The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

Joseph A. Schumpeter

Back in 2021, the lucky few thousand attendees of COP26 (aka the 26th final chance to save the world) were to be thoroughly entertained by our spiffing prime minister, the now legendary Boris ‘No Rules Were Broken’ Johnson. Just judge for yourself — read this extract from his introductory speech and tell me you are not entertained:

Good afternoon everybody, welcome to COP, welcome to Glasgow. And to Scotland, whose most globally famous fictional son is almost certainly a man called James Bond. Who generally comes to the climax of his lucrative films strapped to a doomsday device, desperately trying to work out which coloured wire to pull to turn it off, while a red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation which will end human life as we know it.

Gripped? Good, in that case I’ll let Boris continue:

And we’re in roughly the same position, my fellow global leaders, as James Bond today. Except that the tragedy is this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real. And the clock is ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and turbines and furnaces and engines with which we are pumping carbon into the air faster and faster, record outputs, and quilting the earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2.

I wasn’t there, but I’m guessing his audience was lapping this up. And once Boris had finished with his warm up act, His Royal Highness was on hand to pitch in with his own brand of colourful exaggeration:

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us just how devastating a global cross-border threat can be. Climate change and biodiversity loss are no different – in fact, they pose an even greater existential threat, to the extent that we have to put ourselves on what might be called a war-like footing.

A war-like footing? Surely not. Ah but yes, because apparently, “time has quite literally run out” – yet again!

Since Trump’s commitment to making America great again has now placed the world on an actual, real-life war footing (not one of Charles’s pretend ones but one involving nuclear warheads and shit) we can now look back fondly on such rhetorical gaiety and see it for what it was – eschatological theatrics.

Regrettably, Russia wasn’t in Glasgow to enjoy Boris’s performance; it seems it had better things to do. And it looks like the USA is unlikely to be buying tickets for any future show, so it may be that the annual COP jamboree could finally be running out of steam. A new realpolitik seems to be emerging which seeks to accurately footlight the net zero melodrama. Why, even Boris’s own party seems now to be waking up to the dawning reality. Take, for example, the Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP, who back in October 2024 had this to say during his leadership campaign:

I would go back to the Climate Change Act. I would change it so that we remove these crazy, interim, binding legal targets – the carbon budgets. I would certainly fight against Ed Miliband’s mad plan to phase out gas by 2030. No serious person believes that’s possible without doing immense harm to working people.

He could have got away with simply saying that no serious person believes that’s possible – period. But the fact that he spoke of causing immense harm does raise the interesting question of moral duty. Whilst I’ve never been a student of ethics, I did pick up the idea somewhere in the past that causing immense harm was a bad thing to do. As indeed is lying to the public. This is what Jenrick’s own website said on that particular subject recently:

As we have seen across Europe the public are sick of systematic dishonesty by the political class about what net zero entails. To reckon with the public will not only bring more people onside-it will force policymakers to balance net zero against our security and economy in a more responsible and pragmatic way. Until then politicians will keep driving political instability that blows back painfully in their faces.

He is, of course, having a dig at Labour and its net zero lunacy — and I say good on him. It’s just a shame that he wasn’t as forthcoming when his illustrious leader was holding forth in Glasgow, conjuring images of doomsday devices and James Bond. Back then it was just a case of snipping the right coloured wire, but as Jenrick knew all along and now admits:

Reaching net zero by 2050 requires us to overhaul the material foundations of our economy in just three decades. There is no historical precedent for such a change. It constitutes an eye-wateringly radical revolution; a bet on scientific progress in technology that doesn’t yet exist.

In its day, Team Boris was engaging in ‘dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality’, but it wasn’t until long after the COP26 revelry had subsided that Jenrick finally chose to use that very phrase when describing every climate sceptic’s favourite Bond villain, Ed Milliband.

And now we find Rishi Sunak (remember him?) getting in on the act, telling the BBC that making net zero targets a legal thing was always a bad idea (duh?). I should be able to substantiate this finding by providing the link to the BBC’s own write-up of that ‘wide ranging’ interview. Only, they somehow forgot to include the legally-enforcing-net-zero-was-always-bonkers revelation, preferring instead to focus mainly upon Rishi’s contrition over the stop-the-boats debacle.

