Greenhouse Gases
If you want to be green – kill a cow
Stop, stop. I can feel the guilt building up already. I can feel the self-loathing welling in my skull, the horror at my appallingly affluent consumerist lifestyle.
In just a few short months, I will be taking the whole family off on holiday again, and once again our plane will contribute to the cat’s cradle of CO2 that is swaddling the globe. Out of the nozzles of the Rolls-Royce turbo jets the lethal vapours will spew into the defenceless stratosphere, and, far beneath us, a startled look will pass over the features of another poor polar bear as he plops through the deliquescing floes.
I must atone! I must make a sacrifice! I must offset my emissions and appease the great irascible Sun-god as he prepares to griddle us all. I had heard somewhere that you could be “carbon-neutral” by planting trees before you fly. That’s right. Shove in a few poplars, I was told, and bingo, you can feel all good about your skiing holiday or your winter break in Tunisia.
So I dialled up the eco-websites and — what’s this? It turns out they have got it all wrong! Guilt-stricken Western holidaymakers and others have so far paid £300 million to have trees planted in their name by carbon offset companies, and the whole thing turns out to be a complete nonsense.
It now appears the scientists think the trees just make things worse. Far from soaking up your share of CO2, most trees in non-tropical areas are thought to trap heat and thereby increase global warming.
Aaaargh! Bad trees! Killer trees! But what can I do to exculpate my sin? Here I am, a caring, modern, green politician, proposing some time before the end of this year to take about six people in a plane for no better purpose than simple recreation. Like Tony Blair, I must deal with the hate and rage of the new green puritans; and also, it goes without saying, I genuinely want to make amends for any damage I am doing.
So I have done my homework, and I have come up with a far more effective solution. As ever, I have consulted the ancient texts, and have been reminded that the Greeks and Romans were also convinced of the importance of making a sacrifice before any tricky voyage. You will recall that the Greek task force for Troy actually killed Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, in the hope of guaranteeing good sailing weather — with bad consequences for Agamemnon’s conjugal relations.
Now we are only taking a family holiday, and I don’t think Zeus or Jupiter would desire anything so extreme. A single cow would be about right. If I were an ancient Roman setting out on a family holiday, I would get some old milker and do her up as if for a party. She’d have her hair washed and combed and cut, and there would be ribbons and purple woollen fillets about her horns.
Then my chums and I would decently cover our heads and we’d drone loads of stuff in Latin and chuck some sacred meal about the place; and then one of us would hold a handful of food under the poor old girl’s nose, and as she bent her head to snuffle it up we would take this — praise be! — as a sign that she had assented to her death, and at that auspicious moment she would be whopped hard on the side of the head and her throat would be cut; and then Jupiter would nod, and Olympus would tremble, and the whole family would be able to go off on holidays with a clear conscience.
And the funny thing is that, if we wanted to pay our debt to the great green earth-goddess Gaia, and neutralise the ill-effects of going up in a plane, then, as far as I can see, killing a cow is still exactly the right thing to do, two thousand years later.
I mean it. There are 1.3 billion cows on this planet, and every year each cow produces about 90kg of methane, and as greenhouse gases go, methane is about 24 times worse than CO2 in sealing the heat in the air. According to a recent report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, agriculture produces 18 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent — and that, my friends, is more than is produced by the entire human transport industry.
Think of it: for every cow you killed, you would be ridding the world of 90kg of methane a year — easily enough, surely, to justify an Easyjet flight.
Now it may be that you are repelled by the idea of killing a cow, and you may think that the poor farmers will only be driven to breed a new one to replace it. But there are still plenty of other things you could do that would make more sense than planting trees with these carbon offset companies. You could make sure that your house was properly insulated.
You could turn down the central heating and wear more sweaters; and if you really wanted to tackle global CO2 emissions, you would campaign for nuclear energy, since power production is responsible for 24 per cent of global emissions.
Or better still you could help do something to stop Third World countries from burning the forests, which produces 18 per cent of CO2.
But, of course, people aren’t interested in these kinds of facts. They want the religion. They want the sweet moralistic feeling of telling someone to stop doing something. They want to be able to rage about Chelsea Tractors and Tony Blair’s flights, and they want to give vent to their feelings of disgust at the whole triumph of Western consumerist capitalism; and what worries me is that, in the end, the moralising mumbo-jumbo becomes more important than the scientific reality.
