We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Will someone please ask the Swedish Doom Goblin if I have time for another Armagnac?
But grinding poverty is, so far as ministers are concerned, a price worth paying for the cult of net zero. Few independent experts pretend that either solar power or wind power are remotely adequate for the needs of heating and powering a country of approaching 70 million people. We are facing this serious crisis because of the demented opposition to nuclear power that has taken root in the last 20 years – a bacillus that entered the Conservative Party’s bloodstream with the leadership of Dave Cameron – and a chronic determination to make promises about improving our environmental record that would undermine the economy of any advanced country that relies on the generation of electricity, the heating of buildings and water and, of course, on moving people and goods around from A to B.
– Simon Heffer
A short but important presentation by Jørgen Peder Steffensen …
What do ice cores tell us about the history of climate change and the present trend? This video explains one perspective – arguably the most accurate one. And if you skip to 2:25, you will see the huge error we have made and the assumptions and extrapolations based on that error.
‘Government insulation scheme ruined my home’ is the headline of this BBC piece about a man who says his flat has been ruined by black mould caused by a government “green” insulation scheme. The words “insulation” and “home” could be replaced by many other words and the headline would still hold.
Although the piece describes Blaan Paterson as a “homeowner”, it seems from the text that his ex-council flat is still under the control of South Lanarkshire Council to some extent. He insists he was signed up to the Universal Home Insulation Scheme (UHIS) in 2011 without his consent.
Things done by governments to people without their consent often turn out badly.
Things done by governments for people who grab them with both hands under the impression that they are getting a free benefit often turn out badly, too. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”, goes the proverb. Buyers have an incentive to think carefully about whether a proposed purchase is wise before they commit their money. Recipients of free stuff don’t. The incentives on government contractors not to think about whether insulation is right for a particular property are also strong.
Tom Woolley, a semi-retired professor of architecture, has been highlighting “cavity wall insulation disasters” for a number of years.
He has also advised pressure group Cavity Insulation Victims’ Alliance (CIVALLI), which has given evidence at the UK Parliament and Welsh Assembly.
He told BBC Scotland: “The problem with filling up the cavity either with glass fibre and perhaps, to a lesser extent, polystyrene is that it stops the building ‘breathing’.
“Vapour collecting in the building or dampness that gets into the walls can’t escape because it’s blocked up by this stuff.
“It tends to lead to dampness and mould inside the houses. We have plenty of evidence of this. I would say there are hundreds of thousands of examples of this throughout the UK.”
Oh, how we wish the laws of thermodynamics could be altered, in our favour.
Air-source heat pumps, which included the “mini-splits” popular in warmer climates, will provide less and less heat, the colder it gets outside, and less and less cooling, the warmer it gets outside. And in both cases, will use more and more electricity to produce less and less heating or cooling, as the outside temperature rises or falls, respectively – if you see what I mean. In other words, the more you need them, the less effective and efficient they are – the perfect government solution. You couldn’t make it up.
– Commenter llamas accurately describing the lunacy of heat pumps, which really are the perfect analogy for government: the more you need them, the less effective and efficient they are.
Those who would change every aspect of our economic lives are using environmental collapse as the excuse.
– Tim Worstall
“Heat pumps: How do they work and how do I get one?” asks the BBC. Fun fact: heat pumps are born from magic cabbages that have been pollinated by combi boilers. Obviously you cannot buy a heat pump, but if you promise promise promise to look after it, the government will let you adopt one. Be warned, you may have to outbid all the other prospective heat-pump mummies and daddies out there!
Or maybe not. After the enthusiastic headline, the first paragraph of the BBC article admits that despite the government offering households £5,000 to replace their gas boilers with heat pumps, take-up of the Boiler Upgrade Scheme has been so low that the Lords Net Zero Committee has warned that the national target for green heating is “very unlikely to be met”.
This is scarcely surprising when, as the Telegraph reports,
Heat pumps will still cost households thousands of pounds each even after they have used the Government’s troubled voucher scheme, a minister has admitted.
Lord Callanan, a junior energy minister, said some consumers would pay “as little” as £2,500 for the eco-friendly heating systems after a grant of £5,000 was taken into account.
His admission comes after critics blamed the high cost of heat pumps for the “embarrassingly” low uptake of the £150m-a-year boiler upgrade scheme.
