Sunday 4 February 2024
The Shiny Table Effect
Sometimes it helps to trivialise important issues where there is a core of egregious absurdity, so here’s an example –
When we consider Drax power station burning wood chips to make electricity, it is worth taking a sideways look at the thing via shiny tables.
Vast acreages of trees are chopped down thousands of miles away in the US, turned into wood pellets, transported thousands of miles to Drax and burned to make electricity and save the planet. Where shiny tables come into it is that a group of people almost certainly sat round one and came up with a decision to go ahead with this lunacy.
It was probably a shiny table, which isn’t relevant but it sets the scene. A group of important people sat round it, discussed the Drax plan in a sober, high-level manner and at great length with profound earnestness then made the village idiot decision to go ahead and subsidise it.
What enticed them into the asylum in the first place? Picture them sitting round the shiny table with a big thick project report plus iPhone, iPad, notebook, pens, a cup of coffee, plate of expensive biscuits, bottle of water, some graphs on the whiteboard and so on.
There is one other aspect of this imaginary scenario. Those important people all knew the scheme was absurd. They must have known - the absurdity is just too obvious to miss. Except round a shiny table.
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6 comments:
The IQ of a committee never exceeds the IQ of its dimmest member. Then again, maybe they were corrupt.
The timber has to be felled, dragged to a shredding machine, shredded, dried, compressed into pellets, then hauled to a port, loaded onto a bulk carrier, powered to UK, (someone pays to power the empty ship back to US of A) kept moist to stop spontaneous combustion (see damp hay and compost heaps) hauled to big Drax and heaped up, and kept wet, see above, then mixed with coal (oh, the horror) 'cos it won't burn otherwise.
Then the resultant CO2 joins all the rest generated by all the previous processes.
Result Planet saved.
A muffled titter runs round China.
Having served on too many committees, I have this to offer. The constituent individuals aren't necessarily stupid, or malign. All it needs for things to go this badly wrong is for people to be too frightened or desirous of promotion to raise a dissenting voice. There is a strong link between "committee" and "commitment". Once a person is around the table and has taken part in decisions, they are committed. Unless they register a massive objection at the outset, they get sucked in deeper and deeper and would look increasingly idiotic if they backtracked or resigned. The most forcefully expressed ideas prevail because scepticism becomes less appetising once you are on board.
Perhaps it's possible for rational decisions to prevail, but my experience suggests it's not easy.
dearieme - yes, the vast amounts of money involved do suggest at least some degree of corruption.
Doonhamer - and the technical people must have known how absurd it all was. As you say, a muffled titter runs round China. And probably the rest of the world.
Sam - I served on too many committees and that was what I saw, members get sucked in deeper and deeper until a consensus emerges which isn't necessarily the most rational. It's as if the consensus selects itself as an emergent property of an imperfectly rational set of individuals who aren't rational about the same aspects.
The issue as so well described ny Doonhamer shows what an utter farce this net-zero garbage means to national economies!
GB Inc has immeasurable natural resources in coal and gas, and to think of carving up trees and carting them all this way is utterly ridiculous!
Our useless politicians should hang thir heads in shame!
Scobs - unfortunately they don't seem to be familiar with shame, but you are right, our politicians really are astoundingly useless.
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