Thwaites Glacier.

This rolled up into a news story mid-December and quite rightly too but what no-one is mentioning is the monstrous tidal wave and subsequent follow-on ripples when the Thwaites Glacier drops into the sea. This is not an ‘if’, it is an absolute certainty, only question is ‘when’ … and probably a lot quicker than we have bargained for. The question is, how far around the globe will this tsunami from Thwaites actually penetrate?

We hear of the likes of Henry Dimbleby on bbc r4 this teatime informing us of the need to re-wild, the need to minimise meat consumption (yes I concur) but the arguament re methane in agriculture is quite tiny (and laughable) when one considers the likely many multiple ‘methane burps’ from the Arctic; our actions to remedy are a mere pin-prick and is JUST NOT worth the effort! As well as feel-good platitudes we need to evaluate quantities, realise the scale of what nature can throw at us. Then we’ll realise how we are wasting our time.

I’ve seen so-called ‘re-wilding’ and I suggest creating a better urban landscape, more competent gardens at home is a more valuable exercise.

It is pointless but lets pretend we are trying, we need ….

i) a one child policy.

ii) the near elimination of the American style burger culture.

iii) to live close/ local to our work.

I myself am a twit, no fridge, no washing machine (or tv or mobile) … but does my personal endeavour really help matters at all, not at all unless I can get half of every country in the world to do the same. Will they, not really and y’know it doesn’t even matter….

Why cannot we …

Why can not we have what has nurtured and enthralled us for centuries?

Why does it have to be the next ‘big thing’ ie its only the next big thing that will fulfill us, the shit of Meta, social networking junkery or whatever is riding on the crest of technology?

I’d prefer to read a page of text, a few lines of poetry, perhaps the distilled essence of most likely an old man long dead; or a picture from the Renaissance or almost anymost century accompanied with a worthwhile and educated commentary.

Why has human experience been watered down to one technological and morose thrill after another?

Devised by incomplete humans to engender an army of other incomplete humans.

Think, read, learn …. theres more to life than the web!

Who are you on the web?

I know folk that elaborate and near fantasise whilst i have to stand there in all amicability listening to their preposterous stories, previous roles in employment, outlandish car insurance claims, bogus university courses and general misinformation.

So to what extent do these bright bunnies fantasise online? Who do they align themselves with? What is real if anything? And what image do they wish to project?

If all they indulge in is a form of role play on sites thankfully I’ll never click then so what, thank goodness I’m bright and quick enough not to get mired down in such nonsense, neither do I have such a great need to belong nor to appear anything other than what I actually am.

But there are ‘serious actors’ to use an irritating and trendy expression, we had the predictable story this morning on bbc radio 4 news of surprise surprise the Russians with thousands of bogus accounts have been planting masses of phoney material onto discussion pages of various websites, masquerading as concerned comment from US citizens but just wishing to skew what should be real opinion; I suppose Ivan wanting to demonstrate the degeneracy of the west and our values are failing. All comes back to the useful ‘nonsense vehicle’ trump and how Ivan hitched a free ride culminating in the dreadful scenes of Jan 6th. Another instance of the web gaining too great a hold over what we read, what hopefully we evaluate and spit out again.

My evening window …

… is open!

But no moths in two hours whatsoever have entered into my kitchen and this is from a large garden full of established shrubs and including beyond countless various nooks and crannies.

There is something wrong, that is for sure.

But a google search reveals next to nothing of up to the minute (or year) moth decline here in the UK.

Luckily my garden displays maturity, complex planting ie a great jumble of many different things and many many niche environments, all mostly never disturbed by any human ie me.

As per usual after the summer solstice the nights seem to be cutting in quickly. This is not something I revel in, luckily a couple of nights ago I treat myself to a car ride up to where for near twenty years we fed horses and me n whatever pet dog went round on our circular walk of an hour. The place is loaded with memories, I fully realise the value of this ‘extra-curricular activity’ and am moving toward when time permitting to ‘get out more’ to stay in touch with this focus of location from years gone past.

