Climate change - the POLITICAL debate.

Climate change - the POLITICAL debate.

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JMGS4

8,729 posts

269 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
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powerstroke said:
NoNeed said:
I have often wondered what the driving force is behind this, .
its more about peoples lust for power and imposing rule!!!
And who are the people who lost everything when the Wall came down? Proven by the collapse of their idiotic socialism and "equality for all" (without wanting to work for it), they infiltrated dozens of normal institutions and spread their (well) repackaged lies to continue their attempt to take over, supported of course by the very gullible well meaning PC liberalistic limp-wristed do-gooders everywhere, who bought into their lies.

Look at the resignation of the greenpeas founder...;
look at the tactics of the "greenies"...;
look how they are trying to stifle any discussion or "unbelievers" or "deniers" point of view;
look at their almost libellous accusations of people who do not accept their new religion;
look at their refusal to answer any question which could throw a bad light on their junk science;
look at their refusal to enter into ANY scientific discussion which does not initially accept their base theory that AGW exists;
look at the constant bombarding of normal discussions here by ever new watermelons, to attempt to derail, confuse or just plain bore any members here.

Need I say more...and I read political science, and have learnt and know my enemy!



Edited by JMGS4 on Wednesday 16th February 08:44

hairykrishna

13,149 posts

202 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
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LongQ said:
Of course one can argue that this reliance on consumption of large amounts of inefficently created electricity (in particular) is the source of the 'AGW problem'. However that still would not justify taking the risk of committing so much investment into unproven and even undeveloped technologies in the hope that they will work. It's really not a good time to be doing that and taking on such an easily identifiable risk in my opinion. Nor does it seem to be necessary to anyone but the most extreme viewpoints.
It seems fairly crazy to me that, as you note, we're extremely reliant on a technological infrastructure and electricity yet we're doing very little in real terms to 'future proof' it. Regardless of peoples beliefs on AGW it's undeniable that the days of cheap and easy fossil fuels are numbered. Personally I think we should stop pissing quite so much money away on 'renewable' energy when we already have the solution in the form of fission. Build a few wind farms in the extremely windy places where it makes sense (already done effectively) to keep the hippies happy, few gas plants for load following and start building nuclear as fast as possible.

I think the real problem, contrary to some opinion on here, is not necessarily the greenies who subscribe to the science (i.e. AGW) but the ones who oppose any sensible electricity generating methods at all. The future of energy generation as proposed by Greenpeace et al just doesn't work. The numbers don't add up without a fundamental and unworkable shift in how our society works.

JMGS4

8,729 posts

269 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
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Hairy, to correct my now deleted post.. fission is good, fusion though is the way forward, and we're nowhere near solving that one yet, and we haven't resolved the waste problem with fission yet, and it should be addressed better that at the moment...

MilnerR

8,273 posts

257 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
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This was my point in the "other" thread, whether the science is right wrong or indifferent doesn't matter. AGW activists are essentially facing the hard reality of game theory with regards action on AGW. AGW proponents would like the worlds governments to behave like doves in a world of hawks. The countries that really matter in this are not going to halt their growth. I don't need a multi-million pound super computer to model the prediction that China and India will make noises about curbing emissions whilst maintaining their economic growth and associated co2 production. Make as much noise as you like, the UK destroying it's economy will not have the tiniest impact on AGW (assuming it is real).

F i F

43,931 posts

250 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
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BJWoods said:
hairykrishna said:
As opposed to the science thread, this is somewhere where my views are more in line with the rest of PH. Firstly, although I'm pretty sure the planet's warming, I'm not convinced that's a huge disaster. Secondly even if it is a big problem current measures are just burning money for little to no gain.
Actually that is preety much my view (except, imho, we are still uncertain to the extent of AGW vs natural warming as well)
My view on this is that we (the world) are in a car that is barrelling down an unlit road and we only have knowledge about where the road has been recently because we were sat there, we have some reasonable knowledge about further back, i.e. before we got in the car, but that information is open to interpretation. We do not have the lights switched on.

One group, let's call them politicians / warmists, think they are sitting behind the wheel, and are shouting, "look look the road goes left, we can see this and this and this over there, and we are convinced that the rest of you should pay us lots and lots of money and we will keep the car on the road."

Another group, let's call them sceptics, are saying "but you are ignoring this and this and this over on the right. The road could be going right, we just don't know, and giving you lots of money to go left may be disaster for all, and it will certainly be financially a disaster for us."

There's another group in the car, I'm going to call it me wink which is saying, "FFS why don't we spend some money to figure out how to turn the lights on, so we can with some objectivity see and understand where we are going. Plus all that money that you politicians want, why don't we spend it on doing real good for the world. Like ensuring every single person in the world has access to clean water, sanitation, education, health care, maternity care, birth control, and fix the farking potholes in this road."