We face huge decisions, such as whether or not to allow scientists to use human genetic material in animal cells; and I want those decisions taken on the basis of whether or not the advance can help cure disease, not on the basis of “Frankenbunny” headlines.
We should cease our pagan yammering for sacrifice, and look at what the science really demands. It is a sign of our terrifying ignorance that so many would still prefer to plant a heat-producing tree than see the wisdom of the ancients, and kill a flatulent cow.
115 Comments
You’re all barking!
Nobody from Adam to Adolf cares about the present. (or grammer)
So what if the world is about to end!
Repent Boris.
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Tayles”Also, there’s nothing like ticking off the behaviour of your social inferiors for maintaining a sense of superiority. Going Green is just another way of elevating yourself above the rabble.”
The basis for this argument is weak -as it is a rational gesture to make up for your lower social status by going green. It is confidence building. Others choose to involve in crime and destructive behaviour to get over their inferiority.
“imagining that we confer the greatest benefit on those whom we patronize”. One might interpret it as patronizing but it is for the most part, a question of life management, and ecological necessity that we have to preserve flora and fauna – if we want to ignore other values for how enchanting animals are for humans.
Newmania” This environmental cause must be handled with cynical resistance at every stage even if you are not againsthe supposed objective”
I understand what you fear, but I would rather put it this way: the environmental cause must be imposed globally on all countries before natural resources on earth are overconsumed entirely by emerging economies. I believe environment is strong motivating factor for bringing the world together and turn it to everyone’s business, a collective issue, much more powerful than peace rhetoric. Britain can be recognized to take the reward as precursor, such as becoming the world financial center for carbon trading.
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the environmental cause must be imposed globally on all countries (nasrin)
“Imposed” being the operative word. Demoscracy be damned, you wish for an environmental dictatorship.
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Nasrin
Yes, going green may make certain types feel good about themselves and give them a sense of superiority, but that is all it does. Going green by recycling and cutting down on CO2 emmissions does not help the environment very much at all. If anything some green acts may be counter constructive-swapping domestic air travel for travel on a train for instanc or paying out for extra bins to b made and extra bin waggon journeys in order to recycle which itself requires a lot of energy, recycling paper at great energy cost and causing fewer trees to be planted etc. All of these things do, however, make the green brigade feel very happy with themselves.
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The question here is not whether cheap flights are a serious problem (that they are not is beyond any serious debate), it’s how and why this issue has been driven so far up the public agenda. (Tayles)
In many ways, if there is a consensus on global warming (or any other matter), it is purely a mainstream media consensus, which is served up daily on TV and in newspapers. With relatively few proprietors, editors, columnists, and pundits, it’s fairly easy to manufacture such consensus.
Much the same applied in the US after 9/11, when more or less the entire mainstream media swung in behind George W Bush, with all dissent silenced as “supporting the terrorists”. In the US, it was primarily on the internet that any real dissent and debate was to be found. If Bush’sapproval ratings have been in steady decline since 9/11, it is almost entirely thanks to the internet, on which disturbingly counter-consensual news stories didn’t get spiked, and on which free (and frequently acrimonious) debate continued. Over the past year or two, the US mainstream media have begun to discover, to their dismay and chagrin, that many people pay more attention to upstart online bloggers and news sources than to their established mainstream wisdom. The real debate had upped sticks, and gone elsewhere.
And if everyone simply stopped reading newspapers, or watching TV, every single one of their various manufactured consensus positions would dissolve into insignificance overnight. I no longer buy a newspaper, and I increasingly switch off the TV. In this respect, the upcoming TV conversion to digital may well prove a wonderful blessing, when I turn on my old analogue box one day – and find the screen completely and mercifully blank.
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Yes indeed Idlex ,”imposed”, is the give away word. In a world worth being alive in such unaccountable authority cannot exist ,and it cannot work anyway. I think it equally likely that the threat may come from the spread of supra-national law emanating from disparate treaties .It now appears to have gained a validity of its own.
What does the phrase illegal war mean?In what court ?Underpinned by what mandate?
..and so it begins.
K I believe you are right that Greenery has tapped into a sense of hubris and , in my view, ridiculous nostalgia for an imagined Edenic purity.
