100 Viking queens to be trapped and transported to England

May 1, 2013

It’s the first of May and May is when they emerge from hibernation and are most abundant in Skåne in southern Sweden. But for some of them the freedom they are enjoying will be short lived.

Trappers from the UK have been given permission to capture 100 queens, refrigerate them to induce an artificial hibernation for travel and then transport them to the UK to “rape and pillage” the country-side and hopefully repopulate parts of Kent. A programme was started in 2009 to reintroduce them to the United Kingdom with queens from New Zealand. However this was not a success as many of the queens died during hibernation. DNA analysis of the New Zealand queens showed they lacked genetic diversity.

The queens of the short-haired bumblebee, Bombus subterraneus, are the unfortunate creatures being hunted. It remains to be seen if the Viking queens fare any better than their Antipodean sisters.

Swedish Radio reports:

British scientists have been allowed to capture and bring home 100 Queens of the short-haired bumblebee, fairly common in Skåne but extinct in England. Bumblebees are needed to pollinate plants and vegetables, said Nikki Gammans from Natural England, who leads this unusual hunt, when she presented the project to a large press contingent  today outside Lund . When the British began this effort last year, it was not everybody who applauded, but the resistance was mainlydue to misunderstandings according to the provincial government in Skåne.

From Natural England:

Short-haired bumblebee (c) Nikki Gammans

Short-haired bumblebee (c) Nikki Gammans

After months of careful planning and negotiations, a team of experts led by Dr Nikki Gammans have embarked on a special mission to bring short-haired bumblebee queens back to the UK from the south of Sweden.

After a period of quarantine, It is hoped the bees can then be released on the RSPB Dungeness reserve in May 2012 and eventually colonise the surrounding area – see press release. …..

…. The Short-haired bumblebee, Bombus subterraneus, was last seen at Dungeness in Kent in 1988 and was officially declared extinct in 2000 after many repeated searches. We believe this bee species along with the other threatened bumblebee species have suffered due to the loss of flower-rich habitats such as meadows.

Over the last 60 years, the UK has lost over 97% of its wild flower meadows due to intensifying agricultural practices. It is also likely that the removal of hedgerows from the UK may have reduced the available nesting and hibernation sites for short-haired bumblebees.

While I can see that such a project could be fascinating and challenging, the purpose of the exercise as described by Natural England is rather vague and fuzzy and well-meaning and not at all very convincing. Vague claims of being “critical” to our farming economy read like a sales pitch. These bumblebees failed to adapt / evolve to survive in the UK. Yet they are being  re-introduced without any actions to make the species more likely – genetically – to survive in its new environment. All that has been done is to create some protected habitat (flower corridors). It seems to me that the “conservation” movement is far too backward-looking and must focus more on helping threatened species to evolve genetically rather than trying to prevent the changes to habitat which are inevitable:

Bumblebees pollinate many important agricultural crops and are critical to our farming economy. More bumblebees = better crop pollination – there is evidence that the shortage of pollinators is reducing crop yields. By creating corridors of flower-rich habitat across Romney Marsh area, we have seen an increase and spread in the numbers of bumblebee species in Kent. Five threatened species, which include England’s rarest bumblebee the shrill carder bee, have all increased their geographic range in this area after decades of decline.

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“Consensus science” – by definition – is not “science” and is a dangerous thing

April 30, 2013

The internet is full of polls that I generally find irritating. How many believe that “A” will happen? or that “B will win? or that “C” is better than “D”? Whatever the result of the poll may be, they show nothing more than where the preponderance of belief  lies. The polls are evidence only of what people believe; they are not evidence of the subject being voted upon.

Either something is or it is not.

If we don’t know whether it is or is not, we can formulate it as a hypothesis and address it by the scientific method. The formulation is then as a falsifiable hypothesis and we then predict what data might be collectable if the hypothesis was false. We then collect data and where data is not available we design and carry out experiments to provide such data. These data and their analysis should be tested – for the classical scientific method – to see if the hypothesis is false (not – it should be noted – to show that the hypothesis is true). Where the data cannot show the hypothesis to be false it means only that the hypothesis is still unproven but the data set adds to the body of evidence in favour of the hypothesis in the particular circumstances in which that data-set was collected.

