Parish notes

The great project proceeds apace, with day 13 to be posted later today. We're beginning to populate the sidebar, with links to entries on all the main aircraft flown in the battle. Initially based on Wikipedia, we'll gradually tailor the entries to be Battle of Britain specific, and feed in some of the comments already placed in the forum.

Great minds think alike, it seems. We've spotted another daily blog about the Battle of Britain. The about us section is particularly interesting.

Battle of Britain thread

The calamity cretins

Look how nice I am to you ... a post about the Clegerons and no facial picture. I can spare you that at least. But then you don't need faces for gaffes – and gaffes there have been aplenty. First, we have The Great Leader (or The Boy, if you prefer ... although we could do a mind-meld and have The Great Bleader ... I digress, but then I told you I was in a silly mood).

Anyhow, onto TGL, who is in Washington where, yesterday we picked him up from a WSJ op-ed talking about junior partners in the 1940s and the 1980s.

But, without his speech writer to hand, having to go solo on Sky News, The Great Leader completely ballses it up, telling Boulton: "We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis."

No we weren't - everybody knows that. The Septics weren't even in the war then and, as for being partners, they were even less well equipped than we were. In Europe, at least, we were very much the senior partner until the Allies were safely ashore at Normandy in 1944, and Ike took over as supreme commander. Up until then, we had called the shots, including the "Europe first" policy.

Now, it may look to be a small point – but it isn't. We have a man masquerading as a British prime minister who doesn't know any history. More to the point, anyone who could come out with that sort of crap has no feel for history. Different people use slightly different words. Some would say he isn't "centred", others say "rooted" and others use the word "bottomed", meaning "founded". But they all mean the same thing. Anglo Saxons would use four letters.

Any which way, if this had been an interview for the job of prime minister, the man-child should have failed. It is unthinkable that anyone with a feel for this nation of ours, and aspirations to lead it, could have been so crass.

Which brings us to Clegg. This child has been left in charge of the shop while The Great Bleader has been playing away. And, according to The Guardian and others – including Hansard, as the fool spoke the words at the the dispatch box – he has declared the Iraq war to be "illegal".

The only real things you can say about this is that Cameron and Clegg really do deserve each other – and we don't. Be we the thickest electorates in the history of ... electorates, we didn't deserve this. We really didn't.

There are certain things you don't do in life. One is fart loudly in church during the sermon. The other is to declare the Iraq war illegal when you are pretending to be deputy prime minister and the doorkeeper has let you into the Commons chamber by mistake. Somebody might just take you seriously.

For sure, a lot of people – even a few of our readers, who should know better – might agree with the loathsome Clegg. But, if you value the idea of sovereignty, there is no such thing as an "illegal" war. If it has been declared and conducted in accordance with national laws, it can be wrong-headed, unwise, even immoral - but not illegal.

But even if you do think that it is illegal, you don't stand at the dispatch box and say so. And such is the creaky mental architecture of this fool that he is now insisting that he was speaking in "a personal capacity". This child isn't safe to be let out on his own. One is not even sure that a sojourn without nappies is a terribly good idea - although the nappy should be wrapped round his face to keep The Little Bleader quiet.

I think you may now see why I am having a little bit of difficulty at the moment. How do you take these cretins seriously? How can one come to terms with the fact that they are in charge of our government?

And, by the way, we learn that two more soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan – both shot, and both in the same incident. As part of a combined force, they had gone to the rescue of a wounded colleague. But the really worrying thing here is the location – Lashkar Gah.

This is the place at the heart of the British military presence in Helmand, hitherto regarded as so secure that ministers and other VIPs are taken here for walkabouts. Then they can go home as "warriors" and prattle about having "been there" – the fabulous "wenneyes" – and how much progress there has been.

That troops are now being killed and injured in the streets of Lashkar Gah is a measure of how far down the pan the Afghan adventure has gone. If the man-child at the top of our government and his fatuous sidekick think we can hold out until 2014, then they are as seriously stupid (and dangerous) as they appear to be.

But, as we are beginning to see, with the calamity cretins in charge, anything is possible. Now would be a good time to run for cover.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 12 - Battle of Britain

Depending on who you go to for your source, the weather was either fine and fair early, clouding over during the morning, or (from the MoD archive) "dull with occasional rain." The latter legend allowed for an official record of little action.

Weather, we are told officially, "hampered our fighters in their action against enemy air activity which was again on a reduced scale." Raids were plotted off the Scottish, East and South coasts, apparently searching for shipping. An attack was made on shipping off Dundee and trawlers were attacked off Beachy Head. One or two raids crossed the coast and bombs were dropped in Surrey, Kent, at Portland and in Ayrshire.

Read more on DAYS OF GLORY

Take your pick

We have an important report on the United Nations in The Independent. It describes a corrupt, ineffective and thoroughly unaccountable Sec Gen, at the helm of a corrupt, ineffective and thoroughly unaccountable system – part of which is the IPCC.

And from where do we get this? Ah! From Inga-Britt Ahlenius, a Swedish auditor who until last week served as the UN undersecretary general of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which is meant to keep the fight against internal fraud and corruption alive.

Of Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon, she says: "Your actions are not only deplorable, but seriously reprehensible ... Your action is without precedent and in my opinion seriously embarrassing for yourself," in an introduction to a 50-page memo, which was first obtained by The Washington Post.

"I regret to say that the secretariat now is in a process of decay," she goes on. "Rather than supporting the internal oversight, which is the sign of strong leadership and good governance, you have strived to control it which is to undermine its position." The UN Secretariat, she says, is "drifting into irrelevance".

Tragically, this comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who has been following the UN and knows even a little of its ways. It is a corrupt, ineffective and thoroughly unaccountable organisation. Anyone who thinks we could or should do business with it is either barking mad, stupid or corrupt, ineffective and thoroughly unaccountable. Take your pick.

COMMENT THREAD

Silly mood

When you "read" the newspapers – hard copy and online - go through Google news and then trawl the main blogs, and still nothing registers as interesting or important (for Chrissakes, who gives a toss about PMQs?), then you know there is a problem.

It may be me, in a silly mood (it happens now and again) or it may be something more profound. I sort of get the feeling that some must have felt during the phoney war in 1939-40, a sense of impending doom coupled with the idea that nothing of any significance is being reported. It is as if the world is holding its breath, waiting for "it" to happen, whatever "it" actually is.

