Global warming might be twice as catastrophic as previously thought, flooding settlements on the British coast and turning the interior into an unrecognisable tropical landscape, the world's biggest study of climate change shows
Sounds scary right?? What was this big "study" of climate change??
Researchers from some of Britain's leading universities used computer modeling to predict that under the "worst-case" scenario, London would be under water and winters banished to history as average temperatures in the UK soar up to 20C higher than at present.
So it wasn't a study it was a computer model. Computer models are based on assumptions. If computer modeling was so all fired great then we could predict the winners of all major sporting events.
Computer modeling is used in the stock market sometimes to great success but as anyone who invested in Long Term Capital Management (remember them) can tell you computer models are not the real world and the real world can make computer models look pretty stupid.
Speaking of stupid:
Myles Allen, of Oxford University, said: "The danger zone is not something we're going to reach in the middle of the century; we're in it now." Each of the hottest 15 years on record have been since 1980.
15 years based on what? The temperatures from the last 50 years? The last 100? Who was measuring and with what? And I'd be willing to bet money that those 15 hot years were mostly from 1980-95. I would bet that the past 10 years have been progressively colder.
Professor Bob Spicer, of the Open University, said average global temperature rises of 11C are unprecedented in the long geological record of the Earth. "If we go back to the Cretaceous, which is 100 million years ago, the best estimates of the global mean temperature was about 6C higher than present
Ahh the Cretaceous period a time of absolute devastation on earth right? I mean the planet was uninhabitable correct??
The Cretaceous period was the heyday of the dinosaurs. Huge carnivores like Tyrannosaurus rex and Giganotosaurus appeared, as did Triceratops and many, many others. There was a tremendous diversity in dinosaur species. Mammals were flourishing, and flowering plants developed and radically changed the landscape
Wow, sounds terrible. I can see why environmentalists wouldn't want that to happen again.
Why do I love reading Hog on Ice? For great posts like this:
I know you're all dying for a more detailed report on the baklava.
It was really good the first day. The cheesecake layer was a great idea. Straight baklava is too sweet and rich, and the texture is boring. The cheesecake makes it much more interesting and cuts the richness.
Yesterday, it was even better. Baklava improves if you store it for a day. The flavors had mingled, and it had cooled all the way through, and it was so unbelievably good I could not stay away from it. That's the test of a good recipe. If you absolutely can't stop eating it, your recipe is sound.
I called my regular excess food receptacle, Ivette. Of course, she was ready to do her job. I loaded up the baklava and a two-liter growler of Belgian-style ale for her brother, and I drove to her house.
I'm sorry I can't tell you she greeted me at the door in something outrageously skimpy or clingy. Not this time. She was getting dressed, so her brother Jose answered the door.
We went into the kitchen, and I presented him with the growler. I warned him that the beer was very heavy and about twice as strong as regular beer. He poured himself a mug and started working on it carefully.
Ivette swept in, plopped herself on a barstool, and attacked the baklava. Like a lot of you, she had been skeptical about the cheese. But the first slab disappeared in about thirty seconds, and I realized I had a winner on my hands.
I gave anime a chance, and I'm sorry, but it's just bad cartoons for nerds who have no idea what good entertainment is. Yes, I have seen Cowboy Bebop. No, I do not want to hear why it was actually a good movie. If you think it was a good movie, you are not "ahead of your time." You are not "avante-garde." You are a dork.
For the record I have only seen one anime movie in my life. I forget the title but I think was Blue something or something blue. I found it kinda boring. I haven't seen Cowboy Bebop. I just thought that post (above) was funny.
BTW: Big announcement coming in a few short days!!! Don't miss it.
A Woman of Letters Here in Canada as winter enters its depth we are encouraged that soon February will arrive and the sap will begin to rise in the maple trees. Until that happens we have to make do with a completely different type of sap:
"I know you probably wonder from time to time what you mean to me . . . you mean the world to me. Think of something you couldn't live without and multiply it by a hundred."
So writes Hotel Heiress Paris Hilton in a love note to her former boy-toy Nick Carter. Apparently there is plenty of more where that came from. Which might or might not explain why Carter slugged her.
I do however fear for Ms. Hiltons financial security. How easy it will be for people to bilk her out of her rightful share to the Hilton Fortune:
Paris: like, how much money do I have?
A: ummm well think of a dollar and then multiply it by a hundred.
Paris: Wow! I'm rich!!
Ted Turner called Fox a propaganda tool of the Bush administration and indirectly compared Fox News Channel's popularity to Adolf Hitler's popular election to run Germany before World War II.
Turner made those fiery comments in his first address at the National Association for Television Programming Executives' conference since he was ousted from Time Warner Inc. five years ago.
The 66-year-old billionaire, who leveraged a television station in Atlanta into a media empire, made the comment before a standing-room-only crowd at NATPE's opening session Tuesday.
His no-nonsense, sometimes humorous, approach during the one-hour Q&A generated frequent loud applause and laughter.
Fox wasn't laughing, however. "Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind," said a Fox News spokesperson. "We wish him well."
While no charges have been laid, police raided Evelyn Hynes' office, seized files and a computer. Government sources admit nearly a million dollars is unaccounted for.
Hynes was convicted of defrauding a bank in Newfoundland in the 1980s for more than $600,000. Working as an assistant loans manager, she made up phony clients and bogus loans over six years. She was sentenced to two years in jail but was later pardoned.
After getting out of jail and becoming a social worker she moved to Saskatoon, rising through the ranks of the provincial government to become a middle-level manager. But government officials didn't check Hynes's criminal record when they hired her in 1989. At that time, she had not been pardoned..
Obviously Ms. Hynes was unhappy with the level of UI benefits she was receiving in Newfoudland.
