Josh writes: Divesting from Fossil fuels seems to be flavour of the week, see here, here and here, but leaves a bitter taste. The Bishophill troll known as “aTTP” makes an appearence.
BBC is so anti-CO2, they used a minor fracas to cancel the politically incorrect the UK’s, the world’s end even the known universe’s best motoring tv series ‘Top Gear’.
It was matter for police, but no charges were made. As far as BBC is concerned they should have demanded ‘on air live’ apology from JC, rule that he receives no pay for next 6 episodes and money which is not insubstantional, to be donated to a charity for preventing violence in home or similar.
On programs like the top gear’, in particular for the location shoots, dozens of poorly paid freelances are employed, loosing earnings with no fault of their own, .
With my limited knowledge of the event, the above is what I would have done, but you may well be correct. It was so badly mishandled that no good any kind came out of it, just bad after bad. I suppose as licence payers, we are entitled to our opinions, right or wrong. In final analysis, I do hope that BBC management knowing exact details, had evaluated all options and came to a correct decision.
Mario
April 17, 2015 at 11:10 pm
“Sorry vukcevik, having a thug beat up a junior because said thug didn’t like his dinner is not a minor fracas.”
I’d rather like to have pictures, videos or third hand accounts from non-Fabian sources before I believe any of it.
As someone has already pointed out, “Welcome to the BBC, you may rape & sexually assault as many young women as you want,using your fame as a cover, but don’t you dare punch a producer!” In reference to the fact that people at the BBC knew about the perversions of tv personality Jimmy Saville for years & said absolutely nothing! Yet Jeremy Clarkeson gets sacked because he stupidly lost his temper & struck a producer! I know which I think is the worst conduct!
Alan the Brit
I agree 100%. In the ITV that would be a location manager, a general dogsbody organising everything from transport, catering and accommodation.
>>In any walk of life, striking a work colleague is a
>>dimissable offence – no excuses.
Whatever happened to the good old apology, Vuk?? Is that a dirty word now??
Besides, the BBC is the corporation who covered for a serial paedophile for thirty years. Everyone knew about it, and yet the BBC did nothing – except promote the guy. Why was that, eh?
So getting angry with sheer incompetence is a dismissable offense – while the serial molestation and rape of little girls, the molestation of hospital patients, and serial necrophilia in the morgue while stealing their false eyes are all de rigeur……. Is that how it works, in modern corporations? If so, please count me out. I would rather employ a thousand Clarkesons vs one Saville.
R
Oh Mario you delicate man. It is a minor fracas. Don’t be so effete. A major fracas is when there is a run in with some idiots from ISIS. A major fracas is when a few thugs beat up a man.
I agree that Clarkson should have been disciplined, striking and intimidation of a work colleague should not be tolerated. BUT, the BBC have shown their true colours by permitting him to host “Have I Got News For You” which (if memory serves) should have been broadcast last night. Clarkson, in my view quite rightly withdrew from recording the programme on Thursday. The illogicality continues where another programme in which he appears is going to be broadcast with his face pixellated out! You couldn’t make it up, the BBC treat us like fools
They killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, £50 million of world sales (equivalent to exports of a medium size UK company), with very little extra effort or investment required in the actual programme. If they have to earn their income the way the ITV or Sky do, they could find the way to sanction JC and keep ‘top gear’ on air.
BBC is so anti-CO2, they used a minor fracas to cancel the politically incorrect the UK’s, the world’s end even the known universe’s best motoring tv series ‘Top Gear’.
At our place a few years back in a similar case the company itself took the offender to court as well as paying for the individual to sue him it took physical assault so seriously. It also took the unusual step of refusing to provide him with any reference at all.
The trouble is the JC seemed to think that JC stood for Jesus Christ.
Justthinkin
April 17, 2015 1:51 pm
So they can burn wood/dung, which produces more CO2 then clean coal plants? Remember people….it is never wrong to beat a hippie/prog, Agenda 21, etc. follower with a clue bat.
I knew there was something wrong with washing dishes, but the EPA
is undecided:
“The EPA considers that there is inadequate information to assess the carcinogenic potential of toluene.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toluene
I looked it up. It is Sodium Toluene Sulfonate. Na-Methylbenzene-SO3 The sodium is just a
positive counter-ion and the SO3 is negatively charged. Soaps/detergents have a nonpolar part
(here the methylbenzene) and a polar part (the SO3-). I started to say no as toluene itself is a
solvent and found in gasoline and certain paints, etc. But after they add the sulfonate, it is indeed
a detergent.
Allegedly, few weeks ago Stamford University sold most if not all of their oil companies holdings, just as the oil price hit rock bottom.
I do hope that their climate science is more solidly based than their investment policy.
Canada sold her Gold reserves at $254/oz.(the absolute bottom) The days of Gold as a useful monetary link were seen as archaic.
Then the Swiss came out and said that they were not going to sell anymore of their reserves. They would now be buyers. I was holding futures.
The result was an immediate price spike…..oooops
Mick & dbstealey :
none of this is an accident of course. It would sure be interesting to see whether close family and associates of Gordon Brown just happened to be buying gold at around the he sold the country’s gold as rock bottom prices.
I think you are confusing this with the UK’s Gordon Brown’s efforts, who was possibly the worst and most profligate finance minister in history. Against all advice, he forced through these gold sales at the lowest possible price on the basis that gold was a ‘barbaric relic’.
Nowadays, socialists view cheap and reliable energy as the new barbaric relic, preferring the unreliable and expensive renewable sort to the cheap and reliable fossil fuelled one because the former is trendy and supposedly saves the planet.
Mark W:
”
MarkW
April 17, 2015 at 9:00 pm
Selling that much gold is going to depress prices.”
Ummm – yes. . . .
And Brown (who at least kept the UK out of the Euro) had announced, in advance, and very publically, that he would be selling a great chunk [?25%??] of the UK’s gold reserves – although I don’t think he actually named the hour and day he would do so.
Absolutely no understanding of markets.
None at all.
And if anyone makes connections to any current politicians in the UK – that’s your problem, and mine – as I will still be living here after the Election.
Auto
The price of oil (commodity) may be relatively low for the time being but oil company share prices are not.?dataset%5Bcollapse%5D=monthly&dataset%5Bgraph_title%5D=Exxon+Mobil&dataset%5Bheight%5D=250&dataset%5Bwidth%5D=375
His vandalism went further. He announced the sale which alerted the markets to a flood.
Larry in Texas
April 17, 2015 2:25 pm
I have been referring to the BBC as the PBC, or Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, but you can still refer to the BBC as the “Brainless Broadcasting Corporation” if you wish.
video/transcript: 16 April: Democracy Now: Harvard Students Expand Blockade Calling for School to Divest from Fossil Fuels
Harvard has the largest endowment of any university in the world, at $36.4 billion…
Several alumni of Harvard have also taken part in the blockade including Bill McKibben, the founder of the group 350.org, and former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth. We speak to sophomore Talia Rothstein, one of the coordinators of Divest Harvard, and Harvard science professor Naomi Oreskes…
ORESKES: …So, in our book, Merchants of Doubt, and in the film that we’ve just made about it, we document a long, really terrible history, going back to the 1980s and before, actually going back to the 1950s, of industry trying to deny and discredit scientific information relating to all kinds of issues, not just climate change, but tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole. And what we show is that the fossil fuel industry has played a major role in these campaigns to discredit scientific information. So, at Harvard, like many great universities, we do research, we do scholarship. We are committed. Our purpose, our mission is teaching, research, learning, scholarship. And yet these industries have worked, directly, consciously, deliberately, to undermine the very work that we do at these institutions…
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Oreskes, you were on a panel. How is the university responding? We couldn’t get them to come on the show, but they flew in Charlie Rose—is that right?—to moderate a panel that you were on, as well as representatives of Harvard University’s administration position.
