Bishop Hill Rusbridger asks my question
Apr 16, 2015 Climate: WG3 Ethics In Nature, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger is calling on scientists to put pressure on organisations like the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation to divest from fossil fuels. Now I'm not sure about the idea of scientists taking up the activist cudgels in this way, but I'm certainly interested in the views of climate scientists on the moral dilemmas involved. A month or so ago I asked climate scientists a very similar question on Twitter.
Climate scientist followers: what is your response to people who seek to deny third world access to fossil fuels because of AGW?
— Bishop Hill (@aDissentient) March 15, 2015
My question had been prompted by a tweet by Gavin Schmidt, who had been taking Matt Ridley to task for even suggesting that there might be a trade-off:
Conflating climate change concerns w/a disregard for African children dying from smoke inhalation by @mattwridley is totally abhorrent.
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) March 14, 2015
Unfortunately, nobody seemed to want to respond to my question, and Doug McNeall said that this was my own fault:
@aDissentient *sigh* nobody engages with you because your attempt to frame this is so transparently cynical. @ClimateOfGavin
— Doug McNeall (@dougmcneall) March 16, 2015
I don't see this myself. The policymakers who had to consider the question of investment in fossil-fuels in the Third World had a simple choice to make: do it, or don't do it. To ask people which way they would have chosen is hardly unfair.
Nor is it unfair to note that the policymakers in question said "no" and that their choice has had consequences: no decrease in deaths from woodsmoke in the present day but, if the climate and economic models are to be believed, then a saving of lives and costs in the future.
These are the choices that society has to make, and Alan Rusbridger is asking scientists to stand up and make the same decision. For sure, he makes no mention of the trade-offs involved, so I'm sure I will be commended by all involved for making this clarification.
I wonder what reaction he will get?
Reader Comments (142)
It amazes me with all the Diversity, Eocological Awareness Training Help courses available, no one has set up a proper Green Restaurant.
It would be cheap to set up, and a real money spinner.
Build a tent or shack, using recycled corrugated iron and plastic carrier bags.
No need for mains water, heating, lighting, electricity ventilation,, drainage, or basic food hygiene.
All vegetarian menu, food cooked over animal dung fires.
Even non smokers will be able to enjoy smokers coughs and more serious lung diseases/disorders. Avoidable treatable infections can be experienced, first hand, and shared with others, after every water wasting non flush.
The London Borough of Islington would be ideal, with such an enthusiastic potential local clientele, and their Enironmental Health officers could be asked to develop a blind eye, especially if they worked or dined there regularly.
If rushed through Planning, with appropriate peer approvals, it could demonstrate its success, and the concept taken to Paris, so that world leaders in climate psyeance could contact the dead, and ask them for their views on poverty, and do other useful stuff.
Obviously Real Climate Scientists, will make accusations of conflating real deaths and diseases, with those predicted by computer models.
Slightly off-topic but it may be worth noting that the Green Party manifesto has the following statement (1st bullet on p.13):
"Global temperatures are due to rise between 1.5 and 4.8 degrees C by 2100. And that's just the internationally agreed range without feedback effects. Many experts are predicting rises as high as 6 degrees C"
This does make me question their basic understanding of the science, since I thought something above ~1C was only possible via the 'enhanced greenhouse effect' (i.e. with feedbacks)... or maybe they're assuming wort-case emmission scenarios?
Gavin Schmidt makes the mistake of thinking that he understands society's interactions with the environment, and that the consequences of climate change for society can be read off from climate science. I discuss has naturalistic error at length on my blog here.
Schmidt and McNeall find the question offensive because they don't like the consequences of their own arguments. But the problem for them is that the broader green movement is in general sceptical of growth as such, and that encompasses development. I say 'sceptical' of growth, but large parts of the green movement are actively hostile to growth, industrial society, and democracy. Scientists have shown themselves not to be all that good at understanding the difference between scientific and moral and political claims sufficiently to know what kind of ideas they are reproducing at any time.
