This is definitely climate progress. Next up: urban rickshaws to reduce emissions?
From a Newcastle University press release:
Growth versus global warming
A three-year project led by Newcastle University for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has outlined how our major cities must respond if they are to continue to grow in the face of climate change.
Using the new UK Climate Predictions ’09 data for weather patterns over the next century, the research looks at the impact of predicted rises in temperature – particularly in urban areas – increased flooding in winter and less water availability in summer.
The report “How can cities grow whilst reducing emissions and vulnerability” focuses on the particular challenges facing London but can be used as a model for other UK cities on how policy-makers, businesses and the public must work together to prepare for climate change.
As well as protecting our homes and buildings against the increased threat of flooding from rising sea levels, the report emphasizes the need to reduce our carbon emissions, reduce our water usage and move towards cleaner, greener transport.
Newcastle University’s Dr Richard Dawson, one of the report’s authors, said: “There’s not one simple solution to this problem. Instead we need a portfolio of measures that work together to minimize the impact of climate change while allowing for our cities to grow.
“Most importantly we have to cut our carbon dioxide emissions but at the same time we need to prepare for the extremes of weather – heat waves, droughts and flooding – which we are already starting to experience.
“The difficulty is balancing one risk against another while allowing for the expected population and employment growth and that is what our work attempts to address.”
Led by Newcastle University’s Professor Jim Hall, the project is the result of three years’ work to decide how our cities should respond to the threats of climate change.
Promoting the development of cycleways and public transport, low-carbon energy and water recycling it also shows how solving one problem can exacerbate another.
Dr Dawson explains: “Heat waves like the ones being predicted to occur more frequently in future are extremely serious, particularly for the eldest members of our population.
“To combat the problem we often resort to switching on the air conditioning. This is not only energy intensive (and therefore has potential to raise carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change) but works by cooling the inside of the building and expelling hot air outside, raising the overall air temperature in the city as well.
“This can amplify what is known as the ‘urban heat island’.”
To reduce this problem, the authors show that one option might be to stimulate growth along the Thames flood plain as the water helps to keep the overall temperature lower.
“The problem then is that you are building in the flood plain so you have to prepare for a whole different set of challenges,” explains Dr Dawson. “Houses built on stilts, flood resilient wiring where the sockets and wires are raised above flood level, and water resistant building materials are going to have to be incorporated into our building plans.
“Good planning is the key – we have shown that land use planning influences how much people travel and how they heat and cool their buildings, and hence the carbon dioxide emissions.
“Land use also determines how vulnerable people will be to the impacts of climate change. Our research enables policy makers to explore these many issues on the basis of evidence about the possible future changes and to analyse the effectiveness of a range of innovative responses, so they can better understand and prepare for climate change.”
The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council.
Idiots. If they were serious about sea level rise they could just feed he damn water into the world’s deserts.
This reminds me of the “nasal deodorant” marketing. You convince people that they have a problem that they can’t sense. In this case it is something like “do you know what the inside of your nose smells like to someone else?” and then tie “nasal odor” to bad breath with someone like “if it stinks going in, it will stink coming out”. So now you have people worried that they might have nasal odor and that might be causing bad breath that no mouthwash will cure. Then you spring “nasal deodorant” on them to “fix” the “problem”.
So you have this “rising sea level” problem that has not actually been observed but someone is going to make a million bucks selling people on ways to mitigate a problem that doesn’t really exist.
It’s all a bunch of “nasal deodorant” if you ask me.
I don’t suppose you can blame Newcastle university for taking our money off the Tyndall centre via public bodies we fund. The North East is a cash strapped part of the UK. But reallly – stilt houses? Please.
If there is urban flloding in winter and water shortage in summer, this is a failure of planning control and infrastructure investment, not a harbinger of climate change. Spend the money there, noy on fancy graphics of Thailand on Thames.
And when the Thames freeze over residents can ice skeet into the city for work and recreation.
News Flash: The WBGU has spoken.
‘the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020—i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years.’
Source: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmY0NmE5YWZlNWFjZWU3ZTkwMmNjZDIyYWY1NjU4Y2E=
My response would get me ‘snipped’ so I’ll just go with , NEIN.
We have a dictum “Match and (fire) Pump”.
A similar one in your countries?
It is amazing how nutty the AGW believers are. Not only is there going to be a rising ocean but that it will happen so fast that we have to prepare as soon as possible. Many people suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder. From Wikipedia: “Individuals suffering GAD typically catastrophise, anticipate disaster, and are overly concerned about everyday matters such as health issues, money, death, family problems, friend problems or work difficulties.” This must be a new version: Global Warming Anxiety Disorder. It fits well.
This one’s always good for the “rising seas” carpetbaggers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1066712/Uncovered-lost-beach-Romans-got-toehold-Britain.html
Someone is trying to justify their jobs…
Let’s kind of put this in perspective. My home is on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. It was built in 1860 something… a major renovation in 1890 left gas pipe connections sticking out through all the walls…. lately I’ve had a few “issues” about floor joists that were the result of decisions made after the hurricane of 1938… What is it I’m supposed to be worried about again? These…. “people”…. use thus kind of garbage to justify raising my insurance rates…..
Three years to produce this report? I wonder what sort of grant they received…
Why stilts?
The Dutch simply decided to build houses that float.
That being said, I never could figure out people who wanted to live in ‘flood-able’ areas.
Given me high ground with lots of trees any day of the week, and yes, I would have a fire-break’ [to he11 with what the government wants, or thinks].
If this UK University publishes these global warming solutions then no wonder so many current graduates can’t find any jobs! The concepts can only come from a grant dependent source prepared to ignore facts and opt for politico-science garbage.
They should make those stilts 25 feet high then because according to Gore they seal level will rise at least 20 feet.
God I hate those idiots… I’m trying to raise money for good research that will benefit mankind and those guys get millions to tell some fairytale that will never come true. I have some good advice for you Dr Dawson, you better make sure people can skate once they get down from their stilt houses… the oceans will be frozen.
This is an example of the waste of money and resource that is occurring as the result of blind belief in unvalidated computer models.
Have these people even TRIED looking at the sea level rise charts?
It simply isn’t matching the predictions.
NOWHERE in either the 2001 or 2007 IPCC sea level rise predictions, is there a flattening or decline in Mean Sea Level. It is always shown increasing.
Even their best “Best Case” scenario from 2001shows at least a 2mm/year lower bound for the current time period. Their most recent 2007 “Best Case” is 3mm/year. Their upper “Worst Case” lines are both higher still.
MSL has been about 1mm/yr. for the last five years, and has been flat or declined over the last three, depending upon how you look at the charts.
What do you call it when a scientific prediction fails to materialize?
We’re outside the error bars here, folks.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global.jpg
And to add to all of that … remember back when the “Trak 2” razor came about? SNL did a spoof commercial for the “Trak 5” with five blades “because you’ll buy ANYTHING”.
And sure enough, you can go to the store today and buy a razor with 5 freakin’ blades.
This is about making huge amounts of money by telling children that there is a problem that they will willingly pay to mitigate when they become adults.
So what do we do about the global stupidity problem?
How did this guy get accredited as a Dr? no, really? Have British academic standards plummetted so badly?
I wonder if these houses on stilts could have moving legs so that when you want to move house you can just walk your house somewhere new.
Out of every negative there must be a positive ; )
Houses have long been built on ‘stilts’, or raised foundatins, at Shiplake and other villages along the Thames valley. Nothing new under the sun.
‘foundations’ – doh!
The stilts might be a good idea to build on the newly drying continental shelf exposed due to potentially dropping sea levels.
Lets call them poor man’s pylons.
If the climate ain’t warming, it’s because it’s cooling.
If the Sea Levels aren’t catastrophically rising, it’s because they are about to drop like a rock.
R U Prepared? Got your new beachfront property extension deed all set to go?
It seems Anthony has realised he has a sizeable UK contingent here 😉
I hope they add anti-freeze to the water otherwise those houses will be collapsing in winter faster than a Geordie girl on a night out.
Actually houses on stilts is a good idea. Here in the UK they build housing estates on flood plains and when the decadel rains arrive complain the government has not done enough to control the flooding. doh!
So what do we do about the global stupidity problem?
Nuthin’. Nature writes it as a zero-sum game.
Someone once told me the dividing line goes like this:
There are those who don’t know, and those who don’t suspect.
It was the latter type that really worried him.
Trend 1906-2008 of Japanese Coastline Average Sea Level:
http://www.data.kishou.go.jp/shindan/a_1/sl_trend/sl_trend.html
(Top Figure. Sorry in local language…….)
Our Meteorological Agency says (1) there is no long-term trend, and (2) the sea level shows an obvious 20-year cycle.
You see the portion after 1992 exhibits an apparent 4-cm rise, in line with Colorado U.’s satellite observation, but the long portion before that shows no monotonous trend.
Them stilts will be useful to keep the snow away from the front door.
Interestingly, all the stilt houses depicted in the picture above seem to be made of timber, and even include thatched roofs. For groups who claim to be green friendly this would mean cutting down a large amout of forest.
I would have at least included a solar panel on the thatched roof !
The project (taking 3 years) was based on “the new UK Climate Predictions ’09 data”. That soungs fishy; did they have a crystal ball? The UK Climate Predictions ’09 (UKCP09) can be seen at: http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/868/531/
Quoting from UKCP09: “The projections are provided at seven 30-year time periods covering the period from 2010 to the end of this century and at a 25 km spatial resolution.” Can you believe it – the arrogance of forecsating (projecting) at 25km resolution 90 years into the future? They can’t forecast next week’s weather. Another quote: “For the first time it provides probabilistic projections of climate change based on quantification of the known sources of uncertainty.”
It’s worth going to the website and reading fantasy in action.
That’s my taxes they’re wasting.
