Climate Change Denial, Holocaust Denial: Death Sentences Through History
There is a new movement of denials – although the Holocaust deniers are still around, the far right have found a new thing to deny – this time that the Earth is heating up due to excessive energy consumption and wars for more oil to burn going to more wars for more oil and gas and water control…
The Bush family – who made their fortune with great help of the Nazis – controls a huge region in Paraguay, neighbouring the Christian Tongil sect/movement’s leader, Mr. Moon, which is incidentally the second largest fresh water reserve on the planet and protected by the US military.
Now why do you think that they bought that? Because they like the Paraguayan countryside, or because they know that the water is running out? And how would they know that the water us running out? Well, their business models depend on oil and war and all those things that destroy the water, so it isn’t very difficult to see how that realisation came about. Even people like Bush might care for their own children. If they can make such decisions wittingly, then they can be tried for crimes against humanity, as NASA’s James Hansen, himself a conservative/republican, advocates.
This quick post was prompted by an incoming link from yet another climate change denier. I left a comment in the blog, but seeing as it was held for moderation I imagined that it might not pass the filtering process, so I better paste the comment here. It is a response to some distortion by a Conservative in the City, claiming that Al Gore started the advanced the environmental movements against climate change – which is either completely ignorant and dimwitted or a deliberate denial of history of social movements.
Ever since Gory Al produced his Toyota advertising piece, yes, indeed, there has been a scam moving across the planet suggesting to governments and people that we can produce and shop our way out of this predicament, if we just buy small Toyota cars and energy saving light bulbs.
However, the environmental movement began more than 150 years ago with such poems as “Cologne” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (pasted below) and began to take contemporary shape with Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962.
If anything, Gory Al at best set back the movement and at worst destroyed it, by making his nonsense both the rallying point of governments and ignorant consumers and also the central point of critique for climate change denials, which is not entirely unlike Holocaust denial, since people are dying as I type from lack of water, resulting in failing crops and what is worse.
Even the Word Bank estimates that there will be 40 million people without water in the Andes within 4-6 years and the problems have begun. Al Alto in Bolivia (sister city of La Paz) is suffereing from severe shortages and the same goes for Lima in Peru that only has water for 75% of the inhabitants and many more are coming, as the glaciers disappear and people seek to the cities.
It won’t help much, though, a city like Lima already depends for the most part on the water from the same glaciers; so the prospects in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador are dire, to say the least. From the ashes into the fire.
Having worked with people there over the last three years I urge any climate change denier to come out and talk to the people who with tears in the eyes stand beneath brown dead mountains that a few years ago were white, living, blossoming things – and beneath glaciers that are almost gone and crops that have dried out. Tell them that it is scam.
The Andean threat, of course, is quite small compared to when the Himalayan glaciers run dry within 20 years or so, leaving about half the current population of the planet without water and rendering them environmental refugees. Importantly, all the estimates that scientists make are continuously dwarfed by unexpected feedback loops and converging factors – glaciers receding ten timess faster than estimated five years ago, oceans acidifying twenty-three times faster than previously thought:
“Last month, researchers warned that a new global deal on climate change would come too late to save many of the world’s corals. A report from the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California found that carbon dioxide emissions are likely to acidify seawater enough to cause widespread damage to major reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Even stringent cuts designed to stabilise greenhouse gas levels still put more than 90% of the world’s reefs in jeopardy.”
Come out there and tell the millions of people suffering already that there is no such thing as climate change and a heating of the planet. The ice is melting, the water is disappearing – what more do you need as evidence?
Cologne
IN Köhln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fang’d with murderous stones
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined, and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
colonos 
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 12:41 (570)
Climate Activists Invade DC Offices of Environmental Defense
Daughter of ED Founder Accuses NGO of Pushing False Solutions to Climate
Change
Washington, DC, 1 December – As the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change opened today in Poznan, Poland, grassroots climate activists took
over the Washington DC office of Environmental Defense.
The activists stated that they had targeted ED, one of the largest
environmental organizations in the world, because of the organization’s
key role in promoting the discredited approach of carbon trading as a
solution to climate change.
Dr. Rachel Smolker of Global Justice Ecology Project and Global Forest
Coalition read a statement, which said in part, “My father was one of the
founders of this organization, which sadly I am now ashamed of. The Kyoto
Protocol, the European Emissions Trading Scheme and virtually every other
initiative for reducing emissions have adopted their market approaches. So
far they have utterly failed, serving only to provide huge profits to the
world’s most polluting industries. Instead of protecting the environment,
ED now
seems primarily concerned with protecting corporate bottom lines. I can
hear my father rolling over in his grave.”
The activists rearranged furniture in the office, illustrating how
marketing carbon is “like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
Others held signs reading “Keep the cap, ditch the trade” and “Carbon
trading is an environmental offense.”
