Fear of 'Green' Legislation

[Bernie Gunther]

It's tricky though. A lot of what actually happens with the emissions regulation schemes so far is that they just turn into instant corporate welfare (surprise, surprise)

Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) released a report "CO2 Price Dynamics: The Implications of EU Emissions Trading for the Price of Electricity" which analysed the effect that the free allocation of emission allowances had had on the price of electricity in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands. It found that, although the emissions allowances had been issued to companies without charge, the fact that they could be traded and were in short supply gave them a market value and that a significant part of this market value was being passed to the consumer through higher power prices. The electricity producers had increased their profits as a result.

source

 

[Azrael]

While I keep an open-mind on global warming, if the measures to tackle it follow the hysterical light-bulb ban I doubt it'll be pleasant or effective.

Lets replace one antique technology with ... erm, another antique technology. Many fittings just can't take Compact Flourescent Lights. Many incandescent lamps (indicator lights etc) are very low wattage. A blanket ban on a particular technology is gesture politics at its worst. Some people can't use fluorescent light for medical reasons. Its many disadvantages (flickering, audible buzzing, bulky fixtures, mercury content, poor colour rendering) are simply ignored in the media. People who dislike it are portrayed as simply miserly. (As I'll either be importing incandescents or using expensive LED lights, so much for that argument.)

If this is the strategy in microcosm, I'm not looking forward to it, not at all. The hysterical scaremongering from some environmentalists boarders on the religious: "We have to act now. The time for debate is over!" (Excuse me, but in science, debate is never "over".) I don't have to buy all the dodgy science in The Great Global Warming Swindle to think the evidence is far from conclusive, and we should treat extensive restrictions on freedoms with extreme caution.

When I look at the future, I see a fluorescent tube flickering, and flickering ...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

From where I sit, the evidence for what's in the IPCC reports, if not in the sensational media (and I think it's very important to make the distinction) is pretty damn solid.

What looks very dubious to me is the emerging response. That's where debate is urgently needed.

 

[Azrael]

One of the bits of The Great Global Warming Swindle that did raise issues was a scientist who said his name was co-opted for an IPCC report despite his disagreement, and only removed when he threatened legal action.

Of course debate is urgently needed. I'm perfectly willing to concede that global warming is man-made if the evidence tends to support it. I'm just of the view that elements of both sides have ulterior motives. The problem is the more extreme environmentalists screaming "The time for debate is over!" When people say that, I assume they've something to hide by default.

Will the last person to leave Europe please turn out the lights ...

 

[chooch]

From where I sit, the evidence for what's in the IPCC reports, if not in the sensational media (and I think it's very important to make the distinction) is pretty damn solid.

What looks very dubious to me is the emerging response. That's where debate is urgently needed.

Aye. Response which benefits a familiar few- suspicion. Response which seems to involve no trade-offs- laughter.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Of course debate is urgently needed.

Look. We've had the debate already, over years and years.

 

[Azrael]

Yep, and as evidence is constantly arriving, we'll go on having it. Hopefully a solid causal link will emerge sooner or later.

In the meantime some austerity measures may be justified as a precaution. Just so long as they're genuinely necessary, and not a vehicle for some eco-warrior's madcap fantasy of returning to a pre-industrial Eden. The best thing all round would be if technologies like fusion and the fuel cell are perfected, sparing us from endless cycles of war to keep the petroheads moving.

And then it turns out they were right in the Seventies, the next ice age is on its way, and we all freeze to death.

 

[Giles]

I already look for sensible opportunities to save energy, because quite apart from the environmental issues, energy costs money, and I abhor wasting money (except on drugs, but hey, let's not even go there!) unnecessarily.

I use CF bulbs in MOST but not all light fittings around my house and office.

I even found (expensive) CF replacements that replace those little halogen GU10 bulbs, and they are pretty much as bright, and 7w as opposed to 50w each, which counts when you have a dozen of them in your kitchen!

