Question - Anthropogenic Global Warming: Myth or Reality? Answer - Myth

Clameur de Haro has been travelling extensively to both London and Brussels of late, but was fortunate on Thursday November 12 to attend the lecture and subsequent debate in Westminster organised by The Spectator entitled “Global Warming: Myth or Reality?”. The principal speaker was Professor Ian Plimer, Professor of Geology at the University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, prominent anthropogenic climate change sceptic, and author of the recently-published book “Heaven and Earth”, which brilliantly contrasts the proven science on climatic and geological changes to the Earth throughout its existence with the current green politics of climate alarmism propaganda.

One notable absentee, though, was Guardianista eco-prophet and all-round militant enviro-Greenie, George (“the science is settled”) Monbiot, who, although invited, tellingly declined to come and engage in debate with a proper scientist.

In a masterful presentation, Prof. Plimer depicted the huge geological and climatic changes which have been a constant feature of up to 4½ billion years of Earth history. He explained how massive changes had taken place in the constituents of the atmosphere, driven by factors as diverse as: life itself, the introduction of oxygen to the atmosphere, the exchanges of gases between the atmosphere and the oceans, and tectonic plate movement causing massive changes in ocean currents (including the isolation of Antarctica, allowing for permanent glaciation on that continent), and how all these have changed climate throughout the Earth’s existence.

Emphasising that the Earth has in fact had prolonged periods when it was much, much colder than today, he described six major glaciations / Ice Ages, and pointed out that during no fewer than five of them, levels of atmospheric CO2, including during the cooling phases, were actually higher - as much as 10 times higher - than today, while at other times it was much warmer than today, with the whole Earth, poles as well, enjoying tropical conditions – not surprising, as the Earth is fundamentally a warm, wet, greenhouse, volcanic planet.

Professor Plimer went on to show that, despite the fact that the extent of cooling experienced since just 1998 has significantly negated the rise in temperatures over the previous 30 years (with the fall from January 2007 to January 2008 being the steepest one-year fall since 1880), despite the fact that present temperatures are 7°C below most of the last 500 million years, and despite the fact that atmospheric CO2 is only one ten-thousandth more than it was in 1750, the IPCC tells us that an increase of merely 2°C would be disastrous, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect, ocean acidification, the dissolution of all crustacea in the oceans, and the death of coral – and all because of man-made CO2.

As he stated, what the militant enviro-Greenie / warmist-alarmist religion cannot explain is why none of these disasters seems to have occurred at earlier periods of Earth history when the Earth was much warmer, and the atmosphere was much, much richer in CO2. As Professor Plimer pointed out, far from being a pollutant, CO2 is an entirely natural trace gas in the atmosphere, which is essential to life, and to plant growth: today’s atmosphere is in fact relatively impoverished in CO2 compared to most of the Earth’s history. Higher levels of CO2 would increase both rates of biomass generation and crop yields, and as Professor Plimer also pointed out, throughout human history, warming periods have coincided with increasing food production, life expectancy and prosperity, while cold periods have produced conflict-causing population migrations, poverty and famine.

Professor Plimer admitted that the causes of climate change over geological history are not entirely well understood, but that the main factors appear to be solar irradiance and variations or oscillations in the Earth’s orbit leading to long-term climate cycles, other astronomical factors including gas and dust in space, super-volcanic activity, changes in cloud cover and cloud formation possibly linked to cosmic ray activity, and tectonic plate movement leading to major changes in ocean currents. In the face of all these factors, he said, the idea of fixating on one single trace gas in the atmosphere essential for life, then accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an absurdity bordering on madness.

On one point though, Clameur de Haro disagreed with Professor Plimer. The latter urged the audience to eschew the linguistic tactics so enthusiastically espoused by the militant enviro-Greenie / warmist-alarmist religion who talk about “fighting climate change” or “the war on CO2 emissions”; in his view the language of war has in his view no place in science, because science is simply a process of discovery, with one hypothesis being replaced by another as refuting evidence becomes incontrovertible.

Clameur de Haro would agree with this if science was the only, or even the main factor in the climate change debate as put forward by the warmist enviro-doomsters. But it isn’t. The debate from their side is much more about the opportunity to impose collectivist politics, socialist economics and the inherently flawed Greenist religion which the affectations of concerned environmentalism conveniently conceal.

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Wimberley Runs Up The Red Flag

Clameur de Haro was not remotely surprised to see the traditional banner of redistributive tax-and-spend socialism unequivocally hoisted to the Daniel Wimberley masthead this week. In his letter on Tuesday to the Jersey Evening [sic] Post about the Angry Men, Mr Wimberley rehearsed all the predictable mantras associated with the philosophy.

We had, most notably, the attempted excoriation of what he terms as the low-tax, low-spend ideology implemented over the past three decades, and which according to him must be resisted. Apart from providing an explicit statement of his predatory stance on public sector finances, it is also less than accurate.

Does Mr Wimberley really believe that we have had a low-spend government? If only we had been so blessed - we might not be in the position that we now are. The problems we face at present are in very great measure due to the runaway, uncontrolled public spending and public sector growth that we have seen in the last ten years, and the inability or unwillingness of most politicians to tackle it.

He then follows the usual scare tactics of the political left by implying that the Angry Men favour curtailing public expenditure by abandoning respite care for the disabled, the Town Park, and the problems of Bellozanne, and essential infrastructure maintenance. But nowhere in Mr Trower’s conversation with the JEP’s Ben Queree is any of this even hinted at.

