Shades of Fahrenheit 451 – British retirees burning books to stay warm

Red Dwarf:

More from Benny Peiser’s newsletter.
WHAT HAPPENED TO SPAIN’S GREEN JOBS?
NC Media Watch, 4 January 2010
Russ Steele
The Sunday San Francisco Chronicle Business section has this story on unemployment soaring among Spain’s youth by Nelson D. Schwartz, New York Times. As you will recall, Spain was on the forefront of going green. While Spain has traditionally suffered from relatively high unemployment, double the 9.8 percent average for the European Union, but the sharpest increase has been among young people. It has jumped from 17.5 percent three years ago to the current 42.9 percent.
Unemployment soars among Spain’s youth
“Like hundreds of thousands of other young people, Jesus Pesquero Penas dropped out of school to go to work when the Spanish economy was booming. But since he was laid off from his construction job two years ago, he has been living on unemployment benefits. Now Penas finds himself part of a lost generation in Spain, where unemployment among people ages 16-24 is 42.9 percent, the highest in Europe, and more than double the overall rate.”
Where are all the promised green jobs? How could this happen when Spain was on the leading edge in the EU to convert to a sustainable life style free from their oil addiction, by adopting wind and solar power. California Governor has often pointed to Spain as a example for California to follow.
“Adding to Spain’s woes, its government is unable to inject more stimulus and offer further support for job creation while its economy languishes as one of the weakest in Europe. The outlook on Spanish sovereign debt was recently downgraded, and the government is moving to raise taxes and cut spending.”
As I have written before, every green job in Spain created through government subsidies resulted in the loss of 2.5 jobs in the regular economic sectors. Details here. Though not mentioned in the NYT article one has to wonder how much going green contributed to the job losses in the youth sector?
“In part, Spain is paying the price for its efforts to make it easier to put young people to work. In recent years, a disproportionate share of Spanish youth were employed on temporary contracts. So they were the easiest to lay off when the economy sank, said Alfonso Prieto, deputy director general of employment studies at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.”
Again, one has to ask were those temporary employment contracts funded with government subsidies for green jobs? Will the same happen in California, if we create job with government subsidies? We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation and the Governor is seeking green subsidies a Federal bailout? We should all be aware of the Spanish experience.

Since January 2008, gas bills have risen 40 per cent and electricity prices 20 per cent
This is what Barak Obama wants—“necessarily skyrocket” electric bills.
As long as they burn books with ‘Audacity’ in the title I’m fine with it.

Don’t worry – we have a huge stockpile of “Energy Efficient” bulbs to keep us going….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240585/British-homes-swamped-200-million-unwanted-eco-lightbulbs.html

Books burnt by pensioners because they are cheaper than coal…
Power prices to rise to £5,000 in order to pay for more windmills when those already installed aren’t producting any power during the current big freeze.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/monument-to-folly.html
It really is time the insane wealth-shifters were returned to the asylum.

Call me crazy but I do believe this is deliberate. Looks like the Brits are leading the road back to serfdom.

There’s a good 6″ of white global warming soot in my back garden in West Yorkshire.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6935965/Britain-paralysed-by-snow-and-freezing-weather.html
“Forecasters warned that the snow and arctic conditions are set to continue into the weekend, while southern England is braced to be the “crucible” of the severe weather later today.
The renewed wave of bitter weather comes as experts predicted that Britain is facing the coldest winter in 100 years.”

Thats not all
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6935965/Britain-paralysed-by-snow-and-freezing-weather.html
“The prolonged cold snap has also led to fears that Britain could be confronted with a shortage of gas after the National Grid warned supplies to reduce use of the fuel.
It was the second time ever that the move has been taken and came after a 30 per cent rise on normal seasonal demand. ”
What confuses me is the snowfalls in th e US and Canada are more considerable, yet you don’t get the same paralysis. I guess it’s because we haven’t had a cold winter like this for a long time (apart from last year)

Don Keiller (07:07:02) :
More from Benny Peiser’s newsletter.
WHAT HAPPENED TO SPAIN’S GREEN JOBS?
It seems those should be called ‘welfare jobs’. In America Van Jones had planned for ‘green jobs’ to be inner-city jobs—“climate ‘justice’……give them the wealth, give them the wealth!”—was his mantra.
But Van Jones was ‘stepped down’.

There ought to be a lot of “Our Choice” books available since no one bought any.

Re: Dave Ward’s link:
“An average gas and electricity customer pays £38 a year towards subsidies for green projects, according to Ofgem”
Perhaps some of the British can capitalize on this insanity by selling T shirts, with the caption: ” 38 Pounds a Year and all i got was a lousy lightbulb”.

joe (07:22:09) :
Call me crazy but I do believe this is deliberate. Looks like the Brits are leading the road back to serfdom.
Piers Corbyn thinks higher food prices caused by biofuels is intentional.
He’s right a lot.
I paid attention when he said that.

