Birth Defects Rise in China Coal Country
5 hours ago
BEIJING (AP) — Coal mining regions of northern China are reporting soaring levels of defects in newborns, an apparent result of heavy pollution, state media said Monday.
Results from eight main coal mining areas in Shanxi province show levels far higher than the national average, according to a Xinhua News Agency report carried by the Beijing News.
"The rate of birth defects is related to environmental pollution," the report said, citing provincial population planning official An Huanxiao.
Shanxi is one of China's most heavily polluted regions, mainly as a result of mining and the use of high-sulfur coal.
No figures were given in the report, although data posted this month on the Web site of the government's National Population and Family Planning Commission said the national rate of birth defects increased by nearly 50 percent over 2001-2006, rising to 145.5 per 10,000 births.
Combined with other forms of visible defects and problems that don't show up until several months after birth, a total of 1.2 million children were born with defects every year, accounting for up to 6 percent of all children born, according to the data.
The commission gave no specific reasons for the increase, but urged medical authorities to better educate prospective parents and invest more in prevention and screening.
According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, birth defects affect about one out of 33 babies in the United States.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iuLw ... AD8SJ3EQ81
Carbon catastrophe
33 posts
• Page 2 of 3 • 1, 2, 3
by fourhorses » 10/ 29/ 07 8:58 pm
China Announces $14.5B Lake Cleanup
By JOE McDONALD – 2 days ago
BEIJING (AP) — China has announced a multibillion-dollar plan to clean up a severely polluted lake where an algae bloom forced the suspension of water supplies to millions of people this summer.
The $14.5 billion plan to clean up Lake Tai, in a densely populated area northwest of Shanghai, should take five years, said a statement dated Friday and posted on a government Web site of the nearby city of Taizhou.
The move comes amid mounting official urgency about curbing chronic pollution in China's rivers and lakes that has left millions of people without clean water and disrupted city water systems.
Lake Tai is one of a series of lakes where blooms of blue-green algae blamed on pollution have disrupted water supplies this year. Some types of the algae can produce dangerous toxins.
"The plan will control the eutrophication of Lake Tai in five years and realize the clear improvement of water quality," the government statement said. "In another eight to 10 years, the problem of the Lake Tai water pollution will be basically resolved."
The algae bloom on Lake Tai in June prompted the suspension of running water in and around the major city of Wuxi for six days, forcing as many as 5 million people to rely on bottled water.
The algae covered as much as one-third of the 930-square-mile lake, a popular tourist attraction that has become badly polluted as the Wuxi area developed into a center for manufacturing and high technology.
Regulators responded by ordering the mass closure of chemical plants that dumped waste into the lake.
The pollution of Lake Tai has been politically sensitive for local authorities. An environmentalist who spent years collecting water samples from Lake Tai and warning about rising pollution was sentenced to prison in August on charges that he blackmailed polluters. His supporters said the charges were retaliation for his activism.
Other lakes that suffered algae blooms this year included Chao in eastern China and Dianchi near the southwestern city of Kunming. There was no immediate word on possible cleanup plans for those lakes.
Environmental regulators say China's rivers and lakes are so polluted that tens of millions of people have no access to clean drinking water.
The deputy director the State Environmental Protection Administration said in July that one-quarter of the length of China's seven major rivers is so dirty that even touching the water can be harmful to the skin.
The agency imposed a moratorium on new industrial development in 13 locations along four major rivers to prevent additional pollution.
State media regularly report incidents in which cities are forced to temporarily suspend running water due to chemicals in lakes or rivers from pollution or industrial accidents.
Lower-level authorities often are accused of failing to enforce environmental rules or even blocking regulators in order to protect local businesses. Regulators complain that factories ignore orders to close or bar inspectors.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gRNX ... wD8SHEUM80
By JOE McDONALD – 2 days ago
BEIJING (AP) — China has announced a multibillion-dollar plan to clean up a severely polluted lake where an algae bloom forced the suspension of water supplies to millions of people this summer.
The $14.5 billion plan to clean up Lake Tai, in a densely populated area northwest of Shanghai, should take five years, said a statement dated Friday and posted on a government Web site of the nearby city of Taizhou.
The move comes amid mounting official urgency about curbing chronic pollution in China's rivers and lakes that has left millions of people without clean water and disrupted city water systems.
Lake Tai is one of a series of lakes where blooms of blue-green algae blamed on pollution have disrupted water supplies this year. Some types of the algae can produce dangerous toxins.
"The plan will control the eutrophication of Lake Tai in five years and realize the clear improvement of water quality," the government statement said. "In another eight to 10 years, the problem of the Lake Tai water pollution will be basically resolved."
The algae bloom on Lake Tai in June prompted the suspension of running water in and around the major city of Wuxi for six days, forcing as many as 5 million people to rely on bottled water.
The algae covered as much as one-third of the 930-square-mile lake, a popular tourist attraction that has become badly polluted as the Wuxi area developed into a center for manufacturing and high technology.
Regulators responded by ordering the mass closure of chemical plants that dumped waste into the lake.
The pollution of Lake Tai has been politically sensitive for local authorities. An environmentalist who spent years collecting water samples from Lake Tai and warning about rising pollution was sentenced to prison in August on charges that he blackmailed polluters. His supporters said the charges were retaliation for his activism.
Other lakes that suffered algae blooms this year included Chao in eastern China and Dianchi near the southwestern city of Kunming. There was no immediate word on possible cleanup plans for those lakes.
Environmental regulators say China's rivers and lakes are so polluted that tens of millions of people have no access to clean drinking water.
The deputy director the State Environmental Protection Administration said in July that one-quarter of the length of China's seven major rivers is so dirty that even touching the water can be harmful to the skin.
The agency imposed a moratorium on new industrial development in 13 locations along four major rivers to prevent additional pollution.
State media regularly report incidents in which cities are forced to temporarily suspend running water due to chemicals in lakes or rivers from pollution or industrial accidents.
Lower-level authorities often are accused of failing to enforce environmental rules or even blocking regulators in order to protect local businesses. Regulators complain that factories ignore orders to close or bar inspectors.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gRNX ... wD8SHEUM80
-
fourhorses - Posts: 23902
- Joined: 01/ 23/ 06 9:23 pm
by styky » 10/ 30/ 07 12:57 pm
From junkscience.com today...............
Ozone Man ripping off would be 'green' investors? <a href=http://www.junkscience.com/oct07/al_gore.html>Al Gore's Inconvenient Stock Portfolio Exposed</a>; SEC Filing Raises Questions About the "Sustainability" of Generation Investment Management's $438 Million Investment Fund, says JunkScience.com
Washington, DC, October. 30, 2007 – Government filings by Al Gore’s investment management firm, Generation Investment Management (GIM), indicate that the Nobel Peace Prize winner may be “talking the talk” but not “walking the walk” when it comes to investing in so-called “sustainable” businesses.
“Despite its widely publicized rhetoric, the Gore firm’s stock portfolio looks to be that of an ordinary diversified mutual fund,” said JunkScience.com publisher Steve Milloy. “If this is ‘sustainable’ investing, then it is a meaningless term,” Milloy said.
Ozone Man ripping off would be 'green' investors? <a href=http://www.junkscience.com/oct07/al_gore.html>Al Gore's Inconvenient Stock Portfolio Exposed</a>; SEC Filing Raises Questions About the "Sustainability" of Generation Investment Management's $438 Million Investment Fund, says JunkScience.com
Washington, DC, October. 30, 2007 – Government filings by Al Gore’s investment management firm, Generation Investment Management (GIM), indicate that the Nobel Peace Prize winner may be “talking the talk” but not “walking the walk” when it comes to investing in so-called “sustainable” businesses.
“Despite its widely publicized rhetoric, the Gore firm’s stock portfolio looks to be that of an ordinary diversified mutual fund,” said JunkScience.com publisher Steve Milloy. “If this is ‘sustainable’ investing, then it is a meaningless term,” Milloy said.
- <a href=http://prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-30-2007/0004693271&EDATE=>Media Release </a>
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
-
styky - Member
- Posts: 120244
- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by styky » 10/ 31/ 07 11:05 am
Burning the poor
Carbon taxes in Europe have resulted in massive job losses
Aldyen Donnelly
<a href=http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=695c8e47-3139-4d02-82f6-a3e627bb9470>Financial Post </a>
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Several Canadian academics promote "carbon taxes" as the best way for government to combat greenhouse gas emissions. By "carbon tax," they mean that government puts a price on carbon and applies that price as a new tax, either at the point at which fossil fuels are produced or consumed.
Mark Jaccard, among others, has implied that this kind of carbon tax has been used to successfully curb emissions in Norway and the United Kingdom. The truth is that high energy and emission tax policies introduced in those and other European nations the 1990s have proved highly regressive, have directly resulted in massive manufacturing job losses, and have had no otherwise discernible impact on carbon emissions.
