Category: Uncategorized

The G20 Climate Camp would like to reassure Police Officers that it is perfectly safe to drink camp tea, and that a certain uniformed authority person without an identification lapel has only himself to blame for his state of druggedness. We think he “self-medicated” before coming on the beat today…

Flash update : it appears that some European participants in the G20 Climate Camp didn’t synchronise their watches yesterday evening and have pitched up on the roof of the Bank of England or the Climate Exchange already, a whole hour ahead of the 12.30 “swooping” hour…

…this may be an uncorroborated rumour, however.

Death by Hot Fizz
by Jo Abbess
11th March 2009

It started with a clink. As the ice cube hit the side of the soft drinks glass, I realised that what I was looking at was the Arctic Ocean in miniature.

The two biggie problems Up North are Global Meltdown and Acid Ocean – caused by excess Carbon Dioxide being soaked up by the Ocean from the Atmosphere.

Yes, the seas are becoming soda water. And the ice sheets and glaciers are dropping chunks of ice in it.

The ice melts, stops being white and reflective and starts being dark and absorbing. This pumps up the local temperatures, a Local Warming greater than Average Global Warming.

And the vinegary seas are dissolving the microscopic and not so-microscopic shells of critters at the bottom of the food chain, threatening the maintenance of global Oxygen levels, wiping out marine life, and something called an “Anoxic Event”, which could poison the air and cause mass land life extinction.

It’s death by hot fizz. And it’s all happening much faster than we thought.

This week’s science update conference in Copenhagen has been reviewing the problems in the Arctic region, together with other advances in scientific knowledge since the publication of “4AR”, the most recent IPCC Report :-

https://climatecongress.ku.dk

“Climate Change : Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions : 10 – 12 March 2009”

There has been a landslide of newspaper articles covering the conference, both in print and online, although the print copy is hardly ever on the front page :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/11/sea-lev…

“Sea level could rise more than a metre by 2100, say experts”

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/ma…

“Chaos at the climate conference”

https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article…

“Global temperatures ‘will rise 6C this century’ ”

The Editors on MediaLens commented on one of the stories :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/10/carbon-…

“Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs”

“The Guardian’s David Adam writes: “The conference is intended to […] shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.” But what kind of action? Sufficient to hurt big business and financial speculators and all those driving and selling the myth of economic ‘growth’? Of course not. The childlike naivety here – of the reporter? the scientific community? both? – makes grim reading. State priorities are driven by selfish strategic and corporate interests. The documentary record is very clear on this. The notion that science will drive government policy around by the required 180 degrees defies rationality.”

But the word “shock” is licence – second-guessing the intentions of the scientists taking part in the conference.

In the print copy of The Guardian was this article “Human CO2 emissions blamed for dangerously acidic seas”, in which David Adam wrote :-

“The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and move politicians into acting on carbon emissions.”

This conveys something different than an attempt to “shock”, and is probably closer to the wishes of the conference delegates.

My question is this : why do the Editors of the MediaLens ask if the the political action intended by the conference would be “sufficient to hurt big business and financial speculation” ? Why use such emotive terminology ? Should big business be treated like an enemy ? Is big business a creature with a mind and a will ?

Anthropomorphising corporate entities, imputing a company with a human mind, is about as fallible as the proposal in Richard Dawkin’s “The Selfish Gene” : genetic material cannot think, reason, intend or direct. And neither can complex corporate entities. They are, in effect, stupid in the fullest sense of the word : blind, dumb, deaf and immobile, lacking in the will to change.

Pointing the finger a corporate entities and laying blame really does you no good. People don’t listen. They can detect the dissonance. Companies don’t have human intentions, they’re not motivated by greed, disgust or dismissiveness. They are functionally organised complex units of economically enslaved humans, performing various profit-making roles.

There are humans within businesses, but companies are not human.

The film “The Corporation”, the link is made that shows that if the behaviour of private companies were the behaviour of an individual human being, that person would be labelled a psychopath.

There’s no denying it : when you do the analysis of corporate behaviour, it’s a collection of social bads. But there are real, nice, moral people working in companies, who go home to play with their kids and don’t hit their wives/husbands, who recycle and so on.

Instead of using an ideological lexicon that is violent and uses negative emotions, how can we point out the wrongs of corporate behaviour without targetting the people within it ?

CorporateWatch is clear about where they stand and quote on their website “The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” (Utah Phillips).

By painting a future based on the current chaos, we might be able to show that corporates are limiting their own development by behaving wastefully and being toxic to the surrounding environment and society. But again, who would listen ?

We can’t change the whole system of Capitalist Economics overnight. We can’t convert enough people to our point of view, despite factual predictions based on scientific evidence.

The snowball of chaos rounds down the mountain. “Behind you !” we shout, screaming ourselves hoarse. But it’s a pantomime to our intended listeners. They can’t listen. They are locked within another paradigm of understanding.

That doesn’t make them psychopaths. It makes them stupid – unenlightened – in the dark.

Fortunately, individual people are not as stupid as the collective economic system. Individuals are refusing to borrow money. Banks are refusing to lend it. If we thought that inflicting “harm” was necessary, well, here’s the proof we don’t need to !

Any relatively intelligent person with a spreadsheet tool to help with the compound interest/growth formula can calculate the growing economic inequality between rich and poor, the strain on resources coming into the Economy, Mergers/Acquisitions/Bankruptcies, closures, foreclosures, bad debt and collapsing pyramid (or Ponzi) schemes.

Given that the world is finite, and so is the amount of real tradeable value. Given that there’s only so much Energy available at any one moment, and that workers make a profit for their employers.

Large companies should not be accused of “greed” or their employees of “self-interest”. No, they’re only doing their jobs. The way the corporates operate dictate the stupid behaviour. We don’t need to point out to them that Economic Chaos, just like Energy Chaos and Climate Chaos, is emerging rapidly. No intervention, protest, demonstration or book is required on our part.

It is true that the current “State priorities are driven by selfish strategic and corporate interests.” Big business is bound to influence Government, because the Government is outsourcing its social functions to private enterprise. They’re joined at the hip. Nobody should be surprised. The join is seamless. The Government, by way of demonstration, has a whole Department whose function is to promote Business.

It’s not news that Big Business has influence over Government. That’s the way it was designed to work. You can overlay the facts with an emotional value and call it “undue” influence if you think it helps you communicate this fact to others. But others will not understand you as they have another perspective on what Business means.

But there is something new. Businesses are increasingly strained – a general phenomenon – part of what is being called the “Downturn” an Americanisation by the BBC. This may actually serve to sever Big Business from Government. An example : how can there continue to be privatised State development if there are no private partners stepping forward ? Construction companies are in retreat, just as other sectors. That’s the reality.

And anyway, the Companies and Government are not uninformed, actually. They know about Climate Change. They know about the looming hike in Carbon prices (whether by markets or diktat). They know the Science. This week’s Copenhagen Climate Change science update conference is not something they will ignore.

However, there is a real and exigent problem : there is a faultline between Science and the policy which is formulated to address the Science.

It’s crazy for all the social groups and Science groups to keep urging the Government to act, if the actions that will be taken do not properly address the problems.

So far, the UK Government has merely regurgitated the United Nations and European Union decisions on policy. Even the Green New Deal, promulgated by Green politicians globally, is not a full solution implementation.

We can’t continue to let them believe that what’s been proposed so far matches the scale of the risks.

So, the people are not stupid, but the policies and business practices are. But, the actions of the campaigners and activists – are they any more clever ?

Throwing green custard at Peter Mandelson is not going to be a turning point in his prostitution to neoliberal thinking. He truly believes (or pretends to adhere to) the Free Market principles, not noting the irony. “Meritocracy” for some means increasing inequality for others. “Free Trade” for us means “wage slavery” for many around the world.

Simon Lewis comments in The Guardian that “as those who are not listened to have shown throughout history, targeted protests and civil disobedience can have a major impact.” But there is a problem. Just because civil disobedience and public protest have worked to secure justice in history, does not mean that it can work now, with such an overarching suite of complex issues.

There have been active State policies to discourage activism, protest and campaigning – marginalising and distorting the messages of the activists – lumping all activists together in the “untouchable” and “lunatic fringe” box. Public protest is anathema because it is a sign of heating sentiment – and all forms of violence must be quelled and prevented.

So, are we stupid ? Are we dismissed because our views, our messages, are way off-beam ? Aubrey Meyer knows something of not being listened to and having his messages warped. Contraction and Convergence, his development of the UNFCCC framework has been in the wilderness for years. He has been accused of all manner of things, most recently of promoting a policy leading to certain genocide by Nicholas Stern.

If people do not listen to us, does that mean that we are not considered sufficiently knowledgeable, expert or rational to be listened to ? How much do we need to prove ?

And, who is it that is supposed to listen ? And why ? What can they do when they have heard the message ? ExxonMobil has listened. They have definitely understood, but they still pump money into the Climate Deniers conferences organised in New York by the Heartland Institute.

What political framework are we trying to sell ? How difficult is the formula we have developed ? How easy is it to convert others to our “faith” ? As someone in first Century Palestine narrated, “some [seed] fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up…some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil…other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.”

I shouldn’t need to march in the streets to explain something to other people. And they probably have the cultural mental filters to misunderstand my message.

Last year I had an argument with a close relative. One of the outcomes of that was that I wrote myself a large note in capital letters “ONLY TALK TO THOSE WHO ARE LISTENING”, or as the previously mentioned narrator said in paraphrase “don’t cast your pearls before swine”.

For the Government and Business to be able to modify their patterns of engagement and behaviour successfully – change regulations, apply new laws – they need to show they are prepared to actively engage in constructive dialogue with those who know what they are talking about.

Otherwise, for all their listening, they’ll only come back with stupid non-solutions and unfeasible technologies. They need to be able to translate what they learn, and have already clued up on, into meaningful outcomes.

Currently the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has proved itself to be as useless as the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTi) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and all the other environmental agencies that came before it.

DECC has not been able to follow through their understanding and learning with appropriate responses.

I shouldn’t need to clamour in the streets, and neither should you. The Government should be actively seeking out the best advice – for – clearly – they’ve messed up so far.

I intend not to preach nor proselytise : as Isaiah noted of the Servant of the Lord : “He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth.”

I mean, what good does it do ?

Other people can (and will) rally in the streets, and they will find they’re hitting their own heads against brick walls or riot shields.

In the near future, people will have a choice of engagement or disengagement with the current Economy-Society.

Workers cooperatives, transition movements and low carbon communities will attempt to live apart from the paradigm as the standard Economy collapses. Many people may jump onto those life rafts.

There will be an uncalled-for uprising, but not about Science – but for the most basic of reasons – a circus for bread – frustration about reducing income and less purchasing power – those who are in Energy poverty.

People will attempt democracy and fail because they have not learned how to cooperate, despite all the working models available : from the Quakers (Religious Society of Friends), the Climate Camp, the Methodist Church, Unions, the Latin American social revolution and so on.

People will try to take production back into their own hands, low impact housing cooperatives, defying “normal” conventions on construction, planning and services.

The middle-class rich hippies will find the perfect Low Carbon lifestyle but exclude others from reaching it.

Until some sense, order and sanity is imposed (and it might come to that, although it will cause fear and loathing), we need to keep up the refrain in the public domain, directed at our legitimate (for now) authorities : your policy response is stupid.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and new Nuclear Power do not answer Climate Change, and they’ll be here too slowly, and suck all the funds away from other things that are cheaper and better and quicker.

Geoengineering could be very costly, and go badly wrong, and again, won’t be available for a while yet.

Not everyone in the world can own and run an electric car, especially since we don’t yet have the resources to stop burning Coal for all that juice.

Sea defences will turn out not to be enough. Water conservation will turn out not to be enough. So many things will not be sufficient, and cost too much. A simple cost benefit comparison can show how stupid measures can be.

Until the power is vested in those who are smart, there will be too much stupid going on.

This is the…Age of Stupid

https://www.ageofstupid.net/sites/www.ageofstupid.net/them…

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/10/carbon-…

Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs

Chemical change placing ‘unprecedented’ pressure on marine life and could cause widespread extinctions, warn scientists

David Adam, environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 March 2009 00.05 GMT

Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.

The rapid acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The chemical change is placing “unprecedented” pressure on marine life such as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.

The study, by scientists at Bristol University, will be presented at a special three-day summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen, which opens today. The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and to shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.

…

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/10/clima…

Scientists on the streets

To get the climate change message across, environmental scientists need better arguments – and more public protests

Simon Lewis

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 March 2009 10.30 GMT

Scientists are taking an increasingly political stance towards action on climate change. In 2005, the science academies of the G8 countries, plus China, India and Brazil, collectively called for governments to place climate change at the top of the international agenda. By 2008 they were calling for a planned transition to a low-carbon economy. Similarly, this week’s international climate change conference in Copenhagen, at which I am speaking, is deliberately organised to try to influence the UN conference in December (also in Copenhagen), which will discuss placing global limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, the website calls the conference “science for politics”.

Yet these are potentially dangerous times for scientists who move into political arenas. There is a serious disconnect. On one side the years drift by and we deliver our ever-starker warnings. On the other, policy-makers, business leaders and wide sections of the public barely acknowledge the dangers we face, never-mind change their actions accordingly. This can lead to desperation: how do we get people to listen?

It is tempting to try and capture people’s attention with apocalyptic messages, with the media egging us on. But it’s a dangerous game. Prosaically, at this week’s conference every contrarian will be looking to seize on a seemingly crazy comment from a scientist to allow them to dismiss the whole conference as alarmist. Those of us concerned about climate change need to be more sophisticated in choosing how we communicate about the issue.

One example of a poor choice of facts to highlight is that the arctic sea-ice is melting and that this is bad news for polar bears. It doesn’t really affect many people directly, so remains an abstract concern. However, few seem to be aware that if we continue with business-as-usual, we will push air temperatures over much of the tropics so high that it becomes physiologically very uncomfortable for humans to live there. That is, without dramatic cuts in emissions, we will condemn those 2 billion people living in the tropics to a life of daily discomfort for generations to come.

Another example is that few realise that we are changing the basic rules of agriculture. For the last 8,000 years the game has been the same: judge the likely weather based on past experience, deploy your best technology, hedge your bets, work hard, and hope that you end the year with surplus food. Increasingly the past will be a poor guide to the future, with much-increased chances of major crop failures. This is extremely worrying when we have 6.7 billion people to feed, and the recent food crisis shows the rapidity with which social unrest unfolds across the globe when food becomes expensive.

Re-focusing attention on less abstract impacts of climate change – anyone who has been to the tropics will attest that adding 5 degrees C to those alreadly high temperatures would be very unpleasant – could shift debates fast. Moreover, scientists and others concerned about climate change will also need to challenge entrenched economic ideology that is a significant barrier to tackling climate change. For example, we must challenge why complex carbon markets that have failed at EU level, and within the Kyoto protocol, are set to be replicated globally in the post-Kyoto settlement planned to be agreed in December.

Furthermore, as those who are not listened to have shown throughout history, targeted protests and civil disobedience can have a major impact. A day spent on the street, rather than in my case being in the lab, office or rainforest field site, might be my most useful service to humanity in this pivotal year. It’s probably the same for the majority of us.

I know it is baffling to many that adding a few hundred parts per million to the volume of a colourless odourless gas in the atmosphere could well be our undoing. The contrarians will fill the comment boxes below this article. But is it any more fantastical than the idea that invisible things can cause us to move from being perfectly healthy one day to being dead a few days later?

Investments and actions based on the – still imperfect – scientific understanding of human physiology, diseases, their prevention and cures are probably the cause of the greatest increase in human welfare over the past two centuries. It might well be that investments and actions based on the scientific understanding of what I call the physiology of the planet are the key to human welfare in the 21st century.

The idea that bacteria cause disease took decades to move from controversial scientific hypothesis to an unquestioned fact that has radically changed our behaviour. The anti-progress voices were defeated then, and with progress in human welfare dependent upon accepting the results of the scientific method, they must be defeated again. In climate change terms we must move from residual scepticism to the implementation of solutions to energy needs without using fossil fuels at breakneck speed. A new strategic deployment of arguments, alongside precise protests to move society into a new direction, will be key ways of getting there.

The Unavoidable Economic Truth
by Jo Abbess
4th March 2009

Lord Drayson has discovered what many people have already found out : “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something, if his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

The whole of the Capitalist Economy rests on the unsure foundation of the dirt cheap and readily available supply of Fossil Fuels.

Economic Growth is founded almost entirely on this underpriced Energy.

For product-inventing, profit-making, profit-taking corporate bodies, those who have imposed their systems of trade and exchange on the rest of us; they cannot be made to see the problem of Energy.

How Energy will need to become gradually more expensive to reflect its true environmental cost. How Energy supplies are in freefall because of Peak Oil and peak Economy. How a Carbon Price will take the steam out of every profit-making venture. How Economic Growth is doomed.

Of course business leaders don’t understand these things. They believe that eternal growth is not only possible, it is a prerequisite for continued business. After all, they’ve sold shares in their companies, so they are duty-bound to make a profit, that is, continue to grow.

But the whole thing’s broken, and there ain’t no fixing it. Economic Growth requires added value coming into the system from somewhere, whether that be cheaper and cheaper commodities, cheaper and cheaper labour, cheaper and cheaper production costs.

Well, cheap labour has hit the buffers, despite the Gospel of Globalisation having been preached throughout the world. Why can there not be an expansion of cheap labour, when the people in cheap labour countries continue to spawn uncontrolledly ? Because Climate Change is having an impact on native environments to be able to host so many people.

Commodities are all experiencing upward pricing trends : coffee, tea, cocoa, gold, silver, copper, wheat…Those who had stocks in property are converting to stocks in commodities, because that’s where the profit trends lie. So, commodities in the regular trading systems are experiencing anti-cheapening forces. But Climate Change adds to the stress on costs of commodities through poor harvests, new Energy technology requirements, failures in the rest of the Economy.

And cheaper and cheaper production costs ? Well, when you’ve outsourced to the max, and made all your machines Energy-efficient, and driven down your First World labour costs by union-busting, and lobbied for successful subsidies, bailouts and deregulation (non-taxable status), then where else can production costs be made any cheaper ? As an example, processed foodstuffs converted from expensive oils to Palm Oil several years ago, but now palm oil is under price stress too.

And then, you have to take into account the fact that the Great Assumption about Virtually Free Energy is about to get popped too, and your estimates for production costs must inevitably rise.

Whether Energy costs are increased by fixed-floor Carbon pricing (Kyoto2, Lord Adair Turner today’s news), or by rationing, sooner or later Energy costs will affect production costs, and bang goes the chances for an Economic recovery, forever.

Face the truth : there are Limits to Growth. The Earth system cannot support continued increases, an acceleration in fact, of Carbon Emissions, and the thin crust of the Earth only holds so much crude oil. There has to come a time when Virtually Free Energy becomes quite expensive, really. There’s no escaping this. And it will take down Capitalism with it, I’m sorry to say. But on the other side of the collapse of “the dollar economy”, there will be a brighter, more sane future of trade.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/04/manufac…

Industry leaders denying climate change, says UK science minister

[ Senior figures in the manufacturing industry do not accept that human activities are driving global warming, Lord Drayson says ]

Lord Drayson says there is an urgent need to restate the scientific evidence for global warming and calls for companies to focus on their environmental obligations

Ian Sample, science correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 March 2009 17.40 GMT

Senior figures in the manufacturing industry do not accept that human activities are driving global warming or that action needs to be taken to prepare for its effects, the UK government’s science minister saidtoday .

Lord Drayson said recent discussions with leaders in the car industry and other businesses had left him “shocked” at the number of climate change deniers among senior industrialists. Of those who acknowledged that global temperatures were rising, many blamed it on variations in the sun’s activity.

Speaking in London to mark the launch of a new centre that will gather information from satellites to improve understanding of how the Earth’s environment is changing, Lord Drayson said there was an urgent need to restate the scientific evidence for global warming and called for companies to focus on their environmental obligations despite the pressures of the economic downturn.

