The next global warming scare: "Too hot for chocolate?"

Things are getting really serious in the global warming business: A new cocoa report funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation predicts a one-degree Celsius temperature rise by 2030, increasing to 2.3 degrees Celsius by 2050, "which is enough to inhibit the development of cocoa pods, which could send yields crashing and prices soaring".

Still, the lead author offers some consoling words to all chocolate addicts in the world:

“There is no doubt that these findings are severe,” said CIAT Peter Laderach, the report’s lead author. “But preparation is the name of the game. There is a lot that farmers, governments, scientists – and key players in the cocoa supply chains – can do to help protect and improve cocoa production. But these measures need to be implemented very quickly.”

Read the entire article here

And even if the scenario indicated in the cocoa report would actually materialize - which is highly unlikely - there is always the other side of the coin: the teeth of millions of people would be in better shape.

Barroso´s megalomania: "National governments can´t be trusted"

The unelected über eurocrat, EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso is is not pleased with his "empire":

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said in an interview that the EU's institutions need to be strengthened to stabilize the euro zone, arguing that national governments can't be trusted to take determined action. Meanwhile, former German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück says it's time to openly admit that Greece is practically bankrupt.

He might be "very happy" that the German parliament approved the expansion of the euro rescue fund on Thursday, but European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso appears far from happy with how the European Union is currently functioning.

In a hard-hitting interview with Friday's edition of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, Barroso warned that the EU was in its "deepest ever crisis" and said that the bloc needed a more closely coordinated economic policy in order to stabilize the euro zone and the entire EU.

He called for more power for the EU's institutions, arguing that it was an "illusion" to think that the euro zone's economic policy could be coordinated just by the European Council, the institution that comprises the leaders of the EU's 27 members, which meets twice a year.
He said that setting rules for a stable euro zone could not only be left to the member states. "That will never work," he said, explaining that national governments "always try to negotiate." Barroso said there was a good reason why there were independent institutions such as the European Commission -- the EU's executive body -- and the EU's Court of Justice.
'Somewhat Careless'
Barroso announced that he would submit proposals for closer economic policy coordination between all 27 countries in the coming weeks. The EU will only make a "convincing" impression internationally if it has "strong institutions," Barroso said.

Read the entire article here

PS

It´s definitively time to stop this megalomaniac. The former maoist should be sent back to a safe place in Portugal. in order to prevent him from damaging the real world even more.  

Indian expert on carbon credits: "We call it the corrupt development mechanism"

A few days ago we noted that an expert had described carbon trading in this way:
“You couldn’t design a better instrument for corruption as far as we can work out,”

Now the Telegraph reports what has happened in India:

Hundreds of millions of dollars in carbon credits were awarded to Indian companies even though they did not reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The allegation comes according to an American diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks.

The cable, from July 2008, raised serious questions about the UN-backed carbon trading scheme to cut global warming, under which companies in wealthy countries can buy emission reduction "credits" from firms in the developing world instead of improving their operations.

To qualify for saleable credits the companies in the developing world must demonstrate their emission reductions go beyond their "business as usual" plans.

India has become the world's second largest source of carbon credits or Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) and has attracted foreign companies who trade them to the West.

This Indian expert knows what she is talking about:

Sunita Narain of India's Centre for Science and Environment, said the cable highlighted the dishonesty of the carbon credit system but added that India was no more guilty than those measuring the emission reductions in projects.
"This is not an Indian problem it's been designed not to deal with climate change but for creative carbon accounting to benefit a lot of certifiers. We call it the corrupt development mechanism," she said.

Greenpeace says construction of new coal plants in South Africa is OK

Greenpeace Africa: "Neither are we saying that construction should stop at new plants such as Medupi"


Greenpeace Africa´s climate and energy campaigner Ferrial Adam seems to have a rather realistic view about coal power in South Africa:

"We are not saying close the coal plants," says Adam. "Neither are we saying that construction should stop at new plants such as Medupi (the new South African coal power plant scheduled for completion in 2012).

"What we are saying is that there should be more focus on renewable energy sources as South Africa’s energy needs grow in the future."

Read the entire article here

Quite reasonable words, coming from a Greenpeace employee. One would hope that fellow South African Kumi Naidoo and the other warmists at the top of the international Greenpeace hierarchy would embrace this kind of more realistic policy. But that must be wishful thinking when one considers the "official" Greenpeace policy line:

Coal fired power plants are the biggest source of man made CO2 emissions. This makes coal energy the single greatest threat facing our climate.
Unfortunately, governments across the world are allowing industry to spend hundreds of billion of dollars to build hundreds of new coal-fired power stations worldwide in the coming years. If they are built, CO2 emissions from coal are expected to rise 60 percent by 2030. This will undermine any international agreements to tackle climate change.
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As world leaders fail to step up and take the necessary action to stop coal, people across the world are taking on the struggles themselves. Across the world environmental activists, students, doctors, church leaders and many more are mobilising against coal.
We have been supporting local movements against coal accross the globe and taking action to stop global warming.

