Sex, Violence and Property

Miley Cyrus on stage

 

Sex has become the cuckoo in the nest of the criminal law.

It used to be the case that the criminal law was principally concerned with two things: violence and property. Obviously enough, citizens want to live their lives feeling protected against the risks that they will hurt, or even killed, by others, or that they will have their property taken away from them by robbery, theft or fraud.

Sex has traditionally had a much smaller part to play. For sure, rape has long been a crime, but in large degree, rape has been seen as a subset of violence. Rape is not even contrary to the 10 Commandments.[1] Having sex with people of the same gender, with children or with animals has sometimes been prosecuted, and sometimes not. But, on the whole, both the police and the courts have concerned themselves much more with offences against the person and offences against property.

But now, sex is everywhere in the criminal law, in ways which would appear utterly bizarre to the majority of civilised people, in different places and in different times. It is not so much the actual act of having sex which has been criminalised, but rather a raft of activities peripherally connected with sex.

It used to be okay to prefer to hire

Quiz XIII – Both Sides Now

How many countries can you identify which have shores on both the Atlantic and the Pacific?

USA, obviously. Canada, obviously. Panama, obviously when you take the canal into consideration.

No looking it up. Obviously.

And for the avaoidance of pedantry, the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico counts as the Atlantic for

Tips for Tots

I doubt whether many children read these pages. But if they did, I would like them to get hold of a few home truths which might stop them worrying about climate change:

• It did get a bit warmer in the first half of the 20^th century, and again a bit warmer again in the last part of the 20^th But this century, there has been little if any global warming, apart from the 2016 El Niño, which was nothing to do with carbon dioxide. We are not seeing runaway global warming, and there is no emergency.
• If the predictions of the alarmists had proved true, it would have got much warmer by now, but it has not. And so the theories of these alarmists have turned out to be mistaken. Their models are clearly wrong. Which means that their ongoing predictions are also complete crap.
• Likewise, if the predictions of the alarmists had proved true, the Arctic would have melted by now and Manhattan would be underwater. These things have simply not happened; the predicted rise in sea levels has not happened.
• It was quite a bit warmer than today in the Medieval warming period. That can have had nothing to do with man-made emissions of carbon dioxide. And it was a time when mankind did really rather well.
• It was even warmer than that at the time of the ancient Romans. Again, no significant man-made emissions of carbon dioxide then, and again it was time when mankind flourished.
• It is true that carbon dioxide levels have gone up in the last 50 years, from about 300 ppm to about 400 ppm. These are still tiny amounts, and far, far less than carbon dioxide levels have been in the past. The only detectable effect has been the trees and crops around the world have grown better, since trees and plants need carbon dioxide. That additional greening up is a good thing.
• Nobody has died from climate change, nor have there been any climate change refugees. On the contrary, the migration pattern we have seen has been the same migration of rich people for decades now, moving from colder climates to warmer climates. Because warmer climates are more pleasant and more healthy.
• Conversely, millions of people are now dying around the world as a result of climate change activism. In particular, poor people – particularly an Africa and the Indian subcontinent – are dying for lack of affordable electricity. Pressure from the environmentalists on institutions like the World Bank means that it is more difficult now for poor regions to obtain affordable electricity from traditional power stations. That means they have to cook indoors using dung and other highly polluting fuels. If the likes of Extinction Rebellion were to get their way, the wealthy would be fine, but unnecessary poverty and death of the poorer and weaker would soar even higher.
• Pollution, including pollution from coal-fired power stations and diesel vehicles in cities, can be a real problem, and that is a problem that should be addressed. But it is a problem that has nothing to do with global warming. And carbon dioxide is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a pollutant.
• Climate change is an imperfectly understood science. It is much more likely that, in a highly complex system, the sun is the main driver rather than carbon dioxide levels. But what we do know is that the Earth repeatedly experiences ice ages which last about 10 times as long as the interglacial periods, and that we are now pretty much at the end of the usual interglacial period (about 10,000 years on average). If it were possible to delay or even prevent the onset of the next ice age by massive man-made global warming, that would be a fantastic achievement, which would save billions of lives. But the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is tiny – not nearly enough to produce the warming that we would need.
• Real scientists:
  • test their hypotheses against actuality, and if their hypotheses don’t work, they junk them, and try to work out something else;
  • publicly share their data;
  • welcome criticism, and are willing to engage in debate as to whether their hypotheses hold water;
  • root out and reject data which has been manipulated or cherry picked;
  • do not try to silence other scientists who disagree with them, but treat them with respect and listen to their arguments.
• The current crop of climate scientists do none of these things. They are scientists in much the same way that Scientologists are scientists. Hardly anyone gets to be a climate scientist these days who is not already a climate change alarmist. And so asking what the majority of climate scientists think about global warming is like asking what the majority of Jesuit priests think about the virgin birth. Try it. Try asking a Jesuit priest about the possibility that Jesus’s mother Mary was lying about not having had a bonk. Really.
• It is hardly surprising that governments around the world have been jumping on the climate change bandwagon. Government is the biggest business in the world. And climate change gives them a great opportunity to increase their income from taxation and increase their control over what ordinary people can or cannot do.
• An overwhelming consensus in favour of a particular viewpoint is not evidence at all that that viewpoint is correct. When Galileo first spoke out, there was an overwhelming consensus that the sun went around the earth. Until a couple of hundred years ago, there was an overwhelming consensus among doctors that it was a good idea to take large quantities of blood out of people who are unwell. Even today, there is an overwhelming consensus in the Middle East in the infallibility of the teachings of the psychopathic warlord who hated Jews. Remember that the vast majority of consensus has no independently formed intelligence at all, but is merely moving with the crowd. Much more intelligent is to tune in to the observations of smart people who are looking at the data, making their own analyses.
• There’s no great harm in some of the gestures that are made in the name of global warming, but remember that they are not cost free:
  • Electric vehicles are fine for cities (not so good for long journeys). But bear in mind that their construction means that they cause considerable ecological damage;
  • wind turbines are fine, as long as the wind is blowing at the right speed. But bear in mind that they cause considerable health risks to people living nearby, create huge carbon dioxide emissions to build, are a big headache to dispose of at the end of their short lives and are very damaging to birdlife;
  • solar panels on the roof are fine, particularly in places (such as where I live, in South Australia) where there are frequent power cuts. But bear in mind that they do not produce electricity at night, and to store their daytime electricity for night use requires massive batteries which are very expensive and bad for the environment;
  • disapprove of nuclear power if you like. But bear in mind that it is the cleanest and safest generation system around today, and that the Fukushima incident (nuclear power plant swamped by a tsunami) cost zero lives in terms of radiation exposure, but the Japanese response (closing down its other nuclear power plants) has caused thousands of disadvantage Japanese people to die (they could not cope with the doubling of electricity prices in their homes).
• If, like little Greta Thunberg, you have been radicalised by watching the likes of David Attenborough’s TV programmes about nature and the like, remember that:
  • David Attenborough did not write those scripts. He was just paid to read the voiceovers. He was not hired because he is bright – he was hired because he has a lovely soothing voice;
  • Polar bears are not endangered. Their numbers have multiplied in recent years;
  • When they show you pictures of those huge towers on traditional power stations, the clouds above them are not pollution, but merely water vapour. Just ordinary, harmless clouds;
  • When they show you videos of hurricanes and other extreme weather events, they are showing you exceptions, not the rule. The number of extreme weather events has been falling, as the world’s climate gets more benign. And the number of people killed by extreme weather events is these days a small fraction of what it was 100 years ago.

