It is common for everyone to pick and choose from available data to support their case. For example, I’ll happily point out cases where state intervention has proven to be the incorrect course of action, while blatantly ignoring both cases where the opposite was the case.

Greens, of course, are masters of the art. They’ll happily take invalid data, manipulate it to match their predictions, and then stand in sackcloth at the top of the nearest hill, predicting doom.

Which is why I have no compunction about taking only what I want to take from this article¹.

Things I like to hear: that greenish nonsense is horribly misplaced, and that all this ‘cars are teh wurst evah‘ is, in fact, wrong. Because cows are clearly much worse.

And I don’t care, because a world without medium-rare rib eye steak would be a world not worth living in.

There’s also a list of things at the end that is so entertaining, it’s worth reproducing in full:

— Traditional nappies are as bad as disposables, a study by the Environment Agency found. While throwaway nappies make up 0.1 per cent of landfill waste, the cloth variety are a waste of energy, clean water and detergent

— Paper bags cause more global warming than plastic. They need much more space to store so require extra energy to transport them from manufacturers to shops

— Diesel trains in rural Britain are more polluting than 4×4 vehicles. Douglas Alexander, when Transport Secretary, said: “If ten or fewer people travel in a Sprinter [train], it would be less environmentally damaging to give them each a Land Rover Freelander and tell them to drive”

— Burning wood for fuel is better for the environment than recycling it, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered

— Organic dairy cows are worse for the climate. They produce less milk so their methane emissions per litre are higher

— Someone who installs a “green” lightbulb undoes a year’s worth of energy-saving by buying two bags of imported veg, as so much carbon is wasted flying the food to Britain

— Trees, regarded as shields against global warming because they absorb carbon, were found by German scientists to be major producers of methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas

So, that’s public transportation, organic fads, recycling, paper bags and Luddite-ism all being wrong. Which pleases me.

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¹ – Found via a fella who really needs to clean his wardrobe…