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Committee on Climate Change produces second annual report (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Major changes in policy are still needed to meet climate targets despite emission cuts brought about by the recession, say government advisors.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) calls for a "step change" in power generation, insulation and transport.
...
The is the committee's second annual report to parliament, and follows a year in which UK greenhouse gas emissions plummeted by 8.6%, mainly due to the recession but also because of increased fossil fuel prices."The recession has created the illusion that progress is being made to reduce emissions," said CCC chairman Lord Adair Turner.
"Our analysis shows that this is almost wholly due to a reduction in economic activity, and not from new measures being introduced to tackle climate change.
"So we are repeating our call for new policy approaches to drive the required step change, in order that the UK can ensure a low-carbon recovery."
...
"We had less than 1 Gigawatt (GW) of renewable capacity added to the system in 2009," said CCC chief executive David Kennedy."We need in the order of 2-2.5GW added each year over the next 10 years in order to meet our carbon budget and European targets for renewables.
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UK emissions are currently 26% below the 1990 level - the baseline year most commonly used national, European and global policy.Until 2008, most of this fall was down to the "dash for gas" in the early 1990s and a halving of methane emissions.
But the significance of the recession is shown in the government's recent admission that the 8.6% fall from 2008 to 2009 was the largest single-year decline in the entire record.
The fall, said Mr Kennedy, makes it feasible for the UK to increase its 2020 target from the current 34% emission cut to 42% - the UK's projected share should the EU move from its current 20% target to 30%, as the government is urging.
The CCC is one of the thousands of useless quangos that plague the nation. Unfortunately one of their missions is to produce an annual report, and this kind of report is obviously going to focus on the year prior to which it is written. But with climate change there is no point in looking at one single year in isolation. During the boom years none of the ruling elite pointed out that emissions were really above where they would have been if only Britain had been living within its means. So when a recession happens there is no point complaining that emissions have fallen. The only sensible thing to do is look over an economic cycle (or longer). And over the economic cycle the UK is going to meet the 2020 emissions target. If that disappoints the UK ruling elite it is only because it gives them less excuse to flagellate ordinary people with punitive taxation.
(Of course the way emissions are calculated is completely bogus, since they are counted at the point of production rather than the point of consumption, so Britain and the EU have exported a huge amount of emissions to China and elsewhere. This will end soon enough because the EU is sinking down the economic ladder, thanks to the determined effort of the ruling elite, and so the EU will soon not be able to afford so many imports.)
Gilbert Road will have cycle lanes but no speed bumps (permanent blog link)
The Cambridgeshire County Council Cabinet had a meeting today to discuss, amongst other things, the proposal to ban parking in the cycle lanes on Gilbert Road, and also to put speed bumps (or, as the bureaucrats would have it, "traffic calming") all the way up the road. As with the meeting on 23 February, the room was packed out with interested parties.
The media (including the Cambridge News and the BBC) had portrayed this as a battle between the residents of Gilbert Road, who obviously did not want to lose their parking, and cyclists, by which they really meant the Cambridge Cycling Campaign (CCC) (who represent some, but not most, cyclists in Cambridge).
Needless to say, this ignored everyone else who is a stakeholder in Gilbert Road. So not only were drivers ignored (but Cambridge always ignores drivers since allegedly they do not count) but also all the residents of north Cambridge who happen to live near but not on Gilbert Road. In particular, it was obvious to one and all (except the bureaucrats and the CCC) that the speed bumps would likely encourage rat running of motorists away from Gilbert Road, a relatively main road, to side streets.
Mike Todd-Jones (acting in a personal capacity rather than as a member of the Labour Party) organised a petition a week or two beforehand requesting that the rat running situation be analysed before the speed bumps were installed. This meant that he was given three minutes to put his case at the start of the meeting. And he made the argument in good order. In particular, there is an obvious rat running route from Histon Road down Roseford Road, Perse Way, Carlton Way, Metcalfe Road and Courtney Way, which avoids all current and planned speed bumps.
As an exercise in "fairness", the Cabinet also allowed the CCC spokesperson, James Woodburn, to speak for three minutes, although this seems to have been against the rules, since the CCC had no new petition, and petitions are not allowed to be repeated. He argued that the speed bumps would not encourage rat running (but why the CCC pretends to know anything about how drivers view speed bumps is a mystery). And he argued that a postponement of the decision would affect future funding (emotional blackmail). And he bizarrely claimed that the Todd-Jones petition was "too late", because the public survey carried out before the February meeting had allegedly settled it once and for all that the "public" allegedly supported the proposal. What he failed to mention is that the CCC had emailed all its members in February to ask that they fill in the survey en masse so as to bias it towards the result they wanted. And so the survey was completely bogus. (But pretty much all public surveys like this are bogus, exactly because special interest groups like the CCC can hijack the proceedings.)