That’s strange, don’t you think? It’s unlike the BBC to edit out stuff they don’t approve of. You don’t suppose they could be part of the dangerous fantasy do you? I understand the BBC is a very idealistic organisation, so you just never know.

41 Comments

  1. A subtle point: this is not likely lying, but BS. An analysis by Michael Kinsley ( here) suggests that a candidate or an elected leader and his followers know they are playing a game, and winning depends on having the more compelling narrative, never mind the “truth.” In fact, these falsehoods are not even concerned with any “truth,” they are just making up stuff that sounds good to an audience. In other words, they are not lying, they are bullshitting. Insiders know it and are OK with it, while much of the public is naive and therefore gullible.

    As it happens Harry Frankfurt of Princeton gets to the heart of the matter in his provocative essay, On Bullshit, he says:

    It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

    Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game.

    The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

    If the above describes the shifting positions expressed by politicians lately, it could be because the public no longer buys their BS.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Some further points:

    Now the parallel with climatism is obvious. The Paris COP was striking in the sheer volume of claims that were stated as truths without any attempt to provide proof or even admit the need for any. Climatism is now unconnected to facts, evidence or logical argument. It explains why both political and climate fact-checkers are widely ignored.

    Frankfurt warns:

    The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.
    This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar.

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  3. Regarding the legislation mandating Net Zero, the write-up does at least say:

    He believed in slashing billions from welfare bills, a more “radical restructuring of the state” to pay for increased defence spending, and he says he told Johnson that the UK’s net zero obligations were saddling the economy with cost.

    Now he argues for abandoning the legal commitment to deliver net zero, made law by another Tory leader Theresa May.

    I haven’t listened to the podcast, because I can’t be bothered to find my password for the BBC – they now mandate signing in to do anything with video or audio, it seems. It would be interesting to know in what context:

    “I didn’t have a mandate,” he says, and defends his approach of trying to bring warring factions together.

    …came about. There was something so underwhelming about the “U turn” that perhaps he wanted to do more – actually, to do something – but the teals were warning him not to.

    To which the reply should have been, “If you want to bring down the government, go ahead.”

    To which he might have added, “We’re ****ed anyway.”

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  4. On topic here, I hope:

    “The perils and delusions of Europe’s new war economy

    EU leaders can’t defend their own borders, let alone Ukraine’s.”

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/07/the-perils-and-delusions-of-europes-new-war-economy/

    …Arguably, the rationale is as much about economics as it is about military force. The arms industry is to be Europe’s new growth sector. The powers-that-be have decided that defence is a better focus for economic regeneration than investing in useless Net Zero technology.

    Even Germany, which is usually fanatical about restraining public expenditure, has signed up to this brand of military Keynesianism. Indeed, it is driving the campaign to restructure Europe’s economy around the imperative of defence. It sees this as a way to stave off the seemingly never-ending economic recession and to save its ailing automobile sector. As Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at Berenberg Bank, put it: ‘It is becoming obvious to everybody that defence spending is the way to offset job losses in the car industry.’ A leaked plan for German rearmament goes as far as to propose spending €400 billion on national defence and committing another €500 billion euros to rebuild Germany’s dilapidated infrastructure (Germany’s railway infrastructure is currently in too poor a state to transfer tanks and other military hardware across the country).…

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Today’s Nature has a paper on using AI to spot errors in scientific papers (mostly preprints):

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00648-5

    The Nature Briefing email that drew my attention to it says: The impact could be huge, but the methods also generate a lot of false positives and could have worrying unintended consequences; for example, if they are used to target certain fields.

    I wonder which “certain fields” they might be worried about exposing to scrutiny?

