlaw considering where the missus was raised but will probably never find out as the commies shot everyone in Hue to do with the Government during Tet.
ThinkProgress’s “Extreme Makeover: House of Reps edition”
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/9/11/900788/-ThinkProgresss-Extreme-Makeover:-House-of-Reps-edition
A liberal contemplates the mid-term bloofbath. Once you ignore the propogandist aspects of the article, there are a few gems to delight you.
“Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who opposes the existence of the global warming committee he would chair.”
Pointman
Are we witnessing an attack of windmill realism in Denmark, hopefully it will sink in here in the UK and become obvious to the world, the problems are well known by JD and Oz comments and now spreading to Joe Public at last
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/7996606/An-ill-wind-blows-for-Denmarks-green-energy-revolution.html
“Climate scientists must engage openly with the media ”
http://www.environmental-expert.com/resultEachPressRelease.aspx?cid=33596&codi=194104
The two classic guidelines of every Journalist used to be:
1) Never believe a word the govenment or NGO tells you.
2) If someone is handing you a story, ask yourself what’s in it for them in being so generous to you.
Reading through the above article, the decadence of the fourth estate, in its MSM form is truly alarmingly. It’s all about working with the IPCC et al.
Pointman
“How I got into linguistics, and what I got out of it by William Labov”
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/Papers/HowIgot.html
A facinating read from many viewpoints.
Pointman
Copy across from JD
scientificanomaly
20 minutes ago
Morning jeff
Did you miss my earlier post about renewable oil?
Oh well once again then, just for you mate. 🙂
Enjoy ….
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/27414
Apparently the Russians have a great conviction about adiabatic oil.
Time and the internet will tell
crownarmourer says:
September 12, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Really was an education for the West from which we have learned absolutely nothing, as we are doing the same song and dance behind closed doors as we did then. I still humbly submit the entire lot could have been sorted out over coffee. If General Slim had chaired the cafe conference which never happened, none of what tragedy befell us all on an epic scale would have occurred.
As with Africa, too, the complete absence of an incorruptible police force did for them: I think Commonwealth troopies fresh from Burma for ten years in place would have turned things around for good and all, plus it would have taken the sting out of the demob and given the UK a revenue source other than General Marshall and Harry Eff Truman the Not-So-Good German.
Extending the influence of Schumpeter’s prophecy of the rising of an intellectual class entirely devoted to destroying capitalism whatever the cost, that which I find most amusing as a bean counter reviewing the occasional renewables project is the epic attempt at transformation of the energy industry globally by greentards into an esthetic expression based on an entirely fallacious paradigm of Mad Max survival logic which derives its model of economic structure entirely from the paradigm of public-sector arts financing rather than straight-line pro forma “save it if it pays for itself, kill it if it doesn’t” common sense.
I therefore submit that the key to survival on a macroeconomic scale has to be based on the radical notion of infrastructure projects relating to energy penciling out. Opponents to the AGW fraud would do well to call for and demand spreadsheets above all for these proposed undertakings. IMHO, the proposed alternative energy scam is a Temple of Karnak tailor-made to do for industry and ultimately the West altogether what solar god-based monotheism did for the Egyptian Empire.
It’s rather funny that solar energy is doing for our civilization what a solar god did for ancient Egypt. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.
MOTM:
Excellent point, but what then shall we ever do without beak oil and Ducky Wucky Doo Doo?
If I seem a little punchy, I have just closed out a four-week battle to get my script financed, and it almost happened. It was a wonderfully eye-opening experience on arts funding, and on how profoundly hypocritical politically leftist artists are when it comes to project finance for film and specifically animation projects. The massive irony looming over the entire leftist schtick is that they get what they get owing to having access to more money sources of larger calibre, and that in terms of economic ruthlessness, they leave conservatives in the dust.
To paraphrase Koestler, if you do not follow the party line of the right, you may be temporarily ostracized, but never forever excluded; if one diverges from the party line of the left, the local political commissar will politely put a bullet through the base of your neck.
None of Michael Moore’s dreck was financed by NEA grants, they were financed by hard-nosed cynical dice-rollers with impeccable records for making the box office pay.
Just for general education, most films of an indie character are bankrolled by Rule D Section 506 limited liability corporations and the budget covered by performance bonds and distribution corporation minimum payouts, i.e., even if the film fails at the box office, the film investors get their squirrely nuts back with interest. Without the insurance industry, there would be no Hollywood LOL
I don’t really have a problem with that reality, in fact it lowers my blood pressure about twenty points as I am going to have another go at it. This fact just makes Hollywood commutards look effing stupid when they speak out on socialist issues of the day (though to be fair, if they are in the deep meaning market placement, they are only pandering to their viewer base. It’s called selling their product, which is also profoundly hard work). No wonder psychiatrists make a fortune in Tinseltown, and I am sure a sense of humour is at a massive premium there.
No wonder moral ambivalence is the prevailing and true value set of today. It is now completely impossible to do anything even moderately huge without morally and ethically contradicting one’s self unless one is in the building trades or manufacturing, which possess functional ethical absurdities all their own, if you’ve seen “Back To School” with Rodney Dangerfield, my favourite film about contractors next to “Moonstruck” (remember Danny Aiello?).
Don’t miss “Chico and Rita,” plus there is a new “Resident Evil.” Life is good.
Ours is the only civilization in history that has made of apocalyptic mass destruction a massively profitable entertainment medium. Maybe we should be destroyed LOL What archaeologists are to make of our remnants 10,000 years from now can only be surmised.
Pointman says:
September 12, 2010 at 6:43 pm
I hope you are right, Pointmeister. If this does happen, then the greentards have only two options: more hateful acts of vandalism or to run off and join the Hairless Krishnas or the Hale-Bopp Koolaid cults.
It’s only a month plus a few days until a Scud1 victory flyby, IMHO.
Hi Walt. What people this side of the pond don’t realise is how unpopular Obama is and has been for the last year. The media here still think the Sun shines out of his arse and he’s still being represented as the messiah.
I think as the tide reverses, the more extreme greentards believers will resort to overt eco-terrorism and I think we should be prepared for that. Nasty as it may be, I also think it will hasten the demise of the whole execrable movement.
Pointman
Coverage of Obama’s failures is not the only blackout item, by any means. Any and all pro-coal and even conventional power generation interests and technology are being systematically excluded from search engines, blogspaces and other Net interaction, separating those looking to help preserve Western industry from those in a position to do something about it. This is entirely an expression of the editorial policies of search engine owners who are not regulated as are newspapers.
Freedom of speech and of the Net exists only if you are a greentard leftie twit, if I may hazard a double entendre.
Pointman, Net censorship by leftards is so intense that those positioned to vote against them are staying off the Net altogether, IMHO. The gutting of the leftard citadel of folly will be stupendous in November.
Captain Sherlock was and is correct to target the insurance pension funds, but he needs to hand over to lucid commercial and Chamber of Commerce types. Cred is based on who one is and what one does. I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing.
