A Place to Stand

  Sir John Beddington the Government official Chief Science Advisor (£165,000 a year plus other jobs simply for supporting eco-fascism) has said the government should be "grossly intolerant" of dissent over the catastrophic warming scam and of anybody saying the the failure of the government claim of snow becoming  such a rare event children won't know what it is by now should not be taken as any way of disputing the alleged "scientific consensus".

     Well perhaps Sir £165,000 is sufficiently honest to also have been on record to say that those who claimed flooding or drought as evidence of warming should equally be treated with gross intolerance.

   Nope.

   So perhaps Sir £165,000 being at least marginally honest, has now publicly denounced the state broadcaster for pushing that same flood allegation, with no actual evidence, yet again.

   Nope well perhaps Sir lying thieving parasite actually believes his nonsense about a scientific consensus. In which case he will certainly be able to name some members of this "consensus" who aren't paid, like him, to push it. Well I emailed him and

    Nope. He cannot name a single independent member of his alleged consensus. Not one.

    So perhaps Sir lying thieving fascist parasite isn't actually a complete Nazi and balances his criticism with equal criticism of eco-Nazis who want to murder children for thinking for themselves or the BBC who ban anybody who speaks freely or the obscene eco-Nazi scum who make make obviously unfounded accusations of paedophilia because they know they have no factual case.

    Nope not that either, lying, thieving, Nazi parasite that he is. However I will ask him again to name any actual unpaid members of his "consensus" knowing that not only can no consensus exist if nobody from the majority group of its alleged members exists but that it is statistically impossible that only those paid by government support it without it being a government funded conspiracy.
-----------------------
  Incidentally, on a rather smaller scale may I introduce Adrian Windisch. Green Party candidate for  Reading West who used to post on various websites claiming to be an engineer, while ignorant of engineering & on his blog published the answer to a perfectly sensible question from me that I regularly had intercourse with goats. He declined to apologise.

    Worse than that his party leader Caroline Lucas & all her party leadership resolutely refused to accept that such lies should not be told. Even the leaders of the Scottish part, Parick Harvie & Robin Harper, (statistically improbable but true that they are both homosexuals whose previous jobs have been as government paid lookers after children) declined to dissociate themselves from that lie. Lets see if Sir John Lying Thieving Nazi Parasite is willing to dissociate himself from such intolerance. Lets see if there is a single member of the Green movement who possesses the remotest trace of the honesty or decency their leaders, probably, don't.

"The ratio of computer price to performance is now doubling in less than a year"

From an article in the Wall Street Journal by Ray Kurrzweil whose predictions I have listed before.

This doubling is known as Moore's law though when he first described it (about 1970) the doubling time was 2 years. This was considered incredibly fast and all reasonable people agreed in predicting that it would not last. They still do so.

The alternative is that we are seeing the sort of growth rate expected in any other growing system, such as the S Curve

      The only points on that curve where we see not only growth but an acceleration in the rate of growth is on the lower part of the curve, Indeed we see a greater than doubling of the rate of growth, up to the period from 19th to 26th April. Assuming that we are at the 26th April stage we should expect the more than annual doubling to continue for about twice as long, say 80 years before the rate of increase slows. By that time computer capacity will have increased 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. That is literally an unimaginable change which is why it is known as the Singularity, but if maths works it must be expected.

   Nor is that the most far out scenario.  We could be at an earlier point than that so the the 1 year of Moore's Law will continue to get shorter, & the period to plateauing further away.
------------------------------------
I read this following links from an article by Pournelle today which I suggest you read.

For most of history, for most of humanity, life was hard, and seldom got better. Clark ascribes this to the Malthusian Trap: when conditions get better, people breed up a new population that lowers the average to subsistence level again. Add the observations that Possony and I made in our study of the strategy of progress: that human societies convert more and more of their output to structure, so that bureaucracy absorbs all surpluses, all creativity and progress ceases except for short periods when output grows so rapidly that the structure can't keep up. Examples would be the Discovery of the New World, gunpowder, and all three Industrial Revolutions, and the Silicon Valley revolution. For a while human ingenuity outstrips the ability of government to control it; but inevitably the regulators return. Note also that the bureaucracy inevitably assumes a patron status to its clients, so that the apparatus always takes a high place in the distribution of the society's assets. There is always a nomenklatura, which does not live spectacularly well, but has comfortable conditions. It makes nothing but it is needed so that all will be tranquil. It provides security, regulation, order. And it eats better than those it regulates...

technology marches on. Whether or not a computer passes the Turing Test next year or next decade, we can be sure that more and more service jobs can become apps on the pocket computers we will all carry in 2015. Meanwhile, various agencies, boards, commissions, inspectors will make it more and more expensive to hire a human to do that job. And the public service unions will continue to insist on their rights to pensions and benefits. And the teachers will insist on their right to pensions, and benefits, and academic freedom while more and more of their students drop out. And the students will insist on more and more money to be paid to their professors who will teach them that they deserve low tuition and cheap room and board while studying womyn's studies, ethnic studies, social science, or whatever they choose to study at someone else's expense.

