Sunday
Oct262014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Your future in their hands
Oct 26, 2014 Climate: Parliament Greens Take a look at the new Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss discussing the green blob with Andrew Neil. It is scary to think that people like this have our collective future in their hands. Even scarier to consider that a Prime Minister would want them in his cabinet.
Reader Comments (85)
Compare this stupid woman and her blathering, with [w]hat's actually beginning to happen around the world:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/27/winter-comes-a-month-early-in-kazakhstan-and-other-northern-regions/
Stupid keyboard - "hat's" should, of course, be "what's"...
So our esteemed prime minister sacks his most effective cabinet minister, and replaces him with a pathetic lightweight. Ms Truss is even too dim to inhabit the back benches, if this interview is an indication of her intellect. Cameron has shown, once again, a complete lack of sound judgement and a dangerous belief in management by public relations.
Investors worth $24 trillion call for global carbon price -
http://www.rtcc.org/2014/09/18/investors-worth-24-trillion-call-for-global-carbon-price/#sthash.AmsfH3Aq.dpuf
Out of the reach of children.
Thank goodness for Andrew Neil. Her replies were pathetic. The whole policy is pathetic. I must stop getting so worked up about these people with no backbone/no brain/no credibility/no straight answers etc etc. Choose whichever combination fits, expletives deleted.
She said that we have to move from carbon because it's running out anyway, but we can use it because we will develop carbon capture. She said carbon fuels are running out, so why are they using climate change as the reason for decarbonising? Pathetic. OMMMMMMM!
Compassion compels me to say Ms Truss can best be described as a non-entity. The villain of the piece is the idiot Cameron whose only coherent policy is how to be a smarmy git. He is the corollary of the floating voter - the floating politician. We all know how to get rid of useless politicians - kick 'em in the ballots!
Vote UKIP
'What day is it today, Ms Truss?'
'Well, what I would say is that it's the day after yesterday.'
Andrew Neil's performance reminds me of George Smiley, except Smiley's antagonists were worth his time. Sounds like Cameron has a watermelon in his bedroom at #10.
What is scary is that Andrew Neil is still quoting discredited denier propoganda memes.
He keeps talking about an 18 year pause when all five main datasets show warming during that period.
Love this bit at 7:05
This is a great formulation by Neil. Rather than being some theoretical notion about 'government' cutting 'emissions', it brings the lunacy right down to something people experience every day in their own home: using gas to cook and keep warm. And from their own experience people know gas is way cheaper than leccy for heating. No-one's going to vote for expensive electric heating - it's electoral suicide. Bravo Andrew.
The interview was like something from "The thick of it". To see the minister, who is after all a former oil and gas executive batting on a sticky wicket, with A. Neil bowling bouncers at her was hilarious. I have come to the conclusion that our political masters are so ill informed because talent is not the reason they receive their brief but one of pc correctness. Her knowledge of the brief was so poor, that it would have been unclassified if she had been sitting an examination. However, it probably placated the soft green tinge which Cameron needs to stop a handful of extra seats falling to the Greens should they be given a place in a future tv debate.
@EM
You point to an average increase of c. 0.2 of some unspecified value (Hiroshimas? Elephants? Manns?) over a period of 18 years with no indication of what allowance has been made for measurement errors, and that's your definition of warming?
Good to see that even you couldn't manage to squeeze a "dangerous" or "unprecedented" in there somewhere, but in any event that's pretty pathetic.
Your contributions here are sometimes intelligent and occasionaly thought-provoking. This time, though, you would have been much better off taking the dog for a walk instead of bothering to make such a weak comment.
Entropic Man
When you are in a hole stop digging !
Jerry M
The Y axis is temperature anomaly in Centigrade. My underlying point is that this thread is complaining about the interviewee, without mentioning the weakness of the interviewer. A true sceptic would not accept Andrew Neil's errors just because they agreed with his position.