Pascvaks (07:22:27) :
Burning books? Books cheaper than coal? Hello! What planet am I on?
I think they’re talking about used, donated books at places like Goodwill.
Pretty crafty of the pensioners I think.

What do the environmentalists whose heart are filled with care and concern have to say about this?
Wait, I know, ‘the burnt ink in the smoke is harming the environment’.

Here in Michigan, Governor Granholm (economic advisor to Obama) has passed an initiative that requires 10% of electricity in the State to originate from renewable sources.
The Detroit Free Press explained yesterday that a power company was letting contracts to solar farms to buy electricity at an average rate of fifty cents per kilowatt hour for twelve years. The going rate is 11 cents.
So 10% of our electricity will cost 400-500% more, on average the overall cost will go up 30-40 percent over the cost in nearby States.
It is not for nothing that Michigan is listed dead last in business climate.
When building an economy, it is wise to consult Michigan then do the opposite.

One third of the consumption of bituminous coal in England is residential heat.
In India and China 75% of homes use fire to burn papaer, corn stalks, coal or dung for cooking and heat.
Of course playing games with energy hurts the poor.
The unemployment rate in Spain and the youth and minorities in America is due to defective thinking in economics.

Jeff, you seemed surprised that we still buy bags of coal. Why? Every winter, in the long evenings, we quite often light the fire in the sitting room (having turned off the central heating for the room). And we burn coal in our fireplace (sometimes with a coupla small logs on top). I top up the fire with coal from our nice shiny brass coal scuttle. There’s nothing like a bright coal fire, flickering flames, dancing reflections, and oodles of radiated heat, to make a room really cosy. And yes, I buy the coal in bags. What else? It’s difficult to carry when loose.

The thing that gets me is how fragile our energy sector is. For example, the US once had a thriving industry that built luxury yachts. Then the Dems came along and figured they could get a lot of revenue by taxing these as luxury items. Well, it didn’t take long for rich people to do some comparative shopping and start buying their luxury yachts from overseas. So all those artisans and supplier that had been building luxury yachts in the US went out of business. Then the Dems realized they’d made a huge mistake and rescinded the tax. But you know what happened? The yacht makers had families and themselves to feed, so they had found other jobs doing something else by that time. And with the prospects of yet another “Tax the Rich” on their yachts should they go back to building them, they just said “Nuts”, and so an industry was lost.
The same thing happens with mining–an industry I’m fairly familiar with, having worked as a mining engineer in the western US for 15 years. There, it takes a bunch of disciplines and a huge amount of money to get a mine up and going–including financial gurus, geologists, mining engineers, equipment operators, etc. etc. You destroy an industry and it may never return. Ever! Why? It becomes easier to buy from overseas suppliers, just like luxury yachts.
But the Dems have never been strong on production or business–no, they’re generally a bunch of lawyers who have never produced a workable, useful widget in their lives. They’re so far from the reality most of us face that they’re the butt of many nasty jokes and rightly so. It is pretty sad they impose their unworkable pardigm on the rest of the world.

Maybe their pain will help to instill some sanity… here’s another story… gas shortage
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/149760

‘A spokesman for the National Grid said the alert had been effective in prompting electricity companies to import more gas or switch to coal-fired power stations. ‘
Presumably the lack of wind means all those expensive windfarms are not working. Tut. Tut. More bloody carbon dioxide but hopefully that might warm things up a bit.

Thanks, Anthony and Benny, for continuing to remind us of reality and its conflict with fake climate predictions from a corrupt alliance of scientists with politicians.
PAIN is the greatest teacher. Only ACCEPTANCE of reality will relieve the pain.
May “Climate-gate” produce enough pain for corrupt scientists and politicians to finally accept this basic spiritual principle of science:
“Truth is victorious, never untruth.”
(Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.6; Qur’an 17.85)
Again, I thank you for helping the scientific community face reality.
A list of scientific “Observations That I had To Accept” since 1960 was posted on the “Naked Science Forum” earlier this year:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=9197
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://www.omatumr.com

Well, burning books raises the CO2-concentration.
So it may lead to Global Warming. 😉

It’s continually depressing to me that however much honest science and sensible opinion I read at sites like this our politicians are now so blinkered and brainwashed by AGW and the opportunities for control and tax that they have become seemingly incapapble of admitting it’s a scam. I honestly think that no amount of good science will ever make them admit they have been wrong.
I therefore think the recent news that Ofcom have suddenly admitted to costing ‘error’ and that the treasury are rethinking the impact costs may be the best news we have had in some time.
It suggests to me that the facade is cracking. Some hard rethinking is taking place where the politicians can’t ignore it. And most importantly the ‘we can’t afford it at the moment argument’ is the one situation that allows politicians to both save face and hold back from further action.
One can hope!

