Storm in a Teacup

 

The mainstream media, are inclined to peddle their narrative rather than the facts, but in this case, to understand the facts takes a little insight. The stakes are high and most of us hope for a positive outcome.

 

Storm in a Teacup

 

I’m calling the tête-à-tête between presidents Trump and Zelensky a storm in a teacup because, it seems that negotiations are back on the table by now. I saw a couple of things that happened that nobody else seems to have done, and because it looks to me that there will be progress, it could be assumed the explanation doesn’t matter and then again, maybe not, but here goes.

First a little personal story.

When our forest was ready for harvesting to begin, I was in charge of getting the operation started. The son of my neighbour and friend, who happened to be the local sawmiller, decided to throw his hat in the ring, so I helped him with the costing and what was required to make a go of it and he won the tender on a fair and open tender basis. The young fellow was learning was we went along and bought the necessary equipment, and employed a couple of bushmen. His output and quality easily met the demand.

When his contract came up for renewal, the big noises at the regional office had a mate who had been logging overseas and had arrived back looking for work. It was as plain as day to me they intended to award the contract to him. I objected and because I was known for having the ear of the local member of parliament, they called me down to their office about 300 kilometres away, to soft-soap me. I told my neighbour what was afoot, but promised I would fight in his son’s corner.

I had guessed correctly and at the meeting I had four big noises singing the praises of their fellow so I sang the praises of my fellow just as loudly. They wanted me to agree with them before I left the office, and I held out until 6:30 on a Friday evening while they usually finished up at 4:30 and had a few drinks. I had known all along that I would have to give in, which I finally did.

At least I could honestly face my neighbour and his son with honesty that I had put up the best fight that I could.

 

Now the issue at hand.

The first thing I would point out, is that I know how difficult it is to concentrate when using a second language for an hour. President Zelensky was there with a roomful of English speakers, and yes, I’m aware he had an interpreter there, and that for the most part, the conversation was cordial, but he didn’t want to quickly capitulate to the Russians, because he knew the Ukrainian people wouldn’t want him to. In an issue like this everyone wants to save face as much as possible.

 

The eruption (if I can call it that) was caused when President Zelensky said to Vice President Vance, ‘You raise your voice.’ Now, we all could see that VP Vance didn’t raise his voice, but this is where nuances in language come into play. Again, I’ve been there myself. He more than likely meant, ‘You often raise the issue of diplomacy…’ or ‘You always highlight diplomacy…’ or perhaps, ‘You make a song and dance about diplomacy…’ Or there could be other variations.

On President Trump’s side, I don’t think he’s ever used another language, so he couldn’t be expected to pick up mistaken use of terminology, so he was quick to defend his deputy, which is what a good boss should have done, because he, as all of us saw that the vice president had not raised his voice. Also, Trump’s awareness that his country was watching and sooner or later so would President Putin, put pressure on him to become forthright. The art of diplomacy is about making points and being able to reading the room.

In the preamble, President Zelensky’s use of language seemed to needle the others… and maybe that is what he was trying to do, but manners and the use of speech differs with societies and while a professional interpreter might understand the nuances, the people who interpreted for me, usually didn’t quite get the gist of what my meaning was, which is why I did my best to lean the language, manners and all.

Advice

Advice

An old saying close to my heart is, ‘In this world there are sayers and there are doers.’ The further back I go in my life, practical people are the who doing the doing, while others yak on and come up with all sorts of flowery, even wild ideas. During my old forestry days, every now and then we would have young fellas, straight out of university, come on site full of bright ideas they wanted us to try… usually at expense, but always those things had already been tried and rejected. We used to joke about having to break-in these new foresters, and after they see the light, they’d turn out ok. Another quirk was when I was told before starting my assignment in Africa, that the women of the country did all the work and men sat around all day planning and actually did little. To the casual observer that may be so, but it wasn’t the case, the elderly men certainly sat around planning, but those criticising, and  is generally the trend in today’s world, is if people can get away with sitting on their arse yapping, they will.

I’m not into the air-fairy ideas that have come to the fore from on high over the last few decades, which is why I’m not at all keen on what’s emerging from the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, they too are all arse-sitters. Among many things, coming down from them are rules about water, our drinking water; meanwhile it’s noticeable they aren’t doing much to help rural Africans with water! Here’s what I’ve seen about the rural water where I’ve lived for sixty-odd years. Despite what you might hear about climate change over the past sixty years I’ve monitored the rainfall in our area. We have averaged twenty-one inches of rain per annum, except during the 1960-66 severe drought. For household water we had tank water collected from house roofs… yes, in those day, our roofs were painted with lead-based paint and rats and birds drowned in the tank, dust from the roof washed into the tank when it rained. We had to clean the tank from time to time and always had to be economical with the water because of the low rainfall; buying in water was possible, but it was expensive. Livestock water was from dewponds or creeks, which is why we carefully managed livestock number.