I don't drive a particularly big car, and I don't drive when I can quite easily walk, I shop locally, etc.

If I could usefully attach either some sort of glorified windmill or some solar thingies to my house(s) then I would.

But I don't like, and will spend stupid amounts of time, money and if necessary violence, circumventing any attempts to MAKE me do or not do stuff because some "they" have decided on it.

If they did actually ban the sale of incandescent bulbs in the UK, I would likely be the person taking delight in getting around that ban by whatever means presented themselves.

Giles..

 

[Bernie Gunther]

My understanding based on the draft of the policy makers summary and what I've heard about the rest of the IPCC 4th report is that there is will be very little room left for debate about the fundamental scientific conclusions.

Climate change is definitely occurring due to human CO2 emissions, some consquences of this are now predictable to levels of reliablity exceeding 90%.

There is still a lot of discussion about some other consequences, particularly those related to runaway climate change but the stuff we already know with a high degree of confidence is bad enough and I suggest we focus on that for now.

We need to steer clear of exaggeration and wild speculation on both sides (I'd actually characterise it more as outright lying on the Exxon-sponsored side of the argument, but we already have a thread demonstrating that)

What is not clear is whether the policy responses being recommended to us actually make any sense in terms of addressing the problems we're facing, as opposed to using them to justify regressive tax policies and to enforce profitable investment opportunities for the City on the developing world.

 

[Azrael]

If they did actually ban the sale of incandescent bulbs in the UK, I would likely be the person taking delight in getting around that ban by whatever means presented themselves.

Giles..

My feelings exactly. Not only do I make sure the TV isn't on standby, I switch it off at the mains. I ensure phone chargers etc are turned off. I try and keep the central heating off if I can help it. And while I don't own a single CFL (they give me migraines) I've switched to 40w bulbs.

These are all sensible precautionary measures. Banning an entire technology, regardless of actual energy consumption, is hysterical. (I imagine my handful for 40w bulbs will gobble far less power than someone merrily ramping up the air-con/home cinema/plasma TV/washing machine/tumble dryer on a daily basis. And if they don't, I could use 25w incandescents, similar wattage to a CFL.) It's gesture politics. Lighting is perhaps the most vital function of electricity. People can be expected to cut down on their home cinema and air-con before their lighting. But no, Europe's gone for the thing least likely to upset Joe 12 pack and his widescreen TV. The unfortunate people who will now get sick whenever it gets dark are expendable.

If that's the sort of nonsense global warming is going to provoke, we'd better hope it is exaggerated, or we're screwed.

(If you want the most energy-inefficient light-bulb known to humanity, try one of these.)

 

[Azrael]

Interesting article by Nigel Calder in the Times, especially this quote: "While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean. So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is 'Why is east Antarctica getting colder?' It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming."

Genuinely interested to know the answer to that one.

 

[laptop]

one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is 'Why is east Antarctica getting colder?' It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming.

Genuinely interested to know the answer to that one.

And why shouldn't one place get colder? (Not for a moment assuming that this isn't based on a distortion - is East Antarctica cold year round? Just in winter? Just in summer?)

Global warming is putting a lot of energy into the atmosphere as a whole (some of which ends up eventually in the oceans).

That's likely to increase extremes.

Climate is the long-run trend of the weather (as the weather is the day-long trend of a raindrop, iyswim).

What we can say with certainty is that if you put a shedload of energy into the atmosphere there will be more weather. That will include more cold in some places.


BTW: Nigel Calder keeps claiming Authority as an ex-editor of New Scientist. That was in 1962-1964. Efforts to remember why the tenure was so short continue.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

It might make sense to try to keep the 'is the science true?' stuff off this thread and to do it on any of the other ones.

We've sort of done that to death, but we haven't really done: "Assuming the science in the IPCC 4th Report (but not necessarily any of the wilder claims) is true, then what would an appropriate policy look like and is that anything like what's on offer from the government?"

