Another Beneficial Crisis

Shane Greer ponders whether Gordon Brown may have been the target of the Boeing 777 which crash landed at Heathrow today. Considering the dour one's ability to drain the life force from anyone within a two mile radius through force of personality, I'd have thought that the CAA might list the presence of the Prime Minister as one of the potential causes.

Seriously though, for a vehicle the size of a modern commercial aircraft to suffer what sounds like such a complete systems failure and for the passengers and crew to walk away with only a handful of minor injuries is a great testimony to the skill of the pilot who flew it and of the engineers who designed it. To transition from a run of the mill, doubtlessly computer assisted approach to a seat of the pants recovery from potential disaster at the end of a long flight shows just why the training is so rigorous.

Naturally though there are always those who emerge from such near disasters with less credit. To be fair Brown's PR team did not whisk their man to the other end of the runway to help grateful survivors down the escape slide, however the greenies seem to have scented blood, or at least aviation fuel.

News 24 has had a delightful interview with someone from the 'Green Sky Alliance' or some such set of progress hating goons. Apparently, today's near disaster is a death knell for the prospects of there being a new runway at Heathrow, as the more flights there are, the more accidents there shall be also. Naturally this is almost certainly true, but also completely irrelevant to the case for or against a new runway at Heathrow, so as long as there is no proof of a likely increase in the relative rate or severity of incidents, a case the spokesman didn't even attempt to make.

More remarkable was the spokesman's claim along the lines that 'aircraft are as safe as they ever will be'. Like many such dubious claims from the environmental lobby it is easy to accurately restate their proposition to prove it's absurdity; try 'There will never be any further progress in aircraft safety' for example, it's not exactly a proposition I'd put much money on.

I suspect the beneficial crisis rapid response unit of the EU will also be up to full speed by now looking for some tenuous European angle to demand further transfers of powers from the CAA to the EASA despite the regular criticisms of the latter's questionable performance.

Watch this space.

PS Apologies for the lack of posting for the last week, real work and real beer and an irritating technical problem have got in the way, as has a bout of 'Hain Fatigue' - kicking dog's when they are down gets a bit boring even with NuLab mongrels.

Heat, but Little Light

A Health Hazard?

I don't mind doing my bit to save the planet if, that is, it needs saving; the common sense stuff at least. I do almost exclusively use public transport, but then I live in Greater London, one of the few places in the country where this is remotely possible. I do most of the basic recycling that lies within the bounds of reason for my relatively modest consumption, albeit more from a general aversion to waste than any great belief that it is saving planet Earth from some rather nebulous potential catastrophe.

I have also replaced over time most of the high wattage bulbs in the flat with energy efficient equivalents. This has not prevented me enjoying the beginning of a skirmish between two of my more loathed self-important interest groups, the zero-risk-tolerance health lobby and the enviro-fundamentalist likes of Al Greenpeace, over the news that energy efficient bulbs may present one or more health risks, above and beyond churning mercury into the environment.

With both lobbies being granted most-favoured busybody status by the current government I suspect that health and environment ministers may find themselves firmly impaled on the horns of a dilemma. It would have been better had this happened when the incumbents of these rolls were the truly appalling Hewitt and the increasingly irritating Miliband, but you can't have everything. Better still, according to the BBC article, their own Disability Discrimination Act may come back to haunt them, as those with sensitivities to the conditions in question may be able to claim a legal right to have access to old style incandescent bulbs.

The Devil, on the same news, also points out that their room for manoeuvre is somewhat limited, as since this is an issue of petty bureaucracy and limiting choice for the consumer that the EU is supporting an outright ban anyway. I did think that it wasn't a done deal in Brussels, but I shall defer to his marginally greater loathing and much greater knowledge of what the scumbags over there are up to.

In an earlier article on other alledged health risks with the bulbs, a campaigner on behalf of those who suffer from migraine pleads:

"We would ask the government to avoid banning them completely, and still leave some opportunity for conventional bulbs to be purchased."

Source: BBC News

I fear the spokesperson's words will fall on deaf ears, for in the world of officialdom, a banning that is not complete and absolute is like having sex wearing a reusable 19th century condom. In the case of our lords and masters in Brussels an even greater climax can be obtained by combining the ban with a little bit of protectionism for European markets for the substitute product. Common sense and pragmatism are forms of wrongthink for those bureaucrats whose limited talents deny them the capability to employ either.

