Morts Musings

So, while the economy’s going down the pan, & thousands are loosing their jobs, it would seem that being a banker is still rather lucrative.

Yesterdays Govt announcement that RBS executives are still to get their contractual bonuses is, to my mind, completely unbelievable!

I understand the principle that the bonuses are guaranteed by the bankers’ contracts of employment, & that not paying would certainly lead to court action which the bankers would quite likely win.

What bugs me though is that these guys are essentially being paid out of tax payer’s money; we bailed their bloody bank out! Without state help there’s a good chance that these guys wouldn’t have jobs anymore, let alone bonuses!

Surely common sense and decency would suggest that maybe, just maybe, in a spirit of contrition, for being at least partly to blame for the current economic troubles, the bankers might forego their bonuses this year.

After all it hardly seems like they’ve earned them!

If nothing else, this is something that the govt should have thought about when they were offering the bailout; not paying out bonuses should have been a condition of getting tax payer support in the first place, even if it meant altering the bankers’ contracts, & even if that meant making the whole bloody lot of them re-apply for their jobs. Jobs they should be thankful to have at all, given their performance, & the general state of the jobs market!

What I would like to see is the govt adopting a “hard-ball” position along the lines of “Sure, you can pay those bonuses, but if you do we want our money back, now”.

I know, I know, that’s just a fantasy- we can’t let the banks go under for the good of the economy, but it seems to me that the govt could have got a better deal out of the banks when the bailout was being agreed, if they’d tried at all.

I’m relatively lucky, I still have a job, but I didn’t get a pay rise this year, which, taking inflation into account, amounts to a pay cut, & yet the people that caused this mess are still getting their bonuses, &, to really rub salt into the wound, are being paid out of my tax pounds!

That might be legal, but it’s certainly not right, & I have to think that a legal system which would support the bankers, if they didn’t get their bonuses, is far removed from anything resembling justice or common sense!

Except this time it’s not the Revd Ian Paisley who’s uttered his famous catchphrase, it’s Northern Ireland’s Environment Minister, Sammy Wilson. Sammy has barred a series of, UK govt produced, TV adverts, encouraging reduced energy consumption & CO2 output, from being aired in the province, claiming that they are part of an “insidious propaganda campaign”. Apparently he feels that, “giving people the impression that by turning off the standby light on their TV they could save the world from melting glaciers and being submerged in 40ft of water” is “patent nonsense”. (source BBC News)

Well that’s alright then, thanks Sammy, I only wish you’d let us all know how foolish we were being sooner!

So, just why is Sammy so certain that we don’t need to worry about anthropogenic (man-made) climate change? Maybe his Department have uncovered some previously overlooked research or data? Let’s take a look at what the NI Dept of Environment site has to say about “Sustainable Development and Climate Change”:
“Unsustainable development across the world is overexploiting resources and creating pollution, changing habitats and driving species to extinction. It is creating social problems which are exacerbated by the inequalities in health, wealth, education and employment which accompany it.”

A smile that inspires confidence... or too many beers at lunch time?

Hmm, it would seem not. Well, ok then, maybe he’s just following the DUP’s party line? lets take a look at their manifesto:
“The DUP has supported the introduction of a Climate Change Bill at Westminster and called for year-on-year targets in order to achieve reduced Carbon emissions.” (Page 57, 2007 DUP Manifesto)

So just where is he getting this information, which makes him so certain that anthropogenic climate change is either insignificant or non-existant? Actually it’s hard to say, because in all the recent interviews, I’ve found of him, he doesn’t mention any of his sources, no sources on his own website either, even as references in his sept 08 article “Climate change alarmists damage us all”.

Come on Sammy, this is your own site, you have absolute control over what it contains! If your want thinking people to consider your stand point seriously, you could at least give us the benefit of some of the material that’s led you to your controversial opinions!

In fact, the only thing I’ve found which approaches a quoted source, was in his interview with John Snow, on Monday night’s Channel 4 News, where Sammy claimed that “…indeed the last survey, I think, that was done of climate scientists indicated that about 43% of climate scientists were either convinced that man made causes were not the cause of climate change, or some of them were not convinced.”
Sadly Sammy neglected to tell us the origins of this survey, so it’s rather hard to verify exactly what the researchers found, or wrote.