This business of sea-level changes just seems so weird. I kinda thought I had the general outlines figured out. Like a bit would come from thermal expansion but that’s not really all that much. Melting glaciers add the most seems to be the CW. And when it gets colder the glaciers grow and the water that becomes thicker glaciers comes from the oceans so sea level falls.
It all kinda made sense in a non-detailed overall way…
But..but…but
As temperatures fall, there is less humidity in the air and glaciers aren’t going to grow as much. As temperatures rise there is more humidity and glaciers actually GROW MORE in the places where temps are rising but still below freezing–such as Greenland and Antarctica. As long as they remain below freezing, their glaciers will continue to GROW not shrink so sea level probably will not rise too much. (Though sea level was 40-60 meters higher before the last glaciation than today as can be seen in high stands in California so we may have a ways to go yet.)
I mean look at the GISP2 graph:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.gif
Everyone looked at the temperatures but look this time at the snow accumulation!!! It looks like the bulk of accumulation occurs as the temps rise very quickly out of the minimum! And then more accumulation occurs as the temps continue to rise and the accumulation ceases as the temps drop quickly into another minimum.
Remember that this chart is Greenland where the highest temperature reached on the chart is -28C or so.
So, when were the glaciers that covered Canada and the upper half of America formed? Not when temps were lowest (when it was driest) but when temps were just low enough that more snow stuck around all year than melted. As it got colder the accumulation would be less and less. So sea level started dropping quite early in the process. And dropped a lot. then more slowly as it got colder.
So we probably reached minimum sea level long? before we reached minimum temperatures. And, more importantly, I think a drop in sea level would be a sign that things may be going south.
I’ll stop now. I just have so many questions.
We’ll have kayaking in the Winter, dirt biking in the Summer.
What’s not to like?
When I get in a bad mood I can always find an AGWER to make me smile or else read some comments about them here. LOL!
If they were serious about sea level rise they could just feed he damn water into the world’s deserts.
Indeed, they could rather easily by building a canal to connect the below sea level Qatar Depression (from memory larger than France) with the Mediterranean.
This poses no real technical issues and has many benefits.
The Qatar (or Qattara) Depression Project was a proposal to build a hydroelectric power plant by connecting the depression (located near Alexandria in Egypt) to the Mediterranean sea by an 80km tunnel. Since the depression is over 130m deep and climate is very hot and dry the water level will reach a steady state, balanced by evaporation. A secondary benefit is that the evaporation will increase the rainfall and decrease the temperature in the area, both welcome changes. There are no permanent settlements in the depression, which is partially covered by hostile salt beds, so no population (besides a few nomads) needs to be moved.
A quick calculation says the amount of water removed from the world’s oceans would be about the same as the sea level rise projected by the IPCC for the next 100 years.
Israel and Jordan have already agreed to do the same thing albeit on a smaller scale for the Dead Sea.
The fact that a real solution exists to rising sea levels and is ignored demonstrates how rising sea levels isn’t a real problem.
This ‘Research ‘ project tells us something about those who live in ivory towers separated from the real world. Theory divorced from data and practice, stilt houses built on Thames River real estate, hampering river traffic and washed away by winter floods….I see parallels with the story of Rapunzel in Grimms Fairy Tales.
Lol, I allways suspected that you got to have your brain removed for some university departments…
re sea level and high stands in CA. It was 40-60 feet, not meters. And sea level didn’t necessarily reach the same level each time during interglacials.
re stilted houses why did they need a study. There are houses on stilts on almost every shoreline in America. Seen Galveston?
Besides, there’s more danger from tsunamis than sea level rise due to global warming.
crosspatch (22:19:19) “So what do we do about the global stupidity problem?
rbateman (22:49:20) “There are those who don’t know, and those who don’t suspect.”
crosspatch asks, rbateman answers… and to me the “those who don’t suspect” is the chiller.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Mebbe that should be a lethal thing the way the ignorant are throwing their little knowledge around and about.
Shame those 5 freakin’ blades are in safety razors…
“spangled drongo (21:49:30) :
This one’s always good for the “rising seas” carpetbaggers.
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2Fsciencetech%2Farticle-1066712%2FUncovered-lost-beach-Romans-got-toehold-Britain.html”
Got to 22 comments, and then they turn them off. Truth is not an easy pill to swallow.
“Richard111 (22:47:17) :
Actually houses on stilts is a good idea. Here in the UK they build housing estates on flood plains and when the decadel rains arrive complain the government has not done enough to control the flooding. doh!”
That’s exactly what has happened in my parents village, near Waterlooville in Hampshire. A sizeable housing estate, It’s in a valley, one side is the A3, the other an opposite hill, in between, which as long as I can recall almost always flooded (That’s why my folks bought on the high ground) and copped snow drifts too.
Let me track this…….. you turn your air conditioner on, this amplifies the UHI and to help cool your favorite heat island you live on a stilt house over water.
Can we give these mediocre thinkers a mark out of five, or have a vote on their future funding ?
What a complete waste of time, I hope it wasnt tax payer funded. I used to prepare flood risk assessments in the UK for developers and we always set finished floor levels at the 1in 200 year tide level plus 400mm sea level rise, plus 500mm storm surge, plus 600mm freeboard, so any new development will defintetly not be at risk from sea level rise! Do they seriously think people are building their houses at high spring tide level????
Those scientists should go out and read some of the legislation on flood risk like PPS25 and talk to the EA or councils. Seriosuly, we were allowing all this back in 2000 and before, so anything built in the last 9 years at least will be fine, and all new development will also be fine.
They should also read the EU Water Directive and learn about “making space for water”. They are so far from the mark its rediculous. People will develop in land not at risk in the future, not build silly huts in the sea!
The houses on stilts are great until they catch fire or a floating car hits the piles! I once tried to get planning permission for timber houses on stilts built within the 1 in 100 year flood plain and they (planners & EA) wouldnt have it, so good luck to em. Good to see the scientists solutions are just as rediculous as their climate models.
Maybe the scientists should go back to inventing problems and let the civil engineers in the world solve the problems as they have always done!
sorry for the rant, but this is just a stupid waste of time and money, I mean three years missing the point! Land zoning prevents anyone from buildiing current or future sea / flood plain full stop.
crosspatch (22:19:19):
5-Blades – I remember using 1-blade razors for about a week not long ago. Now I’m happy when I finish once. They don’t harden the blades any more. Reducing the quality of the old product to induce demand for an “improved” one seems to be the choice of the time. Also such with attached bars which produce this slimy mess…
This article contains, yet again, the sort of statement that should not go unchallenged:
” …Dr. Richard Dawson, one of the reports authors said…..we need to prepare for the extremes of weather – heat waves, droughts and flooding – which we are already starting to experience.”
Where?
What they seem to have completely ignored with their stilt houses is the tide and wave height.
A modest swell, approaching a beach with just the right sea-bed gradient, increases in height. Surfers know this well but you mave noticed that waves get higher as they from deep to shallow water.s
These coastal stilt houses are more likely to become temporary surfers lodges; replaced monthly.
The tidal height is going to be even more un-predictable as the shape of the coastline changes.
Just to give you an idea, the tidal range in the Channel (between France and Britain) varies at points along the coast from 1 to 8 metres. The width of the Channel ( varies from circa 100 miles wide at the west to 20 miles at he east) is a factor in the height this moving blob of water is forced to as it is constricted from the sides. (Very oversimplified but you get the general idea).
Changes in the coastline (i.e. higher sea level = greater floodable area of land) will affect the behaviour of the moving blob of water which is the tide and give lower tidal ranges in some areas and higher in others. All very unpredictable – so do not start planning yet where to build you stilt houses.
Climate doctors say ‘feel the pain’…
By Richard Black – BBC Earth Watch
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/10/its_worth_looking_at_the.html
Dr Dawson explains: “Heat waves like the ones being predicted to occur more frequently in future are extremely serious, particularly for the eldest members of our population.
I worked in a Nursing Home for several years, and my wife has too. What kills old people is cold, every single year, not heat. They never, ever complained about the heat in the summer This was in the UK), and the peak of deaths was always in the winter (although helped by a ‘post Christmas holiday depression, it is generally acknowledged).
I keep hearing about this, and it annoys me very time!
Ozzie John (23:00:34) :
Interestingly, all the stilt houses depicted in the picture above seem to be made of timber, and even include thatched roofs. For groups who claim to be green friendly this would mean cutting down a large amout of forest.
More interestingly, the idea of growing wood fast, then chopping it down to build (or even chip and lay on your garden) is a really, really good way to keep (evil, nasty, scary) CO2 out of the air. Merely protecting trees does diddly-squat. Growing them and absorbing all that (evil, nasty, scary) carbon, chopping it, using it and growing MORE trees is the best way to sequester that (evil, nasty, scary) CO2.
So logging should be actively encouraged by the eco-loonies! Go tell ’em from me….
Building in floodplains is a complex matter. In the Thames floodplain, where I live, new building is tightly controlled because any solid body obstructs flood flows and cumulatively makes flood levels higher, thus causing worse flooding elsewhere. Building can be permitted if the new building is raised on stilts which both reduces the risk of the new building flooding and minimises the obstruction to flood flows.
After the great winter floods of 1947 the Thames was subjected to regular dredging by Thames Conservancy to lower the river bed level and thus increase flood flow capacity. Unfortunately politicians have short memories and the systematic dredging was stopped in 1995 after the Thames Conservancy had been replaced by the Department of the Environment. It is widely believed that this failure to dredge has reduced the flood flow capacity of the river and may have been partly responsible for the flooding in January 2003.
Carbon dioxide, of course, has nothing to do with it.
Regards
S
“Most importantly we have to cut our carbon dioxide emissions but at the same time we need to prepare for the extremes of weather – heat waves, droughts and flooding – which we are already starting to experience.”