“There is a significant minority of senior managers who do not accept the evidence for climate change and don’t see the need to take action,” Drayson said. “It really shocked me that those views are held, and it’s not limited to the car industry.”

“The industrialists are faced with a very difficult challenge, which is huge infrastructure investment in existing ways of doing business and very difficult global economic circumstances.

“The temptation is to say we’ll get round to dealing with climate change once we’ve fixed all this other stuff. We need to present them with the evidence to say this can’t wait, we need to fix both,” he added.

The new centre will receive £33m over the next five years and will coordinate research using Earth-observing satellite data at 26 British universities and institutions. Known as the National Centre for Earth Observation, it will focus on ways to improve climate change models, sea level rise estimates, flooding forecasts and ways to predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It also hopes to develop improved weather forecasting software ahead of the London Olympics in 2012.

A major task for the centre will be to use real-time measurements of sea ice melting, droughts and atmospheric conditions to hone computer models that climate scientists use to predict future warming and its effects.

“Earth-orbiting satellites are revolutionising our understanding of planet Earth, in terms of how it works and what forces work against it, not least from climate change. But in order to get more from that data, to get climate information on 10 year scales, and on regional scales, we’ve got to iron out some significant issues we have with the computer models,” said Alan O’Neill, director of the centre.

Some environmental processes are so poorly understood that they hinder the ability of climate models to make accurate predictions. The amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from deforestation in the tropics is so uncertain that estimates range from 0.7 to 2.6bn tonnes a year. Other scientists say that some feedback processes in the atmosphere are so unclear they do not even know if they will speed up global warming or slow it down.

The centre was due to take data from Nasa’s ill-fated Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite, which crashed into the ocean near Antarctica shortly after take-off last month. The satellite was designed to bolster understanding of climate change by mapping levels of CO² in the atmosphere.

Three new Earth observing satellites are scheduled to launch this year, including the European Space Agency’s Goce probe, which by mapping the Earth’s gravity field will reveal details of changes in ocean currents. Another satellite, Smos, will measure soil moisture and ocean salinity, with the third, cryosat-2, monitoring the thickness of continental ice sheets and sea ice cover.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/04/emissio…

Turner adds voice to calls for a ‘floor price’ on carbon permits

Chairman of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change adds an influential voice to calls for a minimum price for carbon pollution permits

Juliette Jowit

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 March 2009 17.15 GMT

A minimum price for carbon pollution permits should be considered to stop current low trading prices scaring off investment in cutting emissions, the government’s top climate change adviser urged today .

The steep drop in the price of carbon under the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) – from about €30 (£26.75) a tonne last summer to €8 (£7.13) last month – has recently prompted calls for a “floor” price.

Today, Lord Turner, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, added an influential voice to calls for the move to be considered, though the committee said more evidence was needed to be sure if current low prices would continue. The recent prices compare poorly to an projected price of £40 per tonne of carbon dioxide in a report by Turner’s committee last year, which led to the UK committing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.

“We have concerns [that] if the carbon price continued at its present level it would not send the signals which are required [to investors],” Turner told MPs on the energy and climate change select committee. “I’d think, given the fall in the carbon price this year, that’s something that should be considered. It would, of course, need to be considered at European level.”

In January the European commission appeared to rule out intervening to prop up the falling price of carbon, and Ed Miliband, the UK climate change secretary, told the Financial Times he was “not convinced that a floor is particularly necessary”.

Carbon trading is a key mechanism by which countries will seek to reduce emissions in a global climate deal to be negotiated in Copenhagen in December.

Concerns about a price floor in the ETS include the threat to EU businesses competing against rivals outside the trading scheme, and that it would make it more difficult to link the European system to other markets around the world, something high on the agenda for the Copenhagen talks.

A planned-for reduction in the allocation of carbon credits under the next phase of the European scheme, reducing by 1.7% each year from 2013 to 2020, would push up the price of carbon and so mean a floor was “not needed”, said Endre Tvinnereim, a senior analyst for Point Carbon, independent experts in energy and carbon markets.

However Richard Gledhill, head of carbon market services for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, said there was growing interest in the issue: “Given where carbon prices are, and the scale of the challenge, I think we should look at this very seriously.”

Today, the ETS price recovered to nearly €12 during morning trading.

The Most Depressing Day
by Jo Abbess
19th January 2009

It really has been a most depressing day, lacking in verve, colour or any sign of encouragement. Psychologists have declared this to be “Blue Monday”, the most depressing day of the year.

I wanted to have some drive, some energy to get up and go get on with things, but after a really long train journey, during which I became so demotivated I feel asleep and snored my co-travellers to distraction, I then feel asleep again at my destination, face down with my travel bags around me, instead of getting busy.

No zip. No zoom. No zap. Just general overpowering tiredness. Can last for days. “Perma-tired”, it’s called, I’ve been informed.

What really drove me into stupor and torpor was a sudden unveiling of reality whilst I was chugging along on the train. I looked out on mile upon mile, row upon row of typical English houses, terraced, detached, semi.

My eyes stared with a dread sense of defeat, as I realised that I could not begin to calculate just how much Energy was being wasted by these poorly constructed, poorly insulated homes.

I thought about the uselessness of the Government’s informmercials about standby lights and turning things off. Anybody who wanted to respond to the call to Save Energy has done so by now. No more “communications” can convert any new minds.

And besides, heat is more of a problem that electricity. How do you get people to deny themselves comfort by turning down the thermostat ?

I thought about how the State invested so much in making sure that people got the equipment installed in their homes so that they could all be “cooking with gas”. Even though the Oil and Gas Engineers knew that British Oil and British Gas would eventually start to falter, peak and start to decline.

I thought about the class divide – those people that read serious things at breakfast, and those that don’t read much at all. All those who are well-informed have been told the reality on Climate Change and Energy, and they have started to grow their own food, burn wood in their living room biomass heaters, and started cycling more.

But they still fly, they still have fashion-statement machines, cars and gadgets; they still waste Energy.

As for the uninformed and undecided, and the plain manipulated sceptics, how are they ever going to be willing and able to take part in a national PowerDown ?

We are going to need to have a Government-regulated cut in Energy use, sometime. The people are not ready. Their homes leak, and there’s no national organisation of skilled insulation engineers, paid or voluntary.

I thought of a chance conversation with someone in my family, who mocked a prominent Environmentalist, painting the picture that campaigning on Climate Change is like campaigning on any other social issue – disposable in the face of other concerns.

Let’s face it – with the Economic collapse, Wealth has probably contracted by around 20%. People are going to have to be engaged more than ever with money-making activities and have so much less time and energy for things like draught-proofing their homes.

If all of us are busy coping with Economic uncertainty, and struggling to keep heads above water, even less of our personal energy will be spent on addressing Energy efficiencies and savings.

And then I realised something else. Like 80% of the population, I am in dire need of motivation to get so many practical things done. Trivia and paperwork occupy valuable leisure and household time to the extent that there are things I haven’t gotten around to for years. Unless I am with practical people, I end up doing few practical things.

We’re all at sea, and I’m right there along with everyone else.

Nobody can fix Climate Change all by themselves. And as we all so desperately cling to our individual space and our individual ways, it’s hard to make friendships and professional services relationships that will count in the insulation and Energy saving game.

There are trust issues with plumbers, carpenters, engineers of every kind. We all know at least one rogue builder…Charges for normal home renovations and repairs are bad enough. Any demand for insulation and airtightness services will bring out the same charlatans making superfluous charges as those who ran the solar power racket for a decade.

There are way too few people who know how to insulate a home cheaply, using local materials and skills. They are way too few people who understand heat and Energy.

Recently, I tried to explain to a young relative of mine who has an interest in Physics about the amount of Energy wasted in the United Kingdom : in 2007, virtually half of the Primary Energy consumed was wasted in bringing the Energy to the end user, much of that in power stations.

And what of the Energy delivered to the end users : how inefficiently is that used ? Why are people required to travel further and further for work, essential services, entertainment ? Why is there an increasing number of electrical devices in public spaces ?

Why do people believe they need to heat their homes rather than insulate them ?

How on Earth are we going to stop wasting Energy ?

Snowball Earth, Baked Alaska
by Jo Abbess
8th January 2009

Sometimes, the daily newspapers, even the most well-respected ones, get their Science in a twist.

The Daily Telegraph started early this year, with an awful and inaccurate summary of some startling results from the geology of ancient rocks.

Despite several informative Press Releases, and several write-ups by the academic world, the Daily Telegraph correspondent got it muddled.

Things could have been eased if the journalist had published corrections after receiving communications from the researchers themselves and a group of Climate Change activists and bloggers.

But, no. The Daily Telegraph has so far refused to admit they got it wrong. Plus, they’re not replying to e-mails on the subject.

I think we can put The Daily Telegraph forward for an early nomination for the science blog RealClimate’s “Most obstinately wrong media outlet” review of 2009, to add to their runner up status in 2008 :-

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/12/200…

To : richard.alleyne@telegraph.co.uk,

CC : editor@telegraph.co.uk, dtletters@telegraph.co.uk, stletters@telegraph.co.uk, charles.clover@telegraph.co.uk

Dear Richard Alleyne,

I am writing to you for the second time in connection with your article entitled “Greenhouse gases could have caused an ice age, claim scientists”, which I read in the online Daily Telegraph on 1st January 2009 :-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechang…

After corresponding with Dr Huiming Bao, one of the researchers who co-wrote the paper with Dr Ian Fairchild, and verifying with him my understanding of the research paper (published in Science Magazine on 2nd January 2009) and other materials kindly provided by him, I can assert with a very high degree of confidence that your reporting was inaccurate.

I am so confident that you are mistaken in what you wrote, that I feel justified in asking you to publish corrections to your article, as it could obviously be misleading to let mis-interpretation stand uncommented.

I shall give you a short summary of where I believe you have failed to grasp what is being said by the scientists.

1. The article title

The title for your article is an inaccurate summary of the research paper.

You wrote : “Greenhouse gases could have caused an ice age, claim scientists : Filling the atmosphere with Greenhouse gases associated with global warming could push the planet into a new ice age, scientists have warned.”

These statements bear no resemblance to the contents of the research paper, entitled “Stretching the Envelope of Past Surface Environments: Neoproterozoic Glacial Lakes from Svalbard”.

The research paper presents evidence that whilst the Earth was in a very cold phase, weathering of rocks must have been greatly reduced, because of signs of a build-up of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, that had direct chemical effects on rocks formed during that period.

Weathering of rocks is one of the main geological processes that removes Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and locks it into land and ocean material.

If weathering over the entire planet were severely restricted, this must imply that the land and ocean are covered. Since the period is presumed to have been very cold, the conclusion is that the Earth must have been extensively covered in ice.

Since the formation of the Earth, Carbon Dioxide has continually been added to the atmosphere through the process of vulcanism : volcanoes spew massive amounts of Carbon Dioxide, Methane and other gases and particles into the atmosphere.

If no weathering of any significant amount is taking place, Carbon Dioxide must be building up in the atmosphere.

The evidence that the research paper analyses also includes signs that as the cold phase on Earth ended, rocks were formed that showed that weathering had re-commenced.

This means that Carbon Dioxide build-up in the atmosphere causes Global Warming, or the ice age would not have ended.

All the analysis of the rocks was based on the ratio of the three main Oxygen isotopes in the material. Various chemical reactions were proposed to account for the results, and the conclusion is that the rocks at the time of the end of the ice age were formed in lakes that were rapidly evaporating, pointing to rapid global warming.

A more correct title for your article could have been : “Greenhouse gases ended an almost permanent ice age, claim scientists // Without the Greenhouse gases from volcanoes, the planet could still be in an almost totally icy state, scientists have concluded”

2. Your first, second and third paragraph

You wrote : “Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that 630 million years ago the earth had a warm atmosphere full of carbon dioxide but was completely covered with ice. // The scientists studied limestone rocks and found evidence that large amounts of greenhouse gas coincided with a prolonged period of freezing temperatures. // Such glaciation could happen again if global warming is not curbed, the university’s school of geography, earth and environmental sciences warned.”

Well, the number of years ago actually given was 635 million years (approximately), in both the Louisiana State University official Press Release and the research paper itself.

And yes, the Earth itself was cold and probably mostly covered in ice.

And yes, the Earth had a warm atmosphere, if it had the high levels of Carbon Dioxide that the evidence points to. Ice over large parts of the Earth had caused weathering processes to virtually cease, and so Carbon Dioxide that was continuing to come out of volcanic eruptions was accumulating in the atmosphere.

The Earth was cool before the Carbon Dioxide accumulated. The Carbon Dioxide did not cause the Earth to cool down, and it did not cause the ice to form.

The presence of high levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, led to a warming atmosphere, which led to the melting of virtually all, if not totally all, of the ice of Earth, by the process of Global Warming.

This statement, then, is ridiculous “Such glaciation could happen again if global warming is not curbed…”

3. Your fourth and fifth paragraphs

You wrote : “While pollution in the air is thought to trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, causing the planet to heat up, this new research suggests it could also have the opposite effect reflecting rays back into space. // This effect would be magnified by other forms of pollution in the earth’s atmosphere such as particles of sulphate pumped into the air through industrial pollution or volcanic activity and could create ice age conditions once more, the scientists said.”

Here you make one giant leap of confusion in my opinion, conflating the concept of “Greenhouse gases” with the more general term “pollution”.

If you consult the literature on the various “radiative forcing” of various atmospheric gases and airborne particles, some of them cause Global Dimming, and hence Global Cooling; whilst others cause Global Warming.

The United Nations body of work, and that of the major scientific establishments around the world attest to the fact that some gases and chemicals and particles are warming the atmosphere, and the land and the oceans, and some are preventing that warming.

With non-gaseous substances it can often depend on the height at which they sit in atmosphere.

Let’s take a classic example : that of the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in 1991. This is what Wikipedia says :-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo

“The effects of the eruption were felt worldwide. It ejected roughly 10 billion metric tonnes (10 cubic kilometres) of magma, and 20 million tons of SO2, bringing vast quantities of minerals and metals to the surface environment. It injected large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere—more than any eruption since that of Krakatoa in 1883. Over the following months, the aerosols formed a global layer of sulfuric acid haze. Global temperatures dropped by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F), and ozone depletion temporarily increased substantially.”

Here’s a transcript of an excellent piece about Global Dimming :-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimmin…

Radiative forcing : Figure SPM.2 on Page 4 in here :-

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-…

There are ongoing arguments about how various aerosols (airborne particles of various kinds) impact on Global Warming : soot, for example :-

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/s…

4. The next paragraph

You wrote, quoting Dr Ian Fairchild : ” “It happened naturally in the past, but the wrong use of technology could make it happen again.” ”

You may or may not be aware of the efforts to “geo-engineer” the planet, by, for example, dumping iron filings in the oceans to seed Carbon Dioxide-sucking phytoplankton growth :-

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/environment/solving-climate…$2-billion-200901052708/

or spraying sulphates into the upper atmosphere to reflect some of the Sun’s light back into space, hence causing Global Cooling :-

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/c…

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/scientist-publis…

What Dr Fairchild is referring to is that possibility that this action could cause such a strong Global Cooling that the Earth could freeze over, just as it did in Precambrian times.

He is pointing to the risk of injecting large quantities of sulphates into the upper atmosphere, because the final effect is not quantifiable.

5. Your last paragraph

You wrote : “The limestones studied were collected in Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean, which is covered in ice and snow.”

The important point to mention is that this area, even though it is currently mostly covered in ice and snow, has rock formations at the surface, which are exceptionally well-preserved, showing signs of glacial retreat – in other words, at one time even this area was ice-free.

The rocks in the area preserve strong evidence of the air and water conditions at the time they were formed in their chemicals and isotopes, and they indicate that planet-wide Global Warming took place, when the atmosphere was very rich in Carbon Dioxide.

6. Extra links that point the way to more accurate information

https://www.2theadvocate.com/news/36988124.html?showAll=y&…

https://www.gees.bham.ac.uk/staff/fairchildresearchglacial…

I would appreciate your acknowledgement of receipt of this communication, and a response concerning whether and when you will be publishing corrections to your article.

Thank you.

Yours,

…

Comments from Dr Huiming Bao, one of the researchers

Regarding the paragraph starting “A more correct title for your article…”

Dr Bao writes : “I would prefer this “Scientists discovered evidence of extremely high CO2 concentration near the end of a global glaciations event ~635 million years ago” ”

In discussing the age of the rocks : “the number of years ago actually given was 635 million years (approximately)”

Dr Bao writes : “It is ok to use 630 instead of 635. It’s a round up. In fact, we don’t know the exact age. It could be anywhere from 650 to 580.”

In discussing the end of the ice age : “the conclusion is that the rocks at the time of the end of the ice age were formed in lakes that were rapidly evaporating, pointing to rapid global warming”

Dr Bao write : “Note that we deliberately leave room (or you can say “vague”) for either snowball or slushball.”

A “Snowball Earth” would be almost 100% glaciated. A “Slushball Earth” would be mostly glaciated, still allowing some weathering of rocks, still building up Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

The rocks under analysis could have been deposited in an evaporating lake when the Earth was still highly glaciated in the “Slushball Earth” scenario, or they could have been deposited in an evaporating lake when the Earth was undergoing a period of intense Global Warming at the end of a “Snowball Earth” scenario.

In discussing the coincidence of a highly glaciated planet and high levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere :-

Dr Bao writes : “might be influenced by my co-author Ian Fairchild who may insist it’s still cold during the deposition of [ the rock formation under analysis ].”

In other words, either the rock was formed while the planet was still cold, before it started to undergo intense Global Warming, or the rock might have formed during the period of intense Global Warming, but the evidence shows that a period of intense Global Warming must have taken place. It can be deduced, as the rock formation points to extensive glaciation and de-glaciation.

Where Richard Alleyne writes : “While pollution in the air is thought to trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, causing the planet to heat up, this new research suggests it could also have the opposite effect reflecting rays back into space. // This effect would be magnified by other forms of pollution in the earth’s atmosphere such as particles of sulphate pumped into the air through industrial pollution or volcanic activity and could create ice age conditions once more, the scientists said.”

Dr Bao writes : “I did not say this. Such statement or content is not in our paper either. Perhaps, the author quoted Ian’s “small-talk” in a wrong way.”

When I corresponded with Dr Huiming Bao in response to these comments, I asked :-

“I think it would be fair to say that, on the evidence you have so far that (a) If [ the rock under analysis ] was laid down while the Earth was cold, the evidence is that the Earth became less cold quite soon after that; OR (b) If [ the rock under analysis ] was laid down as Global Warming from the ice age was taking place, that the Earth would be warming up rapidly then. Is that OK, or is that really wrong of me to say that ?”

Dr Bao replied : “That’s fine.”

In With The New
The big Climate Change story is not rising Sea Levels
by Jo Abbess
1st January 2009

By far the largest mistake of the Media throughout 2008 was to place a magnifying glass on very small fragments of the Climate Change story.

Global Warming ? Well, yes, this is the nub of the big problem, but by focussing on the complexities of temperature data, and giving contrarian and denialist views a platform, the Media have prevented real public debate on the observed data of Climate Change.

You see, it’s not a question of whether the World is warming up or not at any one particular moment. The long-term trend is clear. (And yes, it’s up).

What we really need to focus on is what we can see happening already, and help the public debate move on to productive lines of thought, such as asking : how can we stop the changes ? And how can we adapt to them ?

Rising Sea Levels ? Well, yes, this will be important in 25 years’ time, but it’s not the big story of the moment. The most important water themes just now are the stress on supplies of fresh water, failing harvests due to rainfall changes, meltdown in the snow- and ice-pack globally and increasing storm-related “natural” disasters.

Waste and Recycling ? Well, yes, the enormous waste stream is symptomatic of a throwaway consumer culture, which breeds increasing Greenhouse Gas emissions and wastes Energy everywhere in the trade stream. But the heating and cooling and transport “needs” of the Globalised Retail Economy, and the heating and transport “needs” of modern consumers are the big problem for the Environment.