Leo Cerda, an indigenous activist with Rising Tide Ecuador said, “ED wants
to turn the atmosphere and forests into private property, and then give it
away to the most polluting industries in the form of pollution allowances
that can be bought and sold. Not only is this an ineffective way to
control emissions, it is also a disaster for the poor and indigenous
peoples who are not party to these markets
and are most impacted by climate change.”
ED has been key in establishing the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a
business consortium advocating for a cap and trade system with extremely
weak emissions reductions. US CAP allows polluters like Duke Energy,
Shell, BP, DuPont, and Dow Chemical to claim they are green while
continuing with business as usual. In recognition, activists awarded ED
the “Corporate Greenwash Award,” a three foot tall green paintbrush. “We
think this award is appropriate since
Environmental Defense spends more time painting polluters green than
actually defending the environment,” said Matt Wallace of Rising Tide
North America.
Opposition to carbon trading is growing as it becomes apparent that market
based schemes do little to fight climate change while helping corporations
rake in profits. Earlier this year, over 50 groups came together in the US
to denounce carbon trading in a Declaration Against the Use of Carbon
Trading Schemes to Address Climate Change.
Globally, hundreds of environmental, social justice, and indigenous groups
have come together to oppose such market based initiatives as inherently
unsustainable and ineffective in creating a just transition away from
fossil fuels.
See the full statement from Rachel Smolker, daughter of Environmental
Defense founder Robert E. Smolker
Contact:
+1 902 482 2689
info.globaljusticeecology.org
More photos and information at Rising Tide North America
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org
Time to Shape Up or Step Aside Environmental Defense Fund –
Statement from Dr. Rachel Smolker
http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/connections.php?ID=214
Time to Shape up or Step Aside: Environmental Defense Fund Must Stop
Advocating Market Based Approaches to Climate Change and Halt Corporate
Greenwashing
>From the Daughter of EDF Founder, Robert E. Smolker
Author Dr. Rachel Smolker is with Global Justice Ecology Project and
Global Forest Coalition
My name is Rachel Smolker. When I was a child, growing up on Long Island,
my father, Robert E Smolker, along with Charlie Wurster, Dennis Puleston
and Art Cooley, used to sit around in the living room sipping their beers
and discuss environmental issues. My father, an ornithologist, was
observing the thinning of predatory bird eggshells caused by DDT, Rachel
Carson‚s seminal work on the impacts of pesticides was still relatively
warm off the presses, and their were already many, many indications that
virtually all ecosystems were in decline: the beautiful
wetlandssurrounding our island were contaminated and littered with
garbage, fisheries were declining, and from afar, the drumbeat of
deforestation, pollution, and climate change.
Yes, way back then. Climate change was an issue very few knew anything
about, but I would say it came as no surprise to those who spent time in
the natural world and understood the delicate intricacies of ecological
systems on a tiny blue speck of a planet, more or less accidentally
blanketed in a thin and accommodating atmosphere.
I watched these men as they talked, sometimes seriously, sometimes
withtremendous humor, and almost always with a deep sense of commitment
and comeraderie. I was 10-12 years old, on the brink of puberty and
frankly not all that much interested, but I respected them and as I grew
up recognized the importance of this phenomenon, called EDF, which
germinated out of the couches of my home.
My father and his friends celebrated their capacity to act together
when EDF achieved bans on DDT in the early 70‚s. They brought lawyers and
scientists and fundraisers and administrators and many others onboard
and expanded the organization, experienced and overcame some growing
pains and
enjoyed a number of victories.
My father passed away in 1985. By that time, EDF had at least a few
offices dotted around the country, and sizeable resources. The
organization was, already, under the leadership of Fredd Krupp. Before
his death, he complained to me that he “did not approve of the
direction
in which the organization was headed”.
Why? What was he foreseeing? I think I understand now:
EDF has swelled and mushroomed into the darling of the corporate world:
advocating for “market incentives” to “encourage” corporations to stop
their destructive practices, provided they do not cause “economic
hardship”. Like the corporations you have befriended, you too have
become entirely beholden to the gods of endless economic growth. The goal
of protecting the environment has been relegated to the back seat.
EDF‚s corporate partnership approach sounded friendly and sort of “new”
back in the 80’s. Sure, perhaps there was some potential in trying to
reform polluting practices “from the inside”. EDF proudly designed the
market trading system for sulphur emissions causing acid rain, among
numerous other accomplishments. That emissions trading model,
hailed as a
breakthrough in “harnessing market forces in service of environmental
goals”, has now been carried over to the international arena and
become
the central approach to addressing global warming emissions.
Carbon emissions trading is now formally enshrined within the Kyoto
Protocol, and within almost every state, federal and international
initiative for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It has in fact
become pretty much the only game in town.
You argue that it is the “least expensive” means of lowering
emissions, allowing companies to avoid costly abatement by purchasing
credits
from others who could more easily reduce their emissions. A sort of
“kinder, gentler” approach to lowering carbon emissions.
But let me ask you. Is it working? Has it worked? Will it work fast
enough? Is it in our best interests at this point to make things
kind and gentle and inexpensive for these polluters? Is that our priority?
