Get Over It

There is a perception, amongst some, that the world is going to hell in a handcart. A terrorist bomb goes off, the US dumps excess stock of cruise missiles in the Middle East, Putin does some sabre rattling and oh my God World War III is going to start! A tornado picks up a tractor in the US, a small town is flooded in the UK, climate activists issue another ‘it’s worse than we thought’ report and oh my God Earth is going to become Venus and we are all going to die! Corbyn got more votes than expected and Britain is going to turn into Venezuela! Students and opportunist thieves burn cars and break into shops in Hamburg and fascism is on the rise! Brexit will cause the economic collapse of the UK! We only have (select preference) days to save the NHS! The ice caps will all melt by 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 etc. and we’re all going to drown! While Trump is a fascist dictator!

It’s bullshit, mostly.

We like to join the dots and recognize patterns, even if they are not there. We like to tell stories. And the internet is perfect for these because more news is available and it is immediate. But you need to be selective if you want to put together a story. We are all addicted to confirmation bias. (I’m as guilty of it as anyone, and I’m guilty of it in this post.) You fear Islam? Well it’s easy to find numerous stories of Islamic atrocities all around the world and put those together as the fall of Western civilization. You dislike Brexit? Plenty of stories of how bad it is sure to be from partisan news media. You dislike socialism or capitalism? Easy to cite their catalogues of failures. You’re into the modern version of original sin? Plenty of stuff out there from the Church of Environmentalism to confirm for you how you are destroying the planet.

No, we are not descending into chaos. Shit happens. Shit has been happening forever. Natural and human-caused disasters have not, I would suggest, increased, while the political madness of the past with its putsches, exterminations and stomping of jackboots is not on the rise, in fact has been steadily declining since the World Wars. A hundred years ago religious fanatics were killing people, there was always a war somewhere (in fact WW1), natural disasters and diseases were wiping people out … only what you heard about these things was limited to newspapers, usually sometime after the fact. For example, if a tsunami had washed up on Sri Lanka back then would we have even known about it? Probably – a few column inches on page three of the Times a month after it happened.

And there’s another aspect to all this: bad news sells and is propagated while good news gets lost in the noise. People like bad news, probably because it’s life-affirming for them: hey, this terrible shit is happening … elsewhere and to someone else.

The reality: we are living longer more comfortable lives – compared to people a 100 years ago we in the Western world live like kings. Global poverty and starvation are steadily declining. Medical advances are steadily ridding us of diseases. Mind-blowing technologies are rampant and radically changing the way we live.

Life is good. Get over it. 

Larsen C Ice Shelf

I remember the Cockermouth flood in 2009 when, without delay, protestors had their green wellies on and 'save the planet' signs up and were marching down the flooded street. It was global warming you see. As I have been doing on and off for 20+ years since I realised something stank, I did some research. Oh right, the earliest recorded flooding was in 1761 (when they were catching salmon in the high street) since then flooding had occurred in 1771, 1852, 1874, 1918, 1931, 1932 , 1933, 1938, 1954, 1966, 2005, 2008.

Now a huge iceberg is breaking off the Larson C ice shelf in the Antarctic and, oh my god, the planet is melting. But context is all. That ice shelf was only discovered in 1893 and we have only been looking at the Antarctic properly, by satellite, since the 70s (just as world temperatures have only been measured accurately since then). The berg breaking off of Larsen C is an example of calving, which has been happening forever. Buried in the hype you will discover little details like … the thing was getting thicker before it broke off, which of course doesn’t fit the narrative. So, if you're buying the hysteria and think this calving of huge icebergs has never happened before, think again (Thanks to Steve Goddard):

We are also told that warming is a long term thing and that we must ignore the last 20-year hiatus in it. Don’t get me wrong. The increase in CO2 does increase the greenhouse effect and does have an effect. It has, for example caused a greening increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States. The real debate is not about whether this increase is true and causing warming, but about whether it is catastrophic. Catastrophists cite positive feedbacks that never happen, they cite computer models that are never right, they blithely tell us the ‘missing heat’ has, in defiance of simple physics, gone down into the ocean.