Even flipping 50% of social spending serving undeserving able-bodied over to biz loans would turn things around rapidly. It’s daft to think there is any way around the problems of today other than re-starting a profit-based Western economy which now is hamstrung by too large a percentage of the population on the undeserving able-bodied dole, both on welfare and working for the government. Between the two forms of pointlessly sinecured dole monkeys, there is no Western state not suffering from at least 25% of their respective populations getting their cheques for free. This is not sustainable. If governments fiddle about too long, the axe will fall of its own accord with consequences which will not be reversible except through intensive and long-term civil strife.
Even curtailing personal credit card privileges rigorously would make a massive difference.
Anti-censorship Bear
September 13, 2010 at 5:22 am
Hi Walt
Your censorship piece about the net is matched apparently by Amazon books see here-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/7996749/The-truth-is-getting-lost-in-the-Amazon.html
Chris Booker is claiming anti – AGW books are being deleted from the Amazon sales catalogue. If true this smacks of major manipulation.
Pointman:
One-term president, that’s it.
And I didn’t even want him for that much.
Cheers, Amanda
Walt: Understood, schweetheart :^)
That’s why Paul Westerberg wrote this song
Yes, and that’s why I wrote mine.
MOTM:
People are scared bloody stiff to even look at each other, seems like, too. Anyone seen anything in the press concerning the massive protests the 11th at the site of the Twin Towers mosque, as a glaring example? The pix of the protestors were on Pravda, not in the USA, which I find risible beyond measure.
ConEdison the NYC electric and steam utility owns half the site, so there’s lots of leverage from a public hearing standpoint to shut the damned project down.
Tell you wot: let’s go to the USS Arizona memorial in Hawaii and build a Shinto shrine to the Japanese pilots who were killed during the Pearl Harbour raid. Same thing, right? Or not.
Amanda says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Oooo. Then give us a song, luv. Please.
Seriously. We’d love to hear it.
I’ll check out the NY Times to see if they provided any coverage of the protestors, too.
Good grief. This is all the NYT has in the way of reporting the protest.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/at-a-memorial-ceremony-loss-and-tension/?scp=2&sq=mosque%20protest&st=cse
There IS some form of media hope, however. Check this out:
http://rightnetwork.com/
Well, Walt, I did post a song here on Ozboy’s: perhaps you missed it.
Anyway, how about this one? It’s more upbeat and I smile a lot this time. It even has musical accompaniment (done on scoring software, so don’t expect much; and I missed a cue and slightly flubbed a line to go with it). Also I should mention that there was serious reverb / feedback from the laptop (I wasn’t using a mic), so I couldn’t hear myself very well. That said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u009BScSeM
Forgot to mention: I find that if I don’t listen to my recordings with headphones/earphones, a lot of the accompaniment does not come through, esp. base notes. Nothing wrong with my hearing (like Crownarmourer’s, I think, mine is especially acute); it’s just the way computer speakers are.
Amanda, I really like your lyrics, and I have the perfect professional soundtrack backup source for you so that you do not need to use composer software, just fit the lyrics to the soundtracks done by real, live studio folks. This is free soundtrack studio grade music meant for actual film and video productions which you can download, but if you suddenly become the Dominatrix of the Dancefloor at 10 g’s a performance in Atlanta singing your lovely lyrics without anteing up royalties on your Mobygratis backup tracks, your carriage will turn back into a pumpkin LOL
Have fun, luv. http://www.mobygratis.com
All is perfect on page 2 is my favourite. You might want to fake a performance stage by killing the lights and putting a spotlight on yourself. Don’t know how the dog would like it. I also think your voice would mike perfectly, but get a pop screen for the mike.
Please post the lyrics, too.
Amanda, also please look up Shakespears Sister on YouTube. You are both of them in one. Just don’t belt out, keep it to the level of intensity of your current presentation, you’ll stay in tune and on-pitch just as you are now. A simple red or black cocktail dress and string of pearls and spikes will do well. Don’t emote, just look away from the camera so the audience can study your face.
You’re doing fine, all you need is backup, wardrobe and proper lighting.
When you post the lyrics, mark them Copyright 2010 Amanda, too, if they are yours, which they are.
manonthemoor says: September 12, 2010 at 9:11 pm
“….Did you miss my earlier post about renewable oil?
Oh well once again then, just for you mate. 🙂
Enjoy ….
-link to a John O’Sullivan article in the Canada Free Press ! –
Apparently the Russians have a great conviction about adiabatic oil.
Time and the internet will tell”
Russian oil exploration uses biological markers and the geology of the biotic formation of oil to find the stuff like everyone else however.
Two questions;
If abiotic oil is real, how come the US oil fields dont show any of this renewable feature, but instead demonstrated Hubberts’ Peak Oil curve exactly?
If oil is abiotic, why does it have the decreased Carbon13 isotope ratio characteristic of biological processes that perform this isotopic fractionation?
The article is nonsense, there has been a crank branch of russian theory about abiotic oil, along with a few maverick westerners. There was even a deep drilling exercise to test the theory in Sweden in the 1970s if I remember, with a predictable outcome.
The CFP article quotes this gem –
“So scant is the evidence to support Heinberg and other western pro-fossil fuel theorists that in researching his article ‘The Evidence for Limitless Oil and Gas’ (Digital Journal), Bill Jencks reveals,
“I searched the internet including Google Scholar and there seems to be no ‘absolute proof’ or support from direct modern research for the Biogenic Theory of oil and gas formation. This theory—for want of a better word—seems to be greatly ‘assumed’ by geologists throughout geological research.”
Guess what, if you put ‘biotic origin of oil’ into google scholar you get LOTS of stuff on the chemical processes that turn biological material into oil and other hydrocarbons. It may be a theory, but its a theory that works and the intermediate stages of diagenesis are all observed. Using it finds more oil than any other method. In science there is never ‘absolute proof’ (thats for liquor and maths) but there is the utility of a theory when it is an accurate explanation of reality.
Best link from google scholar, a whole book on the subject –
http://tinyurl.com/2a835b7
The Biomarker Guide: Biomarkers and isotopes in petroleum systems and Earth …
By Kenneth E. Peters, Clifford C. Walters, J. Michael Moldowan
Even the most devoted of the abiotic school don’t claim that the renewal process can generate oil at the rate we are extracting it at present.
And in another attempt to spread a little reality into the fantasy world that sometimes seems to emerge here –
State of the Climate
Global Analysis
July 2010
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center
Global Highlights
* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for July 2010 was the second warmest on record, behind 1998, at 16.5°C (61.6F), which is 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20th century average of 15.8°C (60.4°F).
* The July worldwide land surface temperature was 1.03°C (1.85°F) above the 20th century average of 14.3°C (57.8°F)—the warmest July on record.
* The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.54°C (0.97°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F) and the fifth warmest July on record. The warmth was most pronounced in the Atlantic Ocean.
* La Niña conditions developed during July 2010, as sea surface temperatures (SST) continued to drop across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, La Niña is expected to strengthen and last through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2010-2011.
* For the year-to-date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 14.5°C (58.1°F) was the warmest January-July period on record. This value is 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average.
Walt the Japs are more sensitive about where they build their religious monuments and these are the guys who would not hesitate to put bamboo shoots up your finger nails.
Mind you it would be interesting to see them try to build a shrine at Nanking and that that would be good for a spoof except people die because they believed it to be real.
