“So rather than augmenting supply with water you cannot sell at a profit, you simply impose restrictions and constrain demand. Because you have no competition, nobody can undercut you.” - Malcolm Turnbull (Brisbane Institute-July 2006)
Entries in Global Warming (21)
Pollies Cool on Warming Fixes
stevem
in Environmental, Global Warming
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Updated on Monday, June 30, 2008 at 11:12AM by
stevem
Last week the US Senate debated a 500-page global warming bill known as the Warner-Lieberman Cap-and-Trade bill. The Democrats knew it would likely be vetoed by President George Bush, but they hoped to push it through the Senate anyway and in this way build further momentum for reducing America’s greenhouse gas emissions. But they weren’t successful: some Democrats refused to support it on the basis that it would push up petrol prices. It was perhaps the worst possible time to introduce the legislation with oil prices doubling in the past 12 months and fear of a global fuel supply shortage. Emissions trading is based on the theory that, by forcing up the price of fossil fuel, alternatives will be found.
As Oil Prices Rise, Nations Revive Coal Mining
stevem
in Environmental, Global Warming
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Soaring commodity prices have had distorting effects across the global economy, driving up food prices and prompting fears of future energy shortages. But they have been an unanticipated boon to the coal producing regions of countries like Japan that had written off coal mining as a relic of the Industrial Revolution.
Sunspot cycles may hold key to global warming, cooling
From January 2007 through the end of January 2008, the average global temperature fell by nearly a degree Fahrenheit, based on data obtained by the MET Office in Great Britain and other international temperature monitoring networks. What are we to make of this? The recent climate conference held in New York City, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, provides some answers. Several hundreds climatologists in attendance dispelled notions that the global warming debate is over. Most attendees, who readily acknowledge the existence of post-Little Ice Age warming, believe man-made emissions are unlikely to cause major climate change and signed a declaration to that effect.
Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
World Temperatures according to the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction. Note the steep drop over the last year. Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.
This has been my perfect week
A couple of weeks ago, plans for a wonderful new coal-fired power station in Kent were given the green light and I was very pleased. This will reduce our dependency on Vladimir’s gas and Osama’s oil and, as a bonus, new technology being developed to burn the coal more efficiently will be exported to China and exchanged for plastic novelty items to make our lives a little brighter. It’s all just too excellent for words, but of course galloping into the limelight came a small army of communists and hippies who were waving their arms around and saying that coal was the fuel of Satan and that when the new power station opened, small people like Richard Hammond would immediately be drowned by a rampaging tidal swell. They argued with much gusto that if Britain was to stand any chance of meeting Mr Prescott’s Kyoto climate change targets then we must build power stations that produced no carbon emissions at all.
The Sun Also Sets
Updated on Saturday, February 9, 2008 at 11:00AM by
stevem
Updated on Saturday, February 9, 2008 at 11:05AM by
stevem
Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore’s mythical “consensus.” Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun. Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles. To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better “eyes” with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth’s climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.