When we don’t know we can still suppose the hypothesis to be true or false. But that is just a supposition and lies in the realms of belief and religion. We can take a vote within some group and see how many believe it to be true or to be false. Commercial and other interests may be vested in the supposition. Lobbying and persuasion can be applied in favour of or against the supposition. Voters can be influenced and cajoled and persuaded to vote for or against. A completely democratic and transparent system of voting may be applied. And  the result may be overwhelmingly in favour or against the supposition. But even where a majority – even an overwhelming majority of say 97% – of some group believes the proposed hypothesis to be true, the vote adds not one iota of evidence in favour of or against the hypothesis. An overwhelming vote that a hypothesis is true when it is actually false makes it no less false. All the vote can show is the preponderance of belief (and belief – by definition – comes into play when and because evidence is lacking).

And all that democratic process to establish what people believe brings us no closer to answering the question of whether the supposition is true.

But it gets worse.

Once a “democratic” majority has confirmed its belief in a supposed “truth” of a supposition, then there is a immense societal pressure against proving the supposition to be false. Falsifiable hypotheses are reformulated to be no longer falsifiable. The scientific method is perverted – for reasons of the vested interests – to now produce anecdotal evidence trying to “prove the hypothesis” rather than trying to collect data to try and show the hypothesis to be false. Evidence against the majority belief is not collected because it is no longer expedient to do so. Not only is it not collected, it is ignored even when it is plain and obvious. The moment a scientific hypothesis invokes or has to invoke a majority vote or a consensus in its support it leaves the scientific arena and enters the  political universe. Truth becomes whatever the majority believes. Proper scientific effort directed to falsifying the supposition is not just discouraged, it is penalised and attracts sanctions in the form of reduced funding and rejection of publications. It becomes heresy. Even where the believed supposition is actually true, the supposition remains as belief and cannot easily be brought back into the rational world.

As Judith Curry wrote recently:

With genuinely well-established scientific theories, ‘consensus’ is not discussed and the concept of consensus is arguably irrelevant.  For example, there is no point to discussing a consensus that the Earth orbits the sun, or that the hydrogen molecule has less mass than the nitrogen molecule.  While a consensus may arise surrounding a specific scientific hypothesis or theory, the existence of a consensus is not itself the evidence. ……. 

Given the complexity of the climate problem, ‘expert judgments’ about uncertainty and confidence levels are made by the IPCC on issues that are dominated by unquantifiable uncertainties. It is difficult to avoid concluding that the IPCC consensus is manufactured and that the existence of this consensus does not lend intellectual substance to their conclusions.

“Consensus science” has no option but to become science by majority vote. Polls replace evidence. And where the belief is false, the belief itself prevents a return to the truth. “Consensus science” as belief cannot be “science”. The simple fact is that whenever a “scientific hypothesis” invokes a consensus in its support it is – per force – just a belief. It becomes religion and not science. And that is a dangerous thing.

Related: Climate change: no consensus on consensus

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Plants produce biogenic aerosols and provide a negative feedback to warming climate

April 30, 2013

Another study showing a negative feedback to a warming climate. Needless to say such a negative feeback finds no place in climate models. (The lead author points out that this previous statement is erroneus). Needless to say I doubt if such negative feedback is included in all climate models.

 Paasonen, P., et. al. 2013. Evidence for negative climate feedback: warming increases aerosol number concentrations. Nature Geoscience doi: 10.1038/NGEO1800

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) reports:

© Veronika Markova | Dreamstime.com

As temperatures warm, plants release gases that help form clouds and cool the atmosphere, according to research from IIASA and the University of Helsinki. 

The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, identified a negative feedback loop in which higher temperatures lead to an increase in concentrations of natural aerosols that have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. “Plants, by reacting to changes in temperature, also moderate these changes,” says IIASA and University of Helsinki researcher Pauli Paasonen, who led the study. 

Scientists had known that some aerosols – particles that float in the atmosphere – cool the climate as they reflect sunlight and form cloud droplets, which reflect sunlight efficiently. Aerosol particles come from many sources, including human emissions. But the effect of so-called biogenic aerosol – particulate matter that originates from plants – had been less well understood. Plants release gases that, after atmospheric oxidation, tend to stick to aerosol particles, growing them into the larger-sized particles that reflect sunlight and also serve as the basis for cloud droplets. The new study showed that as temperatures warm and plants consequently release more of these gases, the concentrations of particles active in cloud formation increase. 