To such people I always say “Dentistry” . Come to think of it its getting pretty hard to fuind a dentists again , perhaps they will get there wish for an endless hair shirt.
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I entirely agree, newmania. And it merited being posted twice.
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Excellent article, fun and instructive. We should also look at the horrendous impact of pig farming (especially here in the US but in many EU countries it is equally bad) on local and regional environments. Maybe it should be “kill a cow, or a sow”…
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the environmental cause must be imposed globally on all countries before natural resources on earth are overconsumed entirely by emerging economies. (Nasrin)
These environmentalists. They say:
“We know better than you what must be done. You and your insignificant little personal concerns – for family, for friendship, for personal freedom – are as nothing next to our vast, sweeping vision. We are concerned with the fate of the entire world, and the future of humanity, nay indeed of life itself. You small-minded little people are merely concerned with the price of butter and houses, your local hospital beds, your children’s education, the thin gruel of everyday cares. Pah!! You think in minutes rather than millennia.”
“And you, idlex, are the worst of all: you only want to be able to smoke cigarettes in your pub, you miserable, pathetic little wretch! Not for you our immense intellectual vistas! Nor any of our noble and comprehensive science! You can’t see further than the end of the grubby little roll-ups to which you are addicted!
“You will all be swept aside by our superior wisdom. You people with your petty little concerns just get in the way of our far more profound and chilly perspectives. So we will impose our superior vision upon you. In the end you will recognise that it was for your own good, and you will humbly thank us, and you will give us flowers. Not that we care about small and trivial little things like flowers…”
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Idlex, I was born in 1952 when the official UK population figure was 50.3 million. The current figure is 61 million. That seems like uncontrolled growth to me, especially as only 20 years ago it was forecast that the UK population was expected to start falling.
Human beings are not ants or bees, that normally live their totalitarian existance in ‘hive’ conditions. The conditions in we are increasingly being forced to live might suit people who are used to a ghetto existance in inner-city London, (God help them), but others out here can’t tolerate it much longer.
A trip over to Brittany to check out properties there looks like being on the cards for me after Easter.
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Newmania, idlex – inspired posts and am with you totally.
Joseph Neil – pig farming in America (if my experience is representative, which I believe it is) is disgusting. Not because it’s not seemingly clean, though I spotted one carcass rotting in a sty whilst the living rooted around it – a perennial problem apparently. But more because the pigs were fed antibiotics in their drinking water, constantly, whether they were ill or not, just normal practice. These antibiotics get into the food chain thus and weaken our immune system, leaving us more susceptible to infections for which we need… antibiotics which now have little or no effect. And on and on. I wonder what other farmed species are treated in this way? This is not sensible, it may be profitable, but it is NOT sensible.
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The environmental cause must be imposed globally on all countries before natural resources on earth are overconsumed entirely by emerging economies. (Nasrin)
Yes, God forbid that we actually work towards helping these emerging economies enjoying the same luxuries as us. Pull up the ladder and tell them that sorry, but we used it all up. Yes, we know you wanted to drive, fly and live comfortable, affluent, modern lives, but you missed the boat. Go back to scrabbling in the dirt. That’s it. Remember your place.
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Tayles – yes we could help these emerging economies, rather than just letting them make all the same mistakes.
If a Conservative government was in power, what suggestions would you have to help countries like China and India? And how would you handle the gas/oil reserve crisis?
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Tayles is at the heart of the real problem in my view and the argument is slightly more subtle . We say to then yes you can have your growth but you must do it burdened with a lot of costs that we , now realise , are ones we should have been paying all along Their reply is that they will start paying them when they reach our level of pollution per person . I have the figures somewhere but that level is a very long way off between important blocks like the US and China .
It is not likely to be politically possible to tax petrol much and the cost is ridiculously low so there are other stumbling blocks .
There is real limit to what we can do domestically but we should be pushing for proper progress with the US and in the world . the only answer has to be technology and the best idea I can come up with is attractive tax breaks for researching Green processes and also for importing products with a Green process for raw material to final product. Such things cannot be imposed they can only be encouraged and unless we are going to deny growth to the emerging economies, which we cannot afford to do , we have to influence the outcome by offering new Freedoms and incentives.
Take VAT off Green products
Make Green research deductible from Corporation tax (which is killing us anyway )
At all points offer advantages and opportunities not protectionism.
