Bishop Hill A sudden realisation
Dec 13, 2013 Greens 
Detail from "The Mussel Gatherers" via antiqueprints.com. Click for link.
David Hone is Shell's very green climate change advisor, and his blog posts have been mentioned here in the past. Yesterday he posted a report on the Tyndall Centre's "Radical Emission Reduction" conference, an event that appears to have given him considerable pause for thought.
Given the academic reputation of the Tyndall Centre and of course the credentials of the Royal Society, I was hoping for a useful discussion on rapid deployment of technologies such as CCS, how the world might breathe new life into nuclear and other such topics, but this was far from the content of the sessions that I was able to attend. Rather, this was a room of catastrophists (as in “catastrophic global warming”), with the prevailing view, at least to my ears, that the issue could only be addressed by the complete transformation of the global energy and political systems, with the latter moving to one of state control and regulated consumerism. There would be no room for “ruthless individualism” in such a world. The posters that dotted the lecture theatre lobby area covered topics as diverse as vegan diets to an eventual return to low technology hunter-gatherer societies (but thankfully there was one CCS poster in the middle of all this).
Much to my surprise I was not really at an emission reduction conference (despite the label saying I was), but a political ideology conference.
Hones's sudden realisation that many of his fellow-travellers in the environmental movement are completely round the twist is rather comical and you can't help but wonder where he has been in the last twenty years. I wonder how he is going to break the news to his employers that they have been funding groups who want to take us back to the stone age and who would like nothing more than to wipe out the oil and gas industry in its entirety:
This was a room where there was a round of applause when one audience member asked how LNG and coal exporters in Australia might be “annihilated” following their (supposed) support for the repeal of the carbon tax in that country.
Read the whole thing, it's worth it.
And as an aside, let us remember that these lunatics are paid for by your taxes.
Reader Comments (107)
I love the idea of a 'return to low-technology hunter-gatherer societies'. Back to the Stone Age, eh, with a global population of perhaps 6 million? Sounds good to me.
It just goes to show how thick these upstanding pillars of society really are.
Let us never forget that these lunatics, with the complicity and support of our three main political parties, drafted the legislation which controls our energy policy.
We may laugh and sneer, but these f***wits are, to all intents and purposes, running the country.
They are a tiny mouse with a huge voice.
We are a mute elephant.
The mouse is driving the elephant.
What shall the elephant do?
Do keep in mind that David Hone did not write in his personal capacity, but as an employee of Royal Dutch/Shell.
...Do keep in mind that David Hone did not write in his personal capacity, but as an employee of Royal Dutch/Shell...
Then it looks as if tectonic plates are shifting. If such a bulwark of green idiocy can allow a statement such as this, it shows that the green establishment are beginning to bend...
The elephant should never forget.
Yet each new generation seems destined to repeat in a "modern" way the faults of history.
Education. Education. Education.
But who taught the educators?
"but for me the event highlighted one of the real problems associated with climate change; that it is an issue with a chasm between the two ends of the spectrum and the rest of us are left in the middle watching the exchange."
I find it strange he thinks he is in the middle of 2 extreme views, he needs to get out more.
I'm not sure that Hone is in full possession of all his faculties either ...
It doesn't work, FFS, and even if it did can you think of anything more stupidly risky than pumping large amounts of CO2 into rocky caverns and hoping it stays there.One of the most desperate of the insanely pointless ideas dreamt up (right phrase - it's almost certainly one of those wonderful ideas that come to one in sleep and in the morning are seen to meaningless at best) by eco-nutters for their greater glory and the slow destruction of the rest of mankind.
And this man is supposed to be advising Shell on .... well, on anything!
Details of the meeting are here.
At the bottom of the page there is a link to the abstracts. It's amazing stuff. One speaker said we that had to reduce energy consumption by 60%, and energy would be supplied entirely by windmills and biofuels. Efven the audience there didn't buy it, asking her awkward questions about biofuels that she was unable to answer.
It's worth noting that this political ideology conference was hosted by the Royal Society.
[BH adds: Thanks Paul. I assumed the RS was just renting out space, rather than taking a co-organiser role]
Hone: "I was hoping for a discussion of the next boondongle; the one we can use to leech money off the ignorant public when they realise windmills and solar are a con."
Speakers and their abstracts here:
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/radicalplanabstracts_0.pdf
Really is an echo-chamber of presentations.
