Bishop Hill The end of the scientific revolution?
Apr 27, 2011 Energy Tim Worstall in the Register.
I really cannot understand why we're doing what we are doing on a public policy level. I just don't get why we're pumping tens, possibly hundreds, of billions into technologies like windmills, which we know won't work, to solar which doesn't need subsidies any more, but not willing to put money into other interesting things which might work, like thorium just as one example.
Unless, of course, I'm right in that what we should do about this problem has been hijacked by those who don't in fact want to solve this single, particular, problem of requiring low carbon energy generation but who want to use this agreed upon problem as a means of imposing their vision of the desirable lifestyle upon the rest of us. And so we go with solutions which won't in fact work because they desire that the problem not be solved, but that we should accord with their instructions upon how society should be.
Which is all rather depressing really: rather the end of the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution.
Reader Comments (51)
The hallmark of the Left/Green movement is scaring everyone about apocalyptic future threats, and then implementing policies which bring exactly those conditions to pass.
I have not only been saying this for years I have quoted examples from personal experience. I have spent two decades arguing against one particular group of local idiots who loudly oppose any form of commercial development and shout about localism and the need to find "niche markets" for local shops and try to return to a "quieter" way of life. All the while they are conspicuous by their absence from any of the local shops but are frequently to be seen in Waitrose and assorted upmarket department stores when they are not organising craft fairs ...
I'm sure most posters on here have met either them or their cousins!
I have never bothered to seek their views on the theory of global warming; for all I know they may actually find it a step too far though I doubt it, but the philosophy is all of a piece. They are the ones I call eco-luddites. Their aim is to unpick the industrial revolution and return us to some "golden age". Unlike the genuine neo-Malthusians and eugenicists they do not see mankind as a pest to be eliminated but they do believe that the species has taken a wrong turn and must be brought back to a state of grace .
The Puritans would have loved them.
Except for the Waitrose fixation!
The question, which, IIRC has been asked before, and which I would dearly like to pose to any group of greenies/warmists, is: 'If a provable, easy and economical solution could be found to stabilise the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and it could be done this year, without changing power generation or lifestyles, would you be in favour and drop your CAGW activities/protests?'
I guess I already know the answer...
Snotrocket, I believe that question was asked at a conference a couple of years ago. I can't remember the reference off hand. It did cause a little consternation among the assembled multitude by all accounts.
For an otherwise fairly astute commentator Worstall is surprisingly credulous about CAGW and the role of the IPCC. The former is a scam built on mistakes, deceptions, the suppression of contrary evidence and the orchestrated smearing of those who refuse to be panicked; the latter is a political organisation intent on impoverishing the First World because it can't enrich the Third, and extending its own power.
The manner in which misanthropes, Luddites, crypto-Marxists, colonial guilt sufferers and similar unappetising types have aligned with the UN, the EU and various supra-national charities to push the CAGW scam for their own political, economic or social ends has already been remarked on at length. These people do not want to see any kind of resolution to the problem they claim exists, only the continual implementation of policies to address it, which by coincidence they supported before CAGW made its public appearance.
Joe Public increasingly sees through the whole charade, and whilst he doesn't mind humouring gormless crusties when they go on about saving the planet etc., and will usually play the recycling game with good humour, when the lights start going out and petrol becomes a luxury, things will change.
Great Leap Forward II.
Expect 30 million deaths.
Incisive piece by Tim Worstall. A direct parallel in anti-science financial incontinence is of course the amount of funding that has been hosed up the wall on promoting 'organic' farming. The reason why most of our food is grown by 'conventional' methods is because farming systems which do not have effective methods of managing pests fail to feed us. We know this because the exclusively organic farming systems in use around 100 years ago were inadequate to feed a world population which was a mere fraction of today's numbers.
Threats to food supplies (equating of course to survival) were taken so seriously then that even hideous poisons such as arsenic (as Paris green) were used to protect potato crops. Now we blindly allow deluded fantasists to impose ever more unnecessary legislation (eg. Directive 1107/2009) on our ability to feed ourselves.
"Multiple lines of converging evidence"... of genocidal lunacy.
So how do we resist? Who do we vote for?
The answer to the "who do we vote for" problem is to become active in politics at the local level.
As Phil D points out, Joe Public is becoming increasingly cynical about the whole business and all it needs is for the political parties at the local level to select candidates (parliamentary or local council) who are either not wedded to the paradigm or have enough independence of mind to resist the idiocies of the likes of Huhne and Goldsmith who, to a great extent, is responsible for dripping this poison into Cameron's ear.
