The problem is the word green.

Never Say Green Again

http://thecelticlion.blogspot.com/2008/02/never-say-green-again.html

Spoken in true green format, wording and style.

First Climate Change is real, the earth has been changing since it was formed, plate - techtonics, ocean currents, atmospheric composition, all changed.

Now as far as computer modelling goes you need to understand that you can model generalities but you cannot model details. So due to lack of resolution in the modelling you have to make wide assumptions, these tend to be guesses most of the time. This leads to models that behave like they are expected to because the assumptions are pre-determined.

Example: I can say that with my economic model I can predict a slow-down in GDP Growth, because I made an model that reacts to energy prices and their rise will cause inflation. I do not model countries nationalism, trade sentiments or public opinion but instead assume that it will be positive or stay the same. Now lets say that energy prices rise slightly and since I weighted this as important my model projects a slow-down, but a reversal in globalization occurs centered on protectionism and the GDP rate slips lower than I predicted, but was within my error bands. Was I right?
No. I should start over, not claim a success. A true model only reacts it never makes an assumption, that is currently beyond our capabilities, but we will get there.

Next the Internet is a man-made construct and as such is so simplistic in design as to be modelled easily. What you cannot model is the exact trends of consumer sentiment for Internet products and ads, length of interest in social-networking, impact on crime rates or anything else driven by the Internet, but not part of it’s infrastructure.

Next Doctors make many mistakes because the body is so complicated, that is why they collaborate, research, develop new tests and procedures. Plus must specialize in fields of medicine due to not being able to “know it all”. Unlike climatoligists who seem to think they can.

Being wrong and proved as such must really be a blow to you since you are a green, and have the global weight of moral imperitives behind your ill-conceived notions about how the planet and human civilization truly functions.

Thanks for the validation of my impression of most greens.

I will keep saying. Climate change is not a problem it is a symptom. Find the problem then solve that.

As a bonus you then get the benefits this post is searching for.

That’s a petty attack. First of all, I think the answer is in his name: heretic, a person who holds unorthodox opinions in any field.

Secondly, if you read his posts in any detail at all it is obvious he doesn’t deny that the climate changes, just that AGW is largely BS.

So, without reading any of your posts in detail, I reckon you just lost an argument and are feeling bitter about it

So you’re a climate change denier, then, ClimateHeretic?

Awesome, glad to know that, now I know I can just scan over your posts as I would a flat-Earther.

You should have said that first, it would have saved us a lot of pointless back-and-forth.

And yes, the greens have done a lousy job asking people to make sacrifices for a higher cause. The emphasis as you point it out so well has to be on direct personal benefits. Only a very small percentage of the population has a highly developed green conscience. For the rest, got to appeal to the seve n sins . . . or things like convenience or value. I could spend hours on the subject. As you know, this is what my blog is all about, really.

http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com

Thanks for agreeing to stop forcing the issue, replace through growth and attrition, that has been my opinion since this whole GCC nonsense began. This is the way the human civilization works and has worked for the last 10,000 years, see your weavers/mechanical loom statement.

Next you IMO fall into the category of people that think electricity is magical, I think you should really try and read up on the issues before you make claims like “This involves no extra technical difficulties or expense compared to Business As Usual.”

Losing your job to new technology is different from shutting down an industry. The economic impact alone is mind boggling, think about the airline industry and support businesses.

Airlines (Support Industries)
- Manufacturers - Heavy
- Manufacturers - Light
- Airports and Ground Staff
- Air traffic Controllers
- Food Services
- Airport Retail
- Security Services
- Architects and Engineers
- Federal Administration System
- Manufacturers - Terminal services
- Aircraft Maintenance Techs
- Airport Hotels and Restaurants
- Aluminum Industry
- Copper Industry
- Hydraulics Industry
- Tire Industry
- Carbon Composite Industry

I can keep going right down to the people who work in the factory making the famous airline nut bags.

You need to realize that everything is connected economically, that is why you cannot model economics just like you cannot model the climate. Just far too complex.

Next you better read a tourism report for your own country before you discount over-seas travellers and how much they bring to economies.

Finally there is nothing un-true in post #6. You are adding mercury in concentrated quantities directly into the environment, this is real pollution that could have been avoided because we knew of the dangers before we acted. That is the point, it was not thought through, just like your comments.

However, only in some sort of socialist-style dreamworld is 100% of the population going to get up tomorrow morning and do these things. In reality, a small but growing portion of the population will do these things. As the number grow, the demand for the infrastructure grows, and it gets built.

The embodied energy in wind power, localised agriculture, etc, were already calculated in the figures I gave.

The technical obstacles to building them are no greater than the technical obstacles to building fossil fuel plants. So, when the fossil fuel plants come to the end of their lives - usually about 30 years - rather than replacing them with new fossil fuel plants, we replace them with renewable energy plants. This involves no extra technical difficulties or expense compared to Business As Usual.

Why would tourism and steward jobs disappear? Are we to imagine that people giving up air travel are somehow unable to take the train to somewhere on the same continent, and that trains employ no people, or hotels catering to domestic customers employ less people than hotels catering to international customers?

In any case, I have as much sympathy for those who lose their jobs from our changing to a more environmentally-friendly economy as the factory owners of Lancaster had for the hand weavers who lost their jobs to machines - economies change, and part of that change is some people losing jobs, and others gaining them.

Post #6 is a load of old bollocks, as it fails to mention that we already have mercury emissions into the environment from the smokestacks of coal-fired power stations. So it all comes out much the same, in terms of heavy metals - but much better in terms of greenhouse gases. Amazingly, no one thing is perfect and solves all our troubles.

What I did was only take work on environmentally considered projects. Railways, schools etc. I tried to run things as efficiently as possible. I managed once to get a job setting up the biggest construction site in Europe. I had such a good team and people worked so well together my phase ran 3 weeks ahead of schedule. The whole project then fell into place.

With 1000 people a day on site such efficiency must have saved resources and reduced emissions.

I managed to get a good run then of only working on waste water treatment plants. In an audit of me travelling to work offset by the products I worked on did in fact reduce pollution.

It’s all a bit vague and with no proper audit, but my life in construction feels like it has been a positive contribution to the environment.

it’s not green products but providing environmentally beneficial service. I have never in my life been on an aircraft as I have never worked on a project etc abroad,where my contribution would result in that projects demand on the environment being less, to offset my travel.

Also the question, having watched the news this morning. What would it be like if we all plugged in electric cars?

Answer. South Africa.

Thanks for the figures none of this is presented in the media. Get an electric car and the planet is saved is the message.

There is no where enough “wind” power to do this firstly, secondly there is no where enough manufacturing to supply this and not any feasible storage system for off time reliable operation and peak demand times (see post #8). Manufacturing creates CO2, so lets say we have to create 200 Million wind turbines, they are made out of what? Cheese. No they are made out of aluminum, steel, tin, copper and plastic. Creation of which are all highly CO2 intense.

See Previous Article on this site “Climate Change Plan B”

- “use public transport! walk! cycle!” - rid themselves of their cars and use public transport, 7.6+4.2=11.8t can be reduced to about 1.2t,

There is no where enough public transit infrastructure to handle the demand. Building this up creates CO2 emissions. See “what are these made of” above?

The only waty to get this to work is eliminate the need for the transit by re-designing all living and working spaces. If you work at a factory there will be factory housing within 2 Km. In a office, the building would consist of residential units for each business. We will need to eliminate single family detached living, replacing it with self sustaining micro cities, each with all required services and products to support their internal populations. There should be not migration between micro-cities, all jobs should be hereditary, all populations under strict zero growth regulation.

- “stop flying” - there goes 8.4t down to 0t

Easy for someone to say that has no need to travel, well it would definitely get rid of all those pesky airline manufacturing, travel industry jobs, tourism dollars and people wishing to study and/or experience the cultures of other nations, trace their heritage, visit their families, migrate to better living and working conditions, conduct global commerce, etc. Good news is they can all go to work building wind turbines, until demand is met then they will simply have to become farmers (see below).

- “eat just eight ounces of meat a week” (down from the Western average of 4lbs) - food & grocery-related emissions of 7.7t go to about 3.8t

Enforce this meat ban by slaughtering 75% of the animals used for meat that will reduce the availability to the 25% figure used, and reduce Methane emission considerably.

Increased demand for local agriculture, with it’s 10:1 ratio of fossil fuel energy to food energy that will put pressure on land use and increase CO2 emissions. Luckily we can go back to manual farming using all the people out of work from the airline, vehicle and fossil fuel industries.

- “always refuse plastic bags, and buy things with minimal packaging, while composting your food waste” - waste-related emissions go from 4.8t to 1t

Plastic bags are being removed from our system as we speak many countries are banning them, I agree with this the plastic produced would be better used in other ways. ( perhaps plastic water collection and distribution system for underdeveloped countries)
Product safety and reliability would need to be addressed as most packaging requirements today require excess packaging to be safe from tampering, survive distribution, prevent the loss due to theft, provide adaquate labelling and product information. Packaging is a necessity. Companies do not purposely go out and say I will waste $XXX on things I do not have to. So change the packaging requirements and reduce product safety giudelines and the packaging will reduce automatically.

So only buy what you can carry because you cannot drive home.

So what I read here is live like it is the 50’s, the 1850’s, and we will all be so better off.

You need a better plan than that.