The June shutdown of birdsong seemed early this year, I generally name it as the ‘June 13th shutdown’, but this year things seem a bit off course, earlier. A pigeons nest I suspect rock pigeon, was found destroyed and eggs scattered in my garden this morning. I wonder at the new tenants in the let property next door, very cat orientated but also I suspect against garden birds and their song. Why do I think this …. leylandii next door felled to zilch, I suspect her complaints, a dark woman I suspect wanting her own way, I doubt she’ll have much to do with me. Also obviously ‘very set in their ways’, as if at thirty five going on seventy.

Good news is that both birdboxes on rear of house host bee colonies. My garden provides lots of flowering plants, but I look further afield at neighbouring gardens and its a pathetic spectacle, I look around and all is barren, ignorant nothingness and I reckon the birds, insects and small animals likewise think the same. I think its fair to say they vote with their feet so to speak and most winged things flock to my place.

Dominic Cummings …

What a nasty opportunistic individual with his skewed vision and nail scratching desire to be somehow kept in the news cycle. He’s bitter to the extreme and hurtful to others – whats new – this is Dom Cummings! It is his nature to be so, to ‘have the angle’ no-one else can see, to dismember to turn upside down. Reminds me of very clever sixth formers trying to impress the girls, lots of noise and ‘cleverness’ but in the end of little value.

I think we often get the face we deserve and Cummings bears this out, is most unattractive. In simple terms ‘he has a screw loose’ if not several … always able to promulgate ideas as if known in depth, the glib glibber, but I wonder at his real depth, perhaps just a clever bod, arguamentative and ‘on the make’. He’s been too close to power to let go of it now and in fact wielded far too much influence and policy as unelected and the close advisor of Boris. Why did Boris allow him so much influence, to suffer and encourage him ?

Dom the clever sixth former impressing all around with his desire to be known as the cleverest man in the room, trashing all established norms, de-rating everyone and everything in sight. Again, I find him repulsive, I’m glad I never knew him. It seems so out of character of him for to now be so concerned at loss of life, in his day to day dealings with people his manner is dire, he certainly cares nothing for their feelings. Many if not all in the Commons must dread his presence.

We remember them sadly but looking at the death toll remember that many that died were old people, already so vulnerable, but this is reality, crap happens and must be realised when looking at the numbers; we cannot cheat the effects of age or the weakened old state we will all enter, whether birds animals or humans.

It was hearing Dom Cummings on radio that really made me so sceptical of this desire to pour out all the minutae from fifteen months ago, obviously it was in some ways a different world then, we muddled through, what else can be expected. All I needed to know was in his to my ears a painful delivery, the phoney concerns, the pauses, all telling us so very much more than he realises. He’s clever alright, tricky, an ace manouverer. Pre-Machiavellian or post-Machiavellian take your choice, but in my minds eye I see as if Dickens at his darkest, Mr Cummings stalking the dorm with cane in hand all too ready to inflict pain.

Dom Cummings in his dire outpourings today has capitalised on hindsight to a ridiculous degree. Yes mistakes and a lethargic response created problems and the PPE shortage really should not have happened but considering we were asked to conform to and accept totally new concepts with constricting lockdowns, its my opinion we did okay, outside of war this was as dire a sea change one could imagine, no bombs dropped, we were generally still okay and infinitely lucky as compared to war. Everyone in this country and in Government were being asked to accept completely and with total adherence a totally different way of spending our days. My heart bleeds for all those small businesses, self employed, those on the fuzzy margins, all the struggling black economy workers, the lonely and infirm during all this. The analogy of ‘at war’ is sometimes drawn into the arguament with covid, but goodness me being at war was full of mistakes and errors, yet somehow in an ad hoc fashion we muddled on in a muddy messy muddle. Things have to be done, decisions made, we move forward each day. Ask my grandfather, on a minesweeper in the English Channel with hundreds of evacuees from Dunkirk then to be hit by ‘friendly fire’ and only three survived, swam to France.