Is this the beginning of the end of the Climate Change scam?
The UK government admits there is no money available to waste on future Global Warming nonsense. However to keep the “greenys” from topping themselves en masse have pledged to continue with current scams already in place, looking to the private sector to fund any future nonsense.
As expected, the article contains howls of protest from all with a vested interest in keeping the fraud alive, and expect the media to go into hyperdrive with photoshop pictures of Polar Bears floating up the Thames perched on Glacier Mints, Penguins in Asda, buying up stocks of factor 30, and all manner of reports of Fire and Floods in diverse places as one would expect with impending Climate Armageddon.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/britain-must-adapt-to-inevitable-climate-change-warns-minister-2077175.html
Now is not the time to let up, Global Warming ended in 1998 when the Earth began to move into the cooling phase of a natural ~60 year oscillation, this plus the known Solar cycles currently in place, Man-Made warming is history.
The “worries of global warming” only exist in the mindset of those who wish to profit from carbon trading and the green bandwagon, or who hold dreams of a “Utopia”, a perfect vision of a Republic wherein the beauties of society reign, a bit like “Oceania” in Orwell’s 1984.
“Post Normal” science is a deliberate corruption of the scientific method, to be used as a “political tool” where “scientists have prostituted themselves in the service of political agendas. We have seen the unedifying spectacle of scientists refusing to share their data, fiddling their results, and resorting to ad hominem attacks on those who have exposed their work to be fraudulent. We have seen the Royal Society becoming a shamelessly crude advocacy society”.
MIT’s Dr. Lindzen puts it rather well: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic…over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”
D,E.
Izen,
Read this and get back to me.
Click to access collection_re_noaa.pdf
“Storming Heaven: The Cult of Green”
“Dyson wrote, “Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.” No wonder: environmentalism has much more potential to achieve a rigid regulation of people’s lives than political socialism. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake!”
http://rightnetwork.com/posts/1001642020
It was never about science. If it was, it was post-normal science. It’s about control.
Pointman
@-Dave,Edinburgh says: September 13, 2010 at 2:56 pm
“…Now is not the time to let up, Global Warming ended in 1998 when the Earth began to move into the cooling phase of a natural ~60 year oscillation, this plus the known Solar cycles currently in place, Man-Made warming is history.”
If there is a 60 year cycle then the last peak before 1998 would have been 1938 and the one before that 1878.
There may be a ‘cycle’ but given the different global temperatures at both those times there is also clearly a warming trend.
Quote-“MIT’s Dr. Lindzen puts it rather well: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic…over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.” ”
The amount of ‘hysterical panic’ that may be appropriate has more to do with the robustness of society to whatever changes may occur.
But that they are occurring is unequivocal. It isn’t the few tenths of a degree that has people worried, its the potential threat to agricultural systems. The way in which climate change has ALREADY changed agricultural systems. –
http://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm
The ‘science’ is toast, Izen. That debate is over. You stay in denial and we’ll get on with the political phase.
Pointman
Things are looking up for my pet theory:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7995206/Apple-iPad-tablets-eat-into-PC-sales.html
Dave,Edinburgh says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:56 pm
That’s the way the Pols are handling their disengagement from AGW. Kill off all promised spending because of the austerity regimes, cut back the subsidies and migrate the rest of the spend to the private sector, who won’t of course touch it with a barge pole. The death of a thousand cuts. It’s a nice quiet face saving approach and is happening worldwide.
eg http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Politicians+smart+wait+blow+over/3512911/story.html
Pointman
Climate change is inevitable, says Caroline Spelman
“They also point out that no new money is being offered to help companies or the public sector adapt to climate change, preferring to leave it to ‘the Big Society’ and forward thinking businesses to come up with the cash. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7997668/Climate-change-is-inevitable-says-Caroline-Spelman.html
As I said, a slight change of direction …
Pointman
Izen
You seem to have missed my reply to you on the previous thread. I had asked you…
“Do you have any links to any non biased reports on any of the phenomena you mention that are actually happening?”
A silly map that states that changes are happening with zero evidence does not fulfill any of the criterions desired. The map stops at 2006 and only covers the USA.
Can you find any local (UK), recent (2009-2010), actual, verifiable evidence of any of these changes you believe to be happening?
If you look at my reply to you on the previous thread you will see that despite the predictions and measurements of the “scientific bodies” that the growing season is actually shrinking and not getting longer.
Yes it is true that all the predictions and models show increased growing seasons, however, REALITY clearly shows us that despite your belief that is now hotter than EVER, it is not.
I do not require graphs or charts or equations, just a report of something that has actually happened to support your views.
Later springs and earlier winters, show us what IS happening, how do you equate this with warming?
NoIdea
Amanda, every performer since the late 1980’s has worked gigs wearing their earphones and mike in a headset rig not to be cool but so they can hear what is going on LOL.
Know anyone with a Fender or Marshall amp you can run your computer’s speaker through? You’ll need one or two of those adaptors to fit the computer’s output(s) to the portable amp.
Personally, I think you would be stage-ready in the little black number, spikes and a miked headset. Just concentrate on your sound, don’t move around, and look OVER or to one side, not at the camera. The temptation is always to stare at your feet, too, which is normal, but fight it and look up and over. Works a charm.
Not having you on, luv. This is how Lily Allen started out, though with millions in promo “help” and coaching. You may not ever play Wembley, but you could have a lot of fun and make new friends and a buck or two playing local gigs.
Whatever you do, think first of the profile of the audience you want to reach. Do you want to do nice dinner clubs that also do audience participation detective plays, or do you want to play warehouses where techno is the thing? Neighborhood bars or local cable TV?
http://www.rightnetwork.com/posts/1001642020
PLEASE check the above link out. The fellow from the TV show “Frasier” started this network up, and they are right on target.
Time to scramble the Spitfires, lads. Now is not the time to let up!
Crownarmourer and Amanda: Don’t feel alone about the sensitive hearing. I have to sleep wearing earplugs.
IZEN Sep.13 @ 4.32pm.
“The way in which climate change has ALREADY changed agricultural systems. –”
Sure climate change has changed agricultural systems, where vast tracts of land were once used to grow food crops, because of AGW nonsense, the same land now grows Bio-fuel crops, or as previously reported in Australia, farmland used for livestock production was taken over by government for the placement of “windmills”. Just two examples of how the unfounded fear of climate change has changed the agricultural systems.
All based on what exactly? As I demonstrated in a previous post, with a bit of fancy “number crunching” the data can be made to show whatever result is required to “prove” this weeks “hockey stick”
So, let’s wait and see, if you are correct then I presume we will have another “mild” winter, however if proper science is correct then we can expect the coming winter to dump another load of “deep and crisp and even” global warming on our unprepared highways and byways.
regards.
D,E.
@-NoIdea says: September 13, 2010 at 6:37 pm
“You seem to have missed my reply to you on the previous thread. I had asked you…
“Do you have any links to any non biased reports on any of the phenomena you mention that are actually happening?”
Can you find any local (UK), recent (2009-2010), actual, verifiable evidence of any of these changes you believe to be happening?”
