Bishop Hill Bottoms up
Jul 3, 2012 Climate: WG3 Greens Media Rajendra Pachauri is in the news today, arguing that citizens should be taking action on global warming into their own hands, bypassing governmental stasis in favour of a bottom-up approach.
Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that the experience of Rio proves that the political will to take action simply isn’t there – and argues that a new form of activism is the only answer.
“I would submit that the time has come that we shouldn’t really wait for governments,” he said.
“Governments will of course have to play their own role – but what we really need to rely on is creating awareness among the people, so that each one of us in our own way should start treating this problem as serious – and meeting the challenge that confronts us today.
Of course, nobody is going to object if environmentalists take steps to address their concerns - perhaps by a cessation of their jet-setting lifestyles or abjuring their advocacy of grossly inefficient technologies. Provided it's voluntary, everyone will be happy. It's only their forcing of their beliefs onto others that is objectionable.
Interestingly, today's Guardian also has an article making a call for a bottom-up approach to global warming. Anyone might think that they were more of a green mouthpiece than a serious newspaper.
Reader Comments (50)
The Guardian article is by Andrew Simms (he of Nef, and the Hundred Months and Counting guardian blog.) 50 months to go.. Andrew seems to have inspired Dr Adam Corners blog -
http://100monthsandcounting.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00:00:00Z&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00Z&max-results=15
though he seems to have let it slide since them.
I imagine in 50 months CAGW will be forgotten, and everyone will be calling for political action on sustainability and biodiversity.
My comment (as DXCDXC) was second on the linked Guardian piece comments apparently 'didn't adhere to our community standards' so got binned. These days that seems to mean 'takes a contrary view, is near the top of the comments, and is getting lots of recommends'.
Where exactly does Patchy get the mandate to use UN money to bypass national governments and appeal directly to the people, assisted by NGOs funded from the same source? I think the IPCC is supposed to provide advice for the UN and national governments. He needs slapping down.
If I were in an office block, and someone told me that it was burning and that person was wearing a red nose, size 36 curly slippers and a flower that squirted water, I would wonder if it were the same clown that come around shouting 'Fire' every year or so.
Censorship
Is
Frequent
Oh God, I suppose this means the letters' pages of the local papers will be clogged up with warmist drivel as activists start 'creating awareness'. Our dear old historic Hampshire Chronicle (it abandoned having only adverts on the front page long after the Times did) suffers greatly form the eco-loons at WinACC (Winchester Action on Climate Change).
Hmm so he is inciting direct action? never a good plan for a public figure to do as for every thousand of the new inspired that do it the right way one does it the wrong way and people and property get damaged !
I didn't drive my car today, and I collected some pine cones from the local park to start my wood burner with.
I feel so incredibly virtuous I feel like writing lots of smug letters to the local paper.
Under a pseudonym, of course.
On the Bottom Up approach, this is why the world-wide emphasis through UNESCO and the OECD on social and emotional learning under its various names is so important. As is the push for Quality Learning and Quality Assurance under Education for All that Michael Barber pushed the UK to be a leader in implementing. Don't forget all those citizenship and values elements that were part of those Blair ed reforms. All were linked to encouraging students to worry about poor Spaceship Earth.
When you train students to feel instead of know and insist that all beliefs are equally valid perspectives and need not be analysis grounded in facts, you have your bottoms up army. Teachers and professors who taught their students that the common good must be paramount. Never pointing out it was impossible to know so they and others could always ring that bell to manipulate future action.
Having created the reflexive mechanisms, the statists are starting to try to activate those desired political responses.
Barry-nef is on my radar in the US. They now have an affiliate in Boston that was previously the EF Schumacher Society. I don't think Small is Beautiful unless it is swimsuit season but apparently the degrowth push is to be in earnest.
All tied to this post GDP economics with its emphasis on UN defined happiness and wellbeing and a communitarian inspired Prosperity without Growth. "I think therefore I am" is unacceptably individualistic and rational. Tim Jackson is pushing the revised "I am because we are" in its place as the international slogan for the 21st century.
