Level Headed

While still on Twitter suspension (during which time I have achieved many useful things; perhaps I should get suspended more often?) I can nevertheless still browse the site and see what’s winding folk up. Today I came across this tweet: Link Professor Bill McGuire modestly bills himself as “Volcanologist, climate scientist, broadcaster, activist, socialist, best-selling author…” Author of what, you may ask? A new book called Hothouse Earth, in which this Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL posits the gloomiest of dooms ahead for the planet. 

And why not, eh? It’s a hot topic (pun intended) and he's bound to earn a few capitalist quid from flogging this dead horse. After all, it’s not like he’s going to be contradicted and he is certainly not going to be proved wrong in his lifetime; he’s 67 and the cataclysmic forecasts are projections hundreds of years hence. But let’s have a go anyway, shall we? The article he links to predicts a worst-case scenario of 5 m sea level rise by 2500. Yes, 2500, which is 300 years away. Nothing I could see in the Guardian article suggested McGuire’s sensational 52 m prediction.

 His career has long been founded on doom and disaster – you wouldn’t be inaccurate to presume he has a vested interest in scaring people – beginning with an appointment some thirty years ago as Professor of Geohazards and Director of the UCL Hazard Research Centre. A glance at some of his book titles gives you a quick study of the man and his modus: 

• Surviving Armageddon: Solutions for a threatened planet (2005). 
• Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction (2006). 
• Seven Years to Save the Planet (2008). 
• Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards (2012). 
• Waking the Giant – How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes (2012). 
• Knock Three Times: 28 modern folk tales for a world in trouble (2019). And, of course, 
• Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide (2022).

 Oh, he also blogs for Extinction Rebellion; make of that what you will.

 A tour through his timeline reveals all the expected tendencies: anti-Tory, pro-socialism, hater of all things fossil-fuelled, calls for state-run utilities, Palestine… it goes on and on. Tweet after tweet reveals him not to be the data-driven, serious scientist he tells himself he is, but rather a partisan people-hater. We need top-quality minds to be working on this stuff, and we need properly coordinated energy, social and economic policies, yet from what I see, the people with the most influence tend to be these activists posing as pragmatists.

 Whoever inherits Boris Johnson’s crown needs to very quickly get a grip and clamp down on the apparent knee-jerk responses to every bit of climate quackery. If those sea levels really are going to rise we need to be properly planning for decades, if not centuries in advance to adapt to the effects. And given that nothing we do right now will have any measurable effect for half a century hence, we can afford to divert our attention and resources to solving the current difficulties. The green shit can come later.

If this goes unchallenged people 

like McGuire will earn a fortune.

 I am no climate change denier, but neither am I a climate change junkie. I have no need to search for the next fix of apocalyptic rhetoric. I am, I imagine, more in tune with the vast majority of the Earth’s population, willing to work on my own energy budget just so long as I can see that my efforts are not being hamstrung by governments lurching from one faux-emergency to another. So let’s apply a bit of common sense here. Get back to gas, frack for victory, dig up a bit more coal, keep developing diesel, but most of all, let’s just keep a level head on our shoulders.

What Comes After Climate Change?

 I am very happy to accept that when scientists generally all agree on a topic – climate change, pandemics, renewables, and all that – they are almost certain to be right. Just because many previous predictions did not pan out exactly as described, doesn’t mean that many more were not actually vindicated. But we live in an age where mere facts take second place to feelings, and faith is still a stronger motivator than the plain truth.

Everybody has a different level of investment in the current climate narrative; the elderly just want to hang on to the world they knew without having to make too many changes. The young have been terrified into believing that the human race will actually become extinct in a few decades. And the political classes are panicking about being blamed for it. Those of us in the middle, the boomers who will end up paying for it all are rolling our eyes and waiting for the next hyperbolic announcement to come along.

The truth is nobody really knows what to do. Nobody. Oh, there are plenty of talking heads willing to promote their vision for the world. And there are lots of yummy technological innovations lining up to be recognised and funded. But, just like last week’s local elections, even when all the evidence is in – the votes have been counted – the interpretation of the results varies from sombre acknowledgment to wild speculation. We know our politics is broken; we just don’t know how to fix it.

