JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
So I’m guessing Putins Stirring in The Ukraine will have to be shelved for a couple of years. Does anyone else find it unlikely that the BUK missile system would have been able to successfully shoot down anything with untrained militia taking a crack at it? The alternative seems to be many many more innocents dying for little more reason that the expansionist ambitions of an overinflated ego – as well as a very cold winter for those in Europe dependant on Russian Gas.
I find it interesting seeing these photos out of the crimea of soldiers and others with balaclavas during their summertime. How inaccurate would it be to assume that those covering their faces are Russian soldiers?
70
Remember most ‘militia’ were probably regular Army at one time , so I don’t think we are talking about ‘untrained’ eg. Somali type militias here. Crimea is already under Russian control, so while anyone can wear the regional headdress, no one but Russians should be in military uniform.
30
Where all the armchair warriors get off dismissing the rebels as somehow untrained because, well they are rebels I suppose. These untrained rebels seem a lot more credible in many ways than the rag tag of much better equipped Ukranian regulars that are unable to contain them.
20
Not quite. The BUK missile system had been supplied to Ukraine forces. It is a racing certainty that there are trained Ukrainian soldiers forming the core of the rebel military and that sufficient expertise exists within the rebel group to operate what is a very simple and highly mobile system designed to support an army in the field. Note that Ukraine has not accounted for all it’s own BUK systems yet. I would also suggest that the lack of progress by Ukraine military indicates a distaste of engaging their former comrades in combat.
You may not be aware that the EU has carried out an expansionist, adventurist policy towards former USSR territories. Speeches of EU politicos, including the awful Mr. Cameron, are littered with phrases supporting ” a United Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals”. This aim is transparently a threat to Russia, and it is naive in the extreme to expect no reaction from the Russian people who fought 2 world wars last century to protect the heritage.
What is also ignored by power-mad politicos and a supine MSM is the enormous cost of subsuming Ukraine into “ever-closer union.” Costs in the order of tens of Billions of euros will have to be found within the EU, further impoverishing a population already paying the price of gross economic mismanagement by the Eurocrats.
94
Kevin Lohse: Kevin, it depends on what you mean by a ‘former USSR territory’. I am of Latvian/Polish descent, and in our family line is a Latvian army officer who was shot by the invading communists as an ‘enemy of the people’, for no other reason that as a senior member of tiny Latvia’s military he was deemed a potential threat.
I know, because he was my mother’s first husband. After the iron curtain fell, documents came to light which showed that she was on the communist’s ‘wanted’ list, and was being sought by them. No doubt she would have suffered the same fate had she not fled the country on the advice of fellow countrymen.
Let no one be under any illusions. The Russian communists had no business being there, and were hated.
My mother said on several occasions that during WWII at a time when the Germans invaded Latvia, the Latvians found the Germans to be a far more pleasant people to deal with.
The Latvians have their own culture and language, and if they wish to align themselves with the West, so be it.
120
I wouldn’t argue with any of that and I’m not trying to excuse Russian actions in Ukraine, merely point out that Putin is not necessarily the original aggressor in this case and that the EU bears a grave responsibility in starting the conflagration. Communist Russia was and is a blot on the world political stage, but that doesn’t make any action against Putin’s Russia justified.
21
Not so fast. In WW2 Russia was not protecting their heritage or at least not initially. Together with Germany Russia attacked Poland in September 1939 (but not before they were certain that Germans took care of most of the opposition). Not many people remember that. It was the Russians who shot my grandfather and his son in the back of their heads at Katyn and then tried to blame the Germans for it. Not many people remember that either and it was not mentioned during the Nuremberg’s trials. It was the Russians who held my mother for 6 years in a slave camp in Kazakhstan. It was also the Russians who starved many people in Ukraine during the Stalin experiments in central planning. And it was also because of Russians that I had to learn Russian at school even though I was living in supposedly ‘independent’ country and that applies to many Russian speaking Ukrainians.
Just after the war it was the Russians who forcefully moved Polish and German populations west of their new borders. Did it ever occur to anybody that the Ukraine may prefer to be an independent nation regardless of Putin’s wishes? Perhaps Ukraine should take an example from the Russians and move the Russian population east if they want to be part of Russia so much. My family certainly did not have a choice in this matter.
And is the statement concerning United Europe a threat to Russia? What about if United Europe was to include Russia itself? Certainly it was on the cards not that long ago. I would much prefer United Europe stretching from horizon to horizon than the nationalistic Russians trying to spread their heritage regardless of the costs. It is amazing that while everybody was pointing a finger at the Germans the Russians were always conveniently forgotten regardless of their crimes. It was not the United Europe who was cheering downing of Ukrainian planes flying in their own air space but the Russian media. Twenty years ago Russian special forces vacating the Baltic states promised that one day they will be back. This day is now and it is better to get used to the fact than trying to find an excuse.
The missiles could have been supplied to Ukraine forces. But the Russian news were cheering the mob supported by the Russians who were braking down the fences of the Ukrainian air base. If the rebels were Ukrainian soldiers then they were traitors and terrorists and should be dealt with appropriately. Trying to blame the Ukrainian accounting system for what has happened is somewhat misplaced in my opinion.
81
What about the original Tatar population of southern Ukraine and the Crimea? Who was it who forcibly removed them eastwards?
50
Does it matter? The Tatars used to invade central Europe displacing local population well before the Middle Ages. It does not mean that they are entitled to that land. However I’m sure that some of their descendants find work in the EU at the moment and are quite happy to live there. My neighbours were Ukrainians and Germans but they did not ask Germany or Ukraine to support them, deserted the army or decided that the land they were occupying must belong to Germany or Ukraine. Part of my family used to own land in Ukraine. Yet I hold no grudges and do not demand it to be returned to me. I hope this is considered a civilised behaviour and if the sides involved in the conflict followed this formula perhaps a United Europe would not be a bad place to live in. Instead they want to gain free access to the bread basket but will only sell gas in return.
60
“What is also ignored by power-mad politicos and a supine MSM is the enormous cost of subsuming Ukraine into “ever-closer union.” Costs in the order of tens of Billions of euros will have to be found within the EU, further impoverishing a population already paying the price of gross economic mismanagement by the Eurocrats.”
That’s no obstacle in a global debt-money system as all money is created via loans provided by banks, not from savings of deposits. In this case the ‘money’ and associated debt is created out of thin air via loaning Ukraine whatever they need. Then the Ukrainian tax payers and Ukrainian state assets and national wealth (such as it is) are legally on the hook for the debt liability, from the money that was never given and actually never exists, at least not until the Ukrainian Government deposits it in a Western bank. If the debt is big enough they can never pay it off, they can only service the debt.
But what was bought into existence was a liability and state access to resources, with the State’s taxes covering the liability stemming from the resource and material access. Hence why it’s called a debt-money system.
The Russians made the mistake of giving them gas, as well as debt, and allowed them to effectively default on their debt, that Ukraine then turning to the west, to obtain new debt after defaulting, was a bit upsetting, and here we are. The only difference is the Ukrainians will get a new western navy and air force (given the Ruskies have repossessed the former Ukrainian navy) and the EU and US banks will get cash deposits and asset strip them if they default.
And Washington and Brussels get to boss them around and exploit their tax base to provide employment at Lockheed Martin, until they default again and turn back to Russia for a new batch of debt liabilities (and weapons) in about 2050 or so.
Debt money makes the world go round and no matter what the imagined cost of inclusion, it is actually costs the EU and US virtually nothing, whilst impairing the positions of their major strategic competitor.
Integrating Ukraine into the EU will not only be cheap as chips, it’ll be an economic booster for central EU states. They aren’t pursuing greater Europe integration for nothing, this is all about the debt, which is the greatest creator of wealth and power ever invented.
Vive la Capital!
70
It wasn’t on the news for long but it was mentioned initially by the Ukraine government that it was most likely one of there own BUK stolen by ex-Ukranian soldiers. I suspect that they were designed to be used by grunts and not rocket scientists. It is unlikely that the mistake would have been made if the soldiers were under the control of the Russian military and everyone knows it.
22
Kevin,
I think the EU is scared because Russia controls the gas pipelines into Europe, and no matter how much posturing the EU presents publicly they will cow tow to Russia when told to.
Putin is no ones mug, highly skilled and trained in the black arts of political domination.
00
My assessment, based entirely on open sources that are publicly available, is as follows:
1. The Separatists are likely to have had formal military training (70%), which would have included familiarity with the BUK system (20%).
