Bishop Hill Nobel laureates - not what they used to be
Jun 2, 2014 Energy: gas Greens In an astonishing display of group hypocrisy, a mob of celebs, each with a carbon footprint the size of a small city, have called for a suspension of moves to develop a UK shale industry. Alongside them are names such as Nobel Laureate Sir Harry Kroto, greens like George Monbiot, crony capitalists like Jeremy Leggett, and ecoactivitst groups like Friends of the Earth and the RSPB.
Their letter claims that
...there is substantial evidence that fracking causes water stress and risks water contamination and soil contamination, earth tremors - and is a threat to human, wildlife, bird, fish and livestock health.
I think it's pretty amazing that they managed to get a Nobel laureate to sign up to a statement like that. Even the Green party doesn't try to make such claims, which are right up there alongside visitations from the afterlife as viable scientific hypotheses.
Nobel laureates aren't what they used to be it seems.
Reader Comments (71)
"There is substantial evidence that wind turbines cause water stress and risk water contamination and soil contamination, earth tremors - and are a threat to human, wildlife, bird, fish and livestock health".
"There is substantial evidence that solar farms cause water stress and risk water contamination and soil contamination, earth tremors - and are a threat to human, wildlife, bird, fish and livestock health".
Fixed it for them.
What the wider public doesn't realise is that there is no requirement for a Nobel Prize recipient to be intelligent, brilliant, or even hard working. Luck is good enough, hence the bitterness directed towards some recipients by some commentators.
The prize is supposedly awarded to recognise science/discoveries that are of benefit to the human race. Now I also happen to think that while Buckminsterfullerene is a fascinating molecule, I just can't think of any commercial products containing it or products derived from it.
Maybe it's all the make-believe Nobel Laureates that are having a baleful effect.
Another Nobel Laureate following in the footsteps of that ever great Nobel Laureate: Al Gore.
They never were what they used to be.
Is that list available as text rather than an image?
I do wonder if all the individuals listed have specifically signed up / approved copy - to be included in this tweet or have simply turned up for a photo-op at one of Viv's soirees...
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Are ClimateRevolution simply co-opting a bunch of names to lend a veneer of "legitimacy" to
theirher claims? - A quick look aroundtheirher web shite ... (or should that be been immersed in Viv Westwood's bizarre witterings?) suggests that the lady has quite an idiosyncratic view of the world.Climate Revolution is weird - and I suspect is taking some liberties with 'sleb endorsement - after all, Uncle Tom Cobley isn't in there.
Bish - I think it's not unreasonable to call it "Viv Westwood's Climate Revolution" Next week- "Ballet and climate change".
Yes but Sir Harry Kroto is only a chemist, so his view of the shale discussion is not of much interest.
There is no evidence that fracking causes water contamination but those individuals who drill for water in shale areas risk methane contamination.
Earth tremors - we have had Earth tremors for a long time before the current shale scare stories.
Hydraulic fracking is not new and has been used commercially since the early 1950's. The Scottish shale oil industry has a very long history.
http://www.scottishshale.co.uk/index.html
Isn't Climate Revolution Vivienne Westwoods baby?
Richard Betts had a guest post there just recently.
http://climaterevolution.co.uk/wp/2014/05/27/climate-science-knowns-unknowns-and-attitudes-to-risk/
Jeremy Leggett is, of course, a totally independent non biased voice in all of this.............................
Having made his money from selling solar panels - I suspect the thought of cheaper energy that does not require a huge tax payer funded FIT to make it work DOES fill him with concern.
http://www.solarcentury.com/uk/business/
And he sees the sales of his product as some kind of "Civil War" !!
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/rob-hopkins/2013-11/jeremy-leggett-make-no-mistake-energy-civil-war
tomo
'Ballet and climate change' - I think that's a degree course at UEA.
Just to illustrate Phillip's point (Jun 2, 2014 at 11:49 AM)
In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale.
Michael Hart: "Now I also happen to think that while Buckminsterfullerene is a fascinating molecule, I just can't think of any commercial products containing it or products derived from it"
To be fair, Michael, I can remember how years ago on Tomorrow's World, Raymond Baxter showing how red balloons wouldn't pop when a (new-fangled) laser beam was fired at it, but white ones would. He admitted that there was no known commercial use for lasers.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
There is indeed substantial evidence that fracking causes water stress and risks water contamination ... ...
