Amazon, Deutsche Post and UPS planning to use drones for deliveries

Interesting postal delivery news:

Online retail giant Amazon sparked a marketing frenzy Monday in announcing a project to use flying objects more associated with warfare to deliver packages, maintaining it could be up and running within five years.

 

But Deutsche Post said on Thursday it too has a project that predates Amazon's, though the scheme is in its early stages.

 

"This is only a beginning," a Deutsche Post spokeswoman said, with the focus for now on using drones for home delivery of medicine.

 

Amazon on Sunday posted a video on its website showing a prototype. The body of the device is about the size of a flat-screen TV with eight small helicopter rotors lifting it in the air.

 

"I know this looks like science fiction. It's not," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told US broadcaster CBS when revealing the project.

 

US media reported that delivery giant UPS is also researching drone home delivery.

 

The technology has been tested and proven to work, so it is not surprising that the likes of Amazon, Deutsche Post and UPS are planning to use it:

 

The head of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed by a US drone strike on Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials told Reuters anonymously. Senior sources within the militant group confirmed the death.

 

There might of course be slight a problem in the receiving end for certain customers: How to know whether it is your latest Amazon order arriving or a delivery from quite another type of US "company"?

 

This postman never rings twice.

 

Global warming?: "Worst (winter storm) to hit the United States in years"

This must be another serious consequence of global warming:

A deadly winter storm some forecasters say is the worst to hit the United States in years slammed the nation's midsection Friday, snarling travel and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of customers.
The line of ice, snow and freezing temperatures stretched from the Texas-Mexico border northeast to the Ohio Valley, with the most severe conditions near Dallas, then punching through Arkansas and western Kentucky, according to forecasters at AccuWeather.com.
Residents of large cities and small towns hunkered down against the storm. Many were without power as broad outages were reported through Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, according to local utilities.
At the height of the storm, some 267,000 outages were reported in the Dallas-Fort Worth area alone, according to utility provider Oncor, but that number was down to about 208,000 by Friday afternoon.
More than 1,900 flights were canceled on Friday, according to online flight trackers.--

The National Weather Service said it expected the harsh conditions to continue into the weekend, with temperatures about 30 degrees lower than average in some areas.

And it's not better in Europe:

Icy winter storms with hurricane-force winds Friday lashed northern Europe, where the death toll rose to 10 while hundreds of thousands suffered power blackouts and road, rail and air transport chaos.

UNICEF UK blog: Minus-50 degrees Celsius in Mongolia due to global warming

"Please join our campaign to create A Climate Fit for Children"
UNICEF UK

Here is how a UNICEF UK blogger describers climate change/global warming in Mongolia:

In the last couple of weeks my winter coat has become necessary and I’m contemplating gloves. Yet any complaints I might have are put into perspective when I consider that for millions of children, winter is a time of threat.

When we think of climate change we often think of rising temperatures, but children are also affected in colder climates, experiencing harsher winters and declining water resources. In Mongolia some children can spend 3 to 4 hours every day collecting water, braving frozen rivers and wells, and hauling water containers over extremely long distances.
In western Mongolia in 2010, heavy snow, strong winds and extreme cold created crisis conditions in over half the country’s provinces. Temperatures fell to minus-50 degrees Celsius, and snow meant access to food, fuel, sanitation and basic medical care was even tougher.

Wouldn't it be better for UNICEF to concentrate on helping children in need instead of "creating climates"?

Integration of migrants in Europe: A Finnish example

There is a growing number of migrants in most European countries. Politicians and local officials are trying to integrate them, although it does not always seem to be easy. Here is one example which shows how "integration" should not be done:

Patrons of the Rantakylä swimming hall in Joensuu, northeast Finland are perplexed by the rules pertaining to special ladies-only swimming sessions. A local mother recently tried to take her three-year old son to the session but they were turned away and told that only women were allowed.

"It's related to migrant integration and has received a positive reception. About 50 – 70 customers attend the sessions every week, and that's about half of our total visitor numbers," explained Pentti Ryhänen, Joensuu city facility manager.

However the popular swimming session has also caused some bewilderment. Some believe that the city should not segregate swimming times based on gender. One local mother was taken aback by the strict enforcement of the segregation rule when she tried to take her toddler son to the swimming class.
"I thought it would not be a problem because he's such a small boy. However when we got to the ticket kiosk they asked whether the child was a boy or a girl and they turned us away. Naturally I was upset," the mother said.

Facility manager Pentti Ryhänen said however that there has been little negative feedback over the single-sex swimming session. He noted that that it should be clear that boys are not allowed, even if they are very young.
"Parents are free to attend other sessions with their sons," he pointed out.
Ryhänen said that immigrants have offered positive feedback about the ladies-only sessions to city authorities. They have also made proposals for developing the service.
"One proposal was that we should cover the windows of the swimming hall during these sessions so that no one can see inside. But we won't be doing that," he added.

