Submitted by Viv Forbes, Rosewood Qld Australia
A month ago an arsonist lit a bush-fire that spread into the Morwell open cut coal mine in Victoria. Residents of the nearby town lived for weeks in choking polluted air.
This fire is a clear demonstration of what causes most air pollution – the open-air combustion of complex carbon-bearing products such as coal, oil, grass, sugar cane, cow dung, trees, wood, paper, urban rubbish, plastic bags, rubber tyres or other organic material.
Asian smogs have a few special features – yellow dust from the massive Gobi Desert, fine ash and toxic fumes from dozens of volcanoes in Indonesia, funeral pyres along the Ganges, smoky mosquito fires and forest-clearing fires, millions of wood and dung cooking fires, hundreds of out-of-control coal-seam fires in China and India, and obsolete “back-yard” boilers and furnaces from the Mao era. In large Asian cities, pollution is multiplied by unburnt fuel and particulates spewing from old engines in millions of cars, trucks and motorbikes that clog the roads.
The fumes from open fires and dirty engines often contain soot, fine ash, unburnt hydrocarbons and oxides of sulphur and nitrogen. This is the pollution everyone can see and smell. Notice that NONE of this real pollution is caused by invisible, life supporting, non-toxic carbon dioxide which, along with nitrogen and water vapour, are the main exhaust gases from well-designed boilers burning clean coal in modern power stations with the latest pollution controls.
The western world has gone through its “city smog” phase of development. Places like London (“the Big Smoke”) and Pittsburgh (“Steel City”) solved their pea soups many decades ago by outlawing the burning of dirty coal in open fires and stoves, by cleaning up industrial smelters and by providing urban heat, light and energy using piped coal gas and modern magic – pollution-free electricity from distant coal-fired power stations with modern pollution controls.
“Clean coal by Wire” using clean washed coal in modern out-of-town power stations will work the same magic in Asian cities today.
Disclosure: Viv Forbes is a non-executive director and shareholder in an Australian coal exploration company, but these opinions were held and stated long before that association. This does not alter the truth about the causes of real air pollution.
If you would like to read more see:
Locals Cough in the Morwell Smog:
The World has thousands of natural and accidental coal fires:
http://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-oldest-underground-fire-has-been-burning-fo-1539049759
Is Coal Dirty?
http://carbon-sense.com/2012/07/14/is-coal-dirty/
Coal Combustion & the Grand Carbon Cycle:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/coal-combustion.pdf
this kind of “thinking” is right up there with “Why do you have to kill animals? Can’t you just buy your meat at the store like everyone else?”
Surface coal fires are a menace and sometimes burn for years. China was losing millions of tons each year, fires caused by faulty mining and the bush fires that raged in Indonesia lasted years, caused by surface coal seam fires. India is the same. These fires cause immense pollution, and we have a burning mountain in NSW, caused by a subterranean brown coal burning and has done for thousands of years. Unless you spend billions these fires are hard to stop. But burning mountain is a tourist attraction? They can erupt again too.
They stopped burning coal and coke and replaced it with coal lite. In London it took about 10 years of a smoke free zones to clean up the thames, and dolphins or purposes were seen again, and swallows came back and starting nesting on business houses again. A very good omen it was said. But it didn’t stop the Thames freezing again at Windsor in 1963.
17 March: Guardian: Anne Penketh: Parisians driven to revolt by car ban in fight against pollution
Only half of city’s drivers will be allowed on French capital’s roads on any given day via scheme based on number plates
From 5.30am, a scheme of alternating driving days, based on odd and even number plates, will come into effect for cars and motorcycles after Paris pollution reached dangerous levels for five consecutive days.
Even before the restrictions were announced, Parisians were given free travel on buses, metros and public bikes over the weekend. The smog hanging in a haze over the French capital is the result of a string of warm days and cold nights and has caused the worst pollution levels since 2007.
A revolutionary streak runs through French society. Rules are made to be broken, as anyone who has tried to use a pedestrian crossing in Paris knows. Parisians interviewed on Sunday said that, particularly in the case of those working in the suburbs, their car is essential for travel and they would be prepared to defy the temporary ban and risk incurring a €22 (£18) fine…
Seven hundred police will be deployed in Paris and 22 surrounding areas to monitor the scheme, which will be enforced for the first time in 17 years..
