tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276148672024-03-13T10:35:47.699-04:00ecomythsEcomyths is a blog designed to help people think for themselves. Empirical data are contrasted with theories to examine axiomatic myths: ideas taken to be so well accepted that they don't need to be proven. It seeks to change ideas, correct fallacies and challenge dominant constructs by having people read, think and reflect for themselves about contemporary issues. Facts don't change your perspective. Your perspective changes your facts.L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comBlogger512125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-1631711201283522762022-03-27T14:20:00.008-04:002022-03-27T14:21:34.427-04:00A Personal Note<p><span style="font-size: large;"> <span><span style="font-family: arial;">My last active post on this blog was in November 2016. At that point I'd run out of things to say about the perpetuation of the many Ecomyths I had sought to dispel over the previous decade of postings. I was tired and found that I any new posts were repeating arguments I had made many times earlier and that my efforts to refute Ecomyths with empirical data and the evisceration of their underlying ideology was not sufficient to cease their promulgation. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The issues are largely political in both origin and potential solution. Sadly I lacked the stamina at that point in my career to pivot the focus of the blog and engage fully and effectively in partisan politics that feature little debate and civil discourse.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I did not realize how exhausted I was both emotionally and physically from the academic and institutional marginalization that occurs when the individual takes a stance contrary to the prevailing ideology that has infused and chilled the contemporary academy. De-platforming and cancel culture takes many guises. To all who are recipients, the result is equally unpleasant.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In April 2019 in the space of one week I gave my final lecture, received news that my father had died and was offered an early retirement buy out from my university position. I retired formally in June 2019. I did some initial traveling and was thwarted by the onset of Covid restrictions from undertaking 2 of the more adventurous trips I had planned to mark my retirement. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is my first post since I retired and it has taken me nearly 3 years to find my physical and mental health. I might yet write another book, even one of fiction.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Today's post is to thank all those who read the blog in its heyday as one of the leading blogs in its field and to those who have discovered my posts more recently and to those who continue to read despite my retirement: I felt I owed you the reader a note of explanation for the lack of posting the past 5 years. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I enjoyed writing the blog. It was fun and it kept me sane in an academic environment that was not conducive to critical thought or independent thinking. I was born with an intellect that questions. I am inherently resistant to authoritarianism and blind acceptance of authority. As a teacher I was able to inspire independent thinking and curiosity in thousands who took my courses. I also aggravated and annoyed many who just wished I would just confirm to their stereotype of compliance and passivity. To those who benefited from my courses, I hope the lessons still resonate and inspire you today. </span></span><br /></p>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-89315619418959813732016-11-05T10:11:00.001-04:002016-11-05T10:11:57.893-04:00The ends never justify the means<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">By definition, a democratic free society cannot be achieved through fiat nor imposition. A democratic, free society must be the result of transparent, open and fair processes. Paramount of these is freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom of speech. The imposition, assertion and promulgation through dogma of predetermined outcomes is totalitarianism defined by the nature of its preferred vision of what society should look like. Irrespective of which elite or what version of social justice or what religious tenets are used to wrap and disguise it, totalitarianism is easily recognized by its focus on the denial of the processes that define an open society, including: </span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">independent judiciary</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">an independent media wherein mutiple perspectives prevail</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">preservation of free speech</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">the promotion of independent thinking</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">education free from dogma and censure of divergent views</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This sounds like a description of the enlightenment or at least a precis of its key tenets and principles, but it appears necessary as we head into the pending US election at a time when censure,conformity, political corruption and collusion are all manifest and reinforced by a MSM oligarchy, a plethora of SJWs and an apparent diffidence among millennials to reading, divergent thinking and an understanding that the end never justifies the means.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Today is the 5th of November and perhaps now more than ever the concept of blowing up the cesspit of elitist power structures has never had greater resonance. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I hope Trump wins and I hope he wins in a landslide so that the US can begin to cleanse itself of political corruption, collusion and gross inefficiency. My hope is that this political transformation is the catalyst to a resurgence in the implementation of the processes of free democracy. AT the same time, this will result in necessary and serious weakening in the "progressive" imposition of censure, conformity and compliance that has masqueraded as the "correct" narrative of political discourse for the last 20 years. </span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-75395072281075888422016-11-03T12:43:00.000-04:002016-11-03T12:43:01.558-04:00Intellectual Yet Idiot<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Elites favor democracy only as long as it suborns their abuse of power.
Any deviation they consider invalid or stupid. Brexit + the imminent
election of Trump signify an electorate re-asserting control over
democracy at the expense of a power elite abusing the power of office
for personal advancement + profit. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Trump never positions himself as a
paragon of virtue. His appeal is his express willingness to hold the
beltway cabal to account for all the collusion + corruption tha<span class="text_exposed_show">t
the Wikileaks and Clinton scandals are revealing. The Clinton
Foundation has clearly only ever been a vehicle for graft. If there is
no malfeasance, why the illegal server, the deletion of email records
and the clumsy intervention of the Obama + Lynch DOJ to obstruct the FBI
investigations? Lastly, if the abuse of power is not indictment
enough, people still want to find ways to excuse the cabal rather than
amend their view or accept that a cleansing of the system is paramount. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show">Not unsurprisingly, I find so many who are virulently anti-Trump are
the same people who thought Trudeau as PM was a good idea, Wynne as
Premier was necessary and that climate is actually a pressing political
issue. IYI.</span></span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-91500835908571639402016-07-22T09:58:00.001-04:002016-07-22T09:59:02.227-04:00Resist the Echo Chamber of Confirmation Bias and Presumptive Thought<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nothing like politics to constrain + manifest social media as an echo
chamber of presumption + confirmation bias. Such a massive waste of
technology. People are seriously afraid to think for themselves, to
cast a wide net in what they read, watch + listen to. Change is not our
enemy. Throughout history, progress is the manifestation of change +
intellectual growth. What is the point of education if all it does is
confine + bully people into an acceptance of presumptive nar<span class="text_exposed_show">ratives
and memes? Educational indoctrination breeds convergence and followers,
not creative, dynamic learners. The world is not static and the future
needs divergent, creative thinkers, not drones who conflate a GPA with
actual understanding and comprehension. The echo chamber is the
intellectual closed mind. It is a norm that deserves and requires our
active resistance.</span></span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-42839077002279595442014-08-07T22:45:00.000-04:002014-08-07T22:45:58.884-04:00environmentalism as misanthropic narcissism<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In the <a href="http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/06/why-do-environmentalists-hate-liberty.html" target="_blank">latest</a> in his series of excellent posts, Ben Pile considers the central conundrum of contemporary environmentalism that as a popular movement it is fundamentally elitist and in opposition to most actions, ideas and beliefs that stem from the principle of individual liberty. Environmentalism as an ideology is profoundly, and irrevocably, a stasist instrument for the enforcement of conformity to elite constructs.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Pile <a href="http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/06/why-do-environmentalists-hate-liberty.html" target="_blank">notes </a>that while the ideology of environmentalism is primarily a political construct, it is never presented as such. Rather,environmentalism is present as a moral imperative and compliance always is couched in terms of deep guilt and emotional rhetoric.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In its substance, environmentalism relies upon presumption, axiomatic constructs and referrals to authority to bolster its assertion of preferred, nay, essential actions to avoid the coming Armageddon. In reality, the substance is always rather less dystopian and most, if not all, doom scenarios are invalidated and rendered moot by prosperity and continued advancements in technology -- a premise that environmentalism dismisses with derision rather than any valid consideration of the historical precedent of civilization to date. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/06/why-do-environmentalists-hate-liberty.html" target="_blank">Pile </a>concludes that environmentalism is merely <i>misanthropic narcissism. </i>It is less real political ideology and more performance art, a contemporary theater of illusion to delude, seduce and ultimately suppress the masses into conformity and compliance with the preferences of an elite who are removed from the restrictions they impose on others. The environment is a prop and its vagaries a mere contrivance to be used as necessary to invoke fear and provide justification for continued control of society.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Environmentalism has assumed the mantle of political ideology as a proxy measure that illustrates the absence of true political debate and analysis. It is the last vestige of stasist control in an era when stasism is an anachronism and the realization of individual freedom has never been greater in history.</span></span> <br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Far from being progressive, contemporary environmentalism is a fundamentalist, reactionary imposition of stasism. And like all forms of fundamentalism, it will be overthrown by the progression of change that is immutable because it is definitive to the human experience: basic to change is the liberation of the individual. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Sustainability is change. Change is sustainability. Environmentalism adopted the slogan but has never understood the defining construct of the narrative. </span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-58147966626107280532014-06-05T12:02:00.000-04:002014-06-08T09:44:52.673-04:00When politics doesn't provide options<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Recent <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/its-official-britain-is-now-run-by-an-oligarchy/15064#.U5CK7SiEdfg" target="_blank">elections in Britain </a>caused great dismay and conjecture, causing many observers to condemn the irrationality and sanity of the populace. This is part of a wider trend observable in all Western democracies of alienation of the ruling elites (a.k.a. the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/07/watch-what-you-say-the-new-liberal-power-elite-won-t-tolerate-dissent.html" target="_blank">Clerisy</a>) from large parts of a populace disenfranchised by the edicts of an elite whose values they neither share nor embrace. Popular movements such as the Tea Party in the US are vilified by the intellectual elite and the mainstream media. Both largely misunderstand both the genesis and motives of such expressions of discontent. The elite are simply unable to understand why <i>their</i> ideology could be rejected and, thus, they condemn what they can neither condone nor comprehend. Their <a href="http://prezi.com/g45jku4_t2wo/environment-and-ideology/" target="_blank">ideology</a> is inviolate, so axiomatic that it can only be that the populace must be lacking in morality, social responsibility or intelligence.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In <i>Starship Troopers</i>, Heinlein takes time to discuss the nature of morality and social responsibility. He writes:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i>Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were
not born with it, I was not ...We acquire moral
sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the
mind.</i></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>T</i><span style="color: red;"><i>he instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our
personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival
instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby
fails to show up in future generations. </i></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i>A scientifically
verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct
to survive--and nowhere else!--and must correctly describe the hierarchy
of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all
conflicts.</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i>We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem,
on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country,
responsibility toward the human race . </i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i>The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. </i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i>Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe,
requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues --
which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he
will vomit them out.</i></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The lesson that Heinlein provides is powerful. There can be no social responsibility where there is no shared identity nor sense of community. If an elite ideology of politics, intellectualism and environmentalism is sufficiently removed from the populace to be merely the perspective of the oligarchy which it benefits, then there will be no resonance, no acquired sense of morality, no behavioral change in compliance with that ideology. There will only ever be resentment, disconnection and political <i>ennui</i>. Provided the elite do not over-step their intrusion into daily life, they will be tolerated. The political process offers a small range of alternative elites from which to choose. But when the intellectual and political elites become too intrusive, too incumbent on daily life and too arrogant to perceive the discontent they are prompting, then a change will occur.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Revolution is a big jump for any democracy. So instead, discontent first manifests itself in the recognition of populist movements. Many of these may appear to be simplistic, xenophobic and divisive in their ideology. No matter. It is not the substance of the movement that appeals to the disenfranchised: it is the very act of signifying rejection of the <i>status quo</i>, of the dogma, morality, ideology and accompanying polices being imposed by the oligarchy.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For environmentalists especially, this is a hard message to absorb, as it contrasts so markedly with their own image they have of themselves. </span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-80930961001878058812014-03-06T11:37:00.000-05:002014-03-06T11:37:32.687-05:00IPCC over estimates climate sensitivity<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Posted over at <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/05/the-lewis-and-crok-exposition-climate-less-sensitive-to-carbon-dioxide-than-most-models-suggest/" target="_blank">WUWT</a> is a link to a significant new report by Lewis and Crick examining climate sensitivity. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Along with the report, is a <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/05/the-lewis-and-crok-exposition-climate-less-sensitive-to-carbon-dioxide-than-most-models-suggest/" target="_blank">foreword </a>by Judith Curry in which she writes:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The sensitivity of our climate to increasing concentrations of carbon
dioxide is at the heart of the scientific debate on anthropogenic
climate change, and also the public debate on the appropriate policy
response to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. </i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Climate
sensitivity and estimates of its uncertainty are key inputs into the
economic models that drive cost-benefit analyses and estimates of the
social cost of carbon.</i></span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>This report by Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok addresses this gap between the IPCC
assessments and the primary scientific literature by providing an
overview of the different methods for estimating climate sensitivity and
a historical perspective on IPCC’s assessments of climate sensitivity. </i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i> The report also provides an independent assessment of the different
methods for estimating climate sensitivity and a critique of the IPCC
AR4 and AR5 assessments of climate sensitivity. </i></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/05/the-lewis-and-crok-exposition-climate-less-sensitive-to-carbon-dioxide-than-most-models-suggest/" target="_blank">Lewis notes</a>, the report is significant as it </span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> <i>...shows that – contrary to the impression given by the Summary
for Policymakers – the observational, scientific evidence in the main
IPCC AR5 report actually supports much lower estimates of how sensitive
the climate system is to greenhouse gas levels, both in the long term
and over the remainder of this century...</i></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The narrative for CAGW has been loosing impetus for some time. Despite this, the data are still being juiced to imply and promote a crisis not evidenced by empirical observation. Bottom line:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><em>The GCMs overestimate future warming by 1.7–2 times relative to an estimate</em><em> based on the best observational evidence.</em></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">CAGW isn't happening. Won't be happening in the future, probably never was happening. Climate changes as a dynamic natural system. Always has, always will. Humans do modify both the weather and the climate, but not near to the degree that has been implied nor implicated in advocacy of the CAGW narrative. Severe weather has always been a feature of human occupancy of the planet and there is insifficient evidence to support the contention that either the frequency nor intensity of weather events has changed in a manner inconsistent with the historical record.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Climate was and remains a proxy for a supposed scientific imperative for a set of political policies designed to suppress growth, control economic development, centralize governance and curtail globalization. These policies reflect a particular morality and ideology that is both elitist in design and lacking on poplar support and resonance, hence the attempt to co-opt science as a mechanism to compel compliance by invoking an authority that is difficult to challenge and contradict.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">After all this (the IPCC, the Hockey Stick, the blogs, Climategate and the constant revisionism from global warming to AGW to CAGW) the central issue remains the provision of cheap energy and not climate.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And without the stigma of CAGW, what is the rationale for windmills? For solar panels? For constraint and increasing carbon taxes? Fracking has removed the peril of an energy crisis for the West. What is the cheap energy option for Africa? Why is energy not dropping in price and fueling a new age of innovation and economic prosperity?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And, lastly, <i>absent of any climate crisis</i>, what possible purpose is there to zero-carbon as a goal?