Same with the climate and the demonstrations and disruption caused by the Extinction Rebellion crowd and their hangers-on have not helped. What they demand is, literally, impossible. All human economic activity would have to cease immediately. The resulting hand-to-mouth existence would be so horrifically inefficient that, if anything, emissions would increase and the competition for scarce resources would result in wholesale chaos. Do as this peculiar mix of children and old hippies insist, and everything would turn to shit very quickly indeed.

Already there are forecasts that the metals and minerals needed to build the green revolutionary machine are becoming harder to extract. More and more energy will be expended in trying to winkle out dwindling supplies of copper and cobalt and the like, and more and more energy will be expended in waging the wars to possess the land in which those supplies are located. The pursuit of the green dream will, it seems, be the direct cause of increased CO₂ emissions for decades to come. Irony, thou art come in human form.

Education might once have been a large part of the answer, but I see a dumbed-down population, in thrall to the whims of Tik-Tok and other social media, unable to concentrate for even ten minutes at a time. I see people who are incapable of critically assessing even small chunks of the mountain of information they receive every day. And I see people helpless to do anything other than parrot the lines they are given by their current cult leaders.

Next - the transport of the future!

Maybe they prefer it this way. Maybe they prefer living in a Netflix Special version of life in which everything is a drama, every episode ends on a cliff edge and every denouement is simply a springboard to the next surprising plot development. The way it looks to me right now is how Heroes and Lost looked during the Hollywood writers’ strike, and I am expecting to see many more rambling, incoherent episodes as The Climate Crisis lumbers drunkenly on to its final, disappointing cancellation.

We Need to Talk about Kevin... Again

The Victorians had it right; children should be seen but not heard. In fact they should only even be seen when they are doing something amusing or amazing. If they’re not falling over, bumping into things, or recalling Pi to a thousand decimal places, silently, children are a bloody liability. Parents should nurture them, teachers should fill them with curiosity and various mentors should inspire and encourage them. But for Pete’s sake, shut them the fuck up.

While watching something last night, on a streaming channel which doesn’t allow you to fast-forward through commercials, I had the misfortune to endure the excruciating Amazon climate change pledge excrescence. One after another, whiny brats from around the world admonished me for threatening their future, blamed me for ignoring what was so clear to their all-prescient sensibilities and charged me with fixing it all. For them, presumably.

Well, that can sod off; I am not going to be blackmailed by a bunch of snotty sprogs. My generation grew up in a world where recycling was normal. We didn’t throw things away when they broke; we fixed them, or salvaged what we could for parts. Food was rarely, if ever, thrown away, and we didn’t expect it to come in bomb-proof plastic enclosures with no alternative use, and – I’m talking to you, Amazon – we would have been embarrassed about sending somebody a toothbrush in a box big enough to house a small yak. 

We didn’t roam the streets clutching yet another coffee-to-go, or a single-use plastic bottle on every mission into the deepest, darkest high street. Fizzy drinks were a treat, not a necessity. We didn’t expect our every demand to be met, and deferred gratification was the norm. Before credit cards we knew we had to save up for something we wanted. And when the time came to part with that money we often realised the original desire had waned, and we had a better use for the cash.

Parsimony was normal, choices had to be made and compromises reached. Yes, air travel and yes, personal transport; for many these were the rewards of middle and older age when, after a lifetime of toil we had finally made our nests comfortable. And just as we had endured relative hardship in earlier years, we have the necessary stoicism to set aside our luxuries with few complaints. We are products of our age, as are the next generation. But just look how the next lot is turning out.

Remember that children know nothing but what they have been told. Children didn’t make that maudlin Amazon tripe. They didn’t write the words; they didn’t research their thesis. They just regurgitated what others dictated to them. Who are these others? They are the influencers; a shadowy and ever-present horde of mostly millennials who have decided that their parents and their grandparents are to blame. For everything. In other words, just older children who have depended on real adults all their life, but imagine in their immaturity that they are the grown-ups now.

