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« 'Tiny the Turbine' | Main | Bremorse - Josh 377 »
Tuesday
Jun282016

Playing the Lead - Josh 378

Please note, no actual Labour Leaders were harmed during the making of this cartoon.

Cartoons by Josh

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Reader Comments (449)

Thank you, :) AK. Read yr stuff @CE....
U have made my day!
H/t Clint Eastwood.

Aug 4, 2016 at 10:31 AM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

Uk coal inputs into electricity generation

Down 50%~ in Q1 2016

Biomass inputs now approaching coal inputs.

Q1

Coal: 3.54 mtoe

Biomass (chiefly American wood pellets) 2.54 mtoe.

Source: Energy trends publication

All means are being used to keep the price up so as to maintain the debt standing behind the utility companies.
The Usury class intends to turn the UK into a wood burning society again.
All so as to remain on top of the dung heap.
Quite incredible.
The UKs electricity prices have not moved despite a epic drop in commodity prices.

Aug 4, 2016 at 2:59 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Q1 electricity imports hit another record
Now up 22% from Q1 2015, standing at 6 Twh

Bailing out French based nuclear?

Aug 4, 2016 at 3:03 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

As I said I'm in bear country- New Hampshire, not North Hampshire!
Apparently they are quite common.
But I digress.
Just how is it ecologically sound to cut down forest over here, chip it and sail it over to England to burn it in Drax?
It isn't- just the logical result of the insanity of Barreness Worthless's wet-dream Climate Change Act.
I' m hoping it might be "brexited".

Aug 4, 2016 at 11:19 PM | Unregistered CommenterDon Keiller

I believe, Don, that at one time Canada(Ontario?) had a power plant that used wood pellets sourced in Norway. So the madness doesn't discriminate directionally.

Different AK @ CE, Beth; both are a joy to read.
==============

Aug 5, 2016 at 1:33 AM | Unregistered Commenterkim

Have been trying to work out what connection I have with CE (and what CE is). Kim suggests I'm someone else. So confusing for those precious few brain cells left. Spent quite a few more of those cells over at the new-hockeystick discussion trying to get Phil Clarke to recognize reality. Oh the waste!

Aug 5, 2016 at 6:22 AM | Unregistered CommenterAK

AK my apology fer confusing you with "AK" at Climate Etc' Judith Curry's blog.
That AK is likewise of a sceptical disposition and erudite. Thx kim fer correction.

Aug 5, 2016 at 8:24 AM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

Beth, kim Henseforth will once again shapeshift my nom-de-blog to avoid mass confusion. Thanks to you both for drawing this to my attention.

Aug 5, 2016 at 8:38 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Serfs luv ter be charmed:)

Aug 5, 2016 at 11:09 AM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

Let's face it, the DECC was misnamed.
More like the department for high energy price preservation.
Using this nameplate supposedly crazy policies such as replacing coal with lower Btu wood pellets becomes a rational policy ploy.
It's all about preserving the vast ecosystem of debt claims we have come to live under.
This can only be achieved by inflating prices, now at all costs.
Economic, social and environmental concerns hold little weight.
The only goal is to preserve the freedom of the few against the many.
Bellocs definition of capitalism has stood the test of both vast evidence and time.

Aug 5, 2016 at 11:16 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

"Trolls" love being called erudite, even in error.

Aug 5, 2016 at 11:37 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Just filled up with "gas". It cost $2.01/gallon including all taxes.
Compare with the U.K.
No wonder manufacturing is screwed, food prices and everything else about double the price by comparison.
We need to get fracking and to Hell with the whinging greens, BBC, Grunaird and the rest of the usual suspects.

Aug 5, 2016 at 11:49 PM | Unregistered CommenterDon Keiller

This appears to be The Last Post.

R.I.P., the Bishop.

Aug 11, 2016 at 12:03 AM | Unregistered CommenterMardler

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/05/recession-bank-england-money-uk-households

Simon Jenkins makes social credit noises.
However being the Guardian he cannot blame the bank.
They are caught inside some sort of intellectual trap or something.
Utter tosh.
In reality it is the religious mission of the bank to push prices beyond the ability to consume.

This is what has driven Gdp growth or total prices in the economy.
Printing money to reduce prices will relocalise the economy and crash Gdp growth.
Finally raising the standards of real living.

Aug 11, 2016 at 11:27 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/08/globalization-is-dead-but-the-idea-is-not/

This guy seems to think people have some sort of choice to accept globalisation / higher prices.

He correctly identifies it's religious character but again falls short.

Aug 11, 2016 at 11:37 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Dork, globalization on balance leads to lower prices, more goods. Like any economic system, it has imperfections. Frankly blaming globalization as a bogey man for Ireland is tedious. Look into a collective mirror.

Aug 12, 2016 at 11:50 AM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

@Hunter.
Globalisation always leads to higher prices or higher Gdp.
With each globalisation event you get increased prices and subsequent increased rationing.