To some green eyes, this reads as growth fetish -- that we would put mere profit before our chances of surviving Thermageddon. In this, they miss the point that producing surplus value is a necessary condition of developing past subsistence economics, and of building protection from the elements. Others of the green bent believe that growth is still possible within carbon limits. Others say that there's nothing wrong with subsistence. Even Oxfam -- a one-time development and aid agency -- posits the virtues of "traditional" (i.e. feudal, subsistence) lifestyles as an adaptive measure against climate change. The notion of development has been largely removed from the development agenda, displaced by climate change, and aspirations for the developing world lowered.
For us that means more expensive energy. But for other, less developed economies, there is concomitantly less resistance to green intervention. Whereas the the vision for Africa shared by many in the past was essentially industrial, the agenda pushed for from the West is regressive, with frankly bull**it claims that green technology -- which is failing even in the richest parts of Europe -- can simply leapfrog past the infrastructure that industrialised Europe, America, China. Aid, and even 'Fair Trade' comes with green strings: no GM, no fertiliser, no herbicides or insecticides for you, nor even any machines -- they are 'unsustainable'.
The simplest numerical-moral demonstration of all this is the body count. The WHO estimated that 150,000 people die in the developing world every year because of climate change. Later estimates in 2008 claimed that 300,000 people died from the same diseases: malaria, diarrhoea and malnutrition, as a consequence of climate change, and that this figure would rise to 500,000 a year by 2035. Unfortunately for those organisations, the same datasets have shown that 10,000 fewer infants die every single day today since 1990, and the rates of malaria have fallen dramatically. They have fallen because of economic development, in spite of the best efforts of the green movement. That is to say that, even if the WHO and GHF's figures were true, the costs of climate change caused by business as usual -- i.e. growth -- would be offset by its benefits within 15 days on the WHO's figure, and within one month on the GHF's.
Ken Rice and his ilk need to remember ... And Then There's Politics. For all the physics in the world, it is not an instruction on how to organise society. Yet that is what their argument, from the authority of physics, appears to be. If Ken rice doesn't like the political or moral implications of his own argument, he should stick to the physics, and not wade into arguments about development, and he should advise Schmidt to do the same.
ATTP's rant seems to me to be deflection. I can understand what I think is his point about the BH's phrasing of the question, which is that to accuse those of choosing Climate Change remediation policies is to conclude that such people don't care about the Third World or African cooking fires. Such a choice does not imply necessarily that they don't care, they may care deeply. I understand why that statement <I>taken at face value</I> can be construed as offensive.
However, such outrage at the question is, to me, a clear means of deflection. Using the words "don't care" allows faux outrage (should that be "confected outrage"?) and thus allows the Climate Change supporters to avoid answering the underlying question.
The fundamental underlying question still remains unanswered by ATTP, Schmidt etc. Choosing Climate Change mitigation policies that result in Third World and African countries having little or no development, no electricity and cooking on indoor fires results in a large number of deaths that could have been avoided had that policy not been followed.
So, ATTP, are you happy that choosing climate change mitigation policies is the right decision even though it will result in a large number of avoidable deaths and a lower standard of living perpetuated over a long period of time for some of the poorest people in deprived countries? Are you prepared to say that choosing climate change mitigation policies as opposed to rapid (and humane) development in the third World is a net benefit to mankind and will result in fewer deaths over perhaps 50 years?
Because as far as I can see, poor people in the Third World ARE ACTUALLY DYING NOW FROM SOMETHING WE COULD PREVENT if we were not following these climate policies and yet I can see no evidence that anyone has died from putative AGW.
I know where my conscience leads me. Tomorrow's children will be much richer than me, much better off, enjoy a higher standard of living that we can only dream of. Helping people now to a better future is far more humane than pretending that future generations of unborn children need people's lives to be sacrificed now on the altar of climate science.
aTTP and Gavin and McNeall all seem blissfully unaware that it is US and World Bank and EU policy to no longer support the building of fossil fuel power plants in the 3rd world--because of climate change. So, the Bishop's question is not theoretical, nor is it about what people "want"--after everyone wants lots of impossible things. It is about choices that when made have other consequences than just the ones you want. This is always true about public policy choices--side effects and collateral damage always occur. It is just whether you admit them or not.
