THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS
At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.
This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
Welcome to Harmless Sky, and happy blogging.
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10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”
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Brute,
“…..so much for higher education.”
That is your opinion of education is it?
You might want to read up on the events leading up to WW2 in Europe. There wasn’t much support for ‘free wheeling capitalism’ at the time. The world was still stuck in the depression or maybe it was just coming out of it. The Nazi Party in Germany deliberately used the word “Socialist’ in their title to attract working class support but they weren’t of the left either as the term was understood at the time or as it is understood now. True , the German government were interventionist in the market and took direct control of many industries and banks. But if these are valid criteria, then we would have to conclude, from recent events, that George Bush is of the political left too.
The Spanish Civil War was indicative of who stood on the left and who stood on the right at the time. General Franco, very much like General Pinochet 37 years later in Chile, staged a military insurrection against a democratically elected government in 1936. He was strongly supported by Hitler and Mussolini. The term ‘fascist’ comes from Italy, that’s what Mussolini and his supporters openly called themselves.
Incidentally the origin of the ‘Goose Step’ predates all this. It was used by the Prussian military at least as early as the nineteenth century.
George Orwell is mainly remembered for his last two novels Animal Farm and ‘1984’. But I would suggest to really appreciate what he was saying in them, you really need to go back to some of his earlier writings. He actually fought in the Spanish Civil War in the Trotskyist militia the P.O.U.M. He explains, very much better than I ever could, just what was the difference between the two competing ideologies of the time, in his book “Homage to Catalonia”.
Brute,
I’ve just looked at your 1723 posting. Max is quite wrong to suggest that there will be any disagreement from James Hansen, or anyone else, on this sort of approach. It is likely that ‘bio-engineering’ will be highly important for energy production in future. There are other developments to be made, of course. The plug-in hybrid has got to be the car of the future.
You guys only have a difficulty with CO2 and climate change because, at least so far, you haven’t been able to see beyond the problem to the solution.
[Apologies upfront, Tony and Robin for one “last” OT post regarding our previous discussion on intl debt and the current financial crisis]
Peter (and anyone else interested),
This Wall Street Journal article lays out in great (and sometimes complex) detail the proposed bailout plan for the US financial system. It looks like significant profits can be gained, and hopefully applied to debt rather than new spending proposals. If Obama wins, and the Dem’s win greater majorities in Congress, they’ll spend the money rather than pay down debt.
My post above (1728) should be written by “JZ Smith” not “JZ Snith”. Sorry.
Hi Peter,
You opined about Hansen’s stand on bio-fuels: “Max is quite wrong to suggest that there will be any disagreement from James Hansen, or anyone else, on this sort of approach. It is likely that ‘bio-engineering’ will be highly important for energy production in future.”
Great! So Hansen is ready to drop all his lobbying efforts for a “carbon tax”, now that we obviously do not need it, since we have a solution in hand to averting the otherwise inevitable “tipping point” that would lead to the destruction of our planet?
This would be great news, Peter, but I sort of doubt that it is true.
Not only will “’bio-engineering’ be highly important for energy production in future”, but so will many of the other proposals out there. And the great thing is that none of the proposals require Hansen’s proposed “carbon tax”.
I like positive solutions (such as bio-fuels) to real problems (such as limited energy resources).
But I believe, based on the track record, that Hansen (and Gore) prefer expensive non-solutions (“mitigation”, i.e. carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes) to a non-problem (potentially disastrous AGW).
But let’s see if you are right and if Hansen says we no longer need a “carbon tax”, since we have a solution to our problem without it.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Back to your OT post citing Orwell. Yes, there were many idealists who fought against Franco, some of whom had communist leanings, others had separatist Catalonian leanings and some had more democratic leanings.
But for a better comparison of Hitler/Stalin and their ideologies, I’d suggest the book I cited earlier, ritten by an Oxford historian. It does point out many similarities in both the two men and their ideologies.
The whole “left/right” discussion apparently started with the seating of the French Assembly after the Revolution, but as some have pointed out, it is really more comparable to a circle. As you go further to the left and to the right, the two eventually come back together again in a totalitarian political philosophy that is hard to distinguish between the two, as was the case between the political philosophies and the regimes of Hilter in Nazi Germany and Stalin in the old Soviet Union.
But they were both lucky (to get this back on topic).
The “rampant warming” of the 1930s and early 1940s (caused, as we now know, by human CO2 emissions) stopped suddenly (caused, as we now know, by human aerosol emissions), and there was cooling throughout Europe much to the relief of everyone, especially the German troops at Stalingrad in 1943.
Regards,
Max
Holidays are over, and it’s probably time to drift back towards the subject matter of this blog: climate, the countryside and landscapes. Here is a possible way to make the transition gradual.
