Bishop Hill Bringing politicians to Booker
Mar 24, 2013 Energy: coal Energy: gas Energy: grid Energy: wind Christopher Booker is in fine form this morning, describing in horrific detail the steady progress of the UK's energy system towards disaster. Perhaps mercifully, he does not move on to consider what this will mean for the economy as a whole and for individuals.
[It] is all insane in so many ways that one scarcely knows where to begin, except to point out that, even if our rulers somehow managed to subsidise firms into spending £100 billion on all those wind farms they dream of, they will still need enough new gas-fired power stations to provide back-up for all the times when the wind isn’t blowing, at the very time when the carbon tax will soon make it uneconomical for anyone to build them.
Bishop Hill
Interestingly, a leader in the Telegraph calls for the government to repeal the Climate Change Act. One can't help but be reminded about Winston Churchill's quote about being able to trust Americans to do the right thing once they've tried all the other options.
Nice to hear, but ten years ago would have been better.
Bishop Hill
The Mail is headlining on the excess deaths from the current cold weather.
Freezing Britain's unusually harsh winter could have cost thousands of pensioners their lives.
This month is on track to be the coldest March for 50 years – and as the bitter Arctic conditions caused blackouts and traffic chaos yesterday, experts warned of an 'horrendous' death toll among the elderly.
About 2,000 extra deaths were registered in just the first two weeks of March compared with the average for the same period over the past five years.
Reader Comments (190)
Academics should be afraid.
Climategate demonstrates that in some cliques, peer review is pal review. The endorsement has negative implications for the validity of the paper's conclusions. The journals also lose credibility.
We read of the politiicisation of science where left wing academics allegedly lie in in the belief that it is justifiable if it serves the greater political cause. The same appears to be the case for Green activists.
There are reports that some medical papers that favour certain drugs are bogus and even worse, others find dangerous medications free of side-effects in order to boost sales to the NHS.
Politics and financial gain seem to undermine the credibility of honest science reporting.
Then we have the issue of funding. Why does virtually every climate science paper begin with the oath of allegiance to AGW? Just as real is the removal of funding if you don't toe the line. All of this makes the concept of scientific consensus rather sinister.
The great and the good, from Government advisors to learned Societies, all pretend that the science is settled, the consensus is strong, the science is sound.
What garbage in the case of global warming! Even the name was changed to Climate Change. They couldn't keep calling it warming when everyone knew it was getting colder.
When the whole alarmism scam crashes, what will happen to peer review? Many academics don't have anything else. The number of peer reviewed publications is everything; maybe soon it will be nothing.
You don't need to be guilty to be affected. You didn't speak out when politicians and the MSM were fed a diet of alarmism based on dodgey papers by your colleagues.
The credibility of peer reviewed publication is everything, most academics have little else. Stand back and watch a few of your colleagues destroy it for ever.
Scientists in industry will not support you. They rarely publish anything and are judged on tangible results, not papers.
Where are the whistleblowers?
Richard Betts, HADCRUT4 is flat from Jan 2002 to Jan 2013 (11 years) and negative for 10,9,8,7 years.
Climate Scientists seem to think all you need to do is draw a straight line from 1979 to 1998 and it would continue on forever.
It didn't.
"Talk about disappearing up their own fundament. --Mike Jackson
The heartbreak of proctocraniosis, occupational hazard of academics, politicians, and Climatologists. Incurable, but treatable:
http://www.johnernst.com/sight_windows_p50.html
Don K
You have to remember that Betts' future is entirely dependent on climate model predictions (not projections). He knows that as well as anyone. I'm certain that he and his Met Off colleagues also know that the current run of cold winters across europe are not due to global warming, arctic warming or any other warming. He has to keep his model predictions alive or he is knackered (technical term for up the creek without a model). IF this current cooling is long term and if CO² trends start to slow or move down then the last leg of the 3 legged stool will break and the climate unit with it. Good ridance.
I hope the Brits will be brave enough to vote for UKIP at the next election after all they don't have any other sane politicians do they? That should see the end of wind, solar, Met off subsidies and the Climate Scam.
Vote UKIP - at least they are real people and think like real people - hoping for something to turn up from Dave's lot is to say the least - clutching at straws.
There is no hope, unless good people start making lots of protest noise and vote with your minds not with your hearts.
Mar 24, 2013 at 5:19 PM | Unregistered CommenterAthelstan
Or jousting with wind turbines. ???