Now we seem to be on the dropping side of a 30-year temperature cycle, there is an increased chance of a snowfall during the British winter.
What are the odds that this now counts as an ‘extreme weather phenomenon’, which is a ‘proof’ of global warming…?
Having said that, Britain is a sucker for any slight kind of weather variation. It is fairly unusual in the world in not really having a set reliable climate. You can’t guarantee the start of a monsoon or heavy rain at a set time of year. You might get anything at almost any time. So there is no strong justification to prepare for any set climate, and in consequence the inhabitants all suffer when any slight extreme happens. They suffocate in non-airconditioned commuter trains if the summer is slightly hotter than usual, and the same non-antifreezed trains are stopped by a few inches of snow. No wonder the Bitish are famed for talking about the weather….
rbateman:
I’ve heard the dividing line goes like:
98% of the population are asleep. The other 2% are looking around in wide eyed amazement, terror, or both.
That picture of London at the top looks just like us Northerners imagine it to be!
—
We can see that ‘sustainability’ is a weasel word. What they really have in mind(?) is ‘subsistence.’ Then the Right (Royal) Charlie can stop stamping his foot and have his feudal system back, and we serfs can have all the benefits of lice, scabies and typhoid.
—
Bulldust (22:20:41) :
How did this guy get accredited as a Dr? no, really? Have British academic standards plummetted so badly?
Yes!
A recent (quoted in Parliament) GCSE biology exam question (for 16 year olds):
Do you breathe through;
a. your liver
b. your skin
c. your stomach
d. your lungs?
And even this has to be multiple choice.
Those parents who can afford it are increasingly sending their children abroad for university education.
crosspatch (22:19:19) :
“So what do we do about the global stupidity problem?”
That is a very good question; given that the latest computer models prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that less than half of the world population have a level of intelligence that is above the median.
Ozzie John (23:00:34)
No, it is not timber and thatch. They are made from recycled, and fully biodegradable, milk bottles and plastic bags.
There was a time when the UK produced scientists and engineers of the calibre of Newton, Darwin, Faraday, Maxwell, Brunel, Telford, Arkwright, Wedgwood etc etc. Nowadays we produce pseudo-science as exemplified by UKCP09 and engineering solutions that have have been used by primitve peoples for thousands of years, such as houses on stilts. It makes you want to weep.
Why not build just a little way up the nearest hill? Pathetic.
I remember stilt houses from my history classes about lake villages in the stone age or there abouts, nothing new there then as our ancestors were quite bright despite what our educated elite would have us believe, that now we’em got ‘puters we know everytin! All British governments have allowed local authorities to build on flood planes without any consideration for the risk of flooding for donkeys years!
As to Dr Dawson, me thinks he is a mere whipper-snapper & has forgotten or doesn’t know of the drought & heatwave of ’76? (followed by the almighty rains from October to December that followed, after Drought Minister Howells said it would have to rain from “here to Christmas” to put things right), & the flooding of the Thames basin of the late 1940’s, of which ’47 I believe was the worst, prompting a large expediture of dosh to put into place flood defences. England has always flooded & had heatwaves, they are unpredictable, & unusual, but we don’t oftern have them, (they were even mentioned in an episode of “Cadfael” once around the Gloucester area, nothing new then, that would have been in the middle of the MWP that didn’t exist). Hang on, heavy rains that caused severe flooding in the Thames basin in mid 1940s, a drought that caused terrific water shortages throughout the UK in mid 1970s, that’s almost 30 years difference between extremes, I wonder if there’s a cycle emerging! Oh & of course the unusually cold winter a couple of years further back when Devon & Cornwall were cut off for about 48 hours, must be AGW I spect! Of course we seem to have forgotten that the Thames Barrier was built because London & the South-East of England are sinking due to recovery from the ice-age & Scotland is rising accordingly.
Forgot to add, there was also a heatwave in ’74 too as we were permitted to slightly slacken our school ties for comfort during the June examination time!
As a British taxpayer I object to funding such utter claptrap but can do nothing about it. Our Conservative opposition is trying to outgreen Labour and as you can imagine the LibDems are greener than GreenPeace and Friends of the Earth combined. So expect even more alarmist rubbish for at least until we are all suffering from hyperthermia as our power stations begin to fail.
There’s a more pressing reason why many UK houses might have to be built on stilts and it’s nothing to so with alarmist predictions for rising sea levels. Here is a slice of potentially catastrophic idiocy, this time courtesy of the carbon sequestration lobby.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6868896.ece
Like millions of people I live in a bungalow, which means that all the rooms in my home are situated on the ground floor, I’ll be very interested to see what sort of by-law they’ll pass to cover that. They’ll probably insist I pitch a tent on the roof. Some wag suggested putting my house on stilts. Why the hell should I have to contemplate such a thing in order to accommodate some warmist moron planting a high pressure asphyxiation bomb under my home in response to a problem that doesn’t exist?
Madness!
LoL… They can’t even fantasize about the impact of rising sea levels without getting it wrong…. In a protected water way like that, it would simply be landfilled and reclaimed…. and why would they be wooden huts?
Anyway they are out of touch with reality. The sea level rise is only going to be the same as the last two centuries…. 1.8mm per year… 18cm per century.
…. Grass huts on stilts indeed… pffft.
On the up side, you wouldn’t have to mow the lawn 😉 Parking your plug in car might be a little tough though.
Sea Level Budget over 2003–2008: A Reevaluation from GRACE Space Gravimetry, Satellite Altimetry and Argo by Cazenave et al. 2008
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Cazenave_et_al_GPC_2008.pdf
“The steric sea level estimated from the difference between altimetric (total) sea level and ocean mass displays increase over 2003-2006 and decrease since 2006. On average over the 5 year period (2003-2008), the steric contribution has been small (on the order of 0.3+/-0.15 mm/yr), confirming recent Argo results (this study and Willis et al., 2008).”
As one who grew up in New Hampshire, I am well aware of the history of how cities like NYC and Boston were built of wood originally: by clear cutting our state by 90%. If we go to these idiotic stilt wood houses, you will see massive deforestation of the northeastern forests again, eliminating part of the carbon sink that is the north american forests (protip: the forests of north america absorb more CO2 than our industry emits but the IPCC, Kyoto Treaty, and all the eurotrash won’t let us count that against our emissions.)
People will look back on projections with the same feelings we have about these futures that never happened:
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2008/01/will-war-drive-civilization-underground.html
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2008/12/tomorrows-kitchen-1943.html
Solar cars a consistent fantasy:
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2008/12/everymans-folding-auto-1939.html
Its funny to see references to a world blessed with eugenics:
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2008/07/family-plane-of-2030-ad-1930.html
My favorite, this one about controlling the weather. Another fantasy that will not go away:
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2008/11/weather-made-to-order-1954.html
The big problem in England is that planning regulations allow the building of massive housing and business developments on flood plains. Millions now live and work in flood prone areas, where concrete and tar-macadam now considerably increase the impact of flash floods.
The longer term problem is that the most populous area of England the South-East is actually sinking into the sea, due to isostasis, the bounce back in the north and west from the last Ice-Age.
Hey Ozzie John.
When I first came to live in Oz from the UK in the mid seventies I lived in Brisbane and all the old colonial houses were bilt on piles/stilts. I thought it strange at the time, but back in those days people appreciated the power of nature and prepared for it. It’s called common sense … unfortunately it’s sadly lacking in our politicians today,
They don’t really let first cousins marry in Britain, do they?
CPT. Charles (21:57:41) :
The same thought went through my mind.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/04/02/dutch-floating-homes-by-duravermeer/
Perfect for the River Thames flood plain.
http://www.floodsite.net/html/pilot_site_thames.htm
The extent to which silly research can be funded if it’s just remotely tied to “climate change” is mind-boggling, but I guess it can’t be just any kind of climate change – research for the use of igloos in Cornwall during a possible new ice age probably wouldn’t get any funding?
The really worrying thing, is that the British government is manifestly insane and is likely to incorporate something like that in next years building regs. Every couple of years they tack on more regulations, mostly to do with reducing carbon footprints.
All new buildings will have to have a risk assessment for flood plains and the ground floor must be of sufficient height above the worst IPCC scenario. All bedrooms will have to be upstairs to minimize the risk of drowning whilst asleep, and lifeboats will have to be mounted on the roof. Each bedroom must have a ready means of access to the lifeboats, either through the ceiling into the loft or via a flood escape stairway on the exterior. Life jackets must also be stowed under beds and these will be checked when the annual home environmental inspections are carried out each year to ensure they meet stringent new energy standards.
So the researchers were looking at conditions over the next century and their proposed remedies include recycling dishwater.
These people have completely no idea of the pace of technological change. In another 30 years, let alone 100, we probably won’t need water to clean the dishes — if we have dishes at all.
And stilts? If the Dutch can keep back the ocean with 20th century technology I’m pretty sure out future generations will come up with something better than bloody stilts.
“DaveF (00:18:22) :
This article contains, yet again, the sort of statement that should not go unchallenged:
” …Dr. Richard Dawson, one of the reports authors said…..we need to prepare for the extremes of weather – heat waves, droughts and flooding – which we are already starting to experience.”
Where?”
In computer simulations, movies, MSM, in the minds of the dim and, more dangerously, our “leaders”. Scary sheet!!
“Purakanui (02:23:33) :
Why not build just a little way up the nearest hill? Pathetic.”
Kia ora. How id the snow on Mt Ruhapeu? I read that north of Taupo was “snowed out” recently.
Rob:
“. use thus kind of garbage to justify raising my insurance rates…..”
This is true! One of the leading alarmist “scientists” in Germany, Rahmstorf is sponsored by the company Münchner Rück, a large reinsurance company
Personally I think we should be more cautios. Did you all see “Waterworld” with Kevin Kostner?
