"There’s a lot of demand this year." Robert Nemeti/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.
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I was chatting to the log man as we unloaded chunks of dried beech into my driveway from his trailer. Usually he brings me ash, but ash is becoming harder to find now that ash dieback disease, imported into Ireland from Europe, is killing many of the nation’s trees. Our little home plantation, laid down five or six years ago, is not yet mature enough to keep us going for the whole winter, and we need help to make up the shortfall. So, beech it is this year.
“Not easy to get it now though,” he said to me, as we threw the logs into the growing pile. “And there’s a lot of demand this year. Everyone’s worried about the winter.” Given the likely lack of Russian gas across Europe, people are getting nervous and stockpiling heating fuel before autumn. We’ve been stocking up on winter logs this way for years. But the log man knows that his days of delivering little loads of cut timber to households like ours are probably numbered.
“I’ll just keep going till they tell me to stop,” he said. “It’ll happen soon enough.”
The Irish government is currently campaigning against households which burn turf or wood, the former on the grounds of CO2 emissions, and the latter on the grounds of air quality. As ever, the campaign is driven from Dublin, and mostly takes Dublin sensibilities into account. Rural households in Ireland have been burning turf and wood forever, with little significant impact on “air quality” — or at least, no impact comparable to that which Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” modernisation has had. Suddenly, though, the media is full of scientists armed with studies demonstrating how getting a fire going in your cottage in winter will lead to cancer and lung disease on a widespread scale.
This new tilt against household fireplaces is not just an Irish phenomenon: it is suddenly popping up everywhere. Woodstoves are, curiously, becoming the number one air pollution villain. Never mind mass car use, accelerating air travel or industrial pollution. Never mind the emissions caused by the massive increase in Internet server farms, which within just a few years could be using up an astonishing 70% of this country’s electricity. These days, if you want to demonstrate your social responsibility, you should be all aboard with the abolition of the traditional fireplace and its replacement with “green” alternatives.
Speaking as a former green myself, I’m not without sympathy for at least part of this argument. The mass burning of peat in power stations here, for example, has long been an ecological disaster; one which is, thankfully, coming to an end. Many peat bogs in Ireland have been ravaged over the centuries, and some are now being restored for wildlife, and for use as “carbon sinks”. This is certainly no bad thing. Humans recklessly burning anything in sight on a vast scale is not a story to be defended, no matter how hard some are currently trying.
Something else is happening here, though. The campaign against warming your own house with your own fire is not quite what it claims to be. Sometimes it looks more like a displacement activity, as if a government and a nation which has no interest in actually cutting its consumerist lust down to size is going for an easy target. But it is also something with more symbolism, more mythic meat, than any discussion about “carbon emissions” would suggest. The fireplace, whether our dessicated urban authorities know it or not, has a primal meaning, even in a world as divorced as ours from its roots and from the land.
In his short essay “Fireside Wisdom”, the uncategorisable John Michell suggested that the “displacement of the hearth or fireplace” from the home was one of the many reasons for the craziness of the modern world which his life had been spent playfully exploring. The fireplace at the centre of the home, he wrote, was both an ancient practicality and a device of “cosmological significance” across cultures and time: “Conversation is directed into the fire while dreams and images are drawn out of it.”
In the past, the act of sitting staring into the smoky fire with family or neighbours was the genesis of the folk tale and folk song which tied the culture together. Now we stare at digital fires hemmed into boxes manufactured by distant corporations who also tell us our stories. No song we can dream up around a real fireplace can compete with what these boxed fires can sell us. “Thus,” wrote Michell, “the traditional cosmology is no longer represented by its domestic symbols, and a new, secular, restless, uncentred world-view has taken its place.”
Focus, Michell explained, is “the Latin name for the central fireplace. The fire not only warms but, as a symbol, illuminates the corresponding images of a centre to each of our own beings and of a world-centre which is divine, eternal and unchanging.” Lose your fires, and you literally lose your focus as a culture. In this context, a government spokesman telling his population, as one minister here recently did, that they should “get over” their “nostalgic” attachment to the hearth fire and install ground source heat pumps instead is more than just a nod to efficiency. It is an assault on what remains of the home and its meaning. It is an attack on the cultural — even the divine — centre.
Not that you will get very far explaining that to your local MP.
“Not everyone can afford one of these fancy ground source pumps,” said the log man, as we emptied the last of the trailer. He was right, of course, and many of my neighbours, who at this time of year are hauling tractor trailers full of dried turf back from the bog, would be just as dismissive of the new dispensation. But this is not the real significance of the dying out of the household fire. The real significance is that it represents just the latest blow against the home as the centre of the universe: of the domestic as the cosmological, of the parlour as the place of story.
When you can no longer grow your own wood or cut your own turf to heat your own parlour, you are made that little bit more dependent on the matrix of government, technology and commerce that has sought to transmute self-sufficiency into bondage since the time of the Luddites. The justification for this attack on family and community sufficiency changes with the times — in 17th-century England, the enclosures were justified by the need for agricultural efficiency; today they are justified by the need for energy efficiency — but the attack is always of the same nature. Each blow struck against local self-sufficiency, pride and love of place weaves another thread into the pattern which has been developing for centuries, and which is almost complete now in most affluent countries.
Wendell Berry’s 1980 essay “Family Work” is a short meditation on the meaning of home, its disintegration under the pressures of modernity, and how it might, to some degree at least, be restored. Like so much of Berry’s work, it locates the centrepoint of human society in the home, and explains many of the failures of contemporary Western — specifically American — society as a neglect of that truth. The home, to Wendell Berry, is the place where the real stuff of life happens, or should: the coming-together of man and woman in partnership; the passing-down of skills and stories from elders; the raising and educating of children; the growing, cooking, storing and eating of food; the learning of practical skills, from construction to repair, tool-making to sewing; the conjuration of story and song around the fire.
In my lifetime, in my part of the world, the notion and meaning of “home” has steadily crumbled under external pressure until it is little more than a word. The ideal (post)modern home is a dormitory, probably owned by a landlord or a bank, in which two or more people of varying ages and degrees of biological relationship sleep when they’re not out being employed by a corporation, or educated by the state in preparation for being employed by a corporation. The home’s needs are met through pushing buttons, swiping screens or buying-in everything from food to furniture; for who has time for anything else, or has been taught the skills to do otherwise?
Even back in 1980, Berry recognised that the home had become an “ideal” rather than a practical reality — precisely because the reality had been placed out of reach for many. What killed the home? Three things, said Berry: cars, mass media and public education. The first meant that both work and leisure could, for the first time in history, happen a long way from home. The second — “TV and other media” — have played a role, since the mid-20th century, in luring us all into a fantasy world of freedom from obligation, and a limitless, fun consumer lifestyle. “If you have a TV,” writes Berry, “your children will be subjected almost from the cradle to an overwhelming insinuation that all worth experiencing is somewhere else and that all worth having must be bought.” Finally, the school system is designed “to keep children away from the home as much as possible. Parents want their children kept out of their hair.” Schools exist to train children to fit into individualistic, consumer societies; to internalise and normalise their ethics and goals, and to prepare for a life serving their needs.
What could we add to this list now? Supermarkets, for one, and the whole panoply of long-distance shopping and global supply chains that go along with them. Back in 1980, it can’t have been common to buy avocadoes in winter in the northern hemisphere, let alone endless streams of screen-based gadgets put together by slave labour in China.
We could add “careers” too: and perhaps this is the main culprit. What the Luddites called the “factory system” (we should maybe call it the “office system” now that all the factories have been shipped off to China) was the main reason that the home was broken into in the first place. The pre-modern home was, as few homes are today, a workplace. The Luddites, to stick to my example, were handloom weavers running literal cottage industries, and their rebellion against the rise of industrial capitalism was a rebellion in defence of the home as a place of work as well as domesticity. That work was shared by men and women, who would both have their domestic spheres of influence whatever the particular business of the home was.
In this sense there is a case to be made that the pre-modern woman, working in her home with her husband and family, had in some ways more agency and power than her contemporary counterpart whose life is directed from outside the home by distant commercial interests. Certainly the feminist movement, in at least some of its iterations, has been thoroughly hijacked by capitalism. The “liberation” of women has often translated into the separating of women from their self-sufficiency, as men were separated before them, and their embedding instead into the world of commerce, whether they want it or not.
My point is not that women should get back into the kitchen: it is that we all should. Modernity prised the men away from the home first, as the industrial revolution broke their cottage industries and swept them into the factories and mines, where their brute strength could be useful. Later the women, who had been mostly left to tend the home single-handedly, were subject to the same process. The needs of business were sold to both sexes as a project of “liberation” from home, family and place.
The reason this happened is clear enough. Making a home requires both men and women to sacrifice their own desires for that of the wider family — but this kind of sacrifice does not feed the monster. Only by unmooring the human being from his or her roots in community and place can the emancipated individual consumer and self-creator be born. Only by promoting the fulfilment of individual desire as the meaning of a human life, can the selflessness that we once prized as a cultural ideal be transmuted into the selfishness that capitalism needs to thrive. Liberation and profit, as ever, prove a seamless fit.
Maybe this is all misplaced nostalgia; or at least, the shutting of the stable door long after the horse has been turned into dogmeat. Perhaps people leave homes, or don’t make them, because they just don’t want them much anymore. Maybe we are all loving our liberation. When I was a teenager, I certainly wanted to escape my family and its values — and I did in the end. But I suppose I always assumed there would be something to come back to. That I in my turn would grow up to be the thing that was pushed out of the way so that the world could be opened up before the young. This is how it should be, after all.
But I wonder if we can make those assumptions now. I wonder especially if young people can. How does it feel to grow up in a society whose young can barely afford anywhere to live, let alone dream of owning a family home? With a generational fear of the future which leads increasing numbers not to want families at all? With everything pointing, always, towards movement away, towards not looking back, towards progress? I don’t know, but I know it’s not easy.
The loss of the security of a home is, in some way, the loss of the heart of things. But also — and here comes the good news — the war against home manifests on the human scale, which means we can reverse it, at least to some degree, under our own steam. In these times, any blow struck for the survival, or the revival, of the home and the family is an act of resistance and of rebuilding.
Back in 1980, Wendell Berry ended his essay by suggesting some actions that could be taken in this direction. As well as the obvious — “get rid of the television set” took pride of place — he suggested that we should “try to make our homes centres of attention and interest”; to make them as productive and nurturing as we can. Once you rid yourself of the propaganda of the corporate media-entertainment complex (“a vacuum line, pumping life and meaning out of the household”), you will see new possibilities begin to open up. You will see, in Berry’s words, that “no life and no place is destitute; all have possibilities of productivity and pleasure, rest and work, solitude and conviviality that belong particularly to themselves”, whether in the country, the city or the suburb. “All that is necessary,” he suggests, is “the time and the inner quietness to look for them.”
The “all” in that sentence is doing quite a lot of work — more than ever, perhaps, 40 years on. Time and inner quietness are hard to find, now; but perhaps they always were. Even so, they are worth searching out. Home work is, perhaps, the most important work of all, and it will certainly teach you things. Since we moved to our place eight years ago, I’ve learned — sometimes from choice, sometimes from necessity — a whole suite of new skills, from construction to tree planting, chicken-keeping to breadmaking, hedging to unblocking drains. I’ve learned how to know my neighbours properly, how to stay in a place and begin to really understand it. The choice to homeschool our children has changed our lives and theirs. Certainly our children, in their early- and nearly-teens, are more self-sufficient already than I was by the age of about 25.
Home-making, it turns out, is not something to flee from in pursuit of freedom, as I wanted to do when I was younger. It is a skill, or a whole set of them: a set I have come to value maybe above anything else I do. I am still not very good at it; but even so I feel, on my best days, that I could walk with some of my ancestors and be recognised by them as a fully-qualified human being. Maybe this will turn out to be my greatest achievement, in the end.
***
This essay was originally published on 10 August 2022.
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SubscribeBeautifully written.
Many of society’s leaders today demonstrate a desperate-yet-smug vanity as they reach for easy answers (for them) to ‘heal the planet.’ Those who clamor to remove the burning of a fire to heat homes are the same people who do not need to procure warmth by such means.
These are the same self-important individuals who travel to Davos on private (or commercial) planes when a virtual video conference works just fine but is, perhaps, not as exciting.
They eagerly seek for riches to purchase a beachfront vacation home for themselves even as they tell others that the sea levels are rising to the point of drowning cities and towns near ocean shores.
They cry for the end of nuclear power and gas-powered combustable engines because they can afford to put solar panels on their rooftops with very expensive battery panels to store the power and they purchase $70K Teslas.
Many of society’s leaders today do not seek to implement solutions that require personal, real sacrifice. Instead, they push the concept of ‘forced scarcity’ upon others…in other words, they take away the means of survival for many of their fellow citizens without identifying and implementing realistic substitutes. Sacrifice, in their minds, is for poor people (often in poor countries). This approach is the new-and-improved version of colonization by wealthier societal strata over the poorer classes of the world.
In my opinion, if politicians and other leaders are going to take away the realistic means for people to heat homes, travel to/from work, secure food for ones-self and one’s family, these politicians/leaders are responsible to provide the equal-or-better replacement in advance…this is their job. Their job is not to send their fellow citizens and the poor of the world back 150 years in terms of progress and then tell those citizens to ‘figure it out…and good luck.’ Such laziness in leadership is not acceptable.
Agree 100%.
What amazes me about modern politicians and activists who peddle the climate change emergency myth is that there is no sense, anywhere in what they’re saying, that they themselves have failed. They are basically saying that despite the fact that technological progress itself has not stopped, that all the known channels of wealth creation are still available, and that we have literally millions of years’ worth of artifical energy beneath our feet that we can use with present-day technology, we are for some reason expected to reduce radically our consumption of energy and to tolerate large falls in living standards and personal choice.
Anyone proposing to make decisions affecting the rest of us who puts forward such proposals has by definition failed to a colossal and embarrassing degree. Yet what we appear t be seeing instead is high-handed arrogance and a seemingly limitless appetite for more authority and power.
Firstly, it would help if you provided some meaningful scientific evidence that the “climate change myth” is indeed a myth. If you’re going to dismiss the scientific ‘establishment’, as the new populist terminology has i- as bunk, something more cogent than mere bald assertion would be useful.
Secondly, you are radically opposing the article’s arguments with your promotion of endlessly higher “living standards” (a consumerist article of faith) and the “personal choice”, also a pseudo-religious tenet of the cult of the globalised individual consumer. It would be more interesting if you engaged with that fundamental difference of view, rather than merely finding what you want to find in it and ignoring the meat.
Climate change is, of course, very far from a myth. The climate has always ‘changed’ and always will. The ‘myth’ that John Riordan refers to is the completely debunked lie that the driver of warming since the 1980s suddenly became ‘anthropogenic’ – having previously been natural since the end of the Little Ice Age which ended in the C.19th.
Man’s contribution to this ‘warming’ by ‘burning things’ is trivial and entirely beneficial.
If you doubt this, then you have a lot of homework to catch up on. Try visiting the Global Warming Policy Foundation site for a start.
And, for the avoidance of doubt, I will continue to burn well seasoned logs in my woodburner, until Drax has been strictly prohibited from burning American wood pellets from clear cut forests (all prepared, processed and transported using “fossil fuels”) and once the perpetrators and the politicians who are paying them almost a Billion of taxpayers’ money per year for this blatant scam, producing twice as much CO2 as burning Yorkshire coal, are all serving long prison sentences for their cynical, corrupt, incompetence.
“Twice as much as burning Yorkshire coal”.
I’m not defending Drax, which I think is a terrible idea for various reasons, but you miss the point about CO2 and wood burning. Coal is ancient stored carbon, turned into CO2 when burned. Wood is a renewable resource, that takes out CO2 when growing- this is then released back into the atmosphere when burned, just as coal does. The point being that, unlike fossil coal, the CO2 is largely removed by the next generation of trees.
Utter tripe.
A tree takes 40 years or more to grow.
A tree takes about 20 seconds to burn at Drax.
Renewable?
Don’t be daft.
Sorry to interrupt your ranting, but I’m not (try reading) supporting Drax. It’s the article above that wants you to burn trees, not me. Take your issue up with Kingsnorth.
As for the rest of it, it’s word salad, in terms of scientific content.