I often had the feeling with Matt Hancock his hands were tied, too many to appease, there was a back story we were not allowed to hear; of course there was, its called democratic input and a Cabinet of high stressed colleagues that somehow need to be melded into agreement and with bevys of scientists and modellers adding their data, noise, and opinion. I remember that the 2001 foot and mouth was handled badly, way too much pain and suffering heaped onto both animals and farmers and as if the gold standard 100% credible report from the Duke of Northumberland in 1968 was totally ignored, modellers this time got ahead of themselves and as far as i can see inflicted misery. As the Duke and all practical farmers realised bury local and in quick lime, no transportation, no need for contiguous cull, no ridiculous inefficient pyres. Mr Ferguson! But also we must realise the EU controlled our response during that 2001 foot and mouth, its a blessing and a tragedy avoided with covid yr 2020 we were free of EU control.

A major PR disaster was the term ‘herd immunity’ that was freely aired at the first few weeks of covid here in the UK; yes I can see its meaning but it sounded bad. I was also very sceptical of input from Prof Ferguson, as I remembered him from the foot and mouth cock-up twenty years ago. Maybe I’m wrong, I’ll have to read further.

The biggest disgrace and being led along the garden path during this covid 19 outbreak was the Dido Harding track and trace fiasco; we are talking literally billions of pounds, where the heck did it all go, there certainly needs to be an enquiry. After the tiscali foul-up during her tenure I would have thought she must be kept from any systems and software! When we read ‘billions were pumped into it’ … then where the heck did the money go ?

okay, more to follow perhaps …

E&OE entertainment purposes only, no harm intended, climate-change-briefing.com 2021

Note they never let trump talk to an adult …

Have you noticed in the four year term of office trump never once was capable of an adult informed conversation. He is incapable of such a thing, no reading, no knowledge, no experience … nothing! trump bar room innuendo and brag serves as his mature and (un) evolved conversation, ‘Mr Paper Thin’ himself. I know people hereabouts that as long as one takes an ‘anti-brown’ stance or anti-Moslem, one is regarded as ‘in the fold, one of us’. Wow this is low-brow junk, well suited to the four years of now ended trump exploitation.

I am wholly justified in this criticism because the position demands and requires a person of high calibre (they can read, think, assimilate) and so the world was dealt a paper thin tv adept, totally out of his depth. Tellingly the ONLY in depth conversation for trump in four years of fakery was two hours with Putin in Helsinki, something which is without doubt the willing and criminal act of treason.

Theres such a thing as ‘standards’ ie of capability and effort, something continually lacking in the sad mockingly inept so-called presidency of trump. We are left with a covid response in tatters, a diminished cowering Fauci (shame upon him and Birx) and a long list of wrecking ball dismantlings and willfull neglect. Scientists and experts were much threatened, the EPA was emasculated, a silly wall amounting to a brainless chant, climate change was denied for a full four years, all these things are an insult to the human project, our existence and our intelligence.

trump is a freeloader, he has ridden America for four years, surely anyone can see this?

ie trump; The Great Pretender.

He’ll hang around though, pretending theres a future for him, but in reality he is a ‘Nowhere Man’. He’d better get ready for the orange jumpsuit. America needs to do this, it needs to exorcise itself of this stupidity.

Scandals, incompetence, lack of vision.

