Posts Tagged ‘Global Warming’
Black activist cropped from Greta Thunberg Davos photoshoot
If Greta Thunberg was black, would the world’s media prick up its ear when she spoke? It’s not what she says, but that the white, blonde from Sweden is saying it. Time to meet Vanessa Nakate, a 23-year-old climate activist from Uganda who like Greta has been at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
On Friday, Vanessa was at the Fridays for Future protest in the rarified Swiss town. Big media covered the event. And when the Associated Press portrait of the young activists hit the newswires, Vanessa was noticeable by her absence. The four white girls stayed in the picture, each looking a bit miserable and concerned. It might be modelling shoot for some mid-market brand. To the side, the smiling black girl, the young woman from lands the West presents as places to nurture, control and save, is gone.
Says Vanessa: “I cried because it was so sad not just that it was racist, I was sad because of the people from Africa. It showed how we are valued. It hurt me a lot. It is the worst thing I have ever seen in my life.”
She’s right, isn’t she. Climate change activism looks a lot like colonialism. We know best. We must save them. Their job is to provide the noble cause. And if they’re really lucky, maybe a TV celebrity will come and adopt them and fly them to a place where the knowing really understand what’s going on …
Brenda from Waddington solves global warming
Brenda from Waddington, Lincolnshire is 89. She knows what caused global warming: space travel.
Spotter: @angrypiln
Posted: 19th, January 2020 | In: News, Strange But True | Comment
Wolverhampton measuring stick challenges global warming stats
The UK Met Office says that 2019 was the second warmest in a record dating back to 1850. The Met says 2020 will be warmer still. The news came via a press release. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) got their figures from scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
You can read more about the data and how it was interpreted at the link above. As the Express and Star reports, one reader in Wolverhampton want to see the measuring sticks,
Spotter: APILN
Yellow jacket protest: French prove no one’s taking climate change seriously
That the French are revolting we all know, that they’re revolting in the streets against their own government is also an often enough occurrence. But there’s something important underlying these riots at present. Which is the manner in which no one is really taking climate change seriously. An odd thing to say about riots started by higher fuel taxes to beat climate change but true all the same.
France fuel protests: Macron calls urgent security meeting
OK, but what’s the fuel protest about?
The protesters are known as the “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests), because they have taken to the streets wearing the high-visibility clothing that is required to be carried in every vehicle by French law.
Their core complaint is a hike in diesel taxes. President Macron says his motivation for the increase is environmental, but protesters call him out of touch – particularly with non-city dwellers who rely on their cars.
That “environmental” there being about climate change. And that’s the right way to do it too. If you’ve got some pollution being caused by something then raise the price to have less pollution. So, that the French populace are out on the streets protesting about this, demanding that the tax rises be reversed, shows that the French populace doesn’t take climate change seriously.
But what about Macron? He’s imposed the taxes, surely this means he must be taking it seriously? Well, no, because rather larger than cars as a source of pollution is power plants. And one of the types that doesn’t CO2 pollute is nuclear power stations. Thus beating climate change would be to replace gas and coal fired plants with nuclear. But Macron is closing some of the nuclear plants. So, he’s not taking climate change seriously, is he?
As with Merkel in fact. Germany’s spent well over a trillion on trying to beat climate change. At the same time as they closed the nuclear plants and replaced then with highly polluting brown coal ones.
People just aren’t taking climate change seriously or they wouldn’t be doing what they are.
The Human virus: making IPAT divided by technology
Writing in the Gaurdian, Travis N Rieder wants to talk about what leading Left-wing British politicians call ‘the human virus‘:
Yes, humans are producers, and many wonderful things have come from human genius. But each person, whatever else they are (genius or dunce, producer or drag on the economy) is also a consumer. And this is the only claim needed in order to be worried about climate change.
Eating and breathing are wrong? Before we go on, one of the comments below the line is wonderful:
Daverob”
‘Modern human beings’ have only inhabited the earth for around 200,000 years. I have no doubt that one day a microbe will wipe us out, efficient little things that they are…
Mother nature will have its day! So I’d stop worrying about population growth and concentrate on saving the NHS for the here and now.
