THE LEGACY OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT

An email from James Marusek [tunga@custom.net] below:

In the beginning of April, after almost 4 decades of service to my government, I have retired to a quiet life or at least so I thought. On the 3rd of June, a large tornado ripped through my property. Fortunately it jumped over the house but there was still significant damage requiring a major cleanup effort. (Btw. the tornado was the plain vanilla kind, 100% natural - a normal weather phenomena, uncontaminated by mankind) There is probably a bright side to all this. I now have over a 6-year supply of firewood to heat my home and I am better fit as a result. Its a fallout of cutting up large trees and picking up and tossing the pieces, some weighing over a hundred pounds. Sometimes I feel like I have been run over by a train locomotive. So much for the quiet life!

I have heated my home solely with firewood for the past 30 years. Firewood is an unappreciated plentiful source of renewable energy and it's oldest source. The use of wood to produce heat dates back almost 250,000 years. It is interesting to note that there were 196 wood burning electricity plants in the United States as of January 2007, including 72 with 40 megawatt capacity or larger. Last year wood generated more net electricity in the U.S. than solar cells and wind turbines combined.

In my spare time I have been expanding one of my web-pages called "The Legacy of the Environmental Movement" that I introduced in April. I think it is important to understand the intent of the environmental movement over the past 3 decades and their roadmap into the future. The current global warming scare is only one piece of a much broader picture, like a single piece in a child's puzzle. From my viewpoint, it felt right to put some of this puzzle together and this web-page was my tool for accomplishing that. My original web-page has now expanded into 90 web-pages. These web-pages currently link to over 1,500 articles and books. Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information available.

The main web-page can be accessed here





Italy will veto EU climate plan

Forza Italia!

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has threatened to torpedo the EU's climate change plans, branding them too big a burden for business amid the global financial crisis. His announcement, at an EU summit in Brussels, came despite pleas from fellow leaders not to abandon the targets in the face of growing financial pressure, although Poland also appeared ready to vote parts of it down. "I have announced my intention to exercise my veto," the Italian leader told a press conference on the sidelines of the summit overnight. "Our businesses are in absolutely no position at the moment to absorb the costs of the regulations that have been proposed."

Last year, EU leaders vowed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. They also pledged to have renewable energies make up 20 per cent of all energy sources. But many EU nations have begun to baulk at the costs involved and the consequences to industry of the climate change goals.

The foreign minister of Poland, heavily dependent on coal-fired power, said his country would resist attempts to railroad the targets through. "This is a very intricate game and Poland is ready to introduce a veto if there will be attempts to force us to achieve an agreement on the climate package," Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters. However he insisted Warsaw did not want to kill the whole package, which is meant to be approved by December.

Before the summit Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk led eastern European nations in calling on their EU partners to "respect the differences in member states' economic potential" in fixing national goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In a statement, leaders of the three Baltic states, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia as well as Poland stressed "the union's climate and energy policy should reconcile environmental objectives and the need for sustainable economic growth".

The call for special attention to be paid to economic concerns in finalising the climate package is just what Brussels and other EU member states had feared as the financial crisis takes hold. "This is not the time to abandon a climate change agenda which is important for the future," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned. European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso also urged the leaders to press ahead and not abandon Europe's leadership role.

But Mr Berlusconi said it was unrealistic to expect Europe to adhere to strict limits when other major polluters would not. In a draft of conclusions to be released at the end of the summit, the leaders were set to express their determination to honour the climate change goals. No final decision on the climate package was expected today but the European Commission had been hopeful that it could seal a deal in December.

Source





DUTCH SAY 'NEE' (Or is it "tegen"?) AS NEDERLAND JOINS OPPOSITION TO EU CLIMATE PLAN

The Netherlands will fight a European parliament proposal that seeks to earmark money raised from selling EU allowances (EUAs) for an international fund to help cut emissions in developing countries, according to a government official.

More here




CANADA: THE END OF CLIMATE HYPE?