My mood is reinforced by the work I have been doing on the Battle of Britain narrative. This is turning out to be a serious mistake. I feel an obsession taking hold, and when that happens, I am lost to humanity – and membership always was a bit tenuous.

But what is significant and very relevant to today is the fate of Dover in the second half of 1940 and the years up to mid-1944, when it was a town under siege. But it was also a restricted area. Entry to and from was rigorously controlled, all news out of the area was heavily censored and non-official photography was prohibited.

As a result, for the best part of four years, very little came out of the town, and this continues to have an effect. Because there are so few images and the few that are available cost a fortune – see here with Pathe News - historians, broadcasters and others pay very little attention to it. As a result – or so I believe – the record has become seriously distorted, right up to today.

What is chilling is the propaganda film (at the top) made on 15 September 1940, and the contrast with the film made in 1944 (see the Pathe News link). It is quite worrying that the authorities – i.e., government – could have such control over news and information that even seventy years ago the story is not properly being told. Listen to the narrator tell us: "The damage is amazingly small". Then look at the pics when the censorship was relaxed.

Of course, that was wartime, but what is betrayed here is a mindset – the tendency of government to control information even when it no longer matters, and even when it did not matter in the first place. And while the government currently does not have the same degree of control as it did during the war – over here – a state of war exists over in Afghanistan. How much do we really know of what is going on?

Given that we know what governments are capable of, and how ineffective (and compliant) is the media, can we now – or ever – be confident that we have the first idea of what is going on, that we can trust a fraction of what we are told, or that we are being told a fraction of the news? And that is even without the lies, prevarications, distortions and falsehoods.

Seen in that sense – the current news is just another source of fiction. You might just as well read a novel, as many of them are more interesting and better written. But the one thing that must not be done is to accord any more credibility to either. Truth is a vanishingly rare commodity.

COMMENT THREAD

I come not to praise Schneider

A commentary on the death of an unrepentant hypocrite ... and now an obituary.

COMMENT THREAD

Delusion or deception?

Once again we are thrust into that all-embracing dilemma as we learn of The Great Leader's exudations in the Wall Street Journal, where he tells us that he is hard-headed and realistic about US-UK relations.

"I understand that we are the junior partner - just as we were in the 1940s and, indeed, in the 1980s," says TGL. "But we are a strong, self-confident country clear in our views and values, and we should behave that way."

As it stands, we're not even a country, or barely so, as the EU increasingly usurps our role on the world stage. And as long as we have to play handmaiden to our masters in Brussels, there is not a chance of us being strong, self-confident, or clear in our views and values.

So the question is, is he deluding himself, or deceiving us? Could it even be both?

COMMENT: "stupid" thread

It don't mean nuffink

Mongolia, the dzud and not a mention of global warming – that's The Guardian for you, telling us that temperatures fell to -50°C and thick snow buried the grass.

This was the story we covered earlier in the year. By the time it finally melted in May, nearly 9,000 families had seen their entire herds freeze or starve to death. Another 33,000 lost half their livestock. Almost 10m cattle, sheep, goats, horses, yaks and camels have died, a fifth of the country's total, at a cost of £250m.

Now it is the turn of South America to suffer unusual cold, if by no means as severe. But, according to recent reports, at least 175 people have died in the coldest winter in recent years, officials in six affected countries are saying.

The cold has been worst in southern Peru, where temperatures in higher altitudes of the Andes dropped to -23°C. Since the beginning of last week there, 112 people have died of hypothermia and flu. Argentina recorded the coldest temperatures in ten years. Sixteen people froze to death and 11 died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to faulty heaters.

In Bolivia, 18 people died, in Paraguay five and two each in Chile – where heavy snow has been seen (pictured) - and Uruguay. Nine people died of the cold in southern Brazil. Thousands of cattle also froze to death on their pastures in Paraguay and Brazil. There are no stables for the animals as temperatures usually do not drop that low.

Several regions in Bolivia and Peru closed schools until the end of the week and larger cities opened emergency shelters for homeless people.

Electricity and gas networks are operating at capacity limits in many of the affected regions. Argentina reported natural gas shortages in several provinces. The poorest population groups are worst affected by the cold spell with their homes poorly equipped to deal with the cold, lack of heating and access to health care.

While Britain is set to suffer a shortage of green vegetables because of the dry summer (although not here in Yorkshire), in central and southern Chile it is the intensely cold weather that has hit fruit and vegetable farms. Production is expected to drop sharply and there has already been a 20 percent rise in fruit and vegetable prices.

The problem is a polar air mass which is settling over the region, now causing rare snowfall in the Buenos Aires province. People in downtown Buenos Aires City bundled up against the cold as temperatures ducked down near freezing.

Essentially, the whole of the Southern Cone is trapped, and now thousands of livestock have died.

Meanwhile, there is a heatwave in parts of Russia, and the worst drought in more than a century. In Moscow, it's hotter than in European and African resorts. The heat has caused asphalt to melt, boosted sales of air conditioners, ventilators, ice cream and beverages, and pushed grain prices up.

Environmentalists, silent about Mongolia, silent about the cold in South America and silent about the record cold and snow in Russia over the winter, are blaming the abnormally dry spell on climate change.

"So what was it down to 130 years ago?" asks one of my readers. Well, then it was weather. Now it is weather. It don't mean nuffink. I really am getting tired and terribly bored with these tea-leaf readers who seem to be making up temperatures as they go along in order to discern trends out of random noise. We really should not take them seriously.

COMMENT THREAD

Low grade stuff

Like them or dislike them, some of the scientists in the climate field you can have some small respect for – not many, but there are still some genuine people. On the other hand, the discipline is badly tainted by the low-grade hangers-on, who do not have the intellect to understand the issues and therefore argue almost completely on an ad hominem level.

The problem with these people is that you are never going to win the argument – for two reasons. Firstly, they never engage and, secondly, they do not have the equipment to understand the argument anyway. And this is the measure of the climate debate. We have to win the wider argument, and leave these people beached like stranded whales.

COMMENT THREAD

Parish notes

Readers will have noted that the latest Battle of Britain post went up early, not least because one reader, Andy Baxter, kindly volunteered his services and sent me by email the core script, to which I could then bolt on some more detail and the pics.

I'm actually quite amazed at the response to this venture. There is enormous interest in the narrative, and clearly there is a need for a more coherent account of the Battle. Hence, I am convinced it is worth doing, even if it is taking a little longer than I anticipated each day.