Let’s devlop large floats. And everyone should have a large boat at home, even if he lives 1000km away from the coastline
“Alan the Brit (02:27:10) :
Forgot to add, there was also a heatwave in ‘74 too as we were permitted to slightly slacken our school ties for comfort during the June examination time!”
I don’t recall that, ’76, yes, indeedy. But I do recall the “70’s”, in the UK, were, how can say, sunny in summer, almost always. Winter, was cold/frosty, blue dome days.
OT and as a matter of interest, in 1972 I was at the Biggin Hill (UK) airshow and I watched a flyby of a Vulcan (Look it up, awsome aircraft), and recently started chatting, on another forum, with the pilot who throttled up and destryed my ear drums that day.
The graph at Tokyoboy’s link is interesting and puts a nice perspective on satellite era measurements and worrying about trends based on such short time-scales.
But the picture is precious. That city in the back-ground must have hundreds of thousands in it, but they’re trying to suggest we should consider putting an apparently small number of people in houses on stilts to reduce air-conditioning needs in cities. Hilarious!
Mosquitos ?? Number of deaths ?
Thursday (Sept.1) 1768
“At twelve o clock it began raining, which continued one hour; ’tis now fair. It did not hold fair for a quarter of an hour, & after the rain began again it never ceased, and about 8 o clock it was with a violence I never heard.. I don’t suppose theere could ever fall a greater quantity of rain in a time. My Workmen, when they returned to town, could not go by Knightbridge, the water lay too deep. It continued to rain all night”
Friday
“When I got up this morning I saw two rivers, the grounds two or three miles all being under water, & the Thames made a fine appearance. My servants tell me two houses at Knightsbridge have been washed away & one of the bridges on the King’s Road. It has almost carried away all my gravel walks, and my garden is th epicture of desolation”
from the diary of Lady Mary Coke 1767-69
That such calamity strikes, and none has struck this area since I moved here some 20 years ago to Notting Hill, is a notable thing, although its interesting to speculate on weather extremes from the past that are written in diaries and journals, but not recorded in climatology departments. given the period, which was during the LIA, it leads me to think that weather extremes occur during cold periods more than warm periods.
“The Burchardi flood of 1684 was a Storm tide that struck the North Sea coast of Nordfriesland (Germany and Denmark) on the night between the 11 and 12 October 1634. Overrunning dikes it shattered the coastline and many thousands of lives (8,000 to 15,000 people drowned) while causing catastrophic material damage. Much of the island of Strand washed away, forming the islands Nordstrand, Pellworm and several Halligen.”
However, water has the unusual property of expanding as it cools from 4C downwards, and then its volume increases as it chills. This isn’t a problem for 90% of ocean beneath the thermocline at 0-3C.
Lord Monckton states: “The Thames flood barrier has been closed more frequently in the last few years than since it built, but the reason has nothing to do with “global warming” or rising sea levels. The reason is a change of policy by which the barrier is closed during exceptionally low tides, so as to retain water in the tidal Thames rather than keeping it out.”
This business of sea-level changes just seems so weird. I kinda thought I had the general outlines figured out. Like a bit would come from thermal expansion but that’s not really all that much.
Conventional scientific wisdom says it’s mostly from thermal expansion – 70% from memory.
Although, someone posted here that you could account for almost all recent sea level rises from aquifer extraction. In addition, dam storage and irrigation water volumes are comparable with the water volumes involved in sea level rises (or not rising as in the last few years).
So like much about the climate, the uncertainties are so large that an honest answer is we don’t where the extra water in sea level rises comes from.
BTW, most of what you say about glaciers is correct.
I would like to echo the comments from tallbloke, Stoic, etc,
Many of the flooding issues in the UK are due to poor planning policies, abandoning preventative measures like dredging rivers, riverbank clearing and adequate, well maintained drainage, plus going down the route of flood barriers which simply push the problem downstream until lesser defences can be overwhelmed or there are no defences.
Unfortunately the above practices exaggerates flooding which reinforces the climate change danger stories. Flood barriers contain the water pushing river levels artificially higher. Not dredging rivers reduces the flow capacity similarly pushing levels higher than they would have been when the landscape was being managed properly. Both serve to make flooding appear worse and more frequent.
Nothing to do with a changing climate. Everything to do with increased surface run-off, building homes on floodplains and not maintaining the waterways.
There is one positive aspect to this report – it does acknowledge that humans adapt to changing circumstances. That is the right course of action to any climate change, man made or otherwise. Being a bit damp didn’t prevent Venice from flourishing. The will was there. A solution was just a matter of engineering.
RexAlan (03:47:25) : “When I first came to live in Oz from the UK in the mid seventies I lived in Brisbane and all the old colonial houses were bilt on piles/stilts. …
To let the breeze blow through, Rex (AirConditioner Mk. 1).
Perhaps the people of the UK should demand a refund for any tax payer monies spent on this study?
On the other hand, when obviously stuck-on-stupid studies are produced by the AGW promotion industry, it only serves to further lower the credibility of what the promoters and their promotion.
“A three-year project led by Newcastle University for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has outlined how our major cities must respond if they are to continue to grow in the face of climate change.”
So where’s the report? The press release didn’t link to it, poking around yielded things like:
http://www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/profiles2/njh57 [Prof. Jim Hall]
current work
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: Programme 6: Engineering urban systems: how can cities grow whilst also reducing vulnerability and emissions?
[No mention in the list of papers, some might be interesting. Many from 2008, none from 2009.]
http://www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/profiles/slb6 [Dr Stuart Barr]
2009-2010 Tyndall Centre Phase 2 Transition
Engineering Urban Systems: How can cities grow whilst also reducing vulnerability and emissions? Co-I (£273,826).
[Hey, that’s only two years! Was 2008 Phase I?]
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/tyndall-intranet/calendar/how-cities-can-grow-whilst-reducing-emissions-and-vulnerability
ow cities can grow whilst reducing emissions and vulnerability
Wed, 10/07/2009 – 13:58 – Asher Minns
Date:
Monday, October 12, 2009 – 17:00 – 19:00
Stakeholder Briefing and Reception, University College, London
[Dang, missed it. Of course, being in the states, I wouldn’t have gone.]
This is the BEST ONION story EVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What ?!?! It’s real ?????????
Why not just live UNDER the water? That way the oceans can rise all they like. Problem solved.
Oh, right, that would undermine the stilt industry.
But seriously, we need more government-funded studies about how the human race can live underwater.
The wretched fellow who did this report is my namesake, he should change his name.
I propose a cheaper alternative to stilt houses, which should work for a few decades – shorter trousers, knickerbockers and mini-skirts.
I want to know why the rooftops on those grass huts are not painted white.
If Al Gore believes in seas´ level rise why has he bought a beach house?. Followers and believers should know this.
It would be significantly easier to build dikes.
Morons.
That image above seems a mix of New York with the Belen neighbourhood at Iquitos, Peru, in the middle of the amazon jungle. It would have been a good place for a global warmers international meeting.
The fact they “studied ” this for 3 years – and someone gave them grant money for it – is astounding. I think most of us could have made this crap up overnight, given the assignment. Unrealistic solutions for an imaginary problem. Nice.
From this study alone, you can see why the general public will ultimately reject trying to “solve” AGW (even if it is real) & choose to adapt instead. You know, people are pretty adaptable. We span climates from the Arctic to the desert & everything in between & we all somehow manage to survive.
…. but of course, if we adapt, then the greens cant control our lifestyles, which of course is their ultimate unspoken goal. They could care less about the climate, as long as they can tell everyone else how to live their lives, which is also why their whole agenda will fail.
I suggest Nobel Prize for Climate Science for this work.
Its a good thing that they released some ideas/proposals after the 3 year mark.
There is less chance now they will get to the 6 year mark with ideas like “we will have to move London to Greenland” or something like that.
I mean, who says that flooding risks will increase greatly and then simultaneously says we need to build more housing in the flood plains. That is not something a normal thought process would come up with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
I have had numerous sailboats which have cooking and general rest room equipment. Living in a boat is an option. Some of my friends live in one between houses or in California where they can’t come up with money to buy. It takes less A/C when a boat is on the water. We can manage a while without shore power. We do have electric pumps at the waste water pump out station. Our docks are floating and we use “pins” which are very large pipes that slide in large sleeves. The pipes go into the mud and allow the docks to float up and down with water level changes.
whats happened to all the ice sites dmi cryosphere etc all down for days now also jaxa seems to be old data? lets await a major re-adjustment once again?
Perhaps these guys were among the 38 guests that drank all that wine that got Herr Becker in such difficulty.
Whodathunkit that the movie Porky’s was so cutting edge?
Some of you may remember back in the ’60s when scientists were forecasting undersea cities with undersea schools and businesses as well as homes – the frontier of the future! Then environmental consciousness got in the way. How shortsighted to put houses on stilts – why not go back to the future and build buildings on the floodplains that will adapt as undersea homes when the waters rise? Jack Simmons entry above about past scientific fantasies reminded me of this one. I hope someone e-mails the Newcastle University researchers a link to this site so they can see some true peer review!
UK Sceptic (02:52:28) : The guy is completely barking!!!! He may be a geologist, but it doesn’t stop him from being a nutcase either. Storing CO2 in such huge quantities under ground making it highly concentrated, so that if it escapes, it becomes potentially dangerous close to the gound. Equally barking! I recommend just letting it emit into the atmosphere, thus removing the incredibely expensive & difficult to build storage issues altogether, where it will rapidly dissipate, improve crop fertility, & make life on Earth a little more comfortable, save huge amounts of taxpayers money (no expensive alarm systems to design, install, monitor, & pay for, no emergency services disaster action plan to prepare & pay for, etc). Talk about job creation, they create an imaginary problem, create solutions to it, then cause more problems in the process, typical government thought processes.
