Pro-fracking health report suppressed by New York Governor

January 7, 2013

When a report produces a conclusion you don’t like, political correctness has a simple solution. Suppress the report and commission a new report to reach the “correct” conclusions because the original report “is out of date”.

WNYC News: A document from Governor Cuomo’s Administration assessing the health impacts of hydro fracking, written in early 2012, says the gas drilling process is likely safe if proper precautions are taken by the governor’s environmental agency. ….

While the report says there are potential health risks involved in hydro fracking, it concludes that in each instance, proper mitigation measures that will be required by the state Department of Environmental Conservation will minimize any potential harm and reduce risks. The report, written in February of 2012, says “significant adverse impacts on human health are not expected from routine HVHF (hydro fracking) operations.”

…… The report appears to have been intended for inclusion in the state’s ongoing environmental review of fracking. It also advises against trying to do a site specific quantitative risk assessment of fracking, saying there are too many variables and that too many assumptions would have to be made.

The Administration did not like the conclusion and now a spokeswoman for the DEC says the report is “outdated,” and that no conclusions should be drawn.

“The document is not a health assessment, is nearly a year old, and does not reflect final DEC policy,” said DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis in a statement. “The final SGEIS will reflect the review currently underway by DOH and its outside experts. No conclusions should be drawn from this partial, outdated summary.”

Goodness gracious! A year old!

I suppose the required conclusions have already been written and the review will continue until the desired conclusions are reached.

It’s only politics.

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A week of new cold records in Delhi – must be punishment for man-made global warming

January 6, 2013

In spite of the urban heat effect and perhaps because of the religious fanaticism of the global warming pundits, every winter witnesses a significant death toll in Delhi and North India from bitterly cold weather conditions. Cold is the real killer not warmth. It is adaptation to cold which is more difficult and it is what is required.

Delhi schools to be closed till Jan 12 due to cold wave: indiatvnews.com

If instead of the Canute-like arrogance of following a pseudo-scientific religion in trying to arrest climate change, we focused on adapting and coping with the normal and real-life, variations of weather — where the magnitude of these variations  in real time dwarf those of long-term climate change — we would all be better served. It is successfully adapting to the on-going vagaries of weather (during both warming and cooling climate cycles) that has produced the greatest advances in human history. Futile attempts to control what are natural climate cycles is just plain stupid.

Cold records in Delhi: The minimum temperature in Delhi has been recorded at 1.9 degrees Celsius, which is five degrees below normal. The maximum temperature is 12.8 degrees, which is eight degrees below normal. This is the lowest minimum for January in the past five years.

…. On Saturday also, the capital had got no respite from the bitter cold as the minimum temperature settled at 2.9 degrees Celsius – four notches below average. … On Wednesday, the city witnessed the coldest day in 44 years when the maximum plummeted to 9.8 degress Celsius.

Cold wave in North India: The entire North India on Saturday continued to remain in the grip of severe cold, which claimed 11 more lives in Uttar Pradesh, taking the death toll this winter to 140.

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Indian politicians expose themselves in the wake of the Delhi rape

January 6, 2013

The quality of the political leadership in India leaves much to be desired. What is clear is the medieval and feudal fantasy that many of them still live in. Women politicians included. Rape and murder and torture are all perfectly acceptable if inflicted on victims of the appropriate class or caste or sex or religion. In the 2009 parliamentary elections, 6 candidates had been charged with rape while 34 candidates were awaiting trial for crimes against women. In the state assemblies, 42 members had rape or associated charges against them at the time of their election. India has over 300 such politicians in power.

But even though they make utter idiots of themselves they continue to get the votes which keeps them where they are.

What price democracy!

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat: “There is a theory of social contract in the universe. A husband and a wife are bound by a contract which says – you (woman) look after the household chores and satisfy me, I (man) will take care of your needs and will protect you. Till she delivers her duties without fail, he keeps her on the contract and if she fails to honour the contract, he disowns her. And if it is the husband who is not honouring the contract, she can also abandon him. One can go for a new contract then.”

Congress MP from Jangipur, Abhijeet Mukherjee (son of the President of India): “This is almost like the Pink Revolution. These women who are protesting have no contact with ground reality. These pretty women, dented and painted, who come for protests are not students. I have seen them speak on television, usually women of this age are not students.”

Vibha Rao, Chairwoman of Chhattisgarh State Women Commission and BJP :  “Women, influenced by western culture, send wrong signals through their dress and behaviour and men often take the cue from those signals. Women display their bodies and indulge in various obscene activities. Women are unaware of the kind of message [their actions] generate”. 

Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee President Botsa Satyanarayana: “Just because the country attained independence at midnight, is it proper for women moving at midnight? That particular woman (the Delhi rape victim) should have applied her mind before boarding the private bus. Anyway, it was a small incident”.

BJP, Minister for Commerce and Industry Kailash Vijayvargiya: “Only when Sitaji crossed the Lakshman Rekha, she was kidnapped by Ravan… If Sitaji [woman] crosses the Lakshman Rekha, then Sitaharan [abduction] is bound to take place as Ravans are out there.”

BJP National Youth chief Anurag Thakur: “The difference between India and Bharat is that India is the place where The Dirty Picture gets a national award. India is the place where Mahesh Bhatt talks about sex with his daughter. India is the place where Sherlyn Chopra gets her picture clicked for the cover of Playboy and says had my father been alive, he would have been extremely proud of me. India is the place where the media celebrates the birthday of a foreign porn star. India is the place where a woman like Poonam Pandey openly speaks about stripping herself naked.”

Vishwa Hindu Parishad International President Ashok Singhal: Talking to reporters here at a congregation of saints and sadhus of Tamil Nadu, Singhal described the trend of youngsters in the country imbibing western culture from the US as “alarming”. “We have lost all the values we had in cities,” he said, demanding that India be renamed Bharat. “Let the real name of the country, Bharat, remain. When we call Bharat, it has the culture of thousands of years of this sacred land,” he said

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“White Pimpernel” cat arrested for assisting planned prison breakout in Brazil

January 5, 2013

Two years ago we heard about the drug smuggling pigeons at a Colombian jail, and now comes news of a cat heavily implicated in assisting a planned break-out from a Brazilian prison!! The cat was caught red-handed on New Years day! The arch-criminal has so far refused to speak and all 263 prisoners are suspect. It is not known if the cat is the ring leader or merely an accomplice.

It has been over 5o years since since I read Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s novel of the arch prison escape arranger during the French Revolution – The Scarlet Pimpernel – but this verse is for forever etched in my memory:

We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel.

A prison guard holds a cat that has objects wrapped around his body with tape at a prison in Arapiraca in this handout photo obtained by Reuters on January 5, 2013. A cat carrying a saw and a mobile phone was 'detained' as it entered a prison gate in northeast Brazil, Brazilian media reported on Saturday. Prison guards were surprised when they saw a white cat crossing the main gate of the prison, its body wrapped with tape. A closer look showed the feline also carried drills, an earphone, a memory card, batteries and a phone charger. REUTERS-Superintendent General of Prison Administration shows -Handout

White Pimpernel: Reuters

Reuters: A cat carrying a saw and a mobile phone was “detained” as it entered a prison gate in northeast Brazil, Brazilian media reported on Saturday.

Prison guards were surprised when they saw a white cat crossing the main gate of the prison, its body wrapped with tape. A closer look showed the feline also carried drills, an earphone, a memory card, batteries and a phone charger.

All 263 detainees in the prison of Arapiraca, a city of 215,000 people in the state of Alagoas, are considered suspect in the plot, which is being investigated by local police.

“It’s tough to find out who’s responsible for the action as the cat doesn’t speak,” a prison spokesperson told local paper Estado de S.Paulo.

The cat was taken to an animal disease center to receive medical care.

The incident took place on New Year’s day but was first reported by national media on Saturday

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Noted in passing 5th January 2013

January 5, 2013

Wildlife gallery from Greenland: Photo: Uri Golman

A stunning gallery of wildlife pictures from Greenland.

In the ever-changing world of the web and personal computing, a reminder of the MS wrist-watch and other 10 EPIC CES fails.

Science Fraud – Another web-site silenced by legal threats and the University of Regensburg has rescinded the doctorate of a dentist who had submitted a dissertation that was essentially that of her husband’s.

A new open-access paper in Earth System Dynamics showing that recent global warming is not statistically significantly related to anthropogenic forcing. Matt Ridley has 2 interesting pieces on how fossil fuels have actually greened the planet and how Europeans seem intent on making their future as bad as they can.

A new kidney transplantation racket revealed in India where the price of a kidney varies between Rs. 70,000 and 300,000 ($1,400 to $6,000). Indian Supreme Court reacts to over 2,200 deaths in clinical trials carried out by international pharmaceutical companies in India.

Some modern humans who live natural lifestyles in the forests of Earth still climb more or less like a chimpanzee and ‘Lucy’ could climb like chimps. Jumping genes and horizontal gene transfer leads to the conclusion that cows are more closely related to snakes than to elephants!

