permabubble / impermafrost (the looting can really start)

permabubble

'homebuyers using a mortgage can now borrow up to 20% more than they could as recently as three months ago...'

so is this bad? 

yes - it will keep house prices up. because there will be more 'as-yet-unearned' money chasing the existing properties (as you know the government has promised to build a million more properties by the end of this parliament - so you know that won't be happening). 

and yes again - it will increase the amount of risk in the housing market (making any potential mortgage repayment crisis worse). 

it's a permabubble - expanding onwards and upwards sucking more value into the vortex of just keeping a roof over your head with more and more of it owed to the banks.  in the normal course of events the house always wins (i.e. the banks always win) and in times of crisis there's a fire sale of discounted assets which end up in the hands of those who don't need to borrow (the rich). 

and now the looting really can really start. 

but worrying about these things (in any active kind of way) is in the past for horsemouth. 

impermafrost

like permabubble this is another pun.

the pun is upon the word permafrost - 'soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below 0 °C (32 °F) for two years or more'.

there is rather a lot of it (particularly in the northern hemisphere). 

'around 15% of the Northern Hemisphere or 11% of the global surface is underlain by permafrost, covering a total area of around 18 million km2' 

the wikipedia article on permafrost is reassuring about the amount of CO2 or CH4 that the thawing of this permafrost could release (both of these being greenhouse gases). as global warming increases so increases global warming. horsemouth does not like positive feedback loops in the natural world - once you have two or more positive feedback loops then you have a very unstable system.

other examples of positive feedback loops for global warming would include loss of ice at the poles and glaciers, warming of oceans causing release of CO2, etc. 

but really horsemouth is less worried about changes in the climate than changes in weather patterns producing changes in the areas where rain falls and where food can be grown.

anyway when you have millions (possibly billions) of people on the move because it is no longer possible to grow food where they live (or because the country is under water or too hot to live in)... the looting really can really start.  

horsemouth is very much enjoying reading albert camus' the plague,

'even the small satisfaction of writing letters was denied us' 

horsemouth has reread it since the events but he seems to be getting through to a better, stronger reading of it this time. a chapter provides us with an overview of people's thoughts and conversations as the plague takes hold and then we are off into examples. 

he has compiled his end of the month read, watched, listened to list. 

here it is raining. horsemouth knows this because he has just been out for a walk. (he got as far as the edge of the wood before bottling out).