2. The Ukraine Separatists are likely to be augmented by Russian “Observers” or “Advisors” (60%).
3. Fully operational BUK systems may have been stored in Russia, but in locations close to the Ukraine border (30%).
4. It would have been possible for Separatists to have “liberated” a late model BUK, either from Ukraine, or from Russian soil (10%).
5. The BUK system would, by default, identify the IFF (Indicator, Friend or Foe), of any aircraft, including the ranges used by registered civilian airlines (90%).
6. The BUK IFF reference table would be up to date, regarding specific IFF codes, within the civilian range (10%).
7. The MSA aircraft would have had its IFF transponder on at the time of transit of Ukraine airspace (20%).*
8. Knowing that the Separatists had access to one or more BUK systems, Ukrainian forces were using civilian IFF codes (5%).
9. Knowing point 8, the Separatists would override the IFF system (5%).
* There is some chatter on the informal pilots networks that it is standard practice on MSA aircraft for the IFF to be turned off (along with other “non-essential electronics) to save electrical power. (This does not sound credible to me, but that is what has been discussed in relation to MH-370).
For the plane to have been shot down, points 1 and 4 would have to be true, and either point 7 would false, or point 9 would be true.
110
As always Rereke, your observations are intriguing and balanced
20
Rereke,
I said the same thing with respect to IFF on the Bolt report comments and a couple of “know-nothings” tried to shoot me down with respect to knowledge on IFF. (Ubique did agree, however).
See Bolt here
IF the plane was switched to Mode C and IFF switched on, then either the BUC missile system DID NOT interrogate or manual override was used!
I agree with your comment in relation to IFF being switched off to save power on occasions – I find that highly unlikely as power consumption is minimal.
Cheers,
10
Sorry – Mode C was supposed to be Mode 3 – doh!
Cheers,
00
That point number 4 is probably true if this report by ITAR-TASS is believed. The Google translation of that page reads in part:
“Militia representatives proclaimed the People’s Republic of Donetsk (DNR) took control of the military part number A-1402 air defense (AD) with anti-aircraft missile systems (SAM) ‘Beech’. This information was confirmed by ITAR-TASS, the press service of the DNI.”
(The “beech” is just Google translating Buk to English, since the missile system is named the same as the tree species.)
20
This article from The Interpreter is eye opening about Putin’s control over the media in Russia..
Wow how brave is Sara Firth to not only resign from Russia’s RT news agency but to tweet:
“I resigned from RT today. I have huge respect for many in the team, but I’m for the truth.”
and in response to a colleague who asked “what am I spreading?” she tweeted
“Lies hun. We do work for Putin. We are asked on a daily basis if not to totally ignore then to obscure the truth” and “RT style guide Rule 1: It is ALWAYS *Ukraine’s fault (*add name as applicable)”
60
And in light of the fact that the Russians are doing a ‘William M Connolley’ at the Wikipedia entry for MH17, I’d say that lends more credence to their guilt. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10977082/Russian-government-edits-Wikipedia-on-flight-MH17.html
60
This would be the third time Russia has shot down a civilian aircraft. (From Wiki)
Korean Air Lines Flight 902 (KAL902, KE902) was a civilian airliner shot down by Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 fighters on April 20, 1978, near Murmansk, Russia, after it violated Soviet airspace. Captain Alexander Bosov, pilot of the Sukhoi Su-15 that brought down Flight 902, saw Asian logogram characters on the tail of the Korean aircraft, and reported this to the ground control. Despite this, Vladimir Tsarkov, commander of the 21st Soviet Air Defense Corps, ordered Bosov to take down the plane, as the plane failed to respond to repeated orders to land, and was approaching the Soviet border with Finland. The Su-15 opened fire, taking the plane down, and killing two of the 109 total passengers and crew members aboard Flight 902. The plane made an emergency landing on the frozen Korpijärvi lake near the Finnish border.
Korean Air Lines Flight 007, also known as KAL 007 or KE007, was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage. On September 1, 1983, the airliner serving the flight was shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor near Moneron Island, west of Sakhalin Island, in the Sea of Japan. The interceptor’s pilot was Major Gennadi Osipovich. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Lawrence McDonald, representative from Georgia in the United States House of Representatives. The aircraft was en route from Anchorage to Seoul when it flew through prohibited Soviet airspace around the time of a U.S. reconnaissance mission.
The Soviet Union initially denied knowledge of the incident, but later admitted the shootdown, claiming that the aircraft was on a spy mission. The Politburo said it was a deliberate provocation by the United States to test the Soviet Union’s military preparedness, or even to provoke a war. The White House accused the Soviet Union of obstructing search and rescue operations. The Soviet military suppressed evidence sought by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) investigation, notably the flight data recorders, which were eventually released eight years later after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
60
Who said they were untrained militia? These are Ukranian army who raided the army base two weeks ago and stole the BUK. They know how to use it. This was on Russian National News two weeks ago. They have since shot down two planes, one a fighter jet. You do not do that with an RPG.
No, these people in the Donets basin have been fighting a deadly civil war against murderous corrupt regimes in Kiev. They want their freedom. 65 unarmed people were shot just this year by police snipers in the Kiev demonstrations. No one wants another Kiev dictatorship. The previous president Tymoshenko has been locked in prison for five years and the West just tut tutted. No one wants her either.
Yes, they speak Russian because they are Russian. Most Ukranians speak Russian. These people want to live in Russia under Russian rule after twenty years of living in fear with dictatorships in Kiev.
The sad fact is that the West’s insistence that Putin stay out of it may have done this. They were losing the war without his help, so they grabbed the headlines. Putin is blamed of course, so everything is going to plan.
Putin is damned if he interferes and now damned if he does not. The locals are damned if they move the bodies but damned if they do not in the very hot summer sun. No one wins in a civil war and the US, France and England should be experts.
What we do not want is another Syria, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea. We need to have an urgent conference with Putin, the only man who can fix this and agree on what has to be done. The people who did this will have had direct orders. It took three skilled operators to shoot down this jet and blind Freddy could see it was a civilian airliner at high altitude on a blue day with twin con trails, and that is without binoculars. The device they used would have recognized exactly what it was, as every plane pings its ID. This was no accident. This was at 33,000 feet and moving at 1,000km/hr and declaring its origin. No, this was intentional and ordered.
We must with Putin find who did this and chase the chain of authorization to the top. These were processionals ordered to murder 300 people. No one would have done this without orders, as they knew the consequences. Possibly maybe they are already dead, just to cover up. The BUK will disappear.
At least Russia removed all the nuclear capacity from these satellites in the breakup. You could not imagine the position of these professional soldiers had access to nuclear weapons, or even nerve weapons.
Then for the simplistic good guys and bad guys US view of the world, there is a very complex and serious problem in the Ukraine. Until this is fixed, nothing is fixed. However it is easier to blame one man for all the trouble. Remember Saddam Hussein? Gadaffi? Mubarek? How did that work out?
We need to talk to Putin. Not because he is responsible, but because he is the only person with the power to see that this does not happen again. That is the conflict. No one wants him involved in solving the problems in the Ukraine. They are supposed to solve themselves? How’s that working out?
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Be Sure to pick up your pay check from moscow there TDef.
35
There are two sides to every argument. As a retired cold warrior, I can appreciate the Russian case without necessarily supporting it. Knee-jerk reaction due to highly politicised MSM reporting does you little credit.
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Is anybody here NOT a cold war warrior?
10
I’m fighting the cold at the moment, using coal-fired electricity.
.. does that count?
71
NO! You had to have been there at the time. 😉
20
How about when I got divorced then ??
That was cold war.!
10
Yeah, and we have all been divorced, some of us more than once. Doesn’t cut it I’m afraid, unless your ex has access to Polonium.
20
Darn .. well… I got huffin’ , then !!
01
Nuffin’ …. not huffin’
01
No you cannot be a warrior with those solppers!
00
Hanlons’ Razor
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupididty.
Whats the bets that some cowboy is having his nuts crushed right about now for his dumbassed actions?
Russian or Ukranian hardly matters ,if the actions were those of a loose cannon then he needs to be hauled before the courts before precipitous actions are taken by one State against another.
If neither side are willing to nail one of their own, a scapegoat will be found ,mark my words !
10
Sprry Kevin,
But trying to lay blame for the shooting down of a civilian aircraft through third party excesses like that is lame. It deserves all the contempt it receives.
Right now, the evidence is looking very clear – through the lamestram and alternative sources, that the rebels shot the plane down believing it was a Ukrainian military transport. They screwed up, and they need to front up and cop the consequences.
The alternative theory posed by the russian lamer stream media is the ukranians were trying to shoot down Putins jet, which really does stretch into the realms of fantasy.