I would ask that you take a trip outside of Washington, put on your
boots and jeans and anoraks: travel to the Arctic community of Kivalina
and talk with the folks there who are filing suit against your bedfellows in
the fossil fuel industry over the extermination of their community and
their entire lifestyle. I say, you are guilty by association. EDF has
become the mistress of murderers. While James Hansen and others suggest
they
should be put on trial for their crimes against humanity, you would have us
reward them!
You would have us reward them by turning the atmosphere into private
property, dividing it into pieces and generously bequeathing the
pieces as gifts to these corporate criminals. And in doing so, you provide
them with a license to carry on with their dirty business and pretend to be
doing something other than advancing their own profits. While they drill
and mine and pump and plunder with one hand, the other is busy shaking
hands with Fred Krupp. EDF has been the primary architects and advocates
of “market approaches” which do nothing but pad the coffers of climate
criminals while doing nothing to avert global warming.
EDF has turned itself into a corporate makeover facility. The most
polluting companies on earth walk in here seeking advice on how to
better paint themselves green. EDF does the paint job and then hands out
free samples and an eternity’s worth of coupons for future cash-in. What
comes out the other end is business as usual, and a few added digits on the
organization‚s salary balance sheets.
I have two young children. I am not going to launch into a teary-eyed
appeal to you about their future, don‚’t worry.
No: I am going to tell you something about being a parent that I
think is relevant: When my children do something naughty, do I yell at them
and take away some privileges? Or do I offer them a candy in exchange for
halting their naughtiness? Welllll- some would advocate the candy
approach, but what happens when they realize that the outcome of
their naughtiness is to receive candy? Of course they can’t wait to be
naughty again! That is your approach to dealing with polluting
corporations;
reward them with permits to pollute and a new paintjob.
That is why they are knocking down your doors. Your Climate Action
Partnership? Well, no shit Sherlock – the dirtiest most polluting
industries made windfall profits off the European Emissions Trading Scheme,
which has been deemed completely ineffective if not counterproductive as
a means of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
No wonder these corporations are eager to sign on to the CAP and
have you championing such an approach! They know the climate change grim
reaper is on his way. They see the writing on the walls. Would they
prefer to
be regulated and fined and forced to behave like proper citizens of the
global community? Or would they prefer to hide behind some smoke and
mirrors, receive permits to pollute, pass along the cost of
purchasing those permits to their ratepayers if possible, and then rake in
rewards for sort of maybe doing what they should absolutely for the sake of
us all should be doing in any case? You provide them the means to enhance
profits and paint themselves green at the same time! WoW!
We cannot pretend that handing out permits to pollute and then
trading them around like baseball cards is even remotely related to
seriously
reducing emissions. It is a great get-rich-quick scheme for the
brokers, marketers and financiers who enjoy playing games with my childrens‚
future, and it is a huge gift to the polluting criminals.
Offsetting emissions is a similar deceit, nothing but another fine
arrangement of smoke and mirrors that allow some people to “feel
good” while continuing to carry on business as usual. They provide a
convenient way to sidestep and avoid real and necessary change. It is,
without
question, a lovely idea to provide funding to really good “quality”
projects that hold promise of reducing emissions, but there are more
straightforward ways to get there that do not require unfounded and
unreliable measures of carbon flow, additionality, verifiability or
permanence, and do not confuse fossil and biological carbon. We
clearly need to halt, not offset emissions, even where it is a hard
thing, a very hard thing to do.
We are here today because we have simply had enough. In fact we reached
that point quite a while ago, and since then have been gathering our
courage and building the solidarity that is required to stand up for
the very future of life on earth in the most effective, meaningful manner
possible. It is a mightily sad state of affairs, when a group of
dedicated activists, who are keenly aware of the dire crisis we are
facing, must come to the offices of one of the world‚s biggest and most
influential “environmental organizations” to protest. People you see
before you have chained themselves to the gates of coal fired power
plants and to the doors of the World Bank. They have stood up to
corporate thugs and threats, they have put themselves in harms way to
stand up for what is right and what MUST be done to protect the future
of life.
We cannot afford to wait, or to fail, or to only half succeed at this
point.
EDF: It is time to admit to the failure of the market based policies
you are advocating: The Kyoto Protocol, the European Trading Scheme –
these have failed us, and in the process have blinded and bedazzled so
many that the real solutions to the crisis have fallen into the shadows
where they are languishing. Now it is time to face the facts and turn
every ounce of your substantial weight towards DEMANDING that your
corporate bedfellows strip off their phony green veneer, halt the
pillaging of our futures, and give REAL solutions to climate change
their due opportunity. Yes it will be hard, yes it will force change
upon the polluters. But the cost of inaction, or ineffective action, will
be much, much greater.