It's encouraging that the Telegraph, Mail & Express are all publishing more opinion pieces which are critical of the discredited CAGW hypothesis, its horrendous costs and the suicidal Climate Change Act. The Telegraph has of course always had the wise and wonderful Christopher Booker but now his views are at last reaching their leader column.
How can sceptics help and encourage the rest of the MSM catch up with reality? The BBC and the Guardian may be the last to recant but what about the once intelligent Economist, Independent and Times?
Just one of the 13 mistakes in the physics: at TOA the CO2 signal is ~40% of the black body amplitude. This has in the past been assumed as proving CO2 absorbs IR from the surface.
This is not true: what is observed is the self-absorbed emission spectrum. It comes from ~260 °K, just above mid level clouds where convection changes to radiation. There can be no direct thermalisation >LTE. The people in Climate Alchemy have got the basics wrong.
Sorry BH, but someone has to work out what went wrong over 40 years......
Richard Betts
You'd be funny if what you are preaching wasn't so dangerous.
I'm not saying that 4 degrees by the end of the century is the most likely outcome - I don't know what is most likely - but it's easily possible, and that's the question I was asked to address for the conference.
Mar 24, 2013 at 11:15 AM | Registered CommenterRichard Betts
20°C rise is possible if everything in your nightmare came true. What's the point of your comment.
Either your model can predict the climate or it can't.
Now be honest and open for a change and tell us can it or can't it?
Oh I know already. It can't. So why don't you and your colleague climb back in your little hole and stopping preaching your religion and maybe many of us elderly with live to a more natural death.
Schrodinger's Cat indeed that is perhaps the saddest part off this , the danger that when the AGW house falls down it will take a whole load of more important fact based things with it , and leave the public's opinion of science in the gutter. Its actual this possibility which I think keeps some in science 'onside' and others silent .
The sadder part is by then Mann and 'the Team ' will have made tenure and a ton of cash so will be walking away with their 'rear ends ' still held high , it will be others that pay the price.
"Since I happen to be one of those who welcomes your contributions here I shall refrain from such blunt comments as "wake up and smell the coffee, Richard" but I would suggest that some of your theoretical alarmist projections are so far out of line with what "the science" is now telling us that it really is time to tell the modellers to stop playing silly games with the aim of scaring everyone to death and to look a little more closely at what is actually happening in the real world."
Mar 24, 2013 at 11:42 AM | Mike Jackson
It seems to me that Betts' comments here are condescending at best.
As regards the energy situation in Britain, it seems to me that it is time to recognize that Greens have their hearts set on changing human behavior. They do not want to engage with their opponents but to change their opponents in fundamental ways. It seems that they are not beyond using "Five Year Plans" for the purpose of bringing about fundamental changes in the economy. They are working to create the "New Green Man" or "New Green Being." I doubt that the kinds of catastrophes that have been discussed in this forum would deter them in any way at all.
The 2,000 additional deaths.
This is an alarming number. Can this number be attributed to cost of energy alone?
I ask this question because of experience in the US where people retire and continue to live in their existing homes on a reduced income. With rising real-estate taxes and food cost, perhaps the only cost variable which is accessible to them is energy - drive less, heat less.
If the disparity between income and expense is sufficiently severe, one could say that some of these folks are clearly attempting to live beyond their means. They might be able to escape this trap by relocating to reduced "digs." In the meantime, we have built into our "liberal" POV that they should be subsidized so that they might live out their years in the "old homestead" no matter how inappropriate it might be to their present needs.
So there we have "living beyond their means." Is that what your 2,000 recently departed were doing?
Or is it different? Is it that "Living is beyond their means?" This would presumably be due, in part, to increased energy costs, due in part (or maybe entirely) to the government policies which we all abhor.
If these 2,000 extra deaths of pensioners due to the cold and the cost of energy can be authenticated, I would think it a basis for a government to fall. It is an outrage. Actually it is worse than that, but I cannot find the right word. Murder? Genocide? Destruction of an identifiable part of the populace by government edict? Isn't that genocide?
To paraphrase Winston's acute and I think accurate observation about us (USers), we do try every stupid approach to a problem before acquiescing to the one thing that is sure to work. But that is usually because all the stupid solutions seem cheaper. But we do generally get there ... eventually.