31
A Ukrainian turbo prop military transport has a ceiling of 17,000 feet. It does not have a con trail and does not look like a 2 engine jet. Every plane identifies itself and every weapon recognizes that. Otherwise you shoot down your own people. People trained to operate this equipment know how to identify aircraft, even if a member of the public has no idea.
For example, the reason an Excocet could hit the Sheffield in the Falklands war was that it was a joint French/English missile and identified as friendly. There is no doubt the people who shot down this plane knew exactly what it was and its flight path. Besides, as the Dutch minister said, there were international flights that day on the same path. You can track these flights on your PC. The weapon knew all about this aircraft. So did the three operators.
40
Either it was an accident, which means it was NOT under Russian military control or oversight.
OR,
It was under Russian military oversight and done on purpose, and God help us all if it was. !!!!!!!!!!
30
I suspect that Putin will be highly embarrassed that he allowed such a weapon into the hands of amateurs.
A little knowledge can be dangerous. !! I. guessing that is the true story that is being covered up.
20
The point I made in 1.3, was that for an aircraft to be safe, it must have its IFF operative, and for the launcher to not have been overridden to ignore the IFF response. Since the launcher did not attempt to bring down any other aircraft, on the same flight path, I assume that the launcher had not been overridden. I am thus left with the conclusion that the MSA aircraft had turned the IFF off (however ridiculous that might sound).
If you want to imply that “… the people who shot down this plane knew exactly what it was and its flight path …”, you will need to show plausible just cause.
I cannot think of any reason why this particular Malaysian aircraft, en route to Kuala Lumpur, should have been singled out from all the other flight traffic. That particular flight path is like a motorway, with a plane every five to ten minutes, relevant to an arbitrary point on the ground, so why this particular plane?
20
No, it was only a few flights per day as after the downing of two aircraft and the common knowledge that the rebels had the capacity to bring down commercial jets, many airlines rerouted their flights. After all, on a very long flight, any path is on a great circle, so it makes little difference.
The other piece of logic is that they had been ordered to bring down just one civilian jet, not all of them. Multiple hits would have brought massive military response. One foreign jet is a tragedy. Multiple is a declaration of war inviting more than stern words.
I remember being routed around Vietnam in the Vietnam war. It was a long way then from Bangkok to Hong Kong. Similarly with Afghanistan and Lebanon and more. Despite the tragedy, Malaysian Airlines really have to justify continuing to fly though such risks when it would have cost nothing much to fly around.
40
A major factor that seems to be overlooked is the IFF signal could have simply failed in a most dangerous area resulting in this tragedy, MH370 is thought to have suffered the same fate over the South China Sea during multinational war games.
How many times in the past have apparently mysterious air crashes been linked when applying Occam’s Razor?
Start with checking all airlines maintenance records for any problems with their IFF signal systems.
10
TdeF,
Not so. Between any two points: Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur say, there are only two great circle arcs, that are most efficient in the terms of fuel usage, and hence flight duration. Under ICAO agreements, one arc is used for aircraft travelling from A to B, and the other arc is used for aircraft travelling from B to A. Thus there is horizontal separation between aircraft travelling in opposite directions. (A and B, in this case tends to be areas of heavy flight density, rather that actual definable places).
Redirecting commercial aircraft away from their normal flight paths introduces all sorts of complications when flight paths intersect each other, because the point of intersection changes, sometimes moving outside of its normal control area. Also, on very long flights, fuel capacity becomes an issue, because the long flights are usually at maximum fuel load, including the required safety margin for redirection at destination.
I am not saying that some shorter routed aircraft were not redirected. What I am saying is that for a long haul flight, such as MH-17, SYNA-WMKK, flying at FL33, redirection may not have been an option on the grounds of safety, and the flight level would usually put it out of range of any infantry class air/ground weapon, although not a vehicle-mounted weapon like the BUK.
00
Yonniestone,
The similarity between MH370 and MH15 has already been noted. Unfortunately, the pings from the “Flight Recorder” for MH370 were tracked by satellite to the Southern Indian Ocean. I put “Flight Recorder” in inverted commas, because we only have the satellite’s word for it.
There are some electrical faults in aircraft, that just generate a general alarm, without showing where the cause is. Standard flight-deck procedure, to isolate the fault, is to turn off each non-critial electrical circuit in turn, until the general alarm goes off. The procedure is then reversed, by turning on all of the previously turned off circuits, in the hope that the alarm will not come back on again.
I understand that the IFF is classed as a non-critical system.
00
Whether it was showing as a friendly or not, the fact remains, a civilian aircraft was blown out of the sky by the operators of the system.
The intent of the operators is irrelevant. Particularly considering no one is fronting up and taking responsibility for their actions. An idiot with a high tech weapon is still just a piece of crap put in charge of something they shouldn’t have been put in charge of. The accountability lies with both the operators and those who put them there.
The guilt lies with them and all those who have continued to protect them – either actively or passively over the east few days.
And if it completely undermines whatever their cause is for a while, then so be it, I say.
50
Agreed. This is not a site where a simplistic, single, even trivial explanation is sufficient. The real world and the political world are much more complex and abuse is the refuge of the non thinker.
00
To all the conspiracy theorists you should note that the Ukrainian Government is fully supportive of complete and open access to the crash site. It is the Russian Separatists who have blocked access and who apparently have taken evidence away.
40
TdeF: Re. your comment ‘Yes, they speak Russian because they are Russian. Most Ukranians speak Russian. These people want to live in Russia under Russian rule after twenty years of living in fear with dictatorships in Kiev.’
I can’t claim a personal knowledge of Ukranian history, but here’s a view from Latvia instead, told to me by those who live there.
You’ll find that most people in Latvia speak Russian. Once occupied, native Russians entered Latvia, mostly refusing to learn the Latvian language. When Latvia regained its independence, those of Russian extraction weren’t expelled, but were asked to learn the Latvian language if they wished to remain – a reasonable and practical request.
When I visited the capital Riga with some relatives (from the UK) a few years ago, a lady on a bus turned round and spoke to us in English. She said how nice it was to hear a language other than Russian, and to hear the English tongue in use.
I daresay Chinese is being increasingly spoken in Tibet these days. Invade, get rid of the native population and replace it with your own – that’s how it’s done.
As a final comment, I asked a Lithuanian lady who came to work in the hospital where I once worked what she liked about England. ‘No communism!’ she replied, and smiled.
00
I think this whole tragedy evolved from the EU attempting to coerce the Ukraine into joining the so called union. The Ukraine is very much the bread basket for Russia which I can now believe after seeing videos of the farm land being searched. Russia cannot afford to lose access to that food supply region. This is going to get worse, much worse!
60
Basket I grant you but I don’t see much bread.
From Basket to Case
00
It’s what comes of wearing a bread on your head.
10
You get to being a seriously dangerous lady.
10
Richard111,
Well I think they’d better get used to having to trade for food – just in the same way as the west trades for natural gas.
22
Rereke,
Sounds sensible, but why trade when you control the pipelines and you have the means and the will to take it.
Obama will roll over and so will the EU. The UN is a paper tiger.
00
It’s the same old bloody argument the world over. Putin has issues with the loss of his beloved USSR. He is a throwback conducting cold war politics. If democracy worked as it should in Russia they would have dumped him years ago.
50
How does anyone know this? It seems people are playing psychologist and imagining these plausible but unfounded things. It is equally possible that Putin with his substantial exposure to the West is able to see the other side and can see the advantages of accommodation with Europe and the US. However Russia is still a pariah state with Europe and the US. Who goes there? Certainly not Europeans and Americans. Russia really wants to engage with the West, but the attitudes have not changed since the cold war.
The Russian ambassador to Australia gave a talk about five years ago. He was previously the ambassador to Japan and then China. He said Australia was paradise. However he also said Gorbachev was a bad accountant, Yeltsin was a drunk and Putin was finally putting Russia on its feet commercially and internationally. Banks were honoring Russian letters of credit.
So the West still hates Putin, the new Tsar allegedly. However if they were able to replace him, as they did with Gadaffi, Mubarek, Saddam Hussein and so many more, would the problem be fixed or much, much worse. Think about it. It doesn’t work.
What is odd is that when you speak sense, there is always someone who accuses you of being in the pay of some shadowy Russian. No one says that about Green Senator Lee Rhiannon who was trained in Moscow or Green MP Adam Bandt who has done his PhD on communism or even Julia Gillard who denies being the leader of the Socialist Alliance, as she was until recently. However if someone actually defends the Russians or says conversation is better than confrontation, they must be in the pay of Moscow? Why are these shallow, knee jerk reactions? Do 97% of people believe Putin is the sole problem?
