THE CHANGE IN CLIMATE CHANGE

Another good story in the Guardian is today's front page by John Vidal about the billions wasted on UN climate change programme. He reports on routine abuse and waste in this, which is now a$20bn a year industry, expected to grow to $100bn a year.

By the way, this month has been quite cool, and again the global warming hawkers will have to wear jackets and bring their brolleys if they want to venture outside. Of course, having been so wrong for so long, they might as well just stay in and avoid any public disussion.

If a fraction of that money had been wisely spent on developing hemp farms and more infrastructure for hemp textile production, we would not be in so much of a mess. The do-gooders waste time and money on hair-brained ideas, but there is always a bevy of stupid journalists to take on these ideas. A few in the press are however noticing that we need to pay more attention to facts, but the industries that have $20-100bn to spend can drown them out with a blitzkrieg of press releases.

NOTES FROM THE GUARDIAN

This week I wasted money on the Guardian, but there were some articles well worth 70p. One by comedian Mark Thomas told the tale of the devil and his tricks infiltrating a peace group - paid for by BAE and run by a woman named Le Chene. The infiltrator was one of Thomas' favourite people, and it took him a long time to accept the facts. In reality, many of these left wing groups are run entirely as false fronts - hence the standdown on many issues in the press, including such papers, but let's not name names.

However, the Guardian is in many ways the best we have, and there is always a good amount of accurate reporting, along with the usual hot air from the likes of George Monbiot. This week he heated up the climate with more rubbish about global warming, conveniently avoiding the fact that the earth is moving closer to the sun or any mention of Piers Corbyn. Saturday I will ambush them again, look for me outside the US Embassy with a placard reading: "Real Environmentalists Wear Hemp". The cotton wearing 4x4 driving Guardianistas might just take note.

One sticking point in reporting from the truckers on Farringdon Road is biofuels, many there do not yet get the difference between bioethanol and biodiesel. Easier to just lump the two together, as Jonathan Watts has managed to do in his piece on Tuesday (4 Dec.) about food riots. He makes the same stupid mistake as so many other journalists in talking about biofuels as an enemy to food production - just because George Bush managed to mess up corn based ethanol production in the US; are there any journalists smarter than Bush out there? Can they not realise that farm wastes are perfect for fuel production, as Henry Ford told us? Once again, most of these wastes are cellulose, which humans do not digest, but which turns to ethanol quite quickly. The edible parts, of course, are sold for food. And the cellulose waste parts do not, as one Moonbat tried to tell me, make good fertiliser, as cellulose is only C,H & O, (as in carbohydrate) thus one does not appropriate P,K,Ca or N. (as in Phosphorous, Potassium, Calcium and Nitrogen).

Maybe some, however, are brighter than the Bushman, as John Vidal on Thursday wrote a very worthwhile article about the Tories working on getting 1 million households to create electricity, some of which they would sell back to the national grid - an idea George Monbiot has dismissed (in his speech last month at Friends House). The fact that this is used effectively in Europe ought to be enough to win an argument - for instance, 12% of Germany's electricity is supplied by this method, called 'micro-generation.' My own proposal is that gyms can offer exercise bikes to people and then harness the power to sell to the national grid, solving the problem of obesity as well.

More science reporting from the Farringdon Road crew included James Randerson's report on Sir David King's attack on the press for not supporting GM food; King also supports this climate change nonsense - and no wonder, as it in turn heats up the debate for nuclear power - leaked to me last month was a memo showing that King is about to go to work for Fluor. Can anyone trust him? Maybe the folks at the Guardian who do not already know this. Look for an announcement in the near future, but when it comes out, remember you read it here first.

GOING GREEN

It seems everyone these days is going green, or am I just wearing my Oz glasses? Perhaps the wizard is about to pop out and make the world a better place, but even he will not remove my cynicism.