The generally in the larger towns didn’t care about the problems of rural people… but notably, the townies who temporarily worked on the forest during the winter months, took our water home with them. Our community decided to build our own water scheme by taking out a loan for materials and each property supplied eighty hours labour. We were able to use the forest D6 bulldozer… a bit of a rort because it was actual government property, but none of the big noises knew and what they didn’t know didn’t hurt them. It was used mainly to pull in the pipe and to excavate the site of the reservoirs. Each property was entitled to four hundred gallons a day for household use and livestock water, we paid an annual rate to keep the scheme going… and we chlorinated the water.

And then the ‘bigger is better’ crowd came in where the county council amalgamated with the town council to become a district council and the district council elbowed its way in to run our water scheme. So, from practical people running the county, the airy-fairies had taken over and costs began to rise… and they wanted to put more chemicals in the water. Consultants then told the council that our water supply was substandard and recommended piping water from the mighty river thirty miles to the north, so that was done at more cost. Five years later consultants say that the district council’s water scheme no longer meets United Nations standards but the cost would be too expensive for a mere council, so the government should take over the management of water and the government wanted to bring in another layer of management, the indigenous people who believe that spirits guide water.  It turns out though that the spirits can be bought off with enough money. They also believe waters of catchments can’t be mixed, so water from one river can’t go into another, which is what the district council had us do. Right now, the future of our water looks… complicated, expensive and unknown.

During my tree nursery days, we used to sell tree seedlings to a forest outfit which was run as a aboard, a subsidiary of the local county council also tuned into a district council. The forest was established 120 years ago on a wide, flat alluvial plain that had been difficult bring under the agricultural practices of the day. The forest basically provided shelter from the sometimes-powerful northwesterly winds, fuelwood for the community, fenceposts, and timber from a sawmill that they later built. Our nursery had been selling seedings to the board for at least fifty years, and suddenly they stopped ordering. Of course, we thought that our seedlings might have been below specifications, so we called on them, but there was nothing wrong with our product.

There had been a transition from sheep farming to dairying throughout the country, (which could be made into another uninteresting essay).  Anyway, the board/council’s accountant advised that as far as land value was concerned, it was economically sensible to remove the forest and convert the land into farmland, which I’ll come back to. So, to remain their investment in forestry, they bought some gorse-covered hill country near the bigger city. As far as economics go, forestry on flat land is always advantageous because flat country is far easier to harvest and gorse control is about the most expensive of weeds to convert into forestry. Anyway, the board had to apply for resource consent before they could turn a sod… this is mainly environmental and largely depends on the attitudes of the authorities, so consent was denied… city bureaucrats aren’t keen on radiata pine forests, so it wasn’t a surprise. Because consent wasn’t approved, it cost ten million dollars to fight the authority’s decision; but they lost again. So, no trees have been planted, and to date there have been two fires through the area because of a fuel buildup. On fires…back to my forestry, before the drought of 1960 to 1966, there had been huge buildup of fuel, yet during and after the drought, we had no wildfires. I know enough about fire to with confidence say that fires seldom start naturally. I’ve seen one start by a bulldozer grouser plate creating a spark on a rock and another by a spark from the exhaust of a Champion two stroke grader, so they can easily start accidentally but too many fires these days have malicious undertones… maybe by people with an agenda.

The alluvial plain the board’s forest had sat upon was built up by mountain erosion and river action, so was very stoney and couldn’t support dairying-style grass growth the way it was. Heavy machines were brought in capable of grinding the stumps, burying the stones and lifting the silt-fines… the machine could process two hectares a day, but it was hugely expensive! And then the farmland had to be fenced and wells had to be established for irrigation. We became involved to plan and supply shelter trees, and the dairying infrastructure had to be established, so the whole process wouldn’t have been cheap. The farms were then sold off and the cows were brought in.

The dust has settled on all of this and with hindsight, while I didn’t agree with the change from sheep to dairying in the first place for reasons of ‘my-style’ of environment matters, the changes arrived, and as a result, effluent has seeped into the groundwater which justifies my stance. In the fullness of time cows are now frowned upon for their emissions by the climate change stirrers… which is a dubious theory at best. However, if the forest had continued as it had been for a hundred years, today they would be making a fortune out of the carbon credits… which again is a dubious theory but is happening and likely to continue, and that’s as well as their forestry business.

