Advertising imitating Life…but just which photograph is the fashion shoot ?
Category: Burning Money
Burning Money : Wasting chances. Spending real value on expended ideas. Diversionary activities.
Categories
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Christiana Figueres : The Elusive Saucepan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWsQscb6lfM
https://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/application/pdf/100806_speaking_notes.pdf
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has just held its regular half yearly conference to further the working parties of the Kyoto Protocol :-
https://unfccc.int
https://unfccc.int/2860.php
A number of Press commentators have been critical of proceedings, indicating that there has not been much progress at Bonn, and in fact the conference could show some ground having been lost :-
https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9213b40-a180-11df-9656-00144feabdc0.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TINzvWrtjYI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyutuErxPo8
Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the United States of America, has been all over the Media, announcing the policy to “kill kill kill this” BP nightmare story, telling the world that a turning milestone point has been reached :-
https://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/PDFs/OilBudget_description_%2083final.pdf
Have they decided that BP have been punished enough now for the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher, and the reputation of the company needs to be rehabilitated sharply in order to protect the Economy ?
I made the mistake of taking in a BBC TV news bulletin on the matter. I heard several talking heads say it’s “good news” that roughly three quarters of the accountable oil from the spill has “disappeared” :-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10870159
Breaking this story is “good news” for the stability of pension funds, maybe. But what is the real extent of the real damage to the real world, the world of oceans and fish and plankton ? Will the world be watching as the researchers scavenge data and clues to the marine ecotastrophe that is still unfolding ?
Back in the heady, long-gone days of 2009, The Oil Drum web log hosted a discussion about Australia being highly vulnerable to oil shortages :-
https://www.theoildrum.com/node/5477
“Aleklett: Australia highly vulnerable to oil shortages : June 11, 2009 : ASPO International president, Professor Kjell Aleklett of the Global Energy Systems group at Uppsala University has been in Australia over the past week, presenting lectures in Adelaide and Sydney on peak oil…warned that Australia will be one of the first countries hit hard by oil shortages as oil production peaks within the next three years. Kjell Aleklett, a physicist from Uppsala University in Sweden, says Australia’s relatively underdeveloped public transport system leaves the country more vulnerable to a downturn in energy production. “Australia is very sensitive to such developments,” Professor Aleklett told the Herald. “Much of your industry and transit is dependent on oil, and supplies will decline.” Professor Aleklett addressed the NSW [New South Wales] electric car task force and the Federal Government’s Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics yesterday…”
Categories
WBGU : Equity, Today : Agreement, Never
File under : “That’s never going to ever happen if the United States of America have anything at all to do with it”.
The illustrious German Advisory Council on Global Change, the WBGU, or “Wissenschaftliche Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveraenderungen” in longhand, have done some excellent work on proposals for a global Carbon framework.
As part of their 2009 paper entitled in English “Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach” they came to some useful conclusions, but also some startlingly unworkable recommendations :-
https://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.pdf
https://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.html
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Bait & Switch Behaviour Changeling Big Picture Burning Money Climate Change Divide & Rule Eating & Drinking Emissions Impossible Global Warming Growth Paradigm Low Carbon Life Marvellous Wonderful Pet Peeves Public Relations Regulatory Ultimatum Social Change Unsolicited Advice & Guidance Voluntary Behaviour Change Vote Loser
David Mitchell Curbs Enthusiasm
PLEASE IGNORE THE ADVERTISEMENT AT THE START OF THIS VIDEO. Video Credit : The Guardian
It’s great to see David Mitchell tucking into a big bite of the “Voluntary Behaviour Change” posse’s pie.
Let’s be honest : nobody wants to stop consuming and burning, but we’re going to have to if the Big Energy companies don’t change the way they provide us with power and fuel.
Yes, guilt is so old-fashioned. You can’t tell the public to change their consumption behaviour, trying to make them feel personally responsible for Climate Change, whilst still providing them with environmentally damaging products.
All electricity should be Renewable, all heating systems Carbon-neutral, all manufactured products Low Carbon.
Until that day, governments will continue to hire Public Relations consultants to convince the public to make different choices, and continue to fail to make any converts.
Centre for Alternative Technology
Burning things wastes a lot of energy – even burning waste.
1. Plain Old Inefficiency
The systems and infrastructure for the generation and distribution of electricity in the United Kingdom is extremely poor, nigh on immorally wasteful. See the diagram above from the Zero Carbon Britain 2030 report :-
There are so many things that could be done to improve on that enormous loss of energy, and save on Carbon Dioxide Emissions at the same time.
