Observers monitoring European fish quotas are being regularly intimidated, offered bribes and undermined by the fishing crews they are observing, a Guardian investigation has discovered.

More than 20 former and current observers on Portuguese and Spanish ships said that they had experienced tactics such as beingput under surveillance, deprived of sleep, or threatened with being thrown overboard, or having their official documentation stolen by fishing crews to conceal a culture of overfishing.

Seriously?

The twats expect to beat over fishing by putting a man with a clipboard at sea?

Jeebus.

What you’ve got to do is align the incentives for the fishermen so that it is in their interest to preserve the stock. When over fishing reduces profits then it will stop. Not men with bloody clipboards for goodness sake.

Why bother? That’s at least 10 times the scrap value.

Set a few charges and leave the remains to rust on the reef.

The sea is under attack from both ends. To the north, the once mighty Jordan, on which it depends for replenishment, has shrunk to a polluted trickle, carrying only one fiftieth of the water it did 70 years ago: after gushing spectacularly out of the side of Mt Hermon far to the north, the river is almost entirely depleted by domestic and agricultural use. And to the south, big industrial concerns deliberately evaporate the sea’s waters to gain valuable minerals.

Eh? Deliberately evaporate?

Friends of the Earth groups in Israel, Jordan and Palestine have long argued for an alternative plan, based on persuading the industries to adopt new technologies that do not evaporate water,

What?

Look, the evaporation simply happens. You’ve got open water in a hot place: evaporation. The industries are not increasing this one iota. They are, rather, taking advantage of it. The hugely salty water contains, you’ll not be all that surprised to note, salts. As the water evaporates these salts are left behind and they can be harvested. And they are, for, among other things, the magnesium content.

The tonnage of water that rises up into the skies is not changed by this practice. It’s just made useful. So WTF are Lean and FoE on about here?

These are, please note, consecutive sentences from his blog post. I have not just collected the worst parts:

The paper uses scientific analysis to calculate the world’s total subsidies to oil, coal and gas companies at between $400 and $500 billion per year.

That’s about £45 for each man woman and child on the planet.

This hardly seems possible, but this is a peer-reviewed paper.

1) The paper does not use scientific analysis to calculate this. It quotes the well known finding of the International Energy Authority that a certain group of nations (Iran, Russia, Saudi etc) subsidise the consumption of fossil fuels.

2) A subsidy to consumers is not a subsidy to producers.

3) This is not a peer reviewed paper “Hansen et al. 2012, submitted”…they are waiting for the results of the peer review.

That’s three strikes and, yes, David Thorpe, you are out!

The blunt warning from Linden Homes, the housebuilding division of Galliford Try, is just one of a barrage of policy criticisms submitted last month to a government consultation on new Building Regulations.

The regulations would require higher efficiency standards on new homes from next year and are a step toward the government’s plan to make new homes ‘zero carbon’ from 2016.

Linden Homes, the UK’s fifth-largest residential developer, said the 2016 proposals risk “strangling the building industry with massively increased costs” of up to £30,000 more on each new home.

“The extra costs would make many developments unviable and choke off house-building at a time when the UK’s stalling economy needs it most to provide jobs and tackle the housing crisis,” it said.

They do have a point. If you want to get more of something produced it’s probably a bad idea to insist that production of those things must cost more.

And that increase in cost is a great deal more than it at first seems. As we know, the majority of the cost of a house in the SE of England is the value of the permit to build one. The actual construction cost is in the £100k region, so we’re talking about a 20% or more increase in construction cost.

This just ain’t the way to solve a housing shortage.

Do not expect representatives from Saturday’s Connect the Dots day to show up on Sunday’s talk shows. Over the last three years, those inside-the-Beltway extravaganzas have devoted 98 minutes total to the planet’s biggest challenge. Last year, in fact, all the Sunday talk shows spent exactly nine minutes of Sunday talking time on climate change – and here is a shock: all of it was given over to Republican politicians in the great denial sweepstakes.

So, here’s a prediction: next Sunday, no matter how big and beautiful the demonstrations may be that we’re mounting across the world, “Face the Nation” and “Meet the Press” won’t be connecting the dots. They will be gassing along about Newt Gingrich’s retirement from the presidential race or Mitt Romney’s coming nomination, and many of the commercials will come from oil companies lying about their environmental efforts.

