WHAT A LAUGH!

Scottish politicians spent a billion dollars on their new "green" parliament building and it is still not "green" enough. And it is falling apart, as well

Holyrood managers had to face up to a fresh embarrassment yesterday - their much-vaunted, energy-efficient building is losing heat, lots of it. New thermal imaging pictures of the Scottish Parliament not only show major heat loss, but reveal that the situation has deteriorated in the past year. One expert even warned this could indicate a serious problem of water seeping in behind the granite cladding, which could shatter parts of the outside of the building in time.

The news is the latest embarrassing development to hit the parliament building in the last week. Seven days ago it emerged that the decorative ponds outside the front entrance were being redesigned after a tourist fell in. Then, last Thursday, a wooden beam in the roof of the debating chamber swung free, forcing the parliamentary authorities to close the chamber indefinitely. Now, just when George Reid, the Presiding Officer, had hoped the building was at last getting past the worst of its troubles, it has emerged there could be a problem in the way part of the building retains heat.

The Holyrood building cost 431 million pounds to construct and was three years late. It was designed to reflect the best practice in environmentally friendly building methods. It does not have air-conditioning. Instead, a through-flow of air is supposed to keep the building cool in summer and warm in winter. This does not always work, however, and many offices now have fans and heaters to regulate the temperature - probably worse for the environment than any air-conditioning system.

Last year, British Gas commissioned a series of thermal imaging pictures of the building to see how energy efficient it was. Some heat loss could be seen but the general assessment was good. The latest audit has been commissioned by BBC Scotland for its radio programme Hot Air, and shows the situation has deteriorated in 12 months.

Stewart Little, from IRT Surveys in Dundee, who took the pictures, says on today's programme, hosted by Lesley Riddoch: "Above the main entrance, at parapet level, you can see a panel in white and red. That's either missing insulation which hasn't been installed in the first place, or it's moisture getting down the back of the cladding and soaking down the insulation. "The best case scenario is it's just heat loss because of missing insulation. The pessimistic view is, if it's water getting in it could freeze, expand the crack, water gets in again. Eventually, you could blow the face off the cladding itself so a chunk of granite could fall off."

Shiona Baird, the Green spokeswoman on energy, said: "Buildings and institutions of such national importance should set an example to the rest of Scotland on careful energy use."

The Welsh Assembly, opened by the Queen last week, has already won a top rating for its green credentials from the Building Research Establishment, covering everything from its construction methods to the design of the toilets. The 66 million pound building uses renewable energy resources which will cut costs by up to 50 per cent.

A Scottish Tory spokesman said: "The Scottish Parliament Corporate Body should look hard at all these issues to see what needs to be done." A spokeswoman for the Scottish Parliament insisted the building conformed to rigorous heat-efficiency targets, but added she could not comment on the specific issues raised in the pictures until the parliament's experts had examined them.

Source







GLOBAL WARMING GOOD FOR FARMERS

From AEI-BROOKINGS JOINT CENTER FOR REGULATORY STUDIES

The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Profits and Random Fluctuations in Weather

By Olivier Deschenes and Michael Greenstone

Executive Summary:

This paper measures the economic impact of climate change on US agricultural land by estimating the effect of the presumably random year-to-year variation in temperature and precipitation on agricultural profits. Using long-run climate change predictions from the Hadley 2 Model, the preferred estimates indicate that climate change will lead to a $1.1 billion (2002$) or 3.4% increase in annual profits. The 95% confidence interval ranges from -$1.8 billion to $4.0 billion and the impact is robust to a wide variety of specification checks, so large negative or positive effects are unlikely. There is considerable heterogeneity in the effect across the country with California's predicted impact equal to -$2.4 billion (or nearly 50% of state agricultural profits). Further, the analysis indicates that the predicted increases in temperature and precipitation will have virtually no effect on yields among the most important crops. These crop yield findings suggest that the small effect on profits is not due to short-run price increases. The paper also implements the hedonic approach that is predominant in the previous literature. We conclude that this approach may be unreliable, because it produces estimates of the effect of climate change that are very sensitive to seemingly minor decisions about the appropriate control variables, sample and weighting. Overall, the findings contradict the popular view that climate change will have substantial negative welfare consequences for the US agricultural sector.