Roy Pegram, the Cabinet person responsible for pushing for the Gilbert Road proposal, then spoke. He said that the correspondence he had received had been split 50/50 for and against the proposal. Again, this is meaningless. Anyway, it was pretty obvious that he had thrown in the towel over the speed bumps proposal because he was fairly lukewarm in his presentation.
One of the other Cabinet people (Mac McGuire?) pointed out that there were two parts to the proposal, so the parking ban (so that the current cycle lanes became real cycle lanes) and the speed bumps. Somehow this had not been mentioned by anyone in the Cabinet before, but it was the relevant point. One could have one without the other.
Kevin Wilkins, a Lib Dem county councillor for West Chesterton (but not in the Cabinet), then spoke. He said he himself was not a cyclist but was very keen on both aspects of the proposal, so both the cycle lanes and the speed bumps. Bizarrely he called this view a "compromise". Only in Lib Dem fantasy land. Mac McGuire pointed out that Wilkins had not even attended the two PDG (Policy Development Group) meetings since February to discuss Gilbert Road. Oops.
A few people from the Cabinet then spoke, including Fred Yeulett, Tony Orgee, Martin Curtis and David Harty. It was Martin Curtis who stuck the fatal blow against the speed bumps. He had apparently run as an MP in Nottingham in the recent election (not successfully, it seems) and said that in Nottingham they even had a dual carriageway where there were cycle lanes, so it was not obvious why Gilbert Road needed speed bumps. Nobody official pointed out that Histon Road, which is much more dangerous than Gilbert Road, has cycle lanes and no speed bumps, although there were murmurings from the audience about this.
Harty explicitly supported Curtis and then Pegram officially threw in the towel on the speed bumps and all the cabinet agreed that there should be dedicated cycle lanes, so no parking, and also no speed bumps. And after the cycle lanes are in, they will come back to look at the question of whether speed bumps are needed. Well, there probably won't be any money available at that point, so the speed bumps are unlikely to appear in the near future.
The cycle lanes will be "advisory" rather than "mandatory". This is because apparently the police have to enforce "mandatory" cycle lanes whereas the local authority can enforce "advisory" ones. And none of the politicians trusted the police to do their job (indeed, several were amazingly rude about the police), so "advisory" it is.
It seems that 300k of the 400k pounds that was unbelievably going to be spent on this scheme can probably be diverted elsewhere in the county, and no doubt that meant the politicians were happy that they were not throwing away "free" money.
Needless to say, the main losers are the residents of Gilbert Road, who will no longer be able to park on the road. This will have some impact on side streets as well, with parking spilling over.
The Lib Dems also came out pretty badly, although no doubt they will trumpet their masterful determination to get the cycle lanes. So the local Lib Dem representatives pretty much all put the interests of the CCC ruling elite above the interests of their constituents. (Tim Ward, a Lib Dem city councillor for Arbury, indicated privately that he opposed the proposal as it stood.)
It is unfortunate that no real compromise had been considered since the February meeting. So it seems that the bureaucrats had literally done nothing since then. Their main argument for the proposal (including the speed bumps) boiled down to two bits of emotional blackmail: the possible loss of future funding if the county didn't do as told, and the alleged safety of children (although the rat running could in theory make that worse). Because of the funding issue, they were evidently satisfied just to "run out the clock" rather than doing anything constructive like talk to the residents of north Cambridge, in the intervening four months.
There was a possible compromise. So it's quite feasible that there could be two dedicated
cycle lanes, and also one side of parking at least in stretches along the road, if
only the bureaucrats could have been bothered to try. The photo
shows the situation as it often occurs these days along the southern end of Gilbert
Road. So cars can (currently) park in the cycle lane if they wanted, but they are
nice enough not to (although who knows if what they are doing is technically illegal).
And there is still space for pedestrians, as well. Anyway, parking is
obviously not going to be considered as an option for Gilbert Road.
There is one occasion per year when the whole southern section of Gilbert Road is currently used for parking, and that is for Guy Fawkes night. It will be interesting to see how that pans out in future, e.g. whether the authorities will turn a blind eye to people parking in the cycle lanes that night.
Robert Peston cannot cope with criticism (permanent blog link)
Robert Peston write on his BBC blog about "the coalition's commitment to equalise the rate of capital gains tax with income tax capital gains":
What I am really interested in is the effect on the housing market.
Because it is the uncertainty about what's going to happen that's doing the real damage.
...
If the uncertainty persists about when the new higher rate will be introduced, the negative effect on house prices could be much greater.Because for those sitting on significant capital gains above the tax free rate of £10,100, it becomes rational to flog properties pronto - to take advantage of the 18% rate and avoid a tax rate that looks set for most property investors to rise to more than double that.
In a housing market that is still weak, a wave of panicky sales could push down prices in a significant way.