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  6. The Conversation has just posted an article on the subject of integrity and climate action advocacy, and predictably enough it takes quite a different position to my own:

    “To address the environmental polycrisis, the first step is to demand more honesty”

    https://theconversation.com/to-address-the-environmental-polycrisis-the-first-step-is-to-demand-more-honesty-251742

    It was written by Mike Berners-Lee, Professor of Sustainability, Lancaster University, and for him the issue is very clear: endemic dishonesty is getting in the way of effective climate action. It seems there is no question in his mind of there being any dishonesty behind the hyping of the level of crisis, or the downplaying of risks associate with the transition to a carbon-free world. Yes, dishonesty seems to be an inevitable consequence of the human condition – unless of course we are talking about humans who are agreeing with you.

    If you want a real eye-opener regarding the extent to which dishonesty permeates the whole of society, irrespective of standpoints taken, try reading “Everybody Lies: What the internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are”, by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. John R, in matters of scientific integrity it is interesting (but somewhat depressing) to compare the actions of some (many?) of our much-published, much-publicised and much vaunted alarmist climate scientists to the paradigm of scientific integrity described by the late professor Richard Feynman in, for example, his popular publications – publications that the legacy media could so easily have read and promoted, but instead they chose to follow “the science” as spun to them by the activists. Good copy but, I fear, rather less good science. Regards, John C.

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  8. John R,

    I was particularly taken by these three paragraphs:

    …Many people in the west have become careless in their requirement for this basic standard from their leaders. We have allowed a growing a false narrative, propagated by the most dishonest among us, that lies are a normal and inevitable part of everyday life. And the results of our post-truth experiment are now starting to come in, with, sadly, plenty more consequences yet to come.

    It is now high time not just for a reset on honesty, but to raise the bar beyond anything the global community has ever known. Why do we need a higher standard than ever? Because deceit throws a spanner into any decision-making process and our complex, urgent polycrisis demands the highest quality, wisest decision-making that we can possibly attain.

    How can we achieve a culture of basic honesty when that very complexity makes deceit easier than ever? The answer is to create a high enough price for being caught. We need to treat deliberate deception as a form of abuse.…

    It’s interesting that how one views the honesty of others depends on one’s own perception. From where I’m standing, the repeated (ad nauseam) claims that renewables are good for the environment, are cheap, and will establish energy security in the UK are all profoundly dishonest, yet are little challenged. I think we have some of the least wise decision-making by governments that I have seen for a very long time. I don’t know, but I assume Professor Berners-Lee would profoundly disagree with my assessment, even though I agree wholeheartedly with his desire to reintroduce honesty into the debate.

    Liked by 2 people

  10. Jit took the words out of my mouth, had to google “polycrisis”. 1st hit –

    We’re in a ‘polycrisis’ – a historian explains what that means | World Economic Forum

    Partial quote’s – “If you’ve been feeling confused and as though everything is impacting on you all at the same time, this is not a personal, private experience,” says historian Adam Tooze. “This is actually a collective experience.”

    And that experience has a name – ‘polycrisis’. It describes the interplay between the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the energy, cost-of-living and climate crises.

    The word cropped up throughout panel discussions at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos. Experts evaluating the short- and long-term challenges facing the planet for the Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023, found the risk of polycrises is growing – “where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part”.

    “What are the fixes for our current moment?

    Adam Tooze: Renewable energy is an example of the sorts of solutions we eagerly need to grasp onto in a situation which is otherwise going to be hugely challenging to our collective capacity to organize. We should be, in a structural sense, spending vastly more money on enhancing our ability to produce those kinds of fixes.

    One of the things that’s been happening in Germany right now is a sustained conversation between the public health authorities who had to deal with the COVID crisis in 2020, 2021, and the Bundesnetzagentur, the agency which dispatches energy within the German system, as to how they engage in public information campaigns about energy saving. And so that seems to me the kind of cross-sectoral learning the current crisis moment really demands.

    They’re not the same kind of problem, obviously, but in both cases, you have technical public bodies which are not party-political, but are part of the government apparatus that are making decisions that affect people in their everyday lives. The level of your heating, whether you can send your kids to school and they are communicating with each other, expert to expert, about the problems of effectively communicating in a democracy about those kinds of risks. That’s the kind of cross-sectoral learning we need more of.”