Encourage moves like the M and S campaign
Govt. in partnership with right thinking companies work on the future as process not a diktat
With such a package of measures there is scope for limited taxes on bad things like air travel. These must be linked into the removal of taxes at the lower end where up to 95 % marginal rates are possible
Get out of the EU so we can be free to take these measures which will fall foul of their protectionist instincts.
That would be my idea of the sort of approach a Conservative Government should have but we should not over estimate our importance in all this. The environment is not really this cosy green bin feel good waste of time , that’s called tidying up . It is more a brutal realpolitical apportioning of the world’s resources and raw power will , I am sure , be used as Tayles describes. David Cameron has hinted his interest and intention to follow the sort of virtuous ideas I have mentioned and also his awareness of the concerns of an Idlex or a Newmania .
I think he is getting right its time to start offering support as well as advice
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Tayles – yes we could help these emerging economies, rather than just letting them make all the same mistakes. If a Conservative government was in power, what suggestions would you have to help countries like China and India? And how would you handle the gas/oil reserve crisis? – Jaq
It depends what you mean by mistakes. If you mean burning fossil fuels, then this is only really a problem if you buy into the whole environmental apocalypse theories. Personally, I don’t, so I don’t see any pressing urgency for them to do things any differently to us. It might be more efficient and far-sighted of them to go with nuclear power instead of coal-fired power stations, but that’s a decision for them to make. If their current programme enables them to drag themselves into the 21st Century, then more power to their elbow. It’s a tad hypocritical, not to mention patronising, to preach a ‘do as we say, not as we do’ philosophy to the developing world. As for the gas/oil situation, I would like to see Britain build more nuclear power station, so we don’t rely on other nations.
There is real limit to what we can do domestically but we should be pushing for proper progress with the US and in the world. – Newmania
Newmania makes some sensible suggestions about incentivising Green choices, but this still accepts that urgently something needs to be done. As I mentioned earlier, this is how campaigners get an issue embedded in the public psyche. They relentlessly plug a certain point of view and attack anyone who disagrees as uncaring, reactionary and selfish. As Lenin said, a told often enough becomes the truth; and this has never been better demonstrated than with environmentalism. They have succeeded in getting every discussion about environmentalism to start from the preconception that manmade global warming is a fact and that Something Must Be Done. Suddenly, everyone is on the defensive, feeling guilty for breaking wind.
If capitalism has taught us anything, it is that market forces drive progress, productivity and innovation. More efficient means of production and energy are in the best interests of business and I have little doubt that, as has always been the case, things will improve. Sticking tax on aviation fuel won’t force airlines to become more efficient. BA, for example, spends £1.4 billion each year on fuel; so any technology that can save fuel is already worth adopting. This is why airlines spend billions on new generations of aircraft and why jets replaced propellers decades ago. As I’ve said before, the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone, and they same will apply for the burning of fossil fuels.
But of course, most of the people who obsess over rich Westerners despoiling the earth still view the world through a Marxist prism. The idea of finding an economic solution to a problem like this is an anathema. And the idea that the kind of people they are intent on hurting might actually profit from solving such a problem – real or imagined – is their nightmare scenario.
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Tayles said -> “It depends what you mean by mistakes
I mean for example; having coal fired power stations that run at 20% efficiency when they could have power stations that run at 80% efficiency. They have a lot of coal and you seem to assume I’m saying ‘no coal’. No, what I’m saying is ‘we could show you how to get the most out of what you’ve got without greatly spoiling the nest we all live in’ in other words – don’t make all the same mistakes when they could learn from ours. If only we would let them know what they are!
Take bicycles – I’m not saying don’t ride a bike, I’m saying don’t ride a bone-shaker when we could teach you the benefits of derailleur gears. Don’t make the same mistakes puffing and blowing in thick fog – go straight to derailleur gears.
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The problem is as soon as a developing country say they are going to use nuclear power the western world get thier knickers in a complete twist so they are damned if thy do and damned if they don’t.
The problem with developing countries may only gt worse if britain continues to hurl green tax after green tax onto the british. The more expensive it is to do business in britian then the more attractive doing business with countries such as China will seem and so developing countries will increase their manufacturing. Perhaps, instead of taxinf families going abroad on holiday (what is the point of being in Europe if we cannot even visit other European countries?), we should impose tarriffs on imports from countries such as China.
