Monday
Jan212013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Worthington on Helm
Jan 21, 2013 Energy: wind Bryony Worthington, the environmental campaigner who was ennobled by the last government and then proceeded to run amok through UK energy policy, has penned a critique of Dieter Helm's book on solving the UK's energy problems. Helm's objective is to do this without actually trashing the economy or killing off too many old folk.
Worthington's approach is rather different of course. She notoriously favours only hair-shirt policies on energy - if objectives are achieved without any pain they don't count in her book (see here). It's therefore hard to take her views on anything terribly seriously. For those who want a laugh, she seems to think that subsidising technologies that don't work is the way forward.
Strewth.
Reader Comments (62)
If climate change is Armageddon, caused by the sin of emitting carbon dioxide, then emission reduction is penance. Penance without pain is not penance.
Helm argues that the failure of climate policy is mostly due to the clumsiness of advocates of climate policy. (I agree.) Worthington counters that the "pure of heart" cannot possibly do that.
To Worthington, climate is an ersatz-religion.
Now I know what "hand waving" means. Total bollocks.
I agree with you on most of it Bishop but the one good thing she has done is become Patron of the Alvin Weinburg foundation in Parliament. Pushing the Government to look more closely at Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors. If we could get them to take that seriously, I for one would applaud her and gloss over the rest of the rubbish.
Well, now I know why I get the brush off from my MP when I try to raise climate issues. I could hardly believe my ears when she was talking about the competition between Cameron and Miliband to see who could be greenest. Tragic.
I was also a bit disturbed by all that arm waving. It must have been quite offputting to be in the room.
Bryony Worthington yet another English graduate! Explains her total lack of understanding of the science.
Just how many CAGW proponents are English graduates?
She is a caricature of one of Lenin's "useful idiots".
But much, much more dangerous.
Richard Tol
And just as being able to read the Book of Revelations in the vernacular set the scene for a century of holy wars, so IT and data for all has created the current madness.Bryony:Faith, Hope, and Bryony.
This lady really indicates what is wrong with British politics today, she has done nothing of note apart from sound off about environmental issues and now feels qualified to lecture the rest of use on issues she is poorly qualified to judge on. But of course she is now a part of the governmental process (unelected of course) so that give her the right.
The sooner we rid ourselves of this pack of appointed 'peers' and have a directly elected second chamber with proportional representation the better. At least then we will have a small chance to boot the free-loaders out.
The ole' "it's a failure of communication" myth again. Or at least a variation on that theme.
The failure is first and foremost due to the lack of proven imperative. People aren't (yet) collectively as stupid as advocates of climate policy believe or wish. People still tend to fall back on the "if it ain't broke" heuristic. It has served mankind well and still does.
Bryony said at the IPPR debate that there are no climate sceptics in China, her point is lost on me, (and her) as China is the country building lots and lots of new, extra coal fired power stations.
As Dieter said Chinas GDP is set to double,and it is an inconvenient fact, near thought crime to say China's coal use will double. But it is a reality that Bryony and the IPPR crowd would rather ignore, based on the noises in the room.
Her main concern was that Dieter didN't mention fossil fiel lobby and climate sceptics in his book!
She cannot comprehend they are irrelevant, in context of China, India and the rest of the world growth (non USA) so all she can do is wave her hands, in denial of Dieters facts.
I could have applauded everything Dieter said, despite him believing in Bryony's view of them. He was not discussing climate science, but the reality ofChina, coal and emissions.
Bryony had no figures, and just seemed cncerned with Poland's coal situation
She came across as very naive, saying the Chinese keep telling her that the EU must show leadership, otherwise China will wobble. The same China of course that is growing its emission :-)
Sadly, Bryony is the Shadow in the Lords on Energy and Climate!
Don Keiller:
“One of Lenin’s useful idiots” ??
In her twenties, she was writing five-year plans for carbon budgets for the next 50 years into British law. And when she’d designed the most stupid, expensive law ever devised, then she was made a lawmaker - for life.
It makes Bolshevism seem democratic. At least there was staff turnover under Stalin.
A little 'light blogging' er.. Bishop, rambling rosy is one or two slates short of a full roof, in truth Baroness blah blah Bryony makes Upsy Daisy/Hazel Blears sound like an intellectual.
