World’s biggest eco-toilet scheme fails
Not that I wish to discount the idea of improvements to the current design of toilets entirely. One must not be too quick to pooh-pooh new ideas.
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French intellectuals are, on the whole, a rather annoying group of people, notorious for confusing obscurity and verbosity with profundity, and for whom the regular use of words ending in “-isation” is a substitute for rather than an aid to clear thinking. Nevertheless, when French intellectuals change their minds about something of significance, it signifies. Whether this is because they actually influence any persons other than other French people, and mostly only each other, or whether it is that they influence nobody but do have a highly developed sense of which way the intellectual winds of the world are blowing and when they are shifting in direction, and hence how to sale with them, I do not know. But, one way or another, these people do count for something. So the fact that one of this tribe, Pascal Bruckner (a “celebrated French philosopher from the centre left”), has decided that environmentalism has now become a load of despotic hooey is, I believe, quite significant. I remember when these people turned en masse against Soviet Communism, either because it had “betrayed” Communism (bad) or because it was Communism (bad), in the late nineteen seventies. That meant something then. And this (“Scorning the propaganda of fear”) means something now. July 26th, 2012 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
 A thing I keep banging on about is that a crucial stage in an argument occurs when the burden of proof gets reversed. Crackpot Theorists devise a Crackpot Theory. It unites them. It excites them. It excuses their shared belief that The Free Market Is Not Good Enough. They demand action from each other. They capture small parts of government departments that most people don’t give a damn about. They write small laws and get them passed. A few Critics notice, and start explaining that the Crackpot Theory is, maybe, a crackpot theory. The Crackpot Theorists say: No it isn’t! The Critics say: But you are making bad decisions! The Crackpot Theorists say: No we aren’t! As this phase of the argument gets seriously going, the Critics become ever more convinced that the Crackpot Theorists are indeed Crackpot Theorists, and because the Crackpot Theorists are behaving like the maniacal Crackpot Theorists that they are, the Critics grow in number, and in their certainty that the Crackpot Theorists are totally crackpot. The small bits of the government departments grow into big bits, and infect other bits. The laws they introduce get bigger and more intrusive. But sadly, nobody else cares, or not enough to stop all this. The money and inconvenience involved is still trivial, by the usual standards of government-imposed expense and inconvenience. Let the Crackpot Theorists have their fun! And besides: Maybe, just maybe, the Crackpot Theorists are onto something. Better safe than sorry! Anyway, what can you do? As the Crackpot Theory grows in power, powerless people start to notice and to cry out: Your Crackpot Theory is just an excuse for us to be taxed more! Alas, for many people this is a feature, not a bug. Throughout this phase of the history of the Crackpot Theory, the Critics of the Crackpot Theory are in the impossible position of having only one way of stopping the rise to prominence of the Crackpot Theory, which is to convince the Crackpot Theorists that they are wrong. Some Crackpot Theorists are convinced. Quite a few of them creep away in ashamed silence. A tiny few even say in public that they were wrong. But others of them are now so wholly dependent for their livelihoods upon the Crackpot Theory being true that they stick with it anyway, despite now suspecting or even knowing what total crackpottery it is. What can they do? Until, one day, the Crackpot Theorists pick a fight with a group of people powerful enough for their anger to actually matter, to the entire world. At which point, the burden of proof, hitherto weighing down only upon the shoulders of the Critics, now descends upon the shoulders of the Crackpot Theorists themselves. Suddenly, they have to convince the world that they are right and that their Critics are wrong. They have to convince their Critics that their Critics are wrong, just to shut their Critics up from saying what the world now wants to be told, namely that the fight with those powerful and angry people is a fight that is not worth having. But our Crackpot Theory says that we must have this fight! No matter what! The world must be saved, even if it is ruined in the process! I’m just thinking aloud, you understand. Having seen this (linked to just now by the ever-alert Instapundit):
Wei Zhenzhong, secretary general of the China Air Transport Association, said:
If that’s not a powerful and angry person threatening a trade war, I don’t know what is. If the trade war duly happens, next up: So, Crackpot Theorists, is your Crackpot Theory true enough to be worth stuff like this? Go ahead. Convince us. June 13th, 2012 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Bishop Hill always likes to see the best in people. He assumes good faith unless it is overwhelmingly obvious that it is absent. So he is pleased to report that the House of Commons Committee on Energy and Climate Change has announce that it is to hold an inquiry into the economics of wind power. But this time, says the Bishop:
Confession: when I first read that, I assumed that I was reading this:
I have had to do a complete rewrite of this bit of the posting. I contrasted that with the following comments. In fact the following comments agree! Deep apologies. This is the biggest mis-reading I have ever committed as a blogger. I think. I hope. Anyway, back to that evidence-based policy making.