If Oppenheimer did indeed not say what was attributed then I had better apologise and remove that quote from my database. (I can find plenty of similar ones from similar sources!)
I think it might be fair to suggest that what he did say is not a vast improvement and I suspect that Beck simply put his own, not altogether erroneous, spin on a philosophy which if put into practice as described would have a very similar effect.
As for the rest, Ben Pile has said all I would be inclined to say on the subject. And better. As usual.
Next!
Thinking Scientist raises an interesting point... " I understand why that statement taken at face value can be construed as offensive."
But having possible consequences of one's argument pointed out should prompt reflection and further debate, not outrage.
My experience of arguing with environmentalists is that their arguments are not abstract. Or if they are abstract, they are personally, emotionally invested in those arguments. Being 'passionate' about saving the planet invariably means internalising environmental ideology, to put its claims beyond the reach of reason.
It should be incumbent on Shmidt, McNeall, Rice, to explain how their ideas are compatible with development. But outrage is the easier rejoinder: there's something wrong with pointing out that the green argument doesn't seem to have much regard for human life.
It's as if no notable environmentalists -- scientists amongst them -- ever said that humans are like a plague. It's as if no prize-winning FRS ever said that "giving people cheap energy was like giving an idiot child a machine gun". It is as if no environmental thinker ever said that famine in Africa was a price worth paying for environmental protection. I wonder where Schmidt, McNEall and Rice's complains about Lovelock, Ehrlich and Hardin's moral calculations are published. Perhaps they were too busy scouring Bishop Hill for things to be offended about to bother looking at what green thinkers and scientists were saying.
Thinking Scientist
I don't see how one can read in that I am insinuating that they don't care. I am saying that because they weigh lives in the present equally to those in the distant future (i.e. they don't discount) they are choosing the lesser of two evils. If you accept their discounting scheme then this is the least bad (and therefore most moral) thing to do.
'Hey, instead of demonising us be grateful we've drawn up schemes to save the world from something that could be potentially dangerous 150 years into the future'
What about the actual harm that would result as soon as these schemes are implemented?
'Oh, we'll deal with them when we get there'
!
Andrew - I don't see how one can read in that I am insinuating that they don't care.
I don't mind saying that they don't care.
Hence we see humans compared to viruses, plagues, rats by environmentalists, or even placed beneath them. Hence environmentalists campaign for fewer humans.
Environmentalism places humans beneath a mystical ideal of nature in its cosmology. It denies human agency and exceptionalism in (what passes for) its metaphysics and moral thinking. And it subordinates human interests in its politics. It is anti-human, root to branch.
I don't keep a tally of how many times I've been accused of 'arrogance' for suggesting that humans are morally unique and categorically apart from the rest of nature, by virtue of their faculties, and that this changes the stakes of any discussion of environmental degradation. But it's a lot. And those aren't merely arguments with green loons. The argument doesn't improve as one moves up the food chain to environmentalism's most celebrated thinkers.
They can claim that they care. But this superficial humanism only 'cares' for humans in the sense of caring for a pet to be fed, watered, neutered, kept in a clean cage -- not as moral agent, with his own life, his own interests and as an end in himself. I call it 'metabolic humanism', because it only conceives of humans as eating, defecating, and reproducing (to the limits allowed), not of human life being of greater value than the sum of its metabolic function.
Perhaps some green activists value poor African lives more highly than they value the lives of future generations. If they think that more lives can be saved in the long run, a few present lives being lost could result in many future lives saved and be a net good thing.
So you could divest from fossil fuels while valuing the lives of the poor more than even the lives of your own children. You'd be a good person, doing everything for the right reason and saving more lives than if you had allowed fossil fuels in Africa.
