Bishop Hill Ten Billion
Aug 12, 2012 Climate: Models Media The Guardian's science editor, Robin McKie, has been to the theatre. He went to see Ten Billion, a one-man show by computer scientist Stephen Emmott. This is slightly odd. The Guardian is losing tens of millions of pounds every year and yet this is their second review of the show. I wonder why they would be plugging it so much?
The answer, of course, is that it's a show about man's impact on the planet - it is in essence a lecture by a somewhat millenarian academic with no particular expertise in the area.
McKie seems very taken with the show, and you can tell that Emmott's work presses all the right buttons on a Guardian journalist:
We face a future in which billions will starve, he states. Britain, which could come off relatively lightly when 6C rises in global temperature take effect, will be turned into a military outpost dedicated to preventing waves of immigrants reaching our shores.
It's interesting to see Emmott still pushing 6 degrees as a plausible outcome. Even Mark Lynas - author of a bestselling book of that title - seems to have backtracked a bit, a sensible course of action given that any model prediction of 6 degrees of warming is now deep in falsification territory.
I was also struck my this remark by McKie:
[P]revious theatrical attempts to tackle the issues of global warming, rising sea levels and the ecological mayhem we face have been confused and tame. The National Theatre's Greenland, staged last year, was chaotic and unfocused, for example, while the Bush's The Contingency Plan, a double bill by Steve Waters, although highly enjoyable and intelligently written, only touched on the depth of the crisis we face.
It's funny, but I seem to recall that the Evening Standard award for best show last year went (jointly) to a play about global warming. It was called The Heretic. How odd that McKie should have forgotten about it.
Incidentally, don't get the impression that Emmott is a bad guy. According to Richard Drake, he has been trying to replicate a GCM:
Stephen Emmott, the Microsoft open science guy who spoke at the previous RS do at the Festival Hall, with Nurse and Boulton presiding, sure agreed that it wasn't trivial - in that he couldn't get the general circulation model (GCM) he'd chosen to study to work at all, due to bugs, despite the code being 'open'.
So long as someone is still asking questions, they're OK with me.
Reader Comments (79)
just another clever guy with nutty ideas
there have been lots of clever people so enamored with their own babble that they can't look critically through their own nonsense
this is merely another one
There's an interview with Katie Mitchell, conducted in French and English (via an interpreter) which took place when Prof Emmott perfomed Ten Billion at the Avignon Festival, earlier. Here are some of her responses to questions:
http://www.festival-avignon.com/en/Renc/917/Video
9:20 [Responding to a question which sounds something like "How can the world arrive at a better situation?"]
"Oh dear. I think the problem about it is the scientist isn't very hopeful. And so - simply, what he says: it divides into three sections. One is about the past, the fact that there was no population growth for 10,000 years and suddenly we have increased our population. And he looks at what has increased the population. Then there's the present - what's going on now, in food, transport, water, climate, energy... And then he talks about the future, the bit that you're talking about, what we can do. Ands he suggests that there are two things that we can do. One is to technologise our way out of it, and the other is to change our behaviour. And he doesn't think we will do either. And he thinks we're fucked. And there's nothing I can do with what he thinks. He just thinks that. So I just present what he thinks."
11:52 "So, what started off as a project which was quite optimistic, has turned into a very pessimistic project. And art and theatre simply helps this man communicate his pessimism - about us, really. So all the lovely theatrical effects I was hoping to do [laughs] have been completely oppressed by his pessimism."
14:17 "But the thing is - you keep searching for hope. He's asking you to face a much more serious situation, which has got less possibilities for hope. But of course, if the governments, globally, were to change what they did, and if we were to change what we did, maybe it would mitigate what we have done, with all of our industrial processes since 1800. But the fact is, the picture is very bleak. And it's not his opinion - it's just the science. And the sooner we realise how bad it is, the better."
16:10: "I suppose what he made me realise, and what the show tries to communicate, is that what we are doing is too little. So, we do a lot of recycling in the United Kingdom, and he made it very clear that that is a completely pointless thing, and that if we wanted to make a difference there would be - we would consume less stuff - no meat, no fish, only vegetables, we don't live in concrete buildings, we don't have any heating, we don't drive cars, we don't fly aeroplanes, we don't go on trains. So if you wanted to make a difference, you would have to really, radically consume less and live completely differently. And anything else is pointless, in his opinion. It's quite frightening, really."