Wallace’s letter to Darwin in 1864 doubting the assertion that the aristocracy are more beautiful than the middle-classes. Lead concentration in Greenland ice shows that when Rome fell there was a real reduction of industrial activity which lasted almost a millenium. It could be that climate change is not the great destroyer but is the great enabler and that many of the evolutionary developments of modern humans have been driven by natural – and rapid – climate change. Archaeological sleuthing sheds more light on the strange goings-on during the mutiny on the VOC Retourschip Batavia, in 1629.

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Over 1000 ships trapped by ice in China

January 5, 2013
from Xinhua

from Xinhua

“The ice conditions in the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea this January may be more serious than that in the past years” reports Xinhua. Zheng Dong, chief meteorologist at the Yantai Marine Environment Monitoring Center under the state oceanic administrationsaid that the area under ice in Laizhou Bay was 291 square km this week.

Temperatures in China have plunged to their lowest in almost three decades, cold enough to freeze coastal waters and trap 1,000 ships in ice, official media said at the weekend.

The Shizuishan segment of the Yellow River is frozen due to persisiting cold weather in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Jan. 5, 2012. Two segments of the Yellow River in Ningxia region have been frozen up due to low temperature.

I would have thought it was just winter even if such conditions have not been seen for 3 decades. But – for political and religious correctness – it is no doubt all due to global warming and carbon dioxide!!

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Solar Cycle 24 will be the smallest sunspot cycle since 1906 (SC 14)

January 5, 2013

The January 2013 NASA forecast for the development of Solar Cycle 24 is out.

sc 24 prediction January 2013

SC 24 prediction Jan 2013 – Hathaway -NASA

The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 69 in the Fall of 2013. The smoothed sunspot number has already reached 67 (in February 2012)due to the strong peak in late 2011 so the official maximum will be at least this high and this late. We are currently over four years into Cycle 24. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906.

With sunspot activity at this low level the planet will cool. It remains to be seen whether this is the start of something like a Dalton Minimum (SC5 and 6) or even a Maunder Minimum. This cooling has begun and global temperatures peaked about 16 years ago and are now declining slightly while carbon dioxide concentration continues to increase. It is only a matter of time before the belief that carbon dioxide concentration (whether man-made or not) causes global warming will have to be completely discarded. But there is so much money now riding on this belief (and even though there is only conjecture and no direct evidence for this belief), that we will likely see a decade or more of rationalisation of reality before the belief is abandoned.

SC24 compared to SC5 in 2011 is shown below:

SC24 compared to SC5

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Munich Re: Natural catastrophe and weather related deaths in 2012 were less than one-tenth of the 10-year average

January 5, 2013

Alarmism and fostering a fear of future events where the actual risk is well below the perceived risk is the stock-in-trade of insurance companies. A simple case of boosting revenues (premiums from perceived risks)  for any given cost (actual risk). It is inevitable that while statistics of past events from insurance companies are detailed and accurate any forecast from an insurance company will (must) exaggerate risks. There is no business if perception of risk is low.

When it comes to weather and global warming fears Munich Re is among the more strident of the alarmists. A fear of coming catastrophes by drought or too much rain or floods or rising sea levels are all actively promoted as new insurance products are touted.

Munich Re has just issued a press release about the statistics of natural and weather related catstrophes showing that costs for 2012 were below average and lives lost were well below average. Needless to say the headline is spun to help sell more insurance:

Overall, losses were significantly lower in 2012 than in the previous year, ….. 

Some 9,500 people lost their lives in natural catastrophes last year compared with the ten-year average of 106,000. The relatively small number of fatalities was due to the fact that, in 2012, few severe natural catastrophes occurred in emerging and developing countries, where natural catastrophes tend to have far more devastating consequences in terms of human lives.

Prof. Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research then adds his spin to try and ensure Munich Re’s business for the future:

 “It is not possible, of course, to attribute individual events to climate change, each theoretically being possible in isolation. However, numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the US East Coast in the long term. The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge. And, with no apparent prospect of progress in international climate negotiations like those held recently in Doha, adaptation to such hazards using suitable protective measures is absolutely essential.”

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It is Bharat versus India as Hindu fanatics try to justify the Delhi rapists

January 4, 2013

I have seen the Delhi rape being described as a manifestation of the conflict which arises at the interface between the rural and the urban life-styles. And there is probably some truth in that. There is little doubt that for the young who stream into the cities after leading highly repressed and frustrating lives in rural India it is difficult for them to make the transition from the middle-ages into the 21st century. The concept of women not being chattel is beyond some to grasp. The apparent “anonymity” of life in the city encourages a few to believe that they can prey on other “anonymous” and depersonalised victims with impunity. Most rapes and other crimes against people are rarely given high priority by city police forces struggling against an ever-increasing urban populace.  The speed with which the Delhi rapists have been apprehended and presented in court in this high profile case is the exception – not the rule. But this is not a problem which occurs only when rural meets urban or which only happens in cities. Rural India still abounds with horrendous cases of violence against others – against women,against children, against people of other religions and those of other castes. Most of this rural behaviour goes unremarked and unreported. The Khap Panchayats who use rape as a punishment and support “honour killing” and who are allowed to operate freely by supine politicians is a case in point.