This is an incredibly naive, and one could say damaging, article for a BBC business editor to write, because it completely ignores indexation. Peston's blog allows comments, and the following comment was made:
Robert Peston has unbelievably completely ignored the issue of inflation indexation in the calculation of CGT. Although the 18% figures looks lower than the 40%/50% figure, the former ignores inflation and so makes the CG artificially bigger the longer you hold the asset. If the LibCon government re-introduces the CGT rate being the same as the income tax rate (fair enough, since CG can be thought of as deferred income) then I am assured by my LibDem MP that indexation will also be re-introduced. Of course the devil is in the detail, but it seems to me that Robert Peston is not doing his job, he should be asking his (far better) sources about indexation and reporting back to us, rather than these kind of half-baked stories.
Apparently, after being posted on the BBC website for over a week, either Peston or one of his flunkies took exception to someone pointing out how bad his article was, and the comment was removed, for allegedly being against the BBC's House Rules.
Our Easter Island Moment: is it already too late to save the environment? (permanent blog link)
Sarah Mukherjee gave a Centre for Science and Policy Distinguished Lecture late this afternoon. Mukherjee was an environment correspondent for the BBC before taking voluntary redundancy earlier this year. The CSP is an attempt to foster connections between policy makers and scientists and engineers. It's headed by David Cleevely, one of the city's movers and shakers, and its executive committee has the usual sorts of suspects, so it ought to be influential, although it remains to be seen if it will be.
The title of Mukherjee's talk was "Our Easter Island Moment: is it already too late to save the environment?", and the discussion was about climate change, rather than any other environmental problem. Her main thesis was that the Climate Change Act (2008), which commits the UK government to reducing emissions by 80% by 2050 and which was supported by all three main political parties, was already dead and it was only a matter of time until some government repealed it.
She takes as some evidence for this belief the fact that during the economic crisis all the politicians are fixated on the economy rather than the environment, and never mention the latter when talking about the former. Well, the economic crisis started in 2007, so before 2008, so that's one problem with this argument. And as Mukherjee pointed out, a year or two ago the politicians were falling over themselves to "out green" each other. In particular, Cameron had used the environmental message to try and "detoxify" the Tory brand.
Mukherjee claimed that some person high in the Lib Dems had told her that they were the most "green" party "only because we didn't think we'd get into office". Well that is not quite fair, since the Lib Dems are full of the usual academic middle class types who love to portray themselves as "green", and so most of them presumably believe the rhetoric.
Apparently Jonathon Porritt claimed that "Britain leads the world in climate change rhetoric". Well, Porritt is a perfect example of that. Britain has far too many people who campaign and write books rather than actually contributing something useful to the world (think science and engineering).
Mukherjee claimed that the only legal sanction for a future government failing to meet the goals of the Climate Change Act was judicial review, which she considered a bit of a joke, but which is fair enough, since why should a future prime minister go to prison just because previous prime ministers failed to do something or other. But it does show one of the flaws with the entire concept of the Act.
She put the alleged current lack of interest in climate change amongst politicians down to three things.
First, there is the declining number of British people who believe that "global warming" is a reality. Well, a lot of that decline could be attributed to the silliness of Climategate, or maybe the cold winter Britain just had, who knows. But as someone pointed out in the questions at the end, this kind of blip in opinion polls happens all the time, and it is probably not significant in the long term.
Anyway, she took the opportunity to state that one of the problems was that there was "no engagement between politicians and ordinary people" and that politicians only paid attention to the media, as if somehow the media represented ordinary people. And she had a dig in particular at newspapers for having far too much influence. So the Guardian has only 300 thousand readers, which size of audience she claimed would sink most radio programmes, but the Guardian (and the other newspapers) had instant access to all the top politicians.
The second reason she gave for the alleged waning interest in climate change by politicians is the Energy Gap. So Britain, by some accounts, is in serious trouble of having the lights going out by 2020, and this is one of the big failures of the previous Labour government, but most likely the government in charge at the time when blackouts start happening will be the one that gets the blame.
And the third reason she gave is the failure of the Copenhagen 2009 climate change conference. She put that down to the conference just being too big for any hope of cohesion, and in particular blamed the NGOs (so she said that they had "collapsed it from inside"). Well, the media were also part of the circus, and in particular Mukherjee, so they should also shoulder their part responsibility. She claimed that the EU delegation was completely ignored by the real players (the US, China, India, Brazil).
Bizarrely enough, she showed three of her own reports from Copenhagen, but they added nothing to the discussion, so perhaps it was just useful padding.
Her take on all this was that to overcome these issues, Britain must "invest in elite academic education", and in particular in science. She was keen to stress that "elite" is not the same as "posh". Well, although more and better education is a good thing, it's hard to see this as the main stumbling block in Britain over climate change. Far more serious is that no politician has come up with a narrative whereby they are going to address climate change and make peoples' lives better rather than worse. Part of the problem, as Mukherjee noted, is that there is a dominance of "puritanism" amongst NGOs, who want to move the world back a couple hundred years (so pre-industrial revolution). Mukherjee didn't point out that the reason this kind of puritanism gets such traction in Britain is that the BBC gives these people loads of free air time without any critical analysis or comment.
