This is not just UK issue, NOAA has been claimed to fabricate data for over 30% of their reporting sites by taking the averages of the surrounding stations to represent a defunct, or a ‘ghost’ station, although the numbers at least are labeled as estimates. In UK, some closed weather stations ‘continue’ with similar reported estimated monthly data.
Unreliable measurements from the actually existing weather stations are another large problem. Nearly 8 out of 10 Met Office sites are rated in junk classes with error margins ranging from 2C to up to 5C, or unsuitable for climate data reporting. The default classification for Met Office weather stations is 1, “unless manually adjusted” so there may be more unreliable data sources.
The disproportionate closure of rural weather stations compared to the urban ones has further skewed the average temperatures, because urban environments tend to generate heat islands, so loss of rural stations will increase the average temperature of the remaining measurements.
While unreliability of measurement data was discussed in terms of Net Zero in The Daily Sceptic, I wonder about its effects on near term weather forecasts. Maybe the invented data is also being fed into models predicting daily weather?
A Nature paper by Ito (2023) estimates the global termite methane production 2020 as 14.8 +- 6.7 Tg per year from estimated 122.3 Tg termites (dry weight). Termite biomass estimates range from 40 – 200 Tg (dry weight), and their methane emission estimates vary even more, but by Ito’s estimate, termites produce about 2% of global methane.
The global annual methane production is estimated by IEA to be about 580 metric tons, and Ito’s maybe ~15 metric tons would be on the ballpark of 2.6% of that.
These farts are actually produced by termites’ gut symbionts, complex communities of microbes that help termites to digest lignocellulose and contribute to nitrogen metabolism.
Termites evolved some time during Mesozoic from gregarious cockroaches that ate rotting wood with changes in gut symbiont microbiota, diets and eusociality. Today, termites are important in carbon cycle (and other nutrient cycles).
I was trying to find some papers on their role in Phanerozoic carbon cycles but with poor success, though it could be said that termites (plus their gut symbionts) are currently quite significant decomposers of plant cellulose, and there apparently has been enough of them already 150 million years ago that a mammal species had evolved to eat them.
In other words, there is still a niche for people researching the effect of termite farts on global climate – past, present and future. Assuming the atmospheric carbon question remains politically and culturally relevant (for dissenting voices, see, e.g., these articles in Science of Climate Change and The Daily Sceptic).
How much of this was hype and how much was counterhype, I don’t know (though I suspect my search engines show me very biased results.) On my recent trip to Finland I saw the changes in the countryside, big wind turbines can cause. It takes lots of land and removal of trees or elimination of agricultural fields to build a wind park.
All these projects, while openly posted on-line, are presented so that opposing voices are portrayed as conspiracy theorists and antienvironmentalists. But is it a conspiracy theory if they themselves tell everyone their plans, or worse, their actions?
At least the most fanatical theses from the now destroyed Georgia Guidestones are not openly touted. There are people, other than just me, who would consider the reduction of world human population to 500 million from (official) 8 billion or by over 93% rather genocidal.
But the Green New Leap is not just for UK, Germany, Netherlands or Ireland. Finland, too, is planning ambitious net zero targets, and I mean really ambitious, as in lauded by WEF.
Most of Finland is above 60° latitude, about the same level as Alaska or south end of Greenland, mostly more north than Yakutsk in Siberia. Energy is of utmost importance there. Roughly speaking, a person can survive a few minutes without air, a few hours without heating, a few days without water and a few weeks without food.
Meanwhile in China, 2024 began to build 94.5 GW worth of coal power plants and resumed 3.3 GW of suspended projects according to two think tanks. Only 2.5 GW of old capacity was closed 2024. (Side note: with China’s economy tanking and exports faltering, what do they need this new energy capacity for?)
But what about the reindeer burps?
Indeed, according to our reliable news media, a study was published that Lapland will not be able to meet its greenhouse targets by 2035 because of the large emissions from its agriculture, namely the reindeer. Which as ruminants are burping too much methane, which is a greenhouse gas. Unfortunately, I could not find a link to the original study to check the claims, and to see if the researchers were in earnest or if this was some sort of reductio ad absurdum-document to demonstrate the futility of the Net Zero targets.
