How to be Tiresome - Lesson 496

Greta Thunberg warns everything we love is at stake as she arrives at UN climate talks

ANTALYA, Turkey (AP) — Climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived at U.N. climate talks on Tuesday, condemning the annual proceedings as hypocritical and urging leaders to put people and the planet ahead of profits and power.

The COP31 conference is being held in the Turkish resort city of Antalya following a year of deadly climate-related disasters, including heat waves and floods, and another energy shock caused by the Iran war.

“It’s a hypocrisy every year that the host countries are given an opportunity to whitewash themselves and we know that these negotiations are filled with lobbyists, paid by the very destructive industries which are benefiting from our extremely violent status quo,” Thunberg said as she arrived. “Our political and economic systems that have become incompatible with human nature.”


Strewth - the bone-aching tedium of it all, year after year, the impenetrable dullness of the fanatic. Unfortunately this is part of human nature too.

I think I'll wander off into the kitchen for a biscuit and a cup of tea, even two biscuits.

Science Is Becoming Feelings

William M. Briggs has a typically entertaining and incisive piece on the intrusion of emotional responses into science, or what purports to be science. The whole piece is well worth reading as the wider rejection of dispassionate analysis seems to be with us for the foreseeable future.

Science Is Becoming Feelings

Our constant prediction has been Official Science would spend increasing and inordinate time and energy on FEELINGS. Indeed, science would become, in good part, about feelings. Including the feelings of scientists towards other scientists who dare buck The Consensus (whatever the consensus might be in any field).

As proof of this, I bring you this story: “How anxiety over climate change affects students“...

Students ignorant about the physics of fluid flow over a differentially heated rotating sphere were asked about their, I quote, emotional responses to “climate change.” Which are worth as much as an empty soup can. Even less, because the can is metal and can be recycled for money. (This is also the Appeal to Non-Authority Fallacy, as detailed in the upcoming second edition of Everything You Believe Is Wrong. 22 November.)

In any case, these emotional responses were called The Science, and published as if they were science, or had any bearing on science.

Tell you one thing, though, before we continue. It’s that “feeling powerless” to change the weather is the accurate feeling. Get used to it, kiddies. You’ll find these feelings apply to a great many things in life. Nitwits, and more to the point midwits, who tell you do “Do [or imagine] the impossible” ought to be scorned.

Burn Alerts

Air pollution soars as fog traps emissions in England’s urban areas

Air pollution soared to “very high” levels across urban parts of England on Monday as still, foggy weather kept emissions trapped after a weekend of fireworks and bonfires.

Hmm - was a propaganda opportunity lost in the fog?

Nope - 

Larissa Lockwood, the director of campaigns at Global Action Plan, said the high pollution levels were “not surprising at a time of year when people are lighting log burners, having bonfires and lighting fireworks. On top of the normal levels from transport and industry, we see higher levels of air pollution and they’re then unable to disperse because they’re trapped by the fog.”

Domestic burning and transport are the biggest sources of particulate pollution, she said. Lockwood called for a public health campaign on air pollution and “burn alerts”, asking people in towns and cities not to use wood burners when levels are high.

Ed's Antics

 

The art of the possible

Otto von Bismarck once described politics as "the art of the possible.”

Since Bismarck's time, even in supposed democracies, we have seen "the art of the possible " become what is politically possible to say without any intention to do or achieve what is said. Not new of course, but it has become the standard for political parties in government. 

To take an extremely well-known UK example, consider the railway project HS2. Within certain wide and uncertain boundaries the total cost was unknown because government incompetence does not allow much certainty.

This leaves us with two situations. Firstly, a realistic estimate of the total HS2 cost was politically impossible, it would have to be high enough to allow for project incompetence. Secondly, an absurdly low estimate of the total cost was politically possible, it could be and was low enough to be acceptable. This is the art of the possible, the art which has become standard - it is politically possible to say what there is no intention to do. Merely say it in the right way to the right people.

Today we have large public sector, government patronage and government dependent classes drawn from many sections of society where saying is often preferred to doing. Voting for what can be said is preferred to voting for what ought to be done. The art of the possible has become what can be said, not what can be made, built, grown, afforded, or physically demonstrated.

Politicians such as Andrew Burnham focus almost entirely on what can be said over what can be made, built, grown, afforded, or physically demonstrated – that’s what his voters vote for.

Grafting

Just one in seven staff at the Department for Work turn up by midday

Fewer than one in seven Department for Work and Pensions civil servants are arriving at the office by midday, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Just 317 of 2,245 of the staff paid to get Britons back into work were at the department's headquarters by noon on a recent Friday – leaving more than three-quarters of the building's 1,395 spaces empty.

Researchers from think-tank the Centre for Government Reform (CGR) stood outside Caxton House, the DWP's central London office, to count the number of staff entering.

They spotted just 26 employees arriving between 7am and 8am and 114 arriving by 9am – representing 5 per cent of Caxton House's total headcount.

The total rose to 220 by 10am and 278 by 11am, reaching 317 by midday – 14 per cent of the office's workforce.

COP31 shock: windy twaddle fails to generate electricity

COP31 live: world leaders gather for crucial climate crisis talks

Next up is the Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, who is president of the negotiations here in Antalya.

This is his big moment to set the tone for the next two weeks, and he said even though the 1.5C Paris target will be overshot, “we can return … if we work together and act with urgency, solidarity and resolve.”


Rare call for more electricity supplies as wind power drops across Europe

The government body tasked with keeping the lights on has issued a rare call for more electricity supplies this morning due to low wind power generation forecasts across Europe on Monday.

A notice issued by the National Energy System Operator (Neso) on Sunday night said it faced a “shortfall” of almost 1,400 megawatts in its electricity supply margins from 6am until 11am on Monday.