Recently there seems to have been a lot of discussion on this thread (mainly OT as Robin said) about the two main competing political ideologies of the mid-twentieth century; the German Nazi movement and soviet communism. A characteristic that they had in common was the use of nonsensical slogans in their dogma. On the one hand you have National Socialism and on the other the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The national socialists were in fact fascists, the antithesis of socialism, and there can be no such thing as a dictatorship of the proletariat as dictatorship has nothing to do with rule by the masses or working-class.
In the twenty-first century, the new kid on the block is environmentalism, and it is possible to argue that this movement is already developing some characteristics in common with its totalitarian predecessors. One of these is the use of a meaningless term as the foundation of its ideology: the environment.
There is no such thing as ‘the environment’ – discuss!
Oh! And there is a post-holiday post here.
Max,
If bio-engineering schemes along the lines of the one in Brute’s video clip are so successful what does it matter if James Hansen succeeds or fails with his call for a carbon tax? The process is carbon neutral so there will be no tax to be paid anyway.
If funds are raised from carbon taxes, how about suggesting that they should be earmarked for right-wing causes such as fighting foreign wars or bailing out rich capitalists when their enterprises collapse? Would that be a reasonable compromise?
Tony,
I don’t accept that a discussion of politics is OT. It seems to me that there is good scientific evidence that there is a strong causal link between what I’ve termed ‘scepticitis’, at least as far as climate change is concerned, and and an over fondness for free-wheeling ( laissez-faire) capitalism and the sort of right wing politics which supports the concept.
You are right there can “dictatorship [in the sense that most people now understand the term] has nothing to do with rule by the masses or working-class.” When Marx used the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ he wasn’t advocating authoritarian rule by a single individual along the lines of a Stalin or a Mao. He meant that the working class would become the dominant class rather than a subservient class.
Sorry, the last paragraph should read:
You are right “dictatorship[in ……
Tony,
It strikes me that you aren’t too keen on wind turbines. They spoil the landscape and have a detrimental effect on the countryside. Right? I’m not disagreeing, but isn’t campaigning against it just another form of left-wing environmentalism?
If we apply the laws of the ‘free market’ in their most liberal sense, what does or does not get built on a plot of land, with maybe just a few provisos for noise and chemical emissions etc, should be entirely determined by its owner. Any interference could be described as a form of ‘socialism’.
Peter
That’s three comments in a row avoiding the subject that I invited discussion on.
Try again?
A quickie quiz for Peter (if Tony allows it)…
I am under 45 years old,
I love the outdoors,
I hunt,
I am a Republican reformer,
I have taken on the Republican establishment.
I have several children,
I am the Vice Presidental nominee,
With less than two years in the Governor’s office.
Who am I?
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Theodore Roosevelt, who was elected William McKinley’s VP in 1900 and became US President on September 14, 1901, when McKinley was assassinated. TR would go on to become one of the greatest US Presidents (see “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” and “Theodore Rex” by Edmund Morris).
Getting back to environmental topics, Roosevelt was the first American president to consider the long-term needs for efficient conservation of national resources. During his presidency, he set aside 785,000 square kilometers for national parks and nature preserves.
Thought you might be interested…
Regards,
Max
Tony,
I don’t have much time now but if you answer my 1735 I’ll add some more thoughts this evening.
Pete,
I don’t have a problem with your religious beliefs at all. And I don’t have a problem with this guy making fuel from algae as long as he does it with his own money. If he’s successful, he’ll be a very wealthy man. God bless him.
By the way; I attended a “Green Energy and Technology” Conference today. You’d have been proud of me.
(The fact is that I was somewhat compelled to attend to maintain accreditation for various licenses I posses).
As I fell asleep……I mean, as I was rapt with eager anticipation at the ground breaking innovations that I expected to be unveiled, I couldn’t help but come to the realization that the entire event was a money generating farce.
Everyone was there; all the big players, all SELLING their crap. Everything from light bulbs to megawatts of energy…….consulting services, green roofs, green cleaning products wrapped up in pure, old fashioned, downright dirty, unadulterated American commercialism.
Capping the day were the “industry experts” conducting “round table discussions” of impending doom, (it looked like the Mike Douglas show), and hawking their wares and the various reasons as to why it was “imperative” that we “do something” (buy their load of shit, sorry Tony).
I looked around the room and made special note of the filet mignon and how beautiful it was. The high intensity, (conventional) lighting and the massive amount of energy that was being consumed to condition the various conference centers.
At the end of the day I carried armloads of brochures and “important” (paper) documents all extolling the virtues of “conservation” and saving the planet.
Going up to the mountains to commune with nature….maybe go meditate in a cave or shoot a moose or something. Seen you Monday.
Postscript: We are packing very warm clothes…..cold weather has arrived quite early this season.
Hi Tony,
Yes, Tony, I would agree with your assessment that “the new kid on the block is environmentalism, and it is possible to argue that this movement is already developing some characteristics in common with its totalitarian predecessors”.