With Andy helping out, this makes things a lot easier, but it would also help if we could have "watchers" of specific aspects. In particular, most of the official narratives tend to be London-centric, but this was the Battle of Britain, and the whole of Britain was involved.

People who could watch each of the regions and write the occasional daily summary would be extraordinarily helpful – even the occasional, fully-formed paragraph which could be slotted into the running script would be much appreciated, either put on the forum or emailed to me.

We have other ideas as well, on how to expand the scope of the work, and I will post notes about these developments as they arise. Now, back to work ...

Battle of Britain thread

Day 11 – Battle of Britain

It was the weekend, the second since the official start of the battle, and a Saturday like no other. Activity off Dover had become so intense that this small area of the Channel was being called "Hellfire Corner". And not even the weather was helping. Occasional thunderstorms and some cloud in Straits of Dover proved no deterrent to the Luftwaffe, especially as it brightened later in the afternoon. The morning saw isolated raids all over Britain from Scotland to Dorset. But Channel convoy "Bosom" was the main focus of attention by the Luftwaffe.

Read more on DAYS OF GLORY

Hungary's revolt

Ambrose says it augurs ill for Greece. This is the collapse of Hungary's talks with the International Monetary Fund and the EU that we picked up on Sunday. It is a chilly reminder that sovereign debt crises do not end with a rescue package and a click of the fingers. As austerity drags on for year after year, democracies react, he writes.

The thing is, if it is as bad as he makes out, and as bad as I think it is, then it would be on the front page, instead of this meaningless fluff about a "big society". If this goes down, we'll be lucky to have a society at all, unless you count Grozny as a model (pictured).

But then I keep forgetting that our newspapers don't do real news any more, alongside our politicians who don't do real politics. So, when it happens we're likely to get little warning, and we'll be totally stuffed before we even realise it. Whoever said ignorance is bliss?

COMMENT THREAD

Day 10 - Battle of Britain

The official RAF report for this day seventy years ago, speaks of low cloud. There was, it continues, very little enemy activity, probably owing to bad weather. At the end of the day, it admitted to four Hurricanes lost (two crashing on landing), against one enemy bomber destroyed and two "probables". That was a lie, but the record survives to this day on the MoD website.

Read more on DAYS OF GLORY

Still glaciers

The climate sceptic world was somewhat entertained yesterday by the news from Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times that the US government has suspended its funding of the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit (CRU), citing the scientific doubts raised by last November's emails "leak".

There is a lot more to this story than meets the eye, as the episode has provided a trigger to examine how much of the climate monitoring and analysis is being carried out, with the stress on the CRU work only being suspended. Something new and different may yet come out of this, which would make any triumphalism on the part of the cleptics a tad premature.

A similar caution might be extended to warmists getting over-excited about a brace of photographs taken of the Everest glaciers. One (above), is a 1921 photograph taken by George Mallory of the Rongbuk Glacier. In the distance is the northern slope of Mount Everest and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Then we see the same view (below), only the photograph is taken in 2007 by David Breashears of the Rongbuk Glacier.

Like dogs to their vomit , this is one of the many issues to which the warmists keep returning, even though – as has carefully explained, the relevance of this one glacier, in the grander scheme of things, is absolutely nil.

Some glaciers expand, others retreat, for reasons we know not why. One thing about the Himalayan glaciers we do know is that they are not directly affected by global warming as these are high altitude glaciers, well above the permanent snow line and unaffected by small increases in temperature.

Glaciers, however, have that iconic character which means that the hard-core warmists cannot allow their status to be anything other than "under threat", and so we see yet again the spectre of retreating ice raised. There re-appearance, however, tells us nothing about climate but a great deal about the climate change industry. They are worried and while nothing very much is showing on the surface, as we all know, still glaciers run deep.

COMMENT THREAD

Careers for the stupid

Melanie Phillips doesn't seem to like Baroness Ashton. The "way in which she was appointed to her £270,000-a-year post and her subsequent performance in office have provided a veritable parable of the cavorting caravan of the contemptuous and the contemptible that is the EU," she writes.

Interestingly, her piece gets 22 comments. The fatuous Spelman and her comments on burkas gets 367 (so far). And it's easy to jump on the band wagon and dismiss this woman as stupid ... but it has always been very obviously the case that this woman has been struggling with her brain cell count for an awful long time ... yet she still gets promoted! The woman really is seriously thick.

We do have an interesting phenomenon here. How is it that stupid people are so attracted to politics, and why is it that they do so well? Perhaps the second question answers the first, as politics certainly does seem to be one of those few callings where (like the military) stupidity seems to be a career asset. The thicker you are, the higher you tend to go.

COMMENT THREAD

Hooray!

Now, you're never going to convince the kids that global warming is a bad thing. All that money spent on propaganda ... totally wasted! Heh!

COMMENT THREAD

Worse than stupid

"BRITAIN faces years of blackouts and soaring electricity bills because of the drive toward green power, a leading energy expert warned last night."

That's in The Daily Express this morning. Something like it has been published elsewhere many times, particularly in The Daily Mail, by Booker and others. I've lost count of how many times I've written about it, and you would not thank me if I went back into the blog and found out.

There is not a single expert in the field who says different, who does not agree that the present "green" policy is the road to perdition. Wind does not work, solar is an expensive rip-off and the rest of the renewables don't amount to diddly squat.

Yet still the politicians prat about. There is a sort of equivalence between now and the thirties, when the politicians were ignoring the advice of the experts to re-arm. But in this case, we have the bizarre situation where the politicians are spending more, to achieve less – much less.

They really do not seem realise what is going to happen to them or their successors. We talk in our jokey way about rising up and slaughtering them all. But if you take a cold, hard look at what is going to happen to this society when the lights go out and the supermarkets shut down, slaughter is the least of what is going to happen.

These people are worse than stupid and time is running out. What is it going to take to get through to them?

COMMENT THREAD

A different set of pigs

"Local communities will get the power and money to run bus services, set up broadband internet networks and take over neighbourhood recycling schemes under a mass transfer of power from the state to the people."

That is the brave new world, to be announced by The Great Leader tomorrow in his so-called "big society initiative".

The real question to address, though, is whether local communities could decide to abandon their "neighbourhood recycling schemes" and revert to landfill, as a cheaper and more environmentally friendly option.

If the answer is "no", which of course it would be, then there is no transfer of power. This is merely a redistribution of the franchise – a permit transfer which simply allows different group to do the same things.

