On Sunday morning I walked out to Camber Beach, said hello to Connie whose ashes were scattered in Rye Bay almost four years ago and collected some sea shells to adorn my weblog. We are in the midst of an unexpected heat wave…memories of Stockholm in July 2006…so I spent the rest of the day aboard Vemara getting myself sunburnt…and I mean aboard because for almost two hours the high tides over the weekend cut me off from England. I surprised myself by using my time to swab the decks, scrub the sail covers and give the engine a good run.

The Saturday evening concert at St Leonard’s Church in Hythe went well. Lesley Brownbill…the Musical Director of simply opera as well as Ryesingers…would make an excellent Football Team Manager as she has the magical ability to produce peak performance from her choirs on concert night.

This particular event had been fraught with pitfalls. The original intention had been Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte but just as rehearsals got under way the main Soprano Soloist pulled out so a Mozart Concert was decided upon instead. This meant augmenting the small group of opera singers with a chorus. The first half of our programme for the concert concentrated on Mozart’s Sacred Music: Dies Irae, Tuba Mirum and Lacrymosa from Mozart’s Requiem; Canon (K317); Agnus Dei from Mass in C; Laudate Pueri and Laudate Dominum from the Vespers; Ave Verum and Alleluja from Exsultate Jubilate.

After the interval we did pieces from The Magic Flute (Opening Scene, Papageno’s Entrance, Oh Matchless Beauty, The Road You Trod, Oh Isis and Osiris and The Gentle Love), What is So Funny and May Breezes Blow Gently from Cosi Fan Tutte and the The Letter Duet and Now At Last I May Embrace You from The Marriage of Figaro before rounding off with a four-part harmony version of the Flanders & Swann classic Ill Wind. For good measure we sang…yes Virginia sang…the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro…arranged for four-part harmony and entitled Take it from Figure ‘O’.

Tenors as always were in short supply. Cancellation of the Radical Consultation allowed me to step into the breach at the last minute so simply opera ended up being fifteen singers…four of them tenors. In the final run-up disaster struck again when sopranos started going down with sore throats and summer colds. The large and very appreciative audience went back home to their radios and televisions to listen to the Last Night of The Proms…as I did…with the Flanders and Swann version of Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto ringing in their ears with the wonderful line. ‘I’ve lost my horn. I’ve lost my horn. I found my horn…gone.’

Ten years ago in one of my brief encounters with Westminster Party Politics I put my name forward as one of several prospectus parliamentary candidates for the constituency of Oldham West and Royton. For six months leading up to the May 1997 election I published a regular newsletter which gained me a personal written accolade from my Party Leader Sir James Goldsmith.

I had a few run-ins with the Powers-That-Be in the Referendum Party. My pledge to the voters to take out only a average wage and put the rest of my parliamentary salary into a lottery for the Oldham Poor was thrown out for instance. Another one involved Michael Flanders and Donald Swann and their Song of Patriotic Prejudice which I had to withdraw as Head Office felt it sailed a little too close to the wind. This is what Donald Swann had to say.

‘Our Song of Patriotic Prejudice was a jigsaw number full of curious bits and pieces in the show and on the record. But peering at it during editings I decided it was best offered in a simple form with regular verses and refrains whereupon it turns into a severely needed new English National Song…a need to which Michael refers in introducing it…after all the English, the English, the English are best. But please read the lyric at once for the ironic overtones'. About a dozen copies of the original issue of this Fortnightly Update slipped out to loyal Constituency Workers before it was replaced with the approved version...might be worth a bob or two as a valuable collector’s item.

It would be nice if Future Historians devoted more attention to 1906 than 2001 when they report on 9/11. Yesterday saw the one hundredth anniversary of opposition to forced registration in the Transvaal. The campaign was led by a young London-trained lawyer Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Gandhi adopted the strategy of Satyagraha which went further than the Civil Disobedience of Thoreau by adding Confucian ideas of not humiliating your enemy…ideas which are also at the heart of Mohammed’s Teachings. Satyagraha represents the complete antithesis of the 9/11 attacks and the reaction to them of President George Bush’s Neocon Administration.

