Cap and Trade is….going….down. And that’s probably a good thing :-
Category: Big Picture
Big Picture : Science and Media often concentrate on one tiny element of a problem, ignoring the radioactive elephant in the room.
The news is that there is continuing progress towards a fully Renewable Europe. It is, after all, the only means to ensure a sustainable Economy into the future, given the twin blended threats of Climate Change Carbon Mitigation and Peak Fossil Fuels.
Dr Gregor Czisch’s meisterwerk is being translated into English for publication this Summer :-
You would never know from the plainspeaking title just how exciting this is : seriously cheap Energy and peacemaking collaboration all in one shot !
The management consultants PriceWaterhouseCooper (couldn’t they think of a more speakable name ?), have just published their own view on Europe and North Africa combining to provide a one hundred percent renewable Energy solution :-
https://www.pwc.co.uk/sustainability/
https://www.pwc.co.uk/eng/publications/100_percent_renewable_electricity.html
Today, I’m going to talk to you about education, and no, it’s not about the ongoing “Texas textbook massacre”, where they want to teach children about “alternatives” to the Theory of Global Warming :-
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-schoolbook-massacre-rewrites-american-history-1929320.html
https://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/03/26/why-you-shouldn-t-worry-about-texas-textbook-changes.aspx
This man :-
said this :-
https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5716/176666
“The Climate Change Commitment : Even if atmospheric composition were fixed today, global-mean temperature and sea level rise would continue due to oceanic thermal inertia. These constant-composition (CC) commitments and their uncertainties are quantified. Constant-emissions (CE) commitments are also considered. The CC warming commitment could exceed 1°C. The CE warming commitment is 2° to 6°C by the year 2400.”
This man :-
said this :-
https://www.digitaljournal.com/article/289310
“”Even if all man-made greenhouse gas emissions were stopped tomorrow and carbon-dioxide levels stabilized at today’s concentration, by the end of this century, the global average temperature would increase by about 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 2.4 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, which is significantly above the level which scientists and policy makers agree is a threshold for dangerous climate change.””
You can read it all here :-
https://www.tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/issue_pdfs/23_1/23-1_greene.pdf
It’s a very inconvenient truth indeed. What will Uncle Tom Wigley’s conservative cabal make of that ?
Hot Start
by Jo Abbess
04 February 2010
An assessment of the technology and policy for de-Carbonising the Energy systems of developed societies
1. The Aligned and Related Risks from Climate Change and Peak Fossil Fuels
1a. Key Conclusions
The Low Carbon Transition in Energy in developed countries is inevitable (Climate Change Act, 2008; EU Package, 2008; UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol, 1997); yet policy thinking and decision-making seems to still focus on the debateable “how to do it” rather than the more essential “how long do we have ?” If the window of opportunity for industrialised society to de-Carbonise proves to foreshorten rapidly, then the next few decades could be a story of economic collapse, unless there is concentrated, concerted endeavour (Sustainable Business, 2010).
Together with a couple of my peers, I’ve been taking a look at BP’s “sustainability”, both from a business point of view and from a Climate Change point of view.
We’ve just given a presentation, of which I offer you a couple of the slides and the script to accompany them.
The central point of issue is : what will BP do after the Gas and Oil are gone ? There may be decades of reasonable hydrocarbons left to exploit, but how will Pension Funds get their return on investment after that ? Where is the future thinking ?
And what about Climate Change ? Retreating from Alternative Energy back into its core business of Oil and Gas means that BP plc will not be able to make substantial cuts in the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the products that they sell – which means that sooner or later, when Carbon Energy is rationed, their business will start to implode.
Here at the Church of Holy Science, we believe the precept of Following the Truth of the Data, wherever that data leads us.
The two month period January to February 2010 was the (wait for it…) third warmest January-February out of the whole 131 years of the instrumental record.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. It was cold where I was, as well. But cold here does not mean cold everywhere.
I was going to entitle this little web log post “Yet More Proof Journalists Can’t Read” but I thought that might seem a little too rude, and anyway, I wanted to be clear about the subject of the content of the post in the title, so I changed it.