These complainants are not the solution – in fact it appears they are taking no responsibility at all, insisting that the people they blame must do all the heavy lifting; they are like the BLM crowd, with no sense that they are participants, but insist on being the recipients of reparation. Be the change? They have no intention of being the change; they think that berating others is the same thing as actually doing something. Like think-tank politicians, they believe slogans are the same as action.

Do it, if only for the slebs...

It’s as if the lessons of the last few years have never sunk in. Instead of asking why people voted for Brexit and Trump they just label them as stupid. Instead of asking how the various groups can collaborate to tackle the issues of the day, they act, childishly, as if the fault is always that of the others. The up-and-coming generation have no knowledge of their own, but they just don’t realise it. Children are the future? My arse. But in a sense they may have a point. Adults did this, so adults need to fix this. No, not the climate, the bloody kids.

Code Red?

A week ago, I read an article in the magazine for the American Association for the Advancement of Science which suggested that the warnings of future high temperatures are implausible, based on flawed modelling. In advance of the release of yesterday’s deliberately emotive and alarming ‘CodeRed’ report, the writer is, basically, trashing the science. A bit, at least.

But here’s the thing; who do we trust? The world of scientists who make a living from predicting gloom, or the more moderate voices advising caution? Do we listen, even, to the outright sceptics, who have their own science which tells them what they want to hear? While I am perfectly capable of listening to an argument and, indeed, of being swayed by it, I simply do not have the depth of knowledge to decide whether it is true or not.

Almost whoever you are, you require a leap of faith in forming your opinion because we are talking about the future and literally nobody knows the future. No matter how hard you try to persuade me of ‘the facts’, ‘the science’ or the credentials of those whose homework you are copying, you still don’t know. They don’t know. Your opinion, as much as you believe it to be founded on absolute truths is just that, your opinion. As is mine. We may both be wrong.

When it comes to climate change, I’m not going to even attempt to either dispute, or support, the veracity of the warnings. What I am far more concerned about is what is really likely to happen as a result. Announce a possibility of toilet roll shortages and people will flock to the supermarkets to create a toilet roll shortage. Announce a climate emergency and watch as humanity does its absolute best to make damned sure it comes about.

Not being able to buy your favourite pesto because of ‘bloody Brexit’ is one thing. Being denied the use of your actual country because of an overwhelming deluge of climate refugees is, I might suggest, a calamity on a slightly more serious level. Tell the teeming masses of the medieval continents that they will suffer drought, floods and starvation because of the industrial actions of the West and you can pretty much see what comes next. (See also, slavery…)

Forget your electric cars and your hydrogen boilers; no amount of technology is going to crack this nut. In order to make their point the IPCC report has gone full apocalypse and all but admitted that nothing can really be done, even if all the world’s governments sign up and then actually keep their promises (and this is far from likely). So what? Not reaching unreachable targets isn’t a big stretch for the imagination. But introducing measures which restrict people’s access to resources is like inviting them to raid the stores before the shelves are empty.

“If we don’t act now, it could become irreversible” is an invitation for all to conclude that it is just too late. They may as well have yelled “Last orders!” in a crowded English pub. Meanwhile, those who are really affected by climate change (clue; it is not the developed west) will seek to abandon their desiccated land and head for greener pastures, just as those who tend the pastures are crippling themselves with debt.

The big deal is not whether or not we can arrest or even reverse climate change – a great many in the know think we can’t, or that it will be too little, too late – the big deal is how we cope with what’s to come. Were it just Little Britain we could probably manage fine, but just watch as the trickle of climate refugees becomes a flood and it floods our way. Sod your electric cars, go and buy weapons; in a few years it will be every man for himself

Do Little

The UN Climate Summit recently concluded, having been moved from Chile to Madrid and then being extended. Thousands of air miles consumed and lots of CO₂-laden hot air spouted and not one single conclusive outcome. No actions, no decisions and almost nothing agreed, thus, no point. In fact it is doubtful whether the carbon cost of the futile exercise itself will ever be offset. I mean, just how many trees do you need to plant to cancel out the inanity of coming up with a ‘gender action plan’ which ‘recognises the impact of climate change on human rights, historic and current gender inequalities and the importance of intersectionality’?