Take a chill pill.

A Blasted Heath

I was on the beach the other day when someone said, ‘Is there a fire up there?’ From the mountains, in a long swathe, the sky was stained umber. ‘Probably the power station,’ said someone else, and the matter dropped from my mind (The power station up the coast often spews out a filthy plume – probably when it’s ramping up output to compensate when the wind turbines have stopped ... because it’s too windy). 

 

On a following morning Tim phoned me from Armeni to check if everything was all right at Papagianades – if the fire had reached that far. He then described the Armageddon occurring in the mountains behind my house and to which I had been oblivious until then. Only after that phone call did I walk outside and notice the helicopters flying over to pick up tons of seawater to drop on this fire.

 

After hearing that the fire was out, I determined to go up and look, and take some pictures. I was especially concerned because the fire had burned across the areas I had been walking over during the previous months. The following morning turned out to be unseasonably cloudy, so good for a walk. I charged up my camera, found the bloody thing had decided to give up on me (the lens comes out then immediately goes back again – maybe a new battery required?) so picked up my Ipad and took that. The walk I took was a 6.5 mile circuit that sort of encompassed the fire. At no point, once I was outside of Papagianades, was the fire damage out of sight.  

 

 

On the way up to the top of the mountain about a mile behind my house. 

 

Higher still.

 

The view back towards Papagianades.

 

Up at the top. The wind turbines had been protected since they were surrounded by unburned growth. Chunks of melted fire hose scattered here and there were testament to the battle fought up here over a few days.

 

Some areas looking like those Var and Saul tramped through.

 

Burned out hill lying maybe two miles away from where I was standing.

 

View along the line of the turbines.

 

Towards Handras.

 

Must do a compare and contrast with this picture. Earlier in this blog you'll find exactly the same view, though in the Spring...

 

A couple along the line of the turbines again.

 

Burnt out slopes on the way down to Handras.

 

Slightly sick looking olive grove. Not sure how far beyond what you see here the fire went. It might have gone on for miles more.

 

Looking back towards the mountains from Handras.

 

Fire tenders in Handras.

 

One of the many sentinel tenders parked all around the fire. Apparently they stay in the area for days just in case the fire flares up again.

      

Courtesy of Jean-Pierre

Wow, I actually slept for 9 hours last night which, even under normal circumstances is a lot, but lately is more than half again my usual. It took me a while to get functional so I didn’t head off for my walk until 9.30. This time I went up to the turbines on the mountain behind, turned left to walk along beside them, then continued where I normally turn off for Handras.

 

It was a short extra bit to the walk because the track only continued for the remaining two turbines then stopped, so I turned round and headed back along my usual route. Still, 7 miles walked.

 

While up on the mountain I noticed some thistles coming up that must be a close relative to the artichoke plant. I have to wonder about what led people to domesticate this plant. How hungry must you be to try eating a thistle?

 

Other plants are zooming up. I am presuming the first here is dill – the fennel which grows here everywhere does not flower until later. The second one is a thorny shrub with red berries and I have no idea what it is.

 

Also spotted on the way back was a series of stumps protruding from a bank. I think they were the stumps of pear trees and it looks like shoots have been grafted on. A strange method has been used. The shoots are held on with inner-tube rubber, the top of the stump covered in a thick layer of mud (I’m guessing the kind of mud they used to use for their roofs here) then a stone put on top. I have to assume it works very well. Tim and Helen, in Armeni have a tree that produces cherry plums, but the tree is forked and one branch produces the plums early in the season while the other does so later. Clever bit of grafting, that.

 

And finally, to answer the question burning in my reader’s minds: the title of this post is so because this is my first ever blog post from inside my house here on Crete. Jean-Pierre, my Belgian neighbour, decided to link his neighbours (Anna and I) to his internet connection. I now have a long network cable snaking through my house, while another extends overhead for about 30 metres to Anna’s house.

