Bishop Hill David King has the answer - central planning and more spending
Jun 16, 2012 Climate: MWP Climate: Parliament Economics Former Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King is interviewed in the Guardian. Here are some excerpts:
Record gold prices are an indication that investors are fleeing to safety because they do not feel governments are providing the necessary long-term regulatory frameworks or incentives to give them the confidence to invest in emerging new technologies.
The Treasury civil servants are heavily driven by traditional dogma that we do not support winners but let them emerge in the market place. This is one time when we can no longer let this philosophy dominate and that is a tremendous job to be done.
The scientific community felt very battered by the University of East Anglia climate revelations but they continue to beaver away showing predictions for the next 20 years ago are even worse than predicted and we are faced with a human existential crisis.
Given King's former willingness to mislead the public, it's hard to attach much credence to his views. What is a surprise is that any reputable newspaper should give such a man any column space.
Reader Comments (78)
The man has an ego the size of a planet, but a brain the size of a pea.
His predictions will most certainly be worse than predicted.
He's right you know, I was just at the commodities exchange the other day when I overheard, "Buy gold! The government isn't providing regulatory frameworks or incentives to give confidence to invest in emerging new technologies! Buy buy buy!".
Yes, the poor dears felt so "very battered" that they were obliged to sign onto a Slingo initiated "statement" that endorsed the IPCC's oft repeated mantra. Yet this "statement" was most notable for its conspicuous omission of any mention whatsoever of that which evidently precipitated their "feeling" of being "battered".
Amazing. Simply amazing.
Record gold prices are an indication that investors are fleeing to safety because they do not feel governments are providing the necessary long-term regulatory frameworks or incentives
Really? ... and there was I thinking investors (me included) were fleeing to safety because power crazed politicians had f*cked up the European economy with a totally unworkable financial structure.
Jun 16, 2012 at 1:45 PM | Foxgoose
Spot on - My thoughts exactly
David King last year was still using a 20 year old discredited ice core based graph showing how CO2 and temperature had moved in unison over the past 400,000 years. The fact that more recent studies show clearly that temperature rose first and CO2 only some hundreds of years later seemed to have passed him by. He was still confusing cause and effect.
How can a man this far out of touch have any credibility?
ThinkingScientist
Yes, you can. You can't vote against dictators!"...predictions for the next 20 years ago are even worse than predicted"
I agree, it's going to get cloder,
Anyone who thinks that wind farms, solar panels and electric motors are emerging technology needs to go back to school.
Isn't it strange that people who have no experience of business and industry always manage to use business speak to demonstrate how little they actually know?
"predictions for the next 20 years ago are even worse than predicted." Well I don't know about David King, who seems to be some sort of, nasty, activist, but I'm in the third month of a drought predicted 6 days before it occured. A drought that by the 7th week had completely replenished the dwindling water in our resevoirs. Now common sense should inform all of us that if they can't forecast something 6 days in advance they're not going to be able to forecast events and weather 20 years in advance.
"Record gold prices are an indication that investors are fleeing to safety because they do not feel governments are providing the necessary long-term regulatory frameworks or incentives to give them the confidence to invest in emerging new technologies."
Er, no Dave. Investors have twigged, far in advance of the 'political elite' hahahaha, that the social-democratic ponzi schemes of the western world are in their death throes, and as the politicos struggle and thrash in the face of the inevitable, a bit of gold is the best defence available against whatever mad 'policies' they might dream up in some futile attempt to avoid the inevitable.
A prime example of how fovernment appointments go not to the most competent or honest, or even to those moderately so, but to those most willing to lie in the cause of government scare stories and the consequent alleged need for bigger government. That this happens under every party shows that the reral decisions are not made by ministers but by the parasitic civil service. Once again Pournelle's Iron Law in full flood.
Thanks Neil, I'd never heard of Jerry Pournelle, now I have and he's so very right on this.
By the way if Mike Jackson's right about voting for dictators John-in-Cheshire's got mine as well!
John in Cheshire - I vote for you as next dictator. Your manifesto is spot on.
Is this the David King who was used by BBC's ethical moron in the kitchen experiment which was designed to show carbon dioxide was man's biggest enemy but just showed that the BBC are a bunch of tossers or have I got my wires crossed? Again?
It is worth quoting "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy" in full, since this has much to do with the rise and influence of the David Kings of the world (passage is hyper-linked):
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
[emphasis added]
[but then it can fairly be said that there are two kinds of people, those who think the world can be divided into two kinds of people, and everyone else who realizes it's more complicated than that, heh heh]
p.s. yes, my last post is intended to have something like the flavor of the "Cretan Liar's Paradox" -- the ancient logical paradox in which a Cretan asserts "All Cretans are liars"
From a quick Google, his entire career has been spent in academe and government employ. How in the world does that qualify him to recommend how the power industry should be run?
