Drew Wagar

I’ve resisted the temptation to blog about Global Warming / Climate Change to date…

This is mostly because I try not to write about subjects in which I am wholly ignorant or unqualified to pass comment. I’ll start by saying I’m not a scientist (despite holding a BSc and being a hobby astronomer).

I’ve not got much to add to the debate, because I’m not a member of the IPCC an Oil Company or similar. I’m haven’t seen the data, and the likelihood is that I wouldn’t understand it. I don’t know enough about the properties of Carbon Dioxide, Methane and other green-house gases, nor do I understand the effects of the sun, moon, oceans, upper atmosphere or any of the other things that may or may not be influencing our climate.

I will make the following observations.

1. The debate seems often to be categorised into those who believe in man made global warming and those who don’t. This strikes me as very unscientific. You shouldn’t need to ‘believe’ in this sort of thing. Belief requires faith, and faith requires an unsupported leap of logic. Fine for religion, not for policy setting and remediative action. If you ‘believe’ in something here, I question your rationale.

2. Politicians are involved. Well, they’re involved in everything of course. Politicians exist to curry favour, make short term policy decisions and get re-elected. Nothing else matters to them. GW/CC is merely a tool to be used to further their aims from their perspective. Whether it be traffic congestion legislation, building regs or import and export tariffs. GW/CC is subject to massive manipulation for ulterior motives.

3. Lies, damn lies and statistics. Enough said.

4. Scientists need money. Scientists are no more independant than anyone else. You need money to live. Research requires money. Money comes from grants. Grants are awards by people or organisations with a vested interest. The right finding will get you another grant. This is not the fault of the scientists. This is life.

5. Computer models are used to predict dire consequences. I’m a computer expert. These models are utterly falicious. Even the best are simplistic, vague approximations of reality, which do not reflect reality in the slightest. The only way for a computer model to be taken seriously is for it to be benchmarked, by which I mean that it needs to accurately predict the future over a long period of time. Start a model now and lets see how ‘on the ball’ it is by 2019. If it’s accurate I’ll eat my hat. Has any model achieved anything like this to date. No. Don’t believe a computer model.

6. We do not know enough about what is going on. We don’t even know what 85% of the universe is made of (dark matter and dark energy are pretty much the same as ‘here be dragons’ on the edge of medieval maps). We live in orbit around a massive nuclear fusion bomb, drenched in radiation, affected by gravity with an ecosystem orders of magnitude more complex than we can comprehend. Our ignorance is staggering. Let’s not flatter ourselves that we can make policy decisions based on ‘fact’.

However.

And this is a big ‘however’.

We are wasting the Earth’s resources at a frightening rate, we are overpopulating the planet, we are chucking all sorts of pollutants into the atmosphere. Oil, gas and coal are a finite resource. We should act as long term custodians of this planet. We should clean up our act regard of whether GW/CC exists or not, or is caused by us or not. We’ve got one planet, and no access to any others.

Reduce, re-use, recycle. It’s a good idea anyway!

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Time was when a new car really did mean something.

When I was growing up my parents had a collection of old bangers; a Fiat 500, a Mini 850, a Ford Cortina (mk2) and a Citreon something or other. None were new and most spent a lot of time being repaired. I recall a number of weekends spent up at our garage (at the top of the road, not outside the house) taking oily bits of cars apart with my Dad. These were the days that you always took a weekend to go anywhere. You needed a day to get there, a day to get back and an overnight stay to prep the car in between. It was a huge relief when we finally got a decent car.

I can still remember the day my Dad finally got a company car and what it was. 1986 and a shiny new D reg Audi 80 1.6s. I can remember it was one of the first cars to be fully galvanised. We thought we’d joined the big time. Getting a company car back in the 80s meant you were going places.

Of course, company cars were a perk, and the tax man quickly did his best to knobble that. Even so,  it wasn’t long before company cars became less of a novelty and more of a common place sight on the roads. By the time I started work the roads were brimming with Vauxhaul Cavaliers, Ford Sierras, Peugeots and various other repmobiles.

Cars have always been status symbols to many people. I saw a car advert as recently as last year saying “A car is the biggest set of cloths you can wear, it defines you. Choose well.”

Back then, if a new car arrived on your neighbours driveway, you’d obligingly twitch your curtains and make the ‘oo-ah’ noises about it. Car makers pandered to this of course with their ‘ranges’; obviously you avoided the basic ‘L’ – social death! You wanted atleast the ‘GL’ or the ‘GLX’, then came the ‘i’s’, GTI, SRi, GLXi. Then you couldn’t be seen dead unless you had a 16v, or a V6. Nowadays, if you care about image, it’s still a pointless 4×4 it would seem, because you can’t be seen dead in a more useful saloon, estate or MPV.

The 4×4 image is “I’m a rough and tumble outdoorsy adventurer type, you just happen to have caught me on the day I went to Tescos, that’s all.” Whereas the saloon, estate and MPV image is “I remember the Good Life, I’ve got kids and Tescos is about as interesting as it gets.”