The incoming administration has made it clear that they intend to adopt
a cap and trade legislation, along with a suite of other questionable
steps intended to address the crisis of climate change, including „clean
coal‰, nuclear energy and agrofuels. EDF as a massively influential
organization will undoubtedly play a role in shaping this legislation. It
is time to stop pandering to the corporate criminals. We can no longer
make corporate profits a priority over swift and severe measures to
avoid catastrophe. We can no longer concern ourselves with making it
easy or less costly or any other such warm and fuzzy goodwill towards
the corporations that are responsible for the destruction. We can no
longer count on the magic of markets to achieve the deep, real,
meaningful and essential changes that are needed.
EDF: I wish I could say I am proud of my own father‚s legacy! But it
is, sadly, the case that I have to apologize, offer disclaimers, make
explanations when pronouncing my relationship to this organization. I
can hear my father rolling over in his grave! EDF has strayed so far
from his vision, from the mission of protecting and advocating for the
environment, that it would now be completely unrecognizeable to him. Were
he to rise up from the dead, I can only hope that these plush digs and
six figure salaries would convince him there is no relationship between
the current manifestation of this organization and himself.
For me, it is deeply ironic that I find myself here today, taking
action against this organization which so shaped my early world view, and
which I have now come to see as a primary obstacle to averting
planetary crisis: the architects and powerful advocates of
extraordinarily dangerous and
distracting policy advice.
I HOPE that the people working here will take a very deep look in the
mirror and ask yourselves: are we REALLY doing the right thing? Are we
true to our mission? To ourselves? To our children and to the future of
life on this little blue speck?
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 15:21 (681)
I don’t know whether you misread my comments or intended to blatantly misrepresent them, but I never claimed that Al Gore STARTED the environmental movement. The only mention of Al Gore that I used was in regards to his “documentary” and how it increased support for the environmental cause like never before. Here’s the quote straight from my entry.
“Ever since Al Gore’s scare piece ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, every country on this planet has been bombarded by various environmental groups, pushing for more and more ‘green’ policies. Whether it be lowering carbon emissions, building wind farms, or subsidizing biofuels, governments have been pressured to force legislate this new ‘green’ way of life onto its citizens.”
I fail to see anything inherently wrong with what I’m saying. Ever since “An Inconvenient Truth” the environmental movement has experienced unprecedented growth and support. I never stated that Al Gore STARTED the environmental movement. Obviously this is not true as there have always been groups against deforestation, various types of pollution, and even a campaign to fight “global cooling” in the 1970s.
In fact, you even AGREE with my statement in the paragraph immediately after calling me ignorant, dimwitted, or in denial of history.
“Ever since Gory Al produced his Toyota advertising piece, yes, indeed, there has been a scam moving across the planet suggesting to governments and people that we can produce and shop our way out of this predicament, if we just buy small Toyota cars and energy saving light bulbs.”
I have no problem with your disagreement with any of my ideas or opinions, however, I would expect that while disagreeing with me, you’d at least use my statements truthfully and accurately. Instead of characterizing me as “dimwitted” when you yourself agree with my “dimwitted” statement.
As far as not posting your comment, I didn’t feel it was appropriate to approve your copy/paste of this post, but I did approve the trackback. Perhaps you jumped the gun a little bit in suggesting that I was censoring any dissenting opinion, when really I just hadn’t checked my blog until this morning.
Regardless of whether I believe in global warming, global cooling, global climate change, or anything of the sort, I do not think it’s the government’s job to regulate the lives of its citizens. If they want to be green, hey, that’s great. People can buy hybrid cars, only purchase products from green manufacturers, or do anything else they wish to support their cause, it’s a free market and a free country. However, it is not the government’s job to FORCE people or private companies to change the way they do things (provided their activities are already illegal, of course).
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 15:50 (702)
I probably do misrepresent you – like Al Gore misrepresents environmental movements and you run to his strawman as a counter point.
Interestingly you haven’t responded to the substantial elements only stated your personal dismay with a minor historical point.
However, you misrepresent your own views when you begin like this:
“Ever since Al Gore’s scare piece “An Inconvenient Truth”, every country on this planet has been bombarded by various environmental groups, pushing for more and more “green” policies. Whether it be lowering carbon emissions, building wind farms, or subsidizing biofuels, governments have been pressured to force legislate this new “green” way of life onto its citizens.”
They were bombarded all along, but the message has now been watered and dumbed down and criticising it like you do makes it real, cements as the position of the “environmental movement”, which it is not – it is the end of anything environmentalist, the ultimate recuperation of 150 years of resistance to the polluting nature of industrial capitalism.
Moreover, I never suggested that you censored anything, but figured that you weren’t going to approve it for obvious reasons. And you didnt.
You also misrepresent me, not that I care, but I obviously did not paste my post as a comment in your blog, but copied my comment in your blog and pasted it as a post in this blog, because I suspected, rightly, that you wouldn’t approve it. I didnt just miraculously write a commentary on your post without knowing it existed, although I could have, because the climate change denial movement is growing like a cancer.
Crawl back into your cave of denial, go shopping, for it is such a free country!