These leaders, these experts, these braying donkeys tell themselves they are engaged in saving the planet for all humanity. Instead they are gathering some of its wealth for themselves and some favoured others. This is what climate action does. It creates a problem, funds research to describe the problem, lays the blame at the feet of the people who can do least about the problem, then attracts more funding to arrange junkets where rent-seeking buffoons can pat each other on the back and say they are fixing the problem. Well, they’re not.

This isn’t about whether or not - or how far - you trust the current thinking on climate change. Or whether anybody – and I mean, literally, anybody – has the full information at their command, let alone at their fingertips. For every doomsday prophecy about how a single centimetre sea-level rise will kill a billion people, there are a dozen contrary conclusions available. Hell you can’t even find out how much an offshore wind turbine costs throughout its life, or how much your bills and taxes have increased to pay for it, or whether, as has been reported, the short-term effect on climate change is actually negative.

And by short term I’m talking about the first one hundredyears. Yes, you heard me. Much of the technology isn’t sufficiently mature and the infrastructure needed to support such an energy paradigm shift is decades away. As a result, although a probable majority would agree to pay to ameliorate the worst effects of humanity on the planet, it is difficult if not impossible for anybody to be totally honest about it. Portents of mass extinction are overblown and hysterical, but hardly less problematic are the knee-jerk reactions of governments impotent to act rationally yet all too ready to act irrationally, as long as they are seen to be acting. But, for pity’s sake, governments, give people an incentive, don’t take the stick to them.

Electric cars for instance. I’m going on a charging point installers’ course tomorrow, as it happens, but I don’t expect to be either enlightened or enthused. Far from offering a revenue stream for jobbing electricians, this is just another way of selling blankets and shovels to the prospectors. The installation opportunities have already been monopolised by big money concerns and the little man won’t get a look in. Why am I going? Well, I am also a seller of shovels and blankets and my company will be offering courses in the new year; this is just a bit of small-scale industrial espionage.

Yes, I am part of the problem too, but, you see, humans are opportunists and if we don’t provide the training, somebody else will, as unnecessary as it will all turn out to be. Electric cars are not only not the solution, they don’t even come close to providing a solution. I expect them to prove to be a huge white elephant. Only this morning I heard somebody pronounce that all oil-fuelled vehicles must be off the road by 2030. To do this will involve a massive re-organisation of our entire society, the costs of which will fall – as always and in every way – on those least able to absorb them.

The solution – the solutions – lie not in governments doing a lot, but everybody doing a little. Instead of waiting for subsidies to persuade you to change, how about a bit of self-reliance for once? You want an electric car? Buy an electric car, for the full price. You want to reduce CO₂ from flying? Forget about the ridiculous notions of ‘carbon trading’ just, you know, don’t fly. As for the rest of us, a little bit of tighter budgeting, a reduction in waste and a less thoughtless lifestyle might be all it needs to make a real difference.  If only we could get the Chinese to do the same...

The Name of the Beast

The more measured and sane commentators have taken care to distinguish between weather and climate and between prevention (which is impossible) and mitigation (which is expensive but necessary) when discussing the events of the last week and the devastation and disruption to thousands caught up in the northern floods. But what a bumper festive season it has been for the rent-seekers; the lobbyists, the propagandists, the commentators and the chattering classes, all demanding ever more unearned income to maintain their own lifestyles at the expense of and with no gain to those swept away by the torrent of ideology.

It took no time at all for LBC to wheel out world renowned climate expert, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, to discuss ‘the serious reality of climate change’ on Stig Abell’s show. A plethora of Greens exposed their pale complexions to the harsh spotlights of willing broadcast media, all too ready to give them a platform. And later, Sky News invited yet another famously non-partisan scientist, George Monbiot, as a credible interpreter of the causes of the deluge and its cure. Then yet another giant of meteorology and ecology, the actor Michael Sheen, ‘guest-edited’ the Today Programme and squarely put the blame on those asking for help.

