80mph? Oh no, the planet is at risk.

The government has suggested that the national maximum speed limit might be increased from 70 mph to 80 mph in two years' time, in the interim they propose a consultation exercise. Whether the outcome will be a change in the maximum permissible speed of motorcars on our roads is pretty much irrelevant to me. I have held an unblemished driving licence for decades and will not knowingly exceed a speed limit because I want it to remain unblemished. Consider me a boring prig if you will, but I prefer to live within the law whether or not I agree with it.

Today on my way back from a hack around the golf course I heard an item on this issue on BBC Radio 5 (actually not so much of a hack, I went round in 78 gross on a par 72 course, something went wrong with my usual ineffectual sporting technique - I only throw this in because I'm very proud of it and will almost certainly never do it again).

A number of statements issued by people and organisations involved in the motoring business were read and a few people were interviewed, including a former racing driver and the current Secretary of State for Transport. Some supported the proposal, some opposed it and some said it was necessary to investigate the likely consequences before changing the law. Fair enough.

What was not fair enough was that almost all contributors, including the Secretary of State, said a relevant consideration was the effect of an increase in the maximum lawful speed of motor cars on British roads on the amount of carbon dioxide exuded into the atmosphere.

It really is quite flabbergasting that the anti-carbon dioxide religion has taken hold to such an extent that a minor change in the law of England, Wales and (I believe) Northern Ireland should be thought to have a potential impact on emissions of CO2 that can be of relevance to the well-being of our planet and/or human life on our planet.

The UK (including Scotland which is in charge of speed limits through its own so-called Parliament and is unaffected by the proposed change) produces less than 2% of all carbon dioxide spewed forth by human activity. Traffic on roads carrying a speed limit lower than 70 mph will not be affected by the proposal and not all those travelling on roads to which the national speed limit applies will drive faster and spew more CO2 as a result of the maximum permissible speed being 80 rather than 70.

Against that background it is obvious beyond doubt that any additional CO2 coming from those cars that will be driven at higher speeds because of the proposed change will be such a small amount that it can make no difference to anything. It will be a small percentage (if, indeed it even reaches 1%) of the less than 2% of world emissions coming from the UK.

You can close down all human activity in the UK and the result will not have any measurable effect on the climate. Even if we accept the very direst predictions of those who claim additional human-produced carbon dioxide will cause great changes to the climate and that those changes will be detrimental to human existence, the removal of the 2% currently produced by the UK cannot affect matters to a measurable degree because other countries (especially China and India) are increasing their emissions by far more every year.

To take a proposal that might increase the UK's emissions by a tiny amount and seek to include that effect as a consideration that should affect the decision to accept or reject the proposal is, frankly, moronic.

A pincer movement of sheer lunacy - Part II

In Part I (here) I bemoaned the absurd overreaction by the professionally smug to the non-news that newspapers buy information obtained by illegal phone tapping. A week has now passed since a Parliamentary committee manned by incompetent cross-examiners conducted a kangaroo court trial of three people connected to a particular newspaper and failed to pin a tail anywhere near the donkey's anus. The only public outcry of which I am aware concerns the distasteful bugging (tapping, hacking, call it what you will) of telephonic communications involving the families of deceased people. Reprehensible though I consider such activity to be, there is no evidence that disclosure of any improperly obtained material has caused inconvenience, embarrassment or upset to any family members. In short the whole thing is a bit of a non-issue over which politicians - sniffing the chance to pass laws preventing their own sordid secrets being exposed - have whipped themselves into an unnecessary lather.

Part II is about the apparent intent of all our main political parties to make electricity oppressively expensive. I am not going to rehearse the unanswerable arguments against reliance on generating electricity from wind and waves, nor am I going to rail against those in rabid servility to every scare story promoted by those whose financial position rests on acceptance of the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis. My concern is with something much more basic and, in my view, important.

As recently as twenty years ago I doubt many would have argued with the proposition that elected politicians in the UK had one duty above all other - to do what they considered to be in the best interests of the people they represent. Of course there can be honest disagreements about what is in the best interests of the little people but the focus of the exercise was unaltered by the outcome of the debate. MPs were in parliament to represent their constituents by acting in what they considered the best interests of their constituents. On local issues they would fight for what they felt was best for the constituency, on national and international issues they would broaden their remit to cover all the people living in the UK because the interests of their constituents were the same as the interests of every other person in the country.

Is it in the best interests of those living in a particular constituency and those living in all constituencies for electricity to be cheap or expensive? To my mind that is not a difficult question and should permit only one answer. Cheaper electricity eases pressure on household budgets and reduces the costs of doing business, as such it is a blindingly obvious desire for any right-thinking person whether or not he is a Member of Parliament. More expensive electricity hits the poorest hardest and hampers our businesses in their aim of selling goods and services to overseas customers. It takes a weirdly warped sense of priorities for any MP to promote a policy that impoverishes his own constituents and the country as a whole.

We all know why they continually pass laws making electricity ever more expensive. In part it is because they have fallen for the great global warming scam. In part it is because they hope it will bring in additional tax. In part it is because they want to set a pointless example to other countries in which politicians are not so craven to Saint Al of Gore and his distinctly unmerry fellow-travellers. In part it is because they have fallen for the "green jobs" scam. In part it is because they are scared of the party whips. In part it is because they think there might be votes in presenting themselves as "green". All these things explain why they support a particular line of policy, but none justifies voting for measures that hurt their constituents and damage the economy of the whole country.

Never let it be said I will miss an opportunity to state the obvious, and today is no exception. The reason we in the UK enjoy our current standard of living is that we have found ways of making physical comfort cheaper than it was before. Human beings have always been doing this and over the last two hundred years or so we have done it so successfully that we now measure material deprivation in the UK not in terms of basic housing, food and clean water but in terms of access to the internet, holidays and mobile telephones. Material comforts that are now taken for granted and deemed essential to subsistence living were either science fiction or oppressively expensive as recently as forty years ago. This happy state of affairs has been brought about by the amazing ability of human beings to invent new things and improve old things so that a luxury lifestyle of the 1950s is attainable on the minimum wage in 2011.

At the heart of all this improvement in the quality of everyday physical comfort is electricity. The cheaper it is, the better we all live. And do not ever forget that those earning good money will always be able to afford comfort, what really matters is allowing those of modest means the ability to get more comfort for their limited money. That is a fundamental part of the duty of MPs to act in the best interests of their constituents and of the country as a whole. However tempting it might be to satisfy international or party agendas, their duty is to their constituents and to the UK. Electricity costs are at the heart of all our lives, especially those of modest means, and any MP with his or her eye on the ball should be fighting against any government measure that increases its price.

Schneider's "double ethical bind"

Over at Mr Watts' place I read that someone called Stephen Schneider died last weekend. Professor Schneider's name was familiar to me as the man who promoted telling lies in order to get across the message of the Warmists. At least, that's what I had always understood him to have said. On hearing of his death it seemed appropriate to see whether he really had said it.

What he is often reported to have said is this: "... we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public imagination ... we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

On the face of it this is a blatant call for overstating problems, understating doubts and engaging in dishonesty if that is necessary to get the message across. It was surprisingly easy to find out whether he really did say it, all I had to do was go to his own website. There is a section called "Mediarology" (here) in which he addresses this very point (under "The 'Double Ethical Bind' Pitfall" in the left-hand column). He makes clear that he felt the substance of what he was saying was turned on its head by the above words being isolated from a longer paragraph thereby giving them a meaning they did not have. I have read the whole paragraph and struggle to see any substance in his point. Here is the whole thing:

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect, promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but - which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."

Professor Scheider complained in particular about the omission of the final sentence in reports of his remarks and claimed that it qualified what went before. Specifically he argued that the final sentence changed the meaning of the more limited quotation I gave earlier.

One difficulty I have stems from his claim to be in a "double ethical bind". That supposes one strand of ethics pulls in one direction and another pulls in another direction on the same issue. While I can have no complaint about his description of the scientific method being a matter of ethics, stepping into the spotlight to further one's chosen political policy is not a matter of ethics. It is a matter of personal choice but it is not a matter of ethics.

One can test this by asking why the scientific method is a matter of ethics. Just so I make myself clear, my understanding of the scientific method is that scientific investigation should be accompanied by a freely available comprehensive record of what was done and what results came from that work. If a hypothesis is being tested, the hypothesis should be stated, the tests described and all results recorded whether they support or fail to support the hypothesis. If, on the other hand, the investigation has no hypothesis but is just an experiment to see what happens when various factors are combined, the record must state exactly what was done and what results were identified (again, all results). That is a matter of ethics because others might act in reliance on the conclusions of a scientific investigation, and they must have the opportunity to satisfy themselves that the investigation justifies them doing so. They must have the chance to replicate the work and see whether they reach the same conclusion.