</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Remove the presumption of CAGW, dismiss the narrative, and the value of pursuing zero-carbon as a goal is similarly removed. </span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-3097388804151963142014-01-21T14:18:00.001-05:002014-01-21T14:18:12.209-05:00Scary bananas: How environmental exaggeration harms emerging economies: ...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4zJn4gxCx3c" width="480"></iframe>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-89846696574514713732014-01-21T13:44:00.000-05:002014-01-21T13:45:39.581-05:00ennui or just resignation?<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Read Dale Franks post over at <a href="http://www.qando.net/?p=16078" target="_blank">QandO</a> today about how his blogging had lost its passion and become steadily less frequent, less inspired and less purposeful. I empathized.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Then I read Don Easterbrook's <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-cause-of-pause-in-global-warming/" target="_blank">rebuttal</a> to the reaction he'd received to a previous post pointing out the correlation between PDO cycles and temperature cycles and Tim Ball's <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/20/the-climate-dichotomy-a-scientific-not-a-political-difference/" target="_blank">post</a> on climate as a political dichotomy and not one of science. And I despaired. What they write is so transparently obvious to anyone with an open mind on the topic but, apparently, open minds are in short supply despite the age of enlightenment and the extant technology to bring that enlightenment to all.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Between my empathy and my despair, was I enveloped with a profound sense of <span style="color: red;"><i>ennui</i></span> with the continued intransigence of political authority and the academy to neither see nor accept what people like Easterbrook and Ball so eloquently and clearly expose? Or was I overcome with a deepening <span style="color: red;"><i>resignation</i></span> born from personal empathy with their situation?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My own blogging has become sporadic. I have spent a career <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0rZ2CPCYBQ" target="_blank"><i>trying to change the system from within</i></a> and it appears that far from taking either Manhattan or Berlin, I have failed to hold even my own home court in the form of my own academic institution. Ennui or resignation? Am I simply tired of the stupidity of others? Or am I conceding the field and ceasing to engage in an artificial war of words in which there can be no resolution as the other side simply refuses to accept any evidence as factual that does not accord with their narrative? When academics blithely and routinely ignore empirical data as irrelevant, the medium has not just become the message, it has become the sole narrative of Big Brother University as funded by Big Brother Government in the cause of Big Brother Media.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Is it ennui or resignation to reject a worldview as promulgated by mass media social theorists? Moreover, when did social theorist cease being an oxymoron?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In a conscious act of personal salvation and sanity, I have moved my teaching into a large course on tourism and an interactive senior seminar on change. Professionally, I can survive, still exercise and extend my creative juices in the ongoing delivery and improvement of my pedagogy, and draw considerable satisfaction from the response of those students who value what I offer them: the opportunity to think, reflect and create.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I still believe in the power of education, but I am less confident that there is sufficient interest in using both the extant and future technology to enlighten, to educate and to empower. Instead, I have a deep sense of ennui with the axiomatic dogma peddled by self-interested stasists and a sense of resignation that the forces of conformity will persist in suppressing ideas in the ongoing oppression of true freedom.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;">But hope is a funny thing...it persists despite all rationality and tiredness.</span></span></span><br />
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<br />L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-18328752207486297462013-10-06T16:05:00.000-04:002014-10-06T08:52:38.624-04:00The Road to Redemption<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I have long contended that the faux concern over AGW had little basis in the <i>science </i>of climate change and large reliance upon the symbolic use of climate as a contrivance for compliance with environmentalist control and censure ideology. The science was co-opted merely as a tool to embed an axiomatic authority to the alarmist and dystopian assertions activists invoke to compel compliance with their command and control agendas. Thus, the muted media reaction to the 5th IPCC Assessment is indicative that the conversation on climate is now closed.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In the wake of IPCC5 we have indictments of <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/09/30/ipcc-climate-global-warming/" target="_blank">the IPCC as failed instrument</a> of enforced international consensus, its <a href="http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/9/28/lindzen-on-ar5.html" target="_blank">incoherence and lack of scientific credibility,</a> some insight into the manipulations and deceit utilized to <a href="http://climateaudit.org/2013/09/30/ipcc-disappears-the-discrepancy/" target="_blank">obscure and hide facts </a>within the Summary most media use for their summaries and some <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/08/lindzen-understanding-the-ipcc-ar5-climate-assessment/#more-95335" target="_blank">excellent</a> <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100238550/the-climate-alarmists-have-lost-the-debate-its-time-we-stopped-indulging-their-poisonous-fantasy/" target="_blank">summations</a> of the <a href="http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/03/did-the-ar5-take-the-dangerous-out-of-agw/" target="_blank">present</a> <a href="http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/02/spinning-the-climate-model-observation-comparison-part-ii/#more-13193" target="_blank">state of affairs</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I was recently faced by two different requests at my own institution. One was for a repeat of a debate on climate change I had participated in a decade ago. The second was to promote a student event on the 'growing climate conversation". </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I decided to decline the first: nothing good can come of disabusing people of their faith and that's all a belief in AGW is today, all it ever has been. Any <a href="http://www.climate-resistance.org/2013/10/what-is-the-ipcc.html" target="_blank">pretense of scientific imperative</a>, of pending crisis and human induced catastrophe has ceased to exist with the release of the very data contained within the full version of IPCC5. Climate sensitivity is now estimated at its highest to be below the lowest of the lowest possible scenarios contemplated within previous IPCC supported AGW hysteria. Moreover, climate change at 0.8 degrees Celsius per 100 yrs. can't be spun as alarming to anyone let alone a developed, technocratic and fast changing world.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And yet, the student run environmental association on campus is still in thrall with the anti-hydro carbon, zero-carbon, environmental Armageddon caused by humans message that both initiated and fueled the AGW myth. Ignorance is pervasive, especially within the academy that has feasted at the AGW trough for the past two decades, that thrives on the clarion call for intellectually derived command and control compliance with expertise and authority acting in consensus and uses intimidation politics to marginalize its critics.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I decided to use the second request as a teaching example of the pervasiveness of environmentalism as a religion and as a placebo for real caring, real action and real implementation of change.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Its been a long 20 years of futility, chasing a false God and a mythical Holy Grail. The AGW myth has been a blight on intellectualism, academic integrity, environmental thought and effective policy making. The only question facing its proponents, adherents and inductees is how quickly they will recant and at what cost to their own personal integrity, careers and credibility.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The road to Damascus will indeed be crowded.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<br />L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-24262987727545389552013-09-11T14:19:00.003-04:002013-09-12T11:10:09.556-04:00why blogs persist and scare stasists<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.climate-resistance.org/2013/09/a-wind-of-change-or-an-unchanging-windbag.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is the latest excellent post from<a href="http://www.climate-resistance.org/2013/09/a-wind-of-change-or-an-unchanging-windbag.html" target="_blank"> Ben Pile.</a> Given the <a href="http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/9/7/mapping-the-sceptic-blogosphere.html" target="_blank">flurry</a> of <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/09/97-climate-consensus-denial-the-debunkers-debunked/#more-93502" target="_blank">discussion</a> this week over the sate of the <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/09/mapping-the-skeptical-blogosphere-wuwt-seems-to-be-the-most-central-blog/#more-93491" target="_blank">climate blogosphere</a>, why it exists and what it does, Ben's points are important:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>This blog has always identified itself as sceptical of
environmentalism — environmental politics, especially climate politics —
rather than climate science.</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i> Environmentalists ... simply do not recognise their own
perspective as ‘ideological’. ‘Ideology’ is what other people do. The
conceit — in all senses of the word — being that the environmentalist
simply takes ‘science’ at face value, whereas those he points his
fingers at refuse to see the science because they are somehow blinded by
‘ideology’. </i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Putting it simply, the ‘ideology’ of the political establishment is a
system of ideas that would put political institutions above democratic
oversight, and under the direction of panels of technical experts. But
one can agree or disagree with the scientific consensus independently of
one’s view that political institutions should be arranged in that way.