    Bolded by me. Wonder what COVID crisis lessons might be applicable to “energy saving”!!!

    Might also interest John R as it talks about “Global Risks”.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Mark,

    “It’s interesting that how one views the honesty of others depends on one’s own perception.“

    That is very much the point. I don’t think the author appreciates that he can’t make a strong case for the duplicity and insincerity of those opposing climate action without simultaneously making a similar case for those advocating action. Duplicity and insincerity is a universal strategy taken by people who wish to manipulate and influence others into adopting a particular ideology. The choice of ideology is not a factor. The only difference I can see between the two camps is that the camp seeking to encourage climate action has explicitly declared its intention to use psychological manipulation to achieve its aims (see, for example, the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team).

    The bizarrely partisan attitude shown by the author is similar to that shown by those who recognise that cognitive biases are a universal trait and yet can only see it as a problem for those who happen to disagree with them. And these are academics who commit these basic errors of judgment. What excuse could they possibly have?

    Liked by 3 people

  13. Robin,

    I think you and John C have both made effective points under the Conservation article. At this stage I am more interested in seeing whether the author of the article responds (and, if so, in what way) than I am in adding to the conversation. Perhaps I may, later, depending on the nature of the author’s response – if any.

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  14. Mark, I think your reticence is wise because, albeit based upon limited exposure there, I have found that the level of debate at ‘The Conversation’ is much poorer than I was expecting. While the authors are experts in their field, their understanding of the societal impacts of their proposed policies is rather poor. I had expected much better from what I had expected to be the nation’s finest minds. Regards, John C.

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  15. John C: I’ve been posting comments about climate issues on The Conversation for more than ten years and long ago gave up any hope of a high level of debate. The reason I continue to post is that I think it’s important that academics – who it seems inhabit an echo-chamber of orthodox opinion – should realise there are intelligent, well-informed people out there with a different viewpoint. I think that’s especially important with the likes of Professor Berners-Lee who is quite a well-known public figure – his book There is No Planet B was popular and much praised. Opportunities for communicating our views to such people are rare. We should I suggest seize them when they occur.

    Liked by 3 people

  16. The item in The Conversation – To address the environmental polycrisis, the first step is to demand more honesty – discussed above, is no longer open for comments. Unsurprisingly but disgracefully the author, Professor Mike Berners-Lee, has not responded to either John C’s or my posts. This has prompted me to try to find out more about Berners-Lee’s thinking by looking for a review of his recently published book – A Climate of Truth: Why We Need It and How to Get It – for which the TC piece was I think intended to be publicity. And I found it on the Guardian website (published in the Observer) and written by Robin McKie. It’s titled A Climate of Truth by Mike Berners-Lee review – a white-hot takedown of environmental policy and subtitled The climate professor is justified in identifying the thinktanks, fossil fuel companies and politicians responsible for exacerbating the climate crisis but his list of remedies is underpowered. It can be found HERE.

    Some extracts from McKie’s review:

    Berners-Lee does not mince his words, it should be noted. His disdain for the last Tory government, Boris Johnson, climate change deniers, rightwing columnists, newspaper owners, Donald Trump and fossil fuel companies is visceral and intense. It is thanks to the malignant influence of these groups and individuals that humanity has continued to emit ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide despite decades-old warnings from scientists that our planet, species and most other life forms on Earth will suffer dreadfully as a consequence

    A Climate of Truth is his [Berners-Lee’s] attempt to pinpoint those who have led us to this frightening state of affairs and to offer ways to find salvation from global calamity.

    Berners-Lee … is hearteningly robust in naming those responsible. Villains include bogus fig leaf thinktanks such as the “appallingly dishonest” Global Warming Policy Foundation; fossil fuel companies who are “the godfathers of climate chaos”; the gambling, aviation and food processing industries; a host of different politicians, most of them Tories, and almost every newspaper in the UK apart from the Guardian (and, presumably, the Observer, which – at the time of writing – is still its sister paper). It is a sweeping list of denunciations but a pretty fair one, in my view.

