The carbon footprint of handwringing

The BBC promotes some obscure academic to turn the ratchet of global warming induced hysteria one further notch.

This article has 'dodgy' written all over it, I just know it instinctively. One of the lines which suggest this is this one:

Mr Wissner-Gross's study found a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g (0.25oz) of carbon dioxide.

If you enter another request you obviously end up with double that amount.

Why 'obviously'? When people use the word 'obviously', and it is not completely and demonstrably obvious, and they aren't experts in their field I start to think 'agenda' or 'laziness'. Do Google cache search results? A cached result will return far quicker, and use less energy, than the original. 'Obvious'? Hardly.

This is quibbling while our culture burns, however. A culture and society which obsesses and agonises to this level of detail about perfectly normal things being done by billions of other people around the planet is a doomed one. What's next - the carbon footprint of breathing?

I'd like to see a study done on the energy produced through liberal handwringing. We could line 'em up in rows, attach them to generators and show them statistics about education, or photos from Africa or something. At times of peak demand we can bus in a load of Church of England bishops. It's win-win - energy crisis solved and liberals, at last, doing something useful.

It Certainly Could (giggle)

Climate Bill 'Could lead world':

Here.

Yes, it certainly would, but not in the way the greens and other assorted extreme leftists imagine. This is from the same source which gave us unilateral disarmament for the UK - the idea that rational actors abroad will set aside their own interests and hurt themselves just because they see some pious idiots on the other side of the world doing it. For me, to continue to think this way betrays signs of a disturbing mental illness. The mixture of a messianic complex and extreme naiveity is remarkable.

Anyway, back to the original point. Such a bill would, indeed, lead the world. Scotland would become the first industrialised country EVER to beggar itself into a pastoral, starving existence for no other reason than cultural suicide. One could say that Scotland is on its way to beggaring itself anyway, but us south of the Tweed cannot feel so smug about that these days as our own Clan is desperately doing the same to us. The real irony, though, is whatever carbon savings Scotland makes to offset against their economic and cultural collapse would be wiped out by an over-exuberant celebration of the Chinese New Year in a couple of suburbs of Shanghai.

In short, it is pointless and tremendously dangerous. Only the mad or very small children think like this.

UPDATE: One has to admire the impartial way the BBC wrote this article. There is no opposition to this proposal, not a single word of criticism. It is a press release for environmentalists, no more, no less.

Milliband ups the ante in mythical promises

It is a rule in modern politics that if you want to bury a story or cover up how useless you are at something, commit to an even more grandiose scheme to be done far in the future, like this one. The media class isn't interested in what you have (or haven't) done about something, but they lap stuff like this up.

In a letter to Mr Miliband, Lord Turner said the tougher target would be "challenging but feasible", and could be achieved at a cost of 1% to 2% of GDP in 2050.

Not challenging for Lord Turner and the rest of the extremely comfortable political class, of course.

Anyway, the bit about 1% to 2% in 2050 is extremely misleading - the implication is that it will cost 1 or 2% of GDP only in 2050. Of course, this is rubbish - it will cost 1% to 2% of GDP every year until 2050. Doesn't sound much? Well, average growth of the UK economy is about 2.5% per year, on average. To meet this ludicrous target, however, 1% to 2% will be lost per year, in other words a 1-2% contraction in the economy. That means little or no overall growth for the next forty years. Government projections of spending (on health, welfare, etc) rely on the economy expanding, not contracting or stagnating. You can have a welfare state or a green utopia (which it won't be, of course), but not both. Meanwhile, India and China laugh at our suicidal politics and plough on regardless industrialising their billion or two billion population economies. The irony is that we will beggar our economies, while the pittance in CO2 we save over forty years will be wiped out by about nine months of Sino-Indian economic growth.

Oh, and this forecast of 1% or 2% is by the same people who brought you the estimates for the Olympic games, i.e. born liars. Expect the true cost to be 4% or more, or a fucking economic disaster, in other words.

Driven to Create a blog

Finally, after all of the crap we have had to put up with for the last ten years, this has finally driven me over the edge and into blog land. I am interested in who commissioned this report - our government, or another stuffed-full-of-public-cash organisation like the EU or UN?

Anyway, it's the usual boiler plate green authoritarianism, which fifteen years ago would have been laughed at but is rapidly and disturbingly becoming mainstream, but the killer quote is below:

'it concedes that this approach "raises enormous questions and accusations of nannystate misery-guts spoilsportism".'


Or Fascism, as I'd rather call it, because it is (a) snappier and (b) more accurate. When the State uses its power to decide what you eat, could it be described as anything else?

I believe you are meant to 'hat-tip' your source, in this case 'Chapeau!' to Devil's Kitchen

Update:

I've been thinking a bit more about this. In order to meet their demand that we consume far less meat and dairy produce, they have two options:

• The hands-on, skull smashing variety of Fascism. That is, the use of force to impose rationing. There is no way such an extreme level of rationing could be imposed in peacetime and at a time of unparalleled prosperity without the indiscriminate and massive use of State force.
• The abuse of the market to price such goods out of the reach of all but metropolitan socialists.

The second option is mentioned in the article. But fixing the price at an artificially high level is a weapon almost as blunt and indiscriminate as the truncheons used to impose rationing. The limit on such foods they say we should consume are

one quarter-pound burger, two sausages, three rashers of bacon and one chicken breast, along with a litre of milk and 100g of cheese.

Now, at what price should these goods be set so that I am limited by my income to no more than this? My income is a lot more than many, and a lot less than those who own sumptious properties in Hampstead and vote Labour. How should the price be set? Will we have punitive taxation to steal money from the 'rich' (those able to afford two chicken breasts per week) to the 'poor' (those who spend their money on fags instead)? Are we going to have black-booted bacon inspectors turning over pubs to smash the flourishing black market in illicit pork products?

Like previous scares, e.g. about health, this report and others like it are produced for one reason, and it isn't to combat global warming. It is to prepare for the increase of State power.