What Mr Trower and his colleagues quite rightly protest against is the sheer size, reach, dubious utility and uncontrolled expense of much of the bureaucratic empire, allied to inadequate financial and budgetary discipline – and the inclination to tax in order to fund it, rather than address the underlying problem. Remember the contract for the incinerator, Mr Wimberley? Advocates of a smaller, leaner, less activist but more efficient government have been saying for years that the public sector does too much that is unnecessary, and does it at far greater cost than necessary.

Mr Wimberley appears to recoil in horror that States’ departments were forced to make efficiency savings in order to limit the necessity for taxation increases. Obviously he adheres to the collectivist assumption that public spending is somehow a good in itself, and finds the notion that individuals should be able to retain more of their own money as heresy.

He needs to be reminded that the state, and the public sector, has no resources of its own other than what it confiscates from individuals and firms by way of taxation. As Ludwig Von Mises put it -

“At the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production - that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects - and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes.

This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending.

As against these popular fallacies there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens - and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.”

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What That Climate Change Advert Really Meant To Say………..

Like multitudes of his acquaintance, Clameur de Haro has been utterly disgusted by the selective, one-sided, criminally inaccurate, and blatantly scaremongering “bedtime story” advert now being shown on television. It’s nothing else but pernicious, crude propaganda of which Dr Goebbels himself would have been proud – although emanating as it does from the minions of the shifty, snivelling Ed Marxiband Milliband, one should not be remotely surprised.

Considering the eagerness with which the Militant Green-Left denounce sceptics of the Great Anthropogenic Climate Change Scam as deniers or worse, their silence so far on this classic example of the techniques of totalitarianism has been deafening – and because of that, so unequivocally revealing of their true agenda.

As a critique of the advert, this piece from Janet Daley says it all -

The government is trying to terrify you. That is the only possible interpretation of its latest television advertising campaign on the supposed dangers of global warming. Whether or not you accept the scientific premises behind the “bedtime story” advert which is now to be investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority after attracting over 350 complaints from the public, there is no question that it is propaganda in the strict technical sense of the word.

That is to say, it is an attempt by the state to manipulate opinion and evoke emotional reactions without offering argument or evidence for its case. It accepts uncritically the most extreme rendition of the anthropogenic global warming narrative as if it were entirely uncontentious and presents it in the most sentimentally evocative possible way (ie as a threat to one’s own children and to defenceless creatures generally). It uses the techniques once associated with totalitarian societies not to persuade (which is what advertising properly does) but to coerce: to create fear and guilt.

And to what purpose? Without offering constructive argument or serious explanation of the options, we can only assume that this is a campaign designed to browbeat the public into accepting any new restrictions or “green” taxes which government may choose to impose.

Fortunately, it seems that ordinary people still have the independence of mind to know when they are being bullied.

Indeed they do: and moreover an accurate translation of the Green-Left’s propaganda, and an explanation of its true agenda and motivation, is available. It’s here -

Warning – contains strong language which may offend.

Clameur de Haro would undoubtedly have preferred that the little girl’s comment at the end had been expressed in rather less robust terms – but both the message conveyed by her father and the essential meaning of her own response, are infinitely closer to the truth than the original.

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EU Tax Hypocrisy – Hopefully The Fightback Begins.…

Clameur de Haro notes from the website of The Adam Smith Institute that Jersey Finance’s Geoff Cook will be one of the key speakers participating in an ASI seminar on 4 November on the subject of “Tax Competition: Economic Freedom and National Sovereignty”.

This is good news, for one of the other key speakers is Richard Teather. Apart from his role as Senior Lecturer in Tax Law at Bournemouth University Business School, Mr Teather is also the author of the much acclaimed “The Benefits of Tax Competition”, probably one of the seminal works on the economic justification for, and benefits arising from, the competition provided to high-tax jurisdictions by their relatively low-tax counterparts. CdeH’s own copy is much read, and extensively bookmarked. Mr Teather, thankfully, is also an adviser to the States of Jersey scrutiny functions on tax policy and tax matters.

Mr Cook himself has sound views on the futility and hypocrisy of the attempts by high-tax jurisdictions to deflect attention from their own macro-economic and fiscal deficiencies by attempting to coerce low-tax jurisdictions into emulating them, and Clameur de Haro makes no apology for repeating them.

If through the populism of voter appeal or through some systematic ideology the means of wealth creation are overburdened, the incentive to create wealth is diminished, and governments consume a greater and greater proportion of the total economic value available. Eventually the economic engine becomes too dependent on an inverted pyramid of wealth creators. The creators become disincentivised and go elsewhere, or simply down tools.

Free markets, globalisation and tax competition have all combined to produce stellar growth in world GDP over the last thirty years pulling countless millions out of poverty.

An unlikely alliance of tax hobbyists, left wing newspapers, trades unions, and development agencies has catalysed around calls for greater concentration of the means of wealth creation in the hands of governments, and implicitly greater taxation of business and wealthy individuals through the outlawing of wealth structuring and planning, together with restrictions on cross border capital flows. They hope that their own constituencies will be beneficiaries of this new ‘contract’, with the authors, the tax hobbyists, gaining fame and funding, and their supporters feeling validated in their enduring distrust of the wealthy and their advisers.

Moves are in train to stigmatise wealth structuring and planning; to restrict capital movement through attacks on the use of international finance centre:, and to undermine transfer pricing arrangements. If successful the combined effects of these protectionist measures will be to trap capital within borders, significantly reducing overall economic activity.

Such measures will restrict wealth creating activity and encourage growth in central government expenditure. The net effect will be a constriction of wealth, a reduction in tax bases and a loss of global prosperity, driven by a short sighted grab for tax, all delivered through the Trojan horse of transparency.

