Norfolk Helicopter Crash.

Yesterday (7/1/14) - just as I was getting back from the pub a little early - a UH-60 Pavehawk helicopter from the United States Air Force (USAF) station at the Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Lakenheath crashed on a salt marsh in Norfolk, UK killing all four crew on board. Obviously then I have to talk about this even though I'd much rather be talking about the UFO task in Celebrity Big Brother - Seriously the way that alien craft came down in the compound you would have thought it was a dawn raid.

You may remember that on November 29th (29/11/13) - just after Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour and the COP19/CMP9 Summit had both come to an end - a British police helicopter crashed into a pub in Glasgow, UK killing all three crew and seven passers by. For reasons that are known only to them the Americans took this as the UK signalling that I'd failed miserably and their Rihanna operation had been a resounding success. Now they've had a period of quiet contemplation this latest helicopter crash seems to be a way to revisit that discussion. This theme of US military helicopters crashing has had a mini-world tour of it's own with similar incidents occurring in Japan and Afghanistan in December 2013.

The second element to the story is the salt marsh on which the helicopter crashed. Apart from being a deserted area where the crash was unlikely to injure people on the ground salt marshes are considered very important in environmental science especially when it comes to meeting the challenges of climate change. Left to their own devices salt marshes absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gases and when they're destroyed for things like house building they turn into huge emitters of the greenhouse gases. Also they provide a natural protection against environmental hazards such as flooding by forming a hugely absorbent barrier between the sea and where people live.

As it has become impossible to argue that climate change isn't happening nations such as the UK have begun to argue that climate change is a natural phenomenon that humans cannot influence or that it has passed a tipping point meaning that there is nothing humans can do to stop it. Therefore we should all give up on mitigation efforts such as cutting greenhouse gas emissions and instead concentrate all our efforts on adaptation mechanisms such as preserving salt marches although the UK favours artificial methods such as sea walls and flood barriers. Over the last month or so the UK has been battered by very powerful (possibly driven by heat energy) storms that have caused our artificial adaptation mechanisms to fail catastrophically. As a result this argument has lost most of its credibility although there are those who will dispute that it had any credibility to begin with.

On the subject of extreme weather the US is currently in the grips of a polar vortex that has sent temperatures plummeting to terrifying lows (-43C and worse). Far from being evidence of global cooling this is a natural weather phenomenon that occurs all the time in the arctic circle. It's just that this year it has decided to move further south then usual. I'll need to read up on the exact reasons why but from disruption it's causing I'm getting the distinct impression that the weather is not particularly pleased with the US at the moment.

While I'm here I should take a moment to comment on what has been something of a follow up to the COP19/CMP9 Summit. On December 24th (24/12/13) a Russian ship - the Akademik Shokalskiy got trapped by antarctic ice while researching climate change. It called for help from a Chinese ship - Xue Long - and an Australian ship - Aurora Australis both of which were unable to rescue the ship with the Xue Long also becoming trapped by the ice.

For years Russia and other nations have actually been trying to speed up climate change so it would melt arctic and antarctic ice freeing up new shipping lanes and  oil deposits. By freeing Greenpeace's Arctic 30 during the COP19/CMP9 Russia was signalling that it was no longer pursuing this path. The trapping of the Akademik Shokalskiy was meant to re-state that point and discuss it with other nations that helped in the rescue effort - in this type of circumstance Australia represents the UK Commonwealth. The fact that all the rescue vessels failed suggests that the nations involved now agree with Russia's position.

Finally Russia turned to the US for help and the US Coastguard Ice Breaker the Polar Star was dispatched to join the rescue effort as part of a routine supply mission. Given the cr*p Russia has had to put up with from the US over Syria, amongst other things, rather then assessing the US's attitudes to climate change this seemed to be an effort to trick the US into announcing itself as the global bad guy by being the ones who finally smashed through the antarctic ice.

Yesterday both the Akademik Shokalskiy and the Xue Long broke free from the ice on their own cancelling the US' rescue mission. With the Rihanna operation not only failing but producing serious blow-back for the US in Thailand, Cambodia and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) along with the situations in Syria, Iraq and the proposed 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan this seems to be Russia and China taking pity on the US because they are now in such a hopeless position.


12:25 on 8/1/14 (UK date).