In response to this policy disaster, most European nations have recently committed to freeze, reduce or phase out their carbon taxes in favour of better measures. To an academic, the new measures are also carbon taxes. To the person on the street, they are not.
The new measures are "product standards" like fuel efficiency standards for auto makers and mandates that require electric utilities to buy a certain portion of their total sales from zero-emission generation sources. When governments introduce product standards, they are limiting the environmental impact of the consumption decisions we make. This method leaves it up to the market to compete to deliver cleaner energy products and appliances to us at least cost.
It is essential that Canadian policy makers study why carbon taxes (where government sets the price) have failed. Otherwise, we will simply waste 15 years and countless manufacturing sector jobs repeating European mistakes.
Carbon taxes shift the tax burden from the richest to the poorest families. Lower and middle income Canadian families spend $5,000 to $8,000 per year on energy. Since most of their energy purchases are not discretionary, this eats up a large portion of their disposable incomes. Wealthy families typically spend $8,000 to $12,000 per year on energy, 30% to 50% of which is discretionary, representing a small share of wealthy-family disposable income.
Every nation that introduced a high energy-tax/emission-tax policy in the early 1990s immediately followed up with increases in income support for poor families. The U.K. now spends more through its official Fuel Poverty program (an income supplement and home retrofit program launched in 1999 to counter the impact on poor households of the high energy tax policy first introduced in 1993) than it collects in incremental energy tax income and Climate Change Levies combined.
Norway started phasing in its carbon tax in 1991. Since 2002, Norway's carbon tax has been the rough equivalent of $55 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. But between 1990 and 2002, Norwegian per-capita emissions from energy consumption increased at a much higher rate than Canada's did. Since 2002, Norwegian overall emissions from energy consumption have increased 2.5 times faster than Canada's have.
In 1995, fuel and emission taxes accounted for 5.5% of Norway's total public revenues. By 2005 Norway relied on fuel and emission taxes for less than 2.2% of total government revenues, even though total and per-capita energy consumption grew and the emission intensity of energy consumed both grew over that period. For the first time in its history, Norway started importing and burning coal in 2005.
Norway has cut its revenues per unit of energy consumed by maintaining a plethora of emission and energy tax exemptions and below-cost electricity deals for critically strategic employers. Norway uses the exemptions and special electricity supply deals to stave off manufacturing job losses. Norway just announced its national allocation of CO2 limits and allowances for 2008 through 2012. Norwegian offshore oil and gas producers have been exempted from any limits and are not covered under the European Union Emission Trading Rule.
The U.K. Climate Change Levy (CCL) was introduced in 2002. Having experienced the disastrous impact on poor families of the high energy tax policy, the U.K. government ruled that the CCL applies exclusively to energy consumed by manufacturers. Utilities and oil and gas producers are exempt, along with residential and commercial customers. Since the introduction of the CCL, U.K. coal consumption still increased 16% while Canadian coal consumption fell 12%. Between 2002 and 2006, U.K. oil consumption increased at double the rate Canadian oil consumption increased. The impact of U.K.'s Climate Change Levy has been insignificant compared to the high energy tax policy that was originally introduced by Maggie Thatcher in 1993.
The most important story the data tells is that between 1990 and 2006, Norwegian manufacturing jobs fell 10%, in spite of tax exemptions and below-cost electricity pricing deals to save jobs, and U.K. manufacturing employment crashed an amazing 34%. One hundred percent of Norway's new jobs since 1995 have been in the oil and gas production and government sectors, where emissions per unit of output have increased faster than they have in Canada (even though Norway does not have any oil-sands).
Having found that the high energy-tax and emission-tax policies are much to blame for manufacturing job losses in his county, in the 2006 budget Britain's then-chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, committed to freeze the Climate Change Levy through 2010, suggesting that it may be eliminated later. He also suspended a number of scheduled fuel tax increases.
Have these countries used the revenues from energy tax increases and new emission taxes to cut other taxes? Not the ones we care about.
Since the introduction of the Climate Change Levy, the U.K. government has increased payroll tax rates three times. Payroll taxes currently account for over 20% of all U.K. tax revenues. They account for 7% of the taxes collected by all levels of government in Canada.
U.K. personal income tax rates increased slightly more than Canada's between 1995 and 2005. In 1995, Norway collected 35% of its revenues in the form of income taxes. By 2005, 44% of Norway's revenues came in the form of income taxes and 17% came in the form of dividends from state-owned oil production companies. There has been a small cut in Norwegian payroll taxes (from 19% to 17% of public revenues), though payroll tax rates per dollar of wages paid have gone up.
The inconvenient truth that is that the very laudable commitments to cut greenhouse gases by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell are going to be much harder to achieve than is suggested by many of Canada's leading academics. All of the tax and energy data I cite above is freely available at government-sponsored and United Nations Web sites. Hopefully, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and B.C. Finance Minister Carole Taylor will look at the facts of European emission tax strategies instead of falling for rhetoric. Hopefully they will take real interest in the U.K.'s Fuel Poverty Web site (www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatecha ... uelpoverty ), and after reading it decide that Canada and the provinces should attempt to curb emissions through mechanisms that will increase manufacturing sector employment opportunities, not kill them.
More importantly, let's hope they decide that Canada and the provinces cannot afford -- any more than the United Kingdom found it could -- the social unrest that results directly from the large shift of tax burden from wealthy to poorer families that has been realized in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe due to their high energy-tax policies.
--- - Aldyen Donnelly is president of WDA Consulting Inc. and of the Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium.
Carbon taxes in Europe have resulted in massive job losses
Aldyen Donnelly
<a href=http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=695c8e47-3139-4d02-82f6-a3e627bb9470>Financial Post </a>
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Several Canadian academics promote "carbon taxes" as the best way for government to combat greenhouse gas emissions. By "carbon tax," they mean that government puts a price on carbon and applies that price as a new tax, either at the point at which fossil fuels are produced or consumed.
Mark Jaccard, among others, has implied that this kind of carbon tax has been used to successfully curb emissions in Norway and the United Kingdom. The truth is that high energy and emission tax policies introduced in those and other European nations the 1990s have proved highly regressive, have directly resulted in massive manufacturing job losses, and have had no otherwise discernible impact on carbon emissions.
In response to this policy disaster, most European nations have recently committed to freeze, reduce or phase out their carbon taxes in favour of better measures. To an academic, the new measures are also carbon taxes. To the person on the street, they are not.
The new measures are "product standards" like fuel efficiency standards for auto makers and mandates that require electric utilities to buy a certain portion of their total sales from zero-emission generation sources. When governments introduce product standards, they are limiting the environmental impact of the consumption decisions we make. This method leaves it up to the market to compete to deliver cleaner energy products and appliances to us at least cost.
It is essential that Canadian policy makers study why carbon taxes (where government sets the price) have failed. Otherwise, we will simply waste 15 years and countless manufacturing sector jobs repeating European mistakes.
Carbon taxes shift the tax burden from the richest to the poorest families. Lower and middle income Canadian families spend $5,000 to $8,000 per year on energy. Since most of their energy purchases are not discretionary, this eats up a large portion of their disposable incomes. Wealthy families typically spend $8,000 to $12,000 per year on energy, 30% to 50% of which is discretionary, representing a small share of wealthy-family disposable income.
Every nation that introduced a high energy-tax/emission-tax policy in the early 1990s immediately followed up with increases in income support for poor families. The U.K. now spends more through its official Fuel Poverty program (an income supplement and home retrofit program launched in 1999 to counter the impact on poor households of the high energy tax policy first introduced in 1993) than it collects in incremental energy tax income and Climate Change Levies combined.
Norway started phasing in its carbon tax in 1991. Since 2002, Norway's carbon tax has been the rough equivalent of $55 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. But between 1990 and 2002, Norwegian per-capita emissions from energy consumption increased at a much higher rate than Canada's did. Since 2002, Norwegian overall emissions from energy consumption have increased 2.5 times faster than Canada's have.
In 1995, fuel and emission taxes accounted for 5.5% of Norway's total public revenues. By 2005 Norway relied on fuel and emission taxes for less than 2.2% of total government revenues, even though total and per-capita energy consumption grew and the emission intensity of energy consumed both grew over that period. For the first time in its history, Norway started importing and burning coal in 2005.
Norway has cut its revenues per unit of energy consumed by maintaining a plethora of emission and energy tax exemptions and below-cost electricity deals for critically strategic employers. Norway uses the exemptions and special electricity supply deals to stave off manufacturing job losses. Norway just announced its national allocation of CO2 limits and allowances for 2008 through 2012. Norwegian offshore oil and gas producers have been exempted from any limits and are not covered under the European Union Emission Trading Rule.
