ecology & place

When it comes to the debate about possible solutions to climate change, environmentalists are forever banging on and on about the fact that it is they who are 'armed' with nothing but the latest peer reviewed science. As well as that, how many more times have I got to hear that climate change is the most pressing crisis facing the whole of mankind - now war, poverty and disease have been relegated to second place? What is worse is the fact that when a solution (other than micro-managing humanity back to the Dark-ages, or worse, the caves) is put forward as a possible solution, it is green activists who are normally the first to poo-poo such solutions - and normally, in just one sentence.

Click here for a short screenplay about global warming and capitalism

This forum has been oddly silent in the wake of news reports of the coldest winter in 100 years.

[quote]Global warming sceptics buoyed by record cold
By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles

The benefits of global warming--regardless of its causes, could well offset any theoretical negative impacts. New energy sources now accessible in the Arctic could well provide cost-effective energy supplies. Of course, there is a race to stake claims in previously inaccessible regions.

[quote]
Global warming speeds up Race for North Pole
London , 15 January 2008 – Global warming is accelerating the quest for the North Pole’s vast energy resources, which are becoming accessible due to the disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, Jane’s Defence Weekly reports. Claiming Arctic sovereignty is fast becoming a high-stakes – and potentially dangerous – game.

There may actually be a coherent and decent argument against building a new generation of nuclear power stations in Britain - but the British environmentalist movement have not come up with one single one so far. Indeed, environmental arguments against nuclear power are devised solely from myths and ill-founded jurassic prejudice against new technology, which they appear to fear for no good reason.

For example, one of the fiercest critics of the governments plan to build new nuclear power stations is Caroline Lucas MEP for the Green Party. As far as Dr Lucas is concerned securing Britain's future energy supply with state-of-the-art nuclear power stations is simply 'dangerous, irresponsible and costly distraction from the real challenge of tackling climate change' - but none of this is true.

Environmentalists are for ever banging on and on about how fighting against climate change is the number one issue for the whole of humanity. Apparently, fighting against global warming has now become more important than fighting against war and poverty.

However, there is one thing that climate change activists and their supporters will never talk about - and that is, what exactly will the Earth be like after climate change has been fought and won?

There is a simple reason for that - the truth is, even if every single human being decided to live in a cave and recycle all their waste, the Earth would look no different from what it looks like today.

Global warming?? carbon footprints?? recycling?? terrorism?? religions??............all big subjects yes....... but surely the ONE subject everyone should be talking about is the constantly increasing population of this planet!! Feed 100 starving Africans this year and next year there will be 200 starving Africans to feed. For everyone recycling some rubbish there is someone new producing more rubbish .... You can reduce car and factory emissions....but there will just be more and more cars and factories. More people require more food so more land must be used to produce it... but those people all have to live somewhere so more land is needed to house them. I could go on and on....all the efforts we make are pointless without controlling the worlds population. Why do the media, the politicians, the scientists steer clear of this subject??????

Yet again, the scientific community displays the incredible lack of consensus on the scope and impact of global warming. [quote]As it happens, last week also saw astronomer and Sun expert Dr David Whitehouse further the case for Solar forcing's majority influence. Whitehouse reported that it's been months since any sunspots have been observed: "After a period of exceptionally high activity in the 20th century, our Sun has suddenly gone exceptionally quiet." The significance of which might become quite evident quite quickly. You see, whenever presented with the obvious (and logical) correlations between solar activity and Terran climate in the past, Solar Deniers claimed that continued elevations in global temperatures after 1998 somehow disproved any direct connection. While insignificant in long-term analysis, Whitehouse nonetheless attributed this to the rapid increase between 1978 and 1998, after which average temps have held their high, but steady, level:

It's easy to jump on the GW bandwagon when the scientific evidence is so congruent with the facts, right?