To accuse banks, or companies, or individuals, of illicit or immoral behaviour because they plan their international affairs in perfectly legal ways simply raises the spectre of wrongdoing in a misleading and mischievous manner. Paid for ‘research’, produced by the tax hobbyists, supported by self interested union groups, and trumpeted by sympathetic bugles, claims that billions is being misappropriated through international finance centres. These claims have no credible evidence underpinning them, demonstrating an opacity which these same sources would find intolerable were it postulated by others.

Hopefully Mr Teather and Mr Cook will be both inclined, and able, to convince the Chief and Treasury Ministers of the need for a robust response to the EU and HMG – particularly as the current HMG has a future lifespan measurable in months at most.

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Does The Anglosphere’s Libertarian Capitalism Produce More Creative Freedom?

Sometimes all of us, including not least Clameur de Haro, need a little lightening up and R&R at the end of a distinctly average week. And with that malignant pipsqueak Stuart Syvret purporting to decide for himself which aspects of legal process should or shouldn’t apply to him, the continuing myopia of Jersey’s public sector employees to economic reality, and an EU tax bombshell blowing a hole through an already questionable fiscal policy, this week has certainly fallen into that category.

So on this grey-ish, adjectival October Friday, here’s a classic from CdeH’s not too outrageously mis-spent youth – the great, great, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s legendary performance of Sweet Home Alabama for The Old Grey Whistle Test on (CdeH thinks) 11 April 1975.

Clameur de Haro remembers his youthful self, in those far-off days possessed of long-ish and blond-ish locks and always an aficionado of Whistle Test rather than TOTP, watching the performance, mesmerised. It was one of those moderately seminal experiences we can all recall in our lives, in CdeH's case a Damascene conversion to the blazing vibrancy and musical integrity of Southern Rock that’s lasted now for 34 years.

But looking it again after all this time got CdeH thinking - why is it that the greatest and most successful rock bands of the past 40 years have come predominantly, not just from the democracies of libertarian capitalism, but specifically from their Anglosphere countries?

Is it just the superficially obvious answer of commonality of language and culture? Well, maybe, but that doesn’t quite feel like the whole story.

Or could it somehow be more than this - a subtle consequence of the systems that regulate the Anglosphere societies being based on common law with the presumption that we are all free to do anything we like which is not actually prohibited, rather than the Continental tradition of codifed law that restricts citizens' freedom to only that which is specifically permitted?

So that a bunch of music-mad teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964 could just go ahead and get together to express themselves without needing 27 separate permissions plus elf'n'safety and risk assessments from state, county and municipal bureaucracies? And in the process create, out of nothing, an artistic and commercial product that millions have exercised their freedom of choice to buy for 30 or 40 years, and still do.

And perhaps that’s a handy reminder also to the dirigiste leftists who argue that libertarian capitalism is a zero-sum game, that there exists by definition only a fixed total of wealth, which requires activist governmental intervention to re-distribute it “fairly”. The amount of wealth isn’t fixed – it can be created out of apparently nothing, provided that individuals and entrepreneurs are allowed the freedom to create it.

Is it really that fanciful to wonder whether, if the enviro-militant Greenists get their way, in five years time, 50 years after Skynyrd was formed, the local jobsworths of the Barack Obamania Federal Energy Use Control & Allocation Agency will tell another bunch of music-mad teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida that they’re not allowed the obligatory licence to just get together for a band practice and jam session in a friend's garage, because the power requirement would represent an irresponsibly unnecessary and frivolous use of the planet's precious resources?

What a lot of enjoyment future Clameurs de Haro would miss. And what an unrelievedly dreary and joyless world it would be. We have to stop it happening, and with the wheels slowly but inexorably starting to come off the Great Anthropogenic Climate Change Scam wagon, we will. But in the meantime, and just for 5 minutes and 41 seconds, click the video clip to full screen, turn up the volume on your speakers, sit back, and enjoy those classic riffs.

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Into The Lion’s Den With Daniel

Reluctant though Clameur de Haro is to compete with Daniel in the confines of the Lion’s Den, on examining more closely Mr Wimberley’s comments on some of the Greenism issues aired in CdeH’s recent post On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs, and Definitions ………, it does strike CdeH that Mr Wimberley’s response is, interestingly, equally significant for what he doesn’t say, rather than what he does.

Looking at some of these in more detail (with the original post in blue and Mr Wimberley’s comments in green) -

"The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen" –

which uses exactly the same techniques as he accuses Nick Palmer of using.

"scare" –

errr well no, actually thousands of peer-reviewed articles written by scientists who are each of them would just love, wouldn't they, to become famous by DISPROVING or throwing at least a little spanner in the theory of anthropogenic global warming

"industry" –

Oh, since when were Exxon paying Hansen et al to do their work? On no, sorry, silly me, "industry" refers to the support given by those industrialists who cannot put the common interest above their own narrowly defined interest, to people who can be paid to spread doubt, the key weapon, (exactly as was done by the tobacco giants, which is why I am justified in talking about "industry" and about "weapon")

"Godfather" –

well we know who that was. . .

These are eminently fair points in response to normal journalistic knockabout, but Mr Wimberley did not attempt any rebuttal of CdeH’s salient point, which was the castigation of Hansen’s demand that any who merely question the claims of catastrophic warming should be put on trial.

Mr Wimberley did not rebut CdeH’s condemnation of the 2006 proposal of David Marxiband Millband that we should all be forced to carry a personal carbon footprint use swipe card.

He did not deny the proliferating use of CCTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits.

He did not question, or attempt to justify, the use of children by local councils for enviro-enforcement espionage.

He did not actually deny or rebut the similarities between current Greenist policy prescriptions and those of the 1970s hard-left marxists.