ORESKES: The panel was wonderful in many ways. Charlie Rose is a very gracious man, a wonderful person, wonderful interviewer. We had excellent, outstanding people on the panel, like Chris Field, the head of Working Group II of the IPCC, and John Holdren, the president’s science adviser. So it was a wonderful panel… http://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/16/harvard_students_expand_blockade_calling_for
apparently, the “Merchants of Doubt” docu has ended its theater run, with a Domestic Total as of Apr. 5, 2015: $192,400: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=merchantsofdoubt.htm
How will these people ever manage to get to the Paris conferences?
Steve in SC
April 17, 2015 3:33 pm
Lenin was right about these types.
Goldie
April 17, 2015 3:38 pm
I must say that this is really taking hold in third world countries who are now desperately seeking alternatives to coal and oil because certain international lending agencies refuse to fund energy projects if they have no “alternative” energy “solution” as part of it.
Well, the corrupted organisations World Bank and IMF are now being replaced by the BRICS development bank and the Asian Infrastructure Bank for those 140 nations that are grouped around the BRICS; so they can all wave goodbye to the warmunists. The West has isolated itself by trying to suppress the development of the world, and will fall apart next as vassall nations break ranks.
That’s what the AIIB is for.:)
The only real surprise is that the renewable fanatic UK signed on. France with its nuclear is bulletproof and Germany’s back to burning lignite so there’s some coherence there. That apart, well there’s Austalia wanting to sell coal and the rest of the members are, I think, Asian mainland who just want power for their people and the U.S. dominated international financing organizations can go [pause] whistle, yes, whistle.
Germany is partially running a stable system, burning lignite, importing shiploads of US and Australian coal and all the LNG we can shove into the underground storages, and all the Natgas Russia can pump through Nordstream, on the other hand wind-turbinizing all hilltops like there’s no tomorrow.
As if there were two factions in government, sane people vs corrupt cronies. Maybe an internal fight. Bankers/NWO vs Industry (for which cheap stable supply is absolutely essential, I do not mean wind turbine industry, they’re bit players, I’m talking real factories).
DirkH
Interesting article from the BBC (yes, that BBC) – http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26820405
Has a graph showing overall energy production in Germany dropping from 200 mtoe in 1987 to about 122 mtoe in 2012. I suspect you’re more knowledgeable about Germany than I so I’m curious if you have an explanation for that? 2012 at 60% of 1987 is huge. I wondered if that was due to export of manufacturing industry to the East – the old Warsaw Pact countries and China – or is there some other structural change I was unaware of. Thanks.
Jeff, it is in good part due to the unification of Germany and the subsequent shutdown of East Germany’s horrid and inefficient industry.
skeptic
April 17, 2015 3:40 pm
I am really getting tired of this BS. All I want is for my gas, electricity, LP, and taxes to be as low as possible. I don’t mind paying a little extra fos gas if the politicians would not steal from it for uses other than roads. I think I will buy Leaf in protest.
A little Friday humor about Josh’s reference to the BH ‘house troll’.
Josh, you really love to mock commenter Ken Rice of the University of Edinburg (who comments as ‘…and Then There’s Physics’). But Josh, if Ken Rice is a troll then he can’t be house broken, so if he really is BH’s house troll then you’ve got a helluva intellectual mess to constantly cleanup . . . .
John
Jack
April 17, 2015 3:44 pm
Apparently in poor countries, wood fires and smoke are the greatest source of infant deaths. The motor car saved London from disappearing under a mountain of horse dung.
The blindness of these people is astounding.
Also, it’s ironic that wood has a much higher carbon to hydrogen ratio than coal, which is higher in carbon content than oil, which is higher than natural gas (methane, ie CH4).
Catherine Ronconi: “… wood has a much higher carbon to hydrogen ratio than coal”
Really? Can we have some cites please? Isn’t coal closer to pure carbon than is wood (cellulose and lignin)?
Not that it affects the subject of “Contributing to Al Gore’s Wallet” by CO2 vs H2O; or actual pollution from incomplete combustion of wood; or …
And of course the people picking up the divested holdings are not fooled by the decaying climate change exaggeration.
John
Justthinkin
April 17, 2015 4:05 pm
And as to those selling out at the bottom….how else can you claim a gigantic lose and get government(taxpayer) subsidies to keep feeding those leeches at the top?
Jeff
April 17, 2015 4:07 pm
The Guardian disinvestment campaign have 180,000 people signed up after some weeks. That’s the size of a mid-size town playing against China and India with a combined population of 2.6 Billion. It’s both funny and embarrassing – in the best traditions of British farce.
Also, divestment would just mean that shares change their owners, big deal for the company. Hey let’s all sell our oil and gas shares, maybe China will snap them up.
I’ve tried to tell the Guardian blogs that share ownership is not resource ownership – to little avail.
It’s even more peculiar if you start using numbers like only 2.2% of current global demand is supplied by wind/solar and 86.6% of current demand is supplied from fossil fuel sources. If it’s taken 25 years (from AR1) to get to 2.2%, asking them how they propose to reduce fossil fuel use to a level sufficient to limit temperature rise to 2C in any useful timescale seems to confuse them.
They don’t seem to understand either business or arithmetic.
George Devries Klein, PhD, PG, FGSA
April 17, 2015 4:44 pm
Bottom line message from environmentalists:
“Thou shalt know they place”
As in “Medieval times.
“Thou shalt know they place” As in “Medieval times.
No worse than that they have openly stated the masses should embrace shanty towns as the way forward.
Peter
April 17, 2015 4:56 pm
My parents took me to a third world country for junior school. I took my kids the same way. As a result, my kids are dyed in the wool skeptics. They’ve seen the benefits of a fossil free world. Short brutal lives with a devastated economy.
I am heavily invested in fossil fuels.
I think it has a great future for at least the rest of my life. Divestment is unethical
Catherine Ronconi
April 17, 2015 5:04 pm
I posted in Tips and Notes on the campaign being conducted by 350.org to get Harvard to divest its assets in fossil fuel companies.
The more divestment, the better a deal for truly socially and environmentally conscious investors, if these campaigns should drive down stock prices.
jmorpuss
April 17, 2015 5:39 pm
At 700 ppm Co (carbon monoxide) can cause seizures, comas and even death. Check out how many ppm a wood fire creates.
0.1 ppmv Natural atmosphere level (MOPITT)[40]
0.5–5 ppmv Average level in homes[41]
5–15 ppmv Near-properly adjusted gas stoves in homes, modern vehicle exhaust emissions[42]
17 ppmv Atmosphere of Venus
100–200 ppmv Exhaust from automobiles in the Mexico City central area in 1975[43]
700 ppmv Atmosphere of Mars
5,000 ppmv Exhaust from a home wood fire[44]
7,000 ppmv Undiluted warm car exhaust without a catalytic converter[42] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide
OK S.
April 17, 2015 7:05 pm
Didn’t aTTP (and Then There’s Physics) used to troll here too?