Damian had a post last week regarding Newfoundland and our place in Confederation. In case you don’t know Newfoundland didn’t enter Canada till 1949 when in a very close referendum (48% of Newfoundlanders voted against joining) the province of Newfoundland was born.
For Canadians Newfoundland isn’t a big deal. In fact most Canadians spend most of their lives without giving much thought to the 10th province. Newfoundlanders on the other hand feel differently.
For Newfoundlanders their relationship to the rest of Canada (which they refer to as “the mainland”) is something akin to Canadians relationship to the US. They want to be noticed as a genuine partner and contributor yet are continually disappointed when the object of their desire seems not to know that they exist.
I remember in the 70’s when the seal hunting controversy was raging and Newfoundlanders were feeling particularly sensitive. The Miss Canada pageant (which was very big at the time) was being broadcast on CTV. Lloyd Robertson was hosting and when he came on he welcomed all Canadians from “Victoria to Halifax”. Newfoundlanders were furious. But of course Canadians didn’t notice. The spark for Damian’s post last week was a column by Margaret Wente, which has the entire province in an uproar but has been a non-event here in Canada.
For Newfoundlanders membership in the Dominion of Canada has always been bitter-sweet and the feeling that they are Newfoundlanders first and Canadians second is never too far below the surface.
When I first moved to Toronto in 1985 I went with some friends to Detroit to see a concert (I think the bands were Beefeater and Dag Nasty – the original Dag Nasty with Dave Smalley on vocals) I had never been out of the country before and when we pulled up to the border the border guard asked everyone in the car “What’s your citizenship?” In unison everyone roared “Canadian!!!”
Except me. I realized to my surprise that I had said “Newfoundland”. The border guard and everyone else in the car didn’t notice because the sound of the other voices drowned mine out but for me it was a moment that gave me cause for serious thought.
Why did I not say Canadian, I wondered? I was after all Canadian and had always felt Canadian. Yet here I was identifying myself not as a Canadian and not as a Canadian from Newfoundland but as a Newfoundlander.
It was something that I thought about from time to time again over the years and last week started thinking about it again.
For someone with a belief system that tends towards libertarianism Newfoundland’s place in Canada is difficult to reconcile. We have always been a hand-out province subsisting for years on transfer payments from the rest of Canada (Alberta and Ontario) and successive provincial governments have sought to eliminate the welfare burden (a provincial responsibility) by creating make work projects that allowed outport residents to work just long enough to qualify for unemployment insurance, thus moving them off the provincial books and onto the federal government’s payroll.
The culture of dependence on unemployment insurance was so entrenched when I was a teenager that Newfoundlanders would often begin conversations not by discussing things like the weather but by asking each other if they had “enough stamps” to qualify for unemployment insurance.
It actually wasn’t a bad deal. If you could find 10 continuous weeks of work the Canadian government would pay you for the other 48 weeks. When you think of it – why wouldn’t anyone take that deal?
Unfortunately that type of government largesse has it’s drawbacks. Many Newfoundlanders saw (and still see) UI (unemployment insurance) as their birthright and howl in outrage if any changes are made to the system.
But the culture of dependence started long before UI which was perfected under the Trudeau years.
In fact Newfoundland’s entry into Canada was greased by the promise of government handouts.
The referendum was a closely fought affair with nearly as many voting against as for it and in my mother’s household apparently the division was stark.
My grandfather – a widely read self-educated man was against joining Confederation. Grandfather was well read despite the fact that he only had one eye. He lost his left eye at the age of 14 whilst working in a coopers shop. A cooper made barrels and one of the hoops broke and struck my grandfather in the eye. This was an event that had far reaching effects on my family. Three years later when the First World War broke out my Grandfather eagerly traveled to St. Johns to enlist only to be turned down because of his handicap. The regiment he attempted to join was later cut to pieces at Beaumont Hamel. Had he not lost an eye he most certainly would have been killed there and I probably wouldn’t have been born.
Anyway he was dead set against joining Canada and forbade my Grandmother from voting to support Confederation. My grandmother complied – or at least told him she would.
On the day of the referendum both my Grandparents dutifully cast their votes in a secret ballot. Later that day my Grandmother took my Mother aside and whispered to her that she had in fact not obeyed my grandfather but had voted instead to join Canada.
Why did my grandmother go against the wishes of the family patriarch?? Well the Liberals had promised something called a “baby bonus” where families would get a monthly cash allowance for every child. For a dirt-poor woman living in rural Newfoundland who had never seen two pennies of her own in her entire life this was a kings ransom (especially since she had 8 kids). And of course since it was a secret ballot she could say aloud that she voted against Confederation but only the ballot box knew the real story.
How many other women did the same that day? I have no idea but the system of Government handouts to Newfoundland has been in place since day one.
Newfoundlanders have always felt poor and to a large extent the province has been an economic basket case. They have always felt ripped off because of the ridiculous contract that Joe Smallwood signed with Quebec over Newfoundland hydro and now they feel ripped off once more because the Federal government has refused to give them control over their offshore oil.
Newfoundlanders see themselves as potentially being another Alberta but also feel that if the oil was in the ground as opposed to under the ocean – they wouldn’t be having this problem.
It is a great thing in my opinion that so many Newfoundlanders want to break the cycle of dependence that began from the minute we entered Confederation. It is a shame that the Canadian government seems to want to perpetuate it continually. Until that changes my grandmother's legacy will always be one of poverty, unemployment and lost opportunity.
UPDATE: As Bill helpfully pointed out in the comments section my math is slightly skewed. I should have said 10 weeks of work and 42 weeks of benefits not 48. The 48 figure comes from an earlier iteration of UI when you could get 48 weeks benefits for a mere 4 weeks of work (that was a beauty).
