About an hour ago I was sitting in my living room watching TV while my father was sitting at the kitchen table. Apparently suddenly the back door opened and a black male approx 14-18 walked in. Obviously my father looked at him a bit surprised and he looked at my father more then a bit surprised. He then snatched a plastic wallet containing a "Freedom Pass" that gives pensioners free travel on buses and trains and is easily replaced from the kitchen table.
It was at this point my father shouted out, I burst into the kitchen and he made off down the drive with me in pursuit. With him getting on a bike I gave up after about 70 metres. However in his rush to get away this guy dropped a laptop bag containing an old laptop and some old, pre-decimal coins. That has now been handed over to the police who will examine it to tie it to a suspect or a similar burglary. A small part of me hopes that the police fail on both counts because after three months that laptop becomes mine and well getting burgled and ending up in profit is something of an achievement.
While I'm on local crime news I should point out that there was a similar type of robbery in the street on Sunday (30/4/14) when someone forced their way through the front door at around 08:00 in the morning. I don't know how that case is progressing but tonight's incident strikes me as someone trying to prove themselves in order to get into the local gang.
I must say though that I'm a little bit surprised that the local council has not yet moved to evict members of that well known gang from the borough.
20:15 on 3/4/14 (UK date).
Thursday, 3 April 2014
Fort Hood Shooting: The Sequel.
Yesterday (2/4/14) a mass shooting took place at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas, US.
Fort Hood was of course the scene of another mass shooting back in 2009 when Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people and injured more then 30 others. At his subsequent trial Hasan argued that his Muslim faith made it necessary for him to carry out the shooting in order to protect people in Iraq and Afghanistan by preventing US troops being deployed there. Quite reasonably the Court disagreed with Hasan and he was convicted and sentenced to death in August 2013.
This latest shooting incident seems much smaller in scale with three people being killed and 16 injured before the gunman turned his gun on himself. Although details are still emerging that gunman has been identified as Ivan Lopez a 34 year year old Army specialist who served one tour of duty in Iraq and is suspected of suffering from an anxiety/depressive disorder likely to be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The links with the military and PTSD mean that the main element of this incident is the US' involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan which is scheduled to come to an end at the end of 2014. The big problem that has been faced by militaries engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan is that they are both asymmetric warzones. In traditional wars where there is a clear line of symmetry between the opposing forces troops would often only spend a maximum of two weeks on that front line before being rotated out to a safer area where they could rest and recover. In Iraq and Afghanistan it has not been possible to do that meaning that while the actual fighting is far less intense the psychological effect is far more intense with troops spending every day of their tours of duty not knowing whether they're going to be attacked.
A large proportion of US troops have been forced to serve 18 month long tours and as a result the majority are returning with some form of psychological damage - most typically PTSD. In fact I think the number of US service personnel dying by suicide after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan far exceeds the number killed by enemy action. Added to that the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) and improvements in combat medicine mean that while the death-toll from what has been 13 year conflict is actually very low the number of wounded suffering life changing injuries such as lost limbs and traumatic brain injuries has been very high.
Having all these veterans alive to show off their injuries and tell their stories has been a key factor in chipping away at American public support for the conflicts. It is this lack of support for the wars that is the main driving force behind US President Obama's desire to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan at any cost in order to prevent those conflicts affecting his own electoral chances and the chances of his Democrat Party. The decision to withdraw from Iraq came too soon and has been a disaster with large sections of the west of the country falling into the hands of Islamist terrorists. The withdrawal from Afghanistan also looks to be coming far too soon and seems set to become an even bigger disaster.
Although slim US hopes of success rest of the Afghan government signing up to the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) which would allow a small deployment of US troops (mainly Special Forces) to remain after the main withdrawal. So far the Afghan government has not signed up to the BSA but the US is working under the assumption this is simply a ploy to garner support ahead of Afghan national elections. Those elections take place this coming weekend so we will shortly find out if the US has guessed correctly.
Beyond that rather big issue research into mental health problems - particularly PTSD - has been one of the main driving forces behind the US and the UK's treatment of me over the last seven years now. After all I end up suffering from mild forms of PTSD every time there's an Olympics, a COP Summit or Rihanna goes on tour. For example I'm currently considering re-reading and archiving everything I wrote during the recent Winter Olympics because although I wrote it I can't seem to remember a thing that happened. That is a classic symptom of PTSD. The fact that research project was supposed to end in 2012 and it is now 2014 means that certain people might want to reconsider their approach.
