A Place to Stand

A couple of links from the BBC on the parties' positions on an EU referendum. In Thursday's collective agreement/"debate"

David Cameron said that politicians had given away powers without asking the voters first. He reminded the audience that they had been told they would get a referendum. "People feel cheated," he said. The Conservative leader said "we should have had one." He said that in future any new treaty that involved new powers going to Brussels would trigger a referendum....

Labour finds itself in the position that the two other parties are offering referendums. The Liberal Democrats want to ask the British people whether they want to be in or out of Europe. The Tories will hold a referendum on any new treaty that transfers powers to Brussels.

What the BBC omits to mention is that while 2 of the parties are promising a referendum next time all 3 of them have already promised it anyway. If these parties were in any way whatsoever honest we would already have that referendum. To be fair to the Tories they did go through the motions of voting for it before saying that, once it had passed, we wouldn't get a referendum after all. The precedent of Harold Wilson allowing a referendum on our membership of the EU (then called EEC) after the Conservatives had passed it shows that there is no truth to Cameron's excuse. What can also be proven, by the next BBC link, is that Cameron is not only opposed "in principle" (if the phrase applies) to the British people getting a say in our own fate but is so strongly opposed he risked & probably lost his opportunity to win this election because of it

The UK Independence Party says it offered not to fight the next general election if the Conservatives agreed to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty...

The Conservatives said any mention of a deal had been rejected "straight away".

We offered that if we got a clear, written promise with an agreed wording for a referendum on whether we stayed in or left the European Union... then we would stand down for the general election, providing we had this absolutely clearly in writing.

"And then when we had the referendum - which we believed we would win - we would then be out of the European Union and then at that point UKIP, well it would have been up to UKIP, but it would probably have disbanded because its major point would no longer be in existence."

Lord Pearson said he had taken the proposed deal to Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative leader in the Lords, after UKIP beat Labour into third place in this year's European elections.

He said he was acting on behalf of Mr Farage and told Lord Strathclyde to relay the offer to Tory leader David Cameron.

Overall I think it is better that this did not happen & UKIP dissolve. Had most of the UKIP supporters gone for the Conservatives they would certainly be several points ahead in the polls. Would the Conservatives have kept this promise merely because it was in writing. All manifesto promises are in writing & indeed the most solemn promises any politician can ever make. Only wholly corrupt politicians lightly break manifesto promises as all 3 parties have, so there is no particular reason to think Cameron wouldn't have broken a new one.

More importantly UKIP, however it started out, is not a single issue party & is, on many issues, the main party presenting a real opposition - the only one actively supporting nuclear power; economic growth; sceptical about "catastrophic warming"; whose record shows them opposed to unlimited immigration; for referenda as a general policy; against destroying half our national wealth; opposed to criminal wars; & for cutting back the state to significantly less than half the economy. To have lost all that would have seriously impoverished what passes for our democracy. The Tories forced UKIP to fight.

Iy may be that a lot of people will vote LudDim in this election because they have promised to introduce a democratic electoral system & equally important, have a real incentive beyond having promised, to keep it. That would not be an unreasonable position for anybody who wants an uncorrupt electoral system. We should all remember, next time we get a vote, that that does not make them any less liars, thieves, fascists, murderers & indeed incompetent buffoons unfit to hold office than the other liars.

We are going to have change. I would much prefer it were achieved peacefully but that is up to the fascist liars & thieves in power.

Labels: British politics, election

150 tons or 300,000

In today's Scotsman. This is in response to the third letter in the group including mine published on Tuesday. The Scotsman have published it in full except that they changed the reference to the Guardian to "another newspaper".

A recent letter on the amount of CO2 saved/emitted as a result of the Iceland volcano said a previous writer was in error & claimed a net saving because grounding the aircraft had saved 340 tons of CO2 daily while the volcano had only emitted 150 tons daily (letter 20th April). This figure may have been obtained by misreading a Guardian article which said the volcano emitted 15,000 tons daily. The Guardian have since updated the figure in their article (though not the conclusions) in light of numerous online comments. The true figure is between 150,000 & 300,000 tons per day.

Holyrood has voted unanimously to destroy 42% of our CO2 producing electricity generating capacity (as well as 100% of nuclear) over the next 10 years. Since electricity closely correlates to GNP, this means destroying half our national wealth because "environmentalist" calculations purport to show that last year's barbecue summer & mild winter are harbingers of a warming even more catastrophic than such destruction.

I assume, from the fact that the Scottish media have been broadly supportive of this Climate Change Act that they have satisfied themselves that, at least over catastrophic global warming, the alarmist's arithmetic is entirely correct. If there were any doubt our leaders would have to be, unanimously, clinically insane to have legislated such destruction.

