OPM; other people’s money. 

Durban is a pleasant city in Zululand with the warm Indian Ocean to please the bathers. Sharks took a few of them from time to time and the Durbanites retaliated by setting nets to protect the bathing area and to kill sharks, dolphins and such like. The city is also well suited to host conferences, good, expensive hotels and restaurants and plenty of willing prozzies make it an ideal place for politicians, weird greenies and perpetrators of undocumented science as long as OPM foots the considerable bills of these Climate Control Conferences.

Good intentions cannot be doubted, since 1968, at that first conference in Rome, another pleasant place, the participants of the many succeeding functions have been adamant that the protection and the salvation of Gaia, our Earth, was their primary occupation. Gaïa, of course, has seen a lot worse and, possibly, better eons and no one really knows the influence that 7billion humans might have on our dear planet. What about Gaïa’s microbes, there’s a hell of a lot more of them in weight than us bipeds and again, no one knows what these little beasties are up to.

So many people prate about the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, shrinking or growing glaciers or ice on the poles and all those figures are different because certain groups want more, while others see their benefit in less. A little while ago it came about that the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been falsifying reports, had produced statistics without the slightest scientific background and that all the OPM that had been spent on this IPCC lot had been wasted on a fraud.

So, who can we believe? Well, for one, I believe in myself. As a fisherman, a seaman and a farmer I have been observant, of necessity, of weather phenomena for a long time. For the last almost 30years of my life, my wife and I live on the south point of Africa which is one of the finest observation posts in the world to observe weather. Simply by looking at the barometer, changes in patterns can easily be detected, when the seas pick up, even without wind, it is a sign of an approaching low pressure system that, at times by eye I can spot 24 hours later as the cloud formation, still 120 miles to the west, peeks above the horizon. For all these years I have measured the rainfall, grosso modo an average of 600mm/year. Temperature- and water-wise these last 30 years have been similar and the sea hasn’t risen either. From Cape Agulhas to Cape Columbine on the west coast I know what the weather does and I see no difference during the last 30 years. This conviction of mine is not being sponsored by an oil, fertilizer or tourist company, which must make a difference with all the ‘scientific’ utterings that are being spouted in Durban.

A lot of people are doing their best to safeguard Gaïa from the filth that humanity excretes but their actions won’t have much result as far more people are not going to renounce driving their bloody great SUV’s, the fuel for which Canada will provide from their horrible tar sands.

I wonder if ‘One’ thing might be done to stop the greatest environmental crime that is being perpetrated since the 1950’s. When I lived in France, at times I drove across a bridge that spans the river ‘Loire’ near Nantes. This is a high bridge to let ships pass underneath and from this elevated position you can witness the partial death of Africa. The Loire River is wide with a narrow shipping channel and it has very wide banks, which are used to deposit the trees that have been robbed from the most important forests on Earth. On quiet days I parked my car and contemplated these uncounted hectares covered with vast trunks of the murdered rain forests. Of course this was not the only graveyard, many countries have similar cemeteries that testify to the death of Gaia’s breathing lungs. What saddened me most while contemplating this graveyard was the lack of respect for these tens of thousands of corpses. I have cut down a fair amount of trees in my life and I know that if you want to use the wood for any structural purpose you should not abandon that killed tree. The bark should be taken off and it should not be left lying on the soil or within a few days insects and fungi will attack that splendid wood that cannot defend itself anymore. The tree robbers of the rain forests can’t be bothered with such niceties; a good part of their stolen trees will disappear in rot.

Central Africa, Brazil and surrounding forested countries with Indonesia are not countries where human privileges and Gaïa are high on the agenda and it will be a tremendous battle to stop the cutting of the rain forests. If that cannot be achieved, forget about all the rest such as greenhouse gases because it will become irrelevant when Gaïa’s lungs will have been sold for $150 a cubic meter.