h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is why I get so angry when climate change contrarians try to publicise their crap, even on h2g2: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2051770,00.html

It's plain to anyone that the world is in serious trouble yet certain governments still want to try and water down the conclusions of the IPCC. This is a body of hundreds of scientists who have thrashed out a consensus. And the nature of a consensus is that it is equally likely to understate the impact of possible future scenarios as well as overstate it.

Yet four governments with the US in the vanguard want the conclusions watered down. George W Bush is probably the worst single thing that has happened to this planet in the past ten years. He supports narrow, highly conservative and sectional interests over the good of humanity and the entire world, and when the effects of his thinking are pointed out to him he seeks to neutralise or discredit those who do so.
Louis MacNiece summed up this attitude in his poem Bagpipe Music:
'The glass is falling hour by hour
The glass will fall for ever
But if you break the bloody glass
You won't hold up the weather.'

Antipodally, we are governed by a pig-headedly stubborn climate-change denier whose three-yearly appeal to the feral majority is without fail wallet-driven.

When I've fallen out with others in PR it's been over what constitutes fact and what doesn't. I'm not on a Gradgrindian crusade to exclusively champion factual writing over all other kinds, but I understand the ultimate primacy of facts. Hence the warning you see when you post to this PS. They aren't all I talk about, but when I do talk about them, I like to think that I give them the respect they deserve.

Truth has taken on a very subjective quality in some quarters. Dubya proclaims that the 'jury is out on evolution', when it is anything but. The great ideological war in this coming century will not be between Right and Left, or the Free Market versus State Control. It will be between politics and science. The skirmishes have already started.

More evidence, as if any was needed:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=C38411DA-E7F2-99DF-3FDC4522CD485048&chanID=sa003

There was an Indian on BBC World's Climate Change Series a couple of days ago in India. He was on the bank of the River Ganges talking to a BBC reporter and his words were chilling:
"Thirty years ago the Ganges was 350 mtrs wide and 12 mtrs deep at this point. Now it's 200 mtrs wide and 8 mtrs deep. At least 400 million people depend on the river for their water."

I should add, that's a lovely link from Felonius particularly for me as I've recently read the book to which it relates and it was nice to be reminded of those wonderful passages...

Personally, I'd rather be guided by the Precautionary Principle, than the wallet principle. But sometimes I feel like a lonely voice in the desert...

To be honest I think we're past the point of no return, although I don't want to make the no return any worse than it has to be

Damned politicians (Trout's right... they are beyond the pale here in Oz) and 'captains of industry' Hang 'em all come the revolution...

George Montbiot's book "Heat" is curiously encouraging. He says we need to cut CO2 emissions by 90% in the next few decades, and then shows in detail how it really can be done. We'll have to give up luxurious long-haul flights, as no alternative jet fuel currently appears possible, but otherwise we can do it without much belt-tightening. The whole thing depends on governments accepting the necessity, though, and that means the voters have to give them no alternative.

I'm joining the Green Party to canvass for them in Ireland's coming general election. The way I see it we have to vote for the greens whether or not they're ready, in order to green up all the other parties, as I believe has happened in Germany.

Well, what you join up to is up to you entirely, but I have severe problems with the Green Party, as I have written about in the past: A2028854. In fact, I have severe problems with political parties, period. It's damn nigh impossible to bundle up a load of ideas into one package to sell them to the electorate without (a) good ideas falling out and (b) bad ideas getting in, along the way.

Fair enough, but in time-honoured tradition I am doing it to gain votes against, as much as votes for. I am interested to hear doorstep reactions. There were some hilarious ones when I canvassed for a pro-contraception candidate all those years ago when Ireland had no extramarital sex (apart from the priests, it now appears).

I bought a Newsweek while travelling and find it contains yet more "global warming can be fun" gunk. Incredible; we are facing a holocaust and the writers are saying "we who survive should do well out of this."

"It's about time the movement became a lot less inclusive: when you mix together all the colours in the Rainbow, they don't come out green but an icky brown."

Hurrah to that. Your rant speaks a lot of truth, but the message I see is that the wrong people are in the Green party, and I want to do my wee bit to correct that.

Well, from what I've seen of you so far I think any political party would be glad to have people like you on board. Your participation in the Green cause can be nothing but a boon.

Thank you I try to please, except when I'm trying to needle.

While you're at it, try to encourage an approach which puts thoughts before feelings before action. I'd like to see Green policies based upon evidence and reasoning, not the 'uck' factor or a need to tilt at windmills (or, more contemporaneously, wind farms).

They're against wind farms? Let me at them!

I'd suggest their attitude is ambivalent at best.

Phew. The Irish Green Party favours wind farms. Their energy document is headed by a picture of two kids and seven windmills.

Bet they're against animal experimentation, though.

They don't come right out against it, promising merely to "highlight the ethical dilemma" . . . but they "will call for a diversion of funds from animal based research into alternative research and preventative medicine" which could mean little or much.

They pussyfoot in other words, but at least they don't support extremists.

In my book, 'ethical dilemma' = 'you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs'.