Temperature changes in context

Buried in the comments on a Watts Up With That post are some thoughts from "crosspatch".

Temperatures are rising after the Little Ice Age (LIA) a few hundred years ago. How much of today’s temperature levels are natural recovery from the LIA and how much are due to human CO2 release, he asks. "They can’t even really quantify how much of the CO2 with the fossil fuel 'signature' is even actually released by human activity and how much is natural from such things as global coal seam and gas pit fires."

But why choose the LIA as their starting point anyway? There have been other cold periods and other recoveries. "There were cold periods during the Roman Empire that caused great migrations of people. Why did the Visigoths migrate South from Sweden? Why did the Vandals migrate South from the Baltic? Because it got too COLD there!"

Then he turns to the medieval warm period (MWP).

They would also claim the MWP doesn’t exist and say they can’t find the tree ring signal for it. We don’t NEED a tree ring signal, we have chronicles of the time that report what was being grown and where it was being grown. We know that in many places in the Alps, Scandinavia, Greenland, and other places, some things that were being grown in various locations can not be grown today because it is still too cold in those places.

“The Cause”, he says, would write this off to local circulation changes.

Problem is that we see evidence for the MWP in Alaska, the Sierra Nevada, the Great Basin, South America, and Africa, too.

Now comes the crunch point. To top it all off, they have picked some arbitrary fairly recent period to represent “normal” temperatures when that recovery from the LIA might not even be complete yet.

It might even take the oceans another few hundred years to fully recover at depth and so they are going to be rising as the water undergoes thermal expansion and they will also release more CO2 as it warms at depth.

And, he concludes, "if word were to get around that maybe what we are seeing is a natural recovery of temperatures, what would happen to these people's careers?

Others have asked, if we really could engineer the global climate (ha ha) and keep it stable (ha ha), would we choose present temperature levels? The world might well be better off a few degrees warmer anyway.

Spanish and Italian voters just won't stand for this

Open Europe's press summary reports that

A leaked European Commission report seen by Italian daily La Repubblica reveals that Italy is likely to be told at the end of today’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers that it needs to adopt a new package of savings worth at least €11bn as quickly as possible....

Separately, an article in El País reports that Spain’s incoming centre-right government may have to adopt austerity measures worth between €15bn and €30bn early next year, depending on what the country’s deficit at the end of 2011. Secretary-General of Spanish Partido Popular, María Dolores de Cospedal, yesterday confirmed that the new government will enter into office on 22 December.

Italian politicians and unions simply won't countenance cuts on this scale. Spanish voters seemed more cowed during the recent election, but there isn't even the level of grudging acceptance there that can be seen in Ireland. As for Italy, such proposals would simply make it ungovernable. And did anyone mention Greece?

But will the Irish want to stay in the eurozone anyway, Paul Hannon wonders.

Some years hence, it's possible that Ireland will be a member of a currency area that it believes requires too much surrender of sovereignty, but with a debt that is now much more manageable because a good chunk has been written off.

The Irish might then be tempted to consider whether they want to be in that kind of euro zone, a very different beast from the one they joined in 1999.

And Ireland isn't the only small nation that places a high value on its independence. It is possible that the treaty changes proposed by Germany, France and Italy to help save the euro zone from a hard breakup will lead over time to a soft fracture.

Fintan O'Toole seems to be suggesting Ireland should go ahead and default now (h/t Richard North).

Without hard cuts, southern Europe will default, probably quite soon. With action, southern Europe will be ungovernable.

Off limits for state spending

Autonomous Mind focuses on a decision by Newcastle Council to give money to "good causes". As he says

This underlines the lack of accountability in our town halls.

Several areas should be off limits for state spending. Here are two.

When companies reach an out of court settlement with a complainant who's threatening to sue them, they usually add a dollop to bribe the complainant keep the complaint private. (Think News of the World.) These confidentiality clauses cost money, as we know. The firm complained against then avoids bad publicity like this.

State bodies should be forbidden to include confidentiality clauses in settlements. This is partly for financial reasons (they cost taxpayers more money) but also for reasons of governance - complaints where a taxpayer-funded body has admitted liability should be out in the open.

It's grotesque that taxpayers should pay to shield managements and staff from scrutiny.

Another area off limits should be donations to charities. In a democracy, decisions about donations should be made by the people. The people should choose the causes and give the money. (Call it the Big Society if you must.) By the way, this includes overseas aid to fund African despots fight global warming in Africa. Councillors don't care which charities their voters would like to support. (OK, it's probably the RSPCA, but that's freedom for you.) Chris Huhne the messianic peacock gives not a fig for anyone's opinion.