One continues to wonder whether the man is so stupid that he does not realise that this is a sham, or whether he is so cynical that he believes we are the stupid ones, and he can get away with it.

People will soon discover, however, that all that is happening is that a different set of pigs is being put in charge. And then the gloss will rub off The Leader's project rather fast.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 9 – Battle of Britain

The weather is not - as we recall the myth of 70 years ago – part the long hot summer. There is occasional rain in southern districts and the Straits of Dover are cloudy. It is generally cool. Nevertheless, flying conditions are better than they have been of late and at about 0930 a force of some 30 Luftwaffe aircraft assemble behind Calais and fly towards Deal.

Despite that, for reasons unexplained, an attack on a convoy does not develop. One fighter squadron is operating off Deal and two other squadrons are patrolling nearby as reserves. Interception takes place under cloudy conditions. No enemy aircraft are brought down but a Spitfire of No. 610 Squadron goes missing. Enemy aircraft bomb a coastguard station and sink the East Goodwin Light Vessel.

Read more on DAYS OF GLORY

Hungarian rhapsody (not)

There is something very peculiar going down between the Hungarian government, the EU and the IMF. And if it means what I think it means, then there are industrial quantities of brown stuff about to hit some large rotating objects of such size and power that they absorb the better part of the output of a nuclear plant to keep turning.

Even if it is not quite as bad as that, we are still about to see high-velocity excretions splattering in some very prominent places. But then, this is a distant country about which we know little, and care less. It isn't going to affect us, at all ... is it? Is it? Excuse me, I asked you a question ... is it?

And answer there came none!

COMMENT THREAD

A disappointment

In The Sunday Telegraph today, we see the launch of a competition to design national memorial for the Spitfire, this single iconic aircraft type having become the symbol for the Battle of Britain – and much else.

In a way it also symbolises how far adrift the sentiment is from the reality that the newspaper shows a picture of five Spitfires in echelon right formation – a flight of what are a mix of different marks, mostly Mk IXs with a Mk XI (possibly – it is very difficult to tell) closest to the camera - all types which equipped fighter units only from 1942 onwards. The picture, however, is a promotional still from the 1988 TV series Piece of Cake, a series so execrably bad that I could never bring myself to watch it.

We are, therefore, seeing something totally artificial, something which is not remotely representative of the Battle of Britain. Below is a Mk I - the real thing. The photograph was taken in 1940. Note how bent and tatty the machine is - click to enlarge - as opposed to the models today, glossy, clean and polished to within an inch of their lives. The "pretender" is under that, the PR Mk XI dressed up to look like a Mk I.

One should not be churlish about this, but the fact is that the Battle of Britain is much more than the Spitfire and, in fact, much of the heavy lifting was done by the Hurricane. And while the aircraft is cited as a brilliant design and the envy of the enemy, the Mk I – which bore the brunt of the fighting in 1940 - was outclassed in important respects by the Me 109E.

Later, the Fw 190 completely outclassed the Mk V, especially at low altitudes and, while Spitfire development continued to the Mk 24, long before then the Germans were producing Me 262s and other jets, with only the obsessions of Hitler holding back their earlier introduction. And, in the piston aircraft stakes, the Spit was easily outclassed by the later model Mustangs.

But for the "Spitfire legend", which was by then obsessing the RAF and well as the public, the Spitfire should have been junked after the Mk IX and the RAF re-equipped with Mustangs built under license. And, as time passed, the gap increased. Hawker airframes, such as the Typhoon, the Tempest and then the superlative Sea Fury, far outstripped the later marks of Spit, with the Sea Fury ending up the fastest single-engined production piston fighter in history.

In short, the Spitfire was an aircraft of its time – but a very short time. It was then kept on as a symbol far beyond the time when it should have been replaced. It has now come to symbolise something that never existed, in place of a better understanding of what did. That understanding is being lost as we succumb to the joint pressures of Dianification and dumbing down, so much so that current coverage of the Battle of Britain, 70 years on, is a disappointment.

Leaders in the field, on the web, are the official MoD site, the Imperial War Museum, the BBC, the Battle of Britain Historical Society and a media site. Frankly, though, none of them give a really good overview of the battle, much less a good daily narrative. None of them give this great historic event the effort it undoubtedly deserves. But for the "Few" and the great machine supporting them and fighting the other battles, we could be speaking German.

My own modest coverage of the Battle is, by comparison, not quite as modest as I thought it would be – which is more a reflection on the rest than of my work. But I am nonetheless sufficiently affronted to want to put some more labour into it and produce a record on the web which is worthy of the event. I have thus reactivated a site we set up earlier, called Days of Glory, which I am currently populating and expanding. There, day-by-day, I will transfer the posts put up here, to give a dedicated record of the Battle.

It occurred to me that, between us, we have more than enough expertise and experience to write a definitive record – heck, some of our readers were actually there – and we have a forum to exchange ideas. Further, if anyone wants to volunteer as part of the writing team, they would be very welcome. Some might care to write stuff for their own blogs, for me to lift - and anyone is welcome to lift this material.

This event – this battle – is part of our heritage. It is too important to be left to the lacklustre efforts of the "official" sites. It is something we can do, and leave our mark – a true memorial, our memorial.

Battle of Britain thread

Parliament must fix it

How did we ever get ourselves into a situation where Social Services can steal kids from their parents and put them up for forced adoption, and it becomes a criminal offence to report the details or even the grounds for the action?

Booker takes a look at this utterly bizarre situation. He's told me a lot about the cases and now I can't even publish the details – the parents and the kids will be the ones to suffer. The law that muzzles the media, that prevents the parents even telling their own kids why they can't take them home, is one that has to be changed. And it's down to our MPs to do it. Parliament made this obscene law. Parliament must fix it.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 8 – Battle of Britain

The photograph above was issued by the Germans with a press release on 17 July, 1940, exactly 70 years ago. The caption read: "The British even shot at the Red Cross! The Red Crosses at the fuselage and wings can be seen from a large distance. Despite this the British again shot a German rescue seaplane while trying to rescue British crewmembers who made an emergency landing at (sic) high seas."

Herein lies a long story, even if it stemmed more immediately from events on 11 July when there had been a vicious little fight off the coast at Deal when one of these aircraft, a Heinkel 59, escorted by a dozen or so Me 109s had been intercepted on its way to pick up a downed Me 109 pilot. On that occasion, the He-59 had been forced down and captured.