Once you stop rolling your eyes and sneering, we can continue:
The problem here is that we have a finite resource – the ability of the Earth’s atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gases without violently disrupting the climate – and each additional person contributes to the total amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. So although humans will hopefully save us (we do, in fact, desperately need brilliant people to develop scaleable technology to remove carbon from the air, for instance), the solution to this cannot be to have as many babies as possible, with the hope that this raises our probability of solving the problem. Because each baby is also an emitter, whether a genius or not.
Wow. Utter tosh, of course.
He is stuck on this:
What is the IPAT Equation, or I = P X A X T?
One of the earliest attempts to describe the role of multiple factors in determining environmental degradation was the IPAT equation1. It describes the multiplicative contribution of population (P), affluence (A) and technology (T) to environmental impact (I). Environmental impact (I) may be expressed in terms of resource depletion or waste accumulation; population (P) refers to the size of the human population; affluence (A) refers to the level of consumption by that population; and technology (T) refers to the processes used to obtain resources and transform them into useful goods and wastes. The formula was originally used to emphasize the contribution of a growing global population on the environment, at a time when world population was roughly half of what it is now. It continues to be used with reference to population policy.
George Monbiot notes:
David Satterthwaite of the International Institute for Environment and Development, points out that the old formula taught to all students of development – that total impact equals population times affluence times technology (I=PAT) – is wrong. Total impact should be measured as I=CAT: consumers times affluence times technology. Many of the world’s people use so little that they wouldn’t figure in this equation. They are the ones who have most children.
The Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES), a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was published in 2000. Tim Worstall looks:
More humans means more emissions therefore we should have fewer humans. This is one of those things which is possibly true. But of course what we want to know is, well, is it true? And the answer is no.
For this has been considered. In the SRES which came out in, erm, 1992? And which is the economic skeleton upon which every IPCC report up to and including AR4 was built. And it specifically looks at the varied influences of wealth, population size and technology upon emissions. That’s what it’s actually for in fact. It can be thought of a working through of Paul Ehrlich’s I = PAT equation, impact equals population times affluence times technology. Except, of course, it gets that equation right, dividing by technology, not multiplying by it.
And the answer is that population isn’t the important variable. Nor is affluence, not directly, it’s technology which is. Move over to non-emitting forms of energy generation (and no, not some crash program, just the same sort of increase in efficiency which we had in the 20th century will do it) as in A1T and we’re done. Or if you prefer a bit more social democracy, as in B1.
Population size just isn’t the driving force behind the problem. Thus it’s also not the solution. And we’ve known this for more than 20 years.
Carry on breeding, then.
Posted: 13th, September 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
George Monbiot: vegans against cow shit
George Monbiot wants to tell us about his meals in the Guardian. We live in an age of narcissism, so a broadsheet writer talking about his dinner is staple fare:
I’ve converted to veganism to reduce my impacts on the living world
Cows swoon:
The world can cope with 7 or even 10 billion people. But only if we stop eating meat. Livestock farming is the most potent means by which we amplify our presence on the planet. It is the amount of land an animal-based diet needs that makes it so destructive.
We should slaughter all the animals?
An analysis by the farmer and scholar Simon Fairlie suggests that Britain could easily feed itself within its own borders. But while a diet containing a moderate amount of meat, dairy and eggs would require the use of 11m hectares of land (4m of which would be arable), a vegan diet would demand a total of just 3m.
And lots of manure to grow the stuff with? Human shit is only good for columnists to make a living. The rest of us need horse, bird, pig and cow shit.
Rothamsted tells us:
Livestock manures are a valuable source of nutrients in many organic rotations. Making best use of these nutrients:
• contributes towards economic sustainability
• minimises pollution of the wider environment
Can you have good animal shit without animals to do the shitting? Monbiot adds:
Not only do humans need no pasture, but we use grains and pulses more efficiently when we eat them ourselves, rather than feed them to cows and chickens.
