Your average medieval robber baron has generally earned a bit of a poor reputation amongst the liberal elite, the trade unions, the politcal left and the centre in general, and not without reason as it is supposed they were your nasty right wing types, reactionaries to the core. They made the pips squeak in the hovels of the peasants. The latter feasted on bowls of gruel – and the former on plates burdened with various meats and nibbles of all kind of pleasantry, and all at the expense of others. Its a funny old world in some ways but the windy robber barons are heroes at the coal face of all the above as well as mainstream media and the odd toff in an environmental vest – an about face, back to front, incomprehensible, or worse. We still get paid if the wind doesn't blow, don't you know, and we get paid when the wind blows strong and when the wind blows just a teeny piece, don't you know, and we are waxing fat like cattle feeding on spring grass, and like pigs at the trough, don't you know, we are pals with the politicos, and the media eats at our table, and don't you know, its the plebs that are paying for the junket – in their electricity bills and the taxes we disemburse from out of their purse(s).
Tall Bloke has a rather fanciful title for one of his latest posts – see http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/the-wheels-are-falling-off-the… … you wish! Okay, the odd wind turbine falls over, in the wind, and twitchers get to see a rare bird undergoing the mincing treatment, but the scam goes on – deep into the heart of privilege and rank. Like a cat with a bowl of cream they aren't going to slink away without a little excitement raised by the plebs – but no sign of that, just resignation.
A new study has revealed the numbers of bats and birds being killed by the windy robber barons has been deliberately obscured. Yet, the RSPB utters not a squeak. See www.masterresource.org/2013/09/hiding-avian-mortality-altamont-pass/
On a related theme global warming isn't melting mountain glaciers fast enough – how can we speed things up as cooling has slowed things down a bit and that ain't part of the song sheet. This does not seem to make your average environmental scientist and the odd bunny in thrall very happy – happy hour is no good, we want some good old fashioned tear jerking stuff. Doomsaying is king – and somebody has found a means to get it all moving frantically once again. Over at http://phys.org/print297339209.html … soot is brought out of the grate of fireplaces past, and them tall chimneys Fred Dibnah went around blowing up in a fountain of bricks and dust. The claim now is that melting 19th century glaciers in the Alps were not receding as a result of warmer conditions setting in after the Little Ice Age had run its course but soot from factories and coal fires across Europe was to blame. The logic to take on board, we are assured, hopefully, is that industrial development across Asia will cause Himalayan glaciers to melt more quickly than previously estimated, and rising sea levels will threaten the Indian subcontinent and islands in the Pacific, and all the old bones in the cupboard will fester and swell – or something like that.