So that's another test Newcastle Council failed.

It's not even as if local authorities are flush with our cash, as Richard North points out.

Shale in the news again

Shale is in the news again. Good.

Andrew Gilligan has got half a page in The Sunday Telegraph to tell us that "bids for shale gas exploration licences are expected to surge" in a new licensing round next year.

He takes the opportunity to debunk some of the opponents' lies, telling us that

Fracking is not new and has been used without previous controversy since the 1940s. A spokesman for Cuadrilla said that an existing gas well at Elswick, near one of its sites in Lancashire, was fracked 20 years ago by its then owners, British Gas, in “almost exactly the same way” as at Cuadrilla’s shale sites now.

Even The Tyndall Centre doesn't buy the earthquakes argument.

Cuadrilla admits that its operations in Lancashire “triggered” two small earthquakes, one of 2.3 magnitude and the other of 1.5. Fracking has been suspended ever since. However, earthquakes of such magnitude occur in the UK almost every week, with six in the last month alone, according to the British Geological Survey.

Scientists investigating the Lancashire incident said the “maximum seismic event” from the fracking would be magnitude 3, described as “minor, often felt, but rarely causing damage” and said that coal mining had caused just as many such earthquakes in northern England in the past. Prof Anderson said that earthquakes were “not an argument we use against shale gas in any way”.

He prefers to focus on a claim that shale gas would “fundamentally undermine” Britain’s commitment to tackling climate change.

Repeat after me:

1. Global temperatures haven't risen over the past ten years.
2. Global temperatures are way out of line with the rising output of carbon dioxide.
3. There's increasing questioning of the IPCC's science, its methodology, and the morality of its leaders.
4. Even if carbon dioxide were driving global temperatures, economic suicide by a small country responsible for under 2% of carbon dioxide output would have no effect except to make its people poorer, while other countries pressed on with getting cheaper energy from their shale.

Nick Grealy has pointed out many errors in the (at best) careless Tyndall report. It does not deserve to become a point of reference.

The ineffable Huhne has only been dragged to acknowledge the physical existence of shale by repeated highlighting in the media. The coalition seemingly would prefer that we didn't have this energy bonanza beneath our feet at all, so that they could go on making us poorer by confiscating our money for those huge, expensive windmills that nobody wants.

The Duke makes more sense on this than anyone in The Commons. Charles Hendry, though, may be an honourable exception, as he continues to insist that permissions for shale will be treated in the same way as other sorts of energy.

Matt Ridley suggests:

To persist with a policy of pursuing subsidized renewable energy in the midst of a terrible recession, at a time when vast reserves of cheap low-carbon gas have suddenly become available is so perverse it borders on the insane. Nothing but
bureaucratic inertia and vested interest can explain it.

It's worse than that. It's messianic peacock vanity.

State policy is to make us even poorer

We know we're going to get poorer. Petrol up, energy up, unemployment up, wages clamped, inflation up, and that's before interest rates start returning to realistic levels. Government is still spending more than it's getting in taxes, apparently intending this to go on for ever - though it can't.

But your state is going to do its bit to make you even poorer. Yes, this is the policy of your state, the people that you voted for.

Presumably hypocrite Huhne will eventually get charged with perverting the course of justice, but his policy is government policy, doubtless supported by the nasty vacuous greenie Cameron even as the standing of the IPCC falls even lower and even its own predictions forecast lower rises in temperatures - while emissions of carbon dioxide soar.

Government policy is that "families will pay £280 a year in ‘green taxes’ by 2020 to fund the shift to wind, solar and nuclear power.... Households currently pay £89 a year on their bills for the green energy drive".

So they're going to make you poorer in order to support this lunacy. Huhne's line is that

By 2020, we expect household bills to be 7 per cent – or £94 – lower than they would otherwise be without our policies.

Britain’s homes will be cheaper to heat and light than if we did nothing.

That assumes you will have cut your electricity use by a third and gas by 6%. However will you cut electricity use by a third?

(Actually gas prices will keep falling as more and more countries bring shale gas deposits on stream, making so called renewables even less economic. Money down the drain - or rather into the pockets of the foreign suppliers.)

Separately, up to a fifth of councils in England may not accept the government's offer to help pay for a freeze in council tax next year, suggests the BBC.

One finance director of a Conservative-controlled district [said] that the deal "financially makes no sense" and would result in a bigger-than-planned hike the following year.

They don't get it. We're already going to get poorer. Did you hear that? Poorer. And you want to grab even more of our money?