Do you know how long it took to lay down the fossilised trees in the Carboniferous Period that we use as coal, compared to the forty years of a tree to mature, or the time it takes to burn the coal?
Think about it. Please. It really isn’t that difficult a concept.
Do you know how long it took to lay down the fossilised trees in the Carboniferous Period that we use as coal, compared to the forty years of a tree to mature, or the time it takes to burn the coal?
Think about it. Please. It really isn’t that difficult a concept.
Sorry to interrupt your ranting, but I’m not (try reading) supporting Drax. It’s the article above that wants you to burn trees, not me. Take your issue up with Kingsnorth.
As for the rest of it, it’s word salad, in terms of scientific content.
That is an utterly illogical argument.
What you are proposing is that cutting down a living tree which takes out CO2 is fine if you replace it with another tree. There is nothing stopping us burning coal which does not involve cutting down a tree and planting a tree to give a net benefit -which your proposal does not.
Firstly, of course I’m proposing replacing the cut tree with a new one- that’s the point. That’s how the carbon-cycle works.
Burning coal, however, is a one-time event. The coal was laid down millions of years ago in the Carboniforus period, before fungi could break down lignum. This is a massive, one-off source of carbon. It has remained in the ground for millions of years, the carbon safely sequestered. Now the carbon is release within a few years. Planting a tree won’t offset that, because you’re burning the equivalent of thousands of years of tree growth, and trying to counter the carbon with one tree- or a year’s trees.
I cannot believe I need to explain that (twice) in a remotely scientific discussion.
Firstly, of course I’m proposing replacing the cut tree with a new one- that’s the point. That’s how the carbon-cycle works.
Burning coal, however, is a one-time event. The coal was laid down millions of years ago in the Carboniforus period, before fungi could break down lignum. This is a massive, one-off source of carbon. It has remained in the ground for millions of years, the carbon safely sequestered. Now the carbon is release within a few years. Planting a tree won’t offset that, because you’re burning the equivalent of thousands of years of tree growth, and trying to counter the carbon with one tree- or a year’s trees.
I cannot believe I need to explain that (twice) in a remotely scientific discussion.
Utter tripe.
A tree takes 40 years or more to grow.
A tree takes about 20 seconds to burn at Drax.
Renewable?
Don’t be daft.
That is an utterly illogical argument.
What you are proposing is that cutting down a living tree which takes out CO2 is fine if you replace it with another tree. There is nothing stopping us burning coal which does not involve cutting down a tree and planting a tree to give a net benefit -which your proposal does not.
“Twice as much as burning Yorkshire coal”.
I’m not defending Drax, which I think is a terrible idea for various reasons, but you miss the point about CO2 and wood burning. Coal is ancient stored carbon, turned into CO2 when burned. Wood is a renewable resource, that takes out CO2 when growing- this is then released back into the atmosphere when burned, just as coal does. The point being that, unlike fossil coal, the CO2 is largely removed by the next generation of trees.
Thank you – to be specific, what I am calling a myth is a concatenation of several distinct claims which when taken in total possess no defence in actual scientific evidence anywhere. These are
1) That the climate is changing
2) That it is changing now because of human activity and no longer through the natural forces that have been the reason for about four billion years
3) That this effect is principally the result of human CO2 emissions which are apparently responsible for the rise in atmospheric concentration from 280ppm in 1800 to 410ppm in 2022
4) That this effect is pronounced enough to destabilise the climate and lead to immediate existential risks which at the very least threaten humanity and possibly life itself generally.
5) That the ONLY course of action available to us is to decarbonise urgently even if this causes economic collapse and mass poverty, but for some strange reason this decarbonisation process must not include nuclear power as a large scale replacement for fossil fuel energy.
There is not a scrap of evidence anywhere that supports all these ideas together, and it is this set of ideas that I am calling a myth.
“Not a scrap of evidence anywhere that supports all these ideas together.”
Evidence never supports an entire list of ideas, from the contents of the atmosphere to human political and economic policies, “together’. Even the benefits of nuclear power are a highly contested subject within the ‘Green’ movement.
That’s not how evidence works- it’s how ideology works. You seem rather epistemologically confused.
It’s you that’s confused. The set of ideas I describe above form the basis for the political consensus upon climate change. I suggest you direct your lecture at the people who maintain that consensus, not someone like me who has more sense than to blindly accept it.
Yet you are conflating two different things. The scientific case for AGW is one thing, putative political responses to it is are another. For example, it seems that Putin accepts the scientific consensus, but rejects the political consensus, on the grounds that he believes the putative warming will benefit Russia. He may be right.
I obviously accept that you personally find various or all of the political and economic ‘solutions’ to planetary warming utterly unacceptable- but this has no bearing whatsoever on the veracity of the claims of mainstream science about the effects of carbon dioxide build-up on the planet’s climate. They are two separate things.
Once again it is you that’s confused, because I do understand that there is a political consensus that is different from the scientific consensus. Most of my point here is that the scientific consensus, to the extent that there is any factually supported view shared broadly amongst scientists, emphatically does not support the political consensus.
And that’s leaving aside the fact that science doesn’t even work by consensus anyway.
But anyway, the scientific consensus on climate change broadly does support the view that the climate is changing and that human activity is likely to be a component of it. The consensus does NOT support the view that the change is rapid or dangerous, and it does not support the view that decarbonisation is either necessary or that it is the only or the best course of action.
From where are you finding your ideas about this particular “consensus”? It would be useful to know your sources.
From where are you finding your ideas about this particular “consensus”? It would be useful to know your sources.
“……on the veracity of the claims of mainstream science about the effects of carbon dioxide build-up on the planet’s climate.”
You are told it is mainstream science, but is it, or are claims of support of mainstream science just rhetoric on the part of extremists?
We saw the way that slight of hand changed the claim that 97.5 % of climate scientist believed in made climate change to 97.5% of scientists.
But if you drill down you find that many if not most the scientific papers cited as support for the original claim do not, according to the authors, evidence that climate change is man made.
Some one kindly went to the trouble of emailing them and the responses came back the climate is changing (as it always has done) but my research does not evidence that current changes are the result of human activity.
You then look at the politicians who are pushing this and who are heavily invested in green technology companies whose products they are forcing us to adopt by law
Ethniciodo
You need to go further that that.
Originally two questions were asked of self-identifying “Climate Scientists”
Q1 Has the global temperature increased in the last 150 years?
Q2 Has Mankind contributed to warming?.
Two yesses and you are apparently a believer that 97% of “Scientists” think Mankind (and probably even some Womankind) are absolutely responsible for a “Climate Emergency”.
Work out the logic.
Again, some citations or references for this stuff would be useful- from where are you repeating all this? Without sources or specifics, it’s just internet noise asking for applause in an echo-chamber.
You think
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/09/Warming-consensus-and-it-critics1.pdf
https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/?sh=665a74501157
Do you get ALL of your information on science from free-market lobby groups and financial market newspapers? The article in Forbes is written by a “construction manager”- not exactly an expert in the field is he?
It might, genuinely, be useful to read some actual science sites, just for interest. If I referenced a claim I made about the science to a Greenpeace newsletter or the Guardian, you’d think I was an idiot. but that’s essentially what you’re doing. Seriously, read some actual science by people doing the relevant research, not political blowhards and newspaper hacks.
Mind you, even your Forbes piece claims that around 90-95% of climate scientists agree with strong AGW. Which means you need to explain why you think at least 90% are wrong, in your expert opinion. And the really funny thing is, the usual cliche trotted out by people like the ones on this thread is that ‘science doesn’t work by consensus, and if they agree then it’s either coercion or ‘group-think’.
So if not all climate scientists agree with strong AGW, it should be ignored because there’s ‘disagreement’, but if they do all agree, it should be ignored because it’s fake ‘groupthink’. It’s a very lame bit of double-think.
Do you get ALL of your information on science from free-market lobby groups and financial market newspapers? The article in Forbes is written by a “construction manager”- not exactly an expert in the field is he?
It might, genuinely, be useful to read some actual science sites, just for interest. If I referenced a claim I made about the science to a Greenpeace newsletter or the Guardian, you’d think I was an idiot. but that’s essentially what you’re doing. Seriously, read some actual science by people doing the relevant research, not political blowhards and newspaper hacks.
Mind you, even your Forbes piece claims that around 90-95% of climate scientists agree with strong AGW. Which means you need to explain why you think at least 90% are wrong, in your expert opinion. And the really funny thing is, the usual cliche trotted out by people like the ones on this thread is that ‘science doesn’t work by consensus, and if they agree then it’s either coercion or ‘group-think’.
So if not all climate scientists agree with strong AGW, it should be ignored because there’s ‘disagreement’, but if they do all agree, it should be ignored because it’s fake ‘groupthink’. It’s a very lame bit of double-think.
Again, some citations or references for this stuff would be useful- from where are you repeating all this? Without sources or specifics, it’s just internet noise asking for applause in an echo-chamber.
You think
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/09/Warming-consensus-and-it-critics1.pdf
https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/?sh=665a74501157
As just two examples China and India (44% of manmade CO2) are not going to take part in this Net Zero nonsense, so, if there were any truth in the AGW the only option would be to mitigate and live with it.
The climate alarmists at COP27 said a year ago that it would be too late if not everyone signed up to this lunacy. Well, they didn’t, in a big way.
That’s an ‘interesting’ form of scientific proof;
Concept A (AGW) is proven to be false, by the fact that some political leaders have behaved as if Concept A were unimportant.
For Concept A to be true, all political leaders would behave as if it were so, or, more specifically, behave as if it were both true and they cared strongly about it.
The inevitable follow-up piece of logic is, of course: If political leaders all DID act as if Concept A were both true and important, you and everyone on this site would rant furiously about an evil global conspiracy by the Socialist Elite- or something.
As an exercise in either logic or the scientific method, that does leave something to be desired.
That’s an ‘interesting’ form of scientific proof;
Concept A (AGW) is proven to be false, by the fact that some political leaders have behaved as if Concept A were unimportant.
For Concept A to be true, all political leaders would behave as if it were so, or, more specifically, behave as if it were both true and they cared strongly about it.
The inevitable follow-up piece of logic is, of course: If political leaders all DID act as if Concept A were both true and important, you and everyone on this site would rant furiously about an evil global conspiracy by the Socialist Elite- or something.
As an exercise in either logic or the scientific method, that does leave something to be desired.
Right.
Can you give any sources or references for these claims? I mean, you sending a few emails doesn’t really constitute much more than a personal hobby, does it? Even if it does coincidentally bolster your political beliefs.
Something more comprehensive, and even some kind of scientific methodology really would be useful. In the meantime, I’ll stick to the published statements of scientific institutes, and individual scientists themselves.
Thanks. By the way, what if a politician has invested in fossil fuel? Why, I wonder, have you ‘realised’ (i.e., invented the idea) that all politicians have simultaneously decided to invest in wind farms, and not in oil, or coal, or gas? Any serious idea, or is this just story time?
Wind turbines are a major ecological farce. They can’t exist without fossil fuels at every step of their construction & maintenance, and they depend on fossil fuels for backup, typically fracked gas.
They ruin vast swaths of land and ocean that used to look natural, and kill birds and bats in growing numbers. Look into their future scale and you may be shocked, e.g. a 2050 map of the U.S. from the Net-Zero America project (Princeton/Andlinger). No sincere environmentalist should want that much acreage developed, but it’s well underway, branded as “clean energy.”
See Kingsnorth’s 2009 article “A windfarm is not the answer.” People should stop casually using rows of wind turbines as mascots for all things green and progressive. Debunking that ruse will advance actual climate/energy solutions, namely small-footprint nuclear SMR and other designs.
Wind turbines are a major ecological farce. They can’t exist without fossil fuels at every step of their construction & maintenance, and they depend on fossil fuels for backup, typically fracked gas.
They ruin vast swaths of land and ocean that used to look natural, and kill birds and bats in growing numbers. Look into their future scale and you may be shocked, e.g. a 2050 map of the U.S. from the Net-Zero America project (Princeton/Andlinger). No sincere environmentalist should want that much acreage developed, but it’s well underway, branded as “clean energy.”
See Kingsnorth’s 2009 article “A windfarm is not the answer.” People should stop casually using rows of wind turbines as mascots for all things green and progressive. Debunking that ruse will advance actual climate/energy solutions, namely small-footprint nuclear SMR and other designs.
Do you understand that without CO2 the Earth would be mostly frozen? It’s the most stable greenhouse gas (water washes in and out) and its triatomic molecular structure makes it trap heat. One needn’t to be a leftist to see that the species burning fossil fuels is releasing ancient stored carbon in far greater volumes than modern contributions from volcanoes, etc. This is only controversial because people’s comforts and gravy trains are being questioned.
Dismissive claims like yours always center around a certain group of people wanting to “control” others, when the real issue is mindless gas molecules that only obey the laws of physics. There was no real debate on AGW for decades after its fundamentals were discovered in the 1800s.
Today’s arguments are just another example of waffling until the last minute to fix man-made problems. It’s not even as political as it seems, since plenty of “Greens” live upscale lifestyles. They just virtue signal a bit more, like trashing the countryside with wind turbines and checking a “clean energy” option on their power bills while oil continues to build the whole mess.
Ethniciodo
You need to go further that that.
Originally two questions were asked of self-identifying “Climate Scientists”
Q1 Has the global temperature increased in the last 150 years?
Q2 Has Mankind contributed to warming?.
Two yesses and you are apparently a believer that 97% of “Scientists” think Mankind (and probably even some Womankind) are absolutely responsible for a “Climate Emergency”.
Work out the logic.
As just two examples China and India (44% of manmade CO2) are not going to take part in this Net Zero nonsense, so, if there were any truth in the AGW the only option would be to mitigate and live with it.
The climate alarmists at COP27 said a year ago that it would be too late if not everyone signed up to this lunacy. Well, they didn’t, in a big way.
Right.
Can you give any sources or references for these claims? I mean, you sending a few emails doesn’t really constitute much more than a personal hobby, does it? Even if it does coincidentally bolster your political beliefs.
Something more comprehensive, and even some kind of scientific methodology really would be useful. In the meantime, I’ll stick to the published statements of scientific institutes, and individual scientists themselves.
Thanks. By the way, what if a politician has invested in fossil fuel? Why, I wonder, have you ‘realised’ (i.e., invented the idea) that all politicians have simultaneously decided to invest in wind farms, and not in oil, or coal, or gas? Any serious idea, or is this just story time?
Do you understand that without CO2 the Earth would be mostly frozen? It’s the most stable greenhouse gas (water washes in and out) and its triatomic molecular structure makes it trap heat. One needn’t to be a leftist to see that the species burning fossil fuels is releasing ancient stored carbon in far greater volumes than modern contributions from volcanoes, etc. This is only controversial because people’s comforts and gravy trains are being questioned.
Dismissive claims like yours always center around a certain group of people wanting to “control” others, when the real issue is mindless gas molecules that only obey the laws of physics. There was no real debate on AGW for decades after its fundamentals were discovered in the 1800s.
Today’s arguments are just another example of waffling until the last minute to fix man-made problems. It’s not even as political as it seems, since plenty of “Greens” live upscale lifestyles. They just virtue signal a bit more, like trashing the countryside with wind turbines and checking a “clean energy” option on their power bills while oil continues to build the whole mess.
Once again it is you that’s confused, because I do understand that there is a political consensus that is different from the scientific consensus. Most of my point here is that the scientific consensus, to the extent that there is any factually supported view shared broadly amongst scientists, emphatically does not support the political consensus.
And that’s leaving aside the fact that science doesn’t even work by consensus anyway.
But anyway, the scientific consensus on climate change broadly does support the view that the climate is changing and that human activity is likely to be a component of it. The consensus does NOT support the view that the change is rapid or dangerous, and it does not support the view that decarbonisation is either necessary or that it is the only or the best course of action.
“……on the veracity of the claims of mainstream science about the effects of carbon dioxide build-up on the planet’s climate.”
You are told it is mainstream science, but is it, or are claims of support of mainstream science just rhetoric on the part of extremists?
We saw the way that slight of hand changed the claim that 97.5 % of climate scientist believed in made climate change to 97.5% of scientists.