Patrick Davis (04:41:44) : I definitely do remember it, that summer was apparently very warm & such action had never been undertaken by the school previously, ties were to be worn at all times other than in exceptionally warm periods, oh & PE classes. As to the Vulcan Bomber, never got to Biggin Hill Show, but saw it at the Greenham Air Show one year – we lived quite close so got a free view, along with the English Electric Lightening, which likewise deafened me.
It is a shock to us because we are still questioning the basis for these assumptions. These people are two to three steps beyond the assumption that man is causing catastrophic change in our climate. One has to feel a bit sorry for most of them for they have been led down the garden path by their instructors who have been led down the same path.
“To combat the problem we often resort to switching on the air conditioning…[which] works by cooling the inside of the building and expelling hot air outside, raising the overall air temperature in the city as well.
“This can amplify what is known as the ‘urban heat island’.”
To reduce this problem, the authors show that one option might be to stimulate growth along the Thames flood plain as the water helps to keep the overall temperature lower.
In this study, apparently air conditioning is causing the whole outdoors to be heated up. So these brilliant academics suggest living in a flood plain, in order to keep the overall temp lower.
I just wonder if you will get to keep your air conditioning, once you have your stilt houses, or if the water under your house IS your new a/c? It was left unclear.
If Al Gore believes in seas´ level rise why has he bought a beach house?. Followers and believers should know this.
Simple: He knows which way the sea is heading, and it’s not what he’s expounding.
Jack Simmons (03:32:25) :
Its funny to see references to a world blessed with eugenics:
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2008/07/family-plane-of-2030-ad-1930.html
Ah ha! Just what I was looking for. Guesses about the future forom ‘experts’ . Hopefully I can work out some sort of success ratio and then apply that to our current guesses about future climate.
Miond you, its not all BS.
For example the item linked above.
Flying from New York (Breakfast) to London (Lunch). Hmm. Concorde I suppose was close, but now gone. How would one score that?
And over on the right hand side – using radio to remotely control tanks in a battle from some distance away. Well, there are certainly remote controlled military devices these days and whilst most are not tanks (if you discount small bomb investigating robots) the effects of some of the predator type flying machines are equivalent. And of course control can certainly be very remote from operational theatre.
That’s interesting I think. Must find time to read more of the contents.
“Houses built on stilts, flood resilient wiring where the sockets and wires are raised above flood level, and water resistant building materials are going to have to be incorporated into our building plans.”
Look at that! They are already drooling over all the new global warming building codes they can kill construction with!
A drive down the Umqua river or the Rogue in SW Oregon-you can see homes on
high foundations.Ditto other places where River and Sea can have an influence.
What is amazing is that logic would dictate:_DO_not build there!” Sort of like
looking up at driftwood above your million dollar home, or building a similar home
in the middle of a 40 acre fire ecology woodland-out of log,with a shake roof.
Then expect someone to protect you….
The correct way to deal with this kind of public policy idiocy is to take it seriously. Conduct a discussion which evaluates systematically the risks of building mass housing on stilts in the flood plain in a warming environment.
Are they, for instance going to be susceptible to mosquito borne disease? How is sewage going to work? What about stability of the seabed? How much is it going to cost? How is mass transit going to work? How much of such housing do we need to reduce global temps by x degrees? How much energy and CO2 does it take to build them? What will the accident rate be – living in them, working in them, building them?
Make people get out there and do the work – the same level of work as for any other mass housing project or development scheme, including evironmental damage assessment. This is the way to deal with it.
We must remember that this kind of non sense discourse “To combat the problem we often resort to switching on the air conditioning. This is not only energy intensive (and therefore has potential to raise carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change) but works by cooling the inside of the building and expelling hot air outside, raising the overall air temperature in the city as well.
Is based on Svante Arrhenius theory of the “Hot house”: thought that the atmosphere acted after the manner of the glass panes of hot-houses
The problem with this is that being the concentration of CO2 only 3.8 parts per ten thousand, that “hot house” would only have 3.8 “glass panes” and 9996.2 empty holes.
BTW, the AP is just now getting word of the Catlin survey: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091014/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_arctic_expedition
Perhaps Anthony needs an updated entry on all the issues they had…
RE: urban rickshaws:
Yep, Denver has its own rickshaw / pedicab businesses which seem to be thriving on the 16th Street Mall.
http://www.coloradorickshaw.com/services/services.shtml
Firstly there is no proof whatsover that carbon dioxide emissions are driving climate change.
One hundred year temperature/climate predictions? I hesitate to ask but are these people on drugs or something? The models never saw the cooling phase coming at all did they? and that was only a few years down the line from the IPPCC reports.
How long did it take to come up with this utter trash I wonder? Ill thought out and lazy rubbish thrown together from childrens school books and the lack of imagination just shines through, its as though they saw £££$$$ on the table thats freely available to anyone who sticks to the AGW narrative and they took the cash and just knocked up a bogus bag of tripe!
I think the term ‘laughing all the way to the bank’ applies here.
I wonder if the paper about the houses on stilts shown in the picture has been PIER revewied?
Ahem, ill get my coat!
Oh look, it’s time for another scary bedtime story:
Explorers: North Pole summers ice free in 10 years
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091014/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_arctic_expedition
0.000385″ glass panes, or poly panes.
That’s .3 mils. Your visquine doesn’t come that thin.
Glad wrap territory.
And C02 is a gas, not plastic.
Mighty thin bag. Now what happens when it gets really hot or cold?
Since the end of the last glaciation period, sea level has risen by about 120 meters. The next 10-20 feet is just margin of error.
So as it gets colder, look how much new beachfront will be developed.
My back door is a few feet above high tide, so I guess I will need stilts soon.
When will the nonsense stop?
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE ALERT:
The Catlin Expedition (that got stuck in the Arctic ice) is predicting ice-free summers for the North Pole in 10 years.
Dr Richard Dawson
“…we need to prepare for the extremes of weather – heat waves, droughts and flooding – which we are already starting to experience.”
He’s right. I can’t find anything in the bible about floods, droughts or even things like seven years of famine.
Don’t they know how dangerous these houses are for sleep walkers!
Can’t see Prince Charles approving such a ‘Carbuncle on the Thames’. Maybe he’ll make a personal appeal to Imelda Marcos to develop her new shoe floating market complex in a style more appropriate to its surroundings.
Adolfo Giurfa (07:26:49) :
The problem with this is that being the concentration of CO2 only 3.8 parts per ten thousand, that “hot house” would only have 3.8 “glass panes” and 9996.2 empty holes.
Quite. And I would imagine if you insulated your house to the same measure you would be laughed at if you wanted any kind of energy efficiency certificate.
Well then, who wants to go in with me and corner the jet-ski market? SHOULD this happen, it COULD be an economic windfall. And we MIGHT end up laughing at everyone from our moutain chalets. 😉
Alan M writes:
“A recent (quoted in Parliament) GCSE biology exam question (for 16 year olds):
Do you breathe through;
a. your liver
b. your skin
c. your stomach
d. your lungs?
And even this has to be multiple choice.”
——————————-
I agree that this is a pathetic exam question, especially given the fact that there is more than one correct answer. Respiration through the skin is quite significant:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k112t5377665371m/
OT: Catlin is preparing their media blitz…
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LONDON – A team of British explorers says that within a decade the North Pole will be virtually ice-free during the summer.
The Catlin Arctic Survey trekked an average of about 11 kilometers (six miles) per day and swam in freezing water to take measurements of the ice and snow.
Measurements during the three month research project showed that most of the ice is first year ice that measures about 1.8 meters (six feet) thick. Peter Wadhams with the University of Cambridge said Wednesday the ice is too thin to survive next summer’s ice melt.
The results come ahead of the UN climate Summit in Copenhagen this December
Build houses on stilts? OK. Obviously you can’t park a car near them, so you park on higher ground? But you can’t build there. Or take public transportation. Which has to run on something. Maybe build roads on stilts as well? Keeping the house out of the water doesn’t do a lot of good when you have to get to work. Unless your business is on stilts.
If the economy crashes, we won’t need to go to work. Just fish from the front porch. Cook in solar oven. Right. The late Art Buchwald said it was hard to write good satire as reality had become too strange.
As I have noted in the past, if you build on a flood plain, or below sea level, sooner or later, you will get wet.
3 years worth of research grants for this “project led by Newcatle Uni”. How many millions will that be? I wonder if grants are available for anybody wanting to study what would happen if the universe’s phlogiston turned green?
Douglas DC (07:04:58) :
A drive down the Umqua river or the Rogue in SW Oregon-you can see homes on
high foundations.Ditto other places where River and Sea can have an influence.
What is amazing is that logic would dictate:_DO_not build there!” Sort of like
looking up at driftwood above your million dollar home, or building a similar home
in the middle of a 40 acre fire ecology woodland-out of log,with a shake roof.
Then expect someone to protect you….
It’s not clear where you are laying ‘blame’, but I hope you are being sarcastic.
Consider this: should people assume responsibility for the risk they take, or should the government assume that risk?
If the former, then why impose ludicrous government policies forcing the latter, then complain when people try to take advantage of this government ‘protection’?
While there are nuances to the risks of building close to the coast, the unintended consequences of government assumed risk – not imposed, requested or required by those ‘rich’ people – is that those very same ‘rich’ people will take advantage of it. This generates a lot of chagrin for those who ‘think’ the benefit should be used to help some people but not others.
This is essentially the result of taxation to control behavior: it doesn’t work. In the first iteration those who can ill afford the tax are penalized the most, while those that can, can continue the behavior the tax is designed to control. The second iteration is to give a break to those who cannot afford it, passing on those costs to the ‘rich’. This second iteration means that the ‘poor’ can continue the harmful behavior while the rich must earn more to combat the increase in taxes and maintain their lifestyle. In both cases neither the poor or the rich have changed their behavior, while giving both a free pass to continue said behavior and also increasing the wealth gap between the rich and the poor.