I have just received an e-mail from Jonathan Leake of the Times of London and the Sunday Times. By order of his e-mail signature, I am not permitted to share entirely the contents of that e-mail with you, however, I can relate to you that it concerns the latest Climate Change “sceptic” bunkum story, to which you can find extensive reference plastered all over the Internet like some ugly, testosterone-fuelled teenage graffiti :-
https://news.oneindia.in/2010/03/12/amazonrain-forests-were-unaffected-from-once-in-a-centuryd.html
“Amazon rain forests were unaffected from once-in-a-century drought in 2005 : Friday, March 12, 2010”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311175039.htm
“New Study Debunks Myths About Vulnerability of Amazon Rain Forests to Drought : ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2010)”
When are the Media going to get their own School of the Environment, where all the journalists can come and learn the Science of Climate Change ?
The Times of London continues to mangle the facts, it seems to me; this time from the pen/fingers of Ben Webster, perhaps a Mini-Me version of that accreditable journalist Jonathan Leake :-
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7056173.ece
“[The IPCC]…also claimed that global warming could cut rain-fed North African crop production by up to 50 per cent by 2020. A senior IPCC contributor has since admitted that there is no evidence to support this claim…”
I don’t think that quite pins it down accurately.
Ed Miliband put on his favourite suit, shirt and cufflinks today and ruminated at the Environmental Audit Committee in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom Parliament (all you Americans can stop reading now : none of what follows will concern you) :-
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=6084
One of his many views was that there should be a more permanent nature to the ongoing international Climate Change negotiations, and I entirely agree.
Ed Miliband said he didn’t think that there should be a “repeat” of what happened at the Copenhagen UNFCCC conference in December 2009. I also agree with that.
Goodness gracious me ! I find myself in agreement with Ed Miliband !
I really love China. It’s a country with noble ambitions, to protect and prosper its people, and to advance its economic development through trade across the world.
The rest of the world love China, too. They have outsourced all their manufacture, and other services such as recycling, to the powerhouse that is China, where the labour is cheap and the people work willingly.
Just when you thought it was safe to read The Guardian again, they only go and publish an opinion piece by none other than Roger A. Pielke Jr, justly famed for Climate Change scepticism :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/04/ipcc-major-change-needed
“Major change is needed if the IPCC hopes to survive : Well before the recent controversies, the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was marred by an unwillingness to listen to dissenting points of view, an inadequate system for dealing with errors, conflicts of interest, and political advocacy. The latest allegations of inaccuracies should be an impetus for sweeping reform : Roger A Pielke Jr : guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 March 2010 10.58 GMT : It has been a rough couple of months for the climate science community. Last November someone stole or released over 1,000 e-mails from the University of East Anglia. The e-mails revealed that some scientists were so entrenched in battle with their scientific and political opponents that they lost their perspective, going so far as to suggest improperly influencing the scientific process of peer review and evading legal requirements to disclose their data upon request. Climate science took another hit soon thereafter when it became apparent that the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a number of embarrassing errors and an unacceptable amount of sloppy work, such as its erroneous prediction that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, rather than in several centuries or more. The IPCC’s handling of the allegations of errors have compounded its problems…”
If you can imagine the engine for new, renewable and sustainable Energy systems as a train which should by now be thundering down the tracks, get this : it left the depot only to get stuck in the sidings.
Enough of the locomotive metaphors, already. On to the analysis. Here’s an excerpt from Catherine Mitchell’s fine book “The Political Economy of Sustainable Energy” (2008, 2010) :-
“I don’t think you should be so critical”, the young NGO drone chided me in a public meeting.
And I thought I had the right to express my opinions – I think the Kyoto Protocol was a deeply flawed global compromise with deliberately low ambitions and compromised policy and framework proposals.
Enforce a market in a negative commodity ? How ridiculous !
Categories
Rising Trend
Here’s a general knowledge test for Climate Change deniers, ahem, self-styled “sceptics” : what does the graph above represent ? Is it global temperatures since 2006 ? Is it upper tropospheric temperatures ? Is it the Northern Hemisphere sea temperature in summer ? What could it be ?