Ross Lea
This false belief in an 18 year pause is your hole not mine. I keep lowering you a ladder and you keep pushing it away.
This is why I find it difficult to be polite and call those like yourselves sceptics when your wilful rejection of the evidence makes denier a more appropriate epiphet.
@EM
OK, so c. 0.2C over 18 years, no documented - if any - allowance for measurement errors, and you want to quibble about that not being as near-as-dammit no increase in warming.
0.2C over 18 years averges out at 0.01111 recurring per year. Truly terrifying, right? And indicative of SO much worse to come, for our children and our grandchildren. Or not.
And so on and so on, blah ...
So really - unless you want to argue from a standpoint of uber-pedantry - it's difficult to see where the "discredited denier propoganda meme" is in Neil claiming no warming in that time.
It is the PM's responsibility to choose his ministers at all levels of government and he has, fundamentally, two choices.
He either selects those who he thinks are best suited to the job without fear or favour pointing out that if they choose to shit in the government nest they will land on the opposite bank of the Thames before they can say "who, me?"
Or he can spend hours listening to his spin doctors, poring over the result of focus groups and picking those who (allegedly) make the government look modern or with it or whatever is the current buzz idea.
In the first case he will get the best there is available but will get a lot of stick from the media because they are too right or too left or not enough women or blacks or toffs or plebs or too many white males or old men or young women.
In the second case he gets a peaceful life but a lot of dross who are barely even competent to be lobby fodder.
I know which I prefer and I suspect the majority of voters feel pretty much the same way.
EM derails the thread, once again.
Back on topic, as a danged furriner I just find Cameron baffling. How on earth did he get to the top of the greasy pole? His judgement of people is naff, he has alienated his support base in the electorate, but he just plunges ahead, leading his government into more and more unforced errors.
Entropic man (Oct 27, 2014 at 11:52 AM), I thought this particular issue had been flogged to death a while back. Maybe Neil should have qualified his statement as "no statistically significant warming", but I don't see that this would have made any difference to the question.
Real-world data now indicates that CAGW theory is seriously flawed and so, by implication, are those government policies that are based upon its predictions.
I suspect the lady knew this and understood exactly what Neil was asking and why. However, she also knew the consequences to both herself and the government if she admitted it on national TV, which is why she did her utmost to avoid the questions... by channelling the spirit of Jim Hacker!
Arrogant, ignorant, overpaid, incompetent, useless waste of space! Have I left anything out?
Oct 27, 2014 at 11:52 AM | Entropic man said
"He keeps talking about an 18 year pause when all five main datasets show warming during that period."
The dates you use in your WFT graphs are from start 1996 to start 2014. That is not the last 18 years. The last 18 years go back from end September 2014.... a mere detail!! Try 1996.8 to 2014.8 then apart from BEST (surprise, surprise) they rise by 0.1 at most over 18 years ie statistically significantly flat.
'What I wouild say'.... is that Andrew Neil managed to 'truss' her up good and proper...
(Did you see what I did there..?)
By the way - the arm coming out with the sideways back-of-hand is a classic 'please back off' piece of body language...
The science is 97% irrelevant because they make it up as they go along. Did anyone else notice that ?
When EM has nothing to say he still pitches in to make certain everyone knows he is clueless.
As an aside - I wonder how Alex Salmond's sums would have worked out (re his North Sea Oil tax take) now that the price of Brent Crude is ready to join West Texas Crude at less than $80/barrel..?
As Harold Macmillan famously retorted to a reporter who asked what was causing his difficulties in government: 'Events, dear boy, events...'
She opens by saying "UK CO2 emmissions have fallen over the life of this gov" is that really true ?
anyone know any reliable figures ?
The Wikipedia UK CO2 emmissions page is terrible ..not updated for last 6 years, and old deceptive hockey stick graph.
..DECCs own figures seem to be heavily gerrymandered estimates
she says "debate with a lot of experts active" = lot of activist 'sperts (connected to the subsidy grabbing greenblob)
AN : "do you disagree when he says no warming for 18 years ?"