The U.K. Climate Change Levy (CCL) was introduced in 2002. Having experienced the disastrous impact on poor families of the high energy tax policy, the U.K. government ruled that the CCL applies exclusively to energy consumed by manufacturers. Utilities and oil and gas producers are exempt, along with residential and commercial customers. Since the introduction of the CCL, U.K. coal consumption still increased 16% while Canadian coal consumption fell 12%. Between 2002 and 2006, U.K. oil consumption increased at double the rate Canadian oil consumption increased. The impact of U.K.'s Climate Change Levy has been insignificant compared to the high energy tax policy that was originally introduced by Maggie Thatcher in 1993.
The most important story the data tells is that between 1990 and 2006, Norwegian manufacturing jobs fell 10%, in spite of tax exemptions and below-cost electricity pricing deals to save jobs, and U.K. manufacturing employment crashed an amazing 34%. One hundred percent of Norway's new jobs since 1995 have been in the oil and gas production and government sectors, where emissions per unit of output have increased faster than they have in Canada (even though Norway does not have any oil-sands).
Having found that the high energy-tax and emission-tax policies are much to blame for manufacturing job losses in his county, in the 2006 budget Britain's then-chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, committed to freeze the Climate Change Levy through 2010, suggesting that it may be eliminated later. He also suspended a number of scheduled fuel tax increases.
Have these countries used the revenues from energy tax increases and new emission taxes to cut other taxes? Not the ones we care about.
Since the introduction of the Climate Change Levy, the U.K. government has increased payroll tax rates three times. Payroll taxes currently account for over 20% of all U.K. tax revenues. They account for 7% of the taxes collected by all levels of government in Canada.
U.K. personal income tax rates increased slightly more than Canada's between 1995 and 2005. In 1995, Norway collected 35% of its revenues in the form of income taxes. By 2005, 44% of Norway's revenues came in the form of income taxes and 17% came in the form of dividends from state-owned oil production companies. There has been a small cut in Norwegian payroll taxes (from 19% to 17% of public revenues), though payroll tax rates per dollar of wages paid have gone up.
The inconvenient truth that is that the very laudable commitments to cut greenhouse gases by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell are going to be much harder to achieve than is suggested by many of Canada's leading academics. All of the tax and energy data I cite above is freely available at government-sponsored and United Nations Web sites. Hopefully, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and B.C. Finance Minister Carole Taylor will look at the facts of European emission tax strategies instead of falling for rhetoric. Hopefully they will take real interest in the U.K.'s Fuel Poverty Web site (www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatecha ... uelpoverty ), and after reading it decide that Canada and the provinces should attempt to curb emissions through mechanisms that will increase manufacturing sector employment opportunities, not kill them.
More importantly, let's hope they decide that Canada and the provinces cannot afford -- any more than the United Kingdom found it could -- the social unrest that results directly from the large shift of tax burden from wealthy to poorer families that has been realized in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe due to their high energy-tax policies.
--- - Aldyen Donnelly is president of WDA Consulting Inc. and of the Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium.
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
-
styky - Member
- Posts: 120244
- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by jiboom » 10/ 31/ 07 1:16 pm
This is the kind of scare mongering that kids in our local schools are hearing this past couple of weeks from Dyer.
Dyer: Global warming no longer a guessing game
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Gwynne Dyer/Syndicated columnist
GHS
Sun Feb 04, 2007, 12:25 AM EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waltham - Twenty-eight years ago, when we knew very little about the way human activities affect global climate, independent scientist James Lovelock warned that the sheer scale of human activities threatened to destabilize the homoeostatic system that keeps the Earth's climate within a comfortable range for our kind of life, the system he named "Gaia."
"We shall have to tread carefully," he said, "to avoid the cybernetic disasters of runaway positive feedback or sustained oscillation."
Then he said something that has stuck in my mind ever since. If we overwhelm the natural systems that keep the climate stable, Lovelock predicted, then we would "wake up one morning to find that (we) had the permanent lifelong job of planetary maintenance engineer... The ceaseless intricate task of keeping all the global cycles in balance would be ours. Then at last we should be riding that strange contraption, the 'spaceship Earth', and whatever tamed and domesticated biosphere remained would indeed be our 'life support system'."
I have a nasty feeling that we are almost there. The years have passed, our numbers and our emissions have grown - have almost doubled since 1979, in fact - and the crisis is now upon us. The fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published on Friday, says that global temperature rises of between 2 degrees and 4.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) are almost inevitable in the course of this century - but much higher increases of 6 degrees C (10.8 F) or even more cannot be ruled out.
The IPCC reports are produced by some 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists, nominated by their various national governments, and they operate by consensus, so any predictions they make are likely to err on the conservative side. And they say the argument is over: "It is highly likely (greater than 95 percent probability) that the warming observed during the past half century cannot be explained without external forcing (i.e. human activity)." Indeed, the sum of solar and volcanic influences on the system ought to be producing global cooling right now, if it were not for the human factor.
It's already worse than you think, the IPCC reports, because the sulphate particles that pollute the upper atmosphere as a result of human industrial activity are acting as a kind of sunscreen: without them, the average global temperature would already be 0.8 degrees C (1.2 degrees F) higher. And the report goes on to talk about killer heat waves, more and bigger tropical storms, melting glaciers and rising sea levels - but it doesn't really get into the worst implication of major global heating: mass starvation.
If the global average temperature rises by 4.5 degrees C (8.1 degrees F), shifting rainfall patterns will bring perpetual drought to most of the world's major breadbaskets (the north Indian plain, the Chinese river valleys, the U.S. Midwest, the Nile watershed), and reduce global food production by 25 to 50 percent. If it goes to 6 degrees C (10.8 degrees F), we lose most of our food production worldwide.
The world's six and a half billion people currently produce just about enough food to keep everybody alive (although it is so unevenly shared out that some of us don't stay alive). Any major reduction in food production means mass migrations, war, and mass death. It is getting very serious.
Obviously, the main part of the solution must be to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and stop destabilizing the climate, but we are probably not going to be able to get them down far enough, fast enough, to avoid catastrophe. Short-term technological fixes to keep the worst from happening while we work at getting emissions down would be very welcome, and a variety are now on offer. But they are all controversial.
Bring back nuclear power generation on a huge scale, and stop generating electricity by burning fossil fuels. Fill the upper atmosphere with even more sulphate particles (you could just dose jet fuel with one-half percent sulphur) to thicken the sunscreen effect. Scrub carbon out of the air by windmill-like machines that capture and sequester it. Seed clouds over the ocean with atomised sea-water to make them whiter and more reflective. Float a fleet of tiny aluminium balloons in the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight or orbit a giant mirror in space between the Earth and the Sun to do the same job.
The purists hate it, and insist that we can do it all by conserving energy and shifting to non-carbon energy sources. In the long run, of course, they are right, but we must survive the short run if we ever hope to see the long run, and that may well require short-term techno-fixes. Welcome to the job of planetary maintenance engineer.
We won't like the job a bit, but Lovelock stated our remaining options eloquently 28 years ago. If the consumption of energy continues to increase, he wrote, we face "the final choice of permanent enslavement on the prison hulk of spaceship Earth, or gigadeath to enable the survivors to restore a Gaian world."
Maybe in a couple of centuries the human race will be able to restore the natural cycles and give up the job again, but it won't happen in our lifetimes, or our children's either.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles
are published in 45 countries.
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/opinion ... 1020363774
Dyer: Global warming no longer a guessing game
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Gwynne Dyer/Syndicated columnist
GHS
Sun Feb 04, 2007, 12:25 AM EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waltham - Twenty-eight years ago, when we knew very little about the way human activities affect global climate, independent scientist James Lovelock warned that the sheer scale of human activities threatened to destabilize the homoeostatic system that keeps the Earth's climate within a comfortable range for our kind of life, the system he named "Gaia."
"We shall have to tread carefully," he said, "to avoid the cybernetic disasters of runaway positive feedback or sustained oscillation."
Then he said something that has stuck in my mind ever since. If we overwhelm the natural systems that keep the climate stable, Lovelock predicted, then we would "wake up one morning to find that (we) had the permanent lifelong job of planetary maintenance engineer... The ceaseless intricate task of keeping all the global cycles in balance would be ours. Then at last we should be riding that strange contraption, the 'spaceship Earth', and whatever tamed and domesticated biosphere remained would indeed be our 'life support system'."
I have a nasty feeling that we are almost there. The years have passed, our numbers and our emissions have grown - have almost doubled since 1979, in fact - and the crisis is now upon us. The fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published on Friday, says that global temperature rises of between 2 degrees and 4.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) are almost inevitable in the course of this century - but much higher increases of 6 degrees C (10.8 F) or even more cannot be ruled out.
The IPCC reports are produced by some 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists, nominated by their various national governments, and they operate by consensus, so any predictions they make are likely to err on the conservative side. And they say the argument is over: "It is highly likely (greater than 95 percent probability) that the warming observed during the past half century cannot be explained without external forcing (i.e. human activity)." Indeed, the sum of solar and volcanic influences on the system ought to be producing global cooling right now, if it were not for the human factor.