Apparently Mukherjee grew up on a council estate and went to a grammar school and then Oxford, so the kind of rise that allegedly is less and less common these days, thanks, some people would claim, to the anti-elitist destruction of grammar schools. And it sounded like she was pretty nearly alone in the BBC, which is stuffed full of the same "public" (i.e. private) school types that the cabinet is now stuffed full of. (She made the obvious remark that the current cabinet made the world look more like 1910 than 2010.)
During questions someone asked whether the BBC gave too much airtime to climate change "sceptics" and she said not. Someone else suggested that if only Britain had voting system "reform" (i.e. proportional representation) then all would be well on climate change leadership, but letting extremists (left and right) into Parliament is hardly a great idea. Mukherjee said it might be good to get more Greens into Parliament since they are single minded, i.e. presumably willing to screw ordinary people to achieve their goals. She pointed to the alleged success of the so-called London Congestion Charge as to what could be achieved, but that is a success only in the minds of people who don't mind millions and millions of pounds of money being wasted to run the scheme.
Someone mentioned the town hall meetings where the Climate Change Act was propagandised by the usual NGO suspects (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, etc.). Mukherjee herself had pointed these out as an important reason the Act was passed, and praised them for this reason. But she and the questioner completely failed to point out that these meetings were not representative of the public but just of the usual vocal middle class suspects. And far too much power in Britain has been shifted away from the accountable politicians to the unaccountable vocal middle class.
Someone mentioned how it might take less energy to produce GM crops. And Cambridge is one of the few towns in Britain where GM crops get some kind of sympathy vote, although there is also plenty of opposition even in Cambridge from the usual non-scientific ("chattering") middle class. Mukherjee supported GM crops, but didn't point out that the very same NGOs she praised for pushing the Climate Change Act were the ones who had helped stop GM crops. Instead she blamed the media, and Monsanto for allegedly not responding to the strident anti-GM propaganda (but that's a bit hard to believe). Anyway, she believes that the European elite is going to lose its battle against GM since the rest of the world seems to grow it just fine.
David Cameron, arrogant and obnoxious after two weeks in power (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Downing Street refused to allow a government minister to appear on the Question Time programme unless Tony Blair's former adviser Alastair Campbell was removed, the BBC says.
No 10 complained about the presence of Mr Campbell on the weekly discussion show, the corporation said.
Downing Street said he was not elected or a frontbench spokesman and asked him to be replaced by a shadow minister.
The BBC said it refused the demand as a point of "fundamental principle".
The last Tory government was arrogant and obnoxious beyond belief, for most of its rule. The previous Labour government became arrogant and obnoxious after Gordon Brown took over. The current Tory government has only been in power a couple of weeks and it has already become arrogant and obnoxious.
David Cameron spent much of the campaign claiming that Labour had allowed Government to trample the rights of Parliament. So it was appalling that one of his first acts as prime minister was to trample the rights of Parliament by trying to hijack the backbench 1922 committee to make it compliant with the wishes of his government rather than the wishes of his backbenchers.
And now Cameron has thrown a tizzy because he could not specify who the BBC invited to appear on Question Time. This is presumably the first of the Tory attempts to browbeat the BBC. Rupert Murdoch will be paid off handsomely for his support for the Tories.
John Sulston criticises synthetic genome patents (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A top UK scientist who helped sequence the human genome has said efforts to patent the first synthetic life form would give its creator a monopoly on a range of genetic engineering.
Professor John Sulston said it would inhibit important research.
US-based Dr Craig Venter led the artificial life form research, details of which were published last week.
Prof Sulston and Dr Venter clashed over intellectual property when they raced to sequence the genome in 2000.
Craig Venter led a private sector effort which was to have seen charges for access to the information. John Sulston was part of a government and charity-backed effort to make the genome freely available to all scientists.
"The confrontation 10 years ago was about data release," Professor Sulston said.
"We said that this was the human genome and it should be in the public domain. And I'm extremely glad we managed to pull this out of the bag."
Now the old rivals are at odds again over Dr Venter's efforts to apply for patents on the artificially created organism, nicknamed Synthia. The team outlined the remarkable advance last week in the prestigious journal Science.
But Professor Sulston, who is based at the University of Manchester, said patenting would be "extremely damaging".
"I've read through some of these patents and the claims are very, very broad indeed," Professor Sulston told BBC News.
"I hope very much these patents won't be accepted because they would bring genetic engineering under the control of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). They would have a monopoly on a whole range of techniques."