The "authorities" are perhaps desperate to raise prices and therefore increase globalisation.
Going so far as engineering a return to a wood burning / electricity generation society in the uk to prevent local production / consumption.
There is not much hope but the only glint I can see is its total absurdity.
I cannot think of any society that reverted to a lower Btu fuel despite the abundance of higher quality fuel just to preserve the claims of the few against the many.
In fact its totally astounding.
Unprecedented.
Again to repeat the strategic goal of the money monopoly in the Uk and elsewhere is to raise prices to a point which makes domestic production / consumption impossible.
Raising the cost of primary inputs is the most effective method to do this as it raises prices right down the line.
We then witness a subsequent rise in Gdp or prices and for some funny reason cheer this dastardly outcome.

Aug 12, 2016 at 12:59 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

I would advise people to read the IEAs notorious 2012 energy report on the Ukraine.
If you get past the usual platitudes they did exactly what they said on the tin.
To take down a country from a already extremely poor base into something far more extreme.

Simply look at the BPs annual statistical reports for that area.
They are shocking beyond belief.
Coal production is down 35 %~ in 2014
Off the tip of my head oil, gas and coal consumption is down 20+ %.

Now I hear the authorities want to sell the ravaged war population super expensive solar energy.

These are war crimes on a biblical scale.
The money monopoly will stop at nothing to increase the price level.

Aug 12, 2016 at 2:19 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Ukrainian energy consumption
Oil
Y2006: 308kbd
Y2012 :267kbd
Y2015:183kbd (-16.1% slump vs 2014)

Gas
Y2006 :60.3 mtoe
Y2012: 44.6 mtoe
Y2015: 25.9 mtoe (- 21.8% vs 2014)

Coal
Y2006: 39.8 mtoe
Y2012 :42.5mtoe
Y2015 :29.2mtoe (- 18% vs 2014)

Ukraine has negligible renewables so in no way was these fuels replaced in any way.

Aug 12, 2016 at 2:59 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Dork,
Now you are back to gibberish.
Globalization has led to more food at affordable prices, more motorbikes, cars, trucks at lower prices, air travel at lower prices, medical care at lower prices, jobs in developing areas that pay well.
If you wish to visit a nation that is experiencing what anti-globalization is all about, I would invite you to go to Zimbabwe or Venezuela.
Does globalization come at a price?
Yes.
But your blanket statements- and fact free bizarre pastoralist rants- do you no credit.

Aug 12, 2016 at 3:00 PM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

Again you are confusing increased activity with higher standards of living.
This is a elementary mistake.

Again look at western energy balance sheets, especially post war.
Transport inputs increase relative to local production / consumption inputs.

The standard of living in most western European countries has collapsed, especially post Masstricht.

Aug 12, 2016 at 4:12 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Dork,
More people around the world are living healthier, longer lives and are able to do more with those lives. You insist that those at the tablet are starving. Like a scene from that famous Irishman, CS Lewis: The dwarves were so filled with their hatred and blind to the good that they could only see straw and taste straw when in fact at a banquet.

Aug 12, 2016 at 7:06 PM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

[Snip]

Aug 13, 2016 at 1:52 AM | Unregistered CommenterFr. Jack of Craggy Island

Give Father Jack a red hat- he has a profound grasp of ecclasiastical polity.

Aug 13, 2016 at 3:47 AM | Unregistered CommenterRussell

Wait awhile, red hats require personages of quiet deliberation and guile; Father Jack shouts too much. Suggest purple socks as a preliminary step.

Aug 13, 2016 at 6:48 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Och. ACK, look where purple socks got the late prelate of Bishop Hill.

Aug 13, 2016 at 7:56 AM | Unregistered CommenterRussell

A long retreat away from climate cares? Raising funds for the cathedral?

Aug 13, 2016 at 8:17 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

The site is alive with the sound of snipping!!!!!!!

Aug 13, 2016 at 9:40 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Snipperdy do dah, snipperdy day,
my oh my, what a wonderful day.

Aug 13, 2016 at 9:44 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Global versus isolation? Isolation ain't good Thomas Sowell" Wealth, Poverty and Politics.'
Deserts, mountain ranges, and once before ships the sea , geographic barriers to trade, and
exchange of ideas, Ming bureaucracy.

Cities can create fizz, Jane Jacobs, 'Wealth of Cities.'
Venetians in the marshes, trading salt with Constantinople, then import replacement, leather
goods, glass ...telescopes.Development of Venice triggering birth of City states and Italian
Renaissance.

Serfs love open society.

Aug 13, 2016 at 10:27 AM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

Freed serfs become bolshy

Aug 13, 2016 at 10:32 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

I'm an exceptshun.
Susspicious of
promises of Utopia.

A serf.

Aug 13, 2016 at 11:23 AM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

You barely disguise your ancestry "ExceptSHUN",
descendant of the imperial Li Zicheng,
leader of the serf revolt that smote the mighty Ming.

Singer beneath bridges

Aug 13, 2016 at 12:12 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Singer beneath bridges.)

A Night-Mooring Near Maple Bridge

While I watch the moon go down, a crow caws through the frost;
Under the shadows of maple-trees a fisherman moves with his torch;
And I hear, from beyond Su-chou, from the temple on Cold Mountain,
Ringing for me, here in my boat, the midnight bell.

