Media Watch returned tonight, and look at the fawning coverage of Lord Monckton, the latest self-styled non-scientist sceptic with a happy knack of making stuff up. How do otherwise sensible people get taken in by someone who thinks there’s a world-wide conspiracy afoot to establish a global communist government?
But what finally dawned on me is this: If the right-wing conspiracy theorists are right about a communist conspiracy, why are the ones in agreement with their climate change denial actual communists?
Why is it Western capitalists arguing for action on climate change, and the biggest communist nation on earth arguing against it?
Wouldn’t that make climate change denial the real communist conspiracy?
But what finally dawned on me is this: If the right-wing conspiracy theorists are right about a communist conspiracy, why are the ones in agreement with their climate change denial actual communists?
Why is it Western capitalists arguing for action on climate change, and the biggest communist nation on earth arguing against it?
Wouldn’t that make climate change denial the real communist conspiracy?
Or even more basic, if it’s a conspiracy, why couldn’t they finally agree on anything when they finally got together in Copenhagen?
Monckton is so bizarre I suspect he’s actually a counter-agent working for climate change awareness by tainting all Denialists as having his Dan-Brown sized conspiracy view of the world.
Say it with me: WORLD COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT! Oh the humanity!
Haha yes, I was wondering if Monckton was actually doing high level satire too. Honestly, if Barnaby Joyce thinks you’re too extreme, you’ve really reached the next level.
What struck me about Monckton - beyond the climate-change debate itself - is that he claims mathematical expertise while denying that he’s a scientist. Every mathematician is a scientist! Therefore, why can’t he see that Earth’s climate is a Chaotic [i.e. non-linear] system, hence always subject to change? (I state this from the perspective of someone with BMus(Hons) + PhD degrees, who did 3 years of honours-level Pure Mathematics at USyd, and who is rather affected by wine at present.)
who did 3 years of honours-level Pure Mathematics at USyd
Woah, forget the wine, I wouldn’t go admitting something like this out in public forums like this! ;-)
(Said from the perspective of someone who, for various reasons, got ‘left behind’ in the Year 11 maths classroom. As the stuff snowballed into more advanced areas of geometry and calculus, I was kind of stuck back in earlier chapters thinking “What the…?” I ended up doing my English homework in maths. I still have bad dreams about it…)
With all the nastiness about Climate Change floating around, it seemed to me to be about time for Mighty Church to lead the way. Therefore , I have calculated the degrees C lowering of ocean temperature caused by the melting of Ice in the Antartica.
It is over 50 yrs since I did Physics, so O&OE;. Not one skerick of info comes from E-mails. Mostly Wikipedia.
World Ocean Mass 3 x 10^15 MT
Latent Heat of Ice 334 KJ/Kg
Specific Heat of WAter 4.2 KJ/ Kg / 1 deg C
MT= Metric Ton= Short Ton KJ= Kilojoule
Therefor Energy taken in by Ice= 334 x 30 x 10^14 x 10^3
=10 x 10^20 KJ
Temperature loss of World Oceans (*T )
Q= m c *T
10 x 10^20 = 1.3 x 10^20 x 4.2 x *T celcius
*T = 5.5 degrees Celcius
This figure does not consider the atmosphere or the salty water of the oceans, but when you are worried about the failure of the planet, these , and other, shortcuts are quite OK. I was hoping for a drop of over 25deg. in temperature, then the planet would , for a short time, be a giant skating ring. The Polar Bears would be saved!
Alas, it would not last long, because without the moderating effects of water and ices’ high specific and latent heats, the planet would quickly warm up under the insulation of our CO2 rich Atmosphere.
So perhaps we know now why there are some cases of the planet cooling, maybe even “Snowmageddon in parts of the USA. Can,t find any answers in “Revelations” But I,m sure Barnaby Joyce will sort it all out soon
Yes, freaky weather for sure! But again we have to be sure to distinguish between weather and climate.