Refs - Letter making the 150 tons claim - note it was alongside a letter from me.
WattsUpWithThat on the Guardian article & the correct figure Since you published -------'s letter saying the previous writer was wrong I think you are honour bound to publish a letter (mine or another) or make an editorial statement reporting the correct figures. I have spared Mr -----'s embarrassment by not naming him - this is, after all, no more egregiously untrue than typical claims made by the Greens.

I forgot to put in the letter the amount of CO2 produced daily by all of Scotland for comparison - it is about 130,000 tons (UK fig of 600m annually X 8%/365).

This is not the first time I have said that the SNP, Labour, Conservative, LibDem & Green parties have proven themselves clinically insane (or wicked & deliberately feigning insanity to make themselves look better).

The 3rd online comment says

Excellent letter from Mr Craig. He is like a lone wolf howling in despair in the intellectual wilderness of our politics.

which, depressing though it is, I take as the highest compliment. I will return the favour by saying that I wish I had come up with El Franko's description of Prof Jones & co as the "motley CRU" which is apt & witty on several levels. Following the example of Oscar Wilde I may well do so.

Labels: eco-fascism, Government parasitism, letters

According to the TV pundits what happened is that Clegg beat the other 2 on the TV debate & thus the LD's were propelled into the leading position. The truth reflects a deeper underlying change, which, at least in the short term, is bad news for the Lab/Cons.

Clegg did not score anything approaching a knockout in a debate from which a lot of people turned off in boredom. It was

4023 voters immediately after the debate ended to find out who had actually won. The result, unlike recent opinion polls, was decisive. The Liberal Democrats' Clegg won by 43 % compared to Cameron's 26 % and Brown's 20%.

Only 9.4 million people watched (up from the Nick Griffin appearance but not that much up) which is 16% of the population. Even assuming no kids watched a 20% excess of "Cleggomaniacs" would be no more than 4% of the voters. So a roughly 10% swing to the LDs shows something else. Part of it will be a swing to them that always happens at elections because only then do the media mention them. However most of it is disgust with politicians generally & a feeling that Lab?Con are so similar one need not worry about putting the "wrong" one in (both being wrong) combined with a feeling that only the LDs can be trusted to reform our corrupt voting system & thereby have at least the chance of cleaning out the Augean stables in Westminster. Labour have promised a referendum on a sort of PR but they made the same manifesto promise in 2 of the last 3 elections & had no hesitation about breaking them. The LDs have no greater record of honesty, having done the same on the promise of an EU referendum in their last manifesto & hinting they will again promise & then also cynically breaking. The thing which makes it likely that the LDs would keep their PR promise is self interest which is far stronger than their promises - PR is required for a smaller party to have serious representation.

There have been polls which said anything up to 49% of voters would vote LD "if they had a chance". We will see if that is true or merely an expression that the what is unavailable looks enticing. More importantly at the last EU election, the only way we have of judging what people would vote for in a democratic election, Conservative & Labour combined got only 43.4% of the vote - the rest going to parties that support PR.

I put this on John Redwood's recently

A Hung Parliament would certainly mean some form of PR – Labour’s alternative vote or the top up system in existence in Scotland & Wales or some other. Indeed the present polling which suggests Labour would get the least number of votes & most seats & LibDems most votes & least seats itself totally discredits the current system (& any party that continues to support it). I suspect most of the support for the LibDims comes from people who do not support windmillery & joining the Euro but do support getting a just & democratic electoral system – this must include a lot of UKIP & indeed BNP supporters – remember that at the Euro election more people voted for PR supporting parties than for Tories & Labour combined. If that election means anything then an election which produced proportional results would see the LibDems fall to 4th place & the Conservative & UKIP parties of the “right” gain an overwhelming majority.

The Conservatives should now acknowledge both the justice & inevitability of a proportional system & put their efforts towards the top up system (which would end the advantage Labour get from having less populous constituencies & is favoured by UKIP & most LibDems) & for another immediate election as soon as this reform is in place.

& similar on some other blogs.

If Clegg is going to promise a referendum on the EU in today's debate perhaps Cameron should trump that by offering one on PR, with a multi-option choice of what sort. Neither is trustworthy but both would have some bonus in keeping their word.

Craig Murray comes to the same conclusion about the debate from a different direction - looking at the trend & polls collated before the debate & published after.

Labels: British politics, election

This is lead letter in the Scotsman today. I did not expect it to be used since it was really quite vituperative about the interfering nature of our political masters & of activists generally & also implicitly, of the refusal of the media to report the real economics. By removing the last paragraph (here in italics) they both prove my point about the difficulty of having a literate discussion of economic & prevented me properly making it!