Le TVR

3,092 posts

250 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
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hairykrishna said:
I think the real problem, contrary to some opinion on here, is not necessarily the greenies who subscribe to the science (i.e. AGW) but the ones who oppose any sensible electricity generating methods at all. The future of energy generation as proposed by Greenpeace et al just doesn't work. The numbers don't add up without a fundamental and unworkable shift in how our society works.
I think that there has always been a sense of social engineering underlying their position (not just GP). The objective never seems to be related to a co-ordinated scientific response in developing the energy shortfall if fossil fuels become priced out of the market. All this rhetoric about redefining society, implementing rationing, enforced deprevation just reinforces the opinion that it is some kind of marxist left take-over by the back door of climate science.

hairykrishna

13,149 posts

202 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
JMGS4 said:
Hairy, to correct my now deleted post.. fission is good, fusion though is the way forward, and we're nowhere near solving that one yet, and we haven't resolved the waste problem with fission yet, and it should be addressed better that at the moment...
Fusion is the long term way forward, and we are getting closer - ITER is going to be interesting. The waste problem's not a show stopper for fission; the volume of waste we're dealing with isn't that large.

JMGS4

8,729 posts

269 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
Le TVR said:
All this rhetoric about redefining society, implementing rationing, enforced deprevation just reinforces the opinion that it is some kind of marxist left take-over by the back door of climate science.
One has to answer the question as to what happened, for example, to all the fanatically communist Stasi members in East Germany alone, (and possibly up to 3000 active stasi supporters in the TUC especially in the NUM and traindrivers unions).
There were over 6 million of them in the DDR; they didn't just dissappear into thin air, they changed coats and dissappeared into the green and new left movements, into the SPD, into the "Linken" and any other organisation which would cover their past, as their training predestined them to do.

Do not believe for an instant that all of them are no longer active... true some may have come to their senses and joined the realists, but the rabid ones are still there, still working to bring everyone to their way of thinking, and striving to get back into power. They're just more devious and discreet now, that's an even bigger danger!

I am NOT saying that every greenie is automatically a commie, just that they have been subjected to marxist ideology, although often unknowingly, and; what I am saying is that the old guard of the marxists have a very strong influence in politicalised groupings especially where they try to subvert the "western way of doing things", to put it more neatly.


hairykrishna

13,149 posts

202 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
Le TVR said:
I think that there has always been a sense of social engineering underlying their position (not just GP). The objective never seems to be related to a co-ordinated scientific response in developing the energy shortfall if fossil fuels become priced out of the market. All this rhetoric about redefining society, implementing rationing, enforced deprevation just reinforces the opinion that it is some kind of marxist left take-over by the back door of climate science.
If you examine the positions of FoE, Greenpeace et al in detail you will find that they're often actually massively exaggerating the implications of the climate science. Their positions are not tenable even if you broadly accept the IPCC scienfific position, as I do. I honestly have no idea of their true agenda (I'm not even sure they do) beyond 'developed society=bad'.

turbobloke

103,631 posts

259 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
PH bush telegraph operating well today - this is one for the politics thread.

Is Barry about to destroy the US coal industry on the back of a scam?

http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-energy-secretary...

JMGS4

8,729 posts

269 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
hairykrishna said:
The waste problem's not a show stopper for fission; the volume of waste we're dealing with isn't that large.
Agreed not large but damn dangerous over the long time it'll be with us, we'll have to solve that problem soon... and they're having problems removing Dounreay and it's waste, as they will especially have when they try to clean up Chernobyl, as it's degrading fast according to all reports. No not a doom monger or a pinko, just realistic!

turbobloke

103,631 posts

259 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
More politics than science so another for this thread at a guess.

The Shame Of Green Britain: Families Go Without Food To Pay Winter Fuel Bills

One of the coldest winters in a century saw Welsh people risking their health by switching off heating in the face of rising energy bills, a report has found. The Bevan Foundation report said some families also plunged themselves into debt or went without food in an effort to afford to heat their homes.
Madeleine Brindley, Wales Online, 15 February 2011

This after pensioners were found buying cheap, large, second hand books from charity shops, in order to burn to keep warm.

redcard to UK energy policy fiasco

chris watton

22,477 posts

259 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
JMGS4 said:
I am NOT saying that every greenie is automatically a commie, just that they have been subjected to marxist ideology, although often unknowingly, and; what I am saying is that the old guard of the marxists have a very strong influence in politicalised groupings especially where they try to subvert the "western way of doing things", to put it more neatly.
People like this;

http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Fiona_Fox

article said:
"Fiona Fox is the director of the Science Media Centre (SMC). She was a student at Warwick University and was previously a leading member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and of its front group the Irish Freedom Movement. She was for a period (circa 1992) the editor of its bulletin titled Irish Freedom.


