"Africa's Schoolchildren Should Not Have to Study by Candlelight" says African-U.S. NGO Coalition

Gathering of Nairobi Schoolchildren Dramatizes Need for Affordable Energy

With only about ten percent of sub-Saharan Africa able to enjoy the enormous benefits of electricity, dozens of schoolchildren from the Kariobangi South Primary School in Nairobi participated this morning in a candlelight ceremony to dramatize the millions of children forced to do their homework by candlelight. (To see photos of the event go to: www.nationalcenter.org/ClimateChangeChildren.html). "If we want our African children to be able to have hope for the future, they must have electricity, especially in the rural areas where there is much need," said Rosemary Segero, a native Kenyan who is president of the African International Foundation.

The event was held at the All Africa Conference of Churches as part of the U.N.'s COP-12 conference on climate change. The NGOs are concerned that developing nations, which already suffer from immense poverty and energy deprivation, will eventually bear the burden of Kyoto-style controls if a worldwide reduction in emissions is to be achieved. "It is unconscionable for wealthy, developed countries to deny the benefits of affordable electricity to the developing world," said David Rothbard, president of the Washington, D.C. based Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). "When citizens of nations like Malawi only have five percent of their country electrified, the nations of the world must make reliable, affordable electricity a top priority."

David Ridenour, vice president of The National Center for Public Policy Research, explained why the Kyoto Protocol is destined to be carried on the backs of the poor: "Carbon dioxide emissions are necessary for industrial, medical and technological advancement. Once developing nations are brought into the Kyoto compact, the European Union will continue to use its wealth to purchase more and more emissions credits. This will allow Europeans to continue to live the lifestyles to which they are accustomed while condemning the developing world to a future of hardship and poverty."

CFACT advisor Pastor Abdul Sesay, a native of Sierra Leone, summed up the sentiment, saying: "People in Africa and developing nations deserve the opportunity to create better, healthier lives for themselves and future generations. Sadly, it seems Kyoto Protocol supporters are willing to support a treaty that would deny them a basic necessity like affordable electricity. How many more must go hungry and die before Western leaders understand that this is not a political game?"

The African International Foundation advocates educational opportunities for youth as a means of saving children from crime, violence and sex trafficking. The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-partisan, non-profit educational foundation based in Washington, DC and founded in 1982; CFACT is a non-profit public interest organization that promotes market-based and technological solutions to issues relating to environment and development.

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MERCURY CRAZE THREATENS BAROMETERS

Only safe for the moment



The centuries-old British craft of barometer-making has won a reprieve from a European Union ban on the use of toxic metal in measuring devices. Although the mercury thermometer is being consigned to history, barometer production and restoration, kept alive by three British companies, survived thanks to a lobbying campaign at the European Parliament. MEPs voted by 327 to 274 yesterday for an amendment exempting manufacturers from the ban. They were persuaded that the last producers could do more to protect the environment if they were allowed to stay in business, offering recycling and repair services.

However, European green campaigners vowed to carry on their fight to outlaw the mercury barometer along with the thermometer, the manometer and the sphygmomanometer (for measuring blood pressure), all of which, under the EU directive, are no longer to be made.

Philip Collins, owner of Barometer World in Merton, Devon, which employs five staff, said: "For once it was a victory for the little guy." His campaign, backed by the Federation of Small Businesses and the Conservative MEP Martin Callanan, argued that the barometer industry accounted for a tiny fraction of mercury compared with thermometer production. Annual usage for thermometers and other medical devices was put at more than 25 tonnes in Europe compared with 60kg for new and repaired barometers. "The idea of the directive is to stop mercury getting into the environment - but if people like us are put out of business, people who break their barometer will have nowhere to go for repairs and it is more likely to end up as waste," Mr Collins said. "Some barometers we make sell for 2,000 pounds - they do not get thrown away if they break, they get repaired." His signature barometer is the Admiral Fitzroy, named after the first head of the Met Office, who used mercury measurements to produce the first published weather forecast, which appeared in The Times on July 31, 1861.

Matthew Knowles, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: "This vote has prevented the strange situation where more mercury would have entered the environment in the name of green policies." Mr Callanan said that safety warnings and controls would allow the continuation of barometer manufacturer and repair, safeguarding jobs at eight producers around Europe. He added: "Mercury does need to be controlled, but banning the household barometer is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. "The barometer industry in the UK may be small, but it is a tradition that harks back to our maritime roots. A ban would see the end of the tradition of barometer-making begun in the mid-1600s when mercury barometers were introduced."
However, yesterday's development was only the first reading of the directive. When it returns to MEPs in six months, Greens will try again to have new barometers outlawed.

