Welcome to once great Britain!

I was shaken as the Gautrain pulled into Sandton terminus. Yes, the engineering was wonderful – but what was wrong?  The track levelling felt as if the London Underground gremlins had had a hand in the construction.  We were going quite slowly, but still we shook, rattled and rolled.

And that got me thinking about the gremlins.  London Transport has one of the world’s first underground railways, and it shows.  The track needs levelling. They provide grab handles for the standing multitude.  Are they necessary? Yeeess! I don’t know why there isn’t a mass revolt, but perhaps it is that the Brits don’t like making a fuss. 

It is all the more surprising when you think how many of them nip over to France for the weekend. Paris has two Metros, one riding on steel wheels and the other on rubber. The steel-wheeled one is good, smooth and quite fast as a result.  The rubber-shod one is smoother still, and you wonder why no-one else seems to have thought of this sooner.

But Britain seems convinced that she knows best. If her commuters can be thrown around without complaint, well then, throw them around!  The same lack of leadership seems to have pervaded the Olympic Games.  I was persuaded to watch the opening ceremony.  I nearly threw up when an assortment of children in varicoloured nightdresses appeared, and shrilled the National Anthem! Where were the massed bands of the Royal Marines? Where were the choirs that can fill the Albert Hall with sound?  Where was the thrill?  Instead, there was unmitigated schmaltz – “Aren’t they cute?  And did you see Tommy Jenkins? He wet his pants it was so exciting!”

Then we were treated to dancing nurses and more children in hospital beds, in celebration of Britain’s greatest achievement, the National Health Service.  What a real thrill! (Sarc.) I suppose Health and Safety ruled against one thousand pipers blasting away, on grounds of possible ear damage.

Il Trovatore was clearly the ‘inspiration’ for the British worker at the forges, making the rings that are the Olympic trademark.  It was somewhat more inspired and inspiring than what was supposed to be Britain’s greatest musical achievement, Tubular Bells. Purlees! The parents of my grandchildren were still in their cradles when Oldfield burst on the scene, then disappeared, we thought for good.

Ceremonies in Britain used to be pageants to remember.  It was one thing they used to be able to do really well.  The great State occasions, with Her Majesty smiling benignly from her gilded coach.  This time she was allowed what I think is referred to as a ‘cameo appearance’, a walk-on, walk-off part of minimal importance. Oh yes, and her effigy was dropped from her incoming helicopter. Shall I be kind, and say she looked decidedly underwhelmed?

Great, Britain may have been – but the Olympic opening showed that she has well and truly lost it.  

Beware jail!

I was the last aboard the shuttle.  The big guy on the end moved up, and I squeezed in.  "Where you all going?" asked the driver.  The big guy next to me said "The **** golf course." "Lucky you," I said "It must be nice to have a job that lets you play golf during the week!" "No!" he replied "It's part of our destressing programme."

And he slowly opened up.  He was a jailer at **** Prison.  Built for 1800 prisoners, currently housing over 9000.  As many as 60 prisoners to a single toilet and wash basin. No discipline.  When he started 30 years ago, there were work gangs, and good-behaviour prisoners could be let out to do social work like cleaning the streets.  Today, they all have rights, and sit watching television all day and enjoying three free meals. When they feel like a real rest, they say they are sick, and are rushed off to hospital. Life is better in prison than outside.

And then there were the gangs.  The 26ers would rob you blind, the 27ers would turn you into a woman, the 28ers would make a knife from anything and stab you without a thought.  Woe betide the jailer who went against any one gang - all three would turn on him. 

And the thing that made him really mad was the poor innocents who couldn't find even R50 for bail, and had sat there for a year, while murderous thieves were in and out in a day. There were miscreant husbands, who had fallen behind on child support, and were now locked up while the children suffered.  Eventually the children grew old enough to join a gang, and were soon locked up with their still-jailed father.  In the country village where he had grown up, you knew who the baddies were - now your next-door neighbour could suddenly land up under your care. There was something very wrong with the justice system.

Finally he turned to golf.  It was the one thing that kept him human.  He had grown quite good at it, and was a Correctional Services champion in his age group.  As such he had toured the world, and I was amazed to find myself discussing the seventh  hole at a Melbourne course we had both played! Put a whole new complexion on the jailer's life!

Here's a toast to Her Majesty!

Sixty five years ago, my parents bundled me into the car and we set off on a long trek - my first big traffic jam. 