Bags of coal… yes, we did try using pipelines once, but the lumps kept getting stuck.
The MetOffice predicted a warmer than average winter and now local councils are running out of grit for the roads and the National Grid are warning that gas reserves will run out, because demand is so much higher than expected. D’oh, I can’t tell you how proud I am to be British.
But don’t worry… in order to ensure that this winter is ultimately a warmer than average winter the Met Office has requested that all British subjects go outside at 2100hrs tonight and breathe OUT as hard as possible. The sudden surge in CO2 should cause a tipping point as the CO2 absorbs the energy being radiated from the burning encyclopaedia Britannicas (if only Wikipedia was on paper !) In addition, it is anticipated that the water vapour we breathe out at this time will combine to form huge clouds that blanket the nation overnight and keep all the heat in.
Knowing that around half the UK population is pretty gullible (higher percentages exist in some professions, such as politics and news media), I’d better declare this a hoax. I would hate to be responsible for someone dying from hypothermia just after 9 o’clock tonight.

Nice….

Pensioners grateful to Al Gore for keeping them warm in the current deep freeze.
“Our Choice, A Plan To Solve The Climate Crisis”,
free and available in large quatities at your local junk store.

3×2 (08:44:12) :
Off to enjoy a good book now.
——————–
Reading it or burning it ??
Aren’t library books “renewable” ?

After 100,000 years won’t all the BS Gore spouts turn to peat?

Ric Werme (08:41:23) :
And all this time I thought books were a carbon sequestration mechanism. Clearly the UK needs to put an emergency carbon tax (or price floor) on the carbon content of books.
**************************************
Correct. And furthermore, what with Wikipedia, Google Books, Kindle and all, printed books are fast becoming a non-renewable resource. Still, this problem will not be solved by unilateral action by single states, even in so bookish a nation as Great Britain. Clearly what’s needed is a U.N.-sponsored summit to formulate a Binding (!) International Agreement.

Popsicles!

Be very aware and afraid this is what will happen to the US if Congress and Senate pass the Cap and Trade bill! Obama has threatened to kill coal and all carbon based energy sources in favor of green energy. Britain now is paying the price for this folly.

Quitting AGW cold: “poop on my dock,”.
…-
“Hot Weather Convinces Media of Climate Change; Cold Weather Ignored
The news media constantly misuse extreme weather examples to generate fear of global warming, but when record cold or record snow sets in journalists don’t mention the possibility of global cooling trends. While climatologists would say weather isn’t necessarily an indication of climate, it has been in the media, but only when the weather could be spun as part of global warming.
In Iowa, temperatures are 30 degrees below normal according to the Des Moines Register. That’s a near-record low. Beijing is facing the coldest temperatures in decades according to Australia’s The Age.
And in Pichccahuasi, Peru, bitter cold may cause the extinction of communities of alpaca farmers suffering from pneumonia and other respiratory problems. Ironically, that Guardian (U.K.) report called the
(Excerpt) Read more at businessandmedia.org”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2421461/posts
…-
“Extended cold could kill invasive iguanas
With this week’s evening temperatures falling toward the upper 30s, strange fruit may drop from South Florida trees: non-native, invading iguanas that many residents consider more pest than pet.
“It’s a big deal for me,” Jessica Morgan, a Margate homeowner, said as she watched a yard-long, bright orange male iguana roam near her butterfly habitat. The reptile has a slightly smaller green girlfriend.
“They climb up on the bank and will poop on my dock,” she said. “Fingers crossed that this cold snap will kill them. I don’t have the heart to beat one to death. I hope the weather does it for me.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2421406/posts

So aren’t there warehoused full of unsold Al Gore books available for shipment to Britain ?
Time to revive the Lend Lease Program 🙂

Here is the link to the 53.4% unemployment story I mentioned:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/the_dead_end_kids_AnwaWNOGqsXMuIlGONNX1K

Uber Jalemon (08:43:05) :
Hello from a little place near Montreal, Canada
“What confuses me is the snowfalls in th e US and Canada are more considerable, yet you don’t get the same paralysis.”
In Canada we are ready for it. Building code, snow removal by the cities, private snow removing services, personnal snow blower, lots and lots of shovels and winter tires.