The thing I find interesting about melting ice, as a non-technical amateur, is after talking with a science teacher activist I know, finding out more about the latent heat of ice or the “Phase change”. (Sounds like something off Star Trek).
Basically, it takes far more energy to get the ice to the melting point than people realise. So when the Antarctic ice starts melting into the ocean, it’s not representing cooling moving into the ocean but an ENORMOUS reserve of extra atmospheric energy that is moving into the ice to turn it into water… thinking about it globally.
Then the albedo changes kick in, where once the ice acted as a mirror reflecting 90% of the sun’s energy the darker seawater now ABSORBS 90% of the heat.
In other words, right now ice is already absorbing heaps and heaps of extra atmospheric energy, disguising some of the warming, and bouncing back sunlight before it can transform into heat energy, preventing some of the warming.
When it is gone, we have the double whammy of less ice to act as a “sponge” absorbing heat and less ice acting as a mirror to prevent the heat in the first place!
It’s just one of many feedbacks that make this a very serious proposition.
In other words, the faster it warms, the faster it warms. The last time Co2 was this high was 15 million years ago,
“The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland,” said the paper’s lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
“Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological observations that we now have for the last 20 million years lend strong support to the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent for driving climate change throughout Earth’s history,” she said.
Carbon dioxide is “essentially harmless” to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming?
Utah’s House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning “climate alarmists”, and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.
The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN’s landmark report on global warming.
But it does offer a view of state politicians’ concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.
The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a “well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate “tricks” related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome”. It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a “gravy train” and their efforts would “ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty”.
In the heat of the debate, the representative Mike Noel said environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion.
By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heats apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word “conspiracy”, and described climate science as “questionable” rather than “flawed”.
However, it insisted – against all evidence – that the hockey stick graph of changing temperatures was discredited. It also called on the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt in its moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions “until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated”.
As Noel explained: “Sometimes ... we need to have the courage to do nothing.”
But it does offer a view of state politicians’ concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.
Yeah, the climate scientists are riding the gravy train, sure, yeah, riiiiiiight!
Hey, don’t forget this is the same country that had Sarah Palin as VP on the ticket and who now works for “Fox News” because she values its unbiased portrayal of the truth!
A plug for a Catholic meeting adressed by Rev Dr Sean Mc Donagh about climate change etc. “If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation” It is at Thomas Aquinas centre, Santa Sabina college on the Boulevarde, about 5 min from Strathfield Station.
I’m not just been overcome with ecumenism, although my second religion is Roman Catholic, but Rev Dr Sean Mc Donagh is an Ecologist and was an observer at Copenhagen. So that is a real change from all the politics we have heard about Copenhagen.
As a Columban Priest he represents mission groups that go to difficult places like Pakistan, and handle unpopular issues like refugees.
It is on Sat. 10 th April 2010 and a $10 donation will gain entry.( There’s cheese, wine and music too)
And then they’ll change it to “Look, what the so called “Climatologists” don’t want to admit is that it has been cooling since 2016!” Etc. You get the picture. Dishonest cherry-picking never did anyone any good, as it is so easy to see through.
On ABC’s “Catlyst” tonight we may get some tintillating info on ice in the Antartic.
In the meantime however it appears Kevin has gone cold on climate change inititives. Political pragmatism has sunk in. ” If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it .” Unless there is a catastrophy, but what would that be?
I am a great believer in Climate Change action, but there is of course some validity in the latter argument. Noone can be sure what will happen if we were to just reverse CO2 emissions and stop global warming. Reason and science can only point to one way of attacking the problem.
Real events may be like the old ditty—” There’s a hole in my bucket dear Lisa , dear Lisa, with what shall I fix it?——-”
The fact that Earth’s climate is a Chaotic system makes any action regarding human-controlled CO2 emissions unpredictable in the long term: that’s the nature of Chaos! (This is by no means an argument to maintain our dependence on fossil fuels: research into alternative, cleaner, more efficient energy-sources must continue - at least because coal- and oil-resources are finite.) As for the postponement of the ETS, given the fizzer that Copenhagen turned out to be, it would make no sense whatsoever on a planetary scale (let alone considered locally) to pursue it now, regardless of the national political situation.