However, assuming the reporting is true, reindeer are part of the Arctic ecosystem, and even if the semidomesticated populations in Lapland were counted as human livestock, those globalist net zero plans that would involve reducing the number of large ruminants, such as grazing cows and sheep, come dangerously close to messing the ecosystems by removing large herbivore guild from the food network. While I can see the point in reducing the use of feedlots and grain / soybean based fodder in ranching, eliminating free-range foraging herbivores is IMHO insane.
Ironically, the climate war against cattle (products) is not fully compatible with the idea of rewilding the land, which presumably involves switching domesticated large herbivores with wild large herbivores to the net zero effect on burps per acre in case of free grazing animals. Large scale rewilding is currently hypothetical rather than practical, as the numbers of large wild herbivores are insufficient for the switch. Humans and their cattle, pets and pests account for about 96% of terrestrial mammal biomass. The remaining about 4% is everything else from Etruscan shrew to elephant. Cows alone are ~40% of Earth’s land mammal biomass, meaning there are no replacement herbivores. And without ungulates, the grassland ecosystems will collapse.
When we consider this and other volcanoes, and the coal plants of China and the rest of the world (not to mention everything else that produces greenhouse gases, such as termites), how much effect would it have on the atmospheric chemistry and global climate change if all the reindeer in Lapland stopped burping?
Put the macaronis, water and bouillon cubes into water, and bring it to boil.
Keep them boiling for a lower heat while opening the corned beef can and carving its contents with the macaronis.
Keep on slow boil for about 10 minutes.
If you want, you can add cheese slices or beef bacon or other stuff, but the above four ingredients should be sufficient for multiple meals for an adult.
Cheese should be added last to melt on the top of the macaroni-corned beef soup (adds a little to the cooking time), whereas bacon should be boiled with the corned beef and macaroni.
Enjoy.
Nutritional content:
calories: plenty
fats: a lot
proteins: yes
carbohydrates: yes
vitamins: unlikely – I’d recommend also eating fruits, vegetables and fish (unprocessed – french fries and ketchup do not count.)
Now for the paranoid version:
An important part of survivalism is to be able to live off your preparations. The rule of the thumb is to store those foodstuffs you will actually want to eat. There is nothing more embarrassing than suffering from gastric upset and awful tasting food because you prepared unwisely. (For the many people who have stored cans of Spam, this recipe should also work with that, though I think corned beef tastes better.)
Take 12 ounces of cheap elbow macaroni (European, to avoid GMOs and more dangerous pesticides, while hoping the grain was not smuggled from Ukraine near Chernobyl or grown on industrial wasteland). Rinse the macaroni with water in case their manufacturer had insects, rat droppings or other such impurities.
Take 3 x 12 ounces of pure drinking water without chloramines – chloramines kill aquarium fish but officially are harmless to humans at the concentrations used (do you trust the government???). Chloramines are nowadays used because the municipal water companies want more durable disinfection chemical than the traditional chlorine. (Bonus points for rinsing your macaroni with clean water, though I think the modern foodstuff is so full of impurities that I use chloraminated tap water because I am cheap.)
Put the pure water and rinsed macaronis in a pot, turn the stove on while peeling 3 Herb ox bouillon cubes into the slowly warming water. You did remember to buy more Herb ox to replenish your Doomsday Cache, right?
While the water is beginning to boil, open a 10 ounce can of corned beef bought on sale from an Asian supermarket (Brazilian, made in China – wonder about the Amazon rain forest, cattle hormones and Chinese food hygiene standards, then decide to ignore the paranoia because the can was cheap) and carve the contents into the boiling liquid.
Also add the beef bacon you bought yesterday and needs to be eaten before it goes bad.
Turn the heat down to let the macaroni soup boil at low temperature while watching a dozen minute conspiracy video.
Turn the stove off, add some cheese slices into the pot and in your bowl on hot macaroni soup. Let them melt while watching another conspiracy video.
Enjoy, while checking conspiracy news updates.
Nutritional content:
calories: plenty
fats: a lot
proteins: yes
carbohydrates: yes
vitamins: unlikely – I’d recommend also eating fruits, vegetables and fish (assuming those are available after the economic collapse or natural disaster – at the very least, if this is your survival food for the unforeseen future, top it up with a selection of vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids and other supplements from your Doomsday Cache. Surely yours has them?)