Yes, Ken Rice used to troll here as “To the left of centre”.
pat
April 17, 2015 7:14 pm
beyon divestment, with Mary, who throws the developing world to the CAGW wolves:
17 April: Guardian: Mary Robinson: Developing nations must move rapidly beyond fossil fuels
Rich world must support poorest countries to transition from fossil fuels much faster than they have to keep unburnable reserves in the ground, says UN climate change envoy
Tackling climate change will require developing countries to move beyond fossil fuels far more quickly than the rich world has managed, the United Nations envoy on climate change has warned.
Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and ex-UN human rights chief, said: “It may seem contradictory, but to be fair all countries must be enabled to participate in the transition away from fossil fuels together and at the same time. If not, we will exceed the carbon budget and consign countries without the means to participate in the transition to renewable energy to a future based on expensive, obsolete and polluting fossil fuels.”
The poorest countries, she added, must lead the way in that transition with financial assistance from the rich world.
“They will need to meet their sustainable development goals without using fossil fuels. In other words, they will have to develop using a different model to that which made the industrialised countries wealthy. This is a different prospect than merely reducing emissions, and requires the absolute support of the international community.”
This would be a massive task, she made clear.
***“No country has developed without fossil fuels to date, so cooperation is key to providing the technology, finance, skills and systems to create an alternative way of developing.”…
Her remarks, at a lecture for the Grantham Institute at Imperial College in London on Thursday night, were a counterpoint to views from the coal industry and others that poor countries would need to proceed along a high-carbon path of development until they have emerged from poverty.
In an article in the Guardian on Thursday, former US vice president Al Gore blasted the coal industry for what he claimed was a campaign targeting developing countries, as their developed country markets have declined… http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/17/mary-robinson-developing-nations-must-move-rapidly-beyond-fossil-fuels
as for Gore trying to create a meme that developed countries are exploiting developing countries by selling them coal…well, that’s the kind of dishonesty one has come to expect from this man.
17 April: RTCC: Climate deals make 2015 ‘biggest year since 1945’, says UN envoy
Need to update development goals and finalise global CO2 pact make 2015 most important in 70 years, says Mary Robinson
It’s the year greenhouse gas emissions must peak to stay within humanity’s maximum allowance to stop temperatures rising 2C above pre industrial levels…
But plans afoot must be done in the context of sustainable development, respecting human rights and working to lessen poverty, Robinson urged at Imperial College London at the Grantham Institute annual lecture…
The task in hand rivalled the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions and Marshall Plan, which reshaped the global economy postwar…
***Climate finance, directing the world’s estimated $90 trillion of investment in the next 15 years to low carbon development, and leaving two-thirds of remaining fossil fuels in the ground, were all vital to rein in global warming.
Women’s education and better healthcare to lower infant mortality rates could hold down population growth, she added. http://www.rtcc.org/2015/04/17/climate-deals-make-2015-biggest-year-since-1945-says-un-envoy/
***$90 trillion for the CAGW crowd now. won’t be long before we’re hearing quadrillion.
pat
April 17, 2015 7:21 pm
never funny…Al Gore:
16 April: Guardian: Cheap coal is a lie – stand up to the industry’s cynical fightback
by Al Gore and David Blood (Blood & Gore)
Vested interests are pushing the dirtiest fossil fuel as the energy solution in poor nations. In fact, the argument for investing in solar is overwhelming.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the reality that the days of coal as a source of energy are numbered…
This new economic and political reality is already being shaped by the fast-growing global support for the enforcement of a global “carbon budget”…
This exploitation of an urgent humanitarian need to promote more coal-burning in poor countries is extremely misleading…
Most developing countries face serious challenges that are already being exacerbated by climate change-related extreme weather events. They are being battered by stronger storms, more destructive floods, deeper and longer droughts and disruptive switches in the seasonal timing of rain. Think of the devastation wreaked by typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, or the flooding in Kashmir last summer…
The true cost of coal cannot be calculated without including the so-called airpocalypse… http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/16/coal-isnt-solution-to-energy-poverty-solar-energy
15 April: Bloomberg: Rajesh Kumar Singh: India Poised to Overtake China as Biggest Thermal Coal Importer
India is set to overtake China as the biggest importer of power-station coal, emerging as the leader of a clutch of regional nations that miners including Glencore Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. can tap for new orders.
Indian thermal-coal imports will surpass China’s by 2017 or sooner, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts William Foiles and Andrew Cosgrove said in a report. China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, is cutting down on coal use to fight pollution.
India and its regional peers including Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea plan to increase their combined coal-fired generating capacity by more than 204 gigawatts, or 60 percent, through 2019, according to the report.
Still, that may not be enough to trigger a price rally…
State-run monopoly Coal India Ltd., which produces more than 80 percent of the nation’s coal, has said it will double output to about 1 billion metric tons in five years. That means almost doubling the pace of growth in its annual production.
India’s thermal-coal demand will probably increase 42 percent to 1 billion tons in the six years to 2020, according to the report. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/india-poised-to-overtake-china-as-biggest-thermal-coal-importer
Half Tide Rock
April 17, 2015 7:22 pm
I refuse to be bullied! I have been heating with wood, So far so good. The hippies with out guns went to western Mass. and Vermont. The rest of us went to NH and Maine. I sometimes feel I am “getting too old” for this but the tangible act of doing something to react to a cooling house and spread, by your own intervention, warmth from the heart of the house is fulfilling. A warm possibly really hot stove to back up to soaks heat into your appreciative bones. The whiff of birch smoke as you approach offers joy and anticipation of peace.. When the winds howl, the blizzard rages; the juice of civilization leaves us, there is nothing quite like the reassuring toasty warmth of a perhaps a bit too well stoked stove roaring back at the elements. So a well considered heating plan with wood has offered joy and independence to a Luddite for many years. Here is to renewable energy that warms thrice and hopefully a warmer future as i stoke the CO2 up for the future optimum…or fear not for we’ve got hot when you’ve not!
Yes, but the government wants to take your wood fire away from you. Of course, if you continue to get steadily worse winters for awhile, it will be taking electricity from you, also, as it closes down those coal fired plants you depend. It will make for rough winters.
Seriously, you enjoy the wood fire because the smoke goes up a chimney. In Africa the women and children have to bend over the fire and breathe smoke to prepare meals. Real help for them consists of giving them solar cookers. They are effective for the kind of cooking they do and will stop steady deforestation as the population grows. Solarcookers.org is one organization setting up both temporary and permanent cookers, depending on whether the culture is nomadic or not. They also distribute cheap water pasteurizers (you only need to hold water at 140 degrees for a period of time to kill the organisms). After that you can work on electricity generation to raise the standard of living.
pat
April 17, 2015 8:31 pm
Oxford & Harvard have basically told the “divest” mob to get lost; Yale & UMW tried a different approach (links can be found by searching headlines):
10 April: 19 Students Arrested by Yale Police at Fossil Fuel Divestment Sit-In
16 April: UPDATE: 3 arrested during Divest University of Mary Washington sit-in released
They have each been charged with a class-one misdemeanor for trespassing and have a hearing scheduled for 8:30 a..m on April 30 at the Fredericksburg General District Court…
now Hulme adds his voice to those who try to point out the bleeding obvious, that there’ll be buyers in the wings if the Unis do divest:
18 April: Guardian: Mike Hulme: Why fossil fuel divestment is a misguided tactic
A divestment campaign may raise awareness but this gesture politics does not constitute an effective policy to deal with the risks of climate change
Second, I do not believe divestment will bring about ‘action on climate change’ (whatever might be meant by ‘action’).
