Climate Change Denial

Climate Surfing – a selection of links

Leave a comment
We tuned up the following list of links during our recent Climate Week 2013 event.
I’m posting it here in case it is useful to anyone else.
Concern about Climate Change
Answering Denial
Ways forward

Saving energy

Wind Power

Tidal Power

  • Sea Gen – Sea Generation Tidal Turbine (1min)

Solar Power

  •  A Shade Greener A short video by the BBC explaining the benefits of Free Solar Panels: 

What can We do?

  • * Reality Drop: Makes it easy to help ‘Spread Science about Climate Change, Global Warming’
Climate Change Denial

The Climate Week Declaration

1 Comment

Climate Week 2013 starts tomorrow and I have just signed the Climate Week Declaration. Here is the full wording.

Britain must do all it can to create a secure, prosperous and sustainable future by helping to prevent climate change.

We call on the government to maintain its commitment to the Climate Change Act by taking further steps to encourage investment in the green economy, greater use of renewable energy and positive action across society.

The Energy Bill currently being considered in Parliament is an important and urgent example of the commitment needed. We urge the government to act on the recommendation from its own Committee on Climate Change to include decarbonisation targets in the Energy Bill.

And I got the nice badge to prove it:Print

Now I’m seeing if my colleagues on the Alton Society committee will agree to us signing up as a body. STOP PRESS: Yes they have, with enthusiasm!

Arts

‘Our Country’s Good’ at St James’ Theatre

Leave a comment

Our Country’s Good was a great treat this afternoon at St. James’ Theatre, London. The production capitalised on the intimate atmosphere of this brand-new theatre, with the superb sound creating a realistic impression of being surrounded by Australian wildlife.

We know this play well having produced it with our local group some years ago, but what a superb piece it is. Based on a true event it tells how the enlightened governor of an 18th century prison camp in Australia stuck his neck out and got one of his officers to organise the prisoners into producing, of all things, a play. Trying to introduce some civilisation amongst the savagery. And ultimately succeeding.

So we have a scenario for discussing what plays, and indeed art itself, are for. And we have a contrast between the brutality and degradation of daily life in the camp, depicted here in horrible detail, and the emerging humanity of the disparate cast. A clever device, which we also used to the full in our production, was the doubling of parts. So that, for example, the gentle and reviled prisoner who has been forced into the role of hangman becomes, by donning a wig and uniform jacket, the most vicious and sadistic of the officers. Thus the fact that there is a common humanity beneath the most contrasting exteriors is symbolised in the very structure of the play.

There are really beautiful scenes: I remember loving the  prisoner explaining his passion for words when we did the play years ago, this afternoon it was all the more moving to hear it again, and so beautifully performed. There is the hilarious first rehearsal of the play when a prisoner who once saw Garrick himself perform insists on overacting. Another in which a trustee takes his sulking woman out for a trip in a rowing boat and she gradually unbends to him. And so on. It is a parable of so much that is important today. It’s a superb production, in a superb new venue, and we are aglow with the memory tonight.

http://www.stjamestheatre.co.uk/events/our-countrys-good/

Climate Change Denial

Personal theories are of no significance whatsoever

Leave a comment
An astonishing turnout
An astonishing turnout

It is a month since my open Climate Change meeting: http://www.friendsinlowplaces.co.uk/OnceMore.htm

The key point that has emerged for me during and since the meeting is that personal theories about climate change, yours or mine, are of no significance whatsoever. The only thing that we non-experts should legitimately concern ourselves with is which of the two stories about climate change we can trust. Because it is clear that there are two stories. And they are diametrically opposed to one another. One calls for urgent global action; the other urges inaction.  If we back the wrong one, or undermine our politicians in their attempts to back the right one, the consequences, we are being warned, could be beyond our imagination.

In deciding which story to trust, the suggestion I made at the meeting was that we should look at the language being used. I picked out two characteristic signs of material that should arouse suspicion: CERTAINTY and VITRIOL. Having reiterated the principle that science is never ‘certain’, I gave a number of examples of what I meant by ‘vitriol’. These made a big impression on the audience, especially the personal message from a well-known journalist I invited to the meeting, which I allowed people to read as a slide. To these two tell-tale signs we can now add a third, as described in two of the links below — ‘occult funding by vested interests’. And when these three come together to contradict the consensus view of global scientific expertise on such an overwhelmingly important issue I for one have not the slightest doubt where I will continue to place my trust.

There have been some important developments in the month since the meeting, some are shocking, but some are wonderfully encouraging. Here is my selection in chronological order:

And here are the links I promised to sources of trustworthy information:

Finally, here is the latest pie chart by James Powell, showing the miniscule number of peer-reviewed scientific papers which deny that global warming is caused by humans (Look for the green dot) The excellent website is at jamespowell.org – the methods and criteria are detailed there so that anyone can repeat the survey for themselves if they doubt the findings.

www.jamespowell.org
http://www.jamespowell.org
Professionalism

A target a day keeps professional vocation away

Leave a comment

3 important letters in the Guardian of 23 February 2013

Catherine Hopewell (Letters, 21 February) hits the nail on the head. It’s the target culture which has all but destroyed the professions of social work, education and health, replacing care and common humanity with an obsessive drive for “results”, scored by tick-box assessments on computer databases. In the last 10 years I have seen the social work service for children, young people and families distorted beyond recognition by the need to feed the Ofsted-driven target machine and, to that end, on management instruction, have held “meetings” in the school holidays when nobody could attend, undertaken home visits to families when nobody was in and manipulated my work in all sorts of ways to meet targets rather than real human needs.
The culmination was working in an organisation where personal supervision and team meetings focused on reading out the results of individual and collective “scores” on the data spread-sheet. Children were never mentioned at all. The target culture can be traced back to the Thatcher era, continuing under Blair and Brown, with even more vigour and added spin. Taking care of people cannot be reduced to tick boxes, spreadsheets and scores. It is high time the fightback began and people were given the help they need. My target is to ignore the next five targets I am given.
Kevin Morgan
Beaminster, Dorset

•  Over 30 years as a hospital doctor leads me to concur about the morale-destroying effects of the target-driven culture. The idea of a vocation to help other human beings has all but gone and I fear that we are reaping the effects in our next generation of doctors, teachers and social workers. The Francis report highlights some of the appalling results when targets become more important than humanity (which of course is not readily amenable to measurement). I would welcome the creation of a multi-professional forum in which people-orientated work values, and the quality of care that results from treating both service users and staff as valued human beings, could be resurrected before it is too late.
Dr Diana Brighouse
Chichester, West Sussex

•  As a teacher I have seen the negative impact that tick-box targets can have. Tick boxes rarely have much to do with the real day-to-day challenges. They are a tool designed to empower managers, not to help public-facing staff. Competition may drive efficiency in the private sector, but in education we do not want winners and losers. We want every child to be given the best possible classroom experience. What we really need is a culture of trust and co-operation.
Alun Gordon
London

%d bloggers like this: