Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[Redeye]

I think your frustration levels will go down significantly once you get that the vast majority of the population simply isn't as enlightened and/or intelligent as you are.

For the most part, yes.

No, that's not sarcastic.

 

[Furniture]

Feel free to prove your superior intellect and enlightenment by giving clear, concise proof of man made "Climate Change".

Please ensure the data used to confirm your belief/dogma is in compliance with WMO data standards.

 

[Haletown]

Is this

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/01/follow-the-money-why-heartland-is-a-big-threat/#more-58028

Big Green or Big Government Green ?

 

[Jed]

Is this

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/01/follow-the-money-why-heartland-is-a-big-threat/#more-58028

Big Green or Big Government Green ?

Now I can follow this Graphic over Redeye's prior posted graphic (The one that was supposed to show common sense wrt GCW) anyday.

 

[Haletown]

Well this

http://tinyurl.com/88g94ky

must be, has to be Big Government Green.

Of course it will be Really, Really Big Government Green because POTUS Obama has decided to, in his own words, "double down" on green cars, windmills, solar panels and various other stuff that is made by companies that seem to have deep ties and election campaign  funding arrangements to his administration.

He has to learn about them somehow I guess.

 

[Haletown]

this is going to be fun . . .

"Hong Kong Airlines Ltd. has threatened to cancel an order for 10 Airbus A380s in the latest escalation of tension over the European Union’s decision to extend its emissions trading system (ETS) to aviation, the South China Morning Post reported."

Seems the ever so green Euros have decided they can impose their carbon taxes on anyone and there will be no consequences.

I am sure the Euros will stick to their Green guns because they are saving the world from CO2 pollution, unlike the dastardly Canadians who exploit those terrible tar pollution sands.

Nasty colonials should just shut up and follow the Euroland leadership.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

For the most part, yes.

No, that's not sarcastic.

Hmmmmm, modest as well as intransigent.

 

[Brad Sallows]

"A man's got to know his limitations".

But many do not.

 

[Edward Campbell]

An interesting take on why climate change is not on the top of India's agenda in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/global-exchange/international-experts/why-climate-change-is-not-on-indias-radar/article2356454/

Why climate change is not on India’s radar

SUMEET GULATI

Globe and Mail Blog
Posted on Friday, March 2, 2012

Sumeet Gulati is an Associate Professor in the Food and Resource Economics Group at the University of British Columbia. He also maintains a blog on environmental policy, and can be followed on Twitter.

I am going to India, one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Measured by purchasing power parity (how much it takes to buy a uniform set of goods), India's economy is now the world's third largest. Isn't now the time for India to take part in the battle against climate change?

It's midnight, as Cathay Pacific 695 descends into Delhi. Through the haze its passengers see a brightly lit freeway. Even at this late hour, a constant flow of traffic. The visibility is a distinct improvement over January, when some nights, almost nothing can be seen. I take a taxi from the airport to Hari Nagar, an Ambassador -- a uniquely Indian car -- its body unchanged from a 1956 Morris Oxford III. Sitting on a flat sofa backseat, I smell fumes from the engine leaking into the interior, a slightly open window lets in Delhi's smoky air. Indoors after forty five minutes, I wash my face; dark water drips from it, my nostrils are black with soot.

The next morning, I am on the Shatabdi Express from New Delhi to Chandigarh. Indian Railways, even during a budgetary crisis, lavishes service on its first class customers. Six newspapers are on each seat pair: three English dailies, reporting in the language of the elite; three in Hindi, the preferred language of the masses. Hindi newspapers ignore the environment. Their pages focus on politics, corruption, income inequality and sport. Based on a study by the Energy and Resources Institute and Unicef, the Times of India reports how a quarter of children living along Delhi's Yamuna river have more than 10 micrograms of lead in their blood (widely considered as the threshold for public intervention). Lead levels in children exposed to the polluted north Delhi riverbank are eight times higher than those upstream. The Financial Express reports on bans recommended on mining and quarrying in Goa's ecologically sensitive areas, and near Kaziranga national park, home of India's one-horn Rhino. India's richer elite are marginally concerned with the environment; the poorer, Hindi-speaking majority are not.

Just a few weeks ago, Yale University's Environmental Performance Indicators (EPI) for 2012 rated India as having the world's worst air. Overall, India's pollution ranked 125 out of 132 countries. Responding to the report, a Department of environment scientist said: “it is a non-issue, we have other pressing problems like poverty.” His comments reflect India's mood. The poor crave food to survive, India's growing middle class crave the material trappings of economic growth.

As the western world got richer its environment improved. The first reductions were in smog (the concentration of fine particulates in air). A visible, constant reminder to how dirty our air is, smog causes emphysema, bronchitis, asthma and lung cancer. Fine particulates are still actively targeted by most developed countries. As its development continued, the western world turned its attention to harmful, but less visible pollutants such as lead. Causing nervous system and kidney damage, lead is particularly damaging to children. Even levels below 10 micrograms impair their cognitive development. Climate change is a more abstract concept. It affects our physical environment, seriously impacts our ecology, causing floods or droughts, but no immediate impact on human health. Even within the developed world, strong action on climate change is lacking.

One day into my trip I realize it is unrealistic to expect India to meaningfully address climate change. The country is blanketed in polluted air, and flooded in polluted water. Even in the face of severe health impacts the government presents ineffectual action on local pollutants. Expecting India's government to incur costs for reducing greenhouse gases is to fool ourselves. We must wait for a will to tackle local pollutants, before action on climate change will occur.

I believe in climate change ... I believe the climate has been changing, usually slowly, sometimes quickly, for eons, ever since there was a climate; I believe we, humans, make some "contributions" to climate change but I am not persuaded that they are significant and I think our scientific energy should be devoted to adaptation rather than prevention, since I doubt changing our "contribution" is going to have much impact.