If doesn't make anyone a bad person to accept that in the short run, extra lives will be lost in the developing world. In the long term, more lives will be saved there.
Years ago I told my friend Peter Bocking that I hoped all this madness would end in laughter and ridicule and many years ago he told me that too many people had died already.
====================
ATTP thinks that climate scientists and other commentators (eg himself) are not part of the final decision process and thus share no responsibility for the outcome. Now I'd agree with that if all they told was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if they do not present all the information or if their conclusions are based on selected parts of the information or if they add their opinion, then they are part of the decision process. They are seeking to influence the decision makers and are, in part, responsible for the things done in the name of climate change. They can't shrug off the consequences of the final decisions, even if they didn't choose what is ultimately done.
For instance, someone who writes a paper on malaria should conclude that while AGW might affect it, there are more significant factors which should be the priority for those wishing to eradicate it. But what has happened, is some researchers have been tempted to raise the profile of their research and gain grant money by emphasising the climate factor. This then becomes another item on the 'we must deal with AGW' scale and it shouldn't be.
A doctor who warns about the number of increased UK deaths from heat is negligent if they don't balance those numbers with the reduced deaths from cold.
Climate science is riddled with partial truths. Mistakes are slow to be rectified and not well advertised. Parts of it has engaged in speculation and fear mongering. It is therefore part of the decision process. While there are probably individual scientists who just act as scientists, many are consciously skewing the debate. They may be right to do so, but they are responsible for any side effects that ensue, even if they haven't thought about them.
BH: The wording in your tweet is:
I think the issue is that that wording implies a conscious, deliberant decision to impoverish the third world, not that it is a side effect of (to the AGW supporter) an even more important decision concerning the welfare of everything.
My criticism of your wording is that it allows ATTP, Schmidt etc to portray outrage at the form of the question, and thereby they avoid answering the criticism that it is a direct consequence of climate policy to condemn the third world to a worse fate than otherwise. To me its far better to reform the question to one they can't wriggle away from answering by some "confected outrage".
The outrage is the deflection, the straw man. Re-phrasing the question stops them getting away from not answering the question. ATTP, Schmidt etc aren't stupid: they know full well what the point is, but they are doing a "Nick Stokes" and arguing something irrelevant in order to try and pretend otherwise.
Radical Rodent (Apr 16, 2015 at 2:52 PM), indirect solutions like education (teach a man to fish, etc.) are certainly preferable in the long-term but are unlikely to provide a fix in the short-term. I prefer to see this as humanitarian aid, rather than being patronising.
Ben, BH and others. I personally agree that environmentalists seem to view first world, western humankind (ie their own) as some kind of vile aberration. They demonstrate hypocrisy of the first order. I find many environmentalists to pretty repulsive and inhumane in how they view the world and the people living on it.
But in order to change the opinions of the public, letting Schmidt (or ATTP, or whoever) wriggle off the hook by not admitting the full consequences of their preferred actions, will not lift the burden of AGW policy from killing people. Schmidt, ATTP and many others who support these policies would like to pretend that they are not responsible, they only advised. They are as culpable and wicked as the blind politicians who followed this advice. But only by exposing this to the general public in a reasoned argument will the tide turn, in my view.
ATTP destroys every blog with his inane comments. May I suggest you ignore him.
thinkingscientist
"My criticism of your wording is that it allows ATTP, Schmidt etc to portray outrage at the form of the question, and thereby they avoid answering the criticism that it is a direct consequence of climate policy to condemn the third world to a worse fate than otherwise. To me its far better to reform the question to one they can't wriggle away from answering by some confected outrage".
What makes you think that framing the question in a different way would get a different response. The problem is you are assuming that lots of these people are acting in good faith, they aren't. Its quite simple to the greenest of lefties, the evil white oil-burning west needs to come crashing down. Thats the underlying aim. The environment just another convenient tool to use in their ultimate aims. Does it really matter if its all true or not? Not really, what matters is those evil corporate types are taken off their pedestal.