My initial instinct would be to point out that 93.7% of unsourced statistics are made up on the spot, but lets, just for a moment, give Sammy the benefit of the doubt & assume both that this survey was rigourous, & that his interpretation of the data was accurate; So, 43% of climate scientists either reject the idea of anthropogenic climate change, or, are unsure whether it exists or not. Turning that around, 57% of climate scientists are convinced that there is an anthropogenic effect. It would be very interesting to see what the breakdown of the other 43% is, between the “no”s and the “unsure”s.
In fact grouping them together smacks a little of statistical dishonesty, almost as if someone wanted to create a statistic which, at casual glance, would appear more impressive than it actually is.
Unfortunately, without a source it’s impossible to know whether this aggregation of the “no” and “uncertain” camps is the work of the researchers, in which case I wonder about their impartiality, & Sammy’s ability to objectively & accurately analyse data, or, something that Sammy came up with, which would either raise the same questions about Sammy’s analytical skills, or, call into question his integrity and ability to look at the issues in an impartial & open-minded way!
Looking at Sammy’s article on Climate Change it seems quite clear that many of his objections are economic, hardly surprising from an Economics and Politics graduate I suppose, but his arguements that we’re wasting money on a problem which we didn’t cause, and can’t influence, appear to be based on a very select set of research, much of which has already been discredited, or, at the most generous, is far from the current consensus.

I’m not going to offer a personal rebuttal to the “evidence”, or factors (unsourced, of course,) which Sammy raises in the article referenced above, after all I’m just some random guy on the internet.
Instead I’d offer this rather comprehensive piece by the New Scientist, which, point by point, goes through common climate change myths, including those Sammy raises. Not only is it infinitely better sourced than Sammy’s piece, I’d also suggest that a respected scientific journal like New Scientist is able to take a more informed & impartial view of the subject than Sammy has demonstrated he’s capable of doing.

And really, in the end that’s what it comes down to. If Sammy held almost any other role in the NI administration his personal views on climate change would be insignificant & irrelevant, but he’s the Environment Minister for pete’s sake!!! It’s an important bloody job, if we don’t take appropriate steps to deal with the effects of climate change we could literally be talking the end of civilisation as we know it.
Of course it does need for the steps to be appropriate, and not expensive knee jerk over-reactions, but surely you need someone who is open minded, & willing to stay up to date on the latest research, rather than some guy, with no scientific training, who appears to have already decided what he wants to believe, & is backing it up with questionable research.
Whether he’s choosen that research deliberately, to back up a position he already holds, or is just incapable of objective analysis of the evidence, is to some extent irrelevent; Either way he clearly isn’t capable of carrying out his brief as Environment minister in anything like a conscientious or competent manner.
It is arrogant in the extreme for Sammy to deny the existance of anthropogenic climate change, especially when it flies in the face of a consensus amongst climate scientists, and there is a consensus, despite what he’d like us to believe.

Admittedly, there’s no absolute evidence for how great the effects of anthropogenic climate change will be, yet, but modelling weather patterns decades in the future isn’t an exact science, and anyone who tells you it is (& sadly there are some scientists who do overplay their results) is a liar! Unfortunately politicians don’t like sticking their hands in their pockets unless they have some certainty, and I believe that’s what’s happening here.
Surely it’s enough, at this stage, that most informed, unbiased scientists believe we are having an impact on global climate. I’m not saying pull out all the stops, but we do need to start taking action now, and planning for worst case scenarios, so that if the evidence starts leaning that way we do have time to take action before it’s too late!

If Sammy has any integrity at all, he’ll resign and let someone capable of doing the job objectively take over, or at least stop cherry picking his evidence. Unfortunately integrity is something that seems to have been bred out of the modern political classes, so I won’t be holding my breath. I’ll just be shaking my head in incredulity & despair at the short sighted, self serving nature of some people.

If you’re interested in finding out more, or getting involved, there are many reputable organisations involved in the field, such as Oxfam whose site has a Climate Change section