ET didn't disagree ..so EM argument that is has warmed is invalid (I always say "proper warming" is that at more than the historic come out of an ice-age background trend)
she actualy replied "we are seeing more erratic weather patterns" (yet there is no evidence for this)
Dave Salt, son of mulder
Forgive a slight pedantry, but it is rare to find significant warming over 18 years anywhere in the post-1880 record. The internal variability approximates the long term decadal rate of change so it typically takes two decades to see a statistically significant change in temperature.
Saying that there has been no significant warming in 18 years gives the impression to the ignorant that the warming has stopped ( which was probably the propaganda purpose) but actually says nothing useful about the status of the long term trend.
Entropic Man
Google 'Met Office-Pause' then report back on the three documents they have written on the pause and explain why they use the word 'pause' outside of these papers and referenced 'the pause' when I was at their offices last year.
Your only substantive point is whether the pause is 18 years or a little shorter
tonyb
"we are creating a level playing field"
??? what by giving solar/wind gimmicks massive subsidies ..that creates " a level playing field" ? No it's super distorting the market and screwing it up ..instead of letting it find the optimum efficiencies itself
- she did counter his gas argument , by mentioning CCS ..and if that could be made to work* you wouldn't need to give up gas (* yes it is largely a waste of time )
low CO2 energy is "technology neutral" she kept saying ie could be nuclear/hydro/ & useless green gimmicks
"I'm in favour of solar whether" ..you just cut the subsidies for agricultural land solar parks
.. her performance wasn't as idiotic as Ed Davey's always is
Nice one, EM
How much further out are we going to push this before somebody will admit that the AGW hypothesis is crap and that what, if any, warming there is is irrelevant to life on earth and is probably marginally beneficial, and that CO2 has feck all to do with any of it anyway?
At which point we just might be able to get back to ensuring cheap abundant energy for all which will save lives in the UK and elsewhere and start to drag the currently impoverished parts of the world up to what we consider at least a half-decent living standard.
And there might also be a bit of cash left over to fund some serious and useful research into what we do when in the fullness of time the oil really does start to run out,
EM you are off topic cos Truss didn't disagree with the no rise in 18 year claim..so take your talk to the Discussion blog
(just to tidy the point up .... Has it warmed in the last 18 years ? yes a tiny bit
Is that Global Warming ? No, cos it is not at a levels higher than the historic level we have from coming out of an ice age
Is the overall modern era trend less alarming than it was 18 years ago ? Yes of course)
The South Suffolk constituency in East Anglia earlier this year got rid of Tim Yeo, who was thankfully deselected by his own Conservative party members. In the neighbouring county of Norfolk, Liz Truss was picked to replace the former bane of the 'green blob', Owen Paterson. The now exposed UEA at Norwich was the source of the 'hiding the decline' and other Climeatgate revelations. It seems that as soon as one eco-fanatic is detected and dealt with, another one springs up.
Here's hoping that the election in May 2015 sends Truss packing, and replaces Tim Yeo with a member of parliament with scientific credibility and not solely the ability to bend to the green lobbyists.
Oct 27, 2014 at 3:27 PM | Entropic man
"...but actually says nothing useful about the status of the long term trend."
Well pardon me but it says a damn sight more about the long term trend than the ensemble of climate models that are woefully more and more diverging from the actual temperature record. 17 years was the time required before the cognoscenti of the AGW world were willing to concede a significant climatic deviation from theory, well 17 years has now passed and the "pause" is unexplained despite the 55 and counting "causes of the pause" http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/new-paper-finds-excuse-55-for-pause-in.html Climate scientists seem to be all over the place. 55 excuses that show the science definitely is not settled else they would all be in the models.
Is it the ongoing rise in sea level? Must be <0.000001mm since appointment and yet she is already out of her depth
"Whack a mole?"