I know this sounds over-simplified but a lot of things are more simple than they appear. Influence the people who select the candidates and you influence the make-up of the next parliament. Politicians are not stupid. If their activists on the ground are telling them that this whole environmental nonsense is ... well ... nonsense, then it will very quickly lose favour in high places.
The difficulty is that there are a lot of people who are making a comfortable living out of this and will fight tooth and nail (and why wouldn't you?!) to make sure the scam continues.
The hypocrites who demand simple living but patronise Waitrose (see above) are just examples of that writ small. The point has already been made more or less ad nauseam that if the politicians, environmental activists, and other assorted hangers-on really believed what they preached they would hardly be swanning off to exotic places every year -- at least -- to discuss the whole affair. "Climate change" as far as they are concerned is just another gravy train. It is stoppable but the little people need to do something active to apply the brakes.
Sam TS
I think you may be referring to the 'carbon fairy'
"TOWNSEND: I was making a speech to nearly 200 really hard core, deep environmentalists and I played a little thought game on them. I said imagine I am the carbon fairy and I wave a magic wand. We can get rid of all the carbon in the atmosphere, take it down to two hundred fifty parts per million and I will ensure with my little magic wand that we do not go above two degrees of global warming. However, by waving my magic wand I will be interfering with the laws of physics not with people – they will be as selfish, they will be as desiring of status. The cars will get bigger, the houses will get bigger, the planes will fly all over the place but there will be no climate change. And I asked them, would you ask the fairy to wave its magic wand? And about 2 people of the 200 raised their hands."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/25_01_10.txt
sst ...
That's the one.
I believe several people apart from Townsend have claimed credit, with slight variations.
I would be surprised if the figure was as low as one per cent, though I suppose it depends on the make-up of your audience, but from my own limited experience I would guess that a very large percentage would probably blow a fuse if the option was put to them in those terms. It's the need to control. The ones who answer "yes" are the ones genuinely concerned about the state of the planet (misguidedly or not). The rest are the latter-day Puritans I spoke of earlier. If people want to do it, it must be sinful.
"Go upstairs and find out what Johnny is doing, and tell him to stop it!"
Sam TS
There is a big difference between claiming the moral high ground and occupying it. Claimants need to be cautious about that which they wish for. Occupiers need to be vigilant against revolution at worst and irreverence at best. To paraphrase: one man's utopia is another man's hell.
It is obvious that our (the world) future energy needs can only be met from high energy density fuel sources (fossil fuels, nuclear fission/fusion). The greens do not want this and are opposed to every high energy source. They have lied about radiation for donkey's years to try to kill off the nuclear industry. Even the beeb somehow noted this on a programme about Chernobyl radiation. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010mckx. (Radio 4; Fallout; the legacy of Chernobyl)
Newsnight Scotland (BBC2 11pm) tonight might be worth a look:
"Gordon Brewer discusses the viability of replacing traditional sources of energy with renewables, with two leading figures from the power industry".
"one man's utopia is another man's hell."--simpleseekeraftertruth
The Green Utopia will be everyone's hell, when we actually get there. Then it will be too late. The unintended consequences, which most Greens are too barmey in the crumpet to anticipate, will be murder. Greens like to visualize the simple life, wandering barefoot by a trilling brook, enjoying the sunshine and the birdsong. The actuality is, they'll be IN the icy brook, pounding their smelly, ragged, hemp garments with a rock. No electricity, no washing machines, no soap. No Utopia.
Phillip,
I know that the good people involved are very sincere in what they are doing but I am not sure that they have a grasp of the reality of the situation. My understanding is that the problems of Belarus are more to do with its internal politics and high levels of poverty and malnutrition.Google "Chernobyl Children" and see what happens.
25 years after the incident, there are still "kids" being brought to the UK for a holiday to help them cope with the aftermath.
According to one site
The charities no doubt do good work in helping alleviate that situation (at least briefly) but they remain convinced that the disaster is ongoing just as they remain convinced that "large numbers" of young people (most of whom were not born until at least 10 years after the disaster) are still dying from a variety of cancers caused directly by the radiation from the plant. The anti-nuclear lobby has been remarkably adept in its use of this event.
There is a commenter who goes by the name Paul Kelly; frequently appears at Collide-a-scape,...and other 'reasonable places'. His refrain, (apparently) is this: "I am sure no one here will disagree that we need to get off fossil fuels. Eventually. Therefore,...etc etc".