The Ukraine desperately needs help, like that given to Germany and Japan after the war under the Marshall plan. The basic conditions of life are terrible. If this is not fixed, the consequences of a first world military country as an aggressor are frightening.
60
When Russia shot down the Korean Airlines plane in the early 80’s the Regan administration covered up many of the facts to portray Russia in the worst possible way as part of the Cold War propaganda machine. The truth is that many countries have shot down civilian aircraft in the past. There is a bit of an article here mentioning some past accounts of that.
There is some alleged account from an ATC in Kiev here which might make some interesting conspiratorial reading for those so inclined.
I think it is fair to assume tho that all the ‘breaking news’ reported in the MSM is likely to be crap and just as unreliable as the early conspiracies given the very early stages of any investigation.
20
Yes. I thought this site was full of people who did not automatically believe everything they were told. I thought that a discussion of the facts would produce a better understanding and insights and that simplistic, single solution answers like Putin did it were not sufficient or even likely to be true. So I have even been accused of being in the pay of Big Russia? I had thought better. Why should a skeptical mind stop at carbon? If 97% of people believe Putin is responsible, it must be true? Many people believe? You can list all the fallacies and they apply just as much here as to the Carbon scam.
Even a cursory examination of the facts leads to other conclusions, raises more questions. It certainly leads to the conclusion that we are being manipulated.
We have been in many proxy wars between superpowers before, often started by an incident such as this, wars for control of a region. You can make your own list, but there was a time when Ho Chi Minh was America’s ally against the French, when Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were allies against the Russians and when ISIS were freedom fighters against Assad. We should be extremely wary of accepting these things as being true just because someone says so. The Russian cities all have big and very sad memorials to the thousands of young men brought home on the cargo planes, the Black Tulips, young men killed by American weapons. Now we have lost young men in Afghanistan too. What has been achieved? Why?
We must ask questions, be skeptical and not take the simple answers as automatically true because the mainstream media says so. The search for the truth does not stop at chemistry, physics and mathematics or meteorology. The world needs people to question what they are told. It is the only way to get to the truth and stop people from hijacking our country and oppressing others. Just ask questions. Stay skeptical. It is not a crime.
50
Nice trick there TdeF, the veracity of Agw linked to the credibility of Vladimir Putin. Really??!
01
July 15, 2014
“Explosive Microbial Growth Caused Earth’s Greatest Extinction Event” –The Great Dying
“The end-Permian is the greatest extinction event that we know of,” said Daniel Rothman, a geophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The changes in the fossil record were obvious even to 19th Century geologists.
The end-Permian (or PT) extinction event occurred 252 million years ago.
It is often called the Great Dying because around 90 percent of marine species disappeared in one fell swoop.
Similar numbers died on land as well.
Chief among these clues is a sudden swing in the balance of carbon isotopes stored in rocks from that same time period.
If geologists can find what disrupted the carbon, they’ll likely know what killed off so much of the Earth’s life forms.
Rothman and his collaborators argue that no geological source can adequately explain the dramatic growth of carbon dioxide.
One popular theory has been that high levels of carbon dioxide were released by massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia, which lasted for a million years and covered a million square miles with lava.
“It’s hard to get the arithmetic right with just volcanoes,” Rothman said.”
If interested, read on @thedailygalaxy
10
How long before the warmists try to link climate change sceptics to Russia do you think? (You heard it here first)
30
A Labor/Union caucus, discussing the next election. The funniest video your ever likely to see that supports the Labor agenda.
50
Time for Kitchen Science! Or maybe it’s Culinary Engineering? You be the judge. Read on to find out the secret that the Big Saucepan corporations don’t want you to know.
One of the by-products of the space program was Teflon, which can be used on cookware to create a non-stick coating. You then have to take care of such non-stick surfaces by ensuring they don’t get too hot (above 260 Celsius) and perhaps more importantly by not scratching off the Teflon coating with metal tools.
If you have a normal pre-spaceflight saucepan with a stainless steel surface, you may think you are out of luck, with wear and tear leading to more sticking over the years. You might even be tempted to pay more money to Big Saucepan to buy a replacement pan. Not so!
Yesterday I polished my stainless steel saucepan with sandpaper for Science.
I used 1200 grit sandpaper (P1200 wet/dry) since that was the finest sandpaper I could find at my nearest hardware shop (though 1500 grit is also on the market and should be better). Polishing was done by hand with a small circular finger motion across half of the saucepan. Reflections can be seen very easily in the polished surface but the untouched half remains blurry. The theory is that the polished half should have less cracks and edges for food to grab hold, so it should be less sticky.
Here is the photo album showing the effect of polishing and the initial cooking result.
Look at that reflection in the polished half of the first photo. On the left side, science. On the right side, barbarity! Do you want barbarity in your kitchen? No? I thought not, so get that fine grit sand paper and start scratching smoother than a hip-hop album. Instead of sticking, eggs will slip and slide¹ like they’re on a summer holiday. And a sheet of sandpaper is 10 times cheaper than a new saucepan.
I assure fellow kitchen scientists that these results are probably reproduceable and certainly delicious.
___________________________________________
¹ – some exaggeration for poetic and promotional purposes.
101
Time on your hands there Andrew?…
12
Less than 20 minutes work on a Saturday afternoon? Yeah, real time drainer.
20
I am sorry, but that photo album is not acceptable, since the adjustments to the pan have not been published in a peered reviewed culinary journal. What you present is just voodoo cooking, and should to be thrown into the bin.
80
Oh no! I’ve been panned by the critics.
Maybe you will be more impressed with my novel statistical technique which is capable of reconstructing the entire egg from just a few remaining samples. All you have to do is homogenise the egg record, smoothing the samples from the edges of the pan, et voila, it perfectly reconstructs the original 15 centimetre diameter egg. This proves that ancient frying was entirely due to natural emus and ostriches, which proves modern frying is entirely due to man-made domestic chickens and is completely unprecedented.
80
Groan!
Try something interesting: aim an infrared thermometer at the polished surface and then at an unpolished spot (while it is heated on the burner). Then take a piece of black electrical tape stick it to the surface (not too hot) and take another reading of polished SS, unpolished SS and black tape surface. Record your findings and then explain them.
00
Give the poor man a break RW,he’s only one man bucking(correct spelling)the big end of town.Cut him some slack,he may even non stick cook it for you.BTW did you like the labor meeting.
11
Which one?
10
Tom’s video at #6
00
Naaaaaaa
10
Thank you Prof Plimer for what will undoubtedly be another worthy (and much despised in some sectors) contribution to public debate and education, but to coin a former treasurer, “… this is the critique we had to have.”.
Look forward to it.
80
MadJak
July 20, 2014 at 2:14 pm · Reply
So I’m guessing Putins Stirring in The Ukraine will have to be shelved for a couple of years.
—
Or longer, I notice Ukraine has just been awarded major non-NATO ally status. Which means they are at war now (and potentially with Russia), and there allies will be coming to directly assist.
If that did not make you blood run cold for a seconds or three … then read it again.
90
Unmentionable,
I continue to be hopeful with all the stupid wars in the past in europe that cooler heads will prevail. Having said that, Putin must be held to account with those he has gone to bed with.
It does appear that it was likely russian crews with the launchers – but like most other things, we will never be able to rule that in or out whilst the rebels obstruct any investigations.
10
I don’t know if ruskie nationals did it but the cartoon linked sure made me grin (despite making light of it).
http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d417153ef01a3fd34f3ec970b-popup
That’s some pretty effective spin. I hope everyone’s learned something and decided that maybe territorial annexation tactics have passed their use-by date.
60
What would be the odds on one airline loosing two planes in three months.Does anyone find this just a little out of the ordinary.
30
Coincidence isn’t proof that they don’t happen.
It could have been any one of many airlines crossing that airspace on that day.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/aviation/ukraine-responsible-for-airspace-safety-iata-20140720-zuzmp.html
00
Yes but. Isnt Malaysian the one that’s not unknown for turning off its transponder thingies.
10
no
10
Jo,
Re yr request above:
Ian Plimer’s book launch in Melbourne is on
22nd July, 113 Queen St, Melbourne,@ 5.30pm.
I will be there,
beth the serf.
20
ScienceCasts: Solar Mini-Max.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ha7X6dWVQE
00
Not to be pulled into this but at risk at being at odds with the MSM CIA/ etc fed garbage..
Any Buk missile system had to be backed up with radar, separatists hadnt the capacity or training..