The Sunday inside the Beltway politics shows won’t be talking bout climate change.

They won’t be talking about Nascar, the NFL, the London Mayoral elections nor the location of the G-Spot either.

They’ll be talking about inside the Beltway politics because that’s what they are, inside the Beltway politics shows.

How does Bill Mckibben actually work?

Perhaps more importantly, does he actually believe this shit or is it just a good gig?

But how can anyone write about the use and conservation of a limited resource like water without even once mentioning the incentive that makes all such efforts work?

Price?

Platinum is one metal for which absolute scarcity is
likely (Bloodworth pers comm), because of its unique
catalytic properties (eg car exhaust cleaning and
process chemistry). The related metals palladium,
rhenium and osmium may also become limiting.

Rhenium is not a platinum group metal.

Rhodium is.

If they’re getting this sort of stuff wrong then, well, what weight to place on the bits that I don’t know in such detail?

The main problem with this approach is that the
Global Footprint Network tries to account for all of
humanity’s multifaceted demands on the planet by
reducing them down to one comparable unit: land
area. This can miss some important side effects and
whole activities. For example, energy produced by
nuclear power is converted to global hectares by
calculating how much biologically productive land
would be required to absorb the carbon dioxide
released if fossil fuels were burnt to generate an equal
amount of energy.

I do believe that I am the originator of that criticism……

Sadly I am probably mistaken in that belief, just cannot remember where I first saw it and have thus internalised the idea that it is original to me…..

An example of misunderstandings:

Many resources are subject to collective action
problems: if each actor pursues what is in his or
her short-term interest, things will go much less
well than if all agree to abide by rules that are in
the common interest. Collective action problems
are sometimes thought to arise inevitably from
common ownership of resources, but this is not
the case. Hardin (1968), in coining the phrase
the “tragedy of the commons” assumed that
common ownership of physical resources such
as fields and lakes is problematic because it will
be in the interest of each to consume more of
the resource than is sustainable. Thus, on
Hardin’s analysis, shepherds will tend to
overgraze a field which is held in common, as
each shepherd seeks to ensure that he or she
has as many sheep as possible, and that each
sheep is well-grazed. If all (or most) shepherds
behave in this way, then the commons will
become overgrazed, and its ability to support
sheep will soon be destroyed.

However Hardin was mistaken to assume that
all commons are open access, and can be used
by anyone without control or rules. Almost
all commons are closed access, with distinct
rules and norms. Closed commons are and can
be regulated in such a way that they can be
successfully protected and sustained. (Ostrom
1990). Nonmaterial goods, such as knowledge,
which are also vital for human wellbeing, are
not subject to scarcity and can be provided
for all without being in any way degraded
(Wilson 2012).

That just isn’t what Hardin said.

What he did say is that open access commons, where demand is greater than capacity for renewal, would face such tragic problems. Therefore, as demand rises and Marxian (his phrase) access is no longer viable therefore there has to be some form of restriction of access. Which can be social (socialist) or private property (captialist, again, his descriptions) in form.

Quoting Ostrom doesn’t invalidate his point: she has studied (very well and very interestingly) extant commons. Which gives us survivorship bias. Those commons still exist because they have access managed and thus haven’t been wiped out by open access.

Hardin could be disproved by showing that all commons everywhere all the time have been successfully so managed: but the non existence of the passenger pigeon, the near extinction of the American buffalo would, the exticntion in fact of the magafaiuna just as human beings turn up would militate against that idea.

That currently extant commons are managed can be taken as a proof of Hardin, not a refutation. Because, you know, he said that in order to continue to exist they must be managed?

For example, I’ve a flat in a Georgian building in Bath. Grade II* listed. So you’re not allowed to put in double glazing. The walls are, so I’m told, 4 inch ashlar (erm, I think that’s the same as a slab of Bath Stone). There’s no cavity that can be insulated.

And, umm, that’s about it.

landlords will be forced to make rented properties more efficient;

How?

What people really need is the ability to adapt to their environment, rather than be fobbed off with the promise that if they work hard, they can escape it.