One can disagree with policies independently of the consensus. In other
words, the idea that the scientific consensus is equivalent to the
configuration of supranational and national political institutions and
their respective policies is ‘ideological’. Indeed, as this blog has
also pointed out, ad nauseum, the notion of the scientific consensus is
used in political and policy debates at all levels, <i>with no regard for the substance of the consensus</i>. As I explain it elsewhere, it is a <i>consensus without an object</i>. </i></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For some unknown reason the very basis and logic eloquently summarized by Ben is ignored, missed or simply mis-understood by those who persist in wishing to demonize, silence and otherwise marginalize those of us who blog to question the ideology of environmentalism and the effects it has on contemporary society, politics and public policy.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">As Ben concludes:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The problem is not now, nor has it ever been, ‘ideology’. Ideology has
not itself turned people blind to science or anything else. ‘Ideology’
is nothing more than a system of ideas, or beliefs, much of which is
embedded in, and transmitted through, culture.</i> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The problem is instead an inability to reflect...</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The problem, then, is the same as with any religious zealot, ideologue,
tyrant or bigot. Proponents of orthodoxies do not recognise themselves
as vulnerable to ideology. Why should they, since prevailing hegemonies
don’t need to justify themselves — their preferences and prejudices
appear to them as manifestly ‘common sense’, and challenges to their
authority seem impertinent and obtuse. </i> </span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The environmentalist imperative has always rested on the certitude of the science that its adherents assert to compel compliance with <i>their</i> political edicts. As a consequence, environmentalism has become shrill, anti-humanist and devoid of meaningful morality and ethics.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But to see that from within takes an element of self-reflection most zealots are unwilling and/or unable to achieve. (Sadly it is a capacity even many reasoned, moderates fail to practice). Instead they cast aspersions with invective language at those with the temerity to deviate from their sense of correctness, of compliance, of consensus and then they seek to use the social tools of media, authority and fear to bolster their believe in scenarios of doom and gloom that <i>the science</i> itself does not support, validate nor justify.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The climate blogosphere is not one uniform template of ideas, focus or expertise. There are technical blogs that assess data and methods (like Climate Audit) there are sites that discuss environmentalism (like this one and Climate Resistance), there are those that act as window on the "climate debate" (such as WUWT ,Bishop Hill and Climate Etc), those that act as a news clearing house for environmental stories (Tom Nelson) and those that present investigative insight and revelations (No Frakking Consensus). Beyond this, I am not sure what a mapping of the blogosphere achieves -- it appears to me an exercise without clear intellectual purpose, unless that purpose is merely to box all the deviants together ready for metaphorical or literal abuse.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">That an effort was made to map the climate blogosphere reveals the extent to which the intellectual and political elite (the climatocracy) is threatened and has failed in its attempts to use climate as a contrivance to compel compliance with its message of austerity chic as a necessary ethic for the masses. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And then, of course, there's <a href="http://www.samizdata.net/2013/09/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-342/" target="_blank">this</a>:</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="post-bodycopy clearfix">
<ul>
<li><em>I urge the minister, in the
light of all the evidence that has come out about the lack of any change
in temperature over the past 15 years, to think again about the Climate
Change Act and to revoke it, amend it and support home owners and
British businesses. </em></li>
</ul>
– <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/mps-attack-impact-climate-change-act-families-industry/" target="_blank">David Davies MP</a><br />
</div>
L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-66055721611352070162013-05-15T15:08:00.001-04:002013-05-15T15:13:13.788-04:00A quick summary<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I mentioned the latest article from <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/05/14/peter-foster-keystone-xl-and-the-numerical-mysticism-of-climate-change/" target="_blank">Peter Foster</a> in the last post but it is worth pulling some excerpts because he so nicely summarizes the present situation with climate alarmism.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">As he <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/05/14/peter-foster-keystone-xl-and-the-numerical-mysticism-of-climate-change/" target="_blank">writes</a>, the</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>alleged climate catastrophe is based not on “simple” atmospheric
physics but on the computer models of the... IPCC</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>which assume that CO2 drives the climate</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>then
assume the multiplication of that driving force via positive feedbacks</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>then assume the worst possible implications.</i></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">All of these assumptions can and have been successfully challenged. Some would say debunked and discredited.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, there is no disputing that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have now reached 400 ppm. However,<i> the breathless reporting of this figure reflects numerical
mysticism, not science,</i> especially as the <i> period of years during which there has been no warming</i> is now 16 years.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not only is the science not settled but the situation is muddied further by that fact that </span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">...<i>the policy measures taken to address this alleged existential crisis
have been (a) climatically pointless, and (b) economically disastrous.</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i> However, any suggestion of revisiting the science is treated with primal
screams because the climate industry has succeeded in framing this as a
“moral issue,” all about hurting poor people and recklessly endangering
the future of the planet. </i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>This moral crusade has been so successful because it is fed by the
anti-capitalist psychological compost that has been piling up since Marx
stalked the earth.</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The issue also remains politically toxic due to the vast and
disproportionate power of radical environmental NGOs, who have very
deliberately been cultivated both within the UN and by nodes of Global
Salvationism</i></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Anyone who persists in positing climate policy as an issue of science is both disingenuous and misleading. Climate policy has always been an environmental morality play and the role of science has been as a tool of authority to bully and intimidate people into conforming with prescribed policy outcomes that conform to an elitist ideology of environmentalism that in practice contrasts markedly with the pragmatic environmental ethics of common sense.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The underlying problem with any elitist ideology is that it is not sustainable in a free democratic society. Zombies, vampires and ghosts make for good scary stories but they are ephemeral and as mythical as the sky is falling alarmism of climate catastrophe.</span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-14449293063940036612013-04-01T12:18:00.000-04:002013-05-15T14:32:56.136-04:00Can Climateagate Mann evolve?<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes students will ask me why if everything I am telling them is the truth (and it is!) do other professors and the media still propagate the myths I have just exposed?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I can think of no better example than the continued and ongoing attempts to re-assert the sky is falling, climate alarmism narrative, long after that ship has sailed (much like my efforts to avoid mixed metaphors). In the wake of Climategate 3.0, we have yet another example of climate scientists acting badly. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In this <a href="http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/fixing-marcott-mess-in-climate-science.html" target="_blank">superb summary</a>, Roger Pielke Jr. is careful to leave everyone's dignity intact. He is polite, constructive and wonderfully constrained. I admire his patience and continued belief that accidents can and persistently do happen. Sadly, what he sees as accidental is all too easily construed as intentional malfeasance (again). </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">What this latest example demonstrates is how "findings" are spun, spiral into "facts" and become embedded as the dominant narrative of consensus science. Along the way, there is an embrace of misrepresentation, the inclusion of significant impropriety and the adoption of an attitude that is especially illuminating and immoral in the post-Climategate era.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">No more. No longer. Get it together and act honorably as scientists should. Embrace some ethics, work on your integrity and check you personal ideology at the door. Enough already. Personally I am tired of professional colleagues who should know better not doing better because they lack the will to try.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Cartoon from <a href="http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/4/1/no-joke-josh-228.html" target="_blank">Josh</a>. </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiZJGpMJnOjSajehjL7nrJ-7iws8OZDXzd7nb-pUnO_hAg30Kq-3bZ694mOGgugMemfV7rifez78ccLFLjkHVCVc4Ap0Leq4h-qHBhoRukLsM8yNvw3aBnF5SofIXpKb4uxtxQ/s1600/April_Fools.