So it looks like the French won the Game of Empires. For now.
(Countries with overseas military bases, like USA, do not count. The territories have to be internationally recognized colonies or dependencies officially under full or partial rule of the empire.)
Unfortunately, I have decided to delete the puzzles in this post – jut to be on the safe side. There will be more jigsaw puzzles.
Some more digital jigsaw puzzles for your enjoyment.
Three ferns
Tree ferns can be seen in Berkeley yards. Here are three tree ferns. And a tree.
Little Fruits
These little ones are likely to be unripe and still growing.
San Francisco
Unfortunately, the San Francisco skyline seen from the East Bay (Berkeley Marina), even on a sunny day, is not allowed in commercial purposes, so I deleted this jigsaw puzzle in preparation of starting my business.
Apparently, our government had at least 14 of them, 11 in Department of Treasury, Department of Health and Social Services, Department of State and Department of Defense had their own magic money computers too. A Magic Money Computer, according to Elon Musk is a machine that creates money out of nothing by just issuing payments.
The original Magic Money Computer, Sampo, being stolen from Pohjola by Kalevala raiding party. Sampo of the legend was a magic mill that produced flour, salt and money. (art by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, image sourced from Artvee)
There has been speculation that such Magic Money Computers would allow fraudulent or erroneous invoices (such as double billing) to be paid regardless of available government funds. However, the truth of the bottomless money pit is probably more about standard prosaic grift – based on the parade of DOGE news, the US Government seems to be full of weird offices where the Directors pay to themselves and their “workers” outrageous salaries and lavish other perks (luxury apartments, luxury offices) and then top it up by (relatively) small embezzlements like expensing their everyday (luxurious) life.
These money sinks are supplemented by a class of government parasites, ‘NGOs’ (Non-Governmental Organizations, which actually are mostly or fully dependent on government money). ‘NGOs’ (not to be confused with true charities) siphon money from government coffers and can act as money laundromats by donating heftily to nice politicians and PACs and by hiring politicians or their family members with attractive perks and reimbursement packages.
After hearing more and more about all the ‘NGO’ grift, I felt slightly like a chump for not having founded a ‘charity’ dedicated to “Physical and emotional well-being of an individual” (namely myself), with the governing board and financial regulators consisting of Me, Myself and I and set up a reasonable monthly stipend of, say $7497.68 including taxes and fees, though for that, I would have needed much better political connections within the bureaucracy (not to mention far more flexible morals).
Joking aside, Magic Money Computers are a problem because they are not synchronized, i.e., there was some variation between their bookkeeping, estimated to be about 5 – 10%, which can lead to unregulated increase in nation’s money supply. Which is presumably on top of the official increase by the approved deficit spending.
Officially, the US government does not print money. What happens is that the government issues treasuries which the big banks (primary buyers) buy to sell forward, or to Fed, which buys treasuries from the public by injecting money into the accounts of the selling banks, i.e., creating more money. Banks, of course, use their new capital as a security for issuing new loans via fractional reserve banking, multiplying the money printing effect.
With Magic Money Computers potentially adding to the money supply, we are essentially talking about unsupervised inflation. In theory, as long as the increase in production (of goods) increases with the money supply, the prices remain steady. If the production of goods increases relative to demand at a greater rate than money supply, resulting oversupply causes price deflation, but if the money supply increases faster than production while demand remains steady or increases, this results either in price inflation or, in case of price controls, product shortages.
I suspect that the US economy has been running an experiment where it has artificially inflated money supply (by deficit spending) while increasing demand (by paying people to consume and by importing more people) in hopes that the production would increase due to increasing demand (look at all these new workers.) What was conveniently forgotten was the regulatory jungle stifling any private enterprise while the masses of new capital were scooped by the well-connected who used it to monopolize resources needed for private enterprises, either by buying the resources themselves, the legislation regulating how the resources can be used, or the bureaucrats who determine who can use the resources (and how), namely those who are insiders.