Zhang Ji.

Aug 13, 2016 at 1:07 PM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

An excellent pen bearing dreams
paints sounds
paints colour
paints fragrence in the heart

Luo Zhihai

Singer beneath bridges

Aug 13, 2016 at 1:34 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

'''and Robert Frost, ACK.

Before man came to blow it right
The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong:
I hadn't found the place to blow;
It blew too hard--the aim was song.
And listen--how it ought to go!

He took a little in his mouth,
And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
And then by measure blew it forth.

By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be--
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song--the wind could see.

Aug 13, 2016 at 2:35 PM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

The wind knows the songs of the cities and canyons
The thunder of mountains, the roar of the sea
The wind is the taker and giver of mornings
The wind is the symbol of all that is free

John Denver & Joe Henry

Would enjoy doing this poetic free association with you some more but am afraid we will be snipped.

Singer beneath bridges

Aug 13, 2016 at 3:02 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

U win the jousting, AK.
bts.

Aug 13, 2016 at 3:29 PM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

Poems are for sharing
So never concede
When needs not.

Singer beneath bridges

Aug 13, 2016 at 4:04 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

ACK had best redouble his orisons,

After just forty days in the wilderness, his late prelate's apostle count has fallen below six--even our Lord managed twelve.

Aug 13, 2016 at 7:51 PM | Unregistered CommenterRussell

Curiously theological of you, Russell. However – wrong, as usual.

Aug 13, 2016 at 8:14 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

Russell.
May you be right royally ho'oponoponoed.
Prelates don't have apostles; your lack of ecclesiological knowledge is showing.

Aug 13, 2016 at 8:21 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Some of us are lurking, hoping that they are not merely waiting for Godot.

Aug 14, 2016 at 12:48 AM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

Singer from down under

Magpie

(Gymnorhina hypoleura)


What have you, magpie, to celebrate?
Such glorious chortling in an arid landscape,
Leaves of eucalypts hanging motionless
In the breathless mid-day heat. It isn't
That you can't, or won't complain in some
scenarios, but rather that, by your very song,
You are constrained from self- reflexive musing,
For magpie, you may sing only the songs
Passed down the line by those first ancestors.

Songster extraordinaire, you are programmed
To voice liquid stanzas of affirmation,
Your concert repertoire scarcely allowing
For lamentation.

bts

Aug 14, 2016 at 2:08 AM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

Silent witness
Sing and seeth
Ring and writhe
Sit and seethe;
Skeptics all
Yet we believe.
=========

Aug 14, 2016 at 6:20 AM | Unregistered Commenterkim

Beth

Magpie
(Pica pica)

Oh raucous bird
Orca of the sky
Who sees itself
A master hoarder of others' silver
A builder of lovers' last dreams in far Cathay
A sceptic
No relative of an Aussi butcherbird

Singer beneath bridges

Aug 14, 2016 at 7:15 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Re above, praise be fer trial and error evolution of crittrers and knowledge,
ter wit:

The Evolution of Birds.

Making do with what's at hand,
In this case, 'hands' -
Used to be 'legs,' but they became
Useless little arms
With claw appendage, the kind
You find on odd marsupials like kangaroos,
And on that two-legged oddity
Of the Jurassic, Dinosaur Therapod.
By God! There's a black swan development
If ever there was one.


Fossils unearthed in limestone quarries
By homo sapien with evolutionary tools -
Stone axes won't do it -
Record the evolution of the therapod hand
From flexing wrist of Velociraptor to
Unenlagla's wing-like flaps and
Primitive feathers of Caudipteryx,
Say, there's a giant step for birds.
Then the momentous uncovering of
Flight feathers on fossil Archaeopterix
And we have lift off! ...


A new successful species. Praise be
To tricky Nature for the evolution
Of birds! Lords of the air, of updraft
And perilous tumbling,
Of utterance of sweet song, of joy
To the world and tremulous longing,
Of feathers rivalling in pattern and profusion
The spangled universe, touching the imagination
Of homo sapien, inspiring the visionary words
Of poets, expressive of delights and lamentations
Of mature lovers and yearning dreams of adolescents.

Aug 14, 2016 at 8:52 AM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

Talkin' of 'error' "critters."

Aug 14, 2016 at 9:00 AM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

Beth

Can only concoct one pseudo-poem per day and my earliest morning opportunity has now gone.

Instead I offer my favourite limestone poem (limestones being one of the topics of my career).

The Limestone Rhyme

Pounded, chiselled myriad times, deep in the hills I was mined
Be burned and blazed in ranging fire, is but nothing to my mind
My bones be crushed, body severed, shall brave it all, and more
To leave behind an implacable white, to remain with humankind

Yu Qian

Aug 14, 2016 at 9:45 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

AK
Lovely limestone, makes yer think of Lyell and fossils, and James Hutton,
the man who found time...Three men in a row boat off the coast of Edinburgh,
studying cliff rock strata.

Aug 14, 2016 at 12:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterBeth Cooper

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