The Power of the Blogosphere

Now I will be first to admit that the Blogosphere does contains some very strange characters with some very strange views on things. You can think of it as the democratisation of mental illness as it allows anyone who can type to expound to all and sundry their vision of the world.

At the same time it has radically reengineered the way that campaigns are fought and news is disseminated across the world. Blogs almost always get the breaking news out first with the main stream media struggling to catch up hours or days later. My area of interest is climate science (big intake of breath by all, no surely not, not CLIMATE) and this is one area where the blogosphere has been used to great effect to debunk some of the most crass and blatant distortions of the truth I have seen in many years.

 Why is the blogosphere so influential? Well for a start the costs of entry are very, very small. If you have a bee in your bonnet about something then you can set up a blog about the subject very quickly. If this is an area where there are lots of other interested parties then you may soon find yourself with quite a web readership and by definition in quite an influential position in the very area you are interested in.

If no one is interested your blog withers on the vine, if it strikes a chord then you attract readers and you are up and running.

One good example is Steve MacIntyre’s ClimateAudit.org blog. He has been a thorn in the side of the more “ethically flexible” parts of the climate science community for many years. He simply refuses to lie down and his influence comes almost exclusively from his ability to communicate with an educated and motivated readership via his blog. In past times, pre-blogs what could he have done to get his views across? Not much. The establishment could have silenced him very easily. Regardless of your view as to the veracity of his case you must admit that the fact that he has a platform, which costs very little, but can take on the might and resources of the UN is pretty impressive.

RealClimate is another good example from the other side of the debate. It is a very effective information distributor and largely set up to counter MacIntyre.  This in itself is an acknowledgement by the establishment that the fight has moved out of the dusty halls and into the wilds of the blogosphere.

People now speak of peer-to-peer review of science rather than peer- review. Peer to peer being the review of science by a wide community of educated and well informed bloggers and not just other scientists. I think this is a great way forward and will lead to much more open, and critically useful, discussion of science in all areas.

Regardless of you viewpoint you should be very happy that an active blogosphere is there and stands ready to challenge the establishment view of the world and to drag the mighty down from their ivory towers and engage with the little people (that you and me by the way).

Unity through Failure

For years the EU political elite have been trying to bring about a Federal European state by many means both fair and foul. In the process they have largely managed to shift the democratic process to a side show. If they don't get the answer they want they simply keep asking the question again, whilst applying bullying political tactics, until they get the right answer. The answer they want.

But still they could never quite manage it. Those fucking British hold-outs with their opt-outs and their refunds and their refusal to see things their way, and their whinging and moaning. So non-European. So Anglo-Saxon...

Then came the Euro crisis, a crisis brought about directly by their failure to see the big picture economically and by shameless jerrymandering of the fiscal rules relating to monetery union. And now it seems that they might get what they wanted all along. A single European goverment with full control of the budgets and tax systems of the member states. This is the only way the Euro can ever work or could ever work, and they knew this all along. You cannot have monetery union without political union. They knew this, history clearly tells us this, but they pressed on regardless and in my view engineered this crisis to bring about the union they always wanted.

No you cry, you mad conspiracy theorist, they would not do that their own people? uBt ask youself who has suffered because of this crisis? It certainly was not the EU bureaucrats, commissioners or MEPS. They continued raking it in and are still raking it in. I fear the people of Europe, particularly the people of the peripheral states were seen as acceptable collateral damage in the battle for the greater good.

So the EU now needs a new epithet. The EU - Unity through Failure.

Why the Euro Crisis won't be Solved

Putting aside issue of Nation Sovereignty there are a number of very good reasons why the present Euro crisis cannot be solved by the EU

The first is Economic, as I have aid in the past you simply cannot shackle together divergent economies under the same fiscal rules and constraints and not expect this to cause destructive pressures. One interest rate for a continent as economically diverse as Europe was simply never going to work. I think most intelligent people, whether they be Euro-phile or Euro-skeptic now accept this. To resolve this issue you MUST have a proper fiscal and political union with a European equivalent of the Federal Reserve able to impose fiscal discipline on members.

Personally I think there is a lack of political will to take this necessary step and that being the case the alternative is for the Euro to fail and that is a nighmare scenario. A possibility is a new core Euro bloc with the Northern European countries as members and the peripheral countries thrown to the wolves. Someone on Newsnight last night mentioned that your Greek Euro account could be converted overnight to a much devalued New Drachma. What would your response be to that? Well I am taking my Euros out of my Irish bank accounts.

