How To Solve Global Warming: Stop Taxing Renewables!

UPDATE: 22 January 2007

I've recently come across several articles which suggest that it's possible that Global warming is not due to our emissions of greenhouse gasses alone...

Is The Climate Mainly Determined by Volcanism?

The New Scientist reported on the global cooling that occurred during the 1940-1970s. This was most likely due to increased volcanic activity causing 'aerosols' (i.e. suspended crap) in the atmosphere. Scientists at the time were concerned the world was heading for another ice-age. (I remember the reports - I was alive at the time...)

Maybe cycles of volcanism are what's really important... In which case - is there any way we can manipulate that??? Volcanoes produce particulate matter which gets suspended in the air (aerosols) and colls the earth by relecting sunlight... They also product greenhouse gases, which warm the earth... It's a complicated thing...

Maybe we could: Take heat out of volcanic hospots and make electricity from it, thus cooling them and helping to reduce the amount of volcanic activity...

Is The Science Of Global Warming Rigourous?

Nexus reported on a period of warming in the middle ages which has been suspiciously removed from the standard data-set. Also they reported that the UN's famous 'hockey-stock' graph is based on poor mathmatics - and would result in the same graph for virtually any data-set. The article is based on the following:

Apocalypse cancelled - Sunday Telegraph, 5 November, 2006 is the article I believe the above Nexus one is based on.

Either way, I don't think it's relevant whether CO2 is causing the problem or not:

The Statist Control Agenda or Global Corporation Greed..?

The Nexus article claims that global warming is being used as a tool to instill fear, so as to control and tax the populace still further... But you'd have to be really cynical to believe that... Wouldn't you?

Does CO2 = Global Warming? - The argument is irrelevant! We should be using non-polluting technologies anyway!

There have always been plenty of ways to get the things you need to live without destroying the environment.

The only reason the environment is being systematically destroyed for a quick buck is because global corporations and big (ie oil/banking) money have had a deeply unhealthy influence on politics. It can only be corruption at the highest levels which allows such ongoing injustices to be inflicted on the poorest people of the earth.

The lie that it's difficult to live sustainably - well, it's a LIE! It's EASY

The Solution to Global Warming - Is Simple!

15 October 2006

Back in the 1950s people used to dream of a time when we would engineer our own climate. Little did they realise they had already started - and they were making it... a lot worse!

Our aim should be: To be the masterful custodians of our planet. We should be making the environment better rather than blindly screwing it up in search of a quick profit...

The problem of Global Warming is NOT a complicated problem. It only happens because we burn fossil fuels. That's it. No other reasons...

How hard can this one be to solve???

Well, it must be tricky 'cos those politicians have been having hundreds of meetings, flying all over the world for conferences, setting targets, signing bits of paper for a couple of decades now. They must've contributed quite a bit of CO2, but they've made absolutely fuck-all progress in tackling the problem...

The problem: Burning fossil fuels
The solution: Stop burning fossil fuels - duh!

The only reason we are still using fossil fuels is because they are cheaper than the alternatives.

People will buy renewables if they become cheaper than fossil fuels.

Increasing taxes stifles an activity, removing taxes encourages it... The carrot is mightier than the stick!

The consumer is NOT responsible for Global Warming

Responsibility implies choice. Unless the consumer has the choice of whether to buy energy from a polluting source or not - they can't possibly be 'responsible' for the problem.

Only government has the ability to quickly change the way things are done nationally. Sure, voter pressure eventually gets them on-side, but it takes decades. On an issue as important as GBW - the government alone can act with the urgency that is required.

Besides - it's the government's responsibility to set the tax regime, and hence the 'business climate'. I believe that only by reducing taxes on renewables in addition to carbon-taxes will businesses be able to solve the problem fast enough to combat GBW.

I wrote a long letter on this subject, and you can read it here: How To Stop Global Warming

I think that 'consumer responsibility' for GBW has been one of the biggest obstacles to actually solving the problem - because it has diverted attention away from the people who really can do something about it - the government

There are plenty of ways to generate renewable energy:

• Wind
• Solar
• Wave
• Tidal
• Hydro-Electric
• Geothermal
• Heat-Pumps
• Biofuels
• Methane from Waste

Nuclear power is just plain wrong!

