E17,

I can't say much more than what I tried to say earlier. Warmism represents the confluence of a number of interests which were well organised and had good PR skills. They are not natural bedfellows.

The Big Ask campaign and this

http://www.ippr.org.uk/ecomm/files/warm_words.pdf

for example.

It took off when times were good for the global economy and government realised the advantages of latching onto the scare. One of Mencken's hobgoblins, doing well by doing good, leading the world in climate and all the rest. Getting Western governments on board was the key and with it reinforcing appeals to authority..

It became a thing that you had to at least genuflect to to get government funds.

The opposition was people saying, "Hang on a minute" and was naturally less well organised.

You don't need a rival theory to the hypothesis of CAGW, it's enough to say that it doesn't work and so it should be disregarded, and saying we don't know is a lot better than clinging to something which is bogus. That's pretty much the answer I think you dhould have given your publisher; saying we don't know is a lot better than believing something clearly wrong and which constantly adapts to pretend it isn't.

I see a direct comparison between this and Lysenkoism in the USSR.

The thing that will kill it is the conflict with reality which is becoming ever more apparent. The key will be government realising that it isn't in its interests to promote the folly.

(O/T BB, rant? it is caused by passion and genuine feeling my man... rants are so passé...)

E17 good PR never hurt anyone, but how do we get it. The climate wars began without an opposition in the late 80s, most of us came to be aware of it some 10 to 15 years after James Hansen got the ball rolling. By which time the alarmists held all the commanding heights and had pretty much blocked of any access to the MSM, and even the scientific literature for those who questioned the science. There was no conspiracy, just a confluence of advantages from CAGW to a number of special interests. Environmentalists have found the perfect scare for taking over control of everyone's lives, scientists who spend their careers wondering where the next grant will come from have found coffers opened they'd never dream of. CAGW lends itself to the need for big governments so the monbioterati loved it, the Left loved it for the same reason, while the Lib Dems will pretty much go along with anything that destroys capitalism, and the Tories, ever the capitalists, saw a chance to make money. The BBC, is the most important broadcaster in the UK, and to many around the world, is crammed with people who mirror the casts of Love Actually and Notting Hill, the bien pensants. People who feel do superior to others it goes without saying that they are right and the others aren't just wrong, they're horribly wrong. So they cut off all discussions on their TV and Radio programmes. We are now in the position where, should any broadcaster have the cojones to allow sceptical opinions on air the environmentalists organise mass protests to OffCom. Peter Lilley appeared on Newnight to discuss his excellent destruction of the Stern Report and was told he couldn't say anything that wasn't in the IPPC AR4, only to find a puff piece by Prof. Wadham talking about the disappearance of the Arctic ice, something that isn't in the IPCC AR4 at all. So we're cream crackered. Lord Oxburgh fiddled his investigation of the CRU right in front of the eyes of the world and was congratulated by Beddington for "a blinder played" and no one in the MSM picked it up. They afraid to allow sceptical views, and they won't allow them. Now if you could tell us how we get reasonable discussion in front of the people I'd be keen to support you.

The CCA prepared by singularly under qualified young lady, working for a singularly under qualified minister, and pushed through parliament by a similarly singularly underqualified minister will all but bring our country to its knees, yet I cannot recollect one instance of the serious defects of this act being brought to the attention of the British people. We're cream crackered.

Ian Blanchard. I don't thing the current hiatus in warming tells us anything very much, except for the fact that if CO2 does increase temperature it isn't in a straightforward manner. So whether it goes warmer, or colder, neither will prove the science right. We will only know that when we're all dead, if we live that long!

Yep, what everyone else wrote. It's a bit depressing.

Cosmic, you can't hold back the tide. Look around and I'm sure you'll see solar panels going up on rooftops. That is not going to stop just because you stick your hear in the sand. It is happening, CAGW or not. Companies will increasingly realise that the solar profile matches their usage profile and will put panels on their roofs. So the size of the pie available to fossil will dwindle. Moreover, at weekends when companies don't use their power it is going to be available and your fossil plants won't be able to compete. My guess is that in ten years there will be times when there is too much available anywhere sunny. Then a European or US HVDC grid and more storage will make sense and it will be built. This is all inevitable and welcome.

TinyCO2, you don't get it. People living in the worst parts of London or Coventry or wherever are not the home-owning, 4x4-owning bourgeois. They live there because they have no other choice. And they pay the health price for other peoples' choices to pollute the air. They don't buy 4x4 or electric cars, they take the bus or walk.

Gonna have to duck out of this one in a while. But briefly:

Ian Blanchard: we may be using the term "PR" in different ways.

In one sense the whole AGW story is all about PR, spin, whatever you want to call it.

What I'm talking about in relation to the skeptics' mesage is not overselling, just finding a way to get views heard amid the warmist chatter, described beautifully by geronimo. Given the history, it's now very difficult to get anything taken seriously, if you're allowed to discuss it at all.

