Peter Hitchens' Schoolboy Logic

A couple of days ago Peter Hitchens ranted about wind farms. No, not about the silly events at Conisholme, but about the fact that when (as Hitchens put it) they are needed most during a cold snap, they stand dormant.

In his opening salvo, he demonstrates his skill with words in equal measure with his confounded ignorance:

"The swivel-eyed, intolerant cult, which endlessly shrieks – without proof – that global warming is man-made, has produced many sad effects. The collapse of proper education has made two whole generations vulnerable to rubbishy fads."

Let's not forget that this is a man who believes Darwin was wrong about evolution: so if anyone needs to do some soul-searching about education he needs to look in a mirror. There is any amount of proof that global warming is a man-made - but to understand it you have to open your mind to the frightening possibility that we're fucking with our environment.

Hitchens ignorant and intolerant naval gazing makes him popular with his followers, who take his word for it because that's what they want to hear, but leaves scientists in a frenzy of despair. Hitchen's needs to keep his job and the best way to do that is to raise a cheer from middle England's dullards .

Hitchens goes on:

"But the disfiguring of the country with useless windmills, and the insane plan to ban proper light bulbs, are supreme triumphs of this dimwit pseudo-religion.

"Both schemes override facts and logic. During the current cold spell, observant persons will have noticed that there has been very little wind, a rather common combination. Thus, at a time of great need for power, wind turbines would be almost entirely useless for producing electricity."

But as is usual with Hitchen's schoolboy approach, he's completely missed (or deliberately ignored) the very point, which is this: if wind farms generate electricity when the wind is blowing then conventional - precious - resources such as coal, oil and gas are preserved for the times when it isn't.

I can't say I'm terribly fond of wind farms and hope that new developments will improve and even remove the need for them. But we have to put the future first - because we only own the here and now; the future belongs to our children.

Daily Mail Readers Are Gullible

This is just a quick update on a story I ran a couple of days ago here.

One Daily Mail reader had the gall, the audacity to point out that the other commentators were well, daft, by writing:

"Are the public so gullible to believe such rubbish[?] One blade has broken off and the other was damaged in the freak weather conditions."

Which is pretty close to my own diagnosis and that of many experts including an insurance specialist who sees several of these incidents every year.

Mail readers are outraged - so far the comment is rating -90 (Sunday 21:00) and sinking! Dear god - are they really that stupid? Apparently, they are:

Molly of Stockport (currently one of the most popular comments at +86) has this to say:

"It isn't mentioned in this account but others state that there was no trace of the missing blade ... could ball lightening do that?"

It isn't mentioned, dear because it ISN'T MISSING and never was - it's been sent back to the manufacturer to see what went wrong; and what's ball lightning got to do with it?

It goes on to quote, rent-a-fool, Nick Pope a former MOD employee who now specialises in UFOlogy for TV. Mr Pope told the Mail:

'This is a really bizarre case. What's particularly exciting is that because there's been a collision, there will be residue of the object involved. Forensic science will enable this material to be recovered and analysed. This elevates this UFO case, because with most sightings all you have is eyewitness testimony or indistinct and shaky film footage taken on a mobile phone.'

Does it indeed? All it elevates is the smell of bullshit coming from your direction.

The flashing lights were still most likely of terrestrial origin - fireworks; and the noise - well can you imagine the din if a rotor blade comes off and hits a neighbouring one at speed? There's going to be one hell of a bang!

The residue - what are you going to say when this turns out to be parts of a neighbouring blade, Nick? Will the German engineers even bother to look?

Much of the rest of this is empty speculation fuelled by Nick Pope and his band of gullible idiots. Not that it matters. Nick never has to answer his critics: he just does a Hitchens and ignores them.

Lloyd Webber - "UK Lyricists Are Crap"

OK, hands up, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't really say that - but he might as well have.

On Saturday, the BBC reported that US writer Diane Warren will pen the lyrics to an ostensibly UK song that will be competing in Eurovision - the cheesy, political, waste of money that even Wogan has turned his back on.

Warren who has written powerhouse hits for Toni Braxton and Cher, is to write the lyrics for Lloyd Webber's music - or is that the other way around? Tin Pan Alley style never did much for me.

Not that it matters.

The UK has a mass of talent and really, what the fuck is a yank (albeit it talented one) doing stealing our jobs? If I were a potential competitor in one of the other competing countries I'd be feeling a bit short-changed too and laughing at us for not being able to produce the lyrics in-house as it were.

I mean, this is a small island - there's only 50-odd million people here!

Surely, if we're daft enough to make a spectacle of a bunch of hopefuls by running a televised competition to find the artist, the same could be done for the words, couldn't it?

I'm sure you could line up some walking egos like Simon Cowell, Peter Hitchens and maybe even Bruno Tonioli to judge whatever our home-grown scribes can get onto paper. Then we could have a national phone-in vote to raise loads of money for the telly company while the result is decided long before the phone lines close.

That would be great!

Daily Mail Contradicts Itself

Peter Hitches is a journalist with strong views and he doubts evolution:

"For in my view the theory of evolution is done no favours by its fervent supporters. Interestingly, it's not comparable to other major scientific theories (like the theories of flight, gravity and relativity) to which its supporters always link it. These can be used to predict events, and are testable. Evolution is a theory about the distant past, unobserved and now unobservable."

In this single paragraph, Hitchens both makes an interesting point and then reveals amazing ignorance of both evolution and the scientific method.

First to his positive observation that people like Richard Dawkins (and hell, even folks like me) constantly bang on at people like him to leave it alone and let us study it.

He's right, we do: but with bloody good reason.

Evolution represents probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made but like many other major discoveries it threw a massive scientific clog into machinery of the great Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

The modern-day theory of evolution, so called neo-Darwinian theory is what most scientists regard as the definitive (if incomplete) version; and it's this incomplete bit that pro-theists like to drive wedges into.

Anti-evolutionists, creationists - call them what you will don't want replace evolution with a better natural theory, they want to replace it with a story written four thousand years back by a bunch of nomadic Jews.

Which is why we get so utterly pissed off.

This alternative to evolution is no more an alternative than a slice of plastic is alternative to a sandwich. An alternative to a sandwich would be, say a nice, juicy Aberdeen Angus burger topped with melted cheese and a dill pickle... oh wait, it must be nearly lunchtime here.

It takes Hitchens just a dozen words to prove how strikingly ignorant he is about the whole affair:

"Evolution is a theory about the distant past, unobserved and now unobservable."

WRONG!

One theory about the distant past that a majority of scientists agree with is the Big Bang. We can observe the remnants of Big Bang in the cosmic background radiation - the very low temperature afterglow (about 4 degrees kelvin) of the cataclysmic event that brought our universe into being, yet we cannot - directly - see the event itself. Only a very few scientists actually disagree with Big Bang although small details are frequently debated. We don't have all the answers, yet Hitchens and his ilk don't, err, bang on about it.

Big Bang does not contradict a theist world view - whereas evolution does (sort of). There's a small matter, ignored by creationists that does allow room for God, if you must, called abiogenesis: the creation of life itself - we still don't know for sure how life came about. The famous Miller-Ulrey experiment looked promising, but failed to produce concrete results.

Evolutionary theory does not concern itself with abiogenesis - it only cares about how organisms developed from the simplest form of life into what we are today.

Hitchens can't grasp this.

Evolution is not a theory of some distant past: it's a theory of the development of all life. It is directly observable and it does make testable predictions. Darwin's contemporary, Karl Popper, solidified how theories work by making them falsifiable.

I have a theory that all sheep are white because all the sheep I have ever observed are white. This theory would be valid unless someone could find a black sheep. Even if I could produce a billion white sheep, a single black one would destroy my theory.

If, for example, a dog gave birth to a litter of cats (without human intervention) then evolution theory would be destroyed in an instant. It doesn't happen. Evolution is pretty safe as a theory among respectable scientists.

Journalists like Peter Hitchens are still wrong yet the Mail allows them to vent their spleens at regular intervals about stuff they know less than nothing about. In an amazing change of pace, the paper prints this Salute to Charles Darwin by the respected scientist, Desmond Morris, which is a remarkable about face .

They've also run the story I covered here several days late, but refreshing to see nevertheless with all the evidence including some I didn't include.

My guess is there's someone standing in over the Christmas holidays and the normally dumb service will be resumed shortly.

Today I'm Going To Be: A Doctor

They're an odd breed, journalists.

In most professions you train for a long time to acquire the skills required and then spend years moving up the ladder.

"Experts are not born, they are hewn from the bedrock of endeavour and the granite of experience."

When I wrote that, back in the early 90s, I was considered an expert on computer that today few people have even heard of. It took many years to acquire the knowledge to be specialist in that comparatively narrow field and as a friend of mine wryly observed on me being introduced as an "expert":

Expert: an "ex" is something that was and a "spurt" is a drip under pressure.

Um... a few years later, I refined that into:

A specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less. So the ultimate specialist is someone who knows absolutely everything about absolutely nothing.

Richard "Holier Than Thou" Littlejohn and the cringe-making Peter Hitchens (to name two) are specialists: of the worst form - they're journalists.

The trouble is they have taken upon themselves the mantle of, well, whatever suits. One day they are doctors writing about MMR (a common theme in The Mail) another they are evolutionary biologists telling us that Darwin was wrong (Hitchens) and on yet another day, they become mystically transformed into climate experts and tell their readers that people like me are climate Nazis (Littlejohn).

Not one of these idiots possess anything remotely connected to a science degree and yet they choose to tell vulnerable people all matter of tosh they pick up unchecked from Wikipedia, or more usually thin air.

If I went to an airport and demanded to fly an jumbo to Hong Kong, I'd be escorted off the premises by security and probably handed to men in long white coats. Yet I can fly a jet - I just don't hold necessary licences. There's the small matter of those pesky months of intensive training, hideously difficult exams not to mention the £30,000+ cost.

There was a time when journalists checked their facts but somehow that's got lost to the mists of time. There was also a time when specialists were allowed to write and discuss their specialities - not any more. Now anyone with the journalist's mantle is free to write whatever bullshit they want: hell, they can even make shit up because on the (very) rare occasions they get caught, the fines are minute.

The author Mark Twain (I think) once observed that if you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed. In those wise words, I think that ignorance might just be bliss.

Even our elected politicians command less trust than the newspapers. While I'll grant you that some of our honourable members are, well a bit dodgy, at least they are subject to some degree of scrutiny and can easily lose their jobs. The same, unfortunately, is not true of most journalists.

Believe nothing - check everything.