Nigel Lawson, the Iron Lady?s chancellor, scourge of the miners and father of the adorable Nigella, has joined the ranks of the climate change sceptics. He believes David Cameron?s green agenda is overblown, biofuels are useless and carbon trading resembles ?nothing so much as the sale of indulgences by the medieval church?.
<snip> ?People have been talking about ?peak oil? for as long as I can remember,? Lawson says, with a sniff. ?It?s not going to happen in the foreseeable future.?
Hang on a minute. The Hirsch report, commissioned by the US Department of Energy, concluded that we need to prepare for the likelihood of oil shortages at least two decades in advance. And President George Bush, challenged recently to ask the Saudis to pump more oil for the US, replied that they may not have the capacity to pump more. Lawson is unfazed. ?They?ve got plenty,? he says.
<snip> ?Biofuels,? he says, ?have become one of the European Union?s latest fads. It?s far from clear that ethanol produces more energy than is used in its own production. In the second place, it requires a vast amount of land to produce a relatively small amount of ethanol. This not only antagonises environmentalists, upset by the destruction of rainforests for this purpose, but has also led to a marked rise in food prices ? in particular the price of grain.?
Strange that he should be so wrong about one issue and yet so right about another.
He believes David Cameron?s green agenda is overblown, biofuels are useless and carbon trading resembles ?nothing so much as the sale of indulgences by the medieval church?.
Sadly he has a point, on all 3 counts!
What someone needs to do is convince him about that Shell News article from Our (ex-) Man In Uzbekistan, that not having proper renewables (wind, sea-current, solar etc) will result in losing the Cold War...
I can't understand how someone who's so ugly with a face like an arse (that talks a load of bollocks) could spawn such a beautiful and sensible daughter
At least he got one thing right. Perhaps she could infuriate him by releasing Nigella's low-energy cookbook for a climate and energy-constrained world
Last edited by Bandidoz on 21 Apr 2008, 13:23, edited 1 time in total.
Strange that he should be so wrong about one issue and yet so right about another.
By my count, that's wrong on two things and right about another...
He was on The World Tonight on Radio 4 the other night. It was really quite disturbing: he just asserted things that have been demonstrated untrue ages ago, very confidently. Ms Shah was sort of wrong-footed by the blatant nature of the enterprise; without calling him a total liar there wasn't much she could do. I've never heard a better example of the Nazi maxim (was it Goebbels?) that you can get away with a big lie more easily than a small one.
Strange that he should be so wrong about one issue and yet so right about another.
By my count, that's wrong on two things and right about another...
He was on The World Tonight on Radio 4 the other night. It was really quite disturbing: he just asserted things that have been demonstrated untrue ages ago, very confidently. Ms Shah was sort of wrong-footed by the blatant nature of the enterprise; without calling him a total liar there wasn't much she could do. I've never heard a better example of the Nazi maxim (was it Goebbels?) that you can get away with a big lie more easily than a small one.
s.
Indeed it was Goebbels, he who elevated propaganda to an art form. What Mr. Lawson is doing is the tactic known as argumentum ad nausaem. (With added nausaem just because of who he is )
Bandidoz wrote:I can't understand how someone who's so ugly with a face like an arse (that talks a load of bollocks) could spawn such a beautiful and sensible daughter
At least he got one thing right. Perhaps she could infuriate him by releasing Nigella's low-energy cookbook for a climate and energy-constrained world
Nigella beautiful? Bandidoz, you should have gone to SpecSavers.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
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