Bishop Hill Lord Marland shames Parliament
Oct 21, 2010 Climate: Parliament Yesterday Nigel Lawson asked a question of Lord Marland, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change. This is the full exchange:
Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the chairman of the Government’s own Green Investment Bank commission has authoritatively stated that the cost of meeting our current carbon reduction commitments in this country is somewhere between £800 billion and £1 trillion? Does he not agree that, with the best will in the world, this mind-boggling cost cannot be justified except in the context of a binding global carbon reduction agreement? Therefore, in the absence of such an agreement being secured at Cancun, does he not agree that it is only commonsense to suspend the Climate Change Act until such time as a binding global agreement is secured?
Lord Marland: My Lords, when I bumped into my noble friend in the Corridor and he said that he was catching the train to York I was rather relieved. Sadly, he will be catching a slightly later train than I was hoping for. I have now forgotten entirely what his question was.
Utterly, utterly shameful.
Reader Comments (72)
I see your point, Harold, and agree completely. There's danger in even tacitly endorsing the CO2-cap nonsense poem. Marland response, though, is a notable low point.
According to Wikipedia, "Concorde utilized an electronic engine control package from Lucas".
That fact alone would have doomed it to failure, even if oil had been free and it had been able to fly noiselessly non-stop for 15,000 miles.
Lucas electrics are the common factor in pretty well every failed or otherwise unreliable British car design of the 1960s and 1970s.
Concorde: the TR6 of the skies. 1960s engine. 1970s bodyshell. Lucas electricals. Failure guaranteed.
Oct 21, 2010 at 2:00 PM | HaroldW
Harold
Your point about climate forecasting inaccuracy 100 years ahead if anything understates the vanity of such enterprise.
To forecast the climate, ecofascists forecast emissions. To forecast emissions, they must also by implication forecast population, technology, and energy use, source, and price. If you don't know what these will be, then you have nothing sensible to build into your model about future emissions, because those factors are what determine emissions. So there is an implied value in every model for each of these.
I don't know about the first two, but if there were useful, reliable, agreed-to-be-authoritative forecasts of energy price 100 years into the future, I'd have heard of them. There are not. Actually there are none even 20 years into the future, and what does exist is always wisely hedged with caveats to the effect that they are projections or scenarios, not predictions.
I'd speculate that there is no "consensus" at all about any of the key inputs to deterministic models of the type relied upon by the Canute tendency.
Even if the science on CO2 were settled, which it's not, it wouldn't matter. The 100-year projections would still be complete, utter, arrant bollocks.
The link should now be http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/101020-0001.htm#10102041000398
I'm with Martyn re: Concorde. A fantastic achievement blighted by hapless, indecisive politicians and jealousy around the world. Particularly the US, who's environmentalists shouted so loud that they didn't even hear it fly over.
Never intended as a cattle carrier but as a cutting edge icon worthy of national pride.
No, Chris.
Concorde was the cuckoo in the nest. It consumed all the resources available for civil aircraft development by the UK, was a total blind alley, and wrecked the industry.
It might be an icon. But I'm not proud of it. I'm ashamed the UK can be so stupid - and so arrogant. As stupid and arrogant as it is now being on climate change.
This is no surprise, it is the same in the RS - blind adherence to the 'on message', MM CO2 is destroying the planet b***ox.
But, the government (and the whole Westminster bubble) do not care a fig about the truth, there is and always has been another agenda here.
AGW was the vehicle for tax and control and the politburo in Brussels loved it.
In Britain the 'roll out' of smart meters is the next step, in that they will enable the government to actually dictate to the individual user: how much or how little electrical energy he or she has available/can use.
Also, they will be useful for the coming Brown outs and black outs, which are an inevitable consequence of a combination of factors:
1. The past and present government's disastrous energy policies.
2. The appallingly daft emissions targets set by the EU -
3. And of course not forgetting the imbecilic palliatives, that are the supposed to be the answer to emissions targets - wind farms and solar (hahaha).