“Everyone knows the scent of the forest,” says Ari Asmi, University of Helsinki researcher who also worked on the study. “That scent is made up of these gases.” While previous research had predicted the feedback effect, until now nobody had been able to prove its existence except for case studies limited to single sites and short time periods. The new study showed that the effect occurs over the long-term in continental size scales. 

The effect of enhanced plant gas emissions on climate is small on a global scale – only countering approximately 1 percent of climate warming, the study suggested. “This does not save us from climate warming,” says Paasonen. However, he says, “Aerosol effects on climate are one of the main uncertainties in climate models. Understanding this mechanism could help us reduce those uncertainties and make the models better.”  

The study also showed that the effect was much larger on a regional scale, counteracting possibly up to 30% of warming in more rural, forested areas where anthropogenic emissions of aerosols were much lower in comparison to the natural aerosols. That means that especially in places like Finland, Siberia, and Canada this feedback loop may reduce warming substantially. ….. 

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Posted in Climate, Clouds, Environment | 3 Comments »

Resentment and charges of misconduct and bias at the Delhi component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB)

April 30, 2013

It is not so easy to judge if the charges of bias and misconduct at the New Delhi component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering (ICGEB) and Biotechnology are just because

  • some disgruntled junior researchers are envious about the much higher salaries of their seniors, or
  • it is because of resentment by mediocre scientists when their work is not considered of a quality and significance sufficient to earn them authorship of scientific papers, or
  • because senior scientists are exploiting junior post-doctoral researchers

The ICGEB is part of the United Nations System where of course officials tend to take care of their own.

But whatever the real reason a “scientific institution” which establishes and perpetuates  two classes of scientists where salary scales of the one are double that of the other seems a particularly ill thought-out scheme and – at best – just plain stupid. It not only invites resentment but also implies that the quality of the research done is judged by the salary paid to the researcher.

ICGEB-ND_Building

New Delhi Component of the ICGEB

The ICGEB is an international, nonprofit research organization. Established as a special project of UNIDO, it became fully autonomous in 1994 and now counts over 60 Member States. … With Components in Trieste, Italy, New Delhi, India and Cape Town, South Africa, the Centre forms an interactive network with Affiliated Centres in ICGEB Member States. The New Delhi component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering (ICGEB) and Biotechnology is dedicated to advanced research and training in molecular biology, infectious disease biology, and biotechnology.

The Calcutta Telegraph reports: 

Allegations of discrimination, academic misconduct and lack of transparency over dramatic differences in researchers’ salaries have tainted a 25-year-old international research centre here that is hailed for its excellence in science.

Indian and foreign scientists are trying to resolve what they say is a dual crisis gripping the New Delhi component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB): loss of foreign funding and discontent among researchers.

A panel of Indian scientists set up by the department of biotechnology is examining options to resolve the issue of future funding. ICGEB director-general Francisco Baralle from Italy is expected to meet department of biotechnology secretary Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan and the research institution’s staff here on April 30. ……

Twenty-four of the 30 senior scientists at the ICGEB, New Delhi, have asked Baralle to remove the Delhi director, Virander Chauhan, correspondence between the scientists and Baralle between September 2012 and February 2013 shows.

Also, a grievance committee report from within the ICGEB shows that two former researchers have complained that a senior scientist at the institution, Kanury Venkata Subba Rao, denied them authorship on a research paper.

Both Chauhan and Rao have denied any wrongdoing. ……. 

……. Some of the discontent appears to stem from differences in the salaries of scientists. The ICGEB has a two-tier pay structure — an international scale where a post-doctoral scientist could start at Rs 150,000 per month, paid in US dollars, and a national scale where a similarly qualified scientist would begin at about Rs 75,000 a month.

“The original idea at the ICGEB’s creation in 1988 was to draw the best from international faculty,” said a senior Indian scientist involved in the efforts to resolve the crisis.

“But all the 10 international-grade scientists’ positions there are now held by Indians. There seems to be discord now because sections of scientists feel there should not be huge salary differences between similarly performing and similarly qualified researchers.” ……

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Science, UN | 1 Comment »

Why is the New York Times publicising fraudster Stapel’s book?

April 30, 2013

I would not have expected the New York Times to be an apologist and a publicist for a fraudster.