It seems to me that you guys need to be looking in all of the barns. The tumbrils surely can be found.
Of course all of the above is predicated on the accuracy of the 2,000 extra death number. Is it accurate? Approximately accurate?
Mike Jackson seems to see the point of the Bishop's post better than many. Irrespective of the longer term future, energy policy in this country has to have short, medium and long term objectives. The short and medium term objectives should not be much affected by whatever political and economic view one may form from available evidence (or indeed from lobbied propaganda) of a changing climate. [Assuming short term to mean the management of existing generation infrastructure, and medium term to be it's maintenance and replacement].
The function of the short and medium term energy policy should be to keep the people warm and industry running and to keep the economy competitive.
Where we are now was easily predictable and avoidable 20yrs ago. Maybe even 5 years ago. Now we are in a serious predicament. Where we are now is a very very big fail for those responsible.
Worse, I don't see any sign that those with their hands on the levers have really understood how badly they've failed. I don't see their advisers (yes, I'm sorry RB but I include you here) yet realising the enormity of the damage their prevaricating and eloquently ambiguous witterings have done.
I've seen it first hand. The elderly freezing, terrified of bills, the depression of the people in the street not able to afford food, never mind heat and light. And the promise that at a time when incomes are static, or falling, that energy costs are still going to increase at near double digit rates.
People are going to die, and politicians are airily fantasising about 'low carbon'.
Get the damned power stations built.
One last pop at regaining "street-cred", Richard.
Do you think that Marcott et al's paper is fundamentally flawed (before you reply, I suggest you read Steve McIntyre's posts, over at Climate Audit)?
If you do think it is flawed, what are you going to do about it?
Energy intensive industries like car plants will now have to move to other countries, knowing that energy disruption and high energy costs for the little electricity available in the UK, makes car assembly no longer viable.
Excel Phil has done what the Germans couldn't.
Do you think that Marcott et al's paper is fundamentally flawed (before you reply, I suggest you read Steve McIntyre's posts, over at Climate Audit)?
If you do think it is flawed, what are you going to do about it?
Mar 24, 2013 at 9:55 PM | Don Keiller
My guess is "Yes" and "Nothing".
Richard Betts - I can see you are still on the Kool-Aid.
All sorts of cherry picked quotes about warming rates from all your pet stuff and your models. I always think it is not worth swapping results with warmist believers - it is an idle enterprise. But you mention warming rate and say yours was related to the last 100 years. According to that chap Phil Jones there has been no difference in the warming rate in the last three Multidecadal upsides at about 0.16k per decade, going back to 1860. You can fiddle around with your start and end points but that is the reality.
No model has modelled the actual climate yet and you can huff all you like about it, but as I have said before Feynman's adage that the scientist can fool himself more easily than others remains true. If your models don't model the current standstill then what chance 2100?? It was all so easy when it was warming but now.......
So far there is no evidence that CO2 is a major driver of climate and much evidence that the Current Bun has effects we don't understand, but are slowly gaining some traction (even in the sceptical Met Office). Much evidence that Arctic relative melts and freezes are cyclical and have effects on our weather through the NAO. The President of the Royal Society was concerned about the lack of ice in the Arctic 200 years ago. American nuclear subs surfaced through the sea ice within 10 miles of the North pole in the 1950's. The highest frequency of cat 3 plus hurricanes making landfall in the USA was in the 17th century (sedimental records).
Data tells me it has all happened before and after 5 bitter record breaking NH winters (despite your model forecasts) surely there must be just a little questioning in your mind? - isn't that what scientists do? look at the data and question assumptions of the theory when it don't fit. AR4 told us we would see increasingly warm and wet NH winters,bjut now very cold is the new warm.
I see today that the MO projection for January to March issued in late December suggested that there was a wide range of possible outcomes, but that a warmest category outcome for March was more likely than a coldest cagtegory outcome!!! Not your area I know Richard, but how are they getting on with that??
As I see it Climate Scientists should consider that the CO2 theory is not proven and that they "may" have mistaken the upside of the latest multidecadal oscillation for a warming surge - after all the Climategate1 emails revealed that some in the hockey team even considered this a possibilty.
In meteorology at least persistence is sometimes a good forecast, and if you had just projected forward the slow cyclical warming since the Little Ice Age (as a few people did) you get a global temp pretty close to where we are - total cost 20p for the sheet of graph paper against many billions over 30 years for supercomputers and the research to go with them.