Polar Bears ? Well, yes, cute furry animals are fascinating and engaging, but the biggest habitat issues are the migration of entire ecosystems, including plants, which is breaking up food chains; and migration of peoples due to Climate Change stress, an effect which is currently explained as the “economic” migration of people to urban areas.

Stressed Marine Life ? Well, yes, a combination of over-fishing and chemical poisoning can be blamed, but the big story is the Marine Change due to the build-up of Carbon Dioxide in the upper waters, acidifying the environment and destroying the marine ecocultures, quite literally by dissolving them in the microscopic realm. This is ruining the food chain, and is leading to gas and liquid fraction imbalances in the sea waters, reducing the oxygen levels in the upper layers, and creating Dead Zones.

The disappearance of old ocean ice in the Arctic is one big flashing red light of a signal that Global Warming is taking place, and the research is now showing that localised warming in the Arctic is having large impacts on the surrounding cold land areas, causing more localised warming again.

But the Arctic is fairly remote and relatively unpopulated, apart from vociferous Inuit (but do we get to hear from them in the mainstream Media ?)

The potential effects of Local Warming in the Arctic include : massive outgassing of Methane from tundra and the seabed (Methane is a potent though short-lived Greenhouse Gas); massive upheaval for water, ground and ice systems in the region; security problems due to a sailable Arctic Ocean; huge losses in Marine life (which will have global impacts).

But none of this means much to the ordinary readers of the newspapers and the casual watchers of the regular TV news.

The Media have a responsibility to tell the real news, the currently observed impacts of Climate Change in the human-populated areas of the World.

In 2009, they should start to focus on the human interest narratives in Climate Change, bringing it home and making it real to their followers, those who choose to spend their 45 minutes commuting time with their noses in their folds.

For example, the big-selling print newspapers could write about the stress on water supplies, e.g. in Europe, the United States, Australia, you know, big economies.

They could task one of their Environment journalists to read Fred Pearce’s illuminating and worrying book : “When the Rivers Run Dry: What Happens when Our Water Runs Out” (ISBN 1903919576)

https://www.susdev.co.uk/book_rivers_run_dry.htm

“Startling Statistics”

They could write about the drought, the diverting of agricultural water to human needs, the loss of crops.

If they want to give it city-level scale, they could pick a town or city, say, Atlanta, Georgia. Water problems there are currently being reported on in terms of financial collapse of the American economy, but it runs deeper than that. Atlanta has basically run out of fresh water due to changes in the rainfall patterns.

Yes, the agricultural irrigation needs figure in the equation, but things have clearly changed if human populations are vying with the farmers for what water is there.

https://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2008/12/thur…

“Group pushes water-conservation measures”

https://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/20…

“Morris Brown: School will close if water isn’t restored”

https://www.daltondailycitizen.com/local/local_story_36522…

“Cope: State water plan doesn’t consider economy”

This story is being repeated in slow motion just about everywhere. It’s beginning to show up in the British Media, but it hasn’t gained a pulse yet :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/29/water-s…

“Running dry, running out: we’re wasting too much water despite warnings to turn off taps”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/4001456/Half…

“Half of England and Wales at risk of extreme drought, report warns : Nearly half the households in England and Wales live in areas that are at risk of extreme drought, according to a report by the Environment Agency.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1102724/Less-wate…

“Less water per head than Egypt: 25million live in areas which could face drought rationing”

https://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/Supply-costs-to-r…

“Supply costs to rise as water levels drop”

https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-…

“Johann Hari: My New Year resolution is to lose my bottle – and quit Coke : While we merrily sip their water, a third of Fijians have no clean water at all”

And, naturally, it’s worse in Africa :-

https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel…

“Acute water shortage in Takoradi : Assakai (WR), Dec. 21, GNA – Residents of Assakai, Chapel Hill, New Takoradi, Bankye-ase, and Windy Ridge Extension, all suburbs of Takoradi, have appealed to management of Acqua-Vitens Rand, Operators of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) to rectify the acute water shortage that has hit the areas over the past month.”

Strictly In Lockstep
The Tightly-Coupled Carbon Tango
by Jo Abbess
24th December 2008

If anyone needed proof that Energy and Economy are tightly coupled, one would need look no further than the December 2008 Energy Trends from the BERR :-

https://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file49202.pdf

The charts show that in the latter part of the year, as the Economy goes into freefall, Energy consumption dips away as well. What a complete non-surprise !

And yet, very few people are discussing the full implications of this “lockstep”, this dance of Global Warming death, resulting from over 90% of our Energy coming from High Carbon resources : Coal, Natural Gas and Petroleum Oil.

To re-build Value into the Economy, more Energy will be needed to power productivity. Many of the current Energy plants and grids are falling into disrepair, and so many policy thinkers are concentrating on Economic re-generation through fiscal stimuli in the Energy sectors.

If we want to pull the United Kingdom out of Recession, we will be spending not only more money, but more Carbon on new Energy infrastructure, even if that Energy is Renewable and clean.

Does this mean then, that ironically, we may can kiss our Kyoto and Climate Change Bill targets goodbye ?

And does this therefore mean that pragmatism will kick in, that compromises will be made, that short-term decisions for Economic protection will rely on new Energy resources from the same old High-Carbon Fossil Fuels ?

There are two trends to watch. The first is how swiftly the Economy “bottoms out” Carbon emissions. Some analysts have estimated that up to 20% of the Economy has been voided virtually overnight – that a fifth of all wealth has literally vanished due to the cessation of credit and loans.

The number to watch is national Carbon emissions : since over 90% of all Energy used in the Economy is High Carbon, a 20% collapse in the Economy could equate to somewhere in the region of 15% Carbon emissions reductions. The likely time in which to achieve this could be within months of the Economy reaching its own low point.

If new Value is not created in the Economy in the medium- to long-term, this contraction of wealth could be permanent, and this could mean therefore that the reduction in Carbon emissions is also permanent.

This is therefore the number to watch. If Carbon emissions start to rise again, it could be a sign that the Economy is building up again. There will probably never again be large numbers for “economic growth”, but a few percentage points would be welcomed.

If the Carbon emissions reductions brought on by the Recession are permanent, we could meet our Kyoto and European Union targets very easily for five years or so, although this would be at a cost of high unemployment and low economic activity.

The second trend to watch is which Energy resources are chosen for the new infrastructure required. In the United States, in 13 years the utilities have installed electricity generation plant equivalent in output to 25% of the nation’s total use – and none of it was Coal-fired or Nuclear :-

https://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/12/23/122348/78

In the United Kingdom, the private Energy companies are showing continued reluctance to build new Coal and Nuclear power stations, despite continued Government sweet nothings and positive murmurings.

The recent takeover of British (Nuclear) Energy could hold a real promise of a real plan for new Nuclear Power Stations, but only the one, or at best two, in all likelihood. However building them would be contingent on getting real taxpayer support, and this would be strongly resisted, given the current economic climate.

There is enormous democratic resistance to a resurgence in Coal, and some very public protests and direct action. It seems that signing off new Coal-fired generation plant could be very problematic, politically and practically.

Some key decisions about Nuclear Power and Coal are coming up in the next six months, and those decisions will have an enormous impact on public support for the Government’s Energy plans.

If the numbers go the way of Coal and/or Nuclear, we could see the Government being hounded out of office for lack of accountability and lack of responsibility.

Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State, Minister for the Department of Energy and Climate Change has made noises to the effect that privatised Energy industries are not appropriate bodies to manage new Energy investment, and has made the case for re-nationalisation of Energy :-

https://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_s…

But even if that were to happen, he could not issue a diktat for more Coal-fired generation and more Nuclear Power without severe and entrenched resistance. The new relaxed Planning Laws would allow for rapid Coal and Nuclear development in theory, but in practice, people would actively resist.

The dialogue about Energy keeps throwing up anxious voices who claim that Great Britain will suffer blackouts if we don’t have new Energy investment, and have it as soon as possible :-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/38…

The need for new Energy investment, coupled with the ongoing need to cut Carbon emissions points to an obvious solution : cutting out the waste.

Fifty years of Energy infrastructure development has seen centralised thermal power plants that are highly inefficient. Fifty years of Economic development following the lines of Consumer Capitalism has seen rapid uptake of Energy resources, which are now embedded in social, corporate and public infrastructure, for example : office lights on, around the clock.

The Recession could give us a head start on reducing our Carbon emissions, but after that has troughed we will need new strategies, both to carry on cutting the Carbon, and also making sure that Energy supplies are secure.

Energy efficiencies are the obvious means to permanently reducing our Energy and Carbon profiles, and enabling new Energy infrastructure to satisfy Low Carbon needs.

Every company and public body should make full Carbon Disclosure, and have targets set in cooperation with the Carbon Trust or the Energy Savings Trust.

The Government should be “picking winners” from new and sustainable Energy technologies, and utilities should implement them, whether remaining in private ownership, or re-nationalised.

No New Coal. No New Nuclear. Renewables from now on.

Image Credit : NASA GISS

The Squelch Effect
by Jo Abbess
23rd December 2008

No, it’s true. Even to the most uninformed cursory observer of the records, 2008 has been a cooler year.

In parts, that is.

The overall averages for the year have shown the impact of the Squelch Effect from La Nina, an upwelling of cold waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

We had some courageously cold months over Winter at the start of the year, and in some regions, like North Western Europe and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, things have not been colder for decades.

But take a look at the monthly averages of global temperature for the year, and you will see that as the Squelch Effect has tailed off, there is an unmistakable upward trend :-

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/2008+2005+2007.gif

This makes 2008, averaged January to November, the ninth warmest since records began, and November’s rating is halfway between the November temperature of the first and second hottest years ever overall.

The temperature has bounced back from La Nina and we can expect records to be shredded in 2009, sadly.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you Global Warming stopped in 1998. It was just taking a short rest, to catch its breath.

Anyone who disagrees with that is patently propagating fallacies.

Too Painful To Watch
by Jo Abbess
21st December 2008

“They still do that ?” asked my osteopath, mid-crack. “Yes”, I lamented, “We’re still burning coal to make power, in remote plants, the most wasteful and dirty thing you can do.”

It really is too painful to watch, and I don’t mean the spine manipulation. I mean the Coal-enabled light juice making. It’s like being forced to watch a car crash in slow motion, with your hands, and maybe feet, if you’re that flexible, tied behind your back, with no way of stopping the dreadful eventuality.

Coal, Nature’s own once permanent and tidy sequestration of Carbon, being raked up and torched. All so that people can squander power to do things like watch people faking some heightened emotion whilst performing some form of massage, on cable television, say.

Base instincts aside, what can be driving the Power Industry and the peppy young dapper Mr Ed Miliband in their drive for Coal ?

On the occasion of his congratulatory obligation to speak in the House of Commons on the occasion of his “election” to the post of Secretary of State for the newly hatched Department for Energy and Climate Change, I noticed that poor Ed had a stinking, streaming cold.

Well, everyone in the known Universe seemed to have a rather nasty cold that particular week, and yet there were still some brave stalwarts who braved their public Parliamentary workplace, even as they honked and snorted, even that little Sarah Teather girl MP, who had to wear a heavy shawl to stop herself being blown away by the force of her hacking respiratory infection. She needs looking after, I ruminated. Although I’m not a sheep.

Anyway, back to the Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP. BBC Parliament afforded me a wonderful opportunity to size up the man’s phlegmatism during his welcome to the House. Colin Challen MP afforded him praise and congratulations. Colin, you remember, has worked tirelessly to make Climate Change a real political issue.

Colin Challen MP. Have you heard of him ? Ah, I thought not. Most people haven’t. Not newsworthy enough. Well, I think he’s newsworthy myself, but the mainstream media apparently do not.

Maybe that’s because he’s not Oxbridge, only Hull. Whereas that little Teather thing is Cambridge educated. And do you know what the word “education” actually means ? Probably only if you’ve studied Latin. And you’ll probably have studied Latin only if you were being groomed for Oxford or Cambridge. But we’ll leave education to another day, perhaps.

Back to the case in point : Mr Miliband junior. Let’s read a little review of some of what took place :-

https://www.newenergyfocus.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid…

Government clashes with Tories over carbon capture

13-11-08

Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband has defended the government’s commitment to meeting its carbon emissions targets, as he came under fire in Parliament today.

As Energy and Climate Change questions in the House of Commons got under way, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate change Mr Miliband was challenged on the Severn Barrage and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Mr Miliband was asked by opposition members to explain how the government’s refusal to rule out building new coal power stations without CCS – or “dirty coal” as the Tories refer to it – was conducive to meeting government carbon emissions targets.

But Mr Miliband said that the government’s “top priority” was to prevent a major blackout of energy supply and called the Tories’ opposition to new coal “dogmatic”.

What I think he actually said was that he himself was not “dogmatic” about Coal, trying to distance and differentiate himself from the Conservative Party opposition.

But I think he damn well should be dogmatic about Coal.

Coal has gotten us into most of this Climate Change mess. No amount of burning Coal can put that right.

Carbon Capture and Storage engineering technologies currently being pursued all rely on burning additional Coal at Coal-fired thermal electricity generation plants, and using that extra burn energy to capture and pump the Carbon Dioxide underground.

That Carbon Dioxide being the waste Greenhouse gas from burning the Coal. You end up burning something like 20% more coal, to optimally capture 90% of the emissions, and your chances of permanent storage are in the region of 75%. Added to that, given that the full range of the necessary technologies is not even on the engineering drawing board or the accountancy tables, there is a 100% risk of failure to complete.

It’s a real case of Dr Seuss engineering. Impossible cantilevers, gravity-defying aqueducts and pathways, breaking the Laws of Physics at every turn, bubble and tread.

Coal is bad. Very bad. But it’s not evil, just wrong. It’s the wrong Energy source for the future. And although some people would have you believe there is a rich carpet of lignite stretching the whole way around the globe, in fact, Coal is finite. And supplies are stressed. And eventually, costs will be stressed too. And we know where that leads.

Coal is not a sustainable fuel for the future. And it’s very likely to cause Climate Meltdown even if we just use it for a few short decades as a stop-gap to prevent the feared blackouts.

It’s a “no” in my household. I should be the UK Supreme Nanny and just tell the Energy children a firm “no”, and that should be that. My word should be final.

What causes Ed Miliband to keep Coal warming in his grate ? Ah, that would be the international technological policy position of the United Nations on Carbon Capture and Storage, and the European commitment to Carbon Capture and Storage. And the Chinese commitment to poisoning everybody with Coal so that we can all have uber-cheap sticky tinsel for Christmas. ( But it’s all about Trade, isn’t it, Mandy m’Lord Mandelson, not creating Real Lasting Value ? )

Ed Miliband MP, just like Roger Harrabin before him, and my osteopath too, needs an education.

The only option for Coal is to leave it in the ground.

I’m lifting my glass of Christmas cheer to the future health and well-being of my friend’s baby Josiah, who had breathing problems shortly after birth, no doubt due to a variety of air pollutants, of which, worldwide, Coal and cars are amongst the worst contributors.

Our New Green Hero
by Jo Abbess
19th December 2008

After the first flush of the cool promise of Obama Heaven, I bring you our new green hero : The Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, Secretary of State for the UK Government Department of Energy and Climate Change, or DECC.

Apparently, Ed considers the outrageous slings and unfortunate arrows of criticism, (and I presume he means negative criticism), as part of his job description.

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7751038.stm

“Miliband: Criticism ‘part of job'”

Why does he think he has to face such opposition, and why does he think it is necessary, when the Government has just rocked the House of Commons with a storming Climate Change Bill, guaranteeing in Law an 80% reduction in Carbon Emissions by 2050, with immense public, scientific and political support ?

It’s potentially all revealed in this little paragraph “Popular pressure must be exerted on decision makers to ensure progress on cutting emissions was made, he argued.”

So what he’s after is some big public show of support for policies on Climate Change. Even after the Friends of the Earth Big Ask campaign, the Stop Climate Chaos coalition actions in the last few years, and the clear involvement of thousands in Climate Camp each Summer.

He clarified that message again recently, notoriously, on 8th December :-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labou…

“Ed Miliband urges ‘popular mobilisation’ to tackle climate change”

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/08/ed-mili…

“People power vital to climate deal – minister”

This was, spookily, the very same day that protesters shutdown Stansted Airport :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/08/stanste…

“Climate activists held after Stansted runway protest”

Resonant, but were these two things actually related ? You bet they were.

People are clearly not impressed by announcements on “support” for new Nuclear Power, whatever that word “support” actually turns out to mean.

All around the World, Nuclear New Build is having a tough time, with projects stalling or coming in late with “spiralling costs”.

People are also not really impressed by big technofix solutions being dressed up for us on a plate, such as Carbon Capture and Storage, which is really transparent window dressing for burning ever greater quantities of cheap Coal, which we can dig up unprettily and messily at home.

And where’s the kit to pump the resulting greenhouse gases back into the ground ? Ah, it’s being tested. For a while. Perhaps a decade.

Is there a remote possibility that Ed Miliband wants the Great British Public to support policies that are irrational, expensive and impossible to complete ?

We already know which way he swings, Energy-orientation-wise. He’s no scientist or engineer, so he doesn’t perceive the pitfalls about Carbon Capture and Storage.

But that doesn’t stop him wholeheartedly backing the United Nations core policy on Coal, concreted over the last five years or so; nor the European commitment to use much of the proceeds of Carbon Permit Auctions to finance Carbon Capture and Storage business.

He clearly hasn’t read the reams and reams of reports from Nuclear technician and engineering experts on the fallibility, the solid risks of new Nuclear Power projects.

He clearly hasn’t got the background in the 50 years of Energy Waste that is the Coal-fired centralised electricity generation industry.

He just goes along with all this, seemingly without question, for example dropping this into a recent speech, under cover of hinting at future National ownership of new Energy :-

https://newenergyfocus.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=1&l…

“Miliband: Dynamic markets “not enough” for UK energy : …

The Secretary of State said the best prospects for future energy would be based on a “trinity” of renewable energy, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems for fossil fuel plants. … ”

He has clearly been nobbled, and nobbled at the highest level of order.

His strategy ? Suggest we all club together (again) and mass mobilise against him. Or is that for him, actually ? Are we being manipulated ? It has lose-lose potential, and most people with any knowledge will have none of it.

The Climate Safety Report made much of the supposedly cool connection to Government policymakers that PIRC.info and many others enjoy, by backing the idea of “mass mobilisation”.

https://climatesafety.org

Ah, the heady, verbose, sickly-sweet air of Social Science.

And today, The Guardian Newspaper ran an article by Richard Wilson, author of such worthy tomes as “People and Participation” and “Post Party Politics” :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/19/climate…

“Climate change: ‘We need to unleash the power of the masses'”

Your Energy and Climate Change Minister is asking you to support really, really bad plans, and to do so in a network of engaged Citizens.

My view is : you can forget what has worked in the past, even the recent past.

Don’t try to offer me such ideas as “campaigning networks” or “wider social engagement”.

We’re all completely insane if we think that what used to work in Society will work now. Everything’s changed.

Look around you and see.

Gordon Brown’s Lightbulb Moment
by Jo Abbess
6th September 2008

While we’re waiting with excitement and trepidation for the Renewables Consultation to close on 26th September, we have the Fuel Poverty Windfall Bonanza saga to focus our minds on.

https://renewableconsultation.berr.gov.uk/

The argument goes like this (if you’ve not been following closely) : various factors have been strongly influencing the price of Energy in the last couple of years : two of them being the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and the speculation about Peak Oil fundamentals.

Then there’s the not-so-small matter of electricity. Power doesn’t grow on trees : power plants have to be constructed and maintained. Over the last ten years or so, virtually all electricity generation in Europe has become privatised, and private owners have shown enormous reluctance to invest in repairs and replacements. Obviously. They want to keep their profits for their shareholders.

Then there’s the Climate Change issue : new power generation should obviously be as Low Carbon as possible, and Renewable Energy technologies (apart from Wind Power) are somewhat under-developed.

Some have dallied with the Nuclear Power Renaissance movement, that was launched in the USA. Some have seen the solar/wind light. Some are still pushing for British Sea Power, and that’s not the pop band.