The problem is not so much with Craig Venter as with the entire world (in particular US) patent system. Far too broad patents are allowed in all areas of technology, and they are indeed "extremely damaging". The current patent system often prevents innovation more than it protects it.
Craig Venter makes synthetic genome (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Scientists in the US say they have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell.
The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell.
The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.
The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.
The researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases.
The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.
He and his colleagues had previously made a synthetic bacterial genome, and transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another.
Now, the scientists have put both methods together, to create what they call a "synthetic cell", although only its genome is truly synthetic.
This is another great advance forward in biological techniques. But the hype about the advances it will lead to is still only hype. On the other hand, the "critics" are the usual suspects who cannot cope with biotechnology, or indeed with almost any technology that is post industrial revolution. As with any new technology, there are risks that are not fully understood. But there are risks with anything, and there is no point refusing to develop technology just because some middle class "critics" cannot cope with the modern world.
The LibCon government takes over (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
New Prime Minister David Cameron has said his "historic" Conservative-led coalition government will be united and provide "strong and stable" leadership.
In a good-humoured press conference with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who is now deputy PM, he said they would "take Britain in a historic new direction".
Their agenda was to cut the deficit, support troops, clean up politics and build a "stronger society".
Mr Clegg acknowledged "big risks" but pledged a "bold, reforming government".
He is among five Liberal Democrats appointed to Cabinet posts, something Mr Cameron said showed "the strength and depth of the coalition and our sincere determination to work together constructively".
When Nick Clegg was running around the country proclaiming that he wanted a balanced parliament this is presumably what he meant. So not only is Eton well represented in the cabinet, but so is Westminster. How balanced can you get.
It will be interesting to see how long this coalition lasts, given the inherent contradictions in many of the ideas of the two parties (although the Lib Dems seem to believe all things at different times, dependent on who they are talking to and the phase of the moon).
The first decision of the New Labour government in 1997 was visionary. It handed over power to determine interest rates to a Bank of England committee, without direct government interference.
The first decision of the LibCon government is anti-visionary. It is to refuse to allow extra runway capacity in the southern half of England (and probably everywhere else). It condemns Britain to moving backwards, rather than forwards.
The long national nightmare has begun.
Another end of the world report (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The Earth's ongoing nature losses may soon begin to hit national economies, a major UN report has warned.
The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) says that some ecosystems may soon reach "tipping points" where they rapidly become less useful to humanity.
Such tipping points could include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death.
Last month, scientists confirmed that governments would not meet their target of curbing biodiversity loss by 2010.
This is not really news, and hardly surprising. With the human population increasing more and more, there is less room on the planet for other species. Unfortunately no government and no so-called environmental organisation wants to point out this obvious fact, instead pretending that the circle can be squared. Well of course the 5 billion humans who are currently not in abject poverty could be forced into abject poverty like the unfortunate 1 billion humans who currently are, and that would give more breathing space to other species. This seems to be the rather unfortunate goal of most so-called environmental organisations, but needless to say it is not what normal people would see as the way forward. Governments should not reward people for breeding (as happens now in the rich world). And countries should not be rewarded for breeding by accumulating more of the world's resources by having done so (e.g. it is a common belief among so-called environmentalists that considering per-capita emissions is the only "fair" measure, but that rewards countries that misbehave by having too many people).
The Conservatives hate people who are not married (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The Conservatives are proposing to give four million married couples and civil partners an annual £150 tax break.
It would apply to basic rate taxpayers earning under £44,000 where one partner does not use their full personal tax-free income allowance.
The £550m a year cost would be funded by a levy on banks. Labour said other families would lose out.
The last Tory government waged a war on single mothers. The next Tory government has obviously decided to spread the hate wider, to all people who are not married. It is unfortunate that the Tories have this ridiculous belief that married people are somehow more moral or better citizens. They are not.
The amount of money they are going to waste on this tax break happens to be around the same amount of money that is being reduced from university expenditure. The Tory priorities are not what they should be. And sticking two fingers up to people who are not married is hardly a way to engender good feeling in the nation towards the coming government.
Further, it is odd that someone who earns 43999 pounds deserve this tax break but not someone who earns 44001. Another example of the stupidity of the policy.
The Lib Dems hate drivers (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The Liberal Democrats have set out plans to reopen thousands of miles of railway tracks and stations.
The scheme would be funded by cutting capital spending on roads by £3bn.
Its new Rail Expansion Fund would lead to the biggest expansion of the rail network since the Victorian era, the party claims.
Research group the RAC Foundation said it would be a waste of taxpayers' money when only 7% of UK journeys were made by train, compared to 90% by car.
...
The Lib Dems would cut the government's major roads project for the years up to 2013/14 by 90% and divert almost £3.5bn to rail, according to Mr Baker.Some £480m - currently intended for projects like motorway widening and hard shoulders - would go towards the Lib Dems' existing policy of cutting rail fares.