Actual data is king and warmists have even been fiddling with that - tells you all you need to know.
It has been clear for some time that Warming peaked in about 2003 and that the earth has entered a cooling trend which is likely to last for thirty years and may well continue well beyond that. For links to the data and papers supporting this see " Its the Sun stupid -the minor significance of CO2" and other posts on Global Cooling at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com.
As an expatriate Brit (55 years in the USA) it is interesting to see the difference between the situation in the US and Britain in regard to climate change.Because of the separation of powers in the US constitution there were enough sensible people in the Republican Party who saw through the execrable "science" of the IPCC - Hansen - Al Gore CO2 scare to be able to block the Waxman - Markey Bill which would have lead the US down the same mad path imposed by the 2008 climate act and the succeeding coalition government. The fact is, Britain merely replaced kingly power by rule by one man or at least a small oligarchy. The British at heart still like to doff their caps to some lordly authority who can tell them what to do- this includes the British scientific establishment who happily collect their knighthoods and lordships ( and Grants) for being reliable chaps who won't rock the boat with inconvenient conclusions. Being a more practical nation America is entering a new industrial and economic rennaissance based on the great advances in seismic data processing and horizontal drilling developed by its Oil Companies.Britain by contrast is heading over a self constructed economic cliff and killinmg thousands of its elderly because of the delusions of its political leaders.
I'm not optimistic that the Telegraph's call for repeal of the Climate Bill will have much effect.The bulk of the true believers in Britains chattering , scientific and political classes - will be quite happy to stand up to their necks in snow and proclaim that the drifts are due to Global Warming for some years yet.
Don Keiller
Already asked him that here
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/18/reacting-to-rose.html#comment19842775
He neatly evaded with political skill here
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/18/reacting-to-rose.html#comment19842896
Thanks Pharos :-)
Dr Norman Page
"The British at heart still like to doff their caps to some lordly authority who can tell them what to do- this includes the British scientific establishment"
Tis true we have not yet felt the need to storm the gates or take up the protocol from across the channel of "knit one, pearl one, slice one".
However the effect that no electrical power will have on the UK's overcrowded inner cities may well bring about a change in the normally reserved UK citizen. Our politicians are knowingly attempting the impossible. Mankind will not willingly reverse his aspirations. History ably demonstrates that all previous attempts to do so result in conflict, even in this green and pleasant land!
I'm a bit puzzled that the esteemed Richard Betts claims that CO2 concentration is accelerating. In the past 20 years, it is clearly not; see the link:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1993/to:2012/plot/esrl-co2/from:1993/to:2012/trend
You can see that any deviation from a constant linear trend is minuscule, and after taking the logarithm of the concentration, the acceleration in forcing will be negligible. Looking at the graph, It is perhaps no accident that there is a slight dip in the CO2 vs time curve between 1998 and 2002, relative to the trend line. This is quite possibly due to the Pinatubo eruption's effect on oceanic heat content, which can persist for several years (about 3 or 4, in this case.) [See the page on "Volcanic impacts on the oceans" in Wankerpedia.]
A colder ocean absorbs more CO2.
What I find genuinely puzzling is the fact that even someone like Booker, a founder of Private Eye after all, can't seem to make any traction beyond his core supporters, even when it should be clear to all that the poor above all will suffer from these ridiculous policies. Yes, some tiny cracks are appearing in the liberal consensus, but precious few and only after the longest time. To that extent, it's understandable that 'the man in the street' still largely trusts the consensus. Blame should be directly squarely at the scientists and policy advisors who knew the policies were unsustainable / unrealistic / futile / counter-productive but who chose to keep their counsel.
"I sometimes feel that Don goes a bit OTT in his comments but increasingly I find I agree with him."
I also feel this way. Aren't 0C, 0C and 0 clue also possible and plausible?
"I also feel this way" <- meaning I increasingly agree with DK.
DougieJ, possibly has something to do with him not being a credible source of information.
Here are the met office cet figures from 1659 until today
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
It is very graphic and amply demonstrates the rapid cooling over the last decade in the uk
Tonyb
DougieJ
"What I find genuinely puzzling is the fact that even someone like Booker, a founder of Private Eye after all, can't seem to make any traction beyond his core supporters, even when it should be clear to all that the poor above all will suffer from these ridiculous policies."
