THE GREENIE "BIG LIE"

Below is an excerpt from the conclusions of a report by The Institute for Public Policy Research -- A British "Progressive" think-tank, showing the usual Leftist preference for propaganda over facts. Their dishonest approach is already evident in the media

Treating climate change as beyond argument

Much of the noise in the climate change discourse comes from argument and counter-argument, and it is our recommendation that, at least for popular communications, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. This must be done by stepping away from the `advocates debate' described earlier, rather than by stating and re-stating these things as fact.

The `facts' need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.The certainty of the Government's new climate-change slogan - `Together this generation will tackle climate change' (Defra 2006) - gives an example of this approach. It constructs, rather than claims, its own factuality.

Where science is invoked, it now needs to be as `lay science' - offering lay explanations for what is being treated as a simple established scientific fact, just as the earth's rotation or the water cycle are considered....

Inevitably, these conclusions lead us to treat climate-change communications in the same way as brand communications: we have to approach positive climate behaviours in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and consuming. This is the relevant context for climate change communications in the UK today - not the increasingly residual models of public service or campaigning communications. It amounts to treating climate-friendly everyday activity as a brand that can be sold........






"BAD" FISH GOOD FOR FISHERMEN

And the evils of dandelions

There may be plenty of unwanted fish in the sea for government ecologists, but often those invasive aquatic species are a boon to local anglers. Take the brown trout. A European native, the trout was introduced into America in the late 19th century and can now be found in bodies of fresh water from coast to coast.

Though they may might provide tasty meals after lazy summer afternoons, new fish species come at a cost greater than a bucket of worms. "There's a number of either purposely introduced, or accidentally introduced, species that have provided quite a recreational resource," said George Madison, fisheries supervisor for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for the Western Upper Peninsula. "So while smelt can be desired by people, or brown trout or rainbow trout, it's very clear that they out-compete the native species."

In the Great Lakes region, the introduction of salmon has changed the aquatic landscape, displacing native fish such as the coaster brook trout, a minnow forager. As larger fish destroyed the vegetation, the minnow population declined, spelling doom for the coaster brook trout.

Near Provo, Utah, residents stocked Utah Lake with carp in the 1890s for fishing. "Now they make up well over 90 percent of the biomass of that lake," said Scott Root, the conservation outreach manager at the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. His agency actively looks for ways to get rid of them.

Carp also cause headaches for Bob Davis, an area fisheries supervisor at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. "That's the single biggest problem with invasive species that we have," Davis said. "The carp really has no natural enemies. With its feeding habits, it uproots the established vegetation in the lakes and streams and clouds the water and makes things undesirable for many other species."

Stocking your pond with an exotic fish might make for a fishing challenge, but it's also likely to cause an epic ecological battle that may never be won. "I'm always reminded of dandelions," Madison said. "Evidently they were brought over by a European who wanted to enjoy dandelions when he came to the United States - and you see the great field of dandelions we have now."

Source






THORIUM NUCLEAR REACTOR DESIGNS ADVANCING

Post lifted from FuturePundit

The use of thorium to power nuclear reactors holds out the prospect of a huge reduction in nuclear wastes, a nuclear fuel cycle that is much more proliferation resistant, lower costs, and a fuel that is many times more plentiful than uranium. Australian science writer Tim Dean examines the prospects for thorium reactors in a recent article and finds two avenues of technological advance that might make thorium powered nuclear reactors feasible. The more immediately promising approach uses a mixture of thorium with other radioactive materials.

The main stumbling block until now has been how to provide thorium fuel with enough neutrons to keep the reaction going, and do so in an efficient and economical way.

In recent years two new technologies have been developed to do just this.

One company that has already begun developing thorium-fuelled nuclear power is the aptly named Thorium Power, based just outside Washington DC. The way Thorium Power gets around the sub-criticality of thorium is to create mixed fuels using a combination of enriched uranium, plutonium and thorium.

At the centre of the fuel rod is the 'seed' for the reaction, which contains plutonium.

Wrapped around the core is the 'blanket', which is made from a mixture of uranium and thorium. The seed then provides the necessary neutrons to the blanket to kick-start the thorium fuel cycle. Meanwhile, the plutonium and uranium are also undergoing fission.

The primary benefit of Thorium Power's system is that it can be used in existing nuclear plants with slight modification, such as Russian VVER-1000 reactors. Seth Grae, president and chief executive of Thorium Power, and his team are actively working with the Russians to develop a commercial product by the end of this decade. They already have thorium fuel running in the IR-8 research reactor at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow.

The potential to use existing reactors to burn thorium lowers the barrier to use of thorium. Success in existing reactors could catalyze the construction of new reactors designed to use thorium from their start.

He also goes over Carlo Rubbia's proposal to use a particle accelerator to shoot a stream of protons into a thorium reactor.

AN ALTERNATIVE DESIGN does away with the requirements for uranium or plutonium altogether, and relies on thorium as its primary fuel source. This design, which was originally dubbed an Energy Amplifier but has more recently been named an Accelerator Driven System (ADS), was proposed by Italian Nobel physics laureate Carlos Rubbia, a former director of one of the world's leading nuclear physics labs, CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

An ADS reactor is sub-critical, which means it needs help to get the thorium to react. To do this, a particle accelerator fires protons at a lead target. When struck by high-energy protons the lead, called a spallation target, releases neutrons that collide with nuclei in the thorium fuel, which begins the fuel cycle that ends in the fission of U-233.

Governments should accelerate research into new nuclear reactor designs that promise to lower wastes and reduce costs.

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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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