It is a very regional difference. In areas on the Eastern seaboard like Washington DC and New York that are normally held to moderate temperatures by the nearby ocean, the cities will nearly shut down over a snow fall, that would hardly be noticed in the middle of the country. The difference as noted above, is a combination of existence of infrastructure, (plows, crews trained to plow snow, locations to dump the snow, and supplies of sand and salt or de-icing mix to spray on the roads).
It also changes with the times. In the 1960’s I can only remember 2 or 3 “snow days” where they shut down the schools. One of them was due to almost 3 ft of snow in a single day. I remember it very well because I spent my “day off school” shoveling out my dads car a 1954 Hudson which was buried up to the lower edge of the windows in a snow drift. After that was done, my brother and some friends spent the rest of the day building snow forts and diving head long into drifts beside the road. Later in the evening my brother and I spent a couple hours with shovels helping drivers negotiate the hill in front of our house. If they got stuck and started spinning the tires we would go out and dig the snow out in front of their tires and toss a bit of dirt and sand under their tires and give them a push to get them going again. Sometimes they would give us a quarter for our efforts and a few were so thankful they gave us a dollar.
We thought it all was great fun, but the area was quite self supporting. when the weather cleared, we would have shoveling parties, as everyone would come out of the house about the same time and start shoveling their walks and drives, and when you were done with your home, you walked next door and helped the neighbor deal with his snow drift, knowing that during the next storm the snow drift might be in your driveway.
In areas not used to heavy snow fall, no one has adequate snow tires, the drivers do not know what areas to avoid when it gets slick. Many are not accustomed to driving on ice and snow and do stupid things and get stuck when they should not. No one has chains, the city has too few snow plows or limited supplies of sand and salt.
In the 1970’s the Mayor of Denver lost his job due to poor snow clearing in the preceding winter. As a result they bought more snow equipment, and changed their snow clearing plan, designating some routes as “snow routes” which had priority.
On those routes they get first crack at snow removal to provide essential access to hospitals etc. and any cars stuck on those routes are summarily towed to keep the route navigable by the plows and emergency equipment. They also began applying chain law type ordinances in really severe weather banning all vehicles from the roads that did not have snow tires, or in some cases 4 wheel drive or chains only.
Larry

ah yes, the “good intentions” of leftists / statists / liberals resulting in sky high prices for utilities. which results in the need to grant pensioners an “entitlement” to some sum to cover the cost. just leave people alone already! who among us wouldn’t help our elderly relatives if they couldn’t afford to pay for heating fuel? i’ve already told mine that they are expected to move in with me! families consolidated during The Great Depression – it worked then and it will work now.

I really hate to be a party-pooper, but this story is no more than an urban myth in the making.
This Metro report talks about ‘pensioners in Swansea’ , and EUReferendum links to this report only.
Pity we weren’t given even the name of the charity shop …
Thing is – Swansea is in South Wales, and while its been cold here, we’ve not had that much snow – yet! – as those poor Scots or those in Northern England.
Moreover – this has not been reported in the local papers, not that for Swansea nor those for Cardiff.
So excuse me for being decidedly sceptical here!

The books should be burned so it will be easier to rewrite the past.
BTW: What is the carbon footprint of burning a book? The carbon in the paper is out of circulation but is released when it’s burned. Better to freeze to death!

@ John Galt (11:11:34) :
John, I guess you forgot to insert the sarcon/sarcoff tags on that comment:
…Better to freeze to death! ….
But, if not: you first, please!
Anyway, my wife, me and my kids really like to read books, so there about
2500-3000 books and paperbacks available, even if my heart would truely bleed. (Didn’t count lot’s of manuals, printouts and approx seven years of weeklies about computers and science)… just in case if the refilled heating oil
– should be enough for 15 to 18 month, is not enough.
But before burning them I would use them as an additional insulation for the
windows, stacking them up in the window frame.

A while ago, a western observer in China was watching a dam construction project and noticed that there were thousands of workers toiling with picks and shovels. Surprised at the inefficiency, he explained that if you gave the project bulldozers they could do the job with a tiny fraction of the work force. The Chinese official retorted “of course, but think of the contribution we’re making on unemployment.”

The traditional ending of this probably apocryphal story is as follows:

“Oh,” said the businessman, “I thought you were building a dam. If it’s jobs you want to create, then take away their shovels and give them spoons!”

“Businessman” is the most common hero of this story, sometimes also “engineer” or “economist”. I’ve even seen this attributed to late Milton Friedman.
Looking at all these “green jobs”, it doesn’t sound much like joke anymore.