Anyone else spot the contradiction? "He doesn't think..." "And he thinks we're..." "He just thinks..." "... anything else is pointless, in his opinion".
"And it's not his opinion - it's just the science."
Still haven't finished listening to this, and have to go to work now; there may be some more good quotes after that.
I know it is wrong to judge a play without seeing it but the impression I've got from reviews is that it could do with a few more laughs. The problem is that the play is a monologue. It needs a few more characters. There could be one modelled on Senna the Soothsayer in Frankie Howard's Up Pompeii who comes on at crucial moments to exclaim, “Woe, Woe and Thrice Woe!
In addition we could have a character modelled on Private James Frazer from Dad's Army who could reinforce Stephen Emmott's message by telling the audience every 15 minutes We're Doomed! Doomed, I tell you!
Alex Cull has spotted the basic flaw in the whole CAGW project. It’s just opinion dressed up as irrefutable scientific fact. It comes out too in the post-show talk, where Emmott claims to be in fundamental agreement with Oxford demographer Sarah Harper, but while he’s saying “we’re fucked” she’s saying “it’s a wonderful world for young people”. For all the multibillion pound investment in science, it all comes down to a dinner party dispute between two Oxford intellectuals.
What comes out of the Katie Mitchell interview is the importance of the relationships between the different participants. We’re wasting our time ranting about biassed scientists, idiot journalists, venal politicians, gullible luvvies, etc., if we don’t try and understand the relationships between them which have produced this seemingly unstoppable infernal machine.
Katie is clearly unhappy with the show she’s committed to putting on, but apparently it never crosses her mind to seek a second opinion or set up a debate. Why not? Would a debate be such a turn off for the intellectual élite which frequents the Royal Court? I suspect they’d find the whole idea of using their reasoning faculties in order to assess the evidence just too too tiresome - like being called up for jury service on some sordid petty crime case.
And perhaps that’s the real reason why we’re fucked.
The idea of an Oxbridge don trying to get hold of a shooter for his kids is so funny it deserves a play in itself.
>it all comes down to a dinner party dispute between two Oxford intellectuals.
Who all firmly agree the world should ignore non Oxford intuhlektuwals*.
*Going for a Dilbert style there.
Talk of War and germany brings back a paper involving the German Ministry for the Environment,
http://www.newgrowthpath.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/A_New_Growth_Path_for_Europe__Final_Report.pdf
in which it is written
'After the global crisis of 1929, such a surge of investment in Europe as elsewhere was initiated by the perspective of military armament'.
What horrible, nasty words.
Just reminded of Alex Glasgow's song, My Daddy is a left-wing intellectual. I must see if I still have a copy somewhere.
In a strange twist to the story of the Calculating Cooker Armageddonist Emmott and his gun toting crew - WUWT has a bizarre post about NOAA's National Weather Service ordering massive quantities of hollow point (dum-dum) semi-automatic pistol ammunition - to be delivered to its weather stations.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/14/wtf-national-weather-service-buying-hollow-point-bullets/
The paper chain appears to be convincing - the weather men (Weathermen?) are tooling up.
Is there something Richard Betts needs to tell us?
Is Exeter about to be surrounded by a ring of steel?
"Are you feeling lucky - denier?"
Rob
It’s not just one Oxford don teaching his son to use a gun. According to Emmott, there’s forty in his lab and they all feel the same. So maybe those military gents who turn up at climate conferences aren’t interested in global warming at all. They’re recruiting.
And now Foxgoose explains all. Phil Jones said he’d rather destroy his life’s work than let anyone see it. It’s going to be Jonestown in Norwich. Last Stand in Sloane Square. (When a Mann’s gotta do what a Mann’s gotta do...)
Is there a secret source of guns in Oxford? Not that I live nearby and would like to know, of course, just asking what the hell he is on about when guns are practically outlawed here.
There aren't any guns in Oxford, Rhoda - except for farmers' shotguns and the odd ghetto crack dealer.
Likewise Cambridge - where I think Emmott's main lab is.
What we have here is macho posturing by a bunch of frustrated, urban, middle aged academics who can't bear the thought that nobody is taking their ramshackle science seriously.