The biggest problem with all these talkers is when it comes to their own lives they act with complete self-interest with zero regard to any knock on effects. As soon as they are off the pulpit they are just another gas-guzzling human partaking in economic activity. International oil guzzling conferences, big time CEO's banging on about all this while swanning around the globe in their private jets. If any of these people made a real effort to show me that not only do they believe all these things they also will change their own behaviour to fit with those beliefs my scepticism would be eased. My impression is that their public utterances and their private decision making are not only at odds with each other, but that they consider them to be literally different worlds. Theres no crossover. What they do in their private lives is irrelevant.
Hence the hilarious Guardian banging on about climate change and the abuses of capitailsm while themselves being just another corporate entity doing whatever it can (within the law) to be successful. The likes of Tim Cook banging on about evil whitey not loving the gay marriage while happily doing business with countries that unashamedly execute homosexuals. These people are liars, thats what they are. Stop pretending this is about truth, if it was really about truth nobody would ever be so convinced about anything.
As we can see by the back and forth - the real underlying problem here is the 'Post Normal Science' and its associated flawed reasoning along the lines of:
"we don't know that there really is a hazard, but what we are doing to address the risk of the hazard is accepted to be a good thing to do anyway."
Now by your question you have pulled the rug out from under them. Their statement now becomes:
"we don't know that there really is a hazard, but what we are doing to address the possible risk of the hazard is already demonstrably causing loss of life."
The entire post-normal reasoning has been destroyed. They will not welcome this as their assumption was that everything that they were doing was good. Suddenly, the proponents of the reduction of 'fossil fuel' use find it difficult to look in the mirror. And they hate you for it.
The Hockey Team have used all manner of means to defend their beliefs, against criticism, and now scream Faux Outrage as it keeps going wrong, just as aTTP did to Richard Tol (or something similar)
With declining scientific credibility, global warming does depend increasingly on belief, without proof. Will they now be seeking protection under European Human Rights Legislation, about discriminating against those with Religious beliefs?
Jay Will:
Firstly, you may not get a response at all, but careful framing of a question to which the likes of Schmidt, aTTP etc are non-responsive can make the non-response as significant as answering the question. The question should be posed so as an undecided third party can see your point, whether the other party replies or not. Faux outrage gets them off the hook.
Secondly, ascribing motives to people you have never met, and without evidence, is always problematic. Steve McIntyre is someone who avoids that as much as possible and I think that he is right to do so. However, I, along with many others, are guilty from time to time of ascribing motive. I admit its not helpful though and tends to polarise the argument and demonise others when if you actually met them down the pub you could have a decent argument and still quite like them (maybe).
The problem is, when the argument extends from academic posturing to concrete action, as we have been discussing, and the consequences are that some people will die through deliberate actions taken by others, then the supporters of that policy have to accept the consequence of their position on their conscience.
On the subject of religious beliefs and global warming, the Hockey Team are proud to have a Papal endorsement.
Real Climate scientists were going to have a chat with the Pope, about the Precautionary Principle, birth control and population growth, but decided to withdraw at the last moment.
Oh, I went out for the afternoon with the kids. You weren't trying to actually have a serious discussion were you? That would be a first, if so. I haven't had a chance to read the other comments since my last, but I assume they're as appalling as usual. I'll try and go through them later when I get a chance.
the kids ?
this is like the scene in Jurassic park where they find the nest with the broken egg shells
'omg. they're breeding'
Paul Matthews,
Yes, that was rather my point. Noone that I'm aware of is seeking to deny the third world access to fossil fuels, certainly no climate scientists and certainly not me. But if you can infer something like that from what others are saying, then why can't I do the same? Get it now? No, of course you don't, That would require actually thinking for a moment.
Yes, I'm sure you have but you are rather juvenile and immature, as I'm sure I've pointed out before.
