It seems that Prezza, our dear beloved Climate Change Chief Negotiator is having an attack of the “Tony Blairs” : back-pedalling on Carbon Dioxide reduction targets :-
Category: Climate Change
Climate Change
Climate Change is a problem quintessentially expressed in numbers : how many degrees of warming, how many parts per million of Carbon Dioxide in the air, how much Carbon Dioxide the Oceans, Forests, Rocks, Plants and Soils soak up, how many lives will be affected by drought, famine and sickness, how much Methane could be released from tundra and hydrates, how many species will be lost, perhaps including our own.
I thought the issue was settled by now, but oh no. People are still denying that Climate Change is a problem.
Whatever Climate Change event you go to these days, the organisers will still feel obliged to run a session on Climate Change Science, explaining why there is actually a very real and already present problem, and why the sceptics are mistaken. And why some of them are paid to lie.
Flickr Image : David Breslin @ b3ta
Not content with having four very similar Planning Applications overturned previously in quiet, suburban Highams Park, London E4, (including one taken to a Public Inquiry), nothing seems to be able to stop Tesco trying again, with a remarkably unchanged plan for a mega-superstore with crowded urban-style blocks of adjacent flats.
Only this time it’s got a “travellator”, you know, the kind of moving walkway normally found at airports, to take you from the ground floor car park atrocity to the first floor store.
This is their attempt to design the plan into our hearts. But not even a brilliant architect can make a catwalk model out of this bloated parasitical plan :-
https://www.highamsgreen.co.uk
The local residents are up in arms, flexing their telephone dialling fingers, and furiously typing letters and electronic mails about this abomination of a Planning Application :-
https://www.highamsparkforum.co.uk/tesco.html
If you yourself live in London E4, you can submit a comment on this plan yourself very easily on the Council’s website, quoting the Application Numbers 2008/1490 and 2008/1491 :-
Two signs that Carbon Trading won’t work the way you think it will.
1. It’s going to be so heavily policed to keep the prices stable enough to attempt to have a proper impact, it will end up like a flat Carbon Tax.
Seven reasons why “Clean” Coal is dirty, dangerous and wicked, but not funny in the slightest.
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).
Global Warming comes home.
It’s not the Polar Bears in a remote, formerly ice-locked location that I’m talking about. It’s the humans, in previously luscious fertile parts, now facing extraordinary and continuing drought.
Let’s do a quick review of some global human habitat locations and see how much good quality rain is no longer falling. Oh yes, there are sometimes storms, hurricanes, typhoons and flash floods, but this is “bad water”, running straight off the parched un-absorbing un-receptive land straight back into the waterways.
The Global Warming Potential, or GWP, of various substances in the atmosphere is an indication as to how much extra heat it will make the Earth system retain from the Sun’s light falling on it.
The effect of the basket of Greenhouse Gases has to be added to that of soot and other particles and aerosols in the air above us; something which Al Gore neatly summarises as “Global Warming Pollution”, another GWP, confusingly.
I’m going to call Global Warming Potential “GWPot”, and Global Warming Pollution “GWPol”.
The blanket, ovecoat, effect of GWPol is not something that reverses instantly you remove the gases and dust from the air. A human example that makes it obvious : it takes time to cool down after running for the bus.
Somewhere in the back of all our minds, we know that cows eat soya and soya and cows are grown where the Amazon rainforest used to be, and the Amazon is one of the last ecosystems controlling the overall Climate of the planet.
So we know beef ranching is intrinsically bad, whatever the discussion about cattle burps actually means.
But a brief dip into the news and views of animal husbandry science experts reveals that there is a very intense and ongoing argument about Methane from farmed animals, and what it implies for Global Warming, and my reaction is that we should make ourselves more aware.
The future looks AV – Almost Vegan.
Atlanta, Georgia is running out of fresh drinking water. I heard about it at second hand from one of my relatives who lives there.
Lake Lanier is suffering from drought. Of course there are a number of factors, not just Climate Change. But the combination of cyclical drought, US Army Corps of Engineers activities, increasing urban population and agricultural take doesn’t seem to be able to explain everything.
Of particular concern is the condition known as anoxia, lack of oxygen in the water. This will be partly caused by chemical run-off from surrounding farming land and any industrial activity, and also changes in composition of the tributary rivers which feed it, which will all be exacerbated by changes in rainfall caused by Climate Change.
Categories
Bigger than Katrina
There is an incredible natural tragedy unfolding in East Asia this week. Typhoon Morakot and Tropical Storm Etau have been battering the coast and islands, in particular, Taiwan.
