Owen Paterson: GM science good, Climate Change science bad

Our Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, is a corporate GMO shill. Now it itself that’s no surprise, the previous occupant of the role, Caroline Spelman, ran a firm, Spelman, Cormack and Associates to lobby on behalf of GM firms.

Anyway, our friend Owen is dead keen or rationality and science and all that good stuff.  Owen says people who don’t like GM are humbugs, and if we don’t have GM in Europe WE WILL ALL STARVE. Obviously we don’t want to do that. [ref]I used to have a problem with GM from a fear of frankenshit charging around the environment killing us all off but I don’t any more. It’s the lack of regulation and control of the monopolistic barstewards like Monsanto who scare me. GM would probably be okay if it were open-source and unencumbered with ‘intellectual property rights’ – an awful lot of agricultural research used to be done and the national and government level, up until the 1980s and therefore didn’t have the tendency to screw farming into hard commercial lock-ins. You can choose to do without most things associated with IPO which means the market can set a price for it and price gougers get stuffed eventually. But it’s really, really, hard to stop eating…[/ref]. To wit :

An aide to Mr Paterson said: ‘He wants to have a national conversation about it, based on scientific evidence, and the Prime Minister supports that.’

Now it’s probably a good thing to have somebody in charge of public policy who is prepared to listen to the science – at least as far as knowing what is going on is concerned. Trouble with Owen Paterson, is that he likes to pick and choose his science. GM science is good, because there’s money in it for his chums so Owen likes that sort of science, and indeed his general assertion that safety is okay with what we have had so far is probably right, according to the science. The sort of science that our Owen doesn’t like, however, is anything to do with global warming. As Greenpeace rather wittily pointed out

Owen Paterson has ignored all expert advice warning him of increased flood risks, choosing instead to cut funding and flood-preparedness staff. Instead, he claims that “[climate change] is something we can adapt to over time and we are very good as a race at adapting”
People are suffering – and we owe it to everyone to get an environment secretary who is serious about climate change

Indeed, since dealing with the effects of rotten weather is something that falls in the remit of Owen’s department, it’s interesting that despite his fondness for the scientific method in regard to GM, Owen hasn’t bothered to get briefed about climate change for 14 months. Presumably because he knows in his gut that it’s all bollocks, and also presumably because the good people that wine and dine him would be financially inconvenienced if he were to go along with the scientific consensus and try and do something about carbon emissions.

careful there, wouldn’t want to spill your drink now, Owen?

The chief scientist of the Met Office indicated that Owen might be off on his assumption that climate change is a load of bollocks. Presumably scientists know about science, in their area of expertise?

“But all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change,” she added.

“There is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events.”

Owen’s of the opinion that “the weather’s been changing all the time”. So that’s all right then, nothing to see, move along now.

Fer chrissake, Owen, we have 100mph winds, Eton Prep school is under water and shit’s coming out of the sewers and swirling around the drawing-rooms of the Home Counties but it’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary? WTF? It appears that Owen won’t even read a briefing if it contains the words climate change. That, Owen, is not a canonical example of the scientific method. Now it’s a perfectly rational thing to say that we feel the cost of reducing carbon emissions is too much, or than it needs qualifying and estimating before doing anything. A fellow called Nicholas Stern commissioned by the last government did a report something along those lines. The BBC has a summary here. Of interest at the moment is

There will be more examples of extreme weather patterns

Extreme weather could reduce global gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 1%

so even if Owen’s gut is absolutely right and the fact that people are up to their necks in water has nothing to do with global warming it’s perhaps an example of something that the UK will have to be dealt with more often. Even Bjorn Lomborg doesn’t say climate change is not happening, just that it might be cheaper to adapt. Which may well be true for the rich world, but the do nothing option doesn’t seem a particularly clever response. Cutting back on people in the Environment Agency dealing with flood risk doesn’t seem to be the obvious way to go here.

What stinks about Owen is the way the mendacious little twerp is all for science where his paymasters like the results – like GM. But if they don’t, like with climate change, then he’ll go with his gut. That’s not cool, that’s not clever, and though I’m not always the greatest fan of Greenpeace who have their own agenda they’re absolutely right. Owen’s gotta go, and please, Mr Cameron, can we for once have somebody at the Environment Agency who isn’t a panhandler for the GM lobby? Maybe even have that national conversation, based on scientific evidence, about the Met Office’s Chief scientist telling us we have to face this increasingly often, and not just Owen’s gut saying it’s all gonna be all right.