It baffles me how short sighted the bods at the top really are, I mean the UK Government. BBC r4 radio news this morning again carries mention that highly qualified ultra-competent laboratories in Uni, research, contract testing etc are all available to ramp up cv-19 testing yet multiple contacts and phone calls from Professors and Doctors in their own field produce nothing in return from the NHS or the UK Government; we are so woefully challenged as how this virus is being handled. I think when we view retrospectively the double scandal not using the myriad of labs available outside of the NHS (which I think possibly can often be in advance of the NHS) and the also incredulous scandal of NOT examining and collating deaths in care homes or at home to achieve more accurate data of lives claimed by the virus. Aiming to deliver a competent speech as say from the Head Boy is NOT the same as the actual hard reality of PPE in the hands of those that need it. Maybe we need a Lord Beaverbrook? The only good thing you can say is that our only resort, social distancing was pushed forward as utterly essential. But has anyone ever yet seen trump or the creepily quiet and distanced Fauci wearing simple handgloves? … scandalous!

This terrible time highlights the lag from daily pronouncement to actual on the ground delivery, such as PPE which contrary to podium pronouncements is not to hand for those at the sharp end. And I wonder if that recent Russian and Chinese PPE was delivered to those that needed it or in fact hoarded by Jared?

All care workers and those in contact with cv-19 patients need to be tested every couple of days, these are ‘hot-beds’ of infection no matter how hard the staff follow as many precautions as possible, that’s of course if they have anything near the PPE ther really need, I mean full face gear, forced ventilation head protection (ever heard anyone mention this?). Wow, as I type this we hear someone from the USA (Prof Paul Rohner sorry I missed the name bbc r4 08:46) saying exactly this idea ie to harness the Universities, to intensively test the hot beds of infection. My thoughts exactly. I also think all in healthcare, care homes etc need their own special distancing, their own family members, these people need to be treat and manouvered as the potential super-spreaders these really are … to NOT test say daily is madness.

News from across the pond and as usual presented uncritically and even as ‘normal’ of the continuing, worsening trump disaster as is typical bbc r4 news stance. At 10pm ‘The world Tonight’ at least has some ‘teeth’ and offers a clearer view, a valuable radio programme. In the old Soviet era photographs people were airbrushed out of the picture to alter history, trump does it by merely denying his previous words and actions. I had thought trump was basically a puppet but these last few days I’m more inclined to think he actually does come up with all this crap mostly from himself. At least his unpredictability is predictable, forever casting himself with hindsight as the ‘stable genius’ and reworking his message at whatever shallow whim drives him that day. We can assume now that those around him really are the dregs, Mnuchin, Miller, Kushner etc and with the White House Eunuch Pence in attendance. Even with Anthony Fauci he really does seems to have trawled for and ineffectual yes-man. These really are sick white folk. Winess jareds outburst a few days ago when questioned as to the Governments own massive stocks of PPE when America struggles …. “They are for us” …. wow yet again a DC comic adventure.

For trump to announce withdrawl of funding to the World Health Organisation is cruel indeed, hell-bent (an apt term if ever) at Trumpian disruption and bile. Witness Yemen, tragic. Its again the trump style, max disruption, max cruelty; its got trump written all over it. To be so stingy and pretend ‘he has a view on anything’ (quite laughable were it not so cruel) is all reality show smoke and mirrors, which is all trump knows apart from conman crow-barring of perceived enemies and debtors; he came from the Roy Cohn School of Charm and Grace. Thinking about it, this is when Sean Hannity and Fox could do the nation a service and turn this monstrous Clown to a more sensible approach, come on Sean n Co …. help the Free World!

‘cors …

… cleaner skies will mean more immediate climate heating, oh dear. And my previous post and link for Sam Carana ie Arctic news blogspot focus on the huge release of methane from what looks to be an earthquake in the Arctic. Yuck.

Driving thro my nearby town tonight (NE UK) was a trifle upsetting considering how we still mingle for shopping and for instance many small businesses such as car repair seem to still have human interactions; I cannot help but feel pub and restaurant closure ie trifling but valuable human interactions will create a whole bundle of frustrations and eventual anger. I’m okay, I pretty well live the exact social distancing lifestyle that the Government would so wish us all to pursue, but I’m not sure the average person would wish to live as I do. In fact I know they would not and could not.

Boris has promised vast amounts of citizen wage aid, but be warned he will want his price ie stringent shutdowns as and when he thinks fit.

My heart bleeds for front-line Doctors and nurses … despite the pure lies and blindness of Government Press Briefings … we hear several times over each day from NHS frontline workers that the correct PPE is not present and is pathetically unsuitable, short of the decent minimum.

And where is TEST-TEST-TEST which we were implored to pursue? Its a bit like UK ‘Foot and Mouth’ in that all the hard lessons learnt from the experience of 1969 were ignored thirty years later.

A term seemingly forgotten is bio-security, quite handy actually, its what we all should aim for. Something else we should aim for is NOT to excessively stockpile, methinks there will be much waste, lots ending up in the bin, after all … its difficult to get excited at the prospect of yet more pasta based meals. Luckily I’ve started to get into Indian and Pakistani cooking, I’ve a couple of excellent charity shop books here and once you are ‘tooled up’ ie have the necessary herbs and spices you are able to create so much beautiful taste and often without using meat of any form. Heres so far my rock-bottom must have …..

mustard seed and fennel seed.

olive oil.

cumin seed with hot fried sweet potato ‘twiglet sized’ pieces.

fresh coriander.

try supermarket jars of Indian sauce (try Saag Masala) … you can use red onion, leek and broccoli for an instant meal. Garam masala is part of the toolkit as well as additional coconut milk. I also make my own chapati and Peshwari nan … all v quick and simple.

Besan flour too can make a simple bhaji or vegan burger which is wonderful with say an onion chutney.

I also use Ajiwan seed in my trad brit suet crust or for my nan bread mix.

I also enjoy a sea food pilaf (ie white wine, smoked haddock, mussels, chicken, rice, chicken stock).

a beef skirt casserole with chopped parsnip and carrot for flavour, don’t forget a couple of cloves, also Kalo beef stock ie low salt.

as a treat, crushed chilled raspberry with carnation, ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg.

try to add fresh garlic and ginger wherever possible, fresh diced fig also fine chopped red onion, leek, spring onion; fresh ground black pepper and sea salt. This is all as can be termed ‘Natures Medicine Chest’.

… trump is not credible from whatever angle.

Personally I can’t stand to hear his voice, the voice of a bragging pretending un-educated way too far elevated B/S’er. A con-man basically … ask his many (many) creditors from previous decades and failed enterprises.

In normal life we have qualifications to gain, experience to be accrued, time to be served as in gaining that experience which will place us in a position appropriate to our abilities. Not this fella, a second rate tv prog and wham he gets into the Oval Office. His hobby is his Big Boy marker, how many times am I mentioned in the NY Press today?

This peculiar tele-prompter foul-up is purveyed as a speech from the President of the United States, how standards have slipped! Military man on our right looks a total nervous wreck and I suppose WH Eunuch Pence is in obeyance somewhere. Apparently trumps entrance was highly ‘stage-managed’ ie bright light, silhouette, etc etc. trump is a nobody.

Is trump ‘on something’ ? … certainly seems to me he is, note the sniffling, the pursed strange mouth posture, WTF? If this were anyone else a drug test would be called for.

Where are our critical faculties? The world deserves better than this.

When is idiocy going to be called out for what it is?

This is awful !

I haven’t the patience to listen to all of this turgid drone, but as listening carefully to little bits of the garbage and mangled incomprehensible junk he spews as a so called message to the Nation note how he gets word mangled into absolute nonsense. And we are all expected to swallow this junk? I’ve only sampled little bits …

06:23 ‘tolerited’

06:50 ‘accompliments’

etc. Its as if listening to a four year old.

You can see in his eyes, the eyes of all of them this address is a risky venture. These are NOT honest men.

This demonstrates quite clearly he is unfit for Office, has poor reading ability, of limited intellectual ability below most adults and of very limited vocabulary.

trumps words are weasel, his words are worthless.