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…
Phone your leader :
Sign the Greenpeace Petition :
Sign the Avaaz Petition :
There’s one thing we know : the Earth does not compromise. Politicians might think that they can compromise with the Science; and worse still, the Climate Change Deniers might think that they can compromise the public mind, but in the end the Data will have the final say.
One day, the fringe, radical opinion will be called upon by those at the centre of the debate. Not a debate about whether the climate is changing or not, but the negotiations about who will do what.
Some currently argue that the West was won (and the North) by the immoral earnings from the deep South (and the far East) : the industrialised countries have accrued their wealth on the basis of historical and continuing exploitation of the systems of trade and finance, to garner to their store all the material resource riches of the whole world.
This historical inequality, this chute of nature, taking food, minerals, fuels sliding Northwards and Westwards : for this the rich should pay : Carbon rights should not be “grandfathered” : the rich should not assume they have the free right to continue polluting as they have in the past. The rich should pay up on their historical debt.
The idea behind “clean development” is simple : promoting the clean development of developing countries so that they don’t make the same dirty development mistakes that the developed countries did when they were developing.
So, let the developing countries develop, but avoid the dirty part. Instead of burning Coal to make electricity, let them burn Natural Gas, or BioMethane (poo power); or let them make wind turbines, and hydropower dams and efficient biomass stoves.
There was to be a fund to finance Clean Development Mechanism projects, and it was supposed to be aimed at developing countries.
However, the negotiations around the CDM have taken more than one twist. Today, discussions were held about whether to permit Carbon Capture and Storage technologies to be included as “clean development”.
“Where there’s muck, there’s brass”, as some people in England say. Waste and pollution can be big moneymakers for some, as local and national government bodies strive to ensure a safe, clean environment for their citizens.
Dealing with Carbon pollution is, however, in a different league of Big Dirt than the municipal waste stream, litter picks and recycling efforts. It’s even in a much larger landscape than Energy supply infrastructure and global fuel distribution systems.
Carbon emissions are in everything we do, practically, from texting to flying; from cooking to holidaying; from home comfort to laundry.
We can have school poster competitions that influence dog walkers to clean up after their pooches and hounds, but it’s not going to be so easy to cut the Carbon from our entire civilisation.
https://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10617
I know a couple of people who are not eating because of Climate Change.
It’s not that their country is experiencing drought, flood, famine, storm, trade disruption, economic seizure or war.
It’s because they believe in Climate Justice.
We have consumed, and we will be consumed.
All our Fossil Fuel burning and plunder from the forests and intensive agriculture has eaten up the Earth’s ability to maintain its cool.
The sky will rain down disaster, plague, heatwaves, hurricanes. The sea will rise up and drown our cities.
We have eaten too much, and now it is time to stop.
Just in time for Christmas.
https://www.buynothingday.co.uk
What Would Jesus Buy ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGi21YQFjMM
Rights. Fair shares. It’s time for a Global Carbon Budget.
Ed Miliband is today assuring us that New Nuclear Power will be safe, and that we will all have a say in the planning process – so tantalising us with the idea that we will be able to influence the outcome.
I don’t believe either of these things.
Nuclear Power is inherently dangerous, operationally unreliable, dirty, wasteful, expensive and any public money used to support it in any way will prevent us from pursuing truly sustainable Energy.
New Nuclear won’t work without Government subsidy, either for the construction of the plants themselves, or guaranteed customer pricing, or the insurance to cover the failure of projects to complete (or radioactive accident). The Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change can expect to find any New Nuclear direct public funding, price fixing, subsidy or tax breaks in court.
No, it won’t be me personally taking the Government to court.
Nuclear Power is a dinosaur technology, and judging by the number of countries that have signed up for new fleets of reactors, the Uranium fuel to run the plants being planned will be exhausted within the lifetime of the plants. With supplies of fuel running out, early decommissioning means the plants will never pay back on the investment.
Sounds like a high risk strategy to me, even before looking at the risks of radioactive explosions.