But it's mostly papers and articles by the anti-fracking people.
the fact that high achiever obummer and Al "I invented the internet" Gore are amongst the nobel piss prize winners, tells us enough about how far the nobel committees are infiltrated by self agrandizing self interested red ticks
Vacuous celebrities will keep making their moronic pronouncements for as long as there are sufficient idiots prepared to hang on their every word.
That list of names is well worth a read, if only for the guffaw-guffaw moment it delivers. I mean, would you really put your trust in the likes of Tracey Emin and Georgia-May Jagger? Of course, all the usual useful idiots are there - the McCartneys, Michael Mansfield and his mate Bob Marshall-Andrews and - God preserve us - Yoko OH No!!!
And of course, Dana is there, of course.
Messenger
Combined Honours BSc ballet, (panto)mime and creative writing..
What do the Kardashians think of climate change? I think we should be told. A celebrity speaks...
Harry Passfield
yeah... a roll call of conceited wantwits - I still wonder if they've all specifically subscribed to inclusion in the tweet and uncritically subscribe to everything Viv's got them signed up to.
I was on the fence until I saw the signatures of Paul (I just planted some seeds a fan sent me) McCartney and Russell (Lethario with a free pass from the left) Brand.
Is there nothing junky celebrities don't know?
the only water contamination I'm aware of is all the anti-fracking idiots pissing in the wind
TDK
When you spend most of your life with your head so far up your own backside that you can almost see your own brain your view of the world tends to be (how shall I put this?) limited.
If at the same time your intellect occupies only a small part of your brain then you tend to think that what you see is all there is.
So the answer to your question is:
Yes. Or from another perspective, no.
;-)
I find it amazing — though at my age I shouldn't any longer — just how mendacious some people can be when they see their own interests threatened.
Then I looked at some of the names and apart from the presence of the likes of Mansfield and Marshall-Andrews (which saddens me somewhat) everyone else is oh so boringly predictable.
This time next year it will be: "Anti-fracking, my dear? Oh no! So 2014, don't you know!"
@Barry Woods
Richard Betts
Could this be construed as Betts using taxpayer funded work time to work on AR5? FOIA?
I don't think they know what fracking is:
Average time to build a fracking well - 5 weeks;
Drilling rig is taken away and the site is the size of an average garage;
Fracking takes place 1+ miles below the surface;
Average time to frack a borehole - 1 hour;
Time said borehole will provide gas/oil 10 - 40 years;
There are 1 million fracking wells in the USA, and 100,000 in Canada;
The only known instances of water pollution are spillages from the containers at the well head when the water is recovered. In the UK the regulations insist that these containers are metal to avoid the spillages;
The first fracking well was installed in the USA in 1949.
What's not to like?
It is just a simple parasite strategem anyway, there is no intellectual backup, and there is none needed.
It is industrial spin off of our chossologee/ecologee/humanitee university departments, backed up by taxoverpaid blackmailing public meejah:
Be "against" it,whatever "it" is, then claim seats and presidings in various controlling / certifying institutes, slap each other's back being "the good guys", do the interview and female talk shows circuit, generally live the good life off it.
Plenty of industries that are taxed if not completely suffocated by this thieving business
Harry Passfield,
Nobel prizes are supposed to be awarded for things that HAVE benefited humans, not what the committee thinks WILL benefit us. Partly for these reasons, it is usually awarded after a long delay. This also means that some worthy recipients don't get the prize because they die first, and the rules specify living recipients. (I don't consider myself heavily biased against Fullerenes: formally I am a carbon chemist by training and history).
Mangochutney
Whether an academic or Met Office person is working on AR5 whilst being paid out of the public purse, is a very grey area. I doubt we would ever get to the truth as the institutions would simply use obscurification (as they have been doing).
It is appalling that public funded people are not made to be more transparent. I bet they are just terrified of the public finding out how useless they are.
Surprised to see Monbiot and Jeremy Leggett cuddling up. Didn't they have a bet about the useful/less-ness of solar panels, which Monbiot should certainly have won?