The old saying comes to mind...."If you've never played the game...."
Incidentally some of his early years were spent at East Anglia which may explain his protective attitude.
King gives us a fine demonstration of how qualifications can't protected the person level of common sense and how being an expert in one area does not mean you have good all round scientific knowledge and in fact you can be not better they others who are not 'qualified ' once you step outside your area .
Normal that is not a problem, but he is supposed to be the governments go to guy science matters , lets just hope they don't often feel the need to 'go to ' him for anything .
I have rebelled against the thought that many major officials in Western, market-based economies were, in fact, closet totalitarian socialists or, even, Chinese-style profit-making communists. Recent bold statements from British, Canadian, Australian and (!!!) Washington American politicians has lead me to think I was perhaps wrong. Those with great wealth and influence - and here I include those of the IPCC, the WWF, the Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation - really are working to bring back an economic system closer to the times of rich landowners and poor renter-farmers. Without, of course, the environmental degradation of the resource-raping aristocratic elite. But with the elite, powerful haves and the rest.
All groups have leaders. All leaders live better than their followers. It is an axiom that the eco-green seem to be comfortable with, not seeing any problem with the system as long as those at the top - themselves in the future - treat their commoner underlings well. Nobless oblige on a planetary scale. How much would they like the future to resemble the past! Without the abuse, of course, because we would all be under the scrutiny and control of the modern information age.
Gold prices? :-D.....'Ting-a-ling!'...
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/ting-a-ling/
As Tim Worstall points out, Sir David King's economics research isn't too hot either.
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/energy-environment/what-on-earth-is-sir-david-king-talking-about
predictions for the next 20 years ago are even worse than predicted
I'm sure there's a Philip K Dick short story called that. It's practically a pub quiz question. Which of these is not the title of a Philip K Dick short story? Is it:
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale;
Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday;
Predictions For The Next 20 Years Ago;
The Pre-Persons;
Now Wait For Last Year?
It's not at all obvious, is it?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100165663/martha-payne-isnt-the-only-schoolkid-who-has-fallen-victim-to-school-dinners-authoritarianism/
Bit off (and of topic) but sort of relevent
Another Big Goverment thinking it knows best
and making itself look foolish story
Now that Sir David King is now a Former Scientific Advisor
So hes doing Rent a Quote interviews to get a bit of work
Anyway i found a new job site for him
http://www.afterdinnerspeakers4u.co.uk/
( Also quite handy for lembit )
"...comedy will be allowed to ridicule and besmirch the socialists"
A dictator with a funny bone. Thank gods for small mercies.
I take it laughing with the dictator will be compulsory, while laughing at the dictator won't?
The difference between weather forecast and climate prediction is that for you to refute a 20 year climate prediction both have to be there when the time finally comes to pass and even if it is wrong a thousand other reasons could have been cooked up along the way to make a 20 year old projection irrelavent given that it is still in living memory.
Weather forecast on the other hand can go right or wrong and be know soon enough. Wet or dry, cold or warm, you have a 50 50 chance. For one to get more wrong than right that takes talent. Or may be this would prove the climate model statistically correct. It is just that we human read it the wrong way.
In 2004, King was part of a UK group which attended a Kyoto Protocol Seminar in Moscow. He behaved badly. It is reported here; http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Khandekar/bad_manners_at_the_moscow_kyoto_meeting.html
'The U.K. scientists' delegation, led by Sir David King, chief scientific advisor to the British government, behaved in a most obstructionist and unprofessional fashion throughout the event. They vehemently opposed allowing any of the experts who disagreed with the Kyoto science to even present our work.'
'The U.K. group refused to answer many of the questions of Mr. Illarionov and others.'
This was also the time,me when King reportedly claimed with no evidence that the Kilimanjaro glacier was melting and flounced out when the Russian representative countered by stating that satellites showed temperatures had fallen and the glacier was disappearing through sublimation exceeding precipitation, the real problem being deforestation. The man appears to have been pit in place by Blair because of his arrogant dismissal of science
Yes... LACK of government intervention in the economy is why investors are fleeing into gold...
The pain you feel in your arm is indicative that it hasn't been flayed enough.
Initially I had no intention of commenting on something so ill thought out (King not BH). It really has to be said though that King is one of those individuals that flourishes in the boom years when money (and talk) is cheap. The solution to debt is more debt. The solution to government interference is more government interference - we'll fix it this time round for sure. Hilarious.
Record gold prices are an indication that investors are fleeing to safety because
they do not feel governments are providing the necessary long-term regulatory frameworks or incentives to give them the confidence to invest in emerging new technologies.they know only too well that idiots such as myself are destroying reality and printing money to cover up this fact.