There's a decent looking summary on Wiki of the known contents of the 4th Assessment Report, with links to the detailed stuff. Most of the report has yet to be published, but a draft of the policy-maker's summary came out last month and provides a reasonable basis for understanding the implications in my view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report

Climate change is of course not the only 'green' issue that might have influence on policy in a sane world. It's just the one everybody's talking about right now.

 

[poster342002]

The problem is the more extreme environmentalists screaming "The time for debate is over!" When people say that, I assume they've something to hide by default.

I do know what you mean. I have found some environmentalists to consider their cause (and methods to acheive it) to be above debate or criticism on the basis of it's sheer righteousness and urgency ("we're saving the panet - the ends justify the means, so shut up"). A lot of those types do not appear to seek to win the arguments so much as to find ways to get the existing establishment to impose as much of their will as possible on society for the "common good" (which has been a tactic and battlecry of would-be totalitaranists since time immemorial). Debate with these types merely takes the form of angry and hysterical denunciations, however reasoned or polite your argument.

I have also heard some of them come out with very frightening and reactionary views indeed. I can remeber to this day someone going on about how epidemics were a good thing as they served population reduction.

There are many progressive environmentalists (such as Bernie Gunther and Treelover on here, for example) but I feel they need to distance themselves much more robustly from the scarier members of their ranks.

 

[kyser_soze]

The problem is the more extreme environmentalists screaming "The time for debate is over!" When people say that, I assume they've something to hide by default.

Heh, that sounds like an Independent headline...

Also similar to a quote from PJ O'Rourke in Parliamnet of Whores, when he's talking about the Earth Day march - his thesis is that they've got a good point, it's not really a cause you can actually argue with (stop polluting the earth)...and that's what worried him, because universally true causes can lead down some scary paths cos there's nothing worse than people fighting for something that is incontovertibly correct.

Re: energy saving Giles and Azrael...unfortunately not everyone is as parsimonious as you both with their energy consumption, if they were legislation like this wouldn't be necessary...besides, governments banned the manufacture of CFC based products (and there were people with EXACTLY the same arguments as you - I remember someone complaining that non-CFC aerosol deoderant 'wasn't as good cos it's not freezing cold' and a variety of 'Well if they say I can't have it, I'm gonna have it' type responses), the lightbulbs thing is just the same as that.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> There are many progressive environmentalists (such as Bernie Gunther and Treelover on here, for example) but I feel they need to distance themselves much more robustly from the scarier members of their ranks.

I'm not sure I do need to do that. In fact, if someone can't tell the difference between me and a primitivist or one of the nuttier 'deep greens', then they're probably not listening to anything except the voices in their head, and hence I'm probably wasting my time trying to engage with them. That's been my experience to date anyway.

(edited because in practice I think there is a fair bit of common ground between my views and some of the more politically oriented 'deep ecologists' but I strongly differ with those who put other life forms interests on an equal footing with those of humans and would endorse quite a few of e.g. Murray Bookchin's criticisms of the 'deep green' tendency.)

 

[poster342002]

I'm not sure I do need to do that. In fact, if someone can't tell the difference between me and a primitivist or 'deep ecologist', then they're probably not listening to anything except the voices in their head, and hence I'm probably wasting my time trying to engage with them. That's been my experience to date anyway.

The problem is, the odder environmentalist are tarring everyone with the same brush and run a real risk of either discrediting enviromentalism as a concept, or - worse - growing in number and dominating the movement with their agenda by stealth. If that happens and they end up having any influence or attaining national power anywhere, you can probably expect all progressive environmentalists to be quickly elbowed aside afterwards.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

That effect is I think rather than a reflection of the reality of most environmental thinking, far more a consquence of the establishment propaganda that seeks to exploit the views of a few fringe loonies and to deliberately conflate rational environmentalism with the views of a few nutters that think e.g. that humans have no more right to exist than a smallpox virus, because those views are much easier to argue with than e.g. the science in the IPCC reports, or even the views of someone like Murray Bookchin.