Where this all goes is not at all clear. The governments are out of money. There is probably another round of tax increases to be endured before it all collapses. "And they never catch wise." But of course everyone catches wise eventually. And meanwhile there is no more money. We can run the printing presses for a while longer, but those with goods to sell will demand higher and higher prices, and without money to invest, perhaps the technological revolution will be slowed, at least in the United States.

The Industrial Revolution beginning in about 1850 produced the world we know, in which every generation could look forward to more: longer life, more to eat, better housing, and all that and more for their children. Progress, not just for the officer class, but for everyone; a time when everyone would be a lady or gentleman, not a peasant or a servant; when hard work could create a better life for everyone. The world changed, progress outran the Iron Law. But that was in another country.

  After that I find it easier to understand why the Luddites are so scared of progress that they wish to stop it & why government dinosaurs are with them. But if the human race has a purpose it must involve trying to understand and control the universe and that is not achieved by turning our backs on progress.

  Lead letter in the Scotsman today - Where is the debate on electoral reform

The campaign for a "No" vote on alternative vote (AV) elections has been launched, but its leader, Margaret Beckett, is still refusing to engage in a public - let alone broadcast - debate on the subject.

It is disgraceful that we have been denied the chance to choose full proportional representation (PR) by the Prime Minister, David Cameron.

AV is not PR, but it is a step forward.

Throughout my life Labour and Conservative voters have bemoaned the fact that their respective parties are dreadful, but they also say that they have no choice but to vote for them, because otherwise they would let in the Conservative/Labour Party.

The alternative vote does not disenfranchise anybody who wishes to vote for their first choice and will thus let a limited amount of fresh air into the system.

With the "No" campaign getting lots of money (presumably from the traditional big donors to the Labour/Conservative duopoly) while refusing public debate - the BBC having allegedly banned the words "electoral reform" from the airwaves - it seems to be relying on apathy and the political machines commanding some vestigial loyalty.

I support reform, but I hope that, even if I didn't, I would be opposed to preventing debate.

The BBC - as well as the other broadcasters - has a legal duty to show due balance and should insist that it will broadcast a formal debate, even if someone less exalted than Beckett leads for her side.

  Published in full. The BBC ban has been reported here. The Fair Votes letter to the No campaign inviting debatewhich they decline to accept is here.

     I missed this in the Herald yesterday, experience having inclined me not to get my expectations up.
 Wind power won’t keep us warm in a big freeze

In 10 years the Government has added about £18 billion of carbon levy to our electricity bills and directly subsidised the building of wind turbines by £6 bn.


The longer term ambitions involve putting many hundreds of billions of pounds into this subsidy to close up to 80% of our current generating capacity and replace it with windmills.

Let’s look at the results. On December 6, when temperatures dropped to –20 C, windmill output amounted to 0.2% of all our power. This meant they were producing, on average, 1/40th of their official capacity.

If such circumstances happen again in the future, when it is intended windmills will be the mainstay of our power, we will not only be paying about £10,000 a year for our home electricity bills but with the lights out at –20, we will be experiencing all the joys of living in medieval times.

Alternately, with bills at less than 10% of what we pay currently, we could be warm with unlimited quantities of nuclear power.

There is a reply today which does not dispute anything I say about windmills being useless but says we should immediately spend enormous amounts on off shore windmills & sea turbines which will do everything  previously promised for onshore windmills. I have written a reply but accept the Herald, having given both equal space, have no obligation to publish.

"As our very own Professor Peter Cameron, professor of international energy law and policy at the University of Dundee, wrote,

"Energy is at the heart of modern life"

and

"In modern times the main driver of economic growth has been, and continues to be, energy".

The interesting thing is not that Professor Cameron said this, Jerry Pournelle has said "The more regulation imposed the less competitive the market will be, and the more concentrated it will become. Economic freedom brings about efficiency. Energy plus freedom brings economic boom" and others have said similar. I believe economists tend to gloss over the importance of energy and technology generally compared to fiscal matters, which after all is their area of expertise, but virtually none deny that this is true.