It is not the fact that it is science that makes it a matter of ethics, it is the fact that it can affect other people. Medical practitioners are not obliged to maintain patient confidentiality for the sake of themselves, but for the sake of their patients. Similarly, lawyers are barred from competing against their clients or acting for clients with conflicting interests because the client(s) might suffer, not because the lawyers might either benefit or suffer. People working with money must keep their fingers out of the till because failure to do so is of detriment to their employers not because it is beneficial to them.

The second ethical question Professor Schneider raises is, by his own words, not one of ethics at all. It stems from his words: "we are not just scientists but human beings as well ... we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change". This pre-supposes that he concluded there is a sufficient "risk of potentially disastrous climate change" that he should abandon the leafy groves of academe and (no doubt with huge reluctance) rake in fees from speaking and writing on the subject and dine with Presidents. It was most kind of him to make that sacrifice, but it was not a matter of ethics. Either his belief in impending Armageddon was based on science - in which case it was only as strong as the science and should always have been qualified by any doubts he had about the science, or it was based on something else. If it was based on something else there is only one possibility - his personal political values.

If it was based on the science there would be no ethical bind, his belief would be as strong as the science and he should always put it forward in that context. That doesn't mean answering every question with recitation of an academic paper and the provision of a sheet of footnotes, but it does mean explaining briefly the doubts and uncertainties where it is necessary to do so in order not to be misleading.

It is only when you go one stage further and decide to put forward a case that is more certain than the science allows that you enter the realm of allowing your views as a human being to conflict with the ethics of your work as a scientist. Or do the two really conflict? I don't believe they do provided one is honest. Where you are putting forward an argument that it not wholly supported by the science you have to make clear that you are offering your personal opinion rather than a scientific opinion. By all means also say you believe the science is incomplete, that you believe your conclusion is correct and the doubts and uncertainties are likely to be resolved in favour of the position you take; but that is all you can do unless you are prepared to act dishonestly. Argue a position not supported by science and there is no conflict with your position as a scientist because you are not acting as a scientist, you are acting as an advocate of a policy.

In fact there is a potential ethical problem, but it has nothing to do with the absurd notion that policy advocates are subject to some (as yet unspecified) ethical code. The problem arises where a scientist seeks to use his scientific qualifications and experience to give his policy argument authority that science does not give it. In the same way that a lawyer acts unethically if he uses his position as a lawyer to secure a personal advantage, so it is, arguably, unethical for a scientist to use his position to gain leverage for his personal choice of policy.

Professor Schneider's self-justification falls for this reason alone - he sets up a conflict of ethical codes when there is none. It reaches the realms of absurdity when he argues that he was quoted out of context by reason of the final sentence of his piece being omitted.

Having said it is for each scientist speaking on matters of policy to decide on a balance between being an effective advocate and being honest, the damage was already done. One cannot reach a balance between effectiveness and honesty without sacrificing honesty. If you cannot make your point effectively and still remain honest to the science, you should not be arguing the matter at all and should leave it to those (if any) who can. It's not difficult to do, there are plenty of people who argue policies without having any formal qualifications or recognised expertise in the subject, some even write blogs.

The suggestion that his weasel words: "I hope that means being both" changes the meaning of the previous sentence is ludicrous, it does the exact opposite, it reinforces it. By merely hoping for both effectiveness and honesty he acknowledged that honesty might be compromised. It should be of no concern to anyone that effective advocacy of policy is hindered by the advocate being honest, the only people concerned about honesty hindering effectiveness are those interested in promoting a policy that cannot be defended by honest assessment. That was clearly his concern otherwise he would not have set-up a dichotomy between the two and then argued for individual advocates to form their own view of how honest they had to be.

He did not say whether he believed effectiveness or honesty was more important but I think I can guess. The whole passage I have quoted has no point unless it is a call for effective advocacy in preference to honesty and, indeed, a call for effective advocacy of a position that is not supported by science. It seems to me that his attempt to worm his way out of the hole resulted in it being deeper and more shady than it was before.

Think before you do your bit

We all like to do our bit in a good cause. The local primary school needs a new swimming pool, so people chip in a few quid here and there until the requisite amount has been found. As Remembrance Day looms lapels are adorned by little red poppies for which a little bit of loose change was dropped into a collecting tin. An earthquake demolishes the homes of little brown people, so we phone the number on the screen and use our flexible friend to add to the relief effort.

These might all seem like examples of doing our bit by pooling lots of small donations to produce a sufficient sum to help with a problem, probably because they are examples of exactly that, but they are each different things. In each there is an identified current problem which requires money and the solution is to have the little people reach into their pockets, but the difference is in both the scale of each activity and the extent to which the money given will be used for the stated purpose.

The school project is entirely local. It could be advertised further afield but is unlikely to reap much reward because few living in other towns and villages will feel any obligation to contribute. Unless old Iris the bookkeeper is having one of her creative moments, all the money raised will be used to provide a new pool, there will be no administrative costs.

Poppy day is organised by the Royal British Legion which is noted for having very low overheads because it relies substantially on voluntary assistance. It does have employees because it is such a large organisation that it could not operate effectively without some permanent staff. Necessarily this means that not all money donated goes to the care of ex-servicemen and women.

Providing food and shelter for trembling brown people is an international activity because the sums required are substantial and the organisations who get involved know they can tap into goodwill around the world. However, by their very nature, such organisations have large overheads. Some engage in widespread political lobbying and campaigning that eats into the value of donations they receive. And when it comes to delivering aid the results are variable, in part because of the need to pay bribes to national and local officials in order to be able to get any help through at all in some countries.

When we are doing our bit in these three examples, our bit delivers less bang per buck the further removed the beneficiary is from us physically and the larger and more corporate the body to whom we give our money. Yet in each case we give because we are satisfied that enough of our cash will get through to make a difference. Debatable though that might be in some specific instances of international disaster relief, failings are not widely advertised and the anguish of the next natural disaster always seems great enough to persuade many people to donate.

More than that, in each case it is absolutely true that whatever does get through makes a difference. The school might not raise enough for a pool in one year but it gets there eventually. Whatever is raised by the sale of poppies and the plea to help earthquake victims goes through the system and produces a result.

To my mind that is what "doing our bit" is all about. Our individual bit might be very small but it is pooled with other bits and even if the total remains modest it still achieves something because it causes something to happen.

Imagine what the reaction would be if the Royal British Legion promoted its Poppy appeal along the following lines: "Unless we raise £100million we cannot do anything. Once we raise £100million we can provide nursing care for one injured soldier for one day. Every further £1million will allow us to provide nursing care for one soldier for one day. We can only get to £100million if rich and poor alike give 20% of their income." Nobody would give a penny because the whole exercise would be futile. Giving £10 would not be "doing our bit" because it would achieve nothing other than making the donors poorer by £10.

True though it is that they will never get to £100million unless they start by raising £1 and then add to it, no good works will be possible unless everyone joins in and makes a substantial contribution and that will never happen because the cost of the of contribution required (on the hypothesis I gave) is out of all proportion to the benefit delivered.

I write, of course, not about the Poppy appeal (or indeed about swimming pools or quaking brown people) but about cutting emissions of carbon dioxide. On my last excursion I tried to explain why I consider it utterly futile for the UK to make any sacrifice at the bidding of the CO2 fetishists, but some were not persuaded. My resident Warmist, Mr Andrew, fought bravely and suggested that the little players such as the UK should do the decent thing and then seek to persuade (perhaps he meant shame) China and India into following suit.

It will never happen. The very reason they are industrialising is so that they can enjoy some of the physical comforts we have taken for granted for generations. We can only meet our absurd "emissions targets" by making those very comforts more expensive, thereby hitting the poorest members of our society hardest. To suggest that an industrialising country might slow or halt that process because we have made electricity and gas very expensive for our population and have chosen to get a small fraction of our electricity from windmills is pure fancy.

They can only reduce their emissions by reversing the process of industrialisation. Even the direst predictions of what might happen in China and India as a result of man-made global warming are insignificant compared to the benefits they will reap from industrialisation. They are not going to stop nationwide industrialisation because it might (on the worst-case prognostications of NASA's computer games) have a damaging effect on very small parts of their countries. Still less are they going to do so in order to prevent even more of the Netherlands being below sea level than is currently the case (particularly after the dirty Dutch performance in the World Cup final).

It's not like passing round a collection plate in the knowledge that some good will be done no matter how small the donations. The Warmists present an all-or-nothing case. Reduce CO2 emissions below a certain figure and the world is saved, fail to reduce them below that figure and the world is doomed. Anything short of the magic number is of no consequence. When reaching the magic number requires poor countries to remain poor despite them having set out on a path to riches it is obvious what chance there is of that happening.

None of this is about whether the Warmists' so-called science is accurate, nor does it question the validity of the absurd and Apocalyptic pronouncements about the consequences of not making Saint Al of Gore even richer than he is now. I am assuming for present purposes that all that nonsense can be accepted at face value. The proposed cure can never happen.