Whichever route the Government wishes to take on future Energy Provision, the costs of Energy will continue to mount. And all this adds up to increasing Fuel Poverty : the inability of the poorest and most needy to pay for the Energy they need.

Bright lights flicker on in the minds of a couple of Gordon Brown’s advisers : if the Energy companies are making more money, they can pay for Fuel Vouchers for the poor. Brilliant wheeze ! A windfall tax on the profiteers to redistribute to the poor. It will keep trade in Energy ticking over and qualm poverty activists.

Trouble is : “Robin Hood” money circulation schemes such as these are anti-business, in the sense that they don’t allow the companies to continue to make the levels of profit that they need to guarantee a healthy rate of return to their shareholders.

And Big Energy has been fighting back on this idea with venom and vengeance and manipulative tactics, strongly suggesting that they will back away from financing new Energy plants if they are arm-wrestled into coughing up for any kind of tax, windfall or otherwise.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008…

https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/sep/05/economy.go…

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7599402.stm

OK then : how about selling Carbon Permits, you know, raising the proportion of our National Allocation Plan under the EU ETS that we Auction to Big Carbon Emitters ? Raising that percentage to the maximum allowed in this phase of the EU ETS, 10%, should net the Treasury roughly £500 million, and that can be used to help the fuel poor.

Problem with that too : it’s too late in the game to start shuffling this idea about in Europe. And anyway, charging for Carbon will always end up raising the prices of Energy for everyone, not just the fuel poor.

Big Energy doesn’t want and doesn’t need a Carbon Tax right now, especially given that Gordon Brown wants his shiny new nuclear toys being built.

Gordon Brown wants to relaunch the New Labour project this month. His ideas about trying to revive the property market got dowsed by a flood of dismissal, what about his Energy policy ?

If nothing can be hammered out between the Government and Big Energy pretty soon, he will be reduced to having a “lightbulb moment” : vague promises and petty cash for Energy Efficiency measures, Insulation, Insulation, Insulation and switching to compact fluorescents.

If Gordon Brown really wants to help the fuel poor, he could improve the incomes of the lowest paid by legislation, and introduce larger tax breaks for the poorest, especially those who are retired.

With Energy and fuel bills rising, the effective cost of living has sharply increased, and therefore, so should indexing on benefits and allowances.

He could knock VAT off the bills of those whose household income is less than £350 a week and justify it on the basis that Energy is an essential, not Added Value.

Whatever wealth redistribution Gordon Brown might dream up, it won’t stop Fuel Poverty, as Energy prices will continue to rise, and deny more people access to Energy.

Gordon Brown appears to still believe that charging for Carbon will reduce demand for Carbon. When will he and his posse of policy tinkerers realise that the attempts to control Carbon by creating a price for Carbon is bound to fail ?

The notion that you can create behaviour change by pricing Carbon is so quaint. It’s based on the idea that you can tax an “environmental bad” out of existence.

But the price of Carbon isn’t reducing Energy or fuel demand by very much. It could be argued that the Credit Crunch, billed as a mini-Recession, is doing that far more effectively.

Pricing Carbon as a strategy in an attempt to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions is clearly not working anywhere it is being tried.

The underlying reason is that the whole Economy is based on the use of Carbon Energy. Up the price of Carbon Energy and you up the price of everything. It’s called inflation.

Carbon is an embedded problem.

As a product, it probably has to be treated like tobacco. They couldn’t stop tobacco being sold : there was too much invested in tobacco.

What had to happen was the establishment of a zero tolerance for tobacco. It started with advertising and sales.

Why have the Big Energy and Big Oil companies increased their advertising budgets this year ? Surely it has nothing to do with competition with their so-called competitors. The customer base remains the same size.

Are they in fact trying to sell the idea of Carbon Energy, in order to remain in business ?

Gordon Brown could act on Climate Change in this area very effectively. Stop the blanket advertising for cars, travel, electricity, gas, consumer goods, electrical gadgets.

Another strategy to restrict the flow of oxygen to Carbon : take investment and pension funds out of Carbon. Start the exit somehow.

In the end, controlling Carbon comes down to legislation and regulation. Businesses should be told that they need to drop their Carbon investment, lose their Carbon stocks.

Make the Carbon Trust compulsory viewing, not voluntary engagement.

The framework is : Less Carbon. The message to business is : if you can’t deliver Less Carbon, you won’t be doing business here.

Stop fussing about pricing and assets and investment. Tell Big Energy “You’ve got five years to get out of Carbon. Full stop.” Then watch the feathers fly.

Funding The New Generation (2)
by Jo Abbess
28th June 2008

My Dear Fellow Human Being,

I think you underestimate my experience of and rejection of narrow fundamentalism. I am, for the record, Post-Evangelical, having suffered imported American Religion and its incredibly straight-jacketed thinking, loaded onto me as a young person. And I have managed to extricate myself from “us-and-them” political and religious idea-space. I no longer do polarised ideology. There are no members or outsiders. We are all one.

However, as you may not realise, I am a systems thinker, and I design and improve all kinds of systems for a living. That means that I consider all the fluid and static aspects of systems, including social, ecological and financial. It is in my nature to follow trends and project outcomes or tendencies. I also “look behind” what is in the public domain, the life and times as reported, using lateral rationalisation.

But I’m not a conspiracy theorist. In fact, I am highly pragmatic.

I also think for myself. I’m not a puppet, nor a mime. You are incorrect.

For me, it is obvious that all the current plans to deal with Carbon will amount to mere tinkering, and not achieve real and lasting emissions reductions, unless the whole of life is de-Carbonised, including power generation, transport, agriculture, manufacture and construction.

Current policy schemas being pursued will not amount to much, because innocent people in positions of influence do not comprehend the power of those who are paid to seek compromise in policy. There is no easy way to arm-wrestle the primary producers of hydrocarbons and coal into a binding, effective, self-limiting regime, as their whole raison d’etre revolves around maximising production and maximising profit.

If you tackle them to the floor and force them to control production, the price will skyrocket. If you place price and profit controls on these organisations, they will play with production and source dirtier and dirtier fuels.

De-Carbonisation cannot be achieved by auctioning Carbon to the primary producers of Energy and Fuel. De-Carbonisation requires putting financial resources into ramping up Renewable Energy technologies, Energy Efficiency, Energy Conservation, and powering down dirty Energy by regulation.

One is no longer permitted to smoke in offices, so, by analogy, one should no longer be permitted to sell Coal into the Economy. Selling Coal to power stations is as good as burning the Coal yourself.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to get serious change in the sourcing of Energy merely by applying small incentives or disincentives, subsidising the good and taxing the bad. The scale of the problem is too large.

Some Energy and Fuel sources have to be banned outright, no grace period allowed. Why no grace period ? Because we need to solve the problems faster than we are fixing them, and selling Permits to trade Hydrocarbons and Coal into the Economy does not allow us to create solutions. It just ringfences the flow of Carbon Emissions, protects it from being dismantled.

Phasing out our dependence on Carbon must be based on the laws of supply and demand : in other words : demand should be destroyed at the same time as supply is curtailed, in order to keep the Economy stable. What we are seeing with rising oil prices is destabilisation, as a stressed supply is being priced up by rising demand. This is unhelpful.

Follow the money. The money should be going into implementing Low Carbon solutions and building Renewable infrastructure. If a set of policies is not achieving that, then it is failing. Carbon Trading isn’t working, and neither will Carbon Auctions, Cap-and-Trade or even Cap-and-Anything.

Zero Carbon Britain :-

https://www.zerocarbonbritain.com

from: b d

to: jo abbess

date: Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 7:07 PM

subject: Your criticism of Mark Lynas

Jo

Wherever I go I see your criticisms of Mark Lynas on an upstream cap – I don’t agree with your criticisms.

I don’t think you have understood how an upstream cap works and I think your criticisms are based on that failure to understand. I have my own differences with Mark Lynas but I really think more deeply about the idea of the upstream cap.

The idea of an upstream cap is NOT to produce a high carbon price which will then deliver a behaviour change which will then deliver a fall in carbon used.

Your mind, like so many other people who approach these issues, appears to me to slip over into thinking about effects on price and money flows before you have taken in the effect of a cap as an administered limit imposed on physical quantities – on physical amounts of carbon allowed to enter the economy.

One of your criticisms of Mark Lynas is based on criticisms of the ETS – since the ETS is a partial downstream cap – with a huge, so called “safety valve” in the shape of the CDM – it is not remotely comparable with what he, Oliver Tickell or Cap or Share and Feasta for that matter are arguing for. This is even more the case as permits under the ETS are mostly given to companies for free.

The idea of an upstream cap is a reducing cap carbon imposed on first suppliers of fossil fuels. Upstream. In physical quantities. Full stop.

As you are a very radical person imagine that you are blockading Grangemouth and only allow out 9/10 of the tankers that came out of it as compared to last year because you decided that you were going to reduce the amount of carbon coming out by 10% per annum. Now imagine doing that at the coal ports, at the coal mines, at the gas terminals….now you are getting the idea of an upstream cap (being reduced at 10% per annum).

Of course the government does not need to blockade things – it can make a law and do the same job with a permit scheme – the companies operating at those locations would not allowed be allowed to take the tankers out of the gates without a permit for the carbon of the fuel in the tanker when burned and the numbers of permits available throughout the economy would be reduced year by year.

If you do that you have then achieved your carbon reductions….

Full stop.

Of course, “downstream” people and companies will find they have to cope with and accomodate themselves to less fuel (carbon) available – but they will be accomodating themselves to a fait accomplis. From a climate point of view the reduction in emissions for that year inside the economy will have been achieved…

Now do you get it?

The price rises are the subsequent effects as the consequences spread downstream and companies and individuals adjust to what has already happened.

You appear to have a fixed idea that only downstream caps actually stop the physical quantity of carbon reaching the atmosphere.

Au contraire – the point of an upstream cap is that the physical quantity of fuel and carbon coming out of the refinery gates, out of the coal ports, out of the gas pipelines coming into the country – will be reduced year on year. The PHYSICAL QUANTITIES WILL BE CAPPED AND REDUCED.

It is a no nonsense approach because it is so easy to do and so difficult to evade. In the UK there are only about 60 -70 locations where all the fuel which gives rise to emissions enter the economy. Blockade…..sorry impose a permit scheme at those locations and you have achieved your goal.

Now instead of a blockade – much simpler if you limit the number of permits and you make the first suppliers running the refineries, the coal ports, the gas terminals buy them if they want to sell fuel. That’s the auction.

Where the money from the auction goes is a subsequent matter. If the fossil fuel suppliers are forced to buy supplier permits in an auction then there is revenue available from their purchase of the permits to the auctioning agency. What happens to that money is an open question and a matter for debate and a policy decision.

But whatever happens to the auction revenue it will not undo the effect of the cap – at least not directly. Of course Mark Lynas is quite right that if some or all of the permit revenues are to flow into funding renewables sector investment and energy efficiency that will lead to a more rapid energy transformation of the economy. Well, it might. But it might also lead to much more social and political resistance against the rapid tightening of the cap as people find it really difficult to cope. In that sense it might actually slow down the transformation – which has to achieve a difficult balance act with public acceptability. In terms of political and public acceptability I happen to believe that it would be better that that revenue goes to the public equally – also because in a Zero Carbon Britain households will need resources to get their homes and gardens in order and the biggest transformation of all has to take place at household level where resources should therefore be concentrated…..

But whatever happens to the revenue from an auction (if that is the way permits are distributed) it will not somehow undo the effects of the upstream cap as some of your criticisms seem to imply.

For example if people on a low income find that they have more income as a result of getting some or all of the permit revenues of an upstream cap – and if they can even use this extra revenue to buy some more fuel for themselves in the first few years of the process it will NOT mean that the fall in the physical quantity will somehowhave been thwarted. It will still be the case that each year less will be coming out of the refinery, coal mine, gas terminal gates and pipes – so downstream of those gates and pipelines it is physically impossible for there to be an increase in the amount supplied –

What is in the economy to be distributed can only still be what has previously been allowed into the economy – no more can magically appear from anywhere.

What might happen because of price changes is, however, that the way that the declining quantity is distributed between different groups in society might shift from one group to another to some degree because of the price changes – and depending on who gets the permit revenues.

But just because some people might be better off as a result of their share of higher permit revenues does not mean that, if and when they spend their extra money on more fuel (if they do) that the cap is somehow rendered nul and void. All that is happening is that the more limited amount of fuel that is available might be distributed more in the direction of those who are now better off and away from those who are worse off – without any change in the total amount available changing at all (Because that’s been capped!!!)

Also if there is less fossil energy then the price of fossil energy rises. That makes renewables more competitive. If people want the same amount of energy in the economy then they will have to invest in creating non fossil energy sources – which are not capped.

I hope you understand the issues better now.

b

from: jo abbess

to: b d

date: Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 12:31 AM

subject: Re: Your criticism of Mark Lynas

hi b,

it’s late, so i’m not going to read all of your paragraphs properly just now.

my objections to proposing an “upstream” cap are, briefly :-

1. sign up

at the current time, i cannot envisage the big energy companies doing more than lip service to assenting to being capped.

the big energy companies exist to make profits for their shareholders. they will either do this through selling more product, or they will do that by making more profit per unit of product.

they will not sign up voluntarily to having their business capped. even worse than that, they will find any way possible to get round the cap if it is enforced through law and regulation.

more pernicious, they will do everything they can to block the laws and regulations for the cap being made in the first place.

2. ownership

the only way to engage the upstream operators in any form of cap-and-something is to include a price signal : that is, either carbon permits, the auctioning of carbon rights, or rebate for quota (is there another way ?)

this inevitably creates “property”, and the ownership of this carbon property goes to those who are carbon wealthy, that is, their capital and assets are built on the use of carbon energy from the past.

this will inevitably serve to perpetuate inequalities, and also, it will ringfence protect the carbon-dependent businesses. they, after all, will have the right to burn.

3. de-carbonisation

the purpose of setting any carbon reduction goals is to actually reduce the amount of carbon emissions, permanently, to create a more sustainable energy future.

every scheme that creates carbon rights and prices them diverts funds from the real way to cut the carbon – de-carbonisation, in every process, machine, energy source.

the future is renewable energy. we need to finance this. it won’t happen if companies are raising prices in order to stand still in terms of profit-making.

i had some more to add, but it has temporarily vanished from my mind.

later,

jo.

from: b d

to: jo abbess

date: Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 7:54 AM

subject: Re: Your criticism of Mark Lynas

Jo – you write a 341 word reply before, as you admit, you have actually read properly what I have to say. Your points 2 and 3 were covered in my e mail.

As regards point 1 that too quite simply gets things upside down – the energy suppliers want downstream capping because it means that they don’t have to do anything and because they know that downstream capping will be immensely complicated and so will take ages to come into existence, if it ever does.

Upstream capping would be directly a reduction in their rights to sell – they would have to pay for the privilege of having their right to sell limited.

When Gordon Brown was Chancellor he was asked who the most powerful people in the country were and listed Lord Browne, that time CEO of BP, as, at that time, the most powerful person in the country.

Of course politicians and parliament will be reluctant to take on the sellers of fossil fuels because they are so powerful – but that’s just the point – an upstream cap focuses the political attention at the source of the problem.

Leaving aside land use caused emissions, the climate crisis is caused by the use of fossil fuels – so they are toxic goods and progressively reducing the allowed amount of these toxic goods allowed in the economy is the obvious solution. That means taking on the political and lobbying power of the sellers of fossil fuels. The point of politics is to create a political momentum so that the energy companies have no choice but to participate – because it would be illegal not to.

I answered your points 2 and 3 already in my first e mail. Indeed the whole point of my e mail was to answer those points so to repeat them without reading my response to those points is very frustrating to me.

b

from: b d

to: jo abbess

date: Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 9:17 AM

subject Re: Your criticism of Mark Lynas

Jo – here’s another e mail for you to skim read, to assume to be wrong, and then ignore lest it cause you cognitive dissonance:

NO you did NOT answer my email at all – witness this statement:

“An Auction of Carbon Permits under the proposed Kyoto2 policy would advantage Big Energy producers and generators, who have the wealth to snap up the rights to burn, and then pass on the added cost to their consumers.”

An upstream cap does not involve “rights to burn”. It is about a right to sell fuels that other people and other companies can then burn.

Permits to supply in an upstream system are MEANT TO BE purchased by “big energy” suppliers. Only big companies supply coal, oil and gas.

There is a difference between permits to buy (and then burn) and permits to sell (to other people that burn). How much clearer can one say it and yet you still don’t take it in?!

The psychological mechanisms work like this: you convince yourself you are right, after all, all of your friends think in a similar way and you have committed yourself to an idea by writing and speaking about it with people….then along come critics….so you sneak a quick look at what they say….you skim their idea, find a phrase that you think proves that they are wrong…don’t bother to really try to understand the other point of view…and then repeat what you’ve said a hundred times before…it’s called cognitive dissonance.

Many years ago when I was a young Trotskyist I used to do it myself – in debates I just read the people on “our side” of polemical arguments. After all, if I had been convinced by the other people, in another group, I would find it a difficult one to argue their case in my group – I might even end up ostracised, without a social network. I would have to fall out with people I got on well with. So I fell in with their way of thinking.

As you know if you go to a meeting and everyone else there is arguing for one thing, and you are a critic arguing for something else, eventually you end up silent because it is an uncomfortable role to be in. That’s partly why, having created a momentum by being in the market of ideas in the UK first, David Fleming and Mayer Hillman, have created a set of assumptions about how carbon trading is and must work and it is very difficult for people who argue for upstream caps to get listened to. When they do acknowledge there is a different possible way of doing things, people don’t really look at it closely and take in the real differences – as that is not the taken for granted “correct idea” in their social network.

b

Funding The New Generation
by Jo Abbess
27th June 2008

The British Government is slowly cranking the starter motor handle on the policymaking machine, showing a genuine willingness to squeeze out a decent Renewable Energy plan.

But there remains the Rather Large Question of our time : who’s going to pay for the Government plans for new Renewable Energy ?

All the main policy strands currently being developed at national, regional and international level all amount to the same thing : letting the Energy and Fuel consumers pay for the necessary new plant and infrastructure.

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, a Cap-and-Trade policy, is already forcing price rises on domestic and small business consumers.

A flat Carbon Tax would cause general inflation in the Economy, and household Energy and Fuel bills would form a much higher proportion of domestic expenditure than at present.

An Auction of Carbon Permits under the proposed Kyoto2 policy would advantage Big Energy producers and generators, who have the wealth to snap up the rights to burn, and then pass on the added cost to their consumers.

Cap-and-Dividend, Cap-and-Share or an Income-Neutral Carbon Tax, would reimburse consumers for a portion of the increased Energy and Fuel Bills, but would probably not protect ordinary householders from enormous price rises resulting from the inflation caused.

The reason for this stems from two very simple principles regarding the way the corporate Energy and Oil groups operate.

PASSING ON THE COST

Any price on Carbon Dioxide Emissions, the so-called “Carbon Price Signal”, is primarily intended to limit Carbon Emissions.

The Big Energy and Big Oil operations are managed as profit-making enterprises : any reduction in sales reflects on their bottom line.

Any form of Carbon Cap or Carbon Tax will invariably threaten the profits of the Big Energy and Big Oil companies, because it will limit the amount of Energy and Fuel that can be sold, and so their prime directive to make a profit will need to be satisfied by raising prices for their customers.

All of the measures above fall into this trap, and yet none of them address directly the matter of financing the transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy that is essential to cope with both Climate Change and Peak Oil.

Peak Oil has already established a foothold, and the automatic reaction to this entirely natural “Carbon Price Signal” has been immediate and divisive.

Some consumption has been cut, but there has been much protest from small Energy and Fuel consumers that threatens to derail Climate Change policy as a whole.

DIVERTING FUNDS FROM DE-CARBONISATION

Worse than that, it threatens the scope for investment in Renewable Energy technologies, plant, grid and infrastructure.

In a very transparent move, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Government, has invited the leaders of the oil-producing nations group, OPEC, to invest their profit in Renewable Energy in Europe.

