Magic Statistics

Chinese president Hu Jintao has told the Communist Party National Congress that he wants to double per capita income by 2020, and he’ll burn as much as coal as necessary to make that happen.  Bye-bye, Kyoto.

The president needs more copper, iron ore, zinc and natural gas. Above all, he needs more coal to keep the power stations humming nicely and more oil for Chinese cars and lorries. China accounts for more than a third of world demand for coal and the price in Australia soared this year as the People’s Republic switched from being an exporter to being an importer. If Mr Hu had a message for the world in his address to the Communist Party National Congress, it was this: we will burn our coal and, if we have to, we will burn yours, too.

What does this mean? Put bluntly, it means that the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions is dead and so is any prospect of persuading Beijing to bind itself to other curbs on carbon emissions. We can stop kidding ourselves that China will sign up to any green thingy that hinders his party’s ten-year plan to get rich quick.

Economic growth in China is already putting upward pressure on resource prices.  Coal has doubled to $100 per tonne in Europe.  To ensure continued supplies of energy, Western countries need to step up investments in oil and gas extraction and expand nuclear power production.  "Alternative" energy technologies will not do the job.

h/t: Global Warming Politics: A Hot Topic Blog

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The UN’s former deputy director of investigations, Frank Montil, says that hundreds of millions in tsunami aid funds have been misappropriated because anti-fraud measures were not put in place.

In an exclusive interview with the [Sydney Morning] Herald, Mr Montil said "the oil-for-food scandal taught them nothing". The fraud and corruption which had been occurring during the tsunami reconstruction period would come back to haunt the UN, which had wilfully ignored all the warning signs.

Mr Montil documents endemic bribery, rigged bids on re-construction contracts, and multiple billings for equipment, in connection with aid money donated to the UN to be used for relief after the tsunami disaster.

"My estimations of fraud were that at the bare minimum in Banda Aceh [Indonesia] alone there would be at least $US80 or $US90 million disappearing in fraud and corruption. That's only in emergency funds. That doesn't include the half a billion that will be lost to fraud and corruption in reconstruction funds," he said.

The UN sat on his report for eight months and then shrugged it off as “superfluous”.

h/t: Weasel Zippers and Webelf Binky

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A Canadian professor of pediatrics and psychology has told a Royal Society meeting in London that toddlers are naturally aggressive and need to learn to control their emotions and behaviour.  Richard Tremblay of the University of Montreal says that children whose parents do not teach them self-control are much more likely to become violent adults.

Parents who fail to stop toddlers lashing out at other children risk creating the next generation of violent criminals, according to a new study of "terror tots".
. . .
"Developmental studies show that infants aged three to four years old are more physically aggressive than adults," he said.

"It is during this time period that physical aggression increases most dramatically and environment plays a very important role in the extent to which physical aggression develops or is controlled."
. . .
Parents' intervention is crucial, he added, so efforts to prevent child violence should focus on improving parenting, as well as the behaviour of children.

The study found children most at risk of failing to control their aggression had mothers with a history of antisocial behaviour, who had children at an early age, smoked during pregnancy and had low incomes and troubled family relationships.

Five major UK news outlets report the story.  The differences in spin are instructive.

The Independent and BBC News emphasise the finding that children are born aggressive and downplay the importance of parental discipline.

• Young 'more violent than adults' — BBC News
• 'Nature not nurture' is to blame for aggressive children — Independent

The Guardian (quoted above), Telegraph, and Daily Mail highlight the responsibility of parents to curb children’s belligerent excesses.

• Expert calls for action to tame terror tots — Guardian
• Parents blamed for yobs with no manners — Telegraph
• Toddlers allowed to run wild risk being violent adults, parents told — Daily Mail

The Times does not appear to have reported the story.

I see this news as confirmation of both the biblical doctrine of original sin and the sayings in Proverbs about the importance of diligent rearing of children, for example,

Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.

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Political correctness trumps public safety again.  British police have been prevented from arresting law-breakers following vague accusations of racism.

A police crackdown on cannabis factories run by Vietnamese drug barons has been scrapped after officers were warned their actions might be racist.

Officers have identified a burgeoning industry which typically operates out of anonymous rented houses in the suburbs and shires.

They had planned to write to property landlords warning them to look out for suspicious tenancy applications.

But it is understood at least one force has been found to be in breach of the Race Relations Act after specifically referring to Vietnamese nationals in its letters.

One aspect of the story is rather mysterious: The source of the racism finding is not identified, although it appears to be an internal government agency.  Who else would have access to the police’s internal draft letters?

Police estimate that Vietnamese gangs control 75% of British cannabis supplies.

At the same time, government scientists warn that extremely potent home-grown cannabis, called “skunk”, is flooding the streets of Britain.

"There is now an easy way to grow cannabis in this country because of the availability of equipment, specialist lighting and a cheap labour source through foreign nationals," said Dean Ames, head of the Forensic Science Service's drugs unit.

In the first six months of 2007, over three-quarters of pot seized in the UK was skunk.

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