That's insane. Why are you not planning to take less?

Meanwhile Planet Brussels dreams

Jeremy Warner explains that the Germans

demand limited treaty changes that will allow German fiscal disciplines to be imposed on miscreant nations, with sanctions for non-compliance.

Presumably they'd even apply to France next time round.

Bruno Waterfield has the story on just how "limited" these treaty changes might be.

The commission, he writes, proposes new powers to ensure that the servicing of eurobond debt always takes priority over other spending in national budgets.

Gracious. Enough already? No.

There would be the power "to grant extensive intrusive power at EU level in cases of severe financial distress, including the possibility to put the failing member state under some form of 'administration'".

Budgets would of course have to be submitted for vetting by the unelected Commission. Here we go.

The proposals give the commission the power to send in fiscal inspectors if it decides a member country is "experiencing severe difficulties", even if that country's government has not requested them. EU officials will be able to override a country's protests to "recommend" that it is placed in a Greek, Irish or Portuguese-style austerity programme, involving the loss of its fiscal sovereignty.

Countries that are placed under the control of the EU-IMF, such as Greece, Ireland or Greece, will be unable to regain sovereignty until they have paid back 75pc of their debts, meaning decades of administration from Brussels and Frankfurt.

And Planet Brussels expect the peoples of their subject nations to vote for this in referenda? To vote away their democracies and sovereignty?

Why is it not obvious that we should run a mile from dictators who dream such dreams?

The ideal common currency area?

Italy has been ranked 87th in a World Bank report on the ease of doing businesses in 183 countries, reports The Telegraph. That's below Albania, Moldova, the Solomon Islands and Zambia. It has slipped four places in a year. So much for the Berlusconi years.

The only EU country below Italy was Greece, which came in at 100th. The UK was 7th.

The ungovernable south of Italy, much of it in the grip of mafia groups, has been slipping back. In 1998 southern Italy’s per capita GDP was 89% higher than the EU’s 20 poorest regions; now it is just 14% higher.

Spain's constitution does not allow the new government to take power until mid-December.

Portugal’s former finance minister has warned that it could need a further €25bn to top up its €78bn rescue funds.

And European officials were still refusing to disburse to Athens the €8bn tranche of its bail-out money. Opposition leader Antonis Samaras is refusing to commit to the austerity package. The Dutch Finance Minister said future financial aid for Greece will be terminated if Mr. Samaras doesn't support the reforms in writing. Greece would run out of money in about twenty days.

The euro zone wants the leaders to commit that whoever wins power in scheduled elections in February will carry on with the reforms.

"There is a major issue of mistrust towards Greece," said the EU diplomat. "So the usual promises from Athens that have been repeatedly broken won't suffice."

Have the EU economies achieved the "convergence" that advocates of the euro predicted? Of course not.

So what might happen over the next ten years? Niall Ferguson takes an amusing look.

How European countries' debt has risen

The Slog has a link to an interesting graphic showing how European countries' debts have risen since 1980.

As he says, while you move the slider to the right, keep an eye on Belgium.

We are so badly governed

Standards among officialdom are unacceptably low. We looked yesterday at the government's woefully inadequate attempt at bargaining with the EU (Fraser Nelson suggests Sir Jon Cunliffe is partly to blame).

Today John Redwood takes the MoD to task for the number of senior officer posts it has kept while reducing the number of soldiers. He concludes that

We have a pay bill of over £400 million for top management in the army, with a diminishing number of people to command. Is this cut to the bone?

The MoD should be made to justify the present numbers, or say what cuts it is going to make, and when.

Come on you MPs, do your job.

The winds of change

Suddenly it's fashionable to have a go at windfarms. The Duke of Edinburgh, and now Jeremy Warner. Nothing new in his analysis but good to see it spelled out that

The idea that Britain can lead by example in fostering a low-carbon economy is just idealistic poppycock. Britain accounts for less than 2pc of emissions globally. Whatever it does is going to make next to no difference.

We can meet Blair's (erroneous) renewables targets using gas, which is going to get cheaper. Huhne is bound to lose the political battle against Osborne.

Also questionable is the notion that by spending so heavily on renewables, Britain will end up leading the world in green industries. Most of the wind turbines are at present imported, and in any case, no industry based almost entirely on subsidies for its viability is likely to be sustainable in the long term.

Warner makes his case on the basis that in straitened times we can't afford solutions more expensive than necessary, so his case stands whether or not you think there is a CO2 "problem" which needs a "solution" at all. This blog doesn't.

