The article refers to a series of pictures that are presented as “proof” of what will happen to our world if no “action” is undertaken.
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1828013_1743791,00.html

Is it possible that Anthony takes a look at those pictures and provides us with the real cause of the problems visualized in this presentation?

I am confident that most problems have nothing to do with CO2 emissions and will not be solved by an investment of 100 billion euro in…thin air.

It appears there are any number of beautiful golf courses built on the edges of cliffs. Someone might remind the (celebrity) architects of these course that anything built on a bed of sand or on the edge of the ocean is like to be impermanent. Claiming a bailout when it erodes or falls shows a pitiful naivety.

“A survey last August of 50 links courses by Golf World revealed that in the past 20 years, three-fourths have suffered serious erosion and flooding, one-third have lost entire holes or parts of holes, two-thirds have taken steps to protect themselves from damage, and more than half are now working on long-term survival plans…”

Some other missing links:

Charleston SC:
http://www.earthgolf.com/2007/12/12/charlestons-wild-dunes-loses-18th-hole-to-atlantic-ocean/

Great Lakes, Michigan
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E05EFDF1E39F934A2575BC0A96F958260

And a pseudo-science “lesson”:

http://members.aol.com/ruraleye/gowen4a.htm

The question for governments, as I see it, is:

Should private enterprise (which includes everyone from home-builders to golf course makers) be allowed to build and operate in locations where their long-term safety is endangered by natural forces (tides, tsunamis, floods, earthquake faults, volcanos, fires, etc)?

OR

Should government regulate where people build and live?

Thanks, Patrick Henry, for bringing this rare, if somwhat invidious insight to the fond memory of Robert Burns! Little known TIL NOW was the poet’s unfortunate obsession with this barbarous sport. Once more you literary vandals have helped strip away the veils of pleasure which we Romanticists had savored, as we allowed ourselves to be transported by the word and cadence and illusion of a grand old master.

Is it really so necessary to picture him, up to his knickers in the rough of one of those hellish Scottish links, babbling to his ball (“little mousie”), to be disillusioned about the quaintly colloquial “murd’rin paddel” in reference to that barbarous 8 iron with which he went thrashing about the rye? Must we hear his handicap? Will you next be deconstructing his inspired line “The best laid plans…” from its predecessor: “the best lie…” ?

Ahh life… Ohh Art!

It could start a whole new scuba diving cult; like Truk Lagoon, bringing divers from all over the world to plunge into the murky depths in the search for some Bobby Jones or Ben Hogan lost golfball. The Golfaeologists, will have new reasons to ask for government research grants.

Hey so long as Bagpipes survive the demise of St Andrews, I don’t care.

To their credit, the BBC haven’t turned the story entirely into a “global warming triggers giant spider invasion” scare, but yes, I agree the implication is there. And milder conditions have also helped less scary species like chaffinches and butterflies to flourish, but we don’t hear so much about that.

However, the BBC do imply there is an angle: “Researchers believe arachnids arriving in imports of food and plants are now able to survive and spread thanks to the UK’s increasingly mild climate. The new inhabitants include a species of false widow spider and some believe the deadly black widow could be next to invade.”

Well, yes they do. “Increasingly mild climate” means warmer, or hadn’t you heard?

Nothing to see here…move along, move along.

Jim

Yes, they appear to have a wide range; and according to Wikipedia, the climate in Sweden is also suitable for them. However, the BBC do imply there is an angle: “Researchers believe arachnids arriving in imports of food and plants are now able to survive and spread thanks to the UK’s increasingly mild climate. The new inhabitants include a species of false widow spider and some believe the deadly black widow could be next to invade.”

On their news site, they also announce “…a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said that a new strategy was in place to “tackle the threat to the UK’s native biodiversity from unwanted pest species which have ‘hitchhiked’ into the UK on plants”.

So there’s a right kind of biodiversity and a wrong kind…

John, in this day and age where the majority of people have the attention span of a gnat, what is the purpose of this type of imagined speech? Perhaps if it came from George Lucas it would be no big deal. I believe it is a proven formula for the indoctrination of the masses to a particular way of thinking. It is the start of the process: myths become legends, legends become facts, facts becomes history, history is taught to children. Of course if one is caught, they can always fall back on the position “it was only imaginary thinking”.

Let me explain how this works …

The David Hulme Institute holds a seminar in which various participants imagine Scotland in 2050. As the introduction to the collected essays makes clear – these are not forecasts. Jan Bebbington makes her contribution in the form of an imagined speech, as she says ‘The world in which the speech is being delivered is one where dangerous climate change has been unleashed,’

I don’t see how that could be clearer. It is not a forecast, it is an imagined speech given in an imaginary Scotland in which dangerous climate change is assumed to have occurred. The speech includes the aside ‘we lost many historical sites on coasts (for example, many of you will remember the sorrow at the last British Open played in St Andrews).’

But ‘economist speculates… ‘well, that’s not such a good headline is it? Sso it has to become, in the Herald … Climate Change Expert predicts that St Andrews is doomed!. This is duly picked up by John Goetz, repeated here and we all have a lot of fun about those crazy AGW alarmists and their wacky doom and gloom predictions ….

Fairy stories indeed.

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Sorry, bit of an open goal.