Filed under: Capitalism, Cool Site of the Day, Economy, Education, Energy, Environment, Free Markets, Freedom, Global Warming, History, Junk Science, Politics, Science/Technology | Tags: Matt Ridley, The Greening of the Earth, The Royal Society
Matt Ridley is a fascinating speaker, and the world needs to know something about his ideas—they’re that good. Worth every minute. Published October 21, 2016.The speech was given October 17th at the British Royal Society.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Economy, Europe, European Union, Free Markets, The United States, United Kingdom, United Nations | Tags: BREXIT, Matt Ridley, Prime Minister Cameron
From today’s Telegraph
Market turmoil, apparently they didn’t expect the “Leave” faction to win. Do remember that Norway and Switzerland never joined the EU and are in better financial shape than the rest of the continent. Other countries like the Netherlands, France and Germany are clamoring for a vote. Of course the migrant invasion of Europe has played a big part in rejection of the EU.
A bigger deal entirely is the anti-democratic Brussels bureaucracy. It was British policy makers and business people who made London a great financial center. And as Matt Ridley noted, “container shipping, budget airlines, the internet and the collapse of tariffs under the World Trade Organization” have made it “as easy to do business with Australia and China as with France and Germany.” He added:
The European Union is quite unlike any of today’s international organizations and has never been emulated elsewhere. Britain has no desire to withdraw from NATO, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the Council of Europe or, for that matter, the Olympics. These bodies are agreements between governments. The EU is a supranational government run in a fundamentally undemocratic, indeed antidemocratic, way. It has four presidents, none of them elected. Power to initiate legislation rests entirely with an unelected commission. Its court can overrule our Parliament.
Filed under: Energy, Environment, Heartwarming, History, National Security, Science/Technology | Tags: Greening the Planet, Matt Ridley, The Climate of the Earth
In this modern age we are inclined to be perhaps over-impressed with our technological abilities. New things appear every day, and they seem so cool that we expect more than they can deliver. Devising computer programs to simulate the environment seemed like a natural. You just put in the science that we know for sure and what we’re pretty sure of, and we may have to add some educated guesses, and voilá we can predict what the climate will be in 5, 10, 50 years —why not? That’s where we got in trouble. We thought we knew more than we did, and some of what we thought we knew turned out to be wrong, well, that’s just how things go astray.
And they did go astray. The models told them that the climate of the earth was inexorably warming. You’ve heard Obama: he wants to stop the rise of the seas, save you all from hurricanes, (he didn’t do too well with Sandy), and he wants to do it all with the use of wind and solar— clean energy — and get rid of nasty, dirty fossil fuels. I posted this video of a lecture by Matt Ridley earlier this year, but it seems to be time to post it again.
He does a splendid job of explaining the connections, why things have changed and what our use of fossil fuels had done to make the planet greener, use less land, feed more people, It is absolutely amazing, and utterly devastating to the entire argument of the Greens. Fossil fuels are good? Our whole effort to stop the use of fossil fuels is misguided? Yes, but don’t expect anyone to change their mind. It is not a thought process, it is ideology, or religion, and they are true believers.
Filed under: Energy, Environment, Junk Science, Science/Technology, United Kingdom | Tags: Matt Ridley, The Matt Ridley Prize, The Rational Optimist
Matt Ridley, author of many books, especially The Rational Optimist,in a new article in The Spectator, points out that the British government has finally seen through the wind-farm scam, but getting rid of it is something else. Now he is confronted with a personal problem. A family trust has signed a deal to receive £8,500 from a wind company, which is building a turbine on land that once belonged to his grandfather. He is not a beneficiary. But he finds the idea that any part of his family is receiving ‘wind-gelt’ so abhorrent that he has decided to act.
He is offering a checque for £8,500 as a prize for the best article devoted to rational, fact-based environmental journalism. It will be called the Matt Ridley prize for environmental heresy, and he hopes that it will somehow bring David Cameron to his senses.
To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine — despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.
If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now. The people of Britain see this quite clearly, though politicians are often willfully deaf. …The biggest investors in offshore wind — Mitsubishi, Gamesa and Siemens — are starting to worry that the government’s heart is not in wind energy any more. …
So even if you accept the most alarming predictions of climate change, those turbines that have ruined your favourite view are doing nothing to help. The shale gas revolution has not only shamed the wind industry by showing how to decarbonise for real, but has blown away its last feeble argument — that diminishing supplies of fossil fuels will cause their prices to rise so high that wind eventually becomes competitive even without a subsidy. Even if oil stays dear, cheap gas is now likely to last many decades.
Great fun. If you have not read The Rational Optimist, you are missing something splendid. Or go to TED, and watch his lecture on “When Ideas Have Sex.”