As always, those lost in the background noise emanating from all these empty vessels are the very people who need action, not words. The resources are here for recovery – our armed forces were ready as ever to knuckle down and do what a politician will never do; get their hands dirty. There is also money, plenty of money, but much of it goes to grease the wheels of commerce in corrupt foreign lands; buying limousines for thugs with private armies to subjugate their own people. But what was missing – what is always missing – was simple pragmatism, stripped of dogma and ready for action.

Whether we are responsible for progressive climate change is irrelevant. Naming every other Atlantic depression as Storm Frank Spencer or whatever, in a bid to make people believe they are witnessing extreme events is irrelevant. Whether increased CO₂ warms or, as is increasingly being suggested, cools the planet is irrelevant. How large our Green taxes rise is irrelevant. A single large volcanic eruption, impossible to predict with current techniques, can result in worldwide weather disruption way in excess of any forecasts for anthropogenic climate change for several years. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation and its contrary sister La Niña are complex, difficult to forecast, entirely natural climatic events which have been blamed for truly extreme weather... usually after the event.

Don't pay the Ferryman!

Extreme weather is a feature of planet Earth and any effect that human activity has or may have is minimal and has proved elusive to determine, with each set of data the ‘facts’ are made to fit the delirious and hysterical beliefs of converts to the Church of Climate Change. And of course, what better source of converts than those affected? Why would you not say you believe if it helps bring much-needed relief? The beast walks among us in sheep’s clothing - an iron fist in a velvet glove - and its propaganda is pure genius; any adverse weather can be used to summon it. To surrender your soul to the beast, all you have to do is say its name. 

Poll-axed?

It seems the Labour Party edged ahead again in the polls over the weekend. What is wrong with you people? Now I know that each side of the political divide has its adherents who won’t be budged but is the ‘caring left’ propaganda so deeply embedded it can’t be questioned, even for a moment? The situation we are in at the moment -  afeared of strangers, almost bankrupt, skills shortages and education failures, the bloody, sodding, shitting six-days-to-save-the-NHS ‘crisis’, is largely as a result of socialism and its defining need to dictate and control.

And one of the ways it does this is by endlessly promoting itself as the only party with a claim to the moral high ground and that the Tories are driven by hatred and avarice. Iain Duncan Smith’s entirely admirable crusade to lift those trodden into the deep ruts of society to a level where they can contribute rather than just take is billed as a dirty attack on ‘the most vulnerable’. Labour might want to consider for one moment just how it is that those people became locked into welfare dependency in the first place and ponder Labour’s part in it.

But of course that can’t happen, can it? The only concern of any political party seems to be power itself and not what could be done with it. Thinking two moves ahead? Give over, the election is all there is; after that it’s business as usual and if Labour were to get in (come on, Miliband as PM?) they will spend us back into hell. The one thing that Labour never appear to be capable of is explaining where all the money is actually going to come from. Unrestrained socialism will only ever end up with everybody becoming poorer; poor in pocket, poor in aspiration.

Without capitalism, socialism simply cannot afford itself, so the apparent coming together of the two opposing forces in the fictional battle for (or is it against) the planet sounds at first glance as if there may be an accord. The climate racket is perfect for both because it panders to their own knee-jerk inclinations. Labour get to control ordinary people’s behaviour by taxing them into fuel poverty, while the Tories get to reward the already well off by passing those taxes off as subsidies to incentive landowners and big business. It’s a complete stitch-up cluster-fuck and the only losers are – well they’re not referred to as ‘the most vulnerable’ for nothing.

You want ‘joined up’ government? This is as joined up as it gets. Joining together to promote a hobby horse which, in fifty years will be studied and criticised as intensively as the sub-prime scandal which led to the 2008 crash. Responding to Labour’s dog whistle will get you poor quicker, but will the Tories pale blue be much better? If the government won’t think two steps ahead then we should; back blue for now to keep us solvent but don’t expect anything in return. The only one who is going to look after your concerns is you. If you don’t believe that then, frankly, you deserve what you get.

The Four Windmills of The Apocalypse

Do you remember Up Pompeii? Frankie Howerd, as Lurcio, regularly encountered a series of unlikely characters who dragged him into their deranged world with increasingly far-fetched but ultimately pedestrian plots, almost always relying on deception and the concealing of truths on pain of death. None of Lurcio’s encounters were met with such dread and derision as those with Senna the Soothsayer. “Woe, woe and thrice woe…”? Well, that’s the climate change lobby, that is.