***There will be many other investors waiting to pick up any slack which results from modest investment withdrawals…
Third, and most decisively for me, the divestment campaign is driven by a single and simple climate change narrative in which global bads are linked to global temperature…
***But human influence on the climate system is not all about carbon fossil fuel, and the bads in the world cannot be indexed to global temperature or to trillions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. As we can see from the shortly-to-be-agreed sustainable development goals, there are many things that ‘people of conscience’ are rightly concerned with that have little to do with carbon…
Climate change is a so-called ‘wicked problem’ that is not amenable to single action strategies…
Whilst born of frustration – one detects a sense of panic even in Rusbridger’s language – targeting high profile investors for divestment from fossil fuel companies is “feel-good” campaigning. It is the latest stage in the symbolic politics of climate change, which too often has been wooed by apocalyptic imaginary and false deadlines and lost sight of the politics of pragmatism by which change in the world occurs. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/17/why-fossil-fuel-divestment-is-a-misguided-tactic
and, whilst the MSM likes to play up a small drop in Chinese coal imports on occasion, due to oversupply and a drop in economic activity, these are figures which can’t be ignored:
16 Jan: Reuters: China coal output seen up 2.7 pct in 2014 – coal group
Chinese coal production is expected to grow 2.7 percent this year to around 3.8 billion tonnes, with demand also still rising despite a government campaign to cut air pollution, the China National Coal Association (CNCA) said on Thursday.
The association forecasts that despite efforts to restrict the import and use of low-quality coal, imports would also remain at around 300 million tonnes this year, with the price gap between domestic and overseas markets still attractive…
But total energy demand continues to soar and analysts still expect absolute coal demand to grow 2-3 percent a year over the next five years…
CNCA also said supply capacity was likely to reach around 4 billion tonnes in 2014, up from 3.7 billion tonnes in 2013. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/china-coal-idUSL3N0KQ1JY20140116
Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal. Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels.
More than 50% of premature deaths among children under 5 are due to pneumonia caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution. 3.8 million premature deaths annually from noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are attributed to exposure to household air pollution.
That 1,100 deaths per annum is an estimate only. In theory it could be higher or it it could be lower, & by default the producers of this information “have” to exaggerate the numbers based upon the “Precautionary Principle”, in case they get sued at the end of the day! Any home that has an open fire of some kind will be at reduced risk in a radon affected area automatically, as a result of the forced airflow through draw up the flue, whether the fire is lit or not. As with all these things it is the accumulation of radon in the home that is the issue, & for the most part it is well below background radiation levels. One can sit on a rock on for 20 minutes on Dartmoor & receive twice the annual dosage up one’s rear end as a result, as one probalby can all around the world where granite exists.
Alan,
Radon is only really an inhalation danger. As it is an alpha particle emitter upon decay, it actually needs to be near the tissue to have an impact. Alpha particles are stopped by a few feet of air, a piece of paper, clothing and even the dead layer of skin. Alpha emitters are only a danger if they are inhaled or ingested, then they can wreak havoc on genetic material by ionizing molecules in the cell. S
Sitting on a nice granite outcropping enjoying the view is not going to have any affect whatsoever on the haunches.
Yet in California electricity rates are “necessarily skyrocket”ing as green policy is foisted… to the point where my all electric kitchen costs more than the bbq… So I now do more cooking with wood and charcoal. Morning coffee made on a gas camp stove. This is better how? (other than cheaper to me…)
The special summer daytime rate where Anthony lives is nearly $1/kW hr and that is economical to buy a generator and make your own power for the necessary AC. (rule of thumb for home sized Diesels: divide Diesel price per gallon by 10 to get cents per kW-hr fuel cost, so $4 Diesel is 40 cent kW- hr. Gas Honda is about 50 cents, so still worth it.) Tis a strange workd where running your own generator pays off…
Current tariff for non special cases is 35 cent with 50 cent in planning, at which time my neighbors better like the sound of a motor… btw, nat gas generators are widely avaiable and fuel cost is lower…
Reblogged this on paullitely and commented:
Burning Wood destroys beneficial Greenery.
ImranCan
April 18, 2015 4:11 am
The whole ‘divestment campaign’ is just absurd. Its such an appalling intellectual mix up of 2 things:
1) the demand for an energy companies products that underpins its intrinsic market value
2) how the stock market market works
What exactly do people who want to encourage ‘divestment’ want ? The stock price goes up and down as function of people’s desire to buy or sell that stock. But fundamentally as long as there are a few people in the world who are OK to own or buy that stock, its value will basically be around or about its intrinsic value which is based on the demand for its products. As Margaret Thatcher once said “You cannot buck a market”.
So if all these green lefties sell there stocks, it just means you have a different class of stock owner …. those that really don’t give a shit about how much CO2 we produce … . at least it will stop those ridiculous motions at AGM’s.
AntonyIndia
April 18, 2015 8:03 am
This is exactly how billions of South Asians and Africans would feel mistreated by Western Lefties IF they would know this travesty was going on, BUT they don’t…. too busy living from day to day to make ends meet, more power cuts are making life even worse.
Evan Jones
Editor
April 18, 2015 2:41 pm
Vestment vs. Investment
The New Investiture Controversy.
Stuart B
April 18, 2015 3:43 pm
How about this? If anyone wishes to divest, I’ll willingly take their shares for absolutely nothing- I won’t charge them a thing. These shares will be ethically recycled, by distributing them as dividend generators for households in poorer nations. They will thus be enabled to buy seed, shelter, water equipment, etc, in short, all the paraphernalia of stable modern life. Hope this helps..
Whoops, correction, my apologies, no excuse. The third one about BEST was from “EricAdler”, a different loon that can sound like Appell.
Once you get out of this gentlemen’s debate society arguing fine print physics and advanced calculus and statistics, you find the greater climate debate is: vocal warmists appearing scientific with their talking points lists who can be defeated with a Google search or a spreadsheet; more-vocal liberals whose greatest argument is Watts, Spencer, Christy, Monckton and Morano, are all creationist proven liars bought and paid for by the Kochs etc; and skeptics without enough knowledge and tools to fight back effectively who often get frustrated and also resort to name-calling.
It is fun to argue tactics in the parlor, but some assistance and guidance would be appreciated for the war being fought out front in the street.
It is consistent with the population control agenda
Actually, it’s more like “Let them burn dung.”
BBC is so anti-CO2, they used a minor fracas to cancel the politically incorrect the UK’s, the world’s end even the known universe’s best motoring tv series ‘Top Gear’.
Hope they rework it into “Ethical gear”, that would be a hoot. “Fabian Gear” is more than I could hope for. (Hint: shortages)
Sorry vukcevik, having a thug beat up a junior because said thug didn’t like his dinner is not a minor fracas.
It was matter for police, but no charges were made. As far as BBC is concerned they should have demanded ‘on air live’ apology from JC, rule that he receives no pay for next 6 episodes and money which is not insubstantional, to be donated to a charity for preventing violence in home or similar.
On programs like the top gear’, in particular for the location shoots, dozens of poorly paid freelances are employed, loosing earnings with no fault of their own, .
@vukcevic
I like Top Gear and I like Clarkson, but you’re wrong
In any walk of life, striking a work colleague is a dismissable offence – no excuses
With my limited knowledge of the event, the above is what I would have done, but you may well be correct. It was so badly mishandled that no good any kind came out of it, just bad after bad. I suppose as licence payers, we are entitled to our opinions, right or wrong. In final analysis, I do hope that BBC management knowing exact details, had evaluated all options and came to a correct decision.