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiZJGpMJnOjSajehjL7nrJ-7iws8OZDXzd7nb-pUnO_hAg30Kq-3bZ694mOGgugMemfV7rifez78ccLFLjkHVCVc4Ap0Leq4h-qHBhoRukLsM8yNvw3aBnF5SofIXpKb4uxtxQ/s320/April_Fools.jpg" width="285" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">and a real world up date from <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/05/14/peter-foster-keystone-xl-and-the-numerical-mysticism-of-climate-change/" target="_blank">Peter Foster</a> who offers the insight that <span style="color: red;"><i>...facts always need perspective.</i></span> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">A sentiment heartily endorsed by this blog!</span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-16075586723200755802013-03-13T12:58:00.002-04:002013-03-14T10:08:28.004-04:00Climategate 3.0<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Any good sequel will spawn its own sequel, and so it is with Climategate. Apparently there is indeed a <a href="http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/3/13/climategate-30.html" target="_blank">Climateate 3.0</a>, although the biggest impact of this latest revelation is the <a href="http://tomnelson.blogspot.ca/2013/03/mr-foia-speaks-time-to-tie-up-loose.html" target="_blank">accompanying letter</a> which confirms the leak was that, a leak, and the actions of a civic minded single individual and not the manifestation of an oil funded, massive conspiracy. Another myth laid to rest.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In the real world, Climategate has served to help shift the climate narrative away from AGW alarmism and into a more considered re-assessment of green-inspired energy <strike> lunacy</strike> policy. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Sadly, in the halls of academia, Climategate is rarely mentioned, never discussed and, especially, not brought to the attention of tender, impressionable undergraduates for fear they loose their faith in the environmental <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/12/agw-proponents-fight-rearguard-action-as-political-climate-science-fails/#more-81966" target="_blank">dogma</a> most courses still spoon feed to their compliant stooges more focused on strategic education (is this on the exam?) than deep learning.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As always, truth will out and inquiring minds will re-assert the necessity for academia to actually practice critical thinking rather than merely espouse its virtues.</span></span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-14932635723825270412013-01-21T10:55:00.001-05:002013-01-21T11:11:43.833-05:00don't foget to double tap<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I am invited to speak next week at an environment conference being hosted by one of the colleges on my home campus. I am excited as my views and alternate perspective will broaden the range of discussion and my inclusion on the list of invited speakers offers a sign of hope that a new, more enlightened environmentalism may yet emerge from the ashes of the past 20 year in climate alarmism.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But just as every playbook has a silver lining, there's always a counter point to remind you that mental illness is real and requires infinite patience. Just as ecomyths seem to rise Phoenix style every time they are dismissed, so do old environmentalists. So it was a great pleasure to read the latest missive over on <a href="http://www.climate-resistance.org/2013/01/malthuss-zombie.html" target="_blank">Climate Resistance</a>, once more eviscerating the latest reincarnation of ideological doom and gloom from Paul Ehrlich which Ben encapsulates in his essay <a href="http://www.climate-resistance.org/2013/01/malthuss-zombie.html" target="_blank">Malthus's Zombie</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Can sustainability ever be achieved? What is the greatest barrier to successful implementation of effective strategies and policies? First, we must begin to recognize, acknowledge and finally ignore the willful stupidity still firmly embedded within the heart of environmental ideology. Rather than recycle the alarmist Zombie, we need to recognize that:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">the earth's resources are not limited: technology is advancing more rapidly today than at any other point in human history </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">limits do not define the human existence: hope and ingenuity do. <span style="font-size: large;">Sustainability</span> must be built upon incentives, not censure.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">science and <span style="font-size: large;">an </span>understanding of the environment are not our primary constraint: politics and political will are</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">before <span style="font-size: large;">governance</span> can be <span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">efficient</span>, <span style="font-size: large;">it </span>must first be effective: zero-carbon is <span style="font-size: large;">the wrong goal, we should be seeking to provide low-cost, decentralized energy worldwide to liberate people from poverty</span></span> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">education needs to create divergent thinking and creativity<span style="font-size: large;">: </span>not conformity, fear and censure.</span></span></li>
</ul>
L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-36432114608902567792013-01-15T14:13:00.001-05:002013-01-15T14:13:38.929-05:00if you didn't laugh, you'd cryThis cartoon from Josh was too good not to re-post: the original courtesy of the impeccable <a href="http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/1/13/proper-wrong-josh-194.html" target="_blank">Bishop</a>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaLCt-zezgDqxTW-UdIIJ_xI9kJJgTP7YGzZNZ3kOAuzHiuahU2kRjlH1_WMJPyZn07IELhWl02yW9dp51wHpcp0I45obz-52bSyRBsXzyG_qS3w-_UobsIWjrWNirPnuCzqpJ/s1600/DavidRose_is_wrong.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaLCt-zezgDqxTW-UdIIJ_xI9kJJgTP7YGzZNZ3kOAuzHiuahU2kRjlH1_WMJPyZn07IELhWl02yW9dp51wHpcp0I45obz-52bSyRBsXzyG_qS3w-_UobsIWjrWNirPnuCzqpJ/s320/DavidRose_is_wrong.jpg" width="295" /></a></div>
<br />L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-12153284603149905762012-12-19T09:01:00.002-05:002012-12-19T09:14:50.983-05:00after the summit, the descent (the dissent was always there)<ul>
<li><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Posturing, in fact, is one of the biggest weaknesses of the
environmental movement, where everyone wants to be seen doing the right
thing, without paying the costs of actually doing it.</span></span></i></li>
</ul>
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/18/kelly-mcparland-kyoto-failure-could-threaten-global-summiteering/" target="_blank">This article</a> in today's National Post commenting on the inevitable demise of the global climate summit industry<span style="font-size: large;">.</span> </span></span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The summits have actually outlived the problem they were initiated to discuss. Their demise will force many charlatan professors to look elsewhere for their boondoggles, expenses paid catch up visits with friends from around the world in exotic locations, mutually reinforced by their research findings recommending the very same meetings they then attended. It's a wonder PhD programs have difficulty recruiting. Never mind philosophy and methodology -- how good are you at self-promotion, the art of implied crises and the conceit that an annual conference of like minds ever achieved even a modicum of divergent, let alone creative, thought?</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not to despair, there's always a new environmental dystopia waiting to be "discovered", embraced and fearlessly promoted by those same displaced intrepid summit groupies.</span></span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, the world continues to flourish and improve, globally. No, it is far from perfect and it is still has ample room for improvement. But i<span style="font-size: large;">t is steadily, and occasionally spectacularly, better than in the past<span style="font-size: large;">. So why do environmentalists persist in dystopian visions <span style="font-size: large;">of limits, impending doom, sta<span style="font-size: large;">sist control and constraint?</span></span></span></span></span></span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">The environmental movement will continue to be <span style="font-size: large;">irrelevant, and a cir<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">c<span style="font-size: large;">us</span></span> for Orwellian dis<span style="font-size: large;">tr<span style="font-size: large;">action of the chattering classes,</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">until such time as it embraces the necessity for the future to be embraced with hope, optimism and creative energy, with ideas that actually transpose and facilitate empowerment, improvement and sustained growth that is the very imperative inherent in human existence.</span></span> </i>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-37745324052886703642012-07-09T12:15:00.000-04:002012-07-09T12:19:30.108-04:00rio revisited<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I was not in Rio for the original Earth Summit in 1992. Neither was I invited to Rio+20. In fact, the closest I got to Rio was writing a chapter on Rio as a one of the gateways for my Tourism text <i>Gateways to Discovery</i> being released this fall -- so I was thinking about Rio but not one of the 50,000 delegates in attendance. Funny, after a lifetime career in the field of resource management and sustainability, I don't make the top 50,000 to receive an all expenses trip paid by somebody else but after 6 years of blogging I make the world's top 250 climate skeptics: oh, the vagaries of fame and fortune.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;">Sidebar</span><b>:</b> <i>best line of the year from the movie Contagion. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Character 1: "you're not a writer!" </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Character 2: "I am . I blog". </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>#1: "Blogging is not writing: its graffiti with punctuation."</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Anyways, back to my musing on Rio and now Rio+20. I was pondering what to say when I read <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/06/21/peter-foster-the-rio-future-we-avoided/" target="_blank">this excellent summation</a> by Peter Foster:</span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The failure of Rio does not mean disregard for “The Environment.”