It is, I believe, obvious and unanswerable that nothing the UK does can make any difference. Nor can the USA and India between them make a difference for so long as China do not also play. China and India can achieve nothing without the US on board. The US and China can do nothing without India. And lurking in the background are Russia, Brazil, Mexico and a clutch of African countries who see what India in particular has achieved and, at long last, have realised they can do the same. None of them can be shamed into playing the de-industrialising game. There is not enough money to bribe them into playing. It simply cannot happen.

Somebody needs to point this out to our new Secretary of State for Energy Shortages and Climate Change Claptrap.

The reason I asked about carbon dioxide

My last missive asked what effect a doubling of the UK's production of carbon dioxide would have. It wasn't a frivolous question, nor was it one to which I expected a precise answer. Nor, indeed, was it asked in the belief that human activity producing carbon dioxide is likely to have any appreciable effect on the climate.

It was asked in the hope that a passing Warmist might undertake a calculation using the same methods they use to estimate the effect on temperatures of world-wide industrial activity continuing uninterrupted by greenie initiatives. Only a fool would suggest they pin their colours to one calculation and one figure of anticipated "global" temperature rises, but they conclude there will be a significant increase according to every one of their methods of estimating these things. So, what is the range of figures for the effect the UK has now and the effect it would have if it doubled its output?

Of course none of the great and good would descend to the grubby depths of this blog, but some of their supporters have chipped in from time to time when I have ventured to question something about the Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming theory (see, for example, the comments here and here). This time no one bothered at all. Maybe they have all given up with me, or perhaps they knew that any figure they might propose would be so pathetically small that it would illustrate the point I want to make.

It is at the heart of the whole exercise that things are measured globally save in the case of countries that produce absolutely bucket loads of CO2. They will be used to illustrate the evil of industrialisation to mother earth, whereas other countries (such as the UK) which produce tiny amounts compared to the whole will be lumped in with the sinners to produce stupendously high global figures for which all bear collective responsibility. This masks a truth that is spoken too rarely (unless you happen to be keen on some of my previous offerings such as this and this), namely that there is absolutely no point the UK taking any step to reduce its CO2 emissions unless all other countries do the same. And even then there is no point unless the big players do far more than us.

There's also no point bleating "but we must do our bit". We don't have a bit to do if the bit we do has no effect. After all, this is a game of cause and effect. If the effect predicted by the doom-mongers will occur regardless of anything done in the UK (which certainly seems to be the case for as long as China and India continue on the wicked path of lifting their people out of abject poverty by providing them with electricity for their homes and industries), we really shouldn't waste a penny on the exercise. Still less should we engage in self-flagellation.

A question about the effect of carbon dioxide

I used to read lots of things about "global warming", now that "global warming" has been abandoned I read a lot about "climate change". Even a half-educated newt is aware that the "climate change" is the new term for what used to be called "catastrophic man-made global warming". I have had a lot of fun offering the occasional thought on the subject here and commenting about it elsewhere.

What I have never been able to do (because I have neither the inclination to seek the necessary knowledge nor the necessary knowledge to be able to interpret the necessary knowledge) is give figures that mean something. Figures like "if we add so-many giga-tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over the next five years averaged temperatures - as measured by flawed instruments in only a few places - will rise by so-many hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit". I am not in a position to make that calculation / estimate / stab in the dark.

What I can do is read about (and suffer from) additional taxes being imposed on activities that produce carbon dioxide. I recently bought a new car. Out went the "executive saloon" and in came a small car because I no longer have to undertake long journeys for work - that the old car stopped working also came into the equation. The consequences included a reduction in annual road tax from £245 to £155 and a reduction in the cost of my resident's parking permit from £200 to £70. Both discrepancies arise directly from the carbon dioxide fetish. The reason given for taxing big cars more than small cars and for imposing higher charges for parking big cars rather than small cars was carbon dioxide. Nothing else. Some would suggest it is just an excuse to increase taxes but I would not be so cynical.

That is all very well if you believe carbon dioxide to be the deadliest gas since the days of Auschwitz and poor misunderstood Saddam's little Kurdish experiment. Let's assume you do believe that. Please answer me a question.

What would be the effect on the climate from the UK doubling its production of carbon dioxide? I don't ask for a fully-analysed track of all possible consequences, I ask for a real life answer that is comprehensible to Mr & Mrs Ordinary.

In principle there can only be three answers.

First, our additional CO2 would cause an increase in global temperatures. OK, if so, how much? As I recall, the UK produces around 1.6% of global man-made CO2, what I want to know is what effect a doubling of the quantity would have - so please tell me what effect the UK currrently has on temperature and how it would change.

Secondly, our additional CO2 would have no effect because the quantity we produce is so small that any change that might occur would be too small to be measurable and should, therefore, be treated as zero.

Thirdly, no one knows.

It's all very well saying "we're all in this together" and "we must all do our bit because many a mickle makes a muckle", that doesn't address my concern. I want to know what difference would result from the UK doubling it's CO2 emissions.

Unless someone can identify a consequence that is more than de minimis we really shouldn't worry about what we produce today. There is no point reducing something for the sake of the planet if doubling the same thing would make no substantive difference.

Does anyone know the answer to my question?

What's so special about coral?

It is suggested by some that non-existent global warming will cause carnage to coral reefs. There has been mass panic among the tree huggers when reports have come of some part of a coral reef dying, and silence when another part of the same reef grows by more. Screams of anguish are heard at the thought of coral being bleached by some mystical process associated with keeping our homes warm and our people fed. What I want to know is, why?

As I understand things, coral has not existed since the world began. At some time, I care not when, it formed. Before then there was no coral. And you know what? The earth still turned and the sun still shone despite coral being an unknown substance. And you know what else? There hasn't always been the same amount of coral in the same places. Are you shocked? Of course you are because you are delicate souls who cannot bear the thought that something was once different from how it is today. Let me shock you again. The aquatic creatures that make their homes in and around coral reefs haven't always done so.

Coral is nothing but an underwater fluffy bunny. Latched onto by the wet non-thinkers as a poster child for their latest scenario of doom. We mustn't do anything nasty to fluffy bunnies because they are, well, fluffy. We mustn't do anything nasty to coral because it is wholesome and pretty, just like a fluffy bunny.

Fluffy poster children are essential to the cause of the doommonger. He will get nowhere by saying "global warming will cause the death of millions of scarlet lily beetles and wasps". The whole world would stoke up their coal fires. He needs a fluffy victim to point to so that we feel guilty. Frankly, I couldn't care less about coral. I have no desire to see it destroyed for the sake of destruction but if the cost of feeding people and keeping them warm is that a bit of coral somewhere suffers adverse consequences, so be it. It really doesn't matter. Any displaced water dwellers will settle elsewhere in the same way that their ancestors left their previous habitat and moved to the coral. That it will cause wailing and gnashing of teeth among the tofu-knitting community would be an added bonus.

Far more likely, of course, is that the threat to coral from industrial activity is as illusory as the threat to Arctic and Antarctic ice, to Himalayan glaciers, to polar bears, to Saharan water and to the volume and intensity of hurricanes. All the direst predictions have been exposed as either exaggerations or plain lies. So, I predict, is the position relating to coral. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps one of the fluffy poster children really is endangered. I'm not expecting any of the doommongers to risk a penny of their own money betting on that being the case. Nonetheless, even if they are correct I still ask, "so what"? It really doesn't matter, it is just something some people think is pretty and which is given an elevated a status in the emotions of the vapid. There is absolutely no need for any fuss.

A strange feeling about global warming

Listening to a show on BBC Radio Five Live I heard a woman in Scotland being interviewed about snow. Apparently they are having quite a lot of it up there at the moment. The interviewer asked whether she put it down to global warming. He obviously lost the cue-card that requires use of "climate change" rather than "global warming" in all BBC programmes. It was on the radio but I got the distinct impression that the woman being interviewed was one of those short feisty ladies who is as broad as she is tall and takes no nonsense from anyone.

Her reply? "I don't believe in global warming, I think these things come and go". The interviewer let his guard slip for a second time and said "you can say that, I'm not allowed to". This was not the first time I have encountered a senior BBC broadcaster say this sort of thing, I correspond from time-to-time with one who has confirmed to me that the policy line is strict. My correspondent must remain anonymous but Friday afternoon's interviewer was Peter Allen, a serious journalist with a wealth of experience and, in my opinion, an excellent broadcaster. He will probably get away with letting the cat out of the bag because the mood has undoubtedly changed over the last few months. The occasional snippet of dissent has appeared on the BBC website and even flagship news and comment programmes like Newsnight have hosted debates about some aspects of the great global warming hoax.

I find myself with a curious feeling about this.