Or as I should have put: A commenter read most of the questions the Committee says it will ask as I did, at first, and he wondered: why the sarcasm? But most of the Bishop’s commenters The first one says:
And another says:
And another:
Biggest question of all: Is it actually necessary to fret about “climate change”? Something tells me that this Committee will assume a yes on that. So, take your pick. Better late than never, or too bloody late? Enough of the right questions, or too many wrong assumptions? What I mostly think is: Keep blogging away Bishop. Kudos for spotting this, and further kudos for reporting what gets asked and what answers are forthcoming, as I assume you will when the time comes. There is something very old fashioned about blogs like Bishop Hill. While the newspapers mostly now bang on about celebs and football tournaments, here is a blogger actually spotting some at least potentially quite significant news, and reporting on it. June 13th, 2012 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Recent posting at WUWT? Gordon J. Fulks:
But the reason seems clear. Drapela is a climate skeptic. Says commenter number one:
Except that I bet that more people have been fired by American universities for being climate skeptics than were ever fired for being Communists. I favour a world in which people can be fired for any stupid reason at all, provided there is no contract saying otherwise. Employee beware. But this case does shine a bright light on what a huge industry-stroke-secular-religion Climate Catastrophism has become. The idea that the big money is all on the side of climate skepticism is ludicrous. Who pays for Oregon State University? Do they know what they are paying for? Do they like it? Might they be persuaded to stop paying? Maybe if questions of that sort were asked loudly enough, and if they started to be answered, Drapela might get his job back. June 12th, 2012 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Free-market Western democratic capitalism is sustainable, both environmentally and economically, and alone gives us the affluence and freedom to allow a sizable minority to divorce itself from the gritty daily tasks of production to critique and revile the very system that nourishes them. June 11th, 2012 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
It did not fit easily into my previous post but another example of a person afflicted by “… a desire to maintain the delusion that the world would heed your message if only it were allowed to hear it” is Peter Gleick, who despite having his own blog at Forbes Magazine and turning down star billing to debate his opponents at the Heartland Institute face to face persisted in his belief that they were managing to “prevent this debate”. Incidentally, the Undebated One has been reinstated at the Pacific Institute, I see from a report in the Guardian. You will rejoice to hear that
To my suprise Suzanne Goldenberg, the author of the report who until now has appeared besotted with Gleick now sounds almost like one of those cynical reporters one used to read about:
Ms Goldenberg then continued to veer from side to side in the article. After Old Suzanne wrote about a Heartland plan to “spread misinformation in schools about climate change” (making no reference to the fact that the most damaging quotes on that score came from a document that she has hinted a minute ago was fake), New Suzanne lets slip, I think deliberately, that:
The words in bold represent a change. Until recently the Guardian line was that Gleick’s exposé had been, shall we say, misguided, but had struck a mighty blow against Heartland. I do not think I quite qualify as an ally, but I was and am a strong supporter of the Institute in its efforts to get the truth out of Gleick, and was also one of the chiders after the Unabomber poster came out, though as you will see if you read that post and its comments many here disagree. My impression is that Ms Goldenberg and others with similar views turned with relief from defending Gleick to talking about the Kaczynski poster. Without a confession or an adverse verdict in a court of law they will never admit that Gleick lied. However I suspect the penny has dropped that their public credulity regarding an obviously fishy story, and the public excuses they made for Gleick’s admitted dishonest tactics, let alone his unadmitted ones, sent the message to the public that they may also be credulous and tolerant of dishonesty when it comes to climate science. June 9th, 2012 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Recently I wrote here about how the US Presidential campaign is hastening the end of the CAGW scare. One of the things I said in that piece was that I didn’t know if Romney intended to make a big issue out of the new energy sources that are now coming on stream in the USA. But, I argued, even if Romney’s only interest in enterprises like Solyndra is that they are corrupt and wasteful rackets for syphoning tax money into the pockets of Obama supporters, I argued that such policking would still have the effect of flagging up the CAGW argument, to the extreme disadvantage of those who still take the CAGW scare seriously. The central problem for the CAGW team being that whereas until now, others have been trying to knock some sense into their heads, with little apparent success, now the CAGW team itself is going to have to convince a crucial cohort of American voters that CAGW is a problem, when those voters now mostly reckon that it is not. This the CAGW team will be totally unable to do, any more than they have convinced the people whom they describe as “deniers” to stop their complaining about all the dodgy “climate science” on which the CAGW scare has always depended. All that the CAGW people will do is publicise their failure so far to make any persuasive sense. I learned today, from this article by Walter Russell Mead, that Team Romney is indeed well aware of how Team Obama’s fondness for Greenery has caused Team Obama to impede the development of new energy sources in the USA, and that Team Romney very much intends to make an issue of this. Says Mead:
And then Mead links to an FT story which is behind a paywall, but also quotes from it, as now do I:
Who “he” is there, I don’t know, not being able to read the previous bit of the FT piece that says this, and Mead himself doesn’t say. But I am sure that whoever he is, he is right.
