Filed under: Economy, Environment, Europe, News, Politics | Tags: Global Warming, Great Britain
Great Britain now (2010):
Coldest December since records began as temperatures plummet to minus 10C bringing travel chaos across Britain
Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.
And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.
The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910. [read more]
Great Britain then (2000):
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
…”Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. [read more]
The only thing anthropogenic global warming advocates have proved is Maragaret Thatcher’s famous quote, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” As we are now seeing, socialism has bankrupted much of Europe, and I submit the only reason those nations have been so enthusiastically pushing the United States to sign onto a global warming treaty is because every such agreement to date would have redistributed billions in American wealth to prop up those nations’ failing socialist programs.
(h/t Drudge)
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Progressivism, United Kingdom | Tags: Argentina, Foreign Policy Flub., Great Britain, The Falklands
The Obama administration has a very strange record in foreign policy. The snubs to Britain have been frequent, and now Hillary Clinton has done it again. This is just plain embarrassing. “Argentina celebrates diplomatic coup as Hillary Clinton calls for talks over Falklands.”
Argentina was celebrating a diplomatic coup yesterday in its attempt to force Britain to accept talks on the future of the Falkland Islands, after a two-hour meeting in Buenos Aires between Hillary Clinton and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Responding to a request from Mrs Kirchner for “friendly mediation” between Britain and Argentina, Mrs Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said she agreed that talks were a sensible way forward and offered “to encourage both countries to sit down”.
Her intervention defied Britain’s longstanding position that there should be no negotiations unless the islands’ 3,000 inhabitants asked for them. It was hailed in Buenos Aires as a major diplomatic victory, but condemned in the Falklands.
Britain insisted there was no need for mediation as long as the islanders wanted to remain British. “We don’t think that’s necessary,” a Downing Street spokesman said.
America’s traditional stance has been to stay out of the argument over sovereignty, but to offer logistical support. It sounds as if Hillary was perhaps just trying to be nice, and Argentina made more of her comment than it deserved. However, the British are offended. And it was all quite unnecessary. But apparently in line with Obama’s orders. Ralph Peters has the back story.
We had a hunch that Hillary’s visits to foreign states as First Lady were not quite what they were cracked up to be as embellishments to the resumé.
NHS Worcestershire ruled that Judith Roe, 74, did not qualify for NHS funding because her condition was a “social” rather than “health” problem, even though she was so ill she could not make a cup of tea and regularly left the stove on. She was forced to sell her £200,000 home to pay her £600-a-week nursing home fees, which would have been funded if she had been categorised correctly. Mrs Roe’s family appealed to the Health Service Ombudsman, which ruled that Mrs Roe’s assessment had been incorrect and her treatment should have been funded by the NHS…
Mrs Roe, a retired church warden and school teacher, was diagnosed in 2002 with severe Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons. Under English law, elderly people must pay for their own residential care unless their needs are deemed health-related. She was assessed but her needs were regarded to be social rather than health, meaning she did not qualify for funding. [read more]
Woman gives birth on pavement after being refused ambulance.
Today a spokeswoman for the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said: ‘We are disappointed that Ms Blake was not happy with the advice and care she received and will of course investigate any complaint.
But look on the bright side! At least her pavement delivery was “free”!
Filed under: Energy, Europe, Global Warming, Politics, Science/Technology, Uncategorized | Tags: Energy Supplies, Great Britain, Green Politics, Liberal lies, Socialism
It is helpful to keep an eye on Britain, for many of the problems that they currently face are problems that we could face in the near future. An important example is the extent to which Britain has indulged Green notions in British climate and energy policy.
Britain’s old electricity generating nuclear and coal fired power stations, which generate a third of the country’s energy, are due to close down in the next twelve years. The current political situation makes it difficult to rely on imported gas or oil. Professor Ian Fells, emeritus professor of Energy Conversion at the University of Newcastle, and a noted expert on nuclear energy, has said that Britain will face regular power cuts lasting long enough to delay operations in hospitals, close down schools and bring cities to a standstill.
Professor Fells says that “Security of energy supply must be seen as taking priority over everything else, even climate change.” His September 17th report, commissioned by industrialist Andrew Cook, said that renewables will not fill the impending energy gap, so old nuclear and coal plants must be kept going while new ones are built urgently.
Environmentalists were outraged at the recommendations in the report. Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr said “Professor Fells has a long standing love affair with the technologies of the 20th century, but as time goes by his fetish for coal and nuclear power looks increasingly naive.”
That simple exchange, complete with sneers and outrage, succinctly describes the current state of affairs in Britain. Unfortunately, it is not too far from the current situation in our own congress.
It is hard to tell just what lurks in the mind of a leftist. Are they convinced that if we do not stop producing carbon dioxide — the colorless, odorless gas that we exhale every time we breathe, one of the essentials of life — the planet will suddenly heat up beyond our capacity to endure? Are they totally unaware that it stopped warming ten years ago, and has actually been cooling for seven years?
The sun has gone quiet. No sunspots for over a month. Scientists have shown that what warming there has been over the past century correlates closely with the activity of the sun. But environmentalists are not interested in the sun, they are interested in SUVs.
The lack of environmental interest in recent studies in climate change is notable. It suggests that they are not nearly as interested in climate change as they claim to be.
Power can be generated by windmills when the wind blows at the right speed. When the wind is too strong, or too weak, or doesn’t blow at all, which is frequent, that wind power must be backed up by some other form of energy. Natural gas is the most desirable, because it can be shut off quickly when the wind starts blowing again. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, and to obtain it, you must drill.
Windmills chew up a fair number of birds and bats, arms break and fly off — there are all kinds of details that just don’t get discussed. In many places more energy is needed in the summer when air conditioners are running full tilt. The wind blows more in the winter. In America, only a tiny percentage of electricity demand is generated by wind. But, as they say, hope springs eternal.
The problem is that more people die from cold than from heat. And England can get very cold. Oh well. It will all work out, won’t it?