The event was the arrival in Cape Town of HMS Vanguard, carrying King George VI and Queen Mary, and their two Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret.  After an hour and about 5km of travel, the car overheated, so we gave up, parked on the single-carriageway de Waal Drive where we had a view, and saw the mighty battleship tie up in Duncan Dock, right at the end of Adderley Street (the Foreshore was a recently reclaimed wasteland in those days, and the Heerengracht did not exist).

A few nights later we went to town again, this time because my father had wangled an invitation to a reception on the ship.  As the sun set, I stood on the foredeck and looked up at the mighty 15" guns in wonder.  However, our visit was cut short - my mother was a notoriously bad sailor, and the motion even in the dock proved too much for her.

A month or so after that we were dragged off to the Rosebank Show Grounds (now the University of Cape Town's Lower Campus), where the Royals were to speak.  I think the occasion was Princess Elizabeth's 21st birthday, but I recall little of the day other than a struggle to see their Majesties between the legs of the crowds.

Six years later, and I, as a Sea Cadet Chief Petty Officer,  found myself sent off to the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.  Clad in my Royal Navy uniform, with bell-bottomed trousers carefully ironed with the seven horizontal creases that represented the seven seas, and my seaman's cap whitened with the best Blanco, I marched  in a squad of twenty Commonwealth Sea Cadets across Westminster Bridge, round Parliament Square, to take position in Victoria Street right outside the Abbey. It was a grey morning, with occasional showers, and before long the Blanco had run from my cap and left white streaks down my serge jerkin.

Though I was cold and rather wet, it became exciting as the guests started to arrive.  Many were richly robed and carrying coronets.  One old chap, laden down with ermine, was being henpecked by his wife - "Yes, of course I've got my sandwiches and my potty!" and he raised his robes to reveal package and pot hanging from his belt - and a wonderful line in purple stockings, held up by some rather natty suspenders.

Finally we were all called to attention, and Queen Elizabeth swept up in her carriage.  She emerged with a long train behind her, and a bevy of ladies-in-waiting dashed forward to pick it up before it fell to the damp pavement. There was thunderous music from the Abbey, then long silences, more music, then all the bells began to peal and Her Majesty emerged, beaming, climbed into her gilded carriage, and was off in a flash, surrounded by the Horseguards.  All the other distinguished visitors joined the great procession, and were followed by the various armed forces, each with their bands, and finally we were dismissed and told to find our own way down to Buckingham Palace, and to meet up at Victoria Station later that afternoon.

This year was the jubilee of Her Majesty's accession to the Throne and 59 years since the Coronation.  It all seemed so long ago.  Most of the travel to Britain was by ship - by air you used flying boats and it took eight days. Much of London looked a little toothless - the gaps where bombs had fallen were still there.  Right opposite the Abbey was a blank wall with a row of fireplaces up it, and on one mantelpiece you could just see what looked like a clock.  

There was rationing of food and clothing and petrol and - - oh, the list went on and on. And black-and-white television had just arrived, so visits to my family meant being ushered into a darkened room, staring at a flickering picture of the day's football matches until supper was served, when the lights went on and they suddenly saw me for the first time.  "Ooer! Cousin Philip!  Well I never!  Where have you been, lad? Really?  Is it nice out there?" and then it was time to leave.

In spite of it all, I felt a certain pang of nostalgia over the Jubilee.  So off we went to Cape Town's celebration, the performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Yeoman of the Guard.  Much of their work now seems a little dated, but this production was fresh and full of fun.  There was a host of details I had never noticed before - the echoes of Shakespear in the chats between the jester and the jailor;  the send-up of the madrigal; the touches of Rigoletto; the patter songs a la Donizetti; but above all the killer song, I have a song to sing, oh! What a memorable tune, and what splendid words.  The only thing that I missed was standing up at the end of the performance and waiting while the band played God save the Queen!

The Ice Age approaches!

A well-known book store has recently held a sale. To my surprise there, in the midst of a pile of overruns and remainders, was that environmentalists’ bible, An Inconvenient Truth.  Could Al Gore really have been so reduced in price and stature?

Piqued by memory, I browsed through it.  There were all those images – himself riding the lift upwards to follow the graph of carbon in the air; the dead polar bears adrift in an Arctic sea; the oceans rising inexorably – even the great collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

When I got home, I travelled south by Google Earth, to mourn the remains of the Dear Departed Shelf, testimony to the horrors of global warming. But I had an awful shock – the Shelf had returned! Zooming in to 65.7S, 60.7W, plumb in the middle of what was open sea only a few years ago, was as good a sheet of ice as you could wish for! Solid for miles around – a few cracks, to be sure, but basically wall-to-wall Shelf. 

