Looks like the sky is falling in Canada

According to a Canadian Leftist site we've only got weeks to go:

Runaway Global Warming promises to literally burn-up agricultural areas into dust worldwide by 2012, causing global famine, anarchy, diseases, and war on a global scale as military powers including the U.S., Russia, and China, fight for control of the Earth's remaining resources.

Over 4.5 billion people could die from Global Warming related causes by 2012, as planet Earth accelarates into a greed-driven horrific catastrophe.

It doesn't seem to occur to them that even if their warming prophecies come true it would open up great swathes of productive agricultural land in Canada, Northern Russia, Siberia and Alaska. It would INCREASE the availability of food and other resources. And Hokkaido is a rather large but very Northerly Japanese island that would serve Japan well too. It is roughly the same size as Ireland and already has a railway connection to the mainland (Honshu)





Climate forecasts 'exaggerated': Science journal

"Science" has been solidly Warmist so far -- so cracks are appearing in the dam that is holding real science back

DRAMATIC forecasts of global warming resulting from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been exaggerated, according to a peer-reviewed study by a team of international researchers.

In the study, published today in the leading journal Science, the researchers found that while rising levels of CO2 would cause climate change, the most severe predictions - some of which were adopted by the UN's peak climate body in its seminal 2007 report - had been significantly overstated.

The authors used a novel approach based on modelling the effects of reduced CO2 levels on climate, which they compared with proxy-records of conditions during the last glaciation, to infer the effects of doubling CO2 levels.

They concluded that current worst-case scenarios for global warming were exaggerated. "Now these very large changes (predicted for the coming decades) can be ruled out, and we have some room to breathe and time to figure out solutions to the problem," the study's lead author, Andreas Schmittner, an associate professor at Oregon State University, said.

Scientists have struggled for many years to understand how to quantify "climate sensitivity" - how Earth will respond to projected increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

In 2007, the UN's peak climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels would warm the Earth's surface by an average of 2C to 4.5C, although some studies have claimed the impact could be 10C or higher.

Professor Schmittner said it had been very difficult to rule out these extreme "high-sensitivity" scenarios, which were very important for understanding risks associated with climate change.

The study found high-sensitivity models led to a "runaway effect" under which the Earth would have been covered in ice during the last glacial maximum, about 20,000 years ago, when CO2 levels were much lower. "Clearly that didn't happen, and that's why we are pretty confident that these high climate sensitivities can be ruled out," he said.

Professor Schmittner said taking his results literally, the IPCC's average or "expected" value of a 3C average temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 ought to be regarded as an upper limit.

"Many previous climate-sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through to today, and not fully integrated paleoclimate data, especially on a global scale," he said. "If these paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought."

However, he cautioned that extreme climate change could still occur in some areas.

Dave Griggs, a professor of sustainability at Monash University, said that while models such as the one used by Professor Schmittner and his team were "the only tool we have" to assess long-term climate variability, they were also inherently imperfect.

"We are already heading towards a doubling of CO2 concentrations, so if we're going to get an equilibrium change of 3C that's actually pretty serious," Professor Griggs said.

SOURCE





Britain's Green 'tax' to rise every year... but don't worry, ministers claim overall bills will be lower - because their policies will make you use less energy

Families will pay £280 a year in ‘green taxes’ by 2020 to fund the shift to wind, solar and nuclear power, ministers admitted yesterday. The huge cost faced by ordinary people will pay for the Government’s pledge to cut carbon emissions and be ‘the greenest ever’.

Households currently pay £89 a year on their bills for the green energy drive, but this will increase every year to reach £280 by 2020, according to the Government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The ‘taxes’ will provide almost £8billion a year towards the £200billion cost of vast wind farms, nuclear power stations, a new pylon network, and to put up solar panels.

But in a bizarre statement, energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne told the House of Commons that his policies mean consumers will actually be better off. He said: ‘By 2020, we expect household bills to be 7 per cent – or £94 – lower than they would otherwise be without our policies. ‘Britain’s homes will be cheaper to heat and light than if we did nothing.’