I think the man on our right is thinking “This ace turd is really stretching my patience”. In fact they all look extremely nervous as to how this pillock will be able to read two teleprompter screens and come anywhere near to a) credible b) fool anyone, c) get hired for next season.

Can’t anyone remember 2003 and Iraq, how we were all conned and sleep walked into a huge blunder. Being conned the ‘intel’ was rock-solid ie we MUST do this. No we don’t, let sleeping dogs lie, the alternatives and consequences of action are horrible. Why must the USA act as complete idiots when it comes to the Middle East?

I can hear the same thing again, ordinary people saying “We must do this” when all they have is spoon-fed uncorroborated spiel from a few numskulls that think they know best and have their secret agenda to work towards.

Increasingly I’m finding the web and google quite tricky as a means of getting correct information, firefox was useful, this newer m/c with windows 10 is a clunking ad machine. Never mind, heres the UK Financial Times, which can be regarded as top league and I assume credible.

https://www.ft.com/content/79f87a12-31c0-11ea-9703-eea0cae3f0de

by Col Lawrence Wilkerson edited by O Society Jan 8, 2019

Planting trees will not work.

Why do I not hear people say that planting trees is not a valid solution to climate change / CO2 conversion ?

Plankton, algae and diatoms will or could save us, have until now performed an indispensable part of Earth system balance but are now severely compromised so I’m afraid the idea of oceanic assistance is a non-starter. I doubt either at this point in time the suggestion ‘plant trees in northern regions’ ie the UK will do much good as a valid solution to C02 conversion. Those nearer the Equator will I hope help, they keep their leaves all year round I think, but increasing desertification and alteration of previously established ‘steady state’ weather systems that are now no longer dependable, I fear are in flux. So time to get tough with the robber barons, the rapists of the Rain Forest, the nasty above the law types that scramble to make money from Rain Forest and its destruction.

Trees might be a problem in that we haven’t the time to wait for their growth, nor their withdrawl from participating in CO2 conversion once methane hits.

Heres my reasons that the much bandied ‘planting trees to save the planet’ is hollow, a sacrificial fix-all and I fear will not work…

here uk trees are without leaves half the year.
trees do not rise to counter the effects of increasing C02 … they will fail.
changing weather patterns (prob fr the worst) means most trees will be pissed off, drought etc they will fail.

Which means we are stuck with I assume conifererous plantations. I do also hope we can get planting schemes and Local Authorities to work away from their beloved Rowan, near a blight to my mind and the beloved oak is so often overlooked. The time-frame in using trees, even fast-browth conifers as generally supposed is unworkable for the task in hand. Nice idea but it trips up on itself upon examination. Therefore we need technological carbon capture.

Lately on bbc radio news theres lots of examination of the numbers of trees to be planted as incorporated in ‘election pledges’ in the run-up to the election, such numbers are quite worthless at this stage and not worth the airtime, only the results will matter five and ten years from now and we know fine well it will be a fraction of the lowest contender. I think perhaps that is what they were explaining, the nonsense pledges peddled as ‘could be’ reality. Look at the idiocy of agricultural policy when farmers were paid to take trees out and bycatch at sea was rendered useless and dumped or used as landfill. We seem to be very poor at managing things, of arriving at common-sense practical solutions, of properly husbanding the Earth. However in bbc radio news they have done fine effort at de-bunking the untrue nonsense for instance from Sajid Javid re homeless / rough sleeping from a few days ago. The prog ‘More or Less’ this morning 10th Dec 2019 at 0900 bbc r4 put it well, Javid was talking deliberate nonsense.

Part of a workable solution has to be quite drastic universal population control, it will happen anyway but better do it in a controlled, accepted manner (contraception) than the screaming and lamentation of an unwanted end to nine tenths of the Earths human passengers. A little rubber bag will save us.