Ok then..why was MH17 diverted to fly over that airspace when earlier in the day 17 OTHER flights had gone further south?
Why was it another MH airline aircraft? Like 370 which hasnt been found, I suspect you will find it parked up under cover in Diego Garcia..Certain coincidences like first flight of that (MH17) aircraft was exactly 1 year ago 17 July.
Everything to gain by the NEO NAZI fascist Ukraine (fake) govt (brought to power by a coop in overthrowing legit elected Govt which wasnt favorable to Washington), in downing some aircraft and inflaming the world against Russia, along with the State dept (US). New cold war has of course already started. Lets not forget the gas supply to the EU, how EU had gone colder on sanction against Russia and needed something ‘BIG’ to inflame it, eg. a nice new FALSE FLAG event like a horrific downing of an airliner.
To consider..no evidence exists that an actual ground missile even brought it down, there are video of radar jamming chaff falling from the sky in the smoke over the crash site. Complete unburned perfect condition passports (I counted 20 in the photos on the net) of Dutch passengers have been ‘found’ How do passports survive a missile attack and crash from 30000 feet! Reports of bodies not being fresh but wreaking of decay..
Shooting down a large airliner could only be accomplished by sophisticated military operations, beyond rebel fighters, All evidence by MSM is dubious to the best.. Video of so called evidence of so called pro Russian rebels discussing attack have been proved to be made 1 DAY BEFORE the crash and uploaded to youtube..
Consider this if you dont believe Porochenko is a murdering fascist, video here of children killed in Ukraine military bombing of East Ukraine village and more.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/genocide-in-eastern-ukraine-eye-witness-account-confirms-that-ukraine-armed-forces-are-deliberately-targeting-civilians/5390465
About time truth told about Ukraine fascist govt and all it stands for and why it was installed by the CIA/State dept to the tune of 5 billion by Samantha power the insane US rep to the UN
A certain PM is out of line blaming Russia without any REAL evidence to back it up.
References:
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/mh17-weathering-propaganda-firestorm.html
http://www.activistpost.com/2014/07/evidence-to-frame-russia-for-mh17-shoot.html
http://slavyangrad.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/spanish-air-controller-kiev-borispol-airport-ukraine-military-shot-down-boeing-mh17/
http://globalresearch.ca/
http://tarpley.net/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/malaysian-plane-crash-lies-and-sinister-political-agenda-by-the-west/5391913
ETC..
[I’m still trying to work out if this is a conspiracy spoof. If not I was expecting to see J Cook in the email address! 🙂 – Mod]
16
This is sickening whether spoof or the usual idiots continuing with their ongoing delusion of fitting every event into their paranoid world view. Even the msm sees these things and can’t help but note them.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/top-conspiracy-theories-sparked-by-mh17-disaster-20140720-zuz2w.html
20
For once Gee Aye, I agree with you.
20
Careful Rereke or our ruse will be detected. I told you the the conch shell symbol was not well enough hidden. Anyone can see its resemblance to the fig leaf.
It seems to me that moderation on this blog rightly traps certain keywords but unfortunate furtive fallacy posts still get through.
00
Like the previous Labor Government was great except the people couldn’t see it because of their Murdoch induced misogyny?
00
yep Australian domestic politics sure follows from my comment.
00
RU serious ?
20
Mods, you should probably pull that posts…. anyway, lets debunk a couple of things.
1. The missile does not have to stike the aircraft to down it, the concussion (shock wave) and shrapnel from the blast is sufficient to down the aircraft since it has no defence, such an event would just disintegrate the aircraft in mid air causing everything in it to fall to earth without burning.
2. One would have to think that the Australian PM and American President know more than you do. For one they record all Russian activity via satellite, they will know (for sure) where the missile was launched from. One would think the USA probably watches very closely all missile launches from in and around nuclear capable nations.
The rest of this post is rumor and supposition, and pretty implausible one at that… You really reckon that Obama would order an attack that could start world war III… you are nuts!
12
Mod, this is not a conspiracy spoof.
This is the real 22 carat, gold plated, fair dinkum, genuine, guaranteed, conspiracy theory.
Other airlines went further south? Why was that? Perhaps they were going to Pakistan or India or Saudi Arabia? Did they “divert”? I don’t think so.
The primary question to ask is what would anybody expect to gain by shooting down a Malaysian passenger aircraft, that was going to Malaysia, flying at flight level 330, over the Ukraine?
10
Don’t you find, it rarely pays to attribute to malice, that which may adequately be explained by incompetence (owtte) ?
21
theRealUniverse
Any Buk missile system had to be backed up with radar, separatists hadn’t the capacity or training.
Not so, the Buk series launchers have its own integrated search the track radar system and electo-optical detection and missile cuing system. That large fairing under the front of the missile rack houses the radar and electo-optical systems. It can detect, engage and kill high altitude large aircraft without any external support. The separate tracked dedicated AESA radar is to provide the wattage and resolution to find and track small hard to find targets, like low flying cruise missiles, or distant small fast fighters and low helicopters. The wattage provides burn-through power to overcome jamming, spoofing plus decoys, and also to differentiate remaining valid targets from a shower of falling debris from targets the Buk has already killed. So the Buk launcher, alone, can and will very easily detect and kill a big fat non-maneuvering airliner or transport aircraft, no problem.
I could debunk most of your points easily, and just ignore the speculation, and there would not be much left (if anything), but its you who should do that, skepticism includes skeptical of yourself.
40
Mod – on theRU’s post you mention that you are having difficultly determining the validity of the poster’s comments and state that they may be a ‘conspiracy spoof’. Given that very little investigation has taken place and certainly no ‘independent civilian’ investigation has been possible, I am wondering how you are in the position to be determining what is conspiratorial conjecture and what is, let’s say ‘scientifically sound’? Maybe fair enough if the post mentioned the involvement of aliens in space craft but as far as I see it has not. It is interesting to see many of the regular posters here quite prepared to jump on the mainstream bandwagon and defend the mainstream anti-Russia narrative, presumably because it is the ‘accepted science’ story but it is reassuring to see some other views being expressed by some of the regular commenters.
So we don’t believe the EU’s,or Obama’s CAGW narrative and accept it as the biggest con in history but are quite willing to blindly accept their line on other geo-political matters? Have these governments duped us in the past? Do we remember the missile launchers in Cuba, the WMDs in Iraq, the more recent Sarin gas attacks in Syria and the host of other false flag operations over the years? How many US backed coups following these operations have worked out well? Are US made weapons killing hundreds of civilians in Palestine and Syria as we type?
Why the need to ‘shield’ us presumably capable thinkers from ‘conspiracy’, isn’t that what we are supposed to be able to sniff out and decide ourselves? Sometimes you have to get your nose and hands dirty and pick up the BS for a good sniff as things are not always as they seem.
10
I was just watching David’s You tube video “Climate change in 12 minutes” and the part where he talks about the extra heat from CAGW supposedly evaporating the oceans to cause a major positive feedback, and that got me wondering. If all the worlds oceans were evaporating,(even just a bit). What would be the effect of the latent heat of vaporization. I imagine it would just cool the surface of the water slightly. If any of you folks out there with more knowledge of physics than me, can explain it in simple language, then I would love to know what the effect would be.
10
Yes, the latent heat of evaporation absorbs 2.4kJ per kg (IIRC), which is released again when the water condenses in the upper troposphere by radiation, conduction and convection, it is a major cooling influence. However the models do try to account for that, although noted meterologist Will Kinnimonth once told me he thinks they get the physics wrong, and end up underestimating the amount of evaporative cooling significantly.
Because almost all of this energy is lost though, there is a limit to extra evaporation that can occur due to excess energy in the system. So for example 0.6W per square meter radiative imbalance could at most induce 0.8% increase in evaporation and therefore rainfall, whenever someone tries to tell you (in a peer reviewed paper or otherwise) that weather will be more extreme and biblical floods are coming, remember that when someone claims that annual rainfall will increase by more than 0.8% then that is going to violate energy conservation, the extra 0.6W per meter square, cannot produce more than a 0.8% rainfall increase without violating conservation.
One more point, as the alarmist claim huge rainfall increases ( one peer reviewed paper claimed 20%), you should note that any thermal energy lost to evaporation cannot simultaneously exist as thermal energy, if there was an 0.8% increase in hydrological cycling then there would be no warming, because all the energy for warming has been consumed in evaporation. Every 0.12% increase in hydrological cycling will consume 0.1W per square meter of thermal energy imbalance. It’s a very effective negative feedback. In a similar vein, the warmists suggest that the enhanced CO2 effect will be about 3W per square meter for a doubling, if the whole of that were pushed into latent heat of evaporation, hydrological cycling (rainfall) could only be increased by a mere 3.6%.
