UK Government buys Fifty Billion Pounds of Bad Debt

Last week in the Guardian was a quote from the banking industry that said:

“The banks will now only lend to people who can repay the loan”

That's like saying that the banks will only employ people that know the difference their Elbow from there... well you know the rest of the phrase!

No other business, industry could, or would, expect the government to bail it out when it made a loss. Further while the banks keep all of their profits when they make them, it will be the tax payer that picks up the tab for all these losses. The UK government has just knowingly bought fifty billion pounds worth of bad debts from the banks. So it is the tax payer that will have to pay for this stupid and reckless lending.

There will be some people that disagree with me, but providing a mortgage of 125% of the value of a property is reckless. While for people struggling to afford to buy a home a loan that allowed the buyer to obtain the property and furnish it may have seemed like a blessing. But that thinking is based upon the assumption that house prices would only go up. While looking at the historical data many people could be forgiven for thinking that was the case, however looking at all the other data should have alerted people to the fact that house prices were artificially high.

There has been direct and deliberate manipulation of the housing market. Builders who have been providing false price and sales data to the Land Registry. Estate Agents who have been manipulating prices by not passing on details of lower offers. Charted Surveyors, the valuers that are not given work unless they provide valuations that match the asking price. All reported in the media over the past five years, but no one wanted to take notice. Thus the value of property has been kept artificially high by direct and deliberate price manipulation add to that the irresponsible gambling by the banks all added to the artificially inflated value of properties.

Then there is the role of the government, for the last ten years and more, the economy has only been growing by promoting consumer spending via borrowing. This has lead to the average person owing more than twenty thousand pounds in personal debt. Yet like any borrowing it now has to be paid back.

While this situation is far from ideal, it is far from a crisis. While it will be difficult for some people, and people don't need to panic. While the paper value of your home has fallen and it will continue to fall, as long as you keep up repayments you will not loose your home. Again while it will be hard, pay off those credit cards and only spend the spare income you have. Look at not replacing all the toys and gadgets that litter your home. Unless a vehicle is vital for work, if you can use public transport or cycle to work, sell the car or cars.

Eventually, once those debts are cleared you will be better off not only financially, but you will have developed a real sense of value of the chattels you own.

This is all part of a change that I have been foreseeing for years. The endless growth of the economy, in the way that it has been occurring, had to end. Where growth will happen now will be in rebuilding of the infrastructure that really matters.

These events are the start of the real green revolution the planet has been waiting for. With the increases in the cost of living that is happening and will continue, the need for people to tighten their belts, will reduce the spending on environmentally damaging activities, such as the rampant consumerism and flippant global travel. With less money to spend on luxury goods like TVs or iPods or any number of manufactured items, we will see less damage to the environment occurring. It will not happen over night, but these events are the start of us humans being re-educated about what really matters.

While events yet to happen will still show us that we need to work with the environment and not against it, the people that start to adapt now will have a head start. This includes using your spare time to grow at least some of your own food. Be this some salad crops in pots on the window seal or two or three neighbours sharing an allotment, you will need to grow at least some of your own food. Food prices are going up and quite soon, this year or next, growing some of your own food will become vital.

The cost of energy will continue to rise, especially petrol (Gas). So learning to do away with the car will become essential. Not having a car will save you at least two thousand five hundred pounds per year, and that excludes the cost of using it. While this is not going to be realistic for everyone, it will be the people that can give up their cars that will cope with the changes that are coming.

There will be people who read this and think this is mostly a lot of nonsense, but weather events will seriously impact food and energy over the next ten to twenty years. This will seriously and adversely effect the conventional economy. Further, the sudden influx of seawater from rising sea levels will disrupt our ability to travel.

The choices we all make now will effect how well we as individuals, our families cope with the changes that have already started.

Having Lots of Weather Here

There was a time when I assumed that the reason why the British and more so the English talk about the weather so much was that we are so culturally repressed. While I do feel that this is a small part of the reason, the real reason is that the weather has always been so important to our survival.

While Britain was the crucible of the industrial revolution, agriculture and as an island nation, fishing were so important to the lives and livelihoods of the people of these islands. For several thousand years weather conditions drove the activities that provided the ability for us to feed ourselves. Even as recently as forty years ago the majority of the population were engaged in occupations that were dependent upon the weather, and our ability to grow, collect or sell food.

Even now anyone who lives in a rural area is impacted and concerned by the weather. Tourism is boosted by hot weather, this can benefit a local economy with increased spending by visitors, or if there is a lack of facilities it can despoil an area with litter or pollution from engine emissions, or from noise and disturbance from inconsiderate visitors.