"authoritarian restriction on private behaviour "

= green taxation or taxes on carbon or a carbon rationing system. Perhaps Clameur thinks it is more rational to tax labour when what we have is a surplus of people needing things to do which are paid, and what we do not need is to consume more. I rather think that ANY tax is seen as some kind of restriction by CdeH

Indeed - but only “Up to a point, Lord Copper”. Any kind of tax, being the state’s self-legitimated appropriation to itself of a private citizen’s legally-acquired wealth, is by definition a restriction on the citizen’s freedom to dispose his wealth as he sees fit. But that does not mean that CdeH advocates no taxation – on the contrary, he readily acknowledges that there are economic goods and public services needed by some or all of the population which only the state can or will fund, and that taxation is both an acceptable and the most practical way of raising the revenue needed.

The problems arise, and CdeH’s objections kick in, when states over-reach their remit or fail to control adequately their own spending, and use increased taxation as a prop – or when taxes are cloaked in a supposedly more acceptable colour conveniently to conceal their underlying purpose.

Mr Wimberley did not however deny the co-incidence of the impetus in vehement environmentalism with the collapse of communism.

He did not attempt to refute the explicit support of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity offshoot Green Left for an electoral pact with the Green Party.

"Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party," –

well no actually, there is no such thing. Poor old Clameur, it never does to check your facts, might get in the way of a nice sneer. The Green Party has a male speaker and a female speaker - or did until they voted recently to go for a single party leader, like the other parties, not sure what they have decided to call this person.

Again a fair point about the precise designation of Mr Wall – but what Mr Wimberley does not rebut is the more serious point about Mr Walls’ enthusiastic advocacy of growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement, in the interests of both.

Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.

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Clameur De Haro's Political Compass

With fellow bloggers St Ouennais and Nick Palmer both having been kind enough to reveal their positions after taking the assessment questionnaire on The Political Compass, Clameur de Haro can hardly refrain from showing his own.

Attempting reverse analysis here is an inexact science, because the answers do not have corresponding scores on each of the axes, but for what it's worth, CdeH guesses that on the Authoritarian - Libertarian scale, the scoring from his antipathy to excessive state power and legislative restrictions on personal freedom is probably pulled back a little by the scoring from his support for a robust stance on both defence and the protection of the family as the principal societal unit.

But - wouldn't it be interesting and revealing if we could persuade all States' Members to take the test - and then publish the results so that we can all see exactly where they stand? Do any of them have the cojones to take up the challenge?

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A Comment From Daniel Wimberley

Possibly due to an undetected last ditch reaguard action on the part of the gremlins which have recently aflicted Clameur de Haro's comment moderation facility, a comment from Daniel Wimberley on his post "On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs and Definitions.........." was not highlighted for moderation.

CdeH therefore presents it as a separate post below -

Begins:

"The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen" –

which uses exactly the same techniques as he accuses Nick Palmer of using.

"scare" –

errr well no, actually thousands of peer-reviewed articles written by scientists who are each of them would just love, wouldn't they, to become famous by DISPROVING or throwing at least a little spanner in the theory of anthropogenic global warming

"industry" –

oh since when were Exxon paying Hansen et al to do their work? On no, sorry, silly me, "industry" refers to the support given by those industrialists who cannot put the common interest above their own narrowly defined interest, to people who can be paid to spread doubt, the key weapon, (exactly as was done by the tobacco giants, which is why I am justified in talking about "industry" and about "weapon")

"Godfather" –

well we know who that was. . .

"authoritarian restriction on private behaviour "

= green taxation or taxes on carbon or a carbon rationing system. Perhaps Clameur thinks it is more rational to tax labour when what we have is a surplus of people needing things to do which are paid, and what we do not need is to consume more. I rather think that ANY tax is seen as some kind of restriction by CdeH

"Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party," –

well no actually, there is no such thing. Poor old Clameur, it never does to check your facts, might get in the way of a nice sneer. The Green Party has a male speaker and a female speaker - or did until they voted recently to go for a single party leader, like the other parties, not sure what they have decided to call this person.

Ends

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Greenist Tolerance of Dissenting Opinion #39

From Toby Harnden, US editor of the BarclayTorygraph, comes this piece (written in September, hence the reference to “next month”) about the reaction of militant environmentalists to the next project of two Irish filmmakers –

Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, whose film Not Evil Just Wrong is due to premiere next month, have been subjected to a slew of death threats and instances of disgusting abuse from the environmental Left. One commenter branded them “Hitler’s Henchmen”.

Their crime? Their film dares to challenge the conventional wisdom about global warming – they prefer to call it “global warming hysteria” – and take on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Rather than try to rebut the arguments of the couple, it seems, their opponents want to shut down any debate.

One environmentalist sent McAleer and McElhinney an e-mail describing them as “stinking, selfish, sociopathic fascists” and expressed a desire for them to be executed. “It is one of my fondest hopes that whatever remnants of human civilization exists at the end of this catastrophe is able to put people like you on trial for crimes against humanity and give you the same treatment Hitler’s henchmen got at Nurnberg a long drop at the end of a short rope,” the email stated.

A commenter on YouTube wished that McAleer and McElhinney’s children be born handicapped because they were not campaigning against “pollution”. The most vitriolic comments have been deleted by YouTube.

McAleer said he was disappointed by the taking down of the comments. “We wanted to keep the comments so that people could see for themselves the hate being directed at those who dare to ask questions about liberal orthodoxy.”

The couple have been called “hillbillies,” “rednecks,” “zombies,” “dimwits,” “brainwashed idiots,” “muppets” and “slaves to greedy elitists”.

One commenter suggested a tactic for discrediting the couple, writing: “Slander them as tools of big oil/coal. Insinuate they’re on a par with Holocaust deniers.”