The same goes for storm energy, any energy added to storms must be subtracted from temperature, because the energy can’t simultaneously exist as temperature and storm fury.
Any EFFECT like this that is claimed by the warmists has an energy penalty, whenever a claim like this is made ask yourself “how much energy does that consume”, because that energy must be subtracted from the energy that sustains temperature. Think of all the claims, increased storm fury, more lightning, floods, melting ice, more tornadoes all these things have an energy cost, and they must add up to less than the driving energy a supposed imbalance of a mere christmas light (0.6W) worth of radiant energy per square meter of surface.
30
Very succinct Bobl, and in just a few paragraphs, you have explained the Earth’s thermostat. Now if we only knew what causes ice age conditions. My bet is on volcanoes but what wakes them up?
00
Thats Easy, Energy saturation effectively puts a ceiling on the maximum temperature of the earth, but there are many ways to reduce the temperature of the earth, reducing temperature does not take any energy. While there are energy constraints on warming there are none on cooling and therefore almost anything can cause a cooling.
Think of it like an amplifier, no driving signal into an amplifier will make the output go any higher in voltage than the voltage of the power supply, you can push as much signal as you like into the input, but the power will not increase beyond that that is supplied by the power source. Likewise the energy of the earth is limited to that it receives from the sun, via multiple paths eg gravity, momentum, insolation, solar wind, magnetism etc. It’s very hard to change the system to increase that power, but you only need to put a resistor ( say clouds) in series with that power supply in order to to reduce it’s output.
20
Now you have me worrying that somebody is going to trip over the power cord. Perhaps we need a new tax …?
10
Thanks so much for that bobl
I thought it should have some cooling effect but wasn’t sure how that might work. The thermal energy balance is new to me also. That is absolutely fascinating, and of course the way you have explained it it just makes sense. The same energy can’t be in two places at once. You have just given me another field to research.
Thanks again
00
Paul, you’ll find lots of examples of this kind of double dipping of energy in the dire warnings of warmists. Bobl has neatly explained it and you can easily take the info to your friends as you argue the question. Energy can be heat or work or stored but you cant claim them all at the same time.
Trying to quantify these things in our atmosphere alone much less what happens in biosphere is in my opinion impossible. Warmists will claim it to be “well understood”. Each individual component might be understood but when you put them all together and set them in motion with constant change well that is just too big to measure.
Just look at a single thunderstorm and try to comprehend how much energy is held in that one volume.
20
Once condensed, the droplets have a real surface which can easily radiate heat (mostly) into space. So much more than the 2.4kJ/kg is likely to be lost. Remember; thermal radiation in the classical sense requires a surface area. Planck’s Law does not describe emissions from a molecule doesn’t because the molecule has no “surface” and therefore no surface area. It can still absorb and emit; just not as a surface.
Droplet quantities, dimensions and shape which determine the orientation and area of the surface are unknown variables. A water drop(let) falling through air isn’t spherical. Validation of any physical model is difficult not least because the propensity to condense is highly variable; an interaction between many terrestial and apparently extra-terrestial factors.
00
Bernd (or Bob), maybe you can answer a few questions for me.
The IPCC say that transfer of energy from evaporation is 88W/m2 Is this from an estimate that about 1m of rainfall on average around the globe per year (which comes out to be 80W/m2 from a back of envelope calc.)? There has to be a huge uncertainty and variation from year to year there.
The other one is the outgoing long wave radiation. Wouldn’t most of it be from condensation of water because the IR spectrum of liquid water is continuous while water vapour has many but discrete bands. Emission from water liquid or ice as droplets/crystals form and give back the energy from a change of phase would have to be important in the energy out calculations. What is the amount of energy loss from Earth through cloud formation and evaporation as they move between latitudes? I was wondering whether this was important when taking into consideration the seeding of clouds very high in the atmosphere by ions, not just the increased albedo.
00
Also there is a fair amount of contention over where exactly in the IR spectrum water, water vapor and water dropplets have an effect.
see –
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/unsettled-science-uncertainty-around-the-continuum-absorption-of-water-vapour/
10
Thanks Tomo
00
Since we are talking about Russia here and there, here is a realistic analysis of Ukraine.
The European Union, with Germany influential, has been playing a dangerous game.
The EU has been attempting to bring large areas populated by Russian people (who admit to being Russian) into the fold of the European Union. These people belong with Russia, for they are Russians.
It is part of European deceit to fabricate Russia as the bad group and Putin as its ‘evil’ master.
If the EU did not crave territory in Ukraine, they would have set in motion a proper referendum of each district in Ukraine, to determine which ones want to stay with Russia and which ones and which with the EU.
That is the peaceful way.
Instead, the EU has been silent while allowing war to proceed, a war in which both Russia and the EU have provided weapons.
The dangerous EU brinkmanship has to be seen for what it is. If Russians spoke English, many of us would have a view like this.
We are getting an imbalance of reporting, some of it being crafted by the EU to further their territorial acquisition ambitions without a vote.
In one variation of this view, the proper course for Russia would be to gather evidence of the air crash event and present it to the rest of the world. It is the most relevant country with the means to do this properly.
The Russians are more entitled to take this course than the EU, which has little credible interest in the region, apart from wanting oil and gas from Russia – and its naked territorial expansionism.
33
Rubbish, if a sovereign nation, say Ukraine, wants to align itself with the EU, it is not the business of any other nation, say Russia to interfere. If some of the population of a province wishes Russian rule then they should emigrate there. If I recall correctly the EU require a referendum and national government consent for membership. Such formalities are not seemingly observed by Moscow.
For example, using your logic, since Alaska was once Russian, then the Russians are entitled to reclaim bits of it because some alaskans feel like it? Wonder what Washington would have to say about THAT?
01
Well I do like Putin better than Obammy………
I live in what was part of the Louisiana Purchase. Can I get France to take it back? No wait then I’d be French…….
10
Well Geoff reckons you could, better brush up on your french
01
Hey Mark,
Do you have the authority to sell all that territory? If you do I’ll pay you the original cash purchase price for it, $11,250,000. But you’ll have to eat the forgiven debt if that’s a problem.
Just think of the rent I can collect in all that territory in 2014 – riches beyond my wildest dream. And with the rent possibility as collateral I could easily get the loan to buy it from you.
And you’ll come off looking pretty good too.
Win, win is a good proposition. So just say, “Go.” and it’s done.
10
Maybe we should have bought California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas from Mexico instead of fighting for them. Wouldn’t that make their current claims against the U.S. for taking all that territory by force look a bit silly?
———————————————————
While in a small Mexican town (name I can’t remember to save my life) I had the opportunity to talk to the tour guide about the war for California. He was non confrontational and polite and so was I but I could tell it was something of a sore subject with him. During that war U.S. troops went all the way to Mexico City. So we owned what must amount to a lot more than half of Mexico, at least briefly. According to history we retired Mexico’s debt and then gave back everything south of the current border. What would have stopped us from keeping most of Mexico? I can understand the Mexican desire for California, which once was theirs. So they have some reason for complaint there. But does anyone actually think they can take it back by force?
And the end of that war doesn’t sound exactly like an imperialist nation bent on conquest to me. Yet that’s what some in both countries will yell as loud a they can whenever they can.
Texas was a revolution against a rather brutal dictator for freedom from his transgressions much like the American revolution against King George in 1776. And the Texicans beat Santa Ana fair and square. After that, Texas was an independent state for some time, not part of the United States and they joined the United States voluntarily. Mexico has no complaint about Texas.
Arizona and New Mexico seem to have come along for the ride and given the percentage of both states that is unbearably hot desert in the summer, I wonder why we wanted them. On the other hand, the northern part of both states is some of the most beautiful scenery in the country and Arizona is home to the Grand Canyon.
00
Putin vs. Obammy? Give me neither.
00
[SNIP. Please stick to things we can substantiate. Thanks – Jo]
BRICS development bank will provide capital to develop the new world instead of the IMF World bank, with its genocidal austerity measures that destroy countries like Greece, and its Wall St masters with toxic derivative dept amounting to order $10^15!!!!
33
Geoff Sherrington
July 20, 2014 at 9:01 pm · Reply
Since we are talking about Russia here and there, here is a realistic analysis of Ukraine.
The European Union, with Germany influential, has been playing a dangerous game.
The EU has been attempting to bring large areas populated by Russian people (who admit to being Russian) into the fold of the European Union. These people belong with Russia, for they are Russians.