    If that is a fair representation of Berners-Lee’s views, he must be either frighteningly naïve or simply intent on launching a political attack. Does he really believe that Tory politicians and ‘bogus fig leaf think-tanks’ (he’d probably include Cliscep if he came across it) are the reason why ‘humanity has continued to emit ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide despite decades-old warnings from scientists that our planet, species and most other life forms on Earth will suffer dreadfully as a consequence’?

    Despite a strong disinclination to support this seemingly absurd publication I think I may purchase the Kindle version (it’ll cost me £11.26!) so that, if it’s as bad as it seems, I can publish an informed comment (on Amazon and possibly elsewhere) .

    Liked by 1 person

  17. Robin,

    The lack of engagement is disappointing but by no means surprising. I’m sure he thought he was applying the dictum “do not feed the trolls”.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Villains include bogus fig leaf thinktanks such as the “appallingly dishonest” Global Warming Policy Foundation

    Does this not mean that the thinktanks are not fig leaves at all? I’m not sure you can just string hurty words together and expect them to make sense.

    As to Berners-Lee, my initial supposition is supported, that he should not be taken seriously. I’m sure his opinions [if accurately portrayed by the reviewer] will go down well among the bien pensant. I don’t think it would take long for Socrates to demolish them in a casual conversation. An average sceptic could do the same job, given the chance. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Berners-Lee prefers to lecture rather than converse.

    Liked by 3 people

  19. Jit,

    Figleaf thinktanks are extremely dangerous, because whilst the fig leaves are shielding the climate sceptical thinktanks, they’re exposing complete dickheads like Berners-Lee.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. From Wiki – Mike Berners-Lee – Wikipedia –

    “Mike Berners-Lee is an English researcher and writer on carbon footprinting. He is a Professor in Practice at Lancaster University[1] and director and principal consultant of Small World Consulting, based in the Lancaster Environment Centre at the university.[2] His books include How Bad are Bananas?,[3][4] The Burning Question[5], There Is No Planet B[6] and A Climate of Truth[7], and he is a contributing author to The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg. He is considered an expert on carbon footprints.”

    Meet the team at Small World Consulting | Mike Berners-Lee

    Seems he’s a busy guy, no wonder he can’t respond to comments.

    One interesting thing the website offers is – MRIO dataset | Emissions factors in free and licenced versions | Small World Consulting

    “What is an MRIO or Multi-regional input-output model?
    When you want to calculate your business carbon footprint, the best and easiest place to start is by looking at what you spend money on. Examining how much you spent on different products and services allows you to gain a broad understanding of where the biggest sources of emissions in your supply chain lie.

    Our input-output model provides you with emissions factors which can give you a carbon footprint based on your spend data. Because it covers 75 countries it’s a multi-regional model. And because it gives out emissions factors it’s an environmentally extended model. Our model is the Small World Consulting Multi-Regional Input-Output model, so we call it the SWC MRIO for short. The SWC MRIO emissions factors give you a view of your total supply chain emissions – and breaks this down into your suppliers’ Scopes 1, 2 and 3 – using data for 103 different industries across 75 countries to give the most reliable carbon footprint of your global supply chain.

    If you want to understand more about how input-output models work, and how emissions are broken down into scopes 1, 2 and 3, read our guide to learn how they give the most complete carbon footprint, how they compare to more specific life cycle analysis (LCAs) and how we can hybridise both approaches to give you the most reliable carbon footprint and one that will show your carbon-reduction actions year on year.”

    @Jit – Freebie version sounds like something you might have a play with 🙂

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  21. There is potentially another “down the rabbit hole” article waiting to be written, regarding the organisations and people Mike Berners-Lee is involved with, and their inter-connectedness with the Green Blob. None of these people are doing anything wrong, but it’s only when you go down the rabbit hole that you start to realise the immense scale of the thing and the extent of the vested interest out there. If Big Oil’s a thing, then Big Green certainly is.

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  22. I disagree with some of the sentiments expressed here about Berners-Lee. I don’t think for example (Jit) that ‘he should not be taken seriously’ nor (Mark) that the answer is another ‘down the rabbit hole’ article. OK such people may be ‘dickheads’, but they’re the enemy. And it’s been my priority since long before I joined Cliscep to tackle the enemy whenever I see the opportunity. Given the extreme threat of UK climate policy it’s something about which I feel strongly. (As Mark knows, I’ve done so regarding the OU OxCAN organisation and my college’s Net Zero Fellow). And Berners-Lee has provided just such an opportunity: at the end of his book (yes, I’ve bought it) he invites readers to ‘let me know (respectfully please) what you would add, tweak or delete from this book: mike@climateoftruth.co.uk’ and suggests that we post comments on Amazon or Goodreads. I intend to do exactly that.

    Incidentally the phrase ‘bogus fig leaf thinktanks’ does not feature in the book – it comes it seems from the fevered pen of the Observer reviewer Robin McKie.

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  23. Well, it may be the case that, although Berners-Lee and his ilk should be ignored, they are not being ignored, and that compels a responsible citizen like Robin to try to answer them. The cynic in me says that it will be difficult indeed to change their minds. That’s because, in my view, the destructive nature of Net Zero is “obvious” to anyone who glances sideways at the facts while driving past them at 60. It takes some strange glue to make people remain wedded to an idea that is so easy to refute.

    And yet we have to believe in the power of rational discourse, else all that is left is despair. Personally I have hope that intellectual fashions will shift. There is more open criticism of Net Zero now than there has ever been before. The orthodoxy questions the motives of their opponents to shut them up. Can they do so indefinitely, or are the cogs beginning to slip?

    Liked by 2 people

  24. Jit: you’re right, I don’t expect to change their minds. But I do expect to give them pause when (as I suggested a couple of days ago) they realise there are well-informed intelligent people out there who do not accept their analysis. And that I believe may cause them to be rather less assertive and even perhaps over time to moderate their position. That would make my efforts worthwhile.

    PS: I certainly believe in the power of rational discourse.

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  25. Robin,

    I fear our prospects for rational discourse are hampered by the fact that the very act of our disagreement seems to give the other guy the excuse to treat us as a subject for study rather than holders of considered opinions. People such as Berners-Lee would no more enter into discourse with us as they would with a growth in a petri dish.

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  26. John R: an interesting perspective. You may be right. But times are changing and anything that could undermine their confidence is worthwhile. This is important – I’m not giving up.

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  27. John R, further to the above I have an observation regarding your Petri dish analogy.

    So far I’ve only skimmed Berners-Lee’s book but it seems, regarding the ‘climate emergency’, that he blames the increase in CO2 emissions over the past several years on evil players in the West – and especially the UK – such as Boris Johnson and the GWPF. If that is in fact his position, I will draw his attention by email (as invited) to the essay I published in 2020 headed ‘The West vs. the Rest – How developing countries took control of climate negotiations and what that means for emission reduction‘. Were I to do this, I find it difficult to see how he could somehow regard it as interesting evidence of what virtuous people like him are up against.

    A footnote: I seem to remember that some time ago you said you would give me a considered opinion of that essay. I don’t think that happened. It can be found HERE. Incidentally nothing that’s happened since 2020 changes its conclusion: for example item 38 of the ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 unambiguously confirms developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. Robin,

    “I’m not giving up.”

    Good for you. And good luck with trying to get Berners-Lee to read your essay. Time will tell whether his invitation for feedback was genuine and whether it extends to those of all persuasions. For my part, I honestly can’t remember having promised to read it — but there again, I am getting on a bit. No worries though, I’ll be more than happy to read it when I get the time, and I will get back to you with any thoughts.

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  29. Robin,

    Okay, I’ve had chance to read your essay now, and I agree that there is nothing in it that Berners-Lee could reasonably take exception to. It is essentially an easily verifiable, factual account of the development of the various international agreements, clarifying the significance of the bifurcation of countries into Annex I and non-Annex I nations. I think the emission records of these two camps speak for themselves and that alone refutes the Berners-Lee position. The only thing I might add is that the scope of your essay does not fully cover the extent to which the negotiations have now morphed into a fight for financial reparation – a fight that I am sure can only further detract from the ostensible objective of global emissions reduction.

    If in the unlikely event that Berners-Lee reads your essay and responds to the issues raised by it, I would be fascinated to see what he has to say. Should he be looking into a petri dish, I think it would be to study the various forms that defeatism and delayism can take.

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  30. Mike Berners-Lee is never going to change his mind, he’s fully committed (just read the “Small World” website & book title output).

    Plus he has about 9-13 staff on board so not going to wind that up anytime soon (sadly the grants/money will be a draw).

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  31. Well, I’ve now read Mike Berners-Lee’s book. And it’s just as bad as the Robin McKie Observer review indicated. It’s based on the proposition that humanity is accelerating into multiple crises of which climate change is at the heart and it’s an attempt to answer the question: why are ‘we’ failing to deal with this – with the fact that the ‘carbon curve’ keeps climbing despite all those COPs? His answer is that we’re not facing reality. And that’s because of dishonesty. And especially (it seems to Berners-Lee) the dishonesty of the UK’s Tory politicians and the fossil fuel industry. What’s needed is ‘a push for a climate in which truth matters more than it ever has’.

    None of this will happen, he says, unless we look the situation directly in the eye – failing to do so will be catastrophic. It’s dishonesty that ‘been blocking progress for decades’ with for example ‘the tobacco-industry-style tactics of the fossil fuel industry … holding back the world’s response to the climate emergency’. As a result ‘despite absolute clarity from the scientific community, and even after 29 climate COPs, we are still sleepwalking towards disaster’ with the ‘evidence … screaming at us to change tack’. Yet we’re not doing so – because it seems we ‘continue to allow charismatic but dishonest mischief-makers into positions of power’.

    And that I believe is a fair summary of the book’s 230 pages. I’ve deliberately overlooked pages of extreme left-wing ranting.

    As I’ve noted, the book is essentially an attempt to answer a simple question: why do CO2 emissions keep on rising? He believes the answer is because of lying politicians in the West (especially the UK), the machinations of the fossil fuel industry and evil organisations such as the GWPF. The correct answer (the truth) of course is very much simpler: since the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992, major non-Western countries have blocked all Western attempts to reach a global consensus on emission stabilisation. Yet, far from looking it ‘directly in the eye’, Berners-Lee doesn’t mention that at all.

    I will send him an email. As dhf has said he’s unlikely to change his mind. But it can do no harm. And maybe some good.

    Liked by 4 people

  32. Robin, thank you reading prof. B-L’s book and reporting back on it. Do not his arguments align closely with those of so many of his “academic” colleagues here in the UK and in large parts of Western “academia” too? In other words, are we not confronted with an intellectual monoculture that promotes the ‘polycrisis’ mentality?

    And if memory serves, these academics have been encouraged for years to make their research ‘relevant’, particularly to the political class that so closely relies upon its output to maintain the ‘polycrisis’ meme. This is surely a case of positive feedback if ever there was one – just as president Eisenhower warned us in his farewell address all those decades ago.

    To bring this ‘polycrisis’ to an end it will be necessary to break the feedback loop. However, the nature of The Iron Triangle operating among large organisations (politicians, civil servants, rent-seeking organisations) means that new polycrises are likely to spring up in short order … unless systems are put in place to nip them in the bud. For example, greater democratic surveillance of legislation. Regards, John C.

    Liked by 2 people

  33. John C: you suggest that if the climate feedback loop is broken, new polycrises are likely to spring up. Well, that may already be happening. As the article in the Daily Sceptic I cited on The Case Against this morning said: ‘climatism is collapsing even more rapidly than I expected, and European politicians are taking up the fight against “the Right” instead‘.