The remaining £2.95bn would go into the Rail Expansion Fund. RAC Foundation Prof Stephen Glaister said: "To start cutting the roads budget to expand rail services is unlikely to be the best use of scarce taxpayers' money either in financial terms or by way of serving the vast majority of the population.
"The public liability does not just end once new lines are constructed. Rail services are heavily subsidised by the Exchequer."
Drivers are the only people in the UK who pay for the full (direct and indirect) cost of the service they use. Train passengers do not even come close, and the Lib Dems have decided to give them a huge increase in subsidy. They fail to understand that rail is in fact not a "sustainable" form of transport, because it needs a whacking great government subsidy in order to be sustained. Train passengers have successfully externalised a huge cost onto the rest of society, almost uniquely as a group. And the Lib Dems have apparently also vastly underestimated the cost of doing what they claim they want to do. It's complete madness, but the Lib Dems have never been very good at Economics 101 or Environmentalism 101.
The Tories hate gay people (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A key Conservative has been recorded suggesting people who run bed and breakfasts in their homes should have the right to reject homosexual guests.
But shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said hotels should not be allowed to discriminate in that way.
Labour and the Lib Dems said the Tories would allow discrimination "to thrive".
Mr Grayling later said he was looking at being "sensitive to the genuinely held principles of faith groups" but was not seeking a change in the law.
It's possible that Grayling might have meant that B&B owners should be allowed to discriminate against anyone, not just gay people. And that would be more logical a position to take. So if someone doesn't like gay people, or black people, or white people, or Christians, or Muslims, then allow them not to accept customers who fall into those groups. It's a bit ridiculous, but at least it's consistent. On the other hand, if B&B owners want to be bigots in this way, they should be forced not only to mention which groups they disallow in all their advertising, but they should also have to confirm at the time of booking that this is the case. The immediate problem that led to this discussion was that some B&B owner decided to bar someone after they had arrived at the premises, which is rather ridiculous.
Conservationists want to play God (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A number of non-native mammal species are damaging the UK countryside by eating crops and threatening wildlife, a conservation charity has warned.
A report by the People's Trust for Endangered Species identified 14 problem species including rats, American mink and muntjac deer.
The trust said some of the creatures have been in the UK for so long, they are thought of as indigenous.
It said it was important to stop the extinction of native species.
So-called conservationists unfortunately have taken it upon themselves to play God and decide which species they will try and exterminate and which they will not. They are the equivalent in the non-human world of rabid nationalists (racists) in the human world. All species are not "native" if you go far enough back in time, it just so happens that these people are using recent human history as a guide, because they have a narrow and simplistic partisan view.
The Lib Dems really like pestering the citizens of Cambridge (permanent blog link)
The Lib Dems will probably once again win the Cambridge parliamentary seat, if for no other reason than the current MP, David Howarth, managed to keep his nose clean in the expenses scandal. And if mass delivery of leaflets was any indication of victory, then the Lib Dems would win hands down. This past weekend they delivered not one but two leaflets, running to 12 pages in total. So they are concerned about the environment except when it comes to their own wasteful use of paper.
The first, 4 page, leaflet is a "Cambridge Herald". The headline here is about "Britain's unfair tax system", whereby "unfair" they mean that "the very rich pay a lower rate of tax than the poor". Well, that's obviously true, because the very rich have good accountants and because the poor are stuck in a benefits trap. Needless to say, the Lib Dems are not promising to sort this out, and would be incapable of doing anything about either situation. And they also fail to point out that the very rich pay a huge amount of tax, it's just not huge as a percentage of income. But never let reality get in the way of propaganda.
And what is a "fairer system", according to the Lib Dems? It is one where they will try to extort a bit more money from the very rich (via cutting tax breaks on pension contributions) and hand a small amount to everyone else. Needless to say that is not "fairer", it is just redistribution. So all taxes are random and to say that some random shuffle of taxes is allegedly "fairer" is a joke. The Lib Dems are just playing that typical game whereby they are telling the masses that they can have all the services they want and not pay for any of it, because some rich uncle is going to pay for it. And unfortunately all three main political parties are playing the same game. So the country is bankrupt, but not to worry, the rich will gladly bail every one out. Only the rich will not.
The second headline is that "More new homes will be affordable", about the unsuccessful attempt by the developers of Clay Farm to reduce the number of "affordable" homes from the agreed level of 40%. The way new developments are forced to have a large (rather ridiculous) percentage of "affordable" homes (which are not affordable) is currently considered to be a quick fix to the lack of housing supply, but it has done nothing. If the developer cannot make a good profit the developer will not build, and this forced subsidy of almost half the development ends up not costing the developer but the people who buy houses elsewhere on the site. All in all the way housing is planned and built in England is insane, and the Lib Dems have nothing to offer on this score (nor do the other parties).