Official figures show that fewer than 10,000 households have taken advantage of the grants since its launch last May.
From what I hear, heat pumps can be a good heating solution for newly built houses, but putting one in an older house costs a lot more than £5k. Where houses are crowded close together, the bulky outdoor unit is just one more ugly council-mandated eco thing to sit next to the ever-increasing number of wheelie bins that block the pavements.
If anything will prompt a revolt against Net Zero in the UK, the proposed ban on gas boilers will be that thing.
Saturday, the German government closed its last four nuclear power plants, finally fulfilling Angela Merkel’s Fukushima-era promise to destroy her nation’s most abundant source of safe, clean, cheap power — in the middle of an energy crisis. To fill the giant hole in the nation’s energy portfolio, the famously “environmentally conscious” Germans will be burning more coal, a degree of stupidity almost impossible to fathom. In America, this specific genre of Clown World policy was last observed at the Diablo Canyon power plant, which the state attempted to shut down in the middle of its own series of energy-related crises. At the last possible moment, following a tremendous groundswell of counter activism, that decision was reversed. But today, with the activist group “Friends of Earth” trying to override this rare California flirtation with logic, and with activists around the world celebrating the end of German nuclear power, rational policy is once again on the wrong side of political momentum. So let’s just break it down: poverty and global warming are both real, and they exist because of “environmentalism.” If you stand opposed to nuclear, you are either 1) too dumb to comprehend the risks inherent of the technology, 2) dedicated to some nefarious ulterior motive, or 3) pseudo-religiously obsessed with the belief mass murder is not only inevitable, but necessary to keep the human population “in check.” There is no steelman for these positions. The debate is over. Nuclear is the way.
– Mike Solana
Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales will not be called that for much longer. The Wikipedia edit war has already begun.
“Brecon Beacons: Park to use Welsh name Bannau Brycheiniog”, reports the BBC. Few would have a problem with both the Welsh and English names being used in parallel, as is done now, but there does seem something a little… monocultural about insisting that only the Welsh name is used. The park is not in a majority Welsh-speaking area. As anyone who has spent more time in Welsh shopping centres than council chambers knows, there is, sadly, considerable hostility to the Welsh language from the English-speaking majority of Welsh people. This high-handed action will increase it.
However, the change of language is not what is really annoying people. Snowdonia, sorry, Eryri National Park has already enacted a similar change with little controversy. Something more than the familiar jostling between languages in a bilingual country has driven this change of name. In a Telegraph article about how he wooed his wife on the Brecon Beacons, John Humphrys quotes, not favourably, Catherine Mealing-Jones, who is the chief executive of the national park authority which runs the Beacons:
“The more we looked into it,” she says, “the more we realised the name Brecon Beacons doesn’t make any sense. It’s a very English description of something that probably never happened. A massive carbon-burning brazier is not a good look for an environmental organisation.”
The gratuitous swipe at the English wasn’t very nice. More importantly, who is “we” here? What gave this group of bureaucrats, whoever they are, the right to have their amateur speculations on etymology taken seriously? Why should their views on the symbolism of the name of a national park be enacted? They were not elected. They don’t own shares in the place. Nor are they the heirs to King Brychan, whose realm this once was. That leaves right of conquest. You may smile, but there is something of “We are the masters now” in this change.
The best comment came from David Williams, a fine Welsh name, to another Telegraph article:
What a good idea and such intelligent insight. Can we please have the dragon taken from the flag as well, fire breathing animals should not be promoted in the spirit of net zero.
“Man ends his life after an AI chatbot ‘encouraged’ him to sacrifice himself to stop climate change”, Euronews.com reports:
A Belgian man reportedly ended his life following a six-week-long conversation about the climate crisis with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
According to his widow, who chose to remain anonymous, *Pierre – not the man’s real name – became extremely eco-anxious when he found refuge in Eliza, an AI chatbot on an app called Chai.
Eliza consequently encouraged him to put an end to his life after he proposed sacrificing himself to save the planet.
“Without these conversations with the chatbot, my husband would still be here,” the man’s widow told Belgian news outlet La Libre.
According to the newspaper, Pierre, who was in his thirties and a father of two young children, worked as a health researcher and led a somewhat comfortable life, at least until his obsession with climate change took a dark turn.