In the context that I am the shooter who is suffering from PTSD this latest Fort Hood shooting starts to look like a metaphor for the US' Rihanna operation. Whether or not you choose to blame me after a series of reviews including a very large one at the Winter Olympics it must be clear to all that the Rihanna operation has failed and all involved are either dead or seriously injured. As such the US seems to be positioning itself to make it appear as though they are considering cancelling the operation. However the fact they are speculating rather then acting is in itself a pretty clear indication that they intend to continue until Rihanna lifts a finger to save herself.
14:40 on 3/4/14 (UK date).
Fort Hood was of course the scene of another mass shooting back in 2009 when Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people and injured more then 30 others. At his subsequent trial Hasan argued that his Muslim faith made it necessary for him to carry out the shooting in order to protect people in Iraq and Afghanistan by preventing US troops being deployed there. Quite reasonably the Court disagreed with Hasan and he was convicted and sentenced to death in August 2013.
This latest shooting incident seems much smaller in scale with three people being killed and 16 injured before the gunman turned his gun on himself. Although details are still emerging that gunman has been identified as Ivan Lopez a 34 year year old Army specialist who served one tour of duty in Iraq and is suspected of suffering from an anxiety/depressive disorder likely to be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The links with the military and PTSD mean that the main element of this incident is the US' involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan which is scheduled to come to an end at the end of 2014. The big problem that has been faced by militaries engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan is that they are both asymmetric warzones. In traditional wars where there is a clear line of symmetry between the opposing forces troops would often only spend a maximum of two weeks on that front line before being rotated out to a safer area where they could rest and recover. In Iraq and Afghanistan it has not been possible to do that meaning that while the actual fighting is far less intense the psychological effect is far more intense with troops spending every day of their tours of duty not knowing whether they're going to be attacked.
A large proportion of US troops have been forced to serve 18 month long tours and as a result the majority are returning with some form of psychological damage - most typically PTSD. In fact I think the number of US service personnel dying by suicide after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan far exceeds the number killed by enemy action. Added to that the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) and improvements in combat medicine mean that while the death-toll from what has been 13 year conflict is actually very low the number of wounded suffering life changing injuries such as lost limbs and traumatic brain injuries has been very high.
Having all these veterans alive to show off their injuries and tell their stories has been a key factor in chipping away at American public support for the conflicts. It is this lack of support for the wars that is the main driving force behind US President Obama's desire to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan at any cost in order to prevent those conflicts affecting his own electoral chances and the chances of his Democrat Party. The decision to withdraw from Iraq came too soon and has been a disaster with large sections of the west of the country falling into the hands of Islamist terrorists. The withdrawal from Afghanistan also looks to be coming far too soon and seems set to become an even bigger disaster.
Although slim US hopes of success rest of the Afghan government signing up to the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) which would allow a small deployment of US troops (mainly Special Forces) to remain after the main withdrawal. So far the Afghan government has not signed up to the BSA but the US is working under the assumption this is simply a ploy to garner support ahead of Afghan national elections. Those elections take place this coming weekend so we will shortly find out if the US has guessed correctly.
Beyond that rather big issue research into mental health problems - particularly PTSD - has been one of the main driving forces behind the US and the UK's treatment of me over the last seven years now. After all I end up suffering from mild forms of PTSD every time there's an Olympics, a COP Summit or Rihanna goes on tour. For example I'm currently considering re-reading and archiving everything I wrote during the recent Winter Olympics because although I wrote it I can't seem to remember a thing that happened. That is a classic symptom of PTSD. The fact that research project was supposed to end in 2012 and it is now 2014 means that certain people might want to reconsider their approach.
In the context that I am the shooter who is suffering from PTSD this latest Fort Hood shooting starts to look like a metaphor for the US' Rihanna operation. Whether or not you choose to blame me after a series of reviews including a very large one at the Winter Olympics it must be clear to all that the Rihanna operation has failed and all involved are either dead or seriously injured. As such the US seems to be positioning itself to make it appear as though they are considering cancelling the operation. However the fact they are speculating rather then acting is in itself a pretty clear indication that they intend to continue until Rihanna lifts a finger to save herself.
14:40 on 3/4/14 (UK date).
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Time to Get Technical.