DIVIDED UK GREENIES LOSE WINDMILL PROJECT

Climate change campaigners yesterday condemned the government for rejecting a 55 million pound plan to build 27 wind turbines each 115 metres (377ft) high on a windy ridge just outside the eastern boundary of the Lake District national park. The energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, and rural affairs minister Jim Knight said they had accepted an inspector's conclusions that the need to protect the landscape outweighed the benefits of securing a source of renewable energy.

The decision was denounced by bodies promoting wind power as part of the answer to the problems caused by climate change. The turbines, between Borrowdale and Bretherdale near Tebay, Cumbria, would have produced 1.5 times the power of Cumbria's existing 11 wind farms and 77 turbines. The Whinash scheme, 30 miles east of the Sellafield nuclear plant, had divided campaigners, with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth in support but the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Council for National Parks and Friends of the Lake District against. Other opponents included environmentalist David Bellamy, who threatened to chain himself to one of the turbines if they were built; writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg; climber Sir Chris Bonington; and writer Hunter Davies. David Maclean, Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border, had condemned the wind farm as "a steel noose being placed round the neck of the Lake District".

The ministers' decision, which follows a seven-week public inquiry in Cumbria last year, is likely to cause a rethink of the development of windpower in remote, windy parts of the country with a high landscape value. Promoters were said to have been scouring Cumbria in search of new turbine sites. But wind power supporters said yesterday they feared the balance would now tip towards nuclear energy.

Commenting on the recommendation of the planning inspector, David Rose, Mr Wicks said: "Tackling global warming is critical but we must also nurture the immediate environment and wildlife. This is at the crux of the debate over wind energy. On this occasion, we agree with the independent inspector that the impact on landscape and recreation would outweigh the benefits in terms of reducing carbon emissions."

But Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said he was appalled by the decision. "On the one hand, ministers say they support renewable energy and on the other turn down carefully worked-up proposals that would have minimal environmental impacts while helping to fight climate change - the greatest threat of all. "The ministers who decided this should be ashamed. No wonder the government is failing to tackle climate change. As each day goes by Labour's commitments to the environment become more and more unbelievable."

Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace, said: "Any government that wants to expand airports and turn down windfarms is simply not fit to govern. It's hard to believe that the nuclear industry has not played some role in this.
"Climate change will ravage beautiful areas like the Lake District. I hope those responsible will be willing to explain to future generations how they played their part in allowing the savage grip of global warming to trash the countryside and claim hundreds of thousands of lives."

"We are delighted," said Andrew Forsyth, director of Friends of the Lake District. "We feared that the requirement for renewable energy would outweigh questions of the damage caused to the site and Cumbria in general. But it is quite clear that the weight of evidence made it easy for ministers to decide it was the wrong development in the wrong place on the wrong scale."

Source






NATURAL SEA-LEVEL VARIATIONS ARE NORMAL AND REPETITIOUS IN THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD

An email from Charles Warren Hunt (archeanb@shaw.ca), Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The oceans of the world hide evidence of huge subsidence of sea level. Among them are seamounts in the Pacific 600m below present sea level but with surface materials that clearly show development under atmospheric conditions. Submarine canyons rivalling Grand Canyon in depth and width plus huge deltas of debauched debris. The canyons may have been partly sculpted by submarine processes but presently show no adjacent connection to a continental river that could provide a source of material. Salt deposits that must have resulted from evaporation of seawater at sea level but are now located hundreds of metres below sea level.

Decline of sea level due to land surface emergence has also occurred at astonishing levels. Aside from wave-cut terraces high above present sealevel that characterize some seacoasts, such as California's, there are great prehistoric seaways that bisect continents, such as the long-lived North American seaway between the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean that was open through most of Tertiary and even Quaternary time, but was recently elevated up to 1000m above sealevel.

The metre or two rise in sea level from Anarctic ice sheet melting is trivial by comparison with what has happened in the not so distant past and may happen again at any time. Mankind should not be surprised to experience rapid uplift and subsidence of terrain.

I presented evidence for specific instances of late Pleistocene and Recent uplift and subsidence of Rocky Mountain terrain in my book, ENVIRONMENT OF VIOLENCE: Readings of Catastrophism Cast in Stone

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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