From the deck of a Gaff Cutter moored on the English Channel Coast it is impossible to make any judgements about what did or didn’t happen on the other side of the pond five years ago. Every scenario is wildly improbable…which means that none can be dismissed on these grounds alone because one of these WIS’s represents the Truth.

Nonetheless Adam Hamilton’s analysis of the Derivatives Markets and Boudewijn Wegerif’s discussion on the global financial situation in the late summer of 2001…both written before the Twin Towers Event…are Required Reading for anyone wishing to keep an open mind on the true identity of the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocities five years ago.

The suspicions that many of us harbour about the official version of 9/11 are rooted in the well-choreographed attempts…in its aftermath…to establish an Anglo-Saxon Global Hegemony, Financial Fascism and One World Totalitarian Government.

This outlandish Global Coup d’État Attempt has been directed by a tiny elite with the Global Central Banking Network at their finger tips and an Imperial Security Complex of Government, Banks, Mercenaries, Private Contractors and TNC Killingry Manufacturers at their beck and call.

Like the US Vietnam Fiasco this will all end in tears…it cannot go any other way as it based on outdated geopolitical theories that ignore China, India and their Diasporas…and completely misreads the nature of Islam.

But the tragedy for Socialism in England is that the Scottish Labourites who chanced to be at the helm in 2001 lacked the instincts…and the historical consciousness…of the English Labour Party of the Vietnam Era.

Harold Wilson and his Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart…with none of the inverted snobbery and inferiority complex of Scottish Labour Politicians…had the wisdom to take Foreign Office advice and put their country firmly on the fence for the duration of America’s ill-conceived imperial adventure in the Far East thereby avoiding the mistake of sending their young men into impossible military situations.

By the end of 2004 seven large hurricanes had been recorded striking the USA this decade. But last year…the year of Hurricane Katrina…the number doubled putting the numbers on track to match the record 23 hurricanes recorded for the 1940-49 decade. The Carbonistas were rubbing their hands in glee. Above is the data from 1900 to 2000. Unfortunately this year the planet has failed to keep up its windy performance. There have been just two large hurricanes and with just six weeks left to the end of the Hurricane Season 2000-2009 looks like just another decade.

Hurricanes are fuelled by damp warm air drawn off tropical seas with a voracious appetite. But the Sahara usually billows clouds of extremely dry and dusty air across the Atlantic and strangles many of the storms at birth. It does this each summer by blowing air off the African coast into the Atlantic every 3-5 days. This year the desert has been particularly active. The Saharan air has even reached Miami where it has left fine red coatings of dust on cars. The skies over Florida have become so hazy that Miami’s Civic Authorities have been switching on the street lights early.

America is at war. The year is 1777. Foreign troops had landed at the head of Delaware Bay and were marching towards the capital of the United States of America. They advanced to Brandywine Creek where they were met early in the morning of September 11 by the American army. The strategy of the invading general was to make a strong surprise flanking movement to destroy the rebel forces by a pincer attack. The plan came perilously close to success. 7500 troops closed in on the rear of the Americans after a circuitous 75-mile march through the surrounding hills.

Surprised, the Commander-in-Chief of the American army ordered the retreat, encountering heavy fire. More than 1000 American soldiers were killed or wounded, and 400 were taken prisoner. The Americans might well have been annihilated had it not been for the entanglement and delay of four battalions of Hessian Mercenaries in thick woodland and the decision not to order exhausted men to pursue the enemy after nightfall.

In the capital America’s new Secretary to the Committee for Foreign Affairs was working in his office preparing dispatches to the American Ambassador in Paris ‘when the report of cannon at Brandywine interrupted my proceedings’. That evening he heard of the American rout and was quick to see the disastrous implications. The capital was now vulnerable to foreign occupation. Many citizens were in a state of fear and dread.