How difficult is it for such people to see, that a desire to "transform society", "bring about fundamental change", "get off fossil fuels" is simply an expression of power and ambition that seeks its playing ground (and will create one if none exists), rather than any geniune desire for improvement of mankind's state?
Why 'energy sources'? Why 'energy', (of all things), one has to wonder. Why else are so many politicians, 'policy makers' attracted to this issue, like flies to honey? Fiddling and futzing around with energy sources is totalitarianism in disguise and nothing more.It is a form of disaster capitalism and one more round of the rape of the environment. I would challenge anyone, to prove me wrong on this point.
I suspect that this article has hit the nail on the head..........what happens if it gets nasty and the people have had enough?
The only way to get re-elected would be to fall in line with us plebs.
ssat
Agreed. The moral high ground is a dangerous place to find oneself sometimes.
However, my point really was that when all the argument is one way there is need for action to ensure a balanced view. Sometimes that can mean the pendulum swinging a little far the other way but it's usually a risk worth taking.
In the present situation, if I might be allowed a quote from my own blog,
"... if the “warmists” are right and I am wrong, that still does not justify what the government is doing. With no thought for the welfare of its citizens, with no ‘Plan B’ in mind — or if there is they’re not telling us about it — our leaders have bought hook, line, and sinker into one particular vision of the future.
No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts.
If it starts to go wrong they have no escape because by the time they are prepared to admit they may have made an error, anything they try to do will be too late.
Every egg is in the global warming basket and that is not a clever way to organise anything."
Shub, you ask:
Politicians have unfortunately realised that energy is the basis of a modern society because without abundant energy we don't have food, clean water, transport, industry, commerce, health etc. He who controls the energy source controls society.
I'm sure that the carbon fairy, wand-waver allusion was all a little much for the hardcore environmentalists (accounting for the disappointing show of hands).
Philip Bratby is right on. The powerful need someone to oppress when they are in a bad mood and to control when they feel generous. Otherwise, they wouldn't feel perpetually superior. None of this is about lifting anyone up higher other than the ruling class themselves. Giving out or withholding benevolence (energy) when they see fit is what rulers do by birthright.
Andrew
Just saw a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Green Party, which comprised a speech by our (thankfully) one and only Green MP, Caroline Lucas.
She went on about 'fairness' and other politicians who are 'funded by big business', etc etc...
NOT ONCE did she mention any 'green' issues.
D'you reckon she's (sorry...) seen the light..?
David
Hence the phrase 'green with envy'.
Shub
@ 6:51pm
It's not binary. You are over-simplifying here.
David @ Apr 27, 2011 at 8:32 PM
Yep, I saw the greenies pin-up gal, I wondered when the magic words would pour forth....sustainability, renewables.....?
But no, nothing..........all we got was unction and pious toned nonsense, not even a rabid Marxist utterance anywhere.
Is AGW/Climate change: now thought or reasoned [in Britain at any rate] to be a vote loser?
Times - they are a changin', pragmatism enters the greenies vocabulary, who'd a thunk it? [desperation sets in?]
Whither goest the Greenies from here....... back to: communism [did the reds in green suits ever go away?].
"Which is all rather depressing really: rather the end of the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution."
I couldn't agree more. Sad but true.
This is what we call 'garbage can decision-making': certain problems are desired because they advantage certain solutions.
I became aware of this in two ways with climate change. 1. Researching electricity planning in Ontario (for my book Transforming Power I became aware that the sponsorship of the (unofficial) Toronto conference (and talking up trans-border acid rain) had as much to do with bolstering Ontario Hydro's nuclear expansion plans, CANDU reactor technology, and take-or-pay contracts with Ontario uranium producers as it did with climate change - then just a twinkle in James Hansen's eye.
2. When researching conservation programs in Australia, it was obvious that many bureacrats welcomed the prospect of climate change as a problem because they thought it would force policy-makers to do 'the right thing.'
This, of course, was a sentiment expressed by Tim Wirth, one of the architects of Hansen's 1988 Congressional Testimony (cue young Al Gore). I discussed some of this a couple of years ago in a lecure titled 'The Right Stuff', available at:
http://www.ipa.org.au/people/aynsley-kellow
Apologies - I put in a command to turn off italics after Transforming Power, but it seems to have failed.
[BH adds: Fixed now]
So what has taken Tim so long to come to this conclusion? I thought it was bleeding obvious all along.