Mario
April 17, 2015 at 11:10 pm
“Sorry vukcevik, having a thug beat up a junior because said thug didn’t like his dinner is not a minor fracas.”
I’d rather like to have pictures, videos or third hand accounts from non-Fabian sources before I believe any of it.
As someone has already pointed out, “Welcome to the BBC, you may rape & sexually assault as many young women as you want,using your fame as a cover, but don’t you dare punch a producer!” In reference to the fact that people at the BBC knew about the perversions of tv personality Jimmy Saville for years & said absolutely nothing! Yet Jeremy Clarkeson gets sacked because he stupidly lost his temper & struck a producer! I know which I think is the worst conduct!
Alan the Brit
I agree 100%. In the ITV that would be a location manager, a general dogsbody organising everything from transport, catering and accommodation.
>>In any walk of life, striking a work colleague is a
>>dimissable offence – no excuses.
Whatever happened to the good old apology, Vuk?? Is that a dirty word now??
Besides, the BBC is the corporation who covered for a serial paedophile for thirty years. Everyone knew about it, and yet the BBC did nothing – except promote the guy. Why was that, eh?
So getting angry with sheer incompetence is a dismissable offense – while the serial molestation and rape of little girls, the molestation of hospital patients, and serial necrophilia in the morgue while stealing their false eyes are all de rigeur……. Is that how it works, in modern corporations? If so, please count me out. I would rather employ a thousand Clarkesons vs one Saville.
R
Oh Mario you delicate man. It is a minor fracas. Don’t be so effete. A major fracas is when there is a run in with some idiots from ISIS. A major fracas is when a few thugs beat up a man.
I agree that Clarkson should have been disciplined, striking and intimidation of a work colleague should not be tolerated. BUT, the BBC have shown their true colours by permitting him to host “Have I Got News For You” which (if memory serves) should have been broadcast last night. Clarkson, in my view quite rightly withdrew from recording the programme on Thursday. The illogicality continues where another programme in which he appears is going to be broadcast with his face pixellated out! You couldn’t make it up, the BBC treat us like fools
They killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, £50 million of world sales (equivalent to exports of a medium size UK company), with very little extra effort or investment required in the actual programme. If they have to earn their income the way the ITV or Sky do, they could find the way to sanction JC and keep ‘top gear’ on air.
This will free the producers of ‘Top Gear’ up to seek a more lucrative contract elsewhere and pull viewers away from BBC.
BBC is so anti-CO2, they used a minor fracas to cancel the politically incorrect the UK’s, the world’s end even the known universe’s best motoring tv series ‘Top Gear’.
At our place a few years back in a similar case the company itself took the offender to court as well as paying for the individual to sue him it took physical assault so seriously. It also took the unusual step of refusing to provide him with any reference at all.
The trouble is the JC seemed to think that JC stood for Jesus Christ.
So they can burn wood/dung, which produces more CO2 then clean coal plants? Remember people….it is never wrong to beat a hippie/prog, Agenda 21, etc. follower with a clue bat.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/WoodSmoke.gif
http://www.fs.fed.us/t-d/pubs/pdfpubs/…/pdf04232327dpi72pt03.pdf
Am I wrong, or is Toluene not what dishwashing detergent is made of? Brett
I knew there was something wrong with washing dishes, but the EPA
is undecided:
“The EPA considers that there is inadequate information to assess the carcinogenic potential of toluene.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toluene
I looked it up. It is Sodium Toluene Sulfonate. Na-Methylbenzene-SO3 The sodium is just a
positive counter-ion and the SO3 is negatively charged. Soaps/detergents have a nonpolar part
(here the methylbenzene) and a polar part (the SO3-). I started to say no as toluene itself is a
solvent and found in gasoline and certain paints, etc. But after they add the sulfonate, it is indeed
a detergent.
Very wrong indeed. You have no knowledge or understanding of chemistry I’m afraid.
This is what this kind of philosophy leads to:
http://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/haiti-%E2%80%93-dominican-republic-environmental-challenges-border-zone
The forests on the Haitian side of the border are gone.
Haiti was famous for beautiful mangos. Those are long gone now. Rocks are far less appetizing.
Allegedly, few weeks ago Stamford University sold most if not all of their oil companies holdings, just as the oil price hit rock bottom.
I do hope that their climate science is more solidly based than their investment policy.
Canada sold her Gold reserves at $254/oz.(the absolute bottom) The days of Gold as a useful monetary link were seen as archaic.
Then the Swiss came out and said that they were not going to sell anymore of their reserves. They would now be buyers. I was holding futures.
The result was an immediate price spike…..oooops
Mick,
That’s like the UK — they sold most of their gold holdings on the day that gold hit it’s 20-year low. Their timing was perfect.
Mick & dbstealey :
none of this is an accident of course. It would sure be interesting to see whether close family and associates of Gordon Brown just happened to be buying gold at around the he sold the country’s gold as rock bottom prices.
I think you are confusing this with the UK’s Gordon Brown’s efforts, who was possibly the worst and most profligate finance minister in history. Against all advice, he forced through these gold sales at the lowest possible price on the basis that gold was a ‘barbaric relic’.
Nowadays, socialists view cheap and reliable energy as the new barbaric relic, preferring the unreliable and expensive renewable sort to the cheap and reliable fossil fuelled one because the former is trendy and supposedly saves the planet.
Selling that much gold is going to depress prices.
Mark W:
”
MarkW
April 17, 2015 at 9:00 pm
Selling that much gold is going to depress prices.”
Ummm – yes. . . .
And Brown (who at least kept the UK out of the Euro) had announced, in advance, and very publically, that he would be selling a great chunk [?25%??] of the UK’s gold reserves – although I don’t think he actually named the hour and day he would do so.
Absolutely no understanding of markets.
None at all.
And if anyone makes connections to any current politicians in the UK – that’s your problem, and mine – as I will still be living here after the Election.
Auto
The price of oil (commodity) may be relatively low for the time being but oil company share prices are not.
?dataset%5Bcollapse%5D=monthly&dataset%5Bgraph_title%5D=Exxon+Mobil&dataset%5Bheight%5D=250&dataset%5Bwidth%5D=375
His vandalism went further. He announced the sale which alerted the markets to a flood.
I have been referring to the BBC as the PBC, or Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, but you can still refer to the BBC as the “Brainless Broadcasting Corporation” if you wish.
Bolshevik Bullshit Community.
Sorry bout that.
John,
Bolshevik I s a nasty word.
Auto
If they had it their way, we’d all be picking up our own dung to burn for fuel.
Aaron, if they had their way we’d all be dead.
video/transcript: 16 April: Democracy Now: Harvard Students Expand Blockade Calling for School to Divest from Fossil Fuels
Harvard has the largest endowment of any university in the world, at $36.4 billion…
Several alumni of Harvard have also taken part in the blockade including Bill McKibben, the founder of the group 350.org, and former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth. We speak to sophomore Talia Rothstein, one of the coordinators of Divest Harvard, and Harvard science professor Naomi Oreskes…
ORESKES: …So, in our book, Merchants of Doubt, and in the film that we’ve just made about it, we document a long, really terrible history, going back to the 1980s and before, actually going back to the 1950s, of industry trying to deny and discredit scientific information relating to all kinds of issues, not just climate change, but tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole. And what we show is that the fossil fuel industry has played a major role in these campaigns to discredit scientific information. So, at Harvard, like many great universities, we do research, we do scholarship. We are committed. Our purpose, our mission is teaching, research, learning, scholarship. And yet these industries have worked, directly, consciously, deliberately, to undermine the very work that we do at these institutions…
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Oreskes, you were on a panel. How is the university responding? We couldn’t get them to come on the show, but they flew in Charlie Rose—is that right?—to moderate a panel that you were on, as well as representatives of Harvard University’s administration position.
