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As military war is possibly the worst threat to humanity and the environment, alongside with famine caused by socialised economies, the Nobel Peace Price, is indeed one of of top events of the year. And constantly debated. This year, as well as previous.

The usual questions are: Should it really go to an organisation, and not to an heroic individual? Answer is that it’s OK according to Nobel’s will, though most of us probably find heroes more exciting.

Was it the right choice, and, the recurring question, is it really an honor, given the rather questionable choices previous years. Sure, there are some real heroes on the list, but to give it to Obama, not because he stopped any wars and atrocities, but because he had said he hoped to, made even the recipient himself embarrassed. And Gore and IPCC? It’s not customary to take back the prize, but Climategate ought to have been embarrassing for the committee.

The most heard comment about this year’s pick of the EU is that the project it really not that succcesful for the moment. On the other hand, you can hardly deny that it was, and is, a peace project. There are still unsolved conflictcs among members and neighbours, Cyprus, Sudetenland, Northern Balkan, but we will never know how the 20th century would have developed if not for the EEC/EU.

My annual reflection, given that there’s still some value in the prize, is that – especially in the light of this year’s choice – is that it should be awarded to Walburga Gräfin Habsburg Douglas, who,  literally, opened the iron curtain in August 1989, and her late father Otto von Habsburg, who would have turned 100 on November 20 this year. As International President and Secretary General of the Paneuropean Union, an organisation advocating European unity and peace, long before the EU, they, if any, should be regarded as icons of European peace. You might want to include the PEU itself too, if you want an organisation, the only Paneuropean movement that never accepted the division of Europe in West and East, a point the EU tended to be more ambivalent on.

A tempting alternative is of course to give it to CFACT in a few years, if our efforts to end the costly Climate War are succesful enough.

Next year, my friends!

You get Tosca instead. It’s a pity I could not use the brilliant headline from this article: Apocalypse Not, by Matt Ridley, in Wired Science. It sums up a lot.

“Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth in 972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. Indeed, we seem to crave ever-more-frightening redictions—we are now, in writer Gary Alexander’s word, apocaholic. The past half century has brought us arnings of population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killerbees, sex-change fish, cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics, and climate catastrophes.

So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated. True, we have encountered obstacles, public-health emergencies, and even mass tragedies. But the promised Armageddons—the thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, the tipping points that cannot be untipped, the existential threats to Life as We Know It—have consistently failed to materialize.”

Couldn’t have summarized it better (and please read the full article). But if you are really interested, try my instant polling. Might not be too scientific,  but it helps you understand what is important.

Check Em out. When doing a poll some years ago with informed environmental debaters, Asteroids came out first, as the worst – currently hard, if not impossible, to battle – political schemes, such as CAP came in second.

Doing a similar poll with non scientists, all fears were around faimily life, illnesses and everything connected to that.

What might be threatening, if I may poll myself, is politicians messing with energy. Or pesticides for that matter. Both save lives.

And most importantly, if you absolutely need to scare your kids, scare them with politicians. Not with science. Possibly Scarpia.  

Where Would You Like To Go

Unlike other summers, this year is rightfully filled with daily news. The EU, Syria, just to mention a few and disregarding the Olympics. No tabloids with reported aliens or slight nudity in the city.

For fans of science, and science fiction, however, we get our fair share.

According to a most ambitious take on Time Travel, this prospect also reveals sociological, and in a way political, patterns.

No, stop it right right there. Regardless of that particle under the Swiss/French alps, No, it’s not possible. The interesting thing is that conservatives/classical liberals tend to be more inclined to travel to the future, than to the past. The same group of people who normally question Malthus (refuted long ago by reality), and Rachel Carson (same thing).

Consequently, the same people who would consider going back in time, are those who by draconian environmental regulations, strive to recreate ancient living conditions.

It might be called rational optimism. The world is not going blast within a foreseeable future, and the politicians should stop infringing liberty and spending our money on futile projects to battle another SF-idea; Man Made Global Warming. Not that I’m all unhappy here, but, hey, with the right company, a trip into a future where the UNFCCC has not destroyed it all could be fun.

I can be the tour leader. And then we are, apparently, off to Mars. That’s just a robot running around, but people are going crazy over it. I admit to some enthusiasm myself, though I presume that the only chance for human colonisation lies way beyond this solar system. And its costly, I know, but it’s fun. A reason as god as any to let private companies take care of future explorations.

