This is the problem, there is money (tax) involved, it muddies the water.
Media applies a label, you are either a 'denier or a ‘remainer’ ’ or a ‘leftie’ or maybe a ‘liberal’ or whatever.
But what if I’m none of these, maybe like David Bellamy - spent his 50th in jail in Tasmania because he opposed the creation of dam on the Franklin river - a real leftie, worse still an environmentalist.
David was dropped by the BBC for saying … well much what Fallstaff has said.
Anyways, I always have been a petrol (gas) man, never had diesel, but recently changed my car.
Same model of merc, like for like, but as chance would have it this time it’s a diesel - previous car tax was £150.00 but the diesel is £30.00 - go figure.
EU chart very interesting. Beautiful head and shoulders and very tight compression on right shoulder. Something bout to bust IMO. Just suppose the FOMC surprises and raises 25 basis points this week to prove their independence. I think EU could drop 1000 pips quickly. Auy thoughts?
I just found a little book by Booker, which seems to explain the farce of “CO2 = Global Warming” by promoting understanding of the social psychology issues which have become so powerful and so hard to “Get them to listen …!”
Please download it and read it ! These people are no mugs !
"…1
Introduction
Sinc
e we have now been living with the debate on global warming for 30 years, it
might seem hard to imagine that any wholly new scientific perspective could usefully
be brought to bear on it. But such is the purpose of this paper, which seeks to use the
insights of a distinguished former professor of psychology at Yale to show the real
nature of that debate in a startling new light, helping us to understand much that
observers have long found baffling.
By any measure, the consequences of the belief that human activity may be caus-
ing our planet dangerously to warm have marked it as one of the most extraordinary
episodes in history. Countless billions of dollars gone into attempts to confirm the
theory that human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pos-
ing an unprecedented threat to the future of life on Earth. This idea has been found so
persuasive by many of the world’s politicians that they have been prepared to commit
us to spending trillions more on every kind of measure designed to avert that threat.
Their central aim has been, as they put it, to ‘decarbonise’ the world’s economy.
They want us to phase out the fossil-fuels on which mankind’s material progress has
been based for 200 years, and to rely instead on ‘carbon-free’ sources of energy, such
as ‘renewables’ and nuclear power. Together, they believe, this will bring about such
a reduction in human emissions of carbon dioxide that it will have a significant influ-
ence on the earth’s climate.
This, of course, is why the warming thesis has become so hugely important to all
our futures: it has led to the widely accepted view that our planet can only be saved
by a fundamental revolution in the way the human race manages its affairs, based on
eliminating precisely those sources of energy on which our modern industrial civili-
sation has been built.
But there has long been a very serious puzzle at the heart of how the discussion of
all this has unfolded. From the moment these views exploded to the top of the global
agenda in the late 1980s, they might have seemed to carry all before them. But right
from the start, a number of reputable scientists found them far from convincing or
well-founded. Yet so powerful was the momentum behind what had almost imme-
diately been proclaimed as a ‘consensus’ of scientific opinion that any questioning of
it was swept aside.
Over the years other experts emerged to challenge not just the ‘consensus’ it-
self, but the methods being used to promote it: not least the graphs and predictions
produced by those computer models which were so central to the case for anthro-
pogenic warming. Equally questioned were the methods being adopted by politi-
cians to counter the supposed threat, such as pouring colossal subsidies into new
sources of ‘zero-carbon’ energy.
But however authoritatively many of these attempts to question the ‘consensus’
were put, they were automatically dismissed as scarcely worth answering. In other
1
w
ords, the most obvious characteristic of the supposed ‘debate’ over climate change
was that it was never really a debate at all.
There was never any proper engagement between the two sides, because the
supporters of the ‘consensus’, who included all the world’s major scientific institutions
and most of the media, simply could not accept that any further discussion was called
for. Scarcely had the story begun than we were repeatedly told that ‘the science is set-
tled’.
For many observers, however, there was something very odd about this: not just
the absence of dialogue between the two sides, but the peculiar hostility shown by
supporters of the ‘consensus’ towards anyone who did not share their view. This was
not what might have been expected over what was, on any count, one of the most
significantissuesoftheage. Sowhatmightexplainit? Wasthereperhapssomecluein
human psychology which might help better to explain the extraordinarily one-sided
nature of this ‘non-debate’?
At this point, step forward Irving Janis, a professor of psychology at Yale University
in the 1970s, the man who has given us the crucial missing perspective that may allow
us to see this familiar story in a wholly new light.
I’m 75% scalper but will go longer if I see the train leaving the station. Keeping powder dry till I see something decisive. U right. Support held tight so far.
Actually I’m an “Environmentalist” - well actually a sympathetic believer in Nature and Evolution - I even have some leanings towards James Lovelock’s “Gaia” principle !
The trouble is that I come from a time when evry other kitchen had a twelve bore standing in the corner and we understood that if a Pheasant came strolling across the garden in season, it was “fair game”.