This attempt to “close the loop” on funding new Renewable generation and fuels is clearly at risk of severe stress on the oil supply from rapidly rising demand.

OPEC are not going to invest in Renewables, in their own countries, let alone in Europe, if they seek to shore up their money-making core activities.

The logical move for OPEC and Big Oil is diversification, but without strong Carbon Laws at an international level, diverse supplies will mean deep drilling in the Arctic, tar sands, oil shale and other Fossil Fuel alternatives : cheap and dirty.

So the question of funding Renewables remains : but there are competing demands on the same pot of Big Energy money. Can they really turn a profit from going truly Green ? They probably do not feel that they can, and we will continue to see Renewables projects fall by the wayside as the Carbon Crunch continues.

A CARBON PRICE IS NOT THE ANSWER

The natural Carbon Cap on the international oil supply, brought about by decades of lack of investment in new sources of Fossil Fuels, troubled by extreme weather damaging infrastructure, and beset by sharply rising demand, is showing us that money control of Carbon is not the route to pursue.

It also indicates strongly what Big Oil and Big Energy will do to protect their financial baseline : put the prices up for consumers. It’s the simplest “first aid” “band aid” for their businesses. It doesn’t involve real investment in increased Energy Efficiency, Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy.

There seems to be an acceptance that the reality of investment in Green Energy is that the end consumers will bear the cost burden. The headlines warn the already pressed domestic consumers that they face the double whammy of being made to pay for Carbon Caps and also de-Carbonisation of Energy :-

Rising bills will pay for low-carbon economy

https://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jun/27...

“Friends of the Earth supported the government’s drive to use far more renewable power, but said loading the cost onto the consumer ]was misguided. [Minister John] Hutton said he was sure that the City was ready to help stump up the £100bn of new investment needed, saying it would be “bonkers” not to take money from sovereign wealth funds in nations such as Saudi Arabia, as Gordon Brown had called for on a trip to Jeddah last weekend.”

https://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/analysis/2220….

“Sounds expensive. Well, full blown industrial revolutions don’t come cheap. The government reckons we’re looking at £100bn of investment over the next 12 years and it wants it all to come from the private sector. How are they going to convince them to do that? With the promise of cold, hard cash. The reason this strategy is so different to all the vague commitments the government has made to the renewable sector in the past is that it is backed up by some serious policy instruments – most notably in the form of generous incentives.” (that is : taxpayer money, the Citizen consumers pay).

Gordon Brown vows to drive out fossil fuels https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/20….

“And by 2050 globally the industry could be worth $3 trillion per year employing more than 25 million people. But the plans will come at a price – Ministers have acknowledged that although gas and electricity bills will not increase initially they will rise, possibly for five successive years, after 2015.”

Green energy plan ‘will force more families into fuel poverty’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/20….

“More families will be driven into fuel poverty as a push to generate more electricity from “green” sources like wind, wave and solar power sharply increases household fuel bills, the Government has said. Electricity bills could rise by 13 per cent and gas prices could go up by as much as 37 per cent as consumers are made to pay more to subsidise green energy production, ministers said in a new Renewable Energy Strategy. The move away from fossil fuels is likely to cause a spike in energy bills. At current levels, green tariffs make up around 14 per cent of average domestic electricity bills and 3 per cent of average gas bills. Those tariffs will have to increase as ministers bid to wean Britain off fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.”

GRADUAL, PARTIAL CHANGE

Whilst it is true that increased Energy and Fuel bills can have an impact on consumption, social policies such as Fuel Poverty winter support payments, and special tariffs for poorer households will simply allow Carbon consumption to continue for the most part unabated.

With every actor, from the “upstream” oil producer or electricity generator, down to the “downstream” household consumer and driver, being financially penalised, there will be intense resistance to Carbon Cuts.

It is my contention that money can never be a proxy for Carbon if you wish to make serious, long-term Carbon Emissions Reductions. That no matter how you price Carbon in order to provoke cuts in emissions, that only a certain amount can be curtailed.

Trying to implement a Carbon Cap, making laws and regulation to step down Carbon, year on year, will eventually lead to something akin to civil war, with every economic sector, including consumers, battling the Government to stop making cuts.

That is, because of the negative price placed on Carbon, the focus will always be there, and nobody will be able to justify Renewable Energy investment.

Cap-and-Something policies basically divert finance away from Renewable Energy investment into simply making Carbon Cuts income-neutral for the private companies and OPEC.

There will come a point in any regime of an annual step-down in the Carbon Budget where no more Carbon can be cut, because there has been no investment in Renewable Energy to take up the slack in the economy.

SUSTAINABLE FUTURE : VISION REQUIRED

Instead of trying to use money as a proxy for real change, as is done with any Cap-and-Something policy, I propose that we keep our eyes on the prize : the de-Carbonisation of the entire economy through the aggressive concentration on Renewable Energy capacity.

This would be not simply through direct investment, but also in indirect subsidies and regulations along the lines of : “if you want to supply Energy or Fuel in this country, you have to do so without using a specified set of Energy sources : coal being the main prohibition…”

The only way that a true Carbon Cap can be enforced is by discriminating in favour of Zero Carbon technologies and investment, and forbidding “conventional” both Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Fission.

Any other way could well descend into a Carbon-generating, asphyxiating morass.

https://www.zerocarbonbritain.com

from: b d

to: jo abbess

date: Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 7:07 PM

subject: Your criticism of Mark Lynas

Jo

Wherever I go I see your criticisms of Mark Lynas on an upstream cap – I don’t agree with your criticisms.

I don’t think you have understood how an upstream cap works and I think your criticisms are based on that failure to understand. I have my own differences with Mark Lynas but I really think more deeply about the idea of the upstream cap.

The idea of an upstream cap is NOT to produce a high carbon price which will then deliver a behaviour change which will then deliver a fall in carbon used.

Your mind, like so many other people who approach these issues, appears to me to slip over into thinking about effects on price and money flows before you have taken in the effect of a cap as an administered limit imposed on physical quantities – on physical amounts of carbon allowed to enter the economy.

One of your criticisms of Mark Lynas is based on criticisms of the ETS – since the ETS is a partial downstream cap – with a huge, so called “safety valve” in the shape of the CDM – it is not remotely comparable with what he, Oliver Tickell or Cap or Share and Feasta for that matter are arguing for. This is even more the case as permits under the ETS are mostly given to companies for free.

The idea of an upstream cap is a reducing cap carbon imposed on first suppliers of fossil fuels. Upstream. In physical quantities. Full stop.

As you are a very radical person imagine that you are blockading Grangemouth and only allow out 9/10 of the tankers that came out of it as compared to last year because you decided that you were going to reduce the amount of carbon coming out by 10% per annum. Now imagine doing that at the coal ports, at the coal mines, at the gas terminals….now you are getting the idea of an upstream cap (being reduced at 10% per annum).

Of course the government does not need to blockade things – it can make a law and do the same job with a permit scheme – the companies operating at those locations would not allowed be allowed to take the tankers out of the gates without a permit for the carbon of the fuel in the tanker when burned and the numbers of permits available throughout the economy would be reduced year by year.

If you do that you have then achieved your carbon reductions….

Full stop.

Of course, “downstream” people and companies will find they have to cope with and accomodate themselves to less fuel (carbon) available – but they will be accomodating themselves to a fait accomplis. From a climate point of view the reduction in emissions for that year inside the economy will have been achieved…

Now do you get it?

The price rises are the subsequent effects as the consequences spread downstream and companies and individuals adjust to what has already happened.

You appear to have a fixed idea that only downstream caps actually stop the physical quantity of carbon reaching the atmosphere.

Au contraire – the point of an upstream cap is that the physical quantity of fuel and carbon coming out of the refinery gates, out of the coal ports, out of the gas pipelines coming into the country – will be reduced year on year. The PHYSICAL QUANTITIES WILL BE CAPPED AND REDUCED.

It is a no nonsense approach because it is so easy to do and so difficult to evade. In the UK there are only about 60 -70 locations where all the fuel which gives rise to emissions enter the economy. Blockade…..sorry impose a permit scheme at those locations and you have achieved your goal.

Now instead of a blockade – much simpler if you limit the number of permits and you make the first suppliers running the refineries, the coal ports, the gas terminals buy them if they want to sell fuel. That’s the auction.

Where the money from the auction goes is a subsequent matter. If the fossil fuel suppliers are forced to buy supplier permits in an auction then there is revenue available from their purchase of the permits to the auctioning agency. What happens to that money is an open question and a matter for debate and a policy decision.

But whatever happens to the auction revenue it will not undo the effect of the cap – at least not directly. Of course Mark Lynas is quite right that if some or all of the permit revenues are to flow into funding renewables sector investment and energy efficiency that will lead to a more rapid energy transformation of the economy. Well, it might. But it might also lead to much more social and political resistance against the rapid tightening of the cap as people find it really difficult to cope. In that sense it might actually slow down the transformation – which has to achieve a difficult balance act with public acceptability. In terms of political and public acceptability I happen to believe that it would be better that that revenue goes to the public equally – also because in a Zero Carbon Britain households will need resources to get their homes and gardens in order and the biggest transformation of all has to take place at household level where resources should therefore be concentrated…..

But whatever happens to the revenue from an auction (if that is the way permits are distributed) it will not somehow undo the effects of the upstream cap as some of your criticisms seem to imply.

For example if people on a low income find that they have more income as a result of getting some or all of the permit revenues of an upstream cap – and if they can even use this extra revenue to buy some more fuel for themselves in the first few years of the process it will NOT mean that the fall in the physical quantity will somehowhave been thwarted. It will still be the case that each year less will be coming out of the refinery, coal mine, gas terminal gates and pipes – so downstream of those gates and pipelines it is physically impossible for there to be an increase in the amount supplied –

What is in the economy to be distributed can only still be what has previously been allowed into the economy – no more can magically appear from anywhere.

What might happen because of price changes is, however, that the way that the declining quantity is distributed between different groups in society might shift from one group to another to some degree because of the price changes – and depending on who gets the permit revenues.

But just because some people might be better off as a result of their share of higher permit revenues does not mean that, if and when they spend their extra money on more fuel (if they do) that the cap is somehow rendered nul and void. All that is happening is that the more limited amount of fuel that is available might be distributed more in the direction of those who are now better off and away from those who are worse off – without any change in the total amount available changing at all (Because that’s been capped!!!)

Also if there is less fossil energy then the price of fossil energy rises. That makes renewables more competitive. If people want the same amount of energy in the economy then they will have to invest in creating non fossil energy sources – which are not capped.

I hope you understand the issues better now.

b

from: jo abbess

to: b d

date: Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 12:31 AM

subject: Re: Your criticism of Mark Lynas

hi b,

it’s late, so i’m not going to read all of your paragraphs properly just now.

my objections to proposing an “upstream” cap are, briefly :-

1. sign up

at the current time, i cannot envisage the big energy companies doing more than lip service to assenting to being capped.

the big energy companies exist to make profits for their shareholders. they will either do this through selling more product, or they will do that by making more profit per unit of product.

they will not sign up voluntarily to having their business capped. even worse than that, they will find any way possible to get round the cap if it is enforced through law and regulation.

more pernicious, they will do everything they can to block the laws and regulations for the cap being made in the first place.

2. ownership

the only way to engage the upstream operators in any form of cap-and-something is to include a price signal : that is, either carbon permits, the auctioning of carbon rights, or rebate for quota (is there another way ?)

this inevitably creates “property”, and the ownership of this carbon property goes to those who are carbon wealthy, that is, their capital and assets are built on the use of carbon energy from the past.

this will inevitably serve to perpetuate inequalities, and also, it will ringfence protect the carbon-dependent businesses. they, after all, will have the right to burn.

3. de-carbonisation

the purpose of setting any carbon reduction goals is to actually reduce the amount of carbon emissions, permanently, to create a more sustainable energy future.

every scheme that creates carbon rights and prices them diverts funds from the real way to cut the carbon – de-carbonisation, in every process, machine, energy source.

the future is renewable energy. we need to finance this. it won’t happen if companies are raising prices in order to stand still in terms of profit-making.

i had some more to add, but it has temporarily vanished from my mind.

later,

jo.

from: b d

to: jo abbess

date: Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 7:54 AM

subject: Re: Your criticism of Mark Lynas

Jo – you write a 341 word reply before, as you admit, you have actually read properly what I have to say. Your points 2 and 3 were covered in my e mail.

As regards point 1 that too quite simply gets things upside down – the energy suppliers want downstream capping because it means that they don’t have to do anything and because they know that downstream capping will be immensely complicated and so will take ages to come into existence, if it ever does.

Upstream capping would be directly a reduction in their rights to sell – they would have to pay for the privilege of having their right to sell limited.

When Gordon Brown was Chancellor he was asked who the most powerful people in the country were and listed Lord Browne, that time CEO of BP, as, at that time, the most powerful person in the country.

Of course politicians and parliament will be reluctant to take on the sellers of fossil fuels because they are so powerful – but that’s just the point – an upstream cap focuses the political attention at the source of the problem.

Leaving aside land use caused emissions, the climate crisis is caused by the use of fossil fuels – so they are toxic goods and progressively reducing the allowed amount of these toxic goods allowed in the economy is the obvious solution. That means taking on the political and lobbying power of the sellers of fossil fuels. The point of politics is to create a political momentum so that the energy companies have no choice but to participate – because it would be illegal not to.

I answered your points 2 and 3 already in my first e mail. Indeed the whole point of my e mail was to answer those points so to repeat them without reading my response to those points is very frustrating to me.

b

Why Mark Lynas Is Still Wrong
by Jo Abbess
29th May 2008

Requiring the Energy and Fuel companies to buy Carbon Quotas through auction will add to inflationary pressure in the Economy, will not promote de-Carbonisation, and cannot guarantee global Carbon Emissions reductions.

DRAFT – THIS PIECE IS NOT YET FULLY EDITED

Mark Lynas has today published his support for the premises behind the Kyoto2 framework, as proposed by Oliver Tickell, in the New Statesman magazine “Why I was wrong about rationing” :-

https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2008/05/carbon-ra…

Sadly, although his thinking has moved on, he’s travelling down the wrong road. Auctioning of Carbon Quotas to Energy and Fuel companies cannot, of themselves, be effective as a Carbon Emissions Reduction policy.

In order to stabilise the Climate, and protect Life on Earth from dangerous Change, we need to admit the Inevitable Truth : we need to reduce humanity’s emissions of Greenhouse Gases, which come about through the burning of Fossil Fuels and through the destruction of Forests, Soils and Oceans.

This need dictates the Carbon Framework of Contraction and Convergence, admitting the geopolitical need for Carbon Rights, for equality in Carbon Wealth for all peoples.

For each industrial nation, the challenge is to secure significant Carbon Emissions Reductions, either at home or abroad. The Kyoto Protocol offers the Clean Development Mechanism and other vehicles for “outsourcing” Carbon Emissions Reductions in a system of global trade.

The scale of the Carbon Emissions Reductions that are required leads to the next Inevitable Truth, that industrial countries need to cut the majority of their Carbon Emissions on home territory.

Taking the big picture, it can be seen that the whole aim of any Carbon Policy must be to move from a Carbon Energy-based Economy to a Low or Zero Carbon Economy.

Because of the cost barrier to change, this Transition to a Zero Carbon Economy must be done through a clear and concrete programme of investment, supported by strong regulation to set the direction of travel.

If the only Carbon Policy is to tax Carbon Pollution, it will not necessarily stimulate that Transition. At the moment, since the levels of Renewable Energy are so minor, any Transition is effectively equivalent to creating and entirely new Energy and Fuel delivery infrastructure. That’s going to cost.

If the cost of purchasing Carbon Quotas or Permits is less than paying for a whole new set of Energy toys and technologies, which it will be, the gradient will tip towards the “Polluter Pays” principle without gearing up to the “Polluter-Financed Transition”.

As it becomes recognised that it is necessary to place a firm and binding Carbon Cap, it’s quick and convenient to sell the “Polluter Pays” principle as the key mechanism to limit Carbon. In some measure it can help keep to Carbon Budgets, but it cannot tip the Zero Carbon Transition.

Auctioning Carbon Permits to corporate Energy and Fuel producers assumes that Carbon Emissions Reductions can be made elsewhere and that companies can carry on burning.

The Carbon Cap under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is only tightened by a small amount each year, working on the assumption that the portion of Carbon Permits that are auctioned will pay for Carbon Emissions Reductions elsewhere in the world.

It seems that all the reciprocal arrangements to make Carbon Emissions Reductions in developing countries in exchange for finance are failing to provide genuine Carbon Cuts.

Given that until now this mechanism is failing to work perfectly, and given that industrial nations are still increasing their emissions, it can be seen that this approach is unable to help, unless the Carbon Trading schemes start to bite because the Carbon Price rises sharply.

The amount of emissions in industrial countries that will need to be “offset” in future, even if projected growth is actively limited, indicate that Carbon Trading in Certified Emissions Reductions and Voluntary Emissions Reductions will not be able to bring enough quality reductions to the marketplace.

Talk of “technology transfer” from industrial to developing nations has obscured the problem : the developing nations do not have a lot of Carbon to Drop. Offering developing nations assistance with Renewable Energy Technologies may help their Economies, but might not replace Carbon Energy.

Put simply, the Developing World cannot reduce Carbon Emissions to cover our Carbon Emissions Debt – the figures cannot add up.

And many technologies that have been proposed to make Carbon Cuts in the Industrialised World have not taken off, such as Carbon Capture and Storage (“Carbon Sequestration by Burial”), the non-starter of non-starters.

The “polluter pays” approach, by itself, cannot produce the desired results.

BUY ONE GET ONE FREE

The best way to think about Transition from Carbon Energy to Zero Carbon Energy, or de-Carbonisation is to consider the Buy One Get One Free sales ploy.

What needs to happen is that incentives are created to precipitate de-Carbonisation, given a shrinking annual Carbon Budget, a regime of progressively less Carbon Permits available.

If an Energy Company wants to make money in this climate, they will need to either put their prices up or de-Carbonise so they can offer more product.

The higher the ratio of Clean to Dirty Energy in their products, the more they can sell. But if it costs more to make their Energy cleaner than it does to put their prices up to pay for the extra Dirty Energy they want to sell, what will they do ? It’s obvious really.

The only sure way to make de-Carbonisation the logical route is to explicitly limit the amount of Carbon that the Energy Companies can sell. In other words, do not make money a proxy for Carbon. Cut the Carbon itself, don’t just put a price on it and assume that will be sufficient to enforce de-Carbonisation !

And there are really only two ways to cut the Carbon an Energy Company is permitted to deliver into the Economy : issue fixed production quotas, or limit the amount that the customers can consume.

COMPANIES RESIST PRODUCTION CONTROL

Imagine the trouble that would ensue if you tried to place a production quota on Energy Companies ! It’s true that Peak Oil is doing some of this job for us, giving us a de facto Carbon Price, but not at sufficient speed.

So the only remaining policy is to Ration Carbon for the Consumer Citizens. Sorry, Mark, that is the only way to enforce de-Carbonisation.

COSTS PASSED ON

If you only use money as the lever, you end up with the same problems as the EU ETS and before that Value Added Tax : the added costs to the supplier are passed to the consumer.

The consumers may end up with a double whammy – the producers rack the prices up higher than their own added costs in order to cover the drop in sales.

In the case of the “Polluter Pays”, the Cap will not be a cap on Carbon but a cap on profits, from the point of view of sales there is no growth possible, and the money that could have gone to de-Carbonise is made unavailable, since the producer is under pressure not to squeeze too much out of the consumer.

TRADABLE ENERGY QUOTAS

The reason why Tradable Energy Quotas are expressed as quotas of Energy and not just of Carbon is not just because it covers other Greenhouse Gases besides Carbon. It indicates that given the range of Energy feedstocks (including nuclear) there is only a certain level of Energy that can flow, now that Peak Oil is here.

There is no growth in the rate of extraction of the most concentrated liquid hydrocarbons that we use, and the energy delivery of all the other Energy feedstocks lacks the same punch.

