snowflux
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Lawson in the Telegraph. Who you will say has an agenda. But then who doesn't? This relevant part quotes 'a leading scientific body in the US'. Someone else with an agenda? Again, how do you tell what the truth is? Why should I believe you?
Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I mean. The report quoted by Lawson in the Telegraph article was commissioned in an effort to improve the processes followed by the IPCC and so is bound to be critical in tone. Lawson, in accordance with his agenda, has of course picked out the most negative comments he can find and added his own interpretation and context. Let me now quote the opening paragraph from the conclusion of the report, and you'll see what I mean:
The Committee concludes that the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall and has served society well. The commitment of many thousands of the world’s leading scientists and other experts to the assessment process and to the communication of the nature of our understanding of the changing climate, its impacts, and possible adaptation and mitigation strategies is a considerable achievement in its own right. Similarly, the sustained commitment of governments to the process and their buy-in to the results is a mark of a successful assessment.Through its unique partnership between scientists and governments, the IPCC has heightened public awareness of climate change, raised the level of scientific debate, and influenced the science agendas of many nations. However, despite these successes, some fundamental changes to the process and the management structure are essential, as discussed in this report and summarized below.Does that sound like a damning indictment of the IPCC to you? Can't you see what Lawson did there? -
My quoted words are an executive-summary covering pretty-much every scenario in which climate arises in the mainstream media. I can't point you at a document with those specific words - LOL!You can't find any articles saying anything like the text you quoted because there are very few of them. You were simply making it up. There are, however, plenty of mainstream media articles, mostly in The Telegraph and The Daily Mail, claiming that talk of AGW is nonsense.
Just compare the opinion of virtually any scientific body (e.g. UK Royal Society) to what you read in the media, and you come to a very simple conclusion: a large part of the media is party to a conspiracy to discredit the science of AGW in an effort to prevent legislation from being enacted to counter it.
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I have to admit, I've not read the IPCC report... I've only subjected myself to the debate in the mainstream media - which, I think we agree, fails to debate these questions at all - let alone address them in a balanced way. The debate I hear, on one side says "Climate change is irrefutable: BE SCARED! Accept these abrupt economic sanctions or accept the imminent demise of the entire human species." - on the other... "All this talk of climate change is idiotic nonsense. I reject it - wholesale."
If I'm forced to jump one way or the other, I'd have to jump on the sceptical bandwagon - though, obviously, I don't actually believe that 'all the science is false' - a more realistic interpretation of my position is that what we understand of the science has been hijacked for political reasons... and the (vast majority of the) policies follow from politics rather than credible scientific work.
While you think the sceptical loons are hijacking the debate - from my perspective, they are merely reacting to a barrage of 'fait accompli' fallacies. Personally, I think the 'climate change denier' is a straw man constructed to support proactive political interventions with a dubious eco-justification.
You must be reading some very different mainstream media to me then. Perhaps you can give a link to a mainstream media article indicating that we should "accept these abrupt economic sanctions or accept the imminent demise of the entire human species."
Edit: If you really want to understand the debate, though, it's got to be better to refer to the actual science as set out in the IPCC reports rather than trying to follow it through the warped prism of the media.
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On the whole, contrary to popular opinion here, I'm pretty happy with BBC balance. It isn't perfect - and I've caught it out with some atrociously misleading reporting - but, I have to accept too, no organisation is perfect.
The topic of 'climate change' infuriates me. Perhaps I'm a climate sceptic - but I have no intention to refute any of the careful measurements. I object to other aspects of the orthodox climate change story. I strongly object to the idea that the forecast models are credible because they originate "from scientists" - the idea that forecasts are reliable represents extraordinary hubris... it is to claim that we fully understand everything that influences climate... I'm far from convinced. I object to the 'anthropocentric' arguments as I feel they offer a false dichotomy... "obviously" human activity influences the climate... but the real questions should include: "Is human influence on climate for the better or the worse?" or "What credible changes could we make to positively influence the nature of anthropocentric influence on our environment?" - but these questions never get asked. The final thing that gets my goat is when specific policies are presented as 'necessary to address climate change' - and any arguments in opposition are painted as 'climate change denial' - which, frankly, is an absurd non sequitur.
What I find interesting is the extent to which arguments about climate change have parallels in economics. The real problem, in both domains, is the relevance of the measurements. In both domains, in almost every debate, this critical point seems to be ignored.