I had missed it, I hadn’t looked back at that thread, and have been up to other stuff recently…
However even if I had seen it I might have simply told you to go away and google info you could find yourself….
As it happens, this issue arose early this year on the Open2 forum on evolution. A Creationist there was citing bird migration as the obvious proof (sic) that evolution was impossible.
His argument went like this.
To migrate succesfully the bird has to navigate accurately from a specific location to another specific location on or around specific dates. Any error and the bird dies.
Therefore the instinct for migration would have to be established ‘All-At-Once’. No incremental process is possible to establish a migration pattern so it cannot be an evolved trait.
In finding the numerous counter-examples and alternatives that refute this, the issue of changing migration patterns in response ot climate change was cited as an example of how incremental changes to migration CAN occurr in response to a changing enviroment.
Turns out this is quite an active field of study. The physical behavior (in bio jargon the phenology) of different organisms can respond to the climate change to different degrees. At the bottom of the food chain plants can bud and flower earlier, the associated insects can also reproduce earlier, but bird migration and egg laying times are constrained to differing degrees by the climate at the far migration cite and day length.
This can lead to a mis-match in egg-laying and breeding times if the insect abundance the birds rely on is missed. Studies have been carried out to see what degree of flexibility, or varience, there is in these bird breeding/migration timings that will enable them to evolve new behavior to match the new climate.
Putting this into google scholar –
“uk change in migration times birds climate change”
produces a lot of relevant responses.
clicking on one of the ‘related articles’ links under a relevant paper narrows it down a bit.
If I posted a lot of links it would simply delay the post, but here is a good example, although it was first posted online in Sept 2008 before being published in 2009 but I hope you don’t reject it as ‘too old’ as a result…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01458.x/full
“Climate change and unequal phenological changes across four trophic levels: constraints or adaptations?
1. Christiaan Both1,*,
2. Margriet Van Asch2,
3. Rob G. Bijlsma1,
4. Arnold B. Van Den Burg3,
5. Marcel E. Visser2
This isn’t in the UK, but is more recent –
http://www.springerlink.com/content/66175416534u67u5/
Changing climate and the phenological response of great tit and collared flycatcher populations in floodplain forest ecosystems in Central Europe
Zdeněk Bauer, Miroslav Trnka, Jana Bauerová, Martin Možný, Petr Štěpánek, Lenka Bartošová and Zdeněk Žalud
Abstract
This study is based on 47 years of observations (1961–2007) on two common bird species, the Great Tit (Parus major) and the Collared Flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis), and a dominant tree species in their habitat, the English Oak (Quercus robur). The study took place at four research sites in the Czech Republic located in full-grown, multi-aged floodplain forests with no forestry management. An increase in air temperature over the evaluated period clearly influenced the length of phenological phases. The full foliage date of English Oak has advanced by 8.7 days during the past 47 years. Great Tit and Collared Flycatcher populations have reacted to the changing climate in the same way, with first laying date and mean laying date advancing by between 6.0 and 9.0 days. In all cases, the trends are highly significant and consistent over all sites.
I think I can post one more link, this isn’t related to birds, and the data stops in 2000 for easy to guess reasons, but it is a UK indicator of climate change without any instrumental uncertainty….
http://www.ecn.ac.uk/iccuk/indicators/34.htm
Amanda
I was just settling down to watch your YouTube clip but it says it has been removed!
I’m very disappointed.
Grabbing five minutes to catch-up, visitors here until Thursday……
@-Pointman says: September 13, 2010 at 4:38 pm
“The ‘science’ is toast, Izen. That debate is over. You stay in denial and we’ll get on with the political phase.”
You will find that the political phase is constrained by what NATURE actually does.
And so far (the last few decades) it has been warming as ALL the natural indicators show.
@-Dave,Edinburgh says: September 14, 2010 at 2:26 am
“….So, let’s wait and see, if you are correct then I presume we will have another “mild” winter, however if proper science is correct then we can expect the coming winter to dump another load of “deep and crisp and even” global warming on our unprepared highways and byways.”
No, local weather, which is what you are invoking, is not a simple, unambiguous indicator of global climate change. The UK has anomalous weather due to the Gulf stream and the Atlantic index. Winters especially are mediated more by the AO and the strength of the Atlantic currents than the global climate. (Although there is some indication that those currents/weather systems are corralated with global climate changes). My best guess is that this UK winter will be cold, though not as serve as last year. The ongoing La Nina will affect the AO and jet stream enough to bring arctic weather further south, but as a result the arctic will be cooler.
So, cold here, warmer in Greenland!
-grin-
You need AT LEAST a decade of measurements and observations over as wide an area as possible before you can detect a small trend in a series with large inter-annual variation.
Probably the best natural indicator of global change is the sea level. Because it reflects thermal expansion and the loss of ice on land from glaciers and ice-caps it can indicate whether there is a trend, or just ‘oscillations’….
I don’t think anyone disputes the rising trend except that nutter who believes in dowsing and that pure aryans are descended from a race of northern post-neanderthal giants….
izen says:
September 14, 2010 at 3:51 am
“You will find that the political phase is constrained by what NATURE actually does.
And so far (the last few decades) it has been warming as ALL the natural indicators show.”
As usual Izen, an answer that’s totally content free. Look at the first sentence and laugh out loud folks. If you don’t really believe in all that bollocks Izen, why should we? Stay in denial. The ‘science’ died with Climategate. You and your ‘movement’ are in the trash can of history. Have the decency to stay there.
Pointman
Izen:
In a similar vein http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jJVRcCdvyY&ob=av3e
Pointman
@- Point & Walt
Crass marketing exercises in exploiting teenage alienation with a music style that was out of date 20 years ago.
|
Anybody that thinks music is ever ‘out of date’ is nothing but a led by the nose marketing victim. Every ‘teenager’ that’s ever bought a record, has been exploited, and manipulated – the music Industry has never been about ‘music’, it’s about money and propaganda and brainwashing.
Perfect example, the words to Imagine:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
That’s a roadmap to Hell, but too many people don’t even begin to comprehend why.
If you have nothing worth dying for, you most certainly don’t have anything worth living for. Live for ‘today’ and you make yourself so malleable to manipulative forces, you can’t even see what is being done to you. You become the con-artists wet dream. Et-cet-er-a.
That’s the sort of destructive drivel that’s been drummed into people’s brains for nearly 50 years now. Fully, knowingly, willingly, aided and abetted, by the ‘music’ Industry.
Does anybody seriously think Malcolm McLaren did anything but laugh at all the gullible ‘rebels’ (who couldn’t rebel their way out of a black plastic bag), all the way to the Bank?
Ka-Ching!
In fact it’s not ‘LIKE’ stealing ice creams off children.
It ‘IS’ stealing ice creams off children.
Izen
Quote “However even if I had seen it I might have simply told you to go away and google info you could find yourself….”
If perhaps you had read the reply rather than just seeing it, you would have realized that I had googled information. The googled information matched my recollection and reply to you at the time. Winter came early and stayed late in UK last year. Is this perhaps just Local weather that I am invoking?
Heavy snow and unusually harsh winter weather snarled up transport across India, northern China and South Korea.