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Gentlemen and Ladies,
No matter how hard we try we are not going to win the global warming argument. We don’t have the media platform. Are you aware of the Heidelberg Appeal published just prior to the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 by 250 of the worlds leading scientists, including 27 Nobel Prize winners which said in part:
“We are worried at the dawn of the 21st century at the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific progress and social development. We contend that a natural constant state sometimes idealised by organisaations with a tendancy to want to maintain a status quo does not exist and has never existed since man first appeared in the biosphere, insofar as humanity has always progressed by harnessing nature to its needs and not the reverse. The greatest evils which stalk our earth are ignorance and oppression and not science, technology and industries whose instruments when adequately managed are indispensible tools of a future shaped by humanity by itself and for itself.”
Fat lot of notice the politicians and journalists have taken of this profound advise.
As far as concerns about self distruction of the human race go accoording to geological evidence there have been five mass extinctions of flora and fauna in the earths history. These may have been caused by great changes in climate which may have resulted from meteorites hitting the earth or immense volcanic eruptions. Each of these extinctions heralded the end of a period. The consequences of these events was breathtaking – mor than 99 percent of all the species that have ever lived on earth are now extinct! So we should feel privileged that we have lived in a golden age of the earths climate and be thankful.
In any case it is rather presumptuous of Tony Blair and his fellow politicians to think that by taxing us they can control mother nature. My enduring wish is that mother nature with her numerous powers reverses the trend in atmospheric CO2 concentrations before the politicians can claim that it is due to their action to reduce human induced emmissions.
NMG
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But the science tell us that termites cause far more methane even than cows.
Can I sacrifice a termite please?
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Mike Gaunt said:
“My enduring wish is that mother nature with her numerous powers reverses the trend in atmospheric CO2 concentrations before the politicians can claim that it is due to their action to reduce human induced emmissions.”
Oh yes, ‘Mother Nature’ will indeed come up with something to reduce the CO2 atmospheric concentration. She has tried AIDS as a starter, but that failed to kill off enough humans. She’ll evolve something a bit stronger next time.
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Oh yes, ‘Mother Nature’ will indeed come up with something to reduce the CO2 atmospheric concentration. She has tried AIDS as a starter, but that failed to kill off enough humans. She’ll evolve something a bit stronger next time. – Chris Morriss
I think this comment tells us everything we need to know about your attitude to humans.
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if you want to be green eat grass
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hello mp i love you
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if you want to be green …[Ed: inappropriate]
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Tayles put on his rose-coloured spectacles and said:
“I think this comment tells us everything we need to know about your attitude to humans.”
Yes, you’re right it does, and your comment tells us everything we need to know about your attitude to common sense.
OK, I’ll leave this thread for now, to getting into a flare-up!
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Chris – No flare up needed. Like Thomas Malthus, you doubt the ability of mankind to adapt to a growth in population. His theories were discredited last century. Like it or not, the population will continue to grow in the long term and we had better get used to the idea.
I have no doubt we will be become more ingenious in our use of currently uninhabited (and uninhabitable) parts of the world and that our advances in food production will ensure that people do not go hungry. This is not dumb, pie-in-the-sky, rose-tinted thinking; it is grounded in an appreciation of history and, yes, optimism in the adaptability of mankind.
Doomsayers have been willing Malthusian theory to come true for two centuries now. Whereas in the past this was due to a lack of foresight and optimism, nowadays this is more to do with people’s desire to see misery befall others and have their hateful fantasies fulfilled.
I would say that the kind of response I am recommending is going to be more helpful and constructive in dealing with future population growth than one which wills a deadly virus on humanity for its own good – the mentality behind which beggars belief.
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Hi, I am back with my imposing rhetoric -I missed my chances, as it appears that Monday night I instigated a vivid debate.
Tayle: Yes, God forbid that we actually work towards helping these emerging economies enjoying the same luxuries as us. Pull up the ladder and tell them that sorry, but we used it all up.”
I agree with Jag that emerging economies don’t have to go down the same road, can you imagine extra 300-400 million cars, refrigerators, washing machine and so on what will do to the environment. There is no other rational way than thinking of growth and poverty alleviation as a constant search for new technologies to introduce innovative business ideas.
