Josh writes: Divesting from Fossil fuels seems to be flavour of the week, see here, here and here, but leaves a bitter taste. The Bishophill troll known as “aTTP” makes an appearence.
I refuse to be bullied! I have been heating with wood, So far so good. The hippies with out guns went to western Mass. and Vermont. The rest of us went to NH and Maine. I sometimes feel I am “getting too old” for this but the tangible act of doing something to react to a cooling house and spread, by your own intervention, warmth from the heart of the house is fulfilling. A warm possibly really hot stove to back up to soaks heat into your appreciative bones. The whiff of birch smoke as you approach offers joy and anticipation of peace.. When the winds howl, the blizzard rages; the juice of civilization leaves us, there is nothing quite like the reassuring toasty warmth of a perhaps a bit too well stoked stove roaring back at the elements. So a well considered heating plan with wood has offered joy and independence to a Luddite for many years. Here is to renewable energy that warms thrice and hopefully a warmer future as i stoke the CO2 up for the future optimum…or fear not for we’ve got hot when you’ve not!
Yes, but the government wants to take your wood fire away from you. Of course, if you continue to get steadily worse winters for awhile, it will be taking electricity from you, also, as it closes down those coal fired plants you depend. It will make for rough winters.
Seriously, you enjoy the wood fire because the smoke goes up a chimney. In Africa the women and children have to bend over the fire and breathe smoke to prepare meals. Real help for them consists of giving them solar cookers. They are effective for the kind of cooking they do and will stop steady deforestation as the population grows. Solarcookers.org is one organization setting up both temporary and permanent cookers, depending on whether the culture is nomadic or not. They also distribute cheap water pasteurizers (you only need to hold water at 140 degrees for a period of time to kill the organisms). After that you can work on electricity generation to raise the standard of living.
pat
April 17, 2015 8:31 pm
Oxford & Harvard have basically told the “divest” mob to get lost; Yale & UMW tried a different approach (links can be found by searching headlines):
10 April: 19 Students Arrested by Yale Police at Fossil Fuel Divestment Sit-In
16 April: UPDATE: 3 arrested during Divest University of Mary Washington sit-in released
They have each been charged with a class-one misdemeanor for trespassing and have a hearing scheduled for 8:30 a..m on April 30 at the Fredericksburg General District Court…
now Hulme adds his voice to those who try to point out the bleeding obvious, that there’ll be buyers in the wings if the Unis do divest:
18 April: Guardian: Mike Hulme: Why fossil fuel divestment is a misguided tactic
A divestment campaign may raise awareness but this gesture politics does not constitute an effective policy to deal with the risks of climate change
Second, I do not believe divestment will bring about ‘action on climate change’ (whatever might be meant by ‘action’).
***There will be many other investors waiting to pick up any slack which results from modest investment withdrawals…
Third, and most decisively for me, the divestment campaign is driven by a single and simple climate change narrative in which global bads are linked to global temperature…
***But human influence on the climate system is not all about carbon fossil fuel, and the bads in the world cannot be indexed to global temperature or to trillions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. As we can see from the shortly-to-be-agreed sustainable development goals, there are many things that ‘people of conscience’ are rightly concerned with that have little to do with carbon…
Climate change is a so-called ‘wicked problem’ that is not amenable to single action strategies…
Whilst born of frustration – one detects a sense of panic even in Rusbridger’s language – targeting high profile investors for divestment from fossil fuel companies is “feel-good” campaigning. It is the latest stage in the symbolic politics of climate change, which too often has been wooed by apocalyptic imaginary and false deadlines and lost sight of the politics of pragmatism by which change in the world occurs. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/17/why-fossil-fuel-divestment-is-a-misguided-tactic
and, whilst the MSM likes to play up a small drop in Chinese coal imports on occasion, due to oversupply and a drop in economic activity, these are figures which can’t be ignored:
16 Jan: Reuters: China coal output seen up 2.7 pct in 2014 – coal group
Chinese coal production is expected to grow 2.7 percent this year to around 3.8 billion tonnes, with demand also still rising despite a government campaign to cut air pollution, the China National Coal Association (CNCA) said on Thursday.
The association forecasts that despite efforts to restrict the import and use of low-quality coal, imports would also remain at around 300 million tonnes this year, with the price gap between domestic and overseas markets still attractive…
But total energy demand continues to soar and analysts still expect absolute coal demand to grow 2-3 percent a year over the next five years…
CNCA also said supply capacity was likely to reach around 4 billion tonnes in 2014, up from 3.7 billion tonnes in 2013. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/china-coal-idUSL3N0KQ1JY20140116
Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal. Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels.