The Canadian Liberals went to the polls with very "green" policies but were the major losers in the election

Economic storm clouds and a lukewarm reception to the Liberals' Green Shift plan will likely shelve a national carbon tax for now, experts say. Economists and environmental groups say it's unlikely future governments would adopt the policy. At least for awhile. "I don't believe that it will completely die, but it's tough to see it being advanced by the Conservatives after they campaigned so stridently against it," Doug Porter, an economist with BMO Capital Markets, said in an email.

"I suspect that given the current financial market turmoil, the likelihood of at least a moderate North American recession, and the unpopularity of the B.C. carbon tax, that a national carbon tax will be put aside for some time."

The Conservatives attacked Liberal Leader Stephane Dion during the election campaign over his proposed carbon tax on fossil fuels, offset by income-tax reductions and special energy tax credits for the poor. So it's hard to imagine Stephen Harper's Tories ever adopting a policy he claimed would destroy Canada's economy.

More here





EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME: THE NEXT BUBBLE IN TIMES OF FINANCIAL CRISIS

This week, the German Minister for Environment, Sigmar Gabriel, was quoted saying the money burnt at financial markets must not be taken away from CARITAS or climate protection. While at first sight everyone might nod his head over this statement, it somehow reveals two interesting things. First, even politicians from the environmental wing must finally admit: the so-called "climate protection measures" cost money, in fact, a hell lot of money.

Second, it reveals the ignorance of these politicians towards some very basic economic facts. The money the government and industry might spend for protecting the environment does not appear out of nowhere. It is earned by real work of real people in real companies. This is even more accurate in times of financial crises, where mere book profits from virtual markets fall to insignificance. In these times, politicians should work on keeping the industrial basis of our economies and social welfare alive and support its growth where possible. Instead, right at the peak of the financial crisis, they are discussing a costly reform of the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS.)

On October 7, the European Parliament Committee for the environment voted on the Doyle-Report and this week the European Council will discuss the ETS as well. The main idea is that emission rights will not be given away to the industries for free, phasing in from 2013 on. Moreover, power generators will have to buy the emission rights, and all industries will be included in that system by 2020. With the emission rights being traded in an "emission stock exchange," politicians will finally have created a complex, mushrooming and rampant tool, not calling it a toy just out of politeness.

Duplicating structures we can currently see in the smoking ruins in Wall Street, central London or Frankfurt, we will soon have emission brokers, bankers, accountants, analysts and - last but not least - volatile prices. In correlation with the situation of the global economy, prices for emission rights will go up and down completely unpredictably, even more so as no one really knows the rules of this game. The risks for some industries will be enormous, even supporters of the ETS admit that. But they propose a solution: Like in the real world of stock exchange, we should set up a market of forwards and options for emission rights. By then, everything will be set up for the next bubble to burst one day, a bubble created by the same political forces which are now constantly blaming financial markets and stock exchanges for their failure, meanwhile asking for the nationalisation of banks and extensive government control.

A staterun ETS truly tops this development. At the end, someone will have to pay for the bubble: the real world industry. And they will have to pay twice: Not only for buying emission rights in the first place, but also to set up infrastructures and knowledge to deal with the ETS toy. In times where money is so urgently needed for industry investments, in order to keep the real economy running and alive, while financial markets are in crisis, the money for emission rights could be planned a lot better.

This is definitely not the time for another setback to competitiveness of the European Union`s industrial backbone. Its stable functioning guarantees the available money to spend on social welfare, education and climate protection. It will certainly not work the other way round. And finally, it is absolutely not the time to create another bubble.

Source







Scientists Challenge UK Govt Climate Committee to 'Drop flawed science and the Climate Change millstone - Save the economy'

CO2 is the Gas Of Life ('GOL'), it is not a problem

The recommendation that the UK cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent* is "total madness based on false science" said Piers Corbyn of WeatherAction long range forecasters. "There is no evidence that Carbon dioxide has ever controlled, is controlling or will ever control world temperatures or climate and I challenge the promoters of this nonsense to produce evidence to justify their policies - or drop them, just as 13 world scientists** have similarly challenged the UN.