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 17:19 (763)
Apparently we have different definitions of “bombardment”, and perhaps I’ll go back and further clarify my statements. I was simply illustrating that it wasn’t until AFTER “An Inconvenient Truth” that the environmentalist movement regarding GCC had become mainstream. I hadn’t considered government bodies being “bombarded” until after the support for “green” policies became prevolent. Sure, there were always groups pushing for various legislation, but they really didn’t gain any momentum or serious voice until they grew in number, which occurred AFTER Al Gore’s “documentary”. Again, a point on which you and I both agree.
In regards to your accusation that I haven’t addressed the points you made in your post, you’re right. I haven’t addressed them. I never intended to enter into a debate with you on the merits of man-made global warming, or try and convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong. I simply addressed what I thought was a mischacterization, misunderstanding, or blatant personal attack. I guess being right on 2 out of 3 isn’t bad. I know better than to try and start a debate with someone who has the premise that I’m “dimwitted” or that I live in a “cave of denial”.
Regardless of whether you commented on my blog first, and then copy/pasted it here, or vice-versa, I found it unnecessary to have such a large comment attached to my post, especially when you provided the same content via a trackback. It becomes cumbersome for most visitors to read enormous comments and most people would move along before finishing it. Instead, I thought it best for both my readers and your own site to only approve the trackback. You probably should be thanking me as a trackback will generate traffic for your own site, rather than your comment which people would simply read on my own blog. You’re welcome.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 17:28 (769)
WordPress autogenerated a link to another post in the colonos blog, that is how your climate change denial story came to my attention. “Thank you” WordPress.
The concept of going “mainstream” might sound good to you, but if you dabble for a few hours in social movement histories you will find that what you call “going mainstream” is more precisely described as “recuperation” or “primitive accumulation” when it happens alongside the message being watered down, dumbed down, beyond recognition. So while you think we agree, we don’t!. Not at all.
I take back dimwitted and let you live with the dying on your conscience!
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 17:29 (770)
For the record, I think women contribute to climate change too. It isn’t just man-made.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 06:40 (319)
Your blog post was very heartwarming and really made me have compassion for all those potential victims of global climate change and the melting glaciers and what not. But I am still having trouble understanding the science behind your science. It seems unreasoable and most certainly unscientific to me to blame one variable (CO2, which makes up less than one percent of the earth’s atmosphere) as the “cause” for this warming crisis. The scinetific method, I dont know if you are familary with this, invovles the continualy testing and experimentation with both controlled and uncontrolled variables. It seems that you have already pinpointed one uncontrolled variable and promoted it as “truth” and blatently obvious, unless your dimwitted. It seems more dimwitted and unscientific to me to believe in an ultimate truth rather than leaving an open door for other posibilities. If being skeptical makes me dimwitted. Then yes, thats me.
Your probably wondering what I think has led to a .3F rise in global temperature over the last 10 years or even 150. Ask yourself this for a second. Where do we get the heat we have that keeps the planet at a liveable temperature in the first place? Other planets, body heat, car engines, or maybe that rediculously hot (10,000F) burning ball of gas out in space, which has areas of solar activity (sun spots) that are even hotter. Maybe there been more of a presence of these areas recently. Maybe hotter sun equals hotter earth. Perhaps im just a loonie I guess. It would make more sense, especially scientific sense, that its not what we put in the atmosphere (CO2 and other gases) that make up <1percent of the atmosphere than the thing that our heat comes from in the first place. Im sure if you ask a child with minor scieitific understanding and who hasn’t been brainwashed by the mainstrain “green” movement ‘truths’ what would make the earths temperature warm up. The sun or the smoke that comes out of daddy’s car and the coal plant in your back yard. Im sure he’d say something along the lines of “Are you serious? The Sun! You dimwit!”
Okay, so maybe the glaciers in these areas that depend of them are melting faster and disapearing. If thats the only possible source that these people could possibly have. There must be some law where they aren’t able to get desalinated water from the oceans or have their water imported. No, that isn’t possible at all, they will die! For someone, who I feel is a liberal, aren’t you all about look at the positive things (Hope, Change, Peace, etc…) it is funny that you can’t put a possible spin on this at all. What about all the unhabitabal areas that will warm up and make human occupation and agriculture there possible. Hey, we could use the new crops we can grow there to feed the starving! No, you never hear about the potential positive effects, only the negative. Cause then politicians will lose there “scare tactic” that has gotten them votes and money, it may also leave all those environmental scientists purpetuation human emissions and energy use as the cause out of a job. Without a crisis, they are out of a job. Thankfully there have been thousand of scientists who actually think like scientists and refute this “law” as the potential crisis http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Purpose_Of_Petition.html. Maybe these scientists are dimwitted as well.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 14:29 (645)
Excellent comment – desalination plants and importing water, wow! What a great suggestion. Let me see, ….desalination:
“Large-scale desalination typically uses large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or groundwater. “
So where does the energy come from for that? Who builds the plant? and with what materials? (Do you know anything about concrete production in the context of emissions? If not try googling it) And what do we do in the couple of years it takes to build it…??
