Category Archives: Planet/Environment

Who will own Electric Avenue?

Posted on by
Reply

But the really interesting development in Australia looks to be a ‘real estate grab’ for the infrastructure required to recharge the huge Lithium ion batteries that power EVs.

BetterPlace will install charging units in homes, office carparks, outside train stations, in shopping centre car parks and curb-side on city streets, but plans to retain ownership of the units.

Its Australian infrastructure competitor, ChargePoint Australia, by contrast, plans to sell units to customers who will then onsell the electricity to EV drivers at whatever price they deem appropriate.

The limiting factor for both firms is real estate.

via Who will own Electric Avenue? – Rob Burgess – News – Business Spectator.

A look at the future from BetterPlace.

Economists Ponder Human Adaptation to Climate Change

Posted on by
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 by
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.

After the Nano, TATA releases the cheapest water purifier in the world at Rs.1000.

Posted on by
Reply

Pure water is one of the world’s most precious natural resources. With much of India’s population denied access to safe drinking water, the delivery of safe, convenient and affordable water purification is one of the biggest social and technological challenges in the country today.

Responding to this challenge, Tata Chemicals today unveils ‘Tata Swach’ – a unique and innovative water purifier. Requiring no energy or running water to operate, an early version of the product first saw the light of day as part of the Tsunami relief efforts. Today, the replaceable filter-based product, which is entirely portable and based on low-cost natural ingredients, delivers safe drinking water at a new market benchmark of Rs30 per month for a family of five.

Speaking at the launch, Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons, said: “Safe drinking water is the most basic of human needs. The social cost of water contamination is already enormous and increases every year. Although today’s announcement is about giving millions more people affordable access to safe water, it is an important step in the long-term strategy to find a solution to provide affordable access to safe water for all.”

Tata Swach is the result of years of collaboration between several Tata companies, including TCS, Tata Chemicals and Titan Industries. Based on an innovative concept developed by the TCS Innovation Labs – TRDDC, the Swach technology combines low-cost ingredients such as rice husk ash with superior nanotechnology. The efficiency of the product has been rigorously tested to meet internationally accepted water purification standards.

Water-borne disease is the single greatest threat to global health, with diarrhoea, jaundice, typhoid, cholera, polio, and gastroenteritis spread by contaminated water. According to a 2007 United Nations report, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases. In India, such diseases cause more than 1.5 times the deaths caused by Aids and double the deaths caused by road accidents.

via Tata group | Tata Chemicals | Media releases | Tata Chemicals launches ‘Tata Swach’.

Kevin Rudd pledges to repay ETS costs to consumers

Posted on by
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 by
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 by
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 by
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.

Richard S. Lindzen: The Climate Science Isn’t Settled

Posted on by
Reply

Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example.

via Richard S. Lindzen: The Climate Science Isn’t Settled – WSJ.com.