More than 50% of premature deaths among children under 5 are due to pneumonia caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution. 3.8 million premature deaths annually from noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are attributed to exposure to household air pollution.
That 1,100 deaths per annum is an estimate only. In theory it could be higher or it it could be lower, & by default the producers of this information “have” to exaggerate the numbers based upon the “Precautionary Principle”, in case they get sued at the end of the day! Any home that has an open fire of some kind will be at reduced risk in a radon affected area automatically, as a result of the forced airflow through draw up the flue, whether the fire is lit or not. As with all these things it is the accumulation of radon in the home that is the issue, & for the most part it is well below background radiation levels. One can sit on a rock on for 20 minutes on Dartmoor & receive twice the annual dosage up one’s rear end as a result, as one probalby can all around the world where granite exists.
Alan,
Radon is only really an inhalation danger. As it is an alpha particle emitter upon decay, it actually needs to be near the tissue to have an impact. Alpha particles are stopped by a few feet of air, a piece of paper, clothing and even the dead layer of skin. Alpha emitters are only a danger if they are inhaled or ingested, then they can wreak havoc on genetic material by ionizing molecules in the cell. S
Sitting on a nice granite outcropping enjoying the view is not going to have any affect whatsoever on the haunches.
Yet in California electricity rates are “necessarily skyrocket”ing as green policy is foisted… to the point where my all electric kitchen costs more than the bbq… So I now do more cooking with wood and charcoal. Morning coffee made on a gas camp stove. This is better how? (other than cheaper to me…)
The special summer daytime rate where Anthony lives is nearly $1/kW hr and that is economical to buy a generator and make your own power for the necessary AC. (rule of thumb for home sized Diesels: divide Diesel price per gallon by 10 to get cents per kW-hr fuel cost, so $4 Diesel is 40 cent kW- hr. Gas Honda is about 50 cents, so still worth it.) Tis a strange workd where running your own generator pays off…
Current tariff for non special cases is 35 cent with 50 cent in planning, at which time my neighbors better like the sound of a motor… btw, nat gas generators are widely avaiable and fuel cost is lower…
Reblogged this on paullitely and commented:
Burning Wood destroys beneficial Greenery.
ImranCan
April 18, 2015 4:11 am
The whole ‘divestment campaign’ is just absurd. Its such an appalling intellectual mix up of 2 things:
1) the demand for an energy companies products that underpins its intrinsic market value
2) how the stock market market works
What exactly do people who want to encourage ‘divestment’ want ? The stock price goes up and down as function of people’s desire to buy or sell that stock. But fundamentally as long as there are a few people in the world who are OK to own or buy that stock, its value will basically be around or about its intrinsic value which is based on the demand for its products. As Margaret Thatcher once said “You cannot buck a market”.
So if all these green lefties sell there stocks, it just means you have a different class of stock owner …. those that really don’t give a shit about how much CO2 we produce … . at least it will stop those ridiculous motions at AGM’s.
AntonyIndia
April 18, 2015 8:03 am
This is exactly how billions of South Asians and Africans would feel mistreated by Western Lefties IF they would know this travesty was going on, BUT they don’t…. too busy living from day to day to make ends meet, more power cuts are making life even worse.
Evan Jones
Editor
April 18, 2015 2:41 pm
Vestment vs. Investment
The New Investiture Controversy.
Stuart B
April 18, 2015 3:43 pm
How about this? If anyone wishes to divest, I’ll willingly take their shares for absolutely nothing- I won’t charge them a thing. These shares will be ethically recycled, by distributing them as dividend generators for households in poorer nations. They will thus be enabled to buy seed, shelter, water equipment, etc, in short, all the paraphernalia of stable modern life. Hope this helps..
Whoops, correction, my apologies, no excuse. The third one about BEST was from “EricAdler”, a different loon that can sound like Appell.
Once you get out of this gentlemen’s debate society arguing fine print physics and advanced calculus and statistics, you find the greater climate debate is: vocal warmists appearing scientific with their talking points lists who can be defeated with a Google search or a spreadsheet; more-vocal liberals whose greatest argument is Watts, Spencer, Christy, Monckton and Morano, are all creationist proven liars bought and paid for by the Kochs etc; and skeptics without enough knowledge and tools to fight back effectively who often get frustrated and also resort to name-calling.
It is fun to argue tactics in the parlor, but some assistance and guidance would be appreciated for the war being fought out front in the street.