Looking at the USA, winter came early and hard in mid October.
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8307661.stm
we find that Poland was also hit 14 October 2009 by severely cold weather.
From http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6.tacyhOeZg&pos=9
we can see that Florida had record cold.
So it seems that it is not just local weather that affected the UK last winter, rather it was a lot of the northern hemisphere that was very cold for a long time.
If we then look at what has happened in the southern hemisphere we find that was in the grip of a cold winter in 2010.
Below normal maximum temperatures covered most of the central and southern regions of Australia. A region of central Australia, covering the southern NT and northern South Australia, extending slightly over the borders into Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, recorded at least 1°C below normal, with small areas in the Alice Springs district 2°C or more below normal.
From http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-03/argentina-colder-than-antarctica-spurs-record-power-imports-shuts-plants.html
we find that Argentina has suffered the coldest winter in 40 years.
Bolivia fell to minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit.) The average low predicated through Aug. 5 is 1 degree, according to the National Weather service.
Indeed it seems a far cry from all the “evidence” you provide of changing hardiness zones and migratory patterns, the prolonged cold snap has also been linked to the deaths of at least 550 penguins along the coasts of Brazil, as well as hundreds of people in the region.
I know that you will counter with “google how hot it is in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Canada and the Poles.”
I find it Funny that a map of the temperature anomalies can easily be relabeled…
“A map of where independent thermometers with an internet connection are available” see http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=43235
So it seems that it is much colder everywhere that anyone that can verify and then share this information (especially cold over many of the world’s largest cities it seems in clear denial of the UHIE!) but it is MUCH hotter everywhere else! Everywhere that there are no independent witnesses it is 10C warmer!
In the words of Jimmy Hendrix “Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?”
Is it just a coincidence that it is only very hot where there are no internet connections?
NoIdea
Purple haze
Excuse me while I kiss the sky
NoIdea says:
September 14, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Fair comment NoIdea, made and done with your inimitable style;-).
Thank you.
Ed.
@-rastech
I agree music does not go out of date, and Malcom Maclaren was a student of the 1950s situationists with their theories of anti-establishment disruption.
His rip-off of EMI was a classic.
But while the ‘punk’ style does not go out of date, bands like Simple Plan or Wheatus with that swaggering belligerence and bouncy fast guitar pop are using a musical style to project a marketing image of ‘rebellious’ teens which is not natural or sincere, but chosen as a once extreme style that has now been co-opted by the mainstream to signify their ersatz ‘outsider’ status.
Its about as authentic as the half-timbering on the semi-detached houses of a suburban estate.
izen says:
September 14, 2010 at 7:43 pm
“I agree music does not go out of date, and Malcom Maclaren was a student of the 1950s situationists with their theories of anti-establishment disruption.”
A prime candidate for Pseud’s corner or perhaps NME in its agiprop heyday when the Stones released the perfect reply to those prats who seriously thought they had do some weird sort of dialectic analysis of every tune. Music is entertainment ie having a good time. When it strays into agiprop like ‘Imagine’, it’s well into prattsville. When it reflects an everyman experience with accuracy and wit, as Wheatus do with ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, it’s a hit.
Pointman
Former Civil Service chief calls for climate shakeup
Alert PrintRetweetFacebookWhat do our mandarins really think of global warming?
“The deference is no longer there. We don’t live in that kind of world any more. People in the blogosphere don’t have to accept these and other statements from the authorities, and they will challenge them. We have seen that they can challenge them quite effectively.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/14/lord_turnbull_interview/
More disengagement but this time by the Civil Service mandarins. The once unthinkable is now sayable …
Pointman
The Stones.
Ah, the authenticity of grammer school boys from middle-class homes singing Howlin Wolf songs….
Perfectly derided by the Bonzos in ‘can blue men sing the whites?’
If being a school nerd and having a dream that the school beauty secretly wants to go to an Iron Maiden concert with you is the everyman experience…. teenage dirtbag is presumably fantasy nostalgia as Brenden Brown was 27 when it was released.
Damning New Investigation Into Climategate Inquiries
In particular, the report finds that:
none of the Climategate panels mounted an inquiry that was comprehensive within their area of remit
insufficient consideration in the choice of panel members led to a failure to ensure balance and independence
none managed to be objective and comprehensive
none made any serious attempt to consider the views and submissions of well-informed critics
terms of reference were either vague or non-existent
none of them performed their work in a way that is likely to restore confidence in the work of CRU.
http://thegwpf.org/climategate/1532-damning-new-investigation-into-climategate-inquiries.html
The whitewash is starting to run …
Pointman
izen says:
September 14, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Dearie me Izen, I sense a feeling coming out of you. A real feeling! You must cherish that little spark and perhaps it’ll grow into something. Your juvenile middlebrow snobbery extends even into music. Why should I be surprised …
Pointman
The report in full.
Click to access Climategate-Inquiries.pdf
Pointman
Pointman says: September 14, 2010 at 9:51 pm
“… Your juvenile middlebrow snobbery extends even into music. Why should I be surprised …”
Especially into music.
Very little respect for anyone claiming to be a musician who cannot busk of ‘Laura’ in D#.
-grin-
Actually, Izen, pop music, ANY pop music, is and was damned hard work for which we as teenagers had no end of respect as most of us took a poke at making our own and found out the truth of it: that music, like anything else, if you are making it, requires the same virtues as running a machine tool or driving a truck. Being there on time, not lying to your customers or employers, being polite and courteous, filling out all the forms, keeping deals, and practice, practice, practice and training for a decade or more until you are ready for prime time.
I don’t like tonnes of what is out there, but I can see the sweat and the effort and the goodwill. While having poked at Bono and Sir Mick on many occasions as being overpaid busgers, all one has to do is go to IMDb.com to see their leased rights on music and in the case of the latter, how many films he’s done to know differently. One can hazard the guess that few scientists have broken a sweat of such intensity and rigour since Lord Cherwell died. We’d be teleporting to work by now if such were the case.
In fact, most rockers got ripped off for their royalties, Sir Paul and the other Beatles worst of all. Surprised there aren’t more rockers in the slammer for waving shooters around than there are. I’d be in prison for murder if I had followed up on my teen interests for plugging lawyers and agents then. From the 1950’s to the mid-1980’s pop music was sheer slavery. Why there is pop music at all is due to sheer love of the medium and raw guts.
While what is out there now is not to my tastes, while we are on the subject of hard work, I had to laugh comparing what I know of WW I-era music hall to how biz is done in the girl band business now. If you can, get a copy of “Mr. Punch’s War” from 1920 at http://www.abebooks.com and have a gander at the portrayals of those theatre singalong extravaganzas and put them up against Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. It’s enough to bring tears to your eyes.
If any current performer in the top 10 played hedge funds or derivatives with the same level of effort they bring to their music, we all would be working for them LOL
Sir Jools Holland is another marvel. Insane level of effort and commitment over a forty-odd year career. Beyond amazing. All that for three chords.
Guess he liked the kids. Sense of obligation, and all that.
Walt O’Bruin says: September 14, 2010 at 11:26 pm
“Actually, Izen, pop music, ANY pop music, is and was damned hard work for which we as teenagers had no end of respect as most of us took a poke at making our own and found out the truth of it:…”
Been there, done that.