“…Thin spreading fingers seek
to embrace the sill-warm bundles
that huddle on the doorsteps
of a white London Town. …”
Something’s On the Move – Jethro Tull

Katabasis: “The BBC’s Richard Black ambivalent about the influence of “global warming…””
I don’t see any ambivalence in Black’s comments. His explanation for the current cold snap in the northern hemisphere is that it is weather spilling down from the Arctic as a result of a negative Arctic oscillation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/01/arctic_conditions_arctic_cause.html
This seems to be a reasonable explanation, and intuitively supports the notion that the mid-northern hemisphere is suffering from “Arctic conditions”. Interestingly, my morning newspaper quotes a Beijing meteorologist who opines that the current NH weather is linked to unusual atmospheric patterns caused by global warming.
The article doesn’t elaborate on the “unusual atmospheric patterns”, but it’s also reasonable to suppose that increasing energy levels within the atmospheric system would lead to greater instability and more extremes of weather.
On the book-burning story, while this smacks of “pensioners reduced to eating dog-food”, the outcome of book-burning might not be wholly negative. In fact, if pensioners were to warm their toes against the curling pages of, say, The Da Vinci Code, there could well be a positive benefit to humankind.

I knew there was a reason I shouldn’t have bought a Sony ebook reader. Convenient for lugging copies of papers around, but not sure the lithium battery would be good for the fireplace. Here in sunny Reading, UK I’ve had about 8cm of global warming falling in the last 5hrs. Think the uni’s climate brigade have now been banned from my local pub 🙂

tallbloke (09:23:43) :The depth of the little ice age in fact. 1640-44
I´ve been saying that cycles repeat, so the screw it is already turning….beware ye fools, your time is over, the doom you forecasted for us was yours. Time for nature to process its rotten crops and turn them into soil…

@ Roy (11:44:51) :
Have you ever examined a Rumford Fireplace? They utilize principles that the science at the time hadn’t caught up to yet, such as radiant energy (infrared) for heating instead of heating the air, and a laminar air flow from the room. They have great performance, are EPA tested, and very efficient. And this from a masonry open fireplace with a simple chimney design with no damper.
Jefferson had them put in at Monticello. Makes them worth a look. Check out the Technical Details page of links, start clicking. You might just be impressed.

OAP’s slip-sliding down to the local charity shop then warming themseves with a smouldering tome?
Sounds like a leg-pull to me….but then I am in climate denial.

Mark Bowlin (07:08:01) :
“I suspect it’s a cold cold winter in East Anglia.”
Good one 🙂
I hope they freeze their knickers off…

P Wilson (07:23:16) :

What confuses me is the snowfalls in th e US and Canada are more considerable, yet you don’t get the same paralysis.

kadaka (10:36:58) :

Could it be because the UK has so many tiny efficient cars that don’t have the ground clearance to cross an American rain puddle?

No. Snowfalls in the US and Canada are met with massive snowplow efforts for which all of our northern states (Canada being even further north) are well prepared.
You see the same problems the UK is having in southern US, however, as they are not prepared for snow. Flurries in Jacksonville, FL, for example, result in bridge closings everywhere. TV crews sat along side an Atlanta highway one year watching all the wipeouts from so-called “black ice” that had formed during a freeze.
Of course, no region is not without its idiots that don’t understand why speed limits don’t apply during snow storms or conditions that otherwise result in icy conditions. Drive down any Colorado road in the winter and count the number of cars in the ditches for proof.
Mark

I suggest foreign aid. We send them all those 2,000 page bills with the 500 page amendments introduced at 3 AM. Nobody reads them, and they contain some heat content. Further since they are made from dead trees, they are carbon neutral. Prince Bat Ears the serial adulterer of the House of Hanover should appreciate that.

wonder if the people in Florida have a fire place.
http://www.accuweather.com/index-severe-weather.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0
freeze watch in Florida. Is that common?

During the recent US housing boom, in one of those quick-build developments I visited to see a unit being built, they were boasting of using “slow recovery” heating, just a heat pump and central air ducting. The incoming heat is low, but the place will warm up eventually. Just set the thermostat and never touch it, no benefit to adjusting it for different times of day etc as it didn’t respond that fast.
They were also running plumbing upstairs through an outside wall.
Ah such wonders of modern insulation, as none of that will ever be a problem no matter what the weather. Yeah, right.