 

[poster342002]

That effect is I think far more a consquence of the establishment propaganda that seeks to exploit the views of a few fringe loonies and to deliberately conflate rational environmentalism with the views of a few nutters

That is undoubtedly true as well, but I think it's a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I don't feel like I have any responsibility for those guys one way or another. Other than to point out that they are nuts as far as I'm concerned and to get back to talking about something more useful.

I'm reminded of an old story about Lyndon Johnson in his early campaigning days in butt-fuck texas. He told his political agent to spread a rumour that the other candidate was a pig-fucker. The agent objected that this wasn't true and Johnson said, 'I know, but let's make him deny it'

That's the problem in a nutshell, with allowing yourself to get distracted by cynical propaganda of the kind that conflates the broader environmental movement with the views of a tiny number of headcases.

 

[GeorgeGeorge]

I already look for sensible opportunities to save energy, because quite apart from the environmental issues, energy costs money, and I abhor wasting money (except on drugs, but hey, let's not even go there!) unnecessarily.

I use CF bulbs in MOST but not all light fittings around my house and office.

I even found (expensive) CF replacements that replace those little halogen GU10 bulbs, and they are pretty much as bright, and 7w as opposed to 50w each, which counts when you have a dozen of them in your kitchen!

I don't drive a particularly big car, and I don't drive when I can quite easily walk, I shop locally, etc.

If I could usefully attach either some sort of glorified windmill or some solar thingies to my house(s) then I would.

But I don't like, and will spend stupid amounts of time, money and if necessary violence, circumventing any attempts to MAKE me do or not do stuff because some "they" have decided on it.

If they did actually ban the sale of incandescent bulbs in the UK, I would likely be the person taking delight in getting around that ban by whatever means presented themselves.

Giles..

See... we all do our little bit without the legislative force
or the regressive taxes... Why dont the control freaks leave
us alone to save the planet... and Blair... more video conferencing
please.. you dont need the air miles...

Do as I say dont do as I do... (in action)

||||

 

[poster342002]

That's the problem in a nutshell, with allowing yourself to get distracted by cynical propaganda of the kind that conflates the broader environmental movement with the views of a tiny number of headcases.

That approach works when those sort of views are not widely percieved as a whole. Once a certain momentum has taken hold (which it can often do when it suits the establishment's agenda to assert ever more control over people's lives) it has to be refuted and seen to be distanced-from.

it's a bit like someone advising you to "just ignore" a mugger who'se demanding your wallet - impossible in practise as the very act requires a response (either surrender or fight - one or the other - as the mugger isn't going to just leave you alone if you "ignore" them and their demands for your wallet).

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, I think we're going to have to agree to differ on this one.

I much prefer the approach of sticking to the core stuff, but I recognise that's a personal choice and that others may think it important to engage with that sort of stuff.

 

[Luciona]

Heh, that sounds like an Independent headline...

quelle horreur!

k/s could you see your way clear to clearing a teensy bit of room in yer box? Ta

 

[kyser_soze]

Box cleared!

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

But they don´t in themselves, any more than any other use of any resource does, in itself, and with plenty of mitigation.
They´re very likely to be part of any acceptable solution, because they´re a technology that promotes creativity and ingenuity, social networking, and collective action. More so than motorbikes, for example. Or hair straighteners. Or patio heaters.

right cos what your doing here is comparing collosal wastes of energy by personal irresposnibilty with practical construstive uses of energy in providing a sustainable future... that's a good comparision...

there is no reason btw for you to post on this thread not one that is a selfish enviromentally unsound descion you have made for personal gain at the expensive of the enviroment utilitising the electricity from the server to post on a bulletin board to send the electronic signal from your machine which is on which will use more resources figertively and literally to maintain and use an internet connection that not will mean you are using more energy than you need to do in a friviolus activity which no benifit enviromentally or to anyone one else...