In the UK just a little snow just throws everyone, and it has a greater impact upon us than it does for people in other parts of the world who regularly have to live with snow in the winter. Often its just about ensuring that you are prepared for what will happen.

One of the aspects of the recent threat of flooding here that struck me was all of the houses where the media were visiting to illustrate the story were new build housing. While it would be glib to say that it’s only because of building homes on flood plains that are causing this problem, it is a major factor.

In the past people knew not to build in certain areas simply because they would suffer from flooding. However, partly because of the way people have become detached from the land and natural environment, this old knowledge has been lost. Further because people have much greater geographical and economic mobility, most people don’t have the local knowledge of the landscape that enable a population to know where it’s safe to live.

Then there is the problem that for years we have relied upon technology to provide solutions to all our problems. The difficulty with that is as King Chanute showed, no matter how much power you have, you cannot control nature.

Now as well as the normal weather patterns we should expect, we have the added factor of the unexpected weather events caused by a changing climate. The greatest obstacle to understanding about how we need to plan for this reality has been the media calling the problem Global Warming. That one phrase has made people assume that it will improve the weather. The reality people now have to cope with in the form of flooding.

However, there are lots of things that we can all do to help prevent this occurring, not just the people who are at risk of flooding either. One simple solution is to fit a rain barrel or two so that rainwater is collected. Most people will have some use for this water anyway and it may help keep your garden alive during a drought. As the average size is around seventy-five to one hundred litres in capacity, during heavy rains that is a significant volume of water that you are preventing from adding to the problem. While flooding involves millions of litres, if everyone were to contain that water, that would amount to one hundred and seventy-five billion litres saved.

The water saved by people in the upland areas would not then add to the swell of water further down the watershed.

The other simple action is to ensure that your patio, or cars hard standing is permeable. While having off street parking adds to the value of a property, every square foot of impermeable concrete reduces the grounds ability to absorb rainfall. Further, it proportionally increases the amount of water that soils have to absorb else ware and it adds to the erosion of that soil exacerbating the problem further.

While having a permeable patio is more costly, the cost of doing that is far cheaper than the cost of having your home flooded. And while there will be the cynical out there that will say that insurance will cover the cost of flooding, anyone talking to people impacted by flooding and those cynics will be silenced.

I hope that we British continue to talk about the weather so that we can learn to live with the reality of climate change. Incidentally, were in not for the fact that we are living through a period when the climate is changing, this rain would have most likely have fallen as snow, and that reduces the flood risk.

While I realise that none of this helps the people facing flooding at the moment, but in the future if we all took these simple actions then we would be helping our neighbours and ourselves.

My thoughts tonight though are with all those people who are worried and waiting.

Good News Bad News

When this Mouse switched on his computer this morning, there were two news stories that caused my whiskers to twitch. The first was that Kevin Rudd the new Australian prime minister had as his first action after being sworn in has ratified (signed) the Kyoto Protocol. That leaves only the US as the only major developed country not to have signed the treaty.

All this is happening just as government representatives are meeting in Bali to discus what follows Kyoto. While it is taking time, little by little, politicians around the world are finally taking the issues of climate change seriously. I have even noticed that in the media they are no longer referring to the process as Global Warming, but are calling it Climate Change. As calling it global warming makes it sound like a jolly nice thing to happen, I am glad to see that the media is finally taking the matter seriously.

Then I came across this story:

The Story on the BBC

An investigation has revealed that some airlines are flying longer routes to avoid paying higher Air Traffic Control fees. In doing so they are burning (Wasting) more Fuel and creating an extra three tones of CO2 per flight. That’s six extra tones for each aircraft in every round trip, all this to save a whopping ninety-nine pounds sterling.

The airlines in question say that they do it to maintain schedules, but if the Air Traffic Controllers didn’t have to adjust flight and holding patterns to accommodate aircraft like these coming in via the back door, there would be no delays.

Until we have people and industries thinking and acting in an environmentally responsible way, we all face the effects of the irresponsible.

Business as usual for Bush on Climate Change

One of the greatest difficulties for all of us in our attempts to tackle climate change is the lack of political leadership, especially from the largest polluters. While not the largest population the change of leadership in Australia will be good news in tackling climate pollution.

