Chris Christie's in Trouble Then.

On Tuesday (30/10/12) in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy the Republican Governor of New Jersey broke with his party's campaign position and publicly congratulated Democrat President Obama for his response to the storm. This included making sure that declaration of a federal disaster zone (quite a bureaucratic process) was completed while the storm was hitting so all the federal funds and resources were available to help the moment the storm had passed. As New Jersey was undoubtedly the area most hard hit by the storm Obama visited the state yesterday in his role as President to see for himself the extent of the damage done and exactly what help was required to assist with the recovery.

In the hours before the President's visit New Jersey was hit by a second disaster when a gas main set fire to a number of houses in Mantoloking. As the area was cut off by floodwater the fire department had no option other then to watch the houses burn in scenes similar to the fire in Breezy Point in New York. To me this seemed like an attempt to put extra pressure on both Christie and Obama ahead of the meeting between the two men. For Christie's part it was simply meant to serve as a sharp warning that unless he got back to toeing the party line more accidents could happen. For Obama it was meant to get him talking about the Breezy Point fire in the hope he would reveal details about what if any investigation is going to take place because it turns out a lot of retired police live in Breezy Point.

As for the Breezy Point fire I'm now almost 100% certain that was an arson attack because if you were looking in the right places it fits perfectly into a pattern. First I Tweeted some sexual innuendo about things not coming up when I visited my doctor. Then about an hour later a construction crane went all floppy in Manhattan. Next Chris Brown (nicknamed Breezy) Tweeted some photograph which due to power cuts I've still not seen. About an hour later the facade of a building in Chelsea suddenly collapsed. Then after I'd gone to bed Chris Brown Tweeted a link to some website or another and about an hour later the fire broke out at Breezy Point. The hope was that ahead of the COP18/CMP8 the outside world would view this as me, Chris Brown and Rihanna (still sounds weird to say) having some massive argument and that argument being played out through the changing forces of the storm. The hope was that this would restart the very real debate that's been going on at the fringes (in the bars mainly) of the COP/CMP process since that Umbrella record came out about whether or not Rihanna controls the weather. The reason why this argument is so important to certain camps within the climate change/global warming debate is that with the evidence mounting up those who argue that climate change/global warming isn't a man-made phenomenon are really starting to run out of counter arguments. The Rihanna proposition makes for a perfect blocking tactic because while it is extremely unlikely that she does control the weather the vast gaps in our knowledge about things like the Quantum field and the Higgs Boson means it's impossible to definitively argue that she doesn't so the argument just goes round and round in circles wasting everybody's time and because it's Rihanna it drags in all the other stuff too. This is a bit of a shame because while I think it's a little strong to blame Sandy entirely on global warming things like melting ice caps causing increased sea levels have certainly been significant factors in the storm and the damage it's done.

To give you an idea of how stupid this Rihanna argument is getting within the COP/CMP process the most recent round saw the World Meteorological Organisation strip El Azizia in Libya of the hottest place on earth title and hand it instead to Death Valley in California, USA. The Gulf Monarchies responded to this by comparing it to Apollo's Curse while the Russians compared it to Dostoyevsky's the Idiot. So there you go a little bit of light reading to help with the recovery effort.

12:00 on 1/11/12