I’ve got absolutely no belief whatsoever in the power of ‘modern democratic governments’ to stand up to the big Corporate interests on this one. They’re all in bed with big oil or king coal.
Meanwhile, the new consensus is that we should be at 350 parts per million, and we’re already at 387ppm, while the antiquated IPCC studies are stuck with the goals of 450ppm to negate the chance of catastrophic change to a mere 50%!
“Hey Doctor, if I take really drastic action and cut my left leg off… what’s my chance of surviving this snake bite?”
“50%!”
That’s according to the old IPCC understanding of the science, which was largely hamstrung by the Saudi’s and big oil companies in the wrangling over every last word in the document.
The real climate science has moved on much faster, and the real climate events seem to be unfolding much faster than the IPCC had modelled.
Now here’s the real kicker! How much Co2 is there in all the conventional oil, gas, and coal? We’ll, apparently if we burnt all the fossil fuels it would ‘only’ take us to around 468 to 500 ppm anyway!
There just isn’t as much fossil fuels as people seem to think. (The IPCC modelled oil production increasing through to 2100… I mean, what whacky tobaccy were they smoking?)
So anyway, as far as solutions go we’ll make the right decision when we simply aren’t any more mistakes to make. Peak oil will shock the world so badly that the Greater Depression could do more in itself to reduce economic growth and the resulting increases in power stations than any ETS would. If open university presentations to Stanford University place peak oil between 2010 to 2020 then this knowledge is going mainstream… for those who have the ears to hear.
Hi all,
This is from a review of a book on biochar which explores some of the potential benefits, and also very great RISKS, of using biochar. Biochar seems to be one of those technologies that could be really very good, or really very, very bad… depending on how we use it. It can produce food, fuel, fertiliser, soil remediation AND carbon sequestration if we do it right… or focus more on the fuel, less on the food, with the risk of raising world food prices (again).
However, these quotes are truly amazing.
Remember, biochar is light, easy to spread off the back of a truck, and if done right can produce the syngas to fuel the truck that spreads the biochar (and a bunch of other things!)
Currently half the syngas is wasted cooking up the next batch of biochar. I imagine in a post-peak world biochar cookers might use Concentrated Solar Power to provide the heat to cook the biomass up, so that they could then save ALL the syngas (or synfuel) for running local agriculture.
…. giving a mere 2.5 percent of the world’s productive land over to biochar production would bring CO2 to pre-industrial levels by 2050.
…. Bruges shows that the second scenario is easily doable, in light of a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showing that an additional 4 billion acres could be added to the world’s existing 3.5 billion acres of cropland.
Just came across this horrible acronym—ARRCC. It stands for Australian Religious Response to Climate Change. They aRE HAving their Inaugural Eco Awards Dinner at St Marks , Sth Hurtsville 5 JUNE 7pm . So at least someone is doing something . The invite says religous dress/ semi formal. I know “the Shire” is different. Do you need a passport to enter?
Hey Doug, where do you live ? If you were a Sydneyite, you would have known that Hurstville is in the middle of St George territory.
It’s found north of the border that isolates ( and ” insulates ” ? ) what us ‘foreigners’ ( and those who live within the region ) call “The Shire”. [ Roughly this kingdom is found within that area bordered by the Georges River and Botany Bay to the north, Port Hacking to the south, the Woronora River to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east. ]
As to “So at least someone is doing something” - I don’t think that just seeming to be doing something is necessarily a good thing in itself - seems more like symbolism and tokenism to me. Besides, charging at least $60 a head to attend seems more like expensive “let them eat cake” elitism to me. So, in silent symbolic tokenisim, I won’t be attending - which makes me a non-attender at a non-event ;)
Kalichman, feels that everyday reasoning alone is not enough to make someone a denialist. “There is some fragility in their thinking that draws them to believe people who are easily exposed as frauds,” he says. “Most of us don’t believe what they say, even if we want to. Understanding why some do may help us find solutions.”