Well, that’s the entire premise of civilisation buggered then.

Pity, Mrs. Will Self is usually quite reasonable.

Meanwhile, keeping the sward green and encouraging it to grow requires – as well as copious water – regular applications of oil-based fertiliser.

What buggering oil based fertilisers?

We make fertiliser through the Haber Bosch process, in which we use methane (CH4) to fix the nitrogen (N) from the atmosphere to make ammonia (NH3) and then on perhaps to ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) which we then chuck over the fields and lawns (or in Ireland mix with derv which is the only oil based product and for a very different reason).

What fucking oil?

And note that this methane of which we speak is the major ingredient in that shale gas that we’ve just found 200 trillion cubic feet of underneath Blackpool.

Seriously where did this “oil based fertiliser” stuff come from? Does it all go back to some twat in FoE or Greenpeace who doesn’t know the difference between a [1C] alkane and a mix of [6C] to [10C] alkanes, alkenes, cycloalkanes etc?

You know, someone ignorant of what they speak and thus someone who could usefully remain silent?

Pollution levels are measured in tiny particles of soot and dirt. The particulate matter, known as PM10s, can cause lung and heart problems when inhaled.

In order to meet the European Commission targets the daily limit for PM10 in the UK must not exceed 50 micrograms per metre squared more than 35 times in a calendar year. London was supposed to meet the target by January 1 2005 but has had to ask for a series of extensions. The latest deadline is September and if London fails again then the UK faces a fine of £300 million.

How, actually, can PM10s be reduced?

Anyone know?

But over and above that:

Mr Liddell-Grainger says the land is estimated to be worth £250,000,

This is a minor, trivil even, problem.

At a full council meeting in February, called to debate the issue after the national advocacy group 38 Degrees gathered 40,000 protest signatures in a month,

You just get those 40,000 people who were concerned enough to protest to cough up £6 or £7 each and then buy the land. For of course, those outraged enough to protest will be willing to put up the cost of two pints to preserve forever this very special corner of England, won’t they?

And if they won’t then they’re not concerned enough or it’s not a special corner, is it?

After all, by their actions shall ye know them…..

We might even think that you and your husband should kick things off. After all, a British Viscount, Irish Earl and Dutch Marquess should have sufficient noblesse oblige to spend some time fundraising, no?

While the board contains retired senior executives from AstraZeneca and Merck Sharp & Dohme, it includes no one from a patient group, or any other body representing people whose health could be damaged by its decisions.
…
The other council members include executives or directors from Pfizer, Kardia Therapeutics and Microgen Ltd, but no one who makes their primary living working for a medical charity or any other public interest group.
….
Yet its board contains no members from passenger groups, unions or transport campaigns.
…
There was no one representing groups protecting the environment, landscape or animal welfare.
…
This is just a snapshot of the committee-nobbling in which successive governments have engaged. As well as excluding people who represent the wider public interest, David Cameron’s government has snuffed out the bodies which might have balanced these one-sided boards, such as the Sustainable Development Commission and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Its bonfire of the quangos was in fact a bonfire of dissent, as committees which told it what it didn’t want to hear were selectively purged.

You can see where the anger comes from of course. For the entire point of the vast NGO movement is to become “community leaders”, centres of biased knowledge about this or that that then have to be included into the governance structure. This is the whole point of the fundraising, the campaigning, the dreary hours spent mimeographing. To gain access to those corridors of power.

And if doing all that work no longer gets you seat on those committees then what has a lifetime’s campaigning been for?

And now to ask a slightly different question. That Sustainable Development Commission. When it was in existence was there a single free market environmentalist anywhere in it ever? No, I don’t mean was there someone from business, or a corporate drone, but was there actually any diversity of viewpoint on it at all? Anyone at all who even occasionally muttered that perhaps markets suitably constrained by Pigou Taxes, just as an example, might be the best way to deal with environmental problems that were agreed to exist?

No, there wasn’t? Really?

Well, if you get to pack the committees that you can pack then I’m afraid that when you complain about other committees being packed then you can just fuck right off matey.

The global mining, oil and gas industries have expanded so fast in the last decade they are now leading to large-scale “landgrabbing” and threatening farming and water supplies, according to a report by environment and development groups in Europe, Africa and India.