People seem obsessed by image, but I can’t quite figure out who they are trying to impress. Are there people who still look at your car, phone, cloths and make personality judgement calls on that alone? Perhaps I don’t want the answer to that one.

This is why I love driving my old, but virtually perfect condition 1983 Mk1 Golf GTI. It was an image car in the 80s, but it’s not anymore. People don’t know how to take it. It’s old (that can either be cool or uncool) but it’s clearly been cherished and looked after so it’s not an old banger despite being 26 years old. It’s sporty, it’s different but it doesn’t really fit a social category anymore. Who drives that sort of semi-classic car today? Youngster? No, too expensive. Boy racer? No, not fast enough. City boy? No, too cheap. Sales Rep? No, too small and old. School teacher? Dentist? Reverend? Windowcleaner? Astrophysicist? Trapize-artist?

It says nothing about me at all. People react on one of three ways when they see it. They either ignore it because they can’t figure out what image it’s giving off, ask why you’re driving such an old car (those for who only ‘new’ is cool) or (more commonly) get all enthusiastic about seeing something so unusual and marvel at the great condition it is in, usually with “I/My Dad/My Grandad used to have one of these.” thrown in.

Years ago a new car on your neighbours driveway made you think, “Wow, he’s obviously doing well. I’d better make sure they’re on the tupperware party invite list…”

With the rise of easy credit, equity release and zero percent APR, anyone can go and buy a new car. Nowadays a new car on your neighbours driveway is likely to elicit the thought, “I wonder how much debt he’s saddled himself with trying to impress everyone!”

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Now, I’m a fan of fantasy novels. A good one transports you to a different world and acts as pure escapism from our world, which, let’s face it, can be awfully depressing unless you deliberately switch off the television and go and do something less boring instead.

I feel a bit uncomfortable about trying to review Christopher Paolini’s books. Here’s a kid who wrote a book when he was a teenager. Cool, I did that, but mine was rubbish. His was good enough to get published. Cool guy.

Then you find that his Dad published the book through the family publishing business. Not such a cool guy.

Then you find out that Christopher toured over 135 schools to promote his book. That’s hard work. He also painted the cover and drew the maps. Cool guy again.

Then you saw the film. Well, the least said about that the better. Jeremy Irons and dragons don’t mix well. Poor guy.

I tried to read ‘Eragon’ with an open mind. A nineteen year old author is not going to be Tolkien, McCaffrey, or Herbert are they? No, they’re not

Actually, it’s not awful, it’s just not great. I was enjoying the story up until a point, before I began to realise I’d read this story before somewhere. For ages I couldn’t figure out what it was. It isn’t a rehash of any ‘Dragon’ stories I could recall, it wasn’t ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘Dune’.

Then, I realised. It’s ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ in medieval world.

The story is set in a world ruled by an evil empire. It wasn’t always like this, there was a band of magical warrior types. One of these turned evil and exterminated the others. (Read Mr. Vader and the Jedi)

We start with a princess (Arya) running away from the agent of the evil empire with a prized item which is obviously important. (Princess Leia and the plans for the Death Star.)

She’s captured, but manages to send prized item (a dragon egg) to an old servant of the magical warrior types who is living in solitude in a distant back water village (Rebel plans, R2-D2, Obiwan Kenobi – “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope!”)

Up pops Eragon, the poor farm boy who lives with his Uncle (Luke Skywalker).

He finds the egg (rebel plans, R2-D2) and visits the villages’ crazy old man, called Brom (Kenobi) who turns out to be a wise old man instead, one of the survivors of the magical warrior types. (Jedi Knights).He’s been keeping an eye on Eragon ever since his father (also a magical warrior type) was killed by the top baddie. (So far, so George Lucas)

The evil empire are still trying to find the egg, and whilst Eragon is away they find his village and destroy it (Luke’s Uncle and Aunt/Storm Troopers). Off goes Eragon and Brom to the next settlement (Luke and Kenobi/Mos Eisley)

Brom gives Eragon a strange ancient sword (Lightsabre). Eragon is almost immediately a master of the sword because of his latent magical ability (Use the force Luke!)

Along comes a rogue they meet on the way, Murtagh (Han Solo).

Eragon realises that the princes Arya is being tortured to gain knowledge of the goodies location by the evil baddie dudes (Darth, Moff Tarkin and Leia).

Eragon is captured by the evil empire dudes (Tractor beam, pulled into the Death Star). And finds princess Arya is locked in the same place (Detention block AA-23?)

They manage to rescue Arya and escape, facing down a top baddie, with Brom dying valiently in the process (Obiwan Kenobi, Darth Vader – “Your powers grow weak old man, you should not have come back…”)

They then head of the goodies secret hideout but get tracked in the process (‘The moon with the rebel base will be in firing range in fifteen minutes)

They prepare for an epic battle (X-Wing attack on the death star)

They all fight valiantly and appear to be loosing when Eragon comes up with a super magic word which blows away the enemies ability to command its troops (“You’re all clear kid, now let’s blow this thing and go home!”)