And the adolescents and twenty-somethings have been trained to believe there is nothing wrong with that substitution of words at all.
What shall become of the IPCC if it is no longer viable to do things intergovermentally? Rename it!
Union for Sustainable Social Resources... Climate Change Community Panel...
Green activism is *all about* by-passing democracy. I have to say I admire their belief in being right and that they are 'the voice of the planet'. You see I'm not bothered enough to stop working and start to organise like-minded people to do the same and create a protest movement to stop all this nonsense and head off a few alarmists who want to hijack democracy. My relatively normal family life puts a stop to that idea in fact.
They *are* passionate and bothered enough to take a stance [funded by my taxes in part no doubt] and that is why they get the publicity and might even win the debate on the basis of emotional appeal. Afterall who doesn't want to 'save the planet'?
So when do we start this 'Occupy' GreenPriest movement? After work or after the kids have gone to bed?
Prince Charles has the gall to lecture us on our "Carbon Footprint" whilst living in a mammoth house and flying between appointments in a bleedin' helicopter!!
Sanctimonious hypocrites all!
Sadly no government can criticise Pachauri because they all signed up for AGENDA 21. This bottom up policy is laid out in black and white so while we have all been barricading the front door to keep out the CAGW loons, some other loons slipped in through the back door.
Perhaps he should start by having a chat with the Royal Family.
There's an article in The Times today (firewalled, but page 4 in the paper copy) detailing how much was spent last year on flying them around the globe. The item that struck me was £460,000 for the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to tour the Middle East and visit game reserves in Africa, using a chartered aircraft.
Given his recent video monologue, it seems it's a case of "do as I say, not as I do".
A neighbour where I once lived cut his carbon footprint down to about 50%.
'Stuart' worked 3 days a week at the council. He dressed himself and his 2 children from jumble sales. He spent a lot of time at his allotment growing organic food. They would eat cabbage 3 times a day when in season then it could be rhubarb 3 times a day or gooseberries or brown rice from a hippy shop. He used to cycle to the allotment but had to buy a car to drive there when his tools were nicked from his shed for the 3rd time.
His house was full of sanctimonious slogans about teaching a man to fish and living simply so that simpletons could live.
His wife had left him and needed psychiatric help. The 2 children were surprising normal - smashing kids in fact. My girlfriend used to smuggle them bars of chocolate and other contraband while I distracted the Karbon-Fuhrer.
Very odd - but he was living the dream and he did not force his lifestyle on anyone else except his wife and children.
Pacchauri is reaping what the IPCC has sown. They ignored long-standing, peer-reviewed literature showing there is can be no CO2-AGW** in favour of Aarhenius’ assumption that the heating by GHGs is logarithmic with respect to concentration and direct when there is no mechanism for this to occur so kinetic factors take over.
Furthermore, the Gore-Nye experiment in the recent '24 hour Gore-a-thon'*** used an IR lamp to heat CO2 in a glass bottle. Glass is a strong IR absorber. As Nye [‘the science guy’] is a scientist, this was unforgiveable. This experiment was fraudulent.
**Hottell in the late 1940s measured the concentration - physical path length normalised IR emissivity/absorptivity of CO2 in dry. Lecker replicated these data in the 1970s. For an infinite physical path length, they show emissivity/absorptivity saturates at ~200 ppmV, well below present levels. This information is in metallurgical engineering handbooks. The IR principle behind it, ‘self-absorption’, is well established.
***http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
TestMeat has given the DXCDXC comment another shot. Lets see how long it lasts.
No need to bother commenting. "Creating awareness" is sooo 2007.
Well, at least Pachauri is honest enough to admit that no government is listening to his tawdry band of druids and polywater pundits.
Why not disband it and forget about AR5?
I would love to see activists and progressives of all kinds practising what they preach. It is strange that they don't, and that it is apparently bad taste to comment on that strangeness. It seems to me it should be commented on again and again, until even the morons in Rotherham get it that the progressives believe not a word of what they say, or that the implications of what they say are intended for anyone other than the "little people", a class for whom they are concerned but, my dear, not part of.