However while US president Bush has finally been acknowledging that climate change is a problem, events this week shows that the Bush Government intends to do nothing to reduce the Carbon-dioxide emissions from the US. Here in the UK, in the Financial Times, the leading business and financial publication, a conglomerate of international businesses, in a two-page advert, called for leadership in dealing with climate change. The response from the white house was simple, the US will not do anything to cap CO2 emissions and it, the bush government, can not even say when the US will be able to start reducing its carbon footprint.

The science and the evidence is so compelling now that, international business people realise that real action has to be taken. The difficulty is that unless the US, the largest economy in the world, takes political action and tackles climate change then business can’t plan for the investment in a low carbon future.

While there are some businesses that are making the effort, if we have a large economy like the US that refuses to impose regulation, then those businesses will loose money and or profits. Put simply the people that make the effort will always be undercut by the most polluting countries. In some ways this problem is similar to the way that manufacturing has chased the low wages in china. However, unlike this chasing of low wages, governments like the US allowing carbon pollution to occur will kill all industry.

The greatest problem is that oil men like Bush see climate change as an advantage as it is allowing access to the vast oil and gas deposits that are untapped in the artic circle. Further, the US Japan China and the EU are all looking to the probability of mining helium three on the moon, as a new wonder fuel. That is why there is a new moon race and why so many countries are rushing to land men on the moon again. The carbon footprint from these enterprises are vast and will mean that we will seriously damage our climate in trying to obtain this new fuel for an unproven technology.

Further, the US bush government; in particular, assume that the loss of the sea ice will not be that serious for the climate. However that is based upon a false assumption and reliant upon out of date science. In the last five years the unexpected acceleration in the melting of the sea ice has allowed the Greenland Ice cap to start melting. It is loosing up to 150 cubic kilometres of melt water per year. Further this is increasing and this water is flowing into the sea.

Also the Greenland Ice Cap is suffering from cracks and crevices opening up on the suffice of this vast glacier. This means that lakes of melt water that form in the summer are draining down to the bedrock where it is lubricating the flow of the Ice. But this melt water doesn’t re-freeze during the winter as just as happens in a pond or lake the ice on top insulates the water and stops it from freezing. All this is making the three kilometre thick glacier that is the Greenland Ice Cap very unstable.

It will not take a lot for this ice to break up. Scientists are monitoring the Ice and recording the vibrations of the cracking up of this glacier, known as Ice quakes, they occur every twenty minutes. There is an inevitability that sooner rather than later there will be a large area of this glacier will calf and slip into the sea. This will raise sea levels.

Further, any sizeable earthquake nearby could provide the trigger to allow very sizeable chunks of the Ice cap to slide into the sea. This could trigger Tidal waves as well as a sudden and substantial rise in sea levels. What makes this scenario even more disturbing is that the trigger is already in place. Mount St Helens in the US, an active volcano has a bulging plug in its calderas, and when that blows, the quakes and vibrations from that could well be all that it takes to see the glacier slip into the sea.

This is not something that will happen in some mythical time years hence, but within the next four to five years. I just hope that when it happens it finally shocks the US government into taking action on climate change.

I make a clear distinction here between the American people who want action taken on climate change and the Government who have their head in the sand.

Unhealthy Skies

While I know that some of my readers think I “Bang On” about Climate Change far too much, it is the greatest threat we face. This Article on the BBC website should send a chill down all our backs. It contains a warning by Nobuo Tanaka, the Executive director of the International Energy Agency; he is warning that our energy demands are outstripping resources. However it is the figures quoted about the current global CO2 emissions that are most frightening. In 2005 they were 27 giga-tonnes! That is 27 trillion, trillion tonnes of new CO2 released into our air that year. I say new but its really old carbon that our planet locked away millions of years ago.

We are rapidly returning our home world back to the primeval first stages of life. The result will be that most of the Fauna and Flora will not survive, and Homo sapiens will become a footnote in the evolutionary history of our planet.

The BBC Article

Mass Extinction and Climate Change

When I saw the headline of this story on the BBC web site, I thought this is not news, the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) have already reported that we will have up to a forty percent loss of species as a direct result of this man made pollution we call climate change. However, this research is new and marks an important change in the attitude of scientists. Previously the language used “Hedged the Bets” and spoke of what was theoretically possible rather than what was actually happening.

Part of the problem in dealing with the man made pollution that is climate change, is a psychological one. In the past we have seen pollution as localised, and no matter how bad it got, when action was finally taken, the environment improved and the problem dissipated. Even with acid rain as that was a regional problem, in Europe for example, when Europeans acted collectively the situation reversed. And while there still is some sulphur pollution that is causing acid rain, it is relatively negligible.