Ahead of every United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting nations are invited to submit discussion documents about what they feel are the main issues and how the negotiations are progressing. Unfortunately not all nations do this and some who do are not keen to have their submissions published outside of the negotiations. As a result I'm generally uncomfortable singling out individual nations for specific attention in such as high profile forum.
However I must say that I was really impressed by the submission by New Zealand at the recent March meeting in Bonn, Germany. This document tackled the conflict at the heart of the negotiations over whether the agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol (KP) should be legally binding or voluntary. Obviously the purpose of these submissions is to get people thinking and promote discussion in order to find a solution rather then offering solutions themselves. However New Zealand seemed to be proposing a sort of hybrid agreement which would see a standardised set of commitments for all nations - most likely based on the KP targets. However nations would be free to exceed that baseline if they are able to do so and fall short of that baseline if they are willing to pay the penalty. What form that punishment will take was left open but off-setting missed targets through carbon credits has been suggested.
This flexibility is important because if nations know that they are able to fail without consequence they can be encouraged to set more ambitious targets and a lack of ambition is a big problem. The use of a baseline is important though because in order to set that baseline nations need to agree on a standardised method of what needs to be measured and how it can be measured. After all while methane and carbon dioxide are the most important ones the term "Greenhouse Gas" (GHG) is an extremely broad one. For example even the fine particulate pollution (smog) that is big news in the UK today and has been affecting northern Europe for the best part of a month now absorbs/reflects heat and light affecting the local temperature. This sort of particulate cloud effect was actually at the core of the debate over the surface temperature anomaly in the first part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s fifth Assessment Report (AE5) although the reason why it was disregarded is because while scientifically interesting the effects are pretty minimal.
The New Zealand submission went on to suggest that nations immediately prepare prototype versions of the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) or Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Commitments (NAMCs) that show their methodology but don't include any actual firm data. This is a very good idea that I cannot recommend enough because it will allow everyone to set out the methodologies they intended to use and the differences and similarites will help produce a standardised methodology that will form the basis for the negotiating text.
On what seems like a very related note just as I went to bed last night a large (8.2 magnitude) earthquake struck off the coast of Chile. Fortunately only five people have been reported killed but this 'quake triggered Tsunami warnings up to Chile's neighbour Peru. The 2014 COP20/CMP10 Summit will be held in Lima, Peru and I think the essential outcome for that needs to be the agreement of a negotiating text that can be worked on in the run-up to the COP21/CMP11 Summit at the end of 2015 which is the deadline for the replacement to the KP. Basically we are now getting dangerously close to Peru.
While I'm here I should comment on the latest developments in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 which seems intent on latching onto the UNFCCC process like a barnacle. Although I think the search is now taking place in the correct - if still very large - area Malaysia's delay in telling people where the crash site was means that it is very likely that the batteries on the aircraft's flight data recorders will run out before they are found. To me this seems purely intentional. With the flight data recorders no longer emitting a signal the search effort then becomes centred on using Sonar to map the ocean floor looking for the thing shaped like a plane.
The problem is that the ocean floor is far from flat and instead littered with hills, mountains, valleys and trenches much like the earth above sea level. As a result Sonar maps of the ocean floor very often end up looking like line graphs. That means they can be used as coded references to anything that is measured by line graphs but in terms of the UNFCCC process I think temperature and economic development are the main targets. Also covering the majority of the earth's surface oceans are hugely important in terms of climate change because they absorb huge amounts of both heat and ghg's while ocean ecosystems such as coral reefs - which Australia is famous for - are particularly sensitive to climate change meaning they often provide the first indicators of change.
The UK seems to be leading the effort to turn the search for MH370 into an ocean mapping exercise by sending the submarine HMS Tireless to join the search. As such I stand by my impromptu rendition of the Beatles song/protest chant "Yellow Submarine."
14:10 on 2/4/14 (UK date).
However I must say that I was really impressed by the submission by New Zealand at the recent March meeting in Bonn, Germany. This document tackled the conflict at the heart of the negotiations over whether the agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol (KP) should be legally binding or voluntary. Obviously the purpose of these submissions is to get people thinking and promote discussion in order to find a solution rather then offering solutions themselves. However New Zealand seemed to be proposing a sort of hybrid agreement which would see a standardised set of commitments for all nations - most likely based on the KP targets. However nations would be free to exceed that baseline if they are able to do so and fall short of that baseline if they are willing to pay the penalty. What form that punishment will take was left open but off-setting missed targets through carbon credits has been suggested.