I like to add that – Tayle you don’t have to feel guilty for the luxury you are living, the pace of growth in developing countries will soon exceed. And why do you think that luxurious urban living is the best option, I would give my life now if I had the opportunity to live in a little rural house with small piece of land and a bike (hopefully with the access to Oxford University).
And about imposing – it is just as I can see that the more we are civilized and considerate the easier we are pushed aside by vulgarity and becoming vulnerable. Trust me I have put my whole life on this concept. It just doest work, if you want to survive you have to impose, otherwise you are were I am now – entirely confiscated and pushed in a corner !!!
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Hi, I am back with my imposing rhetoric -I missed my chances, as it appears that Monday night I instigated a vivid debate. – nasrin azadeh
Yep, it was all down to you. Boris’s article didn’t instigate it at all.
Tayle you don’t have to feel guilty for the luxury you are living, the pace of growth in developing countries will soon exceed.
What is it with my name? Is that ‘S’ on the end some kind of optical illusion that people can’t quite see? Anyway, I don’t feel guilty – far from it in fact. I would have no issues with developing countries exceeding the relative luxury that I enjoy. The problem is that they are being warned off the folly of affluence by a bunch of flag waving anti-capitalists, trying to divert people down a different path.
And why do you think that luxurious urban living is the best option, I would give my life now if I had the opportunity to live in a little rural house with small piece of land and a bike (hopefully with the access to Oxford University).
Good for you. What I’m talking about is a modern, affluent society. That doesn’t mean urban; you have simply chosen to interpret it that way. I don’t live in the city and have no desire to. But I would say that an increase in living standards is something that everyone could benefit from. Greater affluence means a higher quality of life, a healthier life and a longer life, with more freedom and greater choice. I hope that you get your cottage and your bike, but I presume you aren’t saying that we should all have to live the ‘Good Life’, growing our own veg and rearing our own animals. While this is an idyllic existence for some, the work-a-day drudgery and toil that it involves is an anathema for others.
What sickens me to the stomach is those who hold up the kind of miserable existences of people in the developing world as some kind of noble lifestyle choice that deliberately shuns Western decadence. They are calling for a world in which the West becomes more like those who live in poor countries. From such a perspective, equality means levelling everyone down rather than raising the living standards of the poor. It means giving up the battle to resist the vagaries of nature. Our aspiration for the world should be to give the poor the advantages of affluence enjoyed by us in the West. These individuals are so consumed by a hatred for successful, aspirational, confident people that they would see the world suffer
And about imposing – it is just as I can see that the more we are civilized and considerate the easier we are pushed aside by vulgarity and becoming vulnerable. Trust me I have put my whole life on this concept. It just doest work, if you want to survive you have to impose, otherwise you are were I am now – entirely confiscated and pushed in a corner !!!
I’m not sure what you are on about here, but I suspect that you doubt the ability of people to make the ‘right’ choices. Personally, I’d like to live in a country where we are free to make the ‘wrong’ choices. Coercing people into living a certain way is a vile and illiberal suggestion. And exaggerating problems to justify such measures is the kind of Leftist nonsense I was hoping we’d seen the last of. However, if you mean that we are a country devoid of shared values or any sense of responsibility or duty to others, then I agree with you. However, this is a consequence of the same politically correct, non-judgmental dogma responsible for the anti-development, anti-progress, anti-human sentiments outlined above.
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Newmania, perhaps you agree with this: “The four ‘ways of life’ identified by Douglas’ Cultural Theory draw comprehensive picture of forces active in the society that include: civil society (fatalists), government (hierarchists), civil movements and NGOs (ethicists) and the private sector (entrepreneurs). Those engaged in the government way of life and those who are driven by ethical principles are keen on control and regulation. They believe they know best (Allan, 2005).
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Boris suggests killing a flatulent cow, but surely [Ed: inappropriate suggestion]. The likes of John McCain are at least taking the issue seriously.
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Tayles I think you may be ascribing an unpleasant attitude to Chris Morriss where non existed. I didn’t understand CM to want a disease like AIDS or any other natural occurance that kills the population, he merely recorded that these things tend to happen. I took it that his comment was about the natural balance of the world rather than any unpleasant desires towards the people in it.
Chris Morriss – please feel free to contradict me and don’t feel you have to leave.