I would further speculate that as an increasing fraction of government money goes to the politicians, bureaucrats and their family and proteges (and paying patrons like megacorporations and transnational NGOs), an increasing fraction of resources, public and private tends to get concentrated to the hands of politically connected oligarchy. Not only does the increased regulation and fewer resources mean fewer small businesses and anemic economy, with political class acting as oligarchy the national ‘free’ enterprise begins to converge towards a top-down command economy. Command economies are very fragile and prone to collapse for multiple reasons that would be a whole another post.
Let me finish by saying that The United States has been for many years unofficially converging towards the Soviet Model, namely the centralized command economy, and while I have been observing faint signals since the previous decade, now the results are visible in our shops to everyone.
Take for example, eggs. The number of laying hens has gone down due to cullings, whereas the number of mouths has increased due to immigration. Unlike the mythical Sampo that produced also edible goods, the US government has only increased the amount of money in circulation, leading to price inflation and egg shortages. Magic Money Computers are not helping.
An old photo from January 2025. Tonight, I saw lots of eggs in a supermarket.
Most people find his similarities spurious and consider his theories false. Nevertheless, I am going to use an analogous methodology to prove that The Republic of Finland is actually The Republic of Fairyland (the Fairy Kingdom having been annexed first by Sweden and then taken over by Russia.)
The name Finn was weird to me when I was growing up – why couldn’t the foreigners call us suomalainen as we called ourselves? The origin of Suomiis unknown, and many theories have been floated (of which I vaguely remember suomu = scale, somehow indicative of Finns predilection towards fishy things; suo maa = bog land, a very good description of terrain that is 30% bog or swamp). I would consider Suomi among the same group of names as Sápmi (land inhabited by the Sámi people) and Sumy (a city in Ukraine) and leave the mystery as is.
However, I later learned that Finn, as used in Elder Edda, such as Völundarkviða, could mean either Sami or alfar (elf). The etymology of word finn could be derived from Norse finnr / finna (spelling varies depending on source, but the word is usually translated as finder, hunter-gatherer). However, I would also consider possibility of celtic fionn / finn (fair, blonde).
If we go with the meanings ‘elf’ or ‘fair’, a Finn could be translated as ‘a person of fair folk’, or fairy for shorts.
Thus, using the Wettenhovi-Aspa approach, it can be proven that The Republic of Finland actually should be called The Republic of Fairyland.
I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, so I have begun to submit my pictures for new puzzles.
My plan is to have two types of jigsaw puzzles: a sample of free online puzzles on jigsawexplorer.com (made with their software), and (hopefully soon) for sale, a selection of solid jigsaw puzzles, which can be ordered from a print-on-demand shop. Both online and hard copy puzzles can be accessed by clicking their images, which will take you to their respective websites. The first puzzles here are based on photos, but I may also experiment with drawings, AI, collages and other sources of imagery.
Digital jigsaw puzzles have the convenience for being portable, never losing a piece, and pets or clumsy stumbles never messing with the nearly assembled game. You can adjust the number of pieces depending on mood and available time.
However, traditionalists and people without reliable Internet, especially those in a remote cabin in the woods (even before an EMP strike or Carrington Event 2.0 wipes out the Internet) may prefer a solid, real-world jigsaw puzzle. There is the enjoyment brought by handling puzzle pieces without the help of electronic shortcuts, and the resulting concrete object can be framed into a piece of art. Or tossed back in pieces into its container, never to be touched again.
But imagine this picture: ten years After the Event, a lonely hermit is getting ready to finish his 10 000-piece, bright blue sky -puzzle. A reminder of the sky, like it was before the Event, even before the Chemtrails, when he realizes that he is missing one of the pieces. That would not be a good day.
Lemons
It is unclear if this picture contains free-range lemons foraged from the streets of Bay City Northeast, or commercially factory-farmed lemons bought from a grocery.
Eucalyptuses
Unfortunately, the eucalyptus photo was taken from a place that does not allow commercial photography, so I have deleted this jigsaw puzzle in preparation of becoming commercial.
Eucalyptuses are the tallest weeds of California. They are covered in sheets of multihued peeling bark, which accumulates onto ground.
This is my first attempt at blogging. For my whole life I have applied plankton strategy of avoiding wrath of powers by not making splashes and by being too insignificant to target personally, anonymous among the masses, trusting the luck to carry me with other plankton among the cultural and political currents. Plankton are countless, and despite individual losses, masses survive, hopefully including me.
PlanktonPunkt 