“…the majority of current and planned cogeneration desalination plants use either fossil fuels or nuclear power as their source of energy. Most plants are located in the Middle East or North Africa, due to their petroleum resources and subsidies. The advantage of dual-purpose facilities is that they can be more efficient in energy consumption, thus making desalination a more viable option for drinking water in areas of scarce water resources.”
What else can we say about it?
“One of the main environmental considerations of ocean water desalination plants is the impact of the open ocean water intakes[citation needed], especially when co-located with power plants. Many proposed ocean desalination plants initial plans relied on these intakes despite perpetuating ongoing impacts on marine life[citation needed]. In the United States, due to a recent court ruling under the Clean Water Act these intakes are no longer viable without reducing mortality, by ninety percent, of the life in the ocean; the plankton, fish eggs and fish larvae.[26] There are alternatives including beach wells that eliminate this concern, but require more energy and higher costs while limiting output.[27] Other environmental concerns include air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the power plants that provide electricity and/or thermal energy to the desalination plants.”
At which point did I blame one variable – apart from perhaps human stupidity? – or, if one thing is to blame, then I’d say “industrial capitalism” (or the liberal/conservative economy), which treats the Earth as having infinite resources – now how is that for a rational, scientific perspective, that something so clearly finite – like trees and rivers – (presumably even the sun is finite in terms of how much energy it provides per hour/day/year?) should be systematically treated as inifnite? What kind of a stupid economical foundation is that?
So, I skip to the good news – new crops; let’s take a look at the estimates by conservative established experts:
“Climate change likely to increase risk of hunger
Industrialized countries could gain in production potential, developing countries may lose
7 August 2007, Chennai/Rome – Climate change is likely to undermine food production in the developing world, while industrialized countries could gain in production potential, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said today in a speech at the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation Conference in Chennai, India.
“Crop yield potential is likely to increase at higher latitudes for global average temperature increases of up to 1 to 3°C depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that,” he said. “On the contrary, at lower latitudes, especially in the seasonally dry tropics, crop yield potential is likely to decline for even small global temperature rises, which would increase the risk of hunger.”
Greater frequency of droughts and floods would affect local production negatively, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes, Dr. Diouf added.
“Rainfed agriculture in marginal areas in semi-arid and sub-humid regions is mostly at risk,” he explained. “India could lose 125 million tons of its rainfed cereal production — equivalent to 18 percent of its total production.”
So, in other words, good news for the rich and bad news for the poor – so hardly news at all, just more of the same.
Then on the political level – what in the heavens’ name make you think that I am a liberal – is that as far as your imagination stretches? Either you are with us (a
conservative, white supremacist) or against us (a liberal terrorist)? From where I stand there is no difference between your opinion and liberalism – same capitalist thing with minor variations – that the U.S public imagination is so narrow and simple is a very sad thing, but the rest of the world hasn’t quite come to that yet, although they’re working hard on it, throwing anyone outside of that spectrum into the dungeons, but so far I am free, at large and I am neither with you, nor am I a liberal.
Quotes from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/1000646/index.html
Thank you for your very constructive comments – it is now in plain view to see where you are coming from – a very informed, scientific, rational basis with great foresight and insight. My sincere apologies for not being with the programme.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 14:42 (654)
Our nuclear future – aren’t we charmed?
http://www.prlog.org/10039002-nuclear-water-desalination-plants-market-pushed-by-shortages-of-clean-freshwater-and-energy-costs.html
Nuclear Water Desalination Plants market pushed by shortages of clean freshwater and energy costs
Water Desalination with Nuclear Reactors, small and medium reactors is a booming future business. Over 50 plants worldwide in planing or design stage. Japan and China with the highest research and development spending to lead the future markets.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 21, 2007 – Nuclear Water Desalination Plants market pushed by shortages of clean freshwater and energy costs
Water Desalination with Nuclear Reactors, small and medium reactors is a booming
future business. Over 50 plants worldwide in planing or design stage. Japan and China
with the highest research and development spending to lead the future markets.
Drinking water is in short supply in many parts of the world and the shortage will increase. Water Desalination is one answer to solve water problems in many countries. The energy need and costs for desalination plants are very high. Most desalination today uses fossil fuels, and thus contributes to increased levels of greenhouse gases. Nuclear energy is already being used for desalination, and has the potential for much greater use worldwide and is generally cost-competitive with using fossil fuels. Small and medium sized nuclear reactors are suitable for desalination, often with cogeneration of electricity using low-pressure steam from the turbine and hot sea water feed from the final cooling system. The main opportunities for nuclear plants have been identified as the 80-100,000 m3/day and 200-500,000 m3/day ranges. The feasibility of integrated nuclear desalination plants has been proven in Kazakhstan, India and Japan and other countries. There are more then 50 new plants in the planning or feasibility stage today and the potentials are much higher. Large-scale deployment of nuclear desalination will depend primarily on economic factors but security and safe handling too.