This flexibility is important because if nations know that they are able to fail without consequence they can be encouraged to set more ambitious targets and a lack of ambition is a big problem. The use of a baseline is important though because in order to set that baseline nations need to agree on a standardised method of what needs to be measured and how it can be measured. After all while methane and carbon dioxide are the most important ones the term "Greenhouse Gas" (GHG) is an extremely broad one. For example even the fine particulate pollution (smog) that is big news in the UK today and has been affecting northern Europe for the best part of a month now absorbs/reflects heat and light affecting the local temperature. This sort of particulate cloud effect was actually at the core of the debate over the surface temperature anomaly in the first part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s fifth Assessment Report (AE5) although the reason why it was disregarded is because while scientifically interesting the effects are pretty minimal.
The New Zealand submission went on to suggest that nations immediately prepare prototype versions of the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) or Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Commitments (NAMCs) that show their methodology but don't include any actual firm data. This is a very good idea that I cannot recommend enough because it will allow everyone to set out the methodologies they intended to use and the differences and similarites will help produce a standardised methodology that will form the basis for the negotiating text.
On what seems like a very related note just as I went to bed last night a large (8.2 magnitude) earthquake struck off the coast of Chile. Fortunately only five people have been reported killed but this 'quake triggered Tsunami warnings up to Chile's neighbour Peru. The 2014 COP20/CMP10 Summit will be held in Lima, Peru and I think the essential outcome for that needs to be the agreement of a negotiating text that can be worked on in the run-up to the COP21/CMP11 Summit at the end of 2015 which is the deadline for the replacement to the KP. Basically we are now getting dangerously close to Peru.
While I'm here I should comment on the latest developments in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 which seems intent on latching onto the UNFCCC process like a barnacle. Although I think the search is now taking place in the correct - if still very large - area Malaysia's delay in telling people where the crash site was means that it is very likely that the batteries on the aircraft's flight data recorders will run out before they are found. To me this seems purely intentional. With the flight data recorders no longer emitting a signal the search effort then becomes centred on using Sonar to map the ocean floor looking for the thing shaped like a plane.
The problem is that the ocean floor is far from flat and instead littered with hills, mountains, valleys and trenches much like the earth above sea level. As a result Sonar maps of the ocean floor very often end up looking like line graphs. That means they can be used as coded references to anything that is measured by line graphs but in terms of the UNFCCC process I think temperature and economic development are the main targets. Also covering the majority of the earth's surface oceans are hugely important in terms of climate change because they absorb huge amounts of both heat and ghg's while ocean ecosystems such as coral reefs - which Australia is famous for - are particularly sensitive to climate change meaning they often provide the first indicators of change.
The UK seems to be leading the effort to turn the search for MH370 into an ocean mapping exercise by sending the submarine HMS Tireless to join the search. As such I stand by my impromptu rendition of the Beatles song/protest chant "Yellow Submarine."
14:10 on 2/4/14 (UK date).
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
Update on Ukraine.
The stand-off in Ukraine is still very much going on. However I've not been providing regular updates because the situation has rather ground to a halt meaning that it still poses more questions then it provides answers.
Although I genuinely doubt that the US had a plan for Ukraine beyond causing problems for Russia there does seem to have been a hope that once the government had been overthrown the European Union (EU) would resume the long process of accepting Ukraine as a member. A large part of this process would involve grinding the rough edges of an opposition that are simply incapable of running a nation. Members of Yulia Tymoshenko's main Fatherland party such as Oleksander Turchynov who has assumed to role of President in Kiev and Arseniy Yatsenyuk who has assumed the role of Prime Minister in Kiev are hopelessly corrupt and inept while the views and methods of Neo-Nazi parties such as Right Sector and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) are simply not acceptable within or even on the borders of the EU.
Even this vague plan has been hit by a couple of major problems though. The first of these has been the continuation of the US' Rihanna plan which has been going on at the same time. On a moral level this operation is simply repellent meaning that it automatically meets with a degree of opposition and people simply don't want to be associated with it. However the operation is also very transparent with everyone in the EU fully aware that it is being undertaken in order to allow the US to bully it's way into influence over the internal affairs of the EU. Faced with this sort of hostility and aggression there are currently very few people with in the EU who are in any mood to do the US any favours - especially when the cost of those favours runs into the tens of billions of dollars.
