The Evolution of Everything

For reading matter on my half-term trip away, I took Matt Ridley's latest book The Evolution of Everything. At nearly 400 pages long it's not a short book, but it turned out to be not nearly long enough to keep me occupied and by the middle of the week I had finished it.

There's only one word to describe it: subversive.

It's subversive of pretty much everything - religion, politics, technology, statism, central banking, education, culture. You name it and it's subverted by the book's central hypothesis. This is the idea that while we seek proximal, top-down explanations for change, in truth bottom-up forces are more powerful, more sustained, and more often than not are the true causes.

So on the subject of societal change we read:

In society, people are the victims and even the immediate agents of change, but more often than not the causes are elsewhere – they are emergent, collective, inexorable forces.

One example is that of the general who leads his army to victory, with no credit given to the malaria that killed off the opposing army. Politicians and activists obsess over aid payments and plans for poor countries, while the people there quietly evolve their way to a better life.

The hard of understanding are struggling with this. There was a typically execrable review in the Guardian which asked "What about the exercise of power?", an argument that almost completely missed the point made in the quote above (which appears on page 5 of the book, leaving one with the impression that the Guardian's reviewer didn't get further than the blurb).

Similarly, science-y people on Twitter have been vehemently arguing that Ridley is wrong to suggest that government can't make technological breakthroughs, which is a futile point to make since Ridley argues no such thing. His case is, as throughout the book, that evolutionary progress is much more important than big breakthroughs and that top-down, planned approaches have less impact than unplanned tinkering.

So with this book, Ridley sets the philosophical cat well and truly among the pigeons, and those who make their living in the world of top-down plans are up in arms.

You can see why I call it subversive. Read on.

COP this

Updated on Oct 26, 2015 by Bishop Hill

I was reading Donna Laframboise the other day on the expected arrival of 40,000 delegates to the COP 21 conference to be held at the incongruously chosen  venue of the  private jet airport of le Bourget. I remembered seeing a breakdown of the horrendous costs of the Copenhagen conference and  I idly wondered what the estimated costs are to be this time. Private finance has been sought apparently but there doesn't seem to much on offer anyway. What investors might  expect to get out of it, I have no idea. Surely COP doesn't make a profit to be distributed to investors? Or does it?

But French taxpayers will be delighted to know the following:

Click to read more ...

Walport’s gloom

I think this article covers all the gloom and doom that can be rustled up on this topic, as yet another alarmist article leads us in to COP21.  

Any bets as to what the next article will be on - dying polar bears, melting Himalayan glaciers (or maybe melting polar bears and dying Himalayan glaciers), Maldives’ cabinet meeting under water again, shortage of water, shortage of heat (or increase in water and too much heat), increase in malaria,  increase in wars,  increase in immigration, reduction in size of … oh there’s lots to come.

Act now -the end may be nigh, but not of this nonsense unfortunately. TM

Saturday singalong

http://m4gw.com/videos/1404-where-have-all-the-eagles-gone

H/T Ross

More heat than light

Does the sun shine all night in Australia?  Are the new batteries a breakthrough? Over to you.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11945075/Half-of-Australian-homes-to-adopt-solar-power-and-move-off-grid-from-2018.html

Jennifer Marohasy tells it like it is

In an almost unprecedented meeting at the Australian Parliament on Monday,  well-respected   researcher and author Dr Jennifer Marohasy was invited, along with climate sceptic Bob Carter, to debate with three alarmist scientists. She was particularly emphasising the differences found between real world data and computer modelling and the need to disclose which was which.

Click to read more ...

A load of gobbledegook?

Splendid little item on Inside Science last night on BBC Radio 4 9.21pm or so which made me laugh, in which Adam Rutherford interviewed Ralf Barkemeyer, Associate Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility at the Kedge Business School. Being interested in the interface between science and policy, he has made an analysis of the ”linguistic readability” of the IPPC summaries, which are, of course, intended for policy makers. He was looking at such things as the length of words and sentences used and the overall comprehensibility expressed as a percentage, for a non-specialist reader.

In comparison, the linguistic readability of a theoretical physics paper was 30-35% for a layman to read, while the IPPC summaries received the very low score of 20% comprehensibility.

Is anyone surprised, and is it deliberate obfuscation or just a badly thought out mess?  TM

Heaven and Hell

A new book by Professor Ian Plimer is published today.

HEAVEN AND HELL: THE POPE CONDEMNS THE POOR TO ETERNAL POVERTY (Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd)

Summary: The recent papal Encyclical was on climate and the environment.  This book criticises the Encyclical and shows that we have never lived in better times, that cheap fossil fuel energy has and is continuing to bring hundreds of millions of people from peasant poverty to the middle class and that the alleged dangerous global warming is a myth.  

Click to read more ...

US & Them - Josh 348

 

Business Standard reports that the US are stalling on the $100 Billion Climate Finance:

The US also asked that the economic reality at present should be taken into consideration, while asking countries to contribute to the climate funds.