The case of Diedrik Stapel and all the data he faked by just making them up to fit his pre-determined results will always bring discredit to the field (not science) of social psychology. But Stapel is now busy creating a new career for himself where his fraud itself is to be the vehicle of his future success. He has written a book about his derailment and the adoring media have not only forgiven him but are now playing an active part in his rehabilitation: in  humanising him and publicisng his book. The con continues and the media are (perhaps unwitting) partners to the con.

The New York Times ran a long “analytical” article about Stapel and his fraud a few days ago. A long interview with Stapel and ostensibly a “neutral” piece the article is entirely concerned with humanising the “criminal”.  It seems to me that Stapel is very successfully continuing to manipulate the media which earlier used to idolise him for his ridiculous “studies” (eating meat made people selfish!). But if you look at the NYT piece as a piece of marketing material for a book written by a discredited author it all makes sense. In fact the NYT article might just as well have been commissioned by the publishers of the book

NYT:  …. Right away Stapel expressed what sounded like heartfelt remorse for what he did to his students. “I have fallen from my throne — I am on the floor,” he said, waving at the ground. “I am in therapy every week. I hate myself.” That afternoon and in later conversations, he referred to himself several times as tall, charming or handsome, less out of arrogance, it seemed, than what I took to be an anxious desire to focus on positive aspects of himself that were demonstrably not false. ….. 

Stapel did not deny that his deceit was driven by ambition. But it was more complicated than that, he told me. He insisted that he loved social psychology but had been frustrated by the messiness of experimental data, which rarely led to clear conclusions. His lifelong obsession with elegance and order, he said, led him to concoct sexy results that journals found attractive. “It was a quest for aesthetics, for beauty — instead of the truth,” he said. He described his behavior as an addiction that drove him to carry out acts of increasingly daring fraud, like a junkie seeking a bigger and better high. ….

The report’s publication would also allow him to release a book he had written in Dutch titled “Ontsporing” — “derailment” in English — for which he was paid a modest advance. The book is an examination of his life based on a personal diary he started after his fraud was made public. Stapel wanted it to bring both redemption and profit, and he seemed not to have given much thought to whether it would help or hurt him in his narrower quest to seek forgiveness from the students and colleagues he duped.

The New York Times : The mind of a con man Published: April 26, 2013

“The book is an examination of his life based on a personal diary he started after his fraud was made public.”  writes our intrepid NYT reporter.

Really? – and how much of this self-serving “diary” was faked or just made up?

Willingly or otherwise, the New York Times (and the reporter Yudhijit Bhattacharjee) are being duped and manipulated by a consummate fraudster.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Fraud, Media, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »

Monkeys – except the top monkey – switch behaviour to conform to local customs

April 29, 2013

Where humans are in a subordinate position in a new society (new immigrants for example) they usually conform to avoid attracting attention which could be dangerous. They observe, they copy behaviour to try to fit in and thereby ensure their own security in the new environment. All driven no doubt by the instinct to survive. But a conquering human does not bother to conform to local customs – he imposes his own. All humans are clearly capable of both types of behaviour. Whether to conform or not is then entirely dependent upon the individual’s position in the society he finds himself in.

And monkeys are – it seems – no different.

I suspect this holds true for many more species than just humans and primates and am a little surprised that the researchers are surprised at this behaviour.

A new paper: E. van de Waal, C. Borgeaud, A. Whiten. Potent Social Learning and Conformity Shape a Wild Primate’s Foraging Decisions. Science, 2013; 340 (6131): 483 DOI:10.1126/science.1232769

From University of St. Andrews press release:

Noha group feeding on pink corn

Noha group feeding on pink corn

….. In the initial study, the researchers provided each of two groups of wild monkeys with a box of maize corn dyed pink and another dyed blue. The blue corn was made to taste repulsive and the monkeys soon learned to eat only pink corn. Two other groups were trained in this way to eat only blue corn. A new generation of infants were later offered both colours of food – neither tasting badly – and the adult monkeys present appeared to remember which colour they had previously preferred. Almost every infant copied the rest of the group, eating only the one preferred colour of corn.

The crucial discovery came when males began to migrate between groups during the mating season. The researchers found that of the ten males who moved to groups eating a different coloured corn to the one they were used to, all but one switched to the new local norm immediately.

The one monkey who did not switch, was the top ranking in his new group who appeared unconcerned about adopting local behavior.

