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,
Thanks for the link showing Mark Lynas’s conversion to the pro-nuclear cause. He’s not the first environmentalist, however you choose to interpret the word, and he certainly won’t be the last to accept that nuclear power is the least dangerous of all power sources. He might want to hang on to his Green Party card. The time won’t be too far away when Green parties around the world accept the same arguments. There is really no alternative.
The problem for the nuclear power industry, in terms of general credibility, is that it was founded on lies. The whole reason for its existence was little or nothing to do with cheap power, but everything to with acquiring stocks of fissile material for nuclear weapons. That is why the Iranians are generally disbelieved now. They are just thought to be telling the same ‘porkies’ as were generally told in the west 50 or 60 years ago.
Of course those of us who, at the time, could see this had to take an anti-nuclear stand to get the message across. However , times change and we have to change with them.
Pete,
Great, we agree on something.
Tomorrow we’ll work on converting you and the Pieman to embracing coal fired power plants.
Tony,
I think that the word “environment” or “the environment” means many different things to many people; however, in general terms I believe that most people are referring to the oceans, land and atmosphere of planet Earth and the living things that inhabit it.
Frankly, I’m sick of hearing the word(s); they’ve been used to death……to the point, as you assert, that they have become meaningless. “Alternative”, “Sustainable” and many other words that presently escape me are currently used as chic, trendy buzzwords to foster the “green” mood and sell stuff. I actually heard the words “light harvesting” yesterday, (opening the window shades).
Many people have a vision of the “the environment” as a imaginary Garden of Eden where the birds and the bees all live in harmony and the lion lays down with the lamb……where people stand around and dream of wonderful things and blow kisses at each other…….moonlight and canoes……..
The fact is that the “environment” is a harsh place for both humans, plants and animals. Millions of species of plants, animals and hominids have become extinct due to “the environment” long before and long after humankind invented a coal fired plant or a nuclear reactor.
Thank God mankind discovered or “invented” fire to keep himself warm, protect himself from predators and eventually to power the engines of progress which has kept us from becoming extinct, (at least for the time being).
Australian Enthusiasm for Combating Global Warming Wanes
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/poll-finds-10-too-far-on-carbon-anxiety-20080928-4pp4.html
Yes AGW has dropped out of the news a bit recently so it’s down a few %, from 75% to 66% according to your link.
Aussies haven’t swallowed contrarian nonsense to anywhere near the same extent as you guys though. You really should read through your links before you post them up. It says:
” A Melbourne University AsiaLink poll earlier this month showed almost 60% of Australians ranked climate change as their main worry, compared with barely 20% of Indonesians.
While in the United States, a poll in March suggested almost 60% of Americans did not believe global warming would pose a serious threat to their way of life.”
The Age hasn’t fallen into the clutches of Rupert Murdoch and you normally get much better reporting than in ‘the Australian’ newspaper.
Hi Peter,
You asked whether scientific knowledge was one of the criteria used by the University of Illinois at Chicago for ranking US presidents.
It was probably not a key consideration, since Carter (like McCain) graduated from the US Naval Academy, plus had a degree in nuclear engineering and only came out #21, while Washington, who lived before much of today’s scientific knowledge had even been discovered came out #3.
Leadership, political judgment and the ability to get things done were probably higher on the list (and are also probably more important than scientific knowledge in a President).
As pointed out, experience at the time of election was not necessarily a key factor in the success of the individuals; one of the top ranked presidents (Teddy Roosevelt) only had two years as a governor and a few years working in the department of the Navy when he was elected VP (less than a year before becoming US President).
Three out of the four candidates today are lawyers by educational training; the fourth is a journalist. Who knows which ones will end up being president some day and how they will be ranked after they’re gone?
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Since you appear to have an interest in UK politics as well, below is the ranking of British Prime Ministers (top 10) according to the University of Leeds and Ipsos Mori survey:
1. Attlee
2. Churchill
3. Lloyd George
4. Thatcher
5. MacMillan
6. Blair
7. Asquith
8. Baldwin
9. Wilson
10. Salisbury
Looks like your favorite (the one who set up Hadley) came out #4.
