Lomborg - was Re: [biofuel] addendum to my last post
Hello Thor There's an apt picture of Bjorn Lomborg, author (perpetrator?) of The Skeptical Environmentalist here: http://www.anti-lomborg.com/ :-) The local troll at the SANET sustag group was pushing Lomborg recently as jolly good sensible stuff, and Misha Gale-Sinex, slightly irked, posted this: Howdy, all-- Regarding assistant professor of statistics Bjorn Lomborg's now-dated and discredited honkings about topics well outside his area of expertise (i.e., biology, meteorology, ecology, climate science, zoology, forestry, economics, public health, energy), see the following scientists' views. One could choose to characterize every one of them as environmentalists and thus dismiss them all as ideological. I'd say that choice reflects a psychological inclination (the common bipolar disorder, A versus B thinking), not clear reasoning nor an interest in understanding the complexities of human impacts on the fabric of terrestrial life. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.html Lomborg's own colleagues and Danish scientists distance themselves from him. This is their statement. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Sorensen.pdf Resources: Lomborg's claims are untrue and dangerous Henning S¿rensen, Professor, dr.phil., former President of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Department of Geology, University of Copenhagen. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Fjeldsaa.pdf Species' extinction: Lomborg's facts are absurd and irrelevant Jon Fjeldsaa, Professor, dr. scient., Vertebrate Department, Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Schou.pdf Economics: Clean growth is not proven Poul Schou, MSc in economics, Ph.D. student at the Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Gundersen.et.al.pdf Forest die-back: Acid rain is not a myth Per Gundersen, Senior Researcher, Research Center for Forrest and Landscape (FSL), J. Bo Larsen, Professor, Royal Agricultural University (KVL); Lars Bo Pedersen, Senior Researcher, FSL and Karsten Raulund Rasmussen, Chief Researcher, FSL. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Astrup%20Jensen.pdf Pesticides: Associate Professor always gets the last word Allan Astrup Jensen, Research Director, DK-Teknik. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Grandjean.pdf Breast cancer: Lomborg's errors Philippe Grandjean, Professor, dr.med., Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Jorgens.Fedders.pdf Climate change: Greenhouse effect created by humans: Myth or reality? Anne Mette K. J¿rgensen, Ph.D., Head of Research Department, Denmarks Meteorological Institute (DMI) and Henrik Feddersen, Ph.D., Danish Climate Centre, DMI. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Skou%20Andersen.pdf Climate and cost-benefit: Lomborg's precarious model Mikael Skou Andersen, Associate Professor, Ph.D., Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus. http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.Politica.pdf Book Review, Politica 1/1999 Bj¿rn Lomborg: Verdens sande tilstand (The True State of the World), Viby: Centrum, 1998 (Politica is the scientific journal for political science in Denmark). http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/wilson121201.asp Lomborg's estimate of extinction rates is at odds with the vast majority of respected scholarship on extinction. Biologist E.O. Wilson -- two-time Pulitzer prize winner, discoverer of hundreds of new species, and one of the world's greatest living scientists. http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/schneider121201.asp What a monumental waste of busy people's time countering the scores upon scores of strawmen, misquotes, unbalanced statements, and selective inattention to the full literature. Stephen H. Schneider, one of the foremost climate scientists in the United States. http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/myers121201.asp Lomborg ignores or is ignorant of much of the work on extinction rates a man who demonstrates repeatedly that he is not acquainted with the basics of the issue. Norman Myers, an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Oxford University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of the Sciences, and a recipient of several of the world's most prestigious environmental awards, looking at Lomborg on biodiversity. http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/brown121201.asp Lomborg's fellow faculty members are concerned that his work does not satisfy basic academic standards. Other reviewers have pointed out that he has never published a single article in a refereed scientific journal. Lester R. Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute, reviews Lomborg on population. http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/matthews121201.asp Lomborg's interpretation of global forest cover and Indonesian forest fires are just two examples of the incomplete and superficial analyses that underpin too much of this book. Emily Matthews, a forest expert and senior associate
[biofuel] Article on discrediting of Lomborg
http://evworld.com/databases/storybuilder.cfm?storyid=480 I guess that he is one of the darlings of those Politicos who are opposed to most environmental thinking shows not their interest in science but their selectiveness and lack of ability in choosing scientists to whom to listen. Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [Biofuel] The great biofuels scandal - Telegraph
Hi all Bjorn Lomborg is, was, or used to be into various shades of global warming denial, depending, I think, on which way the wind's blowing. Recent big winds may have deepened his apparent shade of green. Professional contrarian, author of the infamous The Sceptical Environmentalist. He's a statistician, without environmental qualifications. At a promotional reading of his book in London in 2001 he had a cream pie thrown in his face by none other than Mark Lynas - he who recently changed coats to become a supporter of nuclear power. Maybe they deserve each other. I don't think we deserve either of them. More here: http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=sustainablelorgbiofuel%40lists.sustainablelists.orgq=Lomborg All best Keith On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bjørn Lomborg wrote: The costs of global climate policies is running at about $1billion every day. Wind turbines cost 10 times the estimated benefits in terms of emissions cuts, and solar panels cost close to 100 times the benefits. Yet, with spending on these technologies of about £136 billion annually, there are a lot of interests in keeping the tap open. But opposition to the rampant proliferation of biofuels also shows the way to a more rational climate policy. If we can stop the increase in biofuels we can save lives, save money, and start finding better ways to help. This is about investing in more productive agriculture that can feed more people more cheaply while freeing up space for wildlife. It seems to give a fairly rational explanation of how bad mega-biofuels are. then concludes with these two paragraphs which all of a sudden attack wind turbines and solar panels without giving any data to back up their fairly wild claims. And gives a fairly vague sentence about more production agriculture. Does that mean urban farms, edible landscapes or more intensive chemical use and GMO crops, or what I was pretty on to agreeing with everything he said till the end, but now I kind of question exactly where he's coming from and what his agenda is... Z ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
Re: [Biofuel] The great biofuels scandal - Telegraph
A. Good to know Z Sent from my iPhone On Dec 18, 2013, at 5:59 AM, Keith Addison ke...@journeytoforever.org wrote: Hi all Bjorn Lomborg is, was, or used to be into various shades of global warming denial, depending, I think, on which way the wind's blowing. Recent big winds may have deepened his apparent shade of green. Professional contrarian, author of the infamous The Sceptical Environmentalist. He's a statistician, without environmental qualifications. At a promotional reading of his book in London in 2001 he had a cream pie thrown in his face by none other than Mark Lynas - he who recently changed coats to become a supporter of nuclear power. Maybe they deserve each other. I don't think we deserve either of them. More here: http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=sustainablelorgbiofuel%40lists.sustainablelists.orgq=Lomborg All best Keith On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bjørn Lomborg wrote: The costs of global climate policies is running at about $1billion every day. Wind turbines cost 10 times the estimated benefits in terms of emissions cuts, and solar panels cost close to 100 times the benefits. Yet, with spending on these technologies of about £136 billion annually, there are a lot of interests in keeping the tap open. But opposition to the rampant proliferation of biofuels also shows the way to a more rational climate policy. If we can stop the increase in biofuels we can save lives, save money, and start finding better ways to help. This is about investing in more productive agriculture that can feed more people more cheaply while freeing up space for wildlife. It seems to give a fairly rational explanation of how bad mega-biofuels are. then concludes with these two paragraphs which all of a sudden attack wind turbines and solar panels without giving any data to back up their fairly wild claims. And gives a fairly vague sentence about more production agriculture. Does that mean urban farms, edible landscapes or more intensive chemical use and GMO crops, or what I was pretty on to agreeing with everything he said till the end, but now I kind of question exactly where he's coming from and what his agenda is... Z ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
BS - was Re: [biofuel] Thought Provoking Book Review
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Motie, if you don't mind, this is total BS. Er, Motie, you were joking, right? Please, no more Mr Bailey, nor Messrs Avery, Lomborg, etc. Best Keith Keith and all, My sincere apologies! It wasn't meant to be a joke, just thought provoking. I confess I didn't research it. It came in my email, and I passed it on without knowing it's History, or researching it. To be honest, I am embarrassed, particularly after my recent tirades against those who pass on debunked 'studies'. I do now have a better understanding as to how it can happen. Feeling Humble, Motie Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [Biofuel] The great biofuels scandal - Telegraph
