Christopher Booker : For Once, I Agree

Even only semi-regular perusers of this little web log will be astonished, galled and maybe even venomously upset to discover that for once, and probably only the once going on past evidence, I actually agree with Christopher Booker :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7969102/The-Clean-Development-Mechanism-delivers-the-greatest-green-scam-of-all.html

“The Clean Development Mechanism delivers the greatest green scam of all : Even the UN and the EU are wising up to the greenhouse gas scam, “the biggest environmental scandal in history”, says Christopher Booker. : By Christopher Booker : Published: 28 Aug 2010 : …The way the racket works is that Chinese and Indian firms are permitted to carry on producing a refrigerant gas known as HCF-22 until 2030. But a by-product of this process is HCF-23, which is supposed to be 11,700 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. By destroying the HCF-23, the firms can claim Certified Emission Reduction credits worth billions of dollars when sold to the West (while much of the useful HCF-22 is sold onto the international black market). Last year, destruction of CFCs accounted for more than half the CDM credits issued, in a market that will eventually, it is estimated, be worth $17 billion. Of the 1,390 CDM projects so far approved, less than 1 per cent accounts for 36 per cent of the total value. Even greenies have become so outraged by this ridiculous racket that the Environmental Investigation Agency has described it as the “biggest environment scandal in history”…”

I would commend Mr Booker to get his chemical acronyms sorted out, by substituting “HCF” with “HFC”, or “HCFC”, but apart from that, which was fairly easy to unpick, it is quite an honourable description of the problem.

None of the money-based “flexible mechanisms” sewn into the Kyoto Protocol appear to be working, and that’s because they are (a) money-based and (b) not economy-wide.

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They Call It Precipitation…

…we call it unstoppable megadeath.

We always thought Bangladesh would be the first country for complete Climate catastrophe, but it seems that awful honour has gone to Pakistan instead.

The countries in South Asia need to share data on rainfall, river volumes and the like :-

http://www.amankiasha.com/articles_cat.asp?catId=1&id=96

http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/31/stories/2010073165890900.htm

http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/60167/2010/03/12-155822-1.htm

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE67B10D._CH_.2400

2010 Is A Hot Year

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g3hy5jGjeu796BUwgHljsdxqNqHQ

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php?report=global

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Steady-rise-in-temperature-since-1970-Nasa/articleshow/5951409.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/It-was-Goas-hottest-April-in-40-years/articleshow/5895875.cms

The Times of London is probably under instruction to show some “balance”, so ignore the last paragraph here :-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/uk_and_roi/article7134047.ece

Image Credit : Find Local Weather

Curry and Rice

The Royal Statistical Society publishes a truly readable magazine called “Significance”, and until today I hadn’t realised it’s available online.

The front cover of the March 2010 Volume 7 Issue 1 edition shows an artist’s mock-up of severe drought and the headline question is “After Copenhagen : What can be done ?”

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Glaciers Melting in the Himalayas

Video Credit : Asia Society

The satellites and cameras do not lie : glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, and the loss of any part of this “third pole” ice cover threatens the freshwater supply for billions.

This weekend’s Media clamour on the subject focuses on the trail of a mis-attribution of a claim regarding the complete meltdown of the mountain glaciers.

Just because somebody’s got their references wrong, doesn’t mean that the glaciers have magically not been melting after all.

Yes, the IPCC process has failed to pick up this prediction error. No, it doesn’t throw the whole of the IPCC reports into the trash can.

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A Very Crude Analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or-TyPACK-g
“A Crude Awakening – Trailer”

I watched the film “A Crude Awakening” for the third time this week with the good people of Transition Waltham Forest.

Several people in the room were strongly affected by the footage of the deserted oil fields of Texas, Baku and Venezuela.

In the discussion after the film I challenged the Green Party activist in the room (hopefully without hurting anyone’s feelings), asking where Energy is in the list of electoral campaign policy priorities. I said I don’t hear strong concern from any political party. It’s a subject that’s just not there.

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Carbon Capture and Storage – merely an “Elastoplast” Technology

Lord Ron Oxburgh, formerly non-executive director of Royal Dutch Shell, now honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, today labelled the clean coal technology as an “Elastoplast” – a temporary, transient technology to use in the Energy system until Energy has all been de-Carbonised.

Speaking at the Tenalps Energy and Environment 2009 Conference in Westminster, he derided the 20th Century as profligate in the use of cheap Carbon Energy, oil, coal and natural gas. He said that in the field of Energy, optimisation has been to anything other than fuel use – in other words – the relative cost has always been the driving factor.

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