If not more animals to create more animal manure to grow crops with, is the option to go for increased GM crops and artificial fertilisers?
This would enable 15m hectares of the land now used for farming in Britain to be set aside for nature.
Nature? Are human beings not natural?
File under: show us your shit.
Posted: 10th, August 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
Turbine Watch: Windmill Fire Live Video Palladam Tamilnadu 2016
Alternative energy video of the day is called “Windmill Fire – Live Video Palladam Tamilnadu 2016”. Clean energy – we’re not quite there yet:
Plastic bag tax makes a pigs ear from an avoska
Plastic bags. you pays loads money for your shopping then are asked to cough up surcharge to carry the stuff. Tim Newman:
I think the behaviour that governments and the lobbyists want the citizens to adopt is one whereby they turn up to the supermarket with one or more robust, reusable grocery bags but this only really works when the shopping trip is planned. What somebody is supposed to do if they pop into the supermarket to buy more than two items on the way home is anyone’s guess, unless they fancy forking out a fiver for one of those robust, reusable grocery bags. I expect what we’ll find is people taking up the habit of carrying around a small, compact bag in case they need to do some unscheduled grocery shopping at some point in the day. During the good old days of the Soviet Union, the happy citizens would routinely carry around a string bag called an avoska, which roughly translates as “perhaps bag”, on the off-chance they would stumble across a store selling something worth buying and would be able to carry it home (before swapping it with a neighbour or friend in return for something they might actually want).
For some people, particularly middle-class environmentalists, forcing the masses to adopt practices common in the Soviet Union is probably seen as progress.
The plastic bag charge is nuts.
The most Guardian Guardian column you’ll ever read
Meet Dave Bry. Dave has a question for Guardian readers: “Does climate change make it immoral to have kids?” As the rule dictates, any headline posed as a question must be answered ‘No’. But Dave will not be sterilised so easily. He has a column to fill.
Bringing children into a disintegrating environment used to be a theoretical fear. Now it’s a very real one
Dave is scared of disintegration. He also tell us he has children. This being the Guardian, chances are they will soon be introduced in Dave’s column or one of their own, little Bry-lined specimens, keepers of the Bry hard stare.
…the world is a wonderful place, one we humans have made nicer for ourselves with wonderful inventions like books and record players, penicillin and pizza, it’s also a really awful place, one we’ve ravaged with deforestation and smog, nuclear weapons and mountains of pizza delivery boxes and other garbage.
Which one of those awful things do you suppose Dave and the Bry-lines rub up against on a given day? Nuclear weapons? (Isn’t Islington a nuclear free zone?) Deforestation by the Guardian’s new Kings X offices? Pizza? The Internet?
The awfulness seems to be getting worse, especially now that climate change has sped up – sea level rise that was supposed to take centuries has recently been projected as taking just decades. This complicates the already difficult decision of whether to have a kid.
It’s too late for Dave. But if he can put you off breeding, he’ll have made his contribution to Gaia’s health. And he will do it with science:
We’re living through what scientists call the “Sixth Extinction”, an era of precipitous decline in the number of species able to live on the planet. The last mass extinction, the fifth, happened 66 million years ago, when a giant asteroid crashed into Earth and 76% of all the species on the planet perished.
He sees “global economic collapse, famine, border disputes, wars.”
Thinking about the horrific future scientists predict hurts a very specific part of me, a part of me that I only first learned was there when I met my newborn son, 11 years ago, as he lay on the tray of the scale where the doctors had just weighed him and counted his fingers and toes.
The moment is wordless, and as mind-blowing as any drug trip I ever took.
Trust me. I’m a stoner. And Dave is re-evaluating:
Was I complicit in the damage? I remember every extra paper towel I’ve ever unspooled from the roll, and think about a tree falling in the Amazon, and then think about my son growing up in a gray, dying world – walking towards Kansas on potholed highways. Maybe while trying to protect his own son, like the father in The Road. Will he decide to have a kid? I have foisted upon him a decision even more difficult than my own. It’s all very depressing.
