Climate change is one of those things that no-one* really understands. So much is written about it, on whether or not the ice caps are melting, whether the earth is heating up by a degree each year, whether their is a "scientific consensus" on it or not. And it all just goes right over my head. So I have decided something: I don't care.

I don't care if the earth is heating up by one degree or more, or less, or not at all per year.

I don't care whether or not the ice caps are melting.

I don't care if there is a scientific consensus on climate change.

I don't care whether climate change is being caused solely, mainly, partly, or only a little bit by us.

I just don't care.

And why? Because we should do the same thing regardless. We should all try to reduce our so-called "carbon footprint" anyway. We should walk or cycle rather than drive when possible; we should turn the TV off rather than leave it on stand-by [after all, how hard is it to stand up and push a button?!]; we should recycle everything that we can, from aluminium cans to plastic bottles to garden waste. And so on.

Whether or not climate change is happening and whether or not it is us who is causing it - to whatever extent. We should conserve our planet's resources and reduce the amount to which we pollute our own environment. We should not go back to the Stone Age, but try and produce our electricity in more renewable and less polluting ways, where and when possible and feasible. It is just common sense.

These things should happen and be attempted by everyone, regardless of climate change. Because even if climate change is a myth or turns out to have nowhere near the effect often predicted, our own personal environment will be cleaner and we will all be better off.

* At least anyone who doesn't claim to be a climate change scientist, anyway.

This is an unadulterated Good Thing. "Green" taxes are a bad idea, and don't even serve any real purpose except as a means for government to take more of our hard-earned money away from us. Being "green" isn't about paying extra taxes on "polluting" things, since taxes are already paid on them. And taxing them more will only hurt those lower down on the economic scale anyway.

Carrots work better than sticks in these situations. Any party who is serious about reducing Britain's carbon emissions, for whatever reason, must accept that taxing "bad" things like this isn't the way forward, and I am very glad that the Conservative Party has realised this, even if belatedly.

Greenpeace have decided to name a whale, and have an on-line poll to decide what to call it. The name that just has to win, for the sheer hilarity of making a rabid green activist say it, has to be Mister Splashy Pants.

Go here to vote!

via ASI

This is bansturbation, pure and simple.

I'll expand on this later.

UPDATE: Plastic bags are the end of the life for plastic. The plastic used to make them can be used for nothing else. Hence to ban plastic bags would leave us with tons of plastic that can be used for nothing else.

However, this does not mean that incentives not to use plastic bags shouldn't be promoted. Instead of banning them or charging for their use, provide incentives for re-using or recycling plastic bags - schemes which most supermarkets already have in place.

Banning them is never going to work, and really works against the green principle in the end. Plastic bags are used by many people for many things - bin-liners and the like - and thus many do get re-used. The plastic used to make plastic bags is at the end of it's lifespan. It cannot be used for making anything else any more, so they make bags from it - and plastic bags can only be made into other plastic bags.

It is more the other plastic waste that needs to be reduced rather than plastic bags, so that we don't end up with so much plastic that is only fit to become plastic bags. Don't just go into bansturbation mode.

Who is surprised? Just like Live Earth and Al Gore, high profile "celebrity" environmentalists [and many non celebrity versions] are hypocrites of the highest order. They all are, and always have been. "Do as I say and not as I do" has always been their mantra - and always will be. After all, they are far more important than us "little people" who exist merely to worship the ground they walk on.

This just has to be right at the top my list of the most idiotic thing I have ever heard anyone ever say:

Erm, WTF? How on earth can climate change [it's lucky that they stopped using the term "global warming" because it's bloody freezing at the moment] be the greatest threat to global equality? Surely dictatorship, totalitarian government and PC extremism [as well as the culture of state dependency - on the development of which Theo Spark has a great parable] is a greater threat?

Equality is not prevented by global warming in the slightest. If anything it will do the opposite - if the doomsday claims by eco-fascists is correct - by reducing us all to the same level? If anything under their conditions, us in the developed world would be far more screwed than third world countries.

Climate change is not - and cannot - itself threaten global equality. It might have some impact on it, in a roundabout way, but to claim that it is the "greatest long-term threat" to achieving global equality is utter rubbish, and gives the issue far far more importance than it deserves.