On the last page there is the headline "Children deserve a fair deal say Lib Dems". They claim that "In Britain, clever children from lower income homes are already significantly behind less able children from wealthier homes by the time they start school". Well, the Lib Dems should know, their leader, Nick Clegg, is a classic nice-but-dim middle class boy who ended up at the extremely posh Westminister School before going to Cambridge (to study Archaeology and Anthropology, not the most serious of subjects). It is not clear how the Lib Dems would change the situation except to possibly throw more money at poor children (however "poor" is arbitrarily defined), as if that will help.
The final headline is "Years of 'savings' in roads budget bite" about the plague of potholes that have hit Cambridge after the hard winter. Needless to say, according to the Lib Dems, it is all the fault of the Tory run county council. Well, this is a bit ironic, given how much the Lib Dems hate drivers, and have spent their entire time running Cambridge city council the last decade trying to screw drivers as much as possible. But really, now that there is an election they have their hankies out and are weeping about potholes.
The second, 8 page, leaflet, is basically a hagiography for Julian Huppert, the Lib Dem candidate for parliament. On the front page is a picture of him with David Howarth and his number one pitch: "Cambridge is my home". Well, hopefully he has more than that to offer the people of Cambridge. On the second page is a pitch by Howarth of how wonderful Huppert is.
On the third page Huppert has an article about the police DNA database and ID cards. Well, he happens to be on the sensible side on this issue, but it's hard to believe that more than a handful of people care about this more than about bread and butter issues.
Then there is a two-page spread in the middle of the leaflet, about "what makes Julian tick", complete with a nauseating photo of him on the Cam when he was a kid (he's a faculty brat). At the bottom there is a small article about how he is opposed to university tuition fees. Well, he can say that knowing full well that the Lib Dems will never be in power and so will never have to figure out how to pay for that promise.
Then, on the next page, we are back to the "fair tax that works for you". Again, the Lib Dems are happy to campaign on the idea that the only "fair" tax is a tax that someone else pays for the services you want. Such is the stupidity of British political life.
Then we find out that "Green technology is the way forward". And about the only thing you can say that Huppert really has going for him, versus the Labour and Tory candidates, is that he is a scientist. We find out that "according to Julian, global warming is the biggest threat facing the world". And yet, when you turn the page over what do we find but that "As a father of three young children, it's no surprise that Nick Clegg cares passionately about education". It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the reason that "global warming is the biggest threat facing the world" is that the planet has six billion people, and it is totally irresponsible of anyone claiming to be concerned about this to have three children. Perhaps Huppert should have a quiet word with Clegg and remind him about the wonders of birth control.
Another pointless report by MPs on carbon (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The government must act faster if the UK is to fully benefit from low carbon technology, a report by MPs has warned.
The Energy and Climate Change Committee said in 2008 there were 881,000 green sector jobs - but with extra funding that could rise by 44% by 2015.
But it criticised slow uptake of carbon capture systems, electric cars and home insulation, calling on the government to invest more in the technologies.
...
Committee acting chairman Paddy Tipping MP said: "Investment in low carbon technologies must be seen as key to economic recovery."These technologies have the potential to reduce the carbon intensity at every stage of the energy supply chain, resulting in lower emissions, many new jobs and growth for the economy."
Yet another pointless report by yet another pointless committee of MPs. Surprise, the conclusion is always that the government "must act", although there is never any indication that anything the government has ever done has ever helped in any area of technology, except to get in the way.
Unfortunately this report strays beyond the pointless and ends up in the realm of the silly with that last claim: "These technologies have the potential to reduce the carbon intensity at every stage of the energy supply chain, resulting in lower emissions, many new jobs and growth for the economy."
Countries with lower carbon intensity in general have higher (per capita) emissions than countries with higher carbon intensity, not the other way around. Although reducing carbon intensity means that a given task can be done with less energy / emissions / money, it then means that more can be spent on other goods and services.
Funds for the Sure Start scheme should allegedly not be cut (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Cutting funds for a network of children's centres across England would be disastrous, MPs have said.
The Commons' Children, Schools and Families Committee says the Sure Start scheme is doing pioneering work which should be allowed to bear fruit.
But it criticised a lack of data on its effectiveness and value for money.
Let's see. The country is completely bankrupt but no programme should ever be cut, because some group of MPs with a vested interest, or some other special interest pressure group, thinks that (surprise) their own empire is not where cuts should be made. And yet here there is "a lack of data on its effectiveness and value for money", and that is a classic indication that indeed the programme is probably hugely wasteful. But never let reality get in the way of a good story.
Risk and (Human-induced) Climate Change (permanent blog link)
The 2010 Darwin College Lectures are about Risk. The eighth, and final, lecture occurred on 5 March and was by Bob Watson, of the University of East Anglia, on the subject of "Risk and (Human-induced) Climate Change". He is also chief scientist for the UK ministry DEFRA.