They win…

It’s so blatent I’m amazed he didn’t get sued by Mr. Lucas. What’s worse is his second book ‘Eldest’ is pretty much a rehash of ‘Empire Strikes Back’. So far the third one ‘Brisingr’ isn’t following the route of ‘Return of the Jedi’ so precisely, but we’ll wait and see.

By the way ‘Brisingr’ is a magic word which starts fires, hence the title of this post….

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Well, what do you know. The ‘Angel of the South’ is going to be a horse. Not just any old horse either, but a 50 metre high horse, 33 times lifesize.

Have a look at the BBC video clip about it.

Of all the daft designs that managed to get shortlisted, this is probably the best of a bad lot. Kent’s ‘Invicta’ symbol is, of course, a prancing white horse. Not that this horse is prancing though. In fact it looks like a horse that has been standing in a field for hours on end and is bored out of its mind.

I’m sure we could better use the £2Million it will take to build this, but you could say that about any piece of large scale art work.

I’m no artist myself (really?! ), but I don’t quite see the ‘artwork’ here. It’s a horse, it’s not unusual in any way, it doesn’t suggest ‘freedom’ or ‘back to nature’ or ‘galloping off into the sunset’; it’s not a stylised interpretation of horsey-ness, it’s not a surreal horse with both eyes on one side of its head or anything Picasso-like, it’s just a scaled up horse. How hard is that? Five minutes with a 3D modelling tool and a download of a horse model from Google. Big deal.

Then again, I think the Turner Prize is a complete waste of time and money, as is the Tate Modern. I’m firmly in the amateur  ‘I like what I like’ category of art appreciation. For me, art has to have a few things; look nice/interesting and have obviously taken a lot of time and effort to create. Painting a blue square or chucking some pencil shavings on the floor is not art.

Still, as I said, the horse is better than the rest of the rubbish presented. A bunch of interlocking geometric shapes, a mountain of rubbish with a house on top, a tower with a light on it, and a winged disc thing. (Actually the winged disc thing isn’t too bad, but it has nothing to do with Kent).

With my astronomy hat on, this is good news. The design for a great tower with a hugely powerful beam of light shooting up into space – just what we don’t need. Light pollution is bad enough, though the Ebbsfleet area is already pretty much a dead loss astronomically speaking and generally, my considered opinion is that big towers with lights on the top are not a great idea.

What would I have done if I had to spend £2Million on a sculpture to represent Kent. (Apart from trying to find a way not to spend £2Million on a sculpture to represent Kent and spend it on something worthwhile…) – probably a stylised Oast House or similar, but it would be functional, generating some wind power or something…

As for the horse…

I wonder if you’d be able to fly a light aircraft between its legs, snowspeeder style?

I’ll keep an eye on this one though, I want to make sure it isn’t hollow. You know what they say…

“Timeo Danaos et dona Ferentes.” !

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Well, we’re in the midst of the coldest winter for 13 years, and Kent has now had the most snow it’s seen in the last 18 years. More to come if the weather forecast can be believed.

Everytime it snows in this country you get the same tired and cliched sequence of events…

1. BBC weather forecasters compete with glee to be the ones to announce the “snow’s coming folks”!

2. News and media outlets trumpet the impending doom based on a Met office “Severe Weather Warning”.

3. Despite advance warning, both trains and roads are incapable of coping with 3-4 inches of snow

4. Despite the obvious disruption looming because our our inability to cope with snow, people decide to try to get out anyway and add to the chaos, wasting their entire days struggling in one direction, finding out that the sensible people stayed at home and there is no point being in the office, and then giving up and struggling back the other way again.

5. Some smug people major on their death defying exploits in getting to work/getting home through “atleast 4 feet of snow”(contrary to known weather conditions at their location which seems to suggest about 2 inches of snow actually fell)

6. A contrary bunch of smug people moan on about “how it was much worse in the ‘long long ago/other country I visited once’ and don’t make such a fuss”.

6. 4×4 drivers, finally having a reason for owning their pointless vehicles, get to gloat over ‘ordinary’ cars and then go on to crash and get stuck in more inaccessible places.

7.  The media goes on and on about the snow so we can watch the days stupidity all over again when we get home.

In defense of our rather pathetic response to snow, it is worth mentioning two things.

1. The UK doesn’t get that much snow, so we’re not really used to it, it’s unusual enough to be noteworthy. In addition, maintaining a fleet of snow plows and snow related gear year after year when it doesn’t snow, can be seen as a big expense. I’m sure much of our snow related stuff has been trimmed by a bean counter somewhere.

2. With the UK being generally mild, snow tends to melt and then freeze during the day and night, which does allow it to seep into machinery, railway points and the like, causing considerably more difficulty than the dry powdery stuff you get in colder countries.

That said, we’re still useless, what we need is a calm, rational response to….

…Oo look, it’s snowing again!

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