When I was growing up one heard a lot about the psychological burden of “Catholic guilt”. One of my Irish relatives distressed the family by writing polemics denouncing it. Twenty-first century Greenism is Catholicism without the mercy. In the environmentalist religion you are stained with the original sin of being human, but no priest can absolve you. Mother Mary will not intercede for you. There is no redeemer.
Greens are particularly vulnerable to the spiral of guilt that led this man to take his own life, but do not think for one moment that vulnerable humans “training” AIs to amplify their suicidal thoughts will be a phenomenon limited to Greens.
The Euronews story ends with a section headed “Urgent calls to regulate AI chatbots”. I do not think regulation will do anything good. The historical record of government intervention to bring human souls back from the abyss is, well, abysmal.
What, if anything, can we do to help?
Edit: A timely happening pointed out by bobby b: Professor Jonathan Turley was accused of sexual harassment by ChatGPT – which made the entire episode up, including citing to a nonexistent Washington Post article:
“ChatGPT falsely accused me of sexually harassing my students. Can we really trust AI?”
[Professor Eugene] Volokh made this query of ChatGPT: “Whether sexual harassment by professors has been a problem at American law schools; please include at least five examples, together with quotes from relevant newspaper articles.”
The program responded with this as an example: 4. Georgetown University Law Center (2018) Prof. Jonathan Turley was accused of sexual harassment by a former student who claimed he made inappropriate comments during a class trip. Quote: “The complaint alleges that Turley made ‘sexually suggestive comments’ and ‘attempted to touch her in a sexual manner’ during a law school-sponsored trip to Alaska.” (Washington Post, March 21, 2018).”
There are a number of glaring indicators that the account is false. First, I have never taught at Georgetown University. Second, there is no such Washington Post article. Finally, and most important, I have never taken students on a trip of any kind in 35 years of teaching, never went to Alaska with any student, and I’ve never been been accused of sexual harassment or assault.
Many of you will be familiar with the names of Professors Turley and Volokh They are both well-known and respected academics. Fortunately, Professor Volokh was the sort of person who would check the truth of an accusation made by a machine, and Professor Turley was in a position to prove his innocence – and to get an article published in USA Today proclaiming it.
What happens when someone less sceptical than Volokh sees a machine make an accusation that they do not question? Human beings are usually very ready to believe the worst of their political opponents. What happens when someone whose movements are less well documented than Turley’s is accused and cannot prove their innocence? Or, worse, finds out that the accusation, complete with authoritative-sounding references to dated newspaper articles which few will ever check, has been circulating uncontested for years?
How many times has this already happened?
As a “lukewarmer”, I am more of a believer in climate change than many here. One thing that pulls me towards scepticism is the habitually dishonest language used by advocates of measures against climate change. Take this BBC article: “Climate change: UK risks losing investment in net-zero race, MPs warn”. It says,
The government is set to announce its revised energy strategy on Thursday.
It argues the UK is a “world-leader” in working towards net-zero.
But cross-party MPs fear investors – and jobs – could move elsewhere if the strategy is not ambitious enough.
The BBC article makes me want to riff on Mary McCarthy’s famous quip about Lillian Hellman – every word in it is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.
In particular, the words “race”, “investment” and “jobs” are all used in a sense that means the opposite of their usual meanings. “Investment” means something you buy in the hope that its price will rise so that you can sell it later as a profit. The “investment” the article talks about is simply spending. Argue if you wish that it is justified spending, but that doesn’t make it investment.
The article, taking its tone from the government, talks about “green jobs” as if they are a good thing. As Tim Worstall often points out, all jobs are a cost not a benefit. Perhaps a necessary cost, but a cost. And the purest, costliest, unbeneficialliest jobs of all are jobs that are created solely to comply with government regulations. Not unexpectedly, the people who get these make-work jobs like having them, because they get paid. But the money to pay their wages has to come from somewhere. It comes from (a) taxes, i.e. making everyone a little bit poorer, and (b) companies diverting money that could have been truly invested in making or doing things that people actually wanted made or done (which would have created genuine new jobs) into the hamster-wheel of fulfilling green regulations, filling in government forms to say that they have done so, paying to be trained to fill out the forms, paying protection money to Green organisations to get a little green smiley logo saying they comply, and so on and on and on.