Played waltzs quicksteps and foxtrots with a bit of a singalong and rock-n-roll at the end in hotels and bars for several years a couple of nights a week.
Would struggle to busk Laura in the original Bb thou…-grin-
Have two brothers who were in the biz, one has two gold records… and no money.
Malcom Maclaren may have had a ideology behind his rip-offs, most managers and companies just did the rip-offs…
Making big money from music by selling records etc is a brief abberation, before records and mechanical reproduction the only way a musician could earn was by performing to a ticket buying crowd.
Now with free electronic reproduction of musical performances the music biz should die…
Its impossible to claim ‘Rights’ to something that anybody can make their own copy of for nothing.
Then its back to musicians earning by performing… those that can.
Hello Beary Walt !
On September 14, 2010 at 11:32 pm
You might want to google for Florence Foster Jenkins, the socialite singer. (grin) Wiki has a great entry which begins:
“Florence Foster Jenkins (July 19, 1868 – November 26, 1944) was an American soprano who became famous for her complete lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, and overall singing ability.” It gets worse …
There is a CD of some of her warbling (along with three or four other ‘socialite sopranos’). There is even a DVD out there which tells her story.
Her voice was excruciating. Just goes to prove the power of belief. Kinda like AGW. (grin)
Best,
L’Amerloque
izen says:
September 15, 2010 at 12:05 am
No sale Matey – you’re far to prissy for anything like that.
Pointman
Just a brief taster …
Pointman
Engaging with a Wind Mill Salesman (perhaps) ‘Beaker’ on this thread…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100053493/windfarms-the-wind-of-change-has-started-to-blow/#disqus_thread
Who calls ‘Low Carbon Plot’ a populous conspiracy theory, and is dismissive.
After all the music comments this seemed appropriate somehow…..
Pointman says: September 15, 2010 at 12:40 am
“…No sale Matey – you’re far to prissy for anything like that.”
-Grin- I’ll take that as a compliment!
But the truth is I’m more familiar with the works of Harry Warren (1893-1981) than Warren Buffet.
Amerloque says:
September 15, 2010 at 12:38 am
Detroit had its own socialite singer named Mrs. Miller back in the days of WKNR AM and new rock releases weekly which fell off the charts two weeks later. Her greatest hit was “Frisbee.” No vocoder nor autotuner could have corrected her aural output.
Izen, anyone in the biz will tell you it’s the sheet music which pays the bills for the long term. Why? High school and middle school class marching bands and orchestras, and fake charts used in performances and/or recording by other musicians. Digital repro in any form has yet to break even for any major studio since 1996 or so; it isn’t because of the “radical” innovation of digital reproduction either. 45’s and 78’s didn’t pay either except in jukeboxes which machines paid performance royalties just as do radio and TV studios who broadcast. They could give it all away but for sheet music royalties. Sound recording has always been primarily a teaser to drive performance ticket sales and performance royalties.
Copywright law was and is print media oriented, and always shall be. In the beginning was the word and will be at the end of civilization, too.
Everything Mrs. Miller ever performed is preserved for posterity at YouTube.
Here’s her version of Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” Just for Izen:
Um, enjoy.
Matter of fact, I think even YouTube pays royalties on the dot to BMI for each drawdown of every online performance, and Gargle on top of that if the performer has a pay-per-click deal with them.
Like AGW, the eradication of copywright is a fond delusion of passive-aggressive sinecured unemployables out for a free ride on the sweating workers’ backs, which is what socialism has always been about, stealing working people’s earnings.
After Mrs. Miller, maybe the destruction of Detroit was well and truly earned LOL.
Amerloque, here is Florence Foster Jenkins in all her glory.
After her, maybe now IS the time to give up LOL
Walt O’Bruin says:
September 15, 2010 at 2:30 am
Hi Walt. I remember on the approach highway driving into Detroit there was a 50 foot high type half buried in the ground. It had a massive counter embedded in the sidewall at the top. The number represented the cars being manufactured at that moment. You could watch the numbers clicking up for a couple of miles. I suppose it’s gone now.
Pointman
‘type’ = tyre. Doh!
Pointman
“Arctic fox joins polar bear on new list of Arctic species in danger of extinction”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8000350/Arctic-fox-joins-polar-bear-on-new-list-of-Arctic-species-in-danger-of-extinction.html
They’re like the Bourbons. They forget nothing and learn nothing. Ducks in a barrel.
Interestingly, the body feeding Louise the guff take 5 mins (tops) googling to have their credentials shot to Hell. eg Save the Polar bear http://www.savethepolarbear.org/
Since it’s not an endangered species the Arctic fox is unlikely to be either but Louise being the dumboette journalist she is, is happy (or lazy) enough to run with the story being fed to her. So much for golden rule number two …
Pointman
Walt O’Bruin says: September 15, 2010 at 2:18 am
“Everything Mrs. Miller ever performed is preserved for posterity at YouTube.
Here’s her version of Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” Just for Izen:
-Link-
Um, enjoy.”
We used to get singers up, Ive backed worse…
No sense of rhythm, but at least she finished in the same key she started in!
@-Walt
“Izen, anyone in the biz will tell you it’s the sheet music which pays the bills for the long term. Why? High school and middle school class marching bands and orchestras, and fake charts used in performances and/or recording by other musicians. …45′s and 78′s didn’t pay either except in jukeboxes which machines paid performance royalties just as do radio and TV studios who broadcast. ”
Out of date, the rise of the LP/Vinyl is what made rock/pop profitable.
Want to guess how much Iron Maiden make from sheet music as opposed to record sales…?
Quote-“Matter of fact, I think even YouTube pays royalties on the dot to BMI for each drawdown of every online performance, and Gargle on top of that if the performer has a pay-per-click deal with them.
Like AGW, the eradication of copywright is a fond delusion of passive-aggressive sinecured unemployables out for a free ride on the sweating workers’ backs, which is what socialism has always been about, stealing working people’s earnings.”
Actually its the PRS in the UK and ASCAP in the US that is MEANT to collect and pay the artiste’s royalties.
But if you think the working musician gets any significant portion of the monies they garner you inhabit a dellusional world as far removed from reality as the ideological socialists.
Just to stray back to AGW…
how about this editorial…?
I post it for its irritant value to the OZ crowd here – and probably the rest of you!
-Grin-
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100914/full/news.2010.466.html
This reminising about Music reminded me of Harry Warren. If it wasn’t written by Gershwin, Cole Porter or Rogers and Hammy then any hollywood/broadway music from the 20’s to the 50’s was probably H Warren… at least it seems that way! Seeing his name so often when playing that sort of stuff I suspected ‘he’ was actually a publishing company that used the name for all their writers, but he really did exist and wrote a phenominal amount. Not all of it good…. but the best was up there with the greats.
Found this looking him up again, written in 1927 long before the place was famous for other reasons…
Nagasaki –
Here’s all the words… they don’t write em like this anymore.! -grin-
Verse 1:
Fellows if you’re on,
I will spin a yarn,
That was told to me by able seaman Jones.
Once he had the blues,
So he took a cruise
Far away from night clubs and from saxophones.