It's already worse than you think, the IPCC reports, because the sulphate particles that pollute the upper atmosphere as a result of human industrial activity are acting as a kind of sunscreen: without them, the average global temperature would already be 0.8 degrees C (1.2 degrees F) higher. And the report goes on to talk about killer heat waves, more and bigger tropical storms, melting glaciers and rising sea levels - but it doesn't really get into the worst implication of major global heating: mass starvation.
If the global average temperature rises by 4.5 degrees C (8.1 degrees F), shifting rainfall patterns will bring perpetual drought to most of the world's major breadbaskets (the north Indian plain, the Chinese river valleys, the U.S. Midwest, the Nile watershed), and reduce global food production by 25 to 50 percent. If it goes to 6 degrees C (10.8 degrees F), we lose most of our food production worldwide.
The world's six and a half billion people currently produce just about enough food to keep everybody alive (although it is so unevenly shared out that some of us don't stay alive). Any major reduction in food production means mass migrations, war, and mass death. It is getting very serious.
Obviously, the main part of the solution must be to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and stop destabilizing the climate, but we are probably not going to be able to get them down far enough, fast enough, to avoid catastrophe. Short-term technological fixes to keep the worst from happening while we work at getting emissions down would be very welcome, and a variety are now on offer. But they are all controversial.
Bring back nuclear power generation on a huge scale, and stop generating electricity by burning fossil fuels. Fill the upper atmosphere with even more sulphate particles (you could just dose jet fuel with one-half percent sulphur) to thicken the sunscreen effect. Scrub carbon out of the air by windmill-like machines that capture and sequester it. Seed clouds over the ocean with atomised sea-water to make them whiter and more reflective. Float a fleet of tiny aluminium balloons in the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight or orbit a giant mirror in space between the Earth and the Sun to do the same job.
The purists hate it, and insist that we can do it all by conserving energy and shifting to non-carbon energy sources. In the long run, of course, they are right, but we must survive the short run if we ever hope to see the long run, and that may well require short-term techno-fixes. Welcome to the job of planetary maintenance engineer.
We won't like the job a bit, but Lovelock stated our remaining options eloquently 28 years ago. If the consumption of energy continues to increase, he wrote, we face "the final choice of permanent enslavement on the prison hulk of spaceship Earth, or gigadeath to enable the survivors to restore a Gaian world."
Maybe in a couple of centuries the human race will be able to restore the natural cycles and give up the job again, but it won't happen in our lifetimes, or our children's either.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles
are published in 45 countries.
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/opinion ... 1020363774
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by styky » 03/ 13/ 08 2:14 pm
<a href=http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2008/03/12/co2-global-warming/>CO2 & Global Warming </a>
Climate models forecast increasing temperatures on earth because of increasing levels of atmospheric CO2, but observational data appears to contradict this claim..................
Climate models forecast increasing temperatures on earth because of increasing levels of atmospheric CO2, but observational data appears to contradict this claim..................
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
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styky - Member
- Posts: 120244
- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by styky » 03/ 20/ 08 12:54 pm
Carbon conundrum
Ottawa and the provinces are likely to fight over the billions that can be reaped from carbon taxes
Jack M. Mintz, <a href=http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=386950>Financial Post </a>
Published: Thursday, March 20, 2008
Putting a price on carbon emissions is in fashion these days. British Columbia and Quebec now levy carbon taxes, with the B.C. tax serving as a model for other provinces. Alberta has a $15-per-tonne levy on carbon emissions that exceed provincial targets and the federal government is proposing a similar levy. Stephane Dion, leader of the Liberal party, is talking about a federal carbon tax as well.
On top of all this, governments are looking at cap-and-trade systems that would impose aggregate quotas on big emitters, which would be able trade permits in a market. Even B.C., with its own carbon tax, has agreed to participate in a cap-and-trade system with other Canadian provinces and U.S. states, should it evolve. B.C. may well do both to make sure that small businesses and consumers pay taxes for the carbon emissions, not just big emitters.
As governments rush into carbon-pricing schemes, a looming issue that is so typically Canadian is to sort out which level of government should be responsible for this area of taxation. It is an important question since the potential revenues are huge. Even at $30 a tonne -- which most experts would argue is only the starting point -- federal and provincial governments could raise almost $15-billion in tax revenue. At $100 a tonne, carbon taxes yield almost $50-billion, similar to existing federal and provincial corporate tax revenue.
Assignment of taxing powers in a federation is an old question that Canadians have endlessly debated. Constitutionally, the federal government can levy any tax, while the provinces are limited to direct taxation. Today, both levels raise income taxes, sales taxes (GST and provincial sales taxes), excise taxes (such as gasoline, alcohol and tobacco) and payroll taxes. Only the federal government collects tariffs and withholding taxes on payments to non-residents, consistent with its international trade powers, and property taxes have been left to provincial and local governments. Harmonization agreements have involved both federal and provincial governments with respect to income and sales taxation, given their overlapping powers.
As a rule, the taxes best assigned to the provinces are those that do not interfere much with the free flow of goods and services within Canada, are relatively easy for provinces to collect and are related to their spending powers, such as regarding health, education and infrastructure. Gasoline excise taxes, for example, have been viewed as a relatively good tax to assign to provinces since their payment is (albeit imperfectly) related to the use of roads and highways, and does not disrupt much the integration of the Canadian economy. Similar to most governments in the world, provinces have been reluctant to heavily tax diesel (due to its use in trucking and agriculture) and aviation fuel (since airlines could avoid high levies by fuelling up in airports with low fuel taxes).
A carbon tax, such as the one recently imposed in British Columbia, is a typical excise tax, as it is applied to carbon emissions generated by fossil fuels consumed by consumers and businesses within the province. Taxes on carbon are converted into tax rates on various energy products (for example, a $30-per-tonne tax is equivalent to a 7.5¢ tax on gasoline). A province is unable to impose carbon taxes on imports (except in some limited circumstances) and would generally seek exemptions to avoid taxes on exported carbon.
At relatively low rates, the tax would not be highly disruptive, similar to existing provincial gasoline taxes. However, at future tax levels, carbon taxes applied to business energy inputs could result in substantial distortions in trade and capital flows if provinces not only levy the tax at different rates but provide different exemptions for manufacturing and other industries. Canada could end up with a hodge-podge of carbon taxes and perhaps less-effective measures in costing carbon emissions.
Should the federal government have its own carbon tax? Given that greenhouse gas emissions represent a worldwide problem requiring international co-ordination of some sort, it could be argued that Ottawa should have a role in carbon pricing, especially to ensure that the adjustments are made at the border for trade. Carbon taxation at relatively high rates is better applied federally, since a more common approach could be applied across different products. Further, if Canada joins other countries in cap-and-trade systems, some form of complex integration of cap-and-trade and carbon taxes will be needed.
If, however, the federal government does impose a carbon tax, it creates a major point of conflict with the provinces. Several provinces, looking at carbon taxes as a politically popular source of revenue, will want to impose their own. They would want the federal government to provide an exemption from federal taxation if a province has an "equivalent" policy. Instead, the federal government might wish to establish a minimum level for carbon taxation that the provinces would then piggy-back on to with their own taxes.
A federal tax could result in major transfers of revenue across Canada, since Alberta and Ontario would bear the greatest cost and most likely revenue would either be used for spending programs or for tax reductions that could more heavily benefit other parts of the country. For this reason, some of the provinces only wish to have carbon-pricing mechanisms at the provincial level so all the money can be kept within the province.
One thing is certain. With both federal and provincial carbon-pricing policies, we are about to enter into a new area of federal and provincial conflict. The federal and provincial governments need to put their heads together and decide on the direction of carbon-pricing policy. Otherwise, Canadians may face a jungle of taxes and regulations, with unnecessary burdens imposed on the Canadian economy as a result.
--- - Jack M. Mintz is the Palmer Chair of Public Policy, University of Calgary.
Ottawa and the provinces are likely to fight over the billions that can be reaped from carbon taxes
Jack M. Mintz, <a href=http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=386950>Financial Post </a>
Published: Thursday, March 20, 2008
Putting a price on carbon emissions is in fashion these days. British Columbia and Quebec now levy carbon taxes, with the B.C. tax serving as a model for other provinces. Alberta has a $15-per-tonne levy on carbon emissions that exceed provincial targets and the federal government is proposing a similar levy. Stephane Dion, leader of the Liberal party, is talking about a federal carbon tax as well.
On top of all this, governments are looking at cap-and-trade systems that would impose aggregate quotas on big emitters, which would be able trade permits in a market. Even B.C., with its own carbon tax, has agreed to participate in a cap-and-trade system with other Canadian provinces and U.S. states, should it evolve. B.C. may well do both to make sure that small businesses and consumers pay taxes for the carbon emissions, not just big emitters.