ORESKES: The panel was wonderful in many ways. Charlie Rose is a very gracious man, a wonderful person, wonderful interviewer. We had excellent, outstanding people on the panel, like Chris Field, the head of Working Group II of the IPCC, and John Holdren, the president’s science adviser. So it was a wonderful panel…
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/16/harvard_students_expand_blockade_calling_for
apparently, the “Merchants of Doubt” docu has ended its theater run, with a Domestic Total as of Apr. 5, 2015: $192,400:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=merchantsofdoubt.htm
What’s wrong with those Green foot soldier cheapskates.
I thought that Dr Oreskes was a Professor of the History of Science, not a Professor of (some) Science.
Anecdotally, I’ve found that people named “Naomi” have views that diverge from reality. It’s a small sample size, but…
USEFUL IDIOTS ALL.
How will these people ever manage to get to the Paris conferences?
Lenin was right about these types.
I must say that this is really taking hold in third world countries who are now desperately seeking alternatives to coal and oil because certain international lending agencies refuse to fund energy projects if they have no “alternative” energy “solution” as part of it.
Well, the corrupted organisations World Bank and IMF are now being replaced by the BRICS development bank and the Asian Infrastructure Bank for those 140 nations that are grouped around the BRICS; so they can all wave goodbye to the warmunists. The West has isolated itself by trying to suppress the development of the world, and will fall apart next as vassall nations break ranks.
That’s what the AIIB is for.:)
The only real surprise is that the renewable fanatic UK signed on. France with its nuclear is bulletproof and Germany’s back to burning lignite so there’s some coherence there. That apart, well there’s Austalia wanting to sell coal and the rest of the members are, I think, Asian mainland who just want power for their people and the U.S. dominated international financing organizations can go [pause] whistle, yes, whistle.
Germany is partially running a stable system, burning lignite, importing shiploads of US and Australian coal and all the LNG we can shove into the underground storages, and all the Natgas Russia can pump through Nordstream, on the other hand wind-turbinizing all hilltops like there’s no tomorrow.
As if there were two factions in government, sane people vs corrupt cronies. Maybe an internal fight. Bankers/NWO vs Industry (for which cheap stable supply is absolutely essential, I do not mean wind turbine industry, they’re bit players, I’m talking real factories).
DirkH
Interesting article from the BBC (yes, that BBC) – http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26820405
Has a graph showing overall energy production in Germany dropping from 200 mtoe in 1987 to about 122 mtoe in 2012. I suspect you’re more knowledgeable about Germany than I so I’m curious if you have an explanation for that? 2012 at 60% of 1987 is huge. I wondered if that was due to export of manufacturing industry to the East – the old Warsaw Pact countries and China – or is there some other structural change I was unaware of. Thanks.
Jeff – the chart you refer to is energy production. In all likelyhood the missing energy is being imported due to the shut down of the nukes; and the Green Energy Policy of Germany that is making Gas and Coal plant uneconomic:
http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/13/germanys-on-the-brink-of-an-energy-crisis/
Jeff, it is in good part due to the unification of Germany and the subsequent shutdown of East Germany’s horrid and inefficient industry.
I am really getting tired of this BS. All I want is for my gas, electricity, LP, and taxes to be as low as possible. I don’t mind paying a little extra fos gas if the politicians would not steal from it for uses other than roads. I think I will buy Leaf in protest.
I think I will buy Leaf in protest.
They will then use that as a justification for further investment in electric cars “by public demand”.
A little Friday humor about Josh’s reference to the BH ‘house troll’.
Josh, you really love to mock commenter Ken Rice of the University of Edinburg (who comments as ‘…and Then There’s Physics’). But Josh, if Ken Rice is a troll then he can’t be house broken, so if he really is BH’s house troll then you’ve got a helluva intellectual mess to constantly cleanup . . . .
John
Apparently in poor countries, wood fires and smoke are the greatest source of infant deaths. The motor car saved London from disappearing under a mountain of horse dung.
The blindness of these people is astounding.
Jack…no apparently about it. It is a fact. But that will not stop the JSWs. They are for 3rd trimester abortions. Should tell you something.
Also, it’s ironic that wood has a much higher carbon to hydrogen ratio than coal, which is higher in carbon content than oil, which is higher than natural gas (methane, ie CH4).
Catherine Ronconi: “… wood has a much higher carbon to hydrogen ratio than coal”
Really? Can we have some cites please? Isn’t coal closer to pure carbon than is wood (cellulose and lignin)?
Not that it affects the subject of “Contributing to Al Gore’s Wallet” by CO2 vs H2O; or actual pollution from incomplete combustion of wood; or …
And of course the people picking up the divested holdings are not fooled by the decaying climate change exaggeration.
John
And as to those selling out at the bottom….how else can you claim a gigantic lose and get government(taxpayer) subsidies to keep feeding those leeches at the top?
The Guardian disinvestment campaign have 180,000 people signed up after some weeks. That’s the size of a mid-size town playing against China and India with a combined population of 2.6 Billion. It’s both funny and embarrassing – in the best traditions of British farce.
Also, divestment would just mean that shares change their owners, big deal for the company. Hey let’s all sell our oil and gas shares, maybe China will snap them up.
I’ve tried to tell the Guardian blogs that share ownership is not resource ownership – to little avail.
It’s even more peculiar if you start using numbers like only 2.2% of current global demand is supplied by wind/solar and 86.6% of current demand is supplied from fossil fuel sources. If it’s taken 25 years (from AR1) to get to 2.2%, asking them how they propose to reduce fossil fuel use to a level sufficient to limit temperature rise to 2C in any useful timescale seems to confuse them.
They don’t seem to understand either business or arithmetic.
Bottom line message from environmentalists:
“Thou shalt know they place”
As in “Medieval times.
“Thou shalt know they place” As in “Medieval times.
No worse than that they have openly stated the masses should embrace shanty towns as the way forward.
My parents took me to a third world country for junior school. I took my kids the same way. As a result, my kids are dyed in the wool skeptics. They’ve seen the benefits of a fossil free world. Short brutal lives with a devastated economy.
I am heavily invested in fossil fuels.
I think it has a great future for at least the rest of my life. Divestment is unethical
I posted in Tips and Notes on the campaign being conducted by 350.org to get Harvard to divest its assets in fossil fuel companies.
The more divestment, the better a deal for truly socially and environmentally conscious investors, if these campaigns should drive down stock prices.
At 700 ppm Co (carbon monoxide) can cause seizures, comas and even death. Check out how many ppm a wood fire creates.