Fiona Fox listed as 'Fiona Foster' in a picture from the journal she edited at the time: Irish Freedom the bulletin of the Irish Freedom Movement, Issue 18 Summer 1992.Despite having no previous background in science or science communication, Fox has been afforded, since her appointment in December 2001, the status of expert. She has, for example, been included in a working party on peer review set up by Sense About Science, and in a steering group on improving communication over science policy and risk set up by the Office of Science and Technology. In 2003 Fox delivered a lecture at Green College, Oxford, on the challenge of adapting science to the mass media."

hairykrishna

13,149 posts

202 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
JMGS4 said:
Agreed not large but damn dangerous over the long time it'll be with us, we'll have to solve that problem soon... and they're having problems removing Dounreay and it's waste, as they will especially have when they try to clean up Chernobyl, as it's degrading fast according to all reports. No not a doom monger or a pinko, just realistic!
The legacy stuff like Dounreay is largely a result of a fairly cavalier attitude in the early days of the industry, coupled with cold war pressures. Modern plants which have been built up with decomissioning in mind won't have the same issues and we'll actually have a detailed inventory of what's there.

I'm not saying that it's a non-issue, just that the plan at the moment which is to bury it all in a very geologically stable hole in the ground isn't that bad of a long term solution.

JMGS4

8,729 posts

269 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
hairykrishna said:
Modern plants which have been built up with decomissioning in mind won't have the same issues and we'll actually have a detailed inventory of what's there.
So why are the various governments dragging their heels building them. We need them now, otherwise we'll be "browning out" very shortly!! To answer my own question is that they've bought in to this (AGW) lie and see an unending fiscal bonus to be paid by the gullible taxpayer...

hairykrishna

13,149 posts

202 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
JMGS4 said:
So why are the various governments dragging their heels building them. We need them now, otherwise we'll be "browning out" very shortly!! To answer my own question is that they've bought in to this (AGW) lie and see an unending fiscal bonus to be paid by the gullible taxpayer...
Because the public hate nuclear power. They think it's dangerous; the facts are irrelevant.

turbobloke

103,631 posts

259 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
hairykrishna said:
JMGS4 said:
So why are the various governments dragging their heels building them. We need them now, otherwise we'll be "browning out" very shortly!! To answer my own question is that they've bought in to this (AGW) lie and see an unending fiscal bonus to be paid by the gullible taxpayer...
Because the public hate nuclear power. They think it's dangerous; the facts are irrelevant.
Just out of interest, who or what do you think has relentlessly fed the public this line that nuclear power is dangerous? Was it the government, the nuclear industry, green pressure groups, a.n.other?

Could this be something to do with it?

Greenpeace Press Release sent out by mistake a bit too prematurely said:
Nuclear power is a volatile and dangerous source of energy. . . In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."
For the record, my view as shared by others I've read is that anti-nuclear arguments misrepresent facts, and violate the rules of logic. Not unlike other green propaganda in fact smile

Edited by turbobloke on Wednesday 16th February 11:11

JagLover

42,191 posts

234 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
LongQ said:
As it says. Politics.

Please try to avoid science.

The budget required for the current proposals in most of the industrialised world seems to suggest massive taxation to force things along as well as loose price controll on energy companies (to start with - other later?) to give them seed investment.

Does it make sense?

Is it affordable?

What are the risks?

What are the alternatives.

The green flag lap starts now.
You say it requires massive taxation but actually so far the greatest burden seems to have been bourne by the consumers of electricity. Measures such as the renewables obligation and 'feed in' tarrifs (which are widespread in europe), raise the cost of energy without the government having to dip into their pockets.


turbobloke

103,631 posts

259 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
JagLover said:
LongQ said:
As it says. Politics.

Please try to avoid science.

The budget required for the current proposals in most of the industrialised world seems to suggest massive taxation to force things along as well as loose price controll on energy companies (to start with - other later?) to give them seed investment.

Does it make sense?

Is it affordable?

What are the risks?

What are the alternatives.

The green flag lap starts now.
You say it requires massive taxation but actually so far the greatest burden seems to have been bourne by the consumers of electricity. Measures such as the renewables obligation and 'feed in' tarrifs (which are widespread in europe), raise the cost of energy without the government having to dip into their pockets.
Agreed and that's the domestic view, but look at the risible Climate Change Levy as extorted from corporations.

hairykrishna

13,149 posts

202 months

Wednesday 16th February 2011
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
hairykrishna said:
JMGS4 said:
So why are the various governments dragging their heels building them. We need them now, otherwise we'll be "browning out" very shortly!! To answer my own question is that they've bought in to this (AGW) lie and see an unending fiscal bonus to be paid by the gullible taxpayer...
Because the public hate nuclear power. They think it's dangerous; the facts are irrelevant.
Just out of interest, who or what do you think has relentlessly fed the public this line that nuclear power is dangerous? Was it the government, the nuclear industry, green pressure groups, a.n.other?

Could this be something to do with it?

Greenpeace Press Release sent out by mistake a bit too prematurely said:
Nuclear power is a volatile and dangerous source of energy. . . In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."
For the record, my view as shared by others I've read is that anti-nuclear arguments misrepresent facts, and violate the rules of logic. Not unlike other green propaganda in fact smile

Edited by turbobloke on Wednesday 16th February 11:11
Green pressure groups - I think fueled largely by CND style anti bomb types who were in both groups. Civil nuclear, in the UK particularly, was strongly linked with the weapons program in the early days. The industry never really did itself any favours in the PR department but they’re a lot more savvy these days.

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