It is probably only about three years ago that I started to read into the subject. As the warnings of dire consequences became more and more stark, so my bullshit meter began bleeping loudly and I felt I had to try to understand at least something of the technical case the warmists were putting. Of course I could only reach a conclusion that made sense to me, that it might not make sense to others is a matter for them. What I concluded, subject to revision as and when new analyses or evidence appeared, is that it was nonsense just like every other end-of-the-world prediction I had heard. Indeed, much of it seemed to me to have no more substance than a nutter wearing a sandwich board and proclaiming the descent of London into hell and damnation if we don't all repent our sins by 2.14pm next Monday. I didn't have to wait until 2.15pm on Monday to be able to dismiss his prediction of imminent doom and once 2.15pm arrived he was back again with a new deadline and a message of even more grisly suffering for those who sin.

As the last three years have progressed the modern day nutters in sandwich boards have followed the tried and tested path. When adverse consequences they predicted have not materialised they have just moved the dates and predicted that things will be even worse because we have not done what they have told us to do. And all the time people with greater technical skills than me have been continuing to chip away at the so-called science. Every month seems to uncover a new hole in the case put with absolute certainty by the doommongers just a few short years ago.

The "climategate" hoo-hah has brought matters to the public gaze when previously you had to hunt for evidence on blogs and websites. Suddenly doubts about the reliability of historic temperature reconstructions were headline news when previously they had been almost entirely the subject of discussion between those who chose to investigate. With typical perspicacity our absurd Prime Minister chose to deride sceptics as "flat-earthers" just as the shallowness of the case for man-made catastrophic global warming was being exposed publicly and brutally as it had never been exposed before.

And that is where my strange feeling comes in. Perhaps it is not a very strange feeling at all because opinion polls suggest that the Chicken Licken scenario has never persuaded more than a bare majority. But it feels strange to me. My feeling is that the views I hold have now won the argument. Before I felt like a little voice spouting what I believed to be obvious common sense but never felt that my opinion was the default position. Now that has changed. Those who thought "it sounds like nonsense to me but I suppose those clever scientists might be right" are able to delete the last nine words because their newspapers tell them of the CRU's fiddling of the figure and the IPCC's false claims about Himalayan glaciers, Amazon rainforests and all the rest of it.

Unravelling the paraphernalia of the warmist machine will take time. Politicians who have attached themselves publicly to the warmist case will not back down easily. It will probably require changes of government in many countries before the political powerbrokers reflect the new reality unless incumbent leaders realise their own careers might depend on them abandoning their established positions. They have the evidence they need to say "sorry chaps, we were advised the evidence was unimpeachable and now we know we hitched our wagon to a three-legged nag"; somehow I can't see that happening any time soon.

And then there are the vast financial interests that depend on the catastrophic man-made global warming theory such as the carbon credits nonsense. We know it's nonsense, you only need to ask what it involves to see this. It is, quite literally, trading in hot air. Then there are the "green energy" cons, with companies being subsidised to produce expensive electricity inefficiently. Once they taste the sweet milk from the subsidised teat you know they will suck harder and others will want a piece of the action. None of these vultures will give up the game without a fight.

The biggest game of all is that played by the UN and the EU. We know they are corrupt organisations run almost exclusively by those who proved themselves unfit to run individual countries. These organisations are operated primarily to perpetuate their own existence and they expand their powers so that the act of perpetuation is made easier. Nothing is better for them than an issue about which they can say "the task is so big that only we are big enough to deal with it".

It will take time. That's fine, I can wait because I am basking in the warm fuzzy glow of vindication.

When is a budget not a budget?

On Thursday I bemoaned the government's idea of putting Windy Miller in charge of electricity generation, today I want to discuss another aspect of their exciting "low carbon" plan. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change announced that every government department now has a "carbon budget" as well as one dealing with pounds and pence. He said it was part of the scheme of "legally binding carbon budgets" announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer earlier this year. The use of the term "budget" is a complete nonsense. What he means is that every government department will be set targets. That is not a budget any more than setting a target for the number of exam passes to be attained by schools is an "examination budget" or the number of arrests made by the police is an "arrest budget". But that is only the start of the absurdity.

Let's just stop for a moment and try to absorb the concept of government departments having "legally binding" targets of any kind. What are the consequences of the target not being met? It's easy to see what "legally binding" means in the real world, it means that the law requires you to do or refrain from doing something and will impose a penalty if you breach that requirement. We have things called courts which enforce legally binding obligations and administer penalties to those who fail in their legal duties. How can that apply to the failure of a government department to meet a target for reducing the production of carbon dioxide resulting from, say, the manufacture of giant windmills? What penalty can be imposed, and who will impose it? Will the department's funding be reduced next year if it fails to meet this year's target? Of course not. Will a fine be imposed or the minister and senior civil servants face prosecution and imprisonment? Of course not. These are just targets.

At the moment they seem to be only internal targets for government departments themselves. As such they are nothing but a massively expensive exercise in navel gazing. Some of it is already in place. NHS trusts and local councils have departments dedicated to reducing their employers' "carbon footprint". Lightbulbs that produce the amount of light everyone is accustomed to are replaced by fat curly lightbulbs that don't. The officially mandated guilt associated with the use of electricity and gas is assuaged by spending taxpayers' money on planting trees in Africa. Trees that would have been planted anyway at a fraction of the cost because they provide a crop. Instead we pay not just for the crop but also for the kick-backs to local "worthies". Lowly council employees are told they cannot have a parking space at work because driving is naughty, while the big wigs retain their chauffeurs. Advisors and consultants are made available to local businesses to tell them how they can reduce their emissions. Reams of paper are shuffled back and forth, miles are clocked-up and expenses incurred in order to meet current targets. None of it will make the slightest bit of difference to anything. Absolutely no difference at all.

Real businesses, businesses that make things and generate the wealth that is taxed to pay for the paper-pushers, don't employ "carbon footprint advisors" unless they think there is something in it for them. They know that there is only one measure that matters, pounds and pence. Employing symbolic greenies can be profitable if your business depends on custom from naive, tree-hugging tofu-knitters. But if you are making nuts, bolts and washers your customers are concerned with only price and quality. If you can make the same things at the same or a lower price by adopting a process that emits less carbon dioxide you might choose to follow that path. I defy you, however, to find a government-employed greenie advisor who has the expertise required to find a way for manufacturing businesses to do so. After all, what can these people know about the technical aspects of manufacturing industry? If they knew that stuff they wouldn't be employed as greenie advisors, they would have real jobs in their field of expertise.

None of this will stop some of them coming up with grandiose plans. And none of it will stop most of their "work" being fiddling at the edges to find utterly minuscule savings in carbon dioxide emissions at a cost far out of proportion to any benefit even the most ardent greenie could identify.

It's bad enough that money will be wasted on the fiddling at the edges, far more worrying is the thought of grandiose plans. Grandiose plans make good politics. For as long as it is thought there are votes in greenieness, governments will divert money from sensible stuff because nothing is a better use of our money than buying our votes.

Lying behind all this wibble is the ludicrous concept of measuring in "carbons dioxides". It is a meaningless measure because it cannot be compared to anything else and it has no utility as a measure in itself. The mile is a useful measure because it allows us to judge how long it will take to travel from A to B and, during our journey, it tells what proportion of the trip has expired. The pound is a useful measure because it allows us to judge whether a particular item of paid work is worth doing and whether it is worth buying a particular thing. Measuring carbon dioxide emissions is pointless because there is nothing to compare it to and of itself it means nothing to say "my new car emits 50 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilometre whereas my old one emitted 150". So what? What difference does that make to anything? No one can identify the difference it will make because it is so small as to be irrelevant to anything.

In fact it can be compared to itself. We can assess, but not measure, how much carbon dioxide we produce this year compared to last year. In doing so we will find that anything we do as individuals is very small because most emissions are unavoidable by individual activity - they come from industry (yes, that industry, the one that lights and heats our homes and provides us with employment). But even that comparison is pointless because the whole man-made global warming circus revolves around worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, not just the 1.6% or so from this country.

So, what does a departmental "carbon budget" actually amount to? If anyone thinks it will result in substantial reductions in UK carbon dioxide emissions, I fear they are deluded. The likelihood is that there will be a little trimming at the edges and it will cost a huge amount of money.

Just like the windmills. A futile and unaffordable farce.

Whistling in the wind

It is hard to know where to start when discussing the government's new "low-carbon" energy plan, it is so full of internal contradictions and downright nonsense. But I have to pick somewhere so I'll start with the presumption that the world is warming. This ties in nicely with the announcement made last week that some international talking-shop or another is determined to keep global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius above the level of some time around 1750. There's a bit of slack built in already, the earth has political permission to get warmer provided it doesn't get too warm. So from that starting point my initial observation is that a bit of warming should reduce energy consumption because there will be less of a need to heat our homes and workplaces during the chilly months. There, we have reduced our "carbon footprint" already and it hasn't cost a bean.