As governments rush into carbon-pricing schemes, a looming issue that is so typically Canadian is to sort out which level of government should be responsible for this area of taxation. It is an important question since the potential revenues are huge. Even at $30 a tonne -- which most experts would argue is only the starting point -- federal and provincial governments could raise almost $15-billion in tax revenue. At $100 a tonne, carbon taxes yield almost $50-billion, similar to existing federal and provincial corporate tax revenue.
Assignment of taxing powers in a federation is an old question that Canadians have endlessly debated. Constitutionally, the federal government can levy any tax, while the provinces are limited to direct taxation. Today, both levels raise income taxes, sales taxes (GST and provincial sales taxes), excise taxes (such as gasoline, alcohol and tobacco) and payroll taxes. Only the federal government collects tariffs and withholding taxes on payments to non-residents, consistent with its international trade powers, and property taxes have been left to provincial and local governments. Harmonization agreements have involved both federal and provincial governments with respect to income and sales taxation, given their overlapping powers.
As a rule, the taxes best assigned to the provinces are those that do not interfere much with the free flow of goods and services within Canada, are relatively easy for provinces to collect and are related to their spending powers, such as regarding health, education and infrastructure. Gasoline excise taxes, for example, have been viewed as a relatively good tax to assign to provinces since their payment is (albeit imperfectly) related to the use of roads and highways, and does not disrupt much the integration of the Canadian economy. Similar to most governments in the world, provinces have been reluctant to heavily tax diesel (due to its use in trucking and agriculture) and aviation fuel (since airlines could avoid high levies by fuelling up in airports with low fuel taxes).
A carbon tax, such as the one recently imposed in British Columbia, is a typical excise tax, as it is applied to carbon emissions generated by fossil fuels consumed by consumers and businesses within the province. Taxes on carbon are converted into tax rates on various energy products (for example, a $30-per-tonne tax is equivalent to a 7.5¢ tax on gasoline). A province is unable to impose carbon taxes on imports (except in some limited circumstances) and would generally seek exemptions to avoid taxes on exported carbon.
At relatively low rates, the tax would not be highly disruptive, similar to existing provincial gasoline taxes. However, at future tax levels, carbon taxes applied to business energy inputs could result in substantial distortions in trade and capital flows if provinces not only levy the tax at different rates but provide different exemptions for manufacturing and other industries. Canada could end up with a hodge-podge of carbon taxes and perhaps less-effective measures in costing carbon emissions.
Should the federal government have its own carbon tax? Given that greenhouse gas emissions represent a worldwide problem requiring international co-ordination of some sort, it could be argued that Ottawa should have a role in carbon pricing, especially to ensure that the adjustments are made at the border for trade. Carbon taxation at relatively high rates is better applied federally, since a more common approach could be applied across different products. Further, if Canada joins other countries in cap-and-trade systems, some form of complex integration of cap-and-trade and carbon taxes will be needed.
If, however, the federal government does impose a carbon tax, it creates a major point of conflict with the provinces. Several provinces, looking at carbon taxes as a politically popular source of revenue, will want to impose their own. They would want the federal government to provide an exemption from federal taxation if a province has an "equivalent" policy. Instead, the federal government might wish to establish a minimum level for carbon taxation that the provinces would then piggy-back on to with their own taxes.
A federal tax could result in major transfers of revenue across Canada, since Alberta and Ontario would bear the greatest cost and most likely revenue would either be used for spending programs or for tax reductions that could more heavily benefit other parts of the country. For this reason, some of the provinces only wish to have carbon-pricing mechanisms at the provincial level so all the money can be kept within the province.
One thing is certain. With both federal and provincial carbon-pricing policies, we are about to enter into a new area of federal and provincial conflict. The federal and provincial governments need to put their heads together and decide on the direction of carbon-pricing policy. Otherwise, Canadians may face a jungle of taxes and regulations, with unnecessary burdens imposed on the Canadian economy as a result.
--- - Jack M. Mintz is the Palmer Chair of Public Policy, University of Calgary.
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
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styky - Member
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- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by styky » 05/ 21/ 08 11:02 am
Discredited strategy
Increasing allegations of corruption and profiteering are raising serious questions about the UN-run carbon trading mechanism aimed at cutting pollution and rewarding clean technologies
Patrick McCully
The Guardian, Wednesday May 21 2008
The world's biggest carbon offset market, the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), is run by the UN, administered by the World Bank, and is intended to reduce emissions by rewarding developing countries that invest in clean technologies. In fact, evidence is accumulating that it is increasing greenhouse gas emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. The misguided mechanism is handing out billions of dollars to chemical, coal and oil corporations and the developers of destructive dams - in many cases for projects they would have built anyway.
According to David Victor, a leading carbon trading analyst at Stanford University in the US, as many as two-thirds of the supposed "emission reduction" credits being produced by the CDM from projects in developing countries are not backed by real reductions in pollution. Those pollution cuts that have been generated by the CDM, he argues, have often been achieved at a stunningly high cost: billions of pounds could have been saved by cutting the emissions through international funds, rather than through the CDM's supposedly efficient market mechanism.
And when a CDM credit does represent an "emission reduction", there is no global benefit because offsetting is a "zero sum" game. If a Chinese mine cuts its methane emissions under the CDM, there will be no global climate benefit because the polluter that buys the offset avoids the obligation to reduce its own emissions.
A CDM credit is known as a certified emission reduction (CER), and is supposed to represent one tonne of carbon dioxide not emitted to the atmosphere. Industrialised countries' governments buy the CERs and use them to prove to the UN that they have met their obligations under Kyoto to "reduce" their emissions. Companies can also buy CERs to comply with national-level legislation or with the EU's emissions trading scheme. Analysts estimate that two-thirds of the emission reduction obligations of the key developed countries that ratified Kyoto may be met through buying offsets rather than by decarbonising their economies.
Almost all the demand for CERs has so far come from Europe and Japan. In the next few years, Australia and Canada could become significant CER buyers. In the longer term, the US could become the largest single market for CDM offsets under legislation being debated. The climate plan by Republican presidential hopeful John McCain would allow supposed emission reductions in the US to be met through domestic and CDM offsets.
Around 2bn CERs are expected to be generated by the end of this phase of Kyoto in 2012. At their current price, project developers will sell around £18bn-worth of CDM credits over the next five years. The CDM approved its 1,000th project on April 15. More than twice as many are making their way through the approvals process.
Marginal improvement
Any type of technology other than nuclear power can apply for credits. Even new coal plants, if these can be shown to be even a marginal improvement upon existing plants, can receive offset income. A massive 4,000MW coal plant on the coast of Gujarat, India, is expected soon to apply for CERs. The plant will spew into the atmosphere 26m tonnes of CO2 per year for at least 25 years. It will be India's third - and the world's 16th - largest source of CO2 emissions.
Many observers had hoped that the CDM would promote renewables and energy efficiency. Yet if all projects now in the pipeline generated the CERs they are claiming up to 2012, non-hydro renewables would attract only 16% of CDM funds, and demand-side energy efficiency projects just 1%. Only 16 solar power projects - less than 0.5% of the project pipeline - have applied for CDM approval.
For a project to be eligible to sell offsets, it is supposed to prove that it is "additional". "Additionality" is key to the design of the CDM. If projects would happen anyway, regardless of CDM benefits, then their offsets would not represent any reduction in emissions.
But judging additionality has turned out to be unknowable and unworkable. It can never be definitively proved that if a developer or factory owner did not get offset income they would not build their project or switch to a cleaner fuel supply- and would not do so over the decade for which projects can sell offsets.
The documents written by carbon consultants to justify why their clients' projects should be approved for CDM offsets contain enough lies to make a sub-prime mortgage pusher blush. One commonly used "scam" is to make a proposed project look like an economic loser on its own, but a profitable earner once offset income is factored in. Examples include the Indian wind developers who failed to tell the CDM about the lucrative tax credits their projects were earning.
Off-the-record, industry insiders will admit that deceitful claims in CDM applications are standard practice. The carbon trading industry lobby group, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), has stated that proving the intent of developers applying for the CDM "is an almost impossible task". Industry representatives have complained that "good storytellers" can get a project approved, "while bad storytellers may fail even if the project is really additional".
One glaring signal that many of the projects being approved by the CDM's executive board are non-additional is that almost three-quarters of projects were already complete at the time of approval. It would seem clear that a project that is already built cannot need extra income in order to be built.
Michael Wara, a law professor and carbon trade analyst from Stanford University, and Victor show in a recent paper that "essentially all" new hydro, wind and natural gas fired projects being built in China are now applying for CDM offsets. If the developers are being truthful that their projects are additional, this implies that without the CDM virtually no hydro, wind or gas projects would be under construction in China. Given the boom in construction of power projects in China, the fact that it is government policy to promote these project types, and the fact that thousands of hydro projects have been built in China without any help from the CDM, this is simply not credible.