Dr van de Waal conducted the field experiments at the Inkawu Vervet Project in the Mawana private game reserve in South Africa. She became familiar with all 109 monkeys, making it possible for her to document the behaviour of the males who migrated to new groups.

She said, “The willingness of the immigrant males to adopt the local preference of their new groups surprised us all. The copying behaviour of both the new, naïve infants and the migrating males reveals the potency and importance of social learning in these wild primates, extending even to the conformity we know so well in humans.”

Commenting on the research, leading primatologist Professor Frans de Waal, of the Yerkes Primate Center of Emory University, said that the study “is one of the few successful field experiments on cultural transmission to date, and a remarkably elegant one at that.”

Abstract: Conformity to local behavioral norms reflects the pervading role of culture in human life. Laboratory experiments have begun to suggest a role for conformity in animal social learning, but evidence from the wild remains circumstantial. Here, we show experimentally that wild vervet monkeys will abandon personal foraging preferences in favor of group norms new to them. Groups first learned to avoid the bitter-tasting alternative of two foods. Presentations of these options untreated months later revealed that all new infants naïve to the foods adopted maternal preferences. Males who migrated between groups where the alternative food was eaten switched to the new local norm. Such powerful effects of social learning represent a more potent force than hitherto recognized in shaping group differences among wild animals.

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The Green mantra of “No we can’t” is unsustainable

April 28, 2013

It is a bright, sunny Sunday morning and I refuse to allow Green predictions of impending doom dent my optimism.

The Greens – no doubt – mean well.

Earnest, self-righteous, Malthusian, smug, often sanctimonious but rarely rational, the Greens of today are always ready to tell others what to do and what is best for them. From being – once upon a time – a constructive movement with practical and laudable objectives of improving local environments, it has developed into an authoritarian, arrogant, dogmatic, semi-religious and mildly fascist ideology. It has been perverted by scenarios of catastrophe and subverted by delusions of grandiose global ambitions. It is more concerned with forbidding behaviour it considers undesirable and of coercing people to comply. It has forgotten that humanity is an integral and necessary part of the environment.

I take the view that our descendants will be smarter than we are, that human ingenuity will meet the challenges to come and that change is the essence of humanity. Adapting to change is what has powered human evolution and it is in designing the changes to come which will drive our future evolution. Stagnation and maintaining a status quo in the name of conservation is essentially backward looking and an abdication of responsibility. I prefer to focus on what to do and not on what others should not do.

We can’t keep increasing energy use – Yes we can

We can’t keep using nuclear power – Yes we can

We can’t keep using gas – Yes we can

We can’t keep burning coal – Yes we can

We can’t burn fossil fuels – Yes we can

We can’t feed the world’s population – Yes we can

We can’t eliminate war – Yes we can

We can’t eradicate poverty – Yes we can

We can’t fight disease – Yes we can

We can’t maintain growth – Yes we can

We can’t use gene modified crops – Yes we can

We can’t use stem cells – Yes we can

We can’t adapt – Yes we can

We can’t depend upon human ingenuity – Yes we can

Without change there is no time and all is stasis and dead. The essence of humanity lies in meeting the challenges of change and not in futile attempts to stop change.

Green is also the colour of decay.

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Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Politics | 1 Comment »

Disconnect between man-made CO2 and atmospheric levels of CO2

April 28, 2013

The evidence grows that

  1. Temperature drives carbon dioxide, and 
  2. man made carbon dioxide is a minor contributor to carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere

Atmospheric verification of anthropogenic CO2emission trends, Roger J. Francey et al, Nature Climate Change 3, 520–524 (2013) doi:10.1038/nclimate1817

The Hockey Schtick reports:

A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change finds a disconnect between man-made CO2 and atmospheric levels of CO2, demonstrating that despite a sharp 25% increase in man-made CO2 emissions since 2003, the growth rate in atmospheric CO2 has slowed sharply since 2002/2003. The data shows that while the growth rate of man-made emissions was relatively stable from 1990-2003, the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 surged up to the record El Nino of 1997-1998. Conversely, growth in man-made emissions surged ~25% from 2003-2011, but the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 has flatlined since 1999 along with global temperatures. The data demonstrates temperature drives CO2 levels due to ocean outgassing, man-made CO2 does not drive temperature, and that man is not the primary cause of the rise in CO2 levels.