The second large problem has been the referendum in Crimea and it's subsequent re-absorption into Russia. While the US and the spectacularly naive government in Kiev have been loudly proclaiming this to be the work of some Russian conspiracy I think that the situation is more complicated then that. Although there was a degree of consultation between Russia and the Crimean government over the referendum the fact that it took place on the day of the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter para-Olympics should have been a clue that it was the Crimeans rather then the Russians who were giving the orders. Also the referendum offered voters two choices; to rejoin Russia or to become an independent state.
I think that the Russians would have preferred Crimeans to choose independence because that way it could become used in negotiations with the Kiev government and the EU to help draw up a federal and representative government that would allow the nation to stay united while still protecting the rights of all citizens including the Russian Slavs who have the best historical claim to the area but are deeply despised by supporters of Right Sector and the UIA. Unfortunately voters chose to rejoin Russia which forced the Russians to honour their wishes. This of course caused the US to further ratchet up the rhetoric further entrenching everyone's positions and also presented Russia with a big problem because Crimea is unsustainable to the point that it doesn't even have its own supply of fresh, drinking water. As a result if the confrontation between Kiev and Russia is going to continue then Russia will have to act to secure further areas of eastern Ukraine in order to protect residents and sustain Crimea.
Today the US Secretary of State John Kerry is attending a NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels in Belgium on Ukraine. This should be interesting because it is quite clear everyone is looking towards the US for leadership on how to proceed.
14:00 on 1/4/14 (UK date).
Although I genuinely doubt that the US had a plan for Ukraine beyond causing problems for Russia there does seem to have been a hope that once the government had been overthrown the European Union (EU) would resume the long process of accepting Ukraine as a member. A large part of this process would involve grinding the rough edges of an opposition that are simply incapable of running a nation. Members of Yulia Tymoshenko's main Fatherland party such as Oleksander Turchynov who has assumed to role of President in Kiev and Arseniy Yatsenyuk who has assumed the role of Prime Minister in Kiev are hopelessly corrupt and inept while the views and methods of Neo-Nazi parties such as Right Sector and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) are simply not acceptable within or even on the borders of the EU.
Even this vague plan has been hit by a couple of major problems though. The first of these has been the continuation of the US' Rihanna plan which has been going on at the same time. On a moral level this operation is simply repellent meaning that it automatically meets with a degree of opposition and people simply don't want to be associated with it. However the operation is also very transparent with everyone in the EU fully aware that it is being undertaken in order to allow the US to bully it's way into influence over the internal affairs of the EU. Faced with this sort of hostility and aggression there are currently very few people with in the EU who are in any mood to do the US any favours - especially when the cost of those favours runs into the tens of billions of dollars.
The second large problem has been the referendum in Crimea and it's subsequent re-absorption into Russia. While the US and the spectacularly naive government in Kiev have been loudly proclaiming this to be the work of some Russian conspiracy I think that the situation is more complicated then that. Although there was a degree of consultation between Russia and the Crimean government over the referendum the fact that it took place on the day of the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter para-Olympics should have been a clue that it was the Crimeans rather then the Russians who were giving the orders. Also the referendum offered voters two choices; to rejoin Russia or to become an independent state.
I think that the Russians would have preferred Crimeans to choose independence because that way it could become used in negotiations with the Kiev government and the EU to help draw up a federal and representative government that would allow the nation to stay united while still protecting the rights of all citizens including the Russian Slavs who have the best historical claim to the area but are deeply despised by supporters of Right Sector and the UIA. Unfortunately voters chose to rejoin Russia which forced the Russians to honour their wishes. This of course caused the US to further ratchet up the rhetoric further entrenching everyone's positions and also presented Russia with a big problem because Crimea is unsustainable to the point that it doesn't even have its own supply of fresh, drinking water. As a result if the confrontation between Kiev and Russia is going to continue then Russia will have to act to secure further areas of eastern Ukraine in order to protect residents and sustain Crimea.
Today the US Secretary of State John Kerry is attending a NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels in Belgium on Ukraine. This should be interesting because it is quite clear everyone is looking towards the US for leadership on how to proceed.
14:00 on 1/4/14 (UK date).
Let's Talk About Me.
After all I am the most important person on the planet.