A Nobel Prize in Chemistry Scientist from UC Berkeley gave a lecture in my home town at the local science museum about three years ago. He was older, an emeritus professor and not currently very active.
He made global warming (it was still global warming back in those long ago days) the hilight of his otherwise interesting lecture.
He asserted that storm intensity and frequency has gone up in recent years. He used slides to illustrate this. Slides that have been specifically shown to be incorrect and misleading. It turns out that there is a group hiring Nobel Prize winners, typically older ones of emeritus status, to give these sorts of talks. The climate obsessed, as we see time and time again are not constrained by conscience or truth in their promotion of the climate obsessed agenda.
I wonder how much that lot have contributed to the cocaine contamination of drinking water?
I am sure some of you must of heard of the "dihydrogen monoxide" joke. Where celebrities & politicians all signed up to have it banned. More of the same here, except that this is not a joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax
Just remembered this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/08/cop16-attendees-fall-for-the-old-dihydrogen-monoxide-petition-as-well-as-signing-up-to-cripple-the-u-s-economy/
Last night I watched a repeat episode of the Mentalist (an hour-long drama serial made in Hollywood). The plot concerned a anti-fracking demonstrator found dead in a waste-water well and although the culprit was not the fracking company, they still arrested the CEO for bribing local residents not to report the contamination from the fracking wells. They even included a shot of a flaming water stream from a kitchen tap (faucet).
Now, you might say this is just another Hollywood drama, but the completely accepting way that this was presented - with no question at all over the fracking "damage" - has a profound impact on people watching these programs. This is the kind of propaganda that works and takes in everyone who doesn't know the real story. I am tempted to suggest there may have been middle-eastern oil money involved in developing the script, only that was a sting operation so really, this was just activist Hollywood script-writer getting their rocks off.
From Richard Betts' climaterevolution article:
"While the warming at the Earth’s surface has been slower in recent years, this appears to be largely a temporary natural offset of the long-term warming trend."
I'm not aware of any evidence of the second part of that statement. Can anyone provide such evidence?
"There is substantial evidence that fracking causes water stress and risks water contamination and soil contamination, earth tremors - and is a threat to human, wildlife, bird, fish and livestock health."
And just what is this "substantial evidence"?
Buckminsterfullerene (C60) has a massive carbon footprint. Ban it.
[Snip - raise the tone please]
Good point, mikky.
Since I have already suggested on Unthreaded that the good Dr Betts might like to condemn his employer for the unwarranted scare story they spread round the gullible media last night (in the light of his pious comments about trying to get people not to over-hype the "science") perhaps we can look forward to an explanation of that particular gem that you quote!
Breathe deep and hold it!
I think it comes from so-called "radiative forcing" calculations, which show that the Earth ia absorbing more energy from the Sun than the energy it loses by radiation. Hence "the missing heat" ie the Earth is still getting warmer even though temperature measurements do not show it.
It is confirmed by GCM models.
So far as I know, the radiative forcing calculations have not been verified by actual measurement of incoming and outgoing radiation. According to a paper by James Hansen, the difference between the two from satellite measurements is too great to be plausible so results from models are used.
Gordon Bennett, what a mob! And trying to read that letter and the signatories has wrecked my failing eyesight. Noel Fielding, Jude Law, Sadie Frost, Paloma Faith, Helene Bonham-Carter, Bianca Jagger, Peter Tatchall, Frankie Boyle, Sir Anthony Gormley - well-known and knowledgable scientists all - along with those others already mentioned.
A few vested interests too. Dale Vince, that well-known wind turbine advocate. Tridios Bank - always looking for ventures to back in the 'green' energy field. River Cottage - slightly more removed but Hugh's sister is a well-known greenie activist and advocate of lovely turbines here in Wiltshire.
Helena B-C and Tracey Emin - well-known wearers of Viv's creations - do they get to wear them to events for free and this the quid pro quo? Just wonderin'.
What a joke. I'm sure Frankie Boyle could come up with a few pc lines. I'm surprised Mark Steel isn't there, or perhaps I wasn't squinting hard enough.