This really is bigger than Katrina, and we should all be paying attention.
He may prowl like a cat and purr like a cat, and make out he’s soft and sweet in interviews, but Peter Mandelson’s ideological positioning gives him the impression of him more resembling a pawn, an eel or a rat, and gives me a shudder of disgust; and I’m glad to hear the Climate Rush non-Pussycat Dolls have seen fit to pounce on him :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/10/mandelson-climate-protest-vestas
Geoengineering. Sounds great. Treat the Earth like one big motoring machine, get under the hood (bonnet) and tinker with it.
But what if actually this is the equivalent of putting the Planet on a life support system ventilator, and the plug could be pulled at any time ?
How sustainable are some of the Geoengineering proposals ? Are they guaranteed to work ? Won’t they have knock-on side-effects ? Are they reversible if they prove unhelpful ? And how much will they cost ?
Categories
Stick to the Acting, Love
Keisha Castle-Hughes has been patronised for her work on Climate Change. I think she’s doing quite well, myself.
The State of the World Forum, having met in Belo Horizonte this week, is pitching for 80% cuts in Carbon Dioxide by 2020, not 2050, and besides launching a “2020 Climate Leadership” campaign, they are to use the services of Brazil’s largest TV station Globo TV to raise awareness.
Am disappointed and a touch surprised to find Government propaganda in the New Scientist magazine.
The thread of the official answer to “what to do about China ?” is “sell them Carbon Capture and Storage”. The way it’s packaged is : “we need to help China reduce their emissions”. As if “we” had a right or responsibility to correct China !
A cursory Western reader of news about Russia would find curious snippets with little context or explanation. “Russia plants flag on Arctic floor” from 2007 or “Vladimir Putin dives to bottom of world’s deepest lake” from 1st August 2009.
With the new streamlined Russian openness strategy, the information is not withheld, just dumbed-down, it seems. When reported in the Western press, it’s easy for further meaning to erode at this extra remove. But there is a story here. What are they up to ? Staking claims in the Arctic and mining for unconventional Hydrocarbon fuels underwater, that’s what.
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”.
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…”
Categories
Ian Plimer Needs Help
Yes ! Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University needs your help.
No less than George Monbiot has challenged him on some of the claims in his book “Heaven and Earth”, and I get the feeling he will need some assistance in rising to this challenge.
Go on. Send him an e-mail. Click the “Send Email” button on his contact details page. Offer him your advice and guidance and support.
Where can all our politicians and corporate executive officers from the Big Energy and Engineering companies be found ? At Quibbles Bar where altercation over subsidies and bailouts can be earwigged on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, China and India are still slugging it out with the international community in the Recompense Diner-Restaurant, insisting someone else pays the bill for dealing with Carbon Emissions.
Meanwhile, the pampered and neutered citizen consumers of “The West” are basking in the the Full-Body Entertainment Lounge, with heaps of gadgets and streaming and TV, with nary a care for stories so scary.
Meanwhile, Africa is drying out. I mean, really drying out. Africa is in the Last Chance Saloon.
https://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3605
“Drought threatens future of Kenya’s Maasai people : Posted: 05 Aug 2009 : For the last four years, Kenya has seen far less rain than the long-term average, and today there is total failure. It is a drought that has left the Maasai people with no traditional grassland left to graze their herds. Some of the only remaining alternatives for these pastoralists have been to travel to the far reaches of Kenya in search of proper grassland, or to move illegally into protected areas. While these options may temporarily provide grazing for livestock, the people have experienced starvation and conflict…”
I cannot offer an opinion about the validity of this research, because I haven’t read the science paper with the calculations, I haven’t spoken to the researchers, or entirely understood their model from the news report, but I’ve got to admit the results appear intriguing.
The authors speak to my key annoyances : the proposals for new Nuclear Power and Carbon Capture and Storage. And they say we shouldn’t do it : the net heat from “thermal” power generation is going to be dangerous regardless of what we do with any resulting Carbon Dioxide.
Notes from PA21 Meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment
Meeting Date : Tuesday 25th March 2008
Meeting Time : 14:05 – 15:00
Meeting Venue: Whitehall
Attendees
Joan Ruddock MP, Under-Secretary of State, Environment
Annette Brooke MP
Tony Hamilton PA21 Chair
Theresa McManus PA21 Secretary
Naomi Matteson
Notes from Meeting
Reactions to the article “Wind Turbines Give You Spots” is encouraging, if contentious. Looks like we’ve mined a thick vein of dispute. Could a simple, happy, smiley Public Relations campaign to promote Wind Power counter this ? I think not !