Sunday 24 June 2012 Sunday 24 June 2012
Yeovilton
COMMENT THREAD
Peter North 24/06/2012 Booker: MPs have no idea
Booker is recording some of the results of an exercise he set up in April, asking readers to ask their MPs to explain how the UK would cut CO2 emissions by 80 percent. The answers – from nearly 50 - he says, made worrying reading.
The question put to the MPs was simple. Since we depend on CO2-emitting fossil fuels for 75 percent of our electricity and almost all of our transport system, how in practical terms can we reduce those emissions by four-fifths?
It is no good pretending that we can rely on "renewables" such as wind and solar to fill the gap, since these are so intermittent that they would require up to 100 percent backup from fossil fuels to keep our now largely computer-dependent economy functioning.
The worst of it though, as reader after reader observed, was that not a single MP addressed the question. Not one had done any serious homework or showed the slightest practical grasp of how electricity is made and how our transport system is powered.
To a man (and woman), they merely regurgitated irrelevant, jargon-ridden propaganda passed on to them by others. As one reader put it: "What is infinitely depressing is that all these idiots believe the nonsense they are fed".
Thus says Booker, they live in a bubble of make-believe which doesn't touch reality at any point. Yet these are the people who passed the most potentially damaging law in our history, the Climate Change Act.
Sooner or later, this will have be thrown into the dustbin of history but, judging by their letters, these MPs will be the very last people to realise it. Yet, this is representative "democracy", where we are supposed to be able to rely on our MPs to do the right thing.
Not only cannot they be trusted, we don't even get a basic level of competence from them. When these are the people who pass (some of) our laws, it is easy to see why we are in so much trouble.
COMMENT THREAD
Sunday, 24 June 2012
Photos from RNAS Yeovilton airshow yesterday can be downloaded here and here, for those of you who like that sort of thing.
But not one of the 47 MPs who answered showed the faintest understanding of the question. Many simply relied on a form letter supplied by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, starting with the sentence: "Decarbonisation does not mean de-industrialisation". The more honest MPs sent on DECC's letter, others used cut-and-paste to pretend that this reply was all their own work.
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