Monday 15 July 2013

Arguing The Toss on Climate Change

Following hard on his purposeful assault on Michael Fallon two weeks ago, the redoubtable Andrew Neil had a go at Ed Davey this time around, and only peripherally on energy policy per se.  His main thrust was an outright challenge to a simplified version of what one might call the warmist-scientific consensus.  Of course, Neil is the better debater in every dimension than Davey - a Jesuitical novice could have mounted a better defence without raising his voice above a conversational level - but it's just a low-grade spectator sport with carefully-briefed sophistry on both sides.  Taken at face value, there are rarely any knock-down points scored in such encounters, and I can't imagine many viewers changing their minds.

But points of interest still arise.
  • The days when the Beeb's policy was for active suppression of climate-change skepticism are, it seems, over.  (Davey was more than just called upon to defend his position: Neil made it clear that in his view, Davey had failed to do so.)  That's not a trivial development.
  • Davey's principal fall-back arguments were (1) a Pascal's wager: even given uncertainty, it's still appropriate to insure against the downside of possible climate change (2) "a lot of our policies are 'no-regrets' policies" - we should be doing them anyway.
Lots of people relish the fight over forecasts of temperatures - hockey-sticks at dawn - but I don't find that fruitful at all (go to Bishop Hill if you want to vent steam, though as one contributor says there, it can become a "back-slapping echo-chamber").  Better by far is a practical approach, where knock-down points can truly be scored.  (1) and (2) above are perfect cases in point.  Because it's trivial to demonstrate that current UK / EU policies don't represent any type of insurance policy against climate change: they don't even reduce CO2 emissions, thereby failing against even the most basic of their own criteria.

(The only thing that might represent insurance is adaptation and, as we know, UK expenditure on flood defences is pitiful.)

As for 'no regrets' policies, Minister, You Are Having a Laugh.  Only self-financing, unsubsidised energy conservation measures and small-scale biomass / waste incineration could conceivably fall in this category: everything else is a massive gamble on rising gas prices - a huge speculative long.  With our money. 

At best, the other steps being taken might contribute to a bit of security of supply, and to Keynsian job-creation.  But there would be cheaper and more effective ways of doing both.  Nope, it isn't remotely difficult to paint the 'regret' scenarios.

ND

11 comments:

Demetrius said...

Interesting one on a sticky subject. But Gaia may have other ideas. We have a volcano up in Ecuador at the moment. If there is a run of them which includes a big bad one, then we could all freeze. But with a 1976 heat wave forecast it might almost be welcome.

Timbo614 said...

I think I've said before that I generally-on-principle side with the renewable/sustainable or secure energy crowd. I just don't knwo yet how it is going to be achieved.

On warming, if it wasn't for the Arctic Ice record I would not be convinced - but that IS rather alarming. But even then its not warming/cooling thing its a general environment thing. The steps being taken to combat one aspect of environmental pollution/destruction (possible warming) are (as ND points out) pitiful. The resolution of the problems won't actually come from energy producers sellers but from the people who change their lifestyle to reflect the need for more efficient (read necessarily cheaper) energy use. That does not mean you can't have modern technological toys to play with, it just means that powering these toys needs to become more efficient.

Take my case - 5 years ago we had 10 - 10! 60 watt spotlights in our lounge and dining room, all on that was 600 watts. Now they are all LED and slightly less dazzling but they consume 40 watts when all on, that's quite some change a -93% change.

I believe the rolling power cuts and/or brown-outs that will force the government and suppliers and energy consumers to act are looking increasingly inevitable if we get a another couple of harsh winters. The one just gone wasn't particularly harsh, just dull, boring and long.


Anonymous said...

You shouldn't worry about the Arctic ice. It's only a few metres thick, and sits over a 4000metre deep ocean. Ever since the 1950s ('56 I think) submarines have been able to pop up through it. Ice-breakers cut it up. Changes in the extent of Arctic ice are the result of these processes. It's desperately cold up there and more ice could form. Even better, the ice is floating, so if it melts there's negligible change to sea levels globally

Anonymous said...

The whole "global warming" scare is just a racket. Scientists can get more research grants, governments can raise more taxes, and the BBC can plug its usual leftist agenda, while investing in "green" companies, subsidised by the taxpayer, for the pension fund.

The directors of the South Sea Company were amateurs by comparison.

Timbo614 said...

I never even mentioned the temperatures that might be causing it or sea level but "It's desperately cold up there and more ice could form."
I really don't want to play hockey sticks at dawn, but if it's so "desperately cold" - why does the ice melt in the first place?

I have to give the "coldists" one thing, wherever you post a warming/climate/change sentence, up they pop like submarines through ice holes"!.

Blue Eyes said...

I don't get involved in the [non-]science but I always think

1) opportunity cost
2) opportunity cost
3) opportunity cost
4) etc.

Blue Eyes said...

But now I've thought about it for twenty seconds, could global warming lead to THE END OF BRITAIN!?

ivan said...

why does the ice melt in the first place?

For the same reason it has always done - shifting currents in the oceans bring up warmer water from the south. Sometimes the currents move direction mpre than usual and so we see variations in the ice cover.

Sackerson said...

Now the BBC is trying to make amends by going too far the other way, as we saw in last night's 6 o clock news coverage of Californian oil fields.

Jan said...

I'm more concerned about the pollution we humans have caused eg plastics everywhere ground down into little pieces in the oceans and the heavy metals from catalytic converters in the dust we're all breathing in. (There's a company which wants to collect all the dust on the streets and extract the metals which would be more expensive to mine.)

Who knows what effects these are having on the planet in general as well as all the other sources of pollution we already know about?

Agence communication said...

great information hear ""
The days when the Beeb's policy was for active suppression of climate-change skepticism are, it seems, over. (Davey was more than just called upon to defend his position: Neil made it clear that in his view, Davey had failed to do so.) That's not a trivial development.
Davey's principal fall-back arguments were (1) a Pascal's wager: even given uncertainty, it's still appropriate to insure against the downside of possible climate change (2) "a lot of our policies are 'no-regrets' policies" - we should be doing them anyway.
""