Poor Tim – deselected by the web

When I’m chatting with my better half over a glass of port with the log-burner flickering away and the wind whistling round the chimney, she often has to look up bits and pieces of information on her phone.

Nothing unusual in that, but this tiny gadget gives us access to more information than we could ever have imagined just a couple of decades ago. What difference is it making to our lives?

A few centuries ago there were chained libraries and books with locks because books were expensive and not for the common people.

Today, the ancestors of the common people are able to access anything they please from an unimaginably vast repository of information, news, comment and entertainment. Most of it dross of course, but how many of us would care to read the contents of a chained library anyway?

It changes the balance of power in subtle and not so subtle ways.

We assess the capabilities of our political leaders more easily and don’t have to rely on establishment media to do it. We bypass the genteelly selective BBC and look around for sources we trust and visit them as often as we choose.

Social status is far less important as a route to sound information. A good example is how far behind the curve our leaders are on fracking. Many of us knew about the benefits long before they did, just as we have known for years that climate science is an unholy mess.

It’s impossible to be completely sure of all this, with our political class being so untrustworthy, but their mendacity is something we are aware of too. We don’t suspect – we know.

We know some of them are thick, some dishonest, some personally unreliable, some sexually deviant, some arrogantly aggressive and a few may be good eggs but the good eggs don’t usually get anywhere. We may know all this in some detail, where years ago it was all glossed over by compliant pundits.

Is it likely to make a difference though? I don’t see how it can fail. Narratives are multiplying and for every item of establishment pap there is a more reliable, less ameliorative source of information readily available.

We have reached a stage where no intelligent person takes the BBC as reliable on any subject with an establishment narrative. This is new and unless the BBC changes, its authority has gone for good.

The deselection of Tim Yeo may have had a number of causes, but one of them was surely the persistent wash of negative information telling us about the man, the games he plays and how effective he is as an MP.

It isn’t merely that the negative information on Yeo exists, but it is far more pervasive than it ever could have been in the comparatively recent past. The web seems to keep issues alive in a way which in pre-web days was rare.

Pressure could be brought on newspaper editors and stories would disappear if indeed they ever appeared in the first place. Now anyone may launch a story and if it spreads there is little others can do. Even court injunctions have been circumvented.

The world has changed and I’m sure we have yet to see the full consequences. Although Tim has had a taster.

Has Dave forgotten the droughts?

Old man tests drought control measures - from the BBC

From the delightfully unreliable BBC we hear Dave is concerned about flooding.

"Whatever is required ...this government will help those families and get this issue sorted."

Those words from David Cameron at Prime Minister's Questions were the clearest possible sign that he knows that he needs to be seen to be getting a grip on the fallout of the floods and the storms.

So too his decision to take the chair of today's COBRA emergency committee and to find £100m more of taxpayers money to spend on flood defences.

This belated rush to look in charge was forced by some pretty strong words of criticism.

Has Dave forgotten that one major policy reason we don't need to spend much on flood defences is because of the expected droughts caused by climate change? Has he read this Defra report from 2002 about the risk to crops from said droughts?

The project will provide an assessment of the risk posed by increased incidence of drought conditions, due to likely climate change over the next 30 years, to production of two key UK crops: winter wheat and sugar beet.

Blimey - don't tell me they are making it up as they go along. That would never do.

Derbyshire worst at DIY

From wikipedia

According to Derbyshire Times,

Dales residents have hit back against claims that they are among the least practical people in the UK following results of a survey.

Results from aquestionnaire of 2,000 people show just 40 per cent of people in Derbyshire are able to fit a new wheel, 31 per cent can’t unblock a toilet and only 34 per cent of residents can speak a foreign language.

The study – which was carried out by conference call provider Powwownow – claims 18 to 24–year–olds are least able to carry out basic practical skills like changing a burst tyre or unclogging a loo.

Oddly enough, we are surrounded by people with a wide range of DIY skills. For example, the guy next door built his own house. Even I have my practical side. When the head of my axe broke off I soon fixed it by nipping round to Frank's to buy another one - easy.

While plumbing in our new dishwasher I noticed straight away how light it was compared to a washing machine. No spin cycle you see! Nothing gets past a Derbyshire DIY expert.

N Korea copies Apple

Screenshot of Red Star - from techinasia.com

We learn from techinasia.com  that North Korea has changed the appearance of its official operating system from a Windows look-alike to more of an Apple flavour.