His claim is based on a controversial assumption that families will make vast reductions in their electricity and gas bills by 2020 – wiping out the £280 in green taxes. It also assumes there will be a large uptake of government-backed schemes for insulation projects.

The revelation threatens to spark a revolt from consumers, who are suffering the biggest and longest squeeze on living standards in more than 60 years. In addition, Chancellor George Osborne is under pressure to over-rule Mr Huhne and halt the rush to green energy in a bid to protect British industry.

The fear is that manufacturers and other businesses will be saddled with huge levies on energy bills, pushing up costs and threatening their ability to sell goods around the world.

The details were revealed in the small print in DECC documents.

The current average annual energy bill is around £1,200. DECC said the figure would be £1,379 by 2020 without any government measures to drive a switch to green and nuclear power.

It claimed the figure would be £1,285 based on the impact of its green taxes and associated policies to cut household energy use and curb wholesale prices.

However, a DECC source admitted this lower figure would be possible only if households slashed electricity use by a third (from 4.5 to 3 megawatt hours a year) and gas by 6 per cent.

The Government has a target of providing 20 per cent of the UK’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Despite the £280 price tag of government policies, Mr Huhne insisted rising fossil fuel prices rather than green taxes were to blame for higher energy bills.

He said: ‘I want to insulate Britain’s homes not just from the cold weather, but also from the chill winds of global fossil fuel prices. It’s these that are pushing up consumer energy prices.

‘We will secure our energy at the lowest cost: in the short term by promoting competition; in the medium term by insulating our homes and in the long term by steering us away from excessive reliance on fossil fuels and on to clean, green and secure energy.’

But Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Foundation, said Mr Huhne’s reassurances were ‘political spin’. ‘All analysis by City banks and others make clear that current government policy will lead to big increases in energy bills,’ he said. ‘The energy-use reductions being assumed by the Government to justify the claim that bills will fall are not based on any sound economic facts. They are pure guesswork.’

Government policy is based on an assumption that gas prices will continue to rise, but Dr Peiser said the price could fall. He said: ‘Prices are likely to come down very significantly, perhaps by 30 to 40 per cent if the UK Government gives the green light to shale gas exploration. The UK is sitting on a gold mine of shale gas.’

Energy industry expert Joe Malinowski, of TheEnergyShop.com, said he was ‘deeply sceptical’ about Mr Huhne’s claims of lower bills.

The CBI is particularly fearful of the impact of green taxes. Chief policy director Katja Hall said: ‘Energy intensive industries underpin the UK’s manufacturing sector, making products as diverse as the steel and chemicals needed for wind turbines and low-rolling resistance tyres. ‘The Government is in serious danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater if it continues to pile new costs on to industries.’

The Government plans to spend £11billion installing smart meters in every property, saying that once people see how much energy they use, they will make cutbacks.

Ministers say energy use will also be reduced by the so-called Green Deal, which will allow people to install double-glazing and loft insulation at no upfront cost. But a spokesman for consumer group Which? said: ‘If take-up is lower than expected, energy bills will be pushed up even further.’

SOURCE





Google's promise of solar power 'cheaper than coal' turns out to be hot air as search giant shelves Green Energy division

Google's engineers famously spend 20 per cent of their time on what the company calls '20 per cent projects' - off-the-wall ideas that are 'personal' technologies. Some of these are highly surreal, 'blue sky' projects - and not all of them work.

Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page's moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.

Google said on Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal - a rather vague project aimed at producing good-value renewable energy.

Google said that it believed other institutions were better positioned to take its renewable energy efforts 'to the next level.'

Google began making investments and doing research into technology to drive down the price of renewable energy in 2007, with a particular focus on solar power technology. In 2009, the company's so-called Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, said he expected to demonstrate within a few years working technology that could produce renewable energy at a cheaper price than coal. 'It is even odds, more or less,' Weihl said at the time. 'In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there.' A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.

Google said today, 'This is our third off-season spring cleaning. We're in the process of shutting a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for.' 'Over all, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive truly beautiful Google user experience.'