Even for those who can't complain about a medical condition, there remains the simple fact that for anything other than basic functional lighting that energy saving bulbs are absolutely useless. Anyone who believes otherwise has either made the fatal mistake of reading a Greenpeace press release or some manufacturers carefully worded non-claims, or in the alternative considers that a couple of bare fluorescent tubes in their kitchen/dining room constitutes 'mood lighting'.

For all the appalling devastation I may be causing I will be stockpiling, in advance of their banning, a collection of the 20-40 watt standard incandescent bulbs and even lower wattage halogen bulbs (also fundamentally incandescent technology with an uncertain future) that I actually use in very limited quantity on a day-to-day basis. Their eco-friendly cousins will serve admirably for illuminating the smallest room in the house, and for when I'm doing my rare whip round with the vacuum cleaner.

On another minor rant...Is there anybody out there who actually believes the claim that part of the extra cost of these bulbs is offset by extended lifespan? In my own case, in a modern flat with a healthy mains supply, they seem to have an attrition rate the same, if not worse, than their predecessors. I understand that this is because it is unwise for them to be switched on for less than fifteen minutes, but am unsure how I am meant to get round this problem, especially in the case of the aforementioned toilet lighting.

I can only assume that at some point our ever helpful government will spend a few million to help educate us on the answer:

"Pee slower to save the planet"

"Take a shot in the dark to save the human race" (probably coupled with a "Men - Sit down...it's now the law" reminder for obvious reasons courtesy of the leader of the Commons)

"Cross your legs, not your fingers for the future of the Earth"

Never forget, the capacity of Government for stupidity is the only truly limitless resource our planet has to offer.

Rational Environmentalism

How to vote blue to go green?

As someone who is often critical of BBC national radio news and current affairs output, it is a rare pleasure to recommend something to listen to, still available on the 'Listen Again' service.

It has been a busy weekend, both politically and on the Rugby front, but I did pause in my preparations for England's game yesterday when I heard something on the radio that actually made sense, and made a note to listen to the programme in full today.

Yesterday's 'Talking Politics' on Radio 4 was the last of the current season as normal Westminster service resumes, and tackled the thorny questions around climate change, but not from the normal dogmatic BBC position. It does appear that on this subject at least, some semblance of impartiality has returned.

The 'Listen Again' archive for the show is here and it can also be downloaded as an MP3 podcast here.

The programme features an interview with “Sceptical Environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg, in which he makes his case in a concise, powerful and highly convincing manner. For those who don't know Lomborg's line on how even if you accept man made climate change as fact, that currently approaches to dealing with it are backwards looking and come at an unacceptable human cost, I would suggest you take a listen. For those already au fait with the Lomborg manifesto there are a couple of nice digs at Al Gore to enjoy.

Focus group guru, Frank Luntz, has some fascinating insights in to green issues from a Conservative perspective. He looks at how David Cameron can take the popularity boost that his espousment of green politics has given himself and the party, and look to move from this to truly effective policy without relying on the current 'tax and punish' thinking that dominates the mindset of environmentalists of different political hues.

Finally the panel discussion features Fraser Nelson of The Spectator, Peter Hitchens, who, I'm sure purely by accident, makes the occasional constructive contribution, and they even manage to find a Green party spokesperson, Jenny Jones, who seems to be some distance from the flat-earth, anti-human wing of her party.

I'm not all that interested in green politics most of the time. As I've posted before, I have a deep distrust of some of the green lobby's policy of non-debate on the science of climate change. Another source of scepticism comes from my memories of being told in high school that we had to conserve fossil fuels as they would run out in the first decade of the 20th century. Except of course, they haven't, and we have found massive new reserves and technologies to exploit them. I can't help feeling that the emergence of a new problem, requiring exactly the same solutions once the old argument lost its potency was just a little too convenient.

I buy more into the arguments about security of energy supply, but I guess this is a harder line to push. If you ask the man in the street if he's worried that his gas bill is kept down only by buying from a sometimes hostile Russia, he'll shrug his shoulders and say 'so what?'; ditto petrol from the Middle East. A nice little story line about the end of life on Earth as we know it is a much easier message to infiltrate into the public's consciousness.

Like some of the comment in the programme, I did like the subtle shift of Tory green policy, putting it under the general 'security' banner.

For all my general scepticism, I did enjoy this show. Many of the points put forward would apply equally to tackling security of energy supply, and the moral case that we should tackle other global problems of higher priority first was very powerful.

For once, well done the BBC.

More Tough Choices

Green or Ethical? Not always the same thing

Generally when I find a screwed up piece of torn-out newspaper in a trouser pocket it means it was something that I meant to write about until something beer or rugby related intervened.

This piece from the Sunday Times was no exception. The story is an interesting look at the claims and counter claims over a piece of basic manual pumping technology that is being promoted over modern diesel pumps in the developing world as a lower carbon and lower cost alternative. In many cases the funding for the equipment has come from we in the west paying carbon offsetting fees to assuage our guilt over our long haul holiday flights.

What the article shows is that the more ethical position may not always be fully aligned with the most environmentally sound one. Everyone would welcome the fact that these manually operated pumps represent a significant cost saving to the families which opt to replace their costly hired diesel pumps, and even most of those who remain to be convinced whether there is any certainty in man made cause of any climate change still tend to accept that reducing fossil fuel usage is, in principle, a good thing.

Where the dilemma emerges is that frequently the children of the family are pressed into service to keep the pump going. I'd agree with the claim by the spokesman of the company promoting the pumps that the use of the phase 'child labour' is a bit emotive, but felt less comfortable with his assertion everything was alright because:

"It's a different way of life."

Source: The Sunday Times

This is all too typical of the thinking of the green lobby in general, imagining some more traditional ways of life as being representing some kind of pastoral ideal and raising the notion that any form of what would conventionally be called progress must be a threat to this ideal.

Would the same people suggest that we should also revert to older and less efficient forms of agriculture and industry if that was at the price that the human labour requirements dictated that, for all but the rich, schooling beyond the most basic primary education would generally become an unaffordable luxury?

I doubt it, and that being the case it's an ethically very questionable proposition whether we should be actively promoting the freezing in time of development in other parts of the world. It's easy to forget how rapidly our own society evolved in the matter of a few generations over the course of the industrial revolution. True, these innovations had their own downsides too, but overall few would claim the outcomes were anything other but a good thing. To suggest that others should not seek the same transformations is frankly wrong.

Perhaps if the funding was going towards the development of a super efficient solar powered pump I'd have less of an issue, but I suspect this would be a little too close to the US/Australian belief in technology as the way forward for the hard core Green lobby's liking.

As for the funding basis, I must have to admit that even though there are, doubtlessly other less controversial carbon offsetting schemes, there is still something about them that makes me feel uneasy about them.

There is something, even coming from a very much free trade background, about the 'you can always get away with paying' attitude that sticks in the throat.

I'd have thought that, for any true believer, that there must these schemes, though a little more practical in value, that must surely make them feel like sinful 16th century Catholics buying an indulgence.

The Environmental Jet Set

Best place for them

A few weeks ago I felt obliged to take a swipe at Derek Wall, the slightly ludicrous joint co-spokesman (or whatever he is) of the Green Party. I perhaps slightly unfairly omitted to mention that in among his litany of silly flat-earth society policies covered in his 18 Doughty Street interview, that there was something that he said that did somewhat redeem him. He made it absolutely clear that he now never used air transport. No wiggle room, no 'only for official, necessary business', no flights, period.

It's a somewhat unique position amongst the green lobby, whose blinkered form of evangelism usually involves flying all over the globe, often to very environmentally sensitive locations, to spread their virulent anti-human message.

This particular piece of news from the EU Observer came as very little surprise:

[Leftist GUE/NGL] Members of a European Parliament fact finding mission to Greenland have found themselves caught in the midst of a domestic airline strike, leaving the MEPs and staff stranded some 200 kilometres north of the polar circle at the foot of the Arctic island's biggest glacier.

...

A spokesperson for the political group, said that the party might charter an Icelandic airplane to transport the MEPs to the European continent. Another option is to lease two helicopters.

...

The delegation, consisting of six MEPs and four party staff members, had travelled to Greenland to meet political representatives, NGOs and local experts to discuss a series of issues and challenges facing the people of Greenland, such as the impact of global warming.

Source: EU Observer

I did have to enjoy the thought of a group of hapless left wingers, firmly aboard the green bandwagon, being stranded in a remote wilderness outpost by a strike by their brothers and sisters, forcing them to choose between two enormously polluting options to get them home again. Even the thought that some small part of my taxes will go towards getting these idiots home doesn't take too much shine of it.

What the hell were they doing there? Was there anything in their objectives that couldn't have been achieved over a basic video conferencing set up other than getting a few nice taxpayer subsidised photos for their next election handout?

Were it not for not wishing these MEPs on the good people of Ilulissat, I'd be quite happy for them to be left there.

Letting the Side Down

Margot Wallström

It didn't take long. Having just posted on the generally responsible consideration of the possibility of a link between climate change and recent flooding in the UK, even from the green lobby and the more senior grade of politicians, I suppose it was inevitable that would let the side down badly. Also pretty predictable was that it would come from that land that common sense forgot; Brussels and more specific the EU commission.

The ever logically challenged commissioner, Margot Wallström, has posted on the topic on her blog. OK, she doesn't explicitly state a causal relationship between climate change and the flooding, but the juxtaposition between her comments on the flooding (and fires elsewhere) and her fairly standard issue climate change diatribe leaves little doubt of the impression she wants to make, regardless of whether there is any truth to it.

As is often the case though, Ms Wallström takes things to extremes that would make our domestic politicians blush:

"It is frustrating that so many people still either deny that climate change is happening or that we can do anything about it. (Also frustrating that some people still regard climate change as some kind of conspiracy theory or a quasi religious belief).

"The scientists are unanimous: It is happening."

Source : Margot Wallström's Blog

There you have it. The scientists are 'unanimous', no need for any more debate then.

But of course they are not unanimous. It is true that there is a substantial majority of scientists who back the general consensus on climate change, and I am largely inclined to agree with much of the model from my inexpert position, if not the political answers to the challenges it presents. This is not the same as unanimity though; there are dissenting voices, and to pretend otherwise is simply intellectually dishonest, and just the type of nonsense that the conspiracy theorists feed off.

Maybe Ms Wallström is simply going along with the traditional politician's fantasy that truth can become what you wish it to be simply by repetition of a lie. To be fair though, Ms Wallström has form for statements that are poorly researched and full of logic holes, so it's probably just yet another cock-up. For poor research, my personal favourite was her posting where she announced that opposition to capital punishment was an uncontroversial shared European value, and then seemed genuinely surprised when commenters on her blog revealed just how many people in Europe, unlike me, backed the death penalty. For logical deficiency her finest moment was her treatise on her proud belief that the REACH chemicals directive would force manufacturers to do the impossible and prove a negative, by showing that their products could have no possible harmful effects; thankfully the legislation itself, misguided as it was, didn't quite reach such a level of stupidity. Interestingly her later posts on the same subject carefully avoided the same minefields, presumably after someone had pointed out the folly of her argument, but sadly we still have to fork out the same cash for her to make her foolish pronouncements anyway.

We of course should not be overcritical of Brussels, when we know our domestic politicians can serve up equally ridiculous fare. I truly wish I could remember which NuLab shadow minister it was who, shortly before NuLab came to power, announced that NuLab's target was for there to be nobody earning less than the national average wage. She brushed aside every attempt by the interviewer to convince her that this was a mathematical impossibility, and sad to say I'm pretty sure it was one of a couple of candidates, and both have gone far in government.

Act of Erm...Whoever

Climate change in action?

One of the trickier things about being a non-believer is that you don't feel entirely able to describe the recent flooding as being an act of god; even the secular equivalent, 'shit happens' doesn't quite carry the same meaning. Whatever term you come up with though is likely to be more appropriate than assigning events to the old hoary chestnut of global warmingclimate change. I will be fair to the green lobby to give some balance to my derision at their principal speaker in my earlier posting and say that at first even many of the theory of climate change's most persistent and vocal advocates have been wary of suggesting too close a connection to current events.

Of course not everyone has been quite so responsible. There are now a couple of groups of people who, though generally wholly unschooled in the details of the science, are desperate to link any outbreak of 'funny weather' to climate change; we call them politicians, and journalists. For the latter the benefit is in making a big story even bigger sounding, and for the former it helps justify taking ever more money from us to misspend more our behalf.