David Fiddimore blaming capitalism for the cost of getting across Europe without aircraft shows all the mindless implacable hatred of self styled socialists for free enterprise.

Firstly he is simply wrong to say that costs have been widely pushed up by scarcity - booking ferry places at the last moment has always cost more. Indeed it can be argued that for political reasons there has been to little rationing by price.

There have been news reports of people buying bicycles to become priority "vehicle passengers" - who benefits from that?

Anything that is scarce will be rationed & if it is not done by cost it will be done by some more oppressive method - usually the sort of government control & allocation by political connection that so appeals to the politically connected parasites that the "socialist" movement has descended into. It requires no fundamental understanding of economics to know this, though clearly far more than the assembled "left" has.

Of course in his letter there was, naturally, no mention of the French railway workers going on strike & making things worse. "Greed" by those charging money to provide services may be denounced but not by strikers.

But the worst part of this attack is that he says the crisis is the fault of the airlines & that their wish to be allowed to fly merely demonstrates this. The real fault is that an overbearing governmental EU bureaucracy whose default position is that anything should be banned.

It is becoming clear that this ban was put in place in circumstances much less bad than the Mount St Helen's eruption which so noticeably did not ground all American aircraft or indeed many other instances.

This obfuscation tactic is used constantly. Just as the recession was not caused by the bankers but by the politicians printing money & regulating in the wrong direction so this is caused not by airlines but by government over regulating. Of course it is necessary to maintain these claims if the answer to every question is more state regulation. But that has been & still is an enormously destructive answer, much though it appeals to those who create no wealth & wish to take it from those who do.

OK so they took out a sentence about leftists economic ignorance as well but that makes no new factual point. I regret the omission of the end because the important point about this being a regular tactic is lost.

------------------

When I make a mistake I think it important I acknowledge it. A few days ago I said that "Europe is going to have to get used to being partially cut off from the world for many months". That was because, despite what some may think is my cynicism about what government tells us, I had assumed that when they said this ash cloud made it impossible to fly they were telling the truth. That as Frank Furedi & the excellent EU Referendum had been saying, was not the case.

Alongside transport minister Lord Adonis, they stood in front of the TV cameras, admitting that the rule book had been rewritten and that, despite the lingering presence of the ash cloud, unrestricted operations were to recommence at ten that evening.

For the first time with any clarity, we then heard from the mouths of the officials the words "risk assessment" and "dust concentrations", plus news that the engine manufacturers had backed off from their stance of "zero tolerance" for ash ingestion and redefined acceptable limits.

Yet it was on Sunday last, the words written on the Saturday, that I was pointing out that the then current safety guidelines for dealing with volcano eruptions made no distinction at all between major or relatively modest eruptions.

Nor, I wrote, did they take into account the dilution effect as the cloud spreads from the original point. The only reference was to generic dust clouds, without any attempt to carry out a risk assessment. Furthermore, it was evident from those very guidelines that the model used was the largest and most dangerous of Icelandic volcanoes, the Katla volcano – way more serious than the relatively modest eruption we are currently experiencing.

Now, with hundreds more millions spent, much heartache and disruption and increasing chaos, ministers and officials have finally come to the conclusion that was evident almost from the start, that the total shutdown of UK aviation was a gross over-reaction, and entirely unwarranted.

Predictably, the about-face has been shrouded by lies and prevarication, the impressions being given that there has been constant dialogue with airframe and engine manufacturers. Yet, we know from talking to them on the Saturday that the flying ban had been imposed without such consultation, or even with the airlines who were so immediately and badly affected.

I really must stop being so trusting of these innumerate, lying, thieving, murdering parasites.

Labels: Government parasitism, letters, Science/technology

Recently I reported on how I had, since December, had a Google News alert for the terms "scientific consensus" in the media round the world checking for media claims on catastrophic global warming. Where allowed I put up comments, about 3 per day, pointing out that virtually no scientists not funded by government were part of this alleged consensus. This proves the claims of consensus are untrue & very strongly suggests the entire thing is a scam funded by government. My sample comment is here. .

I would like to take issue with the idea that there ever was a "scientific consensus" on global warming.

I have asked journalists, politicians & alarmist lobbyists now totalling in the tens of thousands to name 2 prominent scientists, not funded by government or an alarmist lobby who have said that we are seeing a catastrophic degree of warming & none of them have yet been able to do so. I extend this same invitation here.

There is not & never was a genuine scientific consensus on this, though scientists seeking government funds have been understandably reluctant to speak. If there were anything approaching a consensus it with over 31,000 scientists having signed the Oregon petition saying it is bunk, it would be easy to find a similar number of independent scientists saying it was true, let alone 2. The whole thing depends on a very small number of people & a massive government publicity machine, both very well funded by the innocent taxpayer.

I am now very pleased to report that it has been an entire week since Google reported any alarmist media as making the "scientific consensus" claim. There have been a few uses of the term by articles rubbishing it & a couple using it to describe alleged consensii on other points.

I can hardly take even the majority of credit for this. I have been very much swimming with the current on this since the the CRU emails had surfaced shortly before & now even the BBC' s favoured warming alarmists are now appearing there pushing a freezing alarm.

On almost all my other campaigns I have been swimming against the current & have been less successful, though in most cases public opinion, if not politician's actions, have moderated slightly. This result suggests some general success. Slowing the race to the precipice may be more important than increasing the speed of march away from it though the effects are less evident. It also shows what 1 person, with a Google news search, an overwhelming case & the knowledge & ability to put it can do.

The "scientific consensus" claim was not bad just for the fight against warming alarmist parasites but it was also important that it be won for the credibility of science. Had the claim that we were experiencing catastrophic warming been discredited before the claim that there was a "scientific consensus" for it that would have lowered respect for science, in an era in which know nothing barbarism needs no help. This should not be seen as unconditional support of scientists though it is unconditional support of the scientific method. The alarmists are overwhelmingly "cargo cult scientist" as Richard Feynman characterised it - wearing white coats & pretending to be scientists without actually using the method. To blame Jones, Mann, Hansen, David King & co for being frauds is to miss the point - that is their nature. But there are also many good & decent scientists who found it easier to do & say nothing than to denounce the charlatans. As Burke has been attributed as saying "for evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing" & for cargo cult science to replace the real thing it is necessary for those who understand the scientific method only to say nothing.
somebody else contemptuous of alarmists
------------------------

And now back to the barricades & the News alerts against those who use the lie that low level radiation is harmful in their Luddite fight against nuclear power, medicines & spaceships.

Labels: eco-fascism, global warming, Science/technology

Andrew Cleland

If this report published in Nature is true we not only have proof of the multiverse theory I have previously discussed here, here & here but the potential for information exchange. If so we have something more significant than evidence of E=MC^2.

A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.

Andrew Cleland at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team cooled a tiny metal paddle until it reached its quantum mechanical 'ground state' — the lowest-energy state permitted by quantum mechanics. They then used the weird rules of quantum mechanics to simultaneously set the paddle moving while leaving it standing still. The experiment shows that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as as atomic-scale particles.

The work is simultaneously being published online today [Saturday] in Nature and presented today at the American Physical Society's meeting in Portland, Oregon1.

According to quantum theory, particles act as waves rather than point masses on very small scales. This has dozens of bizarre consequences: it is impossible to know a particle's exact position and velocity through space, yet it is possible for the same particle to be doing two contradictory things simultaneously. Through a phenomenon known as 'superposition' a particle can be moving and stationary at the same time — at least until an outside force acts on it. Then it instantly chooses one of the two contradictory positions.

But although the rules of quantum mechanics seem to apply at small scales, nobody has seen evidence of them on a large scale, where outside influences can more easily destroy fragile quantum states. "No one has shown to date that if you take a big object, with trillions of atoms in it, that quantum mechanics applies to its motion," Cleland says.

There is no obvious reason why the rules of quantum mechanics shouldn't apply to large objects. Erwin Schrödinger, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, was so disturbed by the possibility of quantum weirdness on the large scale that he proposed his famous 'Schrödinger's cat' thought experiment. A cat is placed in a box with a vial of cyanide and a radioactive source. If the source decays, it triggers a device that will break the vial, killing the cat. During the time the box is shut, Schrödinger argued, the cat is in a superposition of alive and dead — an absurdity as far as he was concerned.

Wonderful Weirdness
Cleland and his team took a more direct measure of quantum weirdness at the large scale. They began with a a tiny mechanical paddle, or 'quantum drum', around 30 micrometres long that vibrates when set in motion at a particular range of frequencies. Next they connected the paddle to a superconducting electrical circuit that obeyed the laws of quantum mechanics. They then cooled the system down to temperatures below one-tenth of a kelvin.

At this temperature, the paddle slipped into its quantum mechanical ground state. Using the quantum circuit, Cleland and his team verified that the paddle had no vibrational energy whatsoever. They then used the circuit to give the paddle a push and saw it wiggle at a very specific energy.