Britain's energy usage will outstrip supply very soon, when will the public start to realise and when will the politicians be FORCED to see sense - we need to out of the EU asap and immediately build coal fired power stations NOW!!
Justice4Rinka wrote:
"Lucas electrics are the common factor in pretty well every failed or otherwise unreliable British car design of the 1960s and 1970s.
Concorde: the TR6 of the skies. 1960s engine. 1970s bodyshell. Lucas electricals. Failure guaranteed."
A common joke amongst American owners of British sports cars of that era goes as follows:
Q: Why do the British drink warm beer?
A: Because their refrigerators are built by Lucas!
I also note that the single most common upgrade to those sports cars was to "de-Lucas" them by replacing all Lucas components with similar-spec components from Bosch.
US classic car enthusiasts, whose quaint Austin Healeys have lighting dependent on Lucas electricals, assert that the patron saint of Lucas is Lucifer - the Prince of Darkness.
"Lord Marland only demonstrates historical illiteracy and a commitment to wasting the resources of the people of the United Kingdom perhaps only matched by the generals of WWI." -- hunter
That is beyond abysmal. There are a lot more lives at stake, here, I think, though. Will another edition of "Now It Can Be Told" be printed in 2050? Will it be printed with movable type? Or scrawled by scribes?
@Justice4Rinka ,
If my memory serves me correctly, Joe Lucas' nickname was 'Prince of Darkness'
A true parable... 1960's 70's Engineering and Manufacturing in the UK.
My Aunty worked for a parts manufacturer in the UK.
First they sent the batch of parts to Germany. Normally, something like 50% rejected as unacceptable.
The rejects repackaged sent to the UK. No complaints. Ever.
It is relevant to this topic but in such a far off way that I would have to write a book...
Oops tea break over. I must go and mothball a couple of aircraft carriers that haven’t been built yet.
Reported this morning that Gordon Brown had it written into the contract that even if cancelled the scottish shipyard workforce would still be paid for 12 years work or no work.
JohnA
"consumed all the resources available for civil aircraft development by the UK"
And what would we have developed? Boeing had the commercial airliner business sewn up after the Comet fiasco, and the only thing they couldn't produce was an SST, which they were ready to make, but was howled down by the environmentalists. They had less of a voice here, but they made life as difficult as they could for Concorde in the US, possibly aided and abetted by congressmen who couldn't bear to think that we (and the French!) could do something they couldn't.
If Air France Flight 4590 hadn't tripped on bits that had fallen off a DC-10 and crashed, Concorde might still be in service.
James P., I do have to disagree...
The UK produced the first real short-range jets.
The most popular plane of the 60's and 70's was the 727. Which was a copy of the Trident. The people developing the Trident showed the plans to Boeing. I think nearly 2000 727"s were built, and around 100 or so Tridents. The Trident was hampered by poor engines.
The BAC 111 was popular in the States, and it could have beaten the DC-9.
The biggest problem affecting them was the Government dictating a de facto nationalisation, with I think almost mandatory use of RR engines, and with the Government influenced National Carriers dictating the specs.
Concorde was the "cuckoo"...
The same problems affected the car industry, and those problems still manifest themselves in today's governments. So we are still on topic ;-)
Concorde became a pawn in the fight between those who believed in human beings' ability to conquer all through technology and those who felt that such developments were threatening the future of the planet. With Concorde, the latter won through.
Jiminy
No doubt I was simplifying, and it's difficult to know what would have been developed, although I note that the HS146 made it through. Agree entirely about the dead hand of government, which never seems to have appreciated our expertise at aircraft design (or anything else with oily bits, really).
Concorde is a useful reminder, if we needed it, of the power of the green lobby, though.
Lord Marland's reply to Lord Lawson's question is dishonourable. It was demonstrably a ploy to avoid the subject and to avoid any futher probing supplement, but in order to do that he had to say that he had forgotten the question.