I think Geoff is worrying a bit too much about the threat of the "armed climate militia" - most UK academics I know struggle to operate a pencil sharpener.
In the vanishingly unlikely event that they ever got their hands on a gun - they would need to book a conference room and have a meeting to decide which end the bullet came out from - and you can bet the decision wouldn't be unanimous.
Same with the Islingtonian Guardianistas who are lapping this stuff up at the Royal Court Theatre (all 90 of them). These are not really people who are ever going to turn their backs on the industrialised consumer society and shun the benefits thereof.
Generally they're the sort of people who need therapy if their boiler doesn't fire first time when they tweak the thermostat - or their taxi turns up 10 minutes late.
This whole farce is about a bunch of dim, pretentious lefties wanking themselves into an orgasm of self-righteous angst about a fabricated disaster scenario that none of them have any intention of ever doing anything about anyway.
The Katie Mitchell interview: 20:11 [Responding to a question which sounds as if it's about whether she finds working with Prof.Emmott frustrating]:
"No, I really love this scientist, and I love the engagement with his mind and his way of looking at the world. Every single thing that you do with him, if you eat or you travel on a train, he just looks at the world in a completely different way. So if you have a salad with him, he tells you about all the processes by which the f*****g lettuce got onto your plate. So it's - you can see, now I'm a bit, you know, low. Because I did about six hours travelling with him yesterday. So I had to look at the world from his devastatingly depressing point of view. And it has got to me, I have to say, now. Sunday morning."
Six whole hours being stuck on a train with someone who sounds as if they have memorised and can recite the entire contents of every single one of Leo Hickman's "Is it OK to...?" columns in the Guardian.
Yes, that would be... not without its challenges.
Wow, he knows where lettuce comes from before it gets to Pret a Manger - he must have a brain the size of the Albert Hall!
Clearly Mizz Mitchell's dad didn't have an allotment then.
This whole weird episode is the ultimate manifestation of post modern science isn't it?
You can't refute it because he makes it up as he goes along and doesn't write it down, you can't disagree with it because he....you know.....feels REALLY strongly about it - and you can't argue about it because .... well it's only his opinion really.
But it's so - you know......POWERFUL......we should make the politicians act on it straight away.
One day all science will be like this.
We could have had a telly debate in whether the Higgs Boson existed - with a phone in vote at the end like X-Factor. Think of the money we could have saved not having to dig that sodding great hole in Switzerland.
We could have a sort of Comic Relief day and cure cancer with sheer enthusiam.
The possibilities are endless.
Foxgoose
No, I’m not worried about the climate militia. I am worried about the ninety zombies a night marching out into Sloane Square to spread the word. Emmott says after a blog article he had a thousand replies, half of them ranting (i.e. disputing his arguments, I suppose) the other half insisting that the message must be spread to schools, all the world’s politicians, and of course tv. He’s been bombarded by offers to make a tv documentary, apparently
We can’t do much about Ed Davey, or Mike Mann, or Pachauri. Perhaps we can do something about Emmott - like pick his argument apart line by line and spread the word so that no tv company will touch it. The Worstalls and Ridleys and Delingpoles might take up the baton. Even the most deep-green BBC executive must understand that “we’re fucked” is hardly a scientific truth that can go unchallenged. He won’t get his TV one-man-show like bloody Brian Cox and effing Paul Nurse. He can finish his short inglorious showbiz career in a top floor room at the Royal Court with his bunch of luvvies all wetting their knickers in unison.
We can do it, however many thousand litres of water it takes.
I don't believe he got a thousand replies to a blog post - that's about what WUWT , with 25M views per year, got when Climategate broke.
I don't believe Hollywood are going to be beating a path to his door either - real people (as opposed to fringe theatre Guardianistas) are never going to pay good money to see a depressed middle age bloke spend a couple of hours telling them they're all DOOMED. Even if he was played by Leo DiCaprio, and they slipped in a bit of gratuitous sex on his desk with Cameron Diaz, followed by a car chase & a shoot up - I can't see it working.
I think it'll have about as much staying power as the average Edinburgh Fringe, lesbian co-operative, interactive, audience participation, anti-war & capitalism drama - ie not very much.