Global warming may have caused the demise of the shelves, so global cooling must account for their return.  I think there is a conspiracy to hide the truth from us. The Global Warming industry knows that the world is actually cooling, that we are drifting back into an Ice Age. They are hiding this fact from us, to preserve their sinecures.

Why have we not been warned?  The Western Cape was facing heat waves and drought. Is our future now one of freezing floods? Is this not the ultimate perversion of science, that the Global Warming scientists are silent on the awful fate we face as our world becomes glacial?

Fortunately there is a solution.  We believe that carbon emissions cause global warming.  Now is the moment to stave off the threat of an icy future.  Let us burn all the fossil fuels we can; we must delay building windmills or solar cells until we are certain that the ice has been turned back and Mother Earth likely to remain habitable. Let us set up a special global warming fund, to reward those who can boost the carbon in the air.

I estimate that if we can raise the carbon dioxide levels to about 600ppm by 2030, we will have a reasonable prospect of avoiding the return to the Ice Ages. It will take some doing, but surely the futures of our children and grandchildren depend on it? And the plant kingdom will love us.

A REALLY inconvenient truth!

I get REALLY cross when my trust is broken.  For over 50 years, I have subscribed to Scientific American. It used to be a reliable source, reporting science by scientists.

About 10 years ago, it started to lose my trust when it treated the Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg, with contempt. Having given four environmentalists the freedom to trash Lomborg's book (and to do so very badly, I might add), they then refused to allow Lomborg to respond. I was very glad to see the last of that particular editor.

In the latest issue, July 2012, Scientific American has gone wildly wrong again. "Witness to an Antarctic meltdown - as glaciers collapse toward the sea, scientists struggle to figure out how fast the southern continent is melting and what that means for sea level rise" is a piece by a freelance journalist, Douglas Fox.

Strike One - the piece was not about the continent, but about the Antarctic Peninsula, that finger which points north from the continent towards South America. It is not typical of the continent, because nowhere on it are you more than about 20km from the sea.  This means, of course, that it is naturally warmer than the continent proper.

Strike Two - there was a graphic showing how glaciers were supposed to be accelerating towards the sea, and to my surprise there was an arrow showing the sea providing a "Bracing force that resists creep." Now my comparatively brief close encounters with glaciers has convinced me of one thing - they will overcome! Nothing can ultimately withstand them. The resistance offered by the sea can be nothing, nada, niks.

By now my hackles were truly up, for the piece was all about the collapse of the Larsen ice shelves.  Who can forget La Gore, emoting over their collapse in An Inconvenient Truth? So I went to check the evidence on Google Earth - it is a really useful source of ground truth, made all the better by the fact that you can get historical images as well as current ones.

Indeed, back in 1999, all was looking fine:

 You can see the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the left and Larsen A on the right quite clearly. 

By 2002, Larsen A had done the disappearing act, and Larsen B was looking much the worse for wear.

By 2006, Larsen B had joined its brother, and gone to the great iceberg in the sky! 

And then came 2010!! Voila, they had reappeared! If global warming had made them disappear, had global cooling now made them reappear?? 

The ice shelf isn't perfect - it's repair still shows a few cracks - but back it is. (Imagery Date 30 Sept 2010, location Lat.65.59, Lon. -60.81 Altitude 14km)

Strike 3 - Fox was well and truly out, and Scientific American with him.  What gets into these people, that Global Climate Change has to be The Phenomenon That Changes All?? Do the glaciologists really have nothing to say about the movement of sheets of ice? 

Back I went into the article.  It got worse. "The disappearance of the heavy glaciers is allowing the earth's crust below to rebound."  Now look at the 2006 view.  Where the ice shelves had been, there was now open sea.  So the shelves were floating - the crust was not bearing their weight!

And then the article's map - "Former Larsen A Ice Shelf", "Former Larsen B Ice Shelf."  Hubris? Spelling mistake - should have been "Reformed"? You be the judge.

But whatever way you look at it, science has really lost the plot, and Scientific American with it, when the political correctness of  Global Warming distorts the truth to this extent.

Give our MP's something to do!

Recently I have had interesting chats with some friends who happen to be members of our judiciary.  They have had a host of complaints, including such things as the fact that the Johannesburg courts have been under jackhammers and dust for something like three years.  The imposition of incompetent senior judges hasn't hloped helped either.

But their greatest gripe is reserved for the plethora of laws that are being passed.  Our legislature sits, and its members have nothing better to do than to pass laws. To while away the time, they do just that.  Law follows law, often badly drafted, often in conflict with earlier laws, often in conflict with our own Constitution, an unending flood of poor legislation.