But if you drill down you find that many if not most the scientific papers cited as support for the original claim do not, according to the authors, evidence that climate change is man made.
Some one kindly went to the trouble of emailing them and the responses came back the climate is changing (as it always has done) but my research does not evidence that current changes are the result of human activity.
You then look at the politicians who are pushing this and who are heavily invested in green technology companies whose products they are forcing us to adopt by law
Do you have any idea of why CO2 is the primary heat-trapping gas (hint: triatomic vibrations) and have you ever bothered to study the topic beyond canned right-wing dismissals?
That said, Mr. Kingsnorth has made some wise commentary over the years about industrial wind power, the biggest invasion of nature to ever be cloaked in the word “green.”
AGW is clearly real (west cost U.S. fire witness here) but how various people react to it can still be criticized.
The problem with many quasi-conservatives is they’re so fixated on dissing radical leftists that they ignore warnings about AGW, going back to the 1800s. There was never a real debate until AGW action was finally needed, and people started protecting their gravy trains.
Yet you are conflating two different things. The scientific case for AGW is one thing, putative political responses to it is are another. For example, it seems that Putin accepts the scientific consensus, but rejects the political consensus, on the grounds that he believes the putative warming will benefit Russia. He may be right.
I obviously accept that you personally find various or all of the political and economic ‘solutions’ to planetary warming utterly unacceptable- but this has no bearing whatsoever on the veracity of the claims of mainstream science about the effects of carbon dioxide build-up on the planet’s climate. They are two separate things.
Do you have any idea of why CO2 is the primary heat-trapping gas (hint: triatomic vibrations) and have you ever bothered to study the topic beyond canned right-wing dismissals?
That said, Mr. Kingsnorth has made some wise commentary over the years about industrial wind power, the biggest invasion of nature to ever be cloaked in the word “green.”
AGW is clearly real (west cost U.S. fire witness here) but how various people react to it can still be criticized.
The problem with many quasi-conservatives is they’re so fixated on dissing radical leftists that they ignore warnings about AGW, going back to the 1800s. There was never a real debate until AGW action was finally needed, and people started protecting their gravy trains.
The burden of proof lies with the people imposing radical change. They simply have not met it.
They’ve “not met it” in the opinions of people who don’t want to give up too many luxuries. Most of those opinions are coming from the same types who treat oil as limitless via “new drilling methods” and ignore the fact that Earth is finite.
This is basic math and needn’t echo radical activists who shut down bridges and cause people to waste even more oil idling.
They’ve “not met it” in the opinions of people who don’t want to give up too many luxuries. Most of those opinions are coming from the same types who treat oil as limitless via “new drilling methods” and ignore the fact that Earth is finite.
This is basic math and needn’t echo radical activists who shut down bridges and cause people to waste even more oil idling.
Who cares about what weird things go on “within the ‘Green’ movement”?
The only point of the “Green movement” is as a sure indicator for what you should never do on any account.
Some nice but seriously misguided people.
The ‘hard’ GandGreens are very nasty people indeed.
The author of this article itself is (or until very recently, was) a “hard” (i.e., ‘Deep’) Green. You might want to take this up with him, rather than me.
It’s interesting that you don’t question his deeply reactionary, anti-technological ideas. .
The author of this article itself is (or until very recently, was) a “hard” (i.e., ‘Deep’) Green. You might want to take this up with him, rather than me.
It’s interesting that you don’t question his deeply reactionary, anti-technological ideas. .
It’s you that’s confused. The set of ideas I describe above form the basis for the political consensus upon climate change. I suggest you direct your lecture at the people who maintain that consensus, not someone like me who has more sense than to blindly accept it.
The burden of proof lies with the people imposing radical change. They simply have not met it.
Who cares about what weird things go on “within the ‘Green’ movement”?
The only point of the “Green movement” is as a sure indicator for what you should never do on any account.
Some nice but seriously misguided people.
The ‘hard’ GandGreens are very nasty people indeed.
By the way, no serious scientist has claimed, to my knowledge, that the ‘natural’ drivers of climate change no longer operate, alongside the human-created driver of CO2 and other greenhouse gas build-up.
I’m not sure where you got that idea from, but if you’re talking about ‘myths’, that’s certainly one.
Best mug up on what the IPCC’s “Summary for Policy Makers” claims.
A political document with a nice fig-leaf composed of activist “scientists” who find analysing actual measured data much to challenging and concentrate on computer generated prognoses generated by multiplying wild assed guesses together and tweaking the results to attempt to match past data which they have adjusted, ‘homogenised’ and tortured on an industrial scale.
Why do you think that ‘record’, ‘unprecedented’ temperatures are usually measured next to concrete or tarmac airfield runways’?
Why do you imagine that temperatures measured 50 years ago were mistakenly written down a degree or two higher than today’s geniuses predict they should have been and duly reduces.
I suggest you do your homework now, rather than carrying on quoting ridiculae from the likes of that great ‘scientist’ Justin Rowlatt on the BBC.
If by “homework”, you mean spending rather too long on paranoid and scientifically-illiterate internet blogs, swallowing a standard screed of half-baked ‘memes’, can I please do something less pointless?
I mean really- “Why do you think that ‘record’ and ‘unprecedented’ temperatures are usually measured next to concrete or tarmac airfield runways” isn’t actually a serious question, is it- any more than asking ‘why do you think Nigel Lawson eats babies out the back of a New York pizzaria’ is a serious question. It’s a daft, entirely unsubstantiated, evidenceless assertion regurgitated unquestioningly from a political blog, pretending to be a question- like all of your other assertions here.
If by “homework”, you mean spending rather too long on paranoid and scientifically-illiterate internet blogs, swallowing a standard screed of half-baked ‘memes’, can I please do something less pointless?
I mean really- “Why do you think that ‘record’ and ‘unprecedented’ temperatures are usually measured next to concrete or tarmac airfield runways” isn’t actually a serious question, is it- any more than asking ‘why do you think Nigel Lawson eats babies out the back of a New York pizzaria’ is a serious question. It’s a daft, entirely unsubstantiated, evidenceless assertion regurgitated unquestioningly from a political blog, pretending to be a question- like all of your other assertions here.
People who think Man can’t simply be exacerbating the natural (base) greenhouse effect are a puzzling lot. When you explain to them that most of Earth would be frozen without CO2, they tend to clam up about CO2 being a mere “trace gas.” That is, if they don’t duck out of the whole conversation at that point, or rehash their old talking points.
We really have a simultaneous crisis of AGW plus reactionary, anti-environmental “solutions” like covering the last remnants of open space in ugly wind turbines, built and backed up by the same fossil fuels naïve Greens assume they can replace. People have formed tribes and dug into shallow positions, not realizing that both sides have glaring deficiencies.
Even Paul Kingsnorth’s piece on firewood is detached from the amount of logging it requires unless purely random people burn it. Biofuels are the dirty secret majority of “renewable” energy.
Best mug up on what the IPCC’s “Summary for Policy Makers” claims.
A political document with a nice fig-leaf composed of activist “scientists” who find analysing actual measured data much to challenging and concentrate on computer generated prognoses generated by multiplying wild assed guesses together and tweaking the results to attempt to match past data which they have adjusted, ‘homogenised’ and tortured on an industrial scale.
Why do you think that ‘record’, ‘unprecedented’ temperatures are usually measured next to concrete or tarmac airfield runways’?
Why do you imagine that temperatures measured 50 years ago were mistakenly written down a degree or two higher than today’s geniuses predict they should have been and duly reduces.
I suggest you do your homework now, rather than carrying on quoting ridiculae from the likes of that great ‘scientist’ Justin Rowlatt on the BBC.
People who think Man can’t simply be exacerbating the natural (base) greenhouse effect are a puzzling lot. When you explain to them that most of Earth would be frozen without CO2, they tend to clam up about CO2 being a mere “trace gas.” That is, if they don’t duck out of the whole conversation at that point, or rehash their old talking points.
We really have a simultaneous crisis of AGW plus reactionary, anti-environmental “solutions” like covering the last remnants of open space in ugly wind turbines, built and backed up by the same fossil fuels naïve Greens assume they can replace. People have formed tribes and dug into shallow positions, not realizing that both sides have glaring deficiencies.
Even Paul Kingsnorth’s piece on firewood is detached from the amount of logging it requires unless purely random people burn it. Biofuels are the dirty secret majority of “renewable” energy.
Point 5) is key – that we aren’t preparing nuclear power.
6) Fossil fuels are essential for fertilisers and much else beyond power
I understand your perspective.
Two points for consideration:
Human population – In November it became official: the global population now exceeds 8 billion! And yet, the overall thrust of Woking Class official pronouncements and reportage was to celebrate this fact! From the end of WW2 to today the total human population has grown by 5-6 billion. That is an appalling statistic, but it explains why there is so much environmental damage in the world. Yet, little or no effort is made to control human fertility and birthrates, especially in Africa which is completely out of control and where the big growth will occur in the decades ahead. Control and limit human population and the environmental problems will reduce. For example, feeling, heating, colling, etc. 5 billion people will have far less impact on the environment than 8-12 billion people! But our world leaders are ignoring the problem.Environmental socialism – the overall thrust of environmental politics is not to save the environment as such, but to transfer wealth from the developed (rich) nations to the developing (poor) nations. This political imperative is driven by Marxist dogma; the struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. Just consider the recent establishment from COP27, under the auspices of the United Nations, the much-trumpeted “Loss and Damage” Fund for Vulnerable Countries. All this will achieve is the transfer wealth to poor nations and probably the swelling of already-bulging private banks accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.
‘Climate change’ has become a gigantic global industry. Whole scientific careers are predicated and played out in this context, and depend upon funding from the political elites to pursue their research. But ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’; and dissenting scientific voices are hardly ever heard, or are discredited and dismissed by the media owned and influenced by the same political class. Anyone who disagrees with the accepted orthodoxy is vilified as a ‘climate change denier’ rather than being listened to and taken seriously.
That is our modern era!
Thank you for your thoughtful, knowledgeable and original contribution.
Except, of course, that no-one has a ‘right’ for their opinions on any articular subject to be “taken seriously”- this is a tenet of ‘woke’ ideology that you seem to have swallowed wholesale.
A person’s views on a complex, specialist subject like science only have the right to be “taken seriously” if they are actually serious; if the person holding forth has sufficient understanding and knowledge of the subject to have earned a hearing. “Taking seriously” the half-baked rantings of every ill-educated internet warrior on complex scientific issues is the fast-track to a relativist idiocracy.
Thank you for your thoughtful, knowledgeable and original contribution.
Except, of course, that no-one has a ‘right’ for their opinions on any articular subject to be “taken seriously”- this is a tenet of ‘woke’ ideology that you seem to have swallowed wholesale.
A person’s views on a complex, specialist subject like science only have the right to be “taken seriously” if they are actually serious; if the person holding forth has sufficient understanding and knowledge of the subject to have earned a hearing. “Taking seriously” the half-baked rantings of every ill-educated internet warrior on complex scientific issues is the fast-track to a relativist idiocracy.
You’re piling a ton of assumptions on the notion that your first 3 points are more than just your unscientific opinion! That’s not how critical thinking works.
There’s also a huge difference between certain reactions to climate change and whether it’s a problem at all. It would be convenient to pretend AGW is just a leftist cause, but CO2 doesn’t care about Man’s fate.
“Not a scrap of evidence anywhere that supports all these ideas together.”
Evidence never supports an entire list of ideas, from the contents of the atmosphere to human political and economic policies, “together’. Even the benefits of nuclear power are a highly contested subject within the ‘Green’ movement.
That’s not how evidence works- it’s how ideology works. You seem rather epistemologically confused.
By the way, no serious scientist has claimed, to my knowledge, that the ‘natural’ drivers of climate change no longer operate, alongside the human-created driver of CO2 and other greenhouse gas build-up.
I’m not sure where you got that idea from, but if you’re talking about ‘myths’, that’s certainly one.
Point 5) is key – that we aren’t preparing nuclear power.
6) Fossil fuels are essential for fertilisers and much else beyond power
I understand your perspective.
Two points for consideration:
Human population – In November it became official: the global population now exceeds 8 billion! And yet, the overall thrust of Woking Class official pronouncements and reportage was to celebrate this fact! From the end of WW2 to today the total human population has grown by 5-6 billion. That is an appalling statistic, but it explains why there is so much environmental damage in the world. Yet, little or no effort is made to control human fertility and birthrates, especially in Africa which is completely out of control and where the big growth will occur in the decades ahead. Control and limit human population and the environmental problems will reduce. For example, feeling, heating, colling, etc. 5 billion people will have far less impact on the environment than 8-12 billion people! But our world leaders are ignoring the problem.Environmental socialism – the overall thrust of environmental politics is not to save the environment as such, but to transfer wealth from the developed (rich) nations to the developing (poor) nations. This political imperative is driven by Marxist dogma; the struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. Just consider the recent establishment from COP27, under the auspices of the United Nations, the much-trumpeted “Loss and Damage” Fund for Vulnerable Countries. All this will achieve is the transfer wealth to poor nations and probably the swelling of already-bulging private banks accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.
‘Climate change’ has become a gigantic global industry. Whole scientific careers are predicated and played out in this context, and depend upon funding from the political elites to pursue their research. But ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’; and dissenting scientific voices are hardly ever heard, or are discredited and dismissed by the media owned and influenced by the same political class. Anyone who disagrees with the accepted orthodoxy is vilified as a ‘climate change denier’ rather than being listened to and taken seriously.
That is our modern era!
You’re piling a ton of assumptions on the notion that your first 3 points are more than just your unscientific opinion! That’s not how critical thinking works.
There’s also a huge difference between certain reactions to climate change and whether it’s a problem at all. It would be convenient to pretend AGW is just a leftist cause, but CO2 doesn’t care about Man’s fate.
“Completely debunked” by whom?
Please give some scientific references to your sweeping claim. And I mean scientific, not an ideological lobby group run by a politician.
I recommended that you do your homework and look at some of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s publications. [thegwpf.org].
Yes they may have a politician as a President, Nigel Lawson, who was almost certainly the best Energy Minister in the last 50 years (OK, not much of a recommendation when you consider the other no-hopers).
But they have 24 Professors of Climate related subjects amongst their Trustees and Academic Advisory Panel.
Truth isn’t necessarily the preserve of large numbers of Scientists, of course. And Einstein’s retort with regard to his theory, when he heard that a book titled “100 Authors against Einstein” was published in Germany, was to point out that “If I were wrong, it would only take one.”
But I don’t think you can just wave away the GWPF as an an “ideological lobby group”.
Certainly an improvement on the Grauniad, anyway. As paid for by Soros and Gates.
If it’s alright with you, I’ll do my science “homework” from science sources, not political lobby sites. I wouldn’t seek out the Guardian’s view on science, either- why would I?
As for the old internet ‘Einstein’ cliche,
A. much of the opposition to his theory at the time was ideological and even anti-Semitic, from non-or-anti-scientific ideological sources, and
B. most of the scientific community fairly quickly realised the usefulness of Relativity as a theory to explain various problematic issues, as science generally does. Most outliers in science remain outliers, and are forgotten for good reason. If you support the ‘one’ against the ‘many’, you need bloody good scientific reasons for doing so- simply repeating that cliche isn’t one of them.
Why would anyone with an interest in a scientific issue seek their information from non-science sites, rather than the vast online resources of genuine scientific bodies and scientists? I mean, what made you decide to dismiss every science institute in the world and go with the one (political) source that fits your ideological ideas? That’s a genuine question…
If it’s alright with you, I’ll do my science “homework” from science sources, not political lobby sites. I wouldn’t seek out the Guardian’s view on science, either- why would I?
As for the old internet ‘Einstein’ cliche,
A. much of the opposition to his theory at the time was ideological and even anti-Semitic, from non-or-anti-scientific ideological sources, and
B. most of the scientific community fairly quickly realised the usefulness of Relativity as a theory to explain various problematic issues, as science generally does. Most outliers in science remain outliers, and are forgotten for good reason. If you support the ‘one’ against the ‘many’, you need bloody good scientific reasons for doing so- simply repeating that cliche isn’t one of them.
Why would anyone with an interest in a scientific issue seek their information from non-science sites, rather than the vast online resources of genuine scientific bodies and scientists? I mean, what made you decide to dismiss every science institute in the world and go with the one (political) source that fits your ideological ideas? That’s a genuine question…
I recommended that you do your homework and look at some of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s publications. [thegwpf.org].
Yes they may have a politician as a President, Nigel Lawson, who was almost certainly the best Energy Minister in the last 50 years (OK, not much of a recommendation when you consider the other no-hopers).
But they have 24 Professors of Climate related subjects amongst their Trustees and Academic Advisory Panel.
Truth isn’t necessarily the preserve of large numbers of Scientists, of course. And Einstein’s retort with regard to his theory, when he heard that a book titled “100 Authors against Einstein” was published in Germany, was to point out that “If I were wrong, it would only take one.”
But I don’t think you can just wave away the GWPF as an an “ideological lobby group”.
Certainly an improvement on the Grauniad, anyway. As paid for by Soros and Gates.
By the way, I like the claim that something is both “trivial” AND “entirely beneficial”.
I’m not sure how this is meaningfully possible, but it certainly covers all bases, which is undoubtedly how the scientific method operates.
Well the alleged trivial 1.1ºC warming since the end of the Little Ice Age (~170 years) is entirely beneficial. Even in India, far more people die of cold than heat.
And the extra CO2 has ‘Greened’ the planet by an area twice the size of Australia. (Check with NASA).
So now you claim it’s NOT trivial at all, but hugely significant?
Just trying to get you to make your mind up….
So now you claim it’s NOT trivial at all, but hugely significant?
Just trying to get you to make your mind up….
Well the alleged trivial 1.1ºC warming since the end of the Little Ice Age (~170 years) is entirely beneficial. Even in India, far more people die of cold than heat.
And the extra CO2 has ‘Greened’ the planet by an area twice the size of Australia. (Check with NASA).
And, for the avoidance of doubt, I will continue to burn well seasoned logs in my woodburner, until Drax has been strictly prohibited from burning American wood pellets from clear cut forests (all prepared, processed and transported using “fossil fuels”) and once the perpetrators and the politicians who are paying them almost a Billion of taxpayers’ money per year for this blatant scam, producing twice as much CO2 as burning Yorkshire coal, are all serving long prison sentences for their cynical, corrupt, incompetence.
Thank you – to be specific, what I am calling a myth is a concatenation of several distinct claims which when taken in total possess no defence in actual scientific evidence anywhere. These are
1) That the climate is changing
2) That it is changing now because of human activity and no longer through the natural forces that have been the reason for about four billion years
3) That this effect is principally the result of human CO2 emissions which are apparently responsible for the rise in atmospheric concentration from 280ppm in 1800 to 410ppm in 2022
4) That this effect is pronounced enough to destabilise the climate and lead to immediate existential risks which at the very least threaten humanity and possibly life itself generally.
5) That the ONLY course of action available to us is to decarbonise urgently even if this causes economic collapse and mass poverty, but for some strange reason this decarbonisation process must not include nuclear power as a large scale replacement for fossil fuel energy.
There is not a scrap of evidence anywhere that supports all these ideas together, and it is this set of ideas that I am calling a myth.
“Completely debunked” by whom?
Please give some scientific references to your sweeping claim. And I mean scientific, not an ideological lobby group run by a politician.
By the way, I like the claim that something is both “trivial” AND “entirely beneficial”.
I’m not sure how this is meaningfully possible, but it certainly covers all bases, which is undoubtedly how the scientific method operates.
You appear to have missed out the word emergency in your response. Climate change is real, however Climate Change Emergency is the myth.
Actually, there is nothing that requires me to prove this claim in the context of the specific point I am making. I made the remark about the climate change myth as an aside that adds a further dimension of absurdity to the position taken by climate politics. But if let’s say for the sake of argument that I accepted that climate change is real, presents near-term dangers, and requires an emergency response from humanity, my central point still stands that the climate establishment is a failed agenda because it refuses to offer alternatives to mass-poverty as a solution despite the fact that it is emphatically not necessary and that there are readily available technological solutions that preserve rising prosperity and permit humans to live in balance with the natural world.
On your second point, since I am not required to agree with the article, it’s irrelevant. Nor do I need to defend the notion of any consumerist article of faith, since this is a red herring introduced by yourself: material wealth proves its own point of existence by simply being useful to humans. If there are some of us that prefer an ascetic existence than that is for them to decide for themselves only and for nobody else.
If I claim something is a “myth”, then it’s entirely reasonable that I should be able explain the objective (in this case, scientific) reasons for my claim.
What the solutions might or might not be to AGW is an entirely separate issue to the issue of its empirical truth. If you want to be spoonfed instant ‘solutions’ to the entire problem by this imagined omniscient and all-encompassing notion of “the climate establishment”, whatever you imagine that might be, you will, of course, be disappointed.
No – wrong. The burden of proof lies with those who claim that dangerous AGW is real, dangerous and requires immediate decarbonisation. There is no proof for this, and it is not up to me to prove the negative in question.
Of course there is no absolute proof for this, partly because you are conflating several different things to simultaneously ‘prove’, and partly because the concept of proof is largely confined to maths anyway.
The sciences of climate, the atmosphere and the workings of the planetary systems generally are largely about probability, not proof. It is ‘proven’, as nearly as anything is proven in chemistry, that carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse’ gas, i.e., it has the property of inhibiting the dissemination of heat in proportion to its presence in the atmospheric mix of gases. This has been known for well over a century. Eighty years of research has convinced most scientists that this will very likely have serious effects on the planet’s temperature, which in turn will very likely have all manner of further repercussions.
The question an intelligent person needs to ask is not ‘is this absolutely proven, if not, it must be ignored’, but ‘what is the probability that this will be a problem, and how much do we need to mitigate it’. Just as a reasonable response to a mechanic telling you that your brakes ‘might’ fail because of a fault would surely NOT be ‘either you give me absolute proof that my brakes will fail tomorrow, or I’ll ignore you’.
By the way, in what form would this”proof” be acceptable to you, personally?
A full scientific paper is the very least that would be needed- more likely a series given the complexity and breadth of the subject- with the relevant advanced chemistry and physics, complex statistical analysis, probability theory and much else beside. You will, I’m sure, be able to judge the veracity of all this, given your knowledge of the subject, but many less scientifically-minded people might find it a bit difficult to come to a definitive conclusion about it. So it might not actually be the final arbiter you want, even if such a thing as ‘absolute proof’ was a coherent concept in the context.
By the way, in what form would this”proof” be acceptable to you, personally?
A full scientific paper is the very least that would be needed- more likely a series given the complexity and breadth of the subject- with the relevant advanced chemistry and physics, complex statistical analysis, probability theory and much else beside. You will, I’m sure, be able to judge the veracity of all this, given your knowledge of the subject, but many less scientifically-minded people might find it a bit difficult to come to a definitive conclusion about it. So it might not actually be the final arbiter you want, even if such a thing as ‘absolute proof’ was a coherent concept in the context.
Well said. If it were possible to ignore all the climate alarmist propaganda we have been subjected to over the last 20 years, an averagely intelligent man would think it absurd that a trace gas such as CO2 ( four hundredths of one percent of the atmosphere) controls our climate. It is up to proponents of this silly theory to provide evidence. So far they have failed to do this. It is looking more and more like a complete scam.
Since when did an “averagely intelligent man”, with no particular scientific knowledge, form the basis of judgements of the veracity of scientific theories?
An “averagely intelligent man” would have thought Einstein’s Theory of Relativity “absurd” in the 1920’s, and most still would, if they ever bothered reading about it; an “averagely intelligent man” doesn’t have the slightest grasp of nuclear fission- so what? Is this the level of all human knowledge, now? Popular vote?
Votes are for politics, not science.
Since when did an “averagely intelligent man”, with no particular scientific knowledge, form the basis of judgements of the veracity of scientific theories?
An “averagely intelligent man” would have thought Einstein’s Theory of Relativity “absurd” in the 1920’s, and most still would, if they ever bothered reading about it; an “averagely intelligent man” doesn’t have the slightest grasp of nuclear fission- so what? Is this the level of all human knowledge, now? Popular vote?
Votes are for politics, not science.
Of course there is no absolute proof for this, partly because you are conflating several different things to simultaneously ‘prove’, and partly because the concept of proof is largely confined to maths anyway.
The sciences of climate, the atmosphere and the workings of the planetary systems generally are largely about probability, not proof. It is ‘proven’, as nearly as anything is proven in chemistry, that carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse’ gas, i.e., it has the property of inhibiting the dissemination of heat in proportion to its presence in the atmospheric mix of gases. This has been known for well over a century. Eighty years of research has convinced most scientists that this will very likely have serious effects on the planet’s temperature, which in turn will very likely have all manner of further repercussions.
The question an intelligent person needs to ask is not ‘is this absolutely proven, if not, it must be ignored’, but ‘what is the probability that this will be a problem, and how much do we need to mitigate it’. Just as a reasonable response to a mechanic telling you that your brakes ‘might’ fail because of a fault would surely NOT be ‘either you give me absolute proof that my brakes will fail tomorrow, or I’ll ignore you’.
Well said. If it were possible to ignore all the climate alarmist propaganda we have been subjected to over the last 20 years, an averagely intelligent man would think it absurd that a trace gas such as CO2 ( four hundredths of one percent of the atmosphere) controls our climate. It is up to proponents of this silly theory to provide evidence. So far they have failed to do this. It is looking more and more like a complete scam.
You will definitely be bitterly disappointed with anything emanating from the “climate establishment” and have been ever since that addled egg cracked open.
Not at all sure what that means, but yes, absolutely. That pesky “climate establishment”…
Not at all sure what that means, but yes, absolutely. That pesky “climate establishment”…
No – wrong. The burden of proof lies with those who claim that dangerous AGW is real, dangerous and requires immediate decarbonisation. There is no proof for this, and it is not up to me to prove the negative in question.
You will definitely be bitterly disappointed with anything emanating from the “climate establishment” and have been ever since that addled egg cracked open.
If I claim something is a “myth”, then it’s entirely reasonable that I should be able explain the objective (in this case, scientific) reasons for my claim.
What the solutions might or might not be to AGW is an entirely separate issue to the issue of its empirical truth. If you want to be spoonfed instant ‘solutions’ to the entire problem by this imagined omniscient and all-encompassing notion of “the climate establishment”, whatever you imagine that might be, you will, of course, be disappointed.
Not looking too warm in North America just now.
Well done. Ain’t science great!
Well done. Ain’t science great!
You don’t even have to challenge the consensus science. A good example is ‘extreme weather.’ The most recent IPCC report states that they don’t attribute extreme weather events to climate change. The IPCC reports are the consensus science. Yet we are told by politicians, government agencies and the mainstream media that every extreme weather event is due to global warming. That is literally misinformation – propaganda.
The IPCC report says that you cannot attribute any specific single weather event to climate change. That’s not the same thing.
Of course one cannot do this- climate is not weather, and no competent scientist would say that one specific event can be definitively attributed to an overall trend. What this trend DOES do is make such events more likely- it is, as usual with any system as complex as the weather, down to changes in probability. Just as normal daily weather forecasts are not ‘predictions’, but estimates of probability.
Yet the BBC with the aid of its weather forecasters always attribute single weather events to climate change. Floods in Pakistan, climate change. Fires in Australia, climate change. 40C in the UK, climate change and so on.
If they make a simple attribution (I have yet to hear them do this, Ive always heard probabilities being spoken of), then sure, they are being hugely simplistic.
If they make a simple attribution (I have yet to hear them do this, Ive always heard probabilities being spoken of), then sure, they are being hugely simplistic.
Yet the BBC with the aid of its weather forecasters always attribute single weather events to climate change. Floods in Pakistan, climate change. Fires in Australia, climate change. 40C in the UK, climate change and so on.
The IPCC report says that you cannot attribute any specific single weather event to climate change. That’s not the same thing.
Of course one cannot do this- climate is not weather, and no competent scientist would say that one specific event can be definitively attributed to an overall trend. What this trend DOES do is make such events more likely- it is, as usual with any system as complex as the weather, down to changes in probability. Just as normal daily weather forecasts are not ‘predictions’, but estimates of probability.
Climate change is, of course, very far from a myth. The climate has always ‘changed’ and always will. The ‘myth’ that John Riordan refers to is the completely debunked lie that the driver of warming since the 1980s suddenly became ‘anthropogenic’ – having previously been natural since the end of the Little Ice Age which ended in the C.19th.
Man’s contribution to this ‘warming’ by ‘burning things’ is trivial and entirely beneficial.
If you doubt this, then you have a lot of homework to catch up on. Try visiting the Global Warming Policy Foundation site for a start.
You appear to have missed out the word emergency in your response. Climate change is real, however Climate Change Emergency is the myth.
Actually, there is nothing that requires me to prove this claim in the context of the specific point I am making. I made the remark about the climate change myth as an aside that adds a further dimension of absurdity to the position taken by climate politics. But if let’s say for the sake of argument that I accepted that climate change is real, presents near-term dangers, and requires an emergency response from humanity, my central point still stands that the climate establishment is a failed agenda because it refuses to offer alternatives to mass-poverty as a solution despite the fact that it is emphatically not necessary and that there are readily available technological solutions that preserve rising prosperity and permit humans to live in balance with the natural world.
On your second point, since I am not required to agree with the article, it’s irrelevant. Nor do I need to defend the notion of any consumerist article of faith, since this is a red herring introduced by yourself: material wealth proves its own point of existence by simply being useful to humans. If there are some of us that prefer an ascetic existence than that is for them to decide for themselves only and for nobody else.
Not looking too warm in North America just now.
You don’t even have to challenge the consensus science. A good example is ‘extreme weather.’ The most recent IPCC report states that they don’t attribute extreme weather events to climate change. The IPCC reports are the consensus science. Yet we are told by politicians, government agencies and the mainstream media that every extreme weather event is due to global warming. That is literally misinformation – propaganda.
A case in point – the Canadian government is proposing extreme electric battery car mandates. I have nothing against the technology- they may make sense in the city. I may even get one as a second car for my family. But electric batteries simply don’t work very well in the cold. Much of Canada is very very cold in winter – think -30 for weeks on end. Much of Canada remains rural as well. So you may need to travel 50 km to the nearest town centre to get groceries. And of course these vehicles are very expensive. To force this technology on people simply makes no sense at all. Yet they still want to do it. Why? None of it makes sense unless you start to entertain hidden agendas.
Firstly, it would help if you provided some meaningful scientific evidence that the “climate change myth” is indeed a myth. If you’re going to dismiss the scientific ‘establishment’, as the new populist terminology has i- as bunk, something more cogent than mere bald assertion would be useful.
Secondly, you are radically opposing the article’s arguments with your promotion of endlessly higher “living standards” (a consumerist article of faith) and the “personal choice”, also a pseudo-religious tenet of the cult of the globalised individual consumer. It would be more interesting if you engaged with that fundamental difference of view, rather than merely finding what you want to find in it and ignoring the meat.
A case in point – the Canadian government is proposing extreme electric battery car mandates. I have nothing against the technology- they may make sense in the city. I may even get one as a second car for my family. But electric batteries simply don’t work very well in the cold. Much of Canada is very very cold in winter – think -30 for weeks on end. Much of Canada remains rural as well. So you may need to travel 50 km to the nearest town centre to get groceries. And of course these vehicles are very expensive. To force this technology on people simply makes no sense at all. Yet they still want to do it. Why? None of it makes sense unless you start to entertain hidden agendas.
I think you would find that the author would have a profound disagreement with your notion of “progress”.
”These are the same self-important individuals who travel to Davos”
I am afraid you totally misunderstand the Davos group. Yes, Green energy is the tool of their global conquest – by undermining how the globe handles energy they take control of every economy, and also every individual. Consumption of energy has always been directly, and lineally, aligned with GDP and wealth. By altering this they can break societies to their will; destroy pensions, savings, economies. Watch the World Economic Forum – ‘The Great Reset’ is entirely based on energy reduction and redistribution. King Charles gave some of the WEF’s main speeches, and is aligned with them – please check youtube to verify all I say, it is all there right from WEF themselves.