Remind you of any comments you’ve seen about Clameur de Haro’s blogposts on green issues?

The film premieres on 18 October.

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On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs, and Definitions ………

Clameur de Haro is prompted by recent comments on his posts to muse at length on the potential for confusion stemming from the epithets and labels applied to beliefs, and the benefits of more precise definitions.

Mr Frank Binney (a new commenter, and most welcome) raises the issue of how accurate, or otherwise, it is to apply the “left” or “right” label to the Greenists? Tony The Prof, in his courteous and erudite way as always, highlights the undesirability of debating climate issues with ad hominem arguments. Both comments, and the reasoned, courteous tone of them, merit a full response.

CdeH subscribes to the view of The Political Compass that the traditional “left” and “right” label is no longer sufficiently adequate to describe positions on the political playing field, because the continuum is one-dimensional, and predominantly an indicator of economic position – ranging from communism or overwhelmingly statist collectivism (on the left), to unfettered, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism (on the right). And that a more sophisticated and illuminating definition of politico-economic philosophy can be made by complementing location on the economic dimension with a statement of position on the social, authoritarian-to-libertarian continuum, ranging from ultimate authoritarian (fascism, in fact) to ultimate libertarian (virtually anarchy).

It should come as no surprise to Clameur de Haro’s more careful and perceptive readers that CdeH finds himself in the area of the 4-o’clock position in the bottom right-hand quadrant of Libertarian Right – being unequivocally in favour of small government, free trade, free markets, low taxes, but light-touch regulation on the economic continuum, and with a moderate libertarian slant on the social scale, believing as he does that the state aggregates too much power to itself and then often proceeds to exercise it illiberally, and has no business, for example, interfering in willingly-undertaken social transactions between competent, consenting adults, provided that others are not harmed thereby.

Not a million miles from the Hayekian and Friedmanite positions, it would appear, which probably accounts for CdeH’s intuitive listing of Friedman’s “Free to Choose” and “Capitalism and Freedom” as among the most influential formatives of his political / economic thinking.

CdeH frequently has the label “right-wing” hurled at him as an insult. On The Political Compass’ economic continuum, of course, this is, as far as it goes, a more correct than incorrect identification of his economic and fiscal philosophy (although quite why the belief that government is not per se automatically efficient and that taxpayers should be entitled to keep more of their own money, should be a cause for insult, is mystifying).

But on the social policy scale, and when hurled at a commentator who -

(1) naturally inclines to concern at the accretion and abuse of power by the authoritarian state and its agents;

(2) has been appalled at the implications for our liberty as citizens of Labour’s 12-year attack on habeas corpus, the right to jury trial, the right to silence, and the presumption of innocence, all on spurious grounds; and

(3) would choose La Moye rather than be forced to carry a show-on-demand ID card or render up his DNA without just cause, believing that it is his property and not that of the state,

the epithet “right-wing” as an insult is hilarious in its inaccuracy (as Clameur de Haro’s friends who know his views on privacy and personal freedom issues tell him), and betrays rather more about the insulter that it does about the criticised.

Where does this take us on the subject of applying labels in that area where politics and Greenism meet?

CdeH has good friends, occupying varying locations on the left-right economic-fiscal spectrum, who are very environmentally-minded but who equally accept that scepticism on green issues is valid, healthy, and should in a free society be widely aired, and that this is all very much a matter of private, personal choice, not public coercion. In no way could they be described as fundamentalist Greenists. On this specific point of socio-political philosophy, we would have to place them in the libertarian half on the authoritarian–libertarian scale.

But others – indeed, many others - appear, regrettably, to be much less tolerant. Consider just the following examples –

The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen, being on record as averring that anyone who even questions the postulate of catastrophic warming should be put on trial. Not positively counter-argues it – merely questions it;

The proposal of David Marxiband Milliband, when UK Energy Secretary in 2006, to force the entire population of the UK to carry a swipe card to be presented on every transaction, with every single person in the land being expected to render account for their carbon footprint and being allocated a personal annual carbon allowance – enthusiastically endorsed by the then environment correspondent of The Guardian (now there’s a surprise) in the following terms –

“The move marks the first serious step towards state-enforced limits on the carbon use of individuals……….extends the principle of carbon to consumers, with heavy carbon users forced to buy unused allowances from people with greener lifestyles” ;

The proliferating use of CTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits;

The admission of Ealing Council in West London that “hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged eight to 10, [have been] trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues” and that of Harlow Council in Essex which has said it has “25 ‘Street Scene Champions’, all aged between 11 and 14, who are encouraged to email or telephone the council if they suspect that an ‘enviro-crime’ has been committed” ;

The examples of prominent EU Greenists with hard-left, marxist, pasts: those of us of a certain age, (pace Tony The Prof) remember, for example, Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit propagating in the 1970s, revolutionary socialist prescriptions eerily precursory of much of both the authoritarian restriction on private behaviour and freedom, and the “for-the-sake-of-the-environment-and-the-planet” taxation that the Greenists espouse today. Is it really just a coincidence that aggressive environmentalism really started to take off in the early 1990s when communism was finally consigned to the scrapheap?

The rallying call of Green Left - an offshoot of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity - for an electoral pact in Birmingham with the Green Party “……….to give a progressive and environmentally aware candidate the chance of taking the seat, and a victory for all those opposing the policies of privatisation, war, greed, racism and environmental destruction. We are firmly of the belief that this will benefit both the Green and progressive movements in this country……….” ;

The author of this, intriguingly enough, is one Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party, who in another incarnation also comes up with this explicit summary of the advantages from the growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement -

“The creation of an Eco-socialist International network seems a good institutional basis for making European Green Parties more radical and I would like to see EU Greens working with the Nordic Green Left. I hope that it builds an eco-socialist network that links activists in every single state on this planet and, as we agreed in Paris, to work to make greens redder and reds greener.”

