Sheep in global warming shocker

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Came across this rather amusing snippet in the Metro’s MiniCosm column, and felt it deserved slightly wider coverage, thought a quick search does show it’s being picked up quite well once you know to search for it (“sheep tree rings”)

The minicosm article says:

“For more than 100 years, tree rings have been used to record climate. But nibbling from sheep could have had more of an impact on their development than historic changes in the weather. After spending nine summers in pens with sheep, cross sections of 206 birch trees were measured. Tree ring widths were more affected by the number of sheep around than the ambient temperature at the site, Scottish and Norwegian scientists found. ‘The density of herbivores affects the tree ring record, at least in places with slow-growing trees” they said.”

A more in depth article can be found over on escience news. Which also notes that:
“Many factors in addition to climate are known to affect the tree ring record, including attack from parasites and herbivores, but determining how important these other factors have been in the past is difficult.”

So the “settled science” is based on an indirect indicator of temperature which is largely affected by non-climate related factors which can in themselves only be indirectly estimated:

“The good news is that past densities of herbivores can be estimated from historic records, and from the fossilised remains of spores from fungi that live on dung.”

And which judging from this study they’ve only just started to disentangle – now obviously this doesn’t disprove anything, well except that maybe the science isn’t actually settled. Though of course as LegIron is won’t to observe the moment anyone claims that the science is settled they’ve ceased doing science.

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For the removal of doubt

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For a while now many people have been talking about the inexorable drive by our political elites to form a united states of Europe. We have of course often been rebuffed as being a bit tin-hat and of course that’s not what’s happening.

Well a bit of video over at Archbishop Cranmers rather lets the cat out of the bag.

As Captain Ranty has observed on many occasion if the EU controls the finances, then everything else effectively follows. Mind he does today also offer the hope that forcing fiscal unity will render the implosion of the EU project inevitable – of course it may get all rather messy before that happens and the implosion will likely be messier. The article by < ahref=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100098260/this-crisis-will-give-germany-the-empire-its-always-dreamed-of/">Peter Oborne that the Captain links to is well worth the read, and strongly echo’s much of the thinking in Archbishop Cranmers earlier piece. The replacement of the sovereign state with a united Europe regardless of the will of the people has been sought after for a long time, and pursued with varying methods and degrees of success down the ages. The disparity of peoples, customs and laws contains the seeds of it’s own destruction just as it has for every previous attempt.Meanwhile the great and good think the solution to the current problem is “more Europe, not less”.

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So it’s a default

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I caught the news about the possibility of the Greeks defaulting on their debt last night, but wanted to check I was understanding things properly at the time. Not that my understanding was helped any by checking what the BBC were saying as last night they were following the line that it wasn’t a default really, though thanks to their wonderful habit of updating articles without mentioning the fact you’d not know that this morning. Now of course the headline isn’t “Greece defaults” but:

“Greece aid package boosts stock markets”

And any mention that some people might consider that forcing lenders to swap the loans they’d already made for longer term ones at worse rates might be considered to be a default is saved until the third paragraph and then it’s just due to those nasty ratings agencies.

But for comedy value there’s Angela Merkels response:
“I strongly welcome the voluntary contribution from the banks.”

Sarkozy continues to deny reality saying:

“If the rating agencies are using the word you just used (default), it is not part of my vocabulary.”

I wonder if I could avoid paying tax by saying it wasn’t part of my vocabulary. But as Archbishop Cranmer observes the EU has lots of form for this sort of linguistic denial. The Greek default is apparently a unique and exceptional thing, but haven’t we heard that before? And of course it’s so unique that “relaxation in lending conditions was also extended to bailed-out Portugal and the Republic of Ireland”. Most worryingly though the quote seems to have vanished it looks as though the Greeks have decided that because they’ve stiffed their lenders and put off repaying anything till tomorrow they no longer need to pursue austerity measures. To be fair so far why should they – if it looks like they’ve got problems the EU will bail them out, they have to to save the EU project. Stealing from the BBC again Frank Schaeffler of the liberal German Free Democrats Party seems to give the only reaction that makes any sense:

“Without the possibility of leaving the euro the debt reduction brings nothing – Greece will remain on a drip-feed from creditor countries for a long time”

Osborne seems to continue to be in some alternate reality hailing the idea to lend the Greeks more money as
decisive economic action. The BBC article does go on to quote John Redwood and Bill cash though both of whom seem to still be at least slightly in touch with reality and how debt works. The markets are certainly not under any such illusions, and given the choice between what the market says and what the politicians say history says bet on the market. Finally in case anyone is as confused as all this as I was the Wall Street Journal has a rather good explanation of how credit agencies work and what the various types of default are.

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