"Climate Change policy is a millstone around the UK and world economies. The beneficiaries are oil companies who ram up prices with abandon (taking advantage of limits placed on expansion of coal), bio-fuel producers who are increasing food prices and starvation, and the booming industry of climate change parasites such as carbon traders and nuclear power-mongers.

"Taxpayers and the developing world are the losers. There is a world recession now upon us which is being made deeper by Climate Change policies and the perpetrators must be called to account. Banks and industry are going bust yet the green fundamentalists want to impose more of this madness on the world. They actually want to increase their burden on the UK economy and deepen the world recession**.

"Genuine green policies to defend bio-diversity and reduce waste should be supported but the deceitful manipulation of the goodwill of many people in order to promote policies of mass taxation, expensive and dangerous energy like nuclear power and cuts in world living standards must be stopped. The UK and the world now need cheap energy solutions like coal to diesel technology which can be made smoke free. The danger for honest green campaigners - unless they break from the stranglehold of the Climate Change lobby - is that when the Global Warming swindle is exposed their spirited defence of nature will be forgotten too.

"CO2 is no problem - it is the Gas of Life (GOL). The problem is Climate Change Policy - not Climate Change which is beyond man's control. Global warming is over. World temperatures have fallen from their peak ten years ago while GOL (CO2) has been rising rapidly. The world was much warmer than now in the Bronze age 4,000 years ago and there was much less GOL (CO2) then. The bounteousness of world vegetation goes up with GOL. We need more GOL not less!

"13 world scientists wrote** to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in July asking for evidence to justify UN Climate Change policy and calling for the UN's climate committee (IPCC) to be made accountable. Tim Yeo MP** (chair of the Parliament Environment Audit Committee) was also written to in July. Neither have acknowledged or replied. The reason is they have nothing to say. I urge members of the public to send the scientists' letter to the UN** to their MP and ask their MPs to make the UN and Tim Yeo+ 'Put Up or Shut Up'. Gordon Brown** was also written to and his office promised to reply".

Source





Another Dissenter: Chemist declares himself `skeptic' - `No uncontrolled, runaway greenhouse effect has occurred in the last half billion years'

Chemist Dr. Kenneth Rundt, a bio-molecule researcher and formerly a research assistant and teacher at Abo Akademi University in Finland, declared his global warming dissent in June 2008. "Let me state immediately before you read on that I count myself among the `skeptics'," Rundt wrote in a scientific paper titled "Global Warming - Man-made or Natural?" on June 16, 2008. Excerpts below:

"I am only a humble scientist with a PhD degree in physical chemistry and an interest in the history of the globe we inhabit. I have no connection with any oil or energy-related business. I have nothing to gain from being a skeptic," Rundt explained. "My personal belief is that natural forcings have more importance than anthropogenic forcings such as the CO2 level," Rundt wrote.

"It can also be reliably inferred from palaeoclimatological data that no uncontrolled, runaway greenhouse effect has occurred in the last half billion years when atmospheric CO2 concentration peaked at almost 20 times today's value. Given the stability of the climate over this time period there is little danger that current CO2 levels will cause a runaway greenhouse effect. It is likely, therefore, that the IPCC's current estimates of the magnitude of climate feedbacks have been substantially overestimated," Rundt wrote.

According to Rundt, even a doubling of CO2 levels from 317 ppm to 714 ppm "would increase absorption approximately 0.17%. This corresponds to an additional radiative forcing of 0.054 W/m2, substantially below IPCC`s figure of 4 W/m2. An increase of this order would not result in a temperature increase of more than a tenth of a degree centigrade."

"The biggest problem for the pro-IPCC scientific community is that there are no means to experimentally determine the effect of an increasing CO2 level," Rundt wrote. "IPCC's spokesman Al Gore has often claimed that the `science is settled', but there is a growing group of scientists critical against the claims of `settled science' and overwhelming `consensus,' he concluded.

PDF downloadable from here

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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