When you grow up, and depending on where you grow up. you might be inclined to blame your parents for being such soft-headed woke hippies. Especially if you look across at places that did not go woke, did not go broke and are much

Pandemic

It is very hard to get a realistic estimate out of pandemic experts on the likely extent of the present coronavirus outbreak. Understandably, they do not want to create panic.

My fear, looking at the figures that are available, is that we might be heading towards half a billion or a billion people becoming infected. That might mean deaths of about a hundred million people or so. Probably mostly in China, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. That would put it as worse, but not much worse, than the Spanish influenza outbreak a hundred years ago.

My daughter Annabel, writing in the Telegraph, has remarked that air travel poses risks which were not present a hundred years ago. Flying around a fair bit, as I do, I have always found aeroplanes to be bad news for picking up bugs. I think she’s right about the dangers of flying.

It also seems to be the case that pandemics, wiping out 1/3 or more of the total human population, are not unheard of in

Progressing Backwards

It is hard not to notice that socialists increasingly tend to call themselves not “socialists” but “progressive” these days.

It is not new for political movements to describe themselves in terms which are less than accurate. As was pointed out many times during the Brexit debate, the British Liberal Democrats turned out to be neither liberal nor democratic, in that they did everything within their power to suppress the views of those with whom they disagreed and to overturn the largest democratic exercise in British political history.

Likewise in Germany, the

A Dangerous Taste for Failure

One of the jolly things about 2020 is that it is a date that has, in the past, repeatedly been picked as the date by which all sorts of terrible things are supposed to have happened, mostly as a result of global warming, but also as a result of other things that the flopsies don’t like. Here is a brief selection:[1]

The Washington Post 1990: “Carbon dioxide is the gas most responsible for predictions that Earth will warm on average by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2020… The United States, because it occupies a large continent in higher latitudes, could warm by as much as 6 degrees Fahrenheit.

All that didn’t happen. It’s more like 1°F.

The New York Times 1989, quoting William Stevens: “untapped pools of domestic oil are finite and dwindling… by the year 2020 there would not be enough domestic oil left ‘to keep me interested.”

Ha ha. The United States is presently swimming in oil, not least because of highly successful fracking.

The Lancet 1997: ‘Millions will die’ unless climate policies change. The report went on to say that 8 million people would die by 2020.

Well, of course, nobody has died from climate change .  Unless  you count,

The Brexit Moment

It is cold and wet right now here in South Australia, but I am not bothered by that at all.

The hard-won independence of the UK from the EU came at 9.30 this morning, local time. I celebrated here at The Phenelry with my lovely Louise and a busy breakfast table of like-minded friends. We played Rule Britannia – loudly – and a recording of Big Ben. We drank French champagne and South American coffee, with bread and bagels freshly made from Australian flour. And of course, sausages, bacon, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, scrambled eggs (free range of course) and other good things.

It rather looks as though British fortunes will be something of a mixed bag over the next few years. On the one hand, Britain can look forward to increased prosperity, free from foreign control and (for most people) with a re-found self-confidence and pride. That will be good news, not only for the British, but also for its many friends around the world, including of course Australia, as Britain is freed up to do the trade deals that it wants to do and to put in place a sensible immigration policy.

But for quite some considerable time, the corridors of power will still be full of left-over remoaners. In the United States, Donald Trump said that he was going to drain the swamp, but it is very evident indeed that the swamp there does not want to be drained. Something of the same is likely to happen in Britain. By way of example, someone on the BBC evidently thought that it was a good idea to spend public money having the very unfunny socialist Nish Kumar put on an absurd and insulting piece about Queen Victoria. I’m not sure anybody could seriously regard this as comedy – rather