I know I keep going back to this - but bear in mind this is a guy who, after working at the leading edge of computer research with Bell Labs and NCR - saw the internet mainly as a tool for keeping track of your shopping and staving off boredom while your pot noodle was warming.
Not exactly Steve Jobs league was he?
Last one, I promise. The Katie Mitchell interview: 21:58 "But, seriously, it is an amazing privilege to travel with that man's mind. And - but the thing underpinning the whole project is his rage that we are not doing anything, and his compassion and his kindness, as a human being, is amazing. So I thought, when I started out, that I was making a show about the environment. And I realise now that I'm just allowing a very remarkable scientist to talk to you about what's going to happen. And I think it is a remarkable event - that this man is bothering to talk, in your language, about his very complicated field, is rather moving."
(Slightly confusing, there - isn't his "very complicated field" computational science?)
24:35: "People were a bit shocked at the end of the show. [Laughs.] No-one really wanted to talk, for a bit. It's like an hour - it's one hour, one minute of very fast information, and people were very quiet at the end of the show. No-one was ready to ask him anything. But later, in the bar, there were many, many conversations about - people wanted to know how to live, or they wanted to avoid what had just happened."
(How to live is very easy. Consume less stuff - no meat, no fish, only vegetables, don't live in concrete buildings, don't have any heating, don't drive cars, fly aeroplanes or go on trains, die horribly anyway. How to avoid what has just happened - that's an easy one, too. Don't ever go to the theatre to see "Ten Billion".)
26:43 [Responding to a complicated-sounding question about animals, plants, micro-organisms, the sky, etc. It's a bit beyond me - any French speakers in the house?]:
"Yeah, the laboratory's very different, because it does very complicated, joined-up science [waves her arm], between many, many different fields. But I don't feel that I should talk about it, because - he really needs to be here to talk about it. I should say that he can't be here, because he has a very bad back problem."
28:49: "Yes, I think forcing this scientist to use language that's everyday language means that we can, at last, understand the science. So that is the heart of the show. And already the show has been invited to party political conferences, a lot of environmentalists are asking that a film is made of it, so that it can go into schools. So without doubt, what has been made is a very simple way of communicating very complicated science. And I think this will make a difference. It will make a difference in my country, this piece of work. A tiny difference, but it will make a difference."
("And I think this will make a difference". Not sure that Prof. Emmott would agree with her there, as the point of the show is he thinks we're probably doomed, no matter what! It's just a case of telling us the bad news, in very simple language that we everyday people can understand.)
OMG!............... as I believe they say nowadays.
Thanks Alex
I’ll translate the bits of the questions where the English translation is inaudible. My impression of the first ten minutes is that the translator does a very good job. The Avignon audience presumably saw the show in English with projected sub-titles, which must have been even less fun than the Royal Court show, and Katie’s grim expression must have impressed. There’s no satisfactory French word for “entertainment”, but they probably didn’t feel they needed one.
Putting it together with the Royal Court post-show Q&A session, you get a sense of a real “folie à deux”. Her awe of the science and his thrill at being on stage complement each other perfectly. It had all the interest and relevance of a summit meeting between L Ron Hubbard and the Dalai Lama.
Hunting around for reviews, I found one at the New Scientist with comments, which are pretty scathing. His estimate of the energy cost of an internet search is out by a factor of a hundred, according to Google, not that it has the slightest relevance to anything.
Emmott was clearly the kind of little boy who counted the number of paving stones on the way to school, being careful not to step on the cracks. Now he’s got computers to do it for him, which I suppose must take a lot of the fun out of life.
“You can’t get there from here” says the Irish peasant in the old joke, indicating how the inability to imagine something outside one’s own experience leads to a logical paradox.
Emmott’s reasoning is a monstrous example of what might be called the Neuro-scientist’s Fallacy. Because he can conceive nothing more complex than his own mind, and his mind can conceive no solution to the world’s problems, therefore no solution can exist.
He should get out more.
It seems that Emmott clearly has nothing to offer the world but his well honed narcisstic posture of apocalyptic ennui. I wonder what else has he ever offered to date beyond his internet microwave?
By all accounts Bill Gates is concerned about climate change but he is still actively engaged in tangible philathropy - in health care and energy development. I wonder if Gates knows there is such an active loser on the Microsoft pay roll?