Only a couple days ago Kumi Naidoo himself was in Chicago demanding that Edison International´s coal plants should be closed down:

“I am inspired by the energy in Chicago today. Corporations must not continue to profit at the expense of human life. Edison International needs to be a responsible global player, shut down these coal plants, and show they can be a leader in green energy,” said Kumi.

Could it be that Greenpeace is demanding that coal power plants should be shut down everywhere else, except in Naidoo´s home country, South Africa?

Expert: Cold winters "a consequence of global warming"

Weather forecastera are predicting another cold winter. But believers in global warming caused by humans need not despair. Physical Oceanographer Tom Rippeth of Bangor Univesity´s School of Ocean Sciences "knows" that it is all "a consequence of global warming":


“Whilst at first sight the recent spate of cold winters might be interpreted as not fitting the picture of a warming planet, they do in fact appear to be a consequence of global warming”

 The secrets behind the new findings are - you guessed it - "complex computer models":
“Using complex computer models scientists have found that, as the ice cap over the ocean disappeared, this allows the heat of the relatively warm seawater (0 degrees C) to escape into the much colder atmosphere above, creating an area of high pressure surrounded by clockwise-moving winds that sweep down from the Arctic over northern Europe.”
“The result here in the UK is that instead of our normal winter conditions, which are dominated by warm and wet winds blowing in off the Atlantic, we experience much colder winds coming in from the North and the East.”

Read the entire article here

PS

The climate alarmists really know how make it easy for themselves: Whatever happens, it is always a result of global warming. No wonder there has been an huge erosion of credibility for the warmist type of climate science.

"Welcome to Putlandia"

Der Spiegel´s Benjamin Bidder has written a good article about the latest developments in "Putlandia":

Welcome to Putlandia, where the president and prime minister swap jobs at will, where the constitution is an empty shell and all power rests with Vladimir Putin. The deal between him and President Dmitry Medvedev is a farce.
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But in recent years, Russia's form of government has undergone creeping change, without any revisions to the constitution. When Medvedev moved into the Kremlin four years ago, most of the power moved out with Putin to the White House on the Moskva River, to the seat of the Russian government.
In the new Russia, it doesn't matter what powers the constitution formally assigns to the president and the prime minister. It all depends on where Vladimir Putin is. He is the state.
Next May, Russia will once again change its form of government, overnight, when Putin becomes president for his third term and returns to the Kremlin to re-establish his old power base. Medvedev will be demoted from head of government to a subordinate.
Putin's high popularity will assure him of a clear victory in the election. Where necessary, obliging governors and election officials will help out. The Russian people have effectively given Putin full power of attorney, grateful that he has given the country a degree of stability.
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Putin's popularity is fed by the prosperity that raw materials exports have bestowed on the country, and by the nation's collective memory of the turmoil of the 1990s. Oil and gas will continue to flow, albeit a little less strongly, and the memories are fading only slowly. There will be no quick changes in Russia.

"We stopped the country from disintegrating," Putin confidant Boris Gryzlov called out to delegates at the party congress. "Powerlessness is a lethal danger for Russia." Putin and his men proudly declare that they have returned the Russian state to strength.

In truth, they have hijacked it. Russia's constitution is little more than an empty shell that does a poor job of concealing the neo-feudal regime of Prince Putin. The democratic institutions may have been weak and flawed at the end of the 1990s, but Putin has robbed them of their functions altogether. He has subjected parliaments, judges and even the office of president to his will. A separation of powers no longer exists.

Read the entire article here

Excellent analysis, but Bidder does not quite seem to understand the future problems for Russia´s gas and oil exports. Thanks to the shale gas and LNG revolutions, Russian energy exports are bound to decrease faster than most people realize. When the money flow slows down, Putin´s popularity will quickly disappear, and people are going to blame him for squandering the country´s wealth.

Martin McCauley - Another useful idiot praising Putin´s stability

Agent Putin before he became the "strong" leader of Russia

It is sad to see another western academic Russia expert turn into a useful idiot for the Putin regime. It is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion having watched Dr. Martin McCauley (former senior lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London) openly praise Vladmir Putin´s leadership in an Al Jazeera program this afternoon.

In the program Dr. McCauley took the line so familar from the statements of the majority of British and American Russia experts at the time just before the downfall of the Sovie Union, stressing the need of stability and strong leadership. (At that time the academics and most politicians did in reality not want to see a break-up of the totalitarian communist empire, because they thought it would lead to dangerous "instability").

Now Dr. McCauley praises the corrupted "stability" created by the thug Vladimir Putin. He even went so far as to lament the lack of  "strong" leaders in Europe and the US. One got the impression that Dr. McCauley would like to replace the quarreling, "weak" band of present EU and US leaders with Putin style strongmen.

McCauley also praised the "strong" Russian economy, although he had to admit that it is based on selling raw materials.