 So, when someone comes up with new theories, maybe backed up by ‘the science’, or economics, it’s any wonder I’m just a tad dubious. And for someone used to practicality and logic, the way our leaders have been performing of late makes me shake my head in wonder. Just today, some of my peers are also wondering. The Covid pandemic has left our already fragile economy in an even poorer state, which rightly has a new government cutting back on frivolous expenditure. Those among us with just a tad of common sense are asking who and why some government official thought it appropriate to approve four million dollars to a person with ‘indigenous’ links, who is playing recorded whale song to kauri trees. Kauri trees are an iconic species and they are suffering from kauri dieback, a fungal disease, and the whale song is hoped to cure them. I’ve no problem with people pursuing their own spiritual belief systems, but not at the taxpayer’s expense, especially when there’s no way such a project can be called, ‘traditional or scientific’.

 We need to be wary of from whom we take our advice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Nothing So Strange

 

Nothing So Strange

 

‘There’s nothing so strange as folks.’ Was the sage saying of my old mate Albert, who also called liars, ‘Tom Pepper’. Tom Pepper is mythological fella who could out-lie the devil himself, so was booted out of hell. Last night Tom Pepper came to mind when I caught a report where the Melanesian islands of Vanuatu are taking Britian to court claiming that she is responsible for the climate change that causes devastating hurricanes to the islands. There were two faces shown, one an islander, probably the PM and another, the lawyer who presumably, the Vanuatuan government has engaged to bring the case to court. Suspicious as ever, I spent about two minutes searching the record, and found ‘devastating’ hurricanes have hit the New Hebrides, which is the islands’ old name, in the following years: 1893, 1898, 1904, 1905, 1911, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1932… we have no record of earlier hurricanes, but the trend is obvious. There’s irony in Albert’s first quote because my country, being a member of the Pacific, always provides assistance to New Hebrides/Vanuatu and other Pacific nations when disaster strikes, and as the New Hebrides were under the umbrella of France, they no doubt provided aid too. Now they are now wanting another bite of the cherry. Proving free money is never really appreciated. Charles Darwin might have figured out about evolution, but during his trip across the Pacific he figured out how the islands grow… and they are growing, not sinking as the lawyer is bound to allege. Of course, with climate change being so widely propagandised, it’s worth the islands and their lawyer to have a crack at the British taxpayer, because judges will just go along with the narrative.

Modern television outfit like the clickbait of weather-related disasters, and in another episode, there were cars piled against a bridge in Valencia, Spain, which was quickly attributed to climate change. The fact is, Valencia is sitting on a riverbed, and because of a ‘devastating’ flood in 1957, they ‘relocated’ the river’s course instead of the town, this flood has returned the river to its historic course as rivers so often do. I found flooding has been recorded at Valencia since 1321, but again two minutes of research revealed floods during the following years: 1879, 1888, 1891, 1907, 1909, 1912, 1919, 1926, 1935, 1937, 1940, 1941, 1957 and 1971. It is apparently difficult to say in a television news bulletin, that the area is a floodplain and has always been prone to flooding. In fact, all floodplains are prone to flooding.

‘There’s nothing so strange as folks’ might come down to people seeing the same thing differently, one group might believe their winning football team won on its merits, while the other team’s supporters believe their team only lost because of the referee’s poor calls. People tend to lie to themselves… why is that?  There are a number of reasons, but a strong motive is for some perceived advantage as in the Vanuatu case, both from the islanders’ and the lawyer’s point of view. Old Scruff, who used to skin possums from a similar habitat as me, reckoned he was paid twice as much for his skins as I was… from the same buyer too. To me what was important, was the interaction between the buyer and me, I knew the truth from his body language. The old-timers used sayings as a learning tool, and old Bert used to say, ‘You can’t fix stupid.’ But opinion on that is in the eye of the beholder… isn’t it?

There’s self-esteem, boasting, preventing a perceived threat, control and, avoiding guilt to consider, but topping the reasons for fibbing is the will to deceive oneself to believe in what others believe so as not to look different. None of these reasons have any logic about them, because somehow, sometime the truth will out but folk become swept along on the tide. I’ve always been interested in the weather more so than the climate, because understanding weather was part of my job and to me it’s obvious that we’re being led down the path by a bunch of people about the so-called climate emergency. What also fascinates me is peoples’ response and willingness to agree and thus comply with what are often draconian rules.

A good example was complying with the Covid rules. There was more known about the virus than we were told, and banning family at the deathbed of kin was a gross infringement of humanity. Our country didn’t even allow citizens to come home from overseas! A mate of mine travelled three hundred kilometres to see his dying sister in a rest home, where he was given fifteen minutes… there’s no logic in that, the near-dead aren’t going to die any earlier. Since the 1970’s it has been known that breathing in your own carbon dioxide inside a facemask has all sorts health risks, especially for children, yet wearing them was mandated… it was also known the weave was too open to keep out viruses. And the dangers of lockdowns were also known, and worse still, the populus weren’t allowed to ask questions.