Read more on DAYS OF GLORY

Cannon fodder

Another two Brits have been killed in Helmand. One was a Royal Marine and the other was a trooper from the Royal Dragoon Guards.

The Marine was on foot patrol in the Sangin district, while the Trooper was a member of the Brigade Reconnaissance Force, part of a dismounted patrol that was providing security to enable new roads and security bases to be constructed to the north-east of Gereshk. Both succumbed to IEDs.

This brings total British military deaths in Afghanistan to 320, less than a month after the three-century milestone had been reached. That puts the current annual death rate at close to 280 and makes it highly probable that the figure of 400 will be reached before the end of the year – unless there in a dramatic change in operational tempo.

In due course, there will be another street exhibition in Wooton Basset, and we are not alone in wondering whether the displays here are getting out of hand. What happened, for instance, to quiet dignity and the famous British "stiff upper lip"?

Moreover, while it is always tragic to see lives cut short, the campaign in Afghanistan has been going on long enough for soldiers to know what they are letting themselves in for. They either joined the armed forces in that knowledge or have not sought to remove themselves from harm's way.

Either way, the Army and the top brass do not seem to be mightily concerned about the losses, otherwise they might be doing something to prevent them, instead of indulging in back-covering propaganda. One does wish, therefore, that the Army spokesman would learn some new lines to go on the press releases when fatalities are announced.

Of the latest casualty, "... tragically he was struck by an explosion," says Lt-Col James Carr-Smith. "His courage, sacrifice and selfless commitment will never be forgotten." But of course it will. If he has any next of kin in Army quarters, the papers for eviction are already being prepared. The pay termination notice applied before even the body was cool.

We need to be a little bit more honest here, and call these men what they are – cannon fodder. Whatever their personal delusions, they are only dying to provide Mr Cameron and Dr Fox with the time to work out a suitable face-saving formula to cover their political embarrassment at announcing a defeat. That honesty might focus a few minds and get us out a little faster.

The pic shows soldiers en route to Afghanistan on the last roulement, in the belly of a C-17. More than three times the number visible will have returned in coffins by the end of the year. At least they get a little more space on the way back, and a car to meet them at the airport.

COMMENT THREAD

Why don't they just admit it?

Selfish, lazy, arrogant? So why doesn't Stephen Glover just come out and admit it? He doesn't like Boris Johnson. You also sort of get the impression that Dellers isn't that keen on wunderkind Daniel Hannan. Perhaps he ought to come out and make his views clear as well.

What they have in common is also quite interesting – Boris and Hannan that is. They are both male ... they are both politicians ... they are both Tories ... can that be what makes them what they are? Or is it that not one but both are selfish, lazy and arrogant? Nah ... can't be that. I'd go for the Tory thingie.

COMMENT THREAD

A goad of lollocks

A headline in the nation's favourite newspaper is gaily trilling: "World's hottest year on record expected." The copy tells us that "forecasters have said" the world is on course to record the hottest year on record, "threatening droughts worldwide".

Then we find out that, for the first six months of the year, 2010 has been warmer than the first half of 1998, the previous record holder, "by 0.03 degree Fahrenheit," according to Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the federal National Climatic Data Center.

Frankly, this is risible – or a goad of lollocks if you prefer. The very concept of a global temperature is highly dubious but, even if you accept that it could or should be measured, the idea that you can get to two places of decimals is tosh. This is what is known as false precision.

A period of a El Nino weather pattern is being blamed for the hot temperatures globally, which means we are talking about "weather" rather than climate, and abnormally warm temperatures have been registered in large parts of Canada, Africa, tropical oceans and parts of the Middle East.

But just as false as the idea that there can be a single global temperature that actually means anything, is the idea that "elevated" temperatures necessarily mean drought. You can certainly see the association in the dismal minds of the hack – hot equals dry equals drought ... doh!
To reinforce this narrative, we thus have the cuts trawled for examples: Northern Thailand is struggling through the worst drought in 20 years, while Israel is in the middle of the longest and most severe drought since 1920s.
In Britain, this year has been the driest since 1929.

Set against that, though, are the massive floods in China. Currently, 146 are reported dead in the latest spate of rainstorms and floods.

China is ravaged every summer by heavy rains and deadly flooding but the weather has been especially severe this year. Rains and flooding have reportedly caused economic losses totalling $17 billion dollars since the start of the year. Rain-triggered floods have affected some 38.2 million people and 1.3 million had been evacuated.

Authorities in the Philippines are also bracing for damage caused by Typhoon Conson, which killed 39 people and left 84 missing, and Vietnam is threatened. Meanwhile, at least eight dead are reported as heavy rains lash Japan. In the city of Kani in Gifu, flood water from a river washed away 28 trucks, and 20 privately owned cars from the parking lot of a transport company.


Nine heavy-duty trucks were seen piling up against an elevated railway bridge (pictured) with total damage estimated at 300 million yen (3.4 million dollars). Said Ryuji Sakai, a spokesman for the company, Tougi Transport: "We didn't expect such a flood and there were no warnings at all."

Singapore has also been hit by recent flash flooding and parts of India have been badly affected. The flood toll in Punjab and Haryana provinces has reached 40, with the situation reported as "grim" in some districts.

Further west, heavy floods are being experienced in the Yemen, with reports of around 20 people being kille, more than five people injured and others still missing. Heavy rains are covering wide areas.

Ghana, on which we reported earlier, is still having problems, with some 136 flood victims at Bosuso in Fanteakwa District in the Eastern Region appealing to government housing aid after the collapse of their homes. The victims comprise 55 children and 81 adults drawn from three communities. More than 14 houses, mostly made of clay, collapsed over the last weekend after a downpour which lasted for almost twenty–four hours. Three rivers have overflowed their banks.


And, in rain-soaked Brazil, flooding has continued. Late last month, at least 1,000 people were unaccounted for after had floods devastated a series of small towns and cities in Brazil's north-east – traditionally one of the drier areas.

Torrential rain had "hammered down" on the north-eastern states of Alagoas and Pernambuco, over 1,200 miles (2,000km) north-east of Rio de Janeiro, causing rivers to swell and at least one dam to burst. The resulting floods tore through dozens of towns with aerial images showing several areas that had been reduced to giant piles of rubble.

Reports then spoke of flooding killing 41 people, with officials scrambling to get food and medical aid to two flood-hit Brazilian states where "torrents of water ripped through towns, killing at least 41 people and driving 120,000 from their homes."