If you're wondering why nuclear isn't in there - it's because it's dangerous to the point of irresponsibility, and it isn't bloody sustainable - i.e. you can't keep building them, and feeding them with fuel forever - you'll run out of resources:

See this Letter to my local UKIP rep - about Nuclear Idiocy

1. The cost of just cleaning up the existing nuclear power stations, and waste is exstimated to be £56Bn
2. The estimated reduction in CO2 emmissions over the whole life cycle is a mere 4%
3. A nuclear power station is a super-easy target for terrorists. It's a huge 'dirty-bomb' just ready for detonation by some semi-competant extremists. (Security at existing stations is effectively non-existent - there was a documentary about it...)
4. NO NUCLEAR POWER = NO CHANCE OF SECRET NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION!

Tidal Lagoons - One of my faves

The best solutions are the simplest ones.

Look - the tide goes up - it makes energy. The tide goes down - it makes electricity.

The only moving parts are the turbines (which only have 1 moving part each) at the bottom which generate the electricity. Turbines can last a long time. The lagoons themselves could be used for hundreds of years...

Hell - we're losing lots of our coast to erosion from the sea - why don't we combine these things and put in sea-barriers which are also tidal lagoons?

The government never seems to have the money for sea defences. Maybe if it generated electricity too...

How cheap is that?

How many tidal lagoons could we build for the price of a single nuclear power station?

What would be the cost per MWH for the full lifecycle of these two options? I'm guessing energy from the lagoons will cost between 1% and 10% of the cost from nuclear. Anyone know any better?

Carbon sinks - taking CO2 out of the atmosphere

There are a number of ways to do this. I always prefer low-tech - i.e. building wooden houses...

• Growing trees - then building wooden houses / boats / etc.
  This has the effect of locking up the carbon into useful structures. When wood decays, it releases it's carbon content. If it gets built into something - then it doesn't.
  
  
• Carbon Sequestration
  
  
• New catalytic processes making biofuels partly from atmospheric CO2...

Comments

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Carbon Sinks

>>Carbon sinks - taking CO2 out of the atmosphere >>There are a number of ways to do this. I always >>prefer low-tech - i.e. building wooden houses... >>Growing trees - then building wooden houses / >>boats / etc. >>This has the effect of locking up the carbon >>into useful structures. When wood decays, it >>releases it\'s carbon content. If it gets built >>into something - then it doesn\'t. Whilst I agree with the sentiment this posting flies dangerously close to the flawed arguments surounding carbon offseting by growing trees. The author is correct in that the carbon does not re-enter the carbon cycle until the tree rots. The danger here is that we have to consider the life-cycle time for building materials. Short lived constructions merely represent a stored problem that will emerge when the structure is finally demolished. Sure to an extent this form of carbon offseting may give breathing space for a few decades and perhaps provide time for us to find alternative energy resources but if we fail then we have merely offset the problem to a future date. It is quite frightening to see the number of people, particularly high profile stars who feel they can offset their flight emissions by planting trees - admirable but ultimately naive. You cant just carry on planting trees indefinetly and each time you do plant a tree to carbon offset remember that when it dies you need to replace it just to preserve your original CO2 offset. You then also need to plant more trees to offset the CO2 emissions that you made in the intervening time after your first planting. Your responsibility in terms of the number of trees you need to keep on planting increases linearly, it is not a one off event. Lets just say a tree lived for only one year and that your CO2 could be offset by one tree (both obviously inaccurate but ok for illustration). In the first year you plant one tree - it dies after one year. In the second year you need to plant two trees, one to replace the one that died in the first year and one to account for your fresh emissions. In the third year you need to plant three trees and so on. Ok, even in managed tree growth schemes some trees that die will replace themselves by natural seeding rather than by human intervention but you can still only grow so many trees in a given area and so even if re-population occurs naturally you are still increasing the amount of land required to offset your personal emission year in and year out. Fine if you want to restore say England to its pre-historic condition of being one great big forrest but I suspect housing and farming demands will not allow for this. The carbon fuels at our disposal represent an age where most of the earths dry surface was populated with vegetation. If you intend to release all of the carbon locked in this manner and achieve an equilibrium in the carbon cycle that leads to low CO2 values then it follows that you need to restore land use to vegetation in order to re-achieve that balance ( and incidentally most fossil fuels originate from a period of much higher CO2 concentration so we would actually need to work a lot harder to maintain todays atmospheric CO2 whilst releasing all fossil based carbon ). Regards Jon

By Jon on 07 January 2008

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