Don't use land, use the sea. Seaweed biofuels: A green alternative that might just save the planet http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/01/seaweed-biofuel-alternative-energy-kelp-scotland Kelp Farming: More of plants energy goes into growth and carbohydrate production (doesn’t need to fight gravity). One species grows up to a foot/day. No fertilizer is necessary. Cleans up sewage areas. Cools the water to prevent hurricanes. Cools the water to restore krill/ plankton and other marine life. Absorbs carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. Re-oxygenates dead zones. After kelp distillation the liquid stillage left over is excellent organic fertilizer. This would replace the toxic fertilizers now used and eliminate fertilizer plant explosions. Using American coastal areas for kelp farming would replace all transportation fuel for the US as well as a large chunk of natural gas and electricity. Needs to be implemented world-wide to slow effects of climate change. No farmland is required. Existing oil platforms could be converted to plants that process seaweed for alcohol and piped to shore. Jobs for fishermen and others. Neatly solves many problems in one stroke. Kelp is currently being farmed for food successfully in Maine, USA by Sarah Redmond, Seth Barker, Tollef Olson and Paul Dobbins and in Connecticut, USA by Dr. Charles Yarish. Kelp farming for fuel would slow the effects of climate change and get us off fossil fuels. This new industry needs to be funded and expanded worldwide. A free kelp farming manual may be downloaded here: http://www.oceanapproved.com/blog/ “To download a copy of our kelp farming manual, please click on the link below.” Ocean Approved OceanApproved_Kelp Manual Information on ethanol production and use can be found at: David Blume http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com All ‘problems’ with engines/vehicles have been worked out. Contact David for solutions. - Original Message - From: zeke Yewdall Sent: 12/18/13 12:40 PM To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org Subject: Re: [Biofuel] The great biofuels scandal - Telegraph A. Good to know Z Sent from my iPhone On Dec 18, 2013, at 5:59 AM, Keith Addison ke...@journeytoforever.org wrote: Hi all Bjorn Lomborg is, was, or used to be into various shades of global warming denial, depending, I think, on which way the wind's blowing. Recent big winds may have deepened his apparent shade of green. Professional contrarian, author of the infamous The Sceptical Environmentalist. He's a statistician, without environmental qualifications. At a promotional reading of his book in London in 2001 he had a cream pie thrown in his face by none other than Mark Lynas - he who recently changed coats to become a supporter of nuclear power. Maybe they deserve each other. I don't think we deserve either of them. More here: http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=sustainablelorgbiofuel%40lists.sustainablelists.orgq=Lomborg All best Keith On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bjørn Lomborg wrote: The costs of global climate policies is running at about $1billion every day. Wind turbines cost 10 times the estimated benefits in terms of emissions cuts, and solar panels cost close to 100 times the benefits. Yet, with spending on these technologies of about £136 billion annually, there are a lot of interests in keeping the tap open. But opposition to the rampant proliferation of biofuels also shows the way to a more rational climate policy. If we can stop the increase in biofuels we can save lives, save money, and start finding better ways to help. This is about investing in more productive agriculture that can feed more people more cheaply while freeing up space for wildlife. It seems to give a fairly rational explanation of how bad mega-biofuels are. then concludes with these two paragraphs which all of a sudden attack wind turbines and solar panels without giving any data to back up their fairly wild claims. And gives a fairly vague sentence about more production agriculture. Does that mean urban farms, edible landscapes or more intensive chemical use and GMO crops, or what I was pretty on to agreeing with everything he said till the end, but now I kind of question exactly where he's coming from and what his agenda is... Z ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo
Re: [Biofuel] The great biofuels scandal - Telegraph
On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Bjørn Lomborg wrote: The costs of global climate policies is running at about $1billion every day. Wind turbines cost 10 times the estimated benefits in terms of emissions cuts, and solar panels cost close to 100 times the benefits. Yet, with spending on these technologies of about £136 billion annually, there are a lot of interests in keeping the tap open. But opposition to the rampant proliferation of biofuels also shows the way to a more rational climate policy. If we can stop the increase in biofuels we can save lives, save money, and start finding better ways to help. This is about investing in more productive agriculture that can feed more people more cheaply while freeing up space for wildlife. It seems to give a fairly rational explanation of how bad mega-biofuels are. then concludes with these two paragraphs which all of a sudden attack wind turbines and solar panels without giving any data to back up their fairly wild claims. And gives a fairly vague sentence about more production agriculture. Does that mean urban farms, edible landscapes or more intensive chemical use and GMO crops, or what I was pretty on to agreeing with everything he said till the end, but now I kind of question exactly where he's coming from and what his agenda is... Z ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
BS - was Re: [biofuel] Thought Provoking Book Review
Motie, if you don't mind, this is total BS. Ronald Bailey, FCOL! When it comes to sheer hard facts, Mr Bailey, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Reason Magazine are right up there with Denis Avery, Michael Fumento, Bjorn Lomborg and, indeed, the one and only David Pimentel - hooray for these torch-bearers of perverted truth, talented liars one and all who would save us from ourselves! Sheesh! The Competitive Enterprise Institute 'postures as an advocate of sound science in the development of public policy. In fact, it is an ideologically-driven, well-funded front for corporations opposed to safety and environmental regulations that affect the way they do business.' Simply that, spinners one and all, very much including Mr Bailey: Ronald Bailey (1993) is the author of a 1993 book titled Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse and a contributing editor to Reason magazine. In 1995, CEI published a book edited by Bailey titled The True State of the Planet, written to counter to the Worldwatch Institute's influential annual State of the World reports. Contributors to The True State of the Planet included a who's-who of the libertarian right: Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, Terry L. Anderson of the Political Economy Research Center, Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, Kent Jeffreys of the Heritage foundation, Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute. http://www.prwatch.org/improp/cei.html Competitive Enterprise Institute Impropaganda Review - A Rogue's Gallery of Industry Front Groups and Anti-Environmental Think Tanks (Center for Media Democracy) Organic farming could kill billions of people, wrote Mr Bailey in an article titled Organic Alchemy in Reason Magazine (June 5, 2002). Ho-hum. On the other hand, his co-author in this Thought Provoking Book, Norman Borlaug, is accused of doing just that, with some reason. Other chapters recount the DDT charade, including the ongoing costs in human life resulting from its ban; the illogical debate over energy supplies and alternative sources; the widespread acceptance of the Precautionary Principle, whose main object is to stop the development of the human race. Stop the rampant development of the corporate bottom-line maybe, at the expense of everything else, including the planet. DDT is essential to controlling the spread of malaria - BS. (One reason malaria's spreading is the spreading of the effects of global warming - not BS.) Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution? He still has some semblance of credibility outside of the Monsanto boardroom? Amazing. All the usual suspects. Hey, guys, we're all being illogical with this childish nonsense over biodiesel and so on - Love Big Oil! And all will be well. Trust me. Er, Motie, you were joking, right? Try this instead: #737 - Environmental Trends -- Part 1, 11-08-01 http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/bulletin.cfm?Issue_ID=2114bulletin_ID=48 #738 - Environmental Trends -- Part 2, 11-22-01 http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/bulletin.cfm?Issue_ID=2116bulletin_ID=48 Please, no more Mr Bailey, nor Messrs Avery, Lomborg, etc. Best Keith Mommy, There's A Monster Under My Bed! (A Review Of Global Warming And Other Eco-Myths) Beginning with the publication of Silent Spring, the environmental movement has become progressively disconnected from science and more rigidly defined by a utopian ideology. Based primarily on exaggerations, distortions, and a willful neglect of valid scientific data that runs contrary to their preaching's, the movement continues to advance an agenda that, while posing as society's savior, condemns millions to poverty and disease. Aided by contemporary press- release journalism and the want-it-to-be-true attitudes on the part of those reporting the stories, their claims go unchallenged, becoming part of the conventional wisdom. But information about the true state of the world environment is available; it's just difficult for to find among the hysteria. Fortunately, Ronald Bailey, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is trying to change that. As the editor of the recently published Global Warming and Other Eco- Myths, Mr. Bailey has assembled a group of the most respected researchers in their respective fields to explain the truth in their areas of interest. The list of contributors includes, among others, Dr. John R. Christy, Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and Lead Author of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Global Warming]; Dr. Norman Borlaug, Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture at Texas AM and the driving force behind the Green Revolution [Biotechnology]; Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies [Population and Resources]; Dr. C. S. Prakash, Director of the Center for Plant Biotechnology Research, Tuskegee University, Alabama [Genetically modified plants]. Along
More BS - Re: [biofuel] Forest Fights