   The interesting thing is that this was said in debate in the Scottish Parliament by the Energy Minister and that none of the other party representatives chose to disagree with it in any way. (I found this on They Work For You which David had suggested I check out - it shows what MPs and MSPs have been saying and voting for).

   Admittedly, having said and accepted that inexpensive energy is the driver of economic growth the rest of the debate was about how all parties wished to restrict, regulate and tax it more heavily to provide more pork barrelling for their various friends, mostly eco-fascist, which automatically makes energy cheaper and scarcer. Depressing.

      But nobody in any of these parties can now dispute knowing and understanding that by doing so & by having legislated the destruction of 58% of our current electricity capacity over the next 9 years they are deliberately destroying around 58% of national and personal wealth.
-----------------------------------------
   So lets look at the world figures. From the CIA World factbook
 
United States 4,110,000,000,000 kwh 2008 est.

*China 3,451,000,000,000 2008 est.    {my est 4,164,000,000,000 2011}

European Union 3,080,000,000,000 2007 est.

 Japan 957,900,000,000 2008 est.

 Russia 925,900,000,000 2009

 India 723,800,000,000 2009 est.

 Canada 620,700,000,000 2007 est.

 Germany 593,400,000,000 2007 est.

 France 535,700,000,000 2007 est.

 Brazil 438,800,000,000 2007 est.

 Korea, South 417,000,000,000 2009 est.

 United Kingdom 368,600,000,000 2007 est.

 Spain 300,500,000,000 2008 est.

 Italy 289,700,000,000 2007 est.

 Mexico 245,000,000,000 2008 est.

 South Africa 240,300,000,000 2007 est.

 Australia 239,900,000,000 2007 est.

 Taiwan 238,300,000,000 2008

       *I have shown both the CIA figure for 2008 and my estimate for this year. 
  This shows an average growth rate of Chinese electricity as 9,8% annually since 1980.It is presumably not a coincidence that they have achieved an average 10% annual growth. In turn this means that their 2011 figure is likely to be 4,164,000,000,000 marginally passing that of the USA. The Chinese economy as a whole is much smaller than that, or it would be much larger than all the EU, but we would expect, if it is a prime cause of growth, that it would lead growth by some years. I am assuming no correction for growth in western countries is required. Scotland may be a particularly Luddite example boasting "In 2007, Scotland generated a total of 48,217 GWh of electricity, a decrease of almost 8% compared to 2006" but to expect growth in any western country's electricity and thus the potential for economic growth seems optimistic.
 
     There is no question that we could get back into high growth any time our politicians wanted it. Mass producing nuclear plants would make them very cheap. As I have previously demonstrated the cost could, in theory, be reduced by 93%. Indeed this fits well with the historical fact that the most advanced economies can grow fastest, assuming the political will. Chinese electricity is cheap and available because most of it comes from relatively low tech coal plants which, with nuclear are joint cheapest. However being a lower tech society they currently find nuclear easier (this will not last - South Korea is now a very large builder of reactors) whereas we still have much greater capability per capita. Thus if we went with the nuclear option at the cost it could be produced without political parasitism, our power could be a quarter of China's.
 
If our politicians actually wanted us out of recession. Our current numptocracy clearly doesn't. UKIP andarguably the BNP are the only sizeable parties in Scotland and possibly Britain which seem to have any true interest in ending recession. I have previously discussed the fact that Britain has the worst ratio of  electricity production to dollar GNP of any large developed nation. This ratio is described as the $nek value & is now unused by economists the world over.                                                                                                                                           

  Last Sunday I saw a BBC programme on the countryside which featured an item about the Brockworth Cheeses Rolling race (they chase a round cheese downhill). This had been going on for at least 200 years and had attracted several TV teams from all over the world, as well as the BBC one.

At the end there was a voice over saying it had been cancelled by the Heath and Safety Mafia (well OK the BBC didn't say "Mafia") .

This must have been a rather old BBC report from about 2009 

despite the cancellation and lack of paramedics, about 500 people showed up in 2010 to hold some unofficial races, with six times champion Chris Anderson winning.

And now it will be held, with bureaucratic approval this May

Call it a win, on points for traditional freedom over the parasites. But if they have moved on, for now, they haven't gone away.