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  34. Yes, Robin, that is interesting. However, it seems to be CONTINENTAL European politicians who are turning away from climatism; our own ISLAND’s politicians seem very much stuck in their Net Zero battle, especially those on the “Left”. Regards, John C.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. Yikes. I think reporting on the collapse of climatism is a case of wishful thinking. I see no evidence of it. Maybe the elites are softpedalling it, keeping quieter than normal, but it is still there behind everything, even as it becomes obvious to even green hardliners that it is in fact impossible. They will come creeping back, slowly, slowly like the tide over a salt marsh, put out a feeler or two and see if it gets lopped off, that type of thing.

    John, your mention of the iron triangle put me in mind of another sort of iron triangle. I was reminded of this a couple of days ago while watching a video from the Tank Museum. Once a single take to camera by a moustachioed gentleman (David Fletcher), now their videos are produced to within an inch of their lives, presumably to appeal to the TikTok generation. However, I digress. In the realm of armoured vehicles, the iron triangle is not a self-reinforcing loop, but a description of three competing properties that have to be optimised: you can’t have all three.

    They are: armour, mobility, and firepower.

    The reason I mention this is that we have a similar iron triangle at work in electricity generation. Here the points of the triangle should be labelled: cheap, reliable, low emission.

    Whereas the iron triangle in tank design is uncontroversial, the iron triangle in electricity design is not recognised by those who matter.

    Liked by 2 people

  36. Talking about tanks & uselessness – The Panzer VIII Maus: The Heaviest Tank Ever Built (German for “Mouse”) – partial quote –

    “Whereas such a heavy tank might conceivably have had some limited military usefulness, it will be more remembered as a drain on German engineers and production capabilities in the last three years of the war, when Germany could least afford such a waste of dwindling resources.”

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  37. Here’s the text of the email that I just now sent to Berners-Lee:

    I wholly agree with James Baldwin’s comment cited in the Introduction to your most interesting book:

    ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’

    And I believe that all who are or should be concerned about climate change must face the answer to the question at the heart of the book: why does the carbon curve keep rising ‘despite the evidence that is now screaming at us to change tack’? Your answer however – epitomised I suggest by your comment that ‘We continue to allow charismatic but dishonest mischief-makers into positions of power’ – is I believe incorrect.

    The correct answer is I suggest much simpler: since the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992, major non-Western countries have blocked all Western attempts to reach a global consensus on emission stabilisation. The answer may be simple but the solution is exceptionally difficult: how are we (essentially the UK and EU) to persuade these countries (the source of over 80% of global emissions and including powerful economies such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Korea, South Africa and Turkey and of course most recently joined by the US) to completely reverse their energy policies – policies based on prioritising economic development and energy security over emission reduction? This is not I think the place to try to answer that question, but I’m sure anyone who’s serious about emission reduction must look it squarely in the eye. As you correctly say, ‘urgent global systemic change is required‘.

    I look forward very much to your thoughts.

    I added a link to my ‘The West vs. The Rest’ essay as a PS

    Liked by 3 people

  38. Robin,

    All credit to you for trying. I shall be very interested to learn whether your email elicits a response and, if so, what that response is.

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  39. A response from Berners-Lee:

    Many thanks for getting in touch.

    I receive a high volume of emails every day and sadly, cannot respond to them all, but they are all valued and each one is read.

    If I am unable to reply to yours, please accept my apologies and very best wishes.

    Mike

    It was also addressed to Mairéad Brown who ‘greases the wheels at Small World, makes things happen and is assistant to Mike Berners-Lee.’

    Liked by 1 person

  40. Robin – at least he kind of responded, maybe Mairéad will find time. From the website –

    “Mairéad Brown Chief Fixer and Assistant to Mike Berners-Lee Mairéad greases the wheels at Small World, makes things happen and is assistant to Mike Berners-Lee. She has a BA in Law from Cambridge University and an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the LSE. Her thirst for understanding the world has taken her from projects mapping coral reefs in Madagascar, to studying in Japan, to human rights work in rural Uganda and even management of an Irish pub in Kampala. It was from ski touring in the Arctic that her personal experience of the changing environment focused her efforts on the climate emergency. Mairéad supports Mike in all aspects of his work and also works closely with the rest of the team.”

    She sounds a smart lady so you never know.

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