No. It’s hilarious. And curse those mahogany paper towels!
What if, and this is obviously a huge “if”, some young person, perhaps a certain 11-year-old in a Black Sabbath T-shirt (I highly doubt it, he can rarely remember to take his lunchbox out of his knapsack at the end of the day), perhaps someone who is not yet born, perhaps not yet conceived, is the one super-genius to figure out the invention that could save the planet?
For anyone not laughing themselves silly at Dave, the story ends with a line about his science:
This article was amended on Saturday 2 April 2016, to correctly identify the timing of the last mass extinction.
Ends.
Spotter: Brendan O’Neill.
Posted: 4th, April 2016 | In: Broadsheets, Reviews | Comment
February was the warmest month ever, so they say
Big news in the Guardian: “February was the warmest month in recorded history, climate experts say.”
Brr! It was cold in the northern hemisphere. And can you balance things out so easily?
The most insane wind turbine photo of all time
Wind turbines reduce the amount of CO2 being released to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. Well, that’s the idea. And then you see this picture from Sweden.
The rotor blades of a wind turbine to ice up bringing the blades to a complete stop. To fix the “problem” a helicopter is employed (burning aviation fuel) to spray hot water (which is heated in the frigid temperatures using a truck equipped with a 260 kW oil burner) on the blades of the turbine to de-ice them.
The aviation fuel, the diesel for the truck, and the oil burned to heat the water, could produce more electricity (at the right time to meet demand) than the unfrozen wind turbine could ever produce. (Before it freezes up again).
Spotter: WUWT
Posted: 24th, January 2016 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Scientist says global warming creates humans with webbed fingers, three eyes and more hair
We glimpse into the future with paleoanthropologist Dr. Matthew Skinner of the University of Kent. He says that as the world’s temperature alters, we will see humanity adopt. You will grow webbed feet and fingers, a third eyelid and lots of hair.
He’s a doctor. HeKate Middleton next Wednesday
People of the Forest of Dean, Norfolk and Westminster, as you are.
[Daily Mail | Photo: Pinterest]
Posted: 14th, January 2016 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
July 1 2015 was the hottest day on record for jets at Heathrow Airport
According to the Met Office, 1 July 2015 was the “warmest July day since records began”. The record was set at Heathrow Airport “when the temperature reached 36.7 °C at 3.13pm. The previous highest July temperature was 36.5 °C on 19 July 2006 in Wisley, Surrey.”
Hot, then. But was it really a record?
Mark McCarthy, Manager of the Met Office National Climate Information Centre discusses records and how we record them.
He states:
1 July 2015 has the honour of holding the highest recorded temperature for a July day with 36.7 °C at Heathrow.
What do we know about Heathrow?
On 1 July the maximum temperature recorded at Heathrow (36.7 °C) was higher than Kew (35.7 °C).
Read the rest of this entry »
Katie Hopkins V New Labour: human cockroaches v the human virus
When Katie Hopkins called migrants “cockraoches” in her Sun column, she was compared to Hitler by many, including UN high commissioner for human rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein of Jordan.
James Delingpole takes a look:
Over the weekend, you may have noticed, Katie Hopkins was trending on Twitter yet again – this time because of a piece she’d written in The Sun in which she’d upset the Offenderati by using the word “cockroaches” in the context of the boatloads of hapless, parched, pitiable migrants now fleeing Libya. At this point you’re obliged tactically to distance yourself from Hopkins by noting how distasteful you too find her appalling choice of words. But I’m not going to, for several reasons, the first being that that it was so devastatingly effective.
It is. It got attention.
Of course, referring to people as parasites is nothing new. After all former environment minister Michael Meacher:
“The lesson is that if we continue with activities which destroy our environment and undermine the conditions for our own survival, we are the virus.”
Meacher is the Labour MP For Oldham West & Royton. Hopkins is unelected.