That doesn't mean it's impossible, though. As Geronimo points out, none of us really know how to do it. A PR company could advise how to do it.

From my position working for a publication which considers itself to be on the front line of environmental news, I can see where some progress might be made, as I mention in a previous post.

I take the point that the change will eventually come from the real world. But what does one do in the mean time? Sit back and watch the fuel prices rocket, the economy go down the pan and the poor and infirm perish?

TinyCO2, I'm sure you're right when you said in a previous post that the difficulty about the skeptics is that they are not the most vocal sector of society, and will be more inclined to sigh and wait for it to blow over.

Plenty more to say: I don't think this is a class issue. The opinionocracy that Geoff Chambers discussed earlier is small – tiny – they just hold the relevant positions of power – media and politics, primarily. But it's too simplistic to say that all Guardian/Times readers or people who work in Hoxton share their opinions. I know plenty who fit that description, and most of them couldn't give a f**k about climate change one way or the other.

BB,

Cosmic, you can't hold back the tide. Look around and I'm sure you'll see solar panels going up on rooftops.......

===========

There have been all sorts of mass crazes which seemed so compelling at the time and afterwards were shown to be completely ridiculous.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Wordsworth-Reference/dp/1853263494

"£3.79 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery"

Instructive, at least amusing, and surely cheaper than a big hit of what you are smoking now.

BB, in many cases they walked, hitched and risked their lives to go from somewhere with no car pollution and no energy to somewhere with both. And that's just the new arrivals of which there are many. London is where the bulk of immigrants aim for. Others come from foreign slums and are far more likely to grumble about the cold and the price of food than the pollution. Some will have swapped to city pollution from open dung fires or lethal kerosine heaters. Their lives will be lengthened for the exchange.

The cities exist because people like my ancestors left the countryside where there was lots of fresh air to go to places, far worse, far poorer and far more polluted than they are now. Fresh air is quite a long way down the list of human priorities. Young people are still doing that. Moving to London to make their fortune. The dream is to eventually take your turn and move out again.

Your arguments conflict with history and reality BB.

TinyCO2, you little homage to your ancestors' grit does nothing to change the equation. There are externalities associated with fossil fuels that are not paid for directly by users of those fuels. This makes such fuels cheaper than they otherwise would be. Just because it is worse somewhere or somewhen else doesn't make it right that people should be inflicted with poisonous air. You may be happy to claim proudly that London is not as bad as some sh*t hole in Africa or Asia, but that is not good enough for anyone who is aware that the clean air they enjoy in their country abode is not a privilege but a right; a right that is denied to those less fortunate.

Cosmic == Canute == Comic

So I and millions like me should be forced to have an inefficient electric car so that someone who has chosen to live in a very lucrative city with an excellent transport system can have cleaner air? Air which I'm not polluting because I don't drive there. In fact most of the traffic there is public transport, goods and services. Possibly some hire cars for tourists. The vast majority of people do not drive in inner London.

Now why would I get an electric car BB? Why would I let anyone try to force that on me? This is what I mean about you not dealing with reality. People won't make the choices you want to force on them just because you have an ideal in your mind that takes scant notice of what people want for themselves.

Sometimes you can persuade the masses to agree to action, even when it doesn't directly affect them but your arguments have to be good. Nicer air quality for Londoners won't sell a single electric car. Sky high fuel prices might do, or it may see people driving hybrids or hydrogen or LPG. People will make their own choices that way.

BB,

Cosmic == Canute == Comic

================================

Very good.

Now read the book.

Well since you don't live there, you can be forgiven for not knowing that the average speed in London is about 12 mph because there is so much traffic. Now it might be that it is just buses and taxis, though if you've spent an hour waiting for your bus to come along, you might doubt that. If you think nobody drives into London, or any big UK city, you are in a minority of about one. Is "inner London" different? There's the congestion charge that reduces traffic a bit, but Boris scrapped an extension to that because so many people objected to paying for their fumes.

Like I said, clean air is a right, not a privilege. Pollution levels in many UK cities are at illegal levels and while those levels might have been acceptable in the past they no longer are. Things change: we have enough data to know that emissions are harmful; and the technology exists to keep cities clean. You can belch away in the countryside to your heart's content, but come into a town or city and in the future I for one expect cars to be zero emission. Zero emission cars are coming whether you like it or not, of that I have no doubt.

damn Shub...I want to take a good fat snort of that powder!

"That doesn't mean it's impossible, though. As Geronimo points out, none of us really know how to do it. A PR company could advise how to do it."

I know it's popularly supposed that sceptics are "well organised, well funded shills for Big Oil." but the fact is we are a rag tag army of individuals, and don't have the organisation to put together the money for PR and lobbying.

