The Climate Change agenda

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Bgile
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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Corporations are responsible for much of the research in this country. Their planning doesn't extend much beyond the next quarterly report, because that determines the compensation and tenure of the CEO. If we don't make fuel artificially expensive, where is the incentive for them to spend large amounts of money to increase energy efficiency?
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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One good source of energy, pretty eficient, is nuclear energy. It doesn´t need acres and acres of oil fueled generators to lit New York. Of course the leftist Greenpeace agents and the liberals that pay attention to them already undermined any effort to expand nuclear energy. I presume everybody is waiting to put a solar cell roof that can produce 1.5 volts per day.
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Dave Saxton
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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Don't you think energy is expensive as it is? Its certainly not cheap.

You can't really make anything artificially expensive because it's value is what the market will bear, and the market will adjust with the consequence being inflation and black markets. In the near term it causes the additional burden to be shifted to those who can least afford it. It always hurts the little guy most. It does not really create an incentive in the long run. If it causes an unfeasable alternative to come to market (because it suddenly seems cost effective but is in reality based on an artificial incentive or market) it will not continue to be competive as the market adjusts and inflation makes its self known. For example, Windmills don't pay for themselves and are based on gov subsidies to remain in operation.

If artificially high energy costs produced innovation and greater efficiencies then the places that have suffered under high energy costs would have produced real innovations and acceptable solutions. They havn't.

It's kind of a myth that if only there was enough incentive that the effiencies would increase. A true free market automatically forces the most feasable effiencies that are practical at a given time.

Cars today are as clean and as efficient as they can realistically be. Really modern cars are not the primary cause of air pollution anymore. By forcing up transportation costs it only makes it less possible for people to upgrade their transportation technology. If people can afford to buy and operate more advanced and more efficient cars, that they really want and like, then it opens up a market to design and produce more advanced cars. Gov mandates and policies that are unrealistic do nothing.

Its a fact that the most advanced societies are the most enviromentally friendly. Others simply can't afford it. For example, the USA generally has less pollution than Japan, and Japan has less pollution than South Korea, and South Korea certainly has less pollution than China. And higher production costs due to higher energy costs will simply force more jobs to be shifted to the dirty slave labor camps of the world.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
Bgile
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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Dave Saxton wrote:A true free market automatically forces the most feasable effiencies that are practical at a given time.
There is no true free market in the first world. You are acting as if a market utopia is possible, and that is no more likely than true Communism. Corruption is rampant in the world, and I think where we are headed now is an economy headed by a few very rich individuals involved in organized crime. The common people will be controlled by a combination of modern Circuses and drugs. If they step out of line they will be killed as happens now in some countries. The failed state will become the rule.

I'm not going to convince you of this, and you aren't going to convince me of your Utopia; our world view is completely different. Forty years ago I was advocating the same market idealism you are now, but I've changed for good.

Finally ... you might want to check your spelling. :wink:
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Dave Saxton
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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Bgile wrote:There is no true free market in the first world. You are acting as if a market utopia is possible, and that is no more likely than true Communism. Corruption is rampant in the world, and I think where we are headed now is an economy headed by a few very rich individuals involved in organized crime. The common people will be controlled .......Finally ... you might want to check your spelling. :wink:

I don't necessarilly disagree about the problems, but I also view the climate change agenda and its proposed solutions as one of the greatest threats to freedom today and entirely unnecessary. Correct spelling is utopia I will never attain. :stubborn:
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
Bgile
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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Dave Saxton wrote: ... Correct spelling is utopia I will never attain. :stubborn:
:lol:
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RF
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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Especially when we Brits and the Americans spell things differently.
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hammy
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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Karl Heidenreich wrote:One good source of energy, pretty eficient, is nuclear energy. It doesn´t need acres and acres of oil fueled generators to lit New York. Of course the leftist Greenpeace agents and the liberals that pay attention to them already undermined any effort to expand nuclear energy. I presume everybody is waiting to put a solar cell roof that can produce 1.5 volts per day.
Agreed .
The problem is the side production of Waste , by which I dont mean the exhausted fuel rods and similar " central " wastes , for these are generally limited in bulk/weight , quantifiable ( In terms of the emmissions ) predictable as to future behavior , and the methods for recycling or safe ongoing storage are known .

The intermediate wastes ( say irradiated rubble from demolished buildings , or materials from old transport/storage containers , machine tools and processing equipment ) are far greater in bulk , are often in mixtures of materials , and are generally simply stored , in a sort of mental category of " Pending , Too Difficult " .

The low level wastes , such as cleaning waste , old clothing , and the like , represent a vast and miscellaneous heap of stuff which often contains an emitting particle or two , wherein lies the hazard , and it is this mountain which represents the biggest problem of all , and one which is added to at the greatest rate .

No-one knows what is actually in there because in the early days the precautions taken were lax , because the dangers were not generally understood and there was not the meticulous record keeping , nor the control we expect today .
This was partially to do with what were hurried weapons material production programmes being disguised as civil developments , but it has left the perception in the UK that the Nuclear Industry and it's Government master are not to be trusted .

Public fears over the waste in the UK are well founded on the base of some regrettable early instances of poor management - such as at Dounreay , on the north coast of Scotland , ( the prototype fast breeder reactor ) where mixed wastes , including some fairly fissile stuff , was simply tipped down a vertical shaft that was not proof against groundwater , condensation or completely against rain .
A steam explosion consequently blew the roof off the shaft , and scattered active particles all around , and onto the adjacent beach and into the sea , from where they have spread far and wide .