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Thanks Jaq, that was my intention, though I have to admit, I am more than a little like a misanthropic (and grumpy) old man!
Although not a believer in the Gaia hypothesis, I do think that the earth may cure its problems itself in a manner that isn’t very coducive to humanity having a pleasant time while it is doing so. Much better to take pre-emptive action first.
Although I would like society to view it as morally contemptible for anyone to have more than three children, I wouldn’t (as a libertarian) try to ban anyone from doing so. I would simply make it financially crippling for them to do so through by the normal graduated tax mechanism.
(A real Fascist would not use the tax system, but would use eugenic means, such as only allowing people with an IQ over 100 to reproduce. However useful that might prove to be, it is not acceptable)
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CM – actually the Gaia hypothesis makes some sense to me. I’m stalled by the accepted meaning of ‘life’ as it seems to refer to aerobic life only and I seem to remember, from the dustbins of my memory, that there was anaerobic life on this planet for quite some time. I can’t remember if the analogy was that if all life was a day then humans have been around for about half an hour or if just aerobic life was contained in a day, we’ve been around for half an hour. I can’t remember if a distinction was made.
Anyway, good point that requires further reading on my part. Thanks for that.
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Andrew,
You obviously don’t have a scientific background and have forgotten what you learnt at school about ‘the carbon cycle’ and photosynthesis. You have also been taken in by the journalists and politicians. Suggest you read all the comments here to balance your views.
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the Heidelberg Appeal published just prior to the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 by 250 of the worlds leading scientists, including 27 Nobel Prize winners which said in part: “We are worried at the dawn of the 21st century at the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific progress and social development. We contend that a natural constant state sometimes idealised by organisaations with a tendency to want to maintain a status quo does not exist and has never existed since man first appeared in the biosphere (Mike Gaunt)
What sensible scientists! It is, however, not just in global warming that irrational ideology has taken over. It is to be found everywhere. Its methods are, very broadly, to decide in advance the conclusions it wishes to reach, and then to perform ‘research’ that reaches the desired conclusions. The same applies at the highest levels of governemt, as indicated by the Downing Street Memo:
The result, in this latter case, has been disaster. One may predict with equal certainty that the results will be equally disastrous in every other case.
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< Boris suggests killing a flatulent cow, but surely killing Bush … would achieve more. (Andrew)<
I guess it depends where you stand. I reckon there would be a reaction in the markets.
Firstly I reckon stock indexes would fall in the USA and then the UK the next day. Oil prices might surge a little bit due to uncertaincy around middle east policy. I reckon people (well people with money) would be tempted to cram more into gold.
In all it might create a bigger bubble in gold (have fun when this bursts everyone) and the increased oil prices would help UK inflation along nicely (yippee higher interest rates/inflation will suit me fine). Hell, I don’t know what I’m really talking about, but all sounds good to me.
Except I’ve got a soft-spot for Bush. I never used to like him, but I’ve kind of grown accustomed to him now. Let’s keep him til’ the end of the course and see what happens anyway.
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“Although I would like society to view it as morally contemptible for anyone to have more than three children, I wouldn’t (as a libertarian) try to ban anyone from doing so. I would simply make it financially crippling for them to do so through by the normal graduated tax mechanism.”
Not exactly a libertarian then, are you. Your comment is a bit like saying everyone is free to go to university so long as they can pay, it does not actually mean much.
Also I do not think AID’s was the best example you could come up with. Firstly AID’s is actually a collection of diseases which have been around for years and years and are in themselves nothing new. HIV, is also a very weak virus in itself, which is why it is very difficult for the average person to catch (look at how many pregnancies there are compared to new cases of HIV). There is also speculation that HIV has only occurred in humans due to human error and if that is the case it cannot be called a natural population control.
As has been mentioned before globl warming and climate changes are supposed to occur and the Earth has seen many different climates as a result so it is quite short sighted to blame global warming on humans. In the big scheme of things our impact is rather insignificant when it comes to global warming. i think people would be better spending their time on issues that we can have an impcat upon such as the rainforests, pollutted oceans and endangered species.
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< There is also speculation that HIV has only occurred in humans due to human error (k)<
I heard someone did the dirty with a monkey, is that true? If so, kind of serves us right.
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< There is also speculation that HIV has only occurred in humans due to human error (k)<
I heard someone did the dirty with a monkey, is that true? If so, kind of serves us right.
