"... because women become more valuable as workers than breeders"
Feb 17, 2020 at 6:52 PM TinyCO2

Child care in developed countries is also expensive

Front page news:

"Cambridge's Trinity College lawn dug up by Extinction Rebellion"

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-51534446

"Climate activists have dug up a lawn outside a Cambridge University college over its role in a major development in the Suffolk countryside.

Extinction Rebellion members said the action at Trinity College was taken against the "destruction of nature".

Activists then took dug-up mud to a local Barclays Bank branch.

Innocence Farm in Trimley St Mary has been part of plans, involving Trinity, for a lorry park. The college said it supported work to fight climate change.

A Cambridgeshire Police spokeswoman said the force was liaising with the college and that "a crime has been recorded for criminal damage".

A spokeswoman for Barclays Bank confirmed activists carrying wheelbarrows full of mud had spread it across the banking hall of its St Andrew's Street branch.

She added the branch had been kept open and staff ensured customers were safe.

Activists, who also chained themselves to an apple tree on the college's front lawn, said they "were careful to ensure that the digging took place a safe distance from the tree so as not to cause any damage to it".

The local group also claimed on Twitter the college invested more money in oil and gas companies than any other Oxbridge college."

I really think it's time the book was thrown at these self-entitled pests. How dare they?!!!

"Jeff Bezos: World's richest man pledges $10bn to fight climate change"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51539321

That should do it. XR can stand down now. Even so, it doesn't seem to matter what you do, some people are never happy:

"Mr Bezos has an estimated net worth of more than $130bn, so the pledge represents almost 8% of his fortune.

Some of Amazon's employees have been urging him to do more to fight climate change. Mr Bezos is financing the Blue Origin space programme, criticised for its carbon footprint.

He has also been criticised for not signing the Giving Pledge, under which the super-rich promise to give away half of their wealth during their lifetimes."

"COP26: Climate summit policing bill estimated at £250m"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51535106

Personally, I think my taxes can be better spent. NB that's just the policing bill. No doubt the whole shindig will cost an awful lot more than that.

"UK must prepare for more intense storms, climate scientists say
Government urged to create more natural drainage systems to cope with impact of crisis"

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/17/uk-must-prepare-for-more-intense-storms-climate-scientists-say

"Britain must brace for more storms like Dennis and Ciara because rainfall will be more intense in a climate-disrupted future, scientists have warned."

"Delivery disaster: the hidden environmental cost of your online shopping
We love ordering goods and food at a click – but this creates mountains of packaging waste and millions of transport miles"

https://www.theguardian.com/news/shortcuts/2020/feb/17/hidden-costs-of-online-delivery-environment

"There’s still something magical about the idea of browsing a world of goods online, choosing what you want and having it delivered to your door, sometimes within hours. You may give a fleeting thought to the environmental impact when you are drowning in excess packaging (nearly a third of solid waste in the US comes from e-commerce packaging) but it’s easy to ignore the rest of it. Such as the fact that Amazon, in figures released last year, emits nearly as much carbon dioxide as a small country. We are buying more online than ever – and younger age groups are less likely to shop locally than people over 55, according to a new survey."

Good to see them catching up. Some of us have been pointing this out for years. The irony is that it tends to be the climate-hysterical youth who are keenest on shopping on-line.

"A citizens’ assembly on climate is pointless if the government won’t listen"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/17/citizens-assembly-climate-pointless

Actually, a citizens' assembly on climate is profoundly undemocratic, the attendees being largely self-selecting, and the agenda having been controlled in advance. That's the real scandal behind this monumental waste of money.

More (much more) of the same sort of thing can be found from this writer here:

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stephen-buranyi

Roger Longstaff, thanks for the info, which clarifies my hazy recollection of the last supercomputer.

AK, we've had the discussion before, and I'm happy to accept that the Met Office might be quite good at forecasting the weather in your neck of the woods. However, they're hopeless where I live, and where I spend much of my spare time - among mountains. I've lost count of the number of times I've decided not to go for a big walk in the hills because of an unpromising Met Office forecast, only for the day to turn out to be glorious. Conversely, I have many times set out for a big hill day, full of optimism brought on by a positive forecast, only for the day to be very wet and/or windy, and not a lot of fun at all. If a £1Bn supercomputer can fix this, I'll be very happy, but the last big spend has wrought no improvement that I've noticed.

I used to rely heavily on MWIS instead (Mountain Weather Information Service):

https://www.mwis.org.uk/

I used to find it extremely reliable. Latterly, however, IMO its accuracy seems to have reduced. HOwever, strangely around the time alternative funding sources were obtained:

"How is MWIS funded?
Since 2007, sportscotland - the national agency for sport in Scotland - has funded MWIS to produce the 5 Scottish forecasts."

I noticed the reliability of the forecasts seemed - to me at least - to deteriorate. The website is certainly a lot more professional now!

I can't help thinking that spending lots of money doesn't always produce improved results.

It is just 5 years since the last Met Office "supercomputer" waste of taxpayer's money:

"Funding has been confirmed for a £97m supercomputer to improve the Met Office's weather forecasting and climate modelling. The facility will work 13 times faster than the current system, enabling detailed, UK-wide forecast models with a resolution of 1.5km to be run every single hour, rather than every three. It will be built in Exeter during 2015 and become operational next September. The Met Office said it would deliver a "step change" in forecast accuracy."

When will they ever learn?

Even poor countries are naturally heading for the 2 child or less because women become more valuable as workers than breeders. The small family is not just more likely to survive due to medicines but they can live a better life. Women might like babies but they don't like risking their life and health in chilberth or spending their entire healthy adulthood looking after them.

Feb 17, 2020 at 2:40 PM TinyCO2
When communities have the technology to enable a light to be turned on at night, the birthrate falls.

Figueres wants to deny underdeveloped communities and countries the technology to turn on a light at night, provide running water, health care, sanitation etc.

For a lady born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she is arrogant, selfish and without understanding. No wonder she fits in so well at the UN.

If she could persuade the Pope about the benefits of contraception, she might have achieved something.

https://order-order.com/2020/02/17/times-radio-poach-john-pienaar/
"In a statement on Twitter, BBC News Deputy Political Editor John Pienaar has announced that he is jumping ship to the soon-to-be-launched Times Radio.

“after nearly three decades at the BBC I am leaving to join the soon-to-be-launched Times Radio as Drive Time presenter.”

It was reported this weekend that Murdoch is making lucrative offers to leading BBC presenters to lure them over; including better wages, editorial freedom and the chance to leave the BBC’s increasingly sinking ship. Nick Robinson’s name was one of those floated as being approached, along with Chris Mason. Who’s next?…"

The majority of women having more than 2 kids in the UK are minorities. Is she saying that refugees and migrants should be limited too? Population growth in most Western countries is down to migration. Should that be stopped? There are a lot of people who would eagerly agree to the two child policy so long as it is fairly applied. If migrants already had 2 or more kids would their fist act of citizenship be sterilisation?

"Her ideas included incredibly legally limiting women in the UK and other developed countries to having no more than 2 children.
She then went on to say this should not apply to women in undeveloped countries as the older people there rely on having a large family for their future security.
Feb 17, 2020 at 1:48 PM stewgreen"

She is the fourth child, out of SEVEN of this interesting and former CIA operative and politician
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Figueres_Ferrer
"Figueres married Henrietta Boggs of Alabama in 1942. They had two children, Muni and José Martí, before the marriage ended in divorce in 1952. He later married Karen Olsen Beck of New York. They had four children, José María, Karen Christiana, Mariano and Kirsten. His wife was a member of the country's Legislative Assembly.

His son, José María Figueres, also served as president from 1994 to 1998. His daughter, Muni Figueres Boggs, is the current Ambassador from Costa Rica to the United States. His other daughter, Christiana Figueres, is a Costa Rican diplomat who served from 2010 to 2016 as the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and is widely considered to be the architect of the Paris Agreement."

If she is the Architect of the Paris Agreement, can she explain why it is so ruinous?

Stewgreen: << At the moment anyone who has a company car is taxed up to two thousand pounds a year for it, as a benefit in kind.
From April, for a whole year, they'll pay no company car tax at all on an electric car,
with some of the big companies that lease cars already reporting a big rise in demand.

FF £2,000 per YEAR is a hell of a subsidy
a £16K subsidy over 8 years etc. >>

It's a lot more than that for most business users. A stereotypical sales manager in the 40% tax bracket pays about k£4.5 pa in BiK tax for his mid-range company Audi A4 If the company pays all of his fuel, not just business use, he is hit for another k£2.4 or so.
Multiply that sort of figure by the number of company cars and, pretty soon, it adds up to serious money (to paraphrase Reagan?).