If you believe an upcoming UN report, Senna was right. In a preview in The Independent the report warns of floods, earthquakes and plagues of locusts. The earth will shake and the seas will boil and death will stalk the land. Wars will be fought for food and world populations, far from rising, will be driven down to Stone Age levels. Kevin Costner will come to be vindicated, even worshipped, as the prophet of Waterworld and the quest to find the mythical Dryland will be man’s final hope for survival. Woe, woe and thrice woe, indeed.

All of which makes me wonder what’s in it for them. Global Warming has become Global Lying or at best Global Fibbing-a-bit. Based on lies, half-truths and projections based on methods few scientists would recognise, the climate change industry actually heralds a coming age of prosperity for many. The report will quantify things they can’t explain and make predictions based on trends they haven’t observed and yet, we’re told, there’s a consensus. Yes, there’s a consensus; there’s a general recognition of a huge market for plausible apocalypse fiction, sold as fact to doom-hungry consumers of bad news.

Populations have moved in response to climate and geographical change for ever. In fact the whole history of man is related to the species’ migration across slowly changing continents and occasionally from fast-changing events. Floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, mudslides, avalanches and disease have always happened and I’m pretty sure Noah’s little escapade wasn’t the result of too many burnt offerings. Or maybe it was? Maybe The Bible marks the first step in spreading climate change propaganda as a vengeful God blames his flood on the activities of mankind.

But mankind is nothing if not adaptable and the basis for species survival is to exploit niches. Look around you. All those bird choppers, solar panels gleaming from rooftops, condensing boilers, heat pumps, insulation, draught-proofing; climate fear is driving all of that. The Warm Front Scheme,* the Green Deal, the Energy Company Obligation and incentives for ‘green’ industry, there is money to be made. Nobody is going to be around long enough to win the ‘is it – isn’t it?’ climate change debate, but that’s not the point.

The great global warming gold rush is with us now and as with the real gold rush the money is not going to be made by the diggers and grafters, the bent-back prospectors but by those who sell them shovels and blankets. Fuck the planet, they say, it’ll see me and mine out, but there’s gold in tham-thar beliefs. So whether you are peddling newsprint, for or against, or supplying dodgy justifications for the purpose of claiming subsidy, or manufacturing kit for the new eco shrines, there is treasure to be had.

The agricultural and industrial revolutions, the ages of steam and rail and flight and information, all have brought benefits to those willing to accept them and so it is now as we usher in the bright new dawn of Environmental Capitalism. Watch as today’s unwashed protesters suddenly realise they have tales to tell, knowledge to sell and contacts to exploit and turn themselves – even while denying it – into Climate Mercenaries. Just as grizzled old class warriors have become titled lords (“It’s not for me, it’s for Pauline!”) the anti-frackers (gotta love Bez!) will eventually join the ranks of the privileged they profess to despise. Oh fickle fiends, oh weak-willed man, oh woe, oh woe, let’s grab that dough.

The Epilogue (Oh, that bench is cold, madam!) No, listen: So, whether or not you believe in climate change or man’s part in it, governments have fallen wholesale for the scam and it would be a grave error not to recognise it. New times bring new opportunities and you don’t have to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ - nobody is listening to that argument any more - you just have to be ‘with’ it. Now get fracking!

(*Warm Front closed last year but other schemes have taken its place.)

Climatemongery

All right, I don’t usually blog on a Saturday but I’ve just been listening to climate mong-supreme, Chris Smith talking to sycophants Ken Livingstone and David Mellor on LBC’s morning show. It appears that La Smith, the big gay lord with a cartoonist’s sketch for a face is standing his flooded ground. I hope he has waders because this shit is going to get deeper. (Yes, yes, ad hominem attack but fuck it - it's what they do all the time.)