Nuclear Desalination Worldwide, developed by Helmut Kaiser Consultancy, is a study about the most recent market development, technological innovations, competition and related regulations & policies. Helmut Kaiser Consultancy has been tracking the development of the water desalination industry for over 20 years
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 14:43 (655)
Then we just need another planet to dump the waste on and we’re sorted:
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/nextnews9.17a.html
Middle East goes Nuclear for Water Desalination Plants
The idea of using nuclear-powered desalination plants is becoming popular in the Middle East and North Africa, where tension over water rights has gone on for millennia, but it is controversial, and without significant foreign assistance it may turn out to be a mirage.
During a visit to Libya by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in late July, the leaders signed a memorandum of understanding that would allow French nuclear-giant Areva to build a nuclear power plant there.
Libya hopes to use the electricity generated by nuclear power for water desalination, a hope echoed in many countries in the region. Egypt has said it will pursue a similar scheme, as have Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries — Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Japan and Kazakhstan already have working nuclear-powered desalination plants.
The Middle East, like much of the rest of the world, is increasingly in need of fresh water. About 60 percent of the roughly 7,500 traditionally powered desalination plants can be found in the Middle East. In fact, Saudi Arabia holds about a quarter of the world’s desalination capacity, according to the International Desalination Association, and it provides 70 percent of the country’s drinking water.
Removing enough salt from seawater to make it usable for irrigation and drinking takes a tremendous amount of energy. It is highly dependent on the method of purification used, as well as the salinity of the water — seawater takes much more energy than slightly brackish water — but on average it takes between 2.8 and 9.8 megawatts of energy to produce 100,000 cubic meters of drinkable water per day, according to a presentation on nuclear desalination by Ron Faibish of the Argonne National Laboratory, the largest research laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Almost all desalination plants in use around the world today are powered by oil, natural gas or coal, which attracts criticism for their greenhouse gas emissions.
The World Wildlife Fund, in a June report, criticized desalination for the amount of carbon dioxide produced by these traditionally powered plants.
“Worldwide, the electrical power generating sector is the world’s most significant single generator of carbon emissions, responsible for 37 percent of global emissions. Always operating large scale desalination plants are also generally unsuited for variable power sources and tend to add to the base load power requirements most likely to be generated by burning fossil fuels,” the report found.
There are several technologies for desalinizing water, and thermal distillation, which is the most conventional and most common in Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, is also responsible for producing the highest rate of greenhouse gases, according the WWF.
With these disadvantages in mind, governments and businesses have been looking for alternatives to hydrocarbon-powered desalination plants. Australia has been using energy from a wind farm near Perth to power a large desalination plant that provides 17 percent of the city’s freshwater supply.
Solar power is also being considered, but the scale for such technologies is inadequate for much of North Africa and the Middle East. A project in Spain hopes to develop a plant with the capacity to produce 50 cubic meters per day. Saudi Arabia’s current daily production is 3 million cubic meters.
Using nuclear power for desalination has some very powerful backers. Not only do private industry giants such as Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Areva, which controls France’s nuclear sector, hope to build in North Africa and the Middle East, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has thrown its weight behind the idea as well with its Nuclear Desalination Project, which facilitates nuclear desalination projects worldwide.
Nuclear power, however, is very expensive. A 1,000 megawatt reactor that Egypt has discussed building is estimated to cost about $1.5 billion, and that cost has been cited as an important reason why Egypt must look abroad for financing. The Areva reactor that may be built in Libya is thought to be about the same size.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 16:07 (713)
So your saying that building desalination plants would be a bad idea because they are expensive and use energy as well which will only add to the problem? So the only real solution here seems to me for everyone to just stop using energy. Therefore the glaciers will come back and everything will be fine. If this is true, you better turn your computer off because its using enery right now and melting away those peoples water source.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 16:36 (733)
Can I point you to a minor aspect of English grammar: it is not “your saying”, which would mean “my saying”, as in a noun. The correct version is: “You’re saying”, meaning that I am saying something, like in a verb.
Your inability to keep with one point, or to respond to anything substantial without recourse to empty rhetoric and either/or positions is remarkable. I can see that you are a student: go study for a change!
However, you are right, cyberspace is posing severe threats the environment, as has been covered in this blog previously. Maybe I am powering my second hand computer with locally generated windpower.
Denial and displacement are typical of the guilty by association.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 18:26 (809)
You ever think that perhaps that windmill that might be powering your computer is altering the natural air currents of our planet. Maybe that has detrimental effects as well.
And yes, I am a student. A student that is far more capable of descerning between what is realistic and what is a far fetched and unabtainable dream. Good luck on trying to SAVE THE PLANET. I’ll be making sure that I keep doing my part to DESTROY it.
