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Day: October 26, 2009

The Real Climate Change Catastrophe

October 26, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Christopher Booker summarises the arguments of his new book: The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with “Climate Chanage” Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?

Long title, but the answer is almost certainly yes. The cost in human life of the greenies’ DDT ban is in the tens of millions. But our obesession with non-existent global warming could end up costing even more.

This graph from Lord Monckton’s presentation helps to explain why. Cheap energy has brought much of world out of poverty, reducing infant mortality, extending life. Denying that cheap fuel to developing nations willl ensure they continue to suffer from starvation and from diseases now virtually unknown in the West.

Infant Mortality Correlated With Energy Use

Infant Mortality Correlated With Energy Use

Bernard Baruch said ‘Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.’

Global warming hysteria is not morally neutral. The people who believe and promote it may be ‘Not evil just wrong,’ but that won’t stop their policies from deepening poverty and suffering.

Ban Ki Moon and the IPCC need to get out of their airplanes and offices, and start talking to real scientists, and looking at that is happening in the real world. Arctic ice is not melting disastrously, for example.

According to Roy Spencer, AGW has all the hallmarks of an urban legend.

Discipline in Schools

October 26, 2009 / / 0 Comments

One of my best friends is a highly intelligent and capable woman who has raised four lovely daughters, run a successful business, and is a respected teacher whose students have produced consistently good results.

This will be her last year of teaching. She just does not have the energy to struggle every day with children who are rude, have no interest in learning, and for whom everything is boring. Of course it is they who are boring, because they have no interests, no skills, no informed opinions to share.

My friend is also dismayed by the level of verbal and physical abuse directed at staff and other students, and by the inability or unwillingness of Education department staff and politicians to recognise the problem, and to put reasonable structures in place to encourage learning, or even to ensure schools are safe places to work and learn.

The always interesting Boris Johnson makes a case for greater support for teachers, and more meaningful (though not necessarily corporal) discipline policies and processes.

Wayne Carey Whines

October 26, 2009 / / 0 Comments

It’s not my fault I’m a drunk, a womaniser and a liar, says Carey in his book The Truth Hurts – my Dad was mean to me.

Well maybe. Dad says otherwise of course.

This reminds me of the old saw about what a patient learned in therapy: I am responsible for all my own decisions, and everything bad that has happened in my life is my parents’ fault.

I’m inclined to believe the abuse stories. But for heaven’s sake, Carey is no longer a child.

Our background certainly influences our feelings and perceptions. But we still make choices about our behaviour. We still know what is right and what is wrong. Having sex with your best friend’s wife is wrong. Treating people as objects to be used is wrong. Lying to people who trust you and rely on you is wrong.

Shouting about it in the media a few years later to make yourself look better isn’t exactly kind or considerate either.

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