It's probably the journalists, led as ever by Auntie, who have been making the biggest meal of it this time around. Every single interview featuring a cajoling of every interviewee from emergency services officers to Mrs Miggins, whose cat is missing, presumed lost, since the floods, to add their doubtfully authoritative weight to the link to climate change. Each segment on the aftermath of the flooding almost always ends with a pronouncement that, due to climate change, we must expect more such events.

Of course there have been slightly more qualified pronouncements on the issue. Only yesterday some of Radio Four's coverage featured a couple of scientists who were already claiming to have 'proved' the link between recent events and climate change, by extrapolation from their existing work. I was drifting around a bit and didn't catch their names on any of the bulletins on which it appears, and nor have I had time to 'listen again' to dredge up the information, but even a cursory consideration of their claim raises a number of considerations. To have come up with a new theory, or adapted an existing one, in the limited number of days since the rains began is indeed an impressive feat, and does, just about, fall within the bounds of credibility. To claim the theory as proven fact strays far beyond these bounds. Proof involves disproval of alternative possibilities, of which many have already been raised, not simply asserting that that ones own theorem fits the available observable data.

To be fair, the scientists in questions did not exactly make this claim, but were certainly in no great rush to correct the impression that a number of poorly informed, credulous presenters and interviewers gave in discussing their theory.

What we need more than ever is the rational debate that the greenies are so keen to deny us. Hysterical band wagon chasing by much of the media, some politicians, and a irresponsible segment of the scientific community does nothing to promote this.

A Serious Choice?

Take me to your leader...
or principal speaker...whatever

I've been catching up on a few regular reads/views/listens and was astonished to find I had missed an excellent episode of TrampFightCross Talk on 18DS. It features, as ever, Iain Dale (from the right) and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (from the loopier end of the left) interviewing some hapless victim. For this particular episode the interviewee was Derek Wall, leaderPrincipal (one of two) Speaker for the British Green Party.

As it happens I have a number of friends who suffer from leftism despite my best efforts, and at the last general election many of them, disillusioned with the Blair government, they voted for their local Green party candidate. In a couple of cases I got to read their campaign literature and in both cases they seemed like decent enough people playing heavily on local issues from a reasonably pragmatic green perspective; so were the candidates from the mainstream parties, but that's another story.

Anyone thinking of following in their wake should really click the programme link above and listen and learn a little more about the party at a national level. The bloke is truly astonishing, and let it not be forgotten that he is not some Dennis Skinneresque character on the fringe of the party, he is as close to being party leader as you get with the Greens.

There are many highlights, but my personal favourite is his bizarre attempt to link nuclear energy to civil liberties, based apparently on the fact that France has nuclear power stations, and France also has ID cards. As anyone who has read any significant part of this blog will know, opposition to ID cards is a cause close to my heart. Perhaps a little more surprising is that I'm actually a little in two minds about nuclear power, especially as the economics of nuclear power plants over a full lifespan, including decommissioning, seem to be a little opaque at the moment and do need greater consideration in my opinion. I am sure though that the links between the two issues are far beyond tenuous. Even Ms Alibhai-Brown, renowned for some rather bizarre statements from her own lips seemed somewhat astonished by this particular suggestion.

Alibhai-Brown was equally scathing over Mr Wall's somewhat drippy explanation over why the Greens have no leader. She and Mr Dale trashed his argument, that it was the only way to have gender equality in party leadership, outlining much more sensible ways it could be achieved, whilst having a single leadership position.

Unable to shake off the weirdo image?

I did at least come some way to having a personal question Mr Wall answered. When I was researching my posting on the alma maters of our party leaders. I found it almost impossible to find any information on which institution saw fit to award Mr Wall a PhD, and so had to decide, on the Green's behalf, to opt for Mr Wall's female counterpart, Siân Berry, instead. While Mr Wall didn't reveal the missing information, at least we got to find out what the subject of his thesis was...a treatise on direct action. It puts some of bold statements on the Green's scientific analysis of the climate change debate, on the rare occasions they even deign to debate the matter, into a new light.

And then, at the end of the day, there's the image...anyone who has always thought that Greens are well, just a bit weird, won't go away disappointed.