Working feverishly through the night, he drafted a fourth number of The American Crisis, revised it, and by noon the following day had rushed the final version to the printer. He ‘ordered 4000 to be printed at my own private charge and given away’. The 4-page pamphlet circulated widely but had little influence on the terrified populace of the capital who refused to be calmed or inspired to stand up to the advancing army. Each day hundreds left the city. The State Government fled to Lancaster. Members of Congress also packed their trunks and headed for York.

By the evening of September 18, more than 10 000 of the capital’s 30 000 inhabitants had fled. The Secretary proposed forming a Citizens’ Militia, raising a defense fund of 50 000 dollars and throwing up ‘works at the heads of the streets’. The invaders had to be resisted. The inhabitants must prepare for hand-to-hand street fighting. The enemy was not trained in urban fighting and would be wary of getting trapped into it. He managed to convince Colonels Bayard and Bradford and also got the ear of Brigadier-General Thomas Mifflin...sent to the capital as State Governor the previous year to rouse the city for resistance. But all to no avail.

Shortly after midnight on 19th September 1777, bells warning of the enemy’s approach sounded throughout the city. British Grenadiers flanked by howitzers and twelve-pound guns and marching in procession to the quickstep tunes of their fife-and-drum bands, quickly took possession of the city. The Secretary...leaden with despair and left with no alternative...stowed his trunk of personal belongings and Committee for Foreign Affairs papers in a small boat sailing for Trenton. 24 hours later with all hope gone and fearing arrest and death he quit the city, a refugee from war. Behind him lay the sacked City of Philadelphia.

For the next nine months Tom Paine rode the rutted dirt back roads of America, squatted at friends’ homes and dodged British scouts and cannon fire as he tracked the military campaign from close range. The outcome of the previous year’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence was poised on a knife-edge. George Washington needed a victory to turn the tide and lift American morale. After the events of September 11 America’s future looked bleak.

One of the most remarkable recoveries from the ashes of Nine Eleven 2001...234 years later…is Cantor Fitzgerald. One theory has the Cantor office in One World Trade Center as the principal target. Everything else was smoke, mirrors and Watergate & Dallas style cover-ups. The controlled demolition of the twin towers from pre-planted explosives in the basements of the two buildings, the shooting down of the Pennsylvania Boeing…witness statements confirm the presence of fighter plans…and the fake crash at The Pentagon…not enough debris and in the wrong place for any plane to have crashed there…being mere sideshows to draw attention from the Cantor Kill.

Six Hundred and fifty eight Cantor People were murdered in New York five years ago. Everything dollar-related went. Cantor Fitzgerald was seriously big in US Treasury Bond Trading in competition with BNP Paribas and Cantor’s unacceptable edge was eSpeed…an electronic trading system for derivatives and commodities that used a software package called TreasuryConnect which they got this up and running again within 48 hours. Cantor battened down the hatches and regrouped in 2002 and 2003 before returning to New York two years ago as BGC…Bernie Gerald Cantor was the main founder of the business.

Cantor Fitzgerald is not yet back to their pre-9/11 strength but they are half way there with 300 employees in New York…a fifth of their global workforce. A quarter of their profits since 9/11-2001...almost two hundred billion dollars…has gone to the families of the Cantor Victims of 9/11 and on 9th September each year everyone at BGC works for nothing with all the firm’s revenues for the day going to charity.

Numerous studies show there is no increase in extreme weather, hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones. Page 11 of the United Nations’ 1995 IPCC report that set the scene for the Kyoto Protocol claimed that overall there is no evidence that extreme weather events or climate variability has increased in a global sense in the 20th century. Six years later the IPCC was still reporting no long-term trend for tropical and extratropical storms and no systematic changes in tornadoes frequency, thunder days or hail. Björn Lomborg discusses it in The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Thomas Naylor was now somewhat the worse for wear. ‘What about Anecdotal Evidence? Lots of people think there will be more extreme weather with more hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones in the future.’ ‘Yes indeed lots of people think so. But scientific studies do not bear them out. That’s why we do science…to see if our opinions can be verified in the real world or whether we are just having fantasies.’ ‘All these hurricanes are not fantasies.’ Shepherd sighed. ‘Here is the actual data,’ Shepherd said. ‘By decade between 1900 and 2000: 16, 19, 15, 17, 23, 18, 15, 12, 16, 14. US hurricane strikes over the last 100 years are not increasing. The data simply do not agree with you.’

