Sunday
Oct162011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Lawson in the Sunday Times
Oct 16, 2011 BBC Nigel Lawson has a piece up at the Sunday Times. It's paywalled of course, but is reproduced at the GWPF site. Lawson is taking a pop at the BBC, and relates the story of his engagement with Steve Jones after the "no platform" report was published by the Beeb.
Let us just say that Jones seems to have come off considerably worse.
Reader Comments (76)
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SSAT, Matt's piece is in the current Spectator - here's Fraser Nelson's write up on it:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7318578/the-poverty-of-britains-energy-debate.thtml
Jesus. Are people still replying to the crap that Zed writes? Im tempted to make a similar reply to that I made a few days ago but I dont want to put the Bish to the trouble of intervening in what was apparently last time an unacceptable result (not that I got to see it).
"Mmm, yeah, all those rabid left wing programmes like Top Gear, Antiques Roadshow and Songs of Praise. And their avowedly Conservative chief political editor Nick Robinson.
Would you just listen to yourself and get some perspective."
The utter lack of understanding or self awareness is breathtaking. Zed, you are without a shadow of a doubt the least informed, thickest, most irritating troll I have ever come across in all my years of reading on the internet.
RB
What - like you just did?
;-)
Woodentop,
Shale gas - the elephant in the room.
Hijacked thread or Attention Deficit Disorders in full flight?
While I wait for the geneticist Professor Steve Jones to compose his reply to the noble Lord, I find comforting solace in the interim, from the familiar bombast of our friend Bob Ward, alluding in passing to the subject Lord, but mainly aimed, in typical Wardian shibboleths, at the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, for his editorial impertinence regarding global warming:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/17/paul-dacre-daily-mail-climate-change?intcmp=122
Nigel Lawson was also on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning at about 8.20.
He was talking about shale gas but also managed to get in some good comments about wind turbines.
Earlier, in the newspaper review, there was a mention of articles in the Mail and the Express about green subsidies driving up electricity prices. Maybe the Beeb is not so bad.
Perhaps the BBC took Lord Lawson's comment in the Sunday Times to heart, when he said
'I am frequently invited to appear on BBC programmes about the economy, and from time to time I do so. But on global warming the BBC has a clear party line, and anyone who might provide an informed challenge to the party line is not wanted'.
So complaining sometimes works!
Personally I avoid the term "sustainable" when it comes to energy supply unless we are talking about nuclear or fossil energy. The fact is that in the whole history of the world no fossil fuel source has ever been abandoned because we had run out of it. We abandoned wood, peat and coal because we lit on something better, but there was plenty of them left and they are for all practical purposes sustainable.
The same cannot be said for supposedly "sustainable" materials which are in fact no such thing. Whale oil was replaced by fossil oil because whales aren't sustainable. Biodiesel failed because it needs so much land to grow it's unsustainable. Nitrogen fertiliser made from air is in infinite supply, that made from fish is not.
Sustainable energy means fossil or nuclear, unsustainable energy is everything else - wind, tide, solar, and so on.
IIRC there is a pretty abundant supply of nuclear fuel available from seawater. Once it becomes necessary to extract it somebody will do so, making it cheap in the process, in the same way John D Rockefeller reduced the price of oil by 90%.
There are probably some watermelon dingbats who think that raping the entire landscape with solar panels and wind farms really is sustainable exactly because it's anti-human, but they can be ignored as the vicious loonies they clearly are.
"Sustainable energy means fossil or nuclear, unsustainable energy is everything else - wind, tide, solar, and so on."
Oct 18, 2011 at 10:01 AM | Justice4Rinka
This is one of the most half-witted comments I have ever read on this website, and that's really saying something.
ZDB
So you read your own comments? That is interesting.
@ BBD
RB
Jesus. Are people still replying to the crap that Zed writes?
What - like you just did?
;-)
BBD - you got me - pure and simple. Banged to rights.
I have been reading Zeds guff here for what seems like forever. Jeez, how many times have others posted that we should just ignore her? I have had a couple of moments of "madness" over the last week or so and these have coincided with bad days personally and a glass or two of vino.
I can assure you (and Bish) that I will not be making any replies to Zed's posts in future.
RB
I don't mind you replying to Zed. I generally do as I prefer engagement to the alternative. I just couldn't resist pointing out the unintentional humour.
BBD
I just couldn't resist pointing out the unintentional humour.
Obviously, neither can I. She can be hilarious. I look forward to reading her each morning. Maybe we can get her on the tele -- the BBC likes doing shows like that.
Don Pablo
The problem with Zed's take on energy policy is that it is based on the misplaced but prevalent belief that renewables will be a major mechanism in the attempt to reduce global CO2 emissions.
The only technology that can do this fast enough and reliably enough to have a chance of success is nuclear. Anti-nuke, pro-renewable advocacy isn't hilarious, it's dangerous.
Zed will be quick to point out that she does not dismiss nuclear. I do not take her protestation terribly seriously as I read her as basically pro-renewables and anti-nuclear. She is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
That's why I rarely pass up the opportunity to engage.
Many people who have posted here have got Nigel Lawson down to a "T", He is not a climate denier, not a climate sceptic, he is simply and admirably a pragmatist ( which once upon a time was a term one could apply to the whole Conservative party).
I read the paper by William Happer quoted by Mr Lawson, it was exactly the same. Despite quoting scientific qualifications to justify his opinion, the paper was that of a pragmatist not a scientist.
It seems to me ( a tiny mote in the maelstrom that is the AGW debate) that he could and should have said more and I have the same opinion about Lawson.
Happer, just like many other scientists including the revered Lindzen, keeps shooting himself in the foot by saying "yes CO2 is responsible for some of the warming but not all of it". They need to clarify that statement.
