Russia funding anti-fracking – but what about the Chinese?

25 Responses to Russia funding anti-fracking – but what about the Chinese?

1. neilfutureboy says:

   20 June 2014 at 10:45

   My impression was that the Chinese FoE member at 28 Gate was somebody working for a western “N”GO busily subverting China. FoE is certainly funded by western governments. There is also the recent case of India acting to prevent Greenpeace India getting western funding to campaign against human progress in India.
   The co-organiser of the BBC’s “symposium” was an “aid” fund (partly funded by BBC’s red nose day) and a number of the attendees were not only not “scientists from all sides” or even alarmist activists but foreign “aid” activists. The Chinese Greenpeace looks like someone straddling both positions.
   While the claim that Putin is funding Luddites may make good copy for us I have seen no actual facts brought forward. I suspect it is up there with “all sceptics are paid by Big Oil/Tobacco Inc”.
   Or that, looking at the way western “N”GOs put $5 bn into promoting “democratic” rioters in Ukraine (also Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Belorus, Georgia, Russia and I am sure others) this is merely the assumption that because our government do it in the cause of democracy the Russians/Chinese must be doing the same in the cause of badness. In that regard one of the “28 leading scientists” was a “diplomat” from the US embassy, whose only previous claim to fame was serving in Croatia at the time a CIA psywar group, based there was funding the overthrow of Milosevic.
2. Scottish Sceptic says:

   20 June 2014 at 11:56

   What is the easiest way to infiltrate the BBC? AS AN ENVIRONMENTALIST – what’s more an environmentalist with bucket load of (chinese) dosh. We’ve all see the way these environmentalists will take money NO QUESTIONS ASKED.
   http://www.biggreenradicals.com/anti-fracking-hollywood-activists-caught-colluding-with-fake-middle-east-oil-sheiks/
   The sad thing is that we’ll probably never know now unless someone involved steps forward and says so. The Chinese, now they are the biggest polluter on the planet, will have realised that all they will achieve pushing the “CO2 is poison” non-science is a backlash against them.
   The big difference between global warming and fracking, is that everyone I know made a profit from global warming — except of course joe public and us skeptics.
   In contrast, many companies stand to make a lot of money out of fracking – which together with the “USSR” monitoring budgets that still exist and still have to prove they are still “worthwhile” – goes a long way in explaining why the fracking funding was exposed whereas the global warming funding was not.
3. Scottish Sceptic says:

   20 June 2014 at 12:02

   In fact, if I remember correctly, the whole global warming thing was kicked off by Thatcher at a time she was trying to destroy the unions – the MANUFACTURING unions.
   So, not only did the Chinese want to destroy UK and US manufacturing so that they could get it, but the UK civil service were probably more than happy to destroy UK manufacturing as the LONDON-based civil service probably saw it as just an inconvenient hotbed of political dissent.
4. neilfutureboy says:

   20 June 2014 at 12:45

   It depends on whether Greenpeace China is largely funded from the west or from China. I have no certain knowledge on that though the Indian example suggests western funding is common. China has more spare wealth than India but I don’t think any of these ex-3rd world countries have much popular support for Luddism. He who pays the piper….
   I also think the “Thatcher produced warming alarmism to beat the miners” is retcon. Back then we did actually have some warming and the theory was not as clearly false as now. Thatcher DID persuade the world into the CFC ban, also probably wrongly, but for no ideological benefit. Because she was a scientist she thought she understood these arguments better than other leaders and that it was her duty to push them into it. If she had been doing this to promote nuclear she could and should have done better by just promoting nuclear – for example call for a proper investigation into whether there is any truth to the Linear No Threshold theory on which the anti-nuclear movement is built (there isn’t).
   We all have 20 20 hindsight and many conspiracy theories depend on the belief that those in charge at the time had a good idea of what they were doing.
5. Scottish Sceptic says:

   20 June 2014 at 13:27

   Neil, interesting comments.
   It was very very clear to me and many others at the time that Thatcher had a hatred of manufacturing industry and engineering. I would go as far as to say she may have attacked the unions as a way of attacking manufacturing industry rather than attacking manufacturing industry as a way of getting at the unions. However whichever way the cause and effect – the outcome was that Thatcher destroyed a huge chunk of the manufacturing base which had built the UK into a global super-power.
   And what I’d like to suggest is taht Thatcher may have been dancing to the USSR tune – as the USSR were probably very willing to help Thatcher destroy UK industry which was so important in our economy. So perhaps all those “red Ken” unions were also playing their part in a Soviet plan to tarnish the name of UK manufacturing (helped by the BBC).
   And this article is relevant: http://www.thegwpf.org/margaret-thatcher-was-wrong-science-doesnt-need-nobel-prizes-to-thrive/ as it shows how Thatcher had no idea about the important of industry in creating good science.
   As for China. It’s been obvious to me that the single biggest beneficiary from the “anti-industry” view of global warming has been the Chinese. It’s also obvious at the climate talks how the Chinese play along everyone talking “green” at the talks whilst clearly have no interest at all in doing anything “green” at home. It’s also they manipulate other countries to create coalitions to push through “global warming” – to the detriment of the west.
   So basically, it’s an open secret the Chinese use global warming to undermine the west’s industry.
6. neilfutureboy says:

   20 June 2014 at 14:26

   We aren’t going to agree that thatcher hated manufacturing industry, let alone was willing to destroy a large share of UK national wealth to get at the workers in it. I do think the failure to allow cheap (basically nuclear) power was the doom of manufacturing and though she spoke in favour of nuclear she did nothing. On that one she still averages better than all her successors who have done less than nothing, as the problem got far worse.
   I don’t think either China or Russia conned us into the catastrophic warming Luddism. At worst they may have followed the Duke of Wellington’s advice “It’s bad manners to interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”. Socialism used to have the redeeming feature of being technologically progressive – Trotsky is on record as advocating big engineering on a scale any modern politician would run from.
   I have discussed Kealey’s views on my blog http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/government-funding-of-r-has-negative.html and come down solidly on the fence between him and Thatcher. He is right that government spending is usually counterproductive for science but she is right that it is important enough and pure research sufficiently unrewarded to justify support. My answer being funding through X-prizes rather than grants.
7. Scottish Sceptic says:

   20 June 2014 at 14:42

   The simple fact is that engineering drives good science (at least in Physics and Chemistry). But when science takes over and begins directing government policy toward its own benefit – it destroys industry, manufacturing and eventually (as we are seeing) it ends up destroying science.
   in part Global warming was part of the death spiral of UK science in that after it has destroyed the goose that laid the golden science (engineering), it had no rational to exist and so desperately sought a rational in areas like climate prediction.
   In other words, global warming was a whole academic sector grasping at straws trying to find a reason to justify the increasing budged being wasted on “science” at a time that “science” was increasingly failing to deliver anything in return.
   Global warming was the last hope for self-justification for the anti-industry, left-wing, pro-environment academia.
   When everything is now “invented here” in theory and made elsewhere, “Science” needed global warning to “show” that science had some other purpose now that industry had gone.
8. neilfutureboy says:

   20 June 2014 at 15:18

   I think CAGW was primarily driven by the bureaucracy and civil service, as one of Mencken’s “imaginary hobgoblins” to keep us in line, rather than by scientists. When you look at it there are very few scientists pushing CAGW and very few of them good scientists – eg my search for a single one, not paid by the state out of millions. Sir Paul Nurse, with a Nobel, is about the only counter example.
   Scientists as a group are to be blamed for keeping their heads down and often adding “because of climate change” to grant applications and for letting their professional bodies fall into the hands of political bureaucrats and government grant giving bodies.
9. Scottish Sceptic says:

   20 June 2014 at 15:35

   I’m not trying to say that scientists intentionally set out to destroy manufacturing industry. Instead I would say that consensus “science” (which is largely public-sector science) treated industry and engineering as something that could be got rid of.
   Also, medical science is an example of a late post-industrial science “industry”, which will more than likely go the way of all other manufacturing industries. What will happen is that academics will push for higher and higher public funding to “help” industry … this will then then undercut commercial science laboratories putting them out of business and forcing commercial companies to increasingly rely on public sector “science” … once almost all commercial science has been destroyed this way, academic/consensus science will then lead the pharmaceutical sector down a series of blind alleyways — resulting in masses and masses of new “inventions” … which are useless to UK sector and eventually only get used abroad. This will herald a steady decline, until this decline becomes seen as an inevitable …. which the SCIENTIFIC/ACADEMIC advisers in government increasingly portray as something that can only be stopped by more and more public funding to academia … which was paradoxically the root cause of the destruction in the first place.
10. neilfutureboy says:

    20 June 2014 at 16:35

    Freeman Dyson has been very critical of the class divide in Britain. Between the academic middle class and the industry/business middle class. I tend to agree and think that the establishment of the civil service in the 1850s, with promotion to the top being dependent on how well you did in Classics at Oxbridge set the trend (& may explain Britain’s comparative economic decline since then).
    The examples of the R100 & R101 (capitalist and civil service airships respectively) is instructive.. When the latter crashed because civil service will canna break the laws of physics the former was scrapped – in my view because it was successful and could not be seen to be so.
    I think we have broad agreement though I would put the emphasis on civil servants who happen to be scientists rather than scientists who happen to be civil servants.
11. Scottish Sceptic says:

    20 June 2014 at 16:54

    Yes we do seem to largely agree. The big problem we both have is that the UK has been taught “science” as a type of religion for the last century – indeed, I might even suggest that “industry” has taken the place of the “fallen angel” in this religion. Science degraded by being commercialised.
    It took a lot of analysis to work out that “science” (as the BBC use the term for a group of academics) has been highly detrimental to UK industry and that anti-CO2 is really a proxy for being “anti-industry”.
    And if you don’t believe me – just go and watch lord of the Rings – and look carefully to see how the industrial society with all the machinery is portrayed! And then look for all the machinery and industry in the shire and the elvish kingdoms!
12. neilfutureboy says:

    20 June 2014 at 17:34

    Yes, I believe Tolkien denied that The Ring, something you can’t give up and gives you an edge but perverts your purity, was not meant to be an analogue of technology. But you can’t always trust authors.
    I always thought “the fires of Mordor in the east” bore an uncanny resemblance to the USSR of the Stalin era and had more than a little time for the villain for that reason. Mind you I am a contrary bugger who normally has some time for official villains.
    Tolkien could certainly have risen to the “First Division Club” of the civil service.
13. Scottish Sceptic says:

    20 June 2014 at 17:51

    I always thought “the fires of Mordor in the east” bore an uncanny resemblance to the USSR of the Stalin…
    I was trying to remember the other film I saw recently … and it’s the time machine. Again, we have the two sides … the pure “Arian” surface dwellings living like Romans in constant luxury, and the underground factories of the Morlock. Of course the twist in the time machine is that the “Arian” race is really being treated like cattle by the “Engineering” race and it is now the professor/Academic/Civil servant must save the scantily lamb like blond headed girls from the evil engineers of industry.
    In other words, it’s a wet-dream for your typical global warming pause denialist!
14. catweazle666 says:

    20 June 2014 at 21:42

    The Trade Unions – which we know now to have had Soviet funding – were responsible for the destruction of British manudfacturing industry, look no further than Red Robbo and the BL Maestro – a car that made even the Trabant look classy.
    Thatcher started the AGW thing when she was involved in the struggle with the coal mining unions led by Crazy Arthur Scargill, in fact. She later recanted, of course.
    A little acknowledged piece of history is that over twice as many mines were closed under the Callaghan administration by Benn than were by Thatcher and McGregor..
15. catweazle666 says:

    20 June 2014 at 21:45

    The examples of the R100 & R101 (capitalist and civil service airships respectively) is instructive..
    Yes, not half.
    Have you read Neville Shute Norway’s autobiography, “Slide Rule”?
    Required reading for anyone with any pretensions to engineering whatsoever.
16. catweazle666 says:

    20 June 2014 at 21:54

    I always thought “the fires of Mordor in the east” bore an uncanny resemblance to the USSR of the Stalin…
    Back in the 1970s as evening was approaching a friend and I were driving over the Pennines between Huddersfield and Manchester on the A62 approaching the very top of the pass.
    What with the spoil heaps and the spectacularly ruddy sky over Manchester, I remarked that it seriously resembled Mordor. My friend remarked that that was probably because Tolkein had spent some time in that part of the country.
    This was before the advent of clean air acts and massive electrification had got rid of all the old steam driven lineshaft transmitted power, when every factory had a cluster of nice smoky Lancashire boilers.
17. Scottish Sceptic says:

    20 June 2014 at 22:04

    Yes the trade unions were also responsible – but they could have been dealt with without “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
    In effect all Thatcher did was to undermine good industrial relations by ensuring that everyone knew that the only hope they had of safeguarding their job was to join a union. So the miners strike might have made her look good – union bashing in general might have got headlines – but the reality is that it strengthened the very people that were causing the problems in industry – the militant unions. And the end result was that good industrial relations were destroyed in the UK and good managers gave up and left leaving the “union bashing” luddites who drove British industry out of a job to run the show. (And where I started work – these luddites were actually ex-union people. They were employed because they knew how to attack unions. And a few years after I left it shut down!!)
18. Scottish Sceptic says:

    20 June 2014 at 22:16

    But how did the elves make their swords – unless they too had blacksmiths? How did men make their armour? The insinuation is that the “evil” side had cut down the forests for its industry – but as I recall, the side with most armour were the men!
    The other area where academics completely distort reality is how they portray the “factories”. If you look at the academic literature, the factories are universally portrayed as horrific places to work and the house are horrific places to live and it was “horrific” that children were working all day long, etc. etc.
    However, when you look into it, you start hearing about the children going to school, the workers enjoying time off to buy the new consumer goods. You look at their homes and see that they are full of all the latest mod cons (for the time).
    Then you go and look at the hovels people in the countryside lived in – you read about the really horrendous working and living conditions – and you read of people flocking to the new fatories to get away from the countryside.
    And suddenly you begin to see that country dwellers literally viewed the factories as “streets paved with gold” The factories were fantastic places to live in compared to the countryside.
    However, if you look at the academic literature … you start seeing portrayals of the country dwellers as “noble savages”.
    So, to our academics, the country dwellers who literally paddled about bare foot in puddles of their own excrement — were “noble” … even “elf like”. Whereas the town dwellers working in factories with money to cloth and shoe themselves, with food and health care. With schools etc …. they are the morlock, the inhabitants of mordor “EVIL INCARNATE” … the “CO2 – POLLUTERS”.
19. neilfutureboy says:

    21 June 2014 at 10:18

    As with your articles about the “clearances” people, largely, moved to the Gorbals because it was a better place to live.
20. neilfutureboy says:

    21 June 2014 at 10:22

    I find it interesting that the only area still largely unionised is the state sector, where there are political factors helping them and no serious competitive pressure. Not what would be expected if Thatcher and her Tory successors had been excessively anti-union.
21. Scottish Sceptic says:

    21 June 2014 at 11:08

    Yes – much as we might look at the early industrial period as “dirty” and “bad for the health”, the shocking reality is that by the standards of the day they were “clean” and “healthy”. Whereas tne countryside which romantic academics want to portray as the “shire”, was in reality nothing much more than a pig-sty.
    And the reason I know this is because we regularly go camping as a family in the summer. Most years we get good weather – but we have had a few where it just rained and rained. And when it does, after even two weeks living in a tent, the entrance is just a morass of mud, things are starting to smell and it soon become impossible to keep everything clean and dry.
    I can see that is what it would be like constantly in winter – and after just a couple of weeks every “hut” would be approached by a thick muddy path – the inside would be either damp or smoky or both (much like living in a pub before the smoking ban).
22. Scottish Sceptic says:

    21 June 2014 at 11:11

    The most militant “unions” these days are “middle class” ones. The worst ones are the medical unions, lawyers are about as bad. The reason was because Thatcher was only concerned about restrictive working practices when they were working class!
23. neilfutureboy says:

    21 June 2014 at 11:27

    Unions have always been strongest among the better off – even when that was skilled workers V unskilled. The skilled have smaller numbers and thus key man positions on their side; better organisation; and more savings to hold out longer. This does not fit the “leftist” workers of the world unite mantra so is ignored.
    ————————————
    Colin McInnes has several times written of internal smoke in 3rd world dwellings as still being the worst environmental killer on the planet. http://colinmcinnes.blogspot.co.uk/
24. Scottish Sceptic says:

    21 June 2014 at 11:52

    But imagine what the smoke would be like in Scotland!! The wood half damp, the fire stacked high to offset the wind and rain. Every possible nook and cranny sealed to stop the heat and smoke escaping.
    I visited one of these reconstruction sites in Denmark around five years ago. Both doors were open – but even so, there was a thick layer of smoke at about shoulder height.

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