Environmental protection is a branch of human protection. The
environment has no value except for what it means to humans. The outrage
that this observation will promote serves to prove the point. The
environment can no more value itself than it can express outrage. Human
development inevitably involves disturbance of land and potential
pollution of air and water. The issue is never people versus the
environment. It is the interests of some people vs. the interests of
others. The question is one of balance, and that pollution should not be
suffered without compensation. A bigger question is one of entirely
bogus eco scares being manufactured as a rationale for payoffs to the
very kleptocrats who are responsible for global poverty.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i> The Rio+20 text was originally sold as promoting “The Future We Want.”
However, the “We” in question was always a self-selected group of UN
bureaucrats, alarmist NGOs, corporate rent-seekers and main chancers
whose interests were sharply at odds with those of ordinary people.
Rio+20’s failure should be celebrated as The Future We Avoided.</i></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Good stuff. Accurate, pithy and just a little acerbic.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I was going to add some more of my own commentary when I read <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/12599/" target="_blank">this</a> by Ben Pile: </span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>A lot is expected of ‘science’. However, the failure of Rio+20, like the
failure of many global conferences to produce agreements, such as the
meetings at <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/11888/">Durban</a>, <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/9986/">Cancun</a> and <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/7912/">Copenhagen</a>,
reveals once again that the real function of ‘science’ is a fig leaf
for their delegates’ bad faith. </i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Rio+20 was the ideal marketplace for such bland pieties. It’s not as if
economic growth, short- or long-term, is a problem the UK enjoys.
Politicians and ‘thinkers’ who lack the ideas necessary to produce
positive change – growth – turn the concept of growth into the enemy.
The anti-growth lobby congeals at events such as Rio, where there’s
ample opportunity to swap ideas about how to turn their own mediocrity
into a worldwide political project under the pretence of ‘saving the
planet’. In reality, the desire for powerful global political
institutions owes much more to politicians’ own domestic crises of
legitimacy than it does to any real threat to the world’s rivers, trees
and oceans.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> B<i>y winning whatever passes for the hearts and minds of the political
establishment, environmentalism has been installed throughout political
institutions without ever having won a democratic contest of its ideals.
Such is the extent of this insidious colonisation that any public
debate about the future, especially of energy policies, is already
prefigured according to environmental precepts.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i> This assumption that the masses are suffering from consumption addiction
allows world leaders to step in and make the big decisions about the
future on our behalf. Yet conferences like Rio+20 are not about
protecting us plebs; these shindigs are really about protecting the
elites.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i> NGOs are only too happy to help. As I have argued previously on </i><i>spiked, environmentalism has <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/11068/">comprehensively failed</a>
to establish itself as a popular movement. Instead, environmental NGOs –
a pale imitation of mass movements – were given access to political
institutions to overcome the disconnect between political elites and the
public. As ‘pressure groups’, they pretended to be holding governments
to account, but by raising the issues the government wanted to identify
with, NGOs were actually doing governments’ bidding.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i> This supranational institution-building needs its own legitimising
basis: environmental crisis. And this is where the science is recruited.
Scientific organisations all over the world plan for years to produce
the most ghastly predictions from measurements of our relationship with
the natural world.</i></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Thank you Ben.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The context within which both Rio and Rio+20 should be viewed is a wider worldview which recognizes the role contemporary environmentalism now plays within politics. It is the <i>de facto </i>moral agenda for political poverty. The science does not require nor compel the subjugation of the human race by elites. There are no limits that are not ideologically created by the<i> </i>self-serving political elites seeking to impose them on humanity. The world has spent 2000 years finally learning how to take the majority out of the default condition of human existence: poverty. The methodology is political freedom, followed by economic freedom, followed by the opportunity for entrepreneurship and technological advancement. Given choice and opportunity, the vast majority of the human race has proven they will choose advancement and with that advancement, both a compassion for the rest of the human race and an increased concern for the health of their environment. In human history, no authoritarian, centralized elite or government has ever succeeded in doing the same.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">About the only other thing history has proven as totally unnecessary? Global gabfests in exotic locations at tax payers expense by phony-baloney hacks.</span></div>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-27704675928150533632012-03-22T16:05:00.000-04:002012-03-22T16:05:43.453-04:00the great wind fallacy<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The world has progressed and prospered through time on the basis of the development of cheap, accessible energy. To replace existing power sources, any new energy will have to be similarly both cheap and accessible, something existing supposedly "green" candidates are not.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">As Matt Ridley aptly<a href="http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-wind.aspx" target="_blank"> summarizes</a>, the situation with wind power is that the option is both ineffective, inefficient and irrelevant:</span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world's
energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the
regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while
improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural
communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons,
felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial
accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia
with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a
ton of which is in the average turbine - despite all this, the
total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per
cent worldwide.</i><i> </i></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Too often, contemporary environmentalism fails to acknowledge that nothing is sustainable if there is a failure to fully integrate the economics of life with both its social and environmental imperatives. There is no prospect for a future energy policy premised on a culture of poverty. Poverty is the default condition of the world. It does not need to be created: it is. Wealth has to be created. Prosperity takes development in all its manifestations: social, cultural, environmental and economic. There is a world of difference between efficiency of resource use and wise use of the environment implicit within the construct of sustainability, and the deprivation and pious imposition of censure and the morally induced poverty emblematic of contemporary environmental ideology</span></span>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-916083628457639532012-02-28T15:32:00.000-05:002012-03-03T20:17:38.600-05:00the long slow death of a faulty paradigm<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The environmental movement is as promiscuous with its ‘ethics’ as it is with ‘The Science’. </i>This pithy conclusion comes courtesy of Ben Pile writing in <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/12163/" target="_blank">Spike </a>on the non-similarities between Fakegate (the falsification of material to incriminate the Heartland Institute) and Climategate 1 and 2 (the massive leak of evidence of malfeasance by the core of the IPCC climatocracy).</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Ben <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/12163/" target="_blank">ably summarizes</a> both the facts of the Hearltland situation and the inescapable reality that the opposition to the imposed AGW consensus at the center of the IPCC has never been a conspiracy, it has never been massively funded and it is neither exclusionary, nor authoritarian in its <a href="http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/the-climate-wars/" target="_blank">ideology</a>. Indeed, perhaps the only factor that universally applies to all climate realists is their sense of abhorrence of an authoritarian, imposed ideology of a conformed political consensus being imposed under the guise of an incomplete science. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Fakegate reveals how deeply the environmentalism narrative of limits, pessimism and dystopia is embedded within academic and intellectual discourse. Environmentalism has become so convinced of the correctness of its own mythology that its adherents are no linger able to see the blue skies of future prosperity for the storm clouds of their own bleak attitudes. Dialogue is near to impossible. Those who question the stasist paradigm are dismissed, ostracized and finally, framed with falsehoods.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Except, a funny thing happened along the way. Those pesky skeptics refused to wear the tag of denial, sulk and wallow in shame -- instead they <a href="http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/the-climate-wars/" target="_blank">stood firm</a>, resolute and, as realists, re-affirmed the primacy of empirical data, scientific method, the differentiation of science from politics, the dissociation of economics from social engineering and a confidence that when one speaks the truth, time will eventually validate you.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">While environmental activists in NGOs, politics and academia collectively scrambled to more elaborate means to spin the redeeming correctness of the central narrative, that their end somehow justified whatever means were employed in its imposition, the paradigm at the center of it all has quietly and very publicly been refuted, repudiated and discredited. But, in scientific terms it is not yet refuted: an ideological proposition can not be refuted, and that is all AGW has ever been, an ideologically conspired assertion.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The paradigm that has galvanized environmentalism for the past 40 years (ecological limits, driven by human mismanagement, inducing a catastrophic and dystopian future) has been overtaken and bypassed by dynamic, progressive and prosperous change...worldwide. It is self-evident that the world has many remaining issues. But it is equally self-evident to the lay public that the world's problems are all issues for which progressive, astute human management can resolve and replace with something better. That process is rarely easy, seldom quick but it is inexorable. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Fakegate reveals that the faulty paradigm of AGW is dead. </span></div>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-59123517037981622772012-01-25T12:57:00.003-05:002012-01-25T12:59:38.848-05:00sad, but true<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>...just as democracy has not guaranteed rationality in economic policy, it