Let's hope the windows in the Joensuu swimming hall will stay uncovered!

Australian warmist scaremongering: "Alice Springs would resemble the Sudan, Darwin will resemble like no place on earth"

"The world added roughly 100 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750."
"Over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth's surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar" 
The Economist


No matter what happens in the real world, global warming alarmists are desperately trying to sell their scare stories. Here is an Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at Melbourne University peddling his message of doom and gloom:

" a book published today paints a terrifying picture of a world that's four degrees warmer and recommends a dramatic increase in Australia's carbon reduction target.*

The book's editor is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at Melbourne University, Dr Peter Christoff.*
ELEANOR HALL: What is the most frightening aspect for you of a four degree warmer world?

PETER CHRISTOFF: Oh look, that's a terrible question to which one only has to give a terrible answer. There are a set of compounding problems that emerge when you start moving towards four degrees. You start to see a world in which there are substantial extinctions.

The oceans have become warmer, are becoming more acidic. So there's a very significant chance of the collapse of significant marine ecosystems like coral reefs, the Great Barrier Reef, for example, is probably doomed when you get to four degrees. There are very substantial problems with food availability planet-wide and in a country like Australia which used to be capable of producing a surplus of food, by four degrees, would probably be facing food security problems with a larger population, but also a hungrier population.

And then you have the issues of extreme weather events, floods, more intense storms, bushfires, all these things particularly in the Australian context, I think leave us with a shatteringly different sense of what Australian can and would be like.

ELEANOR HALL: The physical effects are one part of this. What could the changes in the resource availability then mean for security? Will it inevitably mean more wars?

PETER CHRISTOFF: The projections are at four degrees that you would have significant displacement of population. If you have mass hunger occurring, populations will move to try and find food. Most of those movements, and the projections go from 65 to 250 million people by the end of this century. Most of those movements are likely to occur with countries, but there would be also the prospect of people moving over their borders and looking for resources elsewhere.

And how the world begins to handle a problem of that magnitude I think is something that we can only begin to contemplate. One doesn't know whether it would lead to more conflict. It certainly would lead to problems. I don't think we can understand what a world that looks like the one that's being projected looks like or how we're going to react to it. It's beyond human experience.

ELEANOR HALL: This sounds like a doomsday scenario. Could humans adapt to a four degree warming of the planet?

PETER CHRISTOFF: Well, humans are an extraordinarily adaptable species but if you're looking at a population of seven billion people trying to adapt to a world in which there's less water and less food, one would have to say that the prospects for an adaptation that would leave life looking roughly like it does for many people at this point in time is virtually impossible.

So there are already billions of people living in poverty or in water-stressed and food-stressed circumstances. In a four degree world, their situation would only get extremely worse. And even in extremely wealthy countries like Australia, adaptation I think would be very, very difficult to countenance.

There would clearly be some form of adaptation, but it wouldn't be life as we understand it at this point in time.

ELEANOR HALL: You say that Australia could be one of the most vulnerable continents. Where do you expect to see the worst effects in Australia of a four degree warmer world?

PETER CHRISTOFF: There will be the extinctions of species. There'll be a very substantial impact on agricultural productivity. So the issues of food availability will change. We probably have the wealth and the resources to begin to deal with some of the issues of water availability and desalinisation plants and so on. Everyday life will be very substantially different. There are projections for example of what would happen to just average temperatures over time. So in Melbourne for example, we have something like nine or ten days over 35 degrees at the moment. By the time you get to 2070, that's about 26 days.

When you're looking at Alice Springs, the temperatures are 90 days over 35 degrees now, 180 by 2070. And then you get to places like Darwin, which would move from 11 days to 308. You end up with parts of Australia which are virtually unliveable. And the projections are for example, that while Alice Springs would resemble the Sudan, Darwin will resemble like no place on earth."

Britain's climate change policies are a costly affair

The Cameron government's useless global warming/climate change policy is a costly affair:

Climate-change policies are expected to cost Britain more than £80 billion by the end of the decade, as critics warn that the global-warming industry is spiralling out of control.

Vast sums are being spent on initiatives ranging from climate-change officers in local councils to the funding of “low carbon” agriculture in Colombia at a cost of £15 million alone. Billions of pounds are also being added to fuel bills to pay for green policies.

The full cost is contained in a study published on Monday by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank founded by Lord Lawson, the former chancellor.

Its analysis puts the cost to the British public of climate- change policies at £85 billion in the 10 years to 2021. More than half — about £47.6 billion — will have gone on funding green levies, such as subsidies for wind farms, added to consumer fuel bills.