Where do we go from there? I know, let's see how they plan to generate electricity without producing carbon dioxide. The headline measure is windmills. I am not sure whether these are the same windmills to which they committed £100billion just a few months ago but I presume they are. The intention is to build about 7,000 new windmills by 2020. I've got news for them. It's 2009 already so they only have ten years and five months, 125 months. So that's 56 windmills per month or the best part of two a day every day for more than ten years. Are we really expected to believe that this will happen? Given enough people, materials and money any number of anything can be built pretty quickly, but even so this task strikes me as impracticable.

And what if it does happen? That's where the real fun and games arise. Windmills can only produce electricity when the wind is blowing. When it is not blowing they often have to be kept turning to prevent the blades buckling in the sun (because the size of the things means the three blades will catch unequal amounts of energy from the sun and will buckle unless they are rotated to keep exposure roughly equal). So they will need to take electricity from the grid when they need to be rotated and there is insufficient wind to perform the task.

When the wind is turning the blades electricity will be generated but at present there is no efficient way of storing that juice, it can be fed into the grid and a coal/gas/nuclear plant can be turned down or it can be drained away to earth if there is no call for it. Yet the wind can stop just as quickly as it starts, so there must always be conventional back-up generators to fill the void. Some of these can be turned on and off reasonably quickly but they use a lot more fuel that way compared to running pretty much constantly. Any saving of fossil fuel use through having windy electricity being fed into the grid is ameliorated by the additional fuel consumption and wear-and-tear of the conventional plants. And there is always a bottom line. The bottom line is that we must maintain sufficient conventional generating capacity to provide all our needs because it can never be known how much will come from the windmills.

Coal-fired generators are included in the plan. The government has kindly agreed to allow these provided they are fitted with mechanisms to capture a lot of the carbon dioxide they produce before it floats into the air. What a splendid idea. Or it would be if such mechanisms existed. Some are being trialled at the moment but they are a long way from being usable on a large scale. And all of them require power which means more fuel must be used to generate the same amount of electricity.

So, the plan is to construct an unattainable number of windmills at an unaffordable cost in order to provide an unreliable supply, whilst maintaining conventional generating capacity but not using it efficiently and making it less fuel-efficient when it is used.

Only central planning can come up with such a scheme.

Technological advances might well find ways of storing spare electricity, I would certainly expect that to happen because history shows engineers to be able to find solutions to such problems. Yet no one can say when a solution will be found and there is certainly no guarantee that it will be before 2020. As and when it does happen, windmills might have a serious part to play but even then they can only generate so much power, we are a very long way from windmills being able to make more than a marginal contribution to our electricity needs.

So why is this ridiculous plan being put forward? Ostensibly it is because of fears of catastrophic global warming. Did you spot the adjective I slipped in there? Catastrophic. A bit of warming or a bit of cooling is neither here nor there, even the doomiest of doom-mongers don't argue that small changes will be harmful to anyone other than those who like the cold. You might think that before embarking on a hugely expensive and inefficient exercise the government would take a look at whether the evidence of risk justifies the expense. Those who believe in the catastrophic man-made global warming scenario argue that current evidence of no measured increase in actual average temperatures over the last decade does not undermine their hypothesis. Those who don't believe in it cite the last decade as strong evidence that the hypothesis is incorrect. For the purposes of what I have to say today it really doesn't matter which, if either, of those sides is correct. The simple fact is that the government did not re-assess the evidence before launching the new plan. To say the least, their approach is slipshod.

A further aspect of the plan is worth mentioning. It seems that they want to compel people to utilise energy-saving measures in their homes and work places. We already see this in the current Building Regulations that require a newly-built property to meet strict energy efficiency targets before the work will be certified and the property becomes marketable. Usually these targets can only be met by the installation of cavity-wall insulation or the use of insulating boarding on internal walls, in either case combined with double-glazed windows. It seems likely that they will extend the Building Regulations to ensure that double-glazing and wall insulation have to be added even where work of a non-structural nature is undertaken.

There is a precedent for this in the regulations about noise insulation between flats. Originally noise insulating flooring (which is nothing more than inch-thick chipboard with a layer of hard rubber) had to be fitted only when a new block of flats was being built. Then they extended it to conversions of single dwellings into one or more flats, and now the installation of nothing more than a new bathroom is viewed by some Councils' Building Control departments as triggering the need to replace all flooring so as to provide effective sound insulation between one flat and the flat below. I expect the same creeping process to apply to double glazing and the insulation of walls.

The reason I mention this is that the cost of the work is almost always far in excess of the saving in heating bills. Decent quality double-glazing of a modest home can easily cost between four and five thousand pounds whilst saving only a few pounds a year in heating costs. Wall insulation might only set you back a thousand or two (including the cost of redecoration) while also saving very little. Say these measures save £150 a year, itself somewhat unlikely for a modest property even with electricity and gas costing what they do today, it would take almost thirty years to recoup insulating costs of £4,000. Maybe the windows and wall insulation will last that long or maybe they won't, no one can tell. What we can tell is that people will be forced to fork-out a lot of money on a pure gamble whether they will ever get a benefit from it.

At every stage of this plan one thing is clear. The costs are enormous whilst the benefits are purely speculative. Actually, one other thing is clear. Even if catastrophe will strike through substantial further emissions of carbon dioxide, those emissions will happen anyway. Nibbling-away at the 2% or so of global emissions originating from the UK is utterly futile while China and India today, and Brasil, Mexico, South Africa and others tomorrow, use coal to provide them with energy to give them a small leg-up in their attempt to match the standard of living we currently enjoy.

The whole thing is a futile and unaffordable farce.

Certainly not

I recently left a comment over at nice Mr Watts' place. It received a favourable response, so I thought I would expand it a little and reproduce it here. The relevant background is that a number of commenters had explained that they had been subjected to abuse when leaving comments on another blog (which shall remain nameless but which does not welcome comments from me). That blog takes an extreme view on the catastrophic man-made global warming issue. Its editorial policy appears to be that the IPCC's computer games are beyond any criticism whatsoever and anyone who dares to challenge any part of them is too stupid to understand the issues and/or actuated by malice or greed.

This is a peculiar trait of extreme dedication to the catastrophic global warming hypothesis; as far as I know it is not displayed in relation to any other scientific hypothesis. To what do I refer? Certainty, that’s what.

Some practitioners of an infant science might say “this is our hypothesis, now we’re going to study what actually happens and make any necessary adjustments”. But not, it seems, those wedded to this particular idea. They like to say “the science is settled” but it seems to me that they really mean “our minds are closed”. On hearing that some measures suggest global average cooling within the last decade rather than global average warming, they reply in two ways and adopt both replies, mindless to the conflict between the two.

On the one hand they assert that measured cooling is not cooling at all. This is just legerdemain, by selecting particular starting and finishing points they create trend lines on graphs to argue that lower readings from thermometers actually display continuing upward movements in average temperatures. Yet you only need to adopt different start and end points to show something different. On the other hand they say “this is what should be expected because warming causes cooling”. No. Warming means temperatures going up, cooling means temperatures going down. You cannot create ice by applying heat to a pan of water, nor can you bring tepid water to the boil by adding ice. These two positions are wholly contradictory.

There is a credible explanation available to them but it involves a concession of uncertainty, so they will not propose it. They could say “temporary blips are only to be expected because we are dealing with a vastly complex interaction of factors and we do not fully understand them all”. That would stand alongside their hypothesis and would not cause the batting of a single eyelid. But it would require them to accept that they do not know everything and, therefore, that their hypothesis has not yet been proved. Such a position appears to be unacceptable to them because they have pinned their colours unequivocally to the “the science is settled” mast.

Acceptance of uncertainty lies behind all honest debate, whether scientific or otherwise, until such time, if ever, that all the evidence points in one direction and nothing that is observed in real life is inconsistent with the position being advanced. Unjustified certainty requires dissenting voices to be dismissed rather than challenged on the merits of the points they put forward. Debate and challenge are the tools of those with open minds. Scoffing, sneering dismissal is the tool of those unprepared to accept that their belief in a hypothesis might not be well-founded. It is also the tool of those who know their hypothesis can be subjected to legitimate challenge but are not prepared to risk the personal loss (whether financial, reputational or both) that would result from such a challenge being successful.

What makes their certainty all the more absurd is that they are forever tinkering with both their hypothesis and their computer models, something that would be wholly unnecessary if they really had all the answers already.

The most incoherent climate change clap-trap ever?

There was a most extraordinary letter in yesterday's Times. Extraordinary not just for its factual inaccuracy and it's blatant assertion of an obvious untruth but also for asserting a conclusion that doesn't follow from its flawed premise and for displaying a poor knowledge of English. I will not bother trying to correct their grammar and syntax, no doubt they are too old to learn. The letter was signed by a number of people involved in the field of medicine. I could call them doctors but wouldn't want to mislead because I don't know whether any of them actually holds a doctorate.