Then, of course, the civil service has its work cut out to draw up the regulations required to implement the laws. The regulations suffer from the same flaws as the laws themselves. We land up with a morass in which everything is regulated and nothing is accomplished.

The origin of this state of affairs is not difficult to find.  We have proportional representation in Parliament. This means that obeying the party whips is far more important than anything else.  In days gone by, you needed to pay attention to your constituency.  It was they who got you elected. Most of your time was spent away from Parliament and its work of passing laws. 

Now you merely need to fight your way up a list, and all the benefits of being a legislator are yours. So of course you legislate diligently - that way you will progress up the list, and be more secure in your sinecure.

One of the best bits of political advice I ever received was that democracy was great, but the Westminster system missed the greatest democratic opportunity. It lacked giving people the right to vote for what they were going to vote for.  When your choice is merely a party, and you have to live with the chosen party for at least four years, politics is damned dull.  When you have to decide how much you are prepared to pay the street cleaner or your children's teachers or for the street lights to stay on after midnight, then you become much more involved.  

And when you are involved, then anyone who hopes to represent you is also involved - with you! He or she doesn't have time to waste drawing up bad laws. What bliss it must be! 

The Great Climate Change Propaganda Machine

I opened my paper, and there was a half-page spread trumpeting "MORE CLIMATE CHANGE MEANS LESS WATER," with the sub-text "Unless we play our part, this will have serious consequences on our water systems."

Normally I would not have worried, but in this case the advertisement had been placed by none other than our own Department of Environment Affairs. Your and my tax moneys were being used to spread lies - outright, downright lies, propaganda of the worst kind.

I think I must be getting more intemperate as I get older. Without further ado, I went to the web page of the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa. It was great - within minutes I was lodging a formal objection.

Section 11 of the Preface to the Advertising Code says “Advertising is a service to the public and, as such, should be informative, factual, honest, decent and its content should not violate any of the laws of the country,”while Section 2 of the General Principles of the Code says “2. Honesty Advertisements should not be so framed as to abuse the trust of the consumer or exploit his lack of experience or knowledge or his credulity.”

Right!! The advertisement is neither factual nor honest, and is not therefore informative.
It says that the earth’s temperature is increasing. That much is true.There is general agreement that the earth’s temperature has been increasing since at least 1880. But then it goes on to say "this will have serious consequences on our water system," and that is just false. I have studied South Africa’s rainfall over the past century, and failed to find any relationship between temperature and the supply of water. The same is true globally, as the following figure indicates:

Globally averaged annual precipitation over land areas from GHCN (green bars)

with respect to the 1981–2000 base period

However, the propaganda didn't speak just of rainfall, but of water systems. So let's look at rivers. Dai and others (Dai, A., T. T. Qian, K. E. Trenberth, and J. D. Milliman, 2009: Changes in Continental Freshwater Discharge from 1948 to 2004. Journal of Climate, 22, 2773-2792.) considered 925 downstream stations on the largest rivers monitoring 80 % of the global ocean draining land areas and capturing 73 % of the continental runoff. They found that only about one-third of the top 200 rivers (including the Congo, Mississippi, Yenisey, Paraná, Ganges, Columbia, Uruguay, and Niger) show statistically significant trends during 1948–2004, with the rivers having downward trends (45) outnumbering those with upward trends (19). Given the increasing abstraction due to population increases, it is surprising that there were any upward trends.

So historically there has been no link between temperature and water systems. Is this likely to change? I have been unable to find any evidence that further warming may introduce a relationship that does not at present exist, i.e. that any further warming will have serious consequences for our water supply. I have found however predictions based on climate models: (IPCC 4th Assessment Report, WG2 Technical Summary page 33)

where DJF = December January February and JJA = June July August. Southern Africa = SAF.

The error bars are so large that no scientifically valid conclusions regarding future precipitation are possible. The claims by the Department are thus neither factual nor honest.

In a similar vein, Section 3.1 of the General Principles of the Code says “3.1 Fear Advertisements should not without justifiable reason play on fear.” What does this advertisement do? Why, it plays on fear. The picture is one of a dry surface, with the brown sky suggesting dust. The threat is “Unless we play our part, it will have serious consequences,” which is as overt a threat as could be wished.

It is worth considering that South Africa contributes ~1% to global carbon dioxide emissions, and that China’s emissions are presently growing each year by more than South Africa’s total emissions. So even if the thesis were valid, that carbon dioxide emissions were causing global warming, and they were behind ‘climate change’, no part we could play would have any impact. The advertisement is misleading.

And so it went. One after another, the Advertising Standards were broken. We taxpayers have paid to be fed pure propaganda by our Government - it is wrong, period.