Many Americans, including me, are now of the opinion they will not obey the "Obamacare" law if they can help it, after the execrable and illogical and, yes, fraudulent, majority ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that law, with its "mandate" that everyone MUST BUY health insurance (and if you don't have the money, which applies to many of us, you will be GIVEN it "free", while if you don't feel you have the money but they think you do, you will be ever more harshly fined). So this emotional position expressed by Pachauri, is just another sign of the times, that there is a general disconnect between the aims and methods of governmental authorities, and those of individuals who will insist they can and will run their own lives, whatever government may think.
The difference is that Pachauri and the Left are on the "authoritative coercion" side, and those individuals (and individual U.S. states) who refuse to buy into a long-plagued and ill-run healthcare insurance system, and strongly believe the government has no right to force them into such a business (and BUSINESS is what institutional health care is, not a right), are on the "individual's inalienable human rights" side.
I call Pachauri's side, which is economically and emotionally irrational, but even more fundamentally tyrannous, the "Insane Left", and what they (along with Muslim jihadists--also tyrannous) are doing in the world, "The War of the Insane Left".
That last is the bottom line. It is war, and world war, already being fought. You should divest yourself of the notion that the authoritarians--all of them characterized by a casual disregard, at best, or a determined hatred at worst, of individual rights and freedoms--are engaged in a rational effort to better the world. It is simply not true. They are deluding themselves, every time they assure you or themselves that "it is for the common good".
It is the "Insane Left", and on their part they are quite aware that it is war, because it is their deliberate, thought-out doing--hence, the "War of the Insane Left".
A neighbour where I once lived cut his carbon footprint down to about 50%.
'Stuart' worked 3 days a week at the council. He dressed himself and his 2 children from jumble sales. He spent a lot of time at his allotment growing organic food.
Jul 3, 2012 at 11:01 AM | Jack Hughes
And a small % of the population can operate this way if they wish, but for it to work some has to make the clothes, buy them and give them away so for 100% of the population its impossible. Then when you also take away child support and the rest of the welfare sytem what are you left with. Well just go to rural Africa to find out, and that's with double the cropping potential of the UK.
BoFA
You've pointed out in six words where this falls down.
"Some[one] has to make the clothes." (I assume 'some' was a typo)
And someone had to make his car and the tools for his allotment and all the other things that he is discounting. Though, as you say, he is making an effort and nobody is affected but him and his family.
In the middle of France I have a very productive garden which will grow virtually all the things that I used to grow in the UK plus cucumbers and gherkins and apricots (without the need for a greenhouse) but never in this world would I even start to imagine that I could be self-sufficient.
There is no way that the commune could be self-sufficient. Given that we value our longevity and our health there is no way even the département could be self-sufficient.
Anything other than "playing at it" is doomed to disaster and I will never understand why the eco-luddites are unable to understand this.
Certainly, "nobody is going to object if environmentalists take steps to address their concerns". But a lot should object loudly when the chair of the IPCC - according to its website, a policy-neutral "scientific body" providing governments with "rigorous and balanced scientific information" - campaigns for green activism. All this does is confirm Donna Laframboise's many observations (follow the links here) that Pachauri (bizarrely described in the RTCC article as "the world's leading climate scientist") is totally unconcerned about the IPCC's scientific reputation. Not that such confirmation is any longer needed.
I am in total agreement. The warmists should avoid having children, refuse to use any of our natural resources, avoid any use of energy, and minimize their carbon footprint to approximately zero. I wholeheartedly support them in that bottom up effort to stop global warming without any reservation whatsoever.
Every person in the Western World emits about 10.000 tons CO2
Stop using cars and live in darkness will reduce this by 500 tons CO2
Me and my wife have 3 children, well technically she is the only one shure to have 3 children.
We(she) had planned to have 2 more but due to global warming we decided not to.