To Tim's list you can add boron-proton fusion, which has had only tiny funding compared to the likes of ITER, solar and wind. I have reservations about thorium molten salt technology, mainly concerning materials of construction and fugitive emissions. I have fewer reservations about 11B-p fusion, provided the techical issues can be overcome - but that is what R&D funding is for.
-Christopher Hitchens above
The Scientific Revolution ended with John Dalton or perhaps as late as with Ernest Rutherford. Since then, many have come forward to claim leadership of the revolution whose chief motivation is to share the credit with past luminaries. Some of these have privately confessed to me that their dearest desire in life is to be the discoverer of some new phenomenon in nature, to be recognized as a great or, at least, a leading scientist of our time.
Such motivations are strong and perhaps sufficient to drive one to a life of hard and dedicated work. But I have often wondered if the motivation interferes with the vision and the ability to perceive what others have overlooked. If the thought occurs to them that, "Nobody recognizes this problem as important," will they abandon fresh lines of investigation for more those more esteemed?
In the past, leaders of the revolution often feared to publish their results. Many did so posthumously, and many who didn't perhaps wished that they had. In this day and age, we believe that we are enlightened and that we honor the great thinkers of our age. If this is true, we are very different from those who have gone before us. We believe that great science requires modern laboratories and billion-dollar installations. There is no doubt, that a wealth of valuable information is being gathered by such facilities and observatories: collecting such information is very worthwhile work. But it is not scientific revolution.
If the scientific revolution progresses now, and perchance it does, it's probably occurring where no one looks or expects anything. It progresses by fits and starts, and, when the next advance comes, it will come as a surprise or perhaps never be recognized. It has happened before.
@Apr 27, 2011 at 8:32 PM | David
@Apr 27, 2011 at 10:49 PM | Athelstan
C'mon! Why should she bother to rehearse the Greenie Catechism?
She's got the Nasty Party, The Dims, The Labia Party, SDP, Plaid Cymru, UDP, Sinn Fein all spouting the same crap for her! Not even to mention the EU in all its anti-democratic and unaccountable wonder!
And the Churches, Charities, Prince Chuckles, Universities, Big Business, the CBI, the Scientific and Professional Institutions, the Media. Even the Boy Scouts, no doubt. All licking her big fat Greenie arse!
The only sceptics are folk on here and a large proportion of the great unwashed.
Sooner or later torches will be lit and pitchforks collected.....
Sorry, Bish. I'll try to behave tomorrow......
Having had a pot of tea and taken a few deep breaths...
Meanwhile, back at the fort:-
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028063.300-wind-and-wave-farms-could-affect-earths-energy-balance.html?full=true
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20418-25-years-on-chernobyl-lakes-thriving-despite-fallout.html
Are both of interest.
Wildlife, not listening to the pundits on the Meejah, are more than happy with their little lakes around Chernobyl. 300 times 'background' radiation or not.
And a frankly bizarre account of why wind & solar aren't so renewable after all.
Well, we all knew that, but this paper looks weird to me and isn't what you expect from the New "Scientist" loonies, anyway. Even some of the normally dopey commenters point out some strange gaps in the logic. And I particularly liked the line:- "Humans currently use energy at the rate of 47 terawatts (TW) or trillions of watts, mostly by burning fossil fuels and harvesting farmed plants, Kleidon calculates..."
Hmmmm. When I was a lad, rate of use of energy calculated in watts?
Don't think so.
An O/T thought...
Can we expect a Leo Hickman article in the Guardian: What is the carbon footprint of a Royal Wedding?
As it must be to almost an IPCC level, do you think the Guardian would be a spoil sport? I doubt it, circulation is circulation.
And how can Chas* not choke on his Duchy Originals? He can lecture us on CAGW and pay nice visits to UEA...
Oh, but Royal Weddings are different? Sorry I always keep forgetting that...
Let them eat cake I say....
*future Charles III
Martin Brumby:
You must be forgetting your youthful learning. Power IS the rate at which we convert (use) energy. For example a 100W light bulb (those were the days) in an hour converts 100Wh of electrical energy into kinetic and electromagnetic energy (100Wh/h = 100W or 100W = 100J/s).
Shub asks why 'energy'.
Analysing the long game favoured by elites, I think we are heading towards a carbon based/backed money supply in 10 - 20 yrs.
The peak in easy oil effectively means the end of growth (unless they can come up with something comparable, like 10 yrs ago) which means the end of the current fiat money system. The elites need a replacement money creation scheme, there will be calls for gold backed currency when fiat fails, we hear the calls now in some of the financial sites, but there is not enough gold to back a global currency, carbon backed currency will be there in the wings waiting to be handed to us as the answer IMO.