Tree-Coring Fool (09:27:58) :
“After 100,000 years won’t all the BS Gore spouts turn to peat?”
No it will turn to coal

Paddy (10:24:20) :
Here is the link to the 53.4% unemployment story I mentioned:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/the_dead_end_kids_AnwaWNOGqsXMuIlGONNX1K
Paddy, here in the USA we trashed our education system that is why the kids are unemployable. Worse the kids think they are “the greatest” and have no decent work ethic. I rather hire a retiree than a kid out of college.
“For 10 years, William Schmidt, a statistics professor at Michigan State University, has looked at how U.S. students stack up against students in other countries in math and science. “In fourth-grade, we start out pretty well, near the top of the distribution among countries; by eighth-grade, we’re around average, and by 12th-grade, we’re at the bottom of the heap, outperforming only two countries, Cyprus and South Africa.”
:[url=http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0804/0804textbooks.htm]Source[/url]
Is it any wonder Corporations now import workers from other countries?
“… Surveys of corporations consistently find that businesses are focused outside • the U.S. to recruit necessary talent. In a 2002 survey, 16 global corporations complained that American schools did not produce students with global skills. United States companies agreed. The survey found that 30 percent of large U.S. companies “believed they had failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities due to insufficient personnel with international skills.” One respondent to the survey even noted, “If I wanted to recruit people who are both technically skilled and culturally aware, I wouldn’t even waste time looking for them on U.S. college campuses.”
…the U.S. ranks 21st out of 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in mathematics scores, with nearly one-quarter of students unable to solve the easiest level of questions….
…In 2000, 28 percent of all freshmen entering a degree-granting institution required remedial coursework”
http://www.edreform.com/_upload/CER_JunkFoodDiet.pdf

Gail Combs (14:46:18) :
“Tree-Coring Fool (09:27:58) :
“After 100,000 years won’t all the BS Gore spouts turn to peat?”
No it will turn to coal”
My guess is it will STILL be toxic waste.

The Greens want your grandparents to die in the most depressing manner possible.
Greenpeace’s current banner ads using Google’s adsense system currently says they are seeking £3 donations to save polar bears, which they say are facing extinction, and to help direct physical action/terrorist campaigns to block shipments of coal.
This is what the ad looks like:
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/1316/59990517.png
You could always group yourselves together and take direct physical action against Greenpeace’s offices.

Richard deSousa (09:57:19) :
Be very aware and afraid this is what will happen to the US if Congress and Senate pass the Cap and Trade bill! Obama has threatened to kill coal and all carbon based energy sources in favor of green energy. Britain now is paying the price for this folly.
Reply:
Waxman has another present for US citizens besides Cap and Trade, the Food safety enhancement bill. It will double the price of food at the very minimum. A british dairy farmer stated he now spends 60% of his time on paperwork and that is the same system Waxman wishes to impose on ANYONE who grows food in the USA. Combined with the increased cost in energy and fertilizer, the use of grain for bio-fuel, expect food prices to at least quadruple. Once independent farmers in the USA give up because of the fines, paperwork and legal liability, the transnational corporations running the World Trade Organization will have a monopoly and food prices will really sky rocket.
For Animals:
Guide to Good Farming Practices:
http://xstatic99645.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ggfp-06-oie.pdf
For Plants:
HR 2749: Food Safety’s Scorched Earth Policy
http://farmwars.info/?p=1284
Some of the technical details
http://www.ftcldf.org/news/news-15june2009.htm
Al Gore and Obama’s partner in crime, Maurice Strong stated
““Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
looks like Waxman and Congress is working real hard at it too. Thanks to the doubling of the US money supply and all the bailouts “Stewart Dougherty, a specialist in inferential analysis, agrees. It is now “statistically impossible for the United States to pay its obligations”. http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/08.09/metastasis.html
Like Iceland we as a country are now technically bankrupt it just has not hit yet.

” Dodgy Geezer (07:15:20) :
Message from the Great Britain, a country that used to run a third of the globe
…We’re stuffed…
That is all.”
That is why I left 17 years ago… I could see all this coming….
Just call me Nostradamus

There should be many copies of OwlGores book available since it has been thouroughly discredited. We could also refer the pensioners to the IPCC reports and while we’re at it anything that this lousy US Congress puts together…they seem to like their new laws by the paper case size.

jeroen (14:18:59) :
wonder if the people in Florida have a fire place. [some do but most have heat pumps in the south USA]
http://www.accuweather.com/index-severe-weather.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0
freeze watch in Florida. Is that common?
No it is not at all common, at least in recent years. Citrus trees do not do well in freezing temps. Sprinklers and “smudge pots” are used (or were) to raise the temperatures in the orchards.
Citrus fruits and juices may be going up in price soon. A bad freeze can actually kill the trees. Temperatures in the teens (F) will severely damage or kill trees and temperatures in the high 20s (F) will readily kill or severely damage first or second year of the trees.
I am about 1000 kilometers north of these orchards and on the border of the “snow zone” north of us normally gets snow and south of us does not. I see snow about once every three to five years.