Exactly these questions are addressed in the second chapter of the last IPCC report. In fact, the scientific debate largely concerns the likely effects, both good and bad, of anthropogenic climate change and the possibility of influencing these effects. Unfortunately, however, the political debate keeps getting hijacked by the loons who simply deny the whole idea of AGW, which is why the public debate rarely gets past square one. The BBC has also been guilty of abetting this by giving a platform to political activists with little understanding of the underlying science, such as Nigel Lawson.
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Happy awakening
George Osbourne gets around 2.3 times than you do from that hour of your work, and you still had other costs to pay to earn that in the first place. Makes you wonder why you bother.
Well, not exactly.
Given that I currently receive more in tax credits than I pay in income tax and NI, it's more a case of George Osbourne cutting back the amount he gives me by £70 (£20 tax, £9 NI, £41 tax credits) for every extra £100 I earn. And, on the plus side, for every £100 less that I earn, he gives me £70!
Since I work from home, my other (non-business deductible) costs are minimal.
Edit: Mind you, then there are non-income dependent taxes such as VAT and council tax. If you add those, then I would be paying more in tax than I receive in tax credits, so I guess your interpretation is more accurate after all.
Edit2: But not much more, so I'm still effectively getting government services at a knock-down rate, which becomes less knock-down as my earnings rise.
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I can live with a total/marginal rate of 33%. However, my effective marginal tax rate is 65% for the current tax year so I sacrifice lots into pension to get it back later at 15% marginal rate.
I've cut my PAYE wage by 25-30%. As soon as the mortgage is paid off, I'll get that down by another 15%. No point paying employer/employee NI when you can avoid it with salary sacrifice. I've now got a job closer to home (easy cycling range) as I find commuting costs paid out of net salary are painful.
I've been approached for jobs offering better salaries but when I sacrifice anything over £xxxx and would have to commute further, there is simply no point.
We have a tax system that encourages part-time work so that's what we are getting
We have a tax system that encourages BTL so that's what we are getting.
Encouraging BTL is of course evil, but I don't think that encouraging part-time work is necessarily such a bad thing. Who wants to spend their life slaving away all day?
I've just calculated my own effective marginal tax rate - dot on 70%! As I'm self-employed, this is a figure that's well worth bearing in mind in situations that trade time for money.
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Ah, Philosophy of Science. Trouble is, there are many many examples in the past hundred years that scientists are just human and won't change from the views that put the paycheck in the Bank. I believe strongly in the scientific process, and am a strong pro-environmentalist, have a maths and science background, and yet despite reading lots and lots on global warming still cannot be convinced. I'd like a testable theorem (i.e. one model/prediction that has timeframes and verifiable data) that will settle it - but no such luck.
Instead i see a lot of words used that I KNOW (from my own career) are very useful in getting people to believe something that is not 100%true, to benefit someone else. I use them. I recognise them. I see a lot of behaviours that I KNOW from my experience demonstrate people saying you must do A when they dont really believe A (recent example: greenpeace paying for air commutes).
I also see the BBC as one of the least trustworthy organisations in the media. The fact they support the GW side makes me highly, highly suspicious.....
Some maths and science background. You don't even know what a theorem is. Aside from that, you're come out with the usual conspiracy ******** (scientists say what they're paid to) and logic failures (Greenpeace use planes therefore GW is suspect). D-
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I thought African Elephants and Blue Whales were the standard journalistic units of mass?
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So in IndyWorld gas and electricity should be provided free of charge and funded directly by the taxpayer.
That seems to be the logic of this story.
Yes, it's ridiculous. The provision of energy costs money, and when the environmental effects of its production are accounted for, it costs even more money. The government should concern itself just with specifying the environmental and contractual obligations for its provision and ensuring a competitive market. It is, or should be, up to the energy companies how they meet those obligations, and receiving money from the taxpayer should not be an option.
Energy bills will almost certainly need to rise in the future, and this will inevitably cause hardship for those on lower incomes. However, if the government wishes to mitigate this hardship, it should be through the provision of lower taxes or higher benefits, not through the funding of power companies. The latter will cost more money while failing to provide any incentive to conserve energy. Government micromanagement is not the way to do it.
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So run a small scale experiment to collect real world data and then develop evidence based policy? Sounds amazing. Depressingly also sounds like anathema to the idealogues in the mainstream parties.
