Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The Global Warming Myth

In a review article of the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" by S. Fred Singer, an Atmospheric Physicist, he states:


" Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has met its match: a devastating documentary recently shown on British television, which has now been viewed by millions of people on the Internet. Despite its flamboyant title, The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science and interviews with real climate scientists, including me. An Inconvenient Truth, on the other hand, is mostly an emotional presentation from a single politician.

The scientific arguments presented in The Great Global Warming Swindle can be stated quite briefly:

1. There is no proof that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activity. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded—not resulted from—increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapour is far, far more important than CO2. Dire predictions of future warming are based almost entirely on computer climate models, yet these models do not accurately understand the role or water vapor—and, in any case, water vapor is not within our control. Plus, computer models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the past century (1940–75), nor for the observed patterns of warming—what we call the “fingerprints.” For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite.

The best evidence supporting natural causes of temperature fluctuations are the changes in cloudiness, which correspond strongly with regular variations in solar activity. The current warming is likely part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that’s been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease, and general misery. Attempts have been made to claim that the current warming is “unusual” using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data. Advocates have tried to deny the existence of these historic climate swings and claim that the current warming is "unusual" by using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data, resulting in the famous “hockey–stick” temperature graph. The hockey-stick graph has now been thoroughly discredited.

2. If the cause of warming is mostly natural, then there is little we can do about it. We cannot control the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes for greenhouse gas reduction currently bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless, and wildly expensive:

• Control of CO2 emissions, whether by rationing or elaborate cap–and–trade schemes

• Uneconomic “alternative” energy, such as ethanol and the impractical “hydrogen economy”

• Massive installations of wind turbines and solar collectors

• Proposed projects for the sequestration of CO2 from smokestacks or even from the atmosphere

Ironically, even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend, all these schemes would be ineffective—unless we could persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent!

3. Finally, no one can show that a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much–feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short–term temperature changes, as the rate of sea–level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely—that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. Why do we assume that the present climate is the optimum? Surely, the chance of this must be vanishingly small, and the economic history of past climate warmings bear this out.

But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non–problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights—not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet politicians and the elites throughout much of the world prefer to squander our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real problems. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: the chief scientist of Great Britain tells us that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100, with a few surviving breeding couples propagating the human race. Seriously!

I imagine that in the not–too–distant future all the hype will have died down, particularly if the climate should decide to cool—as it did during much of the past century; we should take note here that it has not warmed since 1998. Future generations will look back on the current madness and wonder what it was all about. They will have movies like An Inconvenient Truth and documentaries like The Great Global Warming Swindle to remind them. "


Source: http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.co.uk/

Monday, March 8, 2010

Announcement on The National Palm Oil Small ReNEWable ENERGY Programme(SREP) & Seminar(POSREP Seminar)

The Seminar will be held on March 11, 2010 at Promenade Hotel, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. Organized by Malaysian Palm Oil Board.

See details here

The Seminar

Energy supply and degradation of the environment are among the major concerns of the world today. Realizing this, the Government of Malaysia has been continuously reviewing its energy and environmental policies in line with the needs at national and global levels. One of the strategies is the use of renewable energy (RE) in the national energy mix for electricity generation.


Under the 8th Malaysia Plan (2001-2005), the Government has announced the five fuel policy with the addition of RE as the fifth source of energy. In May 2001, the Government launched the Small Renewable Energy Programme (SREP) with the objectives to encourage the private sector to undertake grid-connected small power generation projects using renewable resources.

Under SREP, the RE developers can sell electricity to Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) with the maximum power export capacity to the national grid limited to 10 MW. By end of this year, the total electricity generating from RE is expected to contribute 350 MW to the total energy supply.

Biomass and biogas generated from the palm oil industry are identified as potential major fuels for the development of SREP in the country besides solar, mini hydro and wind. With the issues on the sustainability and environment aspects of palm oil production especially on methane emission
from palm oil mill effluent (POME), the industry should play its role to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by using palm based RE to generate green energy either for local use or to be injected to the national grid.

Though the progress of SREP projects compared to off-grid RE projects in the palm oil industry is relatively slow, there is promising development recently with three palm biomass based power plant and one biogas based power plant being connected to the national grid under SREP.

Lack of experience, unattractive Renewable Power Purchase Agreements (REPPA) and incentives as well as financing issues are among the barriers that hindered its development. Therefore, this seminar is specifically organized to disseminate latest development of SREP in the palm oil industry and address all these barriers. This will increase awareness of the importance of SREP development to the industry and the role to be played to establish the palm oil industry as a major player in RE development in Malaysia.

Objectives

  • To highlight and disseminate latest development and status of SREP and the national policies on renewable energy.
  • To promote and encourage the palm oil industry to actively participate in the SREP projects as well as to adopt the technologies for green energy generation.
  • To discuss and brainstorm the role of the palm oil industry towards the development of SREP and RE in the country.
  • To highlight the success story of the SREP development in the palm oil industry.
  • To minimize and mitigate the GHG emission from the palm oil industry via the implementation of SREP projects.
  • To deliberate on policies, incentives, action plans and implementation of policies and action plans.
  • To provide a forum for meaningful interaction and exchange of ideas and experiences amongst the relevant agencies and participants for the benefit and continued sustainability of the palm oil industry.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Unilever Blacklists Indonesian Duta Palma

KUALA LUMPUR: Consumer goods giant Unilever has told dealers not to source palm oil from Indonesian planter Duta Palma on concerns over rainforest destruction, an Indonesian industry official said yesterday.

Unilever, the world’s top palm oil buyer, blacklisted Duta Palma just two months after it halted a US$33mil supply contract with Indonesia’s largest producer, PT SMART.

Green campaigners and consumers have turned up the heat on European firms such as Unilever, saying these companies’ palm oil suppliers are responsible for deforestation and peatland clearence that can speed up climate change.

Source: Unilever blacklists Indonesian planter