H/t The GWPF 

Cartoons by Josh

More hot water

https://mygardenpond.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/soviet-era-cartoon/

In case you missed it- posted as a comment by Ruth Dixon

Non sequitur

A free map containing the most detailed publicly available information on global wind energy potential has been launched this week…

…Lars Christian Lilleholt, Danish minister for energy, utilities and climate, said the new tool will help the wind energy sector to expand by curbing risks and costs for developers around the world.

"The release of the Global Wind Atlas demonstrates the support of the international community to expand global renewable energy to address global climate change, increase electricity access and stimulate economic development," he said in a statement.

 Spot the non sequitur.

Climate Neutral

The UN climate people have got their tentacles everywhere.

 Bonn, 20 October 2015 - The Brazilian Embassy in London hosted a special event today to mark the launch of Climate Neutral Now, the UN-led initiative for increased voluntary climate action, which took place during New York Climate Week in September.

The London event discussed how individuals, companies and governments can contribute to a climate-neutral future by measuring their carbon footprints, reducing emissions where possible, and offsetting the rest with UN-certified emission reductions (CERs), while at the same time investing in sustainable development projects in developing countries. Keynote speakers included representatives from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Brazilian government and the private sector.

Participants at the event heard inspiring examples, such as the successful experiences of the Brazilian government in using CERs to offset carbon emissions from major events. A short film commissioned by the UN climate change secretariat on offsetting the 2014 World Cup’s carbon footprint was also screened. See below.

Click to read more ...

Getting into hot water

As part of their aim to become “carbon neutral”  or something equally daft, the University of St Andrews is planning to close the road to Dundee and to the station at Leuchars for several months in the New Year, requiring diversions of at least three extra miles, while they run a water pipe under the road from their new biomass plant four miles away from St Andrews. They intend to generate hot water which will be piped the four miles to heat university buildings and residences in town. The whole "green energy plant"  is projected to cost £25 million pounds, £10 million from taxpayer via the Scottish government. 

Can anyone give some informed opinion on whether this is possible while retaining enough of the heat to make it worthwhile? Presumably Icelandic district heating systems do something like this but what are the insulating materials used?  Geothermal heat will make the whole process cheaper in Iceland than biomass (“fuel sourced from a radius of 50 miles” -until the trees run out) to be used here, as the Icelanders won't have to generate the heat in the first place. My initial thoughts were that the whole University idea is crackpot, but maybe  I am  wrong? TM

Update on Oct 22, 2015 by Bishop Hill

A shorter closure but further to drive than I had thought.

Residents and workers in North East Fife are being advised to expect travel disruption during early Spring 2016, when major pipe-laying works get underway on the main A919 Guardbridge to St Andrews road.

Fife Council will close the road, from 15 February 2016 to 8 April 2016, to allow 4 miles of water-pipe to be laid, connecting Guardbridge’s new £25 million Green Energy Centre with St Andrews, and providing the essential infrastructure for ongoing inward investment into Fife, job creation, and renewable energy production.

...diversions will be in place through Balmullo, adding an extra 7.5 miles to journeys north of St Andrews and south of St Michaels.

Update on Oct 22, 2015 by Bishop Hill

I am sure that there was talk of importing fuel from North America for the Glenrothes plant- it may be the 10% virgin wood they are talking about here.

The [Glenrothes} project was financed, in part, with an £8.1m Regional Selective Assistance grant from the Scottish Government and Forestry Commission Scotland has also helped underpin the investment with a long term contract for timber supply to the plant, providing 750,000 tonnes of timber over the next ten years.

The plant is fuelled by  a mixture of 90 per cent recovered wood waste – primarily from the construction industry – which otherwise would end up in landfill sites, and ten per cent virgin wood sourced from a variety of sites across the UK.

When fully operational, the CHP will burn 400,000 tonnes of wood of both types in a fluidized bed boiler and flue gas system – that’s an estimated 67 wagon loads, (1500 tonnes per day) of waste wood supplied from storage plants, the nearest being Cardenden

 RWE [npower] said the new contract would see Malcolm Logistics transport around a third of the overall fuel needed for the site by road from two local ports and RWE’s recently opened off-site processing facility at Cardenden..

"Peak heat", peak nonsense

Belatedly, a link from 6 October to John Gummer haranguing the Australians on their global warming policies, if you can bring yourself to watch and listen to it. Too many clichés to mention, from human caused floods in South Carolina to Australians  having to think of their children and grandchildren....... Very feeble interviewer, no challenges and no attribution of the backgrounds of the people asking questions. TM

[Typos corrected. TM]

Literary bits and pieces

A couple of snippets on the subject of The Hockey Stick Illusion.

Firstly I am told by my publisher that they have sold the Japanese rights to the book. This is the first foreign language edition and it's surprising to see it coming after such a long time.

Meanwhile the book got a mention in the New York Times last week.