I refuse to be bullied! I have been heating with wood, So far so good. The hippies with out guns went to western Mass. and Vermont. The rest of us went to NH and Maine. I sometimes feel I am “getting too old” for this but the tangible act of doing something to react to a cooling house and spread, by your own intervention, warmth from the heart of the house is fulfilling. A warm possibly really hot stove to back up to soaks heat into your appreciative bones. The whiff of birch smoke as you approach offers joy and anticipation of peace.. When the winds howl, the blizzard rages; the juice of civilization leaves us, there is nothing quite like the reassuring toasty warmth of a perhaps a bit too well stoked stove roaring back at the elements. So a well considered heating plan with wood has offered joy and independence to a Luddite for many years. Here is to renewable energy that warms thrice and hopefully a warmer future as i stoke the CO2 up for the future optimum…or fear not for we’ve got hot when you’ve not!
Yes, but the government wants to take your wood fire away from you. Of course, if you continue to get steadily worse winters for awhile, it will be taking electricity from you, also, as it closes down those coal fired plants you depend. It will make for rough winters.
Seriously, you enjoy the wood fire because the smoke goes up a chimney. In Africa the women and children have to bend over the fire and breathe smoke to prepare meals. Real help for them consists of giving them solar cookers. They are effective for the kind of cooking they do and will stop steady deforestation as the population grows. Solarcookers.org is one organization setting up both temporary and permanent cookers, depending on whether the culture is nomadic or not. They also distribute cheap water pasteurizers (you only need to hold water at 140 degrees for a period of time to kill the organisms). After that you can work on electricity generation to raise the standard of living.
Oxford & Harvard have basically told the “divest” mob to get lost; Yale & UMW tried a different approach (links can be found by searching headlines):
10 April: 19 Students Arrested by Yale Police at Fossil Fuel Divestment Sit-In
16 April: UPDATE: 3 arrested during Divest University of Mary Washington sit-in released
They have each been charged with a class-one misdemeanor for trespassing and have a hearing scheduled for 8:30 a..m on April 30 at the Fredericksburg General District Court…
now Hulme adds his voice to those who try to point out the bleeding obvious, that there’ll be buyers in the wings if the Unis do divest:
18 April: Guardian: Mike Hulme: Why fossil fuel divestment is a misguided tactic
A divestment campaign may raise awareness but this gesture politics does not constitute an effective policy to deal with the risks of climate change
Second, I do not believe divestment will bring about ‘action on climate change’ (whatever might be meant by ‘action’).
***There will be many other investors waiting to pick up any slack which results from modest investment withdrawals…
Third, and most decisively for me, the divestment campaign is driven by a single and simple climate change narrative in which global bads are linked to global temperature…
***But human influence on the climate system is not all about carbon fossil fuel, and the bads in the world cannot be indexed to global temperature or to trillions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. As we can see from the shortly-to-be-agreed sustainable development goals, there are many things that ‘people of conscience’ are rightly concerned with that have little to do with carbon…
Climate change is a so-called ‘wicked problem’ that is not amenable to single action strategies…
Whilst born of frustration – one detects a sense of panic even in Rusbridger’s language – targeting high profile investors for divestment from fossil fuel companies is “feel-good” campaigning. It is the latest stage in the symbolic politics of climate change, which too often has been wooed by apocalyptic imaginary and false deadlines and lost sight of the politics of pragmatism by which change in the world occurs.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/17/why-fossil-fuel-divestment-is-a-misguided-tactic
and, whilst the MSM likes to play up a small drop in Chinese coal imports on occasion, due to oversupply and a drop in economic activity, these are figures which can’t be ignored:
16 Jan: Reuters: China coal output seen up 2.7 pct in 2014 – coal group
Chinese coal production is expected to grow 2.7 percent this year to around 3.8 billion tonnes, with demand also still rising despite a government campaign to cut air pollution, the China National Coal Association (CNCA) said on Thursday.
The association forecasts that despite efforts to restrict the import and use of low-quality coal, imports would also remain at around 300 million tonnes this year, with the price gap between domestic and overseas markets still attractive…
But total energy demand continues to soar and analysts still expect absolute coal demand to grow 2-3 percent a year over the next five years…
CNCA also said supply capacity was likely to reach around 4 billion tonnes in 2014, up from 3.7 billion tonnes in 2013.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/china-coal-idUSL3N0KQ1JY20140116
“Greens” condemn children to slow death
Household air pollution and health, WHO Fact sheet N°292 Updated March 2014
“•Radon increases your risk of lung cancer
•The higher the radon, the longer the exposure, the greater the risk
•Radon causes over 1,100 deaths from lung cancer each year in the UK
•Half of these deaths occur among the quarter of the population who are current smokers”
http://www.ukradon.org/information/risks
Radon the killer in tobacco . https://altered-states.net/barry/newsletter405/tobacco.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_radon
That 1,100 deaths per annum is an estimate only. In theory it could be higher or it it could be lower, & by default the producers of this information “have” to exaggerate the numbers based upon the “Precautionary Principle”, in case they get sued at the end of the day! Any home that has an open fire of some kind will be at reduced risk in a radon affected area automatically, as a result of the forced airflow through draw up the flue, whether the fire is lit or not. As with all these things it is the accumulation of radon in the home that is the issue, & for the most part it is well below background radiation levels. One can sit on a rock on for 20 minutes on Dartmoor & receive twice the annual dosage up one’s rear end as a result, as one probalby can all around the world where granite exists.