May I proffer an explanation? What you are witnessing is the result of years and years of the nanny state combined with a continual dumbing down of our education system.
The demise of a nation - Bread and Circuses!
@GreenSand: sadly it seems you have a point. The transition from the wonderfully eccentric Patrick Moore to the floppy haired, pouty-lipped, Radio Times cover friendly Brian Cox would seem to bear that out. See also...[insert any number of sexed-up SCIENCE presenters here...]
jorgekafkazar,
Spot on - you can go back further than this on WFT with no substantial deviation from a straight line, and looking more historical Mauna Loa CO2 data there's no evidence of significant acceleration whatsoever since the beginning of the 1970s. Richard B seems such a decent guy that something so obvious as this doesn't ring true to form - why are you playing us Richard?
And again, Richard, further to a question I asked several months ago, why is the Norwegian Met Office (yr.no) far better at forecasting our weather than the home service that costs us so many £ millions? You told me they use the same GCM as your employers - so why does the Met Office so consistently overestimate temperatures and provide such inadequate precipitation information? It should be a complete embarrassment, alongside the MO's execrably useless new website. Why not just pay the Norwegians a royalty - or quit altogether and provide links. They even link to UK webcams, ffs...
Mr Betts is back as of Mar 24, 2013 at 7:36 PM
I'm glad you're back, sir. I suspect the prevailing paradigm continues to affect you, as it has so many in your profession. But I very much respect your honesty and willingness to engage.
I do suggest that viewing the situation as "challenges to a paradigm", rather than "attacks on a consensus" will help all retain a certain equanimity in the discussion.
@BitBucket: "possibly has something to do with him not being a credible source of information"
As opposed to? Gore? Mann? Hansen?
If the roles were reversed, and the above three were seen as representing Big Oil, you'd be all over their inconsistencies like a cheap suit. As it is, true believers seem remarkably willing to over look what they see as minor inconsistencies. It's the motivation behind such choices that interests me.
DougieJ
To the best of my knowledge Brian Cox has only appeared on my TV screen once, and not for long!
I am of course disowning any of the more informative appearances he might have made whilst my children were watching Top of the Pops in the 90s.
He is to me a shining example of how to dumb down education, it isn't easy, it isn't sexy and can't be as you correctly describe "sexed-up". It demands hard work, a great deal of nounce and the sooner people are told they can not all "walk on the moon" the better!
"DougieJ, possibly has something to do with him not being a credible source of information."
BB, it's the nastiness in those words that says something about you than you should have kept hidden.
You display the same characteristics that I experienced from RC posters, years ago, which motivated me to think 'what's going on here?'
Shame on you.
Richard Bett's response to the question about Marcott et al. is interesting:
So - at 3:08 pm on a Monday afternoon, Richard is answering (or evading) questions from work. Yet Richard won't have time to grapple with the intellectual enormity of Marcott et al. for a 'while'. Perhaps Richard's activities are mainly spin and outreach and less honest scientific interest(?)
SayNoToFearmongers & jorgekafkazar
If you haven't already you need to watch the video posted by Don Keiller earlier on this thread:-
http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/people/richard-betts
You will then understand where RB gets his rate of acceleration in CO2 in the atmosphere from (hint - somebody modeled it, using the output from a model that had determined that the world had warmed to such a degree that the ecosystem, soil, plants, trees would by that stage no longer be sinks but would be actual emitters of CO2) but don't let me spoil your watching.
Plug in and invest 23 or so minutes
RoyFOMR, nastiness - really? Seems extreme. So how would you characterise someone who denies the connection between passive smoking and cancer? Or between white asbestos and cancer? Or who accuses someone of corruption, costing his newspaper large amounts in damages when they retract the accusations? Or who believes in intelligent design? etc... Just the sort of person you like to listen to I suppose, if you are a Telegraph reader.
Richard Betts,
Take a deep breath and look in the mirror, repeat several times, "Maybe, just possibly, I'm wrong."
I started working with "computer models" as an engineer in training when a lot of work was still even done on analog machines, the early 60's.
Computer modelling was an essential tool to me as an engineer throughpout my career, but one thing I learned was never ever, ever, make critical decisions based on a "computer model" alone.
As far as I'm concerned anyone or any institution who thinks they can build a reliable computer model of the global climate, is dumb beyond comprehension. For heavens sake, up page you are argueing about fractions of a degree over a decade, do you realize how bloody stupid that is!!!! Angels on a pin head.