Anyway, the Davos group is not
”They eagerly seek for riches to purchase a beachfront vacation home for themselves even as they tell others”
about such petty things as wealth. They are the leadership of the world’s top 1000 companies, which in fact are all owned/controlled by the 4 largest hedge funds who control all management of wealth, from controlling the voting on the stock of all the corporations.
Davos are so far above wishing wealth for beach house as Nero was above wanting money to have a good Chariot team – they play in Global Power – they are in a whole different reality from us, one of sheer power as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Louis XIV, Gengas Khan, Darius of Persia, Caesar, and so on….Only it seems certain they will conquer the world, and with technology, keep it enslaved for all time.
And ‘Green Energy’, with Carbon Credits and sustainability, and so on are their weapons of conquest – and they have almost finished their plans to own the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeykREAlYSg&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeykREAlYSg&feature=youtu.be
You can’t eat in five star restaurants or stay in five star hotels if you attend Davos via zoom.
The Obamas recently installed huge propane tanks under their property in Martha’s Vineyard. Propane is very good for prepping because it doesn’t degrade during storage. So they will be fine when the power grid fails. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.
The house the Obamas recently bought is apparently only 1.5m above sea level so I guess he managed to stop sea levels rising at least!
Propane isn’t as good as butane for indoor use, as its combustion releases prodigious amounts of water vapour. On the other hand, because of its considerably lower freezing point (-42 deg C vs -2 deg C for butane), propane is better for outdoor storage.
The house the Obamas recently bought is apparently only 1.5m above sea level so I guess he managed to stop sea levels rising at least!
Propane isn’t as good as butane for indoor use, as its combustion releases prodigious amounts of water vapour. On the other hand, because of its considerably lower freezing point (-42 deg C vs -2 deg C for butane), propane is better for outdoor storage.
Agree 100%.
What amazes me about modern politicians and activists who peddle the climate change emergency myth is that there is no sense, anywhere in what they’re saying, that they themselves have failed. They are basically saying that despite the fact that technological progress itself has not stopped, that all the known channels of wealth creation are still available, and that we have literally millions of years’ worth of artifical energy beneath our feet that we can use with present-day technology, we are for some reason expected to reduce radically our consumption of energy and to tolerate large falls in living standards and personal choice.
Anyone proposing to make decisions affecting the rest of us who puts forward such proposals has by definition failed to a colossal and embarrassing degree. Yet what we appear t be seeing instead is high-handed arrogance and a seemingly limitless appetite for more authority and power.
I think you would find that the author would have a profound disagreement with your notion of “progress”.
”These are the same self-important individuals who travel to Davos”
I am afraid you totally misunderstand the Davos group. Yes, Green energy is the tool of their global conquest – by undermining how the globe handles energy they take control of every economy, and also every individual. Consumption of energy has always been directly, and lineally, aligned with GDP and wealth. By altering this they can break societies to their will; destroy pensions, savings, economies. Watch the World Economic Forum – ‘The Great Reset’ is entirely based on energy reduction and redistribution. King Charles gave some of the WEF’s main speeches, and is aligned with them – please check youtube to verify all I say, it is all there right from WEF themselves.
Anyway, the Davos group is not
”They eagerly seek for riches to purchase a beachfront vacation home for themselves even as they tell others”
about such petty things as wealth. They are the leadership of the world’s top 1000 companies, which in fact are all owned/controlled by the 4 largest hedge funds who control all management of wealth, from controlling the voting on the stock of all the corporations.
Davos are so far above wishing wealth for beach house as Nero was above wanting money to have a good Chariot team – they play in Global Power – they are in a whole different reality from us, one of sheer power as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Louis XIV, Gengas Khan, Darius of Persia, Caesar, and so on….Only it seems certain they will conquer the world, and with technology, keep it enslaved for all time.
And ‘Green Energy’, with Carbon Credits and sustainability, and so on are their weapons of conquest – and they have almost finished their plans to own the world.
You can’t eat in five star restaurants or stay in five star hotels if you attend Davos via zoom.
The Obamas recently installed huge propane tanks under their property in Martha’s Vineyard. Propane is very good for prepping because it doesn’t degrade during storage. So they will be fine when the power grid fails. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.
Beautifully written.
Many of society’s leaders today demonstrate a desperate-yet-smug vanity as they reach for easy answers (for them) to ‘heal the planet.’ Those who clamor to remove the burning of a fire to heat homes are the same people who do not need to procure warmth by such means.
These are the same self-important individuals who travel to Davos on private (or commercial) planes when a virtual video conference works just fine but is, perhaps, not as exciting.
They eagerly seek for riches to purchase a beachfront vacation home for themselves even as they tell others that the sea levels are rising to the point of drowning cities and towns near ocean shores.
They cry for the end of nuclear power and gas-powered combustable engines because they can afford to put solar panels on their rooftops with very expensive battery panels to store the power and they purchase $70K Teslas.
Many of society’s leaders today do not seek to implement solutions that require personal, real sacrifice. Instead, they push the concept of ‘forced scarcity’ upon others…in other words, they take away the means of survival for many of their fellow citizens without identifying and implementing realistic substitutes. Sacrifice, in their minds, is for poor people (often in poor countries). This approach is the new-and-improved version of colonization by wealthier societal strata over the poorer classes of the world.
In my opinion, if politicians and other leaders are going to take away the realistic means for people to heat homes, travel to/from work, secure food for ones-self and one’s family, these politicians/leaders are responsible to provide the equal-or-better replacement in advance…this is their job. Their job is not to send their fellow citizens and the poor of the world back 150 years in terms of progress and then tell those citizens to ‘figure it out…and good luck.’ Such laziness in leadership is not acceptable.
If this essay had been restricted to using the example of the wood fire to exemplify the dangers of an ever more powerful ( I would say Socialist) State increasingly controlling the way it’s citizens go about their daily lives it would have been fine. Sadly however, it turned into an anti Capitalist rant against modernity coupled with a Panglossian plea for a return to rural self sufficiency.
I can only say to this author “wake up and smell the coffee”. In the U.K. today everyone is immeasurably better off in mind, body and spirit than the 90 per cent of the population who lived in abject and absolute poverty before the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, Capitalism has lifted billions of people across the world out of hopeless destitution – and continues to do so.
It is also sadly too typical of a man ( and the author is such) to have this idealised view of the industrially undeveloped world. Go to the more undeveloped parts of Africa ( unfortunately there are still many of them) and see the women – always women – walking miles each day to collect large bundles of wood and ferry heavy containers of water to their families living in rural hovels with no potable water supply, no sewers, no electricity but only wood fires and maybe a kerosene lamp. Then try to persuade yourself of the nobility, dignity and spiritual benefits of subsistence living.
The author’s attack on modern society industrial goes way too far and throws the baby out along with the bath water.
By the way, in my childhood home we had no running hot water and each of my family of five took one bath a week in a tin bath set before the fire. Frankly it was a difficult, time consuming process which was not without its dangers ( pots of boiling water carried from stove to bath) and somewhat humiliating for all – bar me. As the youngest I was first in the queue and enjoyed clean water. Apologies if that sounds a bit like the Yorkshire “ You we’re lucky..” joke – but please don’t preach to me about the good old days of rural working class life and ritual around the domestic hearth.
I did not read the article in the way you have. I think the author was using the focus of the wood fire to say so much more about, for example, the loss of the women’s position in the family as the matriarch. Contrary to what the 1960s feminists thought, woem had the power because they ruled the house.
He was writing about the loss of the home as a unifying base and how the woke liberal left have undermined society by breaking the fundamental basis of family to cause unrest and unhappiness by focusing on accumulation of ‘things’, criticising Christianity and and anti male and female marriage legislation. This unrest is caused so that power can be in the hands of the few like WEF billionaires, secularists, pushers of trans nonsense and those provoking false racist propaganda and who are anti families and community so that they can maintain power through division.
Surely, we need to maintain the figurative fireplace at the centre of our lives to succeed as rounded and……….free human beings.
Thank you for your thoughtful observation. Maybe I did go overboard – possibly triggered by what I saw as clear anti Capitalist rhetoric. However I am also very suspicious of somewhat uncritical appreciation if former times – which, speaking from my own experience ( I was born in 1949) were no where near as happy and contented for ordinary folk as some people – including I thought the author of this piece- would have us believe. But again maybe that my particular prejudice showing through!
Thank you for your thoughtful observation. Maybe I did go overboard – possibly triggered by what I saw as clear anti Capitalist rhetoric. However I am also very suspicious of somewhat uncritical appreciation if former times – which, speaking from my own experience ( I was born in 1949) were no where near as happy and contented for ordinary folk as some people – including I thought the author of this piece- would have us believe. But again maybe that my particular prejudice showing through!
I agree with you wholly on the matter of what living standards were really like prior to modernity. But I am not sure the article argues for a return to self-sufficiency in principle, it rather points out what the costs of system dependency have been and, in particular, the potential dangers we’re exposed to as a consequence in the potential for State overreach.
Thanks. A good comment. I did acknowledge the commentary on State overreach – but it was the anti Capitalist stuff that really set me off! Coming from a working class family I am also always in the lookout for misunderstanding of and condescension towards people like my very hardworking parents, who so much wanted better for their children- and who, through loving example and encouragement, helped us to achieve it at some cost to themselves.
Thanks. A good comment. I did acknowledge the commentary on State overreach – but it was the anti Capitalist stuff that really set me off! Coming from a working class family I am also always in the lookout for misunderstanding of and condescension towards people like my very hardworking parents, who so much wanted better for their children- and who, through loving example and encouragement, helped us to achieve it at some cost to themselves.
I think you are being a little unfair Malcolm, I’ve lived through the transition and the loss of motivation and self sufficiency has resulted in the weakening of society and family in a way that can never be compensated by “higher living standards”. In fact it seems we are witnessing the end of both. as men become emasculated drones and women jettison their femininity.
Thank you for the comment – I wasn’t meaning to imply that raising living standards is a panacea to all ills but I did find the article’s anti Capitalist rhetoric rather annoying and its pretence that rural self sufficiency could be a helpful model for the future to be delusional. It started well in decrying State overreach but then it seemed to me to go meandering rather steeply downhill.
Thank you for the comment – I wasn’t meaning to imply that raising living standards is a panacea to all ills but I did find the article’s anti Capitalist rhetoric rather annoying and its pretence that rural self sufficiency could be a helpful model for the future to be delusional. It started well in decrying State overreach but then it seemed to me to go meandering rather steeply downhill.
I gave up on his meandering musings halfway through.
Yes I agree that it didn’t improve as it “progressed”.
I agree with your comments about the drawbacks of the simple life of yore. The other thing is that human beings are always looking for independence and new experiences, the lure of city life.
People may wonder why girls in less developed countries work long hours in factories and live crowded in dormitories to earn a pittance. Independence. They may be able to save a little to send to their families, but, given the choice, they don’t go home for the pleasures of living in some rural hamlet. They choose independence, variety, stimulation, fashion, change.
I agree. It is also the reason people flocked from rural drudgery (and penury) to the cities of the British Industrial Revolution. Life was still tough – but better there.
I agree. It is also the reason people flocked from rural drudgery (and penury) to the cities of the British Industrial Revolution. Life was still tough – but better there.
I agree with your comments about the drawbacks of the simple life of yore. The other thing is that human beings are always looking for independence and new experiences, the lure of city life.
People may wonder why girls in less developed countries work long hours in factories and live crowded in dormitories to earn a pittance. Independence. They may be able to save a little to send to their families, but, given the choice, they don’t go home for the pleasures of living in some rural hamlet. They choose independence, variety, stimulation, fashion, change.
Yes I agree that it didn’t improve as it “progressed”.
I did not read the article in the way you have. I think the author was using the focus of the wood fire to say so much more about, for example, the loss of the women’s position in the family as the matriarch. Contrary to what the 1960s feminists thought, woem had the power because they ruled the house.
He was writing about the loss of the home as a unifying base and how the woke liberal left have undermined society by breaking the fundamental basis of family to cause unrest and unhappiness by focusing on accumulation of ‘things’, criticising Christianity and and anti male and female marriage legislation. This unrest is caused so that power can be in the hands of the few like WEF billionaires, secularists, pushers of trans nonsense and those provoking false racist propaganda and who are anti families and community so that they can maintain power through division.
Surely, we need to maintain the figurative fireplace at the centre of our lives to succeed as rounded and……….free human beings.
I agree with you wholly on the matter of what living standards were really like prior to modernity. But I am not sure the article argues for a return to self-sufficiency in principle, it rather points out what the costs of system dependency have been and, in particular, the potential dangers we’re exposed to as a consequence in the potential for State overreach.
I think you are being a little unfair Malcolm, I’ve lived through the transition and the loss of motivation and self sufficiency has resulted in the weakening of society and family in a way that can never be compensated by “higher living standards”. In fact it seems we are witnessing the end of both. as men become emasculated drones and women jettison their femininity.
I gave up on his meandering musings halfway through.
If this essay had been restricted to using the example of the wood fire to exemplify the dangers of an ever more powerful ( I would say Socialist) State increasingly controlling the way it’s citizens go about their daily lives it would have been fine. Sadly however, it turned into an anti Capitalist rant against modernity coupled with a Panglossian plea for a return to rural self sufficiency.
I can only say to this author “wake up and smell the coffee”. In the U.K. today everyone is immeasurably better off in mind, body and spirit than the 90 per cent of the population who lived in abject and absolute poverty before the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, Capitalism has lifted billions of people across the world out of hopeless destitution – and continues to do so.
It is also sadly too typical of a man ( and the author is such) to have this idealised view of the industrially undeveloped world. Go to the more undeveloped parts of Africa ( unfortunately there are still many of them) and see the women – always women – walking miles each day to collect large bundles of wood and ferry heavy containers of water to their families living in rural hovels with no potable water supply, no sewers, no electricity but only wood fires and maybe a kerosene lamp. Then try to persuade yourself of the nobility, dignity and spiritual benefits of subsistence living.
The author’s attack on modern society industrial goes way too far and throws the baby out along with the bath water.
By the way, in my childhood home we had no running hot water and each of my family of five took one bath a week in a tin bath set before the fire. Frankly it was a difficult, time consuming process which was not without its dangers ( pots of boiling water carried from stove to bath) and somewhat humiliating for all – bar me. As the youngest I was first in the queue and enjoyed clean water. Apologies if that sounds a bit like the Yorkshire “ You we’re lucky..” joke – but please don’t preach to me about the good old days of rural working class life and ritual around the domestic hearth.
Brilliant. Another critical factor is how most people have become debt slaves to the financial system, through mortgages and easily accessible credit.
Greece is a particularly horrible example. Until they joined the euro zone, Greece had some of the lowest levels of personal indebtedness in the developed world. And many of them owned their own homes outright. But once in the euro zone German and French banks saw their chance and flooded the Greek economy with cheap credit. With the disaster of the GFC many Greeks were left high and dry, although the clever bankers got their money back from the Greek government. The Greek economy shrank by 25%, and Greece is saddled with a debt that it can never repay.
Brilliant. Another critical factor is how most people have become debt slaves to the financial system, through mortgages and easily accessible credit.
Greece is a particularly horrible example. Until they joined the euro zone, Greece had some of the lowest levels of personal indebtedness in the developed world. And many of them owned their own homes outright. But once in the euro zone German and French banks saw their chance and flooded the Greek economy with cheap credit. With the disaster of the GFC many Greeks were left high and dry, although the clever bankers got their money back from the Greek government. The Greek economy shrank by 25%, and Greece is saddled with a debt that it can never repay.
Lares and Penates.
Before the City, the family house and hearth was the core block of society.
Excellent article by an excellent writer
We love our wood burner. And our log man.
Lares and Penates.
Before the City, the family house and hearth was the core block of society.
Excellent article by an excellent writer
We love our wood burner. And our log man.
Wow, deep! Beautifully written and so much resonates with me.
Each paragraph seems to bring in another complexity. I started thinking about heating a home inexpensively and then you hit one of my bug bears (a London centric one, not Dublin centric) about rural living and heat pumps and electric cars not being the answer for everyone.
Then more to follow!
Very simplistically the group that has benefitted from changes from the old style “home makers” scenario are the financial institutions. Freeing women from non-chosen child birth changed us all from one parent “working” to two parents having to work irrespective of desire. And the beneficiaries are not individuals where the choice to work or not has been replaced by the necessity to work and to the advantage of financial institutions. A two wage family allowed house prices to rise exponentially and the benefactor is those providing mortgages, not, I would argue, even boomers with high notional worth.