With Climate Change, we can not see (or at least some can) that there is anything we can do, as we psychologically assume that there is no point as China or India or what ever other country we want to use as an excuse, are not doing the same. What is needed is leadership, and that should be coming from America and Europe. As the USA is the biggest polluter, producing 24 tonnes of CO2 per head of population they should be taking the lead here.

But the problem is that everyone is hoping for that technological fix, that mythical grail of pollution free energy. As a planet we have squandered our energy resources. We have allowed a culture that is so reliant upon oil to develop that we are prepared to fight wars for access to it, and allowed our whole way of life to become dominated by the automobile. The problem is that to power our way of life we are burning billions of tonnes of oil and releasing all the carbon dioxide that the planet sequestrated away back into the atmosphere.

What this new research shows is that while climate change has naturally occurred in the past, and effected the biodiversity of our planet, our current man made driven warming of the globe could wipe out most of the life on our home world. That as I am sick of having to point out includes us.

If we lost important pollinators like bees how long would we last? That’s not a rhetorical question, but fortunately minds far better than mine have already done the research and tell us that we would last only six years. We would loose our ability to grow over ninety percent of our food. That is what mass extinction will do to us.

Even now when there are clear signs of the effects of Climate Change in the forest fires in California, we still do nothing. Unless we act now, if we survive, we will become the most hated generation of humans within our children’s history.

The BBC Article

Learning Lessons from the Great Storm

When the Great Storm of 1987 hit the UK, my now ex-wife and I had not long moved up to the Northeast. It troubled us greatly as both our families were down in the area devastated by the hurricane and of course the telephones were out of order. Fortunately, none of our kin were hurt in the storm, but with reports of deaths it was an anxious wait for news.

For me though the most memorable part of the events of that time was that it was the first time that I was able to have a sensible discussion with “Non Environmentalists” about global warming. Until that event, everyone I ever spoke to always dismissed it by saying “Great we get better Weather” or some other nonsense.

While that particular storm may not have been caused directly by climate change, the simple principal of a warmer planet does mean that there is more energy put into the atmosphere to drive the weather systems. This brings me to an article on the BBC web site talking about the lessons that the met office learned from the storm, and the improvements that new and improved technology now plays in more accurate forecasting.

You can read the article here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7044050.stm

However, it’s a quote from Ewen McCallum that really caught my attention.

"It is like if we have a big storm tomorrow, you'll get the same answer out of places like the Met Office, where they will say that it certainly fits with the [future] scenarios, but to blame any one event on climate change is facile.

"It is only when you look back over time and you look at global trends, can you make comments like that."

While what he says is scientifically accurate, the greatest obstacles to persuading people to stop polluting our planet is the lack of leadership from people like him, who could get people to take notice. The science is now clear that Climate Change is happening and that it is man made. Therefore with that extra energy in the atmosphere, the changing climate must be substantially at the root of any dramatic weather occurrences.

The trouble is that there are still far to many people, politicians and scientists among them, that are looking for that magic single bit of data, that single event that can only have happened because of Climate Change, before they will commit themselves. Yet if we wait for that single event proof, we will already have destroyed our home world and our species will be facing extinction.

Even if we stop burning all fossil fuel tomorrow, it will take more than one millennia for our planet to get back into equilibrium.

The Truth is Inconvenient

As I haven’t seen the Al Gore film the inconvenient truth, I cannot say if the film is party political or not. But Climate Change is political, if only because so many people are trying to keep their heads in the sand over it. I am glad that British school children will be getting the chance to see this film, as hopefully it will help capture the hearts and minds of the coming generation.

Even today the news that the old energy inefficient incandescent light bulbs are to be phased out is bitter news as it will not be until 2012 this happens. When it could have happened by the end of this year. That will mean at least twenty-five extra tonnes of CO2 will be released into our biosphere before the ban occurs. It’s all far too little, lets hope that it’s not too late.

After all the important line in the IPCC report that everyone seems to have missed says; “If Climate Change is not reversed, we will face temperature increases that will make life on this planet unsustainable”

I shouldn’t need to translate that but that means WE BECOME EXTINCT.

Already this year there is less sea ice in the Artic, and even conservative predictions are saying it will disappear by 2030, that’s only twenty-three years away. And once we have lost a critical mass of that sea ice, we then have thermal induction and convection from the sea, accelerating the rise in air temperatures. In reality if we lose the Sea Ice we lose the fight and the domination of Homo sapiens ends.

Therefore I hope this misguided parent looses his legal challenge to the film being shown to our children so that even if we fail to act, they will.