“The catalogue of devastation is growing. We are no longer talking about isolated pockets of destruction and pollution. In just 10 years, iron ore production has more than doubled, coal has risen 45% and metals like lithium by 125%.

And why has lithium mining increased? To make the bloody batteries for your electric cars you twats.

Jeebus, Dear God and Mother Mary on a pogo stick. How can anyone think that we can change technologies without changing the raw materials we use?

As Lord Marland put it this week: “It is already going to cost the consumer £7 billion for £400 million of net present value.”

This makes the consumer £ 6.6 billion poorer of course.

We really do want to remember only to do those things which have an NPV over and above the cost of doing hem.

For one thing, the model used by the MIT scientists didn’t make precise “predictions”, but projected what was likely to happen if certain trends continued, allowing for “adjustable assumptions” of resource use. Their real finding was not that collapse was likely to occur by a particular year, but that population and the global economy would contract rapidly after peaking. The only circumstances under which some kind of stabilisation, rather than collapse, was achieved, was constraining population and the scale of the economy.

Models and reality are not the same thing. But – strikingly given the relatively crude computer modelling available at the time – the MIT projections have proved remarkably accurate. Today they can be checked against decades of actual data. Population, industrial output, pollution and food consumption all track the lines in the model.

Quite true you ignorant tosspot. Except, of course, for one thing that hasn’t come true: we’ve not run out of resources, have we? For resources are not some fixed endowment with which we start. Resources are things that we create, manufacture, by inventing new technologies which do so.

I have yet to see any figures to illustrate how growth in rich countries can, in perpetuity, be compatible with environmental limits,

I have explained it to you several times. Are you thick or just not listening?

One thing is sure: advocates of growth need to be able to show not only that environmental impact can be cancelled out by efficiency and resource substitution, but that deep, absolute reductions in resource use can be achieved simultaneously, and that such gains can be made year, after year, after year, ad infinitum.

No, we don’t. We need to be able to show that economic growth is compatible with whatever resource constraints that you specify.

There are many problematic issues to do with growth that can’t be covered here. Clinging to growth, however, suffocates the imagination needed to devise more convivial ways to share a finite planet. At the very least, and with so much evidence to the contrary, the burden of proof now lies heavily on those who reject the original message of the Limits report, for them to demonstrate how, and under what circumstances, we could possibly enjoy “growth forever” in a finite world.

And here it is once again you miserable cretin.

So, let us imagine that steady state economy of Herman Daly. We abstract no new resources, at least no resources unsustainably, from nature. We recycle everything and use only renewable energy etc. We’re stuck with just what we’ve already dug out of the ground, we’re not going to mine any new mountains etc.

Excellent, now, in this scenario can we have economic growth? Sure we can, for as long as technology allows us to make more with the same resources or use fewer resources to make the same things.

For example, gold plating on computer boards used to be 200 nm. Now it’s more like 2 nm. So, out of that available stock of gold (and recall, something like 99.9% of all gold ever mined is still available for use, we’re missing pretty much only grave goods and the stuff that weathers off onion domes) we can now make 200 times as many computer boards as we could only 30 years ago.

Or, if you prefer, we can make the same nuber of computer boards and we can still make more gold teeth for rap artists.

We have had economic growth, either way, because we now have either more computer boards or the same number plus gold teeth.

And this is without even thinking about the definition of economic growth, a rise in GDP. GDP is an increase in the value of goods and services as valued at market prices. Perhaps resource constraints do, or at some point will, mean that more goods cannot be produced. But why would that limit the value we can add through advancing technology?

And what’s so intensely annoying about your and your bloviations Mr. Simms is that this is all explained in your Ur text, the works of Herman Daly as above. He says that a steady state economy must move from the consumption of more resources to a stable consumption, to a resource limited mode of production. But he also points out that we can still increase value add and we can thus still have economic growth. He calls the latter qualitative growth, the former quantitative growth.

Shrug, he’s just using different names for absolutely standard economic thinking. Even in a resource constrained world economic growth will continue at the rate of technological advancement.

And you’re just to dim to understand what your own fucking Bible is telling you.

Be Gone, sod off, trouble us no more!