0.1 ppmv Natural atmosphere level (MOPITT)[40]
0.5–5 ppmv Average level in homes[41]
5–15 ppmv Near-properly adjusted gas stoves in homes, modern vehicle exhaust emissions[42]
17 ppmv Atmosphere of Venus
100–200 ppmv Exhaust from automobiles in the Mexico City central area in 1975[43]
700 ppmv Atmosphere of Mars
5,000 ppmv Exhaust from a home wood fire[44]
7,000 ppmv Undiluted warm car exhaust without a catalytic converter[42]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide
Didn’t aTTP (and Then There’s Physics) used to troll here too?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2015/01/who-is-and-then-theres-physics.html
Yes, Ken Rice used to troll here as “To the left of centre”.
beyon divestment, with Mary, who throws the developing world to the CAGW wolves:
17 April: Guardian: Mary Robinson: Developing nations must move rapidly beyond fossil fuels
Rich world must support poorest countries to transition from fossil fuels much faster than they have to keep unburnable reserves in the ground, says UN climate change envoy
Tackling climate change will require developing countries to move beyond fossil fuels far more quickly than the rich world has managed, the United Nations envoy on climate change has warned.
Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and ex-UN human rights chief, said: “It may seem contradictory, but to be fair all countries must be enabled to participate in the transition away from fossil fuels together and at the same time. If not, we will exceed the carbon budget and consign countries without the means to participate in the transition to renewable energy to a future based on expensive, obsolete and polluting fossil fuels.”
The poorest countries, she added, must lead the way in that transition with financial assistance from the rich world.
“They will need to meet their sustainable development goals without using fossil fuels. In other words, they will have to develop using a different model to that which made the industrialised countries wealthy. This is a different prospect than merely reducing emissions, and requires the absolute support of the international community.”
This would be a massive task, she made clear.
***“No country has developed without fossil fuels to date, so cooperation is key to providing the technology, finance, skills and systems to create an alternative way of developing.”…
Her remarks, at a lecture for the Grantham Institute at Imperial College in London on Thursday night, were a counterpoint to views from the coal industry and others that poor countries would need to proceed along a high-carbon path of development until they have emerged from poverty.
In an article in the Guardian on Thursday, former US vice president Al Gore blasted the coal industry for what he claimed was a campaign targeting developing countries, as their developed country markets have declined…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/17/mary-robinson-developing-nations-must-move-rapidly-beyond-fossil-fuels
as for Gore trying to create a meme that developed countries are exploiting developing countries by selling them coal…well, that’s the kind of dishonesty one has come to expect from this man.
17 April: RTCC: Climate deals make 2015 ‘biggest year since 1945’, says UN envoy
Need to update development goals and finalise global CO2 pact make 2015 most important in 70 years, says Mary Robinson
It’s the year greenhouse gas emissions must peak to stay within humanity’s maximum allowance to stop temperatures rising 2C above pre industrial levels…
But plans afoot must be done in the context of sustainable development, respecting human rights and working to lessen poverty, Robinson urged at Imperial College London at the Grantham Institute annual lecture…
The task in hand rivalled the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions and Marshall Plan, which reshaped the global economy postwar…
***Climate finance, directing the world’s estimated $90 trillion of investment in the next 15 years to low carbon development, and leaving two-thirds of remaining fossil fuels in the ground, were all vital to rein in global warming.
Women’s education and better healthcare to lower infant mortality rates could hold down population growth, she added.
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/04/17/climate-deals-make-2015-biggest-year-since-1945-says-un-envoy/
***$90 trillion for the CAGW crowd now. won’t be long before we’re hearing quadrillion.
never funny…Al Gore:
16 April: Guardian: Cheap coal is a lie – stand up to the industry’s cynical fightback
by Al Gore and David Blood (Blood & Gore)
Vested interests are pushing the dirtiest fossil fuel as the energy solution in poor nations. In fact, the argument for investing in solar is overwhelming.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the reality that the days of coal as a source of energy are numbered…
This new economic and political reality is already being shaped by the fast-growing global support for the enforcement of a global “carbon budget”…
This exploitation of an urgent humanitarian need to promote more coal-burning in poor countries is extremely misleading…
Most developing countries face serious challenges that are already being exacerbated by climate change-related extreme weather events. They are being battered by stronger storms, more destructive floods, deeper and longer droughts and disruptive switches in the seasonal timing of rain. Think of the devastation wreaked by typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, or the flooding in Kashmir last summer…
The true cost of coal cannot be calculated without including the so-called airpocalypse…
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/16/coal-isnt-solution-to-energy-poverty-solar-energy
15 April: Bloomberg: Rajesh Kumar Singh: India Poised to Overtake China as Biggest Thermal Coal Importer
India is set to overtake China as the biggest importer of power-station coal, emerging as the leader of a clutch of regional nations that miners including Glencore Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. can tap for new orders.
Indian thermal-coal imports will surpass China’s by 2017 or sooner, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts William Foiles and Andrew Cosgrove said in a report. China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, is cutting down on coal use to fight pollution.
India and its regional peers including Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea plan to increase their combined coal-fired generating capacity by more than 204 gigawatts, or 60 percent, through 2019, according to the report.
Still, that may not be enough to trigger a price rally…
State-run monopoly Coal India Ltd., which produces more than 80 percent of the nation’s coal, has said it will double output to about 1 billion metric tons in five years. That means almost doubling the pace of growth in its annual production.
India’s thermal-coal demand will probably increase 42 percent to 1 billion tons in the six years to 2020, according to the report.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/india-poised-to-overtake-china-as-biggest-thermal-coal-importer
I refuse to be bullied! I have been heating with wood, So far so good. The hippies with out guns went to western Mass. and Vermont. The rest of us went to NH and Maine. I sometimes feel I am “getting too old” for this but the tangible act of doing something to react to a cooling house and spread, by your own intervention, warmth from the heart of the house is fulfilling. A warm possibly really hot stove to back up to soaks heat into your appreciative bones. The whiff of birch smoke as you approach offers joy and anticipation of peace.. When the winds howl, the blizzard rages; the juice of civilization leaves us, there is nothing quite like the reassuring toasty warmth of a perhaps a bit too well stoked stove roaring back at the elements. So a well considered heating plan with wood has offered joy and independence to a Luddite for many years. Here is to renewable energy that warms thrice and hopefully a warmer future as i stoke the CO2 up for the future optimum…or fear not for we’ve got hot when you’ve not!
Yes, but the government wants to take your wood fire away from you. Of course, if you continue to get steadily worse winters for awhile, it will be taking electricity from you, also, as it closes down those coal fired plants you depend. It will make for rough winters.
Seriously, you enjoy the wood fire because the smoke goes up a chimney. In Africa the women and children have to bend over the fire and breathe smoke to prepare meals. Real help for them consists of giving them solar cookers. They are effective for the kind of cooking they do and will stop steady deforestation as the population grows. Solarcookers.org is one organization setting up both temporary and permanent cookers, depending on whether the culture is nomadic or not. They also distribute cheap water pasteurizers (you only need to hold water at 140 degrees for a period of time to kill the organisms). After that you can work on electricity generation to raise the standard of living.
Oxford & Harvard have basically told the “divest” mob to get lost; Yale & UMW tried a different approach (links can be found by searching headlines):
10 April: 19 Students Arrested by Yale Police at Fossil Fuel Divestment Sit-In
16 April: UPDATE: 3 arrested during Divest University of Mary Washington sit-in released
They have each been charged with a class-one misdemeanor for trespassing and have a hearing scheduled for 8:30 a..m on April 30 at the Fredericksburg General District Court…
now Hulme adds his voice to those who try to point out the bleeding obvious, that there’ll be buyers in the wings if the Unis do divest:
18 April: Guardian: Mike Hulme: Why fossil fuel divestment is a misguided tactic
A divestment campaign may raise awareness but this gesture politics does not constitute an effective policy to deal with the risks of climate change
Second, I do not believe divestment will bring about ‘action on climate change’ (whatever might be meant by ‘action’).