@geoffchambers
We could certainly use some of that "staff turnover" you allude to!
Barry Woods:
Oh yes there are. Seehttp://www.21bcr.com/a/shiye/yuwai/2010/0907/1563.html
about the Hockey Stick Illusion (“曲棍球杆曲线”丑闻 )
There are some ‘climate activists’ who are so saturated with their own awful visions that it will be all but impossible for signals from a calmer, more rational world to get through to them unchanged. I suspect that Baroness Worthington is firmly in this category.
The Greenie Watch blog has a daily collection of materials from around the world that are usually well worth a read. I have extracted some quotes from several of today’s set that seem highly relevant to this thread. See: http://antigreen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/another-scientist-who-thinks-that-truth.html#links for links.
First: re the reality that, as Lindzen advised us more than 20 years ago, it will probably be quite hard to detect the effect of rising CO2 levels on the climate system, even if they double.
Lloyd
Second: re the reality that the fervent pursuit of expensive energy is causing and will cause more dreadful tragedies for the world’s poorest people.
Eschenbach
Laframboise
Third: re the politicization of science, the policy-led evidence-making or evidence-ignoring, has proceeded apace in the eco-sector, but is being resisted by an heroic few within 'the system'.
Spady
(For ‘begs’ read ‘raises’, imho)
Fourth: re Mother Nature or the weather god or the climate system, whichever you prefer, is doing a good job of refuting the visions of the dominant climate speculators such as Hansen or Gore.
Ransom
So are we in a kind of virtual Alamo, waiting for events to change in our favour as we watch the frantic antics of such as Worthington beyond our ramparts?
Meanwhile, the UN quietly bans anything that uses or emits mercury by the year 2020.
Say goodbye to electricity generated by fossil fuels.
She is not getting too much fullsome support in the comments.
John Shade;
The problem is the timescale. Those who ignore the evidence of temperature standstill for sixteen years can do it for another sixty years. No-one’s going to ride to the rescue. Bryony will be legislating in the Lords for the next half a century.Some of us have been trying to open up a breach in the climate consensus on the political left at
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/blog_comments/climate_change_and_the_left
and Alice Bell, to her credit, has let us sceptics invade her thread.
The problem I see is that you can’t negotiate people out of a position which is manifestly absurd. We can all give ground a little and admit that the other person has a point, as long as we’re arguing about reality. But how can Lady Worthington, and Ed Miliband who got her enobled, ever be brought to admit that the whole carbon cutting, green jobs, climate chaos story is nonsense? It’s like the difference between believing in socialism and believing in fairies. I can be persuaded to adapt my beliefs on the former, but not on the latter.
You can find a full transcript of Bryony Worthington speaking at the CDKN Action Lab here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20110405_ow
Notice the censors are busy on the "Facts are sacred " website, I have just posted this there, no doubt it won't be there when I return:
"How on earth does an arts graduate with no industrial managerial experience get to plan the future energy policy of the UK, and now, have the chutzpa to challenge a Professor of Economics, especially when the challenge amounts to arm-waving, which is the only intellectual property she can bring to the party.
Worse yet she's got the Guardian alarmists swooning at her intellect. Says it all really."
Geoff, you are only talking to Robin on NLP. The audience there, if any, does not even seem to be reading. Intellectually bankrupt, it seems to me. But keeping up the pretence by blocking out the opposition.
Europe seems unaware that it is utterly, totally irrelevant. In global terms Europe is tiny. The rest of the world happily goes about emitting hugely increasing quantities of plant food every year, usefully enhancing global agricultural productivity. Yet at the same time the European eco-fantasists persist in their god-given mission of freezing ever increasing numbers of the European aged to death by their thousands every year and phasing out energy dependant industries blissfully unaware no one in the rest of the world gives a toss for their self-centred hand-wringing (if they are even aware of it which is itself unlikely).
Two issues combine to make this happen. First we have big government which busies itself in running everything rather than allowing market forces to take their course so economic energy production can prevail to the good of all. But in the UK this issue is compounded by the overwhelming preponderance of classicists in Parliament who have a staggering inability to think rationally about the world around them and are driven by an emotional world view. Short of retiring policy makers for years of re-education in basic physics it is difficult to see what is ever going to change this parlous state of affairs. Otherwise shut down government for the duration so it can do no more harm and the damage it has done be gradually, painfully be repaired.
geoffchambers: "The problem I see is that you can’t negotiate people out of a position which is manifestly absurd. We can all give ground a little and admit that the other person has a point, as long as we’re arguing about reality."