Global warming causes private jets at Davos
This might be the greatest reason to support global warming:
Posted: 22nd, January 2015 | In: Politicians | Comment
Climate Change Watch: Europe Freezes As Snow Becomes A Thing Of The Past
CLIMATE Change Watch: Compre and contrast:
The risk of severe winters in Europe and northern Asia has been doubled by global warming, according to new research… The new research, published in Nature Geoscience, shows that the increased risk of icy winters will persist for the next few decades.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Freezing Polar Vortex Is God’s Punishment For Not Believing In Global Warming Say Weather Experts
EVER hear of a Polar Vortex?
A “polar vortex” will affect more than half of the continental US, starting Sunday and into Monday and Tuesday, with wind chill warnings stretching from Montana to Alabama. The vortex is an anticlockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, and is behind the startling forecast: -25F (-31C) in Fargo, North Dakota, -31F (-35C) in International Falls, Minnesota, and -15F (-26C) in Indianapolis and Chicago.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 5th, January 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Climate Change Made Australian Military Start Bushfires (And Ate My Homework), Says Expert
THE Australian military firing ordnance triggered the bushfires in New South Wales. Those who saw it a sign of man-made global warming are left clutching at dry straws. One is Academic Janet Stanley, who tells us that if children started the blaze -as was thought – their actions were driven by climate change:
“With a child it might just be an accident, you know, it’s fun to watch a fire. You light it and in the circumstances that we’ve got at the moment with climate change it gets away when it probably wasn’t meant to get away.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Over 40% of Americans don’t know Carbon Dioxide warms the planet
THE Pew Research Center wanted to establish how much American adults know about science.
Question 1. “What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures in the atmosphere to rise?”
Correct answer: Carbon Dioxide.
Read the rest of this entry »
Man-made global warming creates 1 million sq miles more Arctic ice, say experts
THE Arctic ice sheet is huge:
A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent. The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013.
Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.
In 2010, BBC Science Reporter Jonathan Amos told us:
Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’
Read the rest of this entry »
Global warming is eating your brains
WHAT can Global Warming not be blamed for? The Courier-Journal reports that it is eating your brains:
Brain eating amoeba strikes again, as some wonder whether global warming will help spread it to the north
Read the rest of this entry »
1933: How the yo-yo triggered war in Syria
ON January 23, 1933 it was reported that Yo Yo’s were banned in Syria because they were also “blamed for drought”.
In 2013, William R. Polk. was quoted:
Syria has been convulsed by civil war since climate change came to Syria with a vengeance. Drought devastated the country from 2006 to 2011. Rainfall in most of the country fell below eight inches (20 cm) a year, the absolute minimum needed to sustain un-irrigated farming. Desperate for water, farmers began to tap aquifers with tens of thousands of new well. But, as they did, the water table quickly dropped to a level below which their pumps could lift it.
Global warming tuns pet lizards into man eaters
IS there anything global warming can’t do?
A study of giant lizard fossils that sat untouched for many years in a drawer at UC Berkeley suggests that global warming could transform today’s pet-sized lizards into creatures as as big as Komodo dragons.
If you have a pet Komodo Dragon, warn it that relatives of the chameleon it’s eating will one day seek revenge (and eat you)…
We’re all getting diesel generators to beat climate change – WTF!
THIS has to be the most insane side effect of the hysteria over climate change yet: we’re all supposed to kit ourselves out with diesel generators:
NHS hospitals are being asked to cut their power demand from the National Grid as part of a government attempt to stave off power blackouts, which the energy watchdog Ofgem warns could arrive as early as 2015.
According to one energy company, four hospitals have already signed up to a deal under which they will reduce demand at peak times by using diesel-fired generators.
Read the rest of this entry »
Win: Global warming threatens the bird-eating big-headed ant
GLOBAL warming isn’t all bad news. Although fans of massive hungry ants will be upset:
An aggressive ant species so vicious that in groups it can eat bird hatchlings alive may see its territory decline in the coming decades as climate change takes its toll on its habitats.
Pheidole megacephala, more popularly known as the big-headed ant, has been classified as one of the world’s 100 most invasive species, found in every continent except Antarctica. A recent model, however, predicts global warming will slow the ants’ march significantly by 2080.