I'm terribly pressed for time, but thought this may be of interest. A minor correction to Hakan. I live in a National Forest, not a National Park. http://www.reason.com/rb/rb121802.shtml Best, Motie ... by Ronald Bailey, Reason's science correspondent, is the editor of Global Warming and Other Eco Myths (Prima Publishing) and Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet(McGraw-Hill). We talked about him before, remember? When you posted this: Mommy, There's A Monster Under My Bed! (A Review Of Global Warming And Other Eco-Myths) (Thought Provoking Book Review). Wise Use, stuff, radical right anti-environment lobby, corporate-funded but claims to be independent, closely linked with all the others and their astroturf groups and so on. There were some responses, to which you replied (below). Ramjee said this: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote Mommy, There's A Monster Under My Bed! (A Review Of Global Warming And Other Eco-Myths) snip Probably the subject line should have read 'provocative book review!' ;-) I guess, an Indian edition/context of the book would include a lengthy chapter on greed (oops, green) revolution by that illustrious agri scientist of India called MS Swaminathan, who is the Norman Borlaug's equivalent in India. The cutest thing is that this scientist has now started talking about 'sustainable' farming etc - probably because, this would get suffient funding, in these days of enlightened benefactors! Anyway, a few quotes that I harvested are in order here: Do not become archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them. -- Ivan Pavlov It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them. -- Caron de Beaumarchais So Motie, please forgive Ron Bailey - he knows naught what he is doing. ;-) Thor said this: I have read sections of similar publications by Bailey before. There is some useful information therein, and undoubtedly it is always good to hear a different opinion. But my impression, after going through the contents posted at http://www.nrbookservice.com/bookpage.asp?prod_cd=C5961 is that this publication is largely greenwash, as is most of what the CEI puts out. I don't care what experts Bailey has lined up. You can always find an expert who disagrees with other experts. What is important is that CEI has a strong ideological grounding, that has nothing itself to do with science. They believe in free markets and limited government. They pick and choose science to suit their point of view, not in any quest for objective truth. Two examples from CEI's The Environmental Source 2002 at http://www.cei.org/gencon/026,01623.cfm 1. on energy policy: CAFE does not reduce gasoline consumption. enough said 2. the section on Agricultural Biotechnology looks as if it has been written by Monsanto. Talk about shoddy science and lack of empirical grounding. It dismisses legitimate ecological concerns (laregely by not mentioning them) about the potential consequences of introducing GMOs into the environment. It claims that labeling of GMO foods will raise the cost of food for poor people--by how much they don't say, and they don't mention that it won't raise the cost of food that DOESN'T contain GMOs. and on and on What is remarkable about CEI's work is that, although they extoll the free market, they say nothing about the role played by corporations (e.g. large market actors) in influencing public policy and regulation. You'd think the only ones out there doing lobbying were misguided environmental organizations and activist groups. Also, they selectively promote consumer welfare; that is, they support the purported desire of consumers to have the lowest priced goods no matter what the ecological, ethical, human rights, or economic impacts of the production, distribution, or consumption of those products, but they generally oppose consumer education and choice through labeling and certification, or anything else that would expose these impacts or reflect them in pricing. In short, it's largely a load of crap, but nevertheless probably an interesting read in parts. best to all, thor skov I said this: Motie, if you don't mind, this is total BS. Ronald Bailey, FCOL! When it comes to sheer hard facts, Mr Bailey, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Reason Magazine are right up there with Denis Avery, Michael Fumento, Bjorn Lomborg and, indeed, the one and only David Pimentel - hooray for these torch-bearers of perverted truth, talented liars one and all who would save us from ourselves! Sheesh! The Competitive Enterprise Institute 'postures as an advocate of sound science in the development of public policy. In fact, it is an ideologically-driven, well-funded front for corporations opposed to safety and environmental regulations that affect the way they do business.' Simply that, spinners one and all, very much including Mr Bailey: Ronald Bailey (1993
[Biofuel] Climate change sceptics bet $10,000 on cooler world
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1552092,00.html Climate change sceptics bet $10,000 on cooler world Russian pair challenge UK expert over global warming David Adam, science correspondent Friday August 19, 2005 The Guardian Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade. The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan. The pair, based in Irkutsk, at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, believe that global temperatures are driven more by changes in the sun's activity than by the emission of greenhouse gases. They say the Earth warms and cools in response to changes in the number and size of sunspots. Most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea, but as the sun is expected to enter a less active phase over the next few decades the Russian duo are confident they will see a drop in global temperatures. Dr Annan, who works on the Japanese Earth Simulator supercomputer, in Yokohama, said: There isn't much money in climate science and I'm still looking for that gold watch at retirement. A pay-off would be a nice top-up to my pension. To decide who wins the bet, the scientists have agreed to compare the average global surface temperature recorded by a US climate centre between 1998 and 2003, with temperatures they will record between 2012 and 2017. If the temperature drops Dr Annan will stump up the $10,000 (now equivalent to about £5,800) in 2018. If the Earth continues to warm, the money will go the other way. The bet is the latest in an increasingly popular field of scientific wagers, and comes after a string of climate change sceptics have refused challenges to back their controversial ideas with cash. Dr Annan first challenged Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is dubious about the extent of human activity influencing the climate. Professor Lindzen had been willing to bet that global temperatures would drop over the next 20 years. No bet was agreed on that; Dr Annan said Prof Lindzen wanted odds of 50-1 against falling temperatures, so would win $10,000 if the Earth cooled but pay out only £200 if it warmed. Seven other prominent climate change sceptics also failed to agree betting terms. In May, during BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the environmental activist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot challenged Myron Ebell, a climate sceptic at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in Washington DC, to a £5,000 bet. Mr Ebell declined, saying he had four children to put through university and did not want to take risks. Most climate change sceptics dispute the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which suggest that human activity will drive global temperatures up by between 1.4C and 5.8C by the end of the century. Others, such as the Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, argue that, although global warming is real, there is little we can do to prevent it and that we would be better off trying to adapt to living in an altered climate. Dr Annan said bets like the one he made with the Russian sceptics are one way to confront the ideas. He also suggests setting up a financial-style futures market to allow those with critical stakes in the outcome of climate change to gamble on predictions and hedge against future risk. Betting on sea level rise would have a very real relevance to Pacific islanders, he said. By betting on rapid sea-level rise, they would either be able to stay in their homes at the cost of losing the bet if sea level rise was slow, or would win the bet and have money to pay for sea defences or relocation if sea level rise was rapid. Similar agricultural commodity markets already allow farmers to hedge against bad weather that ruins harvests. ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [biofuel] Food for thought
You guys need to read The New Thought Police by Tammy Bruce. You guys ain't seen nothing yet! Jonathan Fairbanks East Tawas, MI Uh... The left control the media and are working towards the downfall of America, etc etc, according to Ms Bruce. What a joke. Rupert Murdoch, eg, well-known left-wing pinko running-dog - damn, he's virtually an (AARGGHHH!) Socialist! Or maybe he's just too dumb to notice that his journalists are working against his interests all the time, or he doesn't really mind because he's such a sweet old uncle. Take him out and have him shot, Tammy Bruce, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh et al can pass a hat round to pay for the bullets. Ms Bruce and her book are a bizarre load of hysterical BS. I suppose you believe Ronald Bailey and Steve Milloy too. From Lomborg to Limbaugh, sheesh, it does nothing to raise the tone of the place, mumble mumble... Behind these particular scenes one finds lurking the likes of L. Brent Bozell III and his far-rightwing Media Research Center, Inc., funded to the tune of $15 million a year by right-wing foundations like the Scaife, Bradley, Olin and Donner foundations, various corporations and wealthy Republican donors, all the usual suspects, and Bozell himself gets a quarter-million a year. I guess they get their money's worth. On the MRC advisory boards are well-known bias-free figures such as Elliot Abrams, Mona Charen, Pete DuPont, Rush Limbaugh. The MRC sends e-mail alerts throughout the day to its list of over 11,000 followers who can then rain complaints onto ABC, NBC, CBS and other media that aren't toeing the correct line on Iraq and other issues, along with the constant cant of left-wing media bias. The bothering thing is that people believe it, fact-free foundations regardless. I think *you* need to read Trudy Lieberman's Slanting the Story: the Forces that Shape the News (The New Press, 2000), on the enormous influence right-wing think tanks like The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis etc have over government policy, yet their activities go unscrutinized and underreported. No doubt because of all that left-wing media bias, yes, that must be the reason. Book Excerpt Slanting the Story, Part 1 - Black Holes Of Power http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4155 Book Excerpt Slanting the Story, Part 2 - Ralph Nader And The Right http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4156 Book Excerpt Slanting the Story, Part 3 - Courting The Press http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4192 Book Excerpt Slanting the Story, Part 4 - Clubbing The Press http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4219 Book Excerpt Slanting the Story, Part 5 - Advancing A Cause: Remaking Medicare http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4248 Keith --- csakima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I feel the same way about this social pressure. Almost as if it's (the pressure) being used as (quite an effective) substitute for the secret police used to keep the dissenters quiet. Who needs the secret police ... when Aunt Meg, Uncle Fred and Cousin Jim will just as effectively do the job for free?? Curtis Get your free newsletter at http://www.ezinfocenter.com/3122155/NL - Original Message - From: robert luis rabello [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's sad, really, that in a country of supposedly free people, I find an inordinate amount of social pressure to keep silent about my dissent. The fact that I don't is, in my view, the mark of an individual raised in a free country. There seem to be very few people questioning the American political leadership these days. That seems a dangerous thing. . . Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[Biofuel] Greenhouse effect 'may benefit man'
