AVAA Politics

Hatred of those on benefits is dangerously out of control

glen_quagmire — Sun, 20 May 2012 07:46:33 GMT

What does it say about modern Britain when the pre-meditated massacre of six children is described as "an accident waiting to happen" on national television? In the early hours of last Friday, someone poured petrol through the letterbox of the Philpott household, unleashing a blaze that ended in one of the most appalling mass murders in our country's recent history. Whoever was responsible must have known the almost inevitable consequences of their actions. No rationalisations exist for this sort of atrocity.

But as the surviving Philpotts face an agony most would struggle to imagine, right-wing shock-jock Carole Malone argued that they had effectively brought it on themselves. "This family became a target a couple of years ago," she argued on ITV's This Morning; they had "probably upset a lot of people" by being a family of 17 who were receiving state benefits. "I suspect they have many enemies out there because they were seen to be on benefits," she suggested with a tone that did not betray a hint of compassion. With the country in such a dire financial state, "People have seen families � maybe like this � wanting to take advantage." Referring to the "culture of the family" and the fact they had brought "attention to themselves", Malone concluded that "six innocent children have died as a result".

Malone has form. In 2009, she absurdly claimed that illegal immigrants received "free cars". The Press Complaints Commission forced the now defunct News of the World to apologise and publish a full retraction. After Karen Matthews shocked the nation by kidnapping her own daughter to extort money from the tabloid press, Malone claimed to have lived "next" to a council estate "full of people like Karen Matthews". They were part of a "sub (human) class that now exists in the murkiest, darkest corners of this country", she claimed, as though an abhorrent individual such as Karen Matthews was representative of anybody but herself. But as contemptible as this proven propagator of untruths is, Malone merely reflects prejudice that is increasingly rampant in austerity Britain. On the same day the children were killed, I am told that a producer at a leading radio station suggested using the tragedy as a hook for a feature on large families.

Before the general election, some of the media delighted in using the Philpotts as evidence the welfare system was out of control. They were featured on ITV shows Ann Widdecombe Versus The Benefit Culture and The Jeremy Kyle Show, and in several newspapers. The coverage had a simple aim: to provide proof of the age-old suspicion that the poor are breeding too much � and at taxpayers' expense, too. It was a sentiment that was rife among the eugenicists who flourished in inter-war Britain; and Thatcher's mentor, Keith Joseph, ruined his Conservative leadership ambitions in the mid-1970s by claiming that "our human stock is threatened" by single parents "in [social] classes 4 and 5" having too many children.

Echoing this tradition, Jeremy Hunt argued before the general election that long-term claimants had to "take responsibility' for the number of children they had, adding that the state would no longer fund large workless families. But it is all based on myths. Just 3.4 per cent of families in long-term receipt of benefits have four children or more.

Hatred against those receiving benefits is out of control in Cameron's Britain. The Tories transformed a crisis of capitalism into a crisis of public spending, and determined that the most vulnerable would make the biggest sacrifices. But taking away support from the disabled, the unemployed and the working poor is not straightforward. It can only be achieved by a campaign of demonisation � to crush any potential sympathy. Benefit recipients must only appear as feckless, workshy scroungers, living in opulent quasi-mansions with wall-to-wall widescreen TVs, rampaging around the Canary Islands courtesy of handouts from the squeezed taxpayer. Benefit fraud does exist � according to Government estimates, it is worth less than 1 per cent of welfare spending � but the most extreme examples are passed off as representative, or as the "tip of the iceberg". The reality is all but airbrushed out of existence.

Earlier this year, a Sunday Times article featured the headline "End the something for nothing culture". Below was a picture of the Gallagher family from the comedy-drama Shameless, as though these fictional caricatures were real life. This one-time paper of record quoted a Whitehall official on benefit recipients: "If we want them to tap dance, then they will tap dance." Rod Liddle � who dresses up the boorish rants of a thick pub bore as journalism � claimed that his new year's resolution "was to become disabled", perhaps with a "newly invented" illness like fibromyalgia, so he could claim benefits. As the economic catastrophe that began four years ago led to a national jobs' crisis � there are now over six million people looking for full-time work � the "scrounger'"caricature perversely has become more and more popular.