Source: BBC

Drive in a green way!

Lessons in "eco-driving"? What the hell is "eco-driving"? And why should the government give people lessons in it anyway?

Why won't they just leave us all alone? Trying to force us to drive in a "green" way, though driving lessons, has just got to be counter-productive in terms of carbon-output anyway, since the amount generated taking these lessons is bound to more than that saved by "eco-driving" itself. Not to mention that the Commission for Integrated Transport probably used more carbon in researching and making their report than will ever be saved by it. We'd probably all be environmentally better off if they hadn't done anything at all. We'd certainly be better off in every other way.

Source: The Times

Iain Dale says "Here's a Green Idea: Why Not Ban Plastic Bags?"

In reply I'm just going to pretty much repeat the arguments of a post I wrote on this issue before.

Should we have to pay to use plastic bags from a supermarket? Should we bollocks. Plastic bags are the last thing made of old recycled plastic. It usually isn't of good enough quality to be used for anything else - plastic bags is the end of the life of the plastic.

Providing incentives for re-using and/or recycling plastic bags is a good idea. But also one that is already pretty much in use in many supermarkets, though not to as large an extent as it could be. Banning them is never going to work, and really works against the green principle in the end. Plastic bags are used by many people for many things - bin-liners and the like - and thus many do get re-used. The plastic used to make plastic bags is at the end of it's lifespan. It cannot be used for making anything else any more, so they make bags from it - and plastic bags can only be made into other plastic bags.

Rather than penalising those who want to use the plastic bags to carry their shopping, reward those who re-use and recycle them at the shop. The carrot and not the stick is far more useful in this case. It is more the other plastic waste that needs to be reduced rather than plastic bags, so that we don't end up with so much plastic that is only fit to become plastic bags.

The video below, via Matt Sinclair [with whom I agree entirely on this], shows precisely why I dislike the climate change debate. It says that you are either a "friend or an enemy". Either you believe and do what they want you to do, or you are, basically, an evil mass-murderer - a demonstration of my prediction that "soon leaving your TV on standby will be classed as a crime against humanity!".

The video gives predictions and possibilities as incontrovertible facts. None of the "facts" presented in it - such as famine and disease epidemics - are anything more than their prediction, nor much more valid than a statement that global warming will just mean that we all live on what is basically tropical islands.

It is pretty much calling for so-called "deniers" - a term on which I have written before - to be violently attacked - not very peaceful. It is this sort of thing that drives sceptics like me towards the actual deniers. Engage in debate rather than scaremongering and extrapolation and you may well win the support of the vast majority who waver on this issue. Ads like that, however, work against your real aim. [It is quite a good ad, though. Well written, hard hitting, even more so through being spoken by a child. Just a pity it's so sick in content really.]

... the old man is snoring ...

And Britain is having a wet summer, as always:

So, it's been traditional British summer then? It is horrid outside - cold, wet, and yucky. We were told back at the beginning of August that summer had been and gone, and they were right.

This can't be blamed on climate change, but just the one we've always had. After all, they were blaming the drought orders earlier in the year on that, so surely it can't be the cause of both too little and too much water! The mantra "climate change" does not explain all, or even necessarily any, odd weather. We've always had droughts and floods in Britain and we always will. We don't control the weather!

At least one good thing comes out of all the rain, though - it gives us a real reason to talk about the weather! So, of course, we might as well just go singing in the rain!


Source: The Telegraph

This isn't a well thought out idea. There are no cars that are "zero carbon", and even the so-called "green" cars aren't as green as is claimed. £2,000 on "gas guzzlers" will not effect the rich who can afford them. People who buy these cars do so because they want to, and are willing to pay any extra for them.

Just having a 4x4/SUV seems to be enough provocation for some people, as shown in this video:

Really, most of their reactions are just disgusting.

This road tax policy of the Lib Dems is not a good one. There is already a graduated vehicle excise duty, introduced back in 1998, depending on emission levels. What they re proposing amounts to a huge increase - from a maximum of £300 to £2,000! A far better way to encourage people to buy "green", more fuel-efficient, cars would be to abolish road tax entirely and add the tax onto fuel costs.