The government scrambled to issue a list of exceptions, which include electric and hybrid cars, taxis, and cars with at least three people on board to encourage car-sharing. But all trucks will be banned.
Minute PM10 particles (less than 10 micrometers in diameter) emitted by diesel exhausts, heating systems and industrial emissions, are blamed for the pollution. The safe limit is 80 microgrammes of PM10 particulates per cubic metre, but on Friday, the level peaked at 180 microgrammes prompting authorities to urge people to stay indoors as much as possible and to leave their cars at home.
According to the Paris Air Quality Index, Friday’s level was as bad as that in Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities where policies of alternate driving are enforced during smog emergencies. A French television report pointed out that Rome has also introduced alternating driving, carrying penalties of €155…
Clean Air in London tweeted on Friday morning that London’s pollution level was “worse than Shanghai (having a bad day) and over twice Beijing.”
By Sunday evening, French weather forecasts were predicting that although high pollution levels would return on Monday, they may not reach the records of last week.
With municipal elections scheduled for next Sunday, the emergency smog-tackling measure brought in by the Socialist government and endorsed by their Green coalition partners risks becoming a political football in the polls.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/parisians-driven-revolt-smog-car-ban
Meanwhile we had a few days of smog alarm in our country, in our case mainly caused by millions of – here popular – small diesel cars plus a lot of heavy diesel trucks passing the country. Our local weather woman (a fanatic alarmist) was quick to tie the smog and the passing of 400 ppmv CO2 at Mauna Loa again this year together in such a way that the media thought that CO2 was the main cause of the pollution. Every title in the press was about CO2 “pollution”. J.P. Van Ypersele, vice president of the IPCC was quick to add his twitter voice: “Did you know how significant is the new #CO2 record concentration (401.62 ppm, March 12) compared to past 800000 yrs?”, forgetting to tell the audience that the 400 ppmv was already passed last year… For those who can read Dutch (or use Google Translate…):
http://www.knack.be/nieuws/planet-earth/onze-lucht-was-nooit-zo-slecht-co2-vervuiling-overschrijdt-historische-grens/article-normal-133641.html
Forgot to add: the tweet of our weather woman was: “humans never inhaled such an acid air”. Seems that her knowledge of chemistry is as bad as her knowledge of climate… If what we inhale is 0.04% CO2 today or doubles to 0.08% in the future, what we exhale must be far worse with 4% CO2: good to dissolve all steel, concrete,… where humans are living if she is right… The newspapers first used the “acid air” as title, but later changed that to “pollution”, there were too many reactions on that failure…
given the CAGW crowd expend so much energy scaring children!
17 March: UK Telegraph: Alan Titchmarsh: Young people are becoming ‘fearful’ of the great outdoors
If we do not convince teenagers gardening is not just for their granddads the planet will be on “shaky ground”, Alan Titchmarsh warns, as he calls their lack of access to horticulture “criminal”
By Hannah Furness, Arts Correspondent
Alan Titchmarsh, the broadcaster, wants “growing things” to be made part of the national curriculum, as children and young people are becoming “divorced from the great outdoors”.
Saying they were already well-versed in issues of climate change, he argued it was even more important for them to understand how the natural world works to stop them becoming “fearful”.
Speaking at a South London school, he added the planet would be left in “very shaky hands” in the next generation, if nobody was left to understand it…
“They all know about climate change and global warming, but it’s far more important – I would have thought – for them to know what happens when you plant a seed, how to make it grow, how food is produced, how the environment is purified by plants and organisms, how our entire livelihood depends on things that grow.
“Without plants, this planet would disappear…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/10699190/Alan-Titchmarsh-Young-people-are-becoming-fearful-of-the-great-outdoors.html
much exploitation of children by flannery in latter part of the audio:
AUDIO: 12 March: ABC Big Ideas: Tim Flannery
In his first major public appearance since the government abolished the Climate Commission, Tim Flannery joined Anne Summers in conversation about the climate and other challenges to our environment..
This is Tim Flannery’s interaction with the audience…
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/tim-flannery/5291070
In France today we have a ban on cars with even plate numbers, announced late Saturday evening for maximum confusion. Being blamed on high pollution, but this most likely comes from the east (Belgium/Holland but above all Germany – France has barely any heavy industry left except around Lyon). Doesn’t apply to electric cars and hybrids though as they are ‘CO² free’. Pure propaganda of course.
The battle against life-sustaining atmospheric trace-gas is already withering back into the objective of some fringe parties. The others are already focusing their attention back into priorities, including nature conservation of course.
It’s been quite a sad sort of laugh watching AGW fanboys/girls struggling with the certitude that coal use is not going away. It’s such an jarring sacrilegious stumbling-block to their ideologically edifice that they can’t even get their head around the unadorned basis, that 7.2 billion people plus low-cost high abundance means vast quantities of coal are going to be used for as far as we can envision, unless a low cost practical super energy source is discovered that we don’t yet know about.
AGW’s only answer = destroy the economy
Yeah, that’ll work a treat, 7.2 billion people going without electricity due to a chronically fractured economy is going to solve everything. I grew up using a backyard thunder-box for the first 12 years or so, and foregoing indoor plumbing so I can go dig a hole behind a tree to squat is not much recompense for volunteering to saving the world. And yeah, I lived in the bush and squatted for most of a year when I was 5 years old. I have a part of one of my toe nails missing today to prove that shovels and little kinds that are in a bit of a hurry to squat over an adhoc shallow hole don’t mix too well (not to mention the declining opportunities for unused digging places for a family of five, within walking range). Excuse me while I go cook a hot meal, have a hot shower, and put my cloths into the washing machine.
Here’s the Air Quality Index page for Beijing. The air quality seems to have a negative correlation with the wind speed. http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/
Beijing reports only the PM10 number, the big chunks. The PM2.5 fine particulates are measured at the US Embassy.
And Anthony’s home town http://aqicn.org/city/california/butte/chico-east-avenue/
World coverage is kind of hit and miss. http://aqicn.org/city/all/
The aqicn.org web site has apps and widgets you can download for mobile devices.
I’m happy to witness the poor visibility phenomena in France this week. It had been nicely dry, warm and sunny all week with a deep blue sky – you know – the type of spring weather AGW tries to delay or avoid at all costs. Saturday was back to AGW normal – cloudy with cold drizzle.
The following mornings, before the sunrise a dense mist rose from the ground and dissipated once the sun’s rays had warmed enough. That is not the first time I’ve seen it here or anywhere.
I’ve observed that the more expensive the clean energy is, the more the impoverished locals resort into burning their rubbish. Judging from the smoke hovering above the villages late in the evenings that is. The AGW-crowd may be pleased to learn that the less incomplete the combustion, the more complex molecules (like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) are released into the atmosphere instead of CO2.
Following the AGW logic all the way through, that’s perhaps what we’ll revert back into one way or the other http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/top-global-emitter-china-best-on-climate-change-figueres-says.html.
Sorry, meant to write ‘the less complete the combustion, the more complex molecules are released’
It’s surely time that somebody spoke a good word or two about ‘carbon dioxide emissions’, and I had a go at it this morning at
http://donaitkin.com/ken-henry-as-climate-scientist-is-the-game-shifting-to-reducing-emissions/
I’m beginning to wonder whether or not there is a new word change coming — we won’t talk about extreme weather any more, or climate change. Let’s go to a softer phrase that most people like — ’emissions reduction’!
I have been involved up to my nose for years in the development of ultra-low emission coal burning stoves for the multitudes of poor people in Asia who are unlikely to use anything else in the next few decades. I therefore object to the title ‘dirty coal’. Good coal combustion in a combustor designed for that coal, whether brown or not, produces so little PM2.5 that they literally clean the air almost the entire time they are operating. I have extensive measurements to prove it.
At present the City of Ulaanbaatar is replacing about 200,000 domestic stoves with vastly cleaner ones based the science of improved combustion. Paris and Beijing are not NEARLY cities with ‘bad’ air pollution in terms of what residents of lesser-known regions suffer. Ulaanbaatar peaked at 5500 micrograms of PM2.5 this winter – that isn’t a typo. 180 is for sisies.
The idea that 180 micrograms per cubic metre requires such drastic and disruptive interventions is part or a new wave of fanatical environmentalism. PM2.5 is the new CO2. Watch the EPA.
Soon people driving tractors or harvesting food or walking in the forest or digging in their flower beds will be warned to wear air purifying filters over their mouths at all times. A typical school classroom easily exceeds 100. And playing in a sandbox?!? OMG get those kids moved into a safe environment and arrest those parents!
As CO2 crashes and burns, watch for the rise of the PM2.5 Godzilla coming to snuff out your lives. Think of the children!
Strangely enough, not a single real problem mentioned by Viv is addressed or tackled by Co2 taxes, carbon credits or multiple repeating research into solar panels, let alone a cure. Indeed it tends to highlight the very real problem, real problems that need real fixes are totally neglected because they do not fit the CO2 gods wishes
But ethical climate “scientists” will cherry pick that list of problems and select say, particulates, then study a size that is not a problem but suits their findings, predetermined of course.
Interestingly, green energy initiatives in the UK might be driving a renaissance of dirty energy.
When we lived in the UK, we installed a coal / wood heater, and burned often green wood, because we couldn’t afford to heat our house with electricity, thanks in part to green tariffs.
We were probably breaking clean air laws – but so was everyone else on our street.
redc1c4 says:
March 17, 2014 at 12:10 am
“this kind of “thinking” is right up there with “Why do you have to kill animals? Can’t you just buy your meat at the store like everyone else?””
Having one big coal plant with flue gas scrubbing is more efficient and cleaner than having a million small coal ovens. A coal plant can deliver district heating as well as electricity.
Similarly having one big slaughterhouse where cattle is processed might arguably be far more efficient than having lots of single households slaughtering their own animals.
Do you have difficulties understanding this?
Jaakko Kateenkorva says:
March 17, 2014 at 1:58 am
“Following the AGW logic all the way through, that’s perhaps what we’ll revert back into one way or the other http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/top-global-emitter-china-best-on-climate-change-figueres-says.html. ”
Well, smog cools.
The French reaction to the ban on cars based on number plates will probably be to find another car to use on alternate days with the opposite number. Civil disobedience is in their DNA. The Greeks here don’t take much notice of that sort of thing either.
pat says:
March 17, 2014 at 12:18 am
With municipal elections scheduled for next Sunday, the emergency smog-tackling measure brought in by the Socialist government and endorsed by their Green coalition partners risks becoming a political football in the polls.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/parisians-driven-revolt-smog-car-ban
_______________________
An obvious case of “give them enough rope to hang themselves”.
The Parisian smog situation is a perfect example of what happens when you institute so-called “green energy” policies. Diesel is well-known to be a dirtier fuel, even with the newer engines. Yet, it is supposedly more energy efficient, thus emits somewhat less “carbon”. They’ve substituted emissions of black carbon and sulphur for an entirely benign and even beneficial non-polluting gas. Not very bright of them. On top of that, by creating energy poverty you get people burning dirtier fuels, adding even more to the pollution.
Yes, but think of the wind turbines! Given pollution hanging around the cities, I assume there’s not much wind. How’s the wind power recently?
The French only abide by laws that they consider just. i.e. laws that do not affect them personally.
As there are many cars in most French families the correct plated ones will have been driven in from the suburbs for use on the day, and exchanged at night for the correct one for tomorrow. Flouting and or bypassing the law is a National Pastime.
Here in Brittany we mostly burn wood. As a cloud of smoke hovers low over the town every night we comfort ourselves with a glass of wine and the knowledge that alongside Drax we are saving the planet. Vive la France
“The French only abide by laws that they consider just. i.e. laws that do not affect them personally.”
In practice, this means that they only abide by those laws which tell their neighbors what to do but which they themselves profit from.
AUDIO: 12 March: ABC Big Ideas: Tim Flannery
In his first major public appearance since the government abolished the Climate Commission, Tim Flannery joined Anne Summers in conversation about the climate and other challenges to our environment.
=============================
Would the conversation include frilly lingerie?
(This might not mean much to those who aren’t from Britain.)
Warmists who scream about dirty coal should go and live in rural India for a year while burning dung to cook their raw chicken and shrimps. People will burn whatever is available to cook with and that is that my friends. There are always the forests if they can’t get coal.
An interesting thread, but it lacks one critical ingredient–a conspiracy-theory “ideation”. So I’m gonna be a good-sport and give it a shot.
So, like, I’m thinkin’ all this relentless pursuit of the coal industry, by the lefty-puke hive-bozos, just has to have an ulterior motive–I mean, you know, if the greenwashed hive-masters really cared about the environment, and thought carbon was an environmental threat, then they wouldn’t tool around in CO2-spewing yachts, private-planes, and limos–right? And the low-rent, cannon-fodder social-incompetents, whom the hive employs in its agit-prop street-theater productions and as blog wrecker-bots, would bite the carbon-piggie hand of the “The Corpulent One”, and others of his ilk, that feeds their loser, privileged-white-dork, loud-mouth pie-holes, if the environment and not their pie-holes was these parasites’ real concern. Again, right? But they don’t!! Ergo: all this putative environmental concern about coal (and carbon, generally) is really just a carefully controlled and calculated load of flim-flam and humbug, that our betters and their sell-out flunkies are pushing for some “non-environmental” end. Are you following me?
And since the enduring end-point of all the hive’s incessant, endless duplicities, plots, false-flags, scare-mongering, bait-and-switches, intrigues, carbon-porker porkies, B. S., “communication strategies”, useful-fibs, fake-hysterics, and name-calling is always to serve one, unwavering goal–advancement of the hive’s make-a-greenwashed-buck/make-a-green-gulag agenda–we can reasonably conclude that that is also the objective behind the “War on Coal” business. Make sense?
So here’s the money-shot “ideation”: So the way I imagine it, the hive is hopin’ to shut down the coal industry, run the tacky mine-owners off the land, and zero-out the value of the relevant coal-deposits. At which point our betters will be in an enviable position to swoop in and buy up all those un-mined coal assets for a “song”. And then…and then…UNDERGROUND COAL GASIFICATION!!! (Goggle: “wiki underground coal gasification”). And no worries about any “environmental” objections to this “new technology” either, because when the eco-politburo decides something and unleashes its hive-minders and chekists to enforce its decision, then the good-comrades know it’s time to STFU and toe the party-lline. Pretty slick, huh?
bushbunny says:
March 17, 2014 at 12:10 am
Lewis and Clark wrote about the burning coal seams across Montana, North and South Dakota and Idaho. Of course, those also had been been burning looooooooong before they were written about in 1803-4.
If China simply adopted US emissions standards from the 1970s, it would be A WHOLE LOT better.
Energy consumption in the northeast is up ~20%+ this year due to the cold. Most of that energy was supplied by coal. The greenies would be in serious trouble right now were it not for coal.
mike says:
March 17, 2014 at 6:18 am
“its hive-minders and chekists to enforce its decision, then the good-comrades know it’s time to STFU and toe the party-lline. Pretty slick, huh?”
So you think calling the greens a movement is ridiculous?
I was in Beijing and a few other large cities in China a week ago. I stayed right next to the Bird’s Nest in the Olympic Park. The first day the smog was terrible, with poor visibility. The next 2 days were blue skies and absolutely clear. In the city of Guiyang, the air quality was a combination of fog, high humidity, drizzle, perhaps some haze (hard to tell) and temp’s in the 40’s; like eco-nirvana Vancouver BC back in the 1960’s.
China’s big cities have one clear claim to a much-sought-after Green credential- they have by far the largest number of Electric Vehicles* of any city in the world. I have also never seen so many Mercedes, BMW, Bentley, Range Rovers on the road in any other city I have visited or lived. The urban economy in China is creating many, many millionaires through skyrocketing real estate prices. An acquaintance living in China said his purchased apartment in Beijing has quintupled in value over the last 6 years.
*By electric vehicle, I mean an adult-sized tricycle outfitted with a small flatbed for delivering packages, food, etc, where the driver has the option of either pedaling or running the small DC motor off an old car battery to drive the rear axle. There are millions of these zero-emission EV’s in China’s major cities.
In western Colorado there are a few coal seam fires, some have been burning for decades, and they get re-ignited by lightening. Attempts to extinguish them have been futile. There must be hundreds. if not thousands, around the world. With all the ‘carbon pollution’ mother nature produces, how can we puny humans compete for climate control?