A recent paper by Richard Lindzen alludes to the shift away from the scientific method in “climate science” to using “science” in order to sell a particular ideology. There were examples of this in the 20th century dictatorships of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Another similarity is the effective silencing of dissenting voices through the use of censorship.
The “party line” becomes the “moral high ground” and anyone who dares disagree with it is not “politically correct” or even accused of representing some sinister “anti-environmental” lobby group or conspiracy.
The mere fact that the AGW movement lives on (almost) as strongly as ever, despite a cooling period over the past eight years, shows that it has gained momentum of its own, which no longer has anything to do with real global warming. It is more than just the prevalent paradigm. It has become an “ideology” with a political agenda and a huge annual budget. The “science” used to support it is “agenda driven pseudo-science” (just as questionable as the “Aryan-race pseudo-science” used by the Nazis).
Now, fortunately the AGW movement in our democratic society does not have the power to unilaterally silence dissenters by “kangaroo-court” trials, execution or imprisonment, even though there have been calls to do so by some of the more fervent supporters. It can only attempt to do so by withholding grant funding, blocking publishing of papers, ridiculing and isolating “non-believers” as “deniers”, “flat-earthers”, or “industry stooges”.
But despite these limitations, it is still a disturbing development in our society that smacks a bit of the old totalitarian censorship of dissent.
I am an optimist. I believe that, as long as there are democratic governments that ensure the freedom of speech and of the press and courageous individuals who are unafraid to voice their skepticism, the voice of reason cannot be silenced.
And, in the long run, if our planet stops warming, as it appears to be doing, people all over the world will realize this and will be able to quietly lay the AGW movement to rest despite all the funding and ballyhoo it has enjoyed so far.
Will this happen in 2010? Will it happen in 2020? Nobody knows when, but this collapse will happen as surely as the collapse of the 20th century totalitarian ideologies and regimes.
Regards,
Max
Max,
If you were even slightly acquainted with the writings of George Orwell you would not mistake a comparison of Hitler/Stalin and their ideologies for a comparison between fascism and socialism.
I’ll give you a little taste of Orwell: “Meanwhile the war against Franco continues, but, except for the poor devils in the front-line trenches, nobody in Government Spain thinks of it as the real war. The real struggle is between revolution and counter-revolution; between the workers who are vainly trying to hold on to a little of what they won in 1936, and the Liberal-Communist bloc who are so successfully taking it away from them. It is unfortunate that so few people in England have yet caught up with the fact that Communism is now a counter-revolutionary force; that Communists everywhere are in alliance with bourgeois reformism and using the whole of their powerful machinery to crush or discredit any party that shows signs of revolutionary tendencies. Hence the grotesque spectacle of Communists assailed as wicked ‘Reds’ by right-wing intellectuals who are in essential agreement with them.”
Yes, this is the same guy who wrote “Animal Farm” which is so beloved by the political right.
The US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (COIAC) provides data about global carbon emissions here. (Data are from 2005 and emissions presented in thousand metric tons of carbon.) There’s a great deal of interesting material on this site. For example, US per capita emissions were 5.32 and Chinese were 1.16. In contrast, total US emissions were 1.57 bn and total Chinese emissions 1.51 bn. (Note: since 2005, China has overtaken the US). So, if Chinese and US per capita emissions are to be equalised (as the Chinese – not unreasonably – are said to think is necessary) either the US will have to accept massive cuts in living standards or Chinese CO2 emissions will have to grow yet further. Of course it’s the latter that’s happening: Chinese coal production and use has doubled since 1990 and their emissions have grown 66.2% since 2000. India, Brazil etc. are following a similar course. There’s no sign of a slowdown, let alone a reversal of this trend – see this report. A quotation:
As I keep saying, anyone who believes that mankind’s CO2 emissions will be radically reduced by 2020, 2050 or whenever is living in dreamland.
Re: 1735, Peter
I’m afraid that I just don’t happen to see the world in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’, so your comment is lost on me. But I am interested in finding out what an environmentalist’s definition of ‘the environment’ is because, so far as I am aware, there is no such thing.
Hi Peter,
You wrote, “If you were even slightly acquainted with the writings of George Orwell you would not mistake a comparison of Hitler/Stalin and their ideologies for a comparison between fascism and socialism.”
Yep. I’ve read some Orwell (“Animal Farm” and “1984”). Good literary stuff.
But if I want to read a historical treatise on the two 20th-century dictators, Hitler and Stalin, and on their political ideologies, I’ll stick with a serious historian, such as Allan Bullock of Oxford, rather than the literary giant, George Orwell.
Orwell was an interesting character. He was always writing against totalitarianism (as long as this was fascism). As you mentioned, he was a member of the “Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification” in Spain. He was deeply disillusioned by the Stalin-Hitler Pact, and in later writings seemed to write against post-war communism, as he had earlier against fascism.
