Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Is there a game afoot!
Some scientists are warning that the world needs to prepare for a 4 degree rise in global temperatures. This is the warning Bob Watson, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued August 7, 2008.
Watson thinks there is little doubt that limiting global surface temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial temperatures needs to be the global aim, but without knowing how to limit those temperatures…”we need to be prepared to adapt to 4C.” [rise]
Sir David King, the UK’s former chief scientific adviser thinks…Even with the best efforts made to keep temperatures at just a 2C rise there is a 20% risk that temperatures will rise by 4 degrees.
Moriarty: This is not danger. It is inevitable destruction…
King said, “My own feeling is that if we get a 4 degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway[temperature] increase.”
Prof. Neil Adger, an expert on adaptation to climate change at Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research says, “At 4 degrees we are basically into a different climate regime.” “There is no science on how we are going to adapt to 4 degrees warming. It is actually pretty alarming.”
The game is afoot.
Watson is the ex-chief scientist at the World Bank. Not odd then that he would recommend that the “Uk should take a lead in research on carbon capture and storage (CSS).
The World’s biggest carbon offset market, the CDM, is administered by the World Bank.
Watson figures the UK should launch 10 to 20 CCS pilot projects. Of course he is correct. Carbon needs to be kept from, or at least limited, from the atmosphere. He uses the 1960’s effort to put a man on the moon by the U.S. as an analogy of what can be accomplished in a relatively short time when determination prevails. The U.S. had a singularly myopic mind set toward a manned moon mission.
Why isn’t the same determination being focused on pulling the world off the engorged CO2 teat?
You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a might organization, the full extent of which, even you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize…
The energy industry stands to make over $21 Billion in the next 5 years. The windfall profits coming from emissions trading.
You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot…
According to David Victor, carbon trading analyst at Stanford University, …”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.
Analysts estimate that two thirds, 2/3 of the emission reduction obligations may be met through buying offsets rather than by decarbonising…
The CDM scheme will actually increase the net amount of carbon going into the atmosphere. International Rivers report titled ‘Failed Mechanism’ says that hydro firms will earn millions of dollars by selling ‘fake carbon credits to companies and governments which can use those carbon credits to justify an increase in emissions.
Why oh why doesn’t it make more sense to turn our intellectual capital towards new sources of power rather than watching the hole planet go to hell in a hand basket?
No one will convince me it is easier to find ways to capture, transport and then store the captured pollution than to figure out how not to generate it in the first place.
The whole cap and trade scheme is just that; a scheme.
Even the language is offensive. Scheme. Long associated with crafty and secret plans. One rarely finds scheme not associated with conniving.
Yes, the game is afoot and to quote Moriarty again: This is not danger, it is inevitable destruction. You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a mighty organization, the full extent of which, even you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize…
You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot…
Photo by T.Scott Williams
Petrified wood in Blue Mesa badlands
Labels: CCS, CDM, Carbon Capture, Carbon-credit, Global Warming, U.N., World Bank, carbon-trading market
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
UK should take the lead in research on carbon capture and storage.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Biofuels are becoming the next Bogeyman. Is an explosion of fear over food shortages creating a new enemy or is it the Oil Industry?
The best quote I’ve seen in defense of biofuels comes from Brazil’s President Lula. “Don’t tell me, for the love of God, that food is expensive because of biodiesel. Food is expensive because the world wasn’t prepared to see millions of Chinese, Indians, Africans, Brazilians and Latin Americans eat,” say Lula.
Biofuels are being billed as the diversion of food resources. Jean Ziegler at the U.N. calls biofuels a “crime against humanity,” Oil-rich Venezuela warns that biofuels could increase malnutrition in Latin America.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says, the rise in food prices is due to “inadequate agricultural policies in developing countries”. Merkel says “insufficient forecasts of changes in nutritional habits” in emerging markets are also part of the problem.
Imagine having debate over the ’second meal’. I guess that’s what Merkel feels is a change in nutritional habits. It must be shocking to think people might consider two meals a day. Merkel says of India, “People are eating twice a day, and if a third of one billion people in India do that, it adds up to 300 million people.” Indeed.
Imagine 100 million Chinese suddenly start drinking milk. I would imagine if the world starts eating like the Americans they will start dropping from heart disease and obesity like the Americans too. Perhaps those figures should be added into the mix of long range food forecasts.
Germany is the largest biofuels producer in Europe. Second is France whose biofuels program is said to use up only 7% of French fields.
The World Bank reports, increased bio-fuel production has contributed to the rise in food prices. World Bank President Bob Zoelick called biofuels a “significant contributor” to soaring food prices around the world.
On Tuesday a law went into affect in Britain that requires 2.5 % of all gasoline and diesel sold be derived from biofuels.
What’s the upshot? For now it seems we can’t move to cleaner forms of energy and feed the planet.
How is it possible this global food crisis has seemingly blind-sided the globe?
Labels: Bio Fuels, Climate Change, Food Shortage, Global Warming, Merkel, Survivalist, World Bank
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Will Biofuels Die of Starvation?