Cheers Jean-Pierre.  

Fun with a Scorpion

Yesterday when I took my walk to Handras I set out in shorts and t-shirt because the sun was shining and I expected the temperature to just climb, but cloud steadily thickened. As I approached that village I was pretty sure I was going to get rained on and it occurred to me that while I didn’t mind getting a bit wet since it was still warm, the Greek/English lexicon, sheet of paper with Anna’s latest lesson on it, wallet and notebook in my man-bag might not appreciate it. I started looking for a plastic bag, damning myself for not sticking to my idea of always carrying a spare because wherever you go here Greeks will give you gifts of fruit and veg. (I digress: on one of my first walks here a pickup stopped beside me and the old guy behind the wheel waved to the back and held up three fingers. I took three mandarins out of the back, thanked him, and enjoyed them on the way home.)

The first plastic bag I found had fur and other icky substance stuck inside so had probably contained a dead cat. I passed on that one. The next I picked up was clean so I put the vulnerable items in that then back in my man-bag. Rubbish in general, including plastic bags, is never in short supply here and is strangely lacking in the tourist photos. On many occasions I’ve had my Jaws moment while swimming only to see a carrier bag sliding by under water.

Rumbles of thunder ensued and I did get rained on but not enough to bother me much. Back home, with the weather clearing a little, I set about varnishing woodwork then tidying the garden and other areas surrounding the house. This done I read Greek for an hour before deciding that maybe it was time to fire up that USB microscope that has been sitting on my shelf for 2 or 3 years. I connected it to my laptop, opened camera app, then looked around for the slides. I couldn’t find them anywhere so had to pack the microscope away again and instead watched the Sopranos.

This morning I was determined to make a concerted search for those slides after a walk to Lithines. However, it was grey and pouring with rain and has only eased off now at 9.30. Foregoing my walk I began rummaging through drawers – always traumatic because every item has a memory attached. I threw stuff away and relocated it, then finally found the box of slides in a cobwebby mess behind my desk. Time to set up the microscope again...

 

 

Here’s Mr Scorpion in place:

 

And here are some shots of him, respectively the sting, part of the main body and one claw.

 

This is my first effort. I would have liked a lower magnification so as to get a detailed picture of the whole thing but at x20 this is the lowest of the main settings which then go up to x80 and x350. Here’s x80 on the sting, while x350 is just a difficult blurry mess I won’t bother with.

 

Maybe if I take a series of shots at different points along its body I can paste together a whole picture in one of the other programs I have available? That’s a project for another time. I also need to get hold of the kind of slides I remember from my childhood (when my parents bought me a very good microscope for maybe my 10^th birthday). These slides have dished recesses in them so you can put in a droplet of filthy water and watch fascinating diatoms zipping about, and the app will allow me to take video clips of them.

There you go: it is now confirmed that I am a weirdo.

About those Turbines (and stuff)

In my last post I promised pictures of turbine spares and a wrecked turbine blade but, before we get to them, here are some pretty flowers to be going on with.

Here next is my route past the last of the turbines before I turn and head towards the small village of Handras. This is a walk I’ve taken many times now and without diversions (like one I took recently to try and get a look at an array of solar panels) totals 6.5 miles. The number of occasions when I haven’t gone for a long walk each day since arriving here I can count on one hand. I am also eating little in the way of carbs and the effect has been gratifying. Since that time I stepped on the scales just after Christmas and saw I had edged over 14 stone I’ve lost over 20 pounds. I am in fact just a pound or so away from the supposed upper limit of my BMI, which is ridiculous, because I can hardly be classified as overweight when I need a belt to stop 32 inch waist jeans from falling round my ankles.

Here’s the spare parts store for the wind turbines. You can probably see why it reminded me of a NASA museum, though the turbine blades look like a row of high-tech canoes.

And here is that wrecked turbine blade.

