11. Serves them bloody right for letting a left wing raving lunatic from “Holland” run the show. I mean, France and Holland - they’re nothing like one another. Completely different; Holland is as flat as a pancake and France is as hilly as shit.
12. Allegedly – Jean-Claude-Willy’s International Piss-up and shagging fund.
24 - Global Economy
Today we live and have to compete in a Global Economy. A world-wide market place. We have to be competitive. Lean, mean and effective to survive. We need to make sure we stay within that larger family that constitutes the towering epicentre of economic competence, efficiency and dynamism, the European Union (EU). OMFG! And just for good measure, we send out gangs of our politicians around the globe on jaunts to sniff out ‘best practice’ and point us in the direction of success. What follows is a logical, methodical dissection of where we are now, where we might be heading and where we are definitely going to end up.
Once again, it really is impossible to know where to start. Do you kill yourself laughing first? Or, do you attempt the logical, methodical dissection of where we are now, where we might be heading and where we might end up. And then slash your wrists at the end. If the latter, please remember to go down the arm, not across. It is your moral duty to do the job properly. We don’t want any expensive to maintain partial survivors; only the raw material for glue.
In any event, one or two of you might decide to first take an environmentally friendly train journey into central London, let’s say maybe Westminster, and create a bit of excitement inside a beautiful old building.
So, to the EU. Now why anybody with more than three brain cells can’t see that if you stick with the developed consensus of that lot the chances of staying even remotely competitive with anybody, let alone the Chinese and the rest of the Far East is precisely zero, is just completely beyond me. Again, just to be clear. ‘That lot’ refers to the centralised political elite representatives, not the separate European populations as individuals, who I suspect are just as infuriated as us, if not more so. Either that or they just decide to simply ignore on the ground the latest set of arsehole Directives to spew out of Brussels and carry on enjoying fine wine, pasta and cheese.
Leading the way of course, and I really have been trying, with all my might, to avoid this subject, but I can contain my excitement no longer, is the latest great band wagon to do with Global Warming.
“Shit, sorry, technical mishap, slight slip, old, yesterday’s terminology - I mean, Climate Change. Because we aren’t warming, not any more. Even though the supposed culprit CO2 is rising. Still. But, no matter.”
The new name does give a bit of a clue I suppose. Climate CHANGE. What, change, a bit like has been happening since we started out as a ball of gas, and then cooled and solidified a bit? And has been varying and changing ever since. Sometimes warmer, sometimes colder. And varying well before man appeared and long before the CO2 concentration was being increased by any of man’s (and woman’s) activities.
Now, I know there are thousands of scientists out there arguing the toss, for and against. It’s interesting that it all used to be fairly one sided. Say about a 100,000 or so scientists and engineers as believers leading the politicians in the direction of renewables (it really is, just candy from babies – solar panel anybody? Perhaps a nice windmill?) and about two against. Me and a famous botanist off of the TV.
Now I’m a nobody and I knew in any case that you wouldn’t change the mind of the 100,000 or so on the gravy train. And as for the politicians, they were just wide eyed and begging to be well and truly shafted. Again. So I typically just muttered a few expletives occasionally down the pub and left it at that. On the subject of shafting the politicians, I’m sure big business never colludes. No, they don’t need to. I suspect it’s more just a systematic strategic understanding that happens automatically. So, no quiet meetings in the park or phone calls are ever necessary, but Del Boy just always knows when it’s his turn to hit the jackpot. And boy does he hit it.
The famous botanist of course was somebody, but the second he intimated that he might not be a complete believer and thought it might not be quite worth committing the 1.6 trillion dollars per second to the windmill/solar cause, the powers that be soon made sure he became a nobody again. Quicker in fact than an MP can say:
“Who’s for a quick lap of Clapham Common” and check that his Y-fronts are clean.
Now I knew then and still know now, that I couldn’t, and still can’t, compete in the:
“Have you read those ten zillion articles on CO2 levels in ice samples, temperature profiles over the last 17 millennia, carbonate variations in the deep ocean etc. etc.” game.