Additionality also creates perverse incentives for developing country governments not to bring in, or enforce, climate-friendly legislation. Why should a government voluntarily act to cap methane from its landfills or encourage energy efficiency if in doing so it makes these activities "business-as-usual", and so not additional and not eligible for CDM income?
Waste gases
The project type slated to generate the most CERs is the destruction of a gas called trifluoromethane, or HFC-23, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and a waste product from the manufacture of a refrigerant gas. Every molecule of HFC-23 causes 11,700 times more global warming than that of CO2. Because of this massive "global warming potential", chemical companies can earn almost twice as much from selling CERs as from selling refrigerant gases. This has spurred concern that refrigerant producers may be increasing their output solely so that they can produce, and then destroy, more waste gases.
A rapidly growing industry of carbon brokers and consultants is lobbying for the CDM to be expanded and its rules to be weakened further. If we want to sustain public support for effective global action on climate change, we cannot risk one of its central planks being a programme that is so fundamentally flawed. In the short term, the CDM must be radically reformed. In the long term it must be replaced.
· Patrick McCully is executive director of International Rivers, a US thinktank, internationalrivers.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ding/print
Increasing allegations of corruption and profiteering are raising serious questions about the UN-run carbon trading mechanism aimed at cutting pollution and rewarding clean technologies
Patrick McCully
The Guardian, Wednesday May 21 2008
The world's biggest carbon offset market, the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), is run by the UN, administered by the World Bank, and is intended to reduce emissions by rewarding developing countries that invest in clean technologies. In fact, evidence is accumulating that it is increasing greenhouse gas emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. The misguided mechanism is handing out billions of dollars to chemical, coal and oil corporations and the developers of destructive dams - in many cases for projects they would have built anyway.
According to David Victor, a leading carbon trading analyst at Stanford University in the US, as many as two-thirds of the supposed "emission reduction" credits being produced by the CDM from projects in developing countries are not backed by real reductions in pollution. Those pollution cuts that have been generated by the CDM, he argues, have often been achieved at a stunningly high cost: billions of pounds could have been saved by cutting the emissions through international funds, rather than through the CDM's supposedly efficient market mechanism.
And when a CDM credit does represent an "emission reduction", there is no global benefit because offsetting is a "zero sum" game. If a Chinese mine cuts its methane emissions under the CDM, there will be no global climate benefit because the polluter that buys the offset avoids the obligation to reduce its own emissions.
A CDM credit is known as a certified emission reduction (CER), and is supposed to represent one tonne of carbon dioxide not emitted to the atmosphere. Industrialised countries' governments buy the CERs and use them to prove to the UN that they have met their obligations under Kyoto to "reduce" their emissions. Companies can also buy CERs to comply with national-level legislation or with the EU's emissions trading scheme. Analysts estimate that two-thirds of the emission reduction obligations of the key developed countries that ratified Kyoto may be met through buying offsets rather than by decarbonising their economies.
Almost all the demand for CERs has so far come from Europe and Japan. In the next few years, Australia and Canada could become significant CER buyers. In the longer term, the US could become the largest single market for CDM offsets under legislation being debated. The climate plan by Republican presidential hopeful John McCain would allow supposed emission reductions in the US to be met through domestic and CDM offsets.
Around 2bn CERs are expected to be generated by the end of this phase of Kyoto in 2012. At their current price, project developers will sell around £18bn-worth of CDM credits over the next five years. The CDM approved its 1,000th project on April 15. More than twice as many are making their way through the approvals process.
Marginal improvement
Any type of technology other than nuclear power can apply for credits. Even new coal plants, if these can be shown to be even a marginal improvement upon existing plants, can receive offset income. A massive 4,000MW coal plant on the coast of Gujarat, India, is expected soon to apply for CERs. The plant will spew into the atmosphere 26m tonnes of CO2 per year for at least 25 years. It will be India's third - and the world's 16th - largest source of CO2 emissions.
Many observers had hoped that the CDM would promote renewables and energy efficiency. Yet if all projects now in the pipeline generated the CERs they are claiming up to 2012, non-hydro renewables would attract only 16% of CDM funds, and demand-side energy efficiency projects just 1%. Only 16 solar power projects - less than 0.5% of the project pipeline - have applied for CDM approval.
For a project to be eligible to sell offsets, it is supposed to prove that it is "additional". "Additionality" is key to the design of the CDM. If projects would happen anyway, regardless of CDM benefits, then their offsets would not represent any reduction in emissions.
But judging additionality has turned out to be unknowable and unworkable. It can never be definitively proved that if a developer or factory owner did not get offset income they would not build their project or switch to a cleaner fuel supply- and would not do so over the decade for which projects can sell offsets.
The documents written by carbon consultants to justify why their clients' projects should be approved for CDM offsets contain enough lies to make a sub-prime mortgage pusher blush. One commonly used "scam" is to make a proposed project look like an economic loser on its own, but a profitable earner once offset income is factored in. Examples include the Indian wind developers who failed to tell the CDM about the lucrative tax credits their projects were earning.
Off-the-record, industry insiders will admit that deceitful claims in CDM applications are standard practice. The carbon trading industry lobby group, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), has stated that proving the intent of developers applying for the CDM "is an almost impossible task". Industry representatives have complained that "good storytellers" can get a project approved, "while bad storytellers may fail even if the project is really additional".
One glaring signal that many of the projects being approved by the CDM's executive board are non-additional is that almost three-quarters of projects were already complete at the time of approval. It would seem clear that a project that is already built cannot need extra income in order to be built.
Michael Wara, a law professor and carbon trade analyst from Stanford University, and Victor show in a recent paper that "essentially all" new hydro, wind and natural gas fired projects being built in China are now applying for CDM offsets. If the developers are being truthful that their projects are additional, this implies that without the CDM virtually no hydro, wind or gas projects would be under construction in China. Given the boom in construction of power projects in China, the fact that it is government policy to promote these project types, and the fact that thousands of hydro projects have been built in China without any help from the CDM, this is simply not credible.
Additionality also creates perverse incentives for developing country governments not to bring in, or enforce, climate-friendly legislation. Why should a government voluntarily act to cap methane from its landfills or encourage energy efficiency if in doing so it makes these activities "business-as-usual", and so not additional and not eligible for CDM income?
Waste gases
The project type slated to generate the most CERs is the destruction of a gas called trifluoromethane, or HFC-23, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and a waste product from the manufacture of a refrigerant gas. Every molecule of HFC-23 causes 11,700 times more global warming than that of CO2. Because of this massive "global warming potential", chemical companies can earn almost twice as much from selling CERs as from selling refrigerant gases. This has spurred concern that refrigerant producers may be increasing their output solely so that they can produce, and then destroy, more waste gases.
A rapidly growing industry of carbon brokers and consultants is lobbying for the CDM to be expanded and its rules to be weakened further. If we want to sustain public support for effective global action on climate change, we cannot risk one of its central planks being a programme that is so fundamentally flawed. In the short term, the CDM must be radically reformed. In the long term it must be replaced.
· Patrick McCully is executive director of International Rivers, a US thinktank, internationalrivers.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ding/print
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
-
styky - Member
- Posts: 120244
- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by chainrock » 05/ 21/ 08 11:34 am
The environuts don't care if the result of a carbon tax means that there will be people losing their jobs. They view the human species as a blight on the world which needs to be kept at a low population level, eating nuts and berries and living in caves or mudhuts. In short, they live or wish to live in a reality completley out of wack with contemporary society.
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chainrock - Posts: 2201
- Joined: 05/ 16/ 08 6:21 am
- Location: Newfoundland & Labrador
by styky » 07/ 25/ 08 10:44 am
From junkscience.com today.....
<center><a href=http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/bayreuth1e.htm>Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 20th century</a>
Geo-Ecological Seminar University of Bayreuth, 17th July 2008 (<a href=http://www.geo.uni-bayreuth.de/kolloq/?id=2008_ss&id2=13>see here</a>)
Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol
Summary of the <a href=http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/Summary-bayreuth.pdf>presentation</a></center>
In 1958 the modern NDIR spectroscopic method was introduced to measure CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere [Beck 2007]. In the preceding period, these measurements were taken with the old wet chemical method. From this period, starting from 1857, more than 90,000 reliable CO2 measurements are available, with an accuracy within ± 3 %. They had been taken near ground level, sea surface and as high as the stratosphere, mostly in the northern hemisphere. Comparison of these measurements on the basis of old wet chemical methods with the new physical method (NDIR) on sea and land reveals a systematic analysis difference of about minus 10 ppm.