No need for the experiment. That's pretty much what they do do in Germany, and it works just fine.
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Doesn't go far enough. I'd only support that if it was a stepping stone to Child Tax Credits being abolished completely, perhaps via further reductions to the point they are means tested away way, way below £25k. The current £34k amount now is a DISGRACE to hard-working single people.
Ultimately:
1. out-of-work benefits should be a temporary safety net for a short time until you're back in work
2. (1) should never, ever, ever pay more than wages of people who are in work
3. No-one who is in work should get any benefits at all.
We're so far off that situation it seems impossible to ever get there - but that must be the aim.
Why must that be the aim? Why can't the aim be to have the work done by robots and a few very highly paid experts while the rest of us do as we please? Why must we all keep slaving away when there is no particular need to do so?
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Bloke who services our generators was going on about how it's a massive gravy train we should get in on. As already mentioned he was talking about people setting up generator farms to milk it.
Without an effective means to store surplus electricity wind power was always a waste of time.
Not at all, given that every rotation of a large turbine saves burning about 5 cubic feet of gas. Depending on the price of gas, and the price you put on the environmental effects of burning gas, it can make very good sense to utilise wind power.
Edit: As for generators, those who already have generators for other purposes could make some money, but you're not likely to make a profit from running a generator farm specifically for feeding the grid.
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I wonder how much of this is down to increasing reliance on wind power.
Approx 12% of capacity now comes from onshore and offshore wind, which needs possibly 80% - 90% backup that, because of wind's preferential access to the market, is going to be idle for a lot of the time. Is the problem therefore that it just isn't economic to have further capacity to backup the backup.
It's always been a problem, given that total electricity demand ranges between a minimum of about 20GW on a warm Sunday morning in the summer and as much as 60GW on a cold January afternoon. Even without input from renewable sources, you still need to have a lot of capacity lying idle just to cover those occasional winter peaks. As energy costs rise and the technological means become available, it makes more and more sense to use demand management to flatten the peaks.
Increasing input from wind and solar power will require more conventional plant to be idled, and the market will have to be organised to cope with that, but we're not yet at the level where it makes a significant difference.
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Britain may be forced to use “last resort” measures to avert blackouts in coming winters, Ed Davey, the energy secretary, will say on Tuesday.
Have you actually read the article?
It's just the Telegraph putting a negative spin on what is, on the face of it, a perfectly rational way of cutting electricity costs by reducing the need for new power generating capacity. As far as domestic consumers are concerned, it simply means that electricity should be a little bit cheaper than it would otherwise be.
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Truly, the sheer incompetence of the state boggles the mind. Everything it touches goes to hell.
In what way has electricity generation "gone to hell". Are you without power?
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You're not one of these 'green' types who dreams up ways of taxing idle cars or spare rooms because of the 'inefficiency' or "non-optimal space usage" they represent, are you?!
No, I'm one of those green types who thinks that limited resources, such as land, and environmentally destructive activities, such as burning fossil fuels, should be taxed in order to encourage their sensible use, and that the money raised should be used to reduce or abolish other taxes. The government should not be involved in micromanagement through subsidies or tax breaks; it should simply tax the external negatives and leave the rest to the market.
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It's just media shit-stirring. Demand management makes perfect economic sense. Why pay for extra generating capacity that will hardly ever be used, when it would be cheaper to pay large consumers to cut back their consumption at times of peak demand?
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I love how the BBC suddenly take a subtle "anti-EU" tone when the House Price "sacred cow" is threatened
I also love how they avoid mentioning the possibility of house prices actually "falling". They are, instead, "starting to moderate".
They'll be "starting to moderate" when they drop 30%
The BBC has always taken a subtle anti-EU tone. It just looks pro-EU when contrasted against the rabidly anti-EU tone adoped by most of the rest of the MSM. Like the way sunspots look dark against the solar disk even though they shine almost as brightly.
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Christ you lefties really are deluded nutjobs.
Do you not think the LIBLABCON doing all they can over the last 25 years, having created a system most notably in the last 15 where public and private sector debt is what the nation survives on may be the problem?
Or the LIBCONS borrowing over a 100 billion a year?
Its sad that there are people so thick like you who see a party wanting the promised referendum as being the problem .... but you lefty loons despise the people getting what they want when you think your failed way is best.
What makes you think David Woodsmith of Currency News is a lefty loon?