That way, those who drive more and have less environmentally friendly cars pay more, and those who don't drive much pay substantially less. That way old Mrs Miggins who only drives to the supermarket once a week for her weekly shop doesn't have to pay for the right to have her car, but just for the fuel to drive it. Whilst the mother who drives her little darlings to school every morning in her huge "gas guzzling" SUV pays for it. Thus it's not owning a non-green vehicle that makes you pay, but driving it and thus polluting.

The Liberal Democrats need to drop this bad policy, and that of restricting runway capacity. That would do nothing but hold back, if not actively harm, Britain's economy. Doing that is just giving in to the idiots at the Heathrow eco-camp.

Source: The Times

Which is more environmentally friendly - walking or driving? No, it's not the obvious answer, according to this environmentalist anyway.

"Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated. Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby...
“Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere... If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.
The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”" (The Times)

But this is based on a false premise. People don't eat any less because drive or more because they walk. No-one will much change their eating habits very much based on what they have done - or not done. Also, people do not exercise and then plan to replace all the calories they lost. So if you walked three miles, you would not intend to eat 100g of beef and replace the calories you used.

Quite frankly, Chris Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, is talking utter bollocks. People won't eat less because they drive rather than walk. Only an idiot would think that.

Title inspired by An Insomniac
Source: The Times

Climate change is a complicated issue. This sort of science is open to much politicking, from both sides. My position on this is very simple: Whilst I accept that climate change is almost certainly happening, I do not accept the hypothesis that humans have caused it - affected, exaggerated, accelerated, yes, but not caused. We have been "industrialised" for little over two centuries - to say that this has caused climate change seems to me to be absurd and frankly arrogant. If this planet was really that sensitive to such minor changes as Man has made, it would have imploded by now.

But that is not the point I want to make.

Instead, I want to point out to those who think that climate change is happening that their very language in referring to anyone who dares question their received wisdom as a "denier" doesn't help them or anyone else. This post [along with this] at The Conscious Earth are prime examples of this enviro-fascism. I mean, referring to "deniers" like this:

"Nobody would spend a decade debating bed time with a 5 year old. It's now long past due to end the current climate change "debate" and send deniers to bed, without their supper."

is not exactly seeking any form of debate. As I posted in the comments of that post, to which I received little in the way of a considered reply:

I find the term "denier" related to climate change and global warming inflammatory and offensive. Using that sort of terminology does nothing but make things worse...
I'm not "denying" that climate change is happening. I find the use of the term and your very attitude towards anyone who even slightly disagrees with you quite disgusting. I'm just not convinced that mankind has CAUSED it. That is a big difference, and one which those of you who use the term "deniers" are ignoring, and thus driving people towards the other side of the debate. The more people label me a "denier" because I dare to question their received wisdom, the more I disregard them as idiots.

There is no doubt that this is true. Referring to someone who disagrees with you - even a little - as a "denier" is loaded language, and nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt to smear any and all opposition of any sort as some form of neo-Nazi.

This is enviro-fascism. They are saying 'either you agree with me completely or you are a "denier".' And that I find offensive. I don't "deny", I'm just not convinced.

Eating beef [and presumably drinking milk] is killing the planet by causing global warming:

"Producing 2.2lb of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours, it was claimed yesterday...
Taking into account all the processes involved... four average sized steaks generated greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 80.25lb of carbon dioxide.
This also consumed 169 megajoules of energy...
The amount of energy consumed would light a 100-watt bulb for 20 days.
Most of the greenhouse gas emissions are in the form of methane released from the animals' digestive systems...
But more than two thirds of the energy used goes towards producing and transporting cattle feed" (The Telegraph)

So it is eating meat and drinking milk which is killing the planet, not driving cars and running electrical appliances. But these are pretty much fixable problems. The methane that cows produce can be "halved" through feeding them garlic. And much of the other energy outputs could be cut by cattle feed being made close to the cows, and by buying local. The Vegetarian Society are of course jumping on this, saying:

"Everybody is trying to come up with different ways to reduce carbon footprints, but one of the easiest things you can do is to stop eating meat."

But I really don't think I'll be doing that. I like meat, and I will continue to eat meat - especially steak. Cooked medium-rare, it is absolutely gorgeous! Even if it is 'killing the planet'.

Source: The Telegraph