It is tempting to ignore the ramblings of glorified internet trolls like Liddle, but their projected ignorance has consequences. Six of the biggest disability charities have warned that the campaign of demonisation � by both journalists and politicians � has led to a surge in abuse towards people with disabilities. According to Scope, two-thirds reported abuse in September last year, up from 41 per cent just four months earlier.

But this campaign helps sustain public acquiescence in a massacre of the welfare state. George Osborne plans �10bn of further benefit cuts; Cameron's parting spinmeister Steve Hilton has proposed �25bn. Half a million people are to have their disability living allowance taken away, even though the estimated fraud rate is just 0.5 per cent. People with serious illnesses are being stripped of their employment and support allowance, after undergoing the horrendous (and often humiliating) ordeal of a points-based assessment by French corporation Atos. One man with a degenerative lung disease, Larry Newman, was awarded no points � just a few weeks before he died of his illness. Under New Labour (let's not forget who started this), one woman had her benefits cut after missing an assessment appointment � because she was in hospital having chemotherapy for stomach cancer.

But we rarely see this reality: it is intentionally hidden from us. The Government and much of the media divert anger from those who caused the crisis, to your "scrounging" neighbour down the street. And so we end with Carole Malone arguing that a family whose children died in a fire brought it on themselves. It is beyond shameful. And it must be challenged.

An answer to an query.

Franklin216 — Sat, 19 May 2012 16:52:06 GMT

From Flavius Josephus: Book One < Chapter Thee Paragraph 9.

Now when Noah had lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood, and that all that time happily,
he died, having lived the number of nine hundred and fifty years. But let no one, upon comparing the
lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have
said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument, that neither did they attain
to so long a duration of life, for those ancients were beloved of God, and [lately] made by God himself;
and because their food was then fitter for the prolongation of life, might well live so great a number of
years: and besides, God afforded them a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use
they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time of
foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had lived six hundred years; for the great year is
completed in that interval. Now I have for witnesses to what I have said, all those that have written
Antiquities, both among the Greeks and barbarians; for even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian History,
and Berosus, who collected the Chaldean Monuments, and Mochus, and Hestieus, and, besides these,
Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phoenician History, agree to what I here say:
Hesiod also, and Hecatseus, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus; and, besides these, Ephorus and Nicolaus relate
that the ancients lived a thousand years. But as to these matters, let every one look upon them as he
thinks fit.

Occupy Bilderberg 2012

glen_quagmire — Sat, 19 May 2012 09:25:31 GMT

http://www.prisonplanet.com/occupy-bilderberg-2012.html

Some of the REAL masters of the universe.

Non-Hispanic US white births now the minority in US

MaskedMerganser — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:34:46 GMT

Children from racial and ethnic minorities now account for more than half the births in the US, according to estimates of the latest US census data.

Black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race births made up 50.4% of new arrivals in the year ending in July 2011.

It puts non-Hispanic white births in the minority for the first time.

Sociologists believe the ongoing economic slowdown has contributed to a greater decline in birth rates among white people.

The US Census Bureau recorded 2.02m babies born to minorities in the year to July 2011, just over half of all births, compared with 37% in 1990.

'Sharp diversion'
US birth rates have been declining, but the drop has been larger for white people.

Continue reading the main story
�
Start Quote

There's a sharp diversion between the older population... and the young population that is foreign to them�

William Frey
Brookings Institution
What will a white-minority America look like?
The number of white births has fallen by 11.4% since 2008, compared with 3.2% for minorities, according to Kenneth Johnson, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire.

William Frey, head of demographics at the Brookings Institution, said the data presaged a new set of challenges to the US in years to come.

"There's a sharp division between the older population - with the votes and the money and the power, and a lot of needs - and the young population that is foreign to them and with whom they have no personal connection," he told the BBC.

As population changes the US will see an inevitable decline in the numbers of whites in the labour force, Mr Frey said, adding that better pathways to education were needed for the changing demographic groups.

In its analysis, the Census Bureau found that the national median age rose slightly to 37.2 years, and the number of people in the US who are 65 or older increased by 1.1m to 41.4m. There are now 5.7m people who are over the age of 85.

Hispanic peak?
The nation's minority population now makes up 36.6% of the total US population.

Hispanics make up the largest minority in the US, forming 16.7% of the population in 2011. They are also the fastest growing group and have seen a 3.1% population increase since 2010.

Continue reading the main story
Changing face of the US

50.4% of babies born in the year ending July 2011 are minorities
There were 52m Hispanics in the US in 2011 - the largest minority group - followed by 43.9m African-Americans
The Hispanic population grew at a rate of 3.1,% with Asian population growing by 3% since 2010
More than half the populations of four states - Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Texas - plus Washington DC - are minorities
But demographers also believe the Hispanic population boom may now have peaked.

"The Latino population is very young, which means they will continue to have a lot of births relative to the general population," Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau said.

"But we're seeing a slowdown that is likely the result of multiple factors: declining Latina birth rates combined with lower immigration levels. If both of these trends continue, they will lead to big changes down the road."

As well as changes in birth rates among Hispanics, studies have shown that immigration levels are also changing. A recent survey by the Pew Hispanic Center showed migration to the US from Mexico has begun to decline after four decades of sustained growth.

The data also showed African-Americans comprise the second largest US minority group, with a population of 43.9m in 2011, while Asians are growing second-fastest at a rate of 3% since 2010.

Four states - Hawaii, California, New Mexico, Texas - and the District of Columbia are now counted as majority-minority states, with more than half their population made up of minority groups.

Facebook valued at $104 billion dollars??

glen_quagmire — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:06:15 GMT

It's offical. The world has gone fucking crazy.

Eduardo Saverin's tax-free global citizenship

glen_quagmire — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:26:54 GMT

Eduardo Saverin imagines himself a "citizen of the world". His is an unofficial description, but one that an elite class of super-rich people and multinational companies increasingly take for granted.

Saverin's name stood out when the US government published its latest list of Americans who had renounced their citizenship. He is the co-founder of Facebook, owner of about 4% of the company; and with this week's public offering of shares, he is about to move from rich to super-rich.

But apparently, not sufficiently rich. Despite his claim to the New York Times � an example of PR backfilling if ever there was one � it's blatantly obvious that taxes were deeply implicated in Saverin's move, which took place last year, but has only now been publicized.

He's apparently paid some taxes on his windfall, based on a Facebook valuation from 2011 that is certainly much lower than the IPO price will be Friday; if he'd stayed in the US and sold shares after the IPO, he'd be required to pay capital gains taxes on the value at the time of the sale, which, based on prior speculation, is likely to be much higher than the offering price.

Now, he's home free, because in Singapore, where he's spent much of his time during the past several years, there are no capital gains taxes.

Perhaps the difference in capital gains and other taxes amounts to a mere $100m, as the Times suggested, or $600m � the latter based on the likely value of his shares this week (and on an assumption that he'd sell them at once). To almost everyone, this is real money, even to someone who stands to have wealth in excess of $4bn.

Saverin's self-serving move has drawn the contempt it deserves from a number of commentators, though much of the criticism has been inaccurate in some details. Farhad Manjoo's blog post, entitled "What Eduardo Saverin Owes America (Hint: Nearly Everything)", is one such blast against the Brazilian native who now professes allegiance, sort of, to Singapore. Manjoo pointed out that Saverin would almost certainly be a nonentity had it not been for what he gained after his family's move to the US from his native land. Naturally, meanwhile, this new monument to selfishness is a hero to the crowd that loathes taxes in general, but especially progressive taxation.

Saverin's case should be seen in context. Tax havens are not new. The super-rich have been relocating for decades. Increasingly, however, these people and any number of corporate entities are making it plain that they now belong to a new elite: a global class whose only serious obligation is to its own interests. And as beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies spread, these nomads can always find regimes that will cater to them.

So, it is not remotely surprising that Apple, the most valuable company on the planet, is also a world-class tax avoider, as the New York Times reported recently. Apple is far from alone in using multinational operations and a variety of corporate fronts to reduce the taxes it pays, especially at home. But its strategies lend a certain hollowness to one of its slogans � that its products are proudly "Designed by Apple in California", even if they're built in China. Like so many other global enterprises, Apple spends millions on lawyers and accountants whose sole job is to use various nations' laws as gears in their own financial engines.

It's pointless to suggest to the Apples and Severins of our world that they would never have achieved such heights of prosperity had it not been for, among many other things, America's economic and legal systems (among other benefits they've enjoyed). Contrary to conservative dogma, the US has nurtured wealth creation. And our government, despite many misguided policies (including some tax policies), goes to extraordinary lengths to take care of the interests of the top 1% of the 1%. But why should the Apples and Severins care, when as "global citizens", they can work the system and get more of what they want?

Perhaps the rest of us should care. Not because these people and companies lack even a shred of loyalty to the nations that helped make them what they are. We should care because the rest of us, ultimately, bear the tax burdens the new global elite shirks.

There's no easy way to do anything about this. But we should ask ourselves whether we're satisfied with a world where the global elite enjoys its special perks as it pursues wealth and power, but makes everyone else foot the bill.

What are we doing with our lives?

Myrpou — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:12:10 GMT

Greece: here come the vulture funds

glen_quagmire — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:27:01 GMT

Not everyone is unhappy about the desperate straits of the Greek economy. A group of financial "investors" made a killing on Greek debt on Tuesday � purely by being the most unscrupulous players in the market.

Dart Management is an investment fund based in the Cayman Islands, a British territory notorious for its tax haven status. Dart's business model has earned it the title "vulture fund".

Vultures "invest" in the sovereign debt of countries facing crisis � meaning they can buy debt cheap. They then "hold out" against any form of write-down on this debt. By doing this, they hope to get paid out in full. Given they paid a fraction of the value of the debt, getting full repayment represents an enormous profit.

Vulture funds honed their skills against developing countries: Elliott Associates, a US hedge fund, pioneered the model back in the 1990s, winning a case against Peru which earned it 400% what it paid for the debts. Elliott is also believed to own some of Greece's debt. Dart meanwhile took $600m from Brazil following its 1993 crisis.

In recent years, vulture funds have targeted some of the world's most impoverished countries. Liberia and Zambia have both been hauled before British courts and told to pay out to funds which have bought up very old debts, run up by dictatorial regimes, very cheaply.

When countries refuse to pay up, the vultures chase them around the world, attempting to seize the overseas assets of the country in question. In one case, a particularly noxious vulture fund tried to seize aid money headed for the Republic of Congo. To this day, Democratic Republic of Congo is being pursued by another fund called FG Hemisphere and is currently in legal dispute over assets based on Jersey. The final appeal will be heard in London on 28 May, but under Jersey law.

A law passed in the dying days of the last parliament now prevents vulture funds profiteering on the old debts of very low income countries in British courts � a huge step forward. But this law does not apply to other countries � from Nigeria to Greece � or to new debts.

Argentina gives some clue of what may be in store for Greece in years to come. Since that country defaulted back in 2001, after years of unjust debt burdens brought it to its knees, it was swamped with lawsuits from vulture funds that refused to accept Argentina's writedown. These funds include both Dart and Elliott, and an umbrella group known as the American Task Force Argentina which has attempted to capture US foreign policy as a means of forcing Argentina to pay up on these debts.

For such companies, a crisis as big as Greece's is mouth-watering. For months vulture funds have been working out the best way to pursue vulture strategies against Greece. Vultures have been buying up foreign-law Greek bonds because bonds controlled by Greek law were forced by a majority to accept the writedown.

The Greek writedown was a very good deal for bondholders who were paid 50% of the face value at a time when those same bonds were actually trading for around 35% value � and they got a cash incentive. But that was not good enough for the vultures. American law firm Bingham McCutchen was reported to be trying to organise a group of such funds in order to take legal action to get paid the full value of their bonds.

For some of those funds, Tuesday was payday. Rather than risk legal action, Greece decided to make a repayment of �436m on its foreign-governed debts. Of this total, 90% reportedly went to Dart Management. While the Greek welfare state collapses and society suffers rises in rates of suicide, murder and HIV, Kenneth Dart can sit back on his 220ft yacht in the Cayman Islands and count his winnings.

Holders of over �6bn refused to swap Greek debt � so this will not be the end of such scandals. But we are not powerless to stop them. One vulture fund chief told the Financial Times: "We thrive on people being misinformed." Step one is to introduce transparency into bond trading. It is shocking that the people of Greece do not even know who owns their debt, when they bought it or how much they paid for it.

David Cameron and George Osborne have been clear that the EU needs to sort out its problems � but they have done nothing to stop the vulture funds whose debt is governed by British law. The government can force all British-law creditors to accept the writedown already agreed. Or it could go further and legislate to prevent exorbitant gains being made on debts purchased on the secondary market � such a law has already been floated in the US Congress.

Greece is in the frontline of a battle between unscrupulous investors and people who want their economy to work in the public interest. It is not good enough for governments to simply sit back and declare "that's just how things are".

Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find

glen_quagmire — Thu, 17 May 2012 07:23:52 GMT

The last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according to a new report by scientists that supports the case for a reduction in manmade carbon emissions.

In the first major study of its kind in the region, scientists at the University of Melbourne used natural data from 27 climate indicators, including tree rings, corals and ice cores to map temperature trends over the past 1,000 years.

"Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1,000-year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone, suggesting a strong influence of human-caused climate change in the Australasian region," said the study's lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis.

The climate reconstruction was done in 3,000 different ways and concluded with 95% accuracy that no other period in the past 1,000 years match or exceeded post-1950 warming in Australia.

The study, published in the Journal of Climate, will be part of Australia's contribution to the fifth Intergovernmetal Panel on Climate Change report, due in 2014.

As part of the study, climate modellers used the natural data to analyse the impact of both natural events, like volcanic eruptions in the pre-industrial era, and the impact of human-induced climate change such as greenhouse gasses emissions on temperatures in the last millennium.

Dr Steven Phipps, from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, who carried out the modeling, said the study demonstrated strong human influence on the climate in the region.

"The models showed that prior to 1850 there were not any long-term trends and temperature variations were likely to be caused by natural climate variability which is a random process," he said.

"But [the modeling showed] 20th-century warming significantly exceeds the amplitude of natural climate variability and demonstrates that the recent warming experience in Australia is unprecedented within the context of the last millennium."

Annual average daily maximum temperatures in Australia have increased by 0.75C since 1910. Since the 1950s each decade has been warmer than the one before it.

Australia's peak scientific body, the CSIRO, has said temperatues will rise by between 1C and 5C by 2070 when compared with recent decades. It predicts the number of droughts in southern Australia will increase in the future and that there will be an increase in intense rainfall in many areas.

GREECE and the GREEKS

humesays — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:03:35 GMT

GREECE will continue to say STUPID THINGS and do STUPID THINGS ...... UNTIL......

THE WORLD GIVES THEM EVERYTHING THEY WANT OR CAN IMAGINE !!!!!!

:sucks: :3some: :3some:

New Greek elections as coalition talks fai

Bosanac — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:15:20 GMT

Greece is set to go to the polls again after days of coalition talks failed to produce agreement on a new government, says the leader of the Socialist Pasok party, Evangelos Venizelos.

A final round of talks on Tuesday morning broke up without a deal.

In elections on 6 May, a majority of Greek voters backed parties opposed to austerity plans demanded by the EU and IMF in return for two bailouts.

The Greek president will appoint a caretaker government on Wednesday.

President Karolos Papoulias will meet all political leaders at 13:00 (10:00 GMT) on Wednesday to put in place an interim government until the new vote, which is expected to take place on 10 or 17 June.

"Unfortunately, the country is heading again toward elections," Mr Venizelos told reporters after the talks on Tuesday.

The euro fell sharply on the news, tumbling from $1.2842 to $1.2771 shortly after 13:15 GMT - its lowest value since 18 January.

Greek shares also fell before recovering slightly.

The leader of the right-wing Independent Greeks Party, Panos Kammenos, said: "The pro-bailout parties would prefer a government which will further torment the Greek nation, rather than finding a solution. They have offered a proposal that is too rigid for me to accept".

Euro exit?

European leaders say that they will cut off funding for Greece if it rejects the bailout agreed in March.

This would mean effective bankruptcy for Greece and its all but certain exit from the European single currency, analysts say.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble again ruled out amending the bailout agreement.

"The people in Greece must know that what we have agreed for Greece and have set in train is an entirely unusual effort," he said after talks in Brussels on Tuesday.

Polls suggest the leftist Syriza bloc, which came second in the 6 May vote and rejects all further cutbacks, could become the largest party after a new election.

Syriza wants to renegotiate the bailout package but also wants to keep Greece in the euro.

Greece must also decide whether to redeem an outstanding bond worth 436m euros ($558.67 million) which matures on Tuesday.