Of course those knowing my opinions on some matters might expect me to rant about these ‘bird-shredding blots on the landscape’ but sorry to disappoint. I think they’re beautiful and impressive. What I object to how they are only profitable if subsidized, how they are proposed as a solution to our energy problems when you would need so many of them that if you could supply power in reverse to spin them up Great Britain could probably achieve orbit (Cities in Flight by James Blish now drops into my mind). I object to the fact that they supply no power when the wind isn’t blowing or is blowing too hard. I object to the fact that many of the ‘usual suspects’ are making shitloads of money out of siting these things on their land etc etc. However, if an efficient way can be found to store their output then a lot of my objections would melt away.

That they are often sited in beautiful countryside I have no objection to at all. I guess my thoughts about spin dizzies and James Blish are relevant here. Being a long-time reader of science fiction I’m quite attracted to the idea of chunks of high-tech machinery sitting in wilderness. I don’t see the wilderness as being destroyed, rather enhanced by the contrast.

Matt Ridley - Freedom and Optimism: Humanity's Triumph

Heh: "Fossil fuels are making the Earth greener."

"It really is a wolf," said Peter.

Here’s the ‘news’ in 2007:

Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013'

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.

And here’s how things stand now:

And now it's global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year

·         Almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012

·         BBC reported in 2007 global warming would leave Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013

·         Publication of UN climate change report suggesting global warming caused by humans pushed back to later this month

Of course, lest we forget, our planet has two poles and Antarctic ice is increasing. But, putting things in real perspective:

You have to chuckle ... or maybe scream a bit.

Update:
Something everyone really needs to realise when reading 'science' reports and studying graphs. How much of a tilt there is on any line on the graph - how severe it looks - is utterly dependent on the numbers used and their spacing up the sides or along the bottom or top.

Ban It!

Something I’d been thinking about, and considering writing a blog post about, was nicely summed up by Rich Daniels on Facebook:

Anti-smoking activists remind me more and more of the AGW crowd. They have a principled goal of saving lives/the planet. They posit a solution, don't smoke/don't emit so much CO2. Then some smart arse comes along and solves these problems in such a way as to give them their solutions without really altering our lives, and they fucking hate it. We are doing what they demanded without doing what they told us. The seething must be awful to behold.

So so true. Fracking has drastically reduced America’s CO2 levels:

The reduction is even more impressive when one considers that 57 million additional energy consumers were added to the U.S. population over the past two decades. Indeed, U.S. carbon emissions have dropped about 20 per cent per capita, and are now at their lowest level since Dwight D. Eisenhower left the White House in 1961.

Yet activists don’t want us to do that here. We have to build windmills and pay double or treble for the energy. We must ready ourselves for power cuts every time the wind stops blowing. WE MUST DO WITHOUT.

Next we come to the e-cigarette. Here is a device that in just a few years has taken 1.3 million people partially or completely off cigarettes in Britain. This is something that the ban on smoking in public places completely failed to do, as will the cutting of cigarette displays or the proposed introduction of plain packaging. Yet e-cigs must be legislated against and if possible banned. They must be stopped! No matter that they are saving lives. Ban them. No matter that they are no more harmful than a cup of coffee. Ban them!

Why is that? I submit that it is due to the puritan and punitive instincts of many ‘activists’ who are no better than proselytizing religious zealots. In a transition to a green renewable energy culture the hair shirts must be distributed, to be worn over bodies already self-flagellated by sustainable birch twigs. You must go without cars, beef steaks and must sit shivering in your house squinting at the latest Greenpeace pamphlet in the light of a low-energy bulb, if the power is on. If you’re a stinky smoker then how dare you find a way to avoid all the dangerous aspects of smoking and still enjoy its pleasures! You must suffer all the torments of withdrawal, or become a medicated patient of the NHS and suffer the humiliation of quit-smoking classes for your instruction, and only then, when suitably chastened, are you fit to join the company of your betters.

And, of course, in both cases: ONLY THROUGH SUFFERING CAN YOU ATTAIN REDEMPTION!  