Geoff, keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of people are pretty apathetic and will go with the flow, not just on this issue but many other issues. The privileged Miliband brothers don't know anything, they see themselves as ordained as rulers over the masses who don't have to have worked, been in the forces, or ran a farm etc. to tell us what to do. Having said that, if the tide of public opinion changes these lightweights will change with it, as will all the other lightweights and bien-pensants pushing the agenda. They won't, of course, say they were wrong, they'll switch the agenda to more important things and remove the money from the research. Personally, I think we'll see the last IPCC this year, it was only set up to provide "authentic" propaganda from "scientists" to persuade the great unwashed that there was a crisis. To that extent it has succeeded, mainly due to the absence of anyone challenging the bollocks it regularly puts out in the MSM because of the voluntary censorship and, the lobbying and bullying of the environmentalists.
The whole thing is on its last legs, but as you correctly point out will take decades/centuries to die, it does after all have all the attributes that the great religions have, two of which are that humans are intrinsically evil, and that they must act and behave in a way that will somehow mitigate their evils, else there will be an acopolypse. The third thing it shares with all the religions is that it has a perfectly acceptable goal, i.e. looking after the environment and the animals and plant life that share this planet with us. The fourth thing they share with the great religions is that the practioners will cheerfully kill human beings who either don't agree with them, or transgress the rules they've laid down. Think DDT ban.
TerryS
While the UN is phasing out mercury pollution the EUSSR is phasing it back in in a very big way with its crap energy bollocks saving light bulbs. We have a few of these which have already reduced themselves to junk. We conscientiously took said junk to the local council tip assuming a facility for disposing of them would be available. Hardly to our surprise they hadn't a clue about disposing of them, in fact I don't think they even knew what they were. So much for joined-up thinking government style.
She's bought into 'Thorium', mind you, even though she was once anti-nuclear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryony_Worthington,_Baroness_Worthington#Thorium
Worth reading how she came to realise the potential (links in that Wiki piece).
This woman makes me really angry and everything she represents makes me angry too. The fact that she's been rewarded so well for being so dangerous should be enough to make everybody angry.
Baroness? - my arse!
@ John Shade
So are we in a kind of virtual Alamo, waiting for events to change in our favour as we watch the frantic antics of such as Worthington beyond our ramparts?
Are you an American? If not, why the allusion to a minor US-Mexican battle when there are countless battles from British history that you could have mentioned? In any case the Americans (or Texans) lost at Alamo. If you want a battle that marked the turn of the tide why not Alamein?
Note to self. Read all the previous replies first...
Geronimo:
Nice points. Can I paraphrase Geronimo's creed for religious dystopias?
We believe humans are evil.
We believe you must change your evil ways.
We believe our intentions are noble and above dispute.
We believe we have a right to kill those who disagree with us.
Martin Reed - I have been banging on about the government lunacy on that subject for as long as those blasted light bulbs have been in existence - but I have to admire your efforts in at least taking them to the council tip (where of course they will put them in landfill)....!
Re 'Baroness' Whatserface - in the same way as I never heard a word which Gordon Brown issued on telly due to having to watch with morbid fascination the way he dropped his jaw - I had to abort the video after a minute because of all the hand waving....
And - no - I don't think I can cope with the transcript..
As one of the old folk, if I lived in your neck of the woods, I would be in favor of policies that would not be killing off too many old folk.
Consider this: right now old folk are burning books to stay warm. With ebooks, what're the next generation going to do?
David
I realised I made the mistake of writing that the energy bollocks saving light bulbs had reduced themselves to junk. They were of course junk to begin with, they simply got even more useless. Like everything emanating from the EUSSR.
Geoff "Those who ignore the evidence of temperature standstill for sixteen years can do it for another sixty years." is absolutely right.
The goalposts are being moved constantly, so it's important that as many people as possible blow the whistle. One of the climate charlatans, Chris Rapley, has already tried what Geoff suggested: "Global mean temperatures - whether measured or predicted - are not the issue".