The logarithmic relationship between Co2 and temperature implies that at some levels of atmospheric Co2 it will have a big effect on global temperature. However it also implies that at "some higher level" Co2 has virtually no effect on temperature. At what point does Co2 cease to be a big player?
I think that all the empirical evidence points to the fact that we are in fact past the point where Co2 makes any difference to temperature.
Whenever this topic comes up in discussion on this blog this question is sidelined because science can not yet explain it. Why do we need a scientific theory to explain what will happen when we already have empirical evidence that tells us what will happen?
The work of Idso et al on the ice core records is accepted even by Realclimate but the discussion always focusses on the fact that Co2 did not cause the warming in any of the last 6 interglacials in the current ice age. Co2 follows temperature with about an 800 year lag which is why Co2 is currently rising (Medieval Warm Period) unless of course the laws of physics suddenly changed?
The far more interesting discovery by Idso et al was the lag between falling temperature and falling Co2 which was as much as 2000 years!
The question is; at what level of atmospheric Co2 does it stop warming the planet to any measurable degree?
The answer is that in the last six interglacials the planet stopped warming and started to cool at levels of Co2 much lower than today, even though levels of Co2 continied to rise for as much as 2000 years after the cooling started.
I believe that this empirical evidence is more than enough justification for the belief that Co2 is not currently warming the planet.
@ BBD - the point about renewables is that they aren't sustainable, unless one imagines that wrecking the landscape is "sustainable". Ergo, "sustainable" energy is that kind which does not do this, which rules out everything except mineral (fossil and nuclear).
We have never run out of any mineral energy source, and have in fact largely discarded several already.
The future is bright and always has been.
Apparently in New England there are trees into whose trunks the letters G R have been branded. This was done before the War of American Independence at a time when it was feared that the Royal Navy would run out of oak to build ships with in about 200 years' time.
So the King's agents bagged them for his heirs - on the precautionary principle, and informed by the consensus, no doubt.
As Ibn Khaldun wrote, the past resembles the future as water resembles water.
Lawson is on top an authority on investment policy which our warmists and their consenting scientists simply ignore. Their policy is "just do everything possible because the heavens are going to fall on our heads!"Which is irresponsible investment policy.
No scientist has calculated for CallMeDave if the wimmills investment make sense IF there is damaging warming by the turn of the century. They just do it because it "must be done", and Sir Reginald has insisted upon it.
Sound investment policy might not preclude that , EVEN IF there is harmful warming by 2100, EVEN THEN it is maybe better to let our economies run at full speed without taxing them with wimmills , and invest instead more in nuclear fusion and fission alternatives. From an uncertainty point of view these investments make more sense than wimmills.
Please note: I am not THE Steve Jones.
Part of the problem these days is that too many people, and institutions like the BBC, feel they have a duty to vet what is fed to the public. This is for various reasons, sometimes (usually?) because of an agenda.
What I want from the BBC is to be fed the facts and I shall then make up my own mind. For example, it is a fact that a lot of people, environmental organisations etc believe global warming is due to man-made CO2. So having told me that, then tell me what the global temp has been doing. I can then decide for myself the significance of the lack of global warming since 1998, during which period CO2 levels in the atmosphere have climbed relentlessly, and whether to believe the AGW alarmists. It is a very simple process.
"I can then decide for myself the significance of the lack of global warming since 1998"
Oct 18, 2011 at 7:04 PM | Steve Jones
You are either mistaken, or lying. Let's give you some credit, and assume you're not too bright, and it's the former.
You might want to actually look at some global temperature databases before making statements like that. You might also want to question the wisdom of (even in your error) picking one single high point 13 years ago, and concluding that that all subsequent years should be considered only in light of this, and no account taken of underlying trend.
Cherrys don't get more picked than that, and it's just infantile.
Some very discerning comments coming in, its what makes this blog stand tall.
All in all Lawson has had an superb week. His Sunday Times column must have hit a vital nerve in the BBC. Perhaps the solar plexus! And right on cue the news of the moment is all on energy bills and inflation. Cameron, reeling from Fox, and Osborne stuck in the EU mire, left Huhne centre stage and vulnerable, and Lawson seized his chance. He packed his piece on the Radio 4 Today morning slot (the top rated UK radio exposure) with great finesse, getting the importance of the shale gas revolution across well, the stupidity of rush for wind, the ideological zealotry of Huhne, and much more.
It is always a sure sign that anything threatening the green agenda gets a Bob Ward article in the Guardian as a badge of honour. Lawson, this week, hats off to him.
Oh dear!
There is always a danger that, while typing a comment, something happens to ruin it.
"Oh dear!
There is always a danger that, while typing a comment, something happens to ruin it."
Oct 18, 2011 at 8:15 PM | Pharos
I see what you mean. Missing apostophe in your first *it's*.
Muphry's law
Apostrophe. Apostrophe. Apostrophe.
@Steve Jones
good points & ignore the unhelpful reply by some on this.
i'm like you & would just like a clearer, laymans summery, Bish, any chance this is in your next book project?
the common retort is look at the the trend, draw a line thru' X0 yrs (you can see the problem already) of data temp points & the future must be rising temps, even tho' real world temps, at least in UK coverage do not seem to agree (ah well, error bars will probably cover that).
i've been trying to come up with a "down the pub" analagy to sum this all up.
for pool players, your oponent breaks with his best cue/stick http://climateaudit.org/2009/10/05/yamal-and-ipcc-ar4-review-comments/
http://climateaudit.org/multiproxy-pdfs/
and then with pockets that big & IPCC ref, you've lost.