If you search for Viv's images, there is a classic photo of the old gal in a Climate Revolution t-shirt, a pair of shorts with her tights over the top, a black moustache and a black ring round one eye.
Makes you wonder whether everyone else who signed that letter is equally not of this world, to put it mildly.
Had a flyer pushed through my Salford letterbox from this crew http://www.talkfracking.org/
looking at the website it is not apparent at first look that it is anti fracking. Don't think I'll bother to attend the Manchester debate, it will be too depressing.
I'd disagree with that - some produce for less than ten years.
Wake me up when we see a plot where a driller has been attacked by an anti-fracking activist and is treated sympathetically.
Really, this is emblematic of the whole anti-fracking nonsense - almost entirely based on fictional claims.
We live in an age when allegations are accorded more respect than facts. It didn't take long to revert to this appalling state..
Martin A
You have to love the self-confidence, don't you. Not to mention the hubris."Reality is an illusion. I have a bridge I think you will like and a Nigerian cousin keen to give you some money. Honest!"
Perhaps MydogSpartAlec has been right all along. Has it not occurred to anyone that if the reality is "not plausible" then maybe the initial assumptions were wrong? No?
Since the only energy input to the earth's system is the sun is it possible for a given unit of energy which has heated the surface then to be radiated and heat the atmosphere and then to be re-radiated and heat the surface again? Surely once that photon(?) has done its worst it can do no more?
(I'm a layman, you understand. I get these - to me - apparently logical ideas now and again. Occasionally someone explains why I am talking rubbish. More often they just ignore me!)
Oh the irony: "...earth tremors..." "...bird...health..." "this technology will not bring down fuel bills..."
Vivienne has a photo of some countryside on her blog. Nice view, Viv. Not a wind farm in sight.
I wonder if Helena Bonham-Carter would prefer a room with a view of white satanic mills?
Forgive me for my ignorance, but who the hell is Sir Harry Kroto?
Perhaps MydogSpartAlec has been right all along. Has it not occurred to anyone that if the reality is "not plausible" then maybe the initial assumptions were wrong? No?
(...)
Jun 2, 2014 at 6:33 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson
MJ - to be fair to James Hansen, the difference between incoming and outgoing according to satellites is too *great* to be plausible, hence the need to use models to calculate what the difference might actually be.
Whenever I have suggested that the "pause" in global warming might be Nature's way of saying that perhaps the whole concept of "radiative forcing" is erroneous or - at very best - based on invalid approximations, the response has generally been along the lines: "Climate scientists who have spend their lives studying the subject must know what they are talking about".
("Radiative forcing" is climate science's dodgy method for calculating the effect of CO2 - it is dependent on models that cannot be verified by physical measurement.)
_______________________________________________________________
"Since the only energy input to the earth's system is the sun is it possible for a given unit of energy which has heated the surface then to be radiated and heat the atmosphere and then to be re-radiated and heat the surface again? Surely once that photon(?) has done its worst it can do no more? "
All the heating is done by the incoming radiation from the sun. Back radiation exists but, if you work out in detail what happens, it does not heat anything. The temperature of the Earth rises, heated by the incoming radiation from the sun, until the outgoing energy, taking back radiation into account, and the incoming energy are in balance. Any further discussion on this side topic should be on a Discussion thread, not here.
Martin A
Don't worry! If I planned to pursue this topic further I would keep well away from the main board!
But you must agree that where we have a 15-year pause and the best excuse they can find is "the sea ate my warming" and "models are more accurate than observations" it might just be time to ask if they've got the physics wrong to start with. MDSAlec has been banging this drum for long enough and nobody has yet actually pointed out where he is wrong — at least not that I have yet noticed.
hunter: It turns out that there is a group hiring Nobel Prize winners, typically older ones of emeritus status, to give these sorts of talks.
Didn't work on you. According to surveys, people are seeing through the hype and probably the more so the more exposed to it.
He is a Chemist who jointly received the Nobel Prize for the discoverery of Buckminsterfullerene, a form of pure carbon that had not been [knowingly] observed before. As the wikipedia entry notes, it does in fact occur naturally in small amounts in carbon soot.That's why I made some comments about it up-thread.
Martin A (Jun 2, 2014 at 7:37 PM), how relevant is this?...
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979214500957