Oddly, an earlier quote from the United Nations was that climate policy is not environmental policy, it is economic policy. If you consider wind turbines and solar panels, climate policy can’t possibly be environmental policy because putting aside the land degradation caused by mining for the minerals, the impacts on wildlife and the changes to the landscape, it certainly isn’t caring for the planet. Yet here they are saying that their climate policy will save the planet! The real damage to the environment, is that the lifespan of so-called green energy is so short and there’s no adequate way of recycling them, so they present a toxic hazard for the next generation to cope with… but for the politicians and bureaucrats, 25 years is just long enough for another regime to be the benefactors of the toxic menace, which is counterintuitive to a healthy economy as well.

So far there’s been no sensible approach to energy. Most western nations brought in electric vehicles when already their power grid was stretched and there was hardly any charging infrastructure. No credit has gone to the refining process of liquid fuels or the catalectic converters on vehicles that greatly reduce emissions. We were remonstrated by a teenage truant girl about collapsing ecosystems and people dying, but hey, the greening planet hosts biodiversity and habitat and carbon dioxide has contributed to record crop yields as in SW Ontario and elsewhere with per acre yields twice that of the 1970’s. Basically if there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, plants don’t need so much water, plant growth is better, which has to be good for humanity.

Climate change is much the same as the Covid experience, with the imposed narrative that we should trust the science, but both are easily exposed by applying simple research and logic. There is a wealth of information that can easily be found on the internet… but here’s a warning: Claus Swarb the WEF big noise, has said the algorithms on various search engines have been modified so their version of the climate narrative appears first. I’m not about to prove their climate change narrative is wrong here, I’d rather you do it yourself, but here’s a guide… the first step is to consider critically why Swarb said what he did, why there’s a need to do that if the narrative stacks up? For climate change to be real, there needs to be a long-term trend of the same weather pattern (usually temperature) for a minimum of thirty years or more realistically one hundred. Consider this and check that I’m accurate; 760-910AD there was a drought in Mexico which brought down the Mayans… no question it happened. Check these other changes in climate; 300BC-300AD was the Roman Warm Period, The Medieval Warm Period occurred 900AD-1250AD, you will no doubt see that, your search engine will say, ‘these periods were localised, but the Mayan experience fits, and Mexico is far away from Europe. Later, along came the Little Ice Age 1330-1850 and there’s literature on the living conditions in Europe at that time. The timing of the end of the Little Ice Age coincided with the end of the Industrial Revolutions 1760-1850, and why people wanted to exit Europe. Since the Industrial Revolution together with the end of the Little Ice Age, we have had a warming trend. Question: How does an ice age end? Here’s another, since the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen steadily, why then, hasn’t the temperature risen steadily with it? Look at the temperature graphs… you will see on many that they start at 1980 because the 1970’s were a period of low temperatures and they don’t want you to know. The other question to ask is, ‘if there were storms and weather-related loss of life before say, 1950, when atmospheric carbon dioxide started to increase, how come storms and loss of life is less now when there is more atmospheric carbon dioxide? Help to answer those questions can be found from Tony Heller, realclimatescience.com. Consider the strongest blast on the planet in one hundred years, which was the Tongan undersea volcanic eruption, which increased the moisture content of the stratosphere by ten percent or more… why is such a significant blast hardly mentioned? The likely aftermath, you’d think, would be floods and heatwaves for up to five years after the event, but it fits rather nicely with climate alarmism, so climate change it is. Search the Laki Haze of 1783/4 and also Gilbert White who diarised its aftermath at the English village of Selbourne, and think about it being an anomaly within the Little Ice Age. The power of volcanic action on the planet can be significant.

Climate change is one of the tools the United Nations are using to encourage us to accept their Agenda Thirty. One of their goals is to reduce world poverty, which is a laudable idea, but it here’s the method they intend to achieve that aim. Shortly there is to be the next climate forum known as a COP29, at this one, they intend to punish the nations that have benefitted from the Industrial Revolution. They are debating how much ‘compensation’ those nations will pay to poor nations of the world for the damage to them that man-made climate change is causing… the figure they are proposing is in the trillions. To help get your head around one trillion; one trillion seconds equates to 31,688 years. If that doesn’t concern you, nothing will.  

The Tom Peppers of the world are trying hard to extend the time before they are totally exposed, but it will happen… there’s nothing so strange as folks. Basically, the climate and cosmos are so complicated nobody truly understands them, and to say carbon dioxide is a control knob, simply lacks credibility.