Further, and government cost which is expected to be majority paid by the rich (they can afford it), is actually assumed by the middle class: the more money you have, the more tools you have at your disposal to diminish your tax liability. Indeed, if *I* had the money, I would rather pay a greedy evil lawyer tens of thousands of dollars to find these tax ‘loop holes’ rather than pay that money to the government.
So, pray tell, we have a situation: ‘everyone’ knows that The Big Plan is a good idea to save our planet, but no one wants to go first and pay for it. Actually, we have moved on from that: the situation is that the big evil corporations must pay because of all the iPods they make, the food they bring to the masses, the energy they impose on us poor innocent souls and force us to consume. Yes, make *them* pay. They are evil, I tell you, evil!
The eggs have been scrambled.
The crow has been stewed.
The guest are arriving
to get their just due.
Soon very many will try to recant
but will they give back
those government grants?
Science, oh science
will you live down this shame:
the lies that were spoken
in your noble name?
Mike Lorrey (03:32:23) :
As one who grew up in New Hampshire, I am well aware of the history of how cities like NYC and Boston were built of wood originally: by clear cutting our state by 90%.
Mike, this sounds extreme. New Hampshire forests were reserved mostly for the King’s Navy until the Revolution. Early settlers there were practical men and women indebted to natural resources. Much of old Boston was built on New Hampshire granite and brick. Today 83% of New Hampshire is forest –
with white pine, hemlock, oak, white birch, maple and sugar maple (Fall color and syrup) predominant.
You’re aware New Hampshire is known as “The Granite State,” and features the most adroit State motto in the nation: “Live Free or Die.” An appropriate declaration for humanity today.
Retired Engineer (08:44:36) :
As I have noted in the past, if you build on a flood plain, or below sea level, sooner or later, you will get wet.
Quite so. I, personally, live about 11 feet above sea level.
Ironically, it doesn’t matter where you build today. The government has a nice nifty monopoly on flood insurance; a protection racket if you will – it’s not optional. Buy or build a house where you like, and you are covered. It’ll cost you, of course – New Orleans doesn’t get built on wishes and good will.
So, the ‘insurance’ is quite high, which means houses need to be made for ‘rich’ people to live in, which means the coverage required is going to be greater, which means the premiums are higher, which means…
So, even those who take responsibility for their life choices, don’t actually have any responsibility: the government has assumed it weather you like it or not.
[as a note, I just got my insurance bill recently and wanted to change it because it’s too high. I’m pretty POed at the moment].
CPT. Charles (21:57:41) :
Why stilts?
The Dutch simply decided to build houses that float.
We do have a good tradition with “Houseboats” but we are not the only ones nor the first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseboat
Harold Vance (08:16:56) :
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE ALERT:
The Catlin Expedition (that got stuck in the Arctic ice) is predicting ice-free summers for the North Pole in 10 years.
Look what the cat dragged in.
“that less than half of the world population have a level of intelligence that is above the median.”
Uhm, exactly half the population has an intelligence level that is above the median. The problem is that more than half believe their intelligence lies above it. But the real problem is misinformation and disinformation. Many who believe they are “well informed” are, in fact, well informed but the information is bogus.
There has been no observed global warming for 10 years. There has been no trend in sea level rising for nearly 4 years. In fact, there was a rather dramatic sea level drop in the 1970’s recorded at the Maldives and that information was posted here back in March of this year.
CPT. Charles (21:41:32) : “News Flash: The WBGU has spoken. ‘the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020—i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years.’”
More pseudoscience drivel from Dr. Schnellhubris.
Building on flood plains is wrong. Flood plains are for farming, You know food!
Duh, build on hillsides, much dryer and more stable. Also cooler and less humid.
“Build on stilts in flood plains”. Stupidity like this can only be learned behavour.
“the United States must cut emissions 100 percent”
What does the airline industry think of that?
“Nonsense upon stilts.” Jeremy Bentham 1789.
Maybe this has been pointed out already but…
Does this picture suggest that the convenience and comforts of modern life are a distant dream already (city in the distance), that the sun is setting on “excessive carbon foot-printing” (the sun setting on it)?
And just look at the houses… the roof, straw as straw can be. The lumber of the houses, wheathered and worn-looking. All the (little) boats with (little) sails. And only a tiny patch of green that the houses huddle around, in hope of some kind of new begining that will ultimately beget our salvation, through many, many generations of sacrifice.
So I guess green is the new (feeling) blue, then.
I found the report here:
http://www.ceser.org.uk/demonstrations/cities/tyndallcitiesreport/view
Quick flick through and I couldn’t see the Thailand on Thames picture in it though. Was that put on by someone else? I couldn’t find that much about houses on stilts. Will have a more detailed read though!
‘The United States must cut emissions 100 percent…’
crosspatch asked: “What does the airline industry think of that?”
Or the trucking industry? Or the car industry, both government owned car companies and publicly owned companies? What does the fertilizer industry think of no CO2 emissions? Or electric power utilities? Or the users of fossil fuel electricity?
Or anyone whose job depends on moving anything by truck, train, plane or ship?
I propose that anyone telling us to reduce CO2 must first show us how it’s done. Set an example: eliminate the percentage of electricity used, except the minor fraction that comes from hydro power, wind or solar. Give up your job if it entails utilizing transported goods, or manufacturing, or selling products.
No air travel, no driving, no electric washers, no gas dryers. There’s nothing wrong with using a washboard or river rocks, and winter bicycling is stimulating. Give up food that was produced with the use of fossil fuels. Who needs a tractor, thresher or combine? Scythes and oxen work fine. Give up anything made of plastic, no matter how useful. Give up heating or cooling your houses and apartments.
Cutting emissions 100% is an interesting proposal. So show us how it’s done, you’re the experts. Set the example for us by eliminating all “carbon” emissions from your personal life; you don’t want to be a hypocrite, do you? Do it for 30 days, then report back to us. Let us know how it’s working out.
These busybodies would squeal so loud after three days that they’d make the Caitlin clowns sound like they never uttered a single complaint.
Well now we know what to expect from the UN Dept for Building Permits!
I don’t know, maybe with a few “happy pills,” and a some of those strobe compact fluorescent light bulbs mandated by the gov’t, it might be kind of fun!
Ocean Two-I was being sarcastic.I believe it should be up to the individual.
but one needs to think about these things. Federal flood insurance shouldn’t be
a safety net for rebuilding in a 50 year flood plain,for instance.As for fire, I’ve seen it all as an Aerial Firefighter.The solution is simple big green lawn,
no brush or trees against the house, metal roof…
that soft of thing…
Ron de Haan (08:22:41) : “Don’t they know how dangerous these houses are for sleep walkers!”
Well… they could wear stilts to bed. But then we have to worry about sleepwalkers with bad balance. If they fall, they could knock everything down in the resulting domino effect, putting us all in the water. Kinda adds a whole new meaning to “there goes the neighborhood”, doesn’t it?
That aside, we also have to consider the tree factor. If only 1% of the world sleepwalks, that must add up to 3.5 million trees to make their stilts. That’s too many, obviously.
So they would have to be forced to sleep underwater. That way, they wouldn’t fall and hurt the naturalness of the water. Of course, that risks drowning, but given all the trouble these people are… it might not be a bad idea! But let’s be humane here… Which also rules out tying them down to the bed…So where does that leave us?
We need to have these houses in order to be green. So there’s only one SANE thing left to do, and that’s to disallow them any sleep. If they don’t sleep, they can’t take any unexpected walks!
There, see? Problem solved! You just have to think outside the brain! And if you buy one of these houses (ahem… Confucius say: man who buys house on stilts is high on pot) then you’re definately an outside the brain thinker!
It gets worse. After you’ve rowed your boat home after a day at work, tied it up and then climbed the ladder, you won’t find any tea or coffee in your humble abode either. All thanks to “climate change”. An Aussie without tea or coffee? I might as well slash my wrists now! http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/10/climate-change-fairtrade-food
Smokey (10:17:46) :
It is technically possible to go on a massive nuclear construction campaign, double the capacity of the electrical grid, convert cars, buses, trains and even trucks to electric but an electric airliner is impossible with current technology. The airline industry is the one that can not convert to zero emissions.
So in order to meet that 100% requirement, all airplanes would need to be grounded which means no private jets for the green elite. In short: not going to happen.
crosspatch (09:44:18) :
More importantly, what does everyone that exhales CO2 think about that?
“When will the nonsense stop?” tarpon
Most of the nonsense can be traced to an unstable economic system based on an unstable banking and money system that has driven people insane and raped the environment too. And now a rhyme:
John Maynard Keynes,
you’ve had your fun
but we find we’re living
in your “long run.”
Pragmatic (09:00:42) :
Mike Lorrey (03:32:23) :
“As one who grew up in New Hampshire, I am well aware of the history of how cities like NYC and Boston were built of wood originally: by clear cutting our state by 90%.”
Mike, this sounds extreme. New Hampshire forests were reserved mostly for the King’s Navy until the Revolution. Early settlers there were practical men and women indebted to natural resources. Much of old Boston was built on New Hampshire granite and brick. Today 83% of New Hampshire is forest –
with white pine, hemlock, oak, white birch, maple and sugar maple (Fall color and syrup) predominant.
You’re aware New Hampshire is known as “The Granite State,” and features the most adroit State motto in the nation: “Live Free or Die.” An appropriate declaration for humanity today.