Further north currently, there is flooding near Monterrey, Mexico, caused by heavy rains from Hurricane Alex. This has been partly responsible for carmakers temporarily shutting about seven assembly plants. Throughout south Texas, there has also been heavy flooding.

Of course, all this don't mean nuffink. It's just weather. But it means a great deal more than garbage about a global 0.03 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature, which has USA Today reporting: "World sizzles to record for the year". The only thing sizzling though are their brains. They fried years ago.

COMMENT THREAD

Not irony

A wind turbine at an Olympic sailing venue in Dorset, we are told, has blown over in high winds. The turbine, in the car park of the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy in Portland, collapsed early on Thursday as high winds hit the coast.

Dorset, it seems, is not having a happy time with its windmills. Not very long ago, Southwell Community Primary School in Portland was forced to turn off its machine after it developed birdicidal tendencies and slaughtered at least 14 birds in the past six months.

Installed at a cost of £20,000 with a grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, it was forcing headteacher Stuart McLeod to come into school early to clear up the bodies before his young pupils spotted them. School governors consulted seagull eyesight experts and investigated bringing in bird-scaring plastic owls to solve the problem, but to no avail.

McLeod said they had tried everything to stop the carnage but had no choice but to shut the turbine down. He said: "We've got the ideal location for wind power but unfortunately seagulls kept flying into it." And he can't even get rid of their bird chopper. Because of the grant conditions, it has to stay on site for five years or the school has to repay the money.

But this is not irony. Oh no! This, my dear readers, is much better. It is one-hundred percent, 26-carrot goldy. Absolutely brilliant.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 7 – Battle of Britain

In our world of 70 years ago, fog had straddled the north of France for most of the day, also covering the Straits of Dover and south-east England. There were also thunderstorms in many districts. Predictably, therefore, air activity was extremely light as the Luftwaffe stayed at home, some grounded until late in the afternoon – which meant an awful lot of waiting for British aircrews.

As the day went on, there were attacks on a convoy off the Norfolk-Suffolk coast, and on shipping off the Isle of Wight and Aberdeen, with night attacks again in the south Wales and Bristol areas. Off the Scottish Coast between 2332 hours and 0017 hours, 14 tracks were plotted. These crossed the Fife and Aberdeen coast and bombs were dropped on Cupar, Dunfermline and Helensburgh. No reports of damage were received.

The first successful interception of the day was in Scotland, with a He-111 of KG26 shot down (type pictured) by an aircraft from No. 603 Sqn. This was followed by a Ju-88 shot down in the Solent by a Spitfire from No. 601 Sqn from Tangmere. The surviving crew member took to an inflatable life raft.

All in all, the RAF flew 313 sorties and still, on this "quiet" day, lost two aircraft. German losses totalled five although, on the actual day in 1940, the RAF claimed ten bombers confirmed, two "probables" and two "unconfirmed" fighters shot down - 14 as against five.

Through the whole battle, each side consistently over-claimed the number of "kills" by a factor of about two, while under-reporting their own combat losses and ignoring accidental losses. These were high on both sides throughout the war. Ironically, each side accused the other of inflating their victories, also claiming that their own figures were accurate.

This was a war of words and images as well as of deeds, with propagandists "spinning" furiously. Blair and his New Labour pals might think they invented "spin", but the Ministry of Information was well practiced in the art by 1940. Rarely, in newsreels, for instance, was there ever a wreck shown of a Spitfire or Hurricane - but Luftwaffe wrecks there were aplenty.

Sharp-eyed observers might notice a considerable element of recycling, as the same wrecks cropped up in successive newsreels. But this was all part of keeping the Home Front on-side. It was a closer-run thing than many realise, and the propaganda war played a vital role.

Battle of Britain thread

As Delingpole sees it

You get that close to a subject that you can't always see the wood for the trees. But Dellers sees it. We're effectively reporting the PCC to the er ... PCC, and asking for an adjudication.

Actually, it's not quite that bad – but close. The PCC is compromised, by having at least supported the perpetration of a falsehood, which it must now undo. The whole system is on trial here, and it is going to be interesting to see how it responds. One fears, however, that this is not going to be a rewarding experience.

COMMENT THREAD

Amazongate: Round two

Extended negotiations with The Guardian on the matter of George Monbiot, detailed in my previous post, have got nowhere beyond the stiff apology offered on the offending blog post and a promise of "right of reply".

The newspaper has decided that the comments made fall within the defence of "fair comment" and have thus refused any further remedy – which may explain the Moonbat's cockiness.

However, the Moonbat (pictured) is a tad premature in heralding what he states is my threat to sue. This is for a piece he says: "I wrote criticising his stance on global warming." In fact, the lad did a trifle more than that, accusing me of "peddling inaccuracy, misrepresentation and falsehood". That is a leeetle bit more than just straight criticism. But then the Moonbat's grasp of reality was always slight, which may account for him being a warmist.

What I had always stated, and made very clear to the paper, was that I wanted to attempt an informal resolution, failing which I would then take it to the next stage, with a submission to the Press Complaints Commission. Only then, if need be, would I consider a legal case, keeping my options open all the way through. To take a newspaper to the High Court is the last resort and, in any event, the Courts expect plaintiffs to have sought all possible avenues of remedy before going to law – which is precisely what I am doing.

However, there is another issue here which, when you think it through, is at the heart of the problem. That is the unnecessary and wrongful retraction of its original "Amazongate" story by The Sunday Times. Bizarrely, the paper has retracted a correct assertion, that the IPCC's claim on the Amazon was unsubstantiated, and replaced it with a statement that the claim is supported by peer-reviewed scientific literature, which it is not.

There can be few occasions where a correct statement published by a newspaper has been removed and subject to an apology, and replaced by an inaccurate statement. And, in being inaccurate, it breaches the Press Complaints Commission code.

Thus, the most logical step at the moment is to make not one but two complaints to the PCC, one against The Sunday Times and one against The Guardian. This is what I have done. The complaint went in this morning, and the text is accessible here (42 pages PDF).

We are now in the unusual position of making a complaint to the PCC about the action of a newspaper, which was, as will be recalled, taken ostensibly in response to a PCC complaint by Dr Simon Lewis.

In fact, the newspaper took the action without there being a formal adjudication, and seems to have acted rather precipitately. One wonders whether it consulted the original journalist. It certainly did not contact me. Yet there is a growing awaremess that the IPCC/WWF source is not peer-reviewed, original material.

