Charles on… anything that comes along

Interesting perspective on climate change coverage from Peter Preston and Peter Cole (in the Observer and Indie on Sunday respectively). They make the good point that papers cover climate change as though it were some sort of class divide; as though it’s not really going to affect Daily Mail or Sun readers, except in their pockets. Well, a 25% recession might have a slight effect on your income, sure. (Preston I have always found effortlessly good; even when I was at the Indie he was the first writer I turned to on a Sunday.)

However for sheer bonkersness, nothing beats Ruth Lea, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, whose Daily Telegraph column I read on a discarded copy of the DT’s Business section, and which annoyed me so much I had to hunt it down online to be rude about it.

It really deserves a thorough fisking (hell, even fisting), but to be brief (about this idiotic article entitled “Business should beware of green-clad fundamentalists”):

Environmentalists can be roughly divided into two broad groups. The first group are the new romantics, who have anti-industrial and rural beliefs and nostalgically look back to a world before the Industrial Revolution, indeed before the advent of civilisation itself. But, in the rich West at least, they know they can return to the comforts of the modern world if the glamour of the earth closet palls.

The second group, comprising assorted socialist, anti-capitalist activists, is more significant. At its most extreme it comprises anti-business and anti-development ideologues who oppose the wealth of the capitalist West and the ambitions of the developing countries to grow out of poverty.

Ruth, have you ever considered that they’re seeing the harm that’s being done by capitalistic processes which do not account for the damage they do, and think that some sort of adjustment needs to be made? A carbon tax is one way to do it; if double-entry bookkeeping included an entry for restoring damage to natural resources, then the world GDP figures would look rather different. We treat the air and water and other natural resources as pretty much free, unlimited things that are somehow self-sustaining and reproducing. They aren’t. Ask a North Sea fisherman (or woman).

The eco-fundamentalists have played a brilliant campaign. By exploiting people’s natural concerns about the environment, they have turned contentious theories claiming climate change is primarily man-made into a widely-held popular belief, heavy with moral connotations.

The theories are not contentious. Greenhouse warming is a fact (else we’d be as cold as Mars). CO2 and other GHG emissions are a fact. Understanding science is not a belief system; it’s a trust system. Or else, Ruth Lea, explain to us how you come to trust in the contentious idea that one can light a precise mixture of petrol and air dozens of times a second to turn a crankshaft. Ridiculous! Except when informed by science.

If there’s one group I really hate, it’s people who doubt the power of science, and the scientific method.

These theories now represent the political consensus on the science and heavily influence government policy. Government funding, for example, has been biased towards scientists and learned bodies, including the Royal Society, that support the theories. But the defensiveness of the political and scientific establishment at the launch of the Stern report, when they claimed that the science of man-made global warming was beyond contention, spoke volumes. Surely they know it is not.

*rolls eye* Surely you know it’s stupid not to act on the very great likelihood that it is. Stern made the point: even if it’s wrong, it’s safer to invest now than to pretend it’s not happening. Or do you not buy house insurance and contents insurance, Ms Lea? Why do you do that, then?

The amusing thing though is that she runs out of idiot steam 100 words short of the finish line, and has to scramble to Phil Space. And so the last paragraph is a model of reasonableness:

But not all businesses will suffer. Carbon trading is an increasingly lucrative occupation but, despite the claims of some traders, not one that will change the climate. And many business investments in alternatives to fossil fuels, clean technologies and energy efficiency will surely flourish. Given the economy’s increasing dependency on imported fossil fuels, they are to be encouraged.

So, hurrah for investment in things that aren’t fossil fuels! Even though it doesn’t matter really, eh?

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Ye gods: raised voices at the Telegraph? (23 October 2007; score: 73.81%)
• Save the world: take it out of slavery (25 January 2005; score: 61.98%)
• That "independent investigation" into MPs' expenses? It's already going on (21 May 2009; score: 59.39%)

If you wondered at all whether the commenting system on review sites might work, then waltz over to this dire review of Windows Media Player 11.

Then read the comments. Yeow. And it’s true, the comments are far more informative than the review.

For annoyance, though, nothing can beat the way that CNet snips up perfectly readable articles into tiny, twitching, image-infested pieces of non-information, such as a review of Firefox 2 vs Internet Explorer 7, which Ed Bott nominated as the Worst. Review. Ever. - although he did say that the WMP11 one above runs it close.

If you’re not reading Ed’s blog, why not? (Yes, I know, I seem to be sending everyone away from here at the moment - first to Chris, now this. Just call me the grey Goo-gle.)

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• A quick survey: does anyone believe surveys? (27 July 2004; score: 37.63%)
• Sorry, but I'm not sympathetic to the Guardian's gap blogger (21 February 2008; score: 31.02%)
• Wait, no, don't stop reading this! (12 March 2007; score: 25.75%)

Chris has been tweaking the nose of people who ring him from boiler rooms in the UK and the US: entertaining post one, and two. Marvellous:

The rules for this game are simple: time the call and, without resorting to insults or shouting, get them to either swear at you or petulantly hang up. Congratulations to some guy from what purports to be “The Phone Shop” to be off the line in less than 20 seconds.

Whenever I think of boiler rooms, I think of the episode in The Sopranos where Christopher Moltesanti and some heavier goons go and work over the guy who’s running a boiler room (the first episode of Season 2, the web tells me); they kick him in a short, vicious sequence while the phone-people cower outside, seeing what’s going on through the glass.

And I also remember the -?opening? - sequence of The Last Seduction, where Linda Fiorentino (whose film career fell victim to the Curse of David Caruso) is the woman winding up one of her phoners to make the sale.

Anyhow, if you’re not reading Chris’s blog, you should be.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• The Thick Of It: back, and still brilliant (25 October 2005; score: 42.14%)
• Sometimes you forget that there are clueless spammers too (18 January 2005; score: 40.31%)
• How are would-be spammers registering on my Wordpress blog if I've disabled registering? (15 February 2007; score: 39.77%)