And Lord Leach, a Tory peer, has felt able to dismiss Sir David Attenborough's views on climate change as not "worth listening to". As far as we know, he has not yet been drummed out of polite society.

Another change on the way is the rising economic power of the BRIC economies. Jim O'Neill's new book on the subject, The Growth Road, is being promoted with extracts in The Telegraph. Today he demonstrates why you shouldn't bother with his book, arguing that

There could be a case for allowing Russia to eventually join the EU. If Russia is to achieve its potential, surely a positive minded Europe should seek to welcome the country into the EU. Of course, the same could be said of Turkey....

The case for the EU's existence rests largely on the amount of trade between member countries. If Russia remains as important in terms of trade and fulfils its BRIC potential, then including Russia inside the EU would make a great deal of economic sense.

If his grip on European affairs is that sound, forgive me if I distrust his analysis of more far-off places.

Woefully inadequate

According to Open Europe, The Guardian reports that David Cameron and Angela Merkel have reached a compromise which would involve "examining the implementation of the EU’s Working Time Directive" (WTD) in return for UK support for changes to the EU Treaties, proposed by Germany.

The article notes that the UK will table two demands: first, maintaining the right to opt-out of the 48-hour working week. Second, reversing the European Court of Justice’s Simap and Jaeger rulings on rest periods and “on call” time, which have caused severe problems for the NHS. However, unlike Treaty negotiations, where every member state has a veto, the WTD is decided by qualified majority voting, which means that supporters of the directive, such as France, could form a “blocking minority” to challenge any attempts to reform.

This is beneath pathetic on two levels.

First, it seeks limited change in one delineated area in exchange for treaty changes which would open wide new vistas on EU economic governance. (If you want to go down that route, what about fisheries policy, for instance?)

So as a strategy it is pathetically unimaginative and timorous.

Second, on a tactical level, it seems to be handing over a concession in return for an area being examined. Blair made the same mistake with Sarkozy, giving concessions in return for reform to the Common Agricultural Policy being looked at - and nothing changed. Of course.

If this is our government's opening position, no wonder we're about to be stitched up again.

The government will have only itself to blame.

The pain in Spain

Spain likes shovelling debt under the carpet where it hopes no one will notice.

I've blogged before about the debts of Spanish provincial authorities (click the Spain label below). Now we learn that big power groups have recently stepped up pressure on the likely incoming Spanish government to tackle a deficit they accumulated by selling power at regulated tariffs too low to cover costs for 10 years. Ten years!

Spain deferred them by obliging utilities to hold these costs on their balance sheets as a state-backed debt known as the "tariff deficit", promising the consumer would repay this debt through gradual increases in electricity bills.

The Socialist government ... reached a deal with utilities companies last year to eliminate the tariff deficit.

How much are we talking about here? Hm, a mere 20 billion euros.

And this is a government whose costs of borrowing are rising, and which yesterday couldn't sell all the bonds it wanted to.

If this is the type of off balance sheet financing that Spanish governments like, what other debt have they parked in the Spanish economy? That's quite apart from what the provinces have been up to.

Hear Spain creak.

Who likes windfarms?

Not the Welsh.

Not the Dutch either.

Of course, it's not even as if wind is cheap. Spain may have to axe subsidies for wind and solar power as the euro zone debt crisis makes funding very costly.

So why go for wind? As Matt Ridley says

To persist with a policy of pursuing subsidized renewable energy in the midst of a terrible recession, at a time when vast reserves of cheap low-carbon gas have suddenly become available is so perverse it borders on the insane. Nothing but bureaucratic inertia and vested interest can explain it.

Chris Huhne, take note. It is bad economics and bad politics. Windfarms are only going to get more unpopular, and if this blog can help a little to turn even one voter against them, then good.

The euro is doomed

Ambrose reports Derek Heathcote-Amory on the euro crisis:

The Germans will pay up, accept eurobonds, and mobilise enormous firepower. They are not out of ammo yet.

But this won't save monetary union in the end because it is not a debt crisis. It is a currency crisis. The weaker states are uncompetitive and you cannot force them to deflate their way back to competitiveness by cutting wages 30pc. The EU elites won't admit it, but the euro experiment is over.

Already the Greek and Italian students are demonstrating. You cannot govern southern Europe as if it was northern Europe.

Inside some european minds

You have to wonder what the Frankfurt Group were on when they thought parachuting in Papademos and Monti would make much difference.

First, the individuals. Papademos at the very least connived in the falsification of Greek statistics which allowed the country into the euro in the first place. If there's one man who can be relied on to pronounce his reforms a success even as they crumble like Greece's subsidised Olympic legacy, it must surely be him. And John Redwood coolly dissects Monti's record of missing the main point by giving something to everyone. Not great choices, then, even if they were the most acceptable available.