Similarly with disposable income; just something for the marketeer to focus on with an endless “you must have X, Y, or Z or you are a failure mantra.
One important freedom of choice (contraception) has removed so many other freedoms from too many people.
Follow the money is a decent mantra to work out what benefits most scenarios. Who benefits from banning wood burning? Well, those who can charge the most for the alternative.
Wow, deep! Beautifully written and so much resonates with me.
Each paragraph seems to bring in another complexity. I started thinking about heating a home inexpensively and then you hit one of my bug bears (a London centric one, not Dublin centric) about rural living and heat pumps and electric cars not being the answer for everyone.
Then more to follow!
Very simplistically the group that has benefitted from changes from the old style “home makers” scenario are the financial institutions. Freeing women from non-chosen child birth changed us all from one parent “working” to two parents having to work irrespective of desire. And the beneficiaries are not individuals where the choice to work or not has been replaced by the necessity to work and to the advantage of financial institutions. A two wage family allowed house prices to rise exponentially and the benefactor is those providing mortgages, not, I would argue, even boomers with high notional worth.
Similarly with disposable income; just something for the marketeer to focus on with an endless “you must have X, Y, or Z or you are a failure mantra.
One important freedom of choice (contraception) has removed so many other freedoms from too many people.
Follow the money is a decent mantra to work out what benefits most scenarios. Who benefits from banning wood burning? Well, those who can charge the most for the alternative.
Superb article, full to the brim with insight of the best kind. A credit to this magazine.
Superb article, full to the brim with insight of the best kind. A credit to this magazine.
Good King Wenceslas went out on the Feast of Stephen (that’s today), when the snow lay ’round about, deep and crisp and even. Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel, when a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fu.. el.
Blessed holidays to all from frosty USA. Very glad I have a wood stove for times of power grid failure, and my own little tract of woods to supply it with. I acquired these with proceeds from the sale of my condo in town. At 72, a retired school music teacher and choir director, the physical work is a bit tough, but it is a lovely way to exercise the mind.
Bravo for this article encouraging the development of sustainable self-sufficiency, to the extent we each can. And may family life prosper again, raising children inspired to people a flourishing future for all.
So true, and Merry Christmas by the way
So true, and Merry Christmas by the way
Good King Wenceslas went out on the Feast of Stephen (that’s today), when the snow lay ’round about, deep and crisp and even. Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel, when a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fu.. el.
Blessed holidays to all from frosty USA. Very glad I have a wood stove for times of power grid failure, and my own little tract of woods to supply it with. I acquired these with proceeds from the sale of my condo in town. At 72, a retired school music teacher and choir director, the physical work is a bit tough, but it is a lovely way to exercise the mind.
Bravo for this article encouraging the development of sustainable self-sufficiency, to the extent we each can. And may family life prosper again, raising children inspired to people a flourishing future for all.
On a somewhat incidental note, it bugs me how there is such an assault on ICE engines in cars, while ICE engines in planes are not subject to any compulsory end date, despite being responsible for way more pollution – even though cars are way more important to most people than planes are.
If I gave you a choice – you can either never fly again or never drive again, most people would choose their car. The vast majority of flights – business meeting junkets that easily could be done over Zoom in most cases, going to Malaga to get trolleyed, etc – are simply not necessary. But, for a rural dweller with non-existent public transport, going to the shop or taking your kids to school is necessary.
Yet airlines (owned by billionaires) get a free pass while cars (owned by members of the hoi polloi) are hammered.
Go figure.
Very good point. Too bad you spoiled it with that horrible yankism at the end.
Compare and contrast the the levels of tax applied to aviation spirit with petrol. If they were even remotely comparable, no one would fly anywhere.
Very good point. Too bad you spoiled it with that horrible yankism at the end.
Compare and contrast the the levels of tax applied to aviation spirit with petrol. If they were even remotely comparable, no one would fly anywhere.
On a somewhat incidental note, it bugs me how there is such an assault on ICE engines in cars, while ICE engines in planes are not subject to any compulsory end date, despite being responsible for way more pollution – even though cars are way more important to most people than planes are.
If I gave you a choice – you can either never fly again or never drive again, most people would choose their car. The vast majority of flights – business meeting junkets that easily could be done over Zoom in most cases, going to Malaga to get trolleyed, etc – are simply not necessary. But, for a rural dweller with non-existent public transport, going to the shop or taking your kids to school is necessary.
Yet airlines (owned by billionaires) get a free pass while cars (owned by members of the hoi polloi) are hammered.
Go figure.
I install “woodburners” usually into homes that went “all electric” in the 80s and 90s, I Remember the open fires of the fifties before the power came through and the activities my large family engaged in. My aunties knitting, embroidering and quilting. My uncles sharpening tools, toy making, printing tickets on an old Adana hand operated press. In our bedroom we had a huge paraffin fuelled incubator full of goose eggs, when the goslings were hatching we couldn’t sleep for the noise of chipping eggs, but it was always a joy to see the young geese toddling about on the wire shelf in the morning.
The hearth was indeed the centre of the home in these days and our extended family had an unspoken strength that is almost never seen today in our sanitised new world. We may be better off economically, but spiritually bereft.
I don’t accept the forced choice between economic wealth and spiritual wealth in the manner you imply. There is nothing in the modern world stopping families continuing to choose to live the way you describe here. The modern world has simply offered alternative choices that, for the most part, we freely accepted.
There is a proviso here of course in the form of the fact that an increasing number of people now cannot get onto the property ladder at all and therefore can’t create the conditions for traditional family life – that I do accept. But it does nonetheless appear, from the behaviour of the majority of people possessing the choice, that having multigenerational families living in the home is not an attractive prospect.
“But it does nonetheless appear, from the behaviour of the majority of people possessing the choice, that having multigenerational families living in the home is not an attractive prospect.”
Thank you for you response John, but it does appear that alongside our relative affluence, we have acquired a selfish streak which demands absolute freedom from any responsibilities and has resulted in “the family” having a lifespan of under 16yrs in many cases.
I agree with what you’re saying in terms of the observable social trends in question. I am less sure that we can fairly ascribe it to selfishness.
Take the situation of young adults who want to spread their wings and live the full life of a twentysomething. They cannot do that in the same home as their parents and grandparents, nor would they want to even if permitted, and the parents anf grandparents would never put up with it anyway.
Is it selfish for a young person to want to live that life? I would say rather that it is a rite of passage, and that any society that either refuses to allow it or cannot afford it is a poorer place, both materially and spiritually.
And it leads to an interesting idea: maybe what we need to bring families back together is to be so much MORE wealthy that we can afford generational proximity and separate houses at the same time? Perhaps we’re just in a period of socioeconomc catharsis and we’ll eventually straighten it all out in the end?
Well we had many “Rites of passage” even encompassing my working life in the sixties in the building trade. They were of the utmost importance in developing a sense of self worth, but in the home the elders were given a respect that is absent today in many cases. Our home was small and as said earlier we were a large extended family single rooms were out of the question, I shared a bed with my grandfather and uncle till i left school, much to the consternation of my teacher who’s modern ideas hadn’t quite caught on …thankfully.
The experience of sharing a home with three generations of wonderful, generous and practical people, was unforgettable and they had earned all the respect accorded to them by neighbours and family alike.
My grandfather BTW who died in 1960, had been Round the horn of Africa under sail twice before his seventeenth birthday and survived to fight with the Black Watch on the Somme and various other battles before marrying and fathering 9 children. What stories he could tell!
Much enjoyed our conversation John, Good New Year to you and yours.
Well we had many “Rites of passage” even encompassing my working life in the sixties in the building trade. They were of the utmost importance in developing a sense of self worth, but in the home the elders were given a respect that is absent today in many cases. Our home was small and as said earlier we were a large extended family single rooms were out of the question, I shared a bed with my grandfather and uncle till i left school, much to the consternation of my teacher who’s modern ideas hadn’t quite caught on …thankfully.
The experience of sharing a home with three generations of wonderful, generous and practical people, was unforgettable and they had earned all the respect accorded to them by neighbours and family alike.
My grandfather BTW who died in 1960, had been Round the horn of Africa under sail twice before his seventeenth birthday and survived to fight with the Black Watch on the Somme and various other battles before marrying and fathering 9 children. What stories he could tell!
Much enjoyed our conversation John, Good New Year to you and yours.
I agree with what you’re saying in terms of the observable social trends in question. I am less sure that we can fairly ascribe it to selfishness.
Take the situation of young adults who want to spread their wings and live the full life of a twentysomething. They cannot do that in the same home as their parents and grandparents, nor would they want to even if permitted, and the parents anf grandparents would never put up with it anyway.
Is it selfish for a young person to want to live that life? I would say rather that it is a rite of passage, and that any society that either refuses to allow it or cannot afford it is a poorer place, both materially and spiritually.
And it leads to an interesting idea: maybe what we need to bring families back together is to be so much MORE wealthy that we can afford generational proximity and separate houses at the same time? Perhaps we’re just in a period of socioeconomc catharsis and we’ll eventually straighten it all out in the end?
“But it does nonetheless appear, from the behaviour of the majority of people possessing the choice, that having multigenerational families living in the home is not an attractive prospect.”
Thank you for you response John, but it does appear that alongside our relative affluence, we have acquired a selfish streak which demands absolute freedom from any responsibilities and has resulted in “the family” having a lifespan of under 16yrs in many cases.
I don’t accept the forced choice between economic wealth and spiritual wealth in the manner you imply. There is nothing in the modern world stopping families continuing to choose to live the way you describe here. The modern world has simply offered alternative choices that, for the most part, we freely accepted.
There is a proviso here of course in the form of the fact that an increasing number of people now cannot get onto the property ladder at all and therefore can’t create the conditions for traditional family life – that I do accept. But it does nonetheless appear, from the behaviour of the majority of people possessing the choice, that having multigenerational families living in the home is not an attractive prospect.
I install “woodburners” usually into homes that went “all electric” in the 80s and 90s, I Remember the open fires of the fifties before the power came through and the activities my large family engaged in. My aunties knitting, embroidering and quilting. My uncles sharpening tools, toy making, printing tickets on an old Adana hand operated press. In our bedroom we had a huge paraffin fuelled incubator full of goose eggs, when the goslings were hatching we couldn’t sleep for the noise of chipping eggs, but it was always a joy to see the young geese toddling about on the wire shelf in the morning.
The hearth was indeed the centre of the home in these days and our extended family had an unspoken strength that is almost never seen today in our sanitised new world. We may be better off economically, but spiritually bereft.
It is part of the general trend against self sufficiency. But the biggest problem with wood burning is amongst the poorest in the worlds who do suffer health issues from burning wood in badly ventilated homes.
The worst ventilation in the world is in the ultra insulated houses of Europe. Without opening a window, the fire would probably go out. Very unsuited to log fires – and humans burning bodily energy!
So these houses would be bad for health issues from wood burning, because you can’t burn wood in them as they are too well insulated.
Right. Logic not one of your specialisms, is it Andrew? Thanks anyway.
So these houses would be bad for health issues from wood burning, because you can’t burn wood in them as they are too well insulated.
Right. Logic not one of your specialisms, is it Andrew? Thanks anyway.
The worst ventilation in the world is in the ultra insulated houses of Europe. Without opening a window, the fire would probably go out. Very unsuited to log fires – and humans burning bodily energy!
It is part of the general trend against self sufficiency. But the biggest problem with wood burning is amongst the poorest in the worlds who do suffer health issues from burning wood in badly ventilated homes.
Or, perhaps, it’s simply an empirical fact that wood-burning in the home very often causes long-term respiratory problems. This simple fact is not dependent on a slavish adherence to the ‘industrial/Captitalist hegemony or the ‘war against the family’- it’s just a medical fact. Sometimes, as Freud didn’t say, a cigar is just a cigar, and demanding that science fits one’s ideological outlook is daft.
Having said that, I continue to burn logs, because they are free and I love a fire; life is about balances and choices.
Freud died of throat cancer and knew it was down to his cigars. I love fires and feel they are an essence of what the Germans call ‘Heimat’ but as a City dweller, I know that I should not be lighting them (and even my Dyson tells me that) but I still love it and our (old) house demands sitting in front of a living fire (and closing off the radiators). Balances and choices as John said.
Freud died of throat cancer and knew it was down to his cigars. I love fires and feel they are an essence of what the Germans call ‘Heimat’ but as a City dweller, I know that I should not be lighting them (and even my Dyson tells me that) but I still love it and our (old) house demands sitting in front of a living fire (and closing off the radiators). Balances and choices as John said.
Or, perhaps, it’s simply an empirical fact that wood-burning in the home very often causes long-term respiratory problems. This simple fact is not dependent on a slavish adherence to the ‘industrial/Captitalist hegemony or the ‘war against the family’- it’s just a medical fact. Sometimes, as Freud didn’t say, a cigar is just a cigar, and demanding that science fits one’s ideological outlook is daft.
Having said that, I continue to burn logs, because they are free and I love a fire; life is about balances and choices.
‘Making a home’ is truly underestimated as an important route to contentment & sanity today. It’s actually a skill which luckily an be learned but so many seemingly give it short shrift. Years ago, after I left the corporate world to raise kids (and start a home-based business), a friend, an art dealer, said to me that she was surprised we remained friends as I was ‘at home’ now. It was as if I had given up membership in a special club of a newly evolved group of women who had found affirmation and somehow, could no longer relate to us stay-at-homes. Decades later looking back, I don’t think I made the wrong decision and it was a calculated one; I felt my husband would be making enough money without necessarily having another income, although I did do well for a while writing books, designing, etc. I do think that the Feminist Movement in all its vigor thwarted too many women from learning how to be a ‘homemaker’ and many just didn’t want to do what it entails (yes, it’s it’s own kind of work, some of it drudgery). The opening up of the economy for women did create two camps of those who worked outside the home versus those who chose be at home. It’s a broad topic and one worth debating going forward; How much of our family life do we want to give over to corporatism, to the greater economy?
‘Making a home’ is truly underestimated as an important route to contentment & sanity today. It’s actually a skill which luckily an be learned but so many seemingly give it short shrift. Years ago, after I left the corporate world to raise kids (and start a home-based business), a friend, an art dealer, said to me that she was surprised we remained friends as I was ‘at home’ now. It was as if I had given up membership in a special club of a newly evolved group of women who had found affirmation and somehow, could no longer relate to us stay-at-homes. Decades later looking back, I don’t think I made the wrong decision and it was a calculated one; I felt my husband would be making enough money without necessarily having another income, although I did do well for a while writing books, designing, etc. I do think that the Feminist Movement in all its vigor thwarted too many women from learning how to be a ‘homemaker’ and many just didn’t want to do what it entails (yes, it’s it’s own kind of work, some of it drudgery). The opening up of the economy for women did create two camps of those who worked outside the home versus those who chose be at home. It’s a broad topic and one worth debating going forward; How much of our family life do we want to give over to corporatism, to the greater economy?
“In the past, the act of sitting staring into the smoky fire with family or neighbours was the genesis of the folk tale and folk song which tied the culture together.”
So true – I’m old enough to remember this. Many tall tales were told lol – but there was a cohesion.
“In the past, the act of sitting staring into the smoky fire with family or neighbours was the genesis of the folk tale and folk song which tied the culture together.”
So true – I’m old enough to remember this. Many tall tales were told lol – but there was a cohesion.
What’s wrong with the idea of “warming your own house with your own fire”?
Arithmetic calculation might show what’s wrong. It might show that there are simply not enough trees and forests for ALL the Europe’s population. I mean — in Europe. Of course Canada or Sweden or Russia have a lot. But Central/Western Europe has lost almost all forests during the last millennium.
Weren’t the great forests of Europe–especially the giant trees– cleared for building material, and also agriculture, more than firewood?
But I don’t intend to dismiss your point of view, or concern for preserving what’s left of European forests at all. When I planted trees in western Canada as a young man, I saw for myself that logged areas were often burned or scarified for ease of replanting, and one “cash crop” species” (usually spruce or pine) was plugged back in, in a hollow show of restoring a biodiverse forest. After-the-fact efforts can’t bring it back, except on nature’s long timeline–maybe.