I believe in cleaning up the environment ~ in Delhi, Beijing and Vancouver; I think that the government's green money and green scientific energy should be spent on clean air, clean water and clean soil (for our food). I have been in Beijing on a hot, smoggy summer day when the sky is, literally, yellow with sulphur laden smoke and when breathing is difficult and when every breath tastes like poison; that's a crisis, an immediate crisis that endangers more people than live on all the islands threatened by rising tides caused by melting ice.

 

[YZT580]

How many coal burning electric plants could have had scrubbers installed, thus maintaining a reliable source of electricity whilst reducing the output of pollutants for the cost of all those avian guillotines that were sitting idle here in southern Ontario yesterday because there was no wind for several hours; and now the wind is too strong! 

 

[Haletown]

How many coal burning electric plants could have had scrubbers installed, thus maintaining a reliable source of electricity whilst reducing the output of pollutants for the cost of all those avian guillotines that were sitting idle here in southern Ontario yesterday because there was no wind for several hours; and now the wind is too strong!

None.  Removing C02 from stack gases is very expensive.  Wouldn't want your electric bills to skyrocket, oh wait, that's already happening.  Sucks to have Ontario go all greenie when you can't afford to heat or cool your house.

Now if they could capture the C02 and pump it into greenhouses where it is plant fertilizer . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2qVNK6zFgE&feature=player_embedded

Because C02 is not, despite all the shrill exhortations of Lizzie May, a pollutant. 

 

[YZT580]

wasn't talking about CO2 but about the real pollutants that turn the air brown.  You know, the kind you see in pictures of Beijing and Hamilton on a bad day.  Things like sulphur and lead. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

I don't know about the technology and its costs. I do know that China, like the USA, has an abundance of dirty coal that is cheap and easy to mine and burn ... the pollution is highly visible and tens, hundreds of millions of Chinese breathe in the sulphur and whatever else every day ... but nuclear plants, while clean, take a long time to build; as the Three Gorges project showed there are unintended consequences to mega hydro-electric projects (and power wasn't the primary goal of Three Gorges, it was built, primarily for flood control); so coal is China's (and India's) primary source of much needed electrical power - and it's dirty.

 

[Haletown]

wasn't talking about CO2 but about the real pollutants that turn the air brown.  You know, the kind you see in pictures of Beijing and Hamilton on a bad day.  Things like sulphur and lead.

Ahhhh  real pollution.

Pretty sure Ontario already scrubs the exhaust stacks for particulates.  Ross McKitrick has documented the story of how much cleaner the air is in Ontario now than 30 years ago.


http://www.rossmckitrick.com/pollution-and-health.html

 

[GAP]

Talking to a guy the other day...his son has the contract to install system for stack gases in Estevan's coal burning plant.....30Million

 

[Kirkhill]

Never having had the experience of visiting Beijing myself I still can't help but wonder how much of Beijing's pollution comes from grit blown out of the Gobi desert - a pollutant that would continue regardless of how much coal was burnt.

I recall that in the Lower Mainland - where all pollution is an affront to Gaia - one of the biggest contributors to airborne pollution in Vancouver was grit blown off the sand bars in the Fraser up by Hope.

 

[Jed]

Polution in downtown Damascus is bad as well. A lot of smog from vehicles burning leaded gas plus the grit blown in from some of the surrounding desert. The Barada river is pretty much an open sewer too.

I don't know how most of the heating of infrastructure is done in the winter.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Never having had the experience of visiting Beijing myself I still can't help but wonder how much of Beijing's pollution comes from grit blown out of the Gobi desert - a pollutant that would continue regardless of how much coal was burnt.

I recall that in the Lower Mainland - where all pollution is an affront to Gaia - one of the biggest contributors to airborne pollution in Vancouver was grit blown off the sand bars in the Fraser up by Hope.

Some certainly, but the Beijing government officially blames coal fired power plants for the very real threats to health and even life (for the elderly, especially).

In Cairo we could really see the desert sand 'pollution' which was, of course dependent on the prevailing winds; in Beijing it takes quite stiff breeze to blow away the smog - and even a North wind clears the air, Gobi sand and all.

 

[a_majoor]

The water issue has been raised nuberous times too Haletown. Luckily for us it will die with an even quicker whimper since technologies like "Forward Osmosis" and a microdesalinization technique I posted in another thread (among others) can be quickly developed to provide fresh water at a much lower price than Reverse Osmosis and Thermal desalination can. Since demand for water is quite rigid, market forces will bring these sorts of systems in play faster than the alarmists can drum up the massive "we are all doomed" campaigns.

The greatest threat to the alarmists is simply the "I'm from Missouri" effect. People are tired of apocalyptic predictions that don't pan out (even if they havn't reached the conclusion by other means, such as historical data like the European Warm Period or the Little Ice Age, which were obviously not caused by human activity, or reading how climactic data about Mars mirrors that of the Earth, which is only an AGW problem if you believe NASA is idling millions of SUV's on Mars as well... ).

15 years after the "warmest year on record", temperatures have flatlined or declined while most "green" schemes have turned out to be vast money grabs, which is enough evidence for the vast majority of people to dismiss the topic.

 

[YZT580]

Ahhhh  real pollution.

Pretty sure Ontario already scrubs the exhaust stacks for particulates.  Ross McKitrick has documented the story of how much cleaner the air is in Ontario now than 30 years ago.


http://www.rossmckitrick.com/pollution-and-health.html

  Unfortunately, this is not totally true.  Rather than spend the money on fixing the emissions Dalton elected to shut them down and replace them with wind.  Hasn't happened yet but fortunately, so many businesses have fled the province due to the high power, salary rates that we no longer need as much energy.