Last week I was asked to “Help trim a hedge” a mixed hedge of around half a mile length - and “they had managed to borrow a chain flail to " tidy it up” - I refused of course and told "them " exactly why - made no difference of course the vandals still went ahead ! (Illegally)
Yet I hear people who should know better talking about "Decimation of bank voles " - due to all things “Anthropogenic” - except the real reason !
They moan about the lack of songbirds and blame “Global warming” and "shooting in overseas countries " etc etc - but when was the last time anyone saw a “Gamekeeper’s Gibbet” ? our woods are stuffed with Magpies Jays and Crows - and the neighbours keep cats ! - but hey “that’s just nature - isn’t it ?” nothing to do with the lack of a dawn chorus at all !
There is a lack of Eels in our rivers - due to “overfishing” and some mysterious “sinking disease” - they say - But they fail to take account of the fact that “No sexual organs have ever been found in these fish” (Raymond Parry) and they spend a long time (up to 20 years ) in fresh water before returning to the Sargasso to breed. Couple this with the fact that in the 60s and 70s (and probably still happening) ordinary coarse fish were observed to be changing sex to female in our rivers and maybe to someone who actually had a capacity to think, there may just be an explanation in spending 20 years in the soup of female hormones we call “Rivers” !
[Edit - Oh and I forgot the "declining fertility of ‘men’ these days " ]
Then we get the “Evangelising Vegans” - Screaming “Rape” (artificial insemination) and “Murder” (normal animal husbandry slaughter) and purporting never to eat meat because “It is cruel”.
Well as I said I used to shoot shotgun quite regularly, then one day I went out on a windy day and the pigeons were flying - up wind , down wind , cross wind - I ended up with over 40 in a couple of hours. Never missed a thing all day - I was getting rather good ! Went home and sold my gun ! I wanted "sport " and a “few for the pot” My success just sickened me - but there are plenty prepared to do it !
Where was I shooting ? well Over a field of peas naturally - although Kale, Wheat. Barley, Brassicas - ANY “Vegan food” would have been effective at the relevant season.
But hey - “the Vegans” have “clean hands” - Even when challenged, they REFUSE to consider the pigeons, deer, pheasants etc which are shot to keep their “ethical food” safe, the deliberately introduced Mixymatosis which rots the rabbits away until they die, the gassing, the machenical “Burying alive” of the rabbits, the spraying of the caterpillars beetles and other insects which have to be “Murdered” so “they” can have “clean hands” -
It would be funny if it wasn’t so bloody ridiculous !
“Groupthink” raises it’s “social media head” again !
At a meeting of minds recently (ante- my sons wedding) where everybody had at least a Ph.D. (except me) I was amazed to hear the mobile telephone being blamed for reducing male fertility!
I opined that it was due to modern detergents and the female oral contraceptive, and received an accepting ‘hmmmm…’ However I did not recollect in time for the discussion that I had become aware in the 90s of some men suffering the phenomenon of reduced sperm-count, well before the universal adoption of the mobile infernal device.
Of course it could be other things. If we could persuade the youth to desist in over-indulgence, alcohol particularly, there might be another apparent cause. However the ‘scientific evidence’ (sorry…) that men born after the mid-50s exhibit a reduced sperm-count is difficult to ignore.
Not likely - My generation was drinking beer - 6 pints was a modest night, 15 - 16 at the weekends. We drank to the state of mild to severe intoxication most nights - that was what we did back then !
Historically “Beer” was the only safe drink for the masses - even children. Never been any problems in male fertility until the “water drinkers” which our sons have become !
I have to admit to the possibility that “feminism” may be having an effect. As a young msn I read an article in “playboy” or some such, where a man cast himself away on a desert island for a couple of months and weighed his “shavings” every day. As the end of the period approached, the weight of his whiskers increased ! This experiment he said demonstrated that as his expectation of imminent sex increased, the testosterone level increased - and his “shavings” were taken as a proxy for “testosterone levels”.
In a world where sex is perhaps a “reward” or “gift” from a woman, perhaps “testosterone” could be reduced in the boys and fertility could decline ? - Worthy of further study maybe ?
This climate change malarkey is founded on people’s memories. They remember as I do that winters used to be guaranteed to have snow (in the UK) and that seems to have reduced. In fact it is now unusual to have more than a few flakes.
However these alarmists are using the most unreliable of yardsticks, the human lifetime. When under pressure I ask, “what caused the last 3 ice-ages, and why did they end?”
Who can say whether a cosmic dust cloud passed through the solar system and reduced the sun’s effects upon the Earth? Who can say whether the sun actually runs a pulsating cycle, or not, which causes it emit more or less radiation over a period measured in millennia? There is no data for that sort of question.
Yes and the charts do show them to have been remarkably regular ! - They also show CO2 increases in the “Warm interglacial periods” LAGGING the temperature rise by 800 years !
We used to have “Ice Fairs” on the frozen Thames (Little Ice Age) and they used to grow grapes in the north of England (Medieval Warm Period)
There are bones of Lions, Hippos and Polar Bears all to be found in England !
It happens ! and Nobody really knows why ! (Except the bllody “Warmists” of course - Led by the BBC and the Guardian disgraceful censoring of any contra view as “Undemocratic” !
]