You may remember that just before the start of the recent para-Olympics I was talking about my courier friend who was having trouble with his phone and that was forcing his business to become overly dependent on a company supplying free meals to inner-city schools in London. Well that's all changed. Although I don't have the full details I gather that the local education authority called in a debt and the meal provider went out of business. Then my friend's telephone provider decided that his handset was broken and needed to be repaired. The temporary handset they've provided him with is producing a faultless service. Finally a clerical error meant that his driving license has been temporarily suspended leaving him with nothing else to do expect sit around the house until it is reinstated.
As a result I was meant to go down to Brighton to see him today. The problem is that all this seems to have coincided with a run of genuine bad luck. Basically there was a fault with the plumbing in his house which damaged the plumbing along with the electrical system and brought down a ceiling that was found to contain asbestos. Being a council owned property this is all the responsibility of the local council to repair which they are doing in their usual chaotic fashion. The asbestos was supposed to be removed yesterday (31/3/14), the ceiling was supposed to be replaced today and the plumbing was supposed to be replaced by the end of the week. However the asbestos people didn't turn up until today meaning that everything has been pushed back and I seriously doubt that even Brighton council know what they're doing at the moment.
While we're catching up with what I've been up to last Monday (24/3/14) I spent the afternoon helping my biological mother clear her apartment because she is selling it. During this I didn't make any effort to protect my phone meaning that if people were listening they may have overheard parts of the conversation. Obviously with the day centred around the sale of a house that conversation involved the state of the UK housing market. Also that was the day that the Malaysians conceded that flight MH370 had crashed off the south-west coast of Australia. Saying that this topic came up in conversation is a bit of an understatement because I'm pretty sure that at one point there was actually a wall map and a pointer used. However that was really just a detailed summary of what I've already said on the subject - the Malaysians hijacked the flights computers to divert it off course and decompress the cabin killing all on board of hypoxia. This was done in order to provoke the Chinese to expose their military capabilities to the region and to get everyone to reveal their satellite capabilities in and around the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany.
The other main topic of conversation was the health of one of my mother's cats who slowly dying of what we assume to be cancer although it's not worth the invasive medical testing to find out for sure. Since that conversation there has been lots of speculation in the UK press that domestic cats could give their owners Tuberculosis (TB). As "TB" is also the initials of Tony Blair who was Prime Minister when I was transferred from Brighton to Croydon this medical discovery seems to be a way to discuss who knew what. Personally I'm just finding the fact that this is the cat that was synonymous with the Egyptian revolution more then a little unsettling given recent events.
10:45 on 1/4/14 (UK date).
You may remember that just before the start of the recent para-Olympics I was talking about my courier friend who was having trouble with his phone and that was forcing his business to become overly dependent on a company supplying free meals to inner-city schools in London. Well that's all changed. Although I don't have the full details I gather that the local education authority called in a debt and the meal provider went out of business. Then my friend's telephone provider decided that his handset was broken and needed to be repaired. The temporary handset they've provided him with is producing a faultless service. Finally a clerical error meant that his driving license has been temporarily suspended leaving him with nothing else to do expect sit around the house until it is reinstated.
As a result I was meant to go down to Brighton to see him today. The problem is that all this seems to have coincided with a run of genuine bad luck. Basically there was a fault with the plumbing in his house which damaged the plumbing along with the electrical system and brought down a ceiling that was found to contain asbestos. Being a council owned property this is all the responsibility of the local council to repair which they are doing in their usual chaotic fashion. The asbestos was supposed to be removed yesterday (31/3/14), the ceiling was supposed to be replaced today and the plumbing was supposed to be replaced by the end of the week. However the asbestos people didn't turn up until today meaning that everything has been pushed back and I seriously doubt that even Brighton council know what they're doing at the moment.
While we're catching up with what I've been up to last Monday (24/3/14) I spent the afternoon helping my biological mother clear her apartment because she is selling it. During this I didn't make any effort to protect my phone meaning that if people were listening they may have overheard parts of the conversation. Obviously with the day centred around the sale of a house that conversation involved the state of the UK housing market. Also that was the day that the Malaysians conceded that flight MH370 had crashed off the south-west coast of Australia. Saying that this topic came up in conversation is a bit of an understatement because I'm pretty sure that at one point there was actually a wall map and a pointer used. However that was really just a detailed summary of what I've already said on the subject - the Malaysians hijacked the flights computers to divert it off course and decompress the cabin killing all on board of hypoxia. This was done in order to provoke the Chinese to expose their military capabilities to the region and to get everyone to reveal their satellite capabilities in and around the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany.