He believes the instigators of denialist movements have more serious psychological problems than most of their followers. “They display all the features of paranoid personality disorder”, he says, including anger, intolerance of criticism, and what psychiatrists call a grandiose sense of their own importance. “Ultimately, their denialism is a mental health problem. That is why these movements all have the same features, especially the underlying conspiracy theory.”
Yes Kevin, I am a bit of a foreigner because I live way over at Mt Colah, and there is many badlands in between. However, with apologies to Lisa and Harry, this is another attempt to set things right:—-
There’s no more oil in my bucket dear Jenny, dear Jenny. No more.
Well fix it dear Kev, dear Kev. Fix it.
With what shall I fix it dear Jenny,dear Jenny
With coal dear Kev,dear Kev, With coal.
But the coal gives too much CO2 dear Jenny, dear Jenny.
Well fix it dear Kev, dear Kev. Fix it.
With what shall I fix it dear Jenny, dear Jenny.
With the giant windmills dear Kev,dear Kev.
But the windmills have all rusted since Tony Abbot declared them the work of
the devil dear Jenny,dear Jenny.
Then oil them dear Kev, dear Kev. Oil them.
But there’s no more oil dear Jenny, dear Jenny. NO more.
Hi Doug,
that argument is also called the ‘spanner in the works’ or ‘complex systems collapse’. It’s a doomer argument that attempts to explain why just a few percent drop in oil production means not just a recession or Greater Depression is probably imminent (roughly what I see happening) but the end of law and order, food supplies, water provision and civilisation itself.
So while I think the rationing will be necessary (and quite economically horrible), I’m actually cheering on the day of $200 oil as it will probably instigate the first REAL action on energy substitutes.
And with the S-PRISM reactor able to eat nuclear waste, produce clean power, run the world on existing nuclear waste for 500 years without opening a new uranium mine and provide plentiful abundant baseload electricity to run Electric Cars, Fast Rail, fuel manufacture, etc… I’m now a fan of nuclear power. (This is after much resistance and a long time hoping for something more solid in the renewables camp as well!)
S-PRISM reactors are smaller, modular, compatible with smaller grids (like in Africa and country towns in Australia), don’t require expensive energy storage (as renewables do), don’t require an expensive smart grid to be installed (like renewables do), and can be mass produced on a production line to bring costs right down! It can be delivered to site right off the back of a truck!
Once we realise we have all the energy we need in cheap Australian uranium, then I think we’ll finally see a chance of weaning off fossil fuels within 10 to 20 years.
Well, I’m very inclined to agree with you there Dannii, but at least having a means of lowering demand on liquid fuels reduces the probability of some of my peak oil worst case scenarios. Sadly, nuclear + EV’s might enable car-based suburbia to continue… but maybe with time we’ll realise how inhumane a lifestyle this is and start to build the best of ecocity designs and / or New Urbanism in other districts.
This will offer lifestyle choice, but also save heaps of ecosystems. I’ve shared it here a few times, but have you seen the “Built to last” youtube?
If you have 22 minutes, this is even better! He’s one of my heroes. I disagree with him on the technical potential to solve peak oil, but his understanding of New Urbanism and incredible ability to describe where we’ve gone wrong, and the psychological and social effects of suburbia, are really intriguing. However, it’s rated “F” for language.
Also, there’s this from the ABC… New Urbanism + rail saves lives and a good % of GDP!