So, it would appear that the intellectual pressure already being applied to the CAGW-ers is even greater than I said in my earlier piece. Good. June 7th, 2012 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Dr Fred Singer says that Mitt Romney should exploit the energy issue to get himself elected President of the United States. You don’t have to agree with everything Singer says nevertheless to be optimistic about the impact that the kind of arguments Singer refers to might have during the campaign. I basically agree with Singer. The new energy Singer refers to is such a huge economic open goal (as we here in the soccer mad UK would say), and at a time when the entire Western world needs economic open goals like almost never before, that not even Romney will be able to avoid at least aiming kicks in its general direction, even if for some reason or another he would rather not. The economy is the basic issue in this Presidential election, as it almost always is. If you are happy about how well you and your loved ones and friends and neighbours are doing, you vote for the incumbent or his younger friend. If not, not. Meanwhile, a vast apparatus of energy sabotage has been created, the excuse or the reason for that being that energy of the sort that the modern world likes will ruin the climate and destroy humanity, in accordance with the C(atastrophic) A(nthropogenic) G(lobal) W(arming) story alluded to acronymically in the title of this posting. Only energy of the most non-energetic sort, such as solar panels and silly big propellers, should be allowed, say the CAGW-ers. President Obama either really believes all this CAGW stuff or has lots of supporters who really do believe it, or supporters who placed business bets at a time when they really did believe it, or when they reckoned that a lot of other idiots really did believe it, so Obama is now looking like a green saboteur himself. It gets worse for Team Obama. Americans want their energy to stop being sabotaged into being much more expensive, and to go back to being cheap again. And, says Singer, new sources of non-green energy now coming on stream might make this happen. Singer’s argument may not be true, what with politicians being politicians, but it is at least plausible. Vast new underground oceans of stuff you can set fire to and power four wheel drive vehicles with have recently been discovered under America. Or, they have always known this stuff was there but now they also know how to suck it out. Or push it out. Or some such thing. The point is, here’s a potential economic bonanza. Do we bonanzify it and go with the flow? Or do we ignore it, to save the planet from climate doom? Although Team Obama has changed its tune about this new, bad, energetic type energy somewhat, it hasn’t changed it enough to be convincing. Fred Singer says Romney should talk up this new energy, and that if he does he will make Obama look an even bigger economic saboteur than he looks already. According to Singer, not only is the story of the economy as it is now bad for Team Obama. So is the new story, of the economy as it might be. I agree with Singer. I think this is one of those situations where what the contending Presidential teams merely say might actually make a big difference. → Continue reading: Solyndra! Solyndra! How the US Presidential campaign is hastening the end of the CAGW scare June 4th, 2012 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Don’t vote Green until they drop the anti-science zealotry”, says Tom Chivers of the Telegraph. Well, obviously. The first three words would have sufficed. It is not that I disagree in the slightest with the thrust of Mr Chivers’ article – he rightly condemns a Green Party plan, now apparently dropped, to have some sort of mass vandalism party directed against an experimental crop of GM wheat. Ironically, but not surprisingly, the point of the experiment was to try and produce a type of wheat less reliant on pesticides. That the Greens are Luddites should surprise no one. It did surprise me that it surprised Mr Chivers. How does one get to be assistant comment editor of the Telegraph? I would have thought that the knowledge of political affairs required to qualify for that post would disqualify one from being able to write, other than as a joke, the following:
In other news, Queen Anne’s dead. Mr Chivers shared his Platonic cave with Mr George Monbiot of the Guardian. He has recently noticed that Noam Chomsky and John Pilger are quite happy to flirt with genocide denial so long as the deniers oppose the United States. May 24th, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Heartland Institute has aroused much controversy with its recent anti-global-warming billboards, such as this one:  Here is their announcement concerning these billboards, and the fact that they have now taken them down. Many climate skeptics are most unhappy. Ross McKitrick, for instance, is “absolutely dismayed”:
I’d be very interested to hear what others here – fellow posters, regular commenters and for that matter irregular commenters – think about this. Is this an own goal, as we say in soccer-playing England, or has the Heartland Institute actually accomplished something valuable and important with this operation? Me, I am genuinely unsure, but at present think that this operation may actually play out rather well. For instance, I would never tangle with McKitrick over things like bristle cones, but is he right to say that the big advert above is “fallacious”? Surely not. “Believing in Global Warming” is a muddled phrase. ( I have long preferred C(atastrophic) A(nthropogenic) G(lobal) W(arming).) But it just about serves. My over-all hunch as of now is that these billboards seem outrageous but actually, they are not. They seem down and dirty. Because they pull no intellectual punches, they seem like some of the more disgusting statements perpetrated by CAGW-ers against their skeptic enemies. But, they make various points which are true, and very important, and they tell no lies. The big point they make, I think, is that all this talk about cute polar bears and melting ice caps and so on, quite aside from usually being mistaken, is not nearly as nice as it seems. It is a part of a huge argument, and not a nice argument at all, which says that modern industrial civilisation is evil and should be trashed, and the human species savagely culled to the tune of millions, sometimes billions. Or: not. Most of the people who fret about polar bears have no serious designs on western industrial civilisation, nor do they have fantasies of mass genocide. However, all those who do now want industrial civilisation trashed and humanity culled, and a global despotism of people like themselves superimposed upon the ruins, use CAGW as either an excuse or a reason for their nightmare projects. The psycho-politicians who launched the various global institutions which funded the “science”, and the mass propaganda, behind the CAGW scare had exactly these murderously destructive ends in mind. (For a brief summary of this story, I suggest, once against, the excellent Watermelons.) One of the few Big Points about which I entirely agree with the more fanatical CAGW fanatics is that this is indeed a very important argument. However, I think it very important that my side should win and that theirs should lose. The CAGW scare is indeed not a small spat about polar bears. It is a very big confrontation, right up there with such things as Civilisation versus Communism. Indeed, again as these posters indicate, the CAGW scare is in many, many ways, Communism 2 (and to a somewhat lesser degree also Nazism 2). This is why, exactly as these posters highlight, a succession of history’s recent villains, great and small, have aligned themselves with the CAGW scare, and have in some cases been strongly influenced by it. I presume many on the CAGW side are now also getting very angry about these billboards. But again, this was one of their purposes. You shouldn’t be this horrid, eh? Well no, maybe you shouldn’t. Comparison is invited, between these insultingly true billboards and the insultingly false abuse that has been hurled over the years at people who have opposed the whole CAGW scare, people like Ross McKitrick for instance. Far from lowering the tone of the CAGW debate, I suspect that these billboards may well end up raising it. I always have my doubts about that “moral high ground”. Yes, it’s good to have it, but not if you leave all the other ground in the possession of the enemy. Also, I think that a great many people will read that Heartland webpage. I may, after I have studied that webpage and further reactions to it some more, change my mind about all this. But I thought it worth posting my half-formed thinking-aloud thoughts nevertheless, and also hearing anything others have to say here in response. May 7th, 2012 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is at first denied that any radical new plan exists; it is then conceded that it exists but ministers swear blind that it is not even on the political agenda; it is then noted that it might well be on the agenda but is not a serious proposition; it is later conceded that it is a serious proposition but that it will never be implemented; after that it is acknowledged that it will be implemented but in such a diluted form that it will make no difference to the lives of ordinary people; at some point it is finally recognised that it has made such a difference, but it was always known that it would and voters were told so from the outset. – Yesterday (see below) I quoted a paragraph written by James Delingpole. The above paragraph, originally written to describe the onward march of the European Union, is quoted by Delingpole, in his book Watermelons (p. 45), to help him explain how AGW went from crankery to globally imposed policy. Delingpole found it in The Great Deception (p. 605) by Booker and North. They got it from a Times editorial, published on August 28, 2002. April 22nd, 2012 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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