will also be a poor protector of personal liberty. The democratic masses
are now sufficiently conditioned to believe that politics and state
action are the solution to every problem, and when the crisis
intensifies and anxiety levels rise, the majority will happily sign away
the remaining bits of individual freedom and property rights in a
desperate but entirely counterproductive bid to stem the tide.</i></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The quote above is from the </span><a href="http://papermoneycollapse.com/2012/01/deceits-and-delusions-some-thoughts-on-the-euro-crisis-and-democracy/" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" target="_blank">latest</a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> in a fine series of posts subsequent to his book on Paper Money Collapse by Detlev Schlichter. In <a href="http://www.qando.net/?p=12352" target="_blank">contrast</a> to the </span><a href="http://www.qando.net/?p=12350" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" target="_blank">current US President,</a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Schlichter appears to have a clear grasp on economics, capitalism and the basis for prosperity.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">For example:</span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>On the basis of economic theory and historical experience, the life
expectancy of a societal model with 50 percent or more government
control over the economy does therefore not look promising. The taxing,
resources-consuming state-parasite must constantly weaken and sooner or
later kill the productive and wealth-creating market-host. When does
this happen? Well, we are about to find out, as we are now all part of
some gigantic real-life experiment, bravely conducted by the current
policy establishment in Europe and elsewhere at our own expense and that
of our children. Across the EU, the share of government spending in the
economy is already around 50 percent, depending whose numbers you
believe. If we could account for regulation and interventionist
legislation, the state’s grip on economic decision-making is certainly
larger. To call such an economy capitalist is a joke, albeit perhaps not
as cruel a joke as the one the economy itself, with its persistently
anaemic performance, is playing on the Keynesian economists and their
ridiculous clamour for ever more government spending to boost ‘aggregate
demand’.</i></span></li>
<li style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Anybody with any knowledge of economics should feel uneasy at the sight
of a country where half of recorded economic activity is conducted by
the state.</i></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Rather than a sense of unease, the mass herd of mainstream media appears to be doing its best effort to rationalize and legitimize the ideology of state control over the economy. Find one example in all of human history where this has been a sustainable success.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">When ever the answer is given as "state control over the economy", you know one of two things:</span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the wrong questions have been asked, or</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">someone is seeking to exert power and control using the state as their instrument of personal aggrandizement.</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Sad but true</span></span>.<br />
<br />L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-19124630115706323892012-01-25T10:31:00.000-05:002012-01-27T14:56:23.666-05:00becoming a green hero....<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />As a follow up to an improvised chat I had with a student in the coffee line, I want to share a scenario for you to ponder:</span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;">You
land your spaceship on Earth but know nothing about the planet or its
inhabitants, armed only with superior technology (you are after all an
inter-galactic space/time traveler) and a well-intentioned desire to
assist if possible.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> You ask your on-board computer for a print out of
the key data on the planet and its peoples: you get data for "countries"
listing income per capita; annual death rate, birth rate and infant
mortality; life expectancy; some trends for the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jbkSRLYSojo%29" target="_blank">last 200 years for 200 countries</a>;
an index of political freedom; and then some data on pollution levels,
which includes per capita levels of "waste" -- being from another planet
you have no idea what this last item is, but what the heck, computer
lists it, must have some relevance.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Being of superior intellect you
ask the computer to run a quick correlation analysis to help you
determine what to do and how you can help. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">You can see from the
data that over 200 years the planet has been steadily improving in all
areas, in all countries but some parts still lag and could be classed as
"less developed" "under developed" or just in an earlier stage of
development -- note, have to learn the language these people use, don't
want to offend anyone from the get-go! (Hmmm, wonder if these people
still use violence?)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Anyways your data show that prosperity and
waste are highly correlated: light-bulb! You can bring more "waste" or
even better help the poor places generate greater amounts of waste and,
according to your data, their incomes will rise, their life expectancy
will increase, infant mortality decrease and malaria disappear -- and
you will be a hero. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">And as a tiny green alien, you would,of course, be a
"green hero". </span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Now you still don't know cause from effect, but hey, who's perfect anyways?</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Part 2: denouement</span></b><br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The point
is not that waste is by definition worthless and useless, it is the conditions
that create that value that are significant and meaningful.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">A weakness of capitalism is it generates waste. A strength is it
generates prosperity. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">So, if we
educate concerned and active young people that waste is bad and should be
curtailed, we have just focused on <i>an answer</i> based on flawed presumptions: fear
and guilt -- based on an incorrect presumption about limits. We then take
their energy and enthusiasm and direct them to address waste. Great. Even
if they significantly reduce waste for the wealthiest 1 billion (which has not
proven possible), what difference have they made to the lives of the lowest 1
billion?<br />
<br />
Conversely, if we focus on strengths and hope, we challenge their education to
ask the <i>right questions </i>as to how do we create prosperity for the lowest 1
billion -- implementation of sustainability that is actually
transformative. Poverty is antithetical to sustainability.<br />
<br />
The first construct is stasist and does not significantly alter anything: the
second is inherently dynamist and does: wealth is a necessary condition for
sustainability whereas poverty is what kills people and degrades the planet.<br />
<br />
So why does convergent thinking in education stigmatize wealth? Rather
than inspire or encourage any graduate work on waste, education should be
inspiring and facilitating the examination of creative wealth creation
contextualized and "in country" for those places most in need of development and wealth
creation.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If waste management is the presumptive answer, the wrong question is being asked. </span></div>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-74811710521119730712012-01-22T21:02:00.000-05:002012-01-22T21:29:10.922-05:00it's all politics...<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Most people still assume that resource management and environmental decisions depend upon sound science, rational policy making and human values of progress. In fact, they reflect a fixation on political winds of convenience and contrivance. Too often, the results are an act of "<a href="http://www.qando.net/?p=12324" target="_blank">national insanity</a>". The latest example is the delay and apparent "rejection" of the Keystone pipeline by the Obama Administration, which even the <a href="http://www.qando.net/?p=12333" target="_blank">mainstream media </a>recognizes as <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/01/19/why-obama-turned-down-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/" target="_blank">stupid</a> and ideological from a policy perspective, <i>perhaps the worst political mistake of his entire presidency</i></span>. </div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>It isn’t often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming
virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the
groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed
with his reelection that, through some sort of political calculus, he
believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his
chances.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>This seems like a truly simple determination. Iran is threatening to
blockade the 20 percent of the world’s oil supply that flows through the
Strait of Hormuz. The American economy is struggling from high
unemployment. The volatility of oil prices, reflected in periodic spikes
at the gas pump, is a threat to productivity. A privately funded
pipeline project that would create tens of thousands of jobs while
helping stabilize America’s energy supply clearly seems to be in the
national interest.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i> The Keystone XL pipeline would have single-handedly carried more energy
to the United States than the sum of all the green energy projects
funded by the Obama Administration. And it would have done so entirely
with private funds rather than the Administrations increasingly
ill-fated and ham-handed attempts at venture capitalism with taxpayer
funds.</i></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Stupid is, as stupid does. Perhaps this will be the re-election slogan for the Obama Administration.</span><i><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></i>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-33925624642995137342011-12-06T11:17:00.001-05:002011-12-06T11:29:16.221-05:00death of a delusion<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Dateline Durban: the final death throes of the AGW <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/05/delusional-in-durban" target="_blank">climate delusion</a>.</span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>A week ago, the annual climate change diplomatic cycle convened
here in Durban. Global interest in COP-17 goings-on can be gauged
by the fact that the media contingent is half what it was in
Copenhagen and only 12 heads of state—mostly from Africa—are
planning to drop by. Even the activist contingent seems dispirited.