Alan,
Radon is only really an inhalation danger. As it is an alpha particle emitter upon decay, it actually needs to be near the tissue to have an impact. Alpha particles are stopped by a few feet of air, a piece of paper, clothing and even the dead layer of skin. Alpha emitters are only a danger if they are inhaled or ingested, then they can wreak havoc on genetic material by ionizing molecules in the cell. S
Sitting on a nice granite outcropping enjoying the view is not going to have any affect whatsoever on the haunches.
Yet in California electricity rates are “necessarily skyrocket”ing as green policy is foisted… to the point where my all electric kitchen costs more than the bbq… So I now do more cooking with wood and charcoal. Morning coffee made on a gas camp stove. This is better how? (other than cheaper to me…)
The special summer daytime rate where Anthony lives is nearly $1/kW hr and that is economical to buy a generator and make your own power for the necessary AC. (rule of thumb for home sized Diesels: divide Diesel price per gallon by 10 to get cents per kW-hr fuel cost, so $4 Diesel is 40 cent kW- hr. Gas Honda is about 50 cents, so still worth it.) Tis a strange workd where running your own generator pays off…
Current tariff for non special cases is 35 cent with 50 cent in planning, at which time my neighbors better like the sound of a motor… btw, nat gas generators are widely avaiable and fuel cost is lower…
Reblogged this on paullitely and commented:
Burning Wood destroys beneficial Greenery.
The whole ‘divestment campaign’ is just absurd. Its such an appalling intellectual mix up of 2 things:
1) the demand for an energy companies products that underpins its intrinsic market value
2) how the stock market market works
What exactly do people who want to encourage ‘divestment’ want ? The stock price goes up and down as function of people’s desire to buy or sell that stock. But fundamentally as long as there are a few people in the world who are OK to own or buy that stock, its value will basically be around or about its intrinsic value which is based on the demand for its products. As Margaret Thatcher once said “You cannot buck a market”.
So if all these green lefties sell there stocks, it just means you have a different class of stock owner …. those that really don’t give a shit about how much CO2 we produce … . at least it will stop those ridiculous motions at AGM’s.
This is exactly how billions of South Asians and Africans would feel mistreated by Western Lefties IF they would know this travesty was going on, BUT they don’t…. too busy living from day to day to make ends meet, more power cuts are making life even worse.
Vestment vs. Investment
The New Investiture Controversy.
How about this? If anyone wishes to divest, I’ll willingly take their shares for absolutely nothing- I won’t charge them a thing. These shares will be ethically recycled, by distributing them as dividend generators for households in poorer nations. They will thus be enabled to buy seed, shelter, water equipment, etc, in short, all the paraphernalia of stable modern life. Hope this helps..
They really shouldn’t be profiting from the sale otherwise they are hypocrites, so I would like to get in on this scheme.
Assorted libel and humor (with links) from the mild-mannered madman, David Appell, https://disqus.com/by/DavidAppell/.
“I know for a fact that Watts is a liar, because he’s lied about me. And he later admitted it.”
“Planets don’t just “warm up” without a reason. The reason is manmade greenhouse gases.”
(Note: Ah, so that’s how the interglacial started!)
“When Watts found that the BEST project shot down his theory that the temperature record is no good, he was very embarrassed, but hasn’t yet been able to publish a rebuttal.”
(Note: This is only a few hours old. Given how often BEST has been chewed up and spit out around here, I fear Appell is suffering from early dementia.)
And this is my favorite so far:
“Birds don’t emit CO2, Einstein.”
Whoops, correction, my apologies, no excuse. The third one about BEST was from “EricAdler”, a different loon that can sound like Appell.
Once you get out of this gentlemen’s debate society arguing fine print physics and advanced calculus and statistics, you find the greater climate debate is: vocal warmists appearing scientific with their talking points lists who can be defeated with a Google search or a spreadsheet; more-vocal liberals whose greatest argument is Watts, Spencer, Christy, Monckton and Morano, are all creationist proven liars bought and paid for by the Kochs etc; and skeptics without enough knowledge and tools to fight back effectively who often get frustrated and also resort to name-calling.
It is fun to argue tactics in the parlor, but some assistance and guidance would be appreciated for the war being fought out front in the street.