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This is just another transparent bid by Blair to get a position within the EU. Remember him championing the EU when he was prime minister? No, me neither. Barroso's presidency is up in October. I don't think his successor has been selected yet. Frankly I think the only position that Blair should occupy in Europe is in the dock at The Hague.
As I remember, Blair was quite pro-EU, at least until the Iraq war. I think he certainly had his eye on a job with the EU, but there was no way that France and Germany would have him after Iraq.
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What sets you up for the future is earning more money now.
Time better spent writing cvs than making sandwiches.
I haven't written a CV in ages. I much prefer working (not very hard) for myself, even if it does require me to make my own sandwiches. At least I choose what time I get up to make them.
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One of my brief relationships was dealt a severe blow by a difference in philospohy.
As I may have mentioned, I run a small, economic and old but reliable car that does a perfect job of getting me from A to B. The money I save by running as cheap a car as possible allows me to work less hard and spend money on other things to make my life more comfortable, such as a cleaner.
This logic was lost on my lady-friend, who owned a large, new Audi that she could barely afford to run. In her eyes, it was stupid not to run the most expensive car you could possibly afford; it just seemed a fact of life to her, as was having to keep the house clean herself. She found me eccentric.
We're all different, I guess.
Edit: And she only ever drank bottled water. I'm not sure if she thought tap water was undrinkable, or if drinking tap water was simply a sign of low status to her.
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This is a silly argument since it assumes a degree of party loyalty over time that no longer exists. It also assumes a degree of party continuity in terms of policy and values that is a mirage.
The Liberal Democrats provide a good example of party discontinuity. The party I supported at every election between 1983 and 2010 no longer exists and millions of other ex-supporters take the same view.
Since you place a great deal of importance on IQ (which only measures some aspects of intelligence) and you are posting the drivel above, I can only conclude that you are deluded about the level of your own IQ-based intelligence.
We already covered that. If you want to be pedantic:
Adults who were bright 10-year-old children in 1980 were somewhat more likely to vote Green or LibDem; adults who were slightly dim 10-year-old children in 1980 were somewhat more likely to vote BNP or UKIP, or not vote at all in 2001.
As I mentioned upthread, today's UKIP voters may or may not be brighter than the ones who were voting for them in 2001.
Please also note that my argument was against Flat Bear, who was claiming that LibDems and Greens are stupid. I'm perfectly entitled to present arguments to counter his assertion.
Also, I see that a UKIP spokeswoman has now admitted as much:
It seems UKIP do indeed have a problem getting many educated people to vote for them.
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Siilyness overload achieved, you're as daft as a box of frogs, what a crazy thing to be such an obsessive over.
I don't claim no correlation between IQ at age 10 versus IQ in later life, I merely point out the inaccuracies such a daft age to sample at creates, particularly when your results are given to the closest tenth of a point for the purposes of comparison!
Its simply very poor science.
As for what you're attempting to prove by citing it, I don't care, Ive no dog in that fight, I'm just pointing out the basis for the study is plainly flawed. As it clearly is. Give it up, you've reached ridiculous silliness, I'm starting to be embarrassed for you. You should find a more sound way to prove whatever other point you're attempting to prove, this is not helping you.
Save your embarrassment for yourself. The researchers didn't choose to test the children at 10, they simply used data from the IQ tests normally offered at that age for grammar school selection from the 1970 British cohort study. Because the sample size is so large, the results should be quite accurate.
Perhaps you'll let it go if I phrase the result more precisely:
Adults who were bright 10-year-old children in 1980 are somewhat more likely to vote Green or LibDem; adults who were slightly dim 10-year-old children in 1980 are somewhat more likely to vote BNP or UKIP, or not vote at all.
Hpcers To Be Banned By Bbc?
in House prices and the economy
Posted
I simply asked you to justify your opinion by quoting an example or two, which you have failed to do. My opinion is that the majority of the media coverage of the issue is far more dismissive of AGW than the science indicates. Compare, for example:
Climate Change: Evidence & Causes
from the Royal Society and
The game is up for climate change believers
from Charles Moore in The Telegraph.
I think you'll find that most of the misrepresentation is in articles such as the one I linked to in The Telegraph above. As I said, there has a constant and concerted effort by a section of the mainstream media to discredit the science of AGW in the eyes of the public; it has, unfortunately, been quite successful.