Get Fracking!

Boris Johnson is here speaking some sense about fracking.

The extraction process alone would generate tens of thousands of jobs in parts of the country that desperately need them. And above all, the burning of gas to generate electricity is much, much cleaner – and produces less CO₂ – than burning coal. What, as they say, is not to like?

 I do love his view of the eco-doomsters:

In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news. Beware this new technology, they wail. Do not tamper with the corsets of Gaia! Don’t probe her loamy undergarments with so much as a finger — or else the goddess of the earth will erupt with seismic revenge. Dig out this shale gas, they warn, and our water will be poisoned and our children will be stunted and our cattle will be victims of terrible intestinal explosions.

It's the Population, Stupid.

There’s quite a bit on the news about a hose pipe ban in the East of England and I cannot help but note how the elephant in the room is being ignored (or, read The Departure).

Over just the last 20 years I’ve seen our local town of Maldon expand hugely, acquiring a suburban belt half a mile thick with its superstores, roads and other facilities. This is just one example of what has been happening across large swathes of this country yet, I don’t recollect hearing much about reservoirs being dug (though we do get nimby-ism resulting in this).  

We must also remember how people’s habits have changed since the middle of the last century when the weekly bath, shared by the family, was common. How many showers are pouring every day now, how many washing machines and dish washers churning, how many flush toilets operating? Consider how much water one person now uses each day, which can range from 50 to 150 litres, and multiply that by millions. And consider that the population of London alone is getting on for 8 million.

Another question to ask is where does the rain we do get go? With so much ground now covered with concrete and tarmac it runs off, into drains then into rivers and out to sea. This is also the cause of many of the floods the media have been getting hysterical about in recent years. You may see some old town or village getting submerged, but don’t just blame the weather, blame the housing estates and cities upstream preventing water soaking away and thus passing the buck downstream. Put a waterproof layer over the land and water runs off quickly and, surprise surprise, the land dries up.    

Yes, we have had a couple of dry winters, but they are not the main problem. The problem is infrastructure failing to keep up; infrastructure right at the limit where it fails under just a little extra strain. And of course, it’s the population, stupid.  

Sooty Moths

Funny, I was waffling on about natural selection and evolution to Caroline the other night (after watching a program about how plants altered Earth) and the example I chose was the peppered moth. Today I found myself reading an article on just that. It never occurred to me that the process went into reverse after the clean air act.

I have to add that this is one of the best current proofs of the theory of evolution/natural selection going.

Daily Parasite

Just a recap here for those who maybe don’t know: While I was climbing up the SF-writing ladder, in fact, if I recollect correctly, when I was working on The Parasite for Tanjen Books, I ended up chatting to the mother of a friend. Now, both the mother and father of said friend were smart cookies – both were vets. She gave me some advice on punctuation that has stayed with me ever since, but she also loaned me a veterinary book on helminthology, which is the study of parasitic worms.

I was at once fascinated. Firstly the book reminded me of books my mother had studied during teacher training and which I pored over as a child, what with their anatomical pictures or internal organs, musculature, skeletons etc.

(Oh, on a side note that was very much a formative period of my life: as her main subject in teacher training she studied mycology (fungi) which, for a kid, was great. Not only did we go to woodlands hunting for these weird and wonderful things but we could also eat them, which appealed to the hunter-gatherer in me. Now I can identify quite a lot of British fungi and of course this interest led to mycelia … which led to Jain tech)

Secondly, I found the intricate life cycles of these creatures fascinating, just as I was boggled by the way they could manipulate or physically change their hosts. Some of this went into The Parasite, an awful lot of it went into short stories: The Thrake, Cave Fish, Choudapt, Putrefactors, Spatterjay, Snairls and Shell Game to name but a few. Then, of course, when it came time for me to write a book after Gridlinked I picked up two of those short stories – Snairls and Spatterjay – and used them as the launch pad for The Skinner and the two ensuing books.