The other main topic of conversation was the health of one of my mother's cats who slowly dying of what we assume to be cancer although it's not worth the invasive medical testing to find out for sure. Since that conversation there has been lots of speculation in the UK press that domestic cats could give their owners Tuberculosis (TB). As "TB" is also the initials of Tony Blair who was Prime Minister when I was transferred from Brighton to Croydon this medical discovery seems to be a way to discuss who knew what. Personally I'm just finding the fact that this is the cat that was synonymous with the Egyptian revolution more then a little unsettling given recent events.
10:45 on 1/4/14 (UK date).
Monday, 31 March 2014
The IPCC's Fifth Assement Report.
Today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the second chapter of it's fifth Assessment Report (AR5) on the state of the earth's climate. This chapter focuses on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability to climate change and is around 4000 pages long. As a result I have not read the whole thing but I have skimmed through the executive summary which I found to be a lot easier to understand then I've come to expect.
Despite being easy to follow the findings of this section of AR5 are particularly grim. Essentially it finds that at current rates of warming over the next 100 years the earth's temperature is expected to rise by 4C. If we are unable to keep the earth's temperature from rising by 2C we can expect;
I should also point out that one of my main concerns over a replacement for KP is the role of the Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia who seem intent on spending large amounts of money sabotaging the process. Not only do they seem to be indicating that they will use money they have already invested to intimidate nations into toeing their line as they are doing with the United States they also seemed poised to bribe developing nations into fighting for the old Annexes model in order to prevent a new agreement being reached. AR5 makes it quite clear that these developing nations - many on the more central latitudes - will be the ones that will be the most heavily impacted by climate change.
For it's part the UK responded to the publication of this latest chapter of AR5 by starting the dredging of rivers on the Somerset Levels which were at the centre of the winter 2013/14's epic floods. On the face of it these seems like a sensible and constructive contribution to the discussion because dredging and other forms of waterway management are legitimate adaptation methods. However the public demand for the resumption of dredging seems to come from a refusal to believe that the main cause of the floods which saw the groundwater table over-topped was simply that there was too much rain. By agreeing to start dredging in such a high profile way the British government certainly doesn't seem to be willing to challenge that public misconception.
That is a shame because if the predictions of AR5 prove to be true then we're going to have to move away from adaptation methods such as river dredging towards methods such as building water pipelines like gas and oil pipelines to shift fresh water from parts of the globe that are flooded to parts of the globe which are in perpetual drought. The already desert Gulf region is likely to be one of the worst affected.
20:55 on 31/3/14 (UK date).
Despite being easy to follow the findings of this section of AR5 are particularly grim. Essentially it finds that at current rates of warming over the next 100 years the earth's temperature is expected to rise by 4C. If we are unable to keep the earth's temperature from rising by 2C we can expect;
- Death, injury and illness due to storm surges and flooding brought about by an up to 7 metre rise in sea levels,
- Collapse of infrastructure such as electricity and water supply and health and emergency services,
- Deaths from extreme heat that causes certain areas to become uninhabitable,
- The breakdown of food supply systems leading to greater food insecurity, malnutrition and starvation,
- The breakdown of water supply systems leading to water insecurity,
- The loss of ocean ecosystems including fish,
- The loss of on land ecosystems including humans.
I should also point out that one of my main concerns over a replacement for KP is the role of the Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia who seem intent on spending large amounts of money sabotaging the process. Not only do they seem to be indicating that they will use money they have already invested to intimidate nations into toeing their line as they are doing with the United States they also seemed poised to bribe developing nations into fighting for the old Annexes model in order to prevent a new agreement being reached. AR5 makes it quite clear that these developing nations - many on the more central latitudes - will be the ones that will be the most heavily impacted by climate change.
For it's part the UK responded to the publication of this latest chapter of AR5 by starting the dredging of rivers on the Somerset Levels which were at the centre of the winter 2013/14's epic floods. On the face of it these seems like a sensible and constructive contribution to the discussion because dredging and other forms of waterway management are legitimate adaptation methods. However the public demand for the resumption of dredging seems to come from a refusal to believe that the main cause of the floods which saw the groundwater table over-topped was simply that there was too much rain. By agreeing to start dredging in such a high profile way the British government certainly doesn't seem to be willing to challenge that public misconception.