You might remember the Back-to-Nature movement of the 70′s. That was a rather harmless way for people, longing for the genuine way of living, to move into the countryside to enjoy the splendor of bad, or no, plumbing.
Fine with me. A general observation is that most of these people eventually moved back to the cities, naturally with the exception of those who really knew the fine art of running a farm, instead of just manhandling animals. A slight, but just slight, generalisation, is also that they started to apply both standards and politics in their new back yards. Most Green parties in Northern Europe have their majority of supporters in fancy city center neighbourhoods.

The thing this year is bee keeping. In the city.

It’s a nice idea for the Hilton to be able to serve fresh honey. Nice idea for anyone, really. Bees, if handled the right way, tend to stay at home. When they wander, no such luck.

For quite a few people, a sting can be lethal. And though city dwellers are closer to emergency, the time line is tight.

You might want to compare this to the ever increasing frenzy, using the same generalisation again, about smoking. Staged by the same people.

If you choose to live in a rural area, you accept the rules of nature. I have considered moving, but – yes – my allergy – and my love of infrastructure has prohibited it.

If you choose to live in the city, you accept motor vehicles, dogs, bikers (those two should learn some traffic manners however), smokers, neighbours. And the proximity to challenging discussions with other city-dwellers. Preferably in the evening on your own balcony, where you soon can’t smoke, or at the bar next door, where you can’t smoke.

The mix up of environmental standards here is, though naturally we tolerant people tend to be, well, tolerant, not so tolerant. Bee swarms in the city can be lethal. Serving roasted peanuts in a closed environment can be lethal. Smoking too, but for bystanders it’s at worst a nuisance. We smoking city-dwellers tend to accept a certain amount of hassle. It’s a choice. We just want the greeners to show the same courtesy. As my late friend Karl Hess wrote in his memoirs Mostly on the Edge: [All I ever wanted was to be] “A Good Anarchist, A Good Lover and A Good Neighbour.”

A Great Comedy for a Rainy Day

Al Gore for less than a Euro. Fine with me. It’s been a while since someone mentioned that movie. Incidentally, yesterday, I friend told me that when her daughter had to watch it in class, she gave her a list with the ten worst fallacies in the movie. To her surprise, the public school teacher copied it and distributed for the following discussion.

Those are the sorts of things that can brighten a rainy summer day. The other thing is to take the time to read all the newspapers, even though really interesting news normally are scarce this time of year. The global warming hysteria really seems to have slowed down and the IPCC people seem busy trying to find their own explanations to the lack of warming the past decade. Still people, especially in the media – on all sides – still hastily interpret any change in the ever changing weather as either a sign that they were right. And then about the weather forecasts not being reliable. They never have been.

One thing that is fairly predictable, and sometimes devastating – in Russia this year, tragic – is flooding. Right now an emergency in many parts of Northern Europe. Local flooding is fairly possible to predict, and risk areas ought to be rather easy to identify by now. As every year, take precautions, and think twice before building that dream house on that extraordinarily cheap piece of land on the river bank.

Precaution, however, can also be taken to far. This year I’ve noticed that, as local flooding occurs every year, the weather forecasters, and especially the media reporting the risks are beginning to irritate some people with their precautionary principle. The fact that some areas are hit more easily (and they can easily be identified) does not call for a warning against an entire region. Still, that is what is being done. The result is that the tourist industry, and then not whatever local attraction there is, but also hotels, restaurants, cafes and other business are severely hurt, sometimes into the next season, when even booked parties cancel. Most of these businesses get almost all of their revenue during three months every year. No business this year, might very well mean no business next year too. And this often in perfectly safe areas with unaffected infrastructure.

Those are the reflections you can make when reading your paper in the deserted, and yes, rather relaxed and pleasant, city. And as the late Gilbert Becaud, I’ll wait until September to do my ususal European holiday tour. Have a nice summer. Now it’s time to head out in the rain and find that paper and cosy corner.

…but very well could have been, as so many people – including yours truly – believed in, was the appointment of the dictator Mugabe as UN boss for “tourism“.

The apparent truth, as we all know now was that UN Tourism had urged world leaders to promote tourism in their countries.

Nothing wrong with tourism. As a matter of fact, it can be the best contribution to both liberty and prosperity.

Really, little wrong with the UN either. The UN idea that is. The combination, however, tends to be dangerous.

However, as my esteemed colleague Silberstein pointed out today; maybe it would have been better. We were not watching a horror show here, but – as is intriguingly common  in the UN world – the opportunity to get handle a man who has starved the people, devastated farms and families, and in general terrorised everyone in his presence.

Here’s my idea: Give the fellow the job, let some decent people clean up the mess, or maybe we should make him head of the UNFCCC.

Photo EBU

The peculiar, but by now a sort of fancy kitsch, the Eurovisioncontest, is on again. This time in Baku, the not so democratic Republic of Azerbaijan. (Use the link to check out some of the songs. Montenegro has some, well interesting, lyrics.)