He said, “Yoho, I think I made a certain port,
And when you talk about real he-man sport.”
Chorus 1:
Hot ginger and dynamite,
There’s nothing but that at night,
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky woo.
The way they can entertain
Would hurry a hurricane,
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky woo.
Oh, Fujiyama,
You get a mommer,
And then your troubles increase;
In some pagoda
She orders soda,
The earth shakes milkshakes, ten cents a-piece.
They kissee and hugee nice,
By jingo, it’s worth the price,
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky woo.
Patter:
With an ice cream cone and a bottle of tea,
You can rest all day by the hickory tree;
But when night comes ’round, oh, gosh, oh, gee!
Mother, mother, mother, pin a rose on me.
Chorus 2:
They give you a carriage free,
The horse is a Japanee.
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky woo.
They sit you upon the floor,
No wonder your pants get sore,
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky woo.
Oh, sweet Kimona,
I pulled a boner,
I kept it up at high speed;
I got rheumatics
And then sciatics
Of halitosis that’s guaranteed.
You must have to act your age,
Or wind up inside a cage,
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky woo.
Verse 2:
When the day is warm,
You can keep in form
With a bowl of rice beneath a parasol.
Ev’ry gentleman
Has to use a fan,
And they only wear suspenders in the fall.
That’s where the gals
Don’t think of rings and furs,
Gee, it’s the grandest place that ever was:
Pointman says:
September 15, 2010 at 2:40 am
That would be the Uniroyal tyre on I-94 near the Melvindale exit; heading into the city it would have been on your right. The other direction is toward A Squared (Ann Arbor).
Except for two trade shows and collecting on an old debt, shall we say, I haven’t been back there for almost 30 years. My last project there was working with a firm called Industrial Holographics in Auburn Hills which firm made a custom machine for using lasers to locate internal flaws in aircraft tyres. The owner then needed a hand up sorting out how to broach the OT-8 commercial vehicle (buses, trucks, etc) tyre testing market and some standards traceability certs documentation. Fun contract.
I think that firm is somewhere in Virginia now. Also got to meet Stanley Ovshinsky of amorphous semiconductor fame and developer of the first flexible solar panel.
If you get a chance, dig up some music from the Rationals, one of those local Detroit bands which almost solely gigged in the Mitten-shaped State (you could do that back then and live comfortably). I’ll see if there is anything on YouTube by them. Cat Mother and the All-Night Newsboys was another local fave.
Izen, judging from the lyrics, I wouldn’t be surprised if Harry Warren wasn’t found pinned to the wall in his nursing home with a samurai sword through his head.
wasn’t should be was….sorry
Here’s the song which ran through my mind constantly during the riot of 1967;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxOt6XfmMA0 Amazing live.
Here’s the local dance fave which sent Bob Seger up the river for X number of years on a trumped-up drug charge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=487t88pz-2Y
He came from Grosse Pointe Woods.
Ask a Detroiter sometime what Plum Street was like back in the day. MC5 and Terry Knight and the Pack were pretty good local bands, too.
A lot of these songs if re-done today would wipe everyone else off the charts, IMHO. The lyrics even make sense. I dare Lily Allen to do 2 + 2 = ? from the perspective of a female soldier in Afghanistan.
That’s the Jewish Community Centre in Southfield, Michigan, where you see the Rationals performing. That was when you got beaten to a pulp in high school gym class shower rooms for being circumcised unless you were handy with your mitts. You never told the gym teacher, you settled up on your own.
G’day everyone,
The latest instalment of Locusts’ China Blog is out; you can read it here
Sometimes you find the strangest things…
The Bonzo Dog Band – Button Up Your Overcoat
Izen, big boy,
Now that I’ve got you made,
Goodness, but I’m afraid,
Somethin’s gonna happen to you!
Izen, big boy,
You gotta me hooked, and how,
I should die if I should lose you now!
Button up your overcoat,
When the wind is free,
Take good care of yourself,
You belong to me!
Eat an apple every day,
Get to bed by three,
Oh, take good care of yourself,
You belong to me!
Be careful crossing streets, ooh-ooh,
Don’t eat meat, ooh-ooh,
Cut out sweets, ooh-ooh,
You’ll get a pain and ruin your tum-tum!
Keep away from bootleg hooch
When you are on a screen
Oh, take good care of yourself,
You belong to me!
Don’t step on hornet’s tails, ooh-ooh!
Or on snails, ooh-ooh!
Or third rails, ooh-ooh!
You’ll get a pain and ruin your tum-tum!
Keep away from bootleg hooch
When you’re on a spree,
Oh, take good care of yourself,
You belong to me!
Beware of frozen ponds, ooh-ooh,
Peroxide blondes, ooh-ooh,
Stocks and bonds, ooh-ooh,
You’ll get a pain and ruin your bankroll!
Keep aware of underwear,
When you climb a tree,
Oh, take good care of yourself,
You belong to me!
How weird is that?
NoIdea
Google Maps again
You will be pleased to know the big tyre was still there when Street View passed
But no numbers now!!
Well done Walt for your description of where to find it.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Detroit&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=12.553203,20.566406&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Detroit,+Wayne,+Michigan,+United+States&ll=42.270196,-83.210449&spn=0.126772,0.439453&z=12&layer=c&cbll=42.27038,-83.210157&panoid=biBQ5y1IUqhqc3gd88uhDw&cbp=12,72.74,,0,5
ps Walt how are the electric ciggies
Regards All
Hiya Manonthemoor,
Did you try looking up at the sky from that google view?
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is…Super Sun, or at least a less than normal looking one!
NI
Walt, schweetheart, thank you so much for your flattering seriousness and attentiveness, as well as your compliments over my this and that. Although I do wonder what you find so beneath the wallpaper or whatever the Latin expression is (in Latin — or is it French?) about my outfit. Well yes, the short pink shorts are just what one wears in Florida, but you don’t see much of them anyway (well there isn’t much of them to see!). I looked into the camera because, apart from anything else, I was looking at the intended viewer (someone in particular), and I looked away because my dog decided it was play time (and also started snoring in the middle of another song I was recording, which tells me she needs to be put elsewhere for the duration!).
As for the soundtrack, I’m intrigued, as I don’t know how that could work. The accompaniment I did was a lot of silly fun and believe me, if you think it sounds silly in the video, it’s even sillier when you actually listen to it! Makes me laugh. But it’s not a song to be taken overly seriously.
What you say about ‘concentrate on your sound’ is absolutely correct: in fact I told myself that on another occasion and it was the right thing to do. I don’t have to work on ’emoting’ (and as you say, it can easily be overdone) because they’re my songs so the emotion is already inherent in them for me.
Anyway you are a dear to give me such helpful advice and consideration. Curtseys and bows, Amanda
manonthemoor says:
September 15, 2010 at 7:42 am
Thank you MOTM, that looks to be the tyre but no counter. Maybe Motor City (Motown) doesn’t make any cars nowadays.
Pointman
Meltemian:
I hope you are not too harried with your visitors and that they say lots of nice things about your hospitality and leave you some of the pie, etc. I have had visitors and I have been a visitor, and I can say that I’m like Michael Winner in that he strongly prefers a hotel — for everyone!