More importantly, these technocrats have to get their measures past fractious domestic politicians. But that's worthless if they don't stick. How could one man make unpopular measures effective in a chronically misgoverned country within the few months before another election?

Elected ministers have difficulty getting policies implemented, even in the UK. What chance, then, do Monti & Papademos have of making their policies stick?

None.

Next, an insight into the mind of a French eurocrat:

Countries that are being bailed-out could have their credit ratings suspended temporarily, said markets commissioner Michel Barnier, speaking on French radio.

He said that the ratings agencies "won't have the right, if the ESMA decides, to rate certain countries for a certain time that are receiving an international support programme from the IMF or European Union."

We'll have no inconvenient truths here, thank you. Freedom of speech is secondary to our policy goals, whatever they are. In our EU, you are only allowed to discuss what we allow you to discuss.

This wasn't a slip of the tongue, as it reiterates pronouncements over the past few days. Never mind that it couldn't be made to stick. It's a chilling insight into the EU mindset.

Against this background, Cameron's speech on the EU last night was contemptibly pathetic. He evidently knows no EU history, and his team can't read the papers. Like other British governments before him, he thinks he can divert the determined drive of the EU juggernaut by pleading from an offshore island for tiny reforms.

Ignorance, stupidity, or a pathetic attempt at guile? As an attempt to reframe UK political debate about the EU it fails on all levels, with all audiences.

Even the Dutch question the euro

Open Europe reports in its press review:

A new poll shows that 32% of Dutch prefer a return to the Guilder, while 47% favours a Northern Euro, up from 38% six months ago. Meanwhile, Patrick Van Schie, the head of the think tank of the VVD, the party of Dutch PM Mark Rutte, has said that a Northern Euro, without France, should be considered and that a decision on a new currency is needed.

Dutch media report that, on Friday, Dutch politician Geert Wilders announced that his party, the PVV, will start an investigation into the costs and benefits of re-introducing the Guilder as the Netherlands’ national currency. Depending on the outcome of the investigation, Wilders is planning to propose a national referendum on whether the Netherlands should leave the eurozone.

And the euro issue hasn't even lifted off yet. Wait till they start really demonstrating and rioting in Greece and Italy when the cuts and reforms start to bite. Let alone when the technocrat interregnums expire and the mainstream politicians return to power. What then?

You can't govern southern Europe like northern Europe. It seems Dutch voters will be paying attention as this latest rubbish strategy collapses.

Ministerial responsibility: get it done

John Redwood writes this morning on ministerial responsibility, working forward, as text books do, from the Crichel Down case.

More interesting is his over-politicised conclusion:

The case has served to highlight the dilemma of the Coaltion government. How can it implement its stated aims, when there are habits of working and assumptions amongst some officials based on the previous 13 years which point in the opposite direction to the Minister’s policy? Will Ministers now devote more time and enegry to supervising and following up once they have set out their general policy aims? As a rule of thumb, there needs to be three times as much follow up, analysis and chasing after the policy launch and press realease, than before when constructing it. If there is insufficient interest in the execution of policy more Ministers are going to be wasting time defending their actions and claiming that the policy was fine, it was just a pity about the implementation.

Strip out the special pleading about the problems of coalition. The problem is implementation of laid down policy.

An interesting regular at John's site, Mike Stallard, comments that

Over Free Schools I can tell you that it is the bureaucracy, not the Minister, who is calling the shots – successfully stopping the original reform in its tracks. I have personal experience of this.

(He adds some silly stuff about William Hague having "Eurosceptic credentials of the highest degree", but let's not be distracted by his politics either.)

John Redwood’s ratio of 3:1 feels about right. Chasing and checking policy implementation should be junior ministers’ job.

Make these functions public, so that people with Mike Stallard’s dilemma know who is the minister for unblockages. It will have to be someone in each department with a dogged and pugnacious nature, nipping at the heels of officials to get things done.

Contrary to one A. Campbell, the responsibility of ministers is not headlines. The responsibility of ministers is to get things done.

That's a team game. Every department needs at least one minister for implementation.

EU ratchets up centralised rule

It's an undemocratic inner core calling the shots in the EU, says Fraser Nelson in his piece Europe's hit squad.

He concludes

Merkel and Sarkozy have both been fond of saying that they ‘will do everything necessary’ to save the eurozone. Neither Berlusconi or Papandreou would now doubt them. But a situation where even British officials talk about helping regime change in Italy is not one that can — or should — last long. Berlusconi’s demise marks the EU now entering its endgame. When empires collapse, they can do so very suddenly. David Cameron had better be ready.