Climate change is 'a myth,' sea levels are not rising and Britain's chief scientist is 'an embarrassment' for believing catastrophe is inevitable. These are the controversial views of a new London-based think-tank, the International Policy Network. IPN's latest report claims that the science warning of an environmental disaster caused by climate change is 'fatally flawed,' while global warming benefits include increasing fish stocks in the north Atlantic. IPN has received funding from ExxonMobil, which list[ed] the donation as part of its 'climate change outreach.' Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace compared IPN's work to when tobacco companies blocked action on smoking by sowing doubt about the science. SOURCE: Guardian, November 28, 2004 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1361276,00.html The Observer | International | Greenhouse effect 'may benefit man' Claims by pro-Bush think-tank outrage eco-groups Antony Barnett and Mark Townsend Sunday November 28, 2004 The Observer Climate change is 'a myth', sea levels are not rising and Britain's chief scientist is 'an embarrassment' for believing catastrophe is inevitable. These are the controversial views of a new London-based think-tank that will publish a report tomorrow attacking the apocalyptic view that man-made greenhouse gases will destroy the planet. The International Policy Network will publish its long-awaited study, claiming that the science warning of an environmental disaster caused by climate change is 'fatally flawed'. It will state that previous predictions of changes in sea level of a metre over the next 100 years were overestimates. Instead, the report will say that sea level rises will reach a maximum of just 20cms during the next century, adding that global warming could, in fact, benefit mankind by increasing fish stocks. The report's views closely mirror those held by many of President George Bush's senior advisers, who have been accused of derailing attempts to reach international agreement over how to prevent climate change. The report is set to cause controversy. The network, which has links with some of the President's advisers, has received cash donations from the US oil giant ExxonMobil, which has long lobbied against the climate change agenda. Exxon lists the donation as part of its 'climate change outreach' programme. Environmentalists yesterday said the network report was an attempt by American neo-conservatives to sabotage the Prime Minister's attempts to lead the world in tackling climate change. Last week, the network's director Julian Morris attacked Britain's highly respected chief scientist. 'David King is an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country.' He criticised preparations by Tony Blair to use his presidency of the world's most powerful nations next year to lead attempts in tackling climate change. Morris described Blair's plans to use his G8 tenure to halt global warming as 'offensive'. Bush is understood to have objected to Blair placing the issue at the top of the agenda and to the robust tone of his recent speeches on climate change. Blair, however, has garnered considerable international support for describing the issue as 'the single, biggest long-term issue' facing the world. According to the network, however, his passion on the matter is not shared by the British public. A poll it commissioned claims six out of 10 Britons believe Blair should not implement the Kyoto protocol if it will harm the economy. The executive director of the environment group Greenpeace, Stephen Tindale, said: 'We've been watching how the network employs the same tactics as Washington neo-cons, now we know they employ some of the same people as well. 'For years, the tobacco companies blocked action on smoking by sowing doubt about the science. Esso and its friends have done the same thing in the US on climate change and now they're busy in Britain. Global warming is the biggest threat we face, the science is certain.' Environmentalists believe this week's report will provoke a similar storm to that inspired by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who maintains climate change is not the greatest threat facing mankind and resources should be spent on more pressing issues, such as tackling HIV. Tomorrow's findings echo a number of Lomborg's themes, as well as maintaining that 'extreme weather' is more likely caused by a natural cycle rather than man-made. It also challenges assumptions that climate change will lead to a rise in malaria along with more positive effects, such as increasing fish stocks in the north Atlantic and reducing the incidence of temperature-related deaths among vulnerable people. Morris admitted receiving money from a number of companies, including $50,000 from Exxon, but denied the organisation was a front for neo-conservative opinion. 'I have written about these issues for many years
RE: [biofuel] FWIW: Spectator (UK) Article Prepare for the Big Chill
Thankyou Kirk, that's just what we needed. That gives us a clear comparison between sincere doubt and mere denial. There's more to denial (or less), or surely the deniers would also see the precautionary principle as proper and prudent, as you do. But I've never seen them doing that - instead they usually want their doubts to serve as a reason (?) to stop all further investigation, which defies all logic. The debating style, so to speak, is usually pretty much the same. They claim to invite open discussion but what you get is a choice between capitulation and revilement. If you reject that then they usually say you're attacking them for their views. It's either benighted or less than forthright, IMO. Whatever, it's not sincere doubt. Questioners, doubters, sceptics, are vital to crucial issues such as these, deniers - naysayers - contribute nothing but confusion and discord. Lomborg is a good example - The Sceptical Environmentalist indeed. He's not a sceptic, he's a spin merchant. Well, I've said it before, I'm still a doubter, I think you have to be, the court's still out - in fact the jury hasn't even left the room yet, the case is still being presented, with quite some distance to go. I do accept ozone layer damage and CFC's role, though I'm sure there's more to come. I also accept climate change, and human cause, I'm persuaded by the case for global warming but not yet convinced. There's certainly global warming but it's not yet certain what the outcome will be - probably a lot more global warming. What I'm completely convinced by is the case for the precautionary principle, now long overdue, IMO. Should have been 10 years ago, at least. The Kyoto Protocol is better than nothing, but it certainly isn't due precaution. It's a start. Regards Keith It appears that most public information is of one camp or the other. The Spectator article is a classic example of spin and misinformation. Lest anyone wish to now place me firmly in the other camp let me go on record as stating it is my considered opinion that the CFC ban was political and made lots of bucks for duPont (Bronfman) and Imperial Chemical. It also killed lots of 3rd worlders who could not afford to replace equipment instead of much less expensive repairs and thus lost refrigeration facilities for vaccine and other products let alone foodstuffs. HOWEVER!!! The ban on CFC products was proper and prudent. If you have doubt -- and you have an alternative-- you should employ the alternative. The lost facilities in the 3rd world should have been part of the cost of changeover. Not nice to take money from the poor and then declare their investment obsolete. Likewise, in the absence of definitive CO2 proof, why should we take the risk? We should be concentrating on solar thermal, wind, tidal, wave and what have you. Especially we should be concentrating on distributed generation. Cogeneration can double efficiency of installations yet we act as though we are unaware of it. Biodiesel cogeneration is a natural for a farm. Nukes are a big money maker for some few people. Even if benign--and they are far from it-- they are socially inferior because they are part of the centralised paradigm of big business. As for the nuke data it is too good. I think they claim 600 reactor years of operation and not one fatality. In the real world someone would have slipped on a wet spot in the hall or stepped on a dropped pencil and cracked their skull by now. Statistics that seem too good to be true usually are. Kirk -Original Message- From: Christopher Witmer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 6:37 AM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: [biofuel] FWIW: Spectator (UK) Article Prepare for the Big Chill Cover story from The Spectator: Prepare for the big chill A new ice age is due now, says Andrew Kenny, but you won't hear it from the Greens, who like to play on Western guilt about consumerism to make us believe in global warming http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=oldsection=currentissue=2002 -06-22id=1977 It seems like too long an article to reasonably request point-by-point interaction, but I'd like to hear people's opinions on 1) what are the article's weakest points, and 2) if any, what are the article's redeeming or strongest points (in other words, do you feel the author has any valid points?) -- Chris Witmer Tokyo Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Bush attacks environment 'scare stories' - Secret email gives advice on denying climate change