Their starting position is that many people assert "climate change doesn't exist". How breathtakingly stupid of them to put their case in this way. "Climate change doesn't exist" is another way of saying "the climate is not changing" and/or "the climate does not change". For all I know there might be some existing in hermetically sealed mental bubbles who do indeed assert one or both of these preposterous nonsenses, but I have never read anything to suggest that such people exist outside secure psychiatric facilities. No sane person could ever assert that the climate is not changing or does not change. Of course it changes and of course it is changing now, it always has and it always will.

They then assert that many say climate change is not caused by humans. This is true enough provided one defines "climate change" accurately. The buffoons who signed the letter clearly have not defined it with any care. Let's go back to the days before human beings found a way to make life comfortable, back to the days before the industrial revolution and the development of processes that keep us alive but produce atmospheric carbon dioxide in order to do so . The climate was not stable then any more than it is stable now. What caused climatic instability in those days? I'm no expert but I would suggest two (no doubt there are many more but no one can argue with these two).

First, the sun. That's the big yellow thing in the sky. It does its thing and the result is more or less heat at the earth's surface. If it is busy we get more, if it decides to put its feet up and read a good book we get less. It changes the climate and human activity has nothing to do with it

Secondly, the oceans, they are those watery bits that appear as two thirds of the earth's surface in atlases and on globes. They are not just surfaces they go down a long way and slosh a vast amount of water about. Some of that water is cold, some is not so cold. Both the warm and cold bits are vast quantities of matter. It moves about, churns itself around and oceanic surface temperatures vary according to what the churning produces. We can have years of relative warm waters at the surface and years of chilly stuff exposing itself to the air. The churnings of the oceans change the climate and human activity has nothing to do with it

There we have it, two hugely powerful factors that change the climate regardless of human activity. It is axiomatic that human activity does not cause these climatic changes. You have to narrow down the field to find a contributory factor to changing climate that can be blamed on people. We all know what that factor is - production by human activity of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere. From there we have to ask what detrimental effect carbon dioxide is alleged to have in order to know what the allegation against we naughty people is, because unless the allegation is defined clearly any denial cannot be placed in its proper context.

The case put against carbon dioxide is that increased levels of that gas in the atmosphere lead to higher surface temperatures because of the so-called "greenhouse effect." It's not actually anything to do with the way greenhouses retain heat, it would be more accurate to call it the "duvet and storage radiator effect". Atmospheric gases are said to act like a duvet in that they prevent heat escaping as fast as it would in their absence (yes, I know it's not actually "heat" but energy which at surface level is translated into heat). They also act like storage radiators by releasing energy to heat the surface when it is cool.

But that's only a tiny part of the picture and it is not the part that matters. Nice Mr Pogo has been kind enough to remind me of this point when I have been too loose in my use of language in previous offerings on this topic. The worse case scenarios produced by computer models and by applicable mathematical formulae suggest that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might, of itself, cause average surface temperatures (whatever that means) to rise by around one degree Celcius. That is equivalent to moving from Brighton to Birmingham. The newspapers are not swamped with tales of emigres from the south coast of England to the middle of the country being troubled by the changed climatic conditions. It is only when the great hypothesis is added that people start to fret.

The great hypothesis is that adding further carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will give rise to an amplification effect. The starting point is that adding carbon dioxide will increase both the duvet and storage radiator effect because more carbon dioxide means a greater storage capacity for the "blanket" around the earth. The crucial hypothesis is that various factors will result in an increase in surface temperatures far beyond those that the increased storage capacity would produce by itself. Some argue that this amplification process will happen, some argue it will not, some argue that it is impossible to tell but are inclined towards one position or the other. The one thing of which we can be sure is that it hasn't happened yet.

When the medical buffoons asserted that many say climate change is not caused by humans what they should have said, in order to have any credibility, is that many dispute the hypothesis that increased emissions of carbon dioxide will result in an amplification process causing significant and detrimental increases in surface temperatures. Being buffoons, they did not say this. Instead they asserted that many say climate change is not caused by man. Not only does this misrepresent the argument put forward by those who decry the Chicken Licken scenario but it is hopelessly misleading because it adopts the weasel words du jour of "climate change" rather than "man made global warming". Unless human production of carbon dioxide will trigger dramatic and damaging warming, the whole Chicken Licken argument falls to the floor.

That deals with the untruth in their letter. Factual inaccuracy is proved by their ridiculous assumption that "nearly 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists who consitute the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" agree with the Chicken Licken hypothesis. I call this an assumption because there is absolutely no evidence at all to support it. Yet, tellingly, the buffoons assume that all those who contributed their thoughts and analyses to the IPCC agreed with every apocalyptic word in the conclusions written by politicians. Even in real science people can contribute their views and be noted as contributors to a report without agreeing with a single word of the final report. I wonder how many of the buffoons have been involved in a research project as a contributor of ideas and analysis only to find that the authors produced something they consider to be utter tripe.

And so we get to their conclusions. How appropriate it is that I have just used the term "utter tripe". This is what they wrote: "there are immediate benefits to be had from action now, mainly about how we move, how we eat and how we redistribute resources more fairly around the globe - all of which are fundamental to health and welfare." I am almost lost for words. But I'll try my best to find some.

Take the first two phrases: "there are immediate benefits to be had from action now". No. No, no no. If you are looking at influences on the climate there are, by definition, no immediate benefits. Nothing we do now will affect the climate immediately even if you believe the most extreme of the computerised projections. Maybe they did not mean climatic benefits. We need to look at the rest of their conclusion to see whether they are actually addressing the climate at all.

What is it that they say we must do? They identify three areas. The first is described as "how we move". I know I said I wasn't going to pick at their use of English but I have to. What in the world of living buggery does "the way we move" mean? My best guess is that they might be referring to aeroplanes and motor cars because these are pet hates for the greenies. But that can't be what they mean because changing our motorised travel habits cannot have an immediate effect on climate and giving up air travel and the internal combustion engine is not "fundamental to health and welfare".

Then they say we should take action about "how we eat". I'm beginning to lose the will to live at this stage. Do they mean importing runner beans out of season from Kenya? Fine, let's bankrupt Kenya's farmers. Well, actually, not fine at all. It may be fine for the buffoons but it's the absolute opposite of what I want to see. Maybe they mean we should all turn vegetarian so as to do away with flatulent cows. No, that can't be it, you'd just transfer the production of flatus from cows to humans. Sorry, I don't get this one at all.

Maybe their third idea carries weight: "how we redistribute resources more fairly around the globe". And the connection to human incuded climate change is ...? Yes, that's right, it has absolutely no connection at all to what industrial plants, cars and cargo planes full of Kenyan runner beans might be doing to the environment. It is a totally different topic, a purely political topic. No climate science is involved. No medicine is involved. I would say no sense is involved but that opens another subject for another day.

These idiots started by saying there are many who deny the climate is changing, and ended by saying that people working in medicine "will be reminding" those who question the effect of human activity on the climate that "immediate benefits" will result from changing the way we move, eat and distribute resources around the world. The whole thing is incoherent clap-trap.

The lead signatory carries the title "Professor". Now words do fail me.

No electric cars for "ordinary motorists"

Electric cars have hit the news today with the announcement by the eponymous Geoff Hoon of a plan to offer subsidies towards the purchase of electric cars as and when they are more generally available than at present, currently estimated to be in about two years' time. As usual the BBC report tries to put this in what it considers the best possible light for the government, describing it as "Motorists will be offered subsidies of up to £5,000". If one digs a little deeper, it seems all is not quite as the BBC portrays.

The Department for Transport website carries the details (here). It becomes clear from the government's own account that there are no firm proposals to give anything to motorists. The main article says it is "an initiative to help put electric cars into the reach of ordinary motorists by providing help worth £2,000-£5,000 towards buying the first electric and plug in hybrid cars when they hit the showrooms". I wonder what "help worth £2,000-£5,000" means, it doesn't sound much like money to me. Not that it really matters what it means because we find important clarification in the "notes for editors" section at the bottom of the page: "Consumers will be able to receive help from the government worth in the region of £2,000-£5,000 to allow for the maximum choice of which car they buy. We are beginning discussions with the automotive industry and financiers to determine how best to deliver this help." No longer are we in the realm of subsidies being given to "ordinary motorists" for them to use as they will, we are firmly in the territory of giving cash subsidies to the motor manufacturers. And we mustn't ignore than the headline figure of £5,000 is now "in the region of £2,000-£5,000". It is the reference to "ordinary motorists" that troubles me most because I can see that only extraordinary motorists are likely to benefit from any such scheme.

I rather like the idea of electric cars. It would be wonderful if we could reduce our dependence on oil so that we are no longer at the mercy of the OPEC cartel and reliable electric cars would help achieve that. An additional benefit is that the need for a reliable supply of electricity would be even more important than it is today, thereby rendering even more absurd the current lunatic plans for windmills and waves to be substantial sources of electricity generation. To that end I can understand tax breaks for research and development, but it all gets rather tricky once you start fiddling with prices of manufactured products.