I'm ruminating on the latest Churchill quote to come my way:-
"A fanatic is someone who won't listen & can't change his mind".
There seem to be a large number of fanatics out there.
@Mike Jackson
See my previous remark
Carbon capture is a large-scale chemical process. Carbon transport means piping a large volume of stuff around the place. Carbon storage requires a deep understanding of geology and engineering. Which companies do you think will win the CCS market?
The last days of Pompeii........
You may be closer to the truth than you realize, Agouts. These people here think we might satisfy our energy needs by the reaction of rock with hot water. I kid you not. It was, of course, reported unquestioningly by the BBC at this year's AGU conference. At this point, words fail me.
The conference title that is most appropriate is "Totalitarian Strategy Planning Session" with special topics of "How to make millions without really trying"; "The Gore Wealth Effect" and the ever popular "Carbon - How much can you really sell in a day?"
JohnofEnfield, ironically Churchill was mentioned in the title of one of the talks, see abstracts linked by astateofdenmark,
Presentation title: ‘What would Churchill say? Political leadership, collective action and the
framing of radical emissions reduction strategies’
- a talk given by two members of the "red-green study group" from the Uni of Essex.
The idea of wartime mobilisation also came up.
To be fair to the nutters, they’re partially right. With current technology and if AGW was going to be rapid and catastrophic (big ‘if’) then society would have to radically change. We can’t seriously cut CO2 on our current trajectory. Of course the solution wouldn’t be the fuzzy, touchy feely, simpler life the greenies dream about. It would resemble North Korea with most people suffering inconceivable hardship.
As a pleb, I don’t like the idea one little bit. I’d rather put my faith in our ability to engineer our way out of trouble, if or when it becomes clear that CO2 is a major issue. At the moment we’re dabbling because we don’t really believe it’s real. I see consumerism as one of the best driving forces for innovation and if mankind has to resign itself to a Kim Jong Un style future we’d lose our ability to invent our way out of trouble.
Well, I read his report of this extraordinary anti-science get-together sponsored by the Royal Society, an organisation that has a vanishingly small connection to science in the pre post-normal sense.
He claims to have been shocked by the collocation of vegans, hippies, anarchists and socialists there. However, he is careful to say that what shocked him was the sheer concentration of them at one conference. FGS, he has been knocking around the conference and lobbying circuit with these people for years. Never had a bad word to say about them. Suddenly, his eyes go big, and tears well up - "Oh no!"
I don't think so.
Most likely what it means is that Shell has sniffed a change in the wind. Sorry, Occupiers et al, but we're moving on.
The great thing is that sceptics never relied on evil corporate support, as the CAGW crowd did. They are just about to get a dose of political reality. As John Le Carre (via local CIA boss Martello) said in "The Honourable Schoolboy", in relation to a freelance pilot who had flown opium and who knows what else in and out of Laos:
"Ricardo, well, he's a tough cookie. He flew a lot of missions for the Company [CIA] in Laos, and when the war ended, the Company resettled him and kissed him off and pulled up the ladder. Nobody messes around with those boys when there's no war for them any more ...".
Shell is kissing them off and pulling up the ladder.
Good that David Hone is beginning to ask questions of his environmental activist colleagues. Shocking that the Royal Society could have anything to do with this event. I suppose it fits in with Nurse's agenda of getting scientists involved with politics though.
I went back to look at David's post Warsaw AR5 blog thread where he took a swipe at the BBC for broadcasting a 10 second interview with BH ("a blogger who lacks credible credentials and objectivity"). I am glad to see our comments are still there, and while he may not have responded directly, I like to think that we may have had a part in spreading some seeds of doubt in Hone's green garden?
The fossil fuel industry is damned by the Green Taliban no matter what it does. Despite the fact that fossil fuels have raised the quality of our life hugely.
The industry has in the past provided massive funds for them but its hand has been badly bitten and is often denounced as evil. So it is not surprising that its approach to these zealots is carefully guarded. Much like the male spider mating with a female spider - one wrong move and it becomes food for her.
Lets hope the Royal Society will be eventually be run by saner people than the Earth-Centred lunatics that we currently have.
Why are these people not busy getting arrested in Berlin?
Germany’s New Government Embraces Coal To Counter Rising Energy Costs
I read David’s post with interest, and added my own comment (like all Rodents, I like to let my presence be known even if I cannot be seen) , which is still under moderation; as it gives credit to this site, I now wonder if it will pass.