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One theory is that it crossed species from primates to humans while a polio vaccination was being tested
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What? By the monkey?
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AIDS
I thought the most likely explanation was that it occurred naturally in a small population and by incrreasing cntact reached critical level and expoded outward. Like most plagues in fact. Somwthing about the African secret laboratory theory doesn1`t sound very plausible to me.
On the climate I have some questions. Thoughts in a Garden was written by Andrew Marvellwho dies in 1678.
What a wondrous life is this I lead
Ripe apples drop about my head
The luscious clusters of the vine
About my mouth do crush their wine
The nectarines and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach
Stumbling on melons as I pass
Ensnared with Flowers I fall on grass
Judging by the Loire valley conditions evidently prevailing it would appear the world has got a lot colder. Then the questions keep coming …
Why are air taxes set at such a level as to not to make any change in behaviour?
In 1421 Why was a Chinese naval squadron able to sail around the North Pole and find no ice?
Why is the Antartic gaining ice consistently over the past 30 years ?
6000 bore holes world wide show that temperatures were higher in the middle ages than now ?
Why is this problem absent from UN assessments ?
Why is the fact that the doomsday predictions of criminologists are often disproved ignored. For example James Hansen in 1988told the US Congress in 1988 that the sea would rise several feet by 2000. It rose one inch ?
Why are questions of scale so childishly misrepresented by scare mongers who openly refer to the weather as the “climate”?
Why did Al Gore emote about the snows leaving kilimanjaro when he knows there has been no rise in temperature and it is entirely the result of deforestation and consequent dehydration ? He is absolutely aware of this even if you are not .
Why are the most conspicuous consumers always the most self righteous . Prince Charles bought his “staff” bikes?
(He has asked for a Greener fleet of vehicles but will retain his Bentley , a Jaguar and an Aston Martin)
Why would the government monitor every car from the sky and feed that information into combined data bases than increase fuel tax ?
Why do people refer to a consensus on “climate change” when there is no such thing ?
I know what I think its all to do with this last question What did Jaques Chirac mean by the terrifying phrase” Creating World Government” ?
I `m not sure I even want to know the answers
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Sorry I went a bit quickly there
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Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Francis Bacon
Tayles, with s, I am not living in England – sort of on the wrong side of planet, but hopefully will return soon.
you said ” you aren’t saying that we should all have to live the ‘Good Life’, growing our own veg and rearing our own animals. While this is an idyllic existence for some, the work-a-day drudgery and toil that it involves is an anathema for others.”
I was questioning your definition of poverty.
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I notice that my modest proposal has been censored as “inappropriate”. There seems to be a strange double standard operating on this site. You are allowed to propose the slaughter of an innocent animal, but not a criminally negligible president. Ask yourself which would do more good.
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Freudian slip there – of course I meant to say negligent, but I kinda like how it came out.
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Andrew – come the revolution I’m sure we’d all have a list we could put against the wall, but untill that day homicide is still illegal in this country and for an argument on capital punishment, please see previous thread.
Newmania – Prince Charles? Appeal to ridicule old chap.
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What is it with my name? Is that ‘S’ on the end some kind of optical illusion that people can’t quite see?
Sorry but the ‘S’ gives an impression as I am talking to so many of you, one is already too many for convincing argument…I admire your positive thinking and optimism, I wish it would realize.
Tayles:”the population will continue to grow in the long term and we had better get used to the idea.”
Chris Morries:Although I would like society to view it as morally contemptible for anyone to have more than three children, I wouldn’t (as a libertarian) try to ban anyone from doing so.”
Improving only one side of the equation (in health) while ignoring the impacts is mismanagement.
Dont you have any compassion for indian girls as young as 11 who are giving birth to new born. This is child abuse.
Over last three decades, population growth have been mostly due to ignorance and stupidity not liberty. Children should not be born into appalling life, powerless and hopeless to improve their condition, if you respect human rights.
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…terrifying phrase, Creating World Government (newmania)
Exactly how I see it, except that I would add the euphemism ‘Socialist’ to World Government. This would be a socialist world order run for the benefit of the corporate giants, politicians and their minions , of course.
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Boris sahib, please not cows, which are sacred to Hindus. Kill horses instead. Yours kindly, Bhola
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