Whether the PCC can step round its original involvement remains to be seem but, as can be seen from my submission, I have asked for a preliminary ruling as to what it considers is necessary for a scientific assertion to be considered "substantiated".

Nearly three months elapsed between Simon Lewis's complaint and The Sunday Times taking action, and we may see the same timescale here. But, however long it takes, readers can be assured that "Amazongate" is very far from over. It is only just beginning.

COMMENT THREAD

And by the way

As my regular readers will know, I very rarely do "personal" on this blog. But, as the warmists crowd in, some of whom make a meal of the smallest imperfection and even the typos, I need to say that there will very often be typos and some rather odd mistakes on the first drafts of posts.

This is not through any lack of care but for the very simple fact that I very frequently suffer a form of migraine which closes down my peripheral vision - I end up only being able to see the words, letter by letter. Making sense of them can be a nightmare.

However, I have a band of willing and anonymous proof readers who vet my posts once they are published and send me corrections. I am very grateful for their help and through them, in time, most imperfections should be corrected. If you see a mistake, let me know and I will correct it. That's the way the world generally works. It is no big deal.

Thick end of the wedge

"EU to be given prominent UN role," writes Bruno Waterfield, noting that the EU is to be given similar rights and powers to a fully fledged nation state in the United Nations general assembly.

This is the general assembly, not the Security Council, so it isn't taking our seat, and all that garbage. Not that it really makes much difference. On UN matters, we tend to follow the EU lead, only disguise it to make it look as if we are still in control ... just as we do with other EU-related issues.

The special significance here is that this is implementing the Lisbon treaty, and it is happening under the Tory watch – with absolutely no difference from what would have happened if Labour had managed to cling on to power. In other words, in this vital area of international relations, nothing at all is affected by a change in administration. We're shocked!

Little Willie Hague, conscious of the embarrassment quotient, is trying to put a brave face on it. EU sources are giving the game away though. They are telling Bruno that he was forced to "back down" and accept this enhanced role for the EU as part of the creation of a Brussels diplomatic service under the Lisbon Treaty. So much for "in Europe but not ruled by Europe", but then that always was fantasy.

We are also getting extruded verbal material from David Lidington, the Europe minister. He is stressing that Britain had imposed strict conditions on the EU's new UN role. Yeah, yeah. And Red Riding Hood imposed strict conditions on Big Bad Wolf before granny visiting rights were extended.

"The UK's support is strictly limited and does not imply agreement to seek additional rights in any other forums and does not prejudge whether the EU should actually exercise those rights on any particular issue," says Lidington.

Farage is in his element, with something happening that even he can understand. "This is the thin end of the wedge. How long before David Cameron concedes our seat at the UN Security Council?" he asks, throwing in an unmemorable one-liner to boot. "The Tory government has swallowed EU federalism hook, line and rusty old sinker," says his PR man on his behalf.

The thin end of the wedge analogies are a bit late though. We're well past the thin end, choking on the thick end ... and they're still hammering it in. You can see the wedge at the back of the picture and we're about two-thirds down it.

Funny enough, the only real opposition is coming from Arab and African countries. They have expressed anger because their own regional organisations will not be given the same privileges as the EU. But that will be the next step. Regional governments, as part of the New World Order.

Little Willie is watching it all happen, of course. But he can do (or will do) precisely nothing about it.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 6 – Battle of Britain

A little known but vital part of the Battle of Britain was the RAF's reconnaissance effort. And, by the time the Luftwaffe was conducting operations across the Channel, the RAF was operating a variety of types, including Spitfire Mk 1Cs (pictured). This specially modified aircraft had cameras in the blister under the starboard wing. The port blister held extra fuel.

That there came to be this capability is almost a matter of accident, and certainly not through any great enthusiasm of the RAF, which disliked specialist units and men. Initially, therefore, before the official start of hostilities, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) working with the French commissioned the Australian Sidney Cotton to fly clandestine photographic surveillance missions using Cotton's Aircraft Operating Company based at Heston airfield.

Cotton's company was formally taken over by the RAF in September 1939, the secret Flight at Heston became No 2 Camouflage Unit. Cotton (pictured) was given a commissioned rank of Squadron Leader with the acting rank of Wing Commander. He then went on to fight for the best he could obtain from the Air Ministry in both equipment and men.

In a period of 12 months, Cotton revolutionised the role of photographic reconnaissance in the RAF. Sadly, the Air Ministry in their minds could see that Cotton's Unit was becoming his own private air force, "Cotton's Circus" it has been called, so on the 16 June 1940 Cotton was handed a letter stating that he had been dismissed as OC of the Unit and it was being placed under the command of C-in-C Coastal Commander with Wing Commander G W Tuttle appointed has the new CO.

The specialist Spitfires came into being after Flying Officer Maurice Longbottom, inspired by Sidney Cotton, filed in August 1939 a memorandum on Photographic Reconnaissance of Enemy Territory in War with RAF Headquarters. Longbottom advocated that airborne reconnaissance would be a task better suited to fast, small aircraft which would use their speed and high service ceiling to avoid detection and interception.

As a result of a meeting with Dowding, two Spitfires, N3069 and N3071, were released and sent to the "Heston Flight", a highly secret reconnaissance unit under the command of Cotton. These two Spitfires were "Cottonised" by stripping out the armament and radio-transmitters.

After filling the empty gun ports and all panel lines, the airframe was rubbed down to remove any imperfections. Coats of a special very pale blue-green called Camoutin were applied and polished. Initially, two F.24 cameras with five inch (127 mm) focal length lenses, which could photograph a rectangular area below the aircraft, were installed in the wing space vacated by the inboard guns. Heating equipment was installed on all PR Spitfires to stop the cameras from freezing and the lenses from frosting over at altitude.

And the unit was put to good use. Between July and October – the span of the Battle of Britain - the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) as it was then called, flew over 700 sorties, for a loss of seven Spitfires.

The RAF was not alone of course. The Luftwaffe had a significant reconnaissance effort and on Monday 15 July 1940 it was out in full force. Alerted to intense shipping movement in the Channel, II Fleigerkorps then decided to brave the low cloud which dominated the day, otherwise hampering operations.


Fifteen Do 17s (pictured) went into action, reaching a convoy only to be thwarted by Hurricanes of Nos 56 and 151 Sqn. A small force of bombers also crept inland and bombed the Westland factory at Yeovil, and other targets in the west of England and Wales.