I have never "vented" on a blog like this before, but Richard, you need to stand back and take a long hard look at yourself, your organization, consider the principles, the tenets and the responsibility and accountability assumed, apparently willingly, through their influence on government policies.
I sleep well at night with a clean concience, do you?
As the CO2 concentration rises, undreamt of negative feedback mechanisms will be recruited to re-sequester that carbon back out of the atmosphere, as has been happening since the beginning of time, well, earthtime. These alarmists have been terrified by a possibility so remote as to be absurd. Somebody should pinch the bunch of them, and awake them from their agony.
=========
Old Mike, welcome
I sleep well at night with a clean conscience, do you?
Hand calcs?
And for those outside the world of engineering design, that is not a euphemism!
"Computer modelling was an essential tool to me as an engineer throughpout my career, but one thing I learned was never ever, ever, make critical decisions based on a "computer model" alone."
Mar 25, 2013 at 1:08 AM | Old Mike
Absolutely. When using models for decision making, the most important thing is the history of what output was used from each model, what parts of the output were found salient, what decisions were made, and what the results of the decisions were (how they fared in the world). This activity must be continuous for years or as long as necessary.
@Greensand
Thanks for the link to the RB podcast above.
The word 'Guess' appeared lots of times and with various prefixes in conjugation with 2060, 2070 and other interesting dates.
Well RB certainly is an expert when it comes to climate models but this old brain of mine 'Guesses' that the UK will be well screwed economically 40 years earlier than his predictions if we keep on going the way we've been going.
I'll go all-in with two-pence worth of common-sense against your bank-busting hubristic,digital, playstation projections/predictions/fantasies!
RoyFOMR
"I'll go all-in with two-pence worth of common-sense against your bank-busting hubristic,digital, playstation projections/predictions/fantasies!"
Yup, I don't think you will ever again have an opportunity to hold a "Royal" against an all in "blind" man! Enjoy, bid easy to start, sprats catch mackerels, mackerels catch....
Well done @richardabetts you have made my day - Come back soon :)
"May I proffer an explanation? What you are witnessing is the result of years and years of the nanny state combined with a continual dumbing down of our education system.
The demise of a nation - Bread and Circuses!"
Mar 24, 2013 at 11:45 PM | Green Sand
Yes. Here in the US, conservatives are looking for the backlash that must occur when college students and graduates learn that they have acquired huge debts and worthless degrees. The opposite is true. What the students have learned is that the money they borrowed is "Monopoly Money," as in the board game. They will fully expect the government, especially in the form of the presidential candidates for 2016, to cancel the loans or make good on Obama's promise that a college degree makes one employable. Bread and Circuses.
Greensand,
Hand calcs with a slide rule to three significant figures, quickly learn to carry those decimal places.
I also thank my primary school teacher who used to pose mental arithmatic questions to determine who could get out of class ten minutes early on a Friday afternoon, no multiple choice response, you had to be fast with your hand and were either right or wrong.
I was fortunate enough to have had some lectures from Bronowski, one of his talks on "Ball court accuracy" should be de rigueur for anyone entering a technical field.
I notice several contributors have commended Richard for daring to enter the "Lions Den" here. It takes no courage to contribute to todays virtual world, it's just words and one can withdraw or engage at a whim. I do absolutely respect a willingness to confront differences of opinion in a factual manner but weasel words and hand waving not.
Courage is what I think of when I consider my father, still alive at 92 in the UK, and the hundreds of thousands like him who risked their lifes serving their country. He was fortunate to survive 4 years of operations as a pilot with a statistical life expectancy of 6 weeks, I'm also thankful for his beating the odds or I would not have existed.
For me maturity is acceptance of ambiguity and uncertainty and letting go of the certainty that so many of the "Alarmist cults" seem to grasp for.
Mar 24, 2013 at 11:24 PM | DougieJ
//////////////////////////////////////////
Yes, but if next winter is cold and if there are brownouts, matters can quickly change. This could be a tipping point and I would not be surprised to see a large head of steam built up in matters of months. If this were to happen, all MSM newspapers would be carrying stories. Heck, even the BBC would be forced to comment on the brownouts. Just consider immigration. At the last election, this was not really an issue and had little traction. Now it appears that all parties want to talk tough (note talk not necessarily act) on immigration and it is said to be an issue for the next election. If the UK experiences brownouts for the next winter or two, I can see energy policy and fuel poverty being a significant issue at the next election.