In case you missed it, there are a few folks out there with the courage to point out when the emperor has no clothes. http://tinyurl.com/3a9mzn [quote] The founder of the The Weather Channel in the US has described the concept of global warming as 'the greatest scam in history' and accused global media of colluding with 'environmental extremists' to alarm the public. "It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM," John Coleman wrote in an article published on ICECAP, the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, which is known for challenging widely published theories on global warming.

For whatever reason, the OD servers have decided to allow me post after denying my access for the last few weeks---sort of like the Green Nazis who disdain those who dare question the "science" of global warming. [quote]Mind Games of the Big Green Scare Machine By Marc Sheppard Lord, what fools these mortals be - Shakespeare With each passing day, Americans are increasingly behaving as though Al Gore's mantra "the debate [over man-made global warming] is over" were true. Warming folklore is deserving of incredulity as the extreme left's latest armament in its ongoing battle against capitalism and globalization. But instead it has found insinuation into virtually every corner of our culture.

Interesting articles that dare to question the sanctity of the Global Warming religion. http://www.oism.org/pproject/ [quote]Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth rates. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like CO2 are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge.

This thread is for people who do not believe that anthropogenic climate change is taking place. It is a place for them to express their feelings and paste chunks of climate change denial text. Before you do, please read the following links: Exxon Secrets http://tinyurl.com/3782lx showing the way Exxon has tried to distort the debate. The scientific consensus on climate change http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686 YouTube video on which way to bet : http://tinyurl.com/2w3fc9 New Scientist on environment: http://environment.newscientist.com/search.ns?doSearch=true&query=climate+change+faq

For some time I've thought that there is a relatively cheap investment in technology that could be made that would save large amounts of oil, reduce carbon emissions, improve road safety and speed up traffic flow. Few things are as simple as they first sound, so I thought I would post these ideas here to see what others think. There is nothing especially original here and I would expect this to have come up before, so if anyone knows of other references to similar ideas, I would like to read them. The idea is to develop a flexible traffic control system that is expandable in the future as technology improves. Initially this could be used to simply regulate the maximum speed of vehicles on major roads via wireless telemetry to and from short range roadside basestations but, once in place, such a system could be expanded as an aid to navigation and even for information flow for future driverless vehicles. Similar, if slightly less sophisticated systems, are already in place on many roads. TrafficMaster in the UK for example.

Odd that Tom Burke's article "Climate Change: time to get real" http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-climate_change_debate/climate_change_3939.jsp is one of the all-time big hitters on oD with nearly 23,000 hits, but there has been no discussion on the Forums about it. This is a second attempt to get a thread started. Tom said it is time we focused .. on three simple questions: how much governments need to spend, on what, and by when. Your starter for 10: How much: at least as much as they currently spend on militarism. Instead of , not as well as. On what: Energy efficiency and renewable power, within a framework of Contraction and Convergence.

I believe many will enjoy the images. http://www.yannarthusbertrand.com/yann2/

It's intriguing to observe the occurrence of new terms and concepts in the economy such as slippage, or bong. Following up with the new financial trends has been for me close to becoming a shadowed witness to financial dynamics, which in my opinion are nothing but legally intangible pyramids, where a lot of money is made on your buck of which you don't get a share. Recently I became familiar, on the losing side, with "float" - one of a few interesting financial opportunities. "Float is a term most associated with banks or insurance companies. It's money paid to a company that it has not earned, and expects to pay out. If my car insurance is provided by Progressive (NYSE: PGR), the company has an asset (the cash), but it also has a liability (the expected future claim). But as long as the cash comes in faster than the claims do, Progressive is sitting on my money for what could be a considerable period of time.

Tom Burke asks the green movement to focus on advising governments how much they need to spend, on what, and by when. OK, let's make a start. They need to spend exactly the same amount on climate change avoidance as they spend on the military. This is quite reasonable, since climate change is a far greater threat to global security than Mr bin Laden. If governments find they cannot quite afford a doubling of their military budget, the logical answer is to vire money from the military to climate change. I am sure people who feel insecure as a result will be happy to organise bring and buy sales c to supplement the military budget.