And such as at Windscale in Cumbria , in which a pile being used to produce weapons plutonium overheated , distorting the tubes for the control rods and those for the fuel rods . The Graphite core overheated further and caught fire .
With the normal mechanical reaction controls gone the staff on site ended up opening the little access hatches to the fuel rod shafts and trying to knock them through and out of the back of the pile by pushing in steel tube scaffolding poles and belting the ends with sledgehammers ; and to put the fire out , as a last desperate resort , they stuck a fire hose in there .
The resulting gout of radioactive steam , irradiated graphite , and disintegrated uranium/plutonium flew straight up the chimney , blew through the dust filters on top , and spewed out across the area , and into the Irish sea .
Today , the structure sill stands there sealed after the initial clean up and shutdown , with little done except some peripheral clean-up and some tentative surveys inside the reaction chamber - like Chernobyl , the attitude is to secure it and then leave well alone , rather than try a final remedial clear-up .
The last TV pics I saw , years ago , showed (via remote camera ) some of the fuel rods lying about at the back of the Pile on the floor , where they had been poked out of the Core .
Try asking them what happened to the scaffold pole , and see the answer you get !
It ( and that camera of course ) are both nuclear waste now , but while the whereabouts of the camera are known , that of the pole is not . You just have to hope that in all the confusion .............. Hmmm !

With that sort of background , there is naturally resistance to the notion of more Nuclear power , and here in the UK you dont have to be of the Left or a Green Fanatic to feel qualms . Also , since 9/11 people understand that the domes over the reactors were designed to keep releases of radioactive steam inside , not jet planes from plunging through from outside , so there are additional worries there .
What everyone is seeking is a clean Fusion based system and I think that is one of the things the European collaborative CERN project is actually all about - trying to get fusion reactions unbuttoned , although it is being dressed up as an exercise in pure science .
Lets keep our fingers crossed then .

As regards Solar Power , this is very topical here in the UK at the moment , with a stream of leaflets through my door from companies promising all my energy needs will be met from a couple of panels on the roof .
Well , Im skeptical .
I spend a lot of time wandering about in Greece , where S P is pretty universally used in domestic situations , and I dont think that it is all that good . You get a fairly small tank of hot water about teatime which enables three of you to take a ( quick ) shower , by when all that is left is a tepid dribble until the same time again tomorrow . I'd want to see good proof of far more efficiency than that before spending some £000s on a system for my ( small ) home here in the grey and overcast north .
" Relax ! No-one else is going to be fool enough to be sailing about in this fog ."
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RF
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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The other aspect about solar power panels is the cost to the domestic user.

Quite apart from the fact that we in Britain will receive less solar insolation than countries like Greece, there is a very long pay back period for recovering the cost of installation of panels.
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RF
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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I agree with Karl that nuclear energy will be essential for the future, without which our energy supplies will not be able to meet future demand, regardless of how much ''energy saving'' we have.
hammy has alluded to fusion reactor technology, I think this is the way to go.

In Britain we are not paying anything like enough attention to this. However even our useless Labour government has woken up to the realisation that in a few years time we will have severe electrical energy production shortfalls. Their published plans are totally inadequate, particulary as they have been decommissioning nuclear stations such as Wylfa, Trawsfynydd and Berkely.
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hammy
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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One of the new nuclear plants is due to come to Sizewell to replace/add capacity to two existing Reactors there , on the Suffolk coast , not far from here , and the local "Tree huggers" are already up in arms about it .
Yet at this time we are told that my immediate area must construct another ( Ive forgotten how many ) thousands of extra houses .
Where is all the power generation for them ? ( to say nothing of all the other back-up infrastructure and services needed )

What I cant understand is how the French get away with it , for there you have a truly leftwing and active protest movement .
Can it be that their politicians have told their population the unvarnished truth , Its either more Nukes or its Power cuts , which do you prefer ?
Why is it that no-one can tell people in this country ( unpleasant ) truths ?
" Relax ! No-one else is going to be fool enough to be sailing about in this fog ."
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RF
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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France has a different political agenda.

The country is a lot less densely populated than the UK, and outside of the main cities pollution and overcrowding are not such vital issues. Of greater concern to the French are their living and working conditions, as expressed in the militancy of the French farming community, the French trade unions, and the ''left wing'' battle ground between the socialists and communists. ''Green issues'' don't really come to fore here, not even in a four party political system.
The French record on developing nuclear power and on nuclear safety is I believe a very good one, nothing has happened to upset the political applecart. The Gaullist governments of the past sought to use energy self-sufficiency as a means of maintaining a powerful France (within the EU, taking the subsidies of it) and that has been the main thrust of not only the likes of Giscard and Chirac but also the socialists such as Mitterand.
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RF
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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I was amused over the weekend to see that Osama bin Laden has issued a video using the issue of ''climate change'' as a reason for ''shutting down'' the US economy. Most things don't surprise me, but now I have seen everything.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
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hammy
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

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And our local University , the U E A , is in the cart again ( or at least it's increasingly risible Climate Change research unit is ) , following more leaked Email chatter about how to conceal actual observational Data from opponents .
" Relax ! No-one else is going to be fool enough to be sailing about in this fog ."
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: The Climate Change agenda

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

It seems that Obama is now heading towards nuclear energy, from some news of the US I read. If that`s so I wonder what the Greenpeace bozos will saay about it.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
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