We’ll all die anyways. See analysis and predictions straight from Marx-Lenin inspired work: http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~ekalnay/pubs/handy-paper-for-submission-2.pdf
This work was supported by NASA, see the Acknowledgements below:
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Profs. Matthias Ruth, Victor Yakovenko, Herman Daly, Takemasa Miyoshi,
Jim Carton, Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm, Ning Zeng, Drs. Robert Cahalan and Steve Penny, and
Ms. Erin Lynch for many useful discussions. Study of the \Equitable Society” scenarios (i.e., with
Workers and Non-Workers), in particular, the scenario presented in section 5.2.5, was suggested
by V. Yakovenko.
This work was partially funded through NASA/GSFC grant NNX12AD03A, known as \Col-
laborative Earth System Science Research Between NASA/GSFC and UMCP”.
A new publication is coming soon in the journal Ecological Economics, see
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists
“There are millions of these zero-emission EV’s in China’s major cities.”
EV’s are NOT zero-emission. They just move the emissions somewhere else. Most Chinese EV’s are ultimately coal-powered.
It’s possible that most AGW proponents sincerely believe in settled science around human induced events from earth-scale to molecular level, from the roof of the global greenhouse into the depths of the deepest oceans, with 95% certainty and 97% consensus among scientists.
Now, it shouldn’t be too hard to convince them of the benefits of magical, clean energy by wire. Or that’s at least what energy corporations seem to have banked on.
http://listverse.com/2013/08/15/10-natural-eternal-flames-youve-never-heard-of/
The above link is to a site showing 10 places with burning coal or nat gas some over 2000 years. Very interesting.
“The French only abide by laws that they consider just. i.e. laws that do not affect them personally.”
Namely, this was not a law, but a decree, by a capricious coalition of totalitarian reds and fanatic greens, based on pseudo-science.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted trying to reduce CO2 because the AGW advocates and their absolutely stupid, greedy, power mad politician buddies have labeled it a “pollutant”. These resources should have been spent to clean up the real pollution mentioned in this article. Gore, Mann, Pachauri, Phil Jones, Hansen and the other perpetrators of this, the biggest and costliest hoax in the history of mankind, should be held personally accountable. A trial for crimes against humanity would be appropriate.
@DirkH
Yr: “So you think calling greens a movement is ridiculous?”
A little uncertain about your last, DrikH. Thinkin’ it might be some sort of inside-joke and I’m not gettin’ it. But I’ll play the doofus, straight-man and take your inquiry on literally.
I propose to consider the matter by means of an Einstein-model thought experiment:
An academic, up for tenure at some public university Climate Science Department, at a department meeting urges the attendees: “Hey, guys! You know, if we were to stop jetting around to all those boondoggle, waste-of-time eco-confabs of ours and just held our geek-ball, boring hive-swarms through video-conferencing, then we’d spare Gaia, and the kids, and the polar bears tons and tons of CO2 “pollution” and we’d also finally be able to say to our headless-chicken, “denier” detractors that we’ve GOTTEN OUR SNOUTS OUT OF THE TROUGH AND NOW LEAD FROM THE FRONT BY INSPIRING, CARBON-AUSTERE PERSONAL EXAMPLE!!!!–THAT WE NOW PRACTICE WHAT WE PREACH!!!!!”
1. “Movement” response from the attendees: “Right on, Bro! We’re with you! It’s not about our taxpayer rip-off, good-deal troughs, perks and gravy trains, but about doing what’s right and setting the example! Your tenure is not only a “lock” but you’ll probably end up Department Head with great ideas like that!”
2. “Hive” response: “Hey pal! Not only are you not “tenure” material, but you need to see a shrink, big-time! Somebody call the chekists on this dangerous, counter-revolutionary crazy!!”
So, yeah, I think calling greens a “movement” is ridiculous.