He blathered on about there being a definite, established pattern of more extreme weather due to climate change when even the most pimple-faced, juvenile ‘perfessor’ of climate propaganda isn’t so stupid as to make that claim. It’s filtered through to government too, with any number of MPs from the Prime Minister down blithely trotting out the line that yes, the climate is changing and yes, it’s mankind’s fault and yes, there is no doubt in their minds that recent over-reported extreme weather is proof of all this.

The outrageous Aussie communist Natalie ‘Gordon’ Bennett from the Green Party has even gone so stupidly far as to call for every climate change sceptic throughout the land to be sacked from any position of influence. So much for free speech, the allowance of differing opinion and well, for simple common sense. No doubt under a Green Government we would all wear the same environmentally friendly hemp sack-cloth and ashes and go about self-flagellating and apologising to Gaia while subsisting off lentils and sheltering in cave-communes between our shifts toiling to maintain Wildlife Refuge UK.

But hey, let’s ignore the unsettled science that says there is no pattern – for heaven’s sake just like economics NOBODY knows – and apply a modicum of calm and reason. Let’s ignore the lumbering state-funded quangos and think tanks and activists and above all ‘thinkers’ and let's turn instead to the ‘doers’. Instead of endlessly debating whether or not it’s real and spending £Billions on paying overstuffed bureaucrats to play pass the parcel with policy, why not draw a line under the whole fiasco and get real?

Cut Green funding right now. All of it. Stop penalising businesses, stop loading the energy prices and stop the fuck out of the green gravy train. Pay wind-farmers the market rate for the energy they generate and not a penny more. Hold them to contribution contracts and penalise them when the wind doesn’t blow, just like with any other service industry. If it’s viably economically they will survive – but while they are doing the sums (Prediction: not one single large scale turbine will ever be erected henceforth) let’s get busy saving the country.

Build new power stations, frack for gas, consider coal reserves. Patch up the potholes and repair the railways and where it is appropriate, traditional and right to do so, dredge the waterways, re-forest the hillsides and build flood defences and sea walls and, in short, put the British people first. Create employment based on real, practical things that cost a fraction of what it costs to pay for ideology and utterly relegate the climate debate to a sideshow.

Do this for ten years and restore this crumbing country to some semblance of dignity and then – and only then, when we fixed the things we CAN fix – see if there has been any provable man-made climate change in the meantime. If unequivocally there is, if the currently far from undisputed science can finally show a genuine link, Little Britain will have contributed sweet-FA to it compared to China, Asia and the USA, but at least we won’t have wasted another ten years imagining we did. And at least we will be ready.

Meteoro-lol-ogy

I don’t rely on weather forecasts and I rarely watch them. As a former meteorologist in the good old Andrew* I can read a synoptic chart at a glance, make my own mind up for the day ahead and take an umbrella if appropriate. Also, it really doesn’t matter a great deal unless I’m going out paragliding because whatever the wide-area forecast, the micro-meteorology of a particular hill site may be quite different from the general pattern. Otherwise I am quite sanguine about the fact that however disappointing the weather, I can’t do anything to change it, so I may as well just take what comes.

Friends (yes I do have a couple) often wonder that I can be so blasé but it’s simple, really. And anyway, why make rocket science out of a fairly straightforward process? Here’s how you put a daily forecast together:

Step 1: Look out of the window. Really, always look out of the window. Whatever it’s doing right now, that’s where your forecast starts.

Step2: Check out the latest surface analysis (that weather chart thingy) and see what’s on the way – a front will likely bring cloud and rain and change the airmass. So all you do is work out when it’s going to get here and describe the progression of change for your forecast period.

Step 3: Reduce the information down to Wind + Weather + Visibility and there you go. (Check out the Shipping Forecast – that’s all they give you – WWV – region by region.)

Step 4: Remember you’re only the messenger, not the Messiah – whatever the weather, you didn’t make it happen, you're not a naughty boy and it ain’t your fault!

I’ve always felt sorry for poor old Michael Fish after ‘that hurricane’. The poor fella was doing his best and by and large the forecast was pretty accurate. The difference between a Violent Storm (64-73 mph) and a Hurricane (74+ mph) is technically only one mile per hour but that single steadfast proclamation "Don't worry," has stayed with him for twenty-five years and might have destroyed a lesser man. Talk about defining a man by his mistakes...