Regards,
Max
Brute
I think that you are absolutely right and that ‘the environment’ does mean many different thing to many different people, and thats fine for the general public. What is worrying is that it is also used by scientists and policymakers. Surely it is rather important that they all know precisely what this term means, and that it always means the same thing, otherwise no one is going to be too sure what anyone else is talking about – or trying to save. And that has rather important implications for how they assess risks and formulate strategies for mitigation.
I still doubt whether the term ‘the enviroment’ can have any meaning, in a scientific context at least. Of course everything does have ‘an environment’, which is rather different in each instance, but that precludes the possibility of there being a single phenomenon which can be described as ‘the environment’.
Tony,
I agree. I enjoyed reading your post titled: “If I were a politician, I’d believe in global warming too!” The easiest way for a politician to endear himself to his/her constituents is to exclaim his commitment to “the environment”……specifics be damned. It’s almost the same as exclaiming that they support puppies. Yes, the phraseology has become meaningless, even in a scientific context.
This mock politician has a great definition of “the environment”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0LPUI0lfVw
Hi Peter,
You wisely wrote (1779), “Yes AGW has dropped out of the news a bit recently”.
This is absolutely correct and very easily explainable: it has stopped warming for the past 8 or 10 years, despite some Hadley guys sticking their heads in the sand by contradicting their own measurements. No warming = no need to fret (or even talk) about AGW.
Makes sense to me. How about you?
Regards,
Max
Hi TonyN,
You wrote, “I still doubt whether the term ‘the environment’ can have any meaning, in a scientific context at least. Of course everything does have ‘an environment’, which is rather different in each instance, but that precludes the possibility of there being a single phenomenon which can be described as ‘the environment’.”
I would agree that there can be no “global environment” in a scientific sense (just as there is no meaningful “globally averaged annual land and sea surface temperature”).
What is the “globally averaged mass of all animals living on Earth on September 30, 2008” (from amoebas to whales) and what does this mean? About as much as the “globally averaged annual temperature on September 30, 2008”. Nothing.
There are certainly a myriad of “environments”, each limited to one specific locality and one specific time period. Adak, Alaska at noon on December 22, 2007 has an “environment”, as does Piccadilly Circus in London at 2AM on April 15, 2008.
One might argue that a comparison of the “environment” of Adak, Alaska at noon on December 22, 2007 with that of previous years at the same time on the same date could give a picture of what is happening to the “environment” of Adak, Alaska.
The concept of a “global climate” (over a longer time frame) as a distinction from “local weather” (at a specific time) is another such meaningless generalization.
The newly proclaimed “science” of “anthropogenic climatology” likes to make this distinction, and uses it to show that no matter what really happens to the “weather” out there, the “climate” is moving into a specific direction because of certain anthropogenic factors, even when the “weather” is moving into another direction. The reaction of Hadley “scientists” to the cooling trend over the past 8 or 10 years is a shining example of this dichotomy.
Peter has a hard time understanding and realizing this, because he is firmly committed to the suggestion that (evil, profit-greedy, capitalistic, industrial) man is irreversibly changing the world “climate” for the worse by burning fossil fuels. No matter what the facts out there will show, he will stick to this belief, because he likes it, and his whole “Weltanschauung” (way of looking at the world) depends upon it.
But I would agree that you are right on the meaninglessness of the word “the environment”, in particular in the sense that it is being misused by AGW proponents.
Regards,
Max
The Nonsense of Global Warming
Paul Johnson 09.11.08, 6:00 PM ET
Forbes Magazine dated October 06, 2008
August was one of the nastiest months I can remember: torrential rain; a hailstorm or two; cold, bitter winds; and mists. But we are accustomed to such weather in England. Lord Byron used to say that an English summer begins on July 31 and ends on Aug. 1. He called 1816 “the year without a summer.” He spent it gazing across Lake Geneva, watching the storms, with 18-year-old Mary Shelley. The lightening flickering across the lake inspired her Frankenstein, the tale of the man-made monster galvanized into life by electricity.
This summer’s atrocious weather tempted me to tease a Green whom I know. “Well, what about your weather theory now?” (One of the characteristics of Greens is that they know no history.) He replied: “Yes, this weather is unprecedented. England has never had such an August before. It’s global warming, of course.” That’s the Greens’ stock response to anything weather-related. Too much sun? “Global warming.” Too little sun? “Global warming.” Drought? “Global warming.” Floods? “Global warming.” Freezing cold? “Global warming.”
I wish the great philosopher Sir Karl Popper were alive to denounce the unscientific nature of global warming. He was a student when Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was first published and then successfully tested. Einstein said that for his theory to be valid it would have to pass three tests. “If,” Einstein wrote to British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington, “it were proved that this effect does not exist in nature, then the whole theory would have to be abandoned.”
To Popper, this was a true scientific approach. “What impressed me most,” he wrote, “was Einstein’s own clear statement that he would regard his theory as untenable if it should fail in certain tests.” In contrast, Popper pointed out, there were pseudo-scientists, such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Marx claimed to be constructing a theory of scientific materialism based on scientific history and economic science. “Science” and “scientific” were words Marx used constantly. Far from formulating his theory with a high degree of scientific content and encouraging empirical testing and refutation, Marx made it vague and general. When evidence turned up that appeared to refute his theory, the theory was modified to accommodate the new evidence. It’s no wonder that when communist regimes applied Marxism it proved a costly failure.
Freud’s theories were also nonspecific, and he, too, was willing to adjust them to take in new science. We now know that many of Freud’s central ideas have no basis in biology. They were formulated before Mendel’s Laws were widely known and accepted and before the chromosomal theory of inheritance, the recognition of inborn metabolic errors, the existence of hormones and the mechanism of nervous impulse were known. As the scientist Sir Peter Medawar put it, Freud’s psychoanalysis is akin to mesmerism and phrenology; it contains isolated nuggets of truth, but the general theory as a whole is false.
The idea that human beings have changed and are changing the basic climate system of the Earth through their industrial activities and burning of fossil fuels–the essence of the Greens’ theory of global warming–has about as much basis in science as Marxism and Freudianism. Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.
Those who buy in to global warming wish to drastically curb human economic and industrial activities, regardless of the consequences for people, especially the poor. If the theory’s conclusions are accepted and agreed upon, the destructive results will be felt most severely in those states that adhere to the rule of law and will observe restrictions most faithfully. The global warming activists’ target is the U.S. If America is driven to accept crippling restraints on its economy it will rapidly become unable to shoulder its burdens as the world’s sole superpower and ultimate defender of human freedoms. We shall all suffer, however, as progress falters and then ceases and living standards decline.
Out of Balance
When I’m driving to my country home in Somerset, I pass two examples of the damage Greens can cause when their views are accepted and applied. Thanks to heavy government subsidies, many farmers switched from growing food to biofuel crops–perhaps the most expensive form of energy ever devised. The result has been a world shortage of food, with near starvation in some places, and a rise in the cost of food for everyone. We’re now getting wise to this ridiculous experiment; shares in biofuels have fallen, and farmers are switching back to their proper work. But the cost has been enormous.
The other thing I pass is a new windmill, spinning slowly around. Windmills were the great invention of the early Middle Ages–man harnessing nature and using it to replace muscle power. When I was a boy more than 70 years ago there were still a few windmills, but nobody doubted they were on their way out. The thought of going back to wind power would have seemed preposterous. Nevertheless, under pressure from Greens this has happened. Wind power is a grotesquely expensive and inefficient form of energy, and the new windmills are hideous things, ruining the landscape and making an infernal noise.
Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof–of which history offers so many examples–that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science. If people are in need of religion, why don’t they just turn to the genuine article?
Dump The ETS
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=356&Itemid=1
Emissions Impossible: Norway Taxes Carbon, Emissions Rise
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/09/30/emissions-impossible-norway-taxes-carbon-emissions-rise/
Brute,
Paul Johnson was once one of Margaret Thatcher’s scriptwriters. He may well have scripted some of her speeches in which she spelled out the dangers of global warming. So its Ok then, is it, to talk about global warming if the purpose is to undermine the case of a Trade Union who are on strike?
But when the strike is over the global warming problem just goes away?
Paul Johnson is a historian who knows nothing about science. But he should know something about Marx. He was supposedly a Marxist in his youth. Marx had a lot to say about capitalism , his main work was in fact called ‘Das Kapital’ but next to nothing about the way any alternative society should be run.
So I’m just wondering if you could tell me just what aspects of “applied Marxism” have proved to be a costly failure?
Incidentally, the way the western economies are looking at the moment, “applied Marxism” is currently looking to be not too far off the mark at all.