We have saved the World for 20.000 tons CO2 and should be given a medal and be free to drive a SUV and live in the light the rest of our life.
What the head of UNEP/IPCC/WWF/Greenpeace is actually is saying is that people should go and kill themself?
This sinister chorus for "bypassing governments" and "taking action" is NGO newspeak for:-
"Shit - we managed to infiltrate the UN, the IPPC , the US EPA, and the UK DOE and nearly got away with it but the bloody voters have rumbled us - Plan B will have to involve getting rid of any remaining democratic threats to the cause."
I have no issues with letting it be people lead , for if it is I have confidence that Patchy and his gang would be .metaphorical. dead meat , most people know what BS machine the UN and would love to close the IPCC down . While unlike the AGW proponents that consider people to be fools .unless they fully and blindly support 'the cause ', I think that they are apply to consider the situation fairly and intelligent and when they do they smell BS . So I think he best be careful what he wishes for .
So.... The public have no appetite or enthusiasm for this madness, which means (at least in representative democracies) so have the politicos.
Seems like democracy in action to me. Which is unusual these days.
When I saw the "Bottoms up" headline, I assumed old Pachi had written another steamy novel.
Pachauri really needs to learn to stop shooting from the lip!
If you watch the video, you'll see that he gave this particular speech to that particular group on June 16.
This group, Responding to Climate Change (RTCC), seem to think they are important because they are at all the relevant conferences ... by virtue of their status as "an official observer". They're not on either of the "auto-approve" lists by virtue of accreditation with ECOSOC or DPI, so they can't be that important!
But back to Pachauri ... his own "vision" for AR5 is that "sustainable development" should "pervade" all three Working Groups - and he had declared that "Climate change is only a part of it" [whatever "it" might be this week!]
Besides, "climate change" did receive 22 mentions in the Rio+20 "Outcome document" ... which certainly pales in comparison to the 400 for "sustainable/sustainability" count, but it could have been, well, worse than he thought!
But even his dissing of governments is not an original idea. Ban Ki-Moon has been doing it, as did various and sundry other honchos in the run-up to "Planet Under Pressure".
Somehow I doubt that he thought his little rant would make it to the wider world stage, thereby disgracing himself and undermining what little credibility the IPCC has been struggling to retain.
Some people are just such slow learners. And it would appear that Pachauri is among the slowest of 'em all!
But, Hilary, you may have overlooked an important detail: Pachy is a Green Crusader. (Should go down well in the Muslim world.)
When I hear stuff like this from some UN globalist, I am reminded that the old adage to keep one's powder dry is still good advice.
This is a call to civil desobedience, a prelude to civil war. No more, no less.
There was also an article by Monbiot acknowledging that he was wrong on "peak oil".
Wonders will never cease.
Mind you, he had a long moan about how this made it all the more likely that the world will fry.
It will be interesting to see if he picks up on the dramatic drop in US CO2 emissions due to shale gas.
Bottom up action by activists who know that they cannot wait for the government to take the correct action, that will be the sceptics then. they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
This is real dog-in-the-manger stuff from Pachauri. The IPCC after all was supposed to 'create capacity' so as to position others to 'create awareness' among the hoi polloi. That 'capacity' included the ARx narratives, but also the COPx jamborees - I mean, accelerants. Confucius says: when the driver is asleep at the wheel, the wheels are sure to come off the wagon shortly. And so they do.
Climate Change is like the 10 Ton Gorilla in the room
No more the Emperor with no clothes
Or in his case the politician with no policies
Maybe the Patchy remark is worthy of a Josh cartoon, ostrich style with bottoms up and head in the clouds.
David Chappell:
Maybe the Patchy remark is worthy of a Josh cartoon, ostrich style with bottoms up and head in the clouds.
Bottoms up in the clouds and heads in the sand, perhaps. They've done that already.
A Google image search for cancun climate change conference heads in the sand shows climate activists had their bottoms up back in 2010.