I may have missed it, but what is the practical point in the UK decommissioning a handful of coal powerd generators? China has these past few years been building 1 or 2 new coal powered generators a week. It has plans for a further 360. India has plans to build some 460. Even Germany plans to build 20 to 25 new coal powered generators. This totals more than 1000.
So what will be achieved on a global scale by the UK decommissioning a handful of coal powered generators when just a few countries are building approximately 1000 new ones? It is merely a futile guesture by the UK government and on a global scale it will be impossible to even note the immeasurably small reduction in CO2 emissions
No legitimate and responsible government would indulge in guesture politics of this ilk when the effect of the guesture is to lead to thousands of needlesly premature winter deaths and inflict fuel poverty on millions of its citizens.
It is about time that the politicians were held to account for the mess that they have created, since whatever one's view is on AGW, it is the political response to it that has been so niaive and misguided.
"So what will be achieved on a global scale by the UK decommissioning a handful of coal powered generators when just a few countries are building approximately 1000 new ones? It is merely a futile guesture by the UK government and on a global scale it will be impossible to even note the immeasurably small reduction in CO2 emissions "
What will be achieved is that the value of the pound will be reduced relative to its trading partners, making imports (like gas) more expensive and reducing the British economy to what it was post WW2. If the Greens really get their way then, in time, the once Great Brittain will be drawn down to an economy resembling that of the dark ages.
BB.
Totally off topic but you say: "So how would you characterise someone who denies the connection between passive smoking and cancer?"
Ask of Al Gore that question...
My mother, who is 85 and maintains quite a large house, is horrified by the increasing energy bills. But..........she still believes in global warming/climate change and that we must do something.
Now, she is a lady who is not easily fooled and is very sensible but the whole myth of CAGW has been bought.
Thare is a disconnect between the fact that energy costs are soaring because of government policies and the belief that big oil is raking in profits at the expense of the public.
She also believes in the BBC and that it speaks the truth. The BBC, to my mind, is the major culprit in creating and promulgating this fake idea and they will not change.
What to do?
Now, I live in China and have seen at first hand how people can buy into ideas which have no relationship with truth or reality but the common mind believes In certain cretinous ideas. I have had friends come back from North Korea and tell me that the people do believe in their government - And they are happy in their state.
This belief that we are affecting the climate is very deep in the West. It is like we are are all sleep walking
I have gone back to re-reading Plato's Republic and his story of the man in the cave........
@Richard Betts
Glad you're back.
But may I offer some entirely unsolicited but I hope constructive advice.
As your career continues to flourish, you will come into contact with a wider range of people than you have been accustomed to... politicians, advisers, journos, industrial guys, engineering guys, commercial guys.
They come form different backgrounds from you and most likely they will not share your adherence to academic norms.
This is not a sign of bad faith or being Bad People - just that they have other priorities than worrying about whether footnote 17 to Harrelson, Malone and Long's seminal paper from 2003 overrides appendix B to Petersen, Eads and Guilfoyle (2002) - or whatever it may be. However fascinating to you, the state of the academic literature will not be a matter of any concern to them.
To successfully represent yourself and your institution to the outside world you will need to talk in their language, not yours.
Within climatology, emphasis on precedence and peer review and conventions and 'politesse' may be seen as near sacred concepts. But in the more utilitarian world outside 'does it work?' and 'is it right?' are far more important questions than the niceties of academic protocol. Those are the things that people are interested in.
And debates and discussions are commonly conducted in more robust language and with less deference than you are accustomed to. This, too, should not to be taken as a sign of disrespect...just adherence to a different set of social conventions.
Seems to me that over the next five to ten years some more searching questions will start to be asked about all the assumptions that underpin the last decade's fashionable thinking on climate, energy and economics. When a serious national newspaper calls on the government to repeal the CCA it is clear that the political wind is changing. And it is very likely that you will find yourself embroiled in those discussions with people whose starting points are radically different from yours.
I suggest that you view your interactions here as a place to practice in a relatively sheltered and protected environment for the more brutal battles to come. Contributors here are generally well-disposed towards you as a person and keen to hear what you have to contribute (which does not mean that we necessarily agree with you). But it would be a big mistake to assume that the future fora you will be 'invited' to attend will be so (relatively) benign.