When nobody important is paying much attention and nothing
significant is likely to be at stake, then, as the Durban draft
negotiations documents show, even diplomats can and will say any
silly thing that they’d like.</i></span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>Delegates from 190 countries have
gathered in this seaside resort town to see if they can salvage
anything from nearly 20 years of climate change negotiations. The
prospects are dim. A review of the <a href="http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2011/awglca14/eng/crp37.pdf">amalgam
of draft negotiating texts</a> [PDF] released this past weekend at
the half-way mark of this 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17)
to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), suggests that few delegates are even trying to pretend
that these negotiations are going anywhere. Some countries are
making demands for greenhouse gas emissions cuts that are about as
credible as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_for_the_National_Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union">
Soviet Five-Year plans</a>.</i></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And of course, without China, nothing is possible and China<a href="http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/06/the-china-diplo-speak-syndrome" target="_blank"> is not remotely interested</a> in the AGW delusion: </span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;">...<i>Xie’s statements at the Durban press
conference on Monday amount to a kind of octopus ink cloud of
diplo-speak designed to confuse credulous activists and over-eager
negotiators about its real intentions and goals. If it works China
hopes to escape Durban without being blamed for its "failure." The
Chinese have no intention of agreeing to an international treaty
that would limit their greenhouse gas emissions any time soon. </i></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Watch the media very closely. Sometime in the next year a brand new eco-catastrophe is going to be discovered. It may be a mutation of AGW hysteria, it might be a modification of green energy fetishism but it most certainly will be the coming of Armageddon. Again.</span></div>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27614867.post-74122926957240090722011-12-06T10:39:00.001-05:002011-12-11T15:56:30.512-05:00politics not process<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">How far and how systemic is the fraud of green energy? <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/12/05/terence-corcoran-the-dark-side-of-green-energy/" target="_blank">This report</a> on the findings of Ontario's Auditor General offers both insight and depressing clarity:</span></div>
<ul style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Auditor-General leaves little to the imagination in his incisive
dissection of the government’s top-down, to-hell-with-economics power
trip. Even the Cabinet appears to be an after-thought. </i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i> In a pointed note at the beginning of comments on renewables, the AG
highlights the wilful neglect that continues to dominate electricity
policy. “We did not rely on the Ministry [of Energy]’s internal audit
service team to reduce the extent of our audit work because it had not
recently conducted any audit on renewable energy initiatives.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>No economic analysis or business case had been prepared.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>In the belief that politics can defy economics, politicians all over the
world are making the big bet that they can overturn the hard rules of
supply and demand, the role of prices and the limits of innovation by
pushing the right policy buttons. </i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i> For a decade to come, Ontario will likely have surplus electricity.
Under contracts signed with green-energy producers and others, the
government will pay electricity generators billions of dollars to not
produce electricity</i>.</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Ideology and political manipulation of scientific data are mainstays of ecomyths. A certain absence of transparency also is common. But the green energy fraud has reached new heights in the abuse of due process and concomitant <a href="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/12/07/national-post-editorial-board-mcguintys-green-energy-disaster/" target="_blank">assertion of dogma</a>: </span><br />
<ul>
<li><i><span style="font-size: large;">Mr. McGuinty’s green dream has rapidly become an $8-billion nightmare
for Ontario taxpayers and electricity users. Almost no new net power
will be generated by all the green-energy projects hastily funded since
the bill was passed, but the average residential consumer will see more
than $400 a year added to his power bill for a decade to pay for all the
bad contracts with and subsidies to eco-friendly power suppliers.</span></i></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>...the whole scheme was largely designed by environmentalists and
green-industry lobbyists — “stakeholders” in the government’s
euphemistic rhetoric.</i></span> </li>
</ul>
</div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ontario recently had an election. The perpetrators of Ontario's green energy commitment were re-elected. On the surface this would suggest a political mandate in support of their ideas and program. This is not the case. Not only did the majority of the electorate not vote for the party that "won" the election, a problem arises from the fact that the use of the franchise is only one check and balance that <i>presumes</i> the government is already in compliance with it's own rules, procedures and processes. As the Auditor's report spells out, in Ontario at least, the government is completely by-passing even its own cabinet, the house and the party to assert the dictatorial fetishes of an inner elite headed by the Premier. This is not democracy, it is eco-fascism alive and assertive.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Update: </b> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Rex Murphy <a href="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/12/10/rex-murphy-for-dalton-mcguinty-its-too-easy-being-a-greenie/" target="_blank">discusses</a> how the situation in Ontario happened. He concludes:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Green is the easiest virtue. All it takes in most cases for politicians
is simply to say the word often enough and whatever they propose — for a
time — gets a pass.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>...that’s where this green obsession leads. It promotes a policy on its moral virtues, not on its real-life impact. </i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><i>It also has one other feature that politicians are totally unable to
resist: Being totally green, they are able, for once, to posture as
forward thinking, daring, innovative — even risk-taking — leaders,
champions of the Earth, saviours of “the children.” They get to play
Superman and Boy Scout at the same time.</i></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;">And this <a href="http://news.stv.tv/scotland/west-central/286170-wind-turbine-bursts-into-flames-as-hurricane-force-winds-hit-scotland/" target="_blank">picture</a> was published showing a windmill bursting into flames as a result of high winds:</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_5OGFgDkNekatuZHXpIZYoC5f98DuiJ6p95tyHEQDdwDAL1kQYhfwg-rDtRcd1ckQ2OzLBn3op9NTdKfpDbtbUi3BI9D1cZWdE2VumZtaeUyNHql9QFzBt5oUTGpXLU7R6P7E/s1600/286170-wind-turbine-bursts-into-flames-as-hurricane-force-winds-hit-scotland-410x230.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_5OGFgDkNekatuZHXpIZYoC5f98DuiJ6p95tyHEQDdwDAL1kQYhfwg-rDtRcd1ckQ2OzLBn3op9NTdKfpDbtbUi3BI9D1cZWdE2VumZtaeUyNHql9QFzBt5oUTGpXLU7R6P7E/s320/286170-wind-turbine-bursts-into-flames-as-hurricane-force-winds-hit-scotland-410x230.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.</span>L Graham Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01118540981074309253noreply@blogger.com