Re Bushbunny: The Thames was not polluted by burning of coal – at least not to any noticeable extent. It was polluted by the raw sewage fed into the river from the Southern and Northern Outfalls. These were constructed to collect London’s sewage, stop it being deposited straight into the Thames where the people lived, and deposit it there well down river. Just one problem – they forgot the Thames is tidal. So the sewage was released into the river, and the flood tide brought it back up – one smelt it, saw it – noticeable were the Thames trout floating on the surface seen when crossing the river on the Woolwich Free Ferry. See, for a map and photos of the construction: http://www.hevac-heritage.org/electronic_books/sewage_pumping/1-INTERCEPTING_SEWER_SYSTEM.pdf
I believe that eventually – after the river had been declared “dead” in the 1950s – the treatment facilities at the ends of the Sewers were improved so that only clean water entered the Thames. In addition, industries were not allowed to put toxic effluent into the river. So now it has been transformed. But due to fixing the sewage problem – not carbon dioxide.
Thanks, Viv. An interesting article.
Yes, this is pollution. Burning gasoline in a modern engine produces mostly CO2 and H2O. It is the unintended CO that could kill you. I think CO is a pollutant, CO2 is not; it is plant food, we need more.
Apart from that, not even the IPCC declares to know how much the additional CO2 would warm the Earth.
Answer for Unmentionable
There is still hope for a low-cost highly abundance source of energy. The discovery was made by two researchers by the name’s of Martin Fleishmann and Stanly Pons in 1989. Some referred to it as Cold Fusion and is also called Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, (LENR). I prefer to call it the Fleishmann and Pons Effect. NASA has been doing research on this for some years along with SPARWAR the US Navy research on the subject. Andrea Rossi an Italian researcher has developed a device which was recently patented and sold to a US company located in North Carolina. See what Peter Hagelstein, MIT, has to say on the subject
Unmentionable says:
March 17, 2014 at 12:59 am
It’s been quite a sad sort of laugh watching AGW fanboys/girls struggling with the certitude that coal use is not going away. It’s such an jarring sacrilegious stumbling-block to their ideologically edifice that they can’t even get their head around the unadorned basis, that 7.2 billion people plus low-cost high abundance means vast quantities of coal are going to be used for as far as we can envision, unless a low cost practical super energy source is discovered that we don’t yet know about.
Learn for your self:
http://www.coldfusionnow.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zgmdo4C1VQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97ps7fTWOA8
John
“he calls their lack of access to horticulture ‘criminal'”
You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her . . . . **ducks and runs for cover** ;-p
” Crispin in Waterloo, -18C says: March 17, 2014 at 2:11 am
I have been involved up to my nose for years in the development of ultra-low emission coal burning stoves for the multitudes of poor people in Asia who are unlikely to use anything else in the next few decades. ”
Great stuff and so practical. Hey is there a page for that project? I’d love to check out the details. Like you say there isn’t much else for them to use and they will use whatever is available. 5500? OMG that is unbelievable. How do people and animals breath that? With a fork and spoon?
mike says:
March 17, 2014 at 8:53 am
“So, yeah, I think calling greens a “movement” is ridiculous.”
Thanks. I wanted to make sure I don’t mistakenly think you’re deluded.
” mike says: March 17, 2014 at 6:18 am
An interesting thread, but it lacks one critical ingredient–a conspiracy-theory “ideation”. So I’m gonna be a good-sport and give it a shot. ”
Me next! Love your angle and it just might be the case so here goes mine. A lot shorter 🙂
Keep CO2 at some artificially decided low level (pre-industrial 270 PPM) and when the next ice age kicks in it will drop below the 150 PPM level meaning all plants above the oceans will die followed by all the animals that rely on the plants and all the animals that rely on the animals that rely on the plants. Scavengers could survive the longest but still only a few years.
The humans that had access to fish could survive but society would destroy itself and civilization would be over. That would leave those who planned this to emerge and rule the survivors and reseed the planet with the seed stock they carefully stashed away.
” John McClintock says: March 17, 2014 at 12:35 pm ”
The whole CF/LENR has been mired for a long time but it appears to be emerging from the abyss it was in for 2 decades. Dr. Peter Hagelstein, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT spoke recently on a Serious Science episode on the history of Cold Fusion from the scientific community’s standpoint. Very much worth listening to. He and Professor Schwartz have been putting on theory and demos of LENR for 2 or 3 years now at MIT.