This, and plenty more of the same, can be viewed at http://www.climateandcapitalism.com/.

All of which suggests to Clameur de Haro that, far from the idea of Greenist Fundamentalism being an exaggeration, when taken overall, ample justification exists for that upper left Authoritarian Socialist quadrant of The Political Compass being the correct location for the activist, militant Greenism most often propounded by the save-the-planet-warriors. This is what he refers to when he speaks of Green Fundamentalists. As we can see, there’s a lot of it about.

And yet CdeH is mocked by a commenter for displaying a “Green is the New Red” logo on his sidebar?

Which brings us inevitably on to Mr Nick Palmer, Clameur de Haro’s most frequent commenter, and serial ritual abuser. Mr Palmer is fond of labelling CdeH as a recidivist perpetrator of what seems in his lexicon to be that most heinous of all crimes, far, far worse than mass-murderer, or child-abductor, or financial swindler, or…………………well, worse than anything at all really, namely being a “global warming denier”.

It sheds, firstly, an interesting perspective on the more strident advocates of radical environmentalism that mere scepticism, inherently just a manifestation of thought or opinion, rather than any illegal actions or criminal deed, should be judged so deserving of such calumny. But given on the one hand the inclination so prevalent in Gramscian cultural marxism (to give the colloquial, more familiar, label of political correctness its ideological origin) to establish, define, and prosecute crimes of thought and opinion, and on the other hand the correlation between Gramscian thought and militant Greenism, CdeH is relatively unsurprised by this.

The attaching to sceptics of the term “denier” in this context is quite deliberate, and no mere accidental or careless use of language. Its users are employing one of the classic tactics of cultural marxism – closing down the argument and thereby circumventing debate. It’s exactly the same technique which accuses someone of racism if they attempt to discuss whether current levels of immigration are sustainable, or of elitism if they suggest that a few more grammar schools with scholarships might actually benefit bright children from modest backgrounds, or of xenophobia if they suggest that handing over sovereignty to an unelected and unaccountable supranational authority might not be a terribly good thing for democracy. By seeking to equate enquiring scepticism about anthropogenic climate change with something as repellent as (primarily) Holocaust denial, they try to convey the idea that their target is so irretrievably and unspeakably vile that anything they say should not even be given a hearing, never mind taken seriously.

For the record, Clameur de Haro does accept that there has been an upward movement in average global temperatures over significant periods of the past century-and-a-half or so, but equally is persuaded that this has not been the case since 1998. As indeed, even the warmists – from the IPCC, who acknowledged that its first apocalyptic predictions omitted the Medieval Warming entirely, through Mann, who eventually conceded the fundamental flaws in the algorithms which generated his infamous hockey-stick, to the Biased BBC, which has just reported that for the last 11 years no increase in global temperatures has been observed and that there could be 30 years of cooling due to falling ocean temperatures - have had to admit.

Noticeable, isn’t it, how in the last few years, it’s all become “catastrophic climate change” rather than “catastrophic global warming”?

He has yet to be convinced, also, by the entire man-made / CO2 argument, having seen too many graphs of data sets showing non-correlation between temperature and CO2 output, temperature cooling during periods of rising CO2 output irrespective of whichever time lag is attempted, and studies suggesting that CO2 levels may be the consequence, not the cause, of temperature movements.

And he feels unable to ignore the peer-reviewed evidence that the Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history (and that a mere 30 years ago, some of today’s warmists were ardently warning of catastrophic global cooling and the strong danger of a new ice age). Climate change isn’t unlikely – it’s guaranteed, as it has been for the last x million years, mankind or no mankind, and CdeH is presently unconvinced that human influence on it, while possible, is nevertheless other than peripheral. The notion of “combating climate change” CdeH suspects, is about as feasible as combating tomorrow morning’s sunrise or combating the advent of next Christmas.

So, the correct term for Clameur de Haro is actually “anthropogenic climate change sceptic”. But then that’s so much less emotive as a term of derision than “global warming denier”, isn’t it? Perhaps those who inadvertently - or more likely deliberately - conflate the two need to put “dictionary” at the top of their Christmas List.

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Great – But Not The Line In The Sand That Some Will Want To Believe

Clameur de Haro was delighted to join with 7000 of his fellow islanders at St Ouen’s Bay yesterday in protesting the despoilation of our beautiful coastline by some truly hideous over-developments, for he seldom views the architectural excrescences at La Coupe, Portelet, Le Hocq and above St Aubin without shaking his head in disbelief at how they could have secured planning approval. So - many congratulations to Mike Stentiford and all his colleagues.

CdeH was particularly heartened also by the Planning Applications Panel’s decision unanimously to reject the proposed development of 73 chalets at Plemont. He found it disturbing however that the department’s civil servants apparently recommended its approval on planning grounds, for how anyone could envisage 73 chalets to constitute a substantial environmental gain defies belief. This is surely an area for an independent enquiry into the internal departmental processes.

But – a small word of warning. CeH noted the presence on St Ouen’s Bay of one or two politicians from the left-green end of the political spectrum, for whom the protection of the natural heritage is just part of a wider and more radical agenda for anti-business, heavily-taxing, aggressively redistributive economic and fiscal policies, and the imposition of either curbs or costs on individual freedom, advocated in the cause of environmental rectitude but equally in line with the collectivist ideologies to which they subscribe to greater or lesser extent.

The overwhelming majority of those to whom Clameur de Haro spoke were not in this category – they were there to protest against unsympathetic coastline encroachments (and rightly so), but that was all. So the left-green activists should beware – there is, justifiably, a huge mandate for resisting some of the planning approvals coming from the pen of Greenwash Freddie The Environment Minister, but that does not mean a 7000-person mandate for socialism.