Next, the researchers put the quantum circuit into a superposition of 'push' and 'don't push', and connected it to the paddle. Through a series of careful measurements, they were able to show that the paddle was both vibrating and not vibrating simultaneously.

"It's wonderful," says Hailin Wang, a physicist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who has been working on a rival technique for putting an oscillator into the ground state. The work shows that the laws of quantum mechanics hold up as expected on a large scale. "It's good for physics for sure," Wang says.

So if trillions of atoms can be put into a quantum state, why don't we see double-decker buses simultaneously stopping and going? Cleland says he believes size does matter: the larger an object, the easier it is for outside forces to disrupt its quantum state.

"The environment is this huge, complex thing," says Cleland. "It's that interaction with this incredibly complex system that makes the quantum coherence vanish."

Still, he says, there's plenty of reasons to keep trying to get large objects into quantum states. Large quantum states could tell researchers more about the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity — something that is not well understood. And quantum resonators could be useful for something, although Cleland admits he's not entirely sure what. "There might be some interesting application," he says. "But frankly, I don't have one now."

I assume what is happening is that minuscule quantum variations in the movement of the "paddle" multiply into minuscule variations in where the paddle is in its vibration at any moment. This means that the other vibration being observed is in a universe that split off from ours maybe as much as a fraction of a second ago. Not exactly contact with a reality where Napoleon was never Emperor. However it is clear & I think indisputable evidence that the multiverse exists & that it is possible in both theory & practice to get information from it. Visible observation is well beyond what would be required to get radio messages. Radio messages from a reality that was ours a fraction of a second ago would tell us a limited amount, though it does allow quantum computing (using computer capacity in other realities as a way of increasing computer capacity).

However, as with E=MC^2, the step change is between there being no evidence for it & there being some. Getting from there to it changing the world is "merely" engineering. Engineering that may take generations to be made to work but from now we know it is possible.
the paddle

Labels: Science/technology

There is a possibly apocryphal tale of a British newspaper using the headline "FOG IN CHANNEL - EUROPE CUT OFF". It seems quite possible Europe, including us, will be cut off from the world for some time. The WSJ reports

The flying ban over Northern and Central Europe is being extended into Monday, but European airlines were carrying out test flights Sunday in the hope that they could resume some flights even though the fallout from the Icelandic volcanic eruption showed little sign of easing...

The affected airspace includes Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, most of France, most of Germany, northern Spain, Hungary, Ireland, northern Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the U.K.

"Little sign of easing" may be an understatement. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano first went active in December & started melting through the glacier on top. 20 March 2010, about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) east of the top crater of the volcano in a popular hiking region called Fimmvörðuháls. This first eruption, in the form of a fissure vent, did not occur under the glacier and was smaller in scale than had been thought by some geologists. On 14 April 2010 Eyjafjallajökull resumed erupting after a brief pause, this time from the top crater in the centre of the glacier, causing meltwater floods (also known as jökulhlaup) to rush down the nearby rivers, and requiring 800 people to be evacuated. This eruption was explosive in nature and is estimated to be ten to twenty times larger than the previous one in Fimmvörðuháls. This second eruption threw volcanic ash several kilometres up in the atmosphere which led to air travel disruptions in northwest Europe starting on April 15th 2010. A fissure vent is likely to keep emitting for much longer than traditional volcanoes for example the Laki volcano spewed out 14 cubic km over a period of 8 months in 1783/4 causing bad harvests across Europe . Incidentally making Benjamin Franklin, returning ambassador to France during the American Revolution a founder of real climate science by suggesting that ice ages were triggered by such eruptions & persuading Robert Burns that farming wasn't a good career choice.

Another reason for thinking we are nearer the start than the end of these volcanic clouds is

Over the past 1,100 years, Eyjafjallajökull has erupted four times: in 920, 1612, between 1821–1823, and in 2010. Each of the first three of these incidents preceded an eruption in the nearby subglacial volcano, Katla.[14] Katla – a much more active volcano

This, like the Carrington Event shows how modern technology, because it uses elements not used previously & is engineered to very fine tolerances can sometimes be more susceptible to environmental changes than older technology.

On the grounds that the solution to technological problems is improved technology we should be looking that way. It may be possible to replace some parts of airplane engines with stronger materials. It may be possible the world's remaining propeller planes, which do not need to worry about volcanic dust getting into engines. More likely there is some solution I have no idea of.

However I think Europe is going to have to get used to being partially cut off from the world for many months. The economic effects of that, when we are already on the cusp of an economic meltdown, do not bear thinking about - except that they must be thought about.

Labels: British politics, International politics, Science/technology