Pete,
For fear of drifting off topic again, I’ll keep my answer brief.
The Bolshevik Revolution and the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is one example of the failure of Marxism.
Mao’s China is another.
Castro’s Cuba is a third.
The Kibbutz system in Israel is a fourth.
Every society contains some aspects of Socialism, even the United States. Socialist programs introduced into the American system have been an abject failure. The primary reason that the U.S. economy is in the shape that it’s in today is Socialist programs implemented through legislation mandated by Congress. For example, The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in 1977 required lending institutions to provide lines of credit, (loans) to individuals with virtually no means of paying them back. Many borrowers applied for loans with no viable means of support, i.e. employment verification, down payment, asset verification. “Creativity” in the mortgage market led to the economic problems that we are facing today. People were living beyond their means; this attitude was mandated by Socialist politicians in the interest of “fairness” and “equality” and now responsible citizens are paying the price.
People will not and do not appreciate property that is “given” to them. In a nutshell, that is the cause of this failure.
Brute,
What you have said is a popular misconception. Marx died in London in 1883, having been born in Germany but he lived in England for most of life. He had no connection with Russia, China or Cuba.
His theory was that capitalism was a stage of human society which was brought about by a collision of classes. As the emergent capitalist class gained in power, there was a class between them and the old order leading ultimately to a revolution. The most obvious historical example was the French revolution, but Marxists would also cite the English civil war and the American War of Independence as other examples.
He predicted that in turn Capitalism would itself be swept away by the process of revolution. Marx thought that it would happen in the most developed countries first. Maybe he’ll prove to be right at some time in the future, but he hasn’t been right so far. The revolutions that occurred in Russia in 1917 and China in 1949, which were feudal societies rather than capitalist, weren’t really what Marx had in mind.
Maybe we’re arguing Collectivism then? My point is that redistributing wealth, (however it is characterized), doesn’t help the wealthy or the not so wealthy. It elicits indolence and resentment. Class warfare, rhetoric used extensively by politicians, has been around since the beginning of time and it is a sophistic principle. Giving people something for nothing will leave them ultimately dissatisfied, bitter and hopelessly destitute.
The very same people that are chronically indigent will be wealthy on payday, but will squander their wealth the day after payday.
I’ve written this before; if all of the wealth was confiscated from the wealthy and distributed to the not so wealthy, within a short period of time the poor would be poor again and the formally rich would be rich again. It has nothing to do with “oppression” or “breeding” or birth right; it has to do with incentive, initiative, morals, competition and common sense.
Please substitute “formally” with “formerly” in my last post…………
It’s not about giving people ‘something for nothing’. But you are closer to the mark with the point you make about collectivism. Some individuals are just not team players and don’t like it! The AGW issue clearly requires a more collectivist approach and you guys with your more individualistic culture have a real problem with that.
You seem to believe that there is a natural meritocracy in society. That there is a flat playing field, and the winners of the game are naturally the best players. If that is the case why do wealthy individuals spend so much on their children’s education? I would say that they know that those who are lucky enough to attend the right schools have so much better life chances. The same with health services. If the most naturally gifted of children is unlucky enough to be born to poor parents, in a country with poor health provisions for its population, just one very preventable infection can lead to very poor life chances indeed.
Of course you can find examples of those who have started off with little or nothing and have succeeded specularly. Or examples of those who have started off with all of life’s advantages and thrown it all away. But by and large they are the exceptions. There is a UK TV series which started off in the sixties with the title ‘7 Up’.
It looked at the lives of a group of seven year olds and then followed up every seven years after that. Its well worth a look.
{http:}//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Up!
remove {} in above link.
Yep, I certainly do. I’ve been around way to long and realize when I’m being taken advantage of and you’re wrong, it’s been a level playing field for a long, long time; at least in the United States.
If you’d like to join “the team” be my guest. I choose not to be a slave to anyone or any system. Whether you realize it or not, you are signing yourself over to indentured servitude.
Here you go Pete. I guess the Northwest Passage is open for business.
Northwest Passage II
TIME Magazine
When in the late spring of 1497, John Cabot, middle-aged Italian navigator, hired out to England’s Henry VII and sailed westward from Bristol, his destination was Asia, in particular Mecca, which he had already visited. On board the little three-masted Mathew were 18 men. Crammed under her planks were such trinkets, knives and cloths that “heathens and infidels” delight to trade for, and in the master’s cupboard the commission by which His Majesty agreed to take only 20% of the profits of the trip.
Seven and a half weeks later the land he saw was not Asia but what is now Canada, an impassable barrier of earth, mountain and forest. When his reports were compared with those of his contemporary, Columbus, invincible explorers of Portugal, Spain, France and Britain knew that one must sail beyond or around that barrier to get at the riches of the East. The four-century search for a northwest passage had begun.
Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, Baffin, Parry, Ross and Franklin, intrepid seamen and scientists whose names memorially dot the Arctic, were some among dozens who sought a key to the Northwest Passage to Asia across America’s ice-locked top. But not until 1906 did any man navigate completely across the Arctic. Roald Amundsen, Norway’s hero-explorer, in a three-year trip and with the loss of one of his seven men, traversed the first Northwest Passage*—Baffin Bay, Barrow Straight, along the west coast of North Somerset Island to Cambridge Bay and out to Beaufort Sea and the Pacific. Amundsen’s icebound trail, full of shallows, swirling currents and subject to sudden storms has since been followed by only three or four ships.
Search for a shorter, climatically more favorable route went on. Long pondered by explorers like Ross, Franklin and Amundsen were the possibilities of Bellot Strait, named in 1852 after its discoverer Joseph Rene Bellot, French naval lieutenant. This lies at the extreme northerly point of North America’s mainland, 2,000 miles directly above Minneapolis, and separates Boothia Peninsula from Somerset Island. (Barrow Strait, 150 miles further north, separates Somerset Island from Cornwallis Island.) Bellot Strait, situated on the 72nd parallel 400 miles inside the Arctic Circle, is also just 150 miles north of the North Magnetic Pole—so close that ships’ compasses are useless. Explorers have known that if it were used it would cut 100 mi. from the Baffin Bay-Barrow Strait passage, save 400 miles if the still untraversed Fury and Hecla Strait were navigable. In 1858, after his fifth attempt, Captain Leopold McClintock claimed that he “steamed through the clear water of Bellot Strait this morning and made fast to the ice across its western outlet.” Though many small trade-ships may have used its 30 tortuous miles in the past 80 years, on the record it has remained uncharted, impassable.
Last week this new, shorter Northwest Passage’s navigability was dramatically demonstrated as Hudson Bay Company’s Eastern Arctic Patrol Nascopie sounded her way through Bellot Strait. Snow shrouded the Arctic dusk as head on through the haze came the bow of another ship. Nascopie’s Captain Thomas Smellie’s incredulous hail got a booming reply from veteran Arctic Trader Patsy Klingenberg, from the deck of the Schooner Aklavik, eastbound to Baffin Island, and astonished Eskimo cheers from both crews echoed through the rock-bound channel. That night captains of both vessels described from their anchorages to Canadian Broadcasting Co. and NBC audiences their historic meeting. Hopeful for the growing trade of the North were residents and sponsors of Churchill that somehow Northwest Passage II would bring business, help redeem millions of dollars sunk in Canada’s most northerly port.
Hi Peter,
You wrote to Brute: “What you have said [about the USSR, Communist China and Cuba following Marxism] is a popular misconception. Marx died in London in 1883, having been born in Germany but he lived in England for most of life. He had no connection with Russia, China or Cuba.”
Your last sentence is correct. In 1883, when Marx died, Russia was still Tsarist, China was in the last decades of the decaying Qing Dynasty and Cuba was still a Spanish colony. All of this would change within the next 20 years, and the writings of Karl Marx would eventually play a significant role in the development.
Communist parties subscribed to the teachings and legacy of Karl Marx (Marxism), as interpreted by Lenin. The term Marxism-Leninism was most often used by the Soviet Union and its supporters who held that Lenin’s legacy was successfully advanced by Joseph Stalin, although Trotskyists and Maoists are also technically Marxist-Leninists. The term was also used by Soviet Communists who later repudiated Stalin, such as the supporters of Nikita Khrushchev.
Within 5 years of Lenin’s death, Josef Stalin completed his rise to power in the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism as a separate ideology was established by Stalin in his book, “The questions of Leninism”. During the period of Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism was proclaimed the official ideology of the state.