Is there any weight to my questioning the validity of the vacuous term “Climate change”? My own view is that there is no measurement of climate without reference to temperatures, therefore, as temperatures have stopped rising for over 15 years, the insubstantial phrase “climate change” is now being used to keep us scared without any reference to the elephant in the room. For the sceptics of the argument to continue using this empty phrase continues to give it some validity.
I am tired of the lazy, sloppy and pejorative shorthand for CO2; calling it 'carbon' is a return to the dark days of childhood when we - well, I was - were threatened with 'the bogeyman' if we misbehaved. That, or we'd be carried off by a 'darkie' or some such black beast. And the 'bogeyman' was always seen as being black.
But, over the years, we move on and - quite rightly - see that the threat from the 'black' is not to be tolerated in a modern society. We make laws to stop this kind of hate speech and intolerance. Which is good.
However, the 'greens' want to scare us, so not being able to find the threat of a colourless gas like CO2 overwhelming, they come up with the idea of re-defining it as 'carbon': which is BLACK and therefore EVIL. It will carry you away. It will destroy you. The evil 'black' will be the ruin of us.
Therefore, I come to the conclusion that 'greens', who I have always thought had a facist tendency, are also no better than BNP racists!
Well, we should rise above their [ab]use of the term 'carbon', see it for what it is and call them out on it. Whenever we can we should use the proper term. And if I'm to be called a 'denier', then they shall be racists!
Richard Tol
HONE, AN 'EMPLOYEE OF SHELL' ?
Hone has now posted over 300 blogs on Carbon Capture and Carbon Trading.
OK, so he is Shell's 'Senior Climate Change Adviser' but he is also 'Chairman of the Emissions Trading Association', from which lofty perch he has been able to pontificate independently
He organised the 'Age of Energy' series in the Daily Telegraph with Geoffrey Lean as 'chairman'.
This embarrassing feature has now been deleted, but one of Hone and Lean's prime supporters was Graham van't Hoff who WAS chairman of Shell UK, and has now been 'promoted sideways'.
I would suggest that far from being Shell's spokesman he represents only a faction within a huge and diverse company and having Lean as his mouthpiece within the Telegraph has suited his purpose UP TILL NOW.
Hone's realisation that supporters of the Royal Society and the Tyndall Centre represent only the 'great unwashed' who would take us back to the Stone Age is a horrible shock for him, just as Monbiot must be acutely embarrassed by finding himself still 'head' of the Campaign Against Climate Change.
I'm sure we all await Hone's next blog with utmost interest - is this a Damascene Moment or will he 'regain his composure' ?
Bish: has my post been caught up in auto-modding because I mentioned the initials of the Barking Nutters Party?
[There's nothing in moderation atm.]
"Back to the Stone Age, eh, with a global population of perhaps 6 million? Sounds good to me."
Our ancestors exterminated the Pleistocene megafauna at that population level. It would have to be much fewer now. Why do you think they invented farming which is vastly more work and less fun?
I read David’s post with interest, and added my own comment (like all Rodents, I like to let my presence be known even if I cannot be seen) , which is still under moderation; as it gives credit to this site, I now wonder if it will pass.
Is there any weight to my questioning the validity of the vacuous term “Climate change”? My own view is that there is no measurement of climate without reference to temperatures, therefore, as temperatures have stopped rising for over 15 years, the insubstantial phrase “climate change” is now being used to keep us scared without any reference to the elephant in the room. For the sceptics of the argument to continue using this empty phrase continues to give it some validity.
All greens should voluntarily adopt a hunter-gatherer lifestyle immediately. I don't think we'd be bothered with them for very much longer if they did. I doubt many of them can tie their own shoelaces.
I am tired of the lazy, sloppy and pejorative shorthand for CO2; calling it 'carbon' is a return to the dark days of childhood when we - well, I was - were threatened with 'the bogeyman' if we misbehaved. That, or we'd be carried off by a 'darkie' or some such black beast. And the 'bogeyman' was always seen as being black.
But, over the years, we move on and - quite rightly - see that the threat from the 'black' is not to be tolerated in a modern society. We make laws to stop this kind of hate speech and intolerance. Which is good.