Wet chemical analyses indicate three atmospheric CO2 maxima in the northern hemisphere up to approx. 400 ppm over land and sea since about 1812. The measured atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1920 –1950 prove to be strongly correlated (more than 80 %) with the arctic sea surface temperature (SST).
A detailed analysis of the Atlantic Ocean water during the arctic warming since 1918 – 1939 by Wattenberg (southern Atlantic ocean) and Buch (northern Atlantic ocean) indicates a very similar state of the Atlantic Ocean (pH, salinity, CO2 in water and air over sea etc.) These data show the characteristics of the warm ocean currents (part of global conveyor belt) at that time, indicating a strong CO2 degassing from the Atlantic Sea, especially in the area of Greenland/Iceland and Spitsbergen. More than 360 ppm had been measured over the sea surface.
In 2004 Polyakov published evidence for a multi-decadal oscillation of the ocean currents in the arctic circle, showing a warm phase (strong arctic warming during 1918 –1940 with high temperatures in the Iceland/Spitsbergen area) similar to the current situation, and a cold phase (around 1900 and 1960). Today the Iceland/Spitsbergen area is known for a strong absorption of CO2.
This multi-decadal heating of the oceanic CO2 absorption area and larger parts of the Northern Atlantic Ocean was followed by an increase of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to approx. 400 ppm during the 30s and approx. 390 ppm today. The abundance of plankton (13C) and other biota supports this view.
Conclusion: Atmospheric CO2 concentration varies with climate, the sea is the dominant CO2 store, releasing the gas depending on multi-decadal changes of temperature. | <a href=http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2_supp.htm>180 Years of atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods - Support</a>
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/ ... euth5e.jpg
<center><a href=http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/bayreuth1e.htm>Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 20th century</a>
Geo-Ecological Seminar University of Bayreuth, 17th July 2008 (<a href=http://www.geo.uni-bayreuth.de/kolloq/?id=2008_ss&id2=13>see here</a>)
Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol
Summary of the <a href=http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/Summary-bayreuth.pdf>presentation</a></center>
In 1958 the modern NDIR spectroscopic method was introduced to measure CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere [Beck 2007]. In the preceding period, these measurements were taken with the old wet chemical method. From this period, starting from 1857, more than 90,000 reliable CO2 measurements are available, with an accuracy within ± 3 %. They had been taken near ground level, sea surface and as high as the stratosphere, mostly in the northern hemisphere. Comparison of these measurements on the basis of old wet chemical methods with the new physical method (NDIR) on sea and land reveals a systematic analysis difference of about minus 10 ppm.
Wet chemical analyses indicate three atmospheric CO2 maxima in the northern hemisphere up to approx. 400 ppm over land and sea since about 1812. The measured atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1920 –1950 prove to be strongly correlated (more than 80 %) with the arctic sea surface temperature (SST).
A detailed analysis of the Atlantic Ocean water during the arctic warming since 1918 – 1939 by Wattenberg (southern Atlantic ocean) and Buch (northern Atlantic ocean) indicates a very similar state of the Atlantic Ocean (pH, salinity, CO2 in water and air over sea etc.) These data show the characteristics of the warm ocean currents (part of global conveyor belt) at that time, indicating a strong CO2 degassing from the Atlantic Sea, especially in the area of Greenland/Iceland and Spitsbergen. More than 360 ppm had been measured over the sea surface.
In 2004 Polyakov published evidence for a multi-decadal oscillation of the ocean currents in the arctic circle, showing a warm phase (strong arctic warming during 1918 –1940 with high temperatures in the Iceland/Spitsbergen area) similar to the current situation, and a cold phase (around 1900 and 1960). Today the Iceland/Spitsbergen area is known for a strong absorption of CO2.
This multi-decadal heating of the oceanic CO2 absorption area and larger parts of the Northern Atlantic Ocean was followed by an increase of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to approx. 400 ppm during the 30s and approx. 390 ppm today. The abundance of plankton (13C) and other biota supports this view.
Conclusion: Atmospheric CO2 concentration varies with climate, the sea is the dominant CO2 store, releasing the gas depending on multi-decadal changes of temperature. | <a href=http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2_supp.htm>180 Years of atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods - Support</a>
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/ ... euth5e.jpg
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
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styky - Member
- Posts: 120244
- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by styky » 07/ 28/ 08 11:13 am
Carbon credits' dirty secret
Sun, July 27, 2008
Energy companies and speculators make windfall profits while consumers are hit hard
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
<a href=http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2008/07/26/6275421-sun.php>source</a>
At the bottom of the house of sand on which the Kyoto accord and world carbon trading markets are built, there's a leaking foundation.
Otherwise known as a carbon credit.
A carbon credit is a permit or, alternatively, a unit of currency, allowing a country or corporation to emit one metric tonne of carbon dioxide, linked to man-made global warming.
Carbon credits are the main mechanism by which Kyoto transfers wealth from developed nations like Canada to developing ones like China.
They are also the stock bought and sold on carbon trading markets, usually in concert with government "cap and trade" schemes.
Under Kyoto, Canada and our carbon-emitting industries can buy carbon credits so these industries can continue to operate.
There are various ways to do that, but they mainly involve having developed nations invest money in developing ones like China, so the latter can reduce future emissions. At least, that's the theory.
While the developed world is responsible for most emissions to date, since modern industrial methods emit less carbon than older ones and the economies of many developing countries are growing faster than developed ones, most future emissions will come from the developing world.
China, for example, recently passed the U.S. as the world's largest carbon emitter.
Kyoto turned the developed world (us) into buyers of carbon credits by stipulating 37 developed nations, including Canada, had to lower their emissions to an average of 5% below 1990 levels (for Canada's it's 6%) between 2008 and 2012.
Simultaneously, it turned the developing world into sellers of carbon credits by exempting 143 other countries, including such emerging economic giants as China and India, from having to lower their emissions at all.
But if developed countries invest in projects in developing ones to lower the latter's carbon emissions, they receive a credit to continue emitting an equivalent amount of carbon elsewhere.
Hence, they get a carbon "credit."
Carbon credits are also the stock used in carbon trading markets and like any stock, their value depends on supply and demand.
In a "cap and trade" market, governments set a gradually shrinking annual limit on the total amount of carbon designated industries can emit, then give away or sell credits to these industries that they, in turn, buy and sell among themselves.
The theory is that over time, inefficient companies requiring more credits buy them from efficient ones, requiring less, thus using the power of the market to lower global emissions.
The reality has been a fiasco.
First, buying and selling carbon credits doesn't remove one molecule of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Second, carbon credits weren't designed to lower emissions. They were designed to shift emissions around. Practically speaking, they will delay the day when we start lowering them.
Their present purpose is simply to permit developed countries and their industries to keep emitting carbon, so long as they pay a huge financial price for it by subsidizing the developing world.
Meaning, so long as we pay that price in higher energy costs.
In theory, it's the "cap" on emissions that's supposed to lower them -- both Kyoto's global cap and the caps developed nations set in operating "cap-and-trade" carbon markets.
Problem is, these so-called "hard caps" have turned out to be hair nets.
They're riddled with holes and megatonnes of carbon emissions are pouring through them into our atmosphere, the exact opposite of what politicians have told us these "caps" are designed to do.
Kyoto's biggest carbon "leak" is that under it, only 37 countries, including us, have to lower emissions while 143, including China, India and the rest of the developing world, don't.
Indeed, Kyoto as designed, guarantees future emission increases, not decreases.
Further, Kyoto's program awarding carbon credits to industrialized nations for financing carbon abatement projects in the developing world, is now facing allegations of corruption, profiteering and ineffectiveness.
GROWING CRITICISM
There's also growing criticism many of those projects would have gone ahead anyway without carbon credits, meaning they aren't keeping any additional carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
As for carbon trading outside the UN, the world's largest cap-and-trade market is Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme. Its annual carbon emissions are rising, while big energy companies and energy speculators have made windfall profits and consumers have been hit hard by skyrocketing electricity bills.
The ETS' biggest mistake? Participating governments initially gave away more free carbon credits to companies than the combined total of all their emissions, destroying the purpose of cap-and-trade, which is to give out less.
Do we really want any part of this?
Sun, July 27, 2008
Energy companies and speculators make windfall profits while consumers are hit hard
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
<a href=http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2008/07/26/6275421-sun.php>source</a>
At the bottom of the house of sand on which the Kyoto accord and world carbon trading markets are built, there's a leaking foundation.
Otherwise known as a carbon credit.
A carbon credit is a permit or, alternatively, a unit of currency, allowing a country or corporation to emit one metric tonne of carbon dioxide, linked to man-made global warming.
Carbon credits are the main mechanism by which Kyoto transfers wealth from developed nations like Canada to developing ones like China.
They are also the stock bought and sold on carbon trading markets, usually in concert with government "cap and trade" schemes.
Under Kyoto, Canada and our carbon-emitting industries can buy carbon credits so these industries can continue to operate.