Colin Challen MP [Member of the United Kingdom Parliament], the author of “Too Little, Too Late : The Politics of Climate Change” has told the nascent Carbon Capture industry to stop bleating for funding, effectively a bailout for the Coal industry :-
“CCS industry should support itself, claims MP : Wednesday 04 November 2009 : Labour MP Colin Challen believes the CCS industry should fund itself : A Labour MP has called on the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) industry to stop giving a “sob story” about needing government investment and instead fund new projects itself. Colin Challen, the MP for Morley and Rothwell, made the comments at today’s (November 4) Energy and Climate Change Committee meeting at Westminster, which was held as part of its inquiry into low carbon technologies. Responding to calls from industry body representatives for more government help in developing CCS plants, Mr Challen said: “It seems to me that research and development (R&D) has plummeted to a fraction of what it was. This industry has had billions of pounds out of the consumers’ pockets but yet we get this sob story about needing more money.” However, the director of technology and external affairs at Alstom – which builds integrated power plants – Philip Sharman, argued that utility companies have been investing in CCS, but said that the larger scale projects would need government help…”
Image Credit : Baby Creative
Over the last couple of years, almost everything I have been involved with, the E.On Energy supply company has sought to get its big coal-dust grubby hands on. It seems. The latest twist in this saga involves the Claverton Energy Research Group.
Sometimes you can learn a snippet of useful information from television. It’s rare, and fleeting, but can have impact.
The other night on terror-vision, I watched the sumptuous Fahrenheit 451, a film made in 1966 by Francois Truffaut, based on the science fiction book by Ray Bradbury. I forget which channel it was on. Who cares ? All television is the same in the end.
The Claverton Energy Group will be holding its 8th Conference from 23rd to 25th October 2009 at the headquarters of Wessex Water, Claverton Down in Bath, England.
Advances in Energy technologies old and new will be presented amongst a wide-ranging and influential forum of engineers. The focus, as ever, will be the development of new infrastructure, within the context of the urgent need to de-Carbonise Energy supply.
There’s the real world. And then there’s “Daily Telegraph world”, a fantasy mindscape, it seems to me.
In yet another piece that seems to be written for the sole purpose of attacking wind power, massaged in under the banner of standing up for the fuel poor :-
is this outstanding piece of reporting about Atomic Energy in the United Kingdom :-
“Nuclear, by contrast, is unsubsidised.”
The Carbon game’s up : within 40 to 70 years the Petroleum empires will be gone. Even with massive new investment, Hydrocarbon production will be peaking. With supplies of Crude Oil, Natural Gas, and yes, even Coal, starting to fall away, a crucial sub-plot will begin to play out.
In his own, special, blond, way, I feel Bjørn Lomborg is as dangerous as Martin Durkin. They both act like incarnations of The Climate Joker in my view, showing different capricious sides to the destructive force of mankind’s inhumanity to man (and beast and tree).
Whenever one exchanges words with a representative of the British Government regarding Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), if one deigns to risk asking such a question as “why is the UK spending so much time, effort and resources on CCS demonstrations ?”, the usual, much-trodden answer is “because we need to lead China on this”.
A number of media outlets have been skewered and grilled one more time in the last fortnight by the Nuclear industry and it’s paid-up or paid-to fans. It feels like the poor lamb hacks have been gambolling and frolicking too close to the fire.
Just getting a Press Release in the papers is not equivalent to convincing a critical mass of people to support your energy technology of choice. It’s like roasting and toasting a very dodgy piece of carcase/carcass and adding hot pepper sauce to hide the bacterial slime.
Even recruiting a senior former British Government Minister to the radioactive cause is not sufficiently influential for a good portion of the electorate. That’s like pulling some Amazon-killing soya-fed dead cow out of the freezer and finding it’s several years too old to eat.
Nuclear Power has a bad track record, and the last couple of years have been near-on laughable.
The Public Opinion No is a Government Policy Yes. Carbon is Zero Carbon. Coal is Clean. Sounds like Doublethink to me.
As Orwell put it : “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies…”
A curious little news item caught my eye last week : a Reuters report of the official opening of the Britain’s largest Carbon Capture project in Renfrew, Scotland :-
https://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE56R00E20090728
All pretty standard hot-off-the-Press-Release fare. You would have thought it was a fine thing, a noble undertaking, a breakthrough. If you were at all interested in Energy engineering, which most of you aren’t.
The Campaign against Climate Change has been running a very thought-provoking extending compendium of ideas on how to reduce British Carbon Emissions by ten percent by (the end of) 2010, to which you are all welcome to contribute :-
https://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-ban-domestic-flights
https://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-ban-domestic-flights-0
https://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-50-reduction-cost-public-transport