Pet Peeves : Things that are generally or especially annoying. To me, but it could be to you as well.
What would you do if you met a Climate Camper face to face ? And how could you be sure ? Would they have dreadlocks ? A facepainted clown face, raggedy, dirty clothes ? Would they be shouting ?
More to the point, would they be getting in your face ? Or in your way ? Would they be threatening or violent or extremely negative ? Or would they offer you a cup of tea and a nice wholemeal organic flapjack ?
Here’s one for all my States-side buddies, because nobody in Euroland will get to see this for a while (please correct me if I’m mistaken) : the trailer for the film “Burning the Future”. It’s all about the toxic, dirty nature of Coal Energy :-
https://burningthefuture.semkhor.com/page.asp?s=burningthefuture&content_id=14092
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.
Image Author : Hendrik Tammen
Constructing and operating Nuclear Power facilities has historically required overt and covert support from nation states. A non-negotiable, non-vanishing fraction of every tax dollar/euro/rand goes to keep Atomic Energy alive.
So does the population get some benefit from this costly energy ? Some people ask “payback ? What payback ?” and cast dark hints that Nuclear Energy never has, and never will, produce a net Energy benefit, after all the labour, time, concrete, steel, liquid fuel and other resources that have to be used in reactor building, site monitoring and waste disposal.
So it seemed rather like the British Government had put themselves in a cleft stick, announcing a new round of building Nuclear Fission electricial generation plant, but at the same time foreswearing any state financial support :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jun/14/energy.greenpolitics
Seven reasons why “Clean” Coal is dirty, dangerous and wicked, but not funny in the slightest.
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.
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
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”.
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…”
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.
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.
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 !
I don’t know whether to laugh or shed tears in comic agony at this, which looks like the latest in a very long line of environmental “hoaxes”.
A person allegedly a paediatrician from New York claims to have diagnosed a new disorder, with a wide range of symptoms, relating to Wind Turbines.
Provisionally named “Wind Turbine Syndrome”, this “visceral vibratory vestibular disturbance” can be detected in folks unlucky enough to be living within the spinning shadow of new wind farms.
The Climate Camping season has begun in earnest today, 3rd August 2009.
Here’s a few of the links below. If you’r bored, curious or otherwise ungainfully unemployed, why not come and pitch your canvas alongside the radical Carbon-free thinkers and doers of the future ?
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
Shall We Go Nuclear ?
The way I see it, it’s not a simple straight choice between one energy production technology and any other. It’s quite a lot more complicated than that. There are issues of national energy policy, the method of financing and influential key players, practical details, economics, security and surety of supply, safety, security of installations, and also historical experience, when considering each option.