If Energy is controlled by Quotas, and not by a financial cost substituted for the Quotas, the sooner that Energy can be de-Carbonised, the better.

If we de-Carbonise fast, instead of progressively reducing the annual Tradable Energy Quotas, we can start to increase them.

AUCTION MONEY : WHO GETS IT ?

Where does the Auction money end up ? Really ?

Do you really think that the Energy Companies will reach consensus to do all of these things : (a) meet Production Caps “upstream” at source in the Carbon Pipeline and (b) buy their Permits at Auction and (c) invest in de-Carbonisation ?

Won’t that be too much to ask them ? They’re not going to say “out of the goodness of our hearts and with the full backing of our shareholders we’re going to ramp up the percentage of green energy we produce.” I don’t think so.

Just what is going to incentivise de-Carbonisation ? I don’t mean simply reducing the use of Carbon, but moving all the Energy systems, both production and consumption, over to Zero Carbon ?

And remember, putting another price factor into play through the Auctions will only aggravate the “natural” Carbon Price coming through from Peak Oil.

Pricing for Carbon is already in operation, and not likely to reduce consumption overall by very much. Despite the fact that Americans are driving less in the last few months, they are still using Energy in other ways, probably compensating for the fact that they’re not driving.

Mark, for you to suggest that the funds raised by Auction of Carbon Permits be recycled to the poorest of the consumers to compensate them for the added expense of their Energy and Fuel means that there won’t be an overall decrease in consumption.

If funds raised at Auction of Carbon Permits is reserved for Green Energy development it should be undertaken by new national or regional groups, and should not be given back to the originating Energy Companies as that would make a nonsense of the Auction.

You can’t justify giving Auction money to Companies to de-Carbonise. How can you ensure that the Carbon part of their businesses will be reduced by this repayment ? They’ll spend the Auction money on Renewable Energies if they are forced to, but they won’t wind down their Carbon business.

This is what I call the “Spanish Windmill Problem”. The Spanish Government has taken grants, public and private money to build mountain top after mountain top of beautiful wind farms, but their national energy consumption has only continued to rise.

It’s a bit like receiving a miraculous new medical treatment to re-grow a diseased limb – and you end up with a fantastic new arm or whatever, but the old shrivelled up one is still hanging on in there poisoning you.

There will be much demand on Auction funds – for example to pay for “foreign” Carbon Emissions Reductions, compensation of impoverished customers, Renewable Energy development.

You have to be able to gently block the Big Energy companies from being able to sell so much Carbon – strict Carbon Quotas would be the most effective – from the demand side, the consumer side.

Then the Energy magnates will wake up each morning as say “We can’t make more sales of Energy unless we de-Carbonise our Energy…”

MONEY CANNOT BE A PROXY FOR CARBON

Mark Lynas has fallen into the trap of making money a proxy value for Carbon. But money cannot control Carbon directly, as more money can always be created.

Cost is always relative. Carbon Emissions should be absolute.

You need a regulatory device to force Transition. Tax is not it as it feeds back to the consumer base.

CARBON IS ESSENTIAL – CURRENTLY

Mark makes the mistake of saying that “Carbon is not a necessity like food or water”. In fact, we are highly dependent on Carbon in the industrialised countries.

I could say I’m going Zero Carbon personally, but by living in this country a certain amount of Carbon Energy is continually being used on my behalf that I cannot reduce by myself : Carbon Energy that is used in public buildings, street lighting, offices and so on.

Institutionalised Carbon is not as easy to impact with a price signal as personal Carbon.

By saying that a price signal will mean that people “change their behaviour” and use less Carbon, this does not automatically follow. Following decades of a deliberate policy to stimulate the Economy by encouraging sales of private transport vechicles (cars), and the move to road transport for all goods distribution due to cheap fuel, people and businesses are locked into road transport.

AUCTION PLUS

The EU ETS is proposing Auctions of a percentage of all Carbon Quotas, but this will not have the desired effect without consumer rationing.

If you have both upstream and downstream control you increase the effectiveness of the Carbon Cap and the speed of its application.

NOT ALL CONSUMERS ARE END CONSUMERS

Not all consumers are end consumers. There are essential public services and private businesses that use Energy. There are the “middlemen”, such as Supermarkets that use Energy and Fuel in high quantities to sell us food. Each extra trade with a Carbon component risks a “profit multiplier” effect leading to increased burden on the final consumer.

And the workforce will not be able to adapt well to inflation as wage restraint is becoming increasingly necessary.

The pyramid cannot be wide at the top.

Which leads us to the same place : we have to ration by amount and not price.

CORPORATE RESISTANCE

The EU ETS was originally designed quite well, but since it targetted wealthy “point emitters” of Carbon, it has been subject to modifications after intense corporate lobbying.

Carbon Quotas have been given to businesses for free, in the “grandfathering” compromise. And Auctions will only be a percentage of the total.

If all the Carbon Quotas were sold, you could be sure that there would be more than intense lobbying to ratchet down the Carbon year-on-year slowly rather than at the appropriate science-led speed.

Carbon Quotas will always be “worth” more than the companies pay for them.

The problem with Auctions is that the wealthy always win. Those companies that have become wealthy on the back of Dirty Energy are going to be best placed to buy all the Carbon Permits.

The lesser players, those with Clean Energy start-up costs, are going to be “out-competed”.

Auctions imply “wealth as usual” and “Carry on Burning”. They will not change the Energy sources.

Carbon has a strong negative value. Those stuck with “Sub-prime Carbon Assets” to quote Al Gore, are going to find de-Carbonisation very expensive.

RENEWABLE ENERGY NEEDS INVESTMENT

Britain seemingly cannot do major engineering projects any more. How about small ones then ?

Renewable Energy projects will have to be paid for by the Energy Companies, the only entities with enough wealth !

It will be in the corporate’s interests to de-Carbonise their businesses as their customers become poorer and not so able to make purchases with the rising Carbon cost from Peak Oil affecting the costs of all products.

With this “natural” Carbon Price we are already running the experiment and we shall see what will happen.

WHO WILL DE-CARBONISE ?

Who’s going to lead on de-Carbonisation ? Not any companies in the same sector – the simple logic of competitiveness excludes that.

We cannot convince anyone in the Developed World to de-Carbonise at the moment. Look at the rising emissions !

CHEAPER FEEDSTOCKS

There comes a time when no more resource can be added in – either because it’s not there or because it hits the price wall – the lowest cost possible for the resource.

Let’s take biscuits as an example. There has been a continual substitution of ingredients until they are the cheapest they possibly can be in order to retain/maximise the profit from production. Butter has been substituted for palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia in some cases.

Biofuels were supposed to be a great Carbon-saving idea. We were supposed to be growing oilseed rape (canola) all over Europe. But it was too costly when compared to the lowest cost plant oils available – palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia.

We’ve reached the limit in reducing the feedstock price for the components of biscuits and Biofuels, and the Carbon cost has risen sharply.

RESOURCE LIMITS

If no new Energy and Fuel resources are going in, you cannot justify increasing the money supply, so there is no more growth.

No growth at the upstream input end of the Carbon Pipeline means no investment will be possible, particularly not in Renewable Energy.

SIZE OF THE IMPACT

It’s the size of the costs involved, the proportion of the Economy, that makes Carbon Pricing on all quotas unworkable.

The fact is that costs spiral upwards with Carbon, causing general inflation, as everything is dependent on Carbon.

The United Nations says that we not got a high enough target for Carbon Cuts. This is not a minor manipulation of a business sector this is major upheaval of everything – and immediately.

Do we need to say to companies that some of their business is outlawed ?

Auctions won’t help really – there’s only a small number of players who will get the Carbon Permits because they have the wealth base – it will protect Carbon-based business, not remove it !

A gentler approach will be to remove a part of the consumer base – in other words – Ration Carbon.

Keeping money out of it as far as possible – hence trade by quotas not by money – i.e. strict supply of quotas and this way keep the Economy as stable as possible.

We have to say “you can’t put so much Carbon through the system” to companies. Either we say it to them directly and they try to work out how we could control and check that. Or we say it downstream with Carbon Rations.

Effectively these two approaches are the same but the Companies get a chance to redeem themselves if there is downstream Carbon Rationing in place – they compete to de-Carbonise and win our business. They will be able to afford to de-Carbonise as they will keep their financial wealth. The valuable functions of the Companies are maintained/sustained.

We need to say in effect “BP, Shell, ExxonMobil… your Carbon business is going down. As of now you need to get on with Renewable Energy. It’s no good retrenching from your Green Energy programmes.”

“We will take away your rights to sell Carbon by taking away part of your market share.”

CARBON RESPONSIBILITY

Mark Lynas has made a mistake in conflating the Big Producers (eg. oil importers) and the Point Emitters (eg electricity generation plants).

Part of the problem with Carbon Accounting is that companies such as Shell or BP, who are responsible for vast amounts of Carbon entering the Economy, are quite good with Carbon themselves.

Their Corporate Social Responsibility quotients are quite high and they are cleaning up their businesses to reduce their own Carbon Emissions.

However, they are still piping the same kind of Carbon into the Economy as before. It’s just that someone else burns it. Someone else is responsible for the Carbon Emissions, they say.

They will only need to spend a small amount on buying Carbon Quotas through Auction. Instead they should be spending that money, and much, much more investing in Renewable Energy Technologies so they can stop putting Carbon into the Economy.

But how to make this happen ? By putting in place a downstream Carbon Ration system.

NET END USER EMISSIONS

Electricity generators don’t really care about Carbon Emissions it seems. They have not made plans to reduce their incredible waste of energy in generation and transmission. They say the demand for their product is always high.

Maybe we need to say to the Electricity Generators “you will not be permitted to supply more than X equating to Y Carbon Emissions when used by your Customers.”

POINT OF DECISION

What’s interesting is at present there is an investment decision issue that we could exploit for the good.

Big Oil companies have been holding back from heavy investment spend for expanded oil exploration and production, even though they recognise Peak Oil. Letting the “other” companies explore the smaller, doubtful fields.

The situation is that Big Oil could equally well start Renewable Energy investment as new exploration, and Renewable Energy does offer the prospect of sustainable returns going forward, whereas mined hydrocarbons have probably all peaked now.

CARBON CARRIES ON

The reason why Carbon continues to make good money is a situation analagous to drug dealing – the money stays good – even though there are risks and downsides.

We have to convince Big Oil and Big Energy that things will not go on like this, in terms of policy. Compare energy abuse to smoking. We now have bans on advertising for tobacco products. The same should be done for car and air travel advertising. That would limit sales.

HOME CARBON BUDGET

The thing about Carbon Rationing is some household rationalisation will take place – putting all forms of Energy in competition with each other – and it would naturally favour the less Carbon-intensive.

Rations are good because Cost is not equivalent to Carbon intensity, and this will reflect in the Energy bills.

The decision about which energy source to use should be made on Carbon content / impact rather than price.

COSTS OF CARBON RATIONING

It will not cost as much as the study calculates to set up a Carbon Rationing system.

It will not be necessary to have a full ID scheme in place to identify those who are entitled to a Carbon Ration. Identification of persons can be done by a combination of the Electoral Roll and the Health Service/National Insurance registers.

Also, many companies already run a Reward Card scheme, and it would be a simple matter to get them to produce Carbon Cards.

With access to all the computer banking systems it would be a relatively short and easy process to use one of the shadow currencies that already exist to create a Carbon Currency that would run in parallel with all the others.

In fact, if all we want to do in the first instance is Carbon Ration home energy, fuel and travel, that could be most cheaply and easily done by implementing CRAGs – Carbon Rationing Action Groups for virtually no cost but some commitment in each Local Authority.

The costs of a Carbon Rationing system should be borne by the Big Oil and Big Energy Companies who will benefit from the financial stability it will afford them.

GREEN COLLAR JOBS

De-Carbonisation has the potential to create massive new employment, as the feedstocks in Renewable Energy are really free of charge once the infrastructure is in place, giving profits of almost 100% of any return. However, you still need to get over the initial investment cost.

Compare this to the rising costs of crude oil production, and you can see that at some point Renewable Energy investment will become unavoidable. However, we cannot wait that long before we need to make major Carbon Cuts.

Image Credit : erin designr

Manifesto for the Little People
by Jo Abbess
27th May 2008

Feeling the Carbon Crunch yet ?

Like the Protesting Anarchic Lorry Drivers of Great Britain, I bet you are.

New Labour top-rankers would do well not to grimace or curl their lips back. The poor and desperate are always slightly disgusting, but they are fellow citizens, and voters as well.

Now would be a good time to seize a huge advantage from the Conservative Party by advancing both the cause of the increasingly impoverished and the State of the Environment, in a tax reform so bold it would shine your boots before breakfast.

Yes, New Labour can offer tax cuts and Climate Change policy, all rolled into one fat cigar, stealing back support at a most pertinent moment.

Here’s how it goes :-

(a) Accept the fact that the supply of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuels has reached a flat plateau, a crest of production, and that from here on in, the supply will fall. [ PEAK OIL, PEAK NATURAL GAS ]

(b) Accept that, automatically, and quite naturally, the prices of all energy, manufactured and agricultural products are being forced to rise dizzyingly by the economics of scarcity.

(c) Determine that the poorest in Society will be affected the most deeply by this new pricing regime for food, fuel and home energy.

(d) Project that any form of Green Taxation will be resisted as people will be already struggling to cope with inflation.

(e) Accept the grim reality that the notion of taxing polluting activities in order to curb them cannot be made to work with Carbon Dioxide, as everything we do in our Society is dependent on Carbon Dioxide Emissions.

(f) Calculate how the squeeze on the pockets of the poorest from rising energy prices will strip away the profit-base of many businesses, both small and large. Projecting “demand destruction” away from goods and services as the customers become too poor to buy should focus attention on how businesses could be hobbled or crippled.

(g) Determine that the best kind of re-arrangement would incorporate a “safety margin” for those at the bottom of the wealth pyramid.

Here’s the proposal :-

(1) Completely remove Income Tax obligations (and Family Tax Credit topups rights) from those earning less than the Median wage – the largest number of people earning the same amount – at roughly £15,000 per annum. This should cut out a massive amount of administration and focus the tax authorities on collecting where the amounts of tax revenue possible are more significant. The poorest will then be able to absorb inflationary costs on household spending, and this will serve to stabilise the Economy.

(2) Take a Green Fund Windfall Tax from the big energy companies, transparently used to purchase nationally-owned Renewable Energy stations.

(3) Set up a Green Corps, an engineering group managed in the way that the Army is, that will do home insulation, construct community-scale Renewable Energy infrastructure and assist in flood prevention and environmental-disaster rescue. This group would be very useful in creating employment.

(4) Give each person paying National Insurance (Social Security) the option to also pay a little extra into the Green Corps funding.

(5) Issue each Citizen, working or not, with an Energy Quota certificate, effectively an annual guarantee of being permitted to purchase energy and fuel without any extra tax or charge, up to the quota level.

Those with special needs will of course need Energy Credits to compensate them and make their quota larger.

(6) Set a price for buying Energy Permits over and above the Quota, and use this revenue also to pay for Renewable Energy Technology infrastructure.

The future for Energy is Low Carbon, and the path to Low Carbon must be financed somehow, even as inflationary pressures on the cost of living keep mounting.

(7) As time goes by, and de-Carbonisation of industry, electricity generation and transport is delivered, Energy Quotas will come to mean all forms of energy, not just Carbon-based. Any exceedence of the national quota will generate revnue to put further Low Carbon energy production infrastructure in place.

It’s a bold green vision, and would get us out of the stagnant dependency on mined energy. If New Labour can begin to grasp the problem with Carbon, they will see that tinkering with vehicle and fuel taxation will not solve the rapidly unstable Economy.

We need radical forms of pricing and taxation, for energy and fuel, and we need to protect the poorest from destitution, blackouts and cold lives.

Of Flying And Lying
by Jo Abbess
24th May 2008

(Report from 22nd May 2008 Evening Standard Influentials Debate “DOES LONDON NEED A BIGGER HEATHROW ?”)

It’s rather grand upstairs at the RSA (*). All that weight of history, very old oil paintings on panels, a frieze on the wall, Jupitan in heaviness. We’re waiting for the start of the debate. Late, already.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, I can see him on the frieze, in 17th Century costume, with the Quaker brimmed hat, and napkin cravat, completely in the wrong time zone for the rest of his painting. He is reading a scroll.

The motto above the stage seems to read “Patria Cara, Elexior Libertas”, or at least that’s what I noted. I suppose it means something like “Beloved Country, Freedom by Choice”, but I can’t remember much of the Latin I tried to learn, so I’m not sure.

I glance at the free copy of the Evening Standard newspaper with it’s frontpage headline “PETROL CRISIS ? YES, MINISTER”.

The panellists file in. The camera clicks and flashes. Veronica, Editor of the Evening Standard stands up and talks of cordiality. She’s wearing vintage Jackie Kennedy, all 1960s short trim white frock. We learn of the Rules of Engagement.

Welcome to the great Heathrow debate.

“The woman in the hot seat” is the first to be asked to speak. Ruth Kelly admits that Heathrow is a subject that arouses passionate feelings. That air travel has afforded us unprecedented opportunities to see the world. Children expect to be able to travel. 50% of us have friend or family abroad. “I don’t think that as a matter of principle [we should] set out to ration flights.”

She went on to claim economic benefits. Financial Services people fly 6 times as much. International businesses locate near a good airport… that raises a question for me : if Heathrow is so universally acknowledged to be bad, why do so many businesses reside in London ?

Ruth Kelly claimed that the reality is that Heathrow is bursting at the seams, and that this damages Britain’s reputation. Sweetheart, I wanted to say, Britain’s reputation is in tatters, and the fact that Heathrow is rubbish is only a small part of that. Shall we talk about Iraq ?

Ruth Kelly talked about how fog can through out Heathrow’s operations for a whole day, and I felt like rejoindering : well, if you run an airport with such little slack, it should be expected that a little bit of adverse weather will snarl things up.

Ruth Kelly said there is a problem with runway capacity. She is clearly a “glass-half-empty” person, always analysing in terms of what she thinks is missing. I mean, when there are less cheap flights going through Heathrow it will definitely become more streamlined.

Ruth Kelly said she wants to increase capacity in a “sustainable way”, at which point I would have walked out of the room, were it not for the fact that I was hemmed in on all sides. How can increasing business at Heathrow be sustainable ? I mean, already a little fog virtually closes it down. Sooner or later the amount of traffic at Heathrow will create a crisis or a disaster. The whole system is unsustainable.

Ruth Kelly wants to see “sustainable” development at Heathrow as long as local environmental conditions are met.

Then, Ruth Kelly started to pay fat lip-service to Global Climate Change.

“If we don’t take action the results [will be] catastrophic.” We must take action on Climate Change. We are the first country to commit to a legally binding agreement on Carbon Dioxide emissions reductions.

Ruth Kelly pointed out that in many energy sectors, fuels can be substituted for, but that aviation is a much tougher nut to crack. There’s no real way to fly planes apart from using kerosene jet fuel. She said it was unbelievable that it would be possible to fly in a significantly different way.

At which point, I looked at George Monbiot and thought : hasn’t Ruth Kelly read what George Monbiot has written recently about lighter-than-air craft ? Yes, it would be possible to fly in a different way, very much different, with hugely less Carbon impact. Ruth Kelly is clearly under-informed.

Ruth Kelly talked about how aviation has to be dealt with in a slightly different way that other emissions sectors. Under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme aviation will be set an absolute limit of emissions, the base level of 2005. These emissions would be paid for by airlines buying Carbon Permits from other sectors in the EU, probably in electricity generation.

One obvious conundrum springs to mind : so, what if the electricity generators say they don’t want to de-carbonise simply to allow aeroplanes to continue to take off ?

What if the electricity generation businesses say that it is not fair, not a level playing field for aviation to carry on flying, carry on increasing emissions, while the power generation sector are forced to invest to reduce emissions by their own factor plus the aviation factor ?

Paying for someone’s lunch is one thing. Paying for another business sector’s rising emissions is another.