Nice not very well thought out plan and great example of knee jerk environmentalism and “not thinking it through” See post #6.

My answer is: We’re not going to shop our way out of global warming.

I think it’s not that important, actual consumer goods. One study of Aussie households (www.carbonneutral.com.au/32_p_booklet_how_to_reduce_household_ghg_emissions_2.pdf) found that the average emissions which households could control were, for an average Aussie 3-person household, in tonnes CO2-equivalent

Domestic power, 8.9
Vehicle fuel, 7.6
Air travel (embodied & travel), 8.4
Housing, possessions (embodied), 5.2
Cars (embodied), 4.2
Food & Groceries (embodied), 7.7
Water supply, 0.9
Waste (embodied & methane), 4.8
Total, 43.7

So if you want to look at where we can best focus our efforts, there’s 5.2+7.7 = 12.9 or 29.5% of the total in housing and consumer goods, and groceries. Most “green” products cost more than regular ones, and there are inconsistent standards for labelling, so who knows what effect it’ll actually have?

Whereas if we get people to

- “call your electric company and change to wind power” - emissions drop from 8.9t to 0.9t
- “use public transport! walk! cycle!” - rid themselves of their cars and use public transport, 7.6+4.2=11.8t can be reduced to about 1.2t,
- “stop flying” - there goes 8.4t down to 0t
- “eat just eight ounces of meat a week” (down from the Western average of 4lbs) - food & grocery-related emissions of 7.7t go to about 3.8t
- “always refuse plastic bags, and buy things with minimal packaging, while composting your food waste” - waste-related emissions go from 4.8t to 1t

These five changes give us,
Domestic power, 0.9
Vehicle fuel, 0.0
Air travel (embodied & travel), 0.0
Housing, possessions (embodied), 5.2
Cars become buses, 1.2
Food & Groceries (embodied), 3.8
Water supply, 0.9
Waste (embodied & methane), 1
Total, 13.0t
which is 29.7% of the original figure, a 70 reduction of household emissions.

Kyoto only asked us for a 5-10% reduction…

So, we can focus on “green products” which we don’t know exactly what the emissions are, or what the standards are, and how much effect they’ll have - and even if they were all zero emissions, that’d still be just a reduction of 5.2/43.7=12%, or we can focus on those five changes, which will create a 70% reduction.

Now, these five changes need a good selling, too. But in the end the most useful and significant changes are changes of behaviour, not of what we buy at the shops.

Some Greens have stated that continual off-peak generation has enough energy for 80% of demand.

Problem: How do you manage that demand? Cars will have to be “Smart” and only charge during certain times? What if you need your car at 12 Midnight and it does not start charging until 2am? You cannot regulate when people need to charge their vehicles or anticipate when they will need that vehicle ready to go charged up, the capacity needs to be in place first.

Which means more economical large scale electrical storage ( which is still the holy grail in electrical distribution )and much better automated distribution systems to manage demand, or you can increase peak capacity.

Peak capacity cannot come from solar or wind simply because of reliability of available production. This requires the before mentioned grail.

The only available option is a reliable continual power source like nuclear, gas or coal. Two are GHG intensive, that leaves one.

My own cringe is politicians extolling the virtues and encouraging us to get electric cars. Yes I do mean you David Cameron.

He seems to have some idea that electrity is a magic gift. Get rid of your old car and get an electric one. No emissions. He seems to have no concept that if the generating plant isn’t nuclear or renewable them the enmissions still come from the power station.

The horror scenario would be everyone buying an electric car for Christmas and plugging it in to charge.

Bang. Then darkness as the grid is pulled down or some similar act.

Though it might just make your CFLs flicker.

Anyone got any figures on what sort of installed generating capacity we would need if we all got electric cars?

I had an over 50% failure rate out of the box, and here CFLs are labelled with an equivilency rating, hence the statement regarding comparitive watts I would assume. For example I have a box of 13W CFLs they are rated at 800 lumens and states right on the box “Replaces a 60W Incandescent Lightbulb” which actually is about 880 lumens. The box even states that you will see a 5% reduction in output in a base down position, like in a lamp. 15W replaces a 75W and 18W is a 100W.

Now the savings are real, do not get me wrong but at what cost? 5mg of Elemental Mercury in each light?

The only lamp recycler in my area will not pick up residential lights and charges several $100.00 per pickup regardless of quantity. Recycling centers do not accept them currently, so they are going in the bin. Then the land-fill.

That will cause significant environmental damage at the current rate of consumption and especially factoring in a high failure rate out-of-the-box.

This is another ill-conceived “green” plan with long term consequences, a complete recycling and disposal system should have been developed before the bulbs went to market, if they are really “green” tech.

Just had to act, world in crisis and end of humanity type stuff or could we have thought it through?