ERSATZ AND GLOBAL WARMING

Denied access to world markets by the Royal Navy the Germans,during world war two, developed a number of artifical substitutes.It was then that the word ersatz
crept into the English language largely as a term of derision.

One of those ersatz products, however, was oil and yet another was rubber.With these substitutes the Germans contrived to run an economy and conduct a highly mechanised war for 5 years.

Some may be enraged to learn how oil was produced.It involved the combination of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane.The attentive will note that two of these constituents
are the notorious greenhouse gases which are in overabundant supply and likely to remain so.

Unlike the carbon capture scheme on which vast amounts are to be spent this oil production is proved technology. It is operated today in South Africa for the production of diesel.It could provide oil without the bother of sucking it out of the ground and transporting it around the world.

The search is on for a sustainable source of energy without which human society as we know it cannot exist.What could be more sustainable than those basic constituents of our atmosphere
naturally generated, freely available and allegedly out of balance.

At the end of the war the synthetic oil plants were dismantled and transported to the USA presumably for safe keeping.

If the danger of global warming is such as the authorities would have us believe surely the interests of the oil industry cannot be allowed to stand in the way of such a simple solution to the most serious problem facing humanity.
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Question

If an average 3 bed house were to be roofed with solar panels instead of tiles how would that affect building price and how much of that building's electricity requirements would be generated.How would the cost of maintaining such a roof compare with conventional tile or slate say over a 50year period.

Water Meters

Water is as necessary to life as air.There can only be one justification for rationing and that is to provide equal amounts of an inadequate supply.Rationing by price can never be justified because it would afford unlimited supply to those that can pay and in theory none for those who cannot. Such a situation of total deprivation could never be allowed to happen and certainly not at the discretion of a commercial company.

Water companies attempt to justify their call for meters by claiming a need to conserve supply implying shortage. In the UK the inadequacy is of storage capacity and a lack of the means to move water from one area to another. We have an electricity grid and a gas grid but no water grid.

Electricityis generated where it is economical to do so and carried by wire to where it is needed. Gas is imported from under the north sea or in ships and piped to where it is used.Water falls from the sky abundantly in some areas and less so in others. There is no adequate means of moving it from one site to the other.

No commercial company is at base solicitous for anything but profit. Customers are a means to that end including for water companies.If they can bring it about that households have their supply metered it will be possible better to control their cash flow and hence their profit in the future.

There is one disturbing element at present only marginally evident. That is population growth.
In normal circumstances that would occur as part of a natural balance in which water supply would be one factor.I refer to deliberate stimulation of growth by immigration without regard to any consideration but increase in numbers.That could induce many shortages including shortage of temper. It could indeed produce numbers for which the water supply is inadequate. Natural increase in a fertile population will be more than enough of a problem.

The way to control that situation is not to ration water but to restrict entrants.

Could it not be that the whole idea of water as a commodity is wrong just as air as a commodity would be.Is it not possible that the delivery of water becomes secondary to the delivery of profit to shareholders?

DISCRIMINATION

Nothing could be more discriminatory than the Roman Catholic claim to be the one true faith.

It is a ludicrous claim and without historical foundation. The Church in England as opposed to the Church of England is centuries older than the Church of Rome. Indeed the impetus for the foundation of a Christian Church in Rome came from a Roman Emperor, Constantine, who was proclaimed in York, a city which already had a well founded Christian Bishop.

Furthermore the proposal to discriminate in favour of a minority RC population in the UK is
preposterous.

Few people would object to the removal of discrimination against women in the royal succession but that is an unrelated matter

Quantitative Easing

The US Federal Reserve has announced that it is to apply 1.15 trillion dollars to the purchase of long term US Treasury Bonds as the latest move to repair damage to the banking system. This involves the creation from nowhere of the necessary funds in order to increase the volume of money in circulation. They are seeking to make good money irresponsibly created by banks without proper regard to security and with the consequences that are plain for all to see. Something similar on a smaller scale is already being done by the Bank of England.

However this operation is wrapped in opaque terminology like ' quantitative easing ' what is being done is printing money.We are potentially back to the days of what Dennis Healey, a former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, described as confetti money.

This may hardly affect the very elderly depending on how long they have to live. For the very young and the not so young it is a serious matter although the consequences will be disguised. The number of noughts in the account will remain unchanged but the purchasing power will not.

For the latter, money in the bank or under the bed is not a good idea. The odd Rembrandt or even a house ( in the long run) may be a better alternative. Anything is desirable whose paper value will appreciate as the purchasing power of currencies declines.

Taken to extremes governments would be able to discharge their debts by printing money. It is not likely to happen to that extent.For one thing China and Japan hold vast reserves of dollars. For the value of their holdings to be eliminated in this way would not be regarded with favour. There must be a limit which they could tolerate with equanimity for the general good.

Already banks are being allowed to hold balances belonging to the public at zero or little cost.That is a liberty considering the rates at which those funds are being employed. There is even talk of banks charging to hold deposits which happened at one time in Switzerland. If that were to be done at the same time as currencies were being debauched it would be difficult to avoid suspicion of fraud.

Governments are fondly imagined to have the safety and well being of their citizens as a first responsibility.In recent times it has been difficult to see even a common interest.













ederalReserve

Strange but true

It is odd that the politicians whom the British elect to represent their interests recognise no proprietorial rights in the indigenous population. Indeed it could plausibly be argued that they give preference to incomers.

Is it remotely racist to draw attention to this anomaly? The politicians would like people to think so. They have enacted legislation to protect their preference. It is quite naughty to draw attention to facts of this kind. It is even naughtier to resent them and to want to do something about them is to risk being classified as a dangerous extremist.

Yet it is a fact that, in Britain, an unknown number of incomers, maybe as many as three millions ,have been housed somehow more often as not with local authority help. At the same time large numbers of 'natives' have been on housing lists for many years and so far as the local authorities are concerned can go on waiting.

Perhaps it is even more odd that the British continue to elect the same people to serve and defend their interests.

RAMBLINGS ON GLOBAL WARMING

It seems strange that amongst all the proposals for controlling CO2 emissions nobody has yet suggested banning undue exertion. After all human beings are puffing out CO2 like crazy and the more they exert themselves the more oxygen they take in and the more CO2 they blow out.

Ought we not to know the effect of human exertion on the looming problem of climate change?
It is claimed that we have statistics on the amount of methane vented from the back end of the bovine population so why not?

To my non mathematical mind it would seem to be a relatively simple problem to arrive at an average output of CO2 for a human being at rest and to multiply that by the estimated world population.Using that as a base it ought to be possible to evaluate the effect of exertion.

In the history of this planet the population of human beings has increased beyond all reason and continues to do so. In geological time that is a recent event. Might there not be a connection?

Governments ,which seem to go out of their way to fund unlikely scientific investigations, have been behind the door in missing this opportunity.

Of course to ban exertion would conflict with that other obsession of recent times, obesity.It may be that we are looking at that problem from the wrong angle.Perhaps the solution is not more exercise but restriction of food intake.I have seen it stated that the health of the British population was good during world war II when essential foodstuffs were in short supply and tightly rationed.

The opportunity for more bureaucractic control in this area is very attractive.It could make a contribution to solving the unemployment problem and would go some way to increase the consumer spend.

Banning exertion however might have to be selective.It could have consequences for our way of life which some, but not all, would find congenial. It would mean an end to football,rugby, horse racing, gyms and badminton to mention just a few activities.

It would require a definition of undue exertion which would occupy lawyers for quite a time at great expense.

On reflection perhaps we meddle too much.