The power of FUD

There are plenty of people out there who like the status quo - largely because their current power relies on it - and who will view those who would change the status quo as their enemies, even if a change is necessary and indeed inevitable.

So it's a shame to see that one group of these people - those who wish to give the impression that scientists are divided over anthropegenic climate change, or that scientists are somehow much less trustworthy than the market and big business *coughsubprimecough* - seem to still be having rather a lot of success.

This is a bad thing because, of course, reality isn't democratic. You can't change the laws of physics, or their complex interplay, just because you don't like them or understand them. And a lack of action now will make things worse later.

Gore and Peace

Despite having a UK high court judge rule this week that there were nine errors in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore is quite clearly having a good week.

Cue outrage from US climate change delusionists (and probably some complaints from sceptics that the film is over-the-top, which it is, rather than a pack of lies, which it isn't)

As for the nine errors - that's also open to debate if they were errors...

The green face of greed

Well, the free market economy may not be quite the purely rapacious planet eating beast that many people would like to claim it is. Although news that China has become the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases (thanks in part to the West offshoring all its dirty industries) shows the downside of the free market, the rush of investments into renewable energy resources is a good sign.

The Guardian reports that the forward to the Global Trends in Sustainable Development annual review states:

bankers and other fund managers have ignored government dithering over climate change and started to shift the whole balance of the sector by pumping money into technologies that tackle global warming.

Greenpeace have, of course, pointed out that even these much increased numbers are peanuts compared to the annual investments in fossil fuel technology.

Cast those clouts.

English is full of relatively well-known but slightly obscure sayings. One of these is

Ne'er cast a clout till May is out

One of the suggested derivations for this is that it doesn't refer to the month, but to the May tree, more widely known as Hawthorn. This traditionally blossoms near the end of May, so even if you did misunderstand the meaning of the saying, the timing was much the same*.

Not this year. It's out already.

*The next trick is to know what a clout is, and how to cast one. The OED suggest among other things that "clout" is "Applied contemptuously to any article of clothing". People generally interpret the saying as meaning winter clothing, such as vests.

Lovelock at it again

For every person out there trying to claim that global warming isn't happening at all, or that it has nothing to do with humans, there is at least one out there claiming it will be the worst thing ever. James Lovelock probably cancels out a few PhDs of the former opinion on his own - he apparently believes that the continental US, mainland Europe and China will all become utterly uninhabitable and we'll all end up in the arctic.

As with many of the critics - I really need to see an accurate model that could explain the phenomena he's predicting. And why would the plains of Germany being eight degrees hotter turn them uninhabitable? Tunis is more than eight degrees hotter than Berlin for the vast majority of the year, it doesn't stop the population of the greater Tunis area topping two million. Is there a reason why increased evaporation from the soil won't be compensated at least partially by increased rainfall due to increased evaporation from the sea?

I may not normally agree with Bjørn Lomborg's views on climate, but the quote attributed to him in the NY Times recently is something I can agree on:

Climate change is a real and serious problem that calls for careful analysis and sound policy. The cacophony of screaming does not help.

The "la-la-la" files

Latest to stick his fingers in his ears and deny loudly anything scientists and economists tell him that he doesn't want to hear is Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint

Mr Van Jolissaint is apparently surprised by how much support there had been in the Daimler office in Stuttgart for these "quasi-hysterical" policies that smacked of "Chicken Little" politics

So this rather strongly suggests that any "green" policies such US companies come up with are merely part of window-dressing to get extra sales (or in Chrysler's case, forced on them by Daimler)