Citizens are saying, we want to pay for increased public transport. We see that in research by the Warren Centre where 70% of the citizens who were surveyed said yes, move my tax out of the roads budget and into public transport. Now that’s a resounding response…
— and —
…Robyn Williams: The cost of road crashes in Australia is $17 billion a year. The cost of traffic jams in America, according to The Economist is $100 billion a year, and that was in 1999. The cost of traffic jams in Australia was $12.8 billion in 1995. By 2015, long before 2024, it’ll cost us $30 billion a year – that’s six times what the Commonwealth spends on all scientific research. Can you afford it? Whatever the energy source, hydrogen, wind or whatever, we can’t, says Dave Rand, just hope to go greener and keep our vehicles.
— and —
Sally Campbell: Public transport systems cost less as a percentage of GDP than transport systems based mainly on roads. And we see that when they start to compare Europe’s current systems to the current systems in Australia and the US and it’s almost a third less in terms of percentage of GDP to operate a system mainly based on public transport. So there are massive cost savings to be had.
Robyn Williams: You’re talking about billions.
Sally Campbell: Yeah, we’re talking about billions of dollars, we’re talking about two, or three, or four a percent of GDP that we could be saving. This is huge amounts of money.
I guess SPrism must be the real deal if GE and Hitachi produced it, but I have read many science magazines and have noticed an increasing number (many 100’s ) of quite new and ingenious ways of producing sustainable energy. Perhaps we are missing the elephant in the room , however.
A review in Scientific American April 2010 under ” Breaking the Growth Habit” is from a book by Bill McKibben of 350.ORG fame. I have to agree with the argument that whatever clever energy alternatives we come up with, we still have to break the growth habit in order to be sustainable. eg seen at this weeks newsstand on front cover of “Australian BUsiness Solutions” magazine April 2010—- “GROW or DIE” .
It is significant that the notion of containing growth is published in a science magazine.I can’t imagine it getting into the regular media, especially finance or politics.China’s fortunes have depended on growth. Our financial masters consider it OK to spend $1/2 mil on pools and patios for their $1mil house, so that they can sell it for $2mil. Meanwhile the plebs struggle to pay their rent or mortgage.
Science I would suggest, has one major advantage—Its prime object is to find truth, and it has objective ways of testing for truth. Religion has many truths and only God knows what is the relavent truth. Not that we could comprehend God’s truth.
Science and religion have lived in the same house for a long time. Usually Science is in a broom cupboard somewhere or a sunny porch. Now I think Science and REligion are in adjoining flats. Religion in the top flat closer to God and Science on the ground floor connected to Earth. Truth is such a powerful weapon that perhaps scientists shouth take an oath to uphold truth when they get their degree, just as doctors take the Hippocratic oath to uphold life..
Tonight, i’ll dream about Kevin and Jenny creating CSIRO as a corporation with twice the capital of BHP Billiton (from the Future fund) and a mission to give us a sustainable society.
Hi Doug
the S-PRISM is a plan only, and will no doubt have teething issues when they finally decide to bring it online. However, I think reprocessing uranium is currently illegal in the USA unless supervised by the military for bomb making. The fact that Integral Fast Reactors (which the S-PRISM is a smaller version of) produce ‘good’ plutonium which is not easily converted into a bomb is overlooked by the USA’s blanket ban on reprocessing.
I agree that there are all sorts of advances in renewables occurring on a daily basis: but I’m convinced that they have a long way to go before they can provide baseload power at anything near a competitive price.
If given the go ahead, we could roll the S-PRISM’s off the production line at a great speed and instantly have around 90% capacity cheap electricity that works when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, without the need for a whole new power plant or expensive energy storage system for regular downtimes.
Personally, I’d love to see what society would look like in an alternative time-line in which there had never been fossil fuels or uranium, and how a modern day civilisation would function! Maybe certain factory workers would just take the day off work if it was raining and the solar thermal plant was less effective? Maybe life would be slower, more humane, and our cities would mainly be built around moving people, not cars?
However, I’m convinced that the main aim of the game right now is to stabilise human population growth by sustain-ably meeting all human needs and thereby causing a worldwide demographic transition. And that means huge amounts of reliable baseload cheap electricity.
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