Pragmatic,
Old Boston was mostly wood for most of its history. Oh Fanuel hall is nice etc but Boston is mostly NH granite and brick today because of fires that happened back then. In 1900 AD New Hampshire was 90% clear cut, this is a fact. Proof is found whenever you walk in the woods almost ANYWHERE in the state, from the wilds of the southeast around Keene to the northern tip at the Connecticutt Lakes, you will ALWAYS find stone walls running through the woods, because once those woods were fields, and the stone walls separated them and were built from stones prized from the soil by hardscrabble yankee farmers.
In the 1930’s NH was nearly bankrupt and many families simply packed up and headed west, abandoning family farms. Since that time the mill industry moved south, and so there was no need for grazing fields for sheep any longer. With the advent of the automobile, the need for hayfields to grow hay for city horses in Boston and NYC died out. All those fields, abandoned, have grown back over which is why NH is today 84% wilderness again.
That is what a tremendous carbon sink our northern forests have become.
If God had meant people to live in England , he would have given them gills.
This really is not about science and never has been. They don’t mind any challenges, the main thing is to get the headline out, the rebuttal never gets published.
The Tyndall Centre is not a single institution. It was established in 2000 and is based at the University of East Anglia. At that time it comprised the ten UK research institutions listed here:
University of East Anglia, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, (UMIST), Southampton Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, University of Cambridge, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
Science and Technology Policy Research, SPRU (University of Sussex)
Institute for Transport Studies (University of Leeds), Complex Systems Management Centre (Cranfield University), Energy Research Unit (CLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory).
It has since added other institutions such as the Oxford Climate Change Institute, whose Head of Department, Diane Liverman, (PhD supervised by Stephen Schneider), has just set up a new Institute at Arizona U. with Jonathan Overpeck.
Tyndall is core funded by the National Environmental Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council & Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, with additional support from the DTI.
The first Executive Director was Professor Mike Hulme, from the University of East Anglia, (CRU), now back there after a year long sabbatical. The first Director of Research was John Schellnhuber from Potsdam. The new Tyndall Director is Kevin Anderson, an engineer and modeller. Director of Strategy is Bob Watson, former adviser to Al Gore, World Bank and IPCC chairman.
Check out the personnel and be afraid, be very afraid at the number of fresh-faced, just-out-of college “scientists”. This is the new generation, just out of the Nu-Labour education system and fed the Al Gore story, trained at UEA, Oxford, etc by the warmers. They also have brought in youngsters from other countries as well. They are qualified not in climate science, but in global warming mitigation, sociology, engineering, economics, etc.
They remind me of the Midwich Cuckoos.
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/people/staff-list-with-pictures?page=3
Professor Jim Hall is Director of the Centre for Earth Systems Engineering Research in Newcastle University. He was co-developer of the national flood risk analysis method, which is now applied to all of England and Wales in the UK Environment Agency’s National Flood Risk Assessment. He played a core role in the Foresight Future Flooding project, which analysed risks and responses to flooding and coastal erosion in the UK over the period 2030-2100.
The Foresight project provided key evidence on flood risk to the Stern Review, to which Professor Hall was a named advisor. He was also an advisor on uncertainty and decision analysis to the Environment Agency’s Thames Estuary 2100 project, which explored options for long term flood risk management in London. Amongst other projects, Professor Hall managed the UK programme Sustaining Knowledge for a Changing Climate.
He is Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and coordinator of the Tyndall Centre’s research programme on climate change and cities.
He is also a member of the UK Climate Change Committee which tells the government what measures to put into climate legislation. This their latest offering: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/29/2927.asp
The opposition Tories support this Committee and their proposals. It is a UN Trojan Horse into the UK economy.
Someone asked about funding, read here about the £1 BILLION over ten years going into the program called “Living with Climate Change” from The Economic and Social Research Council’s Global Environmental Change Programme, http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/features/story.aspx?id=73
The Natural Environmental Research Council directs science funding in the UK and currently has Bob Watson on the Board, together with an assortment of greens and members of the Universities who receive the funding.
We really are in a desperate state in the UK, the process is well underway in the US and elsewhere. You must try to stop this hydra growing any more in your own countries.
For more background on how we got to where we are, read Dick Lindzen’s paper from last year, “Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?”
mbabbitt (21:46:40) :
To the dyslexic among us, the acronym for Global Warming Anxiety Disorder is GAWD–as in OH MY GAWD.
ricky: stilts mentioned on p 33.
New series: Monty Pylon’s Flying Circus…..
DennisA (11:51:36) posted :
“Already, taxes account for half of the cost of gasoline in the UK. Officials have already approved an increase in the gas tax of 6p (US 10 cents) by 2013. In addition, the group proposed reducing the national 70 MPH highway speed limit to 60 MPH and using
GPS-enabled devices to cut off power to engines attempting to exceed existing limits.
Another 4.6 million drivers would be forced to go through “eco training.” Taxpayers would also heavily subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles and the new infrastructure that would be required to recharge them. The report explained that batteries for an electric vehicle with an 80-mile range cost $13,000, while those of a vehicle with a 200-mile range cost $42,000. As most consumers would refuse to spend such a premium, the report recommended £9.8 billion (US $15 billion) in subsidies to promote the technology.
If that artists rendition is supposed to depict London, then my only comment is … bwaaaaaaaaahaaaaaahaaaaahaaaa!!!
Bulldust (22:20:41) :
How did this guy get accredited as a Dr? no, really? Have British academic standards plummetted so badly?
Need we say more.
Tesco boss slams school standards as ‘woefully low’
By Sean Poulter
Last updated at 8:23 AM on 14th October 2009
Sir Terry Leahy, head of Tesco, has branded education as ‘woeful’, with many employees needing retraining in basic arithmetic and spelling
Sir Terry Leahy, head of Tesco, has branded education as ‘woeful’, with many employees needing retraining in basic arithmetic and spelling
The boss of Tesco has delivered a stinging attack on Labour’s education record and described school standards as ‘woeful’.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220140/Tesco-boss-slams-school-standards-woefully-low.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0TyetomEn
Peter Davis & Alan the Brit.
Peter, we wore ear defenders tuning the Vulcans engines, the beat as you got close to getting all 4 engines matched was painful at full throttle. The idea was to eliminate the beat signal to give the impression of a single engined approaching.
Alan. My nearest airshows were R.A.F. Middleton St George. When I first went there the airctaft were Gloster Javelins FAW9s IIRC. (Had a nasty habit of flicking inverted on approach).
Later, 226 O.C.U. Lightning T2.
My big bang recollection was an F100 Super Sabre doing a touch & go. Halfway down the runway the pilot turned on the re-heat, there was one HELL of a bang & a huge flame from the back. He must have delayed ignition somehow as the flame was easily 50′ long, maybe more.
DaveE.
Staring at that picture and one word comes to mind: slum. The last time I saw houses on tilts was outside Buenos Aires, south of the city where a lot of people have built houses on top of the rover, on stilts, because they had nowhere else to put them. Similar sights can be found all over the second and third world, especially parts of India and the far east.
This seems to be yet another greenie obsession with the “rustic” lifestyle The idealised romanticist view of these slum dwellings as somehow better than our own, technically advanced homes. They’re divorced from nature and see these style of homes as somehow getting “close” to it again.
They don’t see the water-borne diseases, the filth, the stink, the way that any sort of run-off from these homes pollutes the water they’re built over or the accidents that inevitably happen. They don’t see the fires that devastate these slums. Like a ship at sea, a fire on one of these stilt houses is the greatest fear. They’re highly flammable because of the materials used and – ironically – their position out over the water makes it a lot harder to effectively douse the flames. Oh sure you could get a fireboat… except the last fireboat the sail the Thames was retired nearly half a century ago.
They’re the fantasy of rich, deluded city-dwellers who would never actually live in these pestilent hovels.
Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase
“getting on the property ladder”
Oooops.
That was Patrick Davis. Sorry 🙂
DaveE.
It occurs to me that oil companies have a lot of experience with platforms on stilts. Perhaps the new “green” business of stilt housing could help wean them off their devil’s brew. 🙂
Climate doctors say ‘feel the pain’…
Richard Black | 16:01 UK time, Monday, 12 October 2009
It’s worth looking at some of the international ramifications of the conclusions of the UK’s official climate advisers – reported on Monday – that the country needs a “step change” in ambition if it’s to achieve government targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The UK has been one of the developed world’s champions when it comes to curbing emissions, having cut greenhouse gas output by about 16% since 1990.
How as it achieved this, by distroying its manufacturing base.
Thailand on Thames does not look like a well thought out concept. The UK government plan to tax all practical forms of energy is coinciding with what may be a deep solar minimum. Given what happened to the Thames in the LIA, I would predict that desperate freezing tax oppressed crowds would simply walk out onto the ice and tear down those houses for firewood.
More evidence of of global warming Alarmist Lies!
http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2009/10/more-evidence-of-global-warming.html
At least plenty of Londoners already know how to cook a spicy chicken vindaloo. Exchange the tweeds for Ghandi diapers, let the cows roam at will, and stop waiting in line for the tram and the conversion will be complete
Yeah… I got it…. Bangkok on the Thames…
LOL! Seriously, my question is – how are we not crushing these clowns in the climate change debate?
The whole world is now an extrapolation of the Art Bell Coast to Coast late night radio show.
There is entertainment value.
Rabe, crosspatch:
I was in the hospital in Toronto, Canada for a week last month. They gave me a two-blade disposable razor to shave with after a few days. It sliced my face to ribbons! I’d forgotten how carefully you have to handle one of these things.
Once I got home, I picked up my trusty Gillette Fusion (5 blades with battery action), and without a care, shaved perfectly clean without a single cut. I know it’s fashionable to make fun of such things, but I sincerely believe that my 5-blade razor delivers a faster, cleaner, easier shave.
Now, if only I could bring myself to believe in global warming… naaaah, not gonna happen.
Mike:
“Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound;
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.”
from History of New Hampshire…
Would that this again be true.
JMcCarthy (17:51:38) :
We are.