And I can’t prove they are wrong about what they claim (but I believe they are13 and importantly, I don’t really give a toss about trying to convince them). But I also know that they can’t prove that they are right.
Oh, they’ll say they can. They’ll quote the ten zillion articles and witter on. But, if they are seriously trying to say something like this:
“We now fully understand the energy balance between the stuff entering the earth’s atmosphere, that reaching the earth’s surface, that being absorbed, re-emitted, reflected, for all wavelengths. We understand how this all varies over time and how it inter-relates with all other unspecified natural factors. We also understand how all the gaseous, aerosol and particulate constituents contribute to the different energy variations. And how these various constituents interact, deposit, dissolve in the oceans, diffuse, precipitate and mineralise, thermodynamically and kinetically. And we fully understand the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and the oceans and how these can be impacted by all potential driving forces over both long and short term”.
I’d be tempted to simply reply, in extremely complicated and technical scientific terms that you won’t understand, you understand:
“Complete and utter bollocks”.
And it would be. It would be a delusion of how much we know and understand and how important we (humans) are in driving the natural chemical and physical reactions that constitute planet earth and beyond. A delusion that humans could indeed shag the entire planet, irreversibly. It makes a good few people feel important and in charge for a transient period of the planet’s evolution.
So for the record. Here is the point I unambiguously agree with:
“CO2 absorbs infrared radiation at a few discrete wavelengths.”
That’s it. All of it. That’s the truly proven undisputable bit.
Now, for 1.6 trillion dollars per second:
“PROVE that the man-made CO2 is the primary driver of any positive or negative variations in climate (or both) and that these cannot be exceeded by any other natural cycles you currently haven’t got the faintest clue about”.
And they can’t.
I honestly thought 15 or so years ago when it was 100,000 or so for and 2 against, it would take many decades if not longer before more and more people would start to doubt and think “maybe, just maybe, we’ve been on a wild goose chase (again)”. So it’s interesting that more and more people are now reaching this conclusion, much more quickly than I’d ever imagined.
One thing I am pretty sure of. They will never get worldwide agreement to substantially affect CO2 levels downwards. But even if by some miracle they did, the effect on people’s living standards is likely to be so dramatic that it would last about 5 minutes and 25 seconds before there were an awful lot of ex-idiots who had thought that it was a good idea.
Anyway, back to global competiveness. Are India, Pakistan, China, Brazil and the rest going to stop building power stations, factories, cars, trains, offices, hotels and the like so they can match the 1.6 trillion dollars per second our (EU, America now14 - the Aussies look like they’ve come to their senses) clowns happen to think is good policy and economics. Err, that’ll be a negative then (thankfully).
Of course, the CO2 issue is just one element of why we don’t stand a chance. There are pro
bably thousands of others. Like planning for example. In China, I expect it goes a bit like:
“Few more geezers seem to have been born. We need a new nuclear power station.”
Followed by a quick walk over the road by the equivalent of the mayor and a power station builder at which point the mayor probably says “stick it here”. And then they’ll start the cement mixers. And about 3 ½ weeks later electrons will be whistling down cables to power a new city with a population of 3.3 million that was knocked together the week before last.
Health and Safety during the construction phase might be a bit less bureaucratic than our EU derived systems as well. Something along the lines of:
“When you climb up the side of that 1.35 mile high pylon to attach the lightning conductor bit, make sure you hold on tight and don’t fall off otherwise your arse might get pushed through the top of your head when you land. Oh, and while climbing, don’t grab hold of one of them big un-insulated 158 Giga Watt cable thingy’s – it might make your hair frizzy and your balls tingle.”
So, how long will it be before we will be competitive in the global economy? Well, if I were you I wouldn’t bother trying to assist too much by refraining from expelling that unmentionable carbon containing gaseous expulsion from your own gob. It might be a while.