Ken Rice -- Noone that I'm aware of is seeking to deny the third world access to fossil fuels
-----
World Bank to limit financing of coal-fired plants
(Reuters) - The World Bank's board on Tuesday agreed to a new energy strategy that will limit financing of coal-fired power plants to "rare circumstances," as the Washington-based global development powerhouse seeks to address the impact of climate change. -- http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/16/us-worldbank-climate-coal-idUKBRE96F19U20130716
ATTP, have you ever heard the expression 'guns don't kill people, people kill people'. Annoying isn't it? Saying that proponents of climate change aren't responsible for what happens to try and reduce CO2 is a similar argument. Of course we could accept your reasoning, in which case sceptics have no responsibility if decision makers listen to us either. So which is it?
aTTP, really good to hear that you had the opportunity to spend leisure time with your kids.
One of the luxuries of the developed world.
Ben,
I wondered if someone would post that. Did you read it carefully. Limit the financing of coal-fired power plants. How is that seeking to deny the third world access to fossil fuels? I've no doubt you'll find some way to argue that they're consistent, but that doesn't mean that they are.
The article also says
Tiny,
Who are the proponents of climate change?
Ken Rice - How is that seeking to deny the third world access to fossil fuels?
If I say you can only have 1% of what you want, in what way am I not denying you 99%?
I really think the level of the argument has to raise above 'did you read carefully'.
Ben,
How is that a response to my question? Care to try again, or do you want me to explain it to you?
Ken might want to take a closer look at what senior past & present UN climate bureaucrats are arguing about today.
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/04/11/former-un-climate-chief-yvo-de-boer-defends-coal-finance/
Yvo de Boer: ' “a proper price on carbon” was a better way of tackling climate change than “declaring war” on a particular technology or fuel' ... 'Coal will be a “necessary part of the energy mix for decades to come,” de Boer said on the sidelines of a sustainable cities conference in Seoul.'
[...]
The remarks put de Boer, who headed the UN climate body at the 2009 Copenhagen summit, at odds with his successor Christiana Figueres.
When Associated Press revealed in December Japan was using “climate finance” to fund a coal plant in Indonesia, Figueres expressed concern.
“There is no argument for that,” she told the news agency. “Unabated coal has no room in the future energy system.”
Ben,
Again, how is any of that evidence that there are those who are seeking to deny the third world access to fossil fuels. Any lights coming on yet?
Ken - How is that a response to my question
I sense that that would be the answer given to anything put to you. So much for that 'serious discussion' you were waiting for.
If you don't think that global institutions and senior UN figures have indicated as has been suggested -- coal power is being denied to the developing world -- then we should re-visit Marie A. Cake is a 'feasible alternative', after all.
ATTP, ignorance of the current trend in thinking in development and aid makes for a poor excuse. I've read the World Bank report. They are quite explicit in not supporting financing of coal plants. That alone should be enough, instead of climate consensusists fighting rearguard actions implying the World Bank would do otherwise.
India have either just or are about to declare Greenpeace a terrorist organisation for their behaviour on this matter and their campaigning (much of it dishonest, but then what's new there?) to prevent coal-fired power stations in Africa is a matter of record. The fact that you choose to ignore these inconvenient facts doesn't make them any less true.
And always the rationale is the same: preventing catastrophic global warming and "Saving The Planet".
And while you can add "... certainly no climate scientists and certainly not me" I can say that I haven't heard any climate scientists and certainly not you condemning their actions.
I'll let you off the hook because you're just a camp follower who probably doesn't fully understand but Schmidt and MacNeall are (allegedly) climate scientists so their silence in the face of Greenpeace's actions makes them complicit.
Not difficult to disown the actions of extremists ... unless of course you agree with them.
Greenpeace campaigns to prevent access to fossil fuels to third-world countries. How do you feel about that? Simple question. Stop wriggling.
Mike,
Well, that's complete and utter bullshit. I had thought slightly better of you, TBH. Any chance you could acknowledge that coal is not the only fossil fuel.
If Ken had read on...