Watching the BBC news tonight, which is mainly about the weather, there was a comment about how the Met Office have goofed because they had predicted a BBQ summer and a mild winter and then the news reader said that “predicting whole seasons is an inexact science”.
What does that make predicting a quarter of a century ahead?
We try to cover all eventualities here in our rural part of the UK. Because we had a lot of power cuts when we came here 24 years ago we installed a bottled (no mains here) gas cooker and have an open fire in the drawing room and keep a good supply of candles. We have oil fired central heating (horrendous cost but at the time of installation it was cheaper than electric or bottled gas – a bit like the choice of car; I bought a diesel car when it was cheaper than unleaded and guess where the price of that is now!) Our world saving PM has been promoting grants of £400 to poorer people to change their boilers to more efficient ones. Given that said new boiler costs around £2k apparently, where are the poorer people going to find the difference and what hope is there for me to keep changing expensive equipment to try to save a few pounds and then have the government come along and raise taxes to negate any advantage I might have gained? I sometimes feel like a hamster on an eternal treadmill. Now there’s a thought – generate my own electricity.
Roll on the election in May but if there is a change of government is it going to be any different from the current nanny state? I wonder………..

In the UK we were promised a Mediterranean climate, and that France would be a desert! B*****DS!

Gail Combs (16:27:41) :
jeroen (14:18:59) :
wonder if the people in Florida have a fire place. [some do but most have heat pumps in the south USA]
http://www.accuweather.com/index-severe-weather.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0
freeze watch in Florida. Is that common?
No it is not at all common, at least in recent years. Citrus trees do not do well in freezing temps. Sprinklers and “smudge pots” are used (or were) to raise the temperatures in the orchards.
Citrus fruits and juices may be going up in price soon. A bad freeze can actually kill the trees. Temperatures in the teens (F) will severely damage or kill trees and temperatures in the high 20s (F) will readily kill or severely damage first or second year of the trees.
I am about 1000 kilometers north of these orchards and on the border of the “snow zone” north of us normally gets snow and south of us does not. I see snow about once every three to five years.

If they have a hard freeze and lose the citrus crop, then folks who like orange juice should go out and buy some frozen concentrate because the price will go up substantially.
I am not sure how much of the juice market is now served by the Florida growers but in years past when they had serious freeze losses the effects on prices for citrus crop products like orange and grapefruit juice went up substantially.
I can remember in the 1960’s and 1970’s as I recall it being a major news item with live shots from the orchards where they were spraying the trees with water 24 hrs/day to stave off freeze damage with the latent heat of freezing of the water spray, holding the local air temp near freezing and protecting the fruit from major frost damage. The smudge pots were not very effective as I understand it and today would probably be very expensive to fuel, not to mention pollution concerns probably blocking their use.
http://www.flcitrusmutual.com/industry-issues/weather/freeze_timeline.aspx
http://flcitrusmutual.com/news/ledger_freeze_010510.aspx
Larry

Apologies if this is posted elsewhere, but Joe Bastardi takes a well-deserved victory lap over at his European blog. A few choice quotes:
“What else am I supposed to say? There is nothing else since I AM A FORECASTER, NOT A NOWCASTER. Anyone can come in tell you it’s snowing and cold, once it’s snowing and cold.”
“But hopefully this winter will wake people up to the EXTREME position that has been taken by climate scientists on the global warming issue. For I must point out to you that the forecasts for cold winters came from people that A) are predominately private forecasters and b) have been at this competitive situation so long, that they are well aware of the practical aspects of the climate. I am not talking about ivory tower dictating from above, but instead the ditch diggers that do this every day of their life out of love of subject. The goal is not to “save the planet” but to nail the forecast.”
Read the rest.
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather

P Wilson (07:23:16) :
“…What confuses me is the snowfalls in th e US and Canada are more considerable, yet you don’t get the same paralysis. I guess it’s because we haven’t had a cold winter like this for a long time (apart from last year)”
In Ottawa, Canada we just are just a lot more prepared for the winter.
City snow-removal equipment: 700 plows and trucks, about one for every 750 people.
Snow removal budget 2008: $65 million, about $130.00 per person
Amount of salt used: 220,000-plus tonnes, about 400 kilos per person
Amount of snow moved: 2.4 million cubic metres, about 5 cubic meters per person.
We can move a lot of snow. We can clear a 20 cm. snowfall from the city roads in less than a day.
We salt/sand all the road sometimes just in case of freezing train, why wait.
If this keeps up, someday you will too.

Alan the Brit (08:13:57) :
Mark Bowlin (07:08:01) :
“I suspect it’s a cold cold winter in East Anglia.”
——————————————————————
How will they ban Mother Nature from their global warming science!? What a travesty!
Maybe Ben Santer can beat her up.