It is part of European deceit to fabricate Russia as the bad group and Putin as its ‘evil’ master.
—
Nope, as I pointed out near the top, Ukraine was deep in debt to Russia and already seeking IMF loans prior to November last year. They had defaulted on payments of their energy resource access from Russia, but kept running up the debt further and siphoning-off gas from the pipeline as well, then when it had suckered Russia to the maximum extent possible, the country eventually ditched the Pro-Russian side of their political apparatus and turned to the EU/IMF funding and debt restructuring option instead and asked Germany etal., to pay its gas bill, or else Russia might as a result of non payment eliminate supply capacity via Ukraine, thus drastically reducing the max capacity volume into central and southern Europe as well.
So Kiev has pushed central Europe into a situation in which it has to play along, plus the fact that NATO wanted to take Ukraine out of Russia’s pocket meant a mutual and not inconsiderable slight on Moscow and Russia in general was baked in the moment Kiev went broke and effectively defaulted (which was many years ago now).
As a result the Jilted Putin repossessed their aging navy, and as this did not cover either the debt, nor the intense sense of wounded national pride and betrayal, he asked the Russian majority of Crimea to vote to become a part of Russia. he then over-reached and tried to continue the process of payback in Eastern Ukraine as well, until it’s lead to this situation with MH17. And each action has driven Kiev and the West and its banking financiers together into a graveyard spiraling orgy of debt (apologies to any bankers who jizzed).
It isn’t about goodies and baddies or patriotic Russians and nasty Eurocrats, and all that blather Geoff, it’s about paying the gas bill and obtaining assured and longer-term resources and weapons access and escaping the repercussions of defaulting, plus the strategic damage to Russia due to bringing the EU closer and flouting them as the new sugar daddy, while telling the old cuckold that he isn’t getting paid.
Winter’s coming though and as Jo and others have pointed out, the next few decades or winters could be longer and colder than normal (… or not … I know nuffink!).
But even a normal winter in Ukraine will do when you have zero gas. So how do you guarantee supply if you have no money, no navy and no pipeline flows anymore, and your underground storage is being sabotaged?
Well, … I suppose if you were an ethnic Russian you could consider trying to become Russian nationals, within a Russian satellite territory. If not Russian though you must ingratiate yourself to Brussels, and as quickly as possible, and hope that you can make some supply delivery deals and get your land back before winter.
They have just a few months to sort most of that out.
I’m not even close to summarizing the situation’s complexities adequately, just the main points and drivers, which indicate this has a long way to go yet.
For one thing, the EU is still a crucially important gas export market for Moscow, and if they can’t move gas through Ukraine, this means a lot less gas can get piped into Europe. Which hurts everyone. So the obvious solution is to start shipping gas through Ukraine again, ASAP. Which means Germany etal., must intervene to make and arrangement where that can all be smoothed over, and can take place.
In the meantime Vlad is violently of the view that Kiev should be very severely punished and destabilized, and most likely that’s what he intends to do for as long as he can sustain it, or until someone pays him to stop doing it.
40
Ukraine looks like a lost cause from where I sit. No one will be able to stop Putin in Ukraine. And when he starts adventuring elsewhere who will run to the rescue? No one.
A cowardly world makes its own trouble with no need for a Vladimir Putin, who is but doing what he’s been given an incentive to do by weak, ineffective (and downright negligent) leadership in Europe and America.
10
What will constrain Putin will be Putin’s vested economic interest in getting the gas flowing again, in volume, to his biggest market, Europe, via Ukraine, and soon.
20
Unmentionable,
Thank you for taking the trouble to give your longish analysis, one of which I am well aware. Much of it is not really relevant.
I was wanting to highlight was the mischievous exploitation of some of the people of Ukraine by the EU.
Many past conflicts have arisen when a populace is displaced from its roots with the land. History also shows no lack of onlookers willing to fan discontent while trying to get some gain from the unhappy displacement circumstance.
It seems clear to me that the people of Ukraine should be provided with a framework that allows them choice to minimise the separation of people from land.
Presently, they are being told of outcomes rather than choices. Civil war is expected.
What the heck is America doing, getting involved? I can’t imagine a reason for their interest in the Malaysian aircraft, though it does provide a stage for Hillary Clinton to advance her tactics for getting into the White House.
It would be interesting, as always, to discover precisely who was providing arms to the factions in Ukraine. They are among the people who would prefer (drawn out) outcomes to choices.
But the worst, from the information available to me, is the EU as I outlined above. It’s really not their business any more than it is USA business.
10
Understood Geoff, I’m glad you are interested in the topic.
However, I must politely and respectfully insist that it is not correct at all to say this is not any of central Europe’s business, or mostly irrelevant, when the very reason why the former pro-Russian government was overturned was a direct result of a broke and defaulting and very corrupt formerly Pro-Russian government, making it Europe’s business, via that government in desperation requesting IMF bridging loans under IMF and EU conditions. That unsolicited desperate financial request most certainly made it the EUs and NATOs business as they were about to get a failed-State on their eastern flank.
Most people don’t realise that the only reason Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown was because on the 19th of November 2013 he rejected the IMF’s loan conditions offer, because it would been economically ruinous to accept them.
As a result of his rejection of the loan conditions the geopolitical and economic/trade relationship with the EU was also not acceptable to Brussels and not possible. It was a package deal, accept the loans and you’ll also get the economic relationship.
So that was the deeper nature of the so-called Yanukovych government ‘rejection’ of a closer trade union with the EU. It was the crushing conditions of the IMF loans that ended it, and then lead to the Euromaidan revolt and coup.
But the exact same conditions for IMF loans and trade relations were then offered to the new Euromaidan government in Kiev and they accepted it!
So the corollary of all this is, that if the extremely corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych had simply done what the Euromaidan did, and accepted the IMF’s conditions, then it would be he who is still in power in Kiev, and he would have then been welcomed into western capitals and Government chambers as a new and great friend and champion of freedom and democracy.
i.e. The EU does not give a damn about who’s in Govt in Kiev, they only care about the acceptance of the IMF loans to hitch to the economic and geopolitical wagon of the EU. They played hard-ball with Yanukovych simply because they knew he’d already burned his bridges with Putin by requesting the EU/IMF package. Which is why Putin now detests him, but has to take him into exile to keep up appearances.
What made it inevitable that Europe would be and must be involved was the fact that Ukraine was completely broke, and the Govt had no other realistic option but to bind more closely with Russia or with the EU.
Yanukovych simply decided at the last moment that he was a nationalist after all and would not submit to the IMF’s total exploitation of what little Ukraine had left to offer, and would not slip into the debt yoke.
If he’d simply said yes, all of the current warfare and separatism would probably not have spiral developed nor got anywhere near to this level of open conflict. So this is very much due to the events of Yanukovych’s choices than those of the opportunistically Pro-EU government in Kiev today. They’re not really Pro-EU, they are pro getting western bank loans so that they don’t freeze and starve next winter.
And Europe could not possibly stay out of it, and still can’t, given a large portion of an economically crucial gas supply route is directly threatened. And as we now see it still is. So more and deeper Western European and German involvement is a given. This is very much a shotgun wedding that no one really wants (and in that sense you are right Geoff) but it is unavoidably necessary, so they must hold their nose (as they would have if Yanukovych had said yes to the IMF), and do it anyway.
So that is not mostly irrelevant, it is clearly at the very heart of what’s been occurring and is still playing itself out – Sovereign default. Most people don’t realize this is a Sovereign default’s aftermath, because no one in Europe has an incentive or desire to point this out so it’s disguised as a revolution and switch to the free west … blah-blah.
This is just the divorce conflict over who gets the house and the custody of the kids, in which Vlad the embittered cuckold took Crimea and the Navy and tried to take custody of the kids in the east as well.
Europe must negotiate this ugliness, and it absolutely must be involved, it has no choice. Germany in particular has no choice now but to make an accommodation with Russia to get the gas flowing through Ukraine again. I hope they succeed for if they don’t it would be a catastrophe for everyone.
Sorry for the length but it merits clarification.
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Amazing and Revealing Valedictory article from UK’s outgoing Environment Secretary – worth the full read!
This reveals the despicable, self serving tactics of the “Green Blob” which collectively describes activist environmental NGO’s which include Greenpeace, WWF and many other organisations including renewable energy companies often aligned with The Green Party.
By Owen Paterson former secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs. (The Telegraph 20 Jul 2014)
I leave the post with great misgivings about the power and irresponsibility of – to coin a phrase – the Green Blob.
By this I mean the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely.