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Flying bullets: DHS uses four times as many bullets per person as the army

April 28, 2013

On average, each of the approximately 70,000 Department of Homeland Security agents fires 4.3 bullets every day.

Army soldiers fire less than a bullet a day.

Some strange statistics:

“It is entirely … inexplicable why the Department of Homeland Security needs so much ammunition,” Chaffetz, R-Utah, said at a hearing.  ….. 

Chaffetz, who chairs one of the House oversight subcommittees holding the hearing Thursday, revealed that the department currently has more than 260 million rounds in stock. He said the department bought more than 103 million rounds in 2012 and used 116 million that same year — among roughly 70,000 agents. 

Comparing that with the small-arms purchases procured by the U.S. Army, he said the DHS is churning through between 1,300 and 1,600 rounds per officer, while the U.S. Army goes through roughly 350 rounds per soldier. ….. “Their officers use what seems to be an exorbitant amount of ammunition,” he said.  ….. 

Nick Nayak, chief procurement officer for the Department of Homeland Security, did not challenge Chaffetz’s numbers. 

There are 2 possible story-lines. Either

  • the DHS agents are poor marksmen and need 4 times as much practice as the soldiers, or
  • DHS agents having practiced so much more are far better marksmen than the soldiers

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Cameron’s War: Syria + Sarin = Iraq + WMD?

April 27, 2013

The war in Iraq is over. Everybody is pulling out of Afghanistan.

That a state of violent chaos continues in these countries is really of no consequence. But the subsequent consumption of weapons and ammunition by the US and the UK and in Nato will be a little too low and a growth in this consumption is something to be desired. The Libyan escapade was far too short and too limited in scope to contribute much to the consumption of materials and to the coffers of the weapons industry. And a vigorous and profitable weapons industry does require that that consumption should grow and not just be maintained or  – god forbid – be allowed to decline.

The weapons industry needs a new war. After all if the existing weapons and ammunition don’t get used up how can one sell any more in these times of financial cut-backs. France has Mali. But the US and the UK desperately need a new war. The US needs a new war for economic reasons.

Washington Post: As U.S. wars end, drop in spending hurts economy. A surprising 11.5 percent annualized drop in military spending is holding back the economic recovery, …

Obama would like to leave office having won a war of his own. Bush’s war on terror is a little unsatisfactory since it can never be won and it is not something Obama has created himself. Getting Osama provided little profit for the weapons industry. Cameron needs a new war for purely domestic reasons. He will have to face a new election in 2015. He needs to recreate his own image –  to try and live up to the heroic legacies of Winston Churchill in WW2, Margaret Thatcher in The Falklands and of Tony Blair in Iraq. Once upon a time, wars were declared when there was a genuine belief that no other options were available and a clear enemy could be defined. Bush and Blair (and Howard) and the neo-cons changed all that. They realised that the reasons for a desirable war could always be manufactured. Dossiers could be “sexed up” to invent enemies and provide evidence of their evil doings. Of course the “enemy” needed to be relatively weak so that a “victory” would not be jeopardised but sufficiently strong so that both air and ground forces could consume their equipment. Later if anybody found out that the reasons to go to war had been manufactured, they could just blame faulty intelligence.

It could be happening again in Syria. Cameron really needs to reinvent himself and if it takes a war to do that – then so be it. To just follow in the footsteps of “Slimy Tony” is a little demeaning, so this time the evidence for Syria and Sarin gas will have to be manufactured much more carefully than for Iraq and WMD.

BBC: The US president said there was “some evidence that chemical weapons have been used on the population in Syria, these are preliminary assessments, they’re based on our intelligence gathering.

“We have varying degrees of confidence about the actual use, there’s a range of questions about how, when, where these weapons have been used,” he said.

Mr Obama insisted more evidence was still needed and that there would be a “vigorous investigation”.

But proof of their use would be a “game changer”, he said.

“Horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law.

“All of us, not just the United States, but around the world, have to recognise how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations,” he said.

….. Earlier Mr Cameron told the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson: “I choose my words carefully, but what I see does look very much like a war crime is being committed in our world, at this time, by the Syrian government.”

War has become just another tool of economic stimulus and for building the images of the war-leaders.

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Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Syria, UK, US, War | 1 Comment »

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