But, as I say, a serious historical treatise, which is more objective and less impassioned, is likely to give a more balanced and accurate picture.
Regards,
Max
Peter, your 1741:
Fascism and socialism are first cousins. Fascism is a system wherein all means of production are state-controlled, but can be owned by private citizens, who operate these enterprises under tight state control. Socialism is nearly the same, except that the state both controls and owns all means of production. The only difference is ownership, and if the state has complete control, then ownership is really irrelevant.
Here’s more.
Tony,
I guess I should just direct you to the dictionary definition of environmentalism:
1. Advocacy for or work toward protecting the natural environment from destruction or pollution.
2. The theory that environment rather than heredity is the primary influence on intellectual growth and cultural development.
I guess that the one that you might be referring to, even though you think it doesn’t exist, is the first one. It is interesting that you can’t see how your campaigning against wind turbines isn’t a form of environmentalism.
I would agree too that there is too much emphasis on terms such as left and right. Maybe I’m guilty of that at times too. I would say that the concept of democracy is more important and my definition of ‘left’ is to extend the concept from what we have now. Just putting a cross against a cadidate’s name every four years is nowhere near enough.
JZ Smith,
I wouldn’t disagree with you when you say that the important question is who controls big organisations: industries, banks, railways, ports etc rather than who owns them. I’d agree too, that Fascism and Communism (The USSR and Chinese varities) can end up looking pretty similar if there is no democracy at work to ‘keep the bastards honest’ as we say in Australia.
In addition to the normal parliamentary process I’d like to see an extension of industrial democracy too. The executives and directors of big companies should be responsible to not just their shareholders, or the government, if they own the organisation. The workforce, and customers, should have a say too.
Max,
There are lots of ‘serious historians’ who would support and agree with George Orwell. Christopher Hill maybe? History is like economics, is like food, you just choose a flavour which you find palatable.
Max,
You were saying some nice things about the Hadley Centre recently and Margaret Thatchers’ decision tp set it up.
You might find this interesting:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/warming_goes_on.pdf
“Anyone who thinks that global warming has stopped has their head in the sand”
Hi Tony,
To your question about the meaning (or misuse) of the word “environment”.
The German word for this is “Umwelt” (literally “the world around us”). This is a fairly neutral-sounding concept.
Unfortunately many (in Germany as well as elsewhere) are using the term “environment” in a quasi-religious sense, as embodied by “Mother Nature” (or the “Earth-Goddess”), in a morality story where evil (industrialized) man is invoking certain self-destruction by ravishing the pristine environment (or, more extremely, raping Mother Nature) out of self-interest and greed.
This story has all the aspects of sin and punishment of earlier fables such as the “Great Flood”, as chronicled by the ancient Sumerians (and later the Jews in the Bible). Oracles and prophets warned that “next time the destruction will be by fire”.
A more recent story of guilt and retribution by climate disaster can be found in the chronicles of alpine gold/silver mines that were covered up by advancing glaciers at the end of the Medieval Warm Period. As the glaciers are receding today to the levels approaching their extent during the warmer MWP, the evidence of these mines is now gradually becoming exposed.
The ancient Jews used these “anthropogenic climate disasters” as a way of controlling their people out of fear of Jehovah, just as the Christian Church used the advancing glaciers to control the people out of the fear of the wrath of God.
Today’s “prophets” are the politicians, who use their “oracles” (computer models fed by “climatologists”) to spread the fear by prophesying floods, inundations from the seas, droughts, extreme water shortages, storms, heat waves, pestilence from vector borne diseases, etc. UNLESS we repent now and “mitigate”. (“Mitigate” = agree to pay draconian carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes that will make some already rich people wealthier at the expense of everyone else and give bureaucrats and politician obscene amounts of taxpayer money to shuffle around at will).
Just another scam, in my opinion.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Your Met Office blurb was nothing more than a self-congratulatory press release trying to mask the FACT (as demonstrated by the Met Office’s own thermometers) that global warming has indeed ended (in 1998 or 2001, however you want to measure this).
I’m sure we will see more of these PR releases as the temperatures keep falling.
Sorry, Peter. Nice try.
Regards,
Max
Hi JZSmith,
Your analysis (1745) is that under communism the state owns all factories. The communist propaganda goes even a step further in saying that they belong to “the workers”.
When visiting a Ford assembly plant in Michigan and seeing the parking lot full of automobiles, Nikita Khrushchev is supposed to have asked, “To whom do all these automobiles belong?” When told that they belonged to the workers at the plant, he is supposed to have said, “Funny, in our country the factory belongs to the workers, but the automobiles on the parking lot belong to the management; in your country it is just the opposite.”
(Don’t know if that is a true quotation or not, but it fits.)
Regards,
Max