Local conservationists on the ground do wonderful work to protect and improve wild landscapes, as do farmers, rural businesses and ordinary people. They are a world away from the highly paid globe-trotters of the Green Blob who besieged me with their self-serving demands, many of which would have harmed the natural environment.
I soon realised that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland.
My home address was circulated worldwide with an incitement to trash it; I was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as I was recovering from an operation to save my eyesight. But I did not set out to be popular with lobbyists and I never forgot that they were not the people I was elected to serve.
Indeed, I am proud that my departure was greeted with such gloating by spokespeople for the Green Party and Friends of the Earth.
It was not my job to do the bidding of two organisations that are little more than anti-capitalist agitprop groups most of whose leaders could not tell a snakeshead fritillary from a silver-washed fritillary [types of butterflies]. I saw my task as improving both the environment and the rural economy; many in the green movement believed in neither.
Their goal was to enhance their own income streams and influence by myth making and lobbying. Would they have been as determined to blacken my name if I was not challenging them rather effectively?
When I arrived at Defra I found a department that had become under successive Labour governments a milch cow for the Green Blob.
I began to reorganise the department around four priorities: to grow the rural economy, to improve the environment, and to safeguard both plant and animal health.
The Green Blob sprouts especially vigorously in Brussels. The European Commission website reveals that a staggering 150 million euros (£119 million) was paid to the top nine green NGOs from 2007-13.
European Union officials give generous grants to green groups so that they will lobby it for regulations that then require large budgets to enforce.
When I attended a council meeting of elected EU ministers on shale gas in Lithuania last year, we were lectured by a man using largely untrue clichés about the dangers of shale gas. We discovered that he was from the European Environment Bureau, an umbrella group for unelected, taxpayer-subsidised green lobby groups.
I remain proud to have achieved some renegotiations.
The discard ban ends the scandalous practice of throwing away perfectly edible fish, we broke the council deadlock on GM crops, so decisions may be repatriated to member countries and we headed off bans on fracking.
Judge me by my opponents.
When I proposed a solution to the dreadful suffering of cattle, badgers and farmers as a result of the bovine tuberculosis epidemic that Labour allowed to develop, I was opposed by rich pop stars who had never been faced with having to cull a pregnant heifer. (Interestingly, very recent local evidence suggests the decline in TB in the cull area may already have begun.)
When I spoke up for the landscapes of this beautiful country against the heavily subsidised industry that wants to spoil them with wind turbines at vast cost to ordinary people, vast reward to rich landowners and undetectable effects on carbon dioxide emissions, I was frustrated by colleagues from the so-called Liberal Democrat Party.
When I encouraged the search for affordable energy from shale gas to help grow the rural economy and lift people out of fuel poverty, I was opposed by a dress designer for whom energy bills are trivial concerns.
When I championed brilliant scientists demonstrating genetic modifications to rice to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in developing countries, I was vilified by a luxury organic chocolate tycoon uninterested in the demonstrable environmental and humanitarian benefits of GM crops.
When faced with the flooding of the Somerset Levels I refused to make the popular and false excuse of blaming it on global warming, but set out to reverse the policy inherited from a Labour peeress and serial quangocrat who had expressed the wish to “place a limpet mine on every pumping station”, while deliberately allowing the silting up of drainage channels.
When I set out to shatter the crippling orthodoxy that growing the rural economy and improving the environment are mutually exclusive, I was ridiculed by a public school journalist who thinks the solution to environmental problems is “an ordered and structured downsizing of the global economy”. Back to the Stone Age, in other words, but Glastonbury-style.
Yes, I’ve annoyed these people, but they don’t represent the real countryside of farmers and workers, of birds and butterflies.
Like the nationalised industries and obstructive trade unions of the 1970s, the Green Blob has become a powerful self-serving caucus; it is the job of the elected politician to stand up to them. We must have the courage to tackle it head on, as Tony Abbott in Australia and Stephen Harper in Canada have done, or the economy and the environment will both continue to suffer.
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And that from a real Government Minister, now un gagged I suppose.
What has Dave replaced him with though, for the run up to an election ?
Well the Gruanad finds something to complain about them 🙂
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In 2009, as deputy director of the free-market thinktank Reform, Liz Truss , the new UK Environment Minister said energy infrastructure in Britain was being damaged by politicians’ obsession with green technology: “Vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are being spent subsidising uneconomic activity,” she said.
While the Guardian is quick to point out
“Research from the [ Lefty ] London School of Economics recently concluded that green policies were not harming economic growth.”
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That could have been written for Ian Plimer’s book launch
Be there.
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With regards to a previous post “Can the Moon change our climate”, Figure 15 shows a comparison of the peak lunar tides with the median maximum temperatures for Melbourne and Adelaide.
I thought that there was a better correlation with a plot I did a while ago to show that the weather is not getting more extreme. It was a plot of the sum of F for the year where F is the square of the how much greater the maximum daily temperature is above 31°C. ie. 41°C day is 100 times worse than a 32°C day. Such days in Adelaide are due to sustained hot northerly winds from slow moving highs.
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Miranda Devine’s current blog is worth a read.
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I read it; and it was divine! This is starting to look like a turning point, as I have never seen anything like that from a journalist before other than Andrew Bolt.
Yipeee
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Certainly is! Thanks Rod.
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Not only worthwhile but full of useful information about the behind the scenes activity that I haven’t much of a way to see. So thanks, Rod.
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My two cents worth on how too collate the temperature records into an indicator of how the climate is changing. Something simple that anyone can reproduce (with time on their hands and access to raw data). It would be a mean rate of temperature change of terrestrial measurements with the monthly maximums and minimums looked at separately but the averages are used in this example for Darwin.
I took the raw data from GISS and replaced any missing data with the long term monthly average. This average was subtracted from the monthly average for each year to get a monthly anomaly. This data was transposed into a monthly anomaly (from the long term average for that month) as a function of t in years. I then did a moving linear regression (OLS) over 1 year. I did it with the anomalies to avoid the seasonal cycles. The data for Darwin doesn’t show any point much greater than 3 times the standard deviation except the last data. A few points are that far out but not near 1939 so it doesn’t appear that a correction for a change in positioning or equipment is justified without a historical reference to remove a data point.
My suggestion is to find the mean of the rate data for each site either unweighted or weighted according to the number of similar stations. If there is any correction it is simply to remove any rate data that is larger than 3SD (2 in a thousand data points).
The cumulative plot comes out smoother than the raw data. A moving linear regression over 6 years gives a smoother plot of the rate of temperature change for each site.
The Excel file is here.
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Vic,
I can’t fault you for doing this analysis. But after all is said and done. What do we know except that the weather varies quite widely in many places and we have some actual history showing that climate can change? Unless David’s model is a real breakthrough we still have no way to predict the future that I would bet 10 cents on.
If you’re arguing that your analysis shows that claims of higher temperatures don’t mean climate is changing, I’m not even sure that’s a strong argument. As you point out, past temperatures have been higher.
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I hope the full dissertation on the TSI Solar model is soon forthcoming. 🙂 🙂 🙂
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My argument is that the raw data probably shows that there is a big difference between the NH and SH hemispheres. You shouldn’t try to fit to data of what is a NH trend with SH homogenised to look like the north, using explanations of what effects the global temperature.
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I hope the full dissertation on the TSI Solar model is soon forthcoming.
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This article from “The American Thinker” indicates that the carbon tax scheme is not dead!
http://americanthinker.com/2014/07/australia_still_has_carbon_taxation_comments.html#disqus_thread
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I see the headline this morning that James Garner has died at the age of 86. He was one of the good guys in acting all the way around. While he didn’t mind a little bawdy overtone in a movie, I don’t remember ever hearing a single word of profanity from his mouth.
He was married to the same wife until he died — something unusual among Hollywood types. We have lost a memorable actor.
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The video gives some interesting insight into the man and his work.
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The raving genius Stephan Lewandowsky has treated us to yet another exposition of his deep thinking:
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyCMIP5.html
Of course, Dr. Lucidity puts the heat buildup into the oceans.
One of the comments below the article is particularly laughable:
So now psychologists are referred to as ‘scientists’. I wonder how long before leftwing journalists are also called ‘scientists’?
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If the sane people in it world are awake, Lewy will have ABSOLUTELY NO SAY in the shape of tomorrow’s world !!
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And “Raving”…..
he most certainly is !!!
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Ian Plimer launching his new book: Perth Monday, Melbourne Tuesday, Bris next Monday
He’s converting? I understand that for adults recovery takes a few days.
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Get your warm and woolies ready, it’s started.
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