DaveE (14:00:23) :
And Peter Davis and Alan the Brit.
OT I was a regular attendee at Abbotsford Airshow in British Columbia for about five
years. The first time I saw the Vulcan I was absolutely astounded at this Pterodactyl
in aluminum.It was rainy, nasty and few were flying.Then the Vulcan.Full AB(ok,
Reheat) takeoff impressively short. then infield turns and: the Aileron roll. Twice.
Upon landing the crew got out and I got to talk to the crew,the command pilot was this smallish,fellow with a great handlebar and a calabash pipe,that he promptly lit upon leaving the cockpit.He said-“Not a bad day,thought you had better weather here, this timeof year,though. ”
Loved Abbotsford,i am a big fan of the Spitfire, and if offered a flight in a Spit or
a Mustang-I’d take the Spit.Merlins in general are music from on high..
One other thing-that same show we had a flyby of an SR-71 I popped out of the sky like a Space Spider, roared by in a gear down slow flyby an infield turn,with water vapor flowing off the’chine’ then it went north, into the murk.It came by in full AB
the blue diamond exhaust clearly visible and a noise like none other. The
pilot pulled back into the near vertical.I’m sure with a grin (or two ) in a space helmet.They went back to near space where it belonged.”Bye bye Earthings!”
Heaven on earth to a young pilot…
Meant “It popped ..”
Smokey (10:17:46) :
“…
These busybodies would squeal so loud after three days that they’d make the Caitlin clowns sound like they never uttered a single complaint.”
Speaking of Caitlin clowns:
Flash!
The latest from the Catlin Arctic Survey team.
We’ve all probably been awaiting this news with baited breath.
Fox news Caitlin article
Another sea level data from Japan:
http://cais.gsi.go.jp/cmdc/center/graph/oosakag.gif
The graph shows sea level evolution, from 1903 to 2008, for the coast of Osaka, the second largest city in Japan with population of 2.7 million.
The sea level there “rose” by 2.6 meters (!) in 105 years.
Of course this reflects “ground subsidence” due to urbanization (load increase by social development), which progressed first from 1920s to 1940s and, after about 10 years of plateau during and just after the war, progressed vigorously during the high-growth period of Japan from 1950 to 1970s.
Nobody is scared by thie huge “sea level rise” because the levees are constructed with a 4-meter margin at important coasts.
Conversely:
Dr Dawson explains: “Cold spells like the ones being predicted to occur more frequently in future are extremely serious, particularly for the eldest members of our population.
To combat the problem we often resort to switching on the heating system. This is not only energy intensive (and therefore has potential to raise carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change) but works by heating the inside of the building and expelling hot air outside, raising the overall air temperature in the city as well.
Complete computer generated fantasy. Shame we can’t post pictures here at WUWT.
[ screen capture of “sim city”. Everyone living in stilted houses wearing grass (sorry – hemp) skirts]
[ Reality of Newcastle in October ]
Air conditioning anyone? UHI? Ironically, from a City built both economically and quite literally on Coal.
The only thing demonstrated by this piece is the ever widening gulf between academics and reality.
Harold Vance (08:16:56) :
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE ALERT:
The Catlin Expedition (that got stuck in the Arctic ice) is predicting ice-free summers for the North Pole in 10 years.
Wow, the team damm near won a darwin award, why would anyone listen to them?
First thought: 3 years for this?
Second thought: I thought that “they” knew that UHI did not exist. Small scale energy generation? Didn’t anyone tell them that small scale = lower efficiency? 3 years? For real? I wish I could get money to surf for pron all day for 3 years, then spend a week at the end making up some fairytale. Is that picture actualy from the study? If so, why do the stilt houses have thach roofes? Is this realy energy efficient for a home in London? Just because a house is on stilts does not mean it must look like it is from a small tribal island.
Douglas DC (19:58:55) :
Perhaps surprisingly, the Vulcan did not have afterburners, (reheat).
There may have been one Vulcan that had reheat but not on the main engines. IIRC That aircraft flew out of R.A.F. Finningly near Doncaster. It was the flying test-bed for the Rolls Royce Olympus engine for the TSR2. TSR2 was cancelled in 1964. At that time I used to watch aircraft mainly from Finningly or R.A.F. Benson in Oxfordshire. Finningly is favourite for the prize.
DaveE.
Douglas DC (19:58:55) :
Also, you stated that you’d choose the Spitfire over the P51 Mustang.
It may interest you to know that the P51s supplied to the R.A.F. had Merlins fitted.
DaveE.
What a nice artist’s rendition of houses on stilts. Couldn’t they be more up to date? I don’t care for that “Gilligan’s Island” motif.
I’d like mine to be a yellow colonial on steel stilts that can be hydraulically actuated to raise and lower to my preference. Instead of saving money to have a pool built on my property, I’ll be able to buy a neat boat! The kids can just dive out of their bedroom windows into the “yard”.
Jeff in Ctown (Canada) (09:16:55) :
You’re forgetting, this is from the warmista!
Small scale is obviously the totally reliable wind power 😉
DaveE.
YES. and Egore (Al Gore) has some ocean front land to sell in or Kansas, at bargain prices. These Global Warmist or Climate Change Loons need to board a space ship for outer space, since there brains (if they have any) are already in outer space. In Egore’s situation, they need to reserve a padded cell for him, before he hurts himself!!!!!!
Read below, as this is the real agenda that these Global Warimg Loons have in mind.
Check our the link for the agreement.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21131080/Copenhagen-Climate-Treaty-for-Global-Fascism
Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty, Claims British Lord
http://www.infowars.com/obama-poised-to-cede-us-sovereignty-claims-…
The Minnesota Free Market Institute hosted an event at Bethel University in St. Paul on Wednesday evening. Keynote speaker Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave a scathing and lengthy presentation, complete with detailed charts, graphs, facts, and figures which culminated in the utter decimation of both the pop culture concept of global warming and the credible threat of any significant anthropomorphic climate change.
A detailed summary of Monckton’s presentation will be available here once compiled. However, a segment of his remarks justify immediate publication. If credible, the concern Monckton speaks to may well prove the single most important issue facing the American nation, bigger than health care, bigger than cap and trade, and worth every citizen’s focused attention.
Here were Monckton’s closing remarks, as dictated from my audio recording:
At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.
I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.
How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.
[laughter]
And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, if your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution (sic), and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.
So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.
But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty. For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to [help] it.
So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:
Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Lord Monckton received a standing ovation and took a series of questions from members of the audience. Among those questions were these relevent to the forthcoming Copenhagen treaty:
Question: The current administration and the Democratic majority in Congress has shown little regard for the will of the people. They’re trying to pass a serious government agenda, and serious taxation and burdens on future generations. And there seems to be little to stop them. How do you propose we stop Obama from doing this, because I see no way to stop him from signing anything in Copenhagen. I believe that’s his agenda and he’ll do it.
I don’t minimize the difficulty. But on this subject – I don’t really do politics, because it’s not right. In the end, your politics is for you. The correct procedure is for you to get onto your representatives, both in the US Senate where the bill has yet to go through (you can try and stop that) and in [the House], and get them to demand their right of audience (which they all have) with the president and tell him about this treaty. There are many very powerful people in this room, wealthy people, influential people. Get onto the media, tell them about this treaty. If they go to http://www.wattsupwiththat.com, they will find (if they look carefully enough) a copy of that treaty, because I arranged for it to be posted there not so long ago. Let them read it, and let the press tell the people that their democracy is about to be taken away for no good purpose, at least [with] no scientific basis [in reference to climate change]. Tell the press to say this. Tell the press to say that, even if there is a problem [with climate change], you don’t want your democracy taken away. It really is as simple as that.
Question: Is it really irrevocable if that treaty is signed? Suppose it’s signed by someone who does not have the authority, as I – I have some, a high degree of skepticism that we do have a valid president there because I –
I know at least one judge who shares your opinion, sir, yes.
I don’t believe it until I see it. … Would [Obama’s potential illegitimacy as president] give us a reasonable cause to nullify whatever treaty that he does sign as president?
I would be very careful not to rely on things like that. Although there is a certain amount of doubt whether or not he was born in Hawaii, my fear is it would be very difficult to prove he wasn’t born in Hawaii and therefore we might not be able to get anywhere with that. Besides, once he’s signed that treaty, whether or not he signed it validly, once he’s signed it and ratified it – your Senate ratifies it – you’re bound by it. But I will say one thing; they know, in the White House, that they won’t be able to get the 67 votes in the Senate, the two-thirds majority that your Constitution has stipulated must be achieved in order to ratify a treaty of this kind. However, what they’ve worked out is this – and they actually let it slip during the election campaign, which is how I know about it. They plan to enact that Copenhagen treaty into legislation by a simple majority of both houses. That they can do. But the virtue of that – and here you have a point – is that is, thank God, reversible. So I want you to pray tonight, and pray hard for your Senate that they utterly refuse to ratify the [new] Treaty of Copenhagen, because if they refuse to ratify it and [Obama] has to push it through as domestic legislation, you can repeal it.
Regardless of whether global warming is taking place or caused to any degree by human activity, we do not want a global government empowered to tax Americans without elected representation or anything analogous to constitutional protections. The Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves if they knew their progeny allowed a foreign power such authority, effectively undoing their every effort in an act of Anti-American Revolution. If that is our imminent course, we need to put all else on hold and focus on stopping it. If American sovereignty is ceded, all other debate is irrelevant.
Edited to add @ 8:31 am:
Skimming through the treaty, I came across verification of Monckton’s assessment of the new entity’s purpose:
38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:
World Government (heading added)
(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.
To Redistribute Wealth (heading added)
b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts [read: the “climate debt” Monckton refers to], including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, © a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.
With Enforcement Authority (heading added)
© The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; © a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange [read; enforcement].