The Swedish Green MEP Carl Schlyter said yesterday: "The decision of the European Parliament to exempt barometers from an EU ban on measuring devices risks completely derailing this legislative proposal on this highly toxic substance. "It is a disgrace that a handful of small producers should be able to hold public health to ransom by de facto blocking an agreement on the phase-out of mercury, and it is irresponsible of those MEPs who have pushed for this."

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PEAK OIL SCARE TAKES A HIT

Global oil production will increase for at least the next 25 years as new drilling and refining techniques make it possible to tap heretofore untouchable reserves, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the consulting firm run by Daniel Yergin. The world probably has 3.7 trillion barrels of oil left, more than twice the estimates of geologists and analysts such as Matthew Simmons, of the investment bank Simmons & Co., who argue global output is close to a peak, said Peter Jackson, director of oil-industry research for the Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm. ``The peak-oil theory causes confusion and can lead to inappropriate actions and turn attention away from the real issues,'' Jackson said in remarks prepared for a conference call today with analysts, investors and reporters. ``Oil is too critical to the global economy to allow fear to replace careful analysis about the very real challenges.''

The late geologist M. King Hubbert, working for a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, first put forward in 1956 the theory that output from a specific oil deposit or region would peak and then start to decline following a predictable curve. His ideas have gained currency as oil prices tripled in the past five years and producers struggled to keep pace with rising demand in China. The theory is ``misleading'' and based on incomplete data, according to today's report from Cambridge Energy. Worldwide oil production will rise by more than 50 percent to about 130 million barrels a day around 2030 before output plateaus, the report said. Yergin, the firm's founder, wrote ``The Prize,'' a Pulitzer-winning history of the oil industry.

When global crude output begins to fall around 2050, the decline probably will be gradual, giving policy makers, industry and energy producers time to develop new alternatives to petroleum-based fuels, the report said.

Peak Oil Study Group

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil estimates the world has 1.46 trillion barrels of oil left and that production will peak in 2010, according to the group's November newsletter. The group's leaders include British geologist Colin Campbell, who helped popularize the peak-oil theory with his 1997 book, ``The Coming Oil Crisis.'' An August report from Cambridge Energy that took issue with the peak-oil theory was criticized by the President of the peak oil association, Kjell Aleklett, as a money-making vehicle based on proprietary data that the firm was unwilling to submit to impartial scientific review. Aleklett said Cambridge Energy analysts were too optimistic about the ability of big producers including Saudi Arabia to increase output.

U.S. Representatives Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican, and Thomas Udall of New Mexico, formed the House Peak Oil Caucus to promote the theory among lawmakers. Bartlett and Udall endorse the peak oil association's prediction that output will start declining after 2010. ``There is not much time to act,'' Udall, a Democrat, told a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel in December. ``Since oil provides about 40 percent of the world's energy, a peak in global oil production will be a turning point in human history.''

Refiners have used about 1.08 trillion barrels of crude since the birth of the petroleum industry in Pennsylvania in 1859, according to Cambridge Energy. Undiscovered fields probably hold 758 billion barrels, followed by 704 billion trapped inside a very hard type of rock known as shale, and 662 billion in the Middle East, according to the report. The rest of the firm's 3.7 trillion barrel total comes from untapped reserves in the deepest seas, the Arctic and places such as Canada's tar sands and Venezuela's Orinoco basin.

``This is the fifth time that the world is said to be running out of oil,'' Yergin said in an e-mailed statement. ``Each time -- whether it was the `gasoline famine' at the end of World War I or the `permanent shortage' of the 1970s -- technology and the opening of new frontier areas has banished the specter of decline.''

Oil prices have climbed 24 percent in the past two years and touched an all-time high of $78.40 a barrel in July. Economic growth in China, India and the U.S. has boosted demand while hurricanes and militant attacks crimped production in some regions, including the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which advises governments, oil companies and financial institutions on energy issues, is not the only skeptic of the peak-oil theory. Stuart McGill, a senior vice president who oversees Exxon Mobil Corp.'s oil and gas business, dismissed the peak theory in a Nov. 1 interview as being without merit. Irving, Texas-based Exxon is the world's biggest oil company, pumping more crude than every member of OPEC except Saudi Arabia and Iran.