There is no reason to think that, left to their own devices, the manufacturers would bring out a product until they are satisfied that it is reasonably saleable. What we usually see with novel products is that they are very expensive when first launched because the manufacturers need to try to recoup some of the R&D costs and they know some people will pay a lot either out of interest in the concept or out of snobbery. It soon becomes clear whether the product is capable of being a long-term profit maker and if it is, the unit price falls as some R&D costs are recouped and the remainder are spread over substantial anticipated future purchases. With electrical products we sometimes find that novel ideas don't take off, hence there are attics around the country containing dusty laserdisc players, betamax recorders and novelty peppermills. The position is rather different with electric cars because, for different reasons that appeal to different people, it is necessary to wean ourselves off oil and the only alternative with any reasonable prospect of being workable in the short term appears to be electricity. So the manufacturers can be fairly sure that a reliable electric family car with a reasonable range is likely to be a long-term success.

If, as the government suggests, such cars should be available as early as 2011 (I'll believe it when I see it) it is hard to see that the manufacturers could sensibly price them in line with petrol and diesel cars because they would then forgo the additional price that could be commanded through sheer novelty value. If we assume (and I pluck these figures out the the thinnest of airs) that a petrol driven car will cost £14,000 and the closest equivalent electric model could sell for £20,000, they would be mad to price it at anything lower than £20,000. As the novelty value wanes and production increases we might find it can sell for £17,000 and make the same profit as the £14,000 petrol vehicle, it might even be that further technological developments would allow it to undercut the petrol powered car. The market will determine price as it does for petrol and diesel cars and as it has for other new products such as flat-screen televisions and those frightfully complicated mobile phones that can make you a cup of tea while you talk.

Where does subsidy come in? Perhaps the manufacturers could be given £3,500 per car to start with so that they sell at £16,500 instead of £20,000. This might accelerate demand and lead to additional early sales but it would also mean that those prepared to pay £20,000 get a bargain. Those who were not prepared to pay £20,000 but were prepared to pay £16,500 enter the market earlier than they otherwise would. What is the value of those accelerated transactions? Is it sufficient to justify the taxpayer chipping-in £3,500 per vehicle? I don't know, but it is worth considering what the earlier purchase of goods really means. Say you would buy at £16,500 two years later when the price naturally fell to that level and now you can buy immediately because of the subsidy. You are not receiving £3,500, you are spending £16,500. The seller is receiving £20,000 now rather than £16,500 in two years' time, so he is getting the same lump sum from the same customer that he would otherwise have to wait to receive and he is being paid £3,500 for the privilege. Those who would pay for novelty value - which with high priced items like cars means people of quite substantial means - receive a bonus, manufacturers and/or retailers receive a bonus by making sales early and being paid for doing so, and the ordinary motorist gets only the fun of having a new car two years early. Then he has to get his next new car two years earlier than would otherwise happen and over time his benefit is negligible. And we mustn't leave out of account the possibility that the manufacturers/sellers will price the product at £23,500 so that it can be sold at £20,000 thereby ensuring they get both the full potential of novelty value and the taxpayer subsidy. They will do their sums and decide whether they are better off cashing-in on novelty value or on accelerated future sales.

However the scheme is arranged it will most assuredly not result in "ordinary motorists" receiving a benefit anywhere near close to the cost they pay wearing their other hat of "ordinary taxpayers". Oh, I must add something else. Those with chauffeurs, nice ministerial vehicles and grace-and-favour homes provided free of charge probably don't know this, but most "ordinary motorists" can't afford to buy new cars.

Starvation, the new answer to global warming

The genocide charity movement seems to be gathering momentum. They don't actually plan genocide as such, no Saddamesque gassing or Stalinesque starvation is mentioned in their plans, but as sure as nuts is nuts the result of their proposals will be massive loss of life among those least able to ride out difficult times. I speak, in particular, about the Optimum Population Trust. which has just proudly announced the support of Sir David Attenborough, the well-known creator and presenter of staggeringly expensive (and sometimes rather good) television programmes about gorillas, fish, insects and fluffy bunnies. Sir David is in no danger of starvation himself so he has a free hand to support any bunch of fanatical fruitcakes he wishes without their dangerous practices ever affecting the availability of lentil and garlic bake at his table.

The OPT argue that human population is already at or near or beyond the numbers that can be sustained by the planet (it could be any of the three depending on which of their publications you read). In consequence, they argue that population must be limited so that there is less of a strain on Mother Nature. We can get a feel for their position by looking at some of the papers they have published, they are flagged on the right-side of their homepage, the most interesting of which (to me) is headed "UK overpopulated by 70 percent". Their starting point is their own definition of sustainability. It is based unequivocally and unashamedly on plans to eliminate industrial activity that produces carbon dioxide. They have fallen for the anthropogenic global warming claptrap hook line and, quite probably, sinker. If I didn't know they were serious I would think their writings a parody of everything that is laughable about troglodyte raffia munchers. One analysis they use which really makes me giggle is something they call the "ecological footprint" (see their full paper here), this looks at the raw resources of countries and continents (predominently farming capacity and expressly excluding fossil fuels) and calculates how many people can be supported by those resources.

Please put down all drinks before reading the next bit.

I mean it, you don't want to have to contribute to global warming by buying a new keyboard. OK? Ready? Here goes.

According to their "ecological footprint" analysis the population of Africa is sustainable but the populations of the USA and the UK are not.

There now, aren't you glad you put that cup of tea down?

These people are eco-extremists of the most absurd type, but they are not without wry humour. In the next section of the report the author says "At the sustainability limit, the relationship between population and the biocapacity is a hyperbola", which he then illustrates with a few graphs. How droll it is that their hyperbole creates a hyperbola.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we can see what actually happens. To my unjargonised mind we can measure the sustainability of a population by asking whether they eat or starve, live to adulthood or perish in infancy, keep warm in winter or risk freezing to death, have clean water and good sanitation or cholera, in short by asking whether they have a long or a short average lifespan. The current population of the USA and the UK are entirely sustainable because we have advanced economies which, despite current difficulties, allow us to have warm homes, food, clean water and good sanitation. We have average lifespans unimaginable even fifty years ago. Much of Africa, on the other hand, suffers through political corruption and economic ineptitude resulting in its current population containing a great many who will die in infancy and few who will last as long as the average pie-munching fat Englishman.

Except to those with bizarre notions of what "sustain" means, the sustainability of a population is not about how much the land can produce because that is just part of the equation, and because it assumes agricultural techniques will not develop in the future as they have in the past. Sustainability is about a whole package of things of which one of the most important is the availability of a reliable supply of electricity. If you look at sustainability by examining the earth first and calculating how much you think it can produce and then dividing that by the number of people to see whether each gets enough tofu and nut roast you are looking at entirely the wrong thing. I think I can illustrate this very simply with the humble tomato. If the UK produced tomatoes only in open fields and without any pesticides or herbicides to reduce damage to crops we might well (with enough fields) be able to produce as many as we do today in greenhouses. But we could not do so at an affordable price (although they would probably be rather tastier). As it is, our farmers build greenhouses covering several acres, use composts specially prepared to maximise cropping, add fertilisers made in factories, use electricity to heat the greenhouses to optimum temperatures and to operate optimal lighting and watering systems and, the bit I really like, they pump in carbon dioxide to boost growth. The result is high yield crops of cheap fruits, the size of the crop is far greater than could be grown on the same acreage without the use of technology.

Africa's current population is not sustainable. We know that because their mortality rates are high, they are not sustained ergo the size of population is not sustainable in current conditions. The answer is not to change the population but to change the conditions. In places it is happening and has been happening gradually over the last thirty or so years, but there is a long way to go. As their mortality rates drop so will their birth rate provided cultural and economic conditions make it favourable to have fewer children.

It is important, in my view, to recognise that birth rates in the developed world have fallen steadily as a result of two things. First, technological advances in food production, sanitation and healthcare that have extended lifespans (thereby limiting the number of children people must have to replace themselves) and, secondly, placing the cost of feeding and caring for children on their parents rather than the state. There are groups for whom the second condition does not apply and they still breed in comparatively large numbers. If you want to reduce the UK population, as the OPT does, the most obvious step to take is to place everyone under the same economic constraints that cause most to think carefully about how many children they will have.

And if you want to reduce the population in Africa ... oh, hold on, they don't want to do that because they think Africa's population is sustainable. Let me tell them a little something. It might be sustainable according to their ludicrous definition of sustainability, but not according to real life; more pertinently, not according to real death. What will sustain the population of Africa is efficient farming, clean water, good sanitation and a ready supply of electricity. Naive notions that they can sustain themselves by farming every acre of potentially useable land are simply absurd, it could never happen; to argue that they must be forced to do so without recourse to machinery powered by fossil fuels is not just absurd, it is cruel.