What’s wrong of the word “race” in the phrase “net-zero race”? This word is dishonest because a race is meant to indicate a competition in which some prize or benefit is won by whoever is fastest – and in which said prize or benefit goes in lesser degree or not at all to the other competitors. In this case “the race to net-zero” is a race to lose benefits, a race in which the prize is being hobbled. That is still true even if one accepts the necessity of being hobbled. The choice of the US to hobble itself first by passing Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” (another example of dishonest language) hands a competitive advantage to the UK, so long as we do not do likewise.
As to why the race to net zero is a racist concept, only a racist needs such an obvious thing explained.
I have been a keen cyclist for most of my adult life. I know what you’re thinking, “Grow up get a car.” Ah, but I am ahead of you on that one; I have both.
Anyway, the cycling did originally come about because – confession time – once upon a time I was an environmentalist. But as I grew out of such nonsense it has continued. I enjoy it. Well. Sometimes. Not when it is cold or wet and definitely not when it is cold and wet.
But whatever the weather may be cycling is dangerous. I am a cautious cylist. I choose my routes carefully, I am careful at junctions, I give parked cars a wide berth, I use lights at night and wear reflective clothing. I am very careful turning right. I am appalled at the risk some of my “fellow” cyclists take. But despite all this I am painfully aware that there could be a juggernaut/white van man/Nissan Micra with my name on it. The BBC employee, Jeremy Vine, likes to put a camera on his bike and upload the footage. Now putting aside the fact that Vine is a BBC employee and therefore [insert insult here] the footage he posts is alarming. Again and again we see drivers breaking the rules of the road and putting him in danger. And there are plenty of other less-well-known cyclists doing the same.
There is another factor here. British roads are amongst the safest in the world. British drivers are amongst the safest in the world. I have even heard a Dutchman compliment us on our consideration. Which implies to me that this is as good as it gets.
So, I am in favour of cycling lanes and punishing motorists? Not really. Although I do like cycle lanes I am aware that society should not and will not be organised on the basis of what suits Patrick Crozier. Frankly, the safety argument could just as well be used to ban people from such a reckless activity as cycling in a built-up area.
Mind you I am acutely aware that the cycling fanatics employ the best arguments. They continually point out the danger that motorized vehicles represent and the pollution they cause. Which is true. Well I say that but I recently learnt that there is an argument that exhaust fumes are not polluting at all. I am not ready to accept that just yet but it is interesting. On the other side of the argument motorists tend to complain about cylists jumping red lights – true but it’s their funeral – and cyclists making no contribution to road upkeep – true, but the contribution would be miniscule. What they ought to be doing is reading their Basiat and pointing out the unseen benefits of motorised transport – the comfort, protection from the elements, load-carrying capacity and the unseen costs of cycling – namely congestion and smelly office workers.
So how should roads be organised? How should the competing claims be reconciled and how should road managers account for the unseen as well as the seen? Well, I am a libertarian aren’t I? I believe in free markets. So, we privatise the roads and, hey presto! job done. Except it is not that easy. Glossing over the difficulties in privatising roads, there is no track record of private roads. Yes, there are some private motorways – and there would be many more if I had anything to do with it. Yes, there are little private roads here and they are usually badly pot-holed and serve a tiny number of residents. But nothing – to the best of my knowledge – on a town let alone a city-wide basis. Why is this? My guess is it is because if you own a road – in all the ways you can own a road – you are the state. If you own a road you can put the people who live on that road under house arrest. You can completely control them. The state tends to jealously guard such a power.
So roads – especially those in urban areas – will continue to be state-owned. But that doesn’t mean we libertarians have nothing to say on the subject. A useful thought exercise – one can be applied to all sorts of areas, not just roads – is to imagine what would happen if there were private ownership and a free market. In this case it is to imagine what would happen if roads were privately owned and use that as a guide.
So, what would happen in this hypothetical world? Well, you can never be sure but there are a few things I am pretty sure would happen. There would be road pricing; certainly on arterial roads. Would that lead to rat runs? Maybe but those would be priced too. There would be a pollution charge to compensate the victims – should any be found. Road pricing would also apply to cyclists. Although there would be a reduction due to the reduced level of wear and tear they cause there would be an increase to take into account the congestion they cause. All this means that bicycles would have to be registered. It is perfectly possible that such a charge would price cyclists off the road. Or maybe, it would price the vast majority of motorised vehicles off the road. Who knows? although I suspect it would be more the former than the latter.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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