The EU's problem is that none of this addresses the eurozone's central contradiction: southern eurozone countries have become uncompetitive with Germany at a fixed exchange rate, and their electorates won't accept the measures that would be needed to restore that competitiveness.

It’s no good anyone trying to govern southern Europe as if it were northern Europe – whether they’re domestic politicians or foreigners.

Greece & Italy are holding their breaths at the moment – wait till they get interim governments and the “reforms” start to bite. The streets will be lively. And neither country is likely to elect a government with a clear majority. Removing their heads of government brings them no nearer a solution.

A useful live blog summarising euro developments

http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2011/11/09/live-blog-stakes-rise-in-italy/

How 3 Slovaks robbed us of over £0.5m

It was this easy.

Scottish diehards in futile resistance

Astonishing news from Scotland has provoked a small diehard group trying to hold back the tide into drastic action.

No, not the Scottish Tories' decision to choose as their new leader a young ex-BBC lesbian new to politics (no chance she's a double agent, then), confirming that Tory grassroots always choose the wrong person.

What the Scottish Tories do hardly qualifies as news any more. In passing, though, we can note that they have scarcely chosen Ruth for her political rhetoric or simple, down to earth communication:

A political party is not a leader, a political party is its membership and I want to bring our members at all levels much closer together in our party going forward and to take our party forward in unity.

David Cameron welcomed the party's choice, which shows an unexpected sense of humour.

Ruth puts her view on devolution this way:

She said the Scotland Bill to increase Holyrood's financial responsibility, currently going through Westminster, was "a line in the sand".

Now the point about lines in the sand, as any child or parent know, is that the tides wash most of them away. So Ruth's probably right. She is indeed a special talent.

No, I really didn't mean to talk about this provincial hiccup. Far more interesting is the news that a first licence for fracking has been granted in Scotland. Wasn't the Scottish economy to be based on so called "renewable" energy? Maybe Mr Salmond has read this and is hedging his bets.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) which granted the licence, says fracking is likely to become more widespread in Scotland in coming years.

However, what Scotland on Sunday chooses to call "other environmental groups" believe the process should be banned. This turns out to mean putting Friends of the Earth Scotland on the same level as Sepa. FoES (is that right?) say it is a "worry" to hear that a fracking licence has already been granted in Scotland.

Communities near fracking sites in the US can’t drink their tap water, but they can set it alight due to the amount of methane being leaked.

Not so, say those pesky science people:

Scientists believe the environmental consequences of fracking have been exaggerated. Quentin Fisher, professor of petroleum geoengineering at the University of Leeds, said some groups were “overly concerned”. “There isn’t actually any evidence to suggest water supplies have been contaminated due to hydraulic fracture formation,” he said.

“The examples of gas igniting from taps are probably caused by gas leakage along the casing of boreholes – not hydraulic fracturing.

To translate, Friends of the Earth Scotland are telling lies. Is this the best they can do? They try harder:

Now to add to these dangerous and disruptive impacts, it has been revealed that fracking also causes earth tremors. Scottish communities living near numerous identified fracking sites across the central belt will be rightly alarmed.

What's actually been revealed is that a couple of scarcely detectable tremors have been caused at one English site by the particular rock formation there. To deal with environmental concerns in the US, a new regulation régime is being standardised, but there is no question of prohibiting fracking of shale for gas (and potentially for oil).

For what has also been revealed is that the cost of gas in the US has tumbled, cutting household energy bills and bringing more jobs. Your energy bills may be shooting up - partly to support the expensive so called renewables we advocate - but we at Friends of the Earth Scotland would rather you stayed poor. Sorry, wasn't that in the quote we gave?

Happily these Scottish diehards seem to be hopelessly outnumbered.

Ladling it out to Greece

In comments at John Redwood's site, FatBigot offers a perspective on the Greek protests with an appropriately culinary metaphor:

When people are offered a free lunch they tend to say yes, even though there is said to be no such thing. When they have been served what they perceive to be a free lunch for many years the idea that they should pay for the bread roll this year and the soup in two years time, with the cost of main course and pudding lurking in the future, is met with foreseeable resistance. Others have paid for it so far, so “they” must pay for it again.

But now the Greeks are, um, stuffed.

Hyprocisy and feeblemindedness

Provoked by Freddy Forsyth in the Express, Richard North has set out in some detail why Mr Cameron's cry for repatriation of powers from the EU is sure to come to nothing.

