Category Archives: Climate Change

Generate Electricity for creating Well Being

Posted on
Reply

Yes, CO2 may be bad but that is if you have first reached the level of usage in Australia, Kuwait or Norway. However, if you are a poor person in developing countries like India, China and Brazil, you still need a electricity to create well being even if it emits CO2 and consumption of 2,500 kw seems to be the magic number.

I think the focus to reduce CO2 to control the climate (and this is being questioned now by the solar cycle theory) we should not forget the current human beings who need electricity to survive and live a good life.

From HBR:

The greater a country’s electricity consumption, the greater the well-being of its people. Electricity doesn’t cause well- being, of course. But it is a powerful enabler. When people have lights that allow them to study and work after dark, refrigeration to keep foods and medicine fresh, pumps and purifiers to irrigate farmland and produce safe drinking water, and cell phones and computers to connect them with commercial, educational, and health care resources, they can more fully participate in the social and economic activities that drive human development.
A little electricity goes a long way. Note that when annual consumption rises from 0 to just a few thousand kilowatt hours per capita, countries move near the top of the HDI scale. Argentina, with per capita consumption of about 2,500 kWh, has an HDI score approaching that of Canada, whose consumption is seven times higher.

Himalayan melting by 2035? Scientists just assumed so

Posted on
Reply

The research is amazing! In fact, a Indian scientist had a report before Copenhagen that the Himalayas would not melt for atleast 2350. The IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri did not agree with the report citing that the IPCC peer reviewed research shows 2035 as a more likely outcome. And this is the kind of research he was talking about.

Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was that the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days, the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, an obscure Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and not supported by any formal research.

If confirmed, it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

via Himalayan melting by 2035? Scientists just assumed so – US – World – The Times of India.

Economists Ponder Human Adaptation to Climate Change

Posted on
Reply

As scientists struggle to predict exactly how global climate change will affect our environment, economists are grappling with another question: How well can humans adapt?

Judging from the history of wheat production in North America, the answer is very well, says Paul Rhode of the University of Michigan. In a paper done together with Alan Olmstead of the University of California-Davis, which he presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Mr. Rhode looks at how wheat production fared between the mid-1800s and the late 1900s, as production moved into parts of North America with harsher climates. The conclusion: Production adapted successfully as farmers introduced new strains that grew well in the new climates.

“We’ve been there and done that in terms of adjusting wheat production to new climates,” he said.

via Economists Ponder Human Adaptation to Climate Change – Real Time Economics – WSJ.

This is one example of wheat production in North America but what is relevant is that adaptation is possible and may be more important to concentrate than anything else for the next century.

Global Warming Is Manageable — if we are Smart

Posted on
1

Why is it that what you are saying about global warming is so contradictory to everything else that most people read, see and hear in the media?

Well, there are several reasons. It is partly because they dont read the U.N. reports, which on many of these issues confirm what I am saying very clearly. And since the sensational always goes over better than the merely sensible, stories in the media play into the stereotype of global warming. There is much more sizzle in saying the world is going to come to an end than there is to saying, it is a bit of a problem and we need to fix it smartly, but that is it. The scary stories also appeal to the visceral hatred of materialism harbored by many, even when they are materialist in their own habits.

It is much easier to find a real person who died in the heat wave in 2003 in Paris, and tell that story. It is much harder to tell a compelling story about a person who didnt die from cold in Paris in the winter of 2003. So it is often much easier to show all the problems from global warming, and very much harder to show all the distributed benefits from pursuing more sensible policies.

Finally, politicians obviously garner a lot of support by saying we want to save the planet much more than they garner support if they talk about making smart, simple policies that might also be politically difficult to get through. Essentially, they get to promise they are going to cut emissions in 2020 or 2050 — when they are not going to be politicians any longer.

Al Gore talks about global warming as our generational mission. He asks how we want to be remembered by our kids and grandkids. Well, why would anyone want to be remembered for having spent $180 billion to do virtually no good a hundred years from now, when less than half that sum could fix virtually all major problems today? With better information, most of us would have no difficulty choosing how we want to be remembered.

via Global Warming Is Manageable — if Were Smart – Barrons.com.

Kevin Rudd pledges to repay ETS costs to consumers

Posted on
Reply

How will you change behaviour if the costs do not increase? Most absurd. If you look at the numbers million of people are going to get more than the increased costs. Income distribution.

FAMILIES will pay little or nothing for Labors emissions trading scheme, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pledged yesterday. Full or partial compensation for rising costs would be available for couples with children on an income up to $160,000, as well as for singles on $30,000 a year or less.

via Kevin Rudd pledges to repay ETS rise | News.com.au.

India offers to cut carbon intensity 25 pc by 2020

Posted on
Reply

“We are telling the world that India is voluntarily ready to reduce emission intensity by 20-25% in 15 years from 2005. The Planning Commission has, on the basis of historical experience, concluded that a 20-25% cut in emission intensity between 2005 and 2020 is possible. India will not be taking a legal undertaking and this will not be a law,” minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh told the Lok Sabha.

Via – India offers to cut carbon emissions 25 pc by 2020- Politics/Nation-News-The Economic Times.

Following on the heels of China India does the right thing to suggest voluntary carbon intensity cuts. The interesting thing is how many people confuse carbon intensity with carbon emissions. Even, Economic times has the headline with carbon emissions.

Nir Shaviv on Global Warming

Posted on
Reply

Andrew Bolt points to the astrophysicist Nir Shaviv and his work on cosmic rays.

Shaviv refuses to get worked up: “The hysteria surrounding the concept of ‘global warming’ will fade over the years,” he says. “People will see that the apocalyptic forecasts are not coming true. Today there is no fingerprint attesting that carbon dioxide emission causes a rise in temperature. A Grad missile that falls in Sderot should be more cause for concern.” Back to the Ice Age Last Wednesday, Shaviv was featured in a documentary broadcast on Channel 8, “The Cloud Mystery,” alongside Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark, a physicist whose pioneering experiments conducted in Copenhagen revealed how changes on the sun’s surface and cosmic rays are what affect climate, and not the polluting gases from manmade sources.

[...]

While he was living in Toronto, one of his colleagues asked him how supernovae (the explosion of massive stars) affect the earth. Shaviv examined the question seriously; his conclusions reinforced the argument that charged energy particles called cosmic rays, which are affected by the sun’s activity, are what affect the earth’s climate. Shaviv explains it as follows: “The sun’s activity is cyclical. When it’s more active, the wind that blows from it is stronger and then fewer cosmic rays reach the earth. Cosmic rays cause ions to be produced in our atmosphere, which are one of the factors required for the creation of the surface upon which clouds form, primarily above the ocean’s surface. When there are fewer ions, the clouds that are formed are composed of large drops. Clouds of this type are less white and refract less of the sun’s rays outward, and so the heat is preserved and the earth gets warmer.”

[...]

“The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with arms,” Shaviv continues. “We traverse one of these arms every 145 million years. If the sun’s cyclical changes translate into a shift of one degree on earth, then the changes when we traverse such an arm, close to supernovae, will be on the order of 10 degrees, which is a huge amount. When you look at the geological record of the earth, you see that in the past 100 million years, there were periods with ice at the Poles and periods without ice. I demonstrated in the article that the Ice Ages correlate chronologically with our traversing the arms of the Milky Way. In other words, every 145 million years there is an Ice Age. The conclusion is that cosmic rays affect the earth’s temperature on long time-scales, too.”

An example of what he is talking about,

Gaming the CDMs and carbon trading

Posted on
Reply

Under the CDM, the United Nations awards carbon credits to emissions-reducing projects in the developing world. When credits are sold on to rich countries, the buyers can count them towards their Kyoto emissions targets. Supposed to kill two birds with one stone – reduce emissions and transfer money and technology to the poor – this was, however, never likely to work.

The CDM inherits the UN’s suffocating bureaucracy, so smaller projects struggle to gain approval. But more important than what it keeps out is what it lets in. The criterion of “additionality” is supposed to rule out projects that would not be undertaken without CDM payments. Not only is this counterfactual approach utterly unverifiable; it is also an ideal target for gaming.

The Chinese wind farms are a case in point: Beijing allegedly lowered their subsidies to make them eligible for CDM. The accusation plays right into the hands of the opposition to emissions cuts in the US. Congress threw out Kyoto because China and India were let off without obligations. A US public convinced that poor countries game the system would kill any prospect for a Copenhagen deal.

via FT.com / Comment / Editorial – Anticlimatic policy.