McCauley does not understand that Putin´s house of cards will begin to crumble as soon as the US, the European and the global shale gas and LNG revolutions get into full force (which will not take long). Russia´s "strong" economy is built only on selling gas and oil. When the present demand is not there anymore, the strongman Putin will have to answer for his failed policies.

Aussie chief scentist speaks about scientific "contest of ideas"

Australia´s chief scientist, professor Ian Chubb has been talking to a parliamentary inquiry about the scientific way of doing things. And who could object to this:

Professor Ian Chubb told a parliamentary inquiry today the debate should be a "contest of ideas" and not an agenda-driven conflict.
"The scientific community as a whole has a great deal of responsibility to ensure science is elevated to where it once used to be, and not to be subject to attacks by people with all sorts of agendas," Professor Chubb told the joint select committee inquiry in Canberra.

Regrettably he then did not follow his own advice:
Professor Chubb described media coverage of climate science as "ordinary" and said he was disappointed by the weight given to non-credible views.
"It's raised doubts where doubts should not exist," Professor Chubb said.
"Science will always have some level of uncertainty, but if you're 95 per cent certain your house is going to burn down, do you do nothing? I don't think so."

Read the entire article here

Isn´t it funny that warmist scientists like professor Chubb often speak so loftily about the "contest of ideas", but when they actually are faced with ideas and research that challenge their bogus "95% certainty", they immediately denounce them as "non-credible".

And about professor Chubb´s burning house: The only house that is likely to burn down with "95% certainty" is the warmists´ house of cards. 

"The Electric Car Nightmare"

      Welcome to the "all electric" car future - that will not happen.


Al Gore, Richard Branson, Jems Lovelock and many other promoters of the politically correct future never loose a chance to preach about the massive numbers of all electric cars that we can look forward to in Europe and the US  in 2020. What they do not tell us, is that it is all an impossible dream, as Andrew McKillop, former chief policy analyst at DG XVII Energy, European Commission, explains:

Our problem is that its Sunday night in winter, in Europe in 2020, and there are 16 million all electric cars out there to charge at 5 kW each.
Its cold, the wind is not blowing so you can forget about windmills (Europe proudly has about 45 percent of the world's entire windfarm capacity, as of early 2011), and its nighttime, so those expensive solar power plants are also off-line. We will however be generous, and imagine that only 80 percent of the European all electric car fleet is going to be on charge at those somber moments. Say 13 million plugged in and needing 5 kW for 5 hours, to charge their big, heavy, low power storage capacity (able to store about the energy equivalent of 1 US gallon of fuel), and very expensive batteries.
Down at Better Place and its highway battery swap station clones, imagine what they are doing on Sunday nights ? Charging batteries.
To be sure, the electric car boomers never get on to how we supply the power, but we will. Charging 13 million cars, some 80 percent of a massive 8 percent of Europe's car fleet number of today, will make it necessary to find 5 x 13 million kilowatts of additional power. That is 65 million kilowatts of power.
In the electricity business they talk megawatts, so the need is 65 000 MW. One way to understand what that means: in Carlos Ghosn's soft touch France of Nicolar Sarkozy, its much vaunted nuclear power programme - supplying the most national nuclear electric power in the world - has a total of 58 nuclear reactors with a combined total capacity of around 63 600 MW. That is if all of them could run at full power simultaneously - which they can't. It took France around 40 years to build up that 63 600 MW of nuclear capacity, we can add.
So one way we could or might charge up a lot less than 8 percent of the European car fleet would be to build 65 000 MW of new electric power capacity. Since that in fact is not going to be possible - electric car owners will need to be told to not use their electric cars and use one or other of their family fleet of good old thermal-type cars, or take a day off, use bicycles or buses, work at home, or give up working entirely - after all, they are saving the planet by preventing global warming catastrophe !
Otherwise, it is easy to forecast what happens when around 13 million all electric cars plug-in simultaneously. We get total system overload, large area power cuts, and possible long term damage to overused power grids, transformer stations, and electrical equipment as power surges and collapses with the onslaught of demand.

AND WHAT WOULD IT COST ?
What would it cost to charge the hoped for mass market electric car fleets of 2020 ? This depends on how you do it. If we choose either offshore windfarms or nuclear power to do it, we have per-kilowatt capital costs of around 6000 euro in Europe. This is based on German, UK, Danish and other offshore windfarm construction and projects, and French EPR nuclear power plants being cumbersomely, slowly and expensively built at two-only locations in Europe (Finland, France).

Each electric car costing the state 7000 euro in government hand-outs, would therefore also need about 30000 euro of investment in new wind or nuclear power plants to handle its 5 kW power demand (and 3 times more if its needs 15 kW high charge boosting). The time limit would also be problem, but because we are discussing pure fantasy schemes and childish daydreams that does not matter.
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IT WONT HAPPEN
Welcome to the "all electric" car future - that will not happen. If it did, there would be a permanent threat of total breakdown for national, or even continental power grids in the European case. Anybody who believes in that "ecological" future is just plain stupid or too lazy to work out a few simple numbers.

Read the entire article here

(Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy.)