In the power struggle with Stalin, Trotsky believed that his brand of “Bolshevik communism” actually resembled “Marxism-Leninism” more closely, but this argument died with his assassination in Mexico by Stalin in 1940. Trotskyists called their anti-Stalinist ideology “Bolshevik-Leninism”. There were some subtle ideological differences between Trotsky and Stalin, but the main difference was the question of “who’s in charge here?” (i.e. a classical power struggle between successors to the “throne” of Lenin).
Both the followers of Stalin and, later, Khrushchev, described their ideology as “Marxism-Leninism”.
After the Chinese-Soviet split, communist parties of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China each claimed to be the sole intellectual heir to Marxism-Leninism. In China, they claim that Mao had “adapted Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions” evolving into the idea that he had updated it in a fundamental way applying to the world as a whole; consequently, the term “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought” (commonly known as Maoism) was increasingly used to describe the official Chinese state ideology as well as the ideological basis of parties around the world who sympathized with the Communist Party of China.
This included the party in Albania. Following the split between China and Albania, a small portion of Marxist-Leninists began to downplay or repudiate the role of Mao Zedong in the International Communist Movement in favor of the Party of Labor of Albania and a stricter adherence to the views of Stalin.
Contemporary Marxist-Leninist regimes today include Vietnam, Laos and Cuba.
All of the above comes from Wikipedia.
Peter, it is very clear that “Leninism”, “Stalinism” “Maoism” and “Trotskyism” are all closely related ideologies and that the underlying basis for them all is “Marxism”.
I remember visiting the old DDR (German Democratic Republic) shortly before its downfall. There were large red banners, particularly in the shabbier quarters of East Berlin proclaiming (in German) “Lenin is the basis for our success!” (“Lenin ist die Grundlage für unseren Erfolg!”).
I wondered at the time if DDR regime opponents were responsible for these banners and their placement, because when one just crossed from affluent West Berlin it was easy to see the stark contrast in the communist East and, with it, the abject failure of Marxism-Leninism in Germany, the original home country of Karl Marx.
Just some food for thought.
Regards,
Max
It is indeed all very strange and hardly impartial. Is it a cause for complaint comment or merely observation?
I thought you might be interested in the abstracts from a major climate conference held in Exeter last week under the auspices of The Hadley Centre, Met Office, Environment Agency, Proudman Oceanographic and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
Amongst the outcomes were forecasts of significantly lower sea level rises and less storm surges than previously predicted (Uk bias)
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/climatechange/conference/timetable.php
It is well worth looking at the various extracts which admit far more uncertainties in predictions than previously admitted to
The second link is to an interesting theory which seems to consider water vapour as far more significant than Co2 as a climate change cause and calculates a doubling of Co2 will only raise temperatures by less than half a degree. As someone who believes the role of water vapour is greatly understated I found both links complimentary.
http://landshape.org/stats/the-new-climate-theory-of-dr-ferenc-miskolczi/
Tony Brown
Max,
Lenin’s, or Trotsky’s, or Mao’s or Stalin’s interpretation of Marx isn’t necessarily the correct interpretation. They would naturally skew theirs to suit whatever political programs they would have had in mind at the time regardless.
I would suggest that you might want to take a look at the source for yourself and tell me exactly what your interpretation is, and what it is in Marx’s works which bothers you.
In many ways Marx wasn’t critical of capitalism. He thought it progressive and a big improvement over feudalism. He certainly supported the American colonialists in their war of independence and, later, their annexation of Texas from the Mexicans.
Another interpretation of Marx would be that he undersestimated the resilience of capitalism itself. He certainly sounded a loud warning of what would happen if capitalism were allowed to fail and economists such as Keynes, and politicians such as Roosevelt, weren’t slow to pick up on that in the 30’s when it looked like it might.
The working classes in most western countries are well organised. Since WW2, what we understand by capitalism has worked reasonably well. Especially in Europe there has been in place what the Italian Communist Party used to call the historical compromise. Which basically meant that as long as there is full employment, free or easily affordable health care, universal free education, social programs to deal with homelessness etc etc , then ‘revolution’ as such is off the agenda.
There has been no need for it. But, if ever capitalism does fail, big time, in the way that Marx predicted it would, I have no doubt that it will be swept away and replaced with a workable alternative.
Pete,
No comment regarding my post #1796?