But was that the point at which we no longer took at face value the forecasts from our formerly revered Met Office? In recent years ‘barbecue summers’ have turned to crap, an expected ‘mild winter’ became the coldest on record for fifty years and last year, the wettest since records began, started with a hosepipe ban. (Oh and we’re supposedly in the middle of a heat wave right now. Meh.)

All of which preamble gets me to the pointlessness of the Met Office’s climate change huddle this week. Lots of hand-wringing about something they can’t change. If they’re not careful they’re in danger of looking like a right bunch of Cnuts. Nobody has ever managed to accurately forecast the weather more than two weeks ahead, let alone months or years and the entire Climate Change Industry can’t even agree on what has actually happened in the past.

But the Met Office is missing a trick. From my Met Man days I know that nobody actually listens to the forecasts properly anyway, even if their lives may depend on it. Predict rain in the morning and by ten o’clock you’ll get complaints about the deluge they weren’t expecting until tea time. Forecast a wet Saturday afternoon and come Monday you’re practically guaranteed to have an angry Squadron Commander ranting that you personally ruined his garden party.

Nobody minded about the destructive tornado.

They were still laughing at Michael Fish's pullover!

So, if they’re not going to even remember what you forecast and you’ll get blamed for it being the wrong sort of hail, even if you called it exactly right, you may as well make your performances memorable for something else. I suggest TV Weatherfolk acquire other skills such as juggling, stand-up comedy, wearing ridiculous outfits or swimsuit modelling. So when they’re taking the piss because you dropped all the balls, or a nipple popped out, at least they’re not impugning your ability to guess the weather.

(*Andrew = Royal Navy)

Solar, so good.

A certain Mr Hitler knew the benefits of propaganda; say something often enough and emphatically enough and it becomes true. So it is with the Greens. Yes, you heard me, I'm comparing the Greens to Hitler. So fervently do they believe their claims that they never question their validity, so sure are they of their mission that they never think for a moment of the suffering they cause. To the ecology warriors, individual pain is nothing when you're saving the world.

But does the world need saving? And from whom? In my lifetime I have lived with the promised threat of nuclear Armageddon, rising sea levels wiping out whole countries and oil running out by nineteen-ninety. I watched as the predictions of wholesale skin cancer caused by the depletion of the ozone layer failed to come to pass and I observe, with wry amusement the roller-coaster of contradictions on nutrition; I forget now, is fat/sugar/coffee/chocolate/wine/etc good or bad for you this week?

So, if we can't say with any certainty whether or not Cadbury's might kill you, how is it likely that anybody knows what's really happening on a planetary level? It was called Global Warming for a long time and then, when predictions failed to fruit, it all of a sudden became Climate Change. (Notice any similarity with the equally unfathomable, name-changing European Confidence Trick?) So, come on The Greens, is the temperature getting higher or lower (good game, good game!)

But it doesn't matter, does it? With the incredible power of modern-day minority lobbying they have infiltrated the minds of a generation and infected the politicosphere and just as with welfare, the NHS and fluffy kittens, created a criticism-free zone. That is, feel free to criticise, but expect to be labelled a right-wing, frothing loon for having the temerity to challenge heir touchy-feely, all-join-hands doctrine.

So, back to Hitler, by which of course I mean back to the German Solution [<LINK]. It's because of Nazi Green propaganda that Merkel's minions have been coerced into paying through the nose for solar photovoltaic microgeneration on  a scale which is anything but micro. As the article itself says, "Photovoltaics are fundamentally incapable of replacing any other type of power plant." and "From a climate standpoint, every solar plant is a bad investment," and yet it is climate change that is the stated reason behind every one of these expensive mistakes.

The moral of the story? Stop looking for international solutions to problems we don't have and just help yourself. You'll do more for your planet (and your pocket) simply by switching off unused equipment, not running heating with all your doors and windows open and wearing a jumper instead of wearing out the thermostat. Oh and voting for a party - any party - with a healthy level of scepticism for any form of political intervention in social issues. Good luck with that!

PS: Especially for Rachel - because of her comment below: