Patrick Harvey Interview

And great monoculture plantings are bad for biodiversity in that specific site, but more efficient for harvest and care, etc, so offer carbon savings ... it really does get very tricky to balance all the issues against each other.

I think the key point is probably acknowledging that these are tricky and complex issues and not just alighting on one pleasingly simple proposition and insisting that it is the One True Way.

There's loads more, Gaspode, that's just one wee snapshot. Sitka are classed by some as invasive, but exempt because they are also very useful.

Many thanks, will read that now.

People do drop out of university for all sorts of reasons. I have no problem with that. I just think it's best to be absolutely open about one's experience and qualifications. Don't say 'I was educated at X University' or 'After school I attended X University' without adding 'and I didn't graduate'. Don't try to pass yourself off as a graduate when you're not one! It smacks to me very much of one of my favourite quotations: “If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”

Corbyn never graduated either. Another one with an absolute certainty in his own rightness, and never mind the evidence.

Someone high on their interior religion can't hear sense. It just sounds to them like the devil persuading them to sin, with their holiness rising as they shout back 'I'm not listening'.

It can be quite complicated! Arguments for and against afforestation in general and Sitka in particular.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724061205

I don't know what he enrolled to study but he never completed his degree. Manchester Met is where Stephen Whittle was appointed a professor. Harvie was there in the early 90s when Whittle was either a student or in the early stages of an academic career, founding Press for Change and campaigning for the GRA. I wonder if their paths crossed. Images found on X, originally from a profile in The Times, apparently.

Yes, at times the unevidenced religious fervour type behaviour around environmental issues does rival gender zealotry in it's lack of logic and attempts to destroy heretics. Sometimes it's very much not evidence based and environmental policies can create worse environmental problems than they solve (as well as generally speaking being terrible for the poorest and most vulnerable in society, sometimes it really does feeling like the rich punching down).

I remember as an undergraduate being rather appalled when some of my peers treated an elderly geology lecturer, who had the temerity to mention previous periods of global heating and cooling in the earth's history, very badly, and dismissed all his expertise because they assumed he was trying to say climate change wasn't caused by humans. I think he was raising the possibility but hadn't firmly committed to that position, I witnessed the same talk. And I particularly didn't think it merited him being cast as 'evil' and essentially a wrongthinker just because he might have a different opinion.

Especially since those same students who were extremely nasty about him were all raising money to fly halfway around the world to do 'charity' projects that could have easily be done by those living in those areas, who would have definitely benefited more from directly receiving the money from those flights.

Yes. And now every single opinion you hold is Bad also because nobody can be right about some things and wrong about others. Certain groups of people are automatically Good and can't be challenged at all.

Interested to hear about the Sitka spruce plan. Wasn't what the Forestry Commission did over great swathes of northern Britain many decades agon and now doesn't do because of the environmental effects? The island my mother lives on is half-covered in Sitka spruce even now. It's very noticeable indeed that when you walk through a forest of Sitka there's nothing else there. Quite eerie, actually.

It's the new way of debating things.

"I have a policy. It is Good."

"What about..."

"You do not like my Good policy? I think you must be Bad."

BA in Righteousness followed by MA in Being A Knob?

Out of interest and context: does anyone know what Patrick Harvey studied at Manchester metropolitan university?
I’ve tried to find out but I’m none the wiser.

Ha! I mean I wish the Scotgov had a second chamber, not that I personally had a second house, although that might be nice, maybe Tuscany ....

Yes. Part of the problem is failures to rigorously stress test propositions and consider risks.

So we saw plans for afforestation that proposed planting Sitka on pristine peat bog, because Trees Are Good.

I'm currently quite concerned that windpower is also going to risk being seen as unmitigatedly good and any potential downsides being automatically discounted.

The govt seems very bad at seeing an issue from more than one angle. Rigidity and myopic focus and over simplification of issues.

God, I wish we had a second house.

Greenwashing is just as damaging as no green policies at all, possibly more so as it gives the illusion of Something Being Done.

I think the trouble with the Greens is that they will not countenence any criticism of policies, because of the righteousness and self justification.

They assume any questions or criticism are personal ideologiical attack, so discount any attempts to reason. This leaves them with brittle, weak, and sometimes plain ridiculous positions.

Wood burners use a renewable source of fuel. Gas fires use fossil fuels.

The specifics of this argument were that this was for a back up heating source for when electricity failed.

Houses, if properly designed and insulated, should not generally need a regular heat source at all. And yes, heat pumps are part of that.

But men can be women though, so why worry about all that other unimportant stuff? A complete waste of an opportunity to bring about meaningful change, flushed down the toilet of ideology, they should be ashamed of themselves.

I nearly fell asleep reading that, what a mundane little man he is. He comes across as someone that has been promoted way above his ability by being a big fish in a little pond.

What a wasted opportunity for them in terms of the environment, imagine if they’d put as much effort in to that as they did trying to convince us all that men can be women. Not one iota of self reflection either.

It's just so weird, the only way we know that the climate is changing is because of science, so how does someone who's whole political existence is a stand that is based on science become a science denier themselves. That's next level bonkers.

I think you "I want to be green but..." People need to read the evidence. Yes, wood burners cause pollution. Yes heat pumps work.

It's possible for politicians to hold one daft position without being entirely wrong.

No. They're actually damaging the cause, partly from ridiculously badly thought through posturing legislation (ban wood burning stoves in favour of gas heaters? The deposit return scheme?!), and partly from relentless pursuit of frankly weird and extreme positions (Rainbow Greens spring to mind).

It's a damn shame. Just when we need them more than ever. And in fact there ARE some sensible policies buried in among the shite, but they are discredited because of the determined stupidity of the representatives.