I took my vid down because I like them to be for ‘friends only’ and not all and sundry — and there’s a lot of sundry on the DT blogs, who of course come snooping round here at times. The sundry often attach themselves to me in a more or less icky manner, so the less they know about me, the better.
Anyway, if you’re interested, bless you, and here’s a link that works. Please be aware that it’s much less interesting than Walt makes it sound. Also, at the end I’m supposed to sing ‘I’LL see you…’ which sounds better than what I did sing (forgetting; one does sometimes).
Sorry, forgot to put the text under to avoid the embed thing.
Oz — would have put this in the jukebox but this is sort of part of the thread now. Hope that’s OK.
Are you kidding Amanda? Love it! – Oz
NoIdea says: September 15, 2010 at 7:23 am
” Sometimes you find the strangest things… ”
-GRIN-
I knew this song before hearing the Bonzos cover. Viv Stanshall had a taste for 1920’s ‘flapper’ songs and probably got this from the version by ‘Betty Boop’ – or more accurately the singer that the cartoon was based on.
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Walt Bear:
Did you want the lyrics to ‘See You In My Dreams’? Copyright, Me. :^)
Men came on the shore
from ships all heavy laden:
was there spice and more
to trade or to be taken?
The captain bent his knee
before the island queen
and told her
“I must respect you–
both our customs say–
but you know that I know
that you like me,
so I’ll see you in my dreams”
Hey ho
Seein’ you in my
seein’ you in my
seein’ you in my dreams
Dreams are where we both…are free
A king thought on occasion
of a lovely subject,
the woman with the smile
he’d seen at his banquet;
but she was the bride-to-be
of a foreign monarchy
with crack troops
and bigger
galleons in its fleet
So he sent a gift to the bridal feast,
saying “See you in my dreams”
Hey ho
Seein’ you in my
seein’ you in my
seein’ you in my dreams
There I’ll find you close…to me
Cleopatra guessed
that Marc would have to leave her
after making pledge
of love and giddy laughter;
then as the music played
the barge began to sway
and he knew
he would lose her
once she sailed away;
but she blew a kiss
and threw him a slip—
“I’ll see you in my dreams”
Refrain: (Hey ho etc.)
Bravo Amanda.
Pointman
Pointman
Brava, Amanda. I don’t think I exaggerated in the least. If you had ever seen how bad so many really popular performers were in their apprenticeship days you’d feel like a million bucks about your performance. Most performers spend zillions after they’ve made it covering their tracks, which is why you can’t trust their biographies, auto or otherwise LOL!
Izen is right on, too, in citing Helen Kane and Betty Boop. Get a mike headset, amp, some photographers’ maps on tripods from a second-hand store, download the royalty-free backup, and have another go. Normally for the backdrop a faux blue or red velvet bedspread does wonders. Just don’t get them too near the lamps unless you have a fire extinguisher handy.
All it takes is practice and persistence, luv. 1/2 an hour a day is all it takes.
I also agree with you 200% about the YouTube posting. I am wondering if there is some way a freeserver site can be got where we can upload our own stuff for safekeeping and safe viewing.
I’d meant lamps not maps. Working with site plans all day today on another cost estimate for a boring old boiler which, if they drive it to the site slab using the present road, will be the world’s first land submarine. They’ve got three choices: wait until the civil works are done, spend about 8 grand on a LOT of interlocking metal road bed, or (DUH) wait until the ambient temp is around 20 degrees F for at least a week running.
Really four: keep paying the storage fees to the vendor LOL No choice, really.
Love the dark references in the original You Belong To Me song. Suits today to a tee. BTW, the “wear your flannel underwear when you climb a tree” is a double entendre: in those days before Margaret Sanger made prophylactics legal, if you were caught with a French envelope or Dutch cap, you did some serious bird anywhere in the USA.
Belly guns were a necessary fashion item for women then, too. .22, .25 and .32 semiautomatic pistols which fit in the palm of one’s hand were a girl’s best friend then. Nice girls didn’t go to jail if they just shot the guy in the leg or foot, or just threatened the male assailant, at least in the Detroit of the 20’s through the early Fifties. Mum had her .32 in her bedroom right up through the 1970’s.
BTW, the lyrics are better than market, Amanda. No joke.
Pointman
izen says:
September 14, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Simple Plan are a business plain and simple in a country, Canada, which really is much more lockstep and intolerant of genuine innovation of any country except Germany past and present. Joni Mitchell was lauded and awarded and praised and accepted in every country but Canada, where she was an object of mockery critically well into her sixties at the same time she was waylaid for fundraising performances there. She had to wait until 2004 or so to receive a Governor General’s Award, which is a crime, to me.
Still, it is a snappy song Simple Plan did, wot? LOL It can’t all be meat, a little candy is nice now and again. I’m sure they never missed a gig unless they had a bone broken, and in fact I’ve seen the lead singer onstage with his forearm in a cast.
It’s also extremely difficult to do a meaningful song in an epoch where nothing means anything anymore to anyone. You say something real and you die almost instantly LOL Things like “Homeless shelters are really divorce shelters as well as a product of over-accommodating gender and race ‘positive’ discriminatory hires and corporations hiring temps over permanent staff,” or “The credit crunch and economic downturn aren’t due so much to politics and bankers but to people not paying their bills, not keeping deals, and being screwed up on drugs and booze to be able to tell their Visa from their American Express.” People stomp on your head without even thinking, but both are the truth.
Left out too in front of screwed up :>p Digitarditis strikes again.
Wonder if I could start an NGO to combat this new disease? Won’t you please help? Give generously, I need a new Rollie LOL That was the Noughties for you.
It’s really goofy putting in a boiler this late in the season, but they’ve no choice. Watch the client get the whole thing stuffed up their arse by the weather. I’m going to recommend they make a deal NOW ahead of the seasonal pack with National or Aggreko for a rental unit on a flatbed on standby just to support the jobsite work and some Coppus blowers w/steamcoils. A month or so from now they won’t have to worry about the load capacity of the roadbed into the site, it will be frozen solid until spring.
The Sun’s going down in Wallawoora and as I watch the Lethe flow in the moonlight, I feel no need to negotiate about my taste in music with the taste fascists but that’s just me I suppose http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3udfFdVFDAc&feature=fvsr perhaps they’re right but then again, they’ve never been so far …
Pointman
G’day all,
I see we’ve exhausted disaster preparedness as a conversation topic. So here’s something that’s more back to business.
Cheers
Oz
Amanda – Thank you. Great voice you have – I can’t hold any sort of a tune without people cringing. My kids hated going on long trips with me as I “sang” to anything on the radio!!!!!!
One can tell this is a Commonwealth blog: the blog subject addresses surviving difficult times, and it ends up with an entertainment being organized, which is all to the good, and more than a little bit like “Bridge on the River Kwai” or “Stalag 17.”
Thank you very much, Pointman.
Couldn’t see what’s on your link as it’s blocked my EMI in my country.
Thank you Walt the Wonder Bear. How nice to have someone like you in one’s corner!
Thanks, Meltemian, nice of you to say so.