"U.S. President Barack Obama in June said the United States would stop investing in coal projects overseas, part of a broad package of climate measures, and called on multilateral banks to do the same."
Oh, no, wait, I get it now...
Because instructing banks not to finance development projects isn't precisely the same thing as denying coal to the developing world... And because refusing to invest in coal-fired projects isn't *exactly* the same thing as literally stopping coal getting into the hands of people who might need it, absolutely nobody is denying coal to anybody.
Relax, everyone, it doesn't matter what Obama, Figueres, and the World Bank are doing, they have almost no power to stop people with very little money raising it out of thin air, and using it to buy coal-fired generating capacity.
ATTP "Who are the proponents of climate change?"
Apparently they're people who'd rather play games than deal with real issues.
Gas is cake to the bread of coal, ATTP.
Have you not encountered poverty or hardship at all in your lifetime? I can't imagine that you would be so unfamiliar.
Ben,
No, you don't, but that's no great surprise. You keep trying, though, maybe you'll get it one day.
Shub,
Also, failing to understand the point, but also no great surprise. You also keep trying, though.
And then there's physics ...
"Bishop,
Do you seriously not get the problem with how you framed your question? It's not even all that complicated. You've essentially interpreted a concern about the risks associated with AGW, with people seeking to deny the thrid world access to fossil fuels"
No, it is the people who seek to deny the third world access to fossil fuels because they see risks in fossil fuels that do so. The Bishop is only asking them to make the moral case for so denying.
"Well, in fact, I'd be surprised if you don't which actually reflects more negatively on you than if you were just too stupid to understand why people object to the way in which you've framed your question."
So given that you are actually the one who has failed to understand, are you too stupid to do so or immoral?
I have noted recently how often I have had to ask lefties whether they are ignorant, unintelligent or dishonest because these are the only reasonable interpretations of their comments. Which are you?
Shub,
I doubt if Ken Rice has ever really encountered poverty or hardship at all in his lifetime, let alone personally suffered their effects. He lives in the cossetted world of academe, they are just things that happen to others.
I do hope the BH site is not going to become the place where warmists come to die, but several of them have appeared here of late frothing at the mouth, wailing and ranting incoherently.
If people here do not realise that many of the comments are broadly proving my point, you need to think a bit harder. I'll refrain from explaining it again as I'm confident that people here can work it out for themselves. I'm less confident that they'll acknowledge it, though.
Andrew's question is not about the phrasing but that it was asked at all. You don't ask impertinent questions when you are on a crusade lobbing bombs at the heathens to teach them democracy - are you with us or against us, there can be no other way! Of course they can criticise you as you are not worthy to question their aims, but if you *dare* question their inane and dangerous theories you automatically offend them (anything can offend them it depends on the time of asking and how offended they feel - sometimes it can take a little time to work up their outrage but like a deluge after drought it will come). What else do you expect when the world revolves around them? You see they have no concept of other people or their feelings so asking about others and how they may feel is just not the point (from what I gather African countries are not 'on board' with a load of middle class white supremacists 'carbon feel good' plans - but hey why ask them? Why would Ade choking matter when it's climate change's/capitalism's/the patriarchy's fault anyway?). Hence no outrage about Africans continuing to die from burning cr*p, the outrage is that you ignored the feelings of a narcissist and their divine mission. Their offence is all encompassing, anyone else is an inconvenience to be wiped off their shoe - even when they tread on you.
"If you are looking for equal treatment, acknowledgement, recognition, or significance in his or her eyes, you might be well advised to simply move on. Chances are very good that you will invest excessive amounts of energy, time, and perhaps money, in striving to get what you want. In reality, the possibility that you will succeed is minimal."
http://www.psytalk.info/articles/narcissist.html
No no, you cannot acuse Ken of denying fossil fuels to the third world.
Because there are more fossil fuels than just coal. Nudge nudge wink wink. You said "fossil".
He only said "coal". Ha!!
/sarc
There are 'people here', ... and then there's ATTP.