The original story on the BBC Web Site

Climate Change and Animal Health

It has been reported today that the UK has its first case of an animal disease called Blue Tongue. Over the last five years or so I have been hearing of this disease as it moved up from its normal area of impact around the Mediterranean Sea.

As the virus is carried by, and infection caused by a particular midge, it is only as a result of climate change that this condition has reached this country.

For this mouse, the fact that it infected one of the rare breeds, a Highland Cow, makes this even more poignant. As the farm where this has occurred are keeping rare breeds alive as well as farming in a very sustainable way.

This is not the first impact from Climate Change (Global Warming), nor will it be the last. But it should serve us all as a reminder that we all need to act now to combat climate change.

Another piece of news that many will have missed or ignored. Food prices are set to rise by at least ten percent as a direct result of climate change this year alone. This Mouse has always said that it would always be the economic impacts of our pollution our biosphere that we would see first. Well here it comes.

Catching Up

Today and part of yesterday I have been playing catch up. I have been so busy out of the house, that even my cat, was asking who I was when I came in. So it was down to all the boring housework bits. However, because of where I am living as I hung my washing out on the line, I saw two of the Red Kites glide over in the distance. It even made me feel less peeved at having to do the housework.

In between doing essential bits around the house I have been trying to catch up on some emails and letters, so if anyone is expecting a message from the mouse it will be coming, soon…

Its not all been hard work though and I did get some time for a stroll That’s when I saw this Phaeoulus schweinitzeii although I took this image off it a few weeks ago. I was surprised it was still there, as frequently the kids destroy any of the fruiting bodies of fungi they see.

Because I was playing catch up, I was able to find the time to read some of my friends Blog's, and one made an interesting point. Because of where she lives, it sounds like a paradise the way she writes about it; she has to use wood as her fuel. However, it concerns her that it adds to her carbon footprint.

The simple answer is no it doesn’t, as it is part of a closed carbon cycle loop. The tree grows, capturing carbon, which is only released when it is burnt.

However, it is a little more complex than that as that carbon that is released will be around for about fifty years before it is reabsorbed. Thus while it still is that closed carbon cycle it is the timescale that prevents the answer being simple. This is also why carbon offsetting is so unrealistically simplistic.

This is where people pay for trees to be planted as a salve for their conscience when they jet off on holiday. Even if everyone did that from now on it would not be for fifty to seventy five years that those trees would start to have any impact upon carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

The real problem with burning any fuel is understanding its source. If that fuel was produced using the suns energy from the last couple of centuries, then it is part of a closed loop carbon cycle. With using the suns energy stored in fossil fuels is that it old energy and ancient carbon, that became locked away to provide the breathable atmosphere we have to day.

By releasing that old carbon we are changing the atmosphere back to a state when life barely existed. Not forgetting that plants were first, we are in danger of wiping out all animal life on the planet.

Climate Change and Bird Populations

While the effect of a warming climate will have many predictable consequences, it is the impacts that the majority of the population don’t think about that are in fact the more serious ones.

In some migrating birds choosing not to winter in the UK, many people will assume that this is just a minor matter. Interesting to note but what will be the impact upon my life, they will say. Well, the impacts could be greater than people assume.

Because of the importance of the UK as wintering grounds our agriculture practices have been modified to accommodate these influxes of birds. This is not just about the crops that are grown but the husbandry of farm animals. When you have large populations of birds migrating to the UK there has to be a food source for them, geese and ducks will help clear large areas of grass, thus reducing the cost of farming these lands. Also some of the birds will feed on grubs and insects that present over winter, keeping that population in check. Who knows what the effect on human and animal health this change will bring.

Further there is the impact upon tourism in the areas where these birds flock; there are many small communities that are reliant upon the tourist pound that the bird’s presence brings.

Then there are the problems for the communities where the birds are now choosing to over winter. Will the birds be competing for valuable or scarce resources? Are they competing with man for these? If the answer to any of these is yes the populations of these many species of birds will be at serious risk.

Climate change is already creating a serious problem for the summer breading populations of sea birds. The warming of the seas is reducing the populations of sand eel’s that so rely on to feed and raise their young. This means that populations of internationally important species are in decline. But its not just the effect upon the birds that this should be causing concern, what about the rest of the food chain and the fish that humans eat? In the North Sea fish stocks are already looking as if they are in terminal decline.

There will be some people who will think that this doesn’t really matter, there are other more important issues to worry about, but the reality is this is the most important issue of the day. Unless we act now, we not only risk causing the mass extinction of animal populations, but our own extinction as well.