According to North Korea Tech, Red Star, North Korea’s homegrown, Linux-based operating system – yes, you read that correctly – has received a makeover as part of a version 3 update. The revamped interface ditches what was originally a Windows 7-inspired look, in exchange for an unmistakably OS X-esque appearance.

However we are not talking about a people's information revolution here - after all this is a socialist republic.

It’s extremely unlikely that the average North Korean will ever lay his or her eyes on either Red Star or Bright. And given that North Korean information technology appears to be quite limited at best, the revamped interface ought to be interpreted as a cosmetic change and not much else.

Electric cars - a long gestation

Arnold Bennett clearly liked electric cars. They must have been the coming thing and maybe they were also seen as a hint that the machine age could produce more than dark satanic mills. Here are a few quotes.

Advantages.

Richard’s car ran through the cutting — it was electrical, odourless, and almost noiseless.

Mounting

He crept back to his own car, found it unharmed in the deep shadow where he had left it, and mounted.

Dismounting

Richard directed the car gently through the gate and then stopped; they dismounted, and crossed the great field on foot.

Range

This vehicle, new and in beautiful order, and charged for a journey of a hundred and twenty miles, travelled in the most unexceptionable manner. The two and a half miles to the North-Western station at Dunstable were traversed in precisely five minutes, in spite of the fact that the distance included a full mile of climbing. 

Teresa of Watling Street (1904)

Intimacy

The electric brougham was waiting. I gathered up my skirt and sprang in.

 Oh, the exquisite dark intimacy of the interior of that smooth-rolling brougham! 

Sacred and Profane Love (1905)

Notice the reference to a range of a hundred and twenty miles. There are a number of explanations as to why electric cars were ousted by the internal combustion engine after an auspicious start, but are any of them satisfactory? 

Exit strategy

It has been obvious for some time that institutions and individuals peddling climate apocalypse may be in need of an exit strategy in case the temperature hiatus continues. Such an obvious lack of predicted warming is a serious hole in the CO2 theory. Well – another serious hole anyway.

As the temperature standstill continues, I sometimes ask myself how I’d react if happened to be a working climate scientist with no immediate prospect of retirement or an alternative career. I think I’d have two pressing issues to deal with.

Firstly I’d need to ensure that my adherence to the CO2 narrative was nuanced. Probably not a problem because working climate scientists will have their political antennae just like everyone else.

Secondly I would not want to miss out on some fascinating new lines of research merely because I still had the CO2 theory hanging round my neck like the Ancient Mariner’s dead albatross.

Of the two, I suspect the second motive may be less powerful than we might generally assume. Flogging a dead horse may be boring and frustrating and the grass may now seem a good deal greener on the other side of the fence, but only for some. I have no doubt that many a hack scientist couldn’t care less.

Even so, imagine the private conversations over lunch. Picture the boredom engendered by a theory that just doesn’t deliver, the lack of professional satisfaction, the thwarting of scientific curiosity – and worst of all the possibility that one might be drifting into a professional dead-end where the dread spectre of redundancy lurks.

Obviously I don’t know if such possible undercurrents are real or not, but I’d be astounded if something of the kind isn’t going on.

It would be unprecedented.

Weather games

Ngram Viewer for the terms "climate change" and "weather forecast"

The distinction between climate science and weather forecasting is a language game. If catastrophic climate change had been sold as radical weather forecasts, we’d never have believed a word of it. Even politicians might have been reluctant to engage in such an obviously flaky game.

How much difference would it have made :-

If climate change had been called radical weather trends.

If global warming had been called warmer weather.

If catastrophic global warming had been called much warmer weather.

If climate scientists had been called radical weather forecasters.

If wind turbines were justified by radical ultra-long weather forecasts.

I’m not being entirely serious here of course. We are where we are and we are stuck with the dominant language games, but in my view the point still has some merit. It is still possible to see the apocalyptic climate narrative as a language game and note with interest how players choose to use language in tackling a recalcitrant climate.

After all, language games and political radicalism are hardly unusual bedfellows. Social and political games promoted by manipulating the words we use, the phrases we are persuaded to imitate.

So it is easy enough to see how misleading the terms climate, climate science and climate scientist are compared to weather, weather forecasting and weather forecasters. Maybe in the early eighties it was seen as important to take the climate narrative into more authoritative territory. Maybe we are just too familiar with weather forecasters and their forecasts. 

This may also explain why the weird weather narrative isn’t pushed as hard as it might be. Too many people might tie climate change to weather forecasting and that would never do.