Patrick Harvey Interview

[Igneococcus]

He sill thinks the Cass review is "unscientific":
https://www.thetimes.com/article/8d70cd4b-2b85-4bea-879f-5daa992a2ce2?shareToken=016e03568a02481cf3617dec27209b6c

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.

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

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

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'.

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

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.”

Many thanks, will read that now.

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.

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.

Absolutely fuckin lately.

A friend of our went on for ages about how they were now a one car household and how much they are saving the planet because of it and how they really didn't need two cars. They made a massive big deal about how wrong we were to still have two cars (we drive a car we've had over ten years and a tiny city car which is very efficient on fuel - we try to walk wherever we can too).

Here's the killer - their other car (which was definitely not theirs and definitely doesn't count) was actually being used by their son at university. He's come home and they've just sold it (dunno how because it's definitely not their second car honest gov) and bought a brand new second new car. It's huge, but it's electric so they are saving the planet still but apparently we still aren't. God knows how much energy etc went into building it.

Also they have just installed a heat source pump to go green. They only had a new gas boiler about three years ago, so it wasn't at the end of its life. Apparently it's 'warm enough' but it's ok because they have a wood burning stove to help on very cold days. We have been berated for not saving the planet enough on that (despite our energy bill being considerably lower than theirs despite not having a wood burner).

The cognitive dissonance and ability to explain away things to suit an ideological agenda has got to a point where it actually amuses me with it's staggering levels of hypocrisy and lack of self awareness and bewilderment at why it's sparking a backlash. It's known that a lot of this green washing is actually leading to increased energy consumption because there's a bunch of fuckwits like my friend who thinks they are saving the planet far more than they actually are because they don't think it through or actually change behaviours. The trans stuff is exactly the same.

I now have come to the conclusion that people who shout about how progressive they are, really really probably aren't. Its all for show.

One of the problems for the environmental movement is the conflicts between different areas of concern. Wood burners are part of this. They are one of the worst sources of small particulate matter pollution going. This sort of pollution has a significant health impact so banning them does make sense even though global-warming wise they may be a more efficient source of heat. Though this has to be weighed against the risk of issues with power supply, especially in rural areas.
Ditto commercial tree plantations (including Sitka) is needed to meet our needs for timber for building, paper, biomass etc. There are lots of areas it can be grown that is not peat bog eg grouse moors. Grouse moors are not natural environments. And it is not just forestry that damages peat bogs - so does sticking wind turbines on them embedded in tons of concrete.
In terms of CO2 the best source of power is nuclear power - that produces dangerous waste but pretty much no CO2. If we are to drive electric cars then we will need more electricity so from a global warming perspective this should include investment in nuclear power….

Yet we have no issue with accepting the need for monoculture planting of crops where there is a much shorter interval between planting and harvesting eg wheat, oats, potatoes.

And people need to learn to think through the ramifications for every group of mandating environmental measures. The Greens never do.

I don't disagree.

No one wants to have a conversation about the nuances and complex arguments.

Like how scrapping a bunch of cars and building a whole pile of new ones to replace them, before the end of the lifespan of the product is worse for the environment. Or how using certain materials might be 'worse for the environment' but if they have a longer life span they might be better overall (see things like fully recyclable trainers which are now coming out, but they don't last as long and it's all about maximising and maintaining sales levels rather actually reducing consumption).

And from a political perspective, consumption drives our economy…

Well quite.

It's no good if we end up saving the environment but civil unrest breaks out because everyone is unemployed and hungry. This tends to result in environmental unfriendly wars.

Yes, all of these points sound about right.

Let's do muirburn next! 😂

Heat pumps are totally unsuitable for Victorian and older properties. Huge amounts of Scottish housing stock is not suitable - I'm in a terraced house with minimal insulation and a tiny garden. We'd literally have to site a heat pump in the centre of the lawn to be far enough away from the boundaries to meet regs, and spend tens of thousands ripping the house apart to insulate - which itself generates a huge amount of waste. How on earth would this work in a 1 bed tenement flat? Or conversions where the kitchen is in the boxroom? There's nowhere to put a tank and entire streets would have to be gutted and insulated- it's total nonsense to try and retrofit most older housing stock. We have to include the carbon footprint of works to install things like cycle paths and heat pumps- otherwise you risk generating more carbon dioxide than you save longterm.

Wood burners according to the Gov's own analysis give off low levels of pollution compared to other heating sources - sounds counterintuitive but that's what the science says.

Wood burners according to the Gov's own analysis give off low levels of pollution compared to other heating sources - sounds counterintuitive but that's what the science says.

They give off less CO2 but are very bad for particulate matter. So good for global warming but bad for population health.

But this reminds me of a ‘green’ aquaintance who felt the issue was not enough people dying (so long as those people were not family and friends).

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g thanks that explains a lot.

i think Ross Greer didn’t finish his studies either
(I’m sure his work daddy John Swinney will be a good support if he decides to go for Patrick’s job: do they actually think about what they say out loud?)

I think someone said it was some sort of humanities degree although not certain.

As for his comments, he’s basically saying that politicians shouldn’t get involved in doctor’s prescribing drugs but then goes on to do exactly the opposite by talking about PBs. One rule for him and another for everyone else it seems.

One rule for him and another for everyone else it seems.

Precisely - he's a politician opining in a newspaper that a medical review by led by a doctor, based by work published in peer-reviewed scientific journals is wrong.

I used to be a big fan of the Scottish Greens and it's insane how much they have changed from the Robin Harper days. At worst they were incredibly naive with little experience in policy-making and I always thought their more excessive tendencies could be balanced out by an SNP or Labour. What a laugh. Sturgeon bringing them into government was a horror show - she pandered to their inexperience and frankly Harvie brought the parliament into disrepute on more than once. His aggression should have ruled him out from ever holding any position in Holyrood.

The fact that people think the Scottish Greens are 'the left' in Scotland is dismaying.

“I think there are some politicians who, for quite profoundly ill-judged reasons, are trying to tell doctors what drugs they should prescribe to which patients, and I think that’s deeply wrong and dangerous,”

So he hasn't the curiosity to think about the numerous historical examples that exist for why medicine is regulated? The scandals? The ethical breaches?

Government regulates medicine because no institution can be relied upon to regulate itself completely.

I concur with previous posters that he's clearly an intellectual lightweight.

It is not just about self-regulation though. Doctors are not all independently able to carry out research into all treatments and continuously review other’s research. There is simply not enough time in the day to even begin. Therefore, as research develops and understanding of impact changes there has to be some way to take this on board and ensure doctors are not able to continue to prescribe harmful treatments because they missed out on the latest research.

There are loads of examples of drugs that were once standard practice that have since been withdrawn due to harms that doctors either might not be aware of if relying just on their own practice, or for which the delay between provision and adverse outcome might mean many patients harmed before they would even start to question it.