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1185292,00.html The Observer | International Bush attacks environment 'scare stories' Secret email gives advice on denying climate change Antony Barnett in New York Sunday April 4, 2004 The Observer George W. Bush's campaign workers have hit on an age-old political tactic to deal with the tricky subject of global warming - deny, and deny aggressively. The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy. It tells them how global warming has not been proved, air quality is 'getting better', the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are 'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is cleaner and reaching more people'. The email - sent on 4 February - warns that Democrats will 'hit us hard' on the environment. 'In an effort to help your members fight back, as well as be aggressive on the issue, we have prepared the following set of talking points on where the environment really stands today,' it states. The memo - headed 'From medi-scare to air-scare' - goes on: 'From the heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment - Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming Doomsday! when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.' Among the memo's assertions are 'global warming is not a fact', 'links between air quality and asthma in children remain cloudy', and the US Environment Protection Agency is exaggerating when it says that at least 40 per cent of streams, rivers and lakes are too polluted for drinking, fishing or swimming. It gives a list of alleged facts taken from contentious sources. For instance, to back its claim that air quality is improving it cites a report from Pacific Research Institute - an organisation that has received $130,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998. The memo also lifts details from the controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. On the Republicans' claims that deforestation is not a problem, it states: 'About a third of the world is still covered with forests, a level not changed much since World War II. The world's demand for paper can be permanently satisfied by the growth of trees in just five per cent of the world's forests.' The memo's main source for the denial of global warming is Richard Lindzen, a climate-sceptic scientist who has consistently taken money from the fossil fuel industry. His opinion differs substantially from most climate scientists, who say that climate change is happening. But probably the most influential voice behind the memo is Frank Luntz, a Republican Party strategist. In a leaked 2002 memo, Luntz said: 'The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.' Luntz has been roundly criticised in Europe. Last month Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, attacked him for being too close to Exxon. Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace condemned the messages given in the Republican email. He said: 'Bush's spin doctors have been taking their brief from dodgy scientists with an Alice in Wonderland view of the world's environment. They want us to think the air is getting cleaner and that global warming is a myth. This memo shows it is Exxon Mobil driving US policy, when it should be sound science.' The memo has met some resistance from Republican moderates. Republican Mike Castle, who heads a group of 69 moderate House members, senators and governors, says the strategy doesn't address the fact that pollution continues to be a health threat. 'If I tried to follow these talking points at a town hall meeting with my constituents, I'd be booed.' Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords, who left the Republican Party in 2001 to become an independent partly over its anti-green agenda, called the memo 'outlandish' and an attempt to deceive voters. 'They have a head-in-the-sand approach to it. They're just sloughing off the human health impacts - the premature deaths and asthma attacks caused by power plant pollution,' Jeffords said. Republican House Conference director Greg Cist, who sent the email, said: 'It's up to our members if they want to use it or not. We're not stuffing it down their throats.' He said the memo was spurred by concerns that environmental groups were using myths to try to make the Republicans look bad. 'We wanted to show how the environment has been improving,' Cist said. 'We wanted to provide the other side of the story.' Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Buy Ink Cartridges
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Well, Mr Witmer It's not often that a person has both Gary North and Bjorn Lomborg quoted at him in the same day. If you and them make three straight saws, I'll be fully confident in cutting a dead straight line with my allegedly bent one. No, it's not something akin to a religious confrontation, not by any means. That would simply be the last resort of someone who's been confronted with contrary evidence and been unable to produce any of his own, abandoning his points along the way as they became untenable, pretending they never existed in the first place, and finally being left without a leg to stand on, and hence this retreat into an essentially non-rational arena, hoping to find safety there. It's just cant. As is the stuff below about science. Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter of business. We've had quite a few discussions about what this list's main matter of business is, and here's the answer: whatever we like. Who says so? I do. And with good reason, which, if you care to, you'll find very rationally outlined in the archives, sans religion, sans politics, and several times. What it all comes down to, in this case, is that you flung about quite a few unwarranted opinionations that you were unable to support when challenged, any more than you'd be able to support those above. But at least now you don't even claim that they're anything but opinions. I'm afraid you don't demonstrate much knowledge of the history of thought or the philosophy of science, nor of the current status of either of them. You can pin your Malthus, Marx and Freud labels on someone else, if you please, though I'll admit one of my favourite books is Darwin. Not the one you're thinking of though: it's called The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits. It was his favourite too, and it might surprise you. As for the ideological cow patties littering the field, those are all yours. I've stuck to information and data, I can back up anything I've said with a lot more information and data, and I'm not selective about it. You've presented no credible information or data, just ideology. Cowpats, if you will, and I'd agree - everyone's entitled to their opinions, but as I said, this isn't your village pub, and if you insist on airing here what are really barely disguised
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Well said Keith, this guys numbers are totally out of whack. They are so far from correct, that I suspect that Christoper is a paid propaganda writer. His words sound very much like someone who is involved in the black ops profession. It seems like every list that is set up to do some public good is infected with these folks who just keep causing friction. I sure wish these know-it-all creeps who offer nothing but opinion yet demand proof, would get their own damn list. kris --- Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, Mr Witmer It's not often that a person has both Gary North and Bjorn Lomborg quoted at him in the same day. If you and them make three straight saws, I'll be fully confident in cutting a dead straight line with my allegedly bent one. No, it's not something akin to a religious confrontation, not by any means. That would simply be the last resort of someone who's been confronted with contrary evidence and been unable to produce any of his own, abandoning his points along the way as they became untenable, pretending they never existed in the first place, and finally being left without a leg to stand on, and hence this retreat into an essentially non-rational arena, hoping to find safety there. It's just cant. As is the stuff below about science. Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter of business. We've had quite a few discussions about what this list's main matter of business is, and here's the answer: whatever we like. Who says so? I do. And with good reason, which, if you care to, you'll find very rationally outlined in the archives, sans religion, sans politics, and several times. What it all comes down to, in this case, is that you flung about quite a few unwarranted opinionations that you were unable to support when challenged, any more than you'd be able to support those above. But at least now you don't even claim that they're anything but opinions. I'm afraid you don't demonstrate much knowledge of the history of thought or the philosophy of science, nor of the current status of either of them. You can pin your Malthus, Marx and Freud labels on someone else, if you please, though I'll admit one of my favourite books is Darwin. Not the one you're
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
There's quite a bit of detailed disussion of Lomborg's book at the Scientific American site below: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0B96-9517-1CDA-B4A8809EC588EEDFp ageNumber=1catID=4 Well said Keith, this guys numbers are totally out of whack. They are so far from correct, that I suspect that Christoper is a paid propaganda writer. His words sound very much like someone who is involved in the black ops profession. It seems like every list that is set up to do some public good is infected with these folks who just keep causing friction. I sure wish these know-it-all creeps who offer nothing but opinion yet demand proof, would get their own damn list. kris --- Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, Mr Witmer It's not often that a person has both Gary North and Bjorn Lomborg quoted at him in the same day. If you and them make three straight saws, I'll be fully confident in cutting a dead straight line with my allegedly bent one. No, it's not something akin to a religious confrontation, not by any means. That would simply be the last resort of someone who's been confronted with contrary evidence and been unable to produce any of his own, abandoning his points along the way as they became untenable, pretending they never existed in the first place, and finally being left without a leg to stand on, and hence this retreat into an essentially non-rational arena, hoping to find safety there. It's just cant. As is the stuff below about science. Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter of business. We've had quite a few discussions about what this list's main matter of business is, and here's the answer: whatever we like. Who says so? I do. And with good reason, which, if you care to, you'll find very rationally outlined in the archives, sans religion, sans politics, and several times. What it all comes down to, in this case, is that you flung about quite a few unwarranted opinionations that you were unable to support when challenged, any more than you'd be able to support those above. But at least now you don't even claim that they're anything but opinions. I'm afraid you don't demonstrate much knowledge of the history of thought or the philosophy of science, nor of the current status of either
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa
Correct. And as others have taken such great pains to debunk psuedo-science http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00040A72-A95C-1CDA-B4A 8809EC588EEDF why should anyone take equal or greater pains here? At least not since the rebuttal was thorough and principally accurate. I'm afraid Mr. Witmer is not much more than a lost looking for a cause. Todd Swearingen - Original Message - From: Olga Lange [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 5:46 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa There's quite a bit of detailed disussion of Lomborg's book at the Scientific American site below: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0B96-9517-1CDA-B4A 8809EC588EEDFp ageNumber=1catID=4 Well said Keith, this guys numbers are totally out of whack. They are so far from correct, that I suspect that Christoper is a paid propaganda writer. His words sound very much like someone who is involved in the black ops profession. It seems like every list that is set up to do some public good is infected with these folks who just keep causing friction. I sure wish these know-it-all creeps who offer nothing but opinion yet demand proof, would get their own damn list. kris --- Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, Mr Witmer It's not often that a person has both Gary North and Bjorn Lomborg quoted at him in the same day. If you and them make three straight saws, I'll be fully confident in cutting a dead straight line with my allegedly bent one. No, it's not something akin to a religious confrontation, not by any means. That would simply be the last resort of someone who's been confronted with contrary evidence and been unable to produce any of his own, abandoning his points along the way as they became untenable, pretending they never existed in the first place, and finally being left without a leg to stand on, and hence this retreat into an essentially non-rational arena, hoping to find safety there. It's just cant. As is the stuff below about science. Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter
[Biofuel] Expertise on climate is a terrible thing to waste
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/print/eo20121130a1.html Expertise on climate is a terrible thing to waste By KEVIN RAFFERTY Special to The Japan Times The Japan Times: Friday, Nov. 30, 2012 HONG KONG - Doha, the capital of the oil state of Qatar, might be regarded as the most appropriate host for the climate change talks that have started, given that it is a living, breathing testament to the oil and gas-guzzling modern economy. It offers up free electricity, traffic jams of SUVs and a profusion of steel and glass high-rise buildings that have tamed the 40-to-50-degree (Celsius) heat into comfortable air-conditioned bliss. In consequence, Qatar is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases per person, more than twice those of the United States. But the government has no plans to take action on climate change. Is it a savage irony or just a sad joke that the latest attempt to reach an international agreement to curb the greenhouse gases that threaten the future of fragile planet Earth have opened there? Delegates from 194 countries plus armies of experts from the United Nations and its agencies have started two weeks of creating a lot more hot air and trying to find a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was stillborn because the U.S. refused to ratify it after signing it. The best hope is that Doha will be a steppingstone on the way to a new climate change treaty, which will be agreed by 2015 but will not come into force until 2020. However, skeptics are unsure whether even this leisurely pace toward an agreement can be achieved. Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the U.N. climate convention, admits that We are far behind our targets in every single report. Nevertheless, she is hoping that, in Doha, possible institutional arrangements for a deal will be put in place. She has already prepared optimistic closing remarks for the Doha meeting. She told The New York Times: I'm going to say, 'This is another firm step in the right direction, but the path is still a long road ahead.' If this is the best case, the world is in big trouble. It is. Time is running out. Time has already run out. All of the best scientific research is pointing in the same direction - that world leaders are doomed to failure when it comes restricting the rise in Earth's temperatures to 2 degrees above pre-Industrial levels. The United Nations has noted that greenhouse gas emissions are 14 percent higher than they should be if the world is to keep the temperature rise to 2 degrees. The World Meteorological Organization has reported that greenhouse gases have reached a record 394 parts per million, way above the 280 ppm of the pre-industrial era, and is rising rapidly from the 389 levels of 2010. The uncomfortable fact is that human beings are spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than at any time in the past 55 million years. The World Bank this month warned that the world is on track to be 4 degrees higher, and some scientists claim that the temperature rise may even reach 6 degrees. The consequence is not merely that the Earth will become unbearably hot. The rise in sea waters will mean that some cities and countries may be swamped; others will have to live with the possibility of regular storm surges reaching several meters high. It is not merely writing on the wall. There have already been savage visitations from Nature. This year has seen huge floods in China, India, Australia and Nigeria, while the United Kingdom had drought in the spring and is now suffering flooding. Even the skeptical U.S. has seen its hottest year on record and blistered crops. The final stages of the U.S. election campaign were interrupted by super Hurricane Sandy, which wreaked damage worth an estimated $40 billion. Bloomberg Businessweek heralded the storm with a cover picture of floods and a bold headline that yelled, It's Global Warming, Stupid! But American politicians are wrapped up in immediate issues. They rushed to give succor and aid for victims of Sandy - and President Barack Obama drew plaudits from the Republican governor of New Jersey for his promptness and energy - but promises to do something about global warming or the threat to the Earth were missing from the election campaign. At the global level, leaders are pussyfooting around. Even if they can achieve agreement on a new protocol and implement it immediately by 2015 - which is not on the agenda - it will almost certainly prove too little and too late. Critic Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish academic and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center who was named as one of the world's top 100 thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, makes an important point in claiming that An extremely optimistic Doha climate outcome could cost half a trillion dollars a year, with benefits of only three cents on the dollar. More controversially, he asserts that a successful
[Biofuel] The great biofuels scandal - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/biofuels/10520736/The-great-biofuels-scandal.html The great biofuels scandal Biofuels are inefficient, cause hunger and air pollution, and cost taxpayers billions By Bjørn Lomborg 7:23PM GMT 16 Dec 2013 Last week, the EU missed an opportunity to end the most wasteful green programme of our time – one which costs billions of pounds annually and causes at least 30 million people to go hungry every year. By failing to agree a cap on the use of biofuels, the Council of Ministers has given tacit support for a technology that is bad for both taxpayer and environment. Legislation will now be delayed until 2015. The biofuel story is a perfect example of good intentions leading to terrible outcomes. Moreover, it is a lesson on how powerful, pseudo-green vested interests can sustain a bad policy. Hopefully, it will also be a story of how reason can prevail in the divisive climate debate. Greens initially championed biofuels as a weapon against global warming, claiming they would emit much less CO2 than fossil alternatives. As plants soak up CO2 while growing, the subsequent combustion simply releases the CO2 back into the air, resulting in zero net emissions. But the dream has become a nightmare, as environmentalists turn against it. Even Al Gore claims biofuels are a “mistake”. Studies show that as land is dedicated to energy crops, land for food is simply taken from other areas – often forests – leading to substantial CO2 emissions. And processing biofuels emits CO2, drastically reducing benefits. In the EU, crop-based biofuels have replaced 5 per cent of fuel used in transport. If the biofuels were emission-free, that would reduce emissions by 5 per cent – totalling about 59 million tons (Mt) of CO2 each year by 2020. But a 2013 study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development shows that deforestation, fertilisers and fossil fuels used in the production of biofuels would emit about 54Mt of CO2. A full 92 per cent of the carbon dioxide “saved” is just emitted elsewhere. For biodiesel alone, the net effect would likely be an increase in emissions. Thus the total EU savings would be a minuscule 5Mt, or about one-tenth of one per cent of total European emissions. Even over a century, the effect of these savings would be trivial. When run in a standard climate model, EU biofuel use will postpone global temperature rises by 2100 by just 58 hours. And the cost to taxpayers is some £6 billion a year; each ton of CO2 avoided costs about £1,200. The EU’s “cap and trade” system is estimated to cost less than £4 for each ton avoided – so we pay almost 300 times too much. Moreover, the best economic estimates suggest that cutting a ton of CO2 emissions saves the world about £4 in environmental damage. So for each pound spent on biofuels, we avoid about a quarter of one penny of climate damage –an extremely inefficient way to help the world. Sadly, this will get even worse. Originally, the EU wanted almost the full 10 per cent renewable-energy target for transport to come from biofuels by 2020, a doubling of today’s figure. Now that everyone is having second thoughts, the proposal is to reduce this to 7 per cent. But the Council of Ministers’ failure to implement even this modest reduction leaves us back at 10 per cent, which could double the cost for EU taxpayers to about €13.8 billion per year. Getting 10 per cent of transport fuel from plants would reduce the EU emissions by a tiny 9Mt, and increase the cost of each ton of CO2 cut to more than £1,260. The net effect to temperatures by the end of the century will be just 0.00025C. Crucially, the huge expense and tiny benefit is only a small part of what is wrong with biofuels. In almost all aspects, they are a disaster. Current EU biofuels take up an area of European farmland larger than the size of Belgium, and a similar area is used internationally for European imports. The biofuel farmland in Europe uses as much water as the rivers Seine and Elbe combined. Moreover, farmers use fast-growing trees like poplar, willow and eucalyptus for biofuels. Unfortunately, these trees emit a chemical called isoprene, an air pollutant which can affect human health. A study by Lancaster University shows that increasing the crop fields to meet the EU’s 10 per cent target will increase air pollution, cause an extra 1,400 deaths, and cost £5.2 billion annually. But most importantly, in moral terms, is the fact that using land to grow fuel rather than food is an abomination in a world where almost a billion people still go hungry. It is estimated that European biofuels now take up enough land to feed 100 million people, and the United States’s programme takes up even more. Although biofuels are not the only reason for the price increases in food over the past years, they certainly play a large part. It is hard for poor people to buy food when
[Biofuel] The Anti-Climate Summit