So what am I waffling on about? Well, the above is why I was so glad Vaude passed on the link to Parasite of the Day (thanks Vaude). This is just my kind of stuff. I am almost certainly going to read every article on that site. Also thanks to Dr Tommy Leung who has just changed the black background of that site to make it easier to read!

Oh, and some character in my books has definitely got to be hit by a weaponized version of the above. I can see him/her dying horribly while sprouting mushrooms.

  

The Windup Girl -- Paolo Bacigalupi

My opinion about this book is difficult to nail down. It was rich and textured and engaged all the senses, the characters were fascinating, too, and the extrapolation and some of the ideas were excellent. I particularly liked the kink-spring technology and the semi-retro tech based on it, like the disc guns that are a reminder of a childhood toy. I enjoyed the genetic manipulation and the wind-up girl herself, though of course there were shades of Blade Runner there. However, what gave me pause was the heavy reliance on scares generated by the ‘green’ movement and the MSM, but of course, in present day establishment thinking, it is right on.

We have the scares about global warming and sea-level rise here, and you all know my opinion on them. Yes, we do have global warming, and we’ve had it since the Little Ice Age and it hasn’t come close to being as high as in the Medieval Warm Period and has flat-lined for over a decade. As for sea-level rise, putting aside Al Gore idiocy and desperate IPCC spin, the last time I looked it was few millimetres a year (as it has been for 8000 years), and if we can’t cope with a metre rise in sea-level in three or four centuries then we might just as well give up right now (it has also been dropping for the last three years). However, the clue is in the label. This is science fiction so writing about a future globally-warmed and flooded world is valid, though, extrapolating from historical climate cycles, and writing about a new Ice Age, would be more so.

Then we have the scare about genetic modification or, more specifically, the fear of GM under the control of the evil corporations (sigh). Here we seem to be going into Daily Mail ‘Frankenfoods’ territory, combined with the ‘capitalism is evil’ shibboleth of the left. I am a little doubtful about the idea that our scientists are going to abruptly pull masses of world-devastating monsters out of their arses that billions of years of competitive evolution has failed to manage. But whatever, again this is valid for science fiction, and is of course a very useful spanner in the SF toolbox. I also get tired of that constant portrayal in fiction and film of the evil corporation. It strikes me that corporations seem to come up with most of what improves our lives, while it’s the governments that enjoy bombing people back into the Stone Age.

(I also have to wonder … where are the windmills and tide-generators supplying if not electricity then joules for those kink-springs? Where, with such advanced biotech, are the tank-grown hydrocarbons and the CO2 absorbing microbes? Where, also, are the nuclear power stations? Maybe in the rest of the world?)

Thereafter, if the scares were true, the extrapolation in the book is on the button. I do see Luddite environmental police (white shirts much like Hitler’s brown or black shirts) destroying illegal and dangerous technology and pillorying those who are profligate in energy use. I do see an economy based on calories, and the kind of life-styles depicted in this book. And I do see human life being cheapened.

Now I have to add something more. I have, over time, started to make it a rule that I won’t review books I either don’t like or don’t finish. That I finished this book, considering my personal opinions, is testament to how much I enjoyed it. It’s a valid look at a future from one point of view and, unlike what I have seen in other SF books that venture into this sort of territory, the characters are people struggling to get on with their lives in difficult circumstances, and are not vessels created just to deliver righteous homilies.


Cue the visits by trolls to enlighten me in the ways of correct political thought.   

Linear no Threshold Hypothesis

From a Sierra Club insider:

With junk science, it is easy to scare people. There are many things that are bad for us that are present at low levels in the environment -- for example, mercury, lead, radiation, or tobacco smoke. The junk science approach to trace toxins is to claim that if a high level of the bad thing would cause X people to get sick, then a level 10,000 times smaller must cause 1/10,000 as many people to get sick. Given 300 million people in the country, this math can give you thousands of people getting sick from low levels of mercury, lead, radiation, or secondhand tobacco smoke. This approach is known as the linear no threshold hypothesis.