Spen (08:08:25) :
‘A spokesman for the National Grid said the alert had been effective in prompting electricity companies to import more gas or switch to coal-fired power stations. ‘
Presumably the lack of wind means all those expensive windfarms are not working. Tut. Tut. More bloody carbon dioxide but hopefully that might warm things up a bit.
—————————————————————-
Don’t bet good money on that. You may need it for home heating—-or to buy used books at Goodwill for winter warmth….
you know, curling up by the fire of a good book.

oldgifford (07:53:24) :
the 36,700 old people
Do you have the link or the source for this. I really want to know it.

Just The Facts (20:46:28) :
Rajendra Pachauri…
I heard it said that pressure on people magnifies what is in them. It’s like squeezing a sponge: whatever is in it comes out. The pressure on Rajendra Pachauri from a poor Copenhagen showing, and the cooling earth, is showing what is in him.

Burning paper can be done. Books burn slowly. But so does a lot of other high-density paper, not just because of the lack of air. There is stuff like clay and fabric in paper, which doesn’t burn (/well).
But you can recover a lot of heat by burning paper. Best done with a cross-cut paper shredder and compressed air to feed the paper intothe furnace.
Maybe CRU @ UEA has some pre-shredded paper?!? 🙂

E.M.Smith (02:08:09) :
“….Under the old USSR they found pig farmers feeding bread to pigs, since it was subsidised to cheaper than grain…
Coal in the USA runs about $20 to $50 a TON last time I looked. (But in some places is as low as $12 / TON in some years).
So whenever you distort prices artificially, you get bizarre results like burning books or running cars on corn…
When will folks learn that the laws of economics are just as immutable as the laws of physics?
@Roy:
Per the search function in my browser, first use of “fireplace” is in your comment, not the article. The article does say a large book can last all night. That does not happen in an open fireplace, but does in a very efficient wood stove.
My conclusion: They are using wood stoves, not fireplaces, and you have leapt off a cliff of conclusion…
Save The Books, send coal to Newcastle…”
I hate to say this but I feed our goats and sheep bread here in the USA because it is cheaper than grain. There is a waiting list at the bread store for “day old” bread. I imagine the Russians were using fresh bread though. (Corn and other grains are produced at below production costs in the USA thanks to tax subsidies according to one PEW report)
I also think the Brits use coal stoves and not the wood stoves we have here in the USA. If I recall correctly, we were warned NOT to burn coal in our new wood stove. I mention this because I think specially built coals stoves would handle slow burning fuel like coal and books more easily. Perhaps our friends in the UK could comment.

From yesterday’s browsing France’s public debt for 2009 75% of GDP, Germany 78%, Greece 120%.
Because the Fed is trading short term Treasuries for longer term commercial paper and banks are buying equities on margin we now see interests rates starting to climb before the support ends! Treasuries are already underperforming.
China warned after Copenhagen that there is not enough money in the world to support a doubling of US debt, i.e., this year followed by last.
The end is met. Hyperstagflation and Near-eastern conflagration in 2010.

The first time I visited London, on our honeymoon, was in 1995. My wife and I both being bibliophiles, we of course visited Charing Cross Rd, the famous London bookstore area. We were apalled to find shops selling 200 yr old books *by the yard* at negligible prices for interior decorating purposes.
The Brits have *a lot* of old books. . . tho keep this up for awhile and they won’t. I’m still apalled, particularly knowing how often used bookstores can have some real valuable gems mispriced due to ignorance.

photon without a Higgs (20:47:05) :
oldgifford (07:53:24) :
the 36,700 old people
Do you have the link or the source for this. I really want to know it.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/deaths1109.pdf
Excess winter mortality
highest since 1999/2000
There were an estimated 36,700 excess winter deaths in England
and Wales in 2008/9, an increase of 49 per cent on the previous
year, according to provisional estimates published today by the
Office for National Statistics. This is the highest number since
1999/2000.
The excess winter mortality (EWM) index is calculated so that
comparisons can be made between sexes, age groups and regions,
and is calculated as the number of excess winter deaths divided by
the average non-winter deaths, expressed as a percentage.
The greatest numbers of excess deaths occurred in people aged
over 85. Continuing recent trends, women accounted for the highest
number of excess winter deaths. There are more women aged over
85 than men, which explains the majority of the higher number of
excess winter deaths seen in women.

Oh, and I forgot to insert their mild to normal winter forecast for 2009/2010.

Local businessmen Craig Compeau and Rudy Gavora contracted the piece from award-winning sculptor Steve Dean and say they’ll keep erecting one each winter until Gore accepts an invitation to discuss the global warming issue in Fairbanks.