However, the 'greens' want to scare us, so not being able to find the threat of a colourless gas like CO2 overwhelming, they come up with the idea of re-defining it as 'carbon': which is BLACK and therefore EVIL. It will carry you away. It will destroy you. The evil 'black' will be the ruin of us.
Therefore, I come to the conclusion that 'greens', who I have always thought had a fascist tendency, are also no better than Barking Nutters Party racists!
Well, we should rise above their [ab]use of the term 'carbon', see it for what it is and call them out on it. Whenever we can we should use the proper term. And if I'm to be called a 'denier', then they shall be racists!
(Modified and re-subbed. Apologies if double post)
Twitter report:
I was tipped off about this conference by Paul. Unlike that other event - AGU - Manchester Univ had set up a feed you could watch for free. (AGU asked for lots of dollars). I watched about 4 sessions in all. Just as anyone else, my first impression was: 'what they heck are these people smoking?'
One of the talks I watched was by a John Barrett. (see pages 10 and 11 in this pdf)
His conclusion:
and
The conclusion alone, however, does not give the full flavour of his talk. There was no expression of caveats and/or uncertainty of any kind, with respect to the applicability of his ideas in the real world. Surprising since these consisted of such declarations as 'UK targets for carbon 'emission' reduction should be 97% cuts on present emissions, by 2050'.
Watch the video feed of the talk yourself. His segment starts from ~40 min in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0ZrGHOyvPo
Cutting 97% emissions from UK would mean wiping UK off the world map. What would be the 3% left?
Doug McNeal, appeared on Twitter to defend Tyndall's 'radical' conference:
'using hard won academic freedom to explore responses to one of the greatest challenges of our age' and 'using good science to inform policy', rather than 'science being abused to support a political agenda' (Paul), and,
people studying 'things, and then talk[ing] about them. That is part of their job', and not viewing 'climate science tenure/position... as a direct license to meddle with societal processes?' (me)
An overview of the twitter discussion is here (https://twitter.com/etzpcm/status/410697935274250240
I fully support Tyndall and other academics' right to be throwing ideas around. In a literal sense, I would agree with them. As Tol said, if smallpox was reintroduced or nuclear war began, there would certainly be no more 'emissions' afterward. As an academic, I however find such talk verging on the silly and irresponsible. It tells me they don't take their own work seriously.
Secondly, the output of such academics as Barrett usually consists of fixing some absurd figure as immutable, unalterable truth, and then working the numbers around them. In his case, his starting point is the almighty '2C', which he avers is an 'internationally agreed threshold'. Again, it is only the temptation to perform calculations which leads to the elevation of the significance of some arbitrary number, and, the 2C figure is *not* an internationally binding target, by any means. This crucial aspect of present reality is nowhere in Barrett's talk.
Or alternatively, when you do it I might start to think about it. Till then stop wasting my time.
"It would resemble North Korea"
Not entirely a bad thing, perhaps.. :-)
Whoa there boys and girlies, steady or we'll be going backwards for Christmas.......................
Yup, I am pleased [maybe] to hear that, somebody was doing some joined up thinking and that there was some cognitive rationalization occurring at conference.
Tyndall Centre's "Radical Emission Reduction" conference indeed and if you follow that logic.
Conclusion: hunter gatherer society it will be coming back. [yippee]
Green means: technological retrogression formulated and facilitated by atavistic men and women.
If I have to become a hunter-gatherer, I know who I'll be hunting (although I don't suppose they'd taste very nice).
George Monbiot might feel encouraged, reading Hone's account. Exactly 10 years ago, he was on the Today programme, annoyed because he felt that environmentalists were being ignored:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20031212_r4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqLROIKWM2s
Alex - since you mentioned George Monbiot I cannot let the opportunity pass to post my favourite Mash satire:
Do We Really Need Ambulances?. Daily Mash, 1st August 2007
Mike Jackson - you are SO right on CCS. Its the technology of the madhouse.
Pumping gas at high pressure underground - what could possibly go wrong..?
'Fracking causes earthquakes' - oh, yeah - and pumping carbon dioxide underground to just sit there won't, I suppose..?
Why not just surround power stations with tomato farms, and then the CO2 can be used for something useful, i.e. to increase yields..?
Separately - I note from the BBC News website that a massive wind farm off Scotland (the Argyll Array) has been cancelled - due to 'the presence of basking sharks, and hard rock on the seabed and (get this) "challenging wave conditions"....'....!
