Author: Jo

Categories
Big Picture Carbon Commodities Climate Change

Banking on China

The Circle Line can get a bit stifling in the evening. Not as much as the Central Line, which is often only a few tiers from the fires of Hell itself, but the Circle Line is often clammy in Summer, long after the Rush Hour home. Global Warming ? Global Steamy Clammy Heat !

So, I’m trying to maintain my personal cool and composure on the London Underground by not moving very much and reading a self-styled “pamphlet” I acquired at the 5th June 2009 conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution”.

Continue reading “Banking on China”
Categories
Big Picture Climate Change Cost Effective Emissions Impossible

Bjørn Lomborg Concedes Defeat

Bjørn Lomborg has been struggling to suppress action on Climate Change for some time now. He has reasoned that it is not such a big deal, and we would be better spending our resources and attention on other global ills.

Now, however, he’s proposing a universal Carbon Tax, in order to promote Renewable Energy – both Wind Power and Solar !

What’s gotten into the economist-man ? Has he been poisoned by teeth-whitening chemicals ? Has he finally seen the light ? Or does he think that anything is more workable than Cap-and-Trade ?

Continue reading “Bjørn Lomborg Concedes Defeat”
Categories
Carbon Capture Climate Change Emissions Impossible Meltdown Utter Futility

Number Crunching #1 : Jobs Flooding in, Homes Flooded out

In the best Private Eye style, I will merely present to you two statistics and let you deduce the relationship between the two.

If you really don’t understand what I’m driving at, do get in touch :-

Continue reading “Number Crunching #1 : Jobs Flooding in, Homes Flooded out”
Categories
Carbon Capture Low Carbon Life Marvellous Wonderful

Scotland Rises To The Low Carbon Challenge

For some Low Carbon sanity in the United Kingdom, you have to go North of the English border to Scotland :-

https://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2009/06/17112350

Continue reading “Scotland Rises To The Low Carbon Challenge”
Categories
Carbon Capture Climate Change Technological Sideshow Vote Loser

Clean Coal Capture Economics

Everywhere you look this week there’s news about Coal, and how we need to pay to clean it up, and how wonderful this idea is.

I don’t buy it. But I’m going to be forced to pay for it through my electricity bills regardless :-

Continue reading “Clean Coal Capture Economics”
Categories
Uncategorized

I Do Not Believe We Can Change

I do not believe that people can change. I do not believe in “voluntary behaviour change”.

Despite massive amounts of money ploughed into “communications” with the great British public, people have not shifted.

Continue reading “I Do Not Believe We Can Change”
Categories
Big Picture Burning Money Carbon Capture Carbon Commodities China Syndrome Climate Change Cost Effective Emissions Impossible Nuclear Nuisance Technological Sideshow

Irony Bryony Worthington

[ UPDATE : Some of you have mentioned that you thought this piece was rather biting. So I put it under Bryony’s nose and offered to change anything that she felt was inaccurate, personally distressing, or that she disagreed with or objected to on professional grounds. Changes are bolded. ]

At the The Guardian Climate Change Summit in London’s Russell Square’s Hotel Russell on Monday 15th June 2009, there was a large banner marked out with the name of the key sponsor of the event, E.On, but nobody at the large table underneath it to schmooze the attendees.

Perhaps they thought that the info pack in bright friendly red, orange and yellow colours would suffice in terms of communications. Perhaps they thought that they had enough of a hold on the event’s messaging by having their Chief Executive Officer Paul Golby speaking at one of the morning sessions.

Continue reading “Irony Bryony Worthington”
Categories
Bait & Switch Big Picture Burning Money Carbon Capture Climate Change Peak Energy

The Best A Man Can Get : The Tales Of Two Gillettes

You can take the soul out of an engineer with a boring, stressful or ethically suspect career, (like the Manhatten Project), but you can’t take the engineer out of a soul.

I have a persistent interest in things engineering, and some say I waste too much of my time thinking about systems engineering and the Laws of Physics.

I also have a persistent interest in the minds of engineers. How do we work ? What makes us tick ? And do we have an overview on social organisation that could be useful ?

Continue reading “The Best A Man Can Get : The Tales Of Two Gillettes”
Categories
Big Picture Burning Money Carbon Capture Carbon Commodities Climate Change Emissions Impossible Nuclear Nuisance

The Promised “Summer Strategy”

David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change announced today, almost in passing, at the The Guardian Climate Change Summit, that the “Summer Strategy” regarding all the Government’s choices on Climate Change technologies, as articulated by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) will be published within the week.

Continue reading “The Promised “Summer Strategy””
Categories
Burning Money Climate Change Technological Sideshow Utter Futility

Stern Remarks #2 : The Unbearable Fragility of Complexity

I have been reading Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”, and I feel that it is somehow my role to be making some rather critical remarks about it.

Continue reading “Stern Remarks #2 : The Unbearable Fragility of Complexity”
Categories
Carbon Army Climate Change Cost Effective Emissions Impossible

The New Green Army

As some of my more regular readers will be aware, I have been re-reading Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”.

He signed the book for me : “zero carbon or bust”, at his Book Launch at the London School of Economics, which, I think, shows his commitment to the “Defining Challenge of our Age” (now, who exactly said that first ? And about what ?)

Continue reading “The New Green Army”
Categories
Social Change Unsolicited Advice & Guidance

Winning Advice #2 : Shop by Bicycle

The best way to halt Global Warming in its tracks is to “soften” the volume of international trade.

The Recession has done a fine job in securing just that aim, but if the fabled “green shoots of recovery” are just around the corner/mountain, then we will need pragmatic approaches to keeping trade in its place, lying flat in the dog basket.