Presumably Mr Cameron knows this and is guilty of political cynicism rather than blind ignorance?

Italy & Greece aren't governable by IMF or EU monitors. They could only live within their means and in the syle they choose by running a depreciating currency. That's a perfectly possible democratic choice of the type of society they want.

Italian would-be technocrats hoped governance by the EU would transform their country by providing the firm steer their own politicians couldn't give. But the EU waited for a useful crisis. The correction now needed is too sudden to be acceptable to Italian society.

John Redwood's question is still unanswered: the IMF wouldn't lend to California, so why would it lend to Greece? Or Italy. It would be more likely to get its money back from California, too.

But Mrs Merkel has decreed that the single-currency eurozone can't have a fully functional central bank, so it must be the world at large that funds its more feckless provinces, even though the world at large is poorer.

Two questions for Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne. If the Greek and Italian economies remain unreformed - which of course they will - how much will that have cost us in loan guarantees? And what are you negotiating in return for us assuming that risk?

Nothing that I've noticed so far.

How green democracy works

In a rational debate, MPs discuss how shale gas extraction might be regulated. Tim Yeo commented that

This debate has shown Parliament absolutely at its best, which is probably why not a single word will be reported in the press or by the electronic media.

A pessimistic forecast - those of us who want Britain to become more prosperous again welcome this process, to which Tim Yeo is an important contributor.

Tom Greatrex remarked that

In the three weeks since I was appointed shadow Energy Minister, I have heard Lord Lawson describe shale gas as the biggest energy bonanza since the discovery of north sea oil, [and] the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) — I am surprised that she is not here today — say, “So what?” to the estimate of 200 trillion cubic feet of reserves under the Lancashire coast....

Did the Green MP prefer to avoid a rational discussion on shale?

Meanwhile, across the water the idea of a German euro referendum was criticised by Jürgen Trittin of Germany's Green party (Die Grünen), who said that:

To ask for referendums when they are against Europe is not democratic, but right wing populism.

So now we know. If you are a Green, democracy is just a tool to be used or laid aside, as benefits The Cause.

The eurozone crisis shows up Cameron and Osborne

Greece veered last night from the democratic possibility of a referendum to the opposite extreme of a political conspiracy against their voters.

If we have consensus, then we don't need a referendum

said Mr Papandreou. How will that play out on the streets?

The Telegraph's lead story in its printed edition is worrying in its economic illiteracy. It's regrettable that the paper's political editor doesn't understand what's wrong with the eurozone; but alarming that this probably reflects what ministers and their flunkies are whispering in his ear.

President Obama makes the impossible statement that

The most important aspect of our task over the next few days is to resolve the financial crisis here in Europe.

Is this the mindset, that the great minds can resolve the crisis? This is not just wrong, it's too ridiculous to waste time on fisking.

The story starts by referring to "concerns that the EU plan to save the euro will not be enough to stabilise the world economy".

What? This too is lunacy land. There is no EU plan to "save" the euro (well, not for a few weeks), and even if there were, there's plenty of other stuff to destabilise the world economy.

But Cameron's seeming determination to push more UK money at the IMF makes sense only if he actually believes these statements. Otherwise it's weak-minded rank profligacy.

Later, the story claims

The cost of a full eurozone rescue has been estimated at almost £2trillion.

Leave aside the the "almost", ludicrous in its spurious precision, ludicrous in the breathlessness of the political editor's whisper of such privileged "information". Repeat after me: no amount of money can bring about "a full eurozone rescue" - unless it's enough to fund the debt requirements of the club med economies until the end of time. That's not going to happen, even under these bigheads. And if it did, why would countries outside the eurozone stump up the commitment, which they would only ever see increase?

It's one thing to stand outside the eurozone and advise ever closer union when it's not our money on the line. It's quite another when we volunteer a financial stake.

Mr Osborne said that taxpayers from around the world, including those in America and China, would be "exposed" under the plan.

If we are to be "exposed", we have to know the exposure makes economic and financial sense. It plainly doesn't.

The strongminded, with their feet on the ground, have worked out the basis for their position before they arrive. The weak are swept along by the presence of political celebrities.

This wouldn't matter if Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne were just pledging the fortunes of their rich families, like investors in the Lloyds insurance market. But it's our money - money we haven't got, by the way. We sign an IOU in support of a patently incoherent eurozone policy constructed by bullies who are hostile to us - and what do we get back in return for throwing our money away? Apparently nothing.

We are, indeed, all in it together - thanks to these weak fools.