That is a shame because if the predictions of AR5 prove to be true then we're going to have to move away from adaptation methods such as river dredging towards methods such as building water pipelines like gas and oil pipelines to shift fresh water from parts of the globe that are flooded to parts of the globe which are in perpetual drought. The already desert Gulf region is likely to be one of the worst affected.
20:55 on 31/3/14 (UK date).
Saturday, 29 March 2014
Operation Misery: Month 13, Week 4, Day 4.
In my last post on the subject I mentioned that Friday (28/3/14) provided us with an opportunity to discover if the US had learnt it's lesson from the failures of 2013. With Drake's tour coming to an end they could either set Rihanna free to undertake the repair work that her career and life generally so desperately needs. Alternatively they could continue to press ahead with a plan that has failed at every stage up until now and seems doomed to continue as a failure.
On Friday afternoon/evening we were presented with the US' decision. To people with experience of the operation it should come as no surprise that the US decided to continue with Drake leaving London, UK for Toronto, Canada and Rihanna also leaving London a few hours later for Los Angeles, US. There of course remains a question as to whether the UK should have acted to save the US from itself by refusing to allow Rihanna to leave.
In the immediate term the fact that Rihanna and Drake are now in two separate countries on opposite sides of the north American continent is a good thing. That's because freed from Drake and his associates Rihanna now has the opportunity to reflect on the damage she has done to herself through her actions over this past week. The earthquake that struck Los Angeles shortly after Rihanna's arrival provides a rather apt metaphor for this. After all the main complaint about that 'quake is that it was too shallow and lacked any real depth.
In the longer term though the decision to temporarily separate Drake and Rihanna is actually likely to do more damage. That is because it is quite clear that the US intend to keep the "Will they, won't they?" suspense going all through the summer and at least until Drake returns to the UK for an appearance at the "Wireless" festival in early July at roughly the same time as the G7 Summit. During this time the situation in Ukraine means that diplomatic relations between the US and most to the rest of the world are likely to be extremely tense. If Rihanna insists on putting herself in the centre of that I find it hard to imagine that anybody would want anything to do with her even if no decision is made to actively punish her.
As such I think the only course of action open to Rihanna now is to rapidly put out a statement making clear that the 'relationship' with Drake was entirely fake, she will have nothing more to do with it or him and apologising in the strongest possible terms. After all the federal government clearly cannot be relied on to refuse Drake entry to the US on the grounds that his presence there is contrary to the public good.
15:10 on 29/3/14 (UK date).
On Friday afternoon/evening we were presented with the US' decision. To people with experience of the operation it should come as no surprise that the US decided to continue with Drake leaving London, UK for Toronto, Canada and Rihanna also leaving London a few hours later for Los Angeles, US. There of course remains a question as to whether the UK should have acted to save the US from itself by refusing to allow Rihanna to leave.
In the immediate term the fact that Rihanna and Drake are now in two separate countries on opposite sides of the north American continent is a good thing. That's because freed from Drake and his associates Rihanna now has the opportunity to reflect on the damage she has done to herself through her actions over this past week. The earthquake that struck Los Angeles shortly after Rihanna's arrival provides a rather apt metaphor for this. After all the main complaint about that 'quake is that it was too shallow and lacked any real depth.
In the longer term though the decision to temporarily separate Drake and Rihanna is actually likely to do more damage. That is because it is quite clear that the US intend to keep the "Will they, won't they?" suspense going all through the summer and at least until Drake returns to the UK for an appearance at the "Wireless" festival in early July at roughly the same time as the G7 Summit. During this time the situation in Ukraine means that diplomatic relations between the US and most to the rest of the world are likely to be extremely tense. If Rihanna insists on putting herself in the centre of that I find it hard to imagine that anybody would want anything to do with her even if no decision is made to actively punish her.
As such I think the only course of action open to Rihanna now is to rapidly put out a statement making clear that the 'relationship' with Drake was entirely fake, she will have nothing more to do with it or him and apologising in the strongest possible terms. After all the federal government clearly cannot be relied on to refuse Drake entry to the US on the grounds that his presence there is contrary to the public good.
15:10 on 29/3/14 (UK date).
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