A Greek official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that Athens would pay off the debt on schedule, thereby avoiding a default.

The chairman of the eurozone group of finance minister, Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, said on Monday he wanted Greece to remain in the single currency but warned that Athens must keep to its commitments.

Pasok and New Democracy, which signed up to the bailouts and had previously dominated Greek politics for decades, saw their combined share of the vote drop from about 77% to about 33% on 6 May.

Australian project simulates effects of runaway climate change

glen_quagmire — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:03:25 GMT

An Australian university has embarked upon an ambitious project � hailed as the first of its kind in the world � to simulate how the environment would cope with runaway climate change.

The decade-long study, at the University of Western Sydney's Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, will subject Australian bushland to heightened CO2 levels and altered rainfall patterns consistent with a "business as usual" global increase in greenhouse gases.

The centrepiece of the study is the Eucalyptus Free Air CO2 Enrichment experiment, which has involved the construction of six fibre glass and steel ring structures 28 metres high and 25 metres in diameter in native woodland in Richmond, New South Wales. The structures contain an array of sensors that will deliver a concentration of CO2 to the trees within the rings.

This, scientists say, will recreate an atmosphere where CO2 is at 550 ppm � about 40% higher than current levels � to see how the environment would change for living things, including humans.

This level of CO2 has been chosen to mimic how the environment would react in a world where no significant action is taken to reduce carbon emissions over the next 35 years.

It has been predicted that a 40% increase in CO2 would result in an average global temperature increase of about three degrees centigrade.

An automated computer-controlled system will modulate the amount of CO2 pumped from the rings, to account for environmental variability.

Scientists will use a giant 43-metre high crane to study the impact on all parts of the towering eucalypt trees, such as soil bacteria and fungi, the growth patterns of the tree canopy and the insects that dwell in the foliage.

The sprawling facilities at the institute have been funded via a AUS$40 million (�25m) grant from the federal government, bolstering a $15m investment by the University of Western Sydney.

Prof David Ellsworth, who is leading the "free air" experiment, was involved in a similar study at Duke University in the US.

"That study was with plantation trees and we found there was less [growth] enhancement than we expected with the higher CO2 levels," he said.

"But there's been nothing like this before, on this scale. We're dealing with native woodland and poorer soils. It's an area with impoverished phosphorus and nutrition in the soil, which is the same as the environment in many areas of the world in the tropics and sub tropics.

"It will give us a window into how biodiversity will behave in futuristic conditions."

The first results from the study, which is due to launch in September, will be published next year.

However, the institute has already conducted preliminary research � the findings can be read here and here � on a small collection of trees over the past 18 months, to test their responses to heightened CO2 and warmer temperatures.

"The outcome was that the trees had a limited ability to adjust," said Ellsworth. "They didn't cope well with a warm Sydney summer. Photosynthesis decreased. They stopped growing, basically.

"Heightened CO2 levels have been shown to initially aid plant growth, but previous studies have shown this can last as little as a few months.

"To put it crudely, plants want a balanced diet. CO2 is part of that diet, but they also need nutrients that aren't depleted."

The institute insists its work isn't only of interest to Australia, where modelling has predicted a temperature rise of as much as 5C, coupled with more frequent droughts, by 2070 if no action on emissions is taken.

Prof Ian Anderson, director of research at the institute, said scientists from the UK, Brazil and South Africa had already contacted the institute about the research.

"The soils are very different here to the northern hemisphere, but plants there rely on the same equation of CO2, nitrogen and phosphorus as they do here," he said.

"We are also looking at the impact of drought and because we will potentially see big water reductions in the future, the results here will be very important for the rest of the world."

Ellsworth said: "I really hope the big players, like China and the US, are paying attention to research like this.

"If we don't want to be saturated by carbon in 2040 or 2050, the international community really needs to be in its final run of cutting of emissions right now."

I have returned

Bosanac — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:49:51 GMT

... So is it still Franklin masturbating to his own posts, or is there some actual debate that I've been missing out on for the last three years?

The Deception of Rising Sea Levels

Vinylhound — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:20:59 GMT

The deception of rising sea levels

One of the more mystifying claims in the global warming/climate change debate is that of sea levels rising. There is a huge variation amongst scientists, from Al Gore's figure of 65m per century to NIWA's 1998 Lyttelton study of 1mm per year (10c per century); a disparity of 65,000%. That degree of error disqualifies claims of plausibility, even throwing doubt on NIWA's work.