Continue reading “Winning Advice #2 : Shop by Bicycle”
Categories
Big Picture Climate Change Media

The Guardian Stops Guarding The Environment

I always thought it was a bit strange that the The Guardian’s Environment pages were confined to the Wednesday Society section of the “print edition” of this national newspaper.

Did that mean that the cranky, obsessive, possibly mentally unhinged eco-hippies should be shovelled in with the Social Workers, Educationalists, Housing Associations and Trades Unionists ?

Continue reading “The Guardian Stops Guarding The Environment”
Categories
Big Picture Burning Money China Syndrome Climate Change Emissions Impossible Growth Paradigm Social Change

Mr Tesco Speaks Of Zero

Terry Leahy, the CEO of Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in Britain, spoke at the 5th June 2009 conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution”. His mood was ebullient, it seemed to me.

“We’re going to miss all the targets we set ourselves.” I think he might have been referring to both the Kyoto Protocol and the UK / EU 2020 targets, so I don’t know why he seemed so buoyant about it.

Continue reading “Mr Tesco Speaks Of Zero”
Categories
Big Picture Climate Change Emissions Impossible Low Carbon Life Peak Oil Social Change

Stelios Flies By The Seat Of His Pants

At the conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” on 5th June 2009, Stelios Haji-Ioannou ended up flying by the seat of his pants.

“I’m usually [cast as] the Devil. People are trying to find a high-profile industry [to target]…[they choose] airlines.”

Continue reading “Stelios Flies By The Seat Of His Pants”
Categories
Big Picture Climate Change Social Change

The Third Way on Climate Change

Anthony Giddens spoke at the conference called “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” on Friday 5th June 2009.

For someone who is normally so high-falutin’ in his academic contortions, he was remarkably pragmatic.

Continue reading “The Third Way on Climate Change”
Categories
Bait & Switch Burning Money Technological Sideshow

Cheering the Truth; Regretting the Twist

At the London School of Economics last Friday 5th June 2009, there was a conference called “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution”.

In the afternoon, after Adair Turner spoke, we were treated to the pragmatic realism of Andy Duff, the CEO of RWE npower, the Energy group.

Continue reading “Cheering the Truth; Regretting the Twist”
Categories
Carbon Army Carbon Commodities Climate Change Emissions Impossible Social Change Technological Sideshow

Adair Turner Fidgets While Coal Burns

Adair Turner must be a bundle of nerves, sitting, as he does on both the Financial Services Authority and the Climate Change Committee.

He’s often asked to speak on behalf of ideas that are shaky, like cracking down on the banks with stronger regulation, whilst avoiding blaming the banks themselves for the financial crisis :-

https://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4959789.ece

Continue reading “Adair Turner Fidgets While Coal Burns”
Categories
Peak Oil

Price is a Function of Supply and Demand

I don’t know if any one of you out there can explain to me exactly how to determine the function or formula that can adequately explain the price of Crude Oil. I don’t think that simple analyses of Supply and/or Demand can answer it. Looks chaotic to me…

Continue reading “Price is a Function of Supply and Demand”
Categories
Big Picture Climate Change Peak Oil

Peak Burn

Everyone who is grappling with the Twin Terrors of Climate Change and Peak Oil, sooner or later comes across a graph like this one (which I hand-drew for a Transition Towns meeting this evening) :-

Peak Oil means Peak Energy

Continue reading “Peak Burn”
Categories
Big Picture Climate Change

Climate Change : Meeting in Passing

Last week’s conference “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” was a great opportunity to bump into people I only normally read about.

Trouble is, although they irritate me at a distance by what they have said, or spent, or decided, or spun, when I meet them my anger has subsided and I just can’t get the venom together to be rude.

Continue reading “Climate Change : Meeting in Passing”
Categories
Carbon Army Carbon Capture Carbon Commodities Climate Change Cost Effective Low Carbon Life Social Change

Climate Change and Social Justice

Britain is not Fair. The division between rich and poor is getting wider, and the number of those at the bottom of the stack is rising. This is going to have a significant impact on the ability of people in Great Britain to adapt to Climate Change policy.

Social measures must surely include public investment in de-Carbonising each home. At costs 100 times less than the announced new Nuclear Power programme, and an order of magnitude cheaper than the Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration projects, I think this shows excellent value for money as well as ethical rectitude.

Continue reading “Climate Change and Social Justice”
Categories
Carbon Commodities Climate Change Nuclear Nuisance Technological Sideshow

The Nuclear Begging Bowl

It has become fashionable, since the Financial Crisis was admitted to publicly, for high net worth individiuals to propagate Public Relations campaigns in support of their industry of choice. Normally the industry that makes all their money for them.

In the United States they call this process a “bailout”, making it sound like a worthy rescue of a valued affiliate. In the United Kingdom, it’s called “public support”. It all amounts to the same thing : tax revenue from the public thrown at the private corporations.

Continue reading “The Nuclear Begging Bowl”
Categories
Big Picture Carbon Capture Climate Change

Green Slime Sideshow at the UK Politics Carnival

At the “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution” conference on 5th June 2009, Peter Mandelson’s face was all puffed and pale. He looked rather like a middle-aged drag queen who’s had an allergic reaction to her démaquillant. Or it could be all those late night supposed emergency mini-conferences with Gordon Brown. Or Alan Sugar. You never know.

Continue reading “Green Slime Sideshow at the UK Politics Carnival”
Categories
Carbon Capture Carbon Commodities Climate Change Emissions Impossible

Six Heavies and a Kevlar Vest

Tony Blair looked greyer than ever as he lightfooted it into the auditorium. “He still hasn’t had the surgery to pin back his ears”, I noted to the chap I had been talking to on my right, “I don’t meant to be rude, but he’s still got that sticky-outy look. I would have thought that would be the first thing he’d do with all the money.”

Continue reading “Six Heavies and a Kevlar Vest”