this selfish action repeated on a daily basis contributes to greater usuage of natral resources to generate electricity to expend energy in enviromentally unfriendly ways which all contributes to global warming not to mention the lost energy in terms of heat power overloads on power grids and of course the polltuion of the creation of the machine in it's raw component state...

take any argument you have ever heard about car use or petrolium and you can apply the same arguments to computor use outside of obvious danergious driving ones... (it'd be intreging to see the first case in court where some one is run over on the information super highway etc...before anyone gets all incredulious about how pc's aren't as dangerous as their pet hates the car etc) in terms of pollution causing and creation they are from life to death as bad indeed most of our labour savign devices are... and the reality of it is that we are now in a situation of having at least 2 if not more computors per person (one mobile with internet function one home pc) possibly more.. laptops ... and with the rise of consumer goods from ip phones to ip fridges all becoming wifi connected then this consumption tred will only increase... and thus the pollution levels will also increase...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

It would be interesting to try to quantify what you're arguing Garf. Compare full life-cycle analyses for the various types of technology in question. I'm not sure if anyone has done a life-cycle analysis of the environmental impact of personal computers and so on. I'd be quite interested to see one though.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

not tomention the problems associated with semiconductor production ...

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

It would be interesting to try to quantify what you're arguing Garf. Compare full life-cycle analyses for the various types of technology in question. I'm not sure if anyone has done a life-cycle analysis of the environmental impact of personal computers and so on. I'd be quite interested to see one though.

yeah true i don't have anything to back this up other than supostion but going on the fact that we are looking at a high level of plastics (oil based pollution) acid etching (toxic pollution) semi conductors (toxic pollutin air pollution oil based pollution etc) then we look at perifferals cameras etc leaving on stand by useage consumption of electricity, replacement parts in a standard pc life time and make comparible stuides with how we measure the usuage of cars and also the decommissioning of these, plus as i said in effect each person has become a 2 pc house hold if not more via moblie phones, i'm pretty sure that in terms of internet usuage which is in effect unmetered and unlimited and as a tool of communication we are at a point in time which will never be repeated in effect we are like the start of the industrial revolution were it was ok to pump fumes into the sky with no fear... in future we are going to have to sit back and look at the pollution levels caused by computor useage particularlly when you have govermental pledges like we'll end the technology gap and put a pc in every home... every body to be online by 2012 etc...

if it was all turned off tomorrow, hell today then the energy consumption in the uk would, i'm betting half if not more so and the levels of energy wastage would in effect diminish to near negliable levels again...

it's also why on a personal level i can't stand people who have the audacity to moan that i dirve a car and it's bad for the enviroment whislt doign so from a bulletin board which zonks x amount of electricity out of the power grid and do so from a machine which has in it's lifetime compariable polltion levels (inc semiconductor manucfatior reclaimation etc...) it's a big like sitting in a van complaining about the pollution levels of a rolls royce...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Ah, found some figures. Please don't take this too seriously because I'm just doing a quick look in my lunch hour rather than researching it properly.

Embodied primary energy in a computer is apparently something around 200 MJ per kg

Mine (a powerbook) uses 16w, which if I just did the arithmentic right comes to about 1.3824 MJ per day.

(of course, this doesn't factor in all the stuff on the other end of my internet connection, but on the other hand, that's shared with millions of other people so it's not all my personal cost)

source (pdf)

A small car apparently contains 100 GJ of embodied energy (again though, there's shitloads of supporting shared infrastructure too, including arguably the US military)

source

One litre of petrol yields about 35 MJ of energy.

So, I'd be willing to hazard a guess that if we worked all this stuff out properly instead of going on the 'back of a fag-packet' figures above, computers would turn out to be many orders of magnitude less environmentally intensive than cars, but their contribution is enough to be considered non-trivial.