The second is that whilst The EU presents itself as a single international entity, it is not. It is a loose federation of nation states all of whom are acting in what they conder to be their own national interest. Alastair darling made a very good point about the UK bank bailouts, whether you agree with the action or not, he could simply act. He did not need to secure the unanimous agreement of many disparate states first. If we apply an analogy withe US, were a state to go bust and California has come close a few time, the FED can simply act to bail it out. It does not need to get the agreemnt of the other states before doing this. the USA is a properly constituted federation and the EU is not and that is why even if the Euro crisis WERE solvable, and I don't believe it is, there is no political mechanism in place that would allow effective action to be taken anyway.

The phrase "A Rock and A Hard Place" could have been coined with this fucking mess in mind and the most annoying thing is that it is a crisis entirely manufactured by the EU itself/ It took a great big monetary shotgun, put it under its chin, and pulled the trigger and we now cannot even agree how we get the brains off the ceiling.

But what the fuck do I know, I confidently predicted the Pet Shop Boys would be a one hit wonder.

The Big Flaming Hot Thing in the Sky

Yes that big flaming hot thing that's about 93 million miles away, it seems that , after all, it does have a major effect on the Earth's climate. To the layman that might have appeared to be a self-evident fact but the IPCC and the general climate community have always denied that variations in solar output could have any measurable effect on the climate.

Henrik Svensmark, of the Danish Space Research institute, performed a cloud chamber experiment which showed that an increase in cosmic rays did indeed result in more cloud formation. Cosmic rays intensity is affected by the Solar Wind and the Solar Wind expands when the Sun is more active, this in turn leads to more clouds on Earth and a cooler climate. The reverse is also true. These cycles are approx 1500 years and correspond very well to the long range temperature cycles on Earth

At the time his findings were dismissed but CERN agreed to perform a large scale version of his experiment which would prove or disprove his theory. The results of that experiment are about to be released and CERN's boss, Rolf-Dieter Heuer has forbidden is scientists from interpreting the data. He would hardly be likely to do this if the findings did not support Svensmark's theory.

Svensmark's theory was also fully confirmed last year by an experiment carried out by the Denmark's Univerity of Aarhus. So it appears that the problem with the car may be the engine (The Sun) and not the rear offside wheel nut (C02).

Internet File Sharing

There was an interesting Panorama program on the BBC last night which covered the government’s proposed legislation relating to the downloading of intellectual property by file sharers over the Internet.


The technology is called peer-to-peer and it involves the participation of a central server which co-ordinates the connection of numerous peers, i.e. home PCs and Macs. These machines, and there can be literally millions of these, then cooperate to assemble the required download byte by byte. I describe the technical process as it speaks to the utter stupidity of the proposed “solution” cannot by any stretch of the imagination solve the perceived problem.


If you have teenage kids, and they have access to a computer, then you can be pretty certain they are using Bit Torrent or similar technologies to get their hands on music, software, TV series and films. The government’s proposals, if fully enacted, will see you possibly having a stiff letter from the ISP and if this doesn’t work then eventually having your Internet service suspended. Forget for a second the obvious human rights implications of this and simply look at the practicalities. You can walk into any high street white good store and buy a “pay-as-you-go” 3g data card, plug it into your computer and off you go.


And how will they trace the download to you? They will use your IP address but unfortunately it takes minutes on the Internet to set up a transparent proxy, there are thousands freely available, and you are invisible and untraceable.


So how did proposed legislation of this level of unworkable stupidity ever even see the light of day? The vested interests in the music and film industry have lobbied tirelessly for as they are completely clueless about how to deal with the new economic environment they need to function in. Their natural instinct is to turn protectionism and that has never worked in the pas and there is not reason to suppose that it will work this time either. They quite like having their noses in the trough and would like to carry on pigging out if that’s OK with everyone.


Taking the music industry as an example; it has been exploiting the talent of artists for years and offering them derisory royalty rates in return. In the new economy an artist can reach their audience directly by bypassing the record industry and selling their music, for a reasonable price to their fans and using the recordings as promotional material for their live gigs. A consequence of this new era is the death of the superstar pop groups who take a disproportionate share of the available earnings at the expense of the journeymen who slog up and down the country on the live circuit.


