UK in extreme weather alert

by | Nov 26, 2010 | Climate and resource scarcity

Newsflash just in from the Daily Mash:

BRITAIN ground to a standstill today after the heaviest November global warming bullshit in more than a decade. Across the country thousands of people found themselves trapped in pubs by a relentless blizzard of tedious, predictable observations by the sort of people who post comments on the Daily Mail website. The Met Office said there was around 24 inches of dreary, ill-informed piss in most parts of the UK, while strong winds could cause bullshit drifts up to 40ft deep.

Tom Logan, who is trapped in a pub in Stevenage, said: “I popped into the White Hart for a few triple vodkas before I went back to work and there was Geoff just sitting there. With his newspaper. I could see it coming towards me like a huge, dark cloud full of utter fucking shit about things that he does not even begin to understand.

“It started with a flurry of statistics that simply aren’t true and then the really heavy stuff came down – ‘so why is it so cold?’ and ‘it’s all a Marxist conspiracy’ which was, of course, followed immediately by ‘that Al Gore is a billionaire, you know’. It stopped, very briefly, while he ordered another Guinness and then he just dumped this massive, disgusting comment about Africans right into the middle of my head. Thank God I wasn’t driving.”

Dr Julian Cook, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Studies, said: “One of the nastier effects of the global warming debate is that a lot of people – Daily Mail readers, fuckers, that kind of thing – seem to think climate science is based on looking out the window. So, over the next couple of days, if someone says to you ‘I suppose this is so-called climate change?’ just say ‘yes, it fucking is actually’.”

Via @caspertk, whose Twitter feed is a smorgasbord of delights.

What a limits to growth agenda would really look like

by | Nov 26, 2010 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global Dashboard, Global system

You can feel the frisson in environmental circles: for the first time in a long time, it’s okay to talk about limits to growth again. Jonathon Porritt has been doing a lot of it; Tim Jackson’s book Prosperity without Growth has catalysed much debate; even heads of respectable governments have been heard to utter the phrase.

Most recently, British Prime Minister David Cameron has tickled the greens’ tummies by announcing the unveiling of a new ‘happiness index’ (designed in large part by my friend Jules Peck, who ran the Conservatives’ environment policy commission in Opposition). From April next year, the Office of National Statistics will measure quality of life as well as economic growth.

Now, I’m all for measuring a wide set of indicators on how the nation is doing (although I think my brother Jules Evans is right to question some of the “spurious claims to scientific objectivity” that arise in attempts to measure and promote ‘happiness’ in public policy contexts).

But what I find odd is that, in their attempts to open up a debate about limits to growth, the environmental crowd have been focusing their fire on this whole area of indicators (and not just in the UK, either – c.f. the French-inspired Stiglitz Commission). It’s rather touching to think that the cure for endemic short-termism in political and economic systems might lie with methodological tweaks to the national accounts made by some unassuming, clipboard-toting statisticians at ONS. But surely we know better than that.

If we were really exploring how to operationalise a limits to growth agenda, we’d be talking not about indicators, but about the inner workings of banking, debt and indeed money itself. (more…)

I’m Mullah Omar! And so’s my wife!

by | Nov 26, 2010 | Conflict and security

Ahem. Turns out it may have been largely the Brits’ fault:

President Hamid Karzai’s chief of staff on Thursday said that British authorities were responsible for bringing a Taliban impostor into the presidential palace and that foreigners should stay out of delicate negotiations with the Afghan insurgent group.

In an interview, Mohammad Umer Daudzai said that the British brought a man purporting to be Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a senior Taliban leader, to meet Karzai in July or August but that an Afghan at the meeting knew “this is not the man.”

Afghan intelligence later determined that the visitor was actually a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta, he said.

All in the finest British traditions, of course…