Any organisation promoting upside-down nonsense should be careful to ensure it is consistent in order to avoid becoming infested by supporters of numerous different streams of idiocy rather than just the one they set out to promote. The OPT seems to encourage as many different categories of fundamentalist nutters as possible. For example, it published a paper (see summary here) calling for governmental action to encourage low birth rates, the author of which acknowledged expressly that there is only a "slim chance" of this being achieved without coercion. At the same time on the OPT homepage there is a prominent box boasting "The Optimum Population Trust is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion in family planning." So they publish a paper saying coercion should be avoided and the author comments that there is only a slim chance of it being avoided - the need for coercion being (yes, you've guessed it) that more humans means a greater risk to the environment through climate change. So, they solicit donations from eugenicists who see a chance of eliminating unworthy populations and from those opposed to birth control and from the global warming fanatics. Nice for income, impossible for principle.

Is the OPT just another in the long list of organisations promoting the great global warming computer game circus? Is it just the latest one to put a different slant on the computer game in order to raise money for the benefit of those prepared to write something they want to read? Maybe. Or maybe they really believe we should live only on what we can grow ourselves and the global warming nonsense is a convenient bandwagon to further their ridiculous desire. The one thing of which we can be certain is that those promoting this twaddle won't die as a result of it. As always, that privilege will be reserved for the weakest; it will be reserved for what they like to think of as the surplus population.

Anti-Earth Hour

Many things irritate me. Some things make me cross. Few make me want to tear out what is left of my hair. "Earth Hour" falls squarely into the last category. Even if I had been seduced by the patent clap-trappery of catastrophic man-made global warming I would still rage against this latest example of loud-mouthed vacuousness.

And it is just the latest example. The first big instance was Live Aid in 1985. The previous year a bunch of has-been entertainers released a record under the name Band Aid to raise money for starving brown people in Africa. It sold well so the following year they organised a large number of concerts to be held around the world on the same day, the event was called Live Aid. It raised a lot of money from the little people and did a little to help some of the poorest communities in Africa, but I always had my doubts about the real motives of many of those who took part. Some were successful singers and musicians, others were has-beens who had successfully turned a lot of money into large houses, fast cars and Colombian nose-talc and were facing a future of relative penury unless they re-launched their careers. My contrarian nature objected to being told by people worth (or once worth) millions that I should pay towards their chosen cause from my meagre resources. Had they made a polite request thing would have been different, but I was being ordered to do it by people who, as far as I could tell, spent more on cocaine every year than I spent on food. The real loud-mouths have demanded massive appearance fees to talk about poverty ever since. Some organisations have been stupid enough to pay those fees in return for speeches containing nothing but platitudes laced with profanities.

There was quite a gap until the next big event. In that time a whole generation of so-called popular entertainers had made easy fortunes and blown them in the conventional manner, they were ripe for an opportunity to return to the good times. Along came Live8 in 2005. Twenty years on from the event that would eradicate hunger and misery, there was still hunger and misery in exactly the same places as two decades before. More concerts were arranged. This time successful artistes were in relatively short supply and has-beens were very much the soup of the day. It was another futile gesture achieving a little at huge cost compared to the benefits achieved. Like it's predecessor it allowed some defunct quasi-musical careers to be revived, for which the nation's drug dealers are very grateful.

Grandiose gestures are never the answer to problems.

I have seen nothing to make me think for one second that man-made global warming is a problem (if it exists at all, I think it probably does but the evidence is sketchy). Even if I did, turning the lights off in FatBigot Towers for one hour on a Saturday in March will achieve absolutely nothing. Turning off the lights in every home in the world for one hour will achieve absolutely nothing. Demand for electricity will fall for one hour, so what? So nothing.

The whole thing is a futile gesture promoted by those who believe in fairy tales and those who just want to get their faces on television and their names in the newspapers. I thought of reacting to it by turning my lights on, running the washing machine and dishwasher and utilising every other juice-consuming appliance I have, but that would just waste my money and would be as futile a gesture as turning everything off.

I will only be on this planet for a limited time. When I am gone I will be reduced to ashes which, I hope, will be put to use in family horticultural endeavours. In the meantime I intend to spend my time doing useful things. As Earth Hour started I sat down to a splendid feast at a wonderful local Thai restaurant. It's a mile walk from FatBigot Towers, but worth every step. No futile gestures there because they have a business to run, they have staff to pay and they have the future to think about. The real future, the future of keeping food on the tables of their customers in order to keep food on the tables of their staff. It was a far more productive thing to do than join hands with naive hippies in an act of pathetic nothingness.

Exit green power, enter the 1970s

Some of us are old enough to remember life under the Labour-Conservative consensus of 1964-1979. A long stint of Labour government was interrupted by four years in which the nominally Conservative Edward Heath was top dog from 1970-1974, even in those four years nothing really changed. Burdened by uncompetitive nationalised industries, crippling rates of personal taxation and ever increasing union power the country hobbled from crisis to crisis. Much is mentioned of the Winter of Discontent, that awful period from late 1978 until mid 1979 when the unions had the government under a vice-like grip, but I have in mind today the Heath administration. I have it in mind because the country was so utterly shot that electricity supplies were cut. My particular recollection is of Saturday evenings when we had to have dinner early and then make sure we had plenty of candles. Fortunately the cuts were not random so we knew roughly when they were going to happen.

How different life is today, or is it? I wrote about this a while ago and now it's back again. An interesting commentary in The Times (brought to my attention by the most excellent Englishman) raises the prospect of power cuts through lack of supply capacity. Airy-fairy dreams of windmills and wave machines filling the national grid with wholesome juice are proving to be nothing but a nightmare, the costs of developing large-scale wind and wave electricity generation cannot be afforded in these difficult times. And still the year 2020 hovers over the country. That is when a number of perfectly serviceable coal-fired power stations must be closed to comply with an EU "green" edict.

But we mustn't worry, we have a Secretary of State for Energy and Climate change. He has quite an easy role in this. All he has to do is find a few hundred million quid out of the billions now swilling in the red column of the government ledger and we can have new coal-fired power stations before the deadline. If they get a bit behind, which they will because almost every building project commissioned by central government does, he can pretend to be French and say the EU edict would damage the national interest and must be ignored. Ah, but I forget the politics of the thing. The next general election is at most a touch over fourteen months away. Another cold winter and widespread power cuts might happen, they were very close this winter, but a dying government can always pay a vast sum to France for a little top-up from its magnificently efficient nuclear network. Why risk the wrath of the Greenies when the problem can be adjourned through use of yet more unaffordable borrowed money?

Let's go forward to 2010. There is, I suppose, always the possibility that Labour will win the next general election. Nothing is impossible, after all they still score almost 30% in opinion polls despite their solidly proven ineptitude and corruption. More likely is a Conservative victory. Just what the current Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change needs to get him off the hook. Imagine what it will be like for his successor. Freshly appointed and having access to all the inside information for the first time. It will be too late to say "Thanks but no thanks, Prime Minister, that's a poisoned chalice". The obvious, but distinctly un-green option will have to be taken up. In a way that would be appropriate because the current minister will have used up all the yellow, leaving just blue to solve the problem.

That much, I would suggest, is fairly obvious (unless something extraordinary happens in the next year or so). But my mind is caught by the fact that in 2010 the government of the UK will have to worry about how to keep the lights on, the fridges cold and the computers surfing. What an extraordinary thought that is. Some 35 years after the socialist consensus put the lights out on a regular basis, a new Prime Minister will warn that the same will have to happen again if we don't use one of our most abundant natural resources to prevent it. In fact he will have to warn of something much more serious. Then it was a few hours once or twice a week, loss of a substantial part of our generating capacity will be far worse. He will be harangued by Greenies, hippies, anti-thisses and anti-thats, yet if he did what they wanted they would be first in line to complain when their oven cuts out before their tofu and raffia casserole is ready.

How have we come to this position? How can it be that we are only a decade away from running out of electricity? There are many reasons, of course, some of which I have touched on in previous posts. Today I am simply mesmerised by the thought that twelve years of the current administration has resulted in nothing to address this long-known problem other than the hope that windmills and untested wave harnessing technology could possibly be an answer.

Let's try to put it is context. Thirty-five years ago colour television was a luxury, and there were only three channels. Radio was long or medium wave. No one had heard of compact discs or personal computers. Fax machines were in their infancy. Only posh cars had heated rear windows. Supermarket wine racks (if they had one at all) contained liebfraumilch and cotes-du-rhone. Indian and Chinese restaurants were an exotic rarity in most of the country. In short, the UK was a different and far less comfortable place than it is today. Yet we are faced with the prospect of widespread discomfort unless we do something very obvious and, compared to the other options, very cheap.

It just goes to show how damaging the Greenie agenda can be when it is not countered by common sense and an appreciation by government of its duty to keep the lights on.