Tuesday
Oct222013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Tuesday open thread
Oct 22, 2013 
In my absence, here is an open thread for any climate and energy news today.
Oct 22, 2013 
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Oct 22, 2013
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Reader Comments (17)
Bish, not that I want to be picky or anything like that, but ... I've noticed that since you've introduced a pic with every post, all the pics are on the left. I doubt that you are a leftist at heart, so couldn't you at least place the occasional pic on the right?! Or do you do this deliberately to "balance" the ads? ;-)
P.S. Hope you're enjoying the break!
Hilary~ I recall, a good 20 or more years ago, a news report (on tv) speaking of a study which showed that people have a tendency to look at an image to the left, when it appears.
They then promptly shifted the camera, so the news anchor (Roger Mudd? One of that generation, anyway) was on the left of the screen.
I have to wonder if we are not predisposed to look that way, because we read from left to right.
Otter
Whatever the reason, it's been fairly well-established. By the supermarket chains, no less, and they should know.
The ideal store entrance is to the left of the building with trolleys and baskets to the right as you go in (you need one of them so put them where you are going anyway). First prime display point to the left of the door and thereafter an interrupted run to the back of the store (no cross-aisles!) after which you can filter back down towards the checkout along whichever aisles you like.
Bread, milk, etc. to the back of the store.
All good psychology! Why we tend to look left I don't know but we do. Catch yourself doing it some time and see if you can come up with answer. (You might even be able to get a research grant if you can link it to climate.)
I wonder if people who read from right to left in their native language respond in the same way?
Ahem, back on topic, the ABC has wasted no time in trumpeting Christina Figueres' message that our bushfires are a sign of not "paying the price" for carbon.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-22/un-climate-chief-warns-of-nsw-27doom-and-gloom27/5036814
Actually, her statement is quite incoherent - she says we are paying the price by not paying the price, or something. Under the article are the usual comments from the luvvies saying "I told you so".
Note that the PM, Tony Abbot, a long term volunteer firefighter, spent a day with his brigade fighting the fires. He was then excoriated by critics because he was now too important to waste his time on that stuff. Of course, if he had dropped his volunteering activities after being elected, they would say it was all a stunt to get elected.
The "unprecedented fires" claims being bandied about by greenies and their fellow-travellers are nonsense - Andrew Bolt has listed numerous instances of severe bushfires in NSW in October in the previous 100 years on his blog.
People have lost their homes, possessions, pets, businesses - but these vultures just cannot pass up a chance to feed on the carcasses of people's misfortune. They turn my stomach.
Well, now you've done it. You've made her cry!
steveta, the sight of a spoiled trust fund kid crying because she didn't get her own way is bread and meat to me. :)
The agenda for the upcoming Polish conference now has a section on Gender and Climate Change with this little gem:
"It is increasingly evident that women are at the centre of the climate change challenge. Women are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts, such as droughts, floods and other extreme weather events, but they also have a critical role in combatting climate change."
How on earth does extreme weather affect women more than men? Can men run away faster? Anyway, I thought the problems associated with climate change, assuming warming kicks in again, are still future, present droughts and floods are nothing to do with it but are what has always happened from time to time.
If the situation is potentially as serious as claimed, writing silly things like the above will not convince anyone. Can't they do better than that kind of nonsense?
Finally, how much fossil fuel will be consumed getting people to this year's conference? Yes this is a bee in my bonnet, but why should I listen to an elite that exempts itself from the fuel austerity it decrees the rest of us should enjoy?
@steveta
Won't anyone think of the Children!
Seriously she's not that stable is she?
Re Bushfires, IIRC the last time they were in the headlines, people were losing property because they had not been allowed to create fire-breaks around it. One determined character who had ignored the law, and had been fined repeatedly for it, ended up as the only householder in the area who still had a house...
Mark Walport's lecture on "Energy and climate change: challenges for science and policy" in Cambridge last week is now on-line.
I need some help. I'm wondering about other government programs in the past with an objective benefit to be realized well over some future horizon such as with mitigation where the tempering of the warming may only be felt by out grandchildren, yet we bear the expense.
I thought of cathedral building; maybe.
Maginot line doesn't cut it. There must be another one.
Besides, if this is being done for our grandchildren, why don't we make them pay for it like everything else?
this is a very detailed overview of the electricity market and is a must read - via GWPF
http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/sites/default/files/Labour’s%20energy%20policies%20FINAL.pdf
All good psychology! Why we tend to look left I don't know but we do. Catch yourself doing it some time and see if you can come up with answer. (You might even be able to get a research grant if you can link it to climate.)
Oct 22, 2013 at 10:34 AM Mike Jackson
Does that mean that driving on the left is inherently safer than driving on the right? (Assuming of course that everyone else drives on the same side as you do)
Decades ago a comedian said that Canada was planning to switch to left-side driving, like the Mother Country.
"To ease the transition, for the first month only trucks will drive on the left."
Dave Bob
B***ard!! That was my line!
Re: Figueres and her tears
She and her ilk live at far, far higher levels of material and energy consumption than I do. I can only begin to believe in the sincerity of such people when they themselves switch to a near subsistence level as examples to the rest of us.
I still won't think they are right on issues to date, but at least they won't be such farcical teary eyed hypocrites telling us how concerned they are about future generations.
Oct 22, 2013 at 12:21 PM | Ken
From my reading of (far too many than I ever believed possible!) various and sundry UNEP generated climate change - and/or climate change peripheral - "outcome" documents, "High Level Panel" statements etc, such claims are obligatory (regardless of relevance or stick-out-like-sore-thumbedness)!
Some of the more recent word salads I've read (when I could keep my eyes from glazing over the inanities, platitudes and irrelevancies) do suggest that this obligatory mention of the impacts/contributions of women is now duelling with the more recently introduced imperative to include mention of "indigenous knowledge" which (according to no less an "expert authority" than the World Bank) is "in danger of becoming extinct".