Then remarkably he remembers it sort of and answers it sort of a few minutes later.
So he is without honour. It may not mean much to him. Maybe he's never had any. But if he did he's lost what little he had.
Would anyone reading the exchange trust this Minister, This Noble Lord, to repay even a 10p loan?
Would you trust him with a confidence? Or a State Secret? Or in battle?
I wouldn't. He has no honour.
H/T diggerjock
I have rarely been as angry with the contemptuousness of our supposed 'lords' and 'masters' so I have just sent the following message to 'Lord' Marland:
FOR THE ATTENTION OF:
Lord Marland
House of Lords
Saturday 23 October 2010 David Bishop
Dear Lord Marland,
I note with very considerable concern your response to the question put to you by Lord Lawson of Blaby on 20th October. The question was pertinent and proper but your response was neither.
You said, "I have now forgotten entirely what his question was."
Taking that at face value, you will welcome this reminder, "My Lords, is the Minister aware that the chairman of the Government’s own Green Investment Bank commission has authoritatively stated that the cost of meeting our current carbon reduction commitments in this country is somewhere between £800 billion and £1 trillion? Does he not agree that, with the best will in the world, this mind-boggling cost cannot be justified except in the context of a binding global carbon reduction agreement? Therefore, in the absence of such an agreement being secured at Cancun, does he not agree that it is only commonsense to suspend the Climate Change Act until such time as a binding global agreement is secured?"
Your behaviour was utterly shameful. To make some sort of amends, the very least you can do is offer an apology and a proper response to Lord Lawson and by extension to the long-suffering taxpayers of this country.
Yours sincerely,
David Bishop
Good letter, David Bishop.
There must have been a chair at this session, which was presumably Lords Question Time. Whoever was in charge, they are also remiss in not making Marland behave as he should. His favourable reponse to a later question by someone else, saying how glad he was that HIS train had NOT been caught, only emphasised his disgraceful rudeness.
This is not a joking matter, Lord Marland, you have a duty to answer the questions which are put to you.
Lord Marland does it again, evades a question and delivers a put-down, yesterday in the Lords:
http://tinyurl.com/2uwyxy3
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, the Minister says that Dr Pachauri is working for free, but has he read Christopher Booker's column in the Sunday Telegraph? It suggests that Dr Pachauri has some side activities that might be worthy of the Government's attention.
Lord Marland: I have known Christopher Booker for a long time, but I am afraid that I do not agree with a lot of things he has to say. Doubtless, the noble Lord agrees with every word-it is probably a biblical thing.
Bishop Hill
Proposed Green purge
Since noone has mentioned Lysenko so far:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
'In 1935, Lysenko compared his opponents in biology to
the peasants who still resisted the Soviet government's
collectivization strategy, saying that by opposing his
theories the traditional geneticists were setting
themselves against Marxism. Stalin was in the audience
when this speech was made, and he was the first one to
stand and applaud, calling out "Bravo, Comrade Lysenko.
Bravo." This event emboldened Lysenko and gave him and
his ally Prezent free rein to slander the geneticists
who still spoke out against him. Many of Lysenkoism's
opponents, such as his former mentor Nikolai Ivanovich
Vavilov, were imprisoned or even executed because of
Lysenko's and Prezent's denunciations.
On August 7, 1948, the V.I. Lenin Academy of
Agricultural Sciences announced that from that point on
Lysenkoism would be taught as "the only correct theory".
Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that
contradicted Lysenko's research.[3] Criticism of Lysenko
was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist", and analogous
"non-bourgeois" theories also flourished in other fields
in the Soviet academy at this time (see Japhetic theory;
socialist realism). Interestingly, perhaps the only
opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to
escape liquidation came from the small community of
Soviet nuclear physicists: as Tony Judt has observed,
"Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone... [He] may
well have been mad but he was not stupid."[4]'
Stephen Prower
Stevenage
Friday 14 February 2014