Watson has done the rounds, and this lecture was, not surprisingly, almost identical to the lecture he gave in the Engineering Department two years previously, in 2008. And he must give this lecture pretty much every week of his life, and it is astonishing how enthusiastic he remains for the task.
Meanwhile, the world has not moved on since 2008. Climate change is still the biggest topic on the planet but nothing has changed in the science and nothing has really changed in terms of government action, so two-year old slides are perfectly acceptable. The only thing that has happened since then is that a fake controversy was drenched up, involving Watson's own university, UEA.
Copenhagen, the latest gathering of the governments of the world, and the zillions of NGOs that think they have something to say on the matter, and the climate change groupies, came and went without anything much happening. And this provided one new quip that Watson could make. So he said that as a scientist he thought that the meeting was a "complete failure" but as a government advisor it was a "minor step in the correct direction".
Last time he mentioned the importance of valuing the ecosystem, this time he could report that it was actually happening, both in the UK and globally. Well, needless to say these reports are going to say that the ecosystem is worth trillions of dollars and nobody pays Mother Nature any respect. It will be interesting to see if anyone can find one human activity which actually covers all its externalities, given the claims that will be made about how valuable the ecosystem is just as it stands now, because it's not obvious there is any such activity (except for driving a car in Europe, because the taxation is so extortionate).
Because of the faux outrage over the UEA leaked emails, it has become evident to everyone that climate data and software needs to be publicly available. Well, most of it already was, but it will hopefully be the case that all of it is made available, possibly as a condition that any research that relies on it is published. But the climate science community has far better behaviour on this front that the ecological community does, where there are no standards for data, where many results are published in obscure and expensive or unobtainable journals, and where it is almost impossible to get hold of data or how it was analysed unless the authors feel so inclined to make it available. This will make the UK and global assessments that much more fragile.
At this point Watson trashed GDP as the only measure of a country's "success", and said we should also include other measures like natural capital and social capital, and no doubt the quality of Mom's apple pie. The problem is that most of these other things are not really measurable (GDP is hard enough). So who is going to trust any scientist who claims that a birch tree in such and such a location is worth 1.27 times what a house extension would be worth in the same location, or that a bus driver is worth 3.78 times what a banker is worth. It's all just fun and games for the academic middle class.
Watson of course made the point that society ought to try and internalise the costs of environmental degradation for any good or service, but it's just not totally practicable, except in very specific circumstances like a carbon tax, and even that is not trivial (how do you value land use change).
And bizarrely enough, on the very slide where he said we should internalise costs, he also then suggested that "new technologies" needed subsidising. Well, that is a perfect example of externalising the costs of something, and the UK is about to embark on this kind of folly big time by subsidising totally inefficient energy production by the middle class. Watson also said that in the UK he doesn't own a car (in the US he did) but goes everywhere by train and car, or sometimes by renting a car. But trains are hugely subsidised in the UK, so taking one is indeed externalising the costs onto the rest of society.
In this lecture he didn't mention GM crops at all, which is a bit odd given how crucial they will be to feeding the world in the coming decades. But afterwards he said that he was not necessarily against GM crops, and that people had incorrectly interpreted the IAASTD (the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development), which he had chaired, as being anti-GM, whereas he was just cautious. So the Tony Juniper spin on this report seems not to be the spin that Watson himself would put on it. Watson said that he thought that currently GM crops would not have helped with world hunger (given what is really causing it, e.g. poor governance) but that in the coming decades this technology might help.
An even bigger omission was that he did not mention population at all. So, like most of the academic middle class in Britain, Watson seems more concerned about citizens in the poor world than he is about citizens in his own country (who allegedly consume too much, although the average UK citizen consumes far less than your average UK professor). So he said that any climate change treaty had to be "equitable". But how equitable is it that certain countries of the world have let their populations explode with no thought to the consequence, and should the citizens in the rest of the world be held to account because of this?
Near the end he discussed people's willingness and ability to act to "do something" to help with climate change. He didn't say how and where this data came from, but it is evident that some marketing consultant was involved, because the result was a classification of people into seven magic categories: "positive greens", "concerned consumers", "sideline supporters", "cautious participants", "waste watchers", "stalled starters" and "honestly disengaged".
It's hard to take this kind of stuff seriously. You can quite imagine that 99% of his audience was a "positive green", but are these people really "green", or just "green" in some mythical measure. So the academic middle class are far wealthier than the average UK citizen, not to mention the average citizen of the world, and so the academic middle class are far more responsible for environmental degradation in the world, whether they drive a Prius or not. What matters most is how much you earn (and how many children you have), not how much you cycle to work.
At least Watson had another cute joke here. So he said that he called the "honestly disengaged" the "I don't give a sh*t" brigade. Well, that's one way of looking at it.
For more articles (older ones) see archive.
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