Weren’t the great forests of Europe–especially the giant trees– cleared for building material, and also agriculture, more than firewood?
But I don’t intend to dismiss your point of view, or concern for preserving what’s left of European forests at all. When I planted trees in western Canada as a young man, I saw for myself that logged areas were often burned or scarified for ease of replanting, and one “cash crop” species” (usually spruce or pine) was plugged back in, in a hollow show of restoring a biodiverse forest. After-the-fact efforts can’t bring it back, except on nature’s long timeline–maybe.
What’s wrong with the idea of “warming your own house with your own fire”?
Arithmetic calculation might show what’s wrong. It might show that there are simply not enough trees and forests for ALL the Europe’s population. I mean — in Europe. Of course Canada or Sweden or Russia have a lot. But Central/Western Europe has lost almost all forests during the last millennium.
It’s brilliantly argued as usual where Mr Kingsnorth is concerned, of course. But I want to add what I think is an important proviso to the line of argument about self-sufficiency and the effect that the ongoing loss of it has on society.
First off, I do agree that the drive to eradicate wood and turf burning is a somewhat sinister measure that is bound up with the undeniably-obvious desire of the climate change agenda to confiscate our agency and liberty as part of its mission to save the planet (from a danger that increasingly clearly does not exist in the form described by the political consensus, too, but that’s another argument). And for this to be happening in Ireland of all places is worrying indeed: Irish people are generationally adjacent to a society for which turf was very often the ONLY energy supply available for cooking and heating: most adults over 40 in Ireland today will recall childhoods where burning turf in the Raeburn (a smaller version of an Aga) was a basic requirement in most rural homes. English people, by contrast, will have had central heating and electricity for almost all of living memory. I feel I can generalise on this having been born to Irish parents and grown up in England, but spent most holidays in Ireland from early childhood.
But I do feel as if modernity needs some defending here. Yes there is a price to be paid for the emancipation of the individual from the static bonds and obligations that originate in the hearth as a focus of family life, but it is arguable that we know and understand the trade-off and are willing to make it. To observe a different example of how we’ve traded self-sufficiency for dependency on the machine-system, we all drive cars nowadays instead of riding a horse. The horse, as a mode of transport, is something that can be made, grown and fuelled almost entirely through efforts at a local level, yet it is in no sense an adequate alternative for motorised transport. The important point though is that this exchange, though it came with costs in the form of loss of self-sufficiency and increased dependence on the industrial nexus, makes sense because it represents a huge improvement to our lives, and one that is proven every day through freely-made market transactions.
Wood- and turf-burning devices in the home, too, are actually less efficient, less convenient and dirtier than a gas supply, and until recently were more expensive too. So should we be relaxed about losing them in this manner that seems inevitable? The answer is no, and it comes down simply to whether we are making a market choice on the matter or being forced into a choice by the state. The first would be acceptable, the second is not, and the reason isn’t simply down to the principle of liberty involved, but is also down to the fact that market-led choices lead usually to more optimal outcomes than those made by the state in any case.
So my argument here amounts to a defence of the historic reasons for the atomisation for society up to this point as described above, but offered in such a way as to prevent the state harnessing it to a plan for confiscation of our freedom. The answer is that no matter how much of the hearth we sacrificed to individualism through open choices, we can reverse those choices if we so wish and are willing to pay whatever the price may be. Or in other words, just because I live in a flat in a city with efficient central heating for now, it doesn’t mean I won’t want to move to the country at some point and put a log-burner in the corner and put my feet up, and the government has no business taking the decision out of my hands.
It’s brilliantly argued as usual where Mr Kingsnorth is concerned, of course. But I want to add what I think is an important proviso to the line of argument about self-sufficiency and the effect that the ongoing loss of it has on society.
First off, I do agree that the drive to eradicate wood and turf burning is a somewhat sinister measure that is bound up with the undeniably-obvious desire of the climate change agenda to confiscate our agency and liberty as part of its mission to save the planet (from a danger that increasingly clearly does not exist in the form described by the political consensus, too, but that’s another argument). And for this to be happening in Ireland of all places is worrying indeed: Irish people are generationally adjacent to a society for which turf was very often the ONLY energy supply available for cooking and heating: most adults over 40 in Ireland today will recall childhoods where burning turf in the Raeburn (a smaller version of an Aga) was a basic requirement in most rural homes. English people, by contrast, will have had central heating and electricity for almost all of living memory. I feel I can generalise on this having been born to Irish parents and grown up in England, but spent most holidays in Ireland from early childhood.
But I do feel as if modernity needs some defending here. Yes there is a price to be paid for the emancipation of the individual from the static bonds and obligations that originate in the hearth as a focus of family life, but it is arguable that we know and understand the trade-off and are willing to make it. To observe a different example of how we’ve traded self-sufficiency for dependency on the machine-system, we all drive cars nowadays instead of riding a horse. The horse, as a mode of transport, is something that can be made, grown and fuelled almost entirely through efforts at a local level, yet it is in no sense an adequate alternative for motorised transport. The important point though is that this exchange, though it came with costs in the form of loss of self-sufficiency and increased dependence on the industrial nexus, makes sense because it represents a huge improvement to our lives, and one that is proven every day through freely-made market transactions.
Wood- and turf-burning devices in the home, too, are actually less efficient, less convenient and dirtier than a gas supply, and until recently were more expensive too. So should we be relaxed about losing them in this manner that seems inevitable? The answer is no, and it comes down simply to whether we are making a market choice on the matter or being forced into a choice by the state. The first would be acceptable, the second is not, and the reason isn’t simply down to the principle of liberty involved, but is also down to the fact that market-led choices lead usually to more optimal outcomes than those made by the state in any case.
So my argument here amounts to a defence of the historic reasons for the atomisation for society up to this point as described above, but offered in such a way as to prevent the state harnessing it to a plan for confiscation of our freedom. The answer is that no matter how much of the hearth we sacrificed to individualism through open choices, we can reverse those choices if we so wish and are willing to pay whatever the price may be. Or in other words, just because I live in a flat in a city with efficient central heating for now, it doesn’t mean I won’t want to move to the country at some point and put a log-burner in the corner and put my feet up, and the government has no business taking the decision out of my hands.
Ah, the fireplace delusion. The science on this has been settled for decades. Most of the particles from wood smoke are less than 1 micron which means they will pass through the lung wall and into the bloodstream; and they are carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic. Wood smoke is worse than cigarette smoke as a carcinogenic, outlier studies suggest a lot worse. Also sub micron sized particles are not subject to gravitational settling so remain airborne for weeks.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have wood fires (hey I’m a pipe smoker); but don’t pretend it’s a clean, back to nature, solution you can feel virtuous about.
Lots of things are carcinogenic. Breathing the air in virtually every city or town can be carcinogenic. So can absorbing the sun’s rays. Add to that the plastic fumes from inside every automobile. Doesn’t stop many from driving to the beach with the windows rolled down.
Lots of things are carcinogenic. Breathing the air in virtually every city or town can be carcinogenic. So can absorbing the sun’s rays. Add to that the plastic fumes from inside every automobile. Doesn’t stop many from driving to the beach with the windows rolled down.
Ah, the fireplace delusion. The science on this has been settled for decades. Most of the particles from wood smoke are less than 1 micron which means they will pass through the lung wall and into the bloodstream; and they are carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic. Wood smoke is worse than cigarette smoke as a carcinogenic, outlier studies suggest a lot worse. Also sub micron sized particles are not subject to gravitational settling so remain airborne for weeks.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have wood fires (hey I’m a pipe smoker); but don’t pretend it’s a clean, back to nature, solution you can feel virtuous about.
I love a home fire, but if everyone heated their houses with wood, we would run out of trees in about six months. Britain is already among the least forested countries in Europe- and I assume the author wouldn’t suggest a global trade to supply the difference- or turning half of our farmland over to fast-growing trees.
I realise this is partly a symbolic notion, just part of Kingsnorth’s general repudiation of ‘modernity’, but reality is still reality.
Kingsnorth is a contrarian much of the time. I can say this after reading 2 articles with great interest, and from my takes-one-to-know-one perspective. Yet his writing style and clear intelligence make him worth reading, almost apart from his ex-radical/radical environmentalist views.
Have you read his novels? I read his first, which I thought was remarkable.
As for his politics, they have been drifting away from fairly mainstream ‘Green’ to a profound anti-modernism for some time now. I share a lot of his personal choices about how to live, but I’m at a loss to know how his broader ‘Luddism’ could be made anything more than symbolic without horrifying social breakdown and revisionism- so I stick to a symbolic interpretation, on the whole.
I admit I was totally unaware of him until this website solicited, then grabbed me a few month ago. (To all who might be outraged at all the Americans here, they were likely ‘targeted’ by UnHerd according to their online activity).
The only two of his pieces I’ve read thus are this and the eco-fascism one, which I forwarded to several people. I regard him as a worthwhile voice I often agree with, a bit like Harrington (a lot) and Eagleton (sometimes). I’ll look into Kingsnorth’s novels. Thanks for the context and criticism of his other work.
I admit I was totally unaware of him until this website solicited, then grabbed me a few month ago. (To all who might be outraged at all the Americans here, they were likely ‘targeted’ by UnHerd according to their online activity).
The only two of his pieces I’ve read thus are this and the eco-fascism one, which I forwarded to several people. I regard him as a worthwhile voice I often agree with, a bit like Harrington (a lot) and Eagleton (sometimes). I’ll look into Kingsnorth’s novels. Thanks for the context and criticism of his other work.
Have you read his novels? I read his first, which I thought was remarkable.
As for his politics, they have been drifting away from fairly mainstream ‘Green’ to a profound anti-modernism for some time now. I share a lot of his personal choices about how to live, but I’m at a loss to know how his broader ‘Luddism’ could be made anything more than symbolic without horrifying social breakdown and revisionism- so I stick to a symbolic interpretation, on the whole.
Kingsnorth is a contrarian much of the time. I can say this after reading 2 articles with great interest, and from my takes-one-to-know-one perspective. Yet his writing style and clear intelligence make him worth reading, almost apart from his ex-radical/radical environmentalist views.
I love a home fire, but if everyone heated their houses with wood, we would run out of trees in about six months. Britain is already among the least forested countries in Europe- and I assume the author wouldn’t suggest a global trade to supply the difference- or turning half of our farmland over to fast-growing trees.
I realise this is partly a symbolic notion, just part of Kingsnorth’s general repudiation of ‘modernity’, but reality is still reality.
Great essay. I believe climate change is happening and we are the cause; after all we are living in an enclosed sphere and pumping tons of pollution into the air. However the people in charge are, as usual, going to phock it up and cause more hassle and pain than is necessary. They should have started sooner and with more common sense strategy.
No.
97% of CO2 is natural.
Climate change is natural and has been going on for over four and a half billion years.
Don’t conflate CO 2 with pollution, CO2 is vital to all life on earth.
This is all about power, money and control.
There is no scientific basis for AGW, this is politically driven.
That’s a great AGW Bingo session, there- every half-baked scientifically-illiterate internet cliche of the last twenty yers, stuffed into one short, clueless post.
“CO2 is vital to all life on Earth”. Really? If only the world’s scientists knew this! Thanks for the heads up.
I salute you, Sir! Objective scientific understanding at its finest….
“97% of CO2 is natural”.
Indeed. Which is why the average concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased by roughly 31.4% since 1960, from 318ppm to 414ppm in 2020. That certainly proves your claim.
Top stuff.
You are clearly innumerate as most leftists are.
You are confused.
A 31.4 increase in CO2 does not affect the proportion of anthropogenic CO2, it is STILL around 3%.
CO2 is CO2 wherever it originated.
You are conflating proportion with quantity, probably unknowingly, maybe deliberately.
Funny that.
You are the one spouting cliches, half baked “green”
claims with no scientific basis whatsoever.
If you wish to use sarcasm, you will need to find some wit first.
Bjorn Lomborg’s latest book is entitled
FALSE ALARM.
How Climate change Panic cost us trillions hurts the poorand fails to fix the planet.
We know the the ppm of atmospheric CO2
has increased but how in SCIENTIFIC TERMS
does that prove the existence of AGW ?
It is natural.
There is no scientific basis for AGW.
You think I’m “leftist” because I state a statistic about carbon dioxide?
Right. That says a lot about you, not much about anything else.
As for the rest of this scientifically-challenged screed- how are you measuring the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere that is from human sources? Is ‘human’ CO2 different, chemically, from ‘natural CO2? How do you think you know that he proportion of “anthropogenic” Co2 is a constant 3%? Utter scienfically-illiterate tripe.
What is the source of the extra 30% of extra CO2 in the atmosphere since 1960? If it’s not from human sources, it must be ‘natural’. What is it
You’ve stated the title of a book- well done. That’s not an argument for anything. Its the title of a book. So what? If you want to convey a scientific argument from it that you feel is relevant, try and do so.
“It is natural”. What is? How do you know this? Explain your reasoning. Why do you think making a dumb, evidenceless assertion makes sense when followed by a claim that something has “no scientific basis”? Nothing you’ve just said has any “scientific basis”, evidence, logic or even the most elemental scientific understanding. It’s arbitrary drivel.
Let’s make a start- tell me how ‘human’ CO2 is measured separately from ‘natural’ CO2, so that we can be sure that the ‘human’ part is a constant “3%” of the total. Away you go……
By the way, Bjorn Lomborg accepts the fact that the rise in CO2 levels is caused by human emissions, and he accepts the reality of AGW. He disagrees with most scientists as to its likely severity, and with current mitigating policies.
Perhaps you should actually read his book, rather than just typing the title in the vague hope that it might sound impressive. It is quite long, though.
You think I’m “leftist” because I state a statistic about carbon dioxide?
Right. That says a lot about you, not much about anything else.
As for the rest of this scientifically-challenged screed- how are you measuring the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere that is from human sources? Is ‘human’ CO2 different, chemically, from ‘natural CO2? How do you think you know that he proportion of “anthropogenic” Co2 is a constant 3%? Utter scienfically-illiterate tripe.
What is the source of the extra 30% of extra CO2 in the atmosphere since 1960? If it’s not from human sources, it must be ‘natural’. What is it
You’ve stated the title of a book- well done. That’s not an argument for anything. Its the title of a book. So what? If you want to convey a scientific argument from it that you feel is relevant, try and do so.
“It is natural”. What is? How do you know this? Explain your reasoning. Why do you think making a dumb, evidenceless assertion makes sense when followed by a claim that something has “no scientific basis”? Nothing you’ve just said has any “scientific basis”, evidence, logic or even the most elemental scientific understanding. It’s arbitrary drivel.
Let’s make a start- tell me how ‘human’ CO2 is measured separately from ‘natural’ CO2, so that we can be sure that the ‘human’ part is a constant “3%” of the total. Away you go……
By the way, Bjorn Lomborg accepts the fact that the rise in CO2 levels is caused by human emissions, and he accepts the reality of AGW. He disagrees with most scientists as to its likely severity, and with current mitigating policies.
Perhaps you should actually read his book, rather than just typing the title in the vague hope that it might sound impressive. It is quite long, though.
“97% of CO2 is natural”.
Indeed. Which is why the average concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased by roughly 31.4% since 1960, from 318ppm to 414ppm in 2020. That certainly proves your claim.
Top stuff.
You are clearly innumerate as most leftists are.
You are confused.
A 31.4 increase in CO2 does not affect the proportion of anthropogenic CO2, it is STILL around 3%.
CO2 is CO2 wherever it originated.
You are conflating proportion with quantity, probably unknowingly, maybe deliberately.
Funny that.
You are the one spouting cliches, half baked “green”
claims with no scientific basis whatsoever.
If you wish to use sarcasm, you will need to find some wit first.
Bjorn Lomborg’s latest book is entitled
FALSE ALARM.
How Climate change Panic cost us trillions hurts the poorand fails to fix the planet.
We know the the ppm of atmospheric CO2
has increased but how in SCIENTIFIC TERMS
does that prove the existence of AGW ?
It is natural.
There is no scientific basis for AGW.
That’s a great AGW Bingo session, there- every half-baked scientifically-illiterate internet cliche of the last twenty yers, stuffed into one short, clueless post.