One side-thought that goes along with the opening paragraph of your blog post about the Holocaust. I do not deny that it happened, but think about this for a second. Hitler was able to convince his fellow Germans that the Jews were the cause for their problems and that they should be killed and then everything would be better. He was able to convince a group of people to KILL another group. This is about as extreme as it gets for brainwashing which primarily used political propoganda, empowering speeches (Most will admit that Hitler was a great speaker and leader, just not about the right stuff) and other non-forceful tactics.
Would it be that unreasonable then to think that perhaps our political leaders and scientists through the use of the media have used propoganda to promote global warming? They have convinced most of us (including yourself) that driving our cars, burning coal and everything else that is causing the planet to heat up is caused by us so now we need to change and do this, this, and this. Take a look at this sight for multitude of things that Global warming has been blamed for http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm.
It is naturally appealing for people to put the blame for their problems on other things (people, the environment, politicians, etc…) other than themselves or perhaps just bad luck. People always want an answer and want to feel like they have the power to control everything. I believe it is extremely arrogant in this instance for anyone to think that they have the ability to control the environment. There is so little that we really know about how the environment works, but people hate not knowing and will bend over backwards for anyone that has an explaination and solution. How much do you really think the average person knew about the environment and weather patterns before Al Gore’s flick? I tend to think little to none, I myself fell into that group as well. This is what made it such a great scam. Take something people don’t really know much about (environment – especially on a global scale), and its that much easier to get them to believe what you want them to about it.
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 00:11 (049)
Well, you have stated your position, as strange as it may be, that you want to destroy the planet. That fits well with your general attitude.
So you mean that Hitler’s nazi regime is a bit like the Bush regime that have convinced the world that the islamist militants that his father helped create in the past are now the enemy of freedom. Substitute muslims for jews and you have pretty much the same scenario:
https://colonos.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/the-fascist-mask-and-the-continuity-of-the-state-of-exception-naomi-sheep-in-wolfs-clothes/
https://colonos.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/the-doctrine-of-the-fascist-state-the-letter-of-prominent-jews-that-did-not-exist/
I understand that you are rather ignorant of the matters, as you yourself state, but not everybody has such poor educational background. In Scandinavia climate change and the environment has been in secondary school curricula for twenty five years or more, beginning with acid rain from East German industrial state capitalism factories acidifying the Swedish lakes and the associated forest deaths of the 1980s, first noted in Southern Germany in the 1960s. There are also many cultures than yours and mine that have very different relations to the environment and the natural world around them, from which we can learn a lot about how to best live with the plants and the trees and the other animals. As Terence McKenna used to say: “Humans and the other animals are inventions by the plants to move around seeds.”
Once you begin to think little bit outside the box – and there is no doubt that Gory Al does not help that process along! – you might begin to see and feel things about live and people and planet that can give you many ideas – and there are many others to share ideas with. You keep thinking in this extremely simple binary between liberals (Gory Al) and the good old school American Republican, gun carrying freedom fighter. I guess I can’t blame, living as you do, in the least democratic country in the socalled western world. With a two party system choice between Pepsi or Coke, non-proportionate voting and presidential pardoning powers used left and right to liberate friend and business connections in the last hours of a presidency:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/03/georgebush-usa
Sorry to break the news: the world isn’t that simple.
Like you say, these are complex issues, but letting out chemicals uncritically as has been the tendency during the agricultural revolutions of the 20th century has had enormous consequences all over the world. The Niger Delta, the Amazon and many other places still suffer incredible rates of cancer deaths and skin diseases directly related to the waste from oil extraction (most of which is referenced in various posts in this blog) – and that’s before the oil has even been burned.
It is a complex economy – it used to be called the military-industrial complex, now some call it the celebrity-industrial complex, because it has idiots like David Beckham and Gory Al selling products and misinformation. If you wonder what colonos think about Al, then have a look here:
https://colonos.wordpress.com/2007/03/26/an-inconvenient-truth-al-gore-and-the-domestication-of-dissent/
Here is another warp:
https://colonos.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/the-warped-mind-of-the-ecofascism-conspiracy-theorist/
Despite its complexity, however, you can see that it is pretty much the same few people that make lots of money on environmentally destructive activities and it is almost invariably the poor who suffer the consequences. Is that fair? Do you like that idea? Is that a world you want to live on?
Moreover, it so happens to be that some of those in power today made their fortunes trading with the Nazis – they traded with them well knowing what empire they were building – and until Hitler became really aggressive he was not considered a political enemy, nazism wasn’t that bad a thing, thought the English and others, who also has their own fascist/nazi/far right movements – in Spain until the 1970s.
The U.S.A, however, did the amazing magical stunt – the ultimate brainwash – they imported the nazi scientists (ever seen Dr. Strangelove by Kubrick?), their scientific models and projects, such as the V2 of Peenemuende that became the Apollo programme to the moon under Werner von Braun. Eugenics became biometrics and eye scans in airports, DNA registration and so on.
Go back to bed America….
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eR3KwODDzeY
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqs9ap3iV-4