This has raised some concern over the possible PR, the, no doubt nasty regime, might get. As the same discussion is going on concerning soccer, let me say that I’m generally reluctant to boycotts, and specifically those carried out by government. Boycotting private companies, as was the case with the hysteria over French wines and nukes some years ago, is both stupid and insulting. And even not boycotting governmental monopolies might be a good idea. If I got clearance, naturally out of the question, to operate freely as a journalist in North Chorea, it would be more than stupid to refuse to use whatever electricity, phone services or lodging there is, on the ground that it’s run by a communist regime. Hey, everything is. If it’s running at all, that is.

Sometimes, you tend to think twice though. Not about if boycotts are effective, but if they might be justified. To clear way for the Eurovision, the government quite frankly confiscated peoples’ houses, to clear the way for the stage. In this case, with a short notice, the owners were compensated with 50 percent of the “market value“. How you calculate such in expropriation I’ve never understood. The same goes for the worst environmental crimes, regardless of energy source, committed not by energy companies on a free market, but by energy companies working in collusion with the government.

The damage is done. Sadly enough. So not going would probably just make things worse. Try to spread some fresh ideas while there instead! On the other hand, at least one of the finalists had some difficulties in grasping the possible dilemma. Because Baku is in the Caribbeans, is it not?

It’s here again, the Super Moon, or more correctly the same old moon, but a bit closer to Earth than usual. Got a glimpse yesterday, and admit it’s impressive when the skies are clear enough.

As with all weather phenomena, it’s easy to find speculations. This year, however, I’ve only found articles in which the authors find it necessary to point out that earth quakes are not caused by the moon (or by the otherwise most powerful force around; the Sun, or – for that matter – by CO2). No references to Global Warming. That’s comforting.

It’s otherwise rather natural that in earlier times, superstition has been high.  And sure, if you really browse the net, you can still find it. But this folklore, the risk to be moonstruck, werewolves etc, were – as in the case of a lot of religious myths and traditions – often built on observations and practical considerations. As for some religious rules, such as the ban on pork and certain see food, you only need to look at geography and living conditions to grasp the rationality. As for the sacredness of family values, that too seems rather rational in most societies.

And as for the moon, it is indeed a powerful force. Just look at the tide, for example in the Channel. And with that force, it’s not hard to understand that some people, most notably those prone to migraine, can be very sensitive to a full moon. And dogs do wail towards it. Possibly some humans too, but we are not werewolves.

Please Come Back to Europe

Intended another story, but some issues just make me tired. Like the tiny news piece yesterday in the local paper, informing us that the local community – in a basically monopolized health care market – would no longer provide so called Laughing Gas, to women giving birth.

The reason given was that it hurts the environment.

I’m rather aware of the potential hazards, also to nurses and doctors, of all sorts of anesthesia. And of precautions taken. But why this word “environment“?

Earlier, the talk in the environmental debate was that the worst villain was women eating contraceptives.

I will never give birth, for the simple reason that I’m a man, but I know enough ladies to imagine the suffering (sure, sometimes, it’s just a walk in the park) and anxiety with a pregnancy and birth.

Neither can I eat contraceptive pills, because they are still women only, but again, I know enough women to know that there are health hazards involved. Diminishing, but still risky.

Now, why use “environment” to attack the vast 50 percent of the general population who are female? Never understood those male politicians who pledged to be “feminists”. I still don’t, but if you don’t stop harassing my lady friends, I will certainly reconsider.

Realist or Alarmist?

During my years in the climate debate, I’ve been called all sorts of things. Climate Hater, Weather Denier, to mention a few. Apparently all climate realists are now also “Anti-Science”, and according to Robin McKie, writing for the Observer, though this article  was found in our fanzine The Guardian, people are getting scared.

“Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring. Last week Nina Fedoroff, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), broke ranks in a spectacular manner.

She confessed that she was now “scared to death” by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled, across the US and the rest of the western world.”

 If they had asked me, I could have delivered quite a few speakers, not very hateful, and certainly scientists. As a matter of fact, this service is constantly offered and provided by CFACT and our vast network of scholars.

To my disappointment though, CFACT Europe is not even mentioned by name, but the theme seems to have been that this plague is spreading into Europe too.

According to the article, the conference does not seem to have been a lot about science, just about being scared, so probably my services would not have been of great use. Never mind Climategate. Never mind the lack of significant global warming. Never mind that man can’t control the sun. We are here to share the horror stories. But my offer stands, and until we meet, feel free to browse our web site, quite full of not so hateful science and reflections.