So, I am not sure that this is just an “urbanisation” problem. It goes much deeper than that. The police act (or more correctly – fail to act) as they do in most cases because the political “leaders” give no priority to these. These “leaders” are rarely “leaders” but are mainly parasites. Many are themselves stuck in the attitudes of a few centuries ago and have not made the transition. Many themselves have no wish to make the transition. Many actually still believe that women are chattel. This view of women is not confined to any particular religion. It can be found among Hindus and Muslims alike. But among the Hindus, the parasitic politicians are usually those who continue not only  to believe in “caste” but are mainly responsible for the continued domination of caste politics. And they use the “privileges of caste” or the “perceived disadvantages of caste” to prop up their own out-dated and anachronistic positions. For some it is -paradoxically – the maintaining of the privileges of a “declared disadvantaged caste” which governs.

It is not a case of rural India versus urban India. The transition from rural to urban life and its difficulties could be anticipated by any competent politician or leader. It is surely the job of the leaders to manage and lead this transition. The root cause is a lack of  political leadership and a lack of political management. Fundamentally it is a lack of political competence. For “parasitic politicians” the continuation of a conflict at the interface provides more blood to be sucked out of the masses.

The issue is one of whether to live in a fantasy past or move to the real future. Whether to continue to exhibit the attitudes of  some glorified and completely false view of a Bharat – which never ever existed –  (or of the glorified view of a Moghul Hindusthan which exists only in the Muslim psyche) or to move forward to create the India of the 21st century.

In the particular case of the Delhi rape, the victim and all of the accused were Hindus. It has not taken long for the fanatics of the RSS (who may look utterly ridiculous in their khaki shorts and black caps but are a poisonous influence in the country) and some of the parasitic politicians of the BJP to try and justify the horrific behaviour of the Delhi six.

IBN Live:  Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Friday kicked up a controversy with his remark that rapes happened in cities and not in the rural areas. “Such crimes hardly take place in Bharat, but they frequently occur in India,” Bhagwat said seeming to indicate that “westernization” in Indian cities was the reason behind increasing cases of rapes. 

The remark follows a similar comment by a MP BJP leader who stated that women who did not stay within their limits, paid the price for it just like Sita was abducted by Ravana after she crossed the ‘Lakshman rekha’.

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Obama – sort-of – wins the “fiscal cliff” and goes the way of Europe

January 2, 2013

Well, Obama got some tax increases for the wealthy and a postponement of the fight for spending cuts. The fiscal cliff was little more than a fiscal bump. Republicans are more upset than Democrats – at least judging by the “squeal index” – and the Democrats actually prevailed over the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. So, the view from across the Atlantic based on the belief that the loser squeals the loudest, is that Obama must have won. (The splits in the Republican Party are particularly interesting since these may completely nullify their majority in the Congress!)

But whatever it was that was agreed to, the US debt will rise by some $4 trillion directly as a consequence of this “deal”. The US follows exactly the same way as Europe in putting off the day when the music must be faced. The fight about spending and debt will come in about two months. Years of profligacy and living beyond available means cannot just be wished away. Just wishing that the economy will rebound – faster than has ever happened before – and will increase revenues so that spending cuts can be avoided is not living in the “land of hope” but is living in a fantasy. It is the same fantasy being played out in Europe. Obama is merely following Francois Hollande’s super-tax on the very rich to postpone the cuts in spending that are desperately needed and must come. The fundamental rule of party politics is being upheld: “Tax the voters for the other party and spend on your own”. The pain to come is inevitable. Of course, those who have been profligate have taken their benefits and gone. The pain will have to be borne by others – in the US as in Greece and Spain and Italy. I can’t help suspecting that the goal – whether for Hollande or for Obama – is to just postpone the evil day of spending cuts long enough so that it happens on someone else’s watch. But both Obama and Hollande are at the start of new terms and neither will be able to avoid facing reality.

The high drama at the end of the year in the US bears a strong resemblance to a Christmas farce. It couldn’t possibly have been a pantomime since any kind of music was notably absent. Obama’s performance on the 31st of December was badly out-of-tune and a little embarrassing to watch. And the other bit-players on display – Biden and Reid and Boehner and Cantor and McConnell – with their self-adulation, self-congratulations and mutual admiration were even worse.

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