The sad part is that everyone will clamour for it, without realising they're handing their money supply to the elites on a plate. Unless we have sovereign debt free money creation we have no real freedom.
@ Jiminy Cricket
"What is the Carbon Footprint of the Royal Wedding" - not the Guardian this time but the Telegraph. Guess whose byline....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/royal-wedding/8472283/What-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-the-royal-wedding.html
Apropos this whole subject - a not-very-scientific thought.
My wife and I have furniture in our house (wow - where the hell is this going..? Stick with me...)
Many times we try to re-arrange it - but it always finishes up it back where it started.
My point is this.
Didn't we - as a civilisation - basically get things right first time - energy-wise..? You stick fuel in one end - electricity comes out of the other.
American design is another case in point - 'If it ain't bust, don't fix it'. Look at American trucks - apart from the shape of the headlights, say, you can't tell a 2011 Kenworth from a 1955 one. I've got a Chamberlain (American) garage door lifter - Heath Robinson would have been proud of it - but it WORKS...
I'm going to lie down now....
Frosty
Fantastic sense of humour. Up their with your grasp of C20 history.
As it's another double bank holiday and my brains switching off ready for a large intake of beer i'll keep it simple.
Watermelons. Green on the outside red in the middle commrads.
I came to these sceptred Isles, the land of my fathers, almost a decade ago to work out the fag end of my professional career. I arrived filled with enthusiasm and much curiosity about my own origins: I stayed far longer than I intended. I will return to NZ soon, and gladly, as I have decided that the remainder of my eighth decade should not be spent in political activism in a land where my accent doesn't quite fit. I can see no other avenue in which I can work to effect change and thus remove the illogical, unscientific and wildly counterproductive delusions that seem to have gripped the ruling elites in this lovely land.
I have discovered why some long-ago ancestors fled the apalling Puritans to the then-uncertain Americas, and found that looming poverty and the very real threat of disposession and starvation forced later waves of my forebears to flee to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Most of my forebears were of the 'mechanic' class, an archaic term now that once referred to those who actually made the practical stuff work, who taught in the village schools, sang in the choirs, played in the bands and kept the fledgling public libraries busy. I have discovered the importance to my forefathers of formal knowledge, of science, of all of the arts and the ability of free men to voice their considered opinions. I have visited the wartime graves of family members where those graves exist and spent time getting to know distant relatives whose own forefathers remained here and got on with their lives. I am grateful for the experience but feel impelled to return to where I really belong while I still have the energy to help wrest control from the dreadful watermelon charlatans who would destroy the possibilities of rich and full lives that can only come from energy that can be easily afforded by every citizen.
I am concerned for the future of the UK but feel I can be more useful helping to my own patch of this Green stupidity.
Bish, apologies for this wee rant, but I didn't start out to write this, but I am so frustrated by the smug and self-righteous idiocy of most of the UK's politicians and the lick-spittle subservience to them of the vast majority of mainstream meeja worldwide who don't recognise the outright attack on our shared histories and cultures that this just fell out of the keyboard.
If you feel it's not appropriate for this string, please snip.
Alexander K
Well said, Alexander K - I too get apoplectic with frustration about the astonishing level of subservience of the majority of the media to the political 'received wisdom'. Clearly I exclude Chris Booker and James Delingpole of The Telegraph from that generalisation - by FAR the worst practitioners are the BBC journos - global warming/climate change is NEVER questioned - but then we do know, don't we, that the BBC pension scheme is heavily into the green stuff...
Tim Worstall has encapsulated the situation well - its as though the politicians have COMPLETELY forgotten what electricity generation is all about, and the fact that its absolutely fundamental to our lives. Regrettably, it will have to come to power cuts before they wake up (blackout in the Underground, anyone..? Lotts Road Power Station closed years ago..) - and then of course the rotating finger will point at National Grid engineers or some other poor souls just trying to do their jobs, as the guilty parties...
Still - got my standby genny at the ready....
Aha..! I think I've got it.
In the same way that kids today think that milk and eggs come from the supermarket, politicians (barely an engineer amongst them) think that electricity comes out of the wall socket.
I suggest that the ENTIRE membership of the House of Commons (when they're in recess, which seems to be most of the time) are frog-marched to Drax, Sizewell and a couple of gas-driven power stations, and the basics of power generation explained to them. Then take them to a (preferably stationary) wind farm, to have it explained to them just how many of the things would, on a GOOD day, be required to replace Drax and Sizewell - and then again on a BAD day...