***There will be many other investors waiting to pick up any slack which results from modest investment withdrawals…
Third, and most decisively for me, the divestment campaign is driven by a single and simple climate change narrative in which global bads are linked to global temperature…
***But human influence on the climate system is not all about carbon fossil fuel, and the bads in the world cannot be indexed to global temperature or to trillions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. As we can see from the shortly-to-be-agreed sustainable development goals, there are many things that ‘people of conscience’ are rightly concerned with that have little to do with carbon…
Climate change is a so-called ‘wicked problem’ that is not amenable to single action strategies…
Whilst born of frustration – one detects a sense of panic even in Rusbridger’s language – targeting high profile investors for divestment from fossil fuel companies is “feel-good” campaigning. It is the latest stage in the symbolic politics of climate change, which too often has been wooed by apocalyptic imaginary and false deadlines and lost sight of the politics of pragmatism by which change in the world occurs.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/17/why-fossil-fuel-divestment-is-a-misguided-tactic
and, whilst the MSM likes to play up a small drop in Chinese coal imports on occasion, due to oversupply and a drop in economic activity, these are figures which can’t be ignored:
16 Jan: Reuters: China coal output seen up 2.7 pct in 2014 – coal group
Chinese coal production is expected to grow 2.7 percent this year to around 3.8 billion tonnes, with demand also still rising despite a government campaign to cut air pollution, the China National Coal Association (CNCA) said on Thursday.
The association forecasts that despite efforts to restrict the import and use of low-quality coal, imports would also remain at around 300 million tonnes this year, with the price gap between domestic and overseas markets still attractive…
But total energy demand continues to soar and analysts still expect absolute coal demand to grow 2-3 percent a year over the next five years…
CNCA also said supply capacity was likely to reach around 4 billion tonnes in 2014, up from 3.7 billion tonnes in 2013.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/china-coal-idUSL3N0KQ1JY20140116
“Greens” condemn children to slow death
Household air pollution and health, WHO Fact sheet N°292 Updated March 2014
“•Radon increases your risk of lung cancer
•The higher the radon, the longer the exposure, the greater the risk
•Radon causes over 1,100 deaths from lung cancer each year in the UK
•Half of these deaths occur among the quarter of the population who are current smokers”
http://www.ukradon.org/information/risks
Radon the killer in tobacco . https://altered-states.net/barry/newsletter405/tobacco.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_radon
That 1,100 deaths per annum is an estimate only. In theory it could be higher or it it could be lower, & by default the producers of this information “have” to exaggerate the numbers based upon the “Precautionary Principle”, in case they get sued at the end of the day! Any home that has an open fire of some kind will be at reduced risk in a radon affected area automatically, as a result of the forced airflow through draw up the flue, whether the fire is lit or not. As with all these things it is the accumulation of radon in the home that is the issue, & for the most part it is well below background radiation levels. One can sit on a rock on for 20 minutes on Dartmoor & receive twice the annual dosage up one’s rear end as a result, as one probalby can all around the world where granite exists.
Alan,
Radon is only really an inhalation danger. As it is an alpha particle emitter upon decay, it actually needs to be near the tissue to have an impact. Alpha particles are stopped by a few feet of air, a piece of paper, clothing and even the dead layer of skin. Alpha emitters are only a danger if they are inhaled or ingested, then they can wreak havoc on genetic material by ionizing molecules in the cell. S
Sitting on a nice granite outcropping enjoying the view is not going to have any affect whatsoever on the haunches.
Yet in California electricity rates are “necessarily skyrocket”ing as green policy is foisted… to the point where my all electric kitchen costs more than the bbq… So I now do more cooking with wood and charcoal. Morning coffee made on a gas camp stove. This is better how? (other than cheaper to me…)
The special summer daytime rate where Anthony lives is nearly $1/kW hr and that is economical to buy a generator and make your own power for the necessary AC. (rule of thumb for home sized Diesels: divide Diesel price per gallon by 10 to get cents per kW-hr fuel cost, so $4 Diesel is 40 cent kW- hr. Gas Honda is about 50 cents, so still worth it.) Tis a strange workd where running your own generator pays off…
Current tariff for non special cases is 35 cent with 50 cent in planning, at which time my neighbors better like the sound of a motor… btw, nat gas generators are widely avaiable and fuel cost is lower…
Reblogged this on paullitely and commented:
Burning Wood destroys beneficial Greenery.
The whole ‘divestment campaign’ is just absurd. Its such an appalling intellectual mix up of 2 things:
1) the demand for an energy companies products that underpins its intrinsic market value
2) how the stock market market works
What exactly do people who want to encourage ‘divestment’ want ? The stock price goes up and down as function of people’s desire to buy or sell that stock. But fundamentally as long as there are a few people in the world who are OK to own or buy that stock, its value will basically be around or about its intrinsic value which is based on the demand for its products. As Margaret Thatcher once said “You cannot buck a market”.
So if all these green lefties sell there stocks, it just means you have a different class of stock owner …. those that really don’t give a shit about how much CO2 we produce … . at least it will stop those ridiculous motions at AGM’s.
This is exactly how billions of South Asians and Africans would feel mistreated by Western Lefties IF they would know this travesty was going on, BUT they don’t…. too busy living from day to day to make ends meet, more power cuts are making life even worse.
Vestment vs. Investment
The New Investiture Controversy.
How about this? If anyone wishes to divest, I’ll willingly take their shares for absolutely nothing- I won’t charge them a thing. These shares will be ethically recycled, by distributing them as dividend generators for households in poorer nations. They will thus be enabled to buy seed, shelter, water equipment, etc, in short, all the paraphernalia of stable modern life. Hope this helps..
They really shouldn’t be profiting from the sale otherwise they are hypocrites, so I would like to get in on this scheme.
Assorted libel and humor (with links) from the mild-mannered madman, David Appell, https://disqus.com/by/DavidAppell/.
“I know for a fact that Watts is a liar, because he’s lied about me. And he later admitted it.”
“Planets don’t just “warm up” without a reason. The reason is manmade greenhouse gases.”
(Note: Ah, so that’s how the interglacial started!)
“When Watts found that the BEST project shot down his theory that the temperature record is no good, he was very embarrassed, but hasn’t yet been able to publish a rebuttal.”
(Note: This is only a few hours old. Given how often BEST has been chewed up and spit out around here, I fear Appell is suffering from early dementia.)
And this is my favorite so far:
“Birds don’t emit CO2, Einstein.”
Whoops, correction, my apologies, no excuse. The third one about BEST was from “EricAdler”, a different loon that can sound like Appell.
Once you get out of this gentlemen’s debate society arguing fine print physics and advanced calculus and statistics, you find the greater climate debate is: vocal warmists appearing scientific with their talking points lists who can be defeated with a Google search or a spreadsheet; more-vocal liberals whose greatest argument is Watts, Spencer, Christy, Monckton and Morano, are all creationist proven liars bought and paid for by the Kochs etc; and skeptics without enough knowledge and tools to fight back effectively who often get frustrated and also resort to name-calling.
It is fun to argue tactics in the parlor, but some assistance and guidance would be appreciated for the war being fought out front in the street.