Well, no, actually. If you click on the image you will find out the answer, and it’s definitely a rising trend, regardless of the dips along the way.
Funnily enough, it looks remarkably like the NASA GISS graph since 2006 :-
It’s no good pointing at one cold, snowless Vancouver winter or even one hot New York summer and saying that that determines the trend of global temperatures. You have to sample the data for a longer period, and globallly, and at all heights above the surface, and at all depths in the ocean.
The IPCC is out of date. No, really, the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC is now way out of date :-
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/ul-plr021710.php
“Look”, said my telephone correspondent, “lots of people with influence know, deep down, that Climategate is just political, not real. The spin doesn’t disprove the science.”
“I know,” I acquiesced, “but it is still important what the public thinks, and this series of minor scandals, some completely baseless, and blown out of all proportion, needs some kind of comeback.”
Warming to my theme, I burbled on, “We can’t leave it hanging in the air like this. You never know when you will next meet a disparaging sceptic, who belligerently, senselessly, obstructs the good you are doing. And this crowd could influence the next Government…”
“OK then”, caved my buddy on the line, “what do you propose ?”
I would like to bring before the court of public opinion some evidence that indicates that the leadership at The Guardian newspaper could be said to have become partially intellectually bankrupt.
Specimen A
Simon Hoggart pronounces on Climate Change Science despite not knowing a thing about it. I do not understand how this piece of writing was published, as it contains a number of inaccuracies.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/feb/06/climate-change-simon-hoggarts-week
https://www.polluterharmony.com/
It’s easy to stay on top of the heap – just throw rocks at everybody trying to climb The Hill.
Fossil Fuels are free when they come out of the ground, but exact a heavy price on the Environment – a cost that cannot be measured in Money – since wealth is made from Fossil Fuel Energy.
Unless we cut the thread – the causal relationship between Energy use and Carbon Dioxide emissions – then we will all lose wealth – from the destruction of the natural environment.
The only practical answer is to reduce the amount of Fossil Fuel that is burned. But that would impoverish us. So we need to have Zero Carbon Energy to replace Fossil Fuel Energy.
Renewable Energy is the only source of future wealth.
Categories
The Future of Flight
For decades we have been spoonfed Science Fiction about the future of flight and space exploration as if it were fact.
Richard Branson (“Sir”, if you insist) has drawn us to his vision for commercial passenger space flight :-
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8400353.stm
Yet his participation in the Industry Taskforce for Peak Oil and Energy Security leads him back down to Earth :-
What makes James Delingpole tick ? Why does he take up such an unsupportable position ? Why is he prepared to risk appearing completely absurd ?
https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100025341/climategate-mad-sunday/
I have been rubbing my chin and hmmming quietly to myself, as I to try to understand it, and I think I might have a thread of an idea : money, or rather, the use of money…
Today’s news is that the pastoral life in Africa is sustainable, even with a certain amount of Climate Change :-
Now’s the right time to talk about gardening. Not just any old gardening, no. I mean food gardening, urban farming, home cropping, edible landscape-type gardening.
Now is the time to be thinking about enriching your soil for your next bumper harvest.
Get your resilience genes working !
https://www.londonwaste.co.uk/media/Compost%20Bag%20Leaflet_May09.pdf
OR
Get into Transition mode !
In Transition 1.0 from Transition Towns on Vimeo.
I was warned. And it’s true. BP are so protective of their company image that they live in denial. I should know. I’ve been inside the belly of the beast and spoken to one of their head sustainability honchos. Who had a total disconnect about the risks of Fossil Fuel depletion.
“Oil and gas will remain the mainstay of the “Energy mix”. We’ve said that publicly…”
So they’re telling the world what to believe, are they ?
If I had a eurocent for every time a Climate Change denier-sceptic told me that if I really, truly believe that Carbon Dioxide causes Global Warming I should just stop breathing…well, I’d be rich enough now to afford to buy the whole of Belgium, or at least most of economically-depressed Wallonia. Mmm…Waffles.
But seriously, holding your breath in the form of Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) is one of the big flashing signs for the future of ReSmoothing, smoothing Renewable Energy supply, that is.