“CO2 is vital to all life on Earth”. Really? If only the world’s scientists knew this! Thanks for the heads up.
I salute you, Sir! Objective scientific understanding at its finest….
No.
97% of CO2 is natural.
Climate change is natural and has been going on for over four and a half billion years.
Don’t conflate CO 2 with pollution, CO2 is vital to all life on earth.
This is all about power, money and control.
There is no scientific basis for AGW, this is politically driven.
Great essay. I believe climate change is happening and we are the cause; after all we are living in an enclosed sphere and pumping tons of pollution into the air. However the people in charge are, as usual, going to phock it up and cause more hassle and pain than is necessary. They should have started sooner and with more common sense strategy.
Indeed; all good! But let’s also not forget the absolute disaster that is DRAX!
Indeed; all good! But let’s also not forget the absolute disaster that is DRAX!
I agree with those who’ve noted that the article is engaging and well-written, even if you’ve don’t move in lockstep agreement with all of Kingsnorth’s claims. In a sense its venturesome and (potentially) contentious traits make it stronger and more suitable for UnHerd, likelier to challenge and provoke than to just march the flock across a familiar landscape.
While I acknowledge the value of a co-operative, settled domesticity and like a good fire, I think the author places too great an importance on the actual hearth flame. Do we also need to bring back village hunts so we can return to a truer form of male-bonding? And the confinement and squalor that can accompany domestic settledness–usually but not always hitting women and children harder–is left unaddressed.
I understand that things were not inarguably worse for women in previous centuries, at least not in some ways, but having a drunken or violent father by the hearth, perhaps neither going out to work much nor doing his share around the house, was not uncommon either. The woman may be in charge when such a bad dad is stone-drunk or on the prowl, but that ain’t female empowerment or domestic bliss. Of course there were bad and even drunken mothers too, but I think my stereotyped sketch of some homes in earlier times has a certain validity.
I do think its absurd and hypocritical to blame individual cottage-dwellers (if you will) for woodfire pollution, as if that impact wasn’t dwarfed by massive industrial wastefulness and urban blight.
I’m in stronger agreement with Wendell Berry’s 1980 call to get rid of the TV, if we update that to include an idea of becoming less tethered to our devices and, for example, not checking the phone every few minutes, or posting multiple online comments every day (like I’ve been doing of late). We can make better domestic environments, urban or rural, that are more connected to our ancient and ongoing creaturely needs as social people. Panglossian optimism? Perhaps, but we can and should cut down on our “vidiocy”.
Kingsnorth’s ideas, if taken as anything more than an individual person’s ‘lifestyle’ choice (one that, in many ways, I have chosen along with him, as I’m increasingly self-sufficient in food at least), would inevitably involve grotesque social reversals, not least a necessary reduction in population by three-quarters at the very least, the forcing of most people into life-changes entirely against their will and a Pol-Pot style reversal of three hundred years of technological and social change.
Not to be taken, then, as a social manifesto.
Kingsnorth’s ideas, if taken as anything more than an individual person’s ‘lifestyle’ choice (one that, in many ways, I have chosen along with him, as I’m increasingly self-sufficient in food at least), would inevitably involve grotesque social reversals, not least a necessary reduction in population by three-quarters at the very least, the forcing of most people into life-changes entirely against their will and a Pol-Pot style reversal of three hundred years of technological and social change.
Not to be taken, then, as a social manifesto.
I agree with those who’ve noted that the article is engaging and well-written, even if you’ve don’t move in lockstep agreement with all of Kingsnorth’s claims. In a sense its venturesome and (potentially) contentious traits make it stronger and more suitable for UnHerd, likelier to challenge and provoke than to just march the flock across a familiar landscape.
While I acknowledge the value of a co-operative, settled domesticity and like a good fire, I think the author places too great an importance on the actual hearth flame. Do we also need to bring back village hunts so we can return to a truer form of male-bonding? And the confinement and squalor that can accompany domestic settledness–usually but not always hitting women and children harder–is left unaddressed.
I understand that things were not inarguably worse for women in previous centuries, at least not in some ways, but having a drunken or violent father by the hearth, perhaps neither going out to work much nor doing his share around the house, was not uncommon either. The woman may be in charge when such a bad dad is stone-drunk or on the prowl, but that ain’t female empowerment or domestic bliss. Of course there were bad and even drunken mothers too, but I think my stereotyped sketch of some homes in earlier times has a certain validity.
I do think its absurd and hypocritical to blame individual cottage-dwellers (if you will) for woodfire pollution, as if that impact wasn’t dwarfed by massive industrial wastefulness and urban blight.
I’m in stronger agreement with Wendell Berry’s 1980 call to get rid of the TV, if we update that to include an idea of becoming less tethered to our devices and, for example, not checking the phone every few minutes, or posting multiple online comments every day (like I’ve been doing of late). We can make better domestic environments, urban or rural, that are more connected to our ancient and ongoing creaturely needs as social people. Panglossian optimism? Perhaps, but we can and should cut down on our “vidiocy”.
‘Usually he brings me ash, but ash is becoming harder to find now that ash dieback disease, imported into Ireland from Europe, is killing many of the nation’s trees.’ Odd. My experience is the very opposite. So many ash trees are being felled because of dieback that there’s a glut of ash.
Agreed. I thought that was an odd claim, too. More ash wood than I can deal with, sadly.
Agreed. I thought that was an odd claim, too. More ash wood than I can deal with, sadly.
‘Usually he brings me ash, but ash is becoming harder to find now that ash dieback disease, imported into Ireland from Europe, is killing many of the nation’s trees.’ Odd. My experience is the very opposite. So many ash trees are being felled because of dieback that there’s a glut of ash.
Remote working from home radically changes the whole core of the article. What the article written from your home? With so many now unleashed from the office factory because of Teams and Zoom etc, is the current turning back in your favour.
Remote working from home radically changes the whole core of the article. What the article written from your home? With so many now unleashed from the office factory because of Teams and Zoom etc, is the current turning back in your favour.
Here in Ireland, our Green party taxed heating oil and coal so much that now our lovely oak, ash, elms etc are being felled and cut up for firewood. It’s such a sad sight driving on our roads, seeing the stumps of these once majestic hardwoods like warts in the fields.
Here in Ireland, our Green party taxed heating oil and coal so much that now our lovely oak, ash, elms etc are being felled and cut up for firewood. It’s such a sad sight driving on our roads, seeing the stumps of these once majestic hardwoods like warts in the fields.
Energy use has progressed from windmills to wood to coal to oil to nuke.
Going back to wood is an educated-class fantasy.
And don’t get me started on bird-killing wind turbines.
But I think that the name of the game is understanding dark energy. There’s your future, sports fans.
Domestic cats kill far, far more birds than wind turbines, but for some reason, people don’t seem too concerned about that.
Dark energy is negative and (as far as anyone currently knows) all pervading throughout the universe. So good luck extracting any useful positive energy from that!
Domestic cats kill far, far more birds than wind turbines, but for some reason, people don’t seem too concerned about that.
Dark energy is negative and (as far as anyone currently knows) all pervading throughout the universe. So good luck extracting any useful positive energy from that!
Energy use has progressed from windmills to wood to coal to oil to nuke.
Going back to wood is an educated-class fantasy.
And don’t get me started on bird-killing wind turbines.
But I think that the name of the game is understanding dark energy. There’s your future, sports fans.
The only time I have ever been threatened with a sanction on Facebook was a couple of weeks ago when I shared a post saying that turf (peat) wasn’t a ‘fossil fuel’.
And that post had no other claims that went against the current prevailing orthodoxy?
Peat not being a fossil fuel doesn’t go against any “prevailing orthodoxy” whatsoever. It’s a simple fact, never denied, to my knowledge, by anyone with half a brain.
Why this was ‘sanctioned’ I have no idea, but it would have had nothing to do with ‘current orthodoxy’.
I understand what you mean, and did before you replied to me. I was responding to Mark’s point-of-view as I perceived it, trying to coax out what really ‘happened’–if anything. He implied that his view was censored, and I was hoping to get at why that might have occurred.
Forgive me if this seems hypocritical, but: Please don’t assume the stupidest possible sponsoring viewpoint on my part.
I respect your comments and I’d rather not get too argumentative with you. Partly because I know that wouldn’t work out well for me a good percentage of the time.
Sorry if that came across as a bit patronising- it was intended for Mark, but mis-aimed. I agree that some other issue must surely have been involved.
Understood, agreed, and no problem, sir.
Understood, agreed, and no problem, sir.
Sorry if that came across as a bit patronising- it was intended for Mark, but mis-aimed. I agree that some other issue must surely have been involved.
I understand what you mean, and did before you replied to me. I was responding to Mark’s point-of-view as I perceived it, trying to coax out what really ‘happened’–if anything. He implied that his view was censored, and I was hoping to get at why that might have occurred.
Forgive me if this seems hypocritical, but: Please don’t assume the stupidest possible sponsoring viewpoint on my part.
I respect your comments and I’d rather not get too argumentative with you. Partly because I know that wouldn’t work out well for me a good percentage of the time.
Peat not being a fossil fuel doesn’t go against any “prevailing orthodoxy” whatsoever. It’s a simple fact, never denied, to my knowledge, by anyone with half a brain.
Why this was ‘sanctioned’ I have no idea, but it would have had nothing to do with ‘current orthodoxy’.
Maybe some moderator bot thought “turf” was a misspelling, and you were venturing into the contentious terf vs trans debate!
And that post had no other claims that went against the current prevailing orthodoxy?
Maybe some moderator bot thought “turf” was a misspelling, and you were venturing into the contentious terf vs trans debate!
The only time I have ever been threatened with a sanction on Facebook was a couple of weeks ago when I shared a post saying that turf (peat) wasn’t a ‘fossil fuel’.
Now I remember why I pay for this site: defenses of monarchy and now the hearth. But keep you cell phones on.They’re not a problem
https://unfccc.int/climate-action/momentum-for-change/women-for-results/ibu-inspirasi
https://e360.yale.edu/features/worlds_pall_of_black_carbon_can_be_eased_with_new_stoves
I am a fan of Paul Kingsnorth, in spite of me being an apologist of capitalism. Some readers seem to be thinking he is making a pop at capitalism, whereas I interpret this excellent essay as a call to getting families back to abiding in their homes and seeing them as a place of refuge to build shared values as part of a wider community. Thoughtful and optimistic essays like this are hard to come by.
I’m sorry to break it to you, but Kingsnorth despises Capitalism in all it’s forms. “Interpret” it all you like, you really can’t escape that one.
The Bas***ds are coming after our coal as well – from early next year we won’t be able to buy domestic coal any more in the UK, (Not the proper stuff, the reconstituted excuse for coal euphemistically called smokeless coal is still available)
I may be able to stock pile a years supply but after that its unrealistic.
One more nail in the coffin of the traditional home.
I think people sitting ranting at the globe on computers, as we are both doing, is probably are far more significant “nail in the coffin of the traditional home” than you not being able to give your family lung disease with your choice of fuel.
Yes of course.
All the people burning wood and coal are dying of lung disease.
Why would “all the people” be dying of lung disease?
Who said that? Do “all” people who smoke get lung disease? No. Does that mean smoking doesn’t cause lung disease? No, only an idiot would make that inference.
Reading the comments here, I seriously worry about the level of education these days….
I’m fairly content with using smokeless coal (phurnacite) in my multi-burner. My only complaint is that it is damnably difficult to get started. Maybe my fire setting technique needs improving, but I get through shedloads of fire starter packs!
On the subject of woodburners, the science is weak. About a year or so ago, I decided to track-down the actual data used in the oft-quoted press-releases that particulate from woodburners is harming us all. As a bumbling innocent, I read the original papers for method etc. and discovered that there is no actual measurement – the science is based upon made up data: the number of stoves was guessed; their output (in all its diversity) was guessed; their hours-used was guessed and the resulting amalgam of guesses was totalled and promulgated (as fact) by advisors to media and policy makers. I would suggest a proper literature review by the media who could do far a better job than I have. I really would like to be proven wrong but my own guess is that burning a first-principal, exemplary renewable and beneficial living resource – especially from your neighbourhood tree surgeon – is not, on balance, harmful. It may even be an improvement upon fossil fuel – or even upon non-timber renewables (when production & maintenance cost and environmental impact of the kit needed is properly assessed).
Remember – as in so many things and if you have the time and will – look into that original peer-reviewed scientific paper: who funded it; who did it and; where did the actual data came from; don’t rely upon what is written by well-meaning journalists after reading a press release.
[On the other hand, the notion that trees can be ground into chips using a lot of fossil fuel, then transported over vast distances, ditto, stored and then burned in a fabulously-engineered and expensively developed boiler system – all under astonishing government subsidy to somehow improve the environment is baffling – but I have not looked into the science of all that – it is not an easy target].
Please give a link to or reference for the particular ‘dataless’ study that you’re referring to, as I can’t find one specific source for this. The DEFRA figures, which are often used as the source of reports, come from an extrapolation of a survey of 50,000 homes. This is hardly “made-up data”, it’s a pretty large base for a standard methodology when studying households. How else could it be done?
I have been clear that I am not up to date and working from memory (after reading a Times article and painfully trying to find the method and data). I found it hard to get to the facts behind emission data but there were indeed references to annual Defra figures – digging into that and the method I found only estimates – which I have wickedly called guesses in my diatribe – I di not say ‘data less’. My argument is that real measurement is not happening but there are intermittent and surprising attacks on wood burning based upon ‘guesswork’. I am hoping someone will put me right (I do not think, for example, that the 50,000 homes you refer to were physically surveyed for particulates – or even what they were burning etc). I wish I’d kept notes, but I didn’t – apologies. I stand by for a detailed explanation and correction of how much actual measurement in the field has been made etc.
My point is not that woodburners are blameless; just that if all things, including fuel source, distribution and other impacts etc, were properly (and expensively) surveyed, then it seems credible that woodburners would seem unlikely be a major enemy to the environment and people everywhere. Banning an obvious smoke source might, however, be popular – no matter what the facts are.
Thank you for your considerate response – it does look as though you are more informed than I am – and I should know better than to comment using only memory and little to no scientific expertise – but I was at least clear on that front.
No perspective below. The ‘Hearth’ is a symbol of much less populated days. Now the extended family is scattered to the winds as mentioned almost as if gene driven. Xmas is a throwback symbolically revisiting the old hearth.
As for wood and peat, similar to the power hook ups for EV cars. One or two in the street, fine. Every house in the street, an impossible drain on the grid. The answer is coal with its dust and fumes and the apparent shortening of life expectancy.
Almost everyone understands the symbolism, but Kingsnorth goes beyond that into a real-life defense of woodfires and some rather ideal version of old-fashioned country life. His argument is well-stated and somewhat persuasive to me, but I think you knocked over the bowl for anything but satire when you claimed that coal is ‘the answer’.
“Kicked over the bowl for anything but satire..”
You’d better not read the rest of the comments here, then….
I felt as though I was coining ‘knocked over the bowl’ (your ‘kicked over’ might be better)–but I may have just pinched it from some older author, probably born in England. These comments pages contain a pretty wild mix of insight and trollery.
Always good to read scientific illiteracy and undigested internet cliches masquerading as ‘free-thinking’.
Always good to read scientific illiteracy and undigested internet cliches masquerading as ‘free-thinking’.
I felt as though I was coining ‘knocked over the bowl’ (your ‘kicked over’ might be better)–but I may have just pinched it from some older author, probably born in England. These comments pages contain a pretty wild mix of insight and trollery.
“Kicked over the bowl for anything but satire..”
You’d better not read the rest of the comments here, then….
Almost everyone understands the symbolism, but Kingsnorth goes beyond that into a real-life defense of woodfires and some rather ideal version of old-fashioned country life. His argument is well-stated and somewhat persuasive to me, but I think you knocked over the bowl for anything but satire when you claimed that coal is ‘the answer’.
No perspective below. The ‘Hearth’ is a symbol of much less populated days. Now the extended family is scattered to the winds as mentioned almost as if gene driven. Xmas is a throwback symbolically revisiting the old hearth.
As for wood and peat, similar to the power hook ups for EV cars. One or two in the street, fine. Every house in the street, an impossible drain on the grid. The answer is coal with its dust and fumes and the apparent shortening of life expectancy.