Ruth Kelly admitted that there would be local impacts to having a Third Runway at Heathrow. Goodbye to Sipson. Noise – worse for some, better for others (pretty universal audible sneering from the audience at that comment). Any development has to adhere to strict local environmental assessment – on noise, air quality, local surface transport access.

Ruth Kelly said “I have to weigh the evidence. I won’t shirk in taking a decision. Any decision will not be universally popular… [that decision must be] in the long-term interests of the country…”

Well, the long-term interests of the country, as defined by the Ministry of Defence, for one, include massive reductions in Greenhouse Gas Emissions to air, and buying Carbon Permits from across Europe under the current National Allocation Plans do not amount to a massive reduction in emissions.

I did clap Ruth Kelly, out of general politeness, but I was not thankful.

George Monbiot stood up to the microphone and said that he had a “subtly different view” to the Minister, which raised a tickle of a giggle.

George Monbiot explained that if anyone were asked to design a scheme, a system designed to cause misery, you couldn’t do better than build a new runway at Heathrow.

Building what effectively would be a new airport, causing a 300% rise in flights over South East London, and bringing and end to the “alternating agreement” whereby flightpaths over West London change at 3pm every day to give folk a rest from the noise, and then spread that misery as far as you can.

George Monbiot wanted to know from the Minister Ruth Kelly how she’s assessed the evidence. The decision has to be based on evidence, so why was it rigged by BAA (the British Airways Authority) ?

George Monbiot claimed that the evidence had been “reverse-engineered” to give the numbers that would satisfy BAA and had no basis in reality, whatsoever.

George Monbiot went on to claim that this was not the first lie on which Runway Three is to be hung. There is a history of lies. Then Terminal 4 T4 was built we were promised there would be no T5. There was a promise to cap flights at 480,000 [but R3 would operate to provide 750,000 daily flights].

“Where’s this going to end, Minister ?” he quizzed, “You say this is for our benefit…prosperity. What is this prosperity for ?” He went on to project that Ruth Kelly’s position was effectively saying “humanity exists only to serve the Economy”. And he asked, quite reasonably, why business people can’t use videoconferencing ?

George Monbiot argued that Ruth Kelly was assuming the way things are done is the only way of doing them. Why do we have to be subordinated to the demands to fly more and more ? Other countries in the European Union are facing the same issues, so it’s of no consequence to claim that if we don’t expand Heathrow, flights will go to other airports (gasp !) in other countries (phew !).

This is using the argument that if we don’t do it, someone else will, so we might as well do it ourselves. This is morally questionable. George Monbiot went on to ask, “Why don’t I steal the Minister’s handbag ?”, as an example of using this same logic – if he doesn’t do it, then somebody else will.

George Monbiot asked us to consider that using the Government’s own figures, aviation will constitute 91% of all emissions under the regime of the Climate Change Bill where Britain’s emissions have to reduce by 60% by 2050.

He said that if you take another way of calculating, that could well be 258% of the Carbon Budget. How are we going to purchase enough permits to buy our way out of that ?

In summary, George Monbiot emphasised that Heathrow development was a string of broken promises, and would enhance the sum of human misery. “It is an abomination, Minister, and you should be ashamed of it.”

Of course, we had to get the “business” perspective after this obvious attempt at emotional manipulation…

(To be continued…)

(*) The full title of the RSA is the “Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce”, and is commonly known as “Royal Society of Arts”.

The War For Oil
by Jo Abbess
22nd May 2008

The Metro newspaper, delivered for free to commuters in London carried this astonishing news report today :-

“Burma rejects US aid offer over fears for oil : Burma has shunned a proposal for US ships to deliver aid for its cyclone survivors over fears America may steal oil reserves. The country’s ruling junta claims the offer ‘comes with strings attached’ that are ‘not acceptable’ to Burmese people, according to reports. Aid flown on US planes with military personnel on board has been accepted but the junta would not allow warships and helicopters to deliver relief supplies.”

If this report is accurate, this would go some way to explaining the astonishing refusal of the Burmese leadership to refuse aid, which has been baffling me ever since Nargis blew the country to smithereens.

Surely, I thought, no ruling classes could refuse international aid in the case of a weather-based catastrophe. I didn’t quite go along with the much-repeated accusation that the Burmese junta must be so very evil to refuse aid for their people. I just could not believe that.

Now it seems I have hit upon the underlying reason for this apparently bizarre restriction : the Burmese rulers fear losing their birthright : the value of petroleum found in their national territory.

Now that quite puts the boot on the other hoof. If, as the report suggests, the Americans are offering aid with conditions, presumably conditions about access to “mineral” resources, then who, in fact, are the callous administration ?

More on this from USA Today :-

https://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-05-21-burma-us_N….

“Burma’s state-controlled media said that U.S. helicopters or naval ships were not welcome to join the relief effort. The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said accepting military assistance “comes with strings attached” that are “not acceptable to the people of Myanmar.” The report cited fears of an American invasion aimed at grabbing the country’s oil reserves. Burma’s xenophobic leaders appear to have long feared an invasion by the United States, a concern that some analysts believe prompted the junta’s abrupt decision in 2005 to move the capital from Rangoon to the remote city of Naypyitaw, which is equipped with bunkers.”

ADDENDUM

24th May 2008

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7418206.stm

Cautious response to Burma pledge : Aid agencies have given a cautious welcome to the announcement that Burma’s leaders will allow all foreign relief workers into cyclone-hit areas…The change in the Burmese generals’ hardline position on access came after a meeting on Friday between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Burma’s senior general, Than Shwe. After talks in Burma’s remote capital, Nay Pyi Daw, Mr Ban said Burma would now allow the delivery of aid “via civilian ships and small boats”. But his wording suggested that the US, British and French warships waiting off the coast with supplies may not be able to dock.

Image Credit : Andrew Boswell, Biofuelwatch

Kelly Don’t Get Carbon
by Jo Abbess
22nd May 2008

I’ve just come back home from the Evening Standard’s London Influentials Debate “DOES LONDON NEED A BIGGER HEATHROW ?” I’m in need of a stiff drink, in fact, a very hot cup of tea.

The Right Honourable Ruth Kelly MP, Secretary of State for the UK’s Department for Transport, Baroness Jo Valentine, George Monbiot and broadcaster Julian O’Halloran were ably guided through the debate by Ann McElvoy of the Standard.

The whole debate was, I admit, a clash of the giant paradigms, and I came away rather stunned. In chatting to a couple of people I know vaguely and intimately after the show, one thing rang true : she just doesn’t get it.

Ruth Kelly does not understand Carbon. She doesn’t get how Carbon Trading cannot reduce Carbon Emissions, because it just sweeps Carbon naughtiness under someone else’s carpet (at best), yet doesn’t restrict the total amount.

She doesn’t understand Carbon Numbers, how aviation emissions are more significant because they’re emitted high off the ground, how a lot of British flying is simply gratuitous, how the changes in the electricity generation sector cannot Carbon-Offset aviation, and in which ways aviation cannot comply with the Climate Change Bill.

She doesn’t understand Carbon Subsidies, how successive Governments have supported Aviation as a pillar of the Economy, how airline jet fuel is never taxed, how cheap the airlines can make the tickets.

And worst of all, she doesn’t understand recent Climate Science, how the target of 60% cuts in Carbon by 2050 proposed under the Climate Change Bill cannot address the problem of Climate Stabilisation, how knowledge has moved on since the last IPCC report was first scoped.

If she were to understand Carbon, that at least would be a first step to her understanding the threat that expansion of Heathrow poses.

As it is, she has to limit herself to discussions on local environmental impact of a Third Runway at Heathrow, and there she gets it entirely wrong. She doesn’t understand just how many and in what ways people suffer from aeroplane noise and pollution on the ground, how many, many people across London are totally against Heathrow expansion on the grounds of added congestion and disturbance.

As George Monbiot put it, “Expansion…of Heathrow…would enhance the sum of human misery. It is an abomination, Minister, and you should be ashamed of it !”

The USA Versus OPEC
by Jo Abbess
22nd May 2008

This is 2008, International Polar Year.

But if you thought all those scientific trips to the Arctic were purely about the Environment, think again.

According to the American publication Foreign Affairs, the melting ice on the Arctic Ocean is noted with glee by Big Energy, who view the seabed Up North as prime prospecting territory.

https://www.foreignaffairs.org

Arctic Meltdown

The Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming

Scott G. Borgerson

The Arctic Ocean is melting, and it is melting fast. This past summer, the area covered by sea ice shrank by more than one million square miles, reducing the Arctic icecap to only half the size it was 50 years ago. For the first time, the Northwest Passage – a fabled sea route to Asia that European explorers sought in vain for centuries – opened for shipping.

Even if the international community manages to slow the pace of climate change immediately and dramatically, a certain amount of warming is irreversible. It is no longer a matter of if, but when, the Arctic Ocean will open to regular marine transportation and exploration of its lucrative natural-resource deposits…

Ironically, the great melt is likely to yield more of the very commodities that precipitated it: fossil fuels. As oil prices exceed $100 a barrel, geologists are scrambling to determine exactly how much oil and gas lies beneath the melting icecap.

More is known about the surface of Mars than about the Arctic Ocean’s deep, but early returns indicate that the Arctic could hold the last remaining undiscovered hydrocarbon resources on earth. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Norwegian company StatoilHydro estimate that the Arctic holds as much as one-quarter of the world’s remaining undiscovered oil and gas deposits.

News from the United States of America in the last two weeks regarding fuel supplies has been interesting, to say the least.

George W. Bush has signed into law a halt to topping up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The aim : to allow more oil into the domestic market, to cool the price.

At around the same time, it was found that the stockpiles were surprisingly lower than expected.

Plus, OPEC says it will not (or cannot) increase petroleum supplies.

The result : general market panic.

The American administration blame it all on OPEC, and Gordon Brown in the United Kingdom has reflected that position, to his shame, in my opinion.

Could it be that, despite several years of testing in the Arctic, no huge lakes of oil under the seabed have been sounded out ?

It’s funny. I’ve compared notes with people who were at Primary School as the same time as I was. We learned in Geography lessons that the main petroleum deposits are to be found near the Equator.

Oh yes, there’s tar sands and oil shales further North and South, and coal practically everywhere. But even though there’s been quite a lot of Tectonic Plate movement of the continents between various oil-producing periods in Earth history, the main high-energy liquid hydrocarbons that are readily accessible are close to 0 degrees latitude.

Could it be that the idea of finding oil in the formerly frozen North was used as a gambit to keep the oil industry running ? And that now we see clearly that there’s no significant oil at the Poles, we are starting to run wild with what we do have ?

There is now clear evidence that all of the major oil-producing regions of the world have experienced a plateau in production. This is known as Peak Oil.

The Saudis cannot make it flow out of the ground as fast as it did before. They cannot be blamed. But that does not stop the United States from doing so.

I’m afraid to say it, but this could be part of the next assault on the Middle East. Not just Iran, but the whole region. The same sort of game about national oil reserves was played out just prior to the Incursion on Iraq.

The fact that American Strategic Petroleum Reserve has dropped its reported stocks is possibly because they have already been diverted to the War on Terror Effort.

For American tank machinery, the next stop could be Tehran, or Riyadh, or both at the same time. You have been warned. From now on, do not believe the hype about OPEC.

Drop your own Energy and Fuel consumption to halt the War for Oil.

Carbon Chaos : Economic Stagnation
End of the Trendline for Growth : Start of a Major Security Panic
by Jo Abbess
21st May 2008

I stopped reading the Financial Times before I was 21, sick to the core with its completely falsifiable theories on the operation of Economy and Trade, continually stunned by the misinterpretation of natural resource exploitation as a corporate right, and the mantra that cheap labour was good.

I started to read the Financial Times again in 2003, to try to follow the emerging markets in Renewable Energy. There are still times when I put the pink pages down in disgust.

Yet there are days when my visceral relationship with this newspaper is more jubliant. Today, I have to cheer. Well, two cheers, anyway, not the full three.

The Leader : “The Oil Conundrum” “The economy will adjust. If only we knew when and how : When oil was $10 a barrel, the idea that the stuff was running out seemed demented…It is not possible to make the case that global crude oil production has nowhere to go but down…The question is whether prices will eventually fall because of a substantial expansion of oil supply, a switch to alternative fuels, or a collapse in energy demand…Yet the flood of oil has not been forthcoming…The gloomiest explanation is that all the big fields have been discovered and most are in decline…While the world waits and waits…oil prices will only fall if we burn less oil…”

This is probably the moment that the Financial Times recognises the real possibility of Peak Oil.

I don’t know what’s taken them so long (I do, actually). I mean, Chevron has been on about it in large full-page, full-colour advertisements for over a year.

And major opinion-formers have locked their jaws into position on the Media to keep up the message : there is a finite supply of Brent and West Texas Intermediate, and there will come a point where demand broaches supply as the crude gush plateaus and starts to decline.

Getting past the point of denial is just the first step down a long, hard road. There are several, very obvious, quite possibly very dangerous outcomes to Peak Oil becoming generally accepted. The responses to Peak Oil could be highly chaotic, and risky for many people around the world.

Let’s look at just a few.

PRICE OVERLOAD

There is a genuine possiblity of rapid inflation in all elemental sectors due to price overloading coming out of the predictable “scarcity” value of hydrocarbons.

Large percentages of agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, and quite almost all of transport in the developed world are dependent on petroleum by-products.

If rapid inflation is allowed in the price of hydrocarbon fuels, then the staging value of every product in all these sectors will rise, with more weight being put on the final cost than at the moment, as businesses try to future-protect their profit margins.

This is the scramble up the banks of the river in flood.

The sensible way to stop speculation and high gradients in pricing is to quit grabbing for the biscuits on the tray at the children’s party. One biscuit at a time. One at a time.

This is rationing, and will cause immediate capping of market growth. Some may squabble and say the market will correct itself. But they must admit that the volume, the flow of the central products that drive the economies cannot increase, so it will never correct.

In many countries of the world, rationing is already in operation for things such as water, food and fuel. This measure needs to be applied to everything energy-wise, everywhere in the world.

I believe that Economies need to be kept as stable as possible – sufficiently stable to permit continuing trade and provision of goods and services.

A market environment where prices are not highly volatile – an “operation window” that allows for gradual adjustment to new resource conditions along whole trading chains.

Already, some actors have seemed to capitalise on the scarcity situation and rising base prices, and have passed on more cost that they need to. Some regulatory measures have already been implemented on prices, particularly of food, around the world.

The Oil Giants have to be propped up at the moment, as many funding streams are invested in petroleum, including Pensions, Government Bonds and so on.

There are very few actors in the supply of hydrocarbon fuels, so they act effectively as a cartel, and levelling this accusation could restrict untoward profit-taking on their part, just like the domestic energy companies have been outed as a cartel today in the UK.

If profit-making on the part of the Energy companies and the oil-producing countries can be controlled, then it will be possible to stabilise the Economies and protect us from Social Collapse due to high inflation.

RE-NATIONALISATION OF HYDROCARBON WEALTH

The idea goes like this : so, Mexico produces X barrels of oil a day, and it exports from that, using the intermediaries of the Oil Giants.

But, Mexico’s Economy has bubbled, and although it is only using Y barrels of oil a day, this figure is approaching X, and it can be seen that clearly one day, it will be X.

When will it choose to be more monetarily efficient and close down its contracts with the international Oil Giant companies, and start direct internal oil distribution ?

Buying oil at home is going to be cheaper for most Mexicans than buying from the Oil Giants. The “foreign expertise” will be sent packing. Sovereign control will be asserted.

And if Mexico plays protectionist games, will other countries refuse to trade other products with Mexico ?

Where does this story end ? With the collapse of various markets of food, fuel, and manufactured goods. Nobody benefits.

IRAQ

Iraqi oil production isn’t going too well, what with the in-fighting in the country. No amount of American Surge is going to rectify this, so transnational oil corporates can just stop licking their lips.

In fact, if Iraqi oil production stays as poor as it is now, it will not matter that its reserves are now figured to be the national highest in the world. If it’s not coming out of the ground and into a refinery, it can’t help international supply.

What if Iraq gets repeated elsewhere ? Not necessarily literally in the form of an incursion to correct some perceived regime error.

What happens if other oil-producing nations start to break down, maybe as a direct consequence of Climate Change, or an unstable international Economy ?

The Middle Eastern countries, where most of the remaining oil reserves are in the world, are also prone to the exacerbated air temperatures and drought of recent years.

The Middle East will be running out of drinking water faster than oil. Then what of native agriculture ? What of local labour ? Who can stand to live in 50 degree C heat for several months with no access to air conditioning ? Will national energy supplies be restricted ?

FALLING RESERVE FIGURES : BIGGER HONESTY

Panic could well set in if honesty is employed as a tactic to get the Americans off the backs of the Saudis.

The Americans beg for more oil. The Saudis say they can do a little, but not much. Then the Americans come back asking for more.

“Look at your reserve figures”, they say, “you’re good to supply.”

But, honesty will come out of all of this : the Saudis want to keep a hold of their precious oil, for future use and for future gain. So they will begin to reduce the imaginary figures on their reserves. I’m sure of it.

But this could produce a good deal of panic, as the truth settles in and makes its nest in your mind. So, actually, the Saudis haven’t got as much crude as they said they had. So, Peak Oil has been with us for months in fact, maybe years.

RATIONING THE FUTURE

If there is a limited supply of any product, there must be shares in that product – rations or allowances – whatever you want to call them.

If not, then this risks general collapse of many different supply chains to a greater or less degree. What follows will be not so much “demand destruction” as “demand puncture”.

I believe that we need to avoid breakdowns in trading circuits and market sectors.

I think the way to do that is to move over to using Carbon as the underlying currency.

The financial price of Carbon should be forced to become relatively stable, pegged in order to stabilise the economics.

The supply of Carbon will needs become the value marker, as its flow needs to be regulated.

If the price of Carbon is held relatively stable, it will give us a chance to invest in Alternative Energy technologies, including Energy Efficiency-producing processes, Renewable Energy Technologies and Energy Wastage Reduction systems.

If the price of Carbon is allowed to rocket, everything will destabilise.

I overheard several people in my office discussing oil prices today, making the links between food and fuel and food and fertiliser.

The problems of today are not a result of over-population, as there is still enough food produced to feed the world. But if the costs of petrochemical-based fertiliser is going to rise exponentially, then real hunger will come.

And, even if the Carbon Price is pegged to stabilise Trade, and Carbon is Rationed, there is a serious risk of famine anyway. Fertiliser will be rationed, but harvests will continue to be damaged by Climate Change, with its poor and different rainfalls, flooding, warm nights and drought.

What we need is to curb Carbon growth by rationing, to stabilise the Economies as Carbon declines.

And then we need to apply Contraction and Convergence to protect the Climate and save Civilisation.

Contraction & Convergence :-

https://www.gci.org.uk/contconv/cc.html

Short C & C Briefing :-

https://www.gci.org.uk/briefings/ICE.pdf

Latest C & C Animation :-

https://www.gci.org.uk/animations/Sources_and_Sinks_UK_Climate_Act.swf

Congested Thinking
by Jo Abbess
9th May 2008

Here is the problem : the growth of the British Economy is based on five holy pillars : transport, property, finance, engineering and energy. And each one of these pillars is crumbling and under threat from rising and violent storm surge.

The property bubble has almost certainly burst as people are starting to realise that debt is for life and not just for First-Time-Buys.

Engineering has become more and more specialist, but highly at risk of outsourcing to any trading partner nation with cheap labour.

Finance : well, it’s taken a beating in the last year or so, largely from the property pimple-busting splurge. You can no longer really guarantee that you’ll have a liveable pension, after all the investment funds have hit the wall, because they sunk it all into bricks and mortar.

And Energy, well, there are cracks in the reactors and the Liquid Natural Gas supplies are not quite fulfilling, and the Natural Gas pipelines from mainland Europe are not full.

There are deep impacts from Climate Change in each sector, as all of them are highly dependent on Fossil Fuels. And there are cycles of idiocy in each.

Let’s focus on transport, shall we ? More to the point : cars.