industrial countries has not been insignificant. Japan and Canada, for instance, have retreated from their previous support for a regime of mandatory reductions and saved Washington from total isolation in the negotiations. The European Union, while it continues to support a mandatory regime, does not appear to be willing to support the cuts of up to 80-90% by 2050 that are necessary to prevent irreversible large-scale climate change. In terms of its approach to reducing carbon emissions, the EU, like the United States, has increasingly given a central role to the corporate-friendly market approach of carbon trading. On the critical issue of providing the South with assistance for technology and adaptation, the EU, again like United States, prefers to channel the relatively little money it has so far been willing to commit not through institutional mechanisms set up under UN auspices but through those established by the World Bank, such as the Bank's Climate Investment Funds. The reason is simple: the North controls the World Bank. Most importantly, like the United States and Japan, the European governments continue to hang on to the position that economic growth can be decoupled from energy use. In other words, they think they can maintain current European consumption levels and only have to achieve the more efficient use of energy and replace oil with other energy sources. Thus, the EU has preferred to lull Europeans with panaceas. Brussels has championed biofuels, though its enthusiasm has been dampened somewhat by the increasingly evident negative impact of biofuels on global agricultural production. It has also increasingly come out in support of hard energy alternatives, such as mega-dams and carbon sequestration and storage technology, and has also reopened the discussion on nuclear energy. A Painless Transition? The focus on techno-fixes is not limited to the political and economic elites of the North but is shared by key members of its intellectual elite. I'm not talking about people like the Danish climate skeptic Bjorn Lomborg but influential opinion-makers like Jeffrey Sachs, who has attempted to transform himself from the author of economic shock therapy in Eastern Europe to a progressive partisan of the struggles to end poverty and to fight global warming. In his latest book Common Wealth, Sachs' message is that technology can make the transition to a clean Green world a relatively painless one, with no major lifestyle change in the North and no change in the high-growth development paradigm in the South. Rather than focusing, as some environmentalists do, on reducing the income and consumption of the rich world, he asserts, we should focus much more on raising thesustainability of the world's technologies. For Sachs, the key technology is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) which will allow the world to continue to use low cost fossil fuels such as coal in a manner that does not wreck the climate. With what can only be described as childlike techno-enthusiasm, Sachs says, air capture would allow humanity to reverse a previous rise of CO2 by capturing and sequestering more carbon dioxide than is being emitted in any period! Put differently, the best that can be achieved at a power plant is to stop new emissions. With air capture, we could put into reverse what we've done up to this point. That this technology is at least 20 years away from being a practical technology and comes with unknown risks does not enter Sachs' sci-fi scenario. Capitalism and the Climate Crisis Herman Daly, the renowned environmentalist, calls this attitude -- that environmental action stops when it begins to impinge on the economy -- growthmania. Growthmania, however, goes beyond being a psychological fix. It is a cultivated ideological predisposition that serves as a protective shield for global capitalism. Capitalism is an expansive mode of production, and it can only reproduce itself by continually transforming living nature into dead commodities. This is essentially what growth is all about. This is why ever-increasing consumption is so central to the engine of profitability that drives capitalism. The G8 -- the directorate of global capitalism -- is trying hard to avoid just such radical controls on growth, consumption, profits, and the market that a viable strategy to stave off the looming climate catastrophe will necessitate. Voluntary cuts, technofixes, and carbon trading are desperate efforts to prevent the inevitable. Just like the U.S. economy during World War II, it will take planned economies with severely regulated markets and profits, strictly controlled consumption, and equitably shared sacrifice to win the war against climate change. A columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), Walden Bello is also senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and professor
RE: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa
What has me confused the most is warming should be accompanied with enhanced evaporation. Yet when I look at tree rings in central Montana the reduced rainfall that began in the early 70's is still with us. As for recording peak temperatures at weather stations reduced humidity should see wider temperature excursions. We should set records for high AND low. In Montana we have seen that very thing. It also occurs to me if evaporation is lower cloud cover may be lower. This is not an automatic given because clouds really reflect the humidity at altitude and the precipitation model is not a simple one. I'm not advocating one theory or another. All I can say with honesty is the more I study this the more confused I feel. Has anyone looked at the methane hydrate link I posted earlier? Pawnfart has an uncanny record of prediction accuracy. Kirk Original Message- From: Appal Energy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 8:49 PM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa Correct. And as others have taken such great pains to debunk psuedo-science http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00040A72-A95C-1CDA-B4A 8809EC588EEDF why should anyone take equal or greater pains here? At least not since the rebuttal was thorough and principally accurate. I'm afraid Mr. Witmer is not much more than a lost looking for a cause. Todd Swearingen - Original Message - From: Olga Lange [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 5:46 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa There's quite a bit of detailed disussion of Lomborg's book at the Scientific American site below: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0B96-9517-1CDA-B4A 8809EC588EEDFp ageNumber=1catID=4 Well said Keith, this guys numbers are totally out of whack. They are so far from correct, that I suspect that Christoper is a paid propaganda writer. His words sound very much like someone who is involved in the black ops profession. It seems like every list that is set up to do some public good is infected with these folks who just keep causing friction. I sure wish these know-it-all creeps who offer nothing but opinion yet demand proof, would get their own damn list. kris --- Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, Mr Witmer It's not often that a person has both Gary North and Bjorn Lomborg quoted at him in the same day. If you and them make three straight saws, I'll be fully confident in cutting a dead straight line with my allegedly bent one. No, it's not something akin to a religious confrontation, not by any means. That would simply be the last resort of someone who's been confronted with contrary evidence and been unable to produce any of his own, abandoning his points along the way as they became untenable, pretending they never existed in the first place, and finally being left without a leg to stand on, and hence this retreat into an essentially non-rational arena, hoping to find safety there. It's just cant. As is the stuff below about science. Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion
[Biofuel] New Shade of Green: Stark Shift for Onetime Foe of Genetic Engineering in Crops
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/new-shade-of-green-stark-shift-for-onetime-foe-of-genetic-engineering-in-crops/?src=recg January 4, 2013 New Shade of Green: Stark Shift for Onetime Foe of Genetic Engineering in Crops By ANDREW C. REVKIN In case you missed the coverage and commentary yesterday (the Twitter flow is here), you can now watch Mark Lynas, the British writer and environmentalist who once helped drive Europe's movement against genetically engineered crops, apologize for those actions and embrace this technology as a vital tool for ending hunger and conserving the environment. He spoke yesterday at the Oxford Farming Conference at Oxford University. (Many other fascinating presentations are now online.) An excerpt from Lynas's prepared remarks is below. Here's his remarkable preamble: For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely. The arc of Lynas's fascinating career is in some ways neatly encapsulated by two acts at Oxford - throwing a cream pie in the face of Bjorn Lomborg, the skeptic of eco-calamity, at a book signing there in 2001, yelling pies for lies (see photo below), and now echoing more than a few of Lomborg's assertions in his lecture at the Oxford Farming Conference on Thursday. In doing so, he has displayed an encouraging - and still rare - capacity to shed dogma in favor of data. His valuable 2011 book The God Species (a host of reviews here) was the first big sign of this transformation. After The God Species was published, Lynas explained his shift this way in an interview with Keith Kloor: Well, life is nothing if not a learning process. As you get older you tend to realize just how complicated the world is and how simplistic solutions don't really work There was no Road to Damascus conversion, where there's a sudden blinding flash and you go, Oh, my God, I've got this wrong. There are processes of gradually opening one's mind and beginning to take seriously alternative viewpoints, and then looking more closely at the weight of the evidence. In reading the text of Lynas's speech yesterday, I asked him if he'd reassessed the pie assault. His reply showed just how willing he is to endure slings and arrows from old allies by invoking another name that is anathema to many traditional greens: Bjorn was always the perfect gentleman about that incident. I have apologized properly over email to him, and we've had a couple of phone conversations since. These days I read his stuff with interest but I do think he could make his case more strongly by avoiding his own tendency to confirmation bias and being rather selective with his sources, to say the least. I only recently discovered the work of Julian Simon, who was Lomborg's original inspiration, and I think it should be required reading for all enviro types - some vital wisdom there. Before we get to Lynas's talk on genetics and agriculture, it's worth posting my reply on Simon: Simon was too demonized for sure (his relevant work is online). But he was wrong on one thing - the need for more people to make more progress (more geniuses), as I wrote here: Julian Simon's 20th century notion that population growth was good because it raised the odds of generating a fresh batch of breakthroughs was half right; you just don't need the extra billions if you expand access to education and tie brains together with communication (and translation). Read on for an excerpt from Lynas's speech (as prepared for delivery), but please read or listen to the whole thing, and then to dig in to The God Species, as well: When I first heard about Monsanto's GM soya I knew exactly what I thought. Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us. Mixing genes between species seemed to be about as unnatural as you can get - here was humankind acquiring too much technological power; something was bound to go horribly wrong. These genes would spread like some kind of living pollution. It was the stuff of nightmares. These fears spread like wildfire, and within a few years GM was essentially banned in Europe, and our worries were exported by NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to Africa, India and the rest of Asia, where GM is still banned today. This was the most successful campaign I have ever been involved with. This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot
Re: [biofuel] Greenhouse gas rant ( was Re: Debate on fuel economy standards opens,)
A few points... First, don't confuse climate with weather, they're not the same. Second, in the 1970s, and later, warnings were indeed being sounded of global cooling and an impending new Ice Age. The point here isn't to scoff and say it's all BS, they don't know what they're talking about, so let's just wait and see. At that time sufficient peculiarities and anomalies had been noted to alert scientists to the possibility of climate change, sufficiently to call for further study. There was quite a lot of sensationalism, then as now (now, the biggest load of BS sensationalism comes from deniers like Bjorn Lomborg et al). But the scientists themselves weren't being sensationalist, they were reporting early indications in their studies, with provisos. The sensationalism came from elsewhere. Now, 30 years later, the picture is very much clearer, with new findings coming in all the time, mostly corraborating previous findings, but the picture is still far from complete (nothing is as complex as climate, except perhaps the biosphere itself, and the two are intimately linked). Scientists, very many more of them, representing many disciplines, and using vastly improved technology, are still doing the same thing: reporting the findings of their studies, with provisos. But there are far fewer provisos, along with very large numbers of scientists who've changed their stance from an initial scepticism to an acceptance that global warming is happening. The discussion now focuses on the degree of it, on the details, and on the urgent need for more information, new data. Yet many of the climate-change deniers want all studies stopped because there's no proof. They want a clear-cut verdict before there's been an investigation. Yes, very rational. Further to global cooling, people who point to the 1970s warnings to debunk the global warming scenario should perhaps take a closer look - in fact, they're doing the opposite of what they think. The New Ice Age scenario usually starts with increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere (sound familiar?) leading to rising temperatures, increased evaporation, increased cloud cover, and increased precipitation, especially in the polar regions, causing a thickening of the ice and then a run-away effect with glaciation overtaking atmospheric warming. So increased CO2 levels leading to warming have never been much at issue, it was mainly what happened after that that was in doubt. Either way, you've got a cataclysm. I also heard about all these things in the 70s, and I've been following the climate change debate closely since 1991, when my agency was contracted to produce a conference newspaper at the final, ministerial-level, UN climate change conference that preceded the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 (the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development). I've followed it since not because I'm an enviro (I'm not) or because I take one side or the other, but because I'm an information professional, and once you have a good foundation of information in any particular subject, which that job gave me in this subject, it makes sense to stay abreast of it, good business sense. So I've watched the picture developing, like a print in a tray in the darkroom. And as the picture develops, the scientists keep having to revise their estimates upwards of how great the effects will be, how much damage is likely, how many lives will be ruined. All I can say is that if you see a different picture, you lack information - which is odd, because it's not exactly hard to find. The 1991 UN climate conference was supposed to produce binding agreements by the world's governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and this agreement was to be the centrepiece of the subsequent Rio Earth Summit. Of course it didn't happen, just nice talk, nothing binding, no commitments - as at Rio. As at Amsterdam 18 months ago. So the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 1997 was a bit of a late-comer. Really, the sane time to start cutting back on GGs was 1991, or even earlier. And now, is it too late, so what the hell, eat, drink and be merry? It's too soon to say whether it's too late. Certainly valuable time has been wasted, no need to waste any more. The other vexing question has been whether the rising CO2 levels are human-caused or not. The answer is yes and no, some of it is, some of it's apparently natural (not that we're not natural). The question narrows to whether it's our contribution that's making the crucial difference. Wrong question. Better question: will removing our contribution help to lesson or prevent global warming? The answer, obviously, is Yes. Further question: but will it be enough to be significant? Better question: is it wise to wait until we have precise answers to that, if ever? Answer: of course not. Look, say you know there's a flood coming, it's headed straight at your house, but you're not going to bother to take any
[biofuel] Road to ruin
. They gloated when it snowed unusually hard in Washington last winter (failing to notice the absence of snow in Alaska). When the dissident good news scientist Bjorn Lomborg spoke to a conservative Washington thinktank he was applauded not merely rapturously, but fawningly. While newspapers report that Kilimanjaro's icecap is melting and Greenland's glaciers are crumbling, the US government has been telling its scientific advisers to do more research before it can consider any action to restrict greenhouse gases; the scientists reported back that they had done all the research. The attitude of the White House to global warming was summed up by the online journalist Mickey Kaus as: It's not true! It's not true! And we can't do anything about it! What terrifies all American politicians, deep down, is that it is true and that they could do something about it, but at horrendous cost to American industry and lifestyle. In the meantime, all American consumers have been asked to do is to buy Ben Jerry's One Sweet Whirled ice cream, ensuring that a portion of Unilever's profits go towards global warming initiatives. Wow! Potential Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination have been testing environmental issues a little in the past few weeks. Some activists are hopeful that the newly elected Governor Schwarzenegger of California is genuinely interested. But, in truth, despite the Soviet-style politicisation of science, serious national debate on the issue ceased years ago. Of course, nimbyism is alive and well. And, sure, there are localised battles between greens and their corporate enemies: towns in Alabama try to resist corporate poisoning; contests go on to preserve the habitats of everything from the grizzly bear to rare types of fly; Californians hug trees to stop new housing estates. Sometimes the greenies win, though they have been losing with increasing frequency, especially if Washington happens to be involved. These fights, even in agglomeration, are not the real issue. Day after day across America the green agenda is being lost - and then, usually, being buried under concrete. We're waging a war on the environment, a very successful one, says Paul Ehrlich, professor of population studies at Stanford University. This nation is devouring itself, according to Phil Clapp of the National Environmental Trust. These are voices that have almost ceased to be heard in the US. Yet with each passing day, the gap between the US and the rest of the planet widens. To take the figure most often trotted out: Americans contribute a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. To meet the seemingly modest Kyoto objective of reducing emissions to 7% below their 1990 levels by 2012, they would actually (due to growth) have to cut back by a third. For the Bush White House, this is not even on the horizon, never mind the agenda. Why has the leader of the free world opted out? The first reason lies deep in the national psyche. The old world developed on the basis of a coalition - uneasy but understood - between humanity and its surroundings. The settlement of the US was based on conquest, not just of the indigenous peoples, but also of the terrain. It appears to be, thus far, one of the great success stories of modern history. Remember, this country is built very heavily on the frontier ethic, says Clapp. How America moved west was to exhaust the land and move on. The original settlers, such as the Jefferson family, moved westward because families like theirs planted tobacco in tidewater Virginia and exhausted the soil. My own ancestors did the same in Indiana. Americans made crops grow in places that are entirely arid. They built dams - about 250,000 of them. They built great cities, with skyscrapers and symphony orchestras, in places that appeared barely habitable. They shifted rivers, even reversed their flow. It's the American belief that with enough hard work and perseverance anything - be it a force of nature, a country or a disease - can be vanquished, says Clapp. It's a country founded on the idea of no limits. The essence of environmentalism is that there are indeed limits. It's one of the reasons environmentalism is a stronger ethic in Europe than in the US. There is a second reason: the staggering population growth of the US. It is approaching 300 million, having gone up from 200 million in 1970, which was around the time President Nixon set up a commission to consider the issue, the last time any US administration has dared think about it. A million new legal migrants are coming in every year (never mind illegals), and the US Census Bureau projections for 2050, merely half a lifetime away, is 420 million. This is a rate of increase far beyond anything else in the developed world, and not far behind Brazil, India, or indeed Mexico. This issue is political dynamite, although not for quite the same reasons as in Britain. Almost every