The latest round of victims are Google Friend Connect - a social feature allowing webmasters to add Google friend features to their sites, Google Bookmark Lists, which allows home users to share bookmarks, and Google Search Timeline, which graphed search results for a particular query.

Google's version of Wikipedia, the clunky, unpopular Knol, will also be shut off.

SOURCE




'Green' debacle: Tens of thousands of abandoned wind turbines now litter American landscape

Literal beacons of the "green" energy movement, giant wind turbines have been one of the renewable energy sources of choice for the US government, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their construction and use across the country. But high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned.

Before government subsidies for the giant metals were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business. But in the post-tax subsidy era, the costs of maintaining and operating wind turbines far outweighs the minimal power they generate in many areas, which has left a patchwork of wind turbine graveyards in many of the most popular wind farming areas of the US.

"Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California 'big three' locations which include Altamont Pass, Tehachapin and San Gorgonio, considered among the world's best wind sites," writes Andrew Walden of the American Thinker. "In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills."

Walden speaks, of course, about the birds, bats, and other air creatures that routinely get tangled in and killed by wind turbine propellers. And as far as the "post-industrial junk" language, well, if it costs too much to run the machines in the first place, then it definitely costs too much to uproot and remove them post-construction.

This whole wind energy mess just further illustrates how the American people have been played by their elected officials who bought into the "global warming" hysteria that spawned the push for wind energy in the first place. And now that the renewable energy tax subsidies are gradually coming to an end in some places, the true financial and economic viability, or lack of wind energy, is on display for the world to see.

"It is all about the tax subsidies," writes Don Surber of the Charleston Daily Mail. "The blades churn until the money runs out. If an honest history is written about the turn of the 21st century, it will include a large, harsh chapter on how fears about global warming were overplayed for profit by corporations."

SOURCE



Some of the Wackier Ideas for Improving the Environment



There is a proposal before the United Nations for environmental justice, in order to save the planet. Said justice calls for legal representation on behalf of the environment – plants, animals, insects – against us pesky humans, with the power to seek financial compensation for damages.

* This one is a bit of a touchy subject. Though the thought is in the right place, the evidence seems to suggest that the concept wasn’t entirely thought through. The push to replace incandescent light bulbs with CFL’s (compact fluorescent lamps) would indeed conserve energy. However, they contain significant levels of mercury which, without any safe means of recycling them, would introduce unsafe levels of mercury back into the environment.

* In an effort to safeguard the sanctuary of indigent marine wildlife, the city of San Diego is set to enact laws that would ban birthday parties at local parks within the vicinity of said wildlife.

* As a means to harness human energy and transform it into useable energy, the concept of the human-powered floating gym came into being. Imagine, if you will, dozens of sweaty fitness-minded bodies, powering their way upstream in a bubble, and you’ve got a vague idea of what this truly wacky project is all about.

* Here’s another idea that someone pulled out of their, um … notebook: The basic premise is that the methane produced through cow flatulence is a major contributor to greenhouse gases (14%) and needs to be stopped. The answer? Kangaroo farts. Apparently their marsupial mates are methane-free down under, and possess a bacterium that it is suggested to be injected into cattle.

* Based on the cooling effect that the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo had on the planet 20 years ago, scientists had the brainstorm idea of triggering other volcanoes in the hopes of having similar results. We can only hope that our tax dollars don’t literally go up in (volcanic) smoke, and ash.

* The Eco-Kettle is supposedly the answer to a question we have no idea why anyone would even ask: namely, sparing our precious globe from the bane of our existence known as (wait for it) boiling too much water (gasp!).

* Asus came up with this gem a while back as a solution to excessive use of plastics in consumer product manufacturing: the bamboo laptop. We would love to have seen this sold as part of an office starter package, with a tiki torch desk lamp and margarita mixer.

* Pig pee for plastics. The idea here is to reduce the use of petroleum in the manufacture of plastic plates. The urea in pig urine would act as a bulking agent in its place. Trouble is (among other things -ugh!) is that when these pig-pee plates are discarded? You guessed it, they will emit methane. Maybe we first need to cross-breed these pigs with kangaroos. Yeah, that’s the ticket: pigaroo plates.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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