I see no other way of addressing the problem...
@Apr 28, 2011 at 7:18 AM | Phillip Bratby
You're right (of course). Shouldn't blog until more awake.
What did you make of the paper? No-one hates windmills more than I do. But a major depletion in "free energy" looks improbable. Especially when the wretched things rarely work.
The Bishop's title and the earlier discussion of Kuhn have put me in philosophical mood.
It's readily assumed that the two things Worstall thinks are ending are more or less the same but I question that. The scientific revolution predated the Enlightenment and had much to do (positively) with a Christian worldview that expected to find rationality in a world God created and (less positively) with the flowering of occultism and magic as the Middle Ages ended, man's search for power by two different methods, as CS Lewis argues in The Abolition of Man. The Enlightenment had weighty critics at the time, as Isaiah Berlin describes in numerous papers, and today, not least Berlin's pupil John Gray. The Enlightenment will fail to provide the light we need because as Gray points out it always relied too much on a Christian worldview it obstensibly sought to replace. But the scientific revolution was never dependent on the Enlightenment. Where science goes now and what it becomes is interesting indeed. Those of us picking over the entrails of the hockey stick probably agree that the signs are not all good. This speaks for me of the need for a new humanism (in its earlier sense) as a foundation and safeguard for the future. But what do I know? :)
Richard Drake:
I find your comment interesting. I read "Abolition of Man" a long time ago.Perhaps I need to read it again. I seem to have it muddled up with another Lewis work: "Till We Have Faces" or something like that.
Philosophical moods are nothing to disparage. Solomon seemed to be burdened by them: "The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning..." as I recall.
As much as I might despair of mankind as an "Organized Collective" (let's face it: we avert our gaze to the slaughter and enslavement of millions upon millions because we do not know how to address it), I have very positive feelings about individuals.
There are many examples of differing qualities that can be found in our records. Doubtless there are many excellent examples that have gone unrecorded. In the current discussion, however, it is hard to imagine a better example than that of John Dalton whom I referenced in my earlier comment.
I draw from his example this: that we contribute best as individuals and all that we should ask is that our contributions be genuine and sound. Enlightenment cannot provide a better light than that with which you have been endowed.
Hiya Pluck (say it like that and it'll remind you of some merry men on this most British of days): Those are profound points, in both your posts.
It's a question of definition but I wouldn't myself say that the scientific revolution ended with Dalton or Rutherford. What happened with Bohr and the rest in the discovery and formalism of quantum mechanics in 1926-8, for just one example, is for me utterly revolutionary. Same with Wegener and contintental drift, with Mendel and genetics, with the standard model of cosmology based on the once implausible big bang of Belgian priest Georges Lemaitre, and so on.
Having said that I agree strongly with your point about the crucial importance of the individual (and I just named a few). It's also important that each of us doesn't avert our gaze. I went to school with John McCarthy and he made this point about his previous approach to the victims of atrocity on release from captivity in Beirut. It stuck in my mind more because the one time I met John again was at the back of an annual meeting for the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture somewhere in the City of London. There are individuals who don't avert their gaze and do the little they see they can. And of course in the process places like the Medical Foundation push the boundaries of science, medical and psychological, just as, in another horrible way, some of the most highly organised atrocities have. And that's why science itself can never be our God.
I would recommend that all intelligent adults read (or reread) The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis. It has the great virtue of being very short, and written with beautiful clarity. He himself considered it his most important work. His biographer AN Wilson is critical of his subject in many areas, considering him a Northern Irish bully in his debating techniques and mediocre in theology - and is scathing about the American evangelical teetotallers who have adopted and tried to canonise the hard-drinking, hard-smoking, often ribald don. But Wilson fully agrees that The Abolition of Man is one of Lewis' greatest works and has much to teach about the modern world. Its insights about the place of science are I think profound and it ends with a note of hope - that it may be from scientists themselves that the necessary correction and renewal comes. (Not perhaps from the University of East Anglia but you never know!) Back to the light given to every individual. Thanks again for saying that.
"I really cannot understand why we're doing what we are doing on a public policy level. I just don't get why we're pumping tens, possibly hundreds, of billions into technologies like windmills, which we know won't work, to solar which doesn't need subsidies any more, ...................
It is not difficult to understand at all.
As far as the UK is concerned, the sole reason for this madness is the Climate Change Act 2008:
"The Climate Change Act, that became law on 26 November 2008 has committed the UK to at least 80% reductions of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050"
Quite simple really.