Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 10:24 pm Post subject:
Frank Freedom wrote:
Quote:
Item7 does raise the interesting point about the spurious carbon trading scheme which is nothing more than a money making scam which allows big business to carry on pumping CO2 and even increasing profits by trading in carbon credits. However, it certainly isn't a form of currency to challenge existing currencies; more a sign of how detached big business and politicians are from reality.
There is the (most likely imo) flip side to this extortion racket that is the proposed personal carbon tax on the individual
and small business's that are left to be carbon taxed out of er business!
If politicians like Paddy Ashdown and Gordon Brown are talking about it
(amoungst all the other repeaters) in the context of Global solutions for Global problems
do people here really believe they have the best intentions for us?
And to read on this forum someone saying "the politicians are detached from reality" is an absurd statement
they do and say what they are briefed to say
the ongoing popular mantra's.
Politics as we see it is a charade now
a fixed debating game for the viewer
clear for all to see
especially so for those on here.
FF
I don't disagree about how the politics of the situation will be played out.
The Owning Class will attempt to retain as much as they can and sod the rest will, I imagine, be the default starting positions.
Whether 'the people' can influence events more in our favour remains to be seen and will have to be fought and campaigned for, probably just as hard and like every other social struggle throughout history.
However, this is a separate issue to Item7 and his industry chums' denial that there's anything happening to worry about in the first place (and if there were it'd be all to the good, but it isn't). _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Joined: 01 Feb 2009 Posts: 413 Location: South Essex
Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 11:35 pm Post subject:
chek wrote:
Frank Freedom wrote:
Quote:
Item7 does raise the interesting point about the spurious carbon trading scheme which is nothing more than a money making scam which allows big business to carry on pumping CO2 and even increasing profits by trading in carbon credits. However, it certainly isn't a form of currency to challenge existing currencies; more a sign of how detached big business and politicians are from reality.
There is the (most likely imo) flip side to this extortion racket that is the proposed personal carbon tax on the individual
and small business's that are left to be carbon taxed out of er business!
If politicians like Paddy Ashdown and Gordon Brown are talking about it
(amoungst all the other repeaters) in the context of Global solutions for Global problems
do people here really believe they have the best intentions for us?
And to read on this forum someone saying "the politicians are detached from reality" is an absurd statement
they do and say what they are briefed to say
the ongoing popular mantra's.
Politics as we see it is a charade now
a fixed debating game for the viewer
clear for all to see
especially so for those on here.
FF
I don't disagree about how the politics of the situation will be played out.
The Owning Class will attempt to retain as much as they can and sod the rest will, I imagine, be the default starting positions.
Whether 'the people' can influence events more in our favour remains to be seen and will have to be fought and campaigned for, probably just as hard and like every other social struggle throughout history.
However, this is a separate issue to Item7 and his industry chums' denial that there's anything happening to worry about in the first place (and if there were it'd be all to the good, but it isn't).
Far be it for me to presume what Item7 is saying
ultimately if those industrial powers would intend to exacerbate the situation by excessive levels of pollution for all to see
as I'm sure they can
given the appropriate nod.
This as I propose is not a new idea
but promoting their own Green Agenda falls into the Globalist trap
of Global Taxes for the masses caused by the industrialists actions.
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 12:07 am Post subject:
Frank Freedom wrote:
Far be it for me to presume what Item7 is saying
ultimately if those industrial powers would intend to exacerbate the situation by excessive levels of pollution for all to see
as I'm sure they can
given the appropriate nod.
This as I propose is not a new idea
but promoting their own Green Agenda falls into the Globalist trap
of Global Taxes for the masses caused by the industrialists actions.
What's not perceived as a Global Agenda?
I'm not sure what overall difference would be noticed if there were carbon taxes directly per citizen (which at least have the potential to be varied for individual cases) or price increases at source by the manufacturer, which like VAT on prices is indiscriminate.
One thing that is for certain is that the current method of accounting, where as soon as the goods go out that door and the smoke goes up that chimney all that's left is to count the money, separate out the costs and reap the profit is out of touch with reality. And that reality is that the true cost of goods, which includes dealing with their often toxic manufacturing processes and disposal of broken and/or unwanted goods and their often toxic aftermath at the end of their possibly accelerated lifespans, is currently picked up by others.
Those 'others' are currently local authorities (i.e. rate/taxpayers) or third world eco hell-holes. I can't see how an equally important component such as a value attrubuted according to their CO2 emissions be ignored by any formula. That any such values need to be generally agreed to common standards of justice and fairness to have even a chance of being widely observed in the spirit intended goes without saying, but is by no means a given.
Whether by tax or price increase the adjustment from a linear to a sustainable model will cost us more. I don't see any honest way that can be avoided. _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Vanities of the Warmists
April 7, 2008 — budsimmons
By Jon Caruthers
The conceit that scientists and bureaucrats can use the power the state to manage nature has lead to disaster in the past, and will again if the global warmists keep getting their way.
When Yellowstone National Park was first created, park officials believed they had to “save” the native fauna as well as protect the visitors by killing off the native wolf population. This they did in grand form. Additionally, they noticed the yearly occurrences of wildfires which, according to the then “modern” and “progressive” thought of the day, should be stamped out at all cost.
The net result of these notions was that 110 years or so later half the park burned down. It turns out that without the wolves the ruminants ran wild and ate up the deciduous trees, leaving only the pine trees to go forth and multiply. Anyone who’s started a campfire knows what happens when you compound this with 110 years of pine needles and flotsam and jetsam — you end up with the perfect firestorm. This is nothing natural. This situation was created by us — by human intervention into a formerly pristine ecosystem that was supposedly “managed” by the federal government – and the result was that half the park burned down.
Once again, on the issue of “global warming” we’re faced with government control — in this case not of the national park system, but of the entire globe. The “progressives” and their “grand thoughts” of the age seek to “manage” the globe in the same “modern” way our ancestors “managed” Yellowstone. Like our ancestors of yore, today’s environmentalists believe the government can control the environment better than Mother Nature can. Are we to suppose that the people who give us the DMV and the IRS are going to “manage” the globe in the same efficient and benevolent manner? In the grand scheme of things are we supposed to believe that we humans are actually better than Mother Nature at “managing” the global environment? For some reason, the enviro-nazis of the age seem to believe that Mother Nature is some kind of octogenarian Alzheimer’s patient and they’re the designated colostomy bag.
Take the great debate over the “Atlantic Conveyor Belt” e.g. the Gulf Stream. Recent studies have shown that glacial melting from Greenland has created a massive pool of freshwater over the Gulf Stream that has disturbed the salinity of the Atlantic Ocean and is shutting down the Gulf Stream. Oh no, this must be a horrible event with calamitous consequences, right? According to the Ecopalyptics, if the Gulf Stream is shut down, Europe won’t receive its relatively warm currents that mean the difference between Shropshire and Winnepeg — which are roughly on the same latitude. As a result, Europe would be thrown into a new Ice Age, right? Actually no. It’s all about negative feedback. The earth is a stable system, if it weren’t life would have disappeared billions of years ago. It’s the negative feedback that makes life possible in the first place — if things get out of whack, there’s a system for getting them back to normality. If the Gulf Stream fades, Arctic winds will sink south and cover Greenland, thereby cooling the island and stopping the glacial melt — thus stopping the runaway insanity of the eco-warriors’ worst nightmares.
The part these people miss – in both their mathematical projections and in their current hysterical projections — is that Mother Nature is far craftier than we give her credit for. She’s not some old tottering Betty but rather a spry 40-something working mother with trillions of mouths to feed, and the last thing she needs is a bunch of second borne dysfunctional “Rebel Children” raising hell and getting in her way. To paraphrase the great George Carlin: Think of the insults she (Mother Earth) has had to deal with over the billions of years of her existence – comets, asteroids, worldwide fires, worldwide floods, worldwide glaciations, magnetic reversal of the poles — and we’re to think that some SUVs and some plastic bags are going to make a difference? Mother Nature has had to deal with far worse than us.
Let’s look at those mathematical models that all seem to claim that by mid-century we’re going to be living through climactic hell for a minute. As we know, the climate is a chaotic system — meaning that even minor variations in the starting conditions can drastically affect the outcome of the model. This is known as the “Butterfly Effect” with the observation that according to the models, a minor and completely unpredictable perturbation like a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio de Janeiro can bring sunshine instead of rain as an outcome on a given day in London. As a result, these models tend to break down over time, wildly diverging in their final result because of this effect. This is the reason why meteorologists can’t reliably forecast the weather beyond seven days. The farther out you want to forecast — reliably — the more certain you need to be about the initial conditions, and the more certain you need to be about the variables of your equation.
As for those initial conditions, if we’re talking about global warming from greenhouse gasses, we need to know something about those gasses — how much of each type are produced, and how much of each type are consumed, in a given year. The production of man-made greenhouse gasses is easily, though tediously, quantified. The amount produced naturally is another story. In January, for instance, the Kilauea volcano started producing greenhouse gasses at an alarming rate, and for no apparent reason. One can estimate the amount of such gasses produced, but again, these “assumptions” are what invalidates the mathematical models, as you need absolute accuracy to forecast reliably.
Despite what the “experts” may say, consumption, as described above, is completely unknown. Look into the field of metagenomics. Scientists discovered that if they sampled sand from one area of a beach near Torrey Pines, they discovered literally hundreds of thousands of new species of organisms. Even more surprising, if they moved the probe one meter right or left they discovered hundreds of thousands more species as unrelated to the original crop as we are to the original crop. In short, we have no idea — not even remotely — of the number of species on the planet, and how many of those are consuming greenhouse gasses, and how many are producing the stuff. Since we have no idea of how much of a given gas is being consumed or produced, the estimates going into those models are only that — estimates — and eat away at the efficacy of the model (as again, it’s all about accuracy).
Now for the second part — the variables. The big fallacy of these climate models is twofold: Le Chatelier’s Principle and evolution. The first can be summed up by the Predator-Prey equation: whether it’s lions on the Serengeti or bacteria in a Petri dish, the idea is that the more prey you pump into a system — either in the above examples, wildebeest or yeast extract and milk proteins — the more predators you’ll produce. In terms of the globe, the entire plant kingdom, as well as a good portion of the uni-cellular world, consumes greenhouse gasses to some degree (and again, we have no idea to what degree).
What is known, however, is that if you put more greenhouse gasses into the system — the globe — the more these organisms will consume until equilibrium is reached. The rate of which is a complete unknown. We don’t have any idea of the number of species on the planet, so how can we know anything of their metabolisms and the resulting impact on the environment?
Further, the reproduction of a single-celled diatom or algae is significantly shorter than ours (20 minutes in the best of circumstances). This means they experience evolution on a vastly accelerated scale, and that if the world has an increased level of greenhouse gasses, the organisms that consume the majority of them will react the fastest to the increase, modifying their genomes to become more efficient in their consumption. Again, there’s no way to even begin to account for this variable, so the modelers conveniently ignore its contribution.
The result is that we’re trying to base policy on flawed models that are no better than ancient shamans reading tea leaves. The enviro-nazis are no better than the medicine man of lineage ancient during a lunar eclipse who could claim that the great night spirit was eating the moon goddess, and if only the tribal elders would hand over the virgins he’d perform his incantations and make him spit her out again.
Its getting warm - its GLOBAL WARMING wot dunnit!!
Its getting cold - its GLOBAL WARMING wot dunnit!!
Al Gore is a saint who has no interest in making a fortune in the Global warming scam because he owns massive companies who will profit from the sale of carbon allowances. Its just a coincidence. Everyone else who disputes him is a reprobate who eats babies!!
Quote:
Winter's second wind: Don't put your overcoat away yet... it's going to be very cold and very wet
By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 12:21 AM on 03rd March 2009
Winter will return with a vengeance today, with a band of heavy rain and snow due to sweep across Britain.
More than a week's rainfall is forecast to deluge parts of England and Wales in just a few hours this afternoon, bringing the risk of flash-floods.
The heavy rain will be followed by hail and sleet over the next few days as temperatures plummet back to a few degrees above freezing.
Scotland will see heavy snow showers, with up to a foot expected to fall on higher ground.
forecast
The cold spell follows a fortnight of mild temperatures and spells of glorious sunshine for much of the country.
'We are going to see some very heavy rainfall, probably over a four to six-hour period, with up to an inch in some parts of England and Wales,' said the Met Office's Barry Gromett.
'The heaviest rain will be on higher ground in the West - the Lake District, Pennines, north Wales, Brecons and moorlands in the South West.
The band of heavy rain will reach the western coast of England and Wales late in the morning and slowly sweep across Britain. The predicted rainfall is a quarter of the average for the whole of March.
'It's over a prolonged period of time which reduces the chance of widespread flash-flooding, but we'd be foolish to rule it out. However, it has been dry for a while, so there shouldn't be too many problems.'
Snow in London
The heaviest snowfalls in 18 years hit Britain in early February, shutting down London's transport
Parts of Scotland - including the Grampians, Highlands and Southern Uplands - are expected to be severely disrupted with heavy snow until at least Wednesday.
'We'll see a lot of torrential rain this week,' Mr Gromett added. 'In general the week will be unsettled - rainfall and snow again, with a brief respite coming up to the weekend.'
This winter is on course to be the coldest in Britain since 1995-96, according to the Met Office, with an average temperature of only 2.9C (37F). Yet temperatures over the past fortnight have been mild for the tail end of the season.
Daffodils
Flower power: Three-year-old Maisy Byrne plays among the Daffodils in Greenbank Park, Liverpool
The warmest spot was Canterbury, Kent, which hit an unseasonal 16.9C (62F) on Friday.
That will drop to 4c to 8c (39f to 46f) for the rest of the week before rising again at the weekend. The West of England will be mildest, and the North coldest.
Overnight temperatures will plummet to minus 3C (26F) in the Midlands and elsewhere hover between 2C (35F) and minus 2C (28F).
And now the religious zealots begin their crusade in earnest. Its not enough for those like Chek to sit in his overcoat freezing while the rest of us have fires, which he doubtless does of course. Now they have to attack those who don't agree with them because they are right, and like crusaders of old will force the rest of us to do as they bid. Its for our own good and they know best.
Quote:
NASA's Chief Climate Scientist Stirs Controversy With Call for Civil Disobedience
Friday, February 27, 2009, By Joshua Rhett Miller
NASA's chief climate scientist is in hot water with colleagues and at least one lawmaker after calling on citizens to engage in civil disobedience at what is being billed as the largest public protest of global warming ever in the United States.
In a video on capitolclimateaction.org, Dr. James Hansen is seen urging Americans to "take a stand on global warming" during the March 2 protest at the Capitol Power Plant in Southeast Washington, D.C.
"We need to send a message to Congress and the president that we want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet," says Hansen, who has likened coal-fired power plants to "factories of death" and claims he was muzzled by the Bush administration when he warned of drastic climate changes.
"What has become clear from the science is that we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet. The only practical way to solve the problem is to phase out the biggest source of carbon — and that's coal."
But critics say Hansen's latest call to action blurs the line between astronomer and activist and may violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from participating in partisan political activity.
"Oh my goodness," one of Hansen's former supervisors, Dr. John Theon, told FOXNews.com when informed of the video. "I'm not surprised ... The fact that Jim Hansen has gone off the deep end here is sad because he's a good fellow."
Theon, a former senior NASA atmospheric scientist, rebuked Hansen last month in a letter to the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, saying Hansen had violated NASA's official position on climate forecasting without sufficient evidence and embarrassed the agency by airing his claims before Congress in 1988.
"Why he has not been fired I do not understand," Theon said. "As a civil servant, you can't participate in calling for a public demonstration. You may be able to participate as a private citizen, but when you go on the Internet and call for people to break the law, that's a problem."
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Officials at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which investigates possible Hatch Act violations, disagreed, saying Hansen is in the clear since it's an "issue-oriented activity," according to Hatch Unit attorney Erica Stern Hamrick.
The majority of federal government employees are allowed to take an active part in political activities, while workers at other departments like the FBI, Secret Service and National Security Council are subject to more restrictions on their political activities.
NASA spokesman Mark Hess also defended Hansen.
"He's doing this as a private citizen on his own time and there's nothing wrong with that," Hess told FOXNews.com. "There's nothing partisan here. You don't give up your rights to free speech by becoming a government employee."
Matt Leonard, a project coordinator for Greenpeace, one of more than 90 organizations endorsing the protest, said several thousand people are expected to participate and "peacefully disrupt operations" at the plant just blocks from Capitol Hill.
Participants are willing to "put their bodies on the line to stop climate change," including risking arrest, Leonard said.
"Our intention is to completely surround the facility, basically sending a message that these types of power plants can't be a part of our future," Leonard said. "They're destroying our environment."
Hansen will be in attendance and is expected to speak at the "completely nonviolent, peaceful" protest, Leonard said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., urged Hansen to rethink his plans.
"If he wants to have a demonstration concerning global warming, coming to the Capitol is not a right choice," Rohrabacher told FOXNews.com. "The bottom line is if Hansen wants to protest global warming, he should go to the National Cathedral and take it up with God rather than going to Capitol Hill."
Rohrabacher, a member of the House's Committee on Science and Technology, called on Hansen to "step out" of his role.
"He obviously doesn't feel comfortable with the restraints that come with being a scientist rather than a political activist," Rohrabacher said. "Most of us have always thought he has been hiding behind a scientific facade, and really, he was a political activist all along."
Chris Horner, author of "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed," also denounced Hansen's latest call to arms against climate change.
"He's providing ample cause to question his employment on the taxpayer dime," Horner told FOXNews.com. "He's clearly abused his platform provided to him by the taxpayer, principally by the way he's been exposed of manipulating and revising data with the strange coincidence of him always found on the side of exaggerating the warming."
Horner claimed that Hansen doctored temperature data on two occasions in 2001 and once in 2007 in attempts to show an impending climate catastrophe.
"He's creating an upward slope that really wasn't there," Horner said. "At some point you have to say these aren't mistakes."
Hansen, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story, was most recently honored for his work last month with the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society.
"Jim Hansen is performing a tremendous job at communicating our science to the public and, more importantly, to policymakers and decision-makers," Franco Einaudi, director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a press release.
"The debate about global change is often emotional and controversial, and Jim has had the courage to stand up and say what others did not want to hear. He has acquired a credibility that very few scientists have. His success is due in part to his personality, in part to his scientific achievements, and in part to his refusing to sit on the sidelines of the debate."
Former Vice President Al Gore, who toured with Hansen while promoting "An Inconvenient Truth," did not return repeated requests for comment for this article.
Your water will stay poisoned because to do anything about it will cause global warming!! Really - that's what they are saying!!! Never mind - the people who are reporting this probably eat babies so ignore them.
Quote:
Water Supply Will Stay Poisoned With Gender-Bending Chemicals Due To “Carbon Footprint” Of Filtering Systems
Concerns about global warming make a real environmental problem worse
Calls for sewage treatment facilities to filter out the harmful chemicals have increased since a UK Environment Agency study confirmed the gender-bending effect the substances were having on fish.
However, as was highlighted in a BBC Countryfile segment yesterday, concerns about the “carbon footprint” of filtering machines means that the poisons will remain in the vast majority of the British water supply.
A pilot scheme to screen out the chemicals run by Severn Trent Water at Hallam Fields in Derbyshire has been successful, but according to John Churchly of Severn Trent Water, the UK Environment Agency will only mandate such filtering at “a few sites on the river system”.
“This won’t be at every site, certainly,” said Churchly, before explaining that the “additional carbon footprint” that the filtering machines produce was one of the main reasons why the system would not be installed at every site.
So the choice has largely been made, chemical poisons that feminize fish and increase infertility, and are widely suspected to have the same impact on humans, placing under threat the entire fishing industry and the very reproductive future of humanity, will remain in the British water supply because the government cannot allow the machines that filter them out to be installed due to the “carbon footprint” that they create.
Al Gore is a profit - sorry prophet, and a saint so this article must be lies spread by baby-eating liars!! Worth a look just to see what terrible things they are saying about Saint Al. Take to the streets to defend him!!!
Quote:
Media Ignore Al Gore’s Financial Ties to Global Warming
March 3, 2007 — budsimmons
Posted by Noel Sheppard on March 2, 2007 - 09:58.
As NewsBusters reported here, here, and here, there are huge dollars to be made from global warming alarmism. However, conceivably no one is better positioned to financially benefit from this scam than Dr. Global Warming himself, former Vice President Al Gore, a fact that the media will surely not share with Americans any time soon.
Yet, if America’s press would take some time out of their busy schedules covering the earth-shattering details surrounding Anna Nicole Smith’s demise, they might find a deliciously inconvenient truth about the soon-to-be-Dr. Gore that is significantly more fascinating and diabolical than anything likely to emerge from that courtroom in Broward County, Florida.
As reported by Dan Riehl (emphasis mine throughout):
Former Vice President Al Gore has built a Green money-making machine capable of eventually generating billions of dollars for investors, including himself, but he set it up so that the average Joe can’t afford to play on Gore’s terms. And the US portion is headed up by a former Gore staffer and fund raiser who previously ran afoul of both the FEC and the DOJ, before Janet Reno jumped in and shut down an investigation during the Clinton years.
Think Katie, Charlie, or Brian will be all over this tonight? Regardless, that was just the tip of the questionably melting iceberg as reported by Bill Hobbs in Nashville, Tennessee:
[H]ow Gore buys his “carbon offsets,” as revealed by The Tennessean raises serious questions. According to the newspaper’s report, Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management:
Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe…
Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks.
Fascinating. So, as Dr. Global Warming travels the world in his private jet while spending 20 times the average American on energy for his home, all the time telling us its okay because he’s buying carbon offsets, he’s actually purchasing these investments from himself.
Furthermore, and maybe more important, Gore stands to benefit financially in a potentially huge way if more and more people buy into this junk science.
Isn’t that special?
Yet, it is not clear that Gore’s money is going to purchase carbon offsets at all. Riehl reported:
Here’s a list indicating what it takes to make money along with Al. Funds associated with these companies have placed millions of dollars under Al Gore’s control. And, as you’ll see below, Gore’s selection for the US President of GIM might raise a few eyebrows as well.
AFLAC INC - AQUANTIVE INC - AUTODESK INC - BECTON DICKINSON & CO BLACKBAUD INC - GENERAL ELECTRIC CO - GREENHILL & CO INC - JOHNSON CTLS INC - LABORATORY CORP AMER HLDGS - METABOLIX INC - NORTHERN TR CORP - NUVEEN INVTS INC -STAPLES INC - SYSCO CORP - TECHNE CORP - UBS AG - VCA ANTECH INC - WATERS CORP - WHOLE FOODS MKT INC
According to their own documents, GIM intends to invest in, or buy companies poised to cash in on Global Warming concerns.
Putting this in perspective, for years the left and their media minions have posited that George W. Bush started war with Iraq to benefit the company Vice President Dick Cheney used to run, Halliburton, as well as Bush’s oil tycoon friends. In fact, there have been times when you couldn’t swing a dead cat in any pressroom in this nation without hitting a reporter working on such a story.
Yet, as the former Vice President continues to plug global warming as a coming crisis in need of immediate attention, the same media completely ignore his obvious financial conflicts of interest.
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 8:34 am Post subject:
Item7 wrote:
Its getting warm - its GLOBAL WARMING wot dunnit!!
Its getting cold - its GLOBAL WARMING wot dunnit!!
From the above, I guess the contradictions seemingly apparent in conclusions drawn from actual data like:
"Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2008 was the coolest year since 2000. The GISS analysis also showed that 2008 is the ninth warmest year since continuous instrumental records were started in 1880. The ten warmest years on record have all occurred between 1997 and 2008."
must do your head in. And will continue to do so until you can bring yourself to comprehend the concept of trends in data over time, rather than at single points.
Item7 wrote:
Al Gore is a saint who has no interest in making a fortune in the Global warming scam because he owns massive companies who will profit from the sale of carbon allowances. Its just a coincidence.
So Al Gore, who has campaigned on this issue for decades, actually puts his money where his mouth is. How sinister.
By the way - and I know you're usually keen to avoid actual facts - but could you define these 'massive companies' he owns for me? In terms of annual turnover for each one will be adequate. Thanks.
Here's a fun thing for you to consider: how many trillions have the energy companies' shareholders saved themselves by delaying and denying that environmental damage caused by their product is their responsibility over the past 20 years? _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:56 am Post subject:
Mr-Bridger wrote:
I havent post hear for ages but i cannot understand how you cant see through all this man-made global warming bs Chek.
As the late great George Carlin said can we be that conceited to believe we are harming the planet we are nothing more than fleas.
Believe it or not, I used to think along those lines - until I started looking at the data. It's the only reliable way to deal with received (and not necessarily true) ideas. Yes, in the great scheme of things individually we are fleas but non-stop and ever increasing industrialisation in our customary cheapskate and destructive manner irrevocably changed our relationship to the biosphere. The impression given by looking at, say, the size of Earth from space tends to mask how thin the skin of water and atmosphere actually is.
One analogy is that 106mg of cyanide is considered a fatal dose, which in the case of an average adult's weight, represents roughly 1/660000th of body mass. So something a fifth the size of a flea can still be fatal to a much larger organism.
Carbon content in the atmosphere is increasing and is currently almost 70% of the way to where it was pre-ice age. That may well be fine as far as Mother Earth and many other species are concerned, but our concern is (or should be) to mitigate the effects of induced climate change on available land and agriculture to avoid large scale casualties.
We can either try to follow where the science leads as best we can, or throw up our hands and leave it to others who may not have our best interests at heart. Everyone should take an interest, if only to be able to seperate the shysters from the genuine.
Oh, and welcome back, Mr-B.
Btw, I recently saw a viable method to recover the gold from the bus.
If you're still stuck, let me know I'll see if I can find it again.
Some scientist came up with it _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 2:24 pm Post subject:
When Victor Rothschild closed the British Coal Mines in the 1980s there was no talk of Climate Change as far as I recall.
Energy policy is absolutely at the heart of the New World Order - Plutocrats control freakery agenda.
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 3:02 pm Post subject:
TonyGosling wrote:
When Victor Rothschild closed the British Coal Mines in the 1980s there was no talk of Climate Change as far as I recall.
Energy policy is absolutely at the heart of the New World Order - Plutocrats control freakery agenda.
I'm not convinced at all so far by the science. All seems to me about closing down non-nuclear options.
I don't think there was any ecological motivation for closing the mines, except perhaps for the New Right's seeking to eradicate the germ of unionisation to deliver a more compliant workforce.
And the trouble with the nuclear option is that we have already undertaken to maintain mountains of poison for 500,000+ years when we haven't even managed a continuous history for 5,000 years (out of the million or so we've been around for) without getting extremely sketchy. Not a very reassuring record, given the magnitude of the undertaking.
My instinct is that in view of the facts and the trends, MMGW needs to be, and can be, acted on. The geopolitics of the situation are seperate to the geophysical problems and do not mean bowing down to the elite's ideas of how this will all play out.
My fear is that technology might prove to have been a Faustian bargain that allowed a proportion of God's own chosen Anglo-Saxon's to party like there was no tomorrow for a century or two, but in the long run (say, sticking around for another million years) we'd have been better off remaining neolithic style hunter-gatherers. _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Pelosi gets snowed out because the gulf stream stopped and the extra heat in the NE USA caused colder weather. Al Gore states there is no conflict of interest in owning companies which profit from carbon credits while simultaneously pushing the climate change scam. Last remaining polar bears die out leaving only thousands of healthy polar bears behind. Carbon dioxide is now a pollutant causing all plants to die out. Mankind has become extinct. This site no longer exists. The Pope is a Muslim. Its all TRUE!!!
Pelosi Snowed-Out of Global Warming Rally
Monday, March 02, 2009
By Josiah Ryan and Ryan Byrnes
(Editor's note: After this story was published, the communications director for the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming said that Chairman Ed Markey, D-Mass., could not attend the global warming rally because of a "scheduling conflict." See below.)
(CNSNews.com) – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had to cancel an appearance Monday at a global warming rally in Washington, D.C., that was hit by a snowstorm because her flight was delayed, her office told CNSNews.com.
Brianna Cayo-Cotter, the spokesman for the Energy Action Coalition that held the rally, told a group of reporters that she had been in contact with Pelosi and that her flight had been delayed because of inclement weather.
A blizzard Sunday night and early Monday morning blanketed the nation’s capital with snow, causing events to be cancelled and delayed across the city.
House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who was scheduled to speak at the global warming event, also canceled his appearance because of the inclement weather, a spokesman from his committee’s office told CNSNews.com on Monday.
[Eben Burnham-Snyder, communications director for the committee, later contacted CNSNews.com to say that Markey could not attend the rally not because of the weather but because of a “scheduling conflict.”
[Burnham-Snyder would not say, however, where Markey was at the time the rally took place. “The problem is that I am in a tough position because I am never allowed to release his schedule but I can tell you that’s not true (that he missed the rally because of the weather) because he was already in the District," said Burnham-Snyder. “It wasn’t the same situation (as Speaker Pelosi) -- not that I am saying Speaker Pelosi’s excuse was not right – but it was not the same position as it was with the Speaker because she was flying. The chairman was already here.”
[“He just literally had something he could not avoid happening as the rally was happening,” said Burnham-Snyder.
[Burnham-Snyder repeated that he was not at liberty to say where Markey was, but, he said, Markey “was not in the Capitol complex at the time.”]
Speaker Pelosi’s office confirmed to CNSNews.com that her flight had been delayed, but they could not say where the flight was coming from or whether she was flying commercial or charter.
According to a press notification released by the Speaker’s office on Friday, both lawmakers were scheduled to appear on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol at 11:30AM Monday.
“In her remarks, the Speaker will discuss the progress made and the next steps to green the House of Representatives through the Green the Capitol initiative,” said the press release.
But at 9.35am on Monday the House Radio TV/Gallery e-mailed reporters noting that, “The Speaker will NOT be participating in the 2009 Power Shift Conference Rally this morning at 11:30am on the West Front.”
“It is unclear if the event is still going on,” said the release.
The event did occur, however, and despite the lawmakers' absence, about 500 protesters braved temperatures in the mid-20s and congregated on the Capitol lawn.
The rally was part of the Energy Action Coalition’s Power Shift 2009 Conference, which occurred in Washington, D.C., over the weekend.
On its website, under a section entitled "What We're For," the Energy Action Coalition says: "The partners of Energy Action and the youth who are building this movement have been at the forefront of the movement for bold, just and comprehensive action to stop global warming and create a just and sustainable energy future."
The site also includes a "Youth Climate Pledge" that says in part: "The climate crisis is the most urgent issue facing humanity today. Failure to fully and immediately confront it will condemn my generation to a transformed planet."
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 8:46 pm Post subject:
item7 wrote:
Pelosi gets snowed out because the gulf stream stopped and the extra heat in the NE USA caused colder weather. Al Gore states there is no conflict of interest in owning companies which profit from carbon credits while simultaneously pushing the climate change scam. Last remaining polar bears die out leaving only thousands of healthy polar bears behind. Carbon dioxide is now a pollutant causing all plants to die out. Mankind has become extinct. This site no longer exists. The Pope is a Muslim. Its all TRUE!!!
So, peeling away the still sticky undercoats of witless sarcasm, just to get this straight Item7, your entire stance boils down to "how come it's not warm when it's called Global Warming"? _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
The above link has a lot more but this is just the beginning of what it has to offer.
Quote:
Fire and Ice
Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming
By R. Warren Anderson, Research Analyst
Dan Gainor
The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow
It was five years before the turn of the century and major media were warning of disastrous climate change. Page six of The New York Times was headlined with the serious concerns of “geologists.” Only the president at the time wasn’t Bill Clinton; it was Grover Cleveland. And the Times wasn’t warning about global warming – it was telling readers the looming dangers of a new ice age.
The year was 1895, and it was just one of four different time periods in the last 100 years when major print media predicted an impending climate crisis. Each prediction carried its own elements of doom, saying Canada could be “wiped out” or lower crop yields would mean “billions will die.”
Just as the weather has changed over time, so has the reporting – blowing hot or cold with short-term changes in temperature.
Following the ice age threats from the late 1800s, fears of an imminent and icy catastrophe were compounded in the 1920s by Arctic explorer Donald MacMillan and an obsession with the news of his polar expedition. As the Times put it on Feb. 24, 1895, “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.”
Those concerns lasted well into the late 1920s. But when the earth’s surface warmed less than half a degree, newspapers and magazines responded with stories about the new threat. Once again the Times was out in front, cautioning “the earth is steadily growing warmer.”
After a while, that second phase of climate cautions began to fade. By 1954, Fortune magazine was warming to another cooling trend and ran an article titled “Climate – the Heat May Be Off.” As the United States and the old Soviet Union faced off, the media joined them with reports of a more dangerous Cold War of Man vs. Nature.
The New York Times ran warming stories into the late 1950s, but it too came around to the new fears. Just three decades ago, in 1975, the paper reported: “A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.”
That trend, too, cooled off and was replaced by the current era of reporting on the dangers of global warming. Just six years later, on Aug. 22, 1981, the Times quoted seven government atmospheric scientists who predicted global warming of an “almost unprecedented magnitude.”
In all, the print news media have warned of four separate climate changes in slightly more than 100 years – global cooling, warming, cooling again, and, perhaps not so finally, warming. Some current warming stories combine the concepts and claim the next ice age will be triggered by rising temperatures – the theme of the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow.”
Recent global warming reports have continued that trend, morphing into a hybrid of both theories. News media that once touted the threat of “global warming” have moved on to the more flexible term “climate change.” As the Times described it, climate change can mean any major shift, making the earth cooler or warmer. In a March 30, 2006, piece on ExxonMobil’s approach to the environment, a reporter argued the firm’s chairman “has gone out of his way to soften Exxon’s public stance on climate change.”
The effect of the idea of “climate change” means that any major climate event can be blamed on global warming, supposedly driven by mankind.
Spring 2006 has been swamped with climate change hype in every type of media – books, newspapers, magazines, online, TV and even movies.
One-time presidential candidate Al Gore, a patron saint of the environmental movement, is releasing “An Inconvenient Truth” in book and movie form, warning, “Our ability to live is what is at stake.”
Despite all the historical shifting from one position to another, many in the media no longer welcome opposing views on the climate. CBS reporter Scott Pelley went so far as to compare climate change skeptics with Holocaust deniers.
“If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel,” Pelley asked, “am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?” he said in an interview on March 23 with CBS News’s PublicEye blog.
He added that the whole idea of impartial journalism just didn’t work for climate stories. “There becomes a point in journalism where striving for balance becomes irresponsible,” he said.
Pelley’s comments ignored an essential point: that 30 years ago, the media were certain about the prospect of a new ice age. And that is only the most recent example of how much journalists have changed their minds on this essential debate.
Some in the media would probably argue that they merely report what scientists tell them, but that would be only half true.
Journalists decide not only what they cover; they also decide whether to include opposing viewpoints. That’s a balance lacking in the current “debate.”
This isn’t a question of science. It’s a question of whether Americans can trust what the media tell them about science.
Here is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward global cooling. It may look foolish today, but in fact world temperatures had been falling since about 1940. It was around 1979 that they reversed direction and resumed the general rise that had begun in the 1880s, bringing us today back to around 1940 levels. A PDF of the original is available here. A fine short history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is available here.
We invite interested readers to vist our new website: Climate Debate Daily. — D.D.
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:33 am Post subject:
And so it comes down to trying to pull the old "so many contradictions they don't know what they're on about" ploy.
The subtext being, as usual, do not interfere with the energy industries.
Firstly it's helpful to realise that the press loves a good scare story - the more sensational the better. But luckily the press aren't the ones we should be taking note of. So what were the actual scientists saying?
"The notion that the 1970s scientific consensus was for impending global cooling is incorrect. In actuality, there were significantly more papers in the 1970s predicting warming than cooling.
Scientific studies in the 1970's re global cooling
Most predictions of an impending ice age came from the popular press (eg - Newsweek, NY Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine). As far as peer reviewed scientific papers in the 1970s, very few papers (7 in total) predicted global cooling. Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming due to CO2."
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm
In other words the consensus hasn't changed, and the suggestion that it has is ....surely not yet more dishonesty from the denier camp?.
Whatever next... _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 431 Location: North East England
Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:10 pm Post subject:
I'm not sure whether AGW is a scam or not, and in truth no-one knows for sure...... Even the IPCC will not state categorically that human activity is driving climate change, it uses the phrases "likely" and "very likely".
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_FAQs.pdf
Only now has satellite based study of global CO2 levels been initiated, first by Japan and then almost by the USA (until the rocket exploded...). The truth is AGW is a working hypothesis, its not proven by any means, as many of the processes are poorly understood, its clear there is a relationship between CO2 and temperature trends, but the nature of this relationship is open to interpretation.
Not that you would know this if you were read any of the AGW propaganda put out in the mainstream media, or by interested parties, you would definitely gain the impression that AGW is proven beyond doubt. It worries me when an interested party like Al Gore can say the "debate is over" , and we're all supposed to swallow this.
chek wrote:
The geopolitics of the situation are seperate to the geophysical problems and do not mean bowing down to the elite's ideas of how this will all play out.
This is where for me, the AGW scam starts to kick in. Whether you believe in AGW is almost irrelevant, this will not happen, and AGW will be and is already being used as justification by the elites for a whole host of anti-libertarian measures. Where the limits of 'terrorism' have been reached, the process will continue via AGW. Its already being used to excuse limits on personal mobility via taxation, and there is no evidence this process will cease, it will certainly exacerbate, with road tolls, extra congestion charges, and flight taxes all in the pipeline. Insidiously, black box monitoring is also linked to climate change policies, and there is no doubt local authorites will gain increased snooping powers on an environmental pretext. The population is now continually bombarded with propaganda on the war against climate change, which will make them more compliant when exploitative measures become law. In this context, AGW is the pretext for a scam and nothing more, the UK government has shown a remarkable incoherance in its environmental policies that suggests its interest in AGW doesn't really lie in fixing the problem, if there is one......
The UK could be seizing this as an opportunity to revolutionise its energy supplies and foster in an age of energy self-reliance. With an estimated 300 years worth of coal still to be mined in the UK, the use of carbon capture technology could usher in a legacy we would be very proud to leave to our descendents.....
Quote:
The Times
March 2, 2009
How to win the climate war: dig into your pocket for victory
Going green will costs billions. The way to raise the money is to issue modern war bonds and raise an army of investors
James Cameron
Some of the most effective - and beautifully executed - British propaganda of the Second World War concerned the selling of war bonds. A little boy and his toy crane were pictured above a caption that read: “Lend to defend his right to be free.” Another had a mother and daughter staring into a rising sun above a line which read: “The Dawn of Victory, worth fighting for - worth saving for.”
Collection points were everywhere and the country was urged to do its patriotic duty and dip into its own savings, however meagre, and lend to the Government. The money was specifically used for the war effort. By 1945 the total amount invested in UK war bonds stood at £1,754 million.
I hesitate to link the war against Nazism with the war against climate change but I believe that now is the time for the Government to consider, with urgency, the issue of bonds for another cause - reducing greenhouse gases in our atmosphere - while at the same time kick-starting the faltering economy.
The two are linked. We can fix the economy and build a low-carbon world. Take for instance the research and development done in this country on carbon capture and storage - the means by which power stations using fossil fuels and ones yet built can continue to operate without throwing millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
There are various technologies in play and the UK is a leader in their development. At Imperial College in London and at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and at the universities in Newcastle and Nottingham, an extraordinary expertise has been built up. However Britain is in danger of losing this lead because of the lack of investment to turn this work into reality. We are good in the lab but not so good at getting that idea from the lab to market.
Take another example: the financing of new heat networks. This is where hot water, produced from an existing power station for instance, is distributed via pipes to heat homes, factories or offices. Witness the steam outlets in Manhattan's streets to get the idea. However, a new system of heat networks will not be built in the UK because the upfront costs of laying the pipes make it uneconomic compared with gas, where the delivery system, the gas pipe, is long built. In the long term heat networks are proven to drastically reduce carbon output and cost less to run.
One more. Smart grids use mobile phone and broadband technology so that the amount of energy produced can be matched more precisely to the demands of the consumer, thus cutting the amount of energy that is just thrown away and improving the amount of renewable power put into the grid. The development is being done but the execution will require billions in investment.
All these schemes, together with more mundane but equally necessary ones such as retrofitting existing homes and offices to make them energy-efficient - are part of the simple but large answer to climate change - and they also can create jobs and stimulate local economies.
Huge sums of money would be needed for a complete overhaul of how we produce, deliver and consume energy. The building of a single carbon capture and storage power station will cost around £1 billion. But investment in large-scale low-carbon projects has been limited. Changing government policies, uncertainty about a price put on carbon, inertia and short- termism all stop investors coming forward.
So how to pay for it, how do we find green investors? The answer we've come up with working alongside the top environmental advisor Tom Burke is modelled on the war bond philosophy. We believe that a series of targeted bonds, with their proceeds ring-fenced for investment in tangible green infrastructure, could capture investors' attention whether they be individuals or institutions, such as pension funds looking, as they must, for financial return over many years.
The bonds could be fixed or index linked, offering low but stable rates of return over a long period of time, matching that of the assets into which the funds would be flowing. That is to say we would build things to last. They would have the backing of government and the expected cash flows from the projects themselves. These climate bonds would be a sensible way to finance the needed long-term investment in tangible assets that society should have to improve the quality of our lives.
I sense that there is now a will for people to put their money to productive use and not just hope that their bank will avoid buying housing estates in Florida or parcels of debt. There is something powerful in the idea that “My money built that and it works and I use it.” Meaningful work matters too: building things financed by people for a purpose that binds investor and worker and user. In the end people's savings can produce jobs, galvanise effort in a common cause and leave a legacy of lasting value.
The Government can help to make this happen. The Treasury can lend a hand. That is what happened in the 1940s. To paraphrase a line from an old poster: “Climate Bonds - the present for the future.” We and our political servants should seize the day. We have no time to lose.
James Cameron is the vice-chairman of Climate Change Capital
Picture this: For the price of bailing out a couple of bank(sters), the UK could secure its energy future and create thousands of jobs in largely poorer parts of the country. It could return to a position of being a power exporter, and cut all reliance on the Russian Mafiosi. The UK potentially could become a non-polluting energy autarky (there are plenty of other articles on carbon capture technology for those who wish to dig deeper).
But we all know this won't happen, the UK will continue to play with useless wind farms, and toy with the idea of tidal barrages, which in turn will be interminably stalled by NIMBYism and conservationists. All the while the ruling elites won't care, whatever happens, they will be OK as anti AGW 'policies' won't affect them in the slightest, and an increasingly compliant populace will please them greatly. Its almost enough to make you wonder if AGW is the new chosen religion in this secular country, it certainly would appear to being exploited as a control mechanism.
This, then, is the AGW scam, a possible problem, based on hypothetical evidence, being presented as proven fact to further the interests of various groups and nothing more. Instead of being used as a catalyst for real positive change, it will only further enrich a few, which oppressing the majority. (FWIW I have real doubts about various eco-groups too and their real motives.)
All the while the real problem facing humanity is neatly filed away, allowing a few more years of unparalleled power and influence for the elites....
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:16 pm Post subject:
wepmob2000 wrote:
I'm not sure whether AGW is a scam or not, and in truth no-one knows for sure...... Even the IPCC will not state categorically that human activity is driving climate change, it uses the phrases "likely" and "very likely".
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_FAQs.pdf
Only now has satellite based study of global CO2 levels been initiated, first by Japan and then almost by the USA (until the rocket exploded...). The truth is AGW is a working hypothesis, its not proven by any means, as many of the processes are poorly understood, its clear there is a relationship between CO2 and temperature trends, but the nature of this relationship is open to interpretation.
Not that you would know this if you were read any of the AGW propaganda put out in the mainstream media, or by interested parties, you would definitely gain the impression that AGW is proven beyond doubt. It worries me when an interested party like Al Gore can say the "debate is over" , and we're all supposed to swallow this.
Empirically, what you say is true at face value. However what is known from the various records from previous ages is the infamous 'hockey stick' and the 800 year lag of the initiation of a warming cycle inevitably leading to runaway heat capture by liberated CO2.
The difference now (it is generally agreed) is that whereby there was previously an 800 year lag as the cooled oceans released their stored CO2 as they warmed (rather in the same way as a cold lager releases its CO2 and becomes less fizzy as it warms) we humans are now generating through fossil fuel burning on a global scale that additional CO2 that would in the past have been released slowly from the seas in previous times as a natural process between ice ages.
The mammoths (or whatever - and some didn't make it as the frozen Siberian examples demonstrate) would merely have trekked further south as the climate cooled to another ice-age from it's runaway warming tipping point. The Earth seems to have an inclination to act like the reset button an a cheap air conditioner. While it may appear tough to those with major interests in the northern temperate zones, fleeing south was always an option in the past.
While it can be argued about, there remains little doubt from studying the past that the concentration of CO2 with its propensity for also infiltrating the upper atmosphere, amplifies heating trends (as opposed to the far greater volume of water vapour which luckily resides solely in the troposphere). That, if anything, is what is meant by the debate is over, as I understand it. The chemistry, unfortunately, doesn't lie.
chek wrote:
The geopolitics of the situation are seperate to the geophysical problems and do not mean bowing down to the elite's ideas of how this will all play out.
wepmob2000 wrote:
This is where for me, the AGW scam starts to kick in. Whether you believe in AGW is almost irrelevant, this will not happen, and AGW will be and is already being used as justification by the elites for a whole host of anti-libertarian measures. Where the limits of 'terrorism' have been reached, the process will continue via AGW. Its already being used to excuse limits on personal mobility via taxation, and there is no evidence this process will cease, it will certainly exacerbate, with road tolls, extra congestion charges, and flight taxes all in the pipeline. Insidiously, black box monitoring is also linked to climate change policies, and there is no doubt local authorites will gain increased snooping powers on an environmental pretext. The population is now continually bombarded with propaganda on the war against climate change, which will make them more compliant when exploitative measures become law. In this context, AGW is the pretext for a scam and nothing more, the UK government has shown a remarkable incoherance in its environmental policies that suggests its interest in AGW doesn't really lie in fixing the problem, if there is one.......
If it is accepted for the sake of discussion that any excuse will be used by the generally unrepresentative system of government we currently employ to claim legitimacy through use of pretexts, then what you say is probably true. However that reflects (badly) on our apathy as citizens more than the causes they employ. We know that our Government is corrupted, being bought and sold ten times over even on staple issues such as Education, Health, Welfare and Defence, yet we do nothing about it. But that still doesn't necessarily devalue the issues (such as AGW) that they employ in their attempts to exercise greater control and claim more legitimacy.
wepmob2000 wrote:
The UK could be seizing this as an opportunity to revolutionise its energy supplies and foster in an age of energy self-reliance. With an estimated 300 years worth of coal still to be mined in the UK, the use of carbon capture technology could usher in a legacy we would be very proud to leave to our descendents.....
Indeed. The only problem holding back actual implementation at the moment is not the technical know-how to accomplish it, but probably how to maximise the profit. Plus we live in an almost virtual world where finance rules, and the potential alone can be bought and sold without a single real-world Watt being involved.
wepmob2000 wrote:
Take another example: the financing of new heat networks. This is where hot water, produced from an existing power station for instance, is distributed via pipes to heat homes, factories or offices. Witness the steam outlets in Manhattan's streets to get the idea. However, a new system of heat networks will not be built in the UK because the upfront costs of laying the pipes make it uneconomic compared with gas, where the delivery system, the gas pipe, is long built. In the long term heat networks are proven to drastically reduce carbon output and cost less to run..
From what I understand, it also works very well in Germany, particularly the heavily industrialised Ruhr. I sometimes think that it's due to some fearful mistrust of something or other that resides in the British psyche. In the 1980's, Pacific Gas & Electric distributed energy saving consumer goods to their customers because they realised it was cheaper than building extra generating capacity. Whereas here, it would be perceived by those in power as dangerously immoral, encouraging a 'something for nothing' attitude. They wouldn't recognise an enlightened attitude if it was accompanied by a 10 million watt neon sign lighting up over their heads.
wepmob2000 wrote:
One more. Smart grids use mobile phone and broadband technology so that the amount of energy produced can be matched more precisely to the demands of the consumer, thus cutting the amount of energy that is just thrown away and improving the amount of renewable power put into the grid. The development is being done but the execution will require billions in investment.
All these schemes, together with more mundane but equally necessary ones such as retrofitting existing homes and offices to make them energy-efficient - are part of the simple but large answer to climate change - and they also can create jobs and stimulate local economies.
Huge sums of money would be needed for a complete overhaul of how we produce, deliver and consume energy. The building of a single carbon capture and storage power station will cost around £1 billion. But investment in large-scale low-carbon projects has been limited. Changing government policies, uncertainty about a price put on carbon, inertia and short- termism all stop investors coming forward.
So how to pay for it, how do we find green investors? The answer we've come up with working alongside the top environmental advisor Tom Burke is modelled on the war bond philosophy. We believe that a series of targeted bonds, with their proceeds ring-fenced for investment in tangible green infrastructure, could capture investors' attention whether they be individuals or institutions, such as pension funds looking, as they must, for financial return over many years.
The bonds could be fixed or index linked, offering low but stable rates of return over a long period of time, matching that of the assets into which the funds would be flowing. That is to say we would build things to last. They would have the backing of government and the expected cash flows from the projects themselves. These climate bonds would be a sensible way to finance the needed long-term investment in tangible assets that society should have to improve the quality of our lives.
I sense that there is now a will for people to put their money to productive use and not just hope that their bank will avoid buying housing estates in Florida or parcels of debt. There is something powerful in the idea that “My money built that and it works and I use it.” Meaningful work matters too: building things financed by people for a purpose that binds investor and worker and user. In the end people's savings can produce jobs, galvanise effort in a common cause and leave a legacy of lasting value.
The Government can help to make this happen. The Treasury can lend a hand. That is what happened in the 1940s. To paraphrase a line from an old poster: “Climate Bonds - the present for the future.” We and our political servants should seize the day. We have no time to lose.
James Cameron is the vice-chairman of Climate Change Capital
Picture this: For the price of bailing out a couple of bank(sters), the UK could secure its energy future and create thousands of jobs in largely poorer parts of the country. It could return to a position of being a power exporter, and cut all reliance on the Russian Mafiosi. The UK potentially could become a non-polluting energy autarky (there are plenty of other articles on carbon capture technology for those who wish to dig deeper).
But we all know this won't happen, the UK will continue to play with useless wind farms, and toy with the idea of tidal barrages, which in turn will be interminably stalled by NIMBYism and conservationists. All the while the ruling elites won't care, whatever happens, they will be OK as anti AGW 'policies' won't affect them in the slightest, and an increasingly compliant populace will please them greatly. Its almost enough to make you wonder if AGW is the new chosen religion in this secular country, it certainly would appear to being exploited as a control mechanism.
This, then, is the AGW scam, a possible problem, based on hypothetical evidence, being presented as proven fact to further the interests of various groups and nothing more. Instead of being used as a catalyst for real positive change, it will only further enrich a few, which oppressing the majority. (FWIW I have real doubts about various eco-groups too and their real motives.)
All the while the real problem facing humanity is neatly filed away, allowing a few more years of unparalleled power and influence for the elites....
And yet, all that is required is the will to do it being expressed by a sufficient number of people. After all, the utter insanity of chasing mirages in the deserts of the middle east doesn't prevent futile trillions being spent out there. _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 431 Location: North East England
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:03 am Post subject:
Slightly off-topic, but relevant to any discussion of the UK's inaction concerning the energy gap and AGW. An earlier, yet quite persuasive article on the desirability and necessity of developing Carbon Capture power stations....
Quote:
From The Sunday Times
October 14, 2007
How coal is the future
Forget about wind farms and nuclear power stations. The answer to Britain’s looming energy crisis could be cheap, plentiful and planet-friendly coal
Richard Girling
At 16 minutes after midday on October 17, 1956, at Calder Hall in Cumberland, the Queen pulled a lever and declared open the world’s first nuclear power station. In a high wind that crackled the pages of her script, she spoke of the “limitless opportunities which providence has given us”, and predicted that the peaceful application of nuclear power would be “among the greatest of our contributions to human welfare”. When the cheering died down, men with watch chains spoke of “epoch-making” events, and “energy too cheap to meter”.
Fifty-nine years later, in 2015, someone in the UK will flick a switch and nothing will happen. Eight years from now, the country will have only a fraction of the power it needs. Towns and cities blank out as the National Grid fizzles and dies. Pensioners die of cold, then putrefy in unchilled mortuaries. The only light comes from families burning their furniture. Streets after dark belong to armed gangs operating black markets in everything from clean water to butchered pets. Shop staff flee as customers brawl in the aisles over torch batteries and out-of-date Pot Noodles. The prime minister declares a national state of emergency but nobody hears him.
Fantasy it may be, but it’s hardly more preposterous than the government’s faith in miracles. Somehow, it seems to think, by native genius, good luck and the glad hand of beneficent world markets, the looming energy deficit will not take so much as a kettle off the boil. It invites us to have faith in the power of prayer. North Sea oil and gas are running out and world oil stocks are falling. The UK’s last few nuclear plants are of interest only to demolition contractors; so are its older coal-fired power stations. A third of the UK’s current generating capacity will be out of use by the middle of the next decade. International supplies of natural gas will be controlled by unstable countries on the wrong side of the ideological divide, while worldwide demand will soar. Sellers, not buyers, will rule the market. We’ll be okay, though. We can cover the fields in windmills; burn straw and cow dung; dam a few estuaries…
The problem for the politicians is that there are conflicting imperatives and no consensus on what should be done – you would more easily achieve agreement on the existence of God. It is not so much a debate as an aural riot, voices shouting against one another like dealers on a trading floor. All claim to be driven by high principle. All promise “sustainable” energy and low carbon emissions. But no lobby ever changes another’s mind, and all argue that the best chance for mankind lies in whatever technology they happen to be commercially, professionally or ideologically attached to. Various hard-hat divisions are gung-ho for coal, gas or nuclear. Greens bicker over wind (onshore and off), biofuels, tidal and wave. They pelt each other with wattages, price projections, bar charts, climate forecasts and abuse. Onshore wind power to the hard-hats lies somewhere between Blue Peter and a money-laundering scam. Nuclear to the bean-eaters is the final phase in the Fall of Man. Everyone speaks, nobody listens, and the government calls for yet more talks.
The problem is easily stated. On current trends, the world will need 50% more energy in 2030 than it does today, which is a lot more than it’s got in the tank. Worse: energy-related emissions of greenhouse gases by then will be 55% higher, which means we’ll fry our grandchildren if not ourselves. These, I should say, are the government’s own figures, published in this year’s energy white paper, not some doodle on a muesli packet by the People’s Yoghurt Collective. To keep itself humming, and to compensate for the exhaustion of North Sea oil and the closure of power stations, the UK pretty desperately needs a strategy. For all its length (342 pages), the white paper is much more about “need to do” than “how to do”. It leaves that to “UK companies”, which will “need to make substantial new investment in power stations, the electricity grid, and gas infrastructure”. On how that investment is to be assured, or even encouraged, it remains largely mute (carbon-trading schemes are its best shot).
Top of the “need to” list by around 2015 is finding another 30-35 gigawatts of power. If electricity were a solid substance you could visualise, you’d be looking at a mountain. A gigawatt is 1,000m watts – enough to meet the peak load of 130,000 average British households. Simple arithmetic says we’ll be short of 4.55m homes’ worth if nothing is done in time. And power stations are not all we need. To keep the furnaces hot, the government reckons that by 2020 we’ll need to increase our “gas import capacity” by 15-30%. Which means doing deals with countries having “gas export capacity” that we can afford to buy. Norway can supply part of it, but that still leaves a lot to be met from other sources. As most of these – in the Middle East, North Africa, Russia, Iran – are not famous for their stability, reliability or goodwill to the British, and because we will be bidding for their limited output in competition with America, our European neighbours and the fired-up economies of India and China, buying gas is not going to be a simple matter of phoning in the weekly order. The term most often used to describe the likely outcome is “price-shock”.
Keeping the power on is only half the challenge. The other half is reducing greenhouse emissions. Indeed, “environmental protection” heads the government’s table of priorities, ahead of security of supply and affordable energy. It’s as if forward and reverse gears have to be engaged simultaneously, with no loss of momentum or swerving off the highway. On current evidence, this will require a more skilful driver than the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (Berr, the thinly disguised successor to that world champion procrastinator, the Department of Trade and Industry).
Statistics thud like dough into the brain, impossible to digest. The UK and EU between them have signed up to the inevitable think-of-a-number targets. Britain is supposed to produce 10% of its electricity from renewable sources (wind and tide, etc) by 2010, 15% by 2015 and 20% by 2020. At the moment we are managing just 4%. At the same time, it proposes (one can hardly say “plans”) a 26-32% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, and 60% by 2050 (both against a 1990 baseline). The European Union, meanwhile, is looking for a 20% cut in total energy consumption (not just electricity) by 2020. Hands up anyone who can pick their way through that lot and come out the other end with all boxes ticked and the lights still on.
Officials in the former DTI told ministers earlier this year that Britain had no chance of meeting the EU’s 2020 energy target, and suggested they should use “statistical interpretations” (ie, spin the figures) to get out of it. There is, in short, an orthodoxy of hopelessness in which wriggling deputises for action. The only excuse offered by friends of the civil service is that ministers failed to understand the difference between “electricity” and “total energy”, and that Tony Blair thought it was safe to back unattainable targets because the French and Polish would block them (they didn’t).
Three ideological war zones stand in the way of concerted effort. The major battle, green dragon versus red, sets “renewable” against “conventional” power – good versus bad, or whimsy versus science, depending on which flag you salute. The other two conflicts, more messily, are strike-from-the-hills skirmishes between subdivisions of the greens and reds – onshore versus offshore wind; wind versus tide; tide versus wave; wave versus biomass; biomass versus solar; all these versus coal, gas and oil, and the whole lot versus nuclear. Some of these are nudged forward by government subsidies, carbon trading and tax breaks; others are driven by the market, or are hanging on to ground they already hold. Most are held up by shortfalls in investment or research, or by long delays in the planning system or difficulties in connecting to the National Grid.
Nor are these the only contradictions. When burnt as fuel, for example, municipal waste counts as a renewable resource and helps the government meet its renewables target. But this diverts stuff that might be composted, re-used or recycled, and threatens recycling targets. And here comes the EU, wanting 10% of all transport fuel consumption in Europe to be from biofuels by 2020. This sounds as green as springtime, but alas…
With world population increasing, and cropping areas being reduced by climate change, we can ill afford to take land out of food production to grow fuel for cars. Worse: when forests are felled to clear ground for biofuel crops (typically oil-palm), the intended reduction in carbon emissions not only fails to happen but is thrown into reverse. Forest trees absorb nine times more CO2 per hectare than biofuel crops do. There is no such thing as a free tankful, and it confronts us with the ultimate contradiction – an environmental policy that actually makes global warming worse. Ten million hectares of rainforest have been sacrificed in Sumatra and Borneo, and the 5.5m already lost in Indonesia will rise to 16.5m.
Back on the green and pleasant hills of Scotland, Wales and England, the two most divisive issues are wind and nuclear. Onshore wind farms have a good stiff breeze of green opinion behind them, but there is a green tinge to the opposition too – it is argued, with some vehemence, that wind turbines are noisy, ugly and disruptive to wildlife. The Renewable Energy Foundation (Ref) complains of a “widespread and unplanned industrialisation of the countryside”, and “a developer-led feeding frenzy that is neither green nor sustainable”. The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) warns that “decisions based on flaws in the current wind farm planning regime could spoil fine upland landscapes and leave areas of ‘ordinary’ lowland countryside marred by multitudes of turbines”. It will oppose large-scale developments anywhere near areas of outstanding natural beauty or national parks – which of course includes many of the upland areas where potential for wind energy is greatest.
Though it is withdrawing its mystifying claim that “the UK has 40% of Europe’s entire wind resource”, the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) refuses to give ground. It supports with a blizzard of statistics its claim that, with a nationwide total of 5,000 turbines – a prospect that shocks landscape campaigners – onshore wind could provide 10% of Britain’s electricity by 2020. There is a titanic clash over the economics. Critics argue that tradeable Renewables Obligation Certificates, introduced by the government to encourage carbon-free energy, have created an artificial market that disproportionately benefits onshore wind at the expense of others. The energy regulator Ofgem, the Carbon Trust and Ref are all demanding change; so, in its Blueprint for a Green Economy, published in September, did the Conservative party’s quality-of-life policy group.
This is just one muddle among many. Every technology has its advocates and its raspberry-blowers. Like pantomime dames, the parties have thrown themselves into a yes-we-can, no-you-can’t hissing contest. Given such a parade of prancing hypotheses, in which untried theories and unprovable projections glitter like sequins, it is difficult for us to suspend our disbelief.
We know the lights are going to dim; we don’t know who’s going to turn them on again, though we have our suspicions. Tony Blair, before he left Downing Street, set the nuclear hare racing again, and most people – supporters and opponents alike – suspect a new crop of reactors is now inevitable. Environmental groups, including WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, have rejected the latest round of consultations as “a sham”.
Conspiracy theorists believe the government’s entire performance – the absence of leadership and lack of urgency; the disproportionate amount of support given to fringe technologies – is explicable only if it has been a deliberate ploy designed to leave nuclear the only viable option. If so, the conspirators have botched it. It will take an extended period of political foreplay before anything like a nuclear policy emerges; then the siting, planning, financing and construction of new power stations will take far too long to fill any shortfall by 2015. You need a long-term policy for that kind of thing; and the problem now is short-term and immediate. Like it or not, onshore wind farms will plug part of the gap; so will offshore wind. The Severn barrage – theoretically capable of supplying 5% of the country’s electricity – yet again is under review, but faces opposition from environmentalists who fear damage to the ecosystem. Other renewables may contribute their mite.
In all this Ref sees only futility. Its policy and research director, John Constable, complains that the government, in pursuit of its environmental targets, has placed far too much emphasis on electricity. Energy is not just electricity, he says, and power generation is not the only source of greenhouse gas. Electricity accounts for only around 17% of the UK’s energy consumption, and power stations contribute only 29% of its carbon. He argues that transport emissions are not only as damaging as those from power stations but are actually getting worse – vehicles may be getting more efficient, but the growth in number more than wipes out any gain from cleaner engines. Air travel, too, is increasing and – for all the talk of zero carbon – the government’s housing target (4m new homes by 2020) will give the biosphere another big hit of CO2. Meanwhile, India and China are adding to the global overload exponentially faster than the UK’s puny attempt to reduce it. China alone is adding two new dirty, old-fashioned coal-fired power stations every week. “Against this background,” says Ref, “the present renewables policy seems practically irrelevant.”
“In view of the fact that the UK produces only 2% of the world’s emissions, it is axiomatic that our policy should aim to provide a qualitative rather than a quantitative example. It is only by providing an economically compelling lead that we can hope to draw the developing world with us… Self-harm in the UK will be a poor advertisement for clean energy.”
So what can we agree upon? If we ignore the zealots who believe that either wind or nuclear could provide a full and permanent solution, then there is a consensus on two important points. No single technology offers a complete answer, so there will have to be diversity. And the mix will have to include conventional power stations. If we ignore the government and listen to the professionals, another truth emerges. As Dr Paul Golby, chief executive of the UK branch of the energy giant E.ON puts it, “It’s five minutes to midnight and the clock is still ticking.” If we don’t agree a plan of action before the witching hour, then the 2015 energy gap will not be filled.
It’s already too late for nuclear (though Golby insists it must have a role in the longer term), and it’s beyond the scope of renewables to do the job on their own. If the lights are going to stay on, then the “substantial new investments” the government wants from UK companies will have to be made pretty damn quick. But no company is going to chance its millions unless it can be sure of a return – impossible without government assurances and, in the case of low-carbon technology, enforcement by law. Golby agrees that currently there is “no coherent energy policy that allows companies to invest”.
“We have to make some big long-term decisions,” he says, “and we need to make them quickly, because a third of our generating capacity will be lost in the next decade or so.” This is the plughole around which uncertainty swirls. If the government expects industry to provide, but industry lacks the confidence to oblige, then the whole “policy” goes down the drain. “The broad dilemma,” says David Kerr, who chairs the Institution of Civil Engineers’ (ICE) energy panel, “is that the government have said they are determined to have a wholly market policy. Only time will tell if that will provide security. Some people take the view that that’s too high a risk.”
Given what is at stake – ie, pretty much the whole apparatus of life as we know it – time seems a particularly chancy arbiter. Every passing day now limits the options. What Paul Golby most dreads is what the white paper and ticking clock now make most likely – a renewed “dash for gas”. In lieu of any determined effort to develop alternatives, gas is the default mode – Ref, too, believes it is now “all but unavoidable”. The technology is proven (70% of our electricity is generated this way) and there is – just – time to build more before we have to switch ourselves off. But the risks are enormous.
It would mean placing our fate – economy, health, lifestyle, everything – in the hands of people who, at best, are ambivalent, and at worst hostile to our national interest. Vladimir Putin has already shown the potency of gas as a political and economic weapon against Ukraine, and neither Russia nor any other country with its finger on the valve is going to pass up an opportunity to assert itself. Starving us of gas would do far more damage than bombing the London Underground. It needn’t even look like an act of war – just the normal operation of a market in which the UK government has voluntarily placed its trust. Free markets are economic Darwinism: they are genetically programmed to ensure their own survival, but otherwise are directionless and blind to government objectives. Markets produce winners and losers. What complaint would we have if we found ourselves among the latter?
Going down this route, says Golby, would be “foolhardy”. Neither would it do much for the biosphere. “We have to remember,” he says, “that gas is half as dirty as the average coal-fired station.” Which is very dirty indeed, and which makes all the more surprising the enthusiasm that Golby and others profess for the fuel they think should drive us into the future.
Coal. The very same filthy fossil fuel, dirtiest of them all, that powered the industrial revolution and let global warming out of its cage. The very same that rotted miners’ lungs, blotted out the sun and choked London with smog. The very same that still generates a third of the UK’s electricity and which David Kerr describes, for all the above reasons, as an “undesirable trend”. And yet coal has a lot going for it. The domestic industry may have been Thatchered into the ground, and 80% of our supplies may now be imported, but coal worldwide is plentiful and can be sourced from countries in Europe and the Americas which are far better disposed towards us than the gas merchants of the East.
But nobody wants to fill the air with smoke. Atmospheric pollution was a public enemy long before climate change became an issue, and there can be no going back to it. If coal is to resume its historic role, then it will have to clean up its act. And this is exactly what Golby and others propose. “Clean coal technology” (CCT) is not an oxymoron. Various processes that can be summarised as “carbon capture and storage” (CCS) have been designed to do exactly what the name suggests – remove or intercept CO2 from coal and store it deep underground. It can be done before combustion by a gasification process, or afterwards by stripping carbon from flue gas. The efficacy of the technique has been shown in small-scale trials, but high development costs are holding it back commercially and it’s not something “the market” can afford to deliver.
Yet Golby, head of Britain’s biggest gas and electricity company, is unequivocal: “I believe that this is one of the really critical technologies,” he says. “Unless we can solve the problem of coal, we are going to lose the climate-change battle.” It is a problem that extends far beyond the UK’s ability to power itself sustainably. China and India are going to burn coal – more and more of it – come what may, and unless a way can be found to cut their carbon emissions, and those of every other coal-burning economy, nothing we do in Britain is going significantly to impede humanity’s march to self-immolation. “It will require an international effort not dissimilar to the US putting a man on the moon,” says Golby. “It will take tens of billions of pounds. Some of it will come from industry. Some will have to come from governments.”
So what would it take to get it off the ground in the UK?
“The government would have to support the first one or two development plants.” Ref, too, argues that the Renewables Obligation has placed too much emphasis on renewables and has diverted attention and investment away from technologies such as clean coal. Under-investment in energy research, it says, is “a national disgrace”. Neither is it impressed by the government’s intention, announced in the white paper, to launch a competition “to demonstrate commercial-scale CCS on power generation in the UK”. Not only is this a waste of taxpayers’ money, says John Constable, but it could actually retard investment by making CCS look like an immature technology in need of development. “We don’t need to see whether we can capture carbon dioxide from power stations,” he says. “We know we can. We don’t need a competition. We just need to get on with it.”
For many others, the principal lunacy of the UK’s position is not that it ignores the potential for clean energy from imported coal, but rather that it ignores the wealth under its own feet. Accounts vary. One expert tells me that 75% of the coal that ever existed in the UK still lies undisturbed – a buried mountain of pent-up energy that could fuel the country for centuries. Another says the likelier figure is 98%. Either way, it’s a lot of coal. The problem, of course, is getting at it. If it was easily accessible, then the whole energy equation might look rather different. Coal would still be king, and CCS would be a no-brainer.
But there is a powerful body of opinion that says not only that much of it is accessible, but that it can be extracted with minimum environmental impact – ie, without open-cast mining – and with great benefit to national security and the carbon economy. The key to it is “underground coal gasification” (UCG), a technique devised by the Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay. The Coal Authority thumbnails it as “a method of converting unworked coal deep underground into a combustible gas”, which, through CCS, contains no CO2. The result is “clean energy with minimal greenhouse emissions”.
A few minutes’ Googling will provide technical detail for those who want it – for a simplified account, see the diagram on page 83. It’s enough to know that the plant is more like an oil rig than an old-fashioned coal mine, and so is much smaller and less intrusive; that it taps previously unmineable reserves, including those under the sea; and that the technology has been proved by trials in Europe, America and the old Soviet Union (which actually employed it for energy production in the 1970s – at least one plant in Uzbekistan is still operational). Most coal-producing countries, including India, China, South Africa and Australia, are working towards UCG, but the UK once again lags behind. It has not always done so. The old DTI for a while was a world leader whose guidance on UCG had near-biblical status.
But somewhere, somehow, there has been a change of policy or personnel, and the emphasis is now all on gas and nuclear.
This seems no less extraordinary to energy professionals than it does to laymen. “The government should be putting a big push at getting gasification technology on the road,” says the ICE’s David Kerr. “It’s the most promising technology currently available,” says Graham Chapman, managing director of the energy consultant Energy Edge. Since 2005, the campaign to promote UCG, both in the UK and worldwide, has been led by the UCG Partnership, an independent organisation in Woking, Surrey, whose members include oil and gas companies, banks, regional development agencies, universities and governments.
One of its two founding directors, Rohan Courtney, quotes the British Geological Survey, which concluded that UCG could unlock an extra 17 billion tonnes of indigenous coal – enough for another 300 years at current rates of consumption. (Compare this with the range of 200m to 2,000m tonnes estimated for “mineable” reserves). Like a schoolmaster delivering a favourite lesson, Courtney runs through the advantages at dictation speed. UCG does not suffer from the same negative public image as coal mining. It does not endanger lives underground; does not ruin the countryside; does not involve high transport and labour costs. Production, too, would cost less than either mining coal or buying oil and gas from elsewhere. We would have security of supply.
“We own the coal,” says Courtney. “We would not be subject to market forces on the price of importing energy, high transport costs and the political risks of purchasing oil, gas or coal from a country with a different agenda.” Instead of importing, we could export the technology. Best of all, with directional drilling, UCG can be used under the sea. Rich seams lie under the Firth of Forth and southern North Sea – at least five billion tonnes, and possibly much more.
At the current rate of progress, one cannot be optimistic that the Queen will reign long enough to celebrate the limitless opportunities of providence from an offshore coal-rig. The hills and seas will bristle with turbines. The Scottish Highlands will wear a new woolly coat of willow, grown for biofuel. Municipal garbage, straw, animal dung and wood-waste will be shovelled into furnaces. The arguments over nuclear power will rage on into the darkening night. A few of us in our homes will tinker with solar panels, wind generators and geothermal heat pumps. The price of gas will make us wince.
And all the time, as the power ebbs and, just possibly, flows, the climate poisoned by junkyard technology will be cracking its knuckles. Five minutes to midnight? If only it were that early.
Pipe dreams
GAS With North Sea gas supplies dwindling, the government says that by 2020 we’ll need to import 15-30% more gas. Notable exporters include Russia, the Middle East and North Africa – not renowned for their love of Britain
NUCLEAR POWER Championed by Tony Blair, nuclear power stations and waste-storage facilities require planning
WIND TURBINES Many more new wind farms like one in South Lanarkshire will have to be built if the government is to meet its target of generating 10% of UK electricity from renewable sources by 2010. With three years to go, the figure is just 4%
BIOFUELS The European Union wants 10% of all transport fuel consumption in Europe to be from biofuels - fuels derived from biological material, such as hemp - by 2020. But land is needed to grow food for the world's growing population, and felling trees to grow biofuels makes global warming worse.
Worse: energy-related emissions of greenhouse gases by then will be 55% higher, which means we’ll fry our grandchildren if not ourselves.
Stated as if an indisputable fact just like religious zealots often do. If only we opened as many coal fired power stations as we need we would pump out life enhancing carbon doxide by the millions of tons and perhaps even make the planet a fraction of a percent of a degree warmer after a century or two with all the benefits that would bring as well. Capture the noxious exhausts like sulphur by all means, and it could be done profitably, but lovely fertilizing CO2?? Pump up the gas!!!!
The above is an excellent site which tears apart methodically the "Man-made climate change" scam. It is a large page so I have quoted only some of it below.
Quote:
Is man caused Global Warming a Scientific fact? "Dogma is not only the enemy of science, but the enemy of humankind."
Are the Climate Papers Properly Peer Reviewed?
I think some of the papers are honestly presented and don't overstate their claims, but some are not. The famous "Hockey-Stick graph" is an example of a bigger problem.
Steve McIntyre now of Climate Audit - definitively showed that the Hockey-Stick effect is an artifact of a math filter. Peer review of many of these papers is lacking in general skepticism. Source data and information about published papers is withheld - something that stops a real scientist breath short - real science needs to be open. McIntyre has had to resort to graphics programs to re create the data sets used in some of these papers.Some typical examples:
Steve McIntyre's requests for datasets and other information to check on the validity of published papers is routinely subjected to runarounds, incomplete responses about methods of data smoothing. He has had to resort to 'Freedom of Information' request that are still met with run rounds and obfuscation. The public seems to know nothing of the IPCC's GISS Model E adjustments and fudge factors - something real science takes pains to "bend-over-backwards" to provide in extreme detail.
There is an organization called surfacestations.org that has been trying to audit the quality of the ground station data. As they started their work, NCDC removed (Jun 25 2007) key information about the managing parties field of USHCN and COOP stations. This makes locating the station much more difficult. Man caused global warming is based on this ground data - if it is robust science, why hide it?
"A nice little loophole has been created, whether implicitly or explicitly I don't know. The scientific journals associated with the climate-change community will accept papers for publication the basis of which are calculations by computer software that has not been peer-reviewed. So, AOLGCM-based papers get peer-reviewed and published and then cited in the IPCC reports. This is not correct because it bypasses the independent verification and replication processes of the scientific method." Dan Hughes
This is not science.
Religion provides the means for the ignorant to declare with absolute certainty that they know the unknowable.
Strange that so many commentators are now associating the "Man-made Climate Change" scam with "Liberal" or "Left" politics. I wonder if the neo-cons have realised the game is up and so are trying to blame the whole fiasco on their enemies?? Still, at least they are starting to join the avalanche of "deniers"!
Quote:
Global Warming – Governments, Media Close Down Debate
Politicians Like Obama, Media Leaders Reuters, BBC Apparently Agree
If CO2 Cuts Are Forced, Climate Won’t Change, But Economies Will
Yet Science Isn’t Complete; CO2 Link With Climate Not Proven
Even If It Was, Lomborg Says Cutting CO2 Ineffective, Wasteful
“Is the media corrupt, dumb, lazy, or seeking a quiet life?”
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but maybe I should. After all, governments and politicians around the world seem united in saying CO2 emissions by humans are warming the climate and unless action is taken soon, we will all drown or fry.
And yet any rational, sane or fair person examining the evidence linking humans to climate change would be amazed by the thinness, the inconclusiveness, of the evidence. Reporters like me, who as Reuters’ Science and Technology Correspondent in the 1990s had access to the world’s most impressive climate scientists, know that the balance of evidence points to there being no link between climate change and human activity.
Despite this, the politicians’ zeal to save us gains momentum. President-elect Barack Obama said reducing greenhouse gas emissions will remain a central plank of his new administration’s policy.
“Few challenges facing America – and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season,” Obama said, in a video shown to delegates at a climate conference in Poznan, Poland.
But this isn’t true.
The science is disputed by an array of impressive scientists. Sea levels may be rising, but at the snail’s pace we’ve seen since the end of the last ice age. Some coastlines are being eroded by tidal action, sure, but that’s got nothing to do with climate change. Even climate change alarmists have been beaten into submission by having to acknowledge that hurricanes aren’t growing stronger with each passing season, although building in likely hurricane-inflicted areas has gathered pace.
Media’s pathetic cowardice
I don’t know why politicians insist on doing this. The only reason I can think of is that leftist governments have run out of ammunition to justify ordering us about, as they lost all the arguments for more economic state control in the second half of the 20th century. But that doesn’t explain the pathetic cowardice of the world’s media in letting governments get away with this. Given the strength of the opposing view, you have to ask why? Is the media corrupt, dumb, just too lazy, or looking for a quiet life?
You can see why the government funded BBC, riddled with a corrupt, socialist mantra, would be owned by the hand-wringing warming camp desperate to justify more reasons for governments to tell us what to do. The BBC shows with its climate change reporting that it is only interested in imposing its view on the world, not seeking to report with balance and honesty.
But why would an opinion former and leader like Thomson Reuters, a news organisation which lives or dies by its ability to report the untarnished truth with balance and fairness (my 33 years at Reuters gives me some insight into this), go along with this corrupt, one-sided version of events?
Surrender
I haven’t read all its reports recently on the environment, but the ones that I have show a complete surrender to the conventional wisdom. Not even a tacit admission in its reporting that there might be some other view that should be mentioned in passing. It’s not just the Reuters newsroom which does this. The company, now Thomson Reuters, finances an educational facility which seeks to expose reporters from the less developed world to the rigours of Reuters’ news methods. This is undoubtedly a great thing to do, except for one thing. Reuters refuses to take on board in its lectures on climate change reporting that there is an alternative view that needs to be aired. We’ve had a correspondence recently on this, in which I said the following (in part).
“You say that 97 per cent of the world’s scientists accept anthropomorphic global warming. I’m not sure where you get that figure; 97 per cent of exactly what? I can point you towards scores of top climate scientists, led by MIT’s Professor Richard Lindzen or Professor Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute who say there is not a proven link between human activity and climate change. If you take a look at the website published by Dr Fred Singer’s Science and Environment Policy Project in the U.S. (www.sepp.org) and take in its weekly newsletter TWTW, you can’t fail to be impressed and amazed at the global reach, the depth and breadth of the highly qualified scientists who doubt the link between carbon dioxide (CO2) and global warming. Read this and you will be convinced that the issue is far from done and dusted.
It is true that many of the world’s biggest companies are cranking up climate change schemes. This is possibly because they can see a huge money-making opportunity in Kyoto treaty-inspired activities like Carbon Trading, which many see as a scam to raise taxes, with little impact on climate. Why would they challenge dodgy science if it was likely to curtail their business?
Temperatures falling
Yes, things have moved on since the 1990s. We now know that global temperatures stopped rising in 1998 and have fallen since. We know that the computer models used by the IPCC (U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) didn’t pick this up. We now know that the warmest years in the 20th century were in the 1930s, not the 1990s. We know that from the early 1940s to the late 1970s, CO2 output accelerated steadily, but temperatures fell. We have seen the deliberate faking of evidence, the most egregious being the IPCC “hockey stick” graph, which purported to show that there was no medieval warming period, and that all the heating came recently. This was achieved by putting data into the computer software to make sure the right result was achieved. This has now been withdrawn by the IPCC.
Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” has been comprehensively shot down as a collection of half-truths and dodgy extrapolations, even though it is still being distributed in schools as the gospel truth.
Nicholas Stern’s report, far from pointing the way to sensible policy, has been criticised by serious people as being a mere collection of worst case scenarios designed to scare the public into line. We have seen the Royal Society, yes the Royal Society, which I thought was dedicated to finding the truth through scientific research, seeking to close down the debate in a threatening and outrageous way. The Royal Society is happy to talk, sinisterly, about climate change deniers.
There is clearly a strong, believable and informed body of opinion in the scientific community that is at best being ignored and at worse being cowed into silence by threats to employment and academic tenure if they dare step out of line. And Reuters, by ignoring this perfectly respectable source of opinion, is going along with this.”
Reality
But the reality is that governments are convinced and are starting to hatch plans to curb CO2. Britain’s Committee on Climate Change, in a report, recommended to the government ways to cut CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
On the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme “Newsnight”, a discussion group to discuss this included Lord Adair, author of the report, a representative of the power generation industry, and “environmentalist” George Monbiot. Discussing measures which would seriously impoverish the British economy, but have no discernable impact on the climate, the talk was all about how to meet the CO2 objects. Not a word on the distinct possibility that the whole process was pointless. This is typical of the BBC, and much of the western media. In Britain, all the main political parties have signed up to agree that we are causing global warming, so debate has effectively been stopped.
Bjorn Lomberg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and “Cool It”, said the committee’s recommendations would be a very expensive way to achieve almost nothing.
Miniscule
“The price tag by the committee’s own estimate could reach £14 billion annually but the effect would be miniscule. Climate change models show that the impact up to 2030 would mean the U.K. would help reduce the global temperature increase by about one three thousandth of a degree Celsius by the end of the century. An economic analysis would indicate that the U.K., for every pound spent, would only do about 4p (4 per cent) worth of good for the climate. By any standard, this appears to be a gigantic waste,” Lomborg said.
Lomborg does believe that humans are impacting the climate.
Christopher Booker, fearless iconoclast and author of “Scared to Death”, doesn’t.
In an article in the Sunday Telegraph headed “President-elect proposes economic suicide for US”, Booker talked about the conventional wisdom of CO2’s impact on climate as “claims so demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies”.
Obama has also signed up to cut 80 per cent of CO2 in the U.S. by 2050.
“(this) could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the U.S. economy,” Booker said.
“He (Obama) then babbles on about generating five million new green jobs. This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running on treadmills, to replace all those “dirty” coal-fired power stations which currently supply the U.S. with half its electricity,” Booker said.
Unison
There is of course a sensible course of action which could go some way to uniting these opposing views. Those who point out the weakness in the arguments put forward by the IPCC, and its supporters, would surely agree that fossil fuel based energy will run out sooner or later, that massive research funds should be committed to finding a suitable replacement, and that meanwhile coal, oil and gas should be treated in a suitably respectful way, with taxation seeking to force its economic use. But we don’t need to flagellate ourselves in the meantime back into the Stone Age, as the likes of George Monbiot would have us do.
Red State, a U.S. conservative blog-site has an interesting article by Robert L Mayo which I think puts the argument perfectly.
“I do not claim that scientists who support anthropogenic global warming are wrong, merely that it is unwise to massively reorder our society based on interpretations of extraordinarily complex data conducted by people who are not neutral as to the result.”
“When scientists who believe in global warming stop calling colleagues who disagree with them “Flat-Earthers” and “Neanderthals”, or insist that “the debate is over” and therefore it is illegitimate to question them, then I may be willing to listen to their arguments. Not until then,” Mayo said.
Worse: energy-related emissions of greenhouse gases by then will be 55% higher, which means we’ll fry our grandchildren if not ourselves.
Stated as if an indisputable fact just like religious zealots often do. If only we opened as many coal fired power stations as we need we would pump out life enhancing carbon doxide by the millions of tons and perhaps even make the planet a fraction of a percent of a degree warmer after a century or two with all the benefits that would bring as well. Capture the noxious exhausts like sulphur by all means, and it could be done profitably, but lovely fertilizing CO2?? Pump up the gas!!!!
Ah, so you've revealed yourself. You work for the coal board!
Strange, after all your posts, you admit that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will cause warming. And after suggesting the left wing crowd spout pseudo-science you go on to state, without saying how, that increased warming will bring benefits! Good god man, don't you monitor what is happening in the world? In case you haven't noticed, some of the severest weather in history has happened in the past decade and has affected millions of people. But because it hasn't happened to us in the UK, that's OK therefore man-made warming must be good.
Please remember, man-made warming is more commonly referred to as AGW or Anthropogenic Global Warming. Look at the middle word, it says global, and as you write your nonsense, the poles are slowly melting and the extra water being drawn into the air is being dumped on places like South America and Indonesia where thousands of people have been displaced in the past few years. All so we can drive bigger cars and consume more electricity. Why do you think Bush didn't sign up to the Kyoto protocol? Because he, like you, believes that us humans in the West have a right to consume as much energy as we like and to hell with the consequences. If climate change is a NWO policy then I can guarantee you that Bush would have signed up to Kyoto from day one and green taxes would have been heavily applied. But they never were and still aren't.
Last edited by James C on Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:35 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:47 pm Post subject:
As a response from someone witnessing your confused viewpoint and monster gaffes from the very start of this thread, allow me to be the first to point out that your response is about as far from adequate as can be.
I guess you get that a lot. _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Well if Rupert Murdoch says Man-made Climate Change is real then it MUST be!!! To think I have been wrong all along believing all those baby eating monsters, when a saint like Murdoch has been trying to getl the truth out!!!
Quote:
Fox Admits To Planting Political Brainwashing In Popular TV Shows
Corporation boasts of “inserting messages” about global warming into hit shows like The Simpsons, 24, Prison Break & Family Guy
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com, Friday, March 6, 2009
Rupert Murdoch’s Twentieth Century Fox corporation has admitted to planting political brainwashing within its globally popular TV shows and indeed boasts that it is proud of the fact.
A corporate video currently being showcased on another part of Murdoch’s media empire, MySpace.com, shows Fox executives and stars of its universally recognized shows bragging about how they use the platform of hit shows that are broadcast globally to implant messages about the supposed threat of global warming.
This is not the first time Fox have been enthusiastic in propagandizing for the establishment. In 2003, Rupert Murdoch himself admitted that the corporation had “tried” to help the Bush administration sell the war in Iraq.
The text accompanying the video states, “In 2006, News Corp. embarked upon a company wide initiative to reduce the size of its carbon footprint.”
The means by which this “initiative” was carried out is then made clear by a plethora of clips from Fox’s most popular shows - the Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, Prison Break - which are all loaded with messages about global warming and the need to do something about it.
“What could we do on a practical level to start making a difference,” asks one executive before another answers, “The biggest thing we’ve done is inserting messages about the environment into some of our content.”
In other words, Fox has embarked on a deliberate campaign, which could only have been done with the coordination of the script writers of each program, to force people to accept the pseudo-science of global warming by brainwashing them into accepting it as a reality. This has been achieved by weaving in messages about climate change and having popular characters in the TV shows embrace specific tenants of the global warming manifesto.
“The most powerful way we could communicate the commitment on behalf of our company, was to change the practices within the production, as well as work in a message about global warming, about environmental changes, about empowering people to take responsibilities,” states Fox chairman Dana Walden.
We’re also treated to the vomit-inducing sight of Kiefer Sutherland, who plays the torture loving Jack Bauer in 24, sounding about as genuine as a 3 dollar bill reading off a teleprompter about how Fox is committed to reducing its “carbon footprint”.
This again goes to show that the acceptance of global warming as a reality by the general public is not being accomplished as an organic reaction to scientifically proven threats, but by propagandists artificially piggy-backing the climate mantra on the back of fictional TV shows passively absorbed by people in their millions.
This is key because of the process that people’s brains undergo when they are watching television. Political messages implanted in fictional television programs will always enjoy a receptive audience.
According to an Associated Content article, “Studies have shown that watching television induces low alpha waves in the human brain. Alpha waves are brainwaves between 8 to 12 HZ. and are commonly associated with relaxed meditative states as well as brain states associated with suggestibility.”
Experiments have shown that less than one minute after the viewer begins to watch television, the brain switches from Beta level consciousness, associated with active and logical thought, to Alpha level, which is associated with passive acceptance and suggestibility. This is why advertisers spend billions a year on commercials as well as product placement within TV shows themselves.
The scale of what Fox is admitting to here is staggering, and the fact that they even boast about what they are doing beggars belief. As Darryl Mason sardonically comments, “I never realised just how much I’d learned about the dire threats of global warming-induced climate change simply by watching immensely, globally popular Murdoch/Fox entertainments like The Simpsons and 24.”
Millions of people not just in America but globally are being educated, or should I say re-educated, about the highly complex and highly debatable topic of global warming, not through a reasoned public debate between advocates and skeptics, but through fictional cartoons, comedies and drama shows produced by a monolithic corporation that has its tentacles deeply embedded into the same establishment that is trying to sell global warming in order to introduce a CO2 tax and regulate people’s lives.
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