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Does Hollywood cause global warming?

I no more believe in man's ability to destroy the Earth via global warming than I do in the Tooth Fairy. But I respect the right of those who worship at the altar of Global Warming. It is a religion of peace. Like the Holy Rollers who used to preach at Public Square in Cleveland in my youth, the Global Warming Cult truly believes that Man's Sins Will Cause The Destruction Of Our Planet.

As with Scientology, Kabbalah and the American version of Buddhism, this Cult of Impending Doom has captured the attention of the film industry. Which has the heathen in me snickering over this report in the LA Times today that Hollywood is a major polluter in the LA area. The subheadline to the story could apply to the major manufacturer in every city:

UCLA report says the movie and TV industry is a major generator of Southland pollution. An economist cautions that more rules may drive filming out of state.

Save Hollywood from pollution regulations. The story said the report found Hollywood "emits a whopping 140,000 tons a year of ozone and diesel particulate pollutant emissions from trucks, generators, special effects earthquakes and fires, demolition of sets with dynamite and other sources." By comparison, the John Amos plant which I can see from my back yard emits about 120,000 tons of SO2 and NOx a year. It is the nation's 10th largest coal-fired electricity plant.

The irony is all this blowing up of things comes in movies like "The Day After Tomorrow" -- flicks meant to scare us into believing -- truly believing -- that every forest fire, every hurricane, every blizzard and every tsunami is a prepayment for man's Sin Against Nature. But to get around the nasty little business of destroying the planet in order to save the planet, Hollywood plants trees. That's right. To get around the obvious hypocrisy, you plant a tree and pretend everything is the same as it ever was. Reported KNBC-TV in LA:

The makers of the film "The Day After Tomorrow" paid $200,000 to plant trees and for other steps to offset the estimated 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions caused by vehicles, generators and other machinery used in production.

It is sort of like buying a Hybrid to offset the SUV in the garage, which is only used on weekends. That is sort of like being partially pregnant. Hollywood is recycling and is reusing. And studies like this tend to be aimed more at headlines than at science. Hollywood employs 252,000 people and generates $29 billion a year. That works out to a little more than a half-ton of pollution per employee and about a hundred bucks of revenue per pound of pollution. That's the trade off. Every act of man creates pollution. I am pretty sure God worked this into his calculation when He created the universe.

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Australia reacts to French global warming threat

Australia has hit back at France over its threat to impose a tax on industrial goods from countries that ignore the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Prime Minister John Howard described the plan as "silly", while the mass-circulation Daily Telegraph headlined its report: "Back off, Frogs". Running across a picture of a French nuclear bomb explosion in the Pacific in 1971, a subheading read: "The French did this to our backyard and they have de Gaulle to attack us on Kyoto."

Australia, like the United States, has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on reducing the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Howard's conservative government says compliance would harm the economy and complains that the pact fails to impose similar curbs on pollution by major developing countries such as China and India.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said Monday he would push with European partners for a carbon tax on industrial goods from countries that ignore the Kyoto Protocol. "That is a thoroughly silly proposal and utterly out of touch with reality," Howard told reporters. "Mind you, (Villepin) does come from a country that is known for imposing high trade barriers against other countries like Australia."

The Kyoto protocol requires industrialised countries to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent by 2008-2012 compared with their 1990 levels. UN-sponsored talks are underway in Nairobi to reshape the agreement for the period after 2012 and include rapidly developing economies not bound by the original text.

Villepin said France would present EU members with concrete proposals in the first quarter of 2007 to tax industrial imports from countries that snub Kyoto Protocol requirements after 2012. "Europe must use all its weight" to counter "environmental dumping", he said.

Despite his dismissive comments and a continuing refusal to ratify Kyoto, Howard has recently signalled a major policy shift as Canberra scrambles to counter criticism of its environmental policy. He has proposed a "new Kyoto" and said Tuesday he would back launching an international carbon trading scheme to fight global warming when he meets leaders at this weekend's APEC summit in Vietnam. Carbon trading is the centrepiece of the Kyoto pact, which proposes a system under which rich countries are allotted caps for their pollution but which only Europe has begun embracing. If countries come in under target they can sell any surplus to partners who are above their emissions goal.

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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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