As Billy Bragg said on the program the music industry is fine it is the record industry that has the problem. An artist that can get £10 a year from 500 fans has the foundations of making a living from music. The sooner we see the back of the record companies and their parasitic hangers on the better in my view.


UPDATE: Link to Register article on the Panorama program

Credit Default Swaps and Greece

Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are funny financial instruments. They are similar to an insurance policy intended to protect a creditor or bond holder from the risk of default by the debtor or bond issuer. All in all a very wise precaution if you are extending credit in the form of purchasing bonds from countries or companies.

 Where CDSs depart from insurance is that you can take out this insurance to protect a debt default on a debt for which you have no liability, this is similar to taking out an insurance policy on your neighbour's house because you think that his fire precautions are  bit slack and his house is likely to burn down. A very weird concept indeed. Another twist to the CDS trade is that the instruments are also tradable and can be bought or sold in an "Over the Counter" market.

 Your natural instinct in this situation is to profess this market to be crazy and allowing someone to buy insurance against a debt default for which they have no direct liability cannot be a good thing. This is the argument being put forward currently by the EU in respect to Greece. There has been considerable speculation in the CDS market on Greek bonds as the markets feel that a default by Greece is a reasonably likely outcome and they are willing to stump up the premiums required to benefit should such a default occur.

 The EU want to restrict the capability, particularly of Hedge Funds, to speculate about a Greek Default via the use of CDS instruments. I didagree with this position. The reason that Greece is in its current fiscal position is due to financial mismanagement and political weakness. The speculation by the markets whilst it will pile additional pressure on the EU and the Greeks, will also force them into addressing the fundamental problems in the Euro zone which are needed to prevent the Greek issue spreading to Italy, Spain, Portugal ,Ireland etc.

 The Hedge Funds involved isn this trade stand to make a lot of money should there be a default but also to lose a lot of money should that not happen. That is the natgure of the free market. Attempting to place artificial restrictions on trade, as was done with the short selling ban on bank shares last year, is counter-productive. CDS markets and short selling do not drive events, they react to events. The outcome of events is in the hands of politicians and it does no harms to have a bit of financial pressure to make them "do the right thing".

The Power of the Blogosphere

Now I will be first to admit that the Blogosphere does contains some very strange characters with some very strange views on things. You can think of it as the democratisation of mental illness as it allows anyone who can type to expound to all and sundry their vision of the world.

At the same time it has radically reengineered the way that campaigns are fought and news is disseminated across the world. Blogs almost always get the breaking news out first with the main stream media struggling to catch up hours or days later. My area of interest is climate science (big intake of breath by all, no surely not, not CLIMATE) and this is one area where the blogosphere has been used to great effect to debunk some of the most crass and blatant distortions of the truth I have seen in many years.

 Why is the blogosphere so influential? Well for a start the costs of entry are very, very small. If you have a bee in your bonnet about something then you can set up a blog about the subject very quickly. If this is an area where there are lots of other interested parties then you may soon find yourself with quite a web readership and by definition in quite an influential position in the very area you are interested in.

If no one is interested your blog withers on the vine, if it strikes a chord then you attract readers and you are up and running.

One good example is Steve MacIntyre’s ClimateAudit.org blog. He has been a thorn in the side of the more “ethically flexible” parts of the climate science community for many years. He simply refuses to lie down and his influence comes almost exclusively from his ability to communicate with an educated and motivated readership via his blog. In past times, pre-blogs what could he have done to get his views across? Not much. The establishment could have silenced him very easily. Regardless of your view as to the veracity of his case you must admit that the fact that he has a platform, which costs very little, but can take on the might and resources of the UN is pretty impressive.

RealClimate is another good example from the other side of the debate. It is a very effective information distributor and largely set up to counter MacIntyre.  This in itself is an acknowledgement by the establishment that the fight has moved out of the dusty halls and into the wilds of the blogosphere.

People now speak of peer-to-peer review of science rather than peer- review. Peer to peer being the review of science by a wide community of educated and well informed bloggers and not just other scientists. I think this is a great way forward and will lead to much more open, and critically useful, discussion of science in all areas.

Regardless of you viewpoint you should be very happy that an active blogosphere is there and stands ready to challenge the establishment view of the world and to drag the mighty down from their ivory towers and engage with the little people (that you and me by the way).