So considering this approach, don't you think this toxic substance should be banned or controlled?

For Frack's Sake

On (I think) April 2nd last year this happened:

While we sat in the sunshine sipping cold beers the earth shrugged, grumbled then continued shaking. Some people ran out into the street – one Greek woman all hysterical and crossing herself and doubtless praying to the god who chucks tsunamis about. We remained seated, since we weren’t anywhere anything was going to fall on us, and watched the street lamps whipping about like reeds and nearby trees thrashing. I’ve experienced quakes here before but never seen that.

As far as I recollect this was an earthquake of 6.3 on the Richter scale. On April 1st and May 27th fracking in Lancashire caused, respectively quakes of 2.3 and 1.4, and immediately the media and green hairshirts were shouting for a moratorium on this country accessing an energy supply that might just drag us out of the pit (in fact, do a search of 'fracking' and you get pages and pages of hysteria).

Here is the simplest explanation of the Richter Scale:

A logarithmic scale used to express the total amount of energy released by an earthquake. Its values typically fall between 0 and 9, with each increase of 1 representing a 10-fold increase in energy.

So, the earthquake I experienced in Crete was roughly 10,000 times stronger than the strongest one caused by fracking. In fact, as you can see from the graph the lowest one is in the region of ‘not felt’ and the highest one is ‘minor’.

Now go read Counting Cats and the comments. This one I find particularly illuminating;

A butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico will cause small seismic tremors in Lancashire. Even the lefty dolts at wikipedia know that earthquakes under 2.0 occur “continuously” and those of 2.0-2.9 are ‘Generally not felt, but recorded.’ with 1.3 million of them per year.

Let’s do some maths. A 2.0 quake has 63 MJ of energy, a 2.5 one has 360 MJ. Gasoline contains about 35 MJ/L. Every time some lefty jerk drives to a demo and burns 2 litres of gas he releases as much energy as a 2.0 quake. For a 2.5 quake the dolt has to drive for a couple of hours. Big deal.

Devil's Kitchen also has something to say...

Update
Here's a link to an interesting report passed onto me. If this sort of stuff is of interest to you then read it carefully and consider the words 'correlation is not causation', or even, 'which came first the chicken or the egg?' Remember too that one of the big criticisms of the alarmist film 'Gaslands' was that people had methane in their water supply before any fracking.

The Bully State – Brian Monteith

The End of Tolerance

‘Even if I am a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.’ – Mahatma Gandhi.

This is pretty good as it covers the lies and fact twisting used to push through legislation ‘for our own good’. I didn’t, for example, know about the measurable rise in deaths in countries that introduced the seatbelt law – the unintended consequence of people feeling safer so driving faster and closer to the car in front – nor how the statistics in Britain were skewed by the drink drive ban. Nor did I know the story of Fred Hill, who was a WWII dispatch rider, and his protest against being forced to wear a crash helmet – a protest that led to him dying in Pentonville prison. It was also interesting to read about how the IRA killed more people than any Muslim terrorist in this country yet no need was felt for ID cards and all the rest of the autocratic anti-terror legislation. I of course did know about the lies, fact twisting and ‘consultations’ with bought-and-paid-for NGOs used to push through the smoking ban, and how the same methods are being used on alcohol and ‘unhealthy’ foods.

‘The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it.’ – Henry Louis Mencken.

This book ventures into the mindset of the people who want to control every aspect of our lives, and points out that though the majority of them are politically correct dicks in the Labour Party, and their useful idiots in local councils, they are by no means unique – the urge in politicians to lecture and admonish and generally treat voters like idiot children is a strong one. To a certain extent it is dated, in that it was published under the Anti-Midas Gordon Brown, and an awful lot has happened since then. However, this does not undermine the central thesis of the Nanny State turning into the Bully State in which advice and nannying to try and change people’s behaviour have turned into fines and prison sentences.

‘The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be the defenders of minorities’ – Ayn Rand.