Overall, in a very light day, the RAF flew 449 sorties and lost one Hurricane. The Germans lost three machines in all, including a He 111 off the coast of Scotland.

Battle of Britain thread

In good hands?

"In many respects I think we've been more successful than I anticipated … Not only has Nato unequivocally proved it can fight but actually, militarily, it has defeated the Taliban." So said General David Richards, in February 2007, as he passed command of Nato forces in Afghanistan from the British Army to his American successor, General Dan McNeil.

This is the same Gen Richards who has been appointed CDS. Col Richard Kemp, who commanded British troops in Afghanistan in 2003, said his role for Cameron will be as important as Winston Churchill's wartime chief, General Sir Alan Brooke. "To have a soldier who has the operational experience, particularly in Afghanistan, will make all the difference."

Well, those three years ago - and some months - he had not made that much of a difference. I was writing that we needed a little bit a realism. In short, I said, we need to be worrying that, in the next few, crucial months of the Afghan campaign, we could very well have an unacceptable number of dead armed forces.

That was in this piece here, which is worth another read. And when you have looked at it, please tell me that, with Richards as CDS, we are in good hands, and that we are really going to see a difference?

So far, it does not look good. The attack this week, reports the Montreal Gazette, on a major Afghan police base in Kandahar that killed nine — including three American soldiers — was the best planned and most advanced that US soldiers who fought it off have seen in the past year, US military officials said Thursday.

"It was definitely well-planned and co-ordinated much better than anything we've seen before," said Capt. Steven J Davis of Lansing, Mich., as US and Afghan forces worked to repair the damage.

Not bad for a force that has been defeated militarily.

COMMENT THREAD

A troubled soul

An extraordinary attack by Tim Holmes on his blog Climate Safety reveals a great deal about the warmist mentality. Note how Holmes (MA in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths College, University of London and a degree in English and Related Literature from the University of York) luxuriates in the use of the word "falsehood", rolling it out at every possible opportunity, wrapping himself in its embrace and lavishing his affection on it.

Such are the intellectual contortions though, that he is driven to micro-analysis of extracts from comments taken from a forum to make his (laborious) case, cherry picking the perceived weaknesses and pouring all his resources into his attempt at trashing them.

We can see the technique under the heading: "Did the IPCC make an erroneous, unfounded statement?" - where Holmes offers the sub-header: "Falsehood (in North's 13th comment) ", his example of this "falsehood" being a selected extract from a longer comment.

Thus Holmes uses: "The only way, therefore, to fix Amazongate is for the IPCC to do the decent thing and admit it is wrong." The entire post is replicated above (click the pic to enlarge). The extract that he quotes is arguable, but then this is an argument. To call it a "falsehood" is bizarre. But then, what do you expect of an "English and Related Literature" graduate from York University?

One could return the compliment and micro-analyse the micro-analysis. But one will not. We simply mark in passing the increasing desperation of the warmists to shore up a collapsing case, evidenced by the fact that there is not a single reference to the IPCC case being reliant on a single non-peer reviewed text from a Brazilian website. Invent a mote and forget the beam? Nice technique.

Meanwhile, that other towering intellect, Prince Charles, is accusing sceptics of peddling "pseudo science" – this from a man who had difficulty as a boy passing his O-levels and who talks to plants and believes in homeopathy. He and Holmes should get on well together.

COMMENT THREAD

When the North wind doth blow

If you read people like Daniel Nepstad (who ever thought I'd ever be writing a post where I did not have to explain who he was?), you'd have got the impression that 2005 was Armageddon year for the Amazon, when the rains stopped and everything shrivelled up and died.

Of course, droughts in the Amazon aren't like that – more often they are characterised by the presence of a dry season when normally there is no break in the rains, or by an extension of the normal dry season. But, such is the vastness of the basin that even drought periods cannot be guaranteed to bring er ... drought.

That was the case in 2005 where, according to this paper, the drought did not affect central or eastern Amazonia. It was thus different from the El Niño-related droughts in 1926, 1983 and 1998, and makes a nonsense of a claim that a combination of ENSO and Atlantic-induced droughts will necessarily produce extended dry periods in the same areas.

What actually happened in 2005 was that there was an extended dry season which heavily affected parts of southwestern Amazonia, giving rise to a considerable number of forest fires. This same area, currently under El Niño influence, seems now to be rather wet.

Certainly, in 2005 it is good to know that the rains returned in October 2005 and generated flooding after February 2006. And, as we have recorded, the flooding has continued to the present day.

But, according to a paper just published, that has not been all that has been going on. In early 2005 there was a single, huge, violent storm that swept across the whole Amazon forest, killing an estimated half billion trees, the current study being the first to produce an actual body count for this type of event.

The losses are much greater than previously suspected, the study's authors say, suggesting that storms may play a larger role in the dynamics of Amazon forests than previously recognized.

One of the lead researchers, Jeffrey Chambers, points out that the appearance of a forest hit by a storm is very different from one affected by drought – if you know what you are looking for. And, he says, "We can't attribute [the increased] mortality to just drought in certain parts of the basin—we have solid evidence that there was a strong storm that killed a lot of trees over a large part of the Amazon."

Thus, although in in 2005, large parts of the Amazon forest experienced one of the harshest droughts in the last century, with suggestion that drought was the single agent for a basin-wide increase in tree mortality, a very large area with major tree loss (the region near Manaus, in the Central Amazon) was not affected by the drought.

There, the number of trees killed by the 2005 storm was equivalent to 30 percent of the annual deforestation in that same year for the Manaus region, which experiences relatively low rates of deforestation. And when researchers extrapolated the results to the whole Amazon basin, they came up with the figure of between 441 and 663 million trees destroyed - equivalent to 23 percent of the estimated mean annual carbon accumulation of the Amazon forest.

Given the huge controversy over forest loss due to climate change, one wonders how much of the loss in 2005 possibly attributable to storm damage has previously been attributed to drought, and how that might have affected the findings of the IPCC.

Whatever else though, this further points to the complexities of the Amazon, and underlines how little we know – so little that we really should be avoiding the simplistic nostrums of the warmists. We could be saving the planet from global warming, only to have blown down by the wind. But then, what we lose through more warming could be gained by the expected reduction in storms (or vice versa).

One also wonders whether the kids in the Amazon have their own little rhymes, such as, "when the North wind doth blow, we shall have matchsticks". It's not quite as good as our version, but it might sound better in Portuguese, or whatever.

COMMENT THREAD