A further £17 billion will have been spent by government departments and quangos, according to the study.

The rest — about £20 billion — will have gone to the European Union for global-warming initiatives.
Last month, the EU’s commissioner for climate action said that a fifth of the EU’s £805 billion budget from 2014 to 2020 would go on “climate-related spending”. Britain contributes about an eighth of the total EU budget.
Benny Peiser, the foundation’s director, who compiled the report, said: “The public has absolutely no idea how staggeringly costly and excessive the Government’s climate initiatives are. Even we were shocked when we discovered the astronomical funding streams and added them up.
“Britain’s climate policies combine to a mind-boggling amount of subsidies and departmental spending, which will drastically increase in the next few years.”

Unfortunately the UK is not the only country where the taxpayers have to pay for this madness. Time for voters to support parties/candidates who oppose it.

The Norway Report

The next time you meet a Norwegian in a pub, ask him to pay for the beer. He should be able to afford it:

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the National Oil Fund has now reached the value of NOK 5000 billion, or USD 818 billion. This was announced Monday, 17 years after the Finance Department deposited the first NOK two billion in the Fund in 1996.

But don't wait for too long - even the owners of  the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund have their problems:

In only 12 years, the oil production in Norway will slow down, and so will the growth of the oil fund. Today's youth will have to pick up the bill.

"When the oil age is over we may have to cut down on our benefits. That could be painful, but it will most likely have to be done sooner or later. The rest of Europe, including our neighboring countries, are already cutting their spending, whereas we simply continue to expand systems that are not sustainable in the long run," says Chief Economist in Handelsbanken Knut Anton Mork.

The Economist has more on why wealth has its problems also in the land of the Arctic Arabs:

The oil boom led to a boom in public spending: since the 1970s the number of people employed in education has doubled and that in health and social services has quadrupled. The public sector continues to account for 52% of Norway’s GDP.
Oil wealth is bringing its own problems. The oil sector is monopolising the nation’s technical talent, with more than 50,000 engineers currently being employed offshore. Property prices are rising by nearly 7% a year. McDonalds charges $7.69 for a Big Mac, against $4.37 in America.

The fund is not without its problems, such as its size (it now accounts for 1% of all the world’s stocks), its leisurely approach (it was slow to exploit the opportunities offered by the 2007-08 financial crisis) and its penchant for blacklisting offending companies. But it is nevertheless one of the best-run in the world. The Norwegians have established a clear division between the finance ministry as owner and the central bank as manager. They are now trying to improve returns and diversify risks.

Norway's new conservative PM Erna Solberg is trying to manage the riches, but it's not easy:

ERNA SOLBERG, Norway’s conservative prime minister, is nothing if not ambitious. After defeating her popular Social Democratic rival, Jens Stoltenberg, in a general election in September, she beat the odds to cobble together a minority coalition at the end of that month. On November 15th she successfully negotiated an agreement on the budget for 2014.
Now she says she wants to wean Norway off its dependence on oil revenue and ease it towards a more balanced economy in which budget shortfalls are not plugged by the wealth flowing from the North Sea. It will be no easy task. The gap between Ms Solberg’s ambitions and actions was highlighted in the budget deal, which saw her depend a bit more on the country’s oil coffers than originally proposed—an extra 3.9 billion kroner ($640m). --

 It got a temporary fillip this week when new data showed the economy had grown by 0.5% in the third quarter instead of an expected 0.4%, but the currency has still dropped by about 10% against the dollar this year. Long gone seem the days during the financial crisis when the krone was regarded as a safe-haven currency.

The country’s weak economic fundamentals are the main reason for the krone’s fall, but there is growing concern that Norway could soon experience a big property crash. Property prices, particularly in Oslo and chichi ski resorts such as Hemsedal, have risen rapidly in the last decade. Peter Hermanrud, chief strategist at Swedbank First Securities, told a conference in Oslo recently that the property bubble could soon burst and that the government’s most likely response would be to cut interest rates and increase its spending from the oil fund—exactly the opposite of Ms Solberg’s stated ambition.

The dark clouds on the horizon do not seem to worry the locals too much, at least not this time of the year:

For the first time since the 1980s, the Norwegian Christmas shopping declined last year. This year, the trend has turned. Talking to TV2, trade organization Virke’s CEO Vibeke Hammer Madsen said that their forecasts for this year indicate an increase of 2.5% to 50.5 billion.
Virke also mapped the areas where most money is spent on holiday shopping. The shops in the Oslo area will sell for 10.900 NOK per capita, providing the highest average in the country. On the other end of the scale, one person in Østfold will spend 8350 NOK on average.

Merry Christmas (shopping) to you all up there in Norway! Enjoy your wealth as long as it lasts, but prepare for a time when you are not able to afford a Swedish butler anymore!