Well - stone me - unfriendly sea conditions off Scotland - who'd have thought it..? Anyway - hope Alec Salmond wasn't counting on this one...
Separately again - the Chairman of Peterborough City Council is pressing SO HARD for a 900 ACRE solar farm on Council-owned farmland (which promptly comes out of food production of course) - that you do have to wonder if the developers didn't buy him a VERY good lunch. Seems he's prepared to bet the whole Council budget on this project - for which - it has to be said - there is vociferous opposition. Do hope they win...
Reading that extract from the Today programme that Alex posted has some wonderfully ironic comments from Steve Jones given what we know now.
UKIPs Roger Helmer understands this. Other politicians with a role in energy policy don't.
lapogus
"ask yourselves this question: Am I really good enough to go on living among people like George Monbiot and some of his friends from university?"
Obviously not.. :-)
Odd, S–rocket, but I had always seen the bogeyman as white. Perhaps it is the colour of your skin that determines the colour of the bogeyman? Of course, it could have been a subconscious memory of the Child-catcher in Chitty-chitty Bang-bang (1 word? 2? Or 4?); I had forgotten all about that character until a fairly recent reference on the TV.
Irony is piled upon irony in Greenie-world, where individuals show a ruthless determination to ensure that there “…would be no room for “ruthless individualism” in such a world.” There is much revealed in these cuddly monsters as anyone with whom they disagree will be “annihilated”. Call it what it is from their desire for population control – mass-murder – with the subtext that whoever agrees with them will not be a victim (let’s face it, in their dream hunter-gatherer world, guess who is going to be in charge?). They, and so many others, miss the obvious: population growth slows as the population becomes more wealthy, eventually reaching “tipping point” (recognise the phrase?), as has happened in most western nations, when the birth rate gets below the death rate, and population decreases.
As a driller who has had Greenies of one sort or another in his ears for the best part of 40 years, the only surprise is that Hone is surprised (allegedly) at these nutters. Often well-meaning nutters, but still.
Hunter-gatherer life, no matter how "rich" the culture, would have been "nasty, brutish and short" as Hobbes surmised.
To quote Hobbes further, what the Greenies want could easily be summed up as:
None of it matters, anyway, because the world could not support 7 billion, or probably even 1 billion, hunter-gatherers, so it's either Carry on On As We Are while wailing and gnashing teeth about how awful it all is, or massive immediate slaughter of over 6 billion humans. But hopefully not the ones who know how to make good hunting and gathering tools. And not the ones who know how to identify gluten-free wild vegetables.
Shell is trying to polish its image in front of the green industry simply because of the opportunities they see. In Alberta they have indulged in Grant Farming for their carbon capture and storage project.
Jo Nova has a post on the same topic and I wrote on there.
They are getting more like Dictatorships and Regimes where “The End Justifies The Means” every day.
The cost in monetary value or lives is immaterial.
Sheer Lunacy and Paranoia.
Also, can we postpone Armageddon until the new PS4 comes out?
Thanks.
Rad Rod: Ironies indeed. Mention of North Korea brings to mind another show of ruthless individualism this week. Most of us have not experienced even for one day the terror that is the only absolute in such societies. But we do well to recognise the seeds of such thinking.
The Royal Society has a great deal to answer for. Note there are no restrictions on reporting such drivel but the interaction with Lawson, Lindzen, Lewis and co must remain secret forever.
"Hones's sudden realization that many of his fellow-travelers in the environmental movement are completely round the twist is rather comical and you can't help but wonder where he has been in the last twenty years."
I would maintain that Shell, Exxon-Mobil, BP and other oil companies have used the environmental movement as patsies or useful idiots in their quest to displace coal with natural gas. (Remember, oil reserves are mostly owned by sovereign states while gas reserves are owned mostly by big oil.) They are smart enough to realize that carbon taxes or CCS schemes are going to be twice as painful for coal as it is for them. I realize they are the butt of many environmentalists attacks but there is no bigger beneficiary from these schemes than big oil.
So you ask how did Mr. Hones not realize how radical his fellow travelers are. I would ask, when will those fellow travelers realize they been played big time by big oil to foster a switch from coal to natural gas for the benefit of Shell, Exxon-Mobil and BP?
Sean: Convincing. Not necessarily right but a conspiracy theory that at least makes it to economic literacy.