Rhoda
Yes, it’s mostly me and Robin Guenier talking to each other at New Left Project, with some handy input from yourself and others. But look at it from their point of view. They let us post our differing sceptic points of view, and absolutely nobody from the official consensus side joins in! Nobody refutes our arguments, nobody wants to discuss the science, the evidence, the energy policies, the green jobs - nothing.
How long can they let that go on? We’re not going to change the minds of Bryony or Ed or Alice. Geronimo is right to say that the majority are apathetic, but how is that going to change things? If either Ed or David decided to change their colour scheme from green to red or blue, everyone with an interest in current policies would line up behind their rival. It’s a recipe for permanent stasis, permanent economic suicide, until we’re overtaken by the rest of the world and reduced to utter irrelevance.
In the meantime, the best I can come up with is to keep plugging away elsewhere than here, where someone outside our little circle might just be listening. (And Morph is right. The comments at Youtube are a joy to read, and they’re not from BH regulars).
@Martin
Let’s put figures for Mercury in perspective.
The average CFL contains about five milligrams of mercury.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin and long-lived environmental contaminant, and even the small amount present in CFLs poses a problem. When the bulbs break, either in the house or at a waste disposal site, their mercury content is released.
Green “facts” sites underplay the danger, saying only “a miniscule amount” is released when they are broken.
However in 2003 3.5 billion CFLs were made- that is 17,500 TONNES of mercury.
And counting….
In 2000 the U.S. coalplants emitted 162 TONNES.
As for the dangers…
Compact fluorescent light-bulbs contain very small amounts of mercury and care must be taken in disposing of them or when they break.
The US Environmental Protection Agency suggests the following:
(http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html)
o People and pets should immediately leave the room.
o Open a window and/or door and Air out the room for 5 to 10 minutes.
o Turn off the central forced air heating/air-conditioning system.
o Thoroughly collect broken glass and visible powder using wet cloths. Never use vacuum cleaners or brooms.
o Put all debris and cleanup materials in a sealable container and put outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly. Do not leaving bulb fragments or cleanup materials indoors.
o If practical, continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the heating/air conditioning system shut off for several hours.
Go figure.
Don - I suggest you send those figures forthwith to the Department for the /Environment, calling for the immediate withdrawal from sale of all CFLs, and their safe disposal...
Oh - and a copy to the DECC..
And that was just in 2003..??
However, I confidently predict a response along the lines of: 'We note your concerns, but do not regard CFLs to represent a hazard....'
...which will of course make it all better....
P.S. to my posting above about CFLs...
Shouldn't Chris Booker and/or James Delingpole be taking this matter up..?
Don Keiller listed advice from the US Environmental Protection Agency about what to do when a compact fluorescent light bulb breaks. In Britain the disposal of such light bulbs is supposedly covered by the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Regulations.
Does anyone know what proportion of broken compact fluorescent light bulbs is actually disposed of in the way the regulations state? Does anyone in the government or the civil service have the faintest idea whether or not the relevant regulations are being adhered to? What is the Health and Safety Executive doing about the problem? Does anyone in authority actually care about the subject?
bernie: "We believe..."
Someone once said madness is the need to be believed.
We might wonder if Bryony's pressing need is that we believe in climate change... or that we believe in Bryony.
If there really was a Santa Claus and he ever found the time to write his autobiography, one of its recurring themes (apart from trumpeting his noble cause) might be the terrorising realisation of his own existence depending entirely on other people's belief in him. And that the efforts to secure this belief would have to be commensurate to the scepticism it met with.
A careful reader might recognise the danger of a tipping point in this precarious scenario... the more doubt the author encounters, the more extreme (and therefore, unbelievable) the claims he makes in his neediness to be believed in, the more doubt he encounters... etc.
Whatever Bryony's private story of herself is, it is only self-sustainable by repeated verification from those outside of her. If others stopped believing in her, the world might not cease to exist (as she insists)... but Bryony - like Santa and King Lear - would.
That is such a maddening thought that its thinker might wish to keep it as unconscious as possible.
Having watched the video once before - on Delingpole's blog I think - I couldn't stand to watch it again.