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The Curious Inconsistency of Pink and Green?

Clameur de Haro was, like very many people, horrified this week to read the details of the appalling murders committed by a schizophrenic psychopath, the last after having been released – as a result of a long litany of failings by psychiatric and social services – to live in the community as an outpatient, despite previous convictions for murder.

It’s noticeable from this and other cases - nearly 30 in the 10 years to 2007 - of convicted killers released from jail who have then gone on to kill again, that a significant factor in the eagerness to release was the intolerable violation of the human rights of one person judged to be perpetrated by keeping him incarcerated, just to protect the public from the mere off-chance that he might kill again. A classic world-view, in fact, of the Gramscian cultural left.

Yet many of that self-same Gramscian cultural left are among the most ardent proselytizers of the fundamentally illiberal, authoritarian socialism-by-another-name, policy prescriptions of the Green religion, who harbour no qualms at all about imposing, on billions of people, the most drastic restrictions and penalties on individual freedom, economic liberty, and human advancement, ever seen, just to protect the planet from the mere off-chance that their increasingly discredited and desperate predictions of impending climate apocalypse might turn out to be one-percent true.

A curious inconsistency indeed……or, given that both policies necessitate the subjection of the majority to the views of the unrepresentative minority, possibly not………

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Back to Jersey – and Back to the Blogosphere

Clameur de Haro found it a stimulating and rewarding experience living and working again in the Far East for the past few months: but with his last-ever overseas assignment having come to an end, and now lately arrived back on the Blessed Rock for good, he feels it’s time to pick up once again the reins of rightwards-inclined posting, to balance a little the local blogosphere’s majority leftward slant.

So, catching up, to what extent have the numerous undesirable features of the Island’s politico-economic landscape which CdeH hitherto railed against improved in his absence? And despite keeping intermittently in touch with events from afar, what does CdeH find on his return the land of his birthright?

Many of the answers, sadly, are not encouraging.

A still-bloated public sector, where spending appears predominantly out of control, where budgetary discipline seems lax or non-existent, and where sufficient determination to tackle either to the large extent actually necessary (as opposed to some cosmetic tinkering at the margins) looks less likely than snowdrifts in August.

Terry the Taxer and Ozo the Bozo purporting to direct an economic strategy which announced an appallingly cynical curtailment of front-line patient services and public facilities, but retracted immediately when objections were made – if cuts were (wrongly) thought necessary in the first place, why were they not defended robustly, however unjustifiable they were? And their cohorts and satraps already musing about raising indirect tax rates.

A government which almost certainly will have neither the vision nor the courage to go through with implementing much-needed staffing cuts, an absolute pay freeze, and pensions reform in public sector employment, nor any inclination to contemplate shrinking the size of the state by withdrawing from activities better undertaken by private enterprise.

A policing function with an effectiveness reportedly all but paralysed by internal strife, but still retaining the ability to commit the unbelievably ham-fisted bungling of what ought to have been a low-key routine investigation, thereby giving that malignant pipsqueak Syvret a golden opportunity to revel in his much-loved but self-proclaimed martyr status.

How depressing too, to see that the vast majority of the local politics blogs remain firmly anchored at the left-green end of the spectrum: some still obsessing, ostrich-like, with conspiracy theories about cover-ups or justice-denial to the exclusion of all else (and goodness knows, there’s no shortage of other things to get worked up about in this mis-governed island), while others continue to proselytize pernicious eco-authoritarian greenery.

At least Ratleskutle, Tony’s Musings, and Jersey 24/7 are still out there, providing a bit of much-needed wider variety of subject-matter.

So Clameur de Haro looks forward to a resumption of both promoting the alternative free-market and liberal prescriptions of a smaller state, reduced public spending, lower taxes and enhanced individual freedoms, and rebutting the authoritarian collectivist fallacies peddled by the pink leftists and their green fascist allies of convenience. Just as a taster for the latter, CdeH spied, on his pre-departure sojourn in a certain Far East airport, this entertaining piece in the Jakarta Globe about a ceiling collapse in a virtually new school building in Cirebon, West Java. Do, please, note the last sentence –

“Dedi Windiagiri, the head of the Cirebon school board, denied that the contractor was to blame. Climate change, he said, was the true cause of the accident.”

Really, you couldn’t make it up, could you? Ridiculous? Of course. But as an example of the fundamental dishonesty of so many genuflectors before the altar of the green religion, and their desire desperation to attribute any misfortune at all, whatever its cause, to the great holy mantra of climate change, regrettably not untypical.

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Back on the Rock – and…….Oh God, Ned Greensleeves is awake……...

Clameur de Haro?, returning to the Rock and resuming blogging, after an overseas assignment in more equable (and considerably better fiscally managed) climes since just after Xmas, has noticed that the States’ debate over the La Collette incinerator seems to have resurrected several of our resident eco-mentalist watermelons (green on the outside, but in reality light red on the inside) from what CdeH? would have assumed to be, did they only practise themselves what they demand of others, their winter hibernation.

And, in the realms of holier-than-thou, self-righteous proselytizing, none more so than Ned Greensleeves (aka Nick Palmer), who regrettably passed up the chance to give a deserved wider currency to what is actually rather a good book, such was his desire on 26 February to heap bile and odium of truly Syvret-esque proportions on those States members so unenlightened as to reach a democratic decision at variance with his own views (views comprehensively rejected, incidentally, by an Island-wide electorate, less than 4 months ago).

