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)
Well, my comment is still awaiting approval, as, it would appear, are those of others on this site. However, 4 others have been approved, all with similar sentiments to most of us, here. The most interesting is perhaps that from Dr Norman Page, who describes himself thus: “I am one of the blogosphere’s old contrarian Realists or as I prefer to think Baconian empiricists.” He also has his own blog, at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com, should you be interested.
As an aside, the over-use of my name is getting a bit… well… radical. It is making my litter-siblings jealous, particularly Bellicose and Truculent.
lapogus: Very interesting point on the new CEO. I listened to the Dylan in your honour. Now I've got to do some other stuff today. :)
My post to the Shell blog is still waiting mderation.
In the meantime, for some Saturday entertainment, I can recommend this Norwegian celebrity video, with some English text and subtitles, on saving the world by recycling milk cartons. It's extremely well made.
WE CAN DO MORE !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHKdpkSQE5k&feature=youtube_gdata_player
An important milestone will be when the enviro-parasite industry is cut off from tax payer funding. None of the enviro groups are actually doing enviro work of any significance. They are all political hacks or criminals like Greenpeace, or both.
I am not aware of any of the large 'top tier' of enviro groups that put a majority of their resources into the environment. It all goes to insider dealings with government officials, lobbying, ridiculous theater like the one Hone refers to, or out right criminal behavior like Greenpeace. Where are the land purchases, the replanting of native species, the culling of invasive species, the development of techniques to improve waste water treatment, to reduce need for surface water, to develop dependable energy supplies that have smaller enviro impact, etc.? The greens get billions of our dollars a year and all they do is work to wreck our lives and make us feel guilty for their destructive ways.
Good point, hunter. It would appear that these enviro groups can only think of destructive action against those making money out of improving the lot of humans on this planet, rather than constructive action to support their cause of protecting the planet from abuse by humans. Strange how these quite blatant, and aggressive, acts of envy should receive such sympathetic press from the… er, press. What is even stranger is that partaking in such destruction should, I would have thought, been counter-productive in the idea of winning the “hearts and minds” of the argument, yet does not – it seems to boost their image in the eyes of “the masses”! No-one seems able to see the disconnect between protestors clad in hydrocarbons, in transport constructed significantly of hydrocarbons and powered by hydrocarbons trying to stop the search for further reserves of a product of which that they are such enthusiastic users!
The positive actions of which you speak are occurring, but only by small, isolated groups; nothing dramatic or photo-worthy is going on (where is the "meejah-thrill" of hacking back another strangler vine on Mauritius, or killing another cat on the Galapagos), so the media is not interested.
"When the lights do go out the Echo loons will have some explaining to do to a very angry public."
Dec 13, 2013 at 5:25 PM jamspid
jamspid
The trouble is a fortune will be spent on STOR diesel generators to prevent power cuts, as detailed over at EUReferendum:
http://www.eureferendum.com/results.aspx?keyword=STOR%20generators
Everyone knows the game is up as soon as there are widespread power cuts, whereas they can easily blame the whole mess on the pantomime-villain energy companies as long as there's merely an astronomical increase in fuel bills.
For the record, my comment referenced here: Dec 13, 2013 at 6:50 PM has been posted.