  I  sent this to a large number of BBC emails 2 days ago. Unsurprisingly no reply which must be taken as a general refusal of the BBC not to call :

Dear BBC,


I note the BBC have now gone even beyond their claim that 10s of thousands of hours of warming propaganda "balanced" by zero hours of scientific scepticism is consistent with the "due balance" you are legally required to show by describing those of us who are sceptical about the claims that by now "children won't know what snow is" as "loathsome" & equivalent to paedophiles.

This is made all the worse by having the frontman for this being Michael Buerk in the nominally ethically based "Moral Maze" programme.This must, by definition, be the single programme in which the BBC ensure that their claims and acts have a moral and factual basis. If Michael Buerk is a corrupt, lying & to use the phrase loathsome individual willing to tell any lie to promote state fascism, as he clearly is, there is obviously no possibility of the BBC continuing to employ him in this role unless every single other employee at your organisation is at least equally corrupt, lying, fascist supporting and loathsome.

In any case every single person you have so gratuitously insulted, including myself, is entitled to an apology, both personally and on air in a manner as prominent as the dishonest original programme.

I trust you will also undertake never, under any circumstances, to seek"licence fees" from anybody who doubts catastrophic warming and must ask you to make it clear in all correspondence on the subject that this is the case. It would not only be illegal under UK law to do so, because you are in breach of your charter, it would be a breach of human rights to seek to force anybody to contribute to propaganda lies describing them personally as "loathsome.

I await your confirmation within 48 hours that all this will be done or be forced to assume that it won't and that no BBC employee, who has not publicly denounced the BBC as wholly corrupt, can ever dispute the right of anybody else to describe them personally as loathsome.

Michael Buerk said

“not long ago, to question multiculturalism…risked being branded racist and pushed into the loathsome corner with paedophiles and climate change deniers“

One of the emails went to Roger Harrabin who previously claimed he wanted to "talk to sceptics" but refused to answer a query of mine, allegedly on the grounds that I had been insufficiently placatory to him (I had not said anything 1,000th as disrespectful as to call him loathsome). Clearly if he had meant it he would have instantly wished to say he disapproved of the remark - that or Harraibin and indeed the BBC as a whole regard the description "loathsome" as high praise wish to be addressed as such.

   It has been argued that Buerk was, himself, parodying the BBC attitude rather than endorsing it. Perhaps so but that would only be confirmation that such total dishonesty and contempt for the fee payers does, unquestionably, represent the BBC position, which leaves the thieving scum in even deeper soup. In any case if that is Buerk's excuse he should make it.

Result of a Google search for "BBC + loathsome" - no idea

I think it worth posting this ranking of reading ability by nationality. The UK at 494 isn't abysmal, indeed we are just above the average but being ahead of Hungary and Portugal and behind the Poles is hardly a source of pride or confidence. Scotland's comes in at a marginally better 500 but there is a clear downward trend since 526 in 2000.

Don't expect this to be as widely discussed by politicians and media as the pulchitrudity or otherwise of party leader's partners.

This is Pournelle on the US system, which he considers dreadful though it comes out a lot better than ours.

The purpose of the US education system is to insure employment of bad teachers. It is well known that the efficiency of the system as measured by student performance will be about doubled by firing the 10% worst teachers and apportioning their students out among the rest; that is overwhelmingly to be preferred to "smaller classroom size", teacher pay raises, or anything else that might be tried. Of course this won't be tried because the purpose of the whole system is to see to it that the bad teachers are not fired and are allowed to go through ruining lives until they get large pensions.


The second purpose of the system is to insure full employment for professors of education, many of whom have never done any actual teaching, but whose imprimatur is needed to get the "merit pay" advances you can get from "workshops" and various courses in education. Some education colleges actually prepare teachers to teach, but many simply punch tickets; a lot of bad teachers who ought to be fired get "merit" pay for having accumulated credits from education professors. My suspicion is that firing about half the professors of education would greatly improve the efficiency of the system but I don't have any studies or numbers to prove that; but I would bet money that firing the worst 10% would instantly improve the colleges of education just as firing the worst 10% of classroom teachers would instantly improve the schools.

The purpose of the schools is to extract money from taxpayers and pay it in ways that insure that professors of education and bad teachers get paid. It is not to create citizens, or to teach anything; it is not to train future Legionnaires. If we are to have Legions, the first thing we need to do is cut all ties between the Armed Forces school systems for service dependents from the rest of the education system and run it in a rational manner as it has been done in the past. Alas the trend is in the other direction, with more and more of the poison that ruined the US public school system spreading everywhere else.

Schools no longer prepare students to be citizens or to learn the skills to be employed, even in the Legions. They have new purposes now, and they serve them well.