Let me try to explain how complete the ban is on sceptical views either on the science, or the policy. Only 5 MPs voted against the Climate Change Act. An act which committed us to reducing our CO2 output to 20% of our 1990 levels by the year 2020 and, now, 80% by the year 2050 (it was originally 60%). As far as I can ascertain there was no engineering feasibility study to ascertain if these objectives could be met. The DECC told me that there were 17,000 contributions, the Act was written by Ms. Byrony and a team of 7 others in 12 weeks, so you have to figure that they didn't pay much attention to the contributions. It bound future governments to meet this target and set up the Climate Change Committee, an independent body, which has the responsibility to ensure the government complies with the act snd the Energy and Climate Change Committee to oversee the CCC on behalf of parliament. The chairmen of these two committees, Lord Deben, and Tim Yeo both have ties to the renewable energy industry. Deben as Chairman of Veiola, which intends to make money from connecting wind farms to the grid, and Yeo, who makes around £200,000/annum for advising various renewable energy companies.

In short we have embarked on a radical change in the way we produce our energy without an engineering feasibility study on technology, timescales and costs. (From my own experience and engineering project that starts without an engineering feasibility study will have wildly underestimated the costs and wildly underestimated the timescales).

There is no road map of how we get to where we want to be.

It is being overseen by two men who have a lot of skin in the game if renewable energies take precedence over fossil fuels.

Our energy costs will rise, so our home bills will rise too (and again you can bet your ranch that the lack of a proper engineering feasibility study will have led to these rises being grossly underestimated).

Companies providing jobs here will almost certainly move to a place where their energy costs are more in line with the real cost of energy.

The cost will rise in our transport, retail, manufacturing and service industries, and these will be passed on to the end user.

And already the engineers are saying there will be energy shortages and possibly rolling blackouts.

We shouldn't need a PR company to help us expose this scandal, the press should be all over it like a rash, it's the story of the decade. But there's blanket silence on the issue.

I don't think it's too strong to say that, variously, for political, ideological and financial gain, all the people involved in the writing and implementation of this act are committing a crime against the British people, and in my view should be made to explain themselves. But still there is a blanket silence.

There's a Guardian article about Jeremy Grantham that says it all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/apr/12/jeremy-grantham-environmental-philanthropist-interview

Scary, and most frightening is that most people would read it and think he was a philanthropist. Yep in exactly the way rich people used to preserve the countryside by creating grouse moors and deer forests. In our world the peasants have hung Robin Hood and are urging King John and the sheriff to raise taxes.

BB Of course there’s a lot of traffic, in 2007 there were over 7.6 million people in London and an extra 1 million commuters and visitors every day. There are also a fair number of selfish wealthy drivers – it’s where the term Chelsea Tractor came from after all. And you’re right the poorest end of society are the most likely to walk and use public transport. There is a continuous struggle to reduce pollution and the way they do it is by pricing the poorest off the roads.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/Travel-in-London-report-1.pdf

For travel strictly within Central London only 5% of trips are by car. It’s when trips go further a field that car use goes up, to the point where trips between Greater London and anywhere in the in GB, car use goes up to 81%. The bulk of car journeys are in outer London but that has much lower air pollution than Inner and Central London.

The amount of private transport in London has barely gone up since 1993 but the public transport has. That’s where the increased pollution has come from, especially buses. The pollution emissions of new cars have been substantially improved over that time. The number of people in cars entering London during the weekday peak has halved since 1978. The numbers are a third of other major UK cities.

If you go to page 154 you see a nice table of car ownership by income. Now push the cost of the car up and imagine the car ownership going down, pushing the lowest paid people off the roads altogether. The rich will love it. An easier ride to work. It’ll make the countryside cleaner too because if people can only afford one electric car or no car at all, they’ll not be making too many trips out of the city.

That’s what modern environmentalism does, it penalises the people at the bottom. In the name of making the World better for everyone it take stuff away from them. People like Prince Charles, David Cameron and Jeremy Grantham can be smug in their jet set lifestyles, sure that they can maintain any level of comfort not matter how stringent the rules on CO2 or NOx become. That’s the conspiracy that no one voices, that to reduce our impact on the planet there’s only one clear way. Have less.

And maybe that’s what we have to do but people should go into it with their eyes open. It’s time to stop pretending that if everyone is a bit more thoughtful and engineers try harder to make stuff efficient then huge changes can be made. It’s time people in power stopped making grandiose promises to cut CO2 that other people have to honour.

Geronimo “we are a rag tag army of individuals” I feel I ought to be building an escape vehicle out of scrap while chewing on a cigar ;-) Unfortunately we’re not in a TV series.

“In short we have embarked on a radical change in the way we produce our energy without an engineering feasibility study on technology, timescales and costs.”

That’s it exactly.

“We shouldn't need a PR company to help us expose this scandal, the press should be all over it like a rash, it's the story of the decade. But there's blanket silence on the issue.”

I can see why it happens though I’ve no idea how to fix it.