There are various ways to do that, but they mainly involve having developed nations invest money in developing ones like China, so the latter can reduce future emissions. At least, that's the theory.
While the developed world is responsible for most emissions to date, since modern industrial methods emit less carbon than older ones and the economies of many developing countries are growing faster than developed ones, most future emissions will come from the developing world.
China, for example, recently passed the U.S. as the world's largest carbon emitter.
Kyoto turned the developed world (us) into buyers of carbon credits by stipulating 37 developed nations, including Canada, had to lower their emissions to an average of 5% below 1990 levels (for Canada's it's 6%) between 2008 and 2012.
Simultaneously, it turned the developing world into sellers of carbon credits by exempting 143 other countries, including such emerging economic giants as China and India, from having to lower their emissions at all.
But if developed countries invest in projects in developing ones to lower the latter's carbon emissions, they receive a credit to continue emitting an equivalent amount of carbon elsewhere.
Hence, they get a carbon "credit."
Carbon credits are also the stock used in carbon trading markets and like any stock, their value depends on supply and demand.
In a "cap and trade" market, governments set a gradually shrinking annual limit on the total amount of carbon designated industries can emit, then give away or sell credits to these industries that they, in turn, buy and sell among themselves.
The theory is that over time, inefficient companies requiring more credits buy them from efficient ones, requiring less, thus using the power of the market to lower global emissions.
The reality has been a fiasco.
First, buying and selling carbon credits doesn't remove one molecule of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Second, carbon credits weren't designed to lower emissions. They were designed to shift emissions around. Practically speaking, they will delay the day when we start lowering them.
Their present purpose is simply to permit developed countries and their industries to keep emitting carbon, so long as they pay a huge financial price for it by subsidizing the developing world.
Meaning, so long as we pay that price in higher energy costs.
In theory, it's the "cap" on emissions that's supposed to lower them -- both Kyoto's global cap and the caps developed nations set in operating "cap-and-trade" carbon markets.
Problem is, these so-called "hard caps" have turned out to be hair nets.
They're riddled with holes and megatonnes of carbon emissions are pouring through them into our atmosphere, the exact opposite of what politicians have told us these "caps" are designed to do.
Kyoto's biggest carbon "leak" is that under it, only 37 countries, including us, have to lower emissions while 143, including China, India and the rest of the developing world, don't.
Indeed, Kyoto as designed, guarantees future emission increases, not decreases.
Further, Kyoto's program awarding carbon credits to industrialized nations for financing carbon abatement projects in the developing world, is now facing allegations of corruption, profiteering and ineffectiveness.
GROWING CRITICISM
There's also growing criticism many of those projects would have gone ahead anyway without carbon credits, meaning they aren't keeping any additional carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
As for carbon trading outside the UN, the world's largest cap-and-trade market is Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme. Its annual carbon emissions are rising, while big energy companies and energy speculators have made windfall profits and consumers have been hit hard by skyrocketing electricity bills.
The ETS' biggest mistake? Participating governments initially gave away more free carbon credits to companies than the combined total of all their emissions, destroying the purpose of cap-and-trade, which is to give out less.
Do we really want any part of this?
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
-
styky - Member
- Posts: 120244
- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by free_life2 » 07/ 28/ 08 6:39 pm
With Obama as Prez and the socialist congress the whole economy will be built on green programs, industry and jobs. The greatest socialist experiment ever to roll down the pipe is on its way.
The All Gores and Suzuki's of the world will get richer and those who stand in the way will be crushed. All bow and worship Mother Earth now or else. Your children are being indoctrinated in the public school system.
==========
I am working on turning CO2 into the next energy source to run the world on, at a profit. The left and the right will both love it. Now all I need is a 100 million dollar grant.
The All Gores and Suzuki's of the world will get richer and those who stand in the way will be crushed. All bow and worship Mother Earth now or else. Your children are being indoctrinated in the public school system.
==========
I am working on turning CO2 into the next energy source to run the world on, at a profit. The left and the right will both love it. Now all I need is a 100 million dollar grant.
-
free_life2 - Posts: 12333
- Joined: 11/ 18/ 04 3:34 pm
- Location: Heaven
by styky » 10/ 22/ 08 12:46 pm
Herd of 200 cows 'produces as much greenhouse gas as a family car driven 3,000 miles'
By <a href=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1079354/Herd-200-cows-produces-greenhouse-gas-family-car-driven-3-000-miles.html>Daily Mail Reporter</a>
Last updated at 11:08 PM on 21st October 2008
A herd of cows produces more greenhouse gas in a year than a family car produces to drive 3,000 miles, an economist has revealed.
Dr Andy Thorpe of Portsmouth University said that 200 cows expel an annual amount of methane equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions of a car burning 21,400 litres of petrol.
Dr Thorpe added that while CO2 emissions have increased by 31 per cent in the past 250 years, methane has increased by 149 per cent over the same period.
Methane has a greater warming effect than CO2 and a longer lifetime in the atmosphere. He said the gas is responsible for one fifth of global warming experienced since 1750.
Between 55 per cent and 70 per cent of methane produced comes from man-made sources, mostly farming of animals such as cows, sheep and goats, which have an additional stomach and produce large amounts of methane as they digest food.
Dr Thorpe said: 'Methane emission-growth, like CO2 growth, has been increasing exponentially in the developing world due to a rise in incomes leading to an increased demand for meat, and the "hamburger connection" where developing countries make a lucrative profit supplying meat to developed countries.'
He explained that up to 75 per cent of animal methane emissions came from developing countries, with India and Brazil being the leading producers.
Efforts are being made to reduce emissions, including providing different feed and using vaccinations, but they are in the early stages of research.
Dr Thorpe, whose research is published in the journal Climatic Change, warned there could be problems with downsizing herds.
A reduction in meat could lead to a 'disastrous' increase in demand for fish and cereals.
================================
Response from www.Junkscience.com
By <a href=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1079354/Herd-200-cows-produces-greenhouse-gas-family-car-driven-3-000-miles.html>Daily Mail Reporter</a>
Last updated at 11:08 PM on 21st October 2008
A herd of cows produces more greenhouse gas in a year than a family car produces to drive 3,000 miles, an economist has revealed.
Dr Andy Thorpe of Portsmouth University said that 200 cows expel an annual amount of methane equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions of a car burning 21,400 litres of petrol.
Dr Thorpe added that while CO2 emissions have increased by 31 per cent in the past 250 years, methane has increased by 149 per cent over the same period.
Methane has a greater warming effect than CO2 and a longer lifetime in the atmosphere. He said the gas is responsible for one fifth of global warming experienced since 1750.
Between 55 per cent and 70 per cent of methane produced comes from man-made sources, mostly farming of animals such as cows, sheep and goats, which have an additional stomach and produce large amounts of methane as they digest food.
Dr Thorpe said: 'Methane emission-growth, like CO2 growth, has been increasing exponentially in the developing world due to a rise in incomes leading to an increased demand for meat, and the "hamburger connection" where developing countries make a lucrative profit supplying meat to developed countries.'
He explained that up to 75 per cent of animal methane emissions came from developing countries, with India and Brazil being the leading producers.
Efforts are being made to reduce emissions, including providing different feed and using vaccinations, but they are in the early stages of research.
Dr Thorpe, whose research is published in the journal Climatic Change, warned there could be problems with downsizing herds.
A reduction in meat could lead to a 'disastrous' increase in demand for fish and cereals.
================================
Response from www.Junkscience.com
Not exactly, <a href=http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/otheratg/blake/methane/methane.html>atmospheric methane</a> levels stopped rising in the 1990s (the global cattle herd did not). While 149% sounds a big increase we are talking parts per billion whereas carbon dioxide is measured in parts per million (even though the units are 1,000 times larger atmospheric carbon dioxide is still a mere trace gas).
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
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styky - Member
- Posts: 120244
- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by styky » 12/ 07/ 09 11:32 am
<a href=http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/06/epa-about-to-declare-co2-dangerous-ssshhh-dont-tell-the-trees/>EPA about to declare CO2 dangerous – ssshhh! – Don’t tell the trees</a>
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
-
styky - Member
- Posts: 120244
- Joined: 03/ 10/ 03 9:21 pm
by CdnRepublican » 12/ 07/ 09 12:27 pm
rbacon wrote:The Green Commies will inflict another famine on the world just like their blood brother Uncle Joe Stalin. Many Canadians have never accepted the fact that Socialism and Communism have been the deadliest most lethal thing or concept ever unleashed. Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao butchered millions of citizen's yet the brain dead socialists still believe and promote their ideals and we pay for them.
Good post.
All the Leftards now infect the Greenie Co2mmunist movement.
But they are the 'smart ones'.
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CdnRepublican - Posts: 10158
- Joined: 08/ 10/ 05 8:31 am
- Location: Jerusalem, beating back the hordes of the anti-christ.
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