The thought of two potential leaders of this country being (willingly) led by the nose by a young know-nothing, towards the most egregious piece of legislation ever, fills me with horror.
And to openly boast about how she did it beggars belief!
This extract from dear Bryony’s Guardian article says it all:
She’s referring, I’m sure, to the Globe International study some of us have been discussing here. One of the study’s “30 or so countries” with legislation focusing on “support for low-carbon energy and energy efficiency” is Vietnam: its “National Climate Change Strategy” includes an objective to "Consider low carbon economy and green growth as principles in achieving sustainable development; GHG emission reduction and removal to become a mandatory index in social and economic development". Sounds good – unless, that is, you look (as I’m sure Bryony doesn’t) at what’s really happening. It’s reported here – an extract:
So it’s not – as those in her closed world insist on believing – the evil "fossil fuel lobby defending their vested interests” that’s stopping “progress”. Far from it: it’s the developing economies determination to, as the above report says, exploit hydrocarbons to “produce cheap, abundant, reliable electricity” so as to “grow their economies, educate their citizens and pull their people out of poverty”.
That’s the hard, and understandable, reality. And there’s nothing Bryony can do about it.
If anyone's interested, the New Left Project discussion can be found here. (Geoff: your link above was truncated. BTW my post published this morning took 24 hours to clear moderation: so somebody must be reading our stuff - or maybe they attend to their Gaian devotions on Sunday.)
Dieter is being casts as Osbornes economic advisor, as an explanation for the gas dadh, by all the usual suspects, he said he got a lot if rude emails, when the Guardian printed thst.
He contacted Fiona Harvey to say where did that claim come from after it had gone to print, (she had not checked with him) he has only even met Osborne once.
Fiona told him Greenpeace
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9416805/MPs-have-no-idea-what-the-Climate-Change-Act-means.html
So what does Barroness Worthington think of our Prime Minister sending our brave Troops .our Aircraft our Special Forces our Predator Drones our Transport Planes and our Millitary Advisors into Algeria and rest of North Africa to protect one of our supplys of Fossil Fuel then.
Iraq take 2
Barry, interesting point. Also interesting that the Guardian's Adam Vaughan seemed to be unable to google his own newspaper to find any of the Fiona Harvey articles that made this false claim.
This first one I could find was in March 2012.
The Grauniad Thought Police are on form, deleting comments by Jack Savage, Stunning, Huroner, Crompton (geronimo) and others.
It is astonishing not just that such an obvious air-head as 'Baroness' Worthington should have been actively encouraged by the last government to dictate Britain's 'response' to climate change but that, despite the fact that they might have been written by a kindergarten teacher, her demented strictures remain at the heart of the present government's 'climate change strategies'. In the meanwhile, said bleeding heart liberal now swans around the House of Lords, smugly reveling in her startling elevation to the heart of the establishment.
This is akin to government by the kind of student union activists I knew in the 70s: aggressive, determined, assertive – and relentlessly wrong on every point of substance.
On the other hand, said student union activists confided themselves to 'demands' that students such as me – I am not making this up – should not be allowed to visit the Prado in Madrid at their own expense as it would imply support for Franco.
'Baroness' Worthington, by contrast, has enjoyed a vastly larger remit: to wit, that the British economy be destroyed apparently with no greater goal in mind than to make her feel better.
What a bird-brain. How do we rid ourselves of these interfering, ignorant meddlers?
"It makes Bolshevism seem democratic. At least there was staff turnover under Stalin."
Geoff, you are a bad man ... harsh, but fair.
I considered dumping her Ladyship into a cave with nothing but a pile of furs and a Neanderthal to protect her. Somehow, the sort of life transformation I had in mind didn't quite come about.
Jan 21, 2013 at 12:49 PM | Roy
I think the allusion was to fighting against the odds and buying time for a Sam Houston event. The battle batlle of El Alamein should only have gone the way it did. For an icon sucessful stand against the odds I suggest The Siege of Malta 1565; for a victory where defeat is not an option then Bannockburn 1314 might do.
Whatever you choose the longer the total victory of the AGW crew can be delayed the more chance there is that it will never arrive, despite the best efforts of Bryony Worthington and the like.
Agouts at 6.10pm. How very well put. I wish I knew the answer.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity". W B Yeats: The Second Coming.