Katie Mitchell shows an admirable insight into the character of Emmott when, in answer to a question about the problems of working with someone who isn’t an actor, she says:
Since theatrical processes are a far closer approximation to the way the world works than the processes going on in the head of a neuro-scientist, Mitchell is effectively saying (though she doesn’t realise it) that he hasn’t the foggiest idea what he’s talking about.So maybe the problem’s not Emmott, and not Mitchell, but simply that the one has total faith in the other.
Now thinking about Emmott I just can't help being reminded of the episode of Blackadder with the romantic poets lolling around in a macho way, loudly bemoaning their imminent death from consumption, and Mrs Miggins (Mitchell) swooning in admiration ;)
As Geoff said above, I can sometimes find myself feeling disgusted enough by these poseurs to the point of swearing - I get the strong feeling that people like Emmott, given an inch of real control, whether through incompetence or design, would help drive humanity into the ground in order to fulfil their pathetic prophecy. However I always come back to reality when I start to really think about it - I really think humanity is beyond the clutches of such nihilistic apolcalyptic ennui.
They are self declared losers who have nothing to offer. Give them enough rope, expose them to real scrutiny in the real working world and they will wither.
Another reviewer:
http://alastairmoody.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/ten-billion-upstairs-at-royal-court.html
"He delivered a talk with understatement (a phrase he often used was "in pretty short order") and without affectation, forcefully and believably as himself, the message of which is that nothing will now prevent the movement of our planetary system into a phase of climatic instability that will result in famine, drought, death, "climate migration" and war across the world."
Aug 15, 2012 at 8:10 AM | Alex Cull
Wow. Er, thanks for that "review". Its concluding statement says it all.
What a loser.
I have decided this is loser chic. A kind of material and functional incompetents cult which has found a new messiah in Emmott ;)
Leopard, Foxgoose
Thank goodness you’re there to inject a note of optimism, otherwise Alex and I would probably lose the will to live ourselves, transcribing these people.
Emmott has the same inability to form a properly structured sentence as Bob Watson, whose burblings during the Guardian post-Climategate conference I transcribed. Both were official advisors to both the British and US governments, apparently. That’s why I’m less optimistic than you. The chattering classes hate the ruling class and the ruling class despises the chattering classes. That’s as it should be. But both have total faith in the burbling class of science gurus, and that’s bad.
I’m getting to like Katie. At Avignon she looks about as cheerful as the late great Pina Bausch on a bad hair day, but she’d just spent six hours on a train with Emmott analysing the carbon footprint of “every fucking lettuce leaf” (her words) she consumed. I’m sure her therapist would detect a certain ambivalence in her formulation, which might suggest that all is not well in their relationship.
If we can just break the spell that Emmott has placed on Katie, perhaps the whole of Luvvieland will wake from their trance and we can all go back to leading normal lives.
Talk of the devil. After mentioning Bill Gates philanthropic projects I today see this item pop up near the top of my Google news feed :
From Bill Gates, A Toilet Challenge Spills Forth
Possible use for Emmotts stockpile of microwave ovens? ;)
Geoff Chambers: Emmott says after a blog article he had a thousand replies, half of them ranting (i.e. disputing his arguments, I suppose) the other half insisting that the message must be spread... He’s been bombarded by offers to make a tv documentary, apparently
I smell a rat. I seem to remember another warmist apologist discussed here, who simply refused even to listen to climate skeptics' comments, and regarded them all, indiscriminately, as "rant". Now at a guess, the average skeptic's comment would be three or four times longer than the average warmist's comment. It takes far more words to lay out reasonable disagreement, than to agree and support.
My guess is that very little of what he called "rant" was actually rant. Emmott's the ranter, the rogue who's projecting his own sins of deluded ranting from behind closed ears. His appearance of rationality can only be maintained by force, by gagging all debate. His atheistic "fucked" world is his own unbalanced thinking, projected violently. Thought is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.
btw - (1) an emetic is medicine to make you vomit. (2) To emote = To express emotion, especially in an excessive or theatrical manner: "The more she emotes, the less he listens...".
Alex Cull and I have an article about Emmott’s thespian success at
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2012/08/it’s-a-fct-we’re-fcked.html