Yes, I have been following LENR for a few months now and have become interested in a young fellows work that has been posting open source on the internet. The guy’s name is Justin Church and his website is http://www.jdcproducts.com. I became interest because I have built hydrogen generator and they are available off the shelve now. In looking for a hydrogen purification system, Justin came up with the idea of using a Catalytic Converter and discovered that feeding the hydrogen gas through the Catalytic Converter it started to produce heat, no flame or heat involved, so what caused this reaction?
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Even/odd plate numbers. I live in the US so I don’t know how the French equivalent of our BMV works but is there anything to prevent someone from getting two plates for the same car? Will a black-market rise for even/odd numbered plates? Perhaps there’s room for an entrepreneur to develop “quick-change” plate connectors?
Mr. Green Genes wondered about the Flannery conversation with Anne Summers. Me too. I bet it was all about things warming up. Phew!
http://www.annsummers.com/?SL_ClassKey=1
TRM says:
March 17, 2014 at 2:03 pm
” mike says: March 17, 2014 at 6:18 am
An interesting thread, but it lacks one critical ingredient–a conspiracy-theory “ideation”. So I’m gonna be a good-sport and give it a shot. ”
“Me next! Love your angle and it just might be the case so here goes mine. A lot shorter :)”
Do you mind if I have a go?
I think we are all agreed that CO2 doesn’t have the catastrophic effects we are told it has, so, the drive to cut CO2 emissions must have a different motive than to stop the “warming”.
We are probably all agreed that Many Climatologists are in on the scam and will argue black is white to convince us.
Fossil Fuel will eventually run out or become too difficult to remove from the ground, some new extraction techniques will be developed but ultimately it will become exhausted.
Civilisation requires power, electricity for heating, lighting and to run the infrastructure and generally make life liveable and realistically the only sensible option to supply us with that power is nuclear. Problem with nuclear is that generally people are not too happy with having it anywhere near them, in the past when nuclear plants have been proposed, 30,000 hippies turn up with placards and banners and beards, not very happy about the Nuke plant, demanding enquiries and investigations, holding sit-ins, occupations and generally delaying everything.
The problem became how to convince people to accept the only realistic option for power supply in the 21st and 22nd century.
Solution, come up with something worse to scare people with. i.e. Global Warming, later revised to Climate Change because the climate didn’t really play ball, Scare enough people and we get the Nuclear power, plus, there is a nice little earner of green taxes as a bonus with few complaints from taxpayers because we are going to save our grandchildrens future world.
When Chernobyl melted down in 1986, Europe panicked, Italy, faced with mass protests from it’s people, closed their 4 existing nuclear plants and passed laws banning the building of future nuclear plants, Italy was Nuke free by the will of it’s people. In 2008, Italy announced the repeal of the laws and the building of up to 10 new nuclear plants, the people this time were celebrating in the streets at the news that Italia was going to help save the world from Climate Change, the much scarier bogey man. What a turnaround in 22 years.
Shortly afterwards, the Japanese Fukashima’d the whole thing up again, Italy has returned to a moratorium on nuclear power, Germany has since abandoned nuclear, and gone back to coal. The solution is once more in trouble.
The global warming window is closing as the pause continues, but an ice age is still climate change and we still have finite fossil fuel and an insatiable appetite for electricity. Maybe they will decide soon that CO2 is not that bad after all, but, something else is worse and we still need that Nuclear power.
Conspiracy theory maybe (probably), but, it has the added appeal that if true, Greenpeace and FotW have been taken for suckers too 🙂
Australia has heaps of coal, mainly brown coal. But in Ballina they are burning sugar cane refuse, but get no subsidies like solar panels. I have always thought right back when Al started his ranting, that this global warming scare was a crock. If anything we were likely to enter a severe cooling period, that would admittedly strain our energy resources. And damage crops etc.
Which is basically more frightening and a threat, another glacial period. Not a cosy 2 C increase in heat. I nearly choked on my wine when I was told that he had won the Nobel prize and the Academy award. It is now becoming a political crisis and unfortunately our pollies well some, not green are trying to cut the carbon tax, but it is held up in the Senate before it can be made law. But come July 1st we’ll have some new senators, that will pass it.
I don’t think the French would bother buying or borrowing another car, they would just go to the scrap yard for a second set of number plates.
Is it true that Chinese cabbies and bus drivers have to be instrument rated? Having been there with visibility under 1/4 mile, I would think so.