Climate change-Implications

Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Jo Canadian said:
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good stuff, Joe-C.

you are on a roll. Excellent. :lol:
 
Karlin

Karlin

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Jun 27, 2004
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For the doubters, see what Canada's own government is saying. It must make them squirm in the White House, as they try to insulate their President from criticism.


[/url]http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/english/climate_change/ The second link is about how t...ce predict the consequences for the Earth.” http://gnn.tv/headlines/3575/Clearing_smoke_may_trigger_global_warming_rise Thats just one of the ...istory. On behalf of grandchildren, Karlin
 
Karlin

Karlin

Council Member
Jun 27, 2004
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RE: Climate change-Implic

hey, that wasn't so very long this time!
Maybe i can be healed of those continuous endless everlasting interminable, multiloquent sempiternal indefatigable ramblings of an imperious importunate supertemporal amaranthine sickness.
http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=incessant
[love the internet eh?]
 
R

Reverend Blair

Council Member
Apr 3, 2004
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Winnipeg
RE: Climate change-Implic

I'm wondering when people will start to figure out that doing nothing will have a much larger effect on the economy long term.

Here's something for you to consider ITN. There has not been a major technological shift in the history of our species that has not created more wealth. The major shifts tend to change who controls the wealth though, with the common people gaining and the rich people losing. Now ask yourself who keeps warning of economic problems by addressing global warming.
 
R

Reverend Blair

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Apr 3, 2004
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RE: Climate change-Implic

He's an idiot. He wants to put his right to steal money above the good of the planet.

His dropping farm subsidies is a joke too. Do you have any idea how much money Monsanto, Cargill and such corporations gave to Bush's campaign?
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Re: RE: Climate change-Implic

Reverend Blair said:
He's an idiot. He wants to put his right to steal money above the good of the planet.

His dropping farm subsidies is a joke too. Do you have any idea how much money Monsanto, Cargill and such corporations gave to Bush's campaign?
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idiot indeed. Totally focussed into one way "thinking" and behaving. But seeing as how he cares so little for LIFE Itself......it fits the pattern of his "greed/power and steal ideology as why would the planet itself matter to him?? Totally SELF centred and his self defined POWER on this planet. Heck, in his mind he is "God" or his immediate right hand assistant. In a way it is no surprise that the US population follows this kind of ideology......as it has become conditioned to the "power" trip itself and glorifies itself in it. Very heady trip.

Meanwhile common sense approach like reducing the toxic emissions might be a darned good start .......as any new "technologies" can be developed simultaneously.
 
TenPenny

TenPenny

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Jun 9, 2004
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Location, Location
"Do you have any idea how much money Monsanto, Cargill and such corporations gave to Bush's campaign?"

Let's just say it's probably a fraction of what they make due to the US subsidies to the whole gasohol program. Paying these corporations to grow corn, so that it can be turned into alcohol in plants they themselves own, so that it can be sold to the big oil companies...oh, there's no profit being made by the friends of the republicans there, is there?
 
R

Reverend Blair

Council Member
Apr 3, 2004
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RE: Climate change-Implic

Oh man is he an idiot.

First of all the technologies he's talking about are being driven by Kyoto in the developed world (I no longer think of the US as being part of the developing world...it's regressing).

Second of all his plans lead to an increase in emissions, not a reduction, not even a stabilization.

On the bright side there already a movement to introduce trade sanctions against the US because there insistence on relying on early 20th century technology and 19th century thinking gives them a trade advantage. I wonder how well his economy will do when trade sanctions are in place.
 
L

LeftCoast

Electoral Member
Jun 16, 2005
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I think not said:
I'm curious if anyone knows of an environmental plan that reduces greenhouse gases and doesn't impact the economy long term.
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Sure - here is one. (actually this is two as cap and trade regimes which I have included in my example tend to be market driven, revenue neutral and quite efficient).

Currently, in the United States, farmers are subsidized to grow corn for the production of ethanol. Ethanol is used as an additive in gasoline to boost octane - and increase fuel efficiency.

Unfortunately, when you add up all the energy inputs required to produce a gallon of ethanol, it ends up being more energy than is contained in a gallon of ethanol. The biggest energy input is natural gas that is required to produce fertilizer required to grow annual crops such as corn.

Study after study has shown that ethanol production (at least from annual crops such as corn) is a net consumer of energy rather than a producer of energy. For the most recent published study, look here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm

or

http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/0305/patzek.html


Ethanol production is all about farm subsidies not energy.

So if the objective is to simply give money to farmers why not accomplish some good?

An alternative is to use the money allocated to ethanol subsidies (over $0.50/gal US) to provide loan guarantees and grants to farmers who install grid connected wind turbines. Net metering for electric utilities of course would also have to be mandated.

This would:
- provide farmers with a year round cash "crop" in the form of wind leases or direct generation revenues
- cost taxpayers nothing that they are not already paying
- consume very little farm land (a wind turbine has a very small footprint and needs little clearance - the land could still be used for food crop farming)
- benefit the environment by replacing fossil fuel with clean wind energy. Other octane booster such as MTBE are more effective, but have environmental concerns of their own.

Additionally, if the US implemented a CO2 credit cap and trade regine, the farmer would be able to unbundle the electrical production and carbon credit and sell the carbon credits to dirtier industries or producers. This would simultaneously make wind energy cheaper and dirtiers energy more expensive - at no costs to tax payers or consumers.
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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vanni : from your link:

Tony Blair's hopes of a breakthrough to tackle climate change were dealt a blowwhen President George Bush made it clear that he would not help the Prime Minister to strike a deal on global warming at the G8 summit in return for his support on Iraq.

As G8 leaders prepared to gather in Gleneagles for Wednesday's summit, the US Presidentsignalled that there would be no quid pro quo on climate change.
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interesting isn't it. Seems blair has been a fool to think he could rely on his former buddy in crime ( Iraq invasion). Blair got taken.......big time. Bush is just doing what the USG has usually done.......use others to their advantage, bribe others into supporting them.......and then turn traitor to their supporters. The megalomaniacs in washington have no friends and want none. No one on this planet that can trust the US(G).

but isolating itself as the USG Has done this way.......is also creating a backward moving nation.

Blair would be smart to really distance himself from bush now.....and if bush doesn't want to cooperate......leave him and the US out of any discussions and agreements. who needs that crap??? Obstructionism USG style should not interfere with progress. New alliances are being formed and the US is being quietly left out in the cold. The US wants to be an island onto itself..........let it. New partnerships will evolve.. But the US had better be careful as the nations it own money to, might call in their chips.
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Bush, the obstacle to a deal on global warming
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 05 July 2005
Can America prevent the rich countries agreeing what to do about climate change? That's the other vital question at Gleneagles alongside Africa and its poverty and, last night, the omens did not look good.

President George Bush made anything but reassuring noises in a pre-summit television interview with Trevor McDonald, rejecting outright any suggestion that the US might join the Kyoto protocol on global warming, or consider any binding agreements to cut US emissions of greenhouse gases.

But Mr Bush's blunt stance - "I go to the G8 with an agenda that I think is best for our country" - was clearly aimed at opinion back home, and may not prevent Tony Blair putting climate change on top of the G8 agenda. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, insisted last night a deal was still possible.

Mr Blair's aims are concrete, but limited. He has accepted, even if many environmentalists have not, that the US will not rejoin Kyoto, certainly before the first period of the treaty ends in 2012, and that it will not accept targets to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide before then, under any circumstances.

America signing up to any of that has never been on his Gleneagles shopping list. Instead, he wants progress in three areas, which may take the business of tackling climate change on substantially, even while the Kyoto process itself is inching forward with the rich countries trying, and mainly failing, to shave a very small amount off their CO2 emissions.

Mr Blair wants a statement on the science of climate change, an agreement on the development of energy-saving technology and the beginnings of a climate change partnership with the developing world. He may still get all of them. If he does, he will have proved that he was right to put global warming at the top of the agenda at Gleneagles with Africa, although it has been the forgotten issue of the past few days.

Global warming was not mentioned in the global triumph of goodwill for Africa that was Live8. They did not sing about the warming atmosphere from the stage in Hyde Park, or in Philadelphia, Berlin or Rome. But if the unforgettable coalition of singers and performers could have looked into Africa's future rather than at the haunting images of its past and present, they surely would have done.

For everything that makes Africa hard to inhabit today will be made harder by global warming. Hunger will be made more acute; shortage of clean water will be more degrading; disease will be more painful, crippling and deadly; natural disasters will be more overwhelming. Climate change threatens to vitiate all the efforts to help Africa that the rich world can possibly come up with, all the debt cancellation, the aid increases and the trade liberalisation.

Two weeks ago, a group of British aid agencies and environmental groups, from Oxfam to Greenpeace, forcefully pointed out this awkward truth. Their report, Africa - Up In Smoke? insisted the issues of African poverty and climate change are inseparably linked, and the first cannot be solved without dealing with the second. It was a direct challenge to the simple Live8 theme, that if only the economic basis of Africa's future can be sorted by a properly responsible rich world, the continent will come good. It will not, the report said, if we do not tackle the warming atmosphere.

There is no doubt Mr Blair has grasped that truth and it is reflected in his three aims from the summit. His statement on the science of climate change, signed by all the G8 leaders, is the simplest, but also the riskiest, of his initiatives at Gleneagles.

Its purpose, he told the Word Economic Forum in Davos in January, was " to set a direction of travel". Mr Blair believes the business community will not really get going on the task of building a low-carbon future, and investing in the new technology needed for long-term projects such as new power stations until it sees clearly that world governments are united on the essentials of climate change.

The scientific consensus that climate change is real and happening is now overwhelming. But that is to reckon without the astonishing attempts by the Bush administration in its second term to deny the science. Yesterday, however, there were reports that summit "sherpas" had managed to agree a text all G8 leaders could agree to, which, although not stating that global warming was happening, did state that scientists said it was. On such subtleties are summits sometimes rescued.

Mr Blair's second climate change aim at Gleneagles is to reach agreements about how new energy-saving or CO2-limiting technology can be speeded in development, and be adopted more quickly by industry. He has in mind renewable energy projects and others such as the hydrogen fuel cell, which may replace the internal combustion engine without emissions of CO2, and carbon sequestration, a method of taking CO2 out of the waste gases of a power station and burying it.

As that is hardly a contentious issue - and indeed, the US sees the way forward on climate change as developing technical fixes rather than agreeing to targets set by somebody else - Mr Blair may get his way.

His third and final initiative is perhaps the most vital: it concerns the developing countries. As we report elsewhere, in the next 20 years, China, India and other developing nations will produce gigantic emissions of CO2 as their economies boom. Yet they have no commitments to cut those emissions. If they do not tackle them eventually, all the CO2 savings the US and the other rich nations can make will go for nothing, because emissions from the emerging economies will more than make up for rich countries' cut. So Mr Blair wants to start a climate change dialogue with the developing world, reassuring them they can continue to grow but offering to help them grow cleanly, by using new energy-saving technology as soon as it comes on stream.

In all the righteous, clamorous protest about aid, trade, and debt in Hyde Park, amid the Geldof-inspired, rock'n'roll-fuelled euphoria, it was easy to forget that Africa can be ruined by the atmosphere as well as by economics. But in that luxury golfing hotel on the edge of the Scottish Highlands, it is going to be forcefully remembered.

Can America prevent the rich countries agreeing what to do about climate change? That's the other vital question at Gleneagles alongside Africa and its poverty and, last night, the omens did not look good.

President George Bush made anything but reassuring noises in a pre-summit television interview with Trevor McDonald, rejecting outright any suggestion that the US might join the Kyoto protocol on global warming, or consider any binding agreements to cut US emissions of greenhouse gases.

But Mr Bush's blunt stance - "I go to the G8 with an agenda that I think is best for our country" - was clearly aimed at opinion back home, and may not prevent Tony Blair putting climate change on top of the G8 agenda. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, insisted last night a deal was still possible.

Mr Blair's aims are concrete, but limited. He has accepted, even if many environmentalists have not, that the US will not rejoin Kyoto, certainly before the first period of the treaty ends in 2012, and that it will not accept targets to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide before then, under any circumstances.

America signing up to any of that has never been on his Gleneagles shopping list. Instead, he wants progress in three areas, which may take the business of tackling climate change on substantially, even while the Kyoto process itself is inching forward with the rich countries trying, and mainly failing, to shave a very small amount off their CO2 emissions.

Mr Blair wants a statement on the science of climate change, an agreement on the development of energy-saving technology and the beginnings of a climate change partnership with the developing world. He may still get all of them. If he does, he will have proved that he was right to put global warming at the top of the agenda at Gleneagles with Africa, although it has been the forgotten issue of the past few days.

Global warming was not mentioned in the global triumph of goodwill for Africa that was Live8. They did not sing about the warming atmosphere from the stage in Hyde Park, or in Philadelphia, Berlin or Rome. But if the unforgettable coalition of singers and performers could have looked into Africa's future rather than at the haunting images of its past and present, they surely would have done.

For everything that makes Africa hard to inhabit today will be made harder by global warming. Hunger will be made more acute; shortage of clean water will be more degrading; disease will be more painful, crippling and deadly; natural disasters will be more overwhelming. Climate change threatens to vitiate all the efforts to help Africa that the rich world can possibly come up with, all the debt cancellation, the aid increases and the trade liberalisation.

Two weeks ago, a group of British aid agencies and environmental groups, from Oxfam to Greenpeace, forcefully pointed out this awkward truth. Their report, Africa - Up In Smoke? insisted the issues of African poverty and climate change are inseparably linked, and the first cannot be solved without dealing with the second. It was a direct challenge to the simple Live8 theme, that if only the economic basis of Africa's future can be sorted by a properly responsible rich world, the continent will come good. It will not, the report said, if we do not tackle the warming atmosphere.
There is no doubt Mr Blair has grasped that truth and it is reflected in his three aims from the summit. His statement on the science of climate change, signed by all the G8 leaders, is the simplest, but also the riskiest, of his initiatives at Gleneagles.

Its purpose, he told the Word Economic Forum in Davos in January, was " to set a direction of travel". Mr Blair believes the business community will not really get going on the task of building a low-carbon future, and investing in the new technology needed for long-term projects such as new power stations until it sees clearly that world governments are united on the essentials of climate change.

The scientific consensus that climate change is real and happening is now overwhelming. But that is to reckon without the astonishing attempts by the Bush administration in its second term to deny the science. Yesterday, however, there were reports that summit "sherpas" had managed to agree a text all G8 leaders could agree to, which, although not stating that global warming was happening, did state that scientists said it was. On such subtleties are summits sometimes rescued.

Mr Blair's second climate change aim at Gleneagles is to reach agreements about how new energy-saving or CO2-limiting technology can be speeded in development, and be adopted more quickly by industry. He has in mind renewable energy projects and others such as the hydrogen fuel cell, which may replace the internal combustion engine without emissions of CO2, and carbon sequestration, a method of taking CO2 out of the waste gases of a power station and burying it.

As that is hardly a contentious issue - and indeed, the US sees the way forward on climate change as developing technical fixes rather than agreeing to targets set by somebody else - Mr Blair may get his way.

His third and final initiative is perhaps the most vital: it concerns the developing countries. As we report elsewhere, in the next 20 years, China, India and other developing nations will produce gigantic emissions of CO2 as their economies boom. Yet they have no commitments to cut those emissions. If they do not tackle them eventually, all the CO2 savings the US and the other rich nations can make will go for nothing, because emissions from the emerging economies will more than make up for rich countries' cut. So Mr Blair wants to start a climate change dialogue with the developing world, reassuring them they can continue to grow but offering to help them grow cleanly, by using new energy-saving technology as soon as it comes on stream.

In all the righteous, clamorous protest about aid, trade, and debt in Hyde Park, amid the Geldof-inspired, rock'n'roll-fuelled euphoria, it was easy to forget that Africa can be ruined by the atmosphere as well as by economics. But in that luxury golfing hotel on the edge of the Scottish Highlands, it is going to be forcefully remembered.
Click to expand...

bush the major obstructionist. :twisted: It is HIS way or forget it. Why does the word "dictator" come to mind.?? LIttle men with little brains do well as "dictators" or a reasonable facsimile of.
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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DUBLIN, Ireland (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin will do what he can at the G8 meeting in Scotland to persuade his neighbour George W. Bush to recognize the reality of climate change, say senior Canadian officials. But no one should expect the American president to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol against global warming, they said, adding that just an acknowledgement of climate change would be a big step.

Officials, who held a background briefing for reporters Monday during Martin's trip to Ireland, said the G8 countries are making progress in pre-meeting talks on both climate change and aid for Africa.

They said leaders won't all agree to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's call to raise aid for poor countries to 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2015, but they will agree to his challenge to double aid for Africa to $50 billion US by 2010.

Canada has already decided to double aid to the troubled continent by 2008-09 and double overall aid by 2010. But critics say that would only bring total aid worldwide to about 0.37 per cent of the current GDP.

The United States, the world's richest country, lags far behind others in the percentage of GDP it commits to aid: just 0.16 per cent.

Bush announced last week that he will ask Congress to double U.S. support for Africa by the target date.

Blair has described Africa's condition as a "scar on the conscience of the world."

A number of G8 leaders have signed on to Blair's 0.7 target but Martin has refused, saying it would be irresponsible to make a promise he's not sure Canada can keep. He has even chided some of the leaders who have said they will reach that target.

Canadian officials noted that while several countries have agreed to the 0.7 target, some have attached caveats tied to economic growth.

They also said the Africa plan will build on the current process of tying aid to good governance to ensure money isn't wasted.

Martin heads to Scotland on Wednesday to meet with Bush, Blair and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

The meetings will be held under heavy security in the luxury golf resort at Gleneagles, about an hour's drive north of Edinburgh. Thousands of demonstrators have been protesting in Edinburgh in recent days. They want the leaders to go even further to help poor countries.

In addition to pouring billions more dollars into Africa through aid and investment, the leaders have already agreed to cancel $40 billion in debt to the world's poorest countries.

They are also expected to pledge to work for a successful conclusion of the current Doha Round of global trade talks, which has as a top priority reducing rich country trade barriers, such as huge farm subsidies which depress the exports of poor countries.

Canadian officials said the leaders will discuss soaring oil prices and will underscore their commitment to the free market and transparency of supply and demand. There are no plans to discuss a regulatory scheme to control prices.

Other items on the agenda include Iraq, Iran, North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and the leaders of India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa will meet with the G8 on Thursday while leaders of several African countries will hold talks on Friday.

The United States is the only G8 country that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, claiming it would hurt the economy.

Environmentalists say Blair should consider leaving his U.S. ally behind as he tries to unite the world's top democracies behind urgent action against global warming. Blair has called climate change "probably the most serious threat we face."

On Monday, Bush described climate change as a "significant" issue, but he called for shifting the debate away from limits on greenhouse gas emissions to new technology that would reduce environmental damage without restricting energy use.

A British official involved in the pre-summit talks said the G8 could reach an accord on global warming that recognizes the problem and the need to combat it.
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Martin and others will be talking to a brick wall. :banghead:
 
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