With that degree of uncertainty, it is difficult to see how anybody can be sure the sea is rising at all.

How, it may be asked, can 1mm change in sea level be calculated, averaged over one entire year or a hundred years, when even a flat sea at rest undulates more than that with waves every few seconds, and tide height just in one day varies by some two metres.

To say a tide height is higher we require knowing higher than what? To fairly compare tide heights one needs a past reference height to compare with one in the present. Finding the former is not possible because (at least 10) factors that influence tide height do together repeat.

We are talking of phase of the moon, lunar declination, perigee cycle, high and low pressure zones that can suck heights up or depress them, and winds onshore that can blow water into a harbour or offshore depleting a bay.

Equinox tides are higher than solstice tides. The sea is warmer in summer, therefore higher. Underwater earthquakes, eruptions, and fissures raise local sea-levels, most non-recordable and/or undetectable.

Rainfall at sea, river flows and land run-offs contribute to sea-levels. Temperature changes control density and water volumes, ever-shifting in the ocean, and the direction of currents both deep, mid and surface, alter sea height. Cycles of glaciers' advance and retreat change heights of the ocean.

In short, we haven't a clue how high sea levels are ever supposed to be in any fixed place, to a tolerance of 1mm per year, when everything connected to the sea is in constant flux.

The sea is not a lake or a pond. No computer model can pretend that it is, just for the sake of a neat result.

Examinating old photographs, sketches and tide markers reveals high watermarks unchanged on NZ beaches, apart from erosion due to changing currents.

Disappearing sand is a cycle, a function of lower than normal sea levels because lower water undermines foreshore and top sand collapses.

Without higher water to re-deposit sand higher up the shoreline, over a long time period a beach can ebb slowly away.

Higher tides deposit more sand because sand is heavier than water - surf brings sand in by momentum of wave action, and leaves it there when water recedes. Erosion cycles are just that, cycles.

As of last month we have started getting higher than normal tides again, after months of smaller tidal variation. Erosion on east coast beaches like Ngunguru, Whitianga and Hawkes Bay will reverse as sand is replaced.

If this was not cyclic, all sand on all beaches would have gone long before now.
Without monitoring over all oceans we cannot know if sea-levels are rising.

We only have measuring devices on 0.4% on the earth's surface where humans live. Special buoys now report via satellite using Argos transmitters, but we need to wait several centuries to achieve a reliable average to comment on any future century's departure from average.

Antarctic and Arctic ice are thickening, which means sea levels are dropping.

On Tuvalu and other island atolls it is the land that is moving, not the sea. Small atolls like Tuvalu cannot be sliding under the sea whilst beaches in Australia and NZ stay unaffected. How would the sea decide which countries to send beneath the waves?

As we emerge from this interglacial the poles are the smallest they have been in a while and some sea-levels the highest they aspire to. Some countries are still rebounding after the last ice age- Scotland is rising and the south of England is lowering. The west of Australia is rising whilst the east is dropping. There is a similar differential between our north and south island.

The high watermark on any beach varies up and down the sand by about a metre every 10 minutes. To that add just 1 millimetre per year, the thickness of a grain of sand.

Is the thought of that terrifying anyone?

Monetarists claim way to boost growth is to abolish labour laws

glen_quagmire — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:15:58 GMT

You've got to hand it to the Chicago school of monetarists. From what seemed like almost certain defeat 30 years ago, they are back in business.

In the 1980s, there was the failure of Geoffrey Howe's first two budgets, only rescued by a jumble sale of under-invested state assets and ultra-low commodity prices. In the 1990s, they championed faster and purer markets, unencumbered by regulation. They claimed every area of economic life could be virtually self-regulating, especially exotic financial products.

After the financial crash, precipitated largely by this flawed theory, instead of slinking away, they had another solution. Now austerity has run into the ground two years after its adoption (largely by the rightwing governments of Europe). Again no apology, just a pitstop for refuelling and a new proposal.