Some things however are hard to knock, and I have only good words for a new book out by Sheherazade Goldsmith, wife of Zac, who is known for his work at the Ecologist. The cover is featured right (so I could save time typing in the lenghty title). It is very spot on, though it seems to have greatly upset George Monbiot last week in his Guardian piece. Methinks he did protest too much, as there are 90 projects here and whether someone lives on a sheep farm or in a bedsit there is something for everyone in this tome. Maybe even he could roll up his sleeves and get to work instead of inundating us with innacuracies. He also tried to sneak out the back door on the global warming issue, rather than saying he was wrong, or listening to Piers Corbyn, whose letter appeared the next day in the same paper. Corbyn gave us his previous predictions, facts on which they were based, and future predictions. According to him, this year and next will get colder, and there will be more storms this summer. The Big Green Gathering will be mostly spared these storms, if he is correct, and I hope he is as sloshing around in the mud with the madding crowd in Somerset is not my idea of fun, or even how to save the planet. I am to hold forth on hemp on Friday, 8:30 pm in the Moon Marquee, so if Corbyn is spot on we will be high and dry.

When I called around to the environment editors in the UK to invite them, they all seemed to know nothing about the Big Green or Mr. Corbyn (except for John Vidal of the Guardian). So tens of thousands of people will be speaking in the woods, but there will quite likely be a mainstream press blackout, with the left trying desperately to ignore anyone who questions global warming, just as they did when they were all global cooling experts. From the right, expect lots of stories about drunk rich kids and journalists killing each other in helicopters as they try to follow drunk rich kids, and from the left, expect lots of know-it-alls claiming that we are freezing this summer due to global warming.

Somewhere in the middle there are a number of people who just want facts and are working on growing hemp and using electric cars. The next political movement may well be the Centrist Party, fed up with all the nonsense on the far left and far right. They will be carrying copies of genuine peer reviewed articles on hemp, climate change and sustainable living. The 'Green Party' ought to take note and expect a rebuke from me this Friday. Unless I get thrown out first for speaking the truth by the hard core global warming Nazis.

HEMP STORY IN THE GUARDIAN,

29 AUGUST 2006

In today's Guardian, a brief article about the hemp initiative in California has appeared, written by Richard Luscombe in Miami. This is a story that has been around for some time now, but is staying in the press as there is world-wide interest. Should California pass the bill, it could set a precedent for other states. Not that others are not interested in this, the Vermont legislature some years back voted for it but got their votes vetoed by Skull & Bones member John Dean, then governor. Californians face a similar prospect, with their Republican governor able to play dictator and terminate their hopes.

Luscombe's article made the point that industrial hemp and pot are different in the crucial aspect of THC content; so much so that Repubican Senator Tom McClintock asserts: "Hemp bears no more resemblance to marijuana than a poodle to a wolf." McClintock is backing the legislation to allow hemp farming in California.

Also mentioned inthe Guardian piece is the oft repeated argument that hemp fields would be an ideal place to hide pot plants, which is thrown out as a stumbling block to progress. The truth is that fibre hemp plants grow thin and tall and the bushy, short varieties of Cannabis sativa that epitomise pot would stick out immediately. Further, as hemp fields would be subject to spot testing, no pot dealer in their right mind would want the visits from law enforcement. Better to plant them in a field of herbs growing the same height and not attract attention.

Part of the wording of the California bill, which passed in the assembly by a vote of 44-29, provides for it to be grown without a special permit from the Drug Enforcement Agency. A test for THC is required, and would add data to the argument that hemp is not a drug. In Canada, autorities have stopped testing USO varieties (used mainly for seed) as they are consistently so low in THC as to not even register a percentage. Other varieties such as Santhika (grown for fibre) are even believed to be THC free.

The article ends with a word of thanks from Eric Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, who acknowledged the bipartisan support for hemp. This is now a trend in the US, with other state senators also joining forces across party lines to help American farmers revive the industry that was part of the lives of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Expect to hear more about hemp from this paper - the environment editor, John Vidal, has spoken with me to tell me he has wanted to do an article on hemp for ten years. Last month Whitaker Publishing sent him a copy of Hemp for Victory: History and Qualities of the World's Most Useful Plant, which he has passed on to a colleague, Annie Kelly, who is researching at the moment to produce a full length feature for later this month.