Here is one with activists getting their bottoms up under the watchful eyes of Bill McKibben at a beach in Cancun. No kidding. He's standing there behind the activists with his hands on the hips (his hips) and sporting sunglasses.
Here is another. The same set of activists (who should really be called 'passivists' under the circumstances) are having their asses covered by three activists wearing masks. Two of them are holding instruments that resemble a three-headed marital aid. I suspect that's meant to represent the blades of a wind turbine. If so, the message is incongruous. What do they mean?
Here is one with a different angle. The bottoms up activists are in the background this time. In the foreground there is what appears to be an activist in a polar bear costume lying on his back on the sand. He appears not to be dead but completely exhausted. Did you notice that the article from the previous link begins with "Friday is fun-day"?
Activists with their bottoms up just keep coming and coming.
The Americans are in it.
So are the Canadians.
Australia has world class bottoms up activists too. The bottom is down this time but unfortunately that has the effect of turning the flag upside down, which is just so un-Australian.
While the McKibben led activists kept their heads in the sand and bottoms up the clouds, elsewhere on the beach life went on as normal.
OK, I made a mistake.
Some of the photos above are from the bottoms up event in Durban climate change conference which followed Cancun 2010.
Bottoms up is becoming a tradition. I wonder whether the Qatari government will allow that particular collectivisation of love on their beaches in Doha this year.
If the activists dress up like Lawrence of Arabia, perhaps they will. Lawrence won Arabia with a bottom up approach.
Stuart (of the jumble sale clothing) was a pleasant neighbour. No point in attacking the logic of his lifestyle because it was not based on logic. It was 100% emotion - a worldview of mankind being sinful and his personal effort to be less sinful.
Getting your clothes from jumble sales and debating with yourself whether you can really justify more than 1 cup of tea per day is not an attractive vision for normal people. Make do and mend. My parents had enough of this in WW2 and there was a hangover into my own childhood. I don't want it for myself or my own children.
One of the great things about my childhgood was the zeitgeist at the time. Upbeat, confident, outgoing, more, bigger, better, faster, reaching for the moon and getting there. What a contrast to the negative whiny shrinking zeitgeist of today.
In our idiom this sort of pseudo movement is called 'astro turfing': phony grass roots.
History shows many examples of groups of people who believe their special insights trumps all other ideas. And demand that everyone else give up their beliefs and give over all power and authority to the self-declared enlightened.
It does not end well.
I'm all in favour of a "bottom up" approach.
Judging from recent opinion polls in the UK, it might be rather different from what Pachauri thinks.
By the way I'm often puzzled at why the Watermelons hang on Pachauri's every word.
After all he is not a "climate scientist"?
Don:
But ... but ... surely that's not right? According to the RTCC article referred to by His Grace, he's "the world's leading climate scientist".
I agree with Pachauri: the "green industry" should stop conspiring with governments to steal tax monies in order to fund their ridiculous and harebrained energy schemes e.g. windmills and solar power.
Jul 3, 2012 at 3:43 PM | Robin Guenier
To be perfectly honest, Robin, this "award" was certainly on my mind! However, I was in a hurry - and lacked time to provide links for my assertions.
So, I didn't want to press my luck (and/or jeopardize my credibility in this parish) by introducing yet another unlinked claim - which was but one of many I coulda and shoulda included ... none of which would improve any rational being's impressions of Pachauri!
P.S. Considering the high level of attendance at the various "climate" related conferences by states in the Muslim world, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the very high mucky-muck mullah's had declared that "green crusades" are kosher ... ooops "hallal" ;-)
Hopefully now governments will return the compliment, and realise it is now time to bypass the IPCC when it comes to deciding what to fund.
Be fair to the Grauniad. It kills fewer trees every week.
In times of auserity like these, cutting the funds to organizations like the IPCC and all those renewable green projects would be very reasonable. And with Pachauri desecrating the hands that fead him and his ilk, he might have given them the little push to actually do that.
Pachauri, the gift that keeps on giving. He will single-handedly kill his pet-project and wont even notice he did.