April into May

Monday April 25th

The temperature has climbed in a minor way, hovering at about 12C up here in the mountains and maybe rising as high as 20 down in Makrigialos. It’s still nowhere near where it was last year and my shorts are still confined to a chair in the bedroom. The apotheche door is still jammed shut and I still have no need to divert grey water for the plants here.

However, on the good news front, the ruin is all but complete. But for the discovery of an unattached pipe for the water tap outside, the plumbing is complete and not leaking. The walls are painted, ceiling and other interior woodwork is varnished and the lights are up. Before we move the bed up there all that’s needed is a shower booth, things like toilet roll and towel holders and a bathroom cabinet. Then we have to get a fridge, a small cooker and other smaller items like waste bins etc.

Wednesday April 27th
So many of the programs we pick up on the satellite are platforms for snake-oil salesmen, whether that snake-oil is God or slimming pills or surgery, so I shouldn’t really complain about BBC World. However, those other programs make no claim on balance and integrity. Yesterday we were hit repeatedly with the phrase ‘refugees fleeing the violence in the Middle East’ yet all we got to back this up were interviews with young Tunisian men in railway stations. Now, according to the BBC, freedom and democracy have arrived in Tunisia, the despot has stepped down and all is tea and cucumber sandwiches. What we basically have here, as anywhere the welfare state hasn’t spread its stifling tentacles, is young men looking for work. These ‘refugees from violence’ are actually fleeing the thing that had them chucking rocks at their leaders in the first place: poverty. It’s the economy, stupid. Of course there doubtless are refugees from the violence in Libya out there, but they’re probably a bit far from the hotel bar for our intrepid BBC correspondents.

Ah, now that’s more like it. We went up to Handras and then Ziros to celebrate someone’s birthday and in a kafenion were put in contact with a guy selling a nice rose wine for €1 a litre. We bought five litres and will doubtless be seeing him again – he’s not going to be running out any time soon since he has 25,000 litres on tap...

We had more pissing rain last night, and there’s still no sign of the promised global warming. We’ve ordered another two tonnes of wood for the stove, which will maybe turn up today. I’m hoping we won’t get to use much of it this ‘spring’ and can save it for next autumn and the start of winter. But it seems that every time it’s looking like it’s warming up, another shitload of cloud comes over the horizon and the temperature drops.

Monday May 2nd
I moved the bed and some other bits and pieces up into the ‘ruin’ over the weekend (the words ‘the ruin’ have stuck despite it being cleaner, drier and newer than the main house) and can now concentrate on other work. Having cleaned out the spare room I bleached the mould on the walls and ceiling, treated and varnished the beams and used up the remainder of the paint on the walls. I’ve also been varnishing the pergola and generally working on other stuff until completely knackered. The weather is still crappy – cloudy, damp and cold – though things are looking better this morning. During the royal wedding, when I intended to go fishing with ‘the boys’ whilst Caroline watched the wedding with ‘the girls’, it absolutely chucked it down, so I ended up drinking far too much wine.

We’ve just seen on the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed. Perhaps it is a good thing to have access to BBC World, since when Michael Jackson died we didn’t find out about it until about three weeks afterwards. Then again, does knowing these things make any difference to us at all?

The cynic in me immediately wondered what news was being covered up by this, that maybe the killing of Gadaffi’s family was something the powers that be wanted kept low key, but, just maybe, the announcement was being held over until after the wedding. Anyway, this is a good media victory for America and has reduced the number of murderous people-hating psychos by at least one.

Wednesday May 4th
I’ve just received an uncorrected proof copy of The Departure (thanks Julie) and here, for your delectation, is a picture of what you can’t have until September...

The temperature is climbing. This morning at 10.40 it is over 20C – the first time it has risen so high since we’ve been here. I’m actually contemplating putting on my shorts and venturing outdoors.

Meanwhile, I was going to post a picture of Makrigialos beach for Chris (Dutch physics teacher) showing how much the sea level has dropped here. However, the one time I remember to bring my camera down the sea is back where it was before.