Now CdeH? suspects that, even if most of the green/Gore fallacies serially peddled by him, and fellow-travellers - CdeH? uses the expression advisedly - less honest than he, on the green left (eg. peak oil theory, MMGW, economic self-improvement = “greed”) are flawed, on the incinerator question itself, Nick is actually on to something. Nick is a highly intelligent man, if misguided on politico-economic issues, and CdeH? does find his claims about the relative merits of a thermal pyrolysis / gasification plant to be persuasive.

But - that is not the point of this post. What is the point is that, in plumbing Syvret-like depths of vituperation ("…The level of stupidity and incompetence on view was just incredible…” ) and ( "…incapable of rational judgment…” ) etc. etc., Ned unwittingly reveals his unerring consistency with the overwhelmingly and universally defining characteristic of the pernicious green religion – its utter intolerance of any contrary view, which must be countered with vitriolic, ad hominem abuse, not reasoned argument.

And predictably – such is the level of anger and zealotry engendered – he misses the supreme irony inherent in his railing against “…the extreme arrogance and self-belief of too many members….”. Allegations of arrogance and self-belief, Mr Palmer? From a green religion proselytizer sufficiently presumptious as to describe himself publicly in his blog’s About Me sidebar as “thinker” ? But then of course, we plebs like CdeH?, who are justifiably skeptical of the green religion, its threats to individual liberty, and the uncanny resemblance of its policy prescriptions to those of statist socialism, don’t have the capacity of thought, do we?

And as for that reference to Sarah Ferguson’s “coming out” as a “global warming denier” - well, doesn’t Ned’s use of that latter phrase tell you everything you need to know? Welcome, Sarah – it’s taken a few of us a little time, but you’ve seen the light.

How long before you and your ilk advocate that “global warming denial” becomes a crime, Nick?

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First Post-Election Thoughts

Clameur de Haro? was exceptionally disappointed at the general thrust of last night’s results, and suspects that the silent majority who rail at the ineptitude of the current Establishment, but positively despair at the direction espoused by the left and the greens, will feel the same.

Amid the euphoria of the JDA and their fellow-travellers (and CdeH? uses the expression advisedly) the implications of the composition of the new States Assembly for the island’s future economic prospects are decidedly unfavourable.

There must now be a strong likelihood of a raft of superficially crowd-pleasing, uncosted exemptions to GST, coupled with the equally costly additional bureaucracy necessary to administer them: yet CdeH? recalls few if any of the tax-and-spend socialists have offered any cogent suggestions as to how the resulting shortfall should be met.

In the current financial markets, populist sentiment may well favour a “let’s hit the banks, they can afford it” approach to filling the revenue gap. Would-be imposers of greater burdens of tax on the industry which comprises 70%+ of the economy, provides significant numbers of its jobs, and contributes most of its Jersey’s prosperity should remember however that financial services are internationally mobile, and that other jurisdictions are willing and able to accommodate ours should the industry be taxed into a disadvantageous position.

Clameur de Haro? never under-estimates the capacity of socialism to leave an economy seriously worse than it found it. Let’s hope that those now congratulating themsleves don’t in the future have to explain themselves to a population wondering how it is that benefits have had to be cut, jobs have disappeared, and living standards have dropped alarmingly.

And finally, a footnote. If there had to be some degree of electoral success for Time4Change, what a pity that Nick Le Cornu - an intelligent and articulate exponent of civilised but robust debate, however much one might disagree with him – didn’t make it in St Helier while his egregious associate Montfort Tadier did in St Brelade. A travesty indeed.

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Nick Palmer's Radically Different Economic System

Clameur de Haro? notices that, over on his Elect Nick Palmer 2008 blog, Mr Palmer regales us with his evident pride at having signed a Friends of the Earth petition “Call Time on Global Greed”.

Excoriating those who created “a crisis caused by a greedy, reckless and under-regulated economic system”, “biased against the poor and the environment”, the Petition calls for “a radically different economic system”: one that “reduces inequality, creates jobs, protects vulnerable citizens, preserves the environment, and works to eradicate poverty”.

How very noble and apparently altruistic. CdeH? however is reminded of a few realities.

First, Friends of the Earth, despite the misleading title, isn’t an environmental organisation. It was once – but no longer. Like Greenpeace, it was long ago taken over by the economic and political collectivist left, who perceived that, while socialism would never be permanently accepted as the prevailing economic system per se, if it could be cleverly cloaked in an environmental camouflage, then, to a deliberately under-educated populace, it just might be.

Secondly, the present financial crisis has, in actual fact, several origins, and many, many different culprits, ranging from fiscally irresponsible governments who directed central banks to hose unlimited credit at economies for no other reason than to cynically maintain an illusion of prosperity for political advantage, to financially illiterate consumers who foolishly lapped up every offer of credit lobbed their way, with no thought of ability to repay. The very thing that the present system has not been is under-regulated: over-regulation, but inefficiently conducted and misleadingly targeted, has played its significant part.

Thirdly, despite inequalities in degrees of betterment, no other system has ever delivered greater overall advancement, for the majority of the time, to the majority of humankind, than has capitalism. FoE’s “greed” is, of course, the leftist translation of the natural aspiration towards improving one’s lot possessed by all mankind. In the leftist lexicon, the desire for something as fundamental as a better education for one’s self and one’s children becomes “greed”.

Finally, Clameur de Haro? recalls that the FoE’s appealingly-labelled “radically different economic system”, the one which purports to “reduce inequality, create jobs, protect vulnerable citizens, preserve the environment, and work to eradicate poverty”, but which actually does the opposite, isn’t new (although it certainly is radically – and in more than one sense of the word – different). It’s been tried. It’s called communism, or its watered-down variant, authoritarian socialism.

And it doesn’t work.

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