Well, in order to stimulate the Economy, the selling of cars is so well encouraged, you’d think there was a law against walking or taking the bus.

In every newspaper, magazine, in betwixt every slice of television, in every telly programme, in every cinema, on every roadside hoarding, just about everywhere are advertisements for cars.

Cars as objects of desire, cars bedecked with women, cars made to look like parts of the natural world, cars on open roads, cars moving at speed. It’s enough to make you feel vomitious if you stop to think about it.

The reality of car driving in the United Kingdom is jam and grind, bumper to bumper. And all that idling in motors is puffing more and more pollution into the air.

The effects include Global Warming, road rage, RTA hospitalisations, asthma (check), quite possibly brain damage, sinusitis, autism (possibly connected), noise stress, and general toxic poisoning to anything that’s near a road.

So we sell the cars, and the taxman gets his slice. Then we tax and insure the cars, and the taxman gets his slice. Then we drive the cars on taxable fuels, and we park on highly taxed strips of tarmac.

Oh yes, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, formerly known as the Inland Revenue, are certainly raking in the revenue. It’s all part of keeping the Economy rolling.

It gets spent on poorly servicing the Military, almost adequately servicing Education, just about propping up the Health Service, averagely supporting the socially disadvantaged, and brilliantly financing road building.

But what about the implications of more and more cars on the roads ? It impacts negatively on the functioning of the Economy as a whole.

And what about the targets on congestion ?

The Times reveals today the story of missed targets. Behind the statistics, a massive increase in car ownership.

Can you get anywhere fast in a car ? Nope. So why do people buy them exactly ? The story goes on : more advertising, more selling, more congestion.

A radical road-pricing scheme : dropped. Probably a good thing too.

History repeats itself : inefficient machines, sold in increasing numbers, creating pollution and distress. It’s high time we called time on congestion.

There is a way to stop congestion. Stop selling cars.

It’s simple. It’s bold. Some will call it economic madness. But it’s the only policy that can touch congestion and stop the waste of fuel energy burned while people leave their engines running,

With the hot weather, everyone will be stuck in holiday jams, with the engines ticking over, to keep the wasteful air conditioning on.

The Government promised to meet targets on reducting congestion, but have failed to meet them because they haven’t addressed the root cause.

How likely are they to be able to deliver Climate Change Emissions reductions if they have no policy, only targets ? If they can’t even fix congestion, how are they going to fix Carbon Emissions ?

People continue to struggle to travel in Britain. All forms of transport suffer from congestion and delay. Every day, more fuel is wasted in longer journeys and traffic hold-ups.

And meanwhile, the price of petrol/diesel continues to climb…

https://driving.timesonline.co.uk

From The Times

May 9, 2008

Drivers in worse jam as traffic plan fails

Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

Motorists are wasting more time sitting in queues on motorways and A-roads because the Government has failed to meet its key target for reducing congestion.

Delays have increased on the 100 key routes on which ministers promised three years ago to make journeys more reliable.

The Department for Transport attempted to bury its failure to meet the target by quietly releasing the figures yesterday in a large batch of reports on congestion.

The motorways pledge is the most important target because delays affect the entire population, either directly or through the cost to the economy of lost working time.

The failure is particularly embarrassing for ministers because the target was criticised for being too weak when it was announced. A fall in journey times by a single second could have been trumpeted as a success.

The revelation comes as new figures show that the number of cars owned by British households has increased by five million to 27.8 million in the past decade.

All regions have had an increase in car registration, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. But the North East and East Midlands have had the biggest growth, of up 30 per cent each. In the past two years alone, there has been a 3 per cent increase in distance travelled by car to 5,900 miles per person per year.

The congestion failure originates from 2005, when the Government announced a target, known as a public service agreement, to “make journeys more reliable on the strategic road network” — the country’s 100 most important motorways and A-roads.

It said that the target would be achieved if the average vehicle delay on the slowest 10 per cent of journeys were less in the 12 months to April 2008 than in the 12 months ending in July 2005.

The average driver was delayed by 3 minutes 47 seconds for every ten miles travelled on the slowest 10 per cent of trips in 2005. But figures for the last 12-month period, ending on March 31, show that the average delay had risen by 4.4 per cent to 3 minutes 57 seconds. The worst delays were on the A556, the M26; the A453 from Kegworth to Nottingham; the M25; the M60; and the M1 from junction 13 to 6a.

The target was less challenging than a previous target, set in 2000, to reduce congestion by 6 per cent by 2010. That goal was abandoned in 2003 when the Government admitted that rising traffic levels would make it unachievable.

The new target was expected to be much easier to meet because it disregarded 90 per cent of journeys and allowed the Government to claim success if the time lost in traffic jams on the remaining 10 per cent had fallen by only one second.

A spokeswoman for the Highways Agency said that it had failed to predict the impact of long-running roadworks, such as the widening of the M1. Last summer’s flooding contributed a quarter of the increase in total delays.

Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said that the main reason for the failure to meet the target was the Government’s slow progress in delivering extra capacity. “They were likely to fail from Day 1 because traffic was growing each year but they were putting in almost no new capacity. The only measures that will relieve congestion are road pricing or building more roads.”

Professor Glaister published a report last November which proposed a combination of road pricing and road building, with some of the proceeds from tolls being reinvested to relieve the network’s worst bottlenecks. Using DfT forecasts and data, the report predicted that the number of cars would rise to 38 million by 2041. It recommended that 373 miles (600km) of new lanes be added to the strategic road network every year — equal to 100km of motorway with three lanes in each direction. The Government has approved an average of just over 100km of new lanes a year until 2015.

Eight years ago, the Highways Agency proposed using the hard shoulder as a cheap and rapid solution to motorway congestion. But to date it has enabled this on only 11 miles of the M42 near Birmingham.

In March, the Government said that hard shoulders would be turned into running lanes on hundreds of miles of congested motorways, with users paying tolls. The first of these lanes will not open until 2010 at the earliest.

Car traffic fell by 1 per cent last year compared with 2006. But traffic rose overall by 0.6 per cent; the boom in home deliveries has contributed to a 9 per cent increase in mileage by vans.

Car costs soar

— It will cost £600 more to run a family car this year because of rising fuel prices, road tax and insurance

— Mondeo Man, who paid £5,611 for 10,000 miles last year, now needs £6,256

— The 11.5 per cent increase in running costs has added 6.45p a mile for running a family car

— Farmers and rural drivers who need a larger 4×4 will be worst affected, with their costs rising by almost a fifth, or more than £2,000

— Even the most efficient cars, such as the VW Polo or Ford Fiesta, cost £300 a year more

— Petrol has gone up by 18.4 per cent in the past year, with the average price of a litre of unleaded now at 111p and diesel at 121p a litre. It now costs more than £8 extra to fill a 50-litre petrol tank

Source: AA

What the Department for Transport has to say :-

https://www.dft.gov.uk

Wendy Wot Won It
by Jo Abbess
8th May 2008

My, my, Wendy Alexander is having fun at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood just now.

Before you ask, I’m in England, but having fun watching her gleeful high-octane antics on BBC Parliament, the freeview television channel.

Yes, I have to admit it. When I’m visiting people I do occasionally watch TV. I turn to BBC Parliament to avoid having to suffer the non-news Sports News.

Wendy’s regular implosional-explosional style at First Minister’s Questions has been burning a fire with increasingly higher ire as time goes by.

She just can’t put up with the Opposition. She’s paid not to. But on this one thing they agree : the people of Scotland should have the right to decide on independent governance.

This week she ratcheted up the stakes by seeming to join the call from the ruling Scottish National Party for an early Referendum.

When asked about a vote, she said in broad daylight on a public television broadcast : “Bring it on.”

And if, in years to come, Scotland regains its economic freedom, it could become obscenely wealthy from the supply of sustainable energy : power from the wind and the waves and tides.

This would be the payback for the theft and waste of North Sea oil and Natural Gas, long appropriated and piped south for the pleasure and prosperity of the English.

Scotland has double the wind profile of England, and Scottish marine engineers could make the National Grid hum with green electricity.

There are oceans of opportunities for Renewable Energy north of the Scottish-English border.

Just as long as large foreign companies don’t impose unworkable schemes on local communities.

Just as long as long as the English naturalist societies are sent packing back south, organisations that have been meddling in Scottish environmental affairs, such as the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and the CPRE (Campaign for the Protection of Rural England).

Wendy Alexander, William Wallace would have been proud of you, seeking to protect the rights of the Scottish people to economic security and political sovereignty, by encouraging secession from Westminster.

Gordon Brown may frown, but I’m smiling.

Image Credit : James Hansen, NASA GISS

Climate Smash & Climate Squish
by Jo Abbess
25th April 2008

* Energy Balance

* Fast and Slow Responses to Global Warming

* Global Warming Time Lag

* The Saving Polar Ice Caps

* Self-Reinforcing Effects

* It’s Happened Before But For Different Reasons

* Better Back Down Fast

OLD CULTURE : NEW EXPRESSION

In the last few minutes I have heard a handbell being rung outside in the street. A large white open-backed van has thrumbled and purred past, chock-full of large metal equipment, wiring and furniture, and the passenger was shaking his hand up and down to clang and clang.

This being East London, some people reading this will know what this means. No, it’s not the Medieval call of the priests with handcarts calling to take away the bodies of the victims of Yersinia Pestis.

It’s not “Bring out your dead !”, it’s “Bring out your dead white goods !” as this is the Big Trash service of the Local Authority.

This activity used to be undertaken privately by people known as rag-and-bone-men, but it’s been brought bang-up-to-date as a modern expression of mandatory public service recycling.

ROCKS & RULES

In the last weeks, the scholarly 18th and 19th Century studies into Geology and the 20th Century enquiries into Geophysics have been brought sharply into relief as the European Geosciences Union in Vienna acted as a platform for the unveiling of startling new data on Global Warming.

It’s suddenly fashionable once more to be interested in rocks and things that died many years ago. Astonishing facts, figures and theoretical projections have been presented, and although journalists have not always understood the implications of what is being said, they have understood the general tone.

The stability of that part of the Earth system we call home is highly at risk from Global Warming and Climate Change, and the Geographers and related professionals are yanking the cat out of the bag (or the rabbit out of the hat, if you prefer) for all to see. It’s high time that people started to pay serious attention.

ENTIRELY NEW THINKING

I’ve been reflecting over the last month upon several research papers, principally that from James Hansen et alia :-

https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

I wanted to try and get a feeling for all the processes and effects they talk about, as I wanted to be able to describe them properly, without using numbers or graphs.

I want to pick out what here what I consider to be the most important concepts to hold on to, descriptions that I hope will have a pictorial effect in your minds. If you can hold onto these ideas, you may be able to make sense of what unfolds, and help you to take appropriate action.

OUT OF ENERGY BALANCE

What Hansen and his colleagues have tried to demonstate is that any change in Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere causes a Global Warming or Global Cooling effect.

This they did by considering different geological time periods, looking at all the available proxy and real data from the physical records.

One period in pre-history shows that at the time that the Antarctic Ice Sheet formed, the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere was dropping sharply, cooling the Earth.

The picture I have in my mind is this : imagine a long line of coaches moving at the same speed along an inter-city high-speed road (a motorway, an autoroute…) Imagine that one coach brakes sharply. All the other coaches behind it will crash into it.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter which speed they start out at. If they are travelling fast or slow, any change in speed of one of them will cause bunching.

This is the same with the warming effect of Carbon Dioxide. At approximately 34 million years ago, the level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere plummeted, and massive glaciation took place as a result of the Global Cooling that ensued.

The count of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere was higher than it is today, but reducing it caused Global Cooling.

Today, Carbon Dioxide levels are rising sharply, so we can expect Global Warming.

Because Carbon Dioxide has a warming effct, changes in the levels of Carbon Dioxide put the Earth system out of Energy balance, and it must adjust to the new conditions.

CLIMATE SMASH & CLIMATE SQUISH

Imagine if you will a lump of dough, made with flour, water, sugar and yeast, that has been left to prove and aerate and expand for a little while. Picture tearing a piece of the dough and putting it on a floured table, and then punching down on it with a clenched fist. The dough will collapse instantly in the shape of your fist.

But what happens if you continue to keep pressing down on the dough ? Over the period of a minute or so, it will start to squelch out at the edges around your fist, bulbing and bulging out of the pressure zone.

This is a representation of what James Hansen refers to as “fast” and “slow” feedback Climate Sensitivity.

In other words, it can be understood that there is a relatively rapid response of the Earth system to Global Warming, but it is clear from the data from ancient history that there are also slower processes that occur during a Global Warming or Global Cooling episode, over a longer timescale.

Hansens’ team take the data from drilled ice cores and other sources, and show that the Fast Feedback is somewhere in the region of 3 degrees Celsius (roughly 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), on average, globally.

They use the same series of data to deduce that Slow Feedbacks can ammount to somewhere in the region of 6 degrees Celsius (roughly 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

The concern is that although Life on Earth might be able to survive the Fast Feedback, it might not be able to survive Slow Feedback.

GLOBAL CLIMATE TIME LAG

There are many factors at work in Global Warming, one of the major ones being that the Earth system does not warm uniformly.

Ocean and Atmosphere warm at different rates and with different trends and cycles. Various elements of the Earth system have both Global Warming and Global Cooling impacts, and it takes time for these effects to resolve one way or another.

One thing is clear : the near-surface land temperatures have not caught up with the implied amount of warming calculated from the known Carbon Dioxide Emissions.

This means there is a time lag between known “radiative forcing” and the full warming effect.

Imagine this : drop an icecube into a cup of hot water. The icecube does not melt in an instant. It takes time to equilibrate. This is the time lag of Global Warming.

We have experienced a rise of 0.7 or 0.8 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, but there is another 1.4 degrees Celsius “in the pipeline” coming to us from the Emissions we have already made.

THE SAVING GRACES : HOW THE POLAR ICE CAPS ARE PROTECTING US

What comes across clearly from the Hansen paper is that were it not for the polar ice caps, the total warming feedback would be much faster than it is.

The polar ice caps are in fact protecting us from catastrophic Climate Change at the present time.

However, the most recent news is that massive changes are afoot in the Arctic, which could mean and ice-free northern Arctic Ocean within 10 to 20 years.

As the Arctic sea ice melts away, so will one of our defences against dangerous warming.

SELF-REINFORCING EFFECTS

Carbon Dioxide Emissions cause Global Warming which causes Carbon Dioxide Emissions and other Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

There are other mutually self-reinforcing effects that are becoming possible.

The news in the last 48 hours is about how global airborne Methane levels have started to rise again, after stabilising for several years. These increases are not due to increases in farming livestock, so they must be due to other effects. The most likely ones include the melting of the permafrost and the warming of underwater shallow continental shelves, both of which could presage increased Methane Emissions.

IT’S HAPPENED BEFORE, BUT FOR DIFFERENT REASONS

Yes, Global Warming has happened before in Earth history, but it is clear from the geophysical and biophysical record that those phases were caused by different reasons than today.

The tectonic movement of the India plate which resulted in it joining with Asia, most likely caused a massive outgassing of Carbon Dioxide and other Greenhouse Gases, as indicated by the geological records.

The warming effects were fast and furious, but eventually the Earth recovered its balance.

BETTER BACK DOWN FAST

We need to reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions into the Atmosphere, caused by the burning of Fossil Fuels and deforestation, peat-burning and other man-made change.

The Hansen paper makes the point that if we reduce emissions rapidly, we may be able to avoid the full force of the slow feedback warming, as the “Climate Inertia” or time lag allows us time to get cooling again before the slow feedbacks melt all of the ice on Earth.

The picture is this : I put a teaspoon into a very hot cup of coffee. If I’m quick, I can stir the coffee and take the spoon out of the cup before the heat transport through the metal of the spoon causes me to burn my fingers !

Take It From Me
by Jo Abbess
24th April 2008

You should listen to the experts. If all decisions made by our governments were made on the sole basis of public debate, this country would collapse. Honest.

Do you honestly think that people who believe in the healing power of diluted water (for example) should be able to influence health services provision ?

I don’t claim to be an expert on Climate Change. I’m not a Climate Scientist. But I have studied enough Science to be able to understand some of the research into Global Warming and Climate Change.

Although I cannot spell out the whole story, I do want you to take it from me : Climate Change is real, it’s happening now, and mankind’s activities are the largest factor in causing it.

I can also convey to you, with relayed authority, that there are high risks to the natural world, and all Life on Earth, from the progressive and emerging changes to the Climate that are taking place.

The evidence from events that are already happening confirms that the risks are not only real, but are becoming reality.

We have no option but to rein in and cap our use of Fossil Fuels, and dramatically reduce deforestation in the tropical regions of the Planet, amongst other vital measures, including the installation of Renewable Energy technologies, and changes in the use of land, food provision and water management.

This is a message of Life-saving environmental control. It is not, however, a message of austerity. If we properly address the Climate Change problem, and succeed, we will continue to enjoy the great riches and abundance of the natural world.

I want to explain a little about why I feel confident in asserting this message.

My university studies were in the Science of Natural Philosopy : otherwise known as Physics. I did rather well in (Micro) Electronics and Electromagnetics. For my final year project I built briefcase-sized equipment for the purpose of detecting magnetic resonance (you know, like those great big body scanners in hospitals).

During the work placement that was part of my course, I made alloys of various metals and constructed Thermoelectric devices. Amongst other things, I followed studies into Energy (including Nuclear Power), Thermodynamics and Materials Science.

The only reason I am not building high technology weapons for the Military is that I consider that making machines to kill people is unethical and I don’t want to be a part of it.

I won’t work in the Nuclear Engineering sector, either, for reasons of Entropy, which can be summarised as “the larger the mess, the larger the budget”. I don’t really believe that Nuclear Power can ever be economic, or clean. So, to all those headhunter agencies out there, please stop sending me text messages about Nuclear Engineer vacancies.

When I joined the workforce, I was initially working on a “civilian” project (i.e. not making equipment to kill people for a living), but when I was invited to worked on weapons technology, I had to desist from that employ. I suppose I could have oriented myself towards a career in Medical Technology, but instead I diverted into Information Technology.

One of the greatest things I learned from my studies was that it is important to try to understand the underlying physical processes in the forces and flows of Nature. I am no longer able to do the Mathematics to construct and solve the equations, but I am still able to work through in my mind the way things move and change and influence each other.

From the basic principles regarding the powers of the electromagnetic spectrum, I have to stop myself laughing out loud at people that claim that the invisible waves from cordless digital phone systems can harm them. It also explains why I pooh-pooh the quaint and frankly anti-technology notion that the signals from mobile phone masts might be killing bees.

I have been reading James Hansen et al.’s recent paper on Carbon Dioxide targets :-

https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

It’s been taking me a long time to absorb, and not only because I can’t remember all the names for the geological periods of ancient history.

I have been trying to get a handle on the basic underlying processes of Global Warming that Hansen is attempting to describe. These are formed from deductions and inferences and calculations, from the empirical data from the distant past, data that has come from ice core sampling and other sources.

Hansen’s team have concluded from their enquiries that the Climate signal from Global Warming, that is, the sensitivity of temperatures on Earth to changes in the chemical composition of the Atmosphere, is an average of SIX DEGREES CELSIUS or Centigrade of Earth Heating for a DOUBLING of Carbon Dioxide in the air.

For any Americans or old British fuddy-duddies, that equates to a little bit under ELEVEN DEGREES FAHRENHEIT of Earth Heating, as a global average, for DOUBLE Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.

You must remember that easily verifiable models show that the Earth’s Polar regions can warm much higher than at the Equator, which means if you’re at mid-latitudes the heating may not as high as the whole six degrees, but even so, it could be a significant jump

Considering that before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric Carbon Dioxide was at around 282 parts per million by volume, and that now it is close on 386 ppmv, a rise of nearly 40%, I think we should be paying attention :-

ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt

Don’t give in to the smear tactics of sceptics/skeptics. Most of them are not scientists, and even those that are don’t have any up-to-date expertise in Climate or Geophysical Science :-

https://news.smh.com.au/climate-change-deniers-smear-scien…

https://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9036411