Growth built on cuts in workers' terms and conditions: obviously this is not a new idea for monetarists. But it has been given a special place in speeches by Europe's remaining rightwing leaderships in the past two weeks. We can give you growth, said Germany's foreign secretary Guido Westerwelle in a speech last Friday, but not at the expense of government spending cuts, not in Germany or Greece or Spain. It must involve supply-side reforms, he said, which is generally a monetarist euphemism for reduced labour rights. (And monopolistic practices, though in truth with a focus on cabbies and chemists more than big companies and the professions.)

Westerwelle, leading representative in Angela Merkel's coalition of the free market FDP, said Brussels should also better target its existing subsidies, encourage private investment in large cross-border transport routes, and tear down more barriers to free trade.

In Britain it is the same story. The Treasury said the Queen's speech contained measures to promote growth. Yet the only bill recognisably designed to support business is one that helps firms more easily fire staff.

In this way, rightwing elites besotted with monetarist ideas continue to hold sway, zigging and zagging to keep control of the debate and combat critics of austerity.

It is alarming how easily monetarist ideas have prevailed. Without much competition from left-leaning thinktanks and academics, monetarists have convinced working people they are the reformers and that social democrat parties are a conservative barrier to recovery. Social democrats only seek to preserve the privileges and outmoded practices that got us into trouble, they argue.

Privately, or in small gatherings, they admit to flaws in their design for global capitalism based on an absence of regulation, but deny it provided the unstable foundations to the boom years. Using Margaret Thatcher's technique of constant repetition in parliament, in the media and to their constituents, monetarists maintain it was the profligacy of social democratic-style governments that was really to blame.

There is no need to repeat the facts and figures that show this is a ridiculous argument. Suffice it to say that virtually all the government's extra borrowing in the past four years replaces missing taxes from property, personal incomes and corporate profits while at the same time paying more in benefits (and that is without including the billions of pounds lost in bank bailouts).

The crime committed by Gordon Brown, Hank Paulson in the US and finance ministers across Europe of all political colours was to believe in the low regulation story and watch, with regulators at their side, as banks went on a lending spree.

Westerwelle and his colleague, finance minister Wolfgang Sch�uble, are two of the most dangerous characters in European politics, along with our own chancellor, George Osborne, for their adherence to the bankrupt idea that Europe cannot compete globally without cuts in real wages, benefits and working conditions.

While there are outmoded practices and crazy spending policies in different countries, attacking the living standards of ordinary workers is not going to produce the confidence we need for growth.

Many hope France's Socialist president-elect, Fran�ois Hollande, will undermine the dominance of monetarist policies, despite Westerwelle telling the Bundestag lower house of parliament: "The fiscal compact to lower national debts is irrevocable. "

Hollande has promised to try to renegotiate the pace of public spending cuts, rightly believing that only with a boost in state spending in beleaguered sectors of the economy will the private sector regain confidence. This fact goes to the heart of any critique of supply-side economics.

We can only leave the private sector to regenerate an economy if we have first let asset prices be destroyed. There is a myth that private businesses, in the main, take risks. Mainstream businesses, and especially those that are publicly owned, must be more circumspect. Banks ignored the rule because they enjoyed the protection of huge implicit state subsidies.

Business owners will buy land, factories and shops only at recession-hit, knockdown prices before shifting up a gear, increasing investment and employing people. Only with the huge cushion provided by artificially low asset prices will these nervous creatures take their first expansionary steps.

This is the first postwar recession where asset prices have been supported by the Bank of England. Without its quantitative easing programme, house prices and land prices would have repeated the 50%-plus falls of the 1990s. Instead, homes fell 10% to 15% and have since recovered by half, according to the Land Registry.

In this environment, where asset prices remain high and banks, private or publicly owned, are weighed down by toxic debt, everyone will sit on their hands. Only collective action by citizens, which is what governments are, can make up for the restrictions placed on the private sector by shareholders.

Westerwelle thinks of the Greeks much as Henry II perceived Thomas Becket: troublesome and better off out of the picture. But only because he denies basic economic truths for the southern European countries his government effectively controls. Without a route out of disaster � a cheap currency, a robust banking system ready to lend or booming export markets � they will crash. The only comfort is the FDP's low poll ratings. It currently ranks behind the Pirate party in some areas and has less than the 5% needed to gain parliamentary seats. With elections next year, perhaps all Hollande needs to do is bide his time