UPDATE Richard North reminds us

As we see the world slip into a cooling cycle, the great tragedy is that we do not have the politicians with the wit and courage to admit they are wrong, and row back on the accumulated stupidity and waste which marks twenty years of policy failure.

Yes there's a pattern here.

No consequences in the state sector

Three disgusting Tory MPs - Nadine Dorries, Steve Baker and Caroline Nokes - enjoyed a £25,000 junket to Equatorial Guinea this summer just weeks before a report concluded human rights violations in the country were 'trivial'. Ignorant, thick and venal.

Prescott has denied going on a credit card spending spree while Deputy Prime Minister, blaming card cloning.

Among the officials, luxury hotels, doughnuts, and even flying lessons are among the items paid for using Government credit cards since the coalition came to power. Examples here. But who was disciplined?

Another example. In Lincolnshire one fire officer spent £27,000 in two years on business class flights. This was one Mike Thomas, who took trips to the US, Canada, Japan and New Zealand to attend search and rescue training programmes on business class tickets - then charged them back to the council.

These costs were incurred "in his work with groups aiming to improve firefighter safety at an international level". Why did this fall to the taxpayers of Lincolnshire?

Still, at least Mr Thomas is applying the lessons he learned for the benefit of the taxpayers of Lincolnshire? Seems not - he is now former chief fire officer Mike Thomas. If all this overseas research was going to be worth while, why was it best to send someone just ending his career?

The council chief executive says the expenditure contravened council rules. Did the chief fire officer not know this? Did the person who signed the payments off not know this? If they didn't they should have done.

So who has suffered - apart from the taxpayers? Guess what. Mistakes have been made and steps have been taken to address them. And that's it, of course. Tough luck, taxpayers. Your money's gone.

The eurozone must shrink - and will

If the architects of the euro planned it to fail, to make fiscal and fuller political union necessary, their imaginations failed them.

Why would any country welcome more integration when it was already in the grip of an economic squeeze? Especially as closer integration would bring the prospect of the squeeze continuing and tightening - with no effective way for the citizens to bring pressure on their masters to change it.

Eric Edmond explains how the economics point to the eurozone splitting in two, the northern part in a new 'mark zone', the southern part keeping a devalued euro. But "will it happen?" he asks. "I doubt it." For Ambrose, the two halves are locked together in a broken marriage.

Greece and Spain, for two, are already suffering. For ordinary Greeks the big bailout adds up to years of hardship, while Spain's jobless rate has reached 21.5%, and more and more jobless Spaniards are seeing their unemployment benefits expire - some 560,000 people have no support at all. If subsidies from the EU don't make up for individuals' worsening poverty - and no hope that it would be relieved in the short term - why would they vote for more of this?

Greece is a crooked economy, Spain is trying but is hamstrung by its regional governments, and Italy is probably incapable of any real economic reform at all. In Portugal real M1 deposits have fallen at an annualised rate of 21% over the past six months, buckling violently in September. Recession beckons. As Ambrose summarises:

Europe’s leaders are betting that a reduction of red tape and a radical shake-up of the labour markets will unleash growth in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain, a decade hence. In the meantime, the governments of these near helpless countries must soldier on with perma-slump, and riot gear, and pray for a miracle.

Democracy won't tolerate this - especially at the hands of unaccountable foreigners. So the eurozone in its present form is doomed.

Abolish government overseas aid

The Spectator will be holding a debate about the overseas aid budget.

Dambisa Moyo in her book Dead Aid is persuasive on why perpetual aid is unlikely to work. However, the issue for the Spectator debate seems to be not that, but whether everyone should be forced to contribute, through taxation.

They shouldn't. In the localist Big Society, individuals make their own decisions about how much to give, and to what. The only remaining question: should these voluntary contributions be subject to tax relief, making taxpayers at large contribute anyway?

Of course politicians love doling out other people's money. But why should we let them dole out money we can't afford, when there's that more democratic alternative available?

The Department doesn't audit aid properly anyway, and some of it goes to bizarre causes. It has shown itself an unfit steward.

Stop compulsory aid and close the department.

A good move by the GMC

The General Medical Council has drawn up new guidelines reminding doctors that their care goes beyond clinical treatment. The guidelines tell doctors they have a duty to take ‘prompt action’ whenever there are ‘problems with basic care for patients who are unable to drink, feed or clean themselves’.

Cue indignation from the usual suspects who huff and puff that this should be the norm anyway.

But it seems a good move. The GMC is surely sending a public message, on behalf of patients and doctors, to nurses and managements.

They are now on public notice to respond to doctors' concerns.