Now El Niňo.’ ‘Yes…’ ‘As you know El Niňo is a global weather pattern that begins when ocean temperatures along the west coast of South America remain above normal for several months. Once it’s triggered, El Niňo lasts about a year and a half affecting weather around the world. El Niňo occurs roughly every four years…twenty three times in the last century. And it has been occurring for thousands of years. So it long precedes any claim of Global Warming.’

‘But what threat does El Niňo represent to the US? There was a major El Niňo in 1998.’ ‘Floods, crops ruined, things like that,’ Naylor replied. ‘Sure but the net economic effect of the last El Niňo was a gain of fifteen million dollars because of a longer growing season and less use of winter heating oil. That’s after deducting $1.5 billion for flooding and excess rain in California. Still a net benefit.’ ‘I’d like to see that study,’ Naylor said. ‘Constanza?’

‘Stanley A. Changnon 1999. Impacts of 1997-98 El Niňo-Generated Weather in the United States in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 80 Number 9 pages 1819-1828. To quote: the net economic benefit was surprisingly positive. Direct losses nationally were $4 billion and benefits $19 billion.’ ‘I’ll make sure you get a copy of the report because it suggests that if Global Warming occurs it will benefit most nations of the world.’

‘So what exactly is your point?’ Naylor asked. ‘You’re saying that we don’t need to pay any attention to the environment, that we can just leave it alone and let industry pollute and everything will be hunky-dory?’ For a moment Constanza thought that Bill would get angry. But he stayed calm and said, ‘If you oppose the death penalty, does it also mean you are in favour of doing nothing at all about crime?’ ‘No,’ Naylor said. ‘You can oppose the death penalty but still favour penalising criminals.’ ‘Yes of course.’ ‘Then I can say that Global Warming is not a threat but still favour environmental controls, can’t I?’ ‘But it doesn’t sound like you are saying that.’

Shepherd sighed. ‘Let’s remember where we live…on the third planet out from a medium-size sun. Our planet is five billion years old and it has been changing constantly all during that time. The Earth is now on its third atmosphere. The first atmosphere was helium and hydrogen. It dissipated early on because the planet was so hot. Then as the planet cooled volcanic eruptions produced a second atmosphere of steam and carbon dioxide.

Later the water vapour condensed forming the oceans that cover most of the planet. Then around three billion years ago some bacteria evolved to consume Carbon Dioxide and excrete a highly toxic gas Oxygen. Other bacteria released Nitrogen. The atmospheric concentration of these gases slowly increased. Organisms that could not adapt died out.’

‘Meanwhile the planet’s land masses floating on huge tectonic plates eventually came together in a configuration that interfered with the circulation of Ocean Currents. It began to get cold for the first time. The first ice appeared two billion years ago. And for the last 700 000 years our planet has been in a geological ice age characterized by advancing and retreating glacial ice. No one is entirely sure why but ice now covers the planet every 100 000 years with smaller advances every 20 000 or so. The last advance was 20 000 years ago so we’re due for the next one.’

‘Even today after five billion years our planet remains amazingly active. We have 500 volcanoes and an eruption every two weeks. Earthquakes are continuous, a million and a half a year, a moderate Richter 5 earthquake every six hours, a big earthquake every ten days. Tsunamis race across the Pacific Ocean every three months. Our atmosphere is as violent as the land beneath it. At any moment there are 1500 electrical storms across the planet. Eleven lightning bolts strike the ground each second. A tornado tears across the surface every six hours. And every four days a giant cyclonic storm hundreds of miles in diameter spins over the ocean and wreaks havoc on the land.’

‘To imagine human beings can stabilize the Earth’s atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. We can’t control the climate. We run from the storms because this is far and away the most sensible thing to do.’

…extracted from a Tavern Talk on Climate with Bill Shepherd