There?s not much future in predictions
Is it possible to make useful economic predictions spanning 100 years? World climate change forecasts require it.
WMO Consensus Statement on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change
1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.
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2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.
3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.
4. Tropical cyclone wind-speed monitoring has changed dramatically over the last few decades, leading to difficulties in determining accurate trends.
5. There is an observed multi-decadal variability of tropical cyclones in some regions whose causes, whether natural, anthropogenic or a combination, are currently being debated. This variability makes
detecting any long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity difficult.
etc
Green fundamentalism
In a recent essay, Peter Berger, Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University, argues that contemporary culture appears to be in the grip of two seemingly contradictory forces: one towards relativism, where there are no absolute truths whatsoever; the other towards fundamentalism, where an alleged absolute truth is militantly and uncompromisingly affirmed. The idiomatic formulas for these opposing forces he describes are, respectively, ?Let us agree to disagree? versus ?You just don?t get it?.
Berger argues that neither of these extremes can play a legitimate role in civil discourse, and that both are, in fact, closely interlinked and can easily morph one into the other. ?In every relativist?, he says, ?there is a fundamentalist about to be born, and in every fundamentalist there is a relativist waiting to be liberated?. Both forces, he maintains, are products of the pluralising effect of modernisation, and both serve only to shut down reasoned debate.
Europe to see 14 per cent price increase in Russian gas in 2007
Europe is to pay Russia's Gazprom 293 US dollars per 1,000 cubic metres of natural gas in 2007, a 14 per cent increase over current prices, the daily Vedomosti reported Monday.
The world is richer and healthier
