Yes, it’s Easter. Happy Easter to those in the “Christian world”!
It’s been a great weekend for climate change at the Beeb. Good Friday saw headline after headline drawn from the pre-release of one of the IPCC’s four reports expected this year. Now the main pre-report report is lurking both under Science and Nature and also under the Americas section, for some reason, although the IPCC met in, guess where? Brussels.
April 4th saw them see fit to report Scotland basking in warmth ahead of this Easter weekend; as if to show that weather stories arestories, even if they can’t boast any records.
Then we have, currently, a report from Mexicodetailing the drying up of a lake there. This begins with citing that well-known source of water disappearance, God, as one possible explanation, and then posits the alternative – man-made global warming. Yeah, that’s balance. The same source who cited God as the main culprit, a Ms Ortega Torres, also claims a dramatic reduction in rainfall and blames this on anthropomorphic global warming:
“Ms Ortega Torres has no doubts why the lake has shrunk so much.
“It’s because of climate change,” she says. “This area used to get around 300 days of rain a year. Now we are lucky to see 100 to 150 days. So the lake cannot be replenished.”
Faith abounding, apparently.
Because lost in the rest of the text, concealed as a contributing factor, is the massive increase in Mexico’s population and the demand that has placed on agricultural production and water consumption.
Worth investigating, I’d have thought- especially the source and specifics of the rainfall claim. I’d have thought that’s what editorial meetings are for.
But no, probably they’re for deciding not to cover record-breaking cold weather across much of the United States. And when I say record-breaking, I mean, RECORD BREAKING. That is to say, daytime historic lows in cities like Atlanta (1886), Augusta (1981), and Charlotte (1961). And it’s also pretty chilly in Nashville (hat-tip, Insta).
Bad timing, Auntie. High time to manage the news. I notice that the unwisely opened Have Your Say is dominated by MMGW sceptics, like this chap from Lithuania who comments:
“I dont like BBC as it provides us information about global warming. It provides us all arguments for, however, almost all arguments against are kept quiet.”
Indeed, Mr Kinselis, indeed.
[nb. all the above is not an argument against global warming per se, but against the dramatic claims made for MMGW. Evidence that record low temperatures are possible in this carbon benighted world needs to be carefully recorded and studied, and noted by both public and politicians worldwide. How are the BBC helping that along, I wonder?]
As a postscript to the above – There is a real damager here- and the BBC is playing a large part in it – if causes of climate change are only focused on CO2 omissions – the real causes can be missed. Cutting CO2 is going to have no effect whatsoever on Lake Patzcuaro or places like it. Cutting CO2 by any amount is not going to make the forest come back to life. I find this tack by the BBC wholly irresponsible and dangerous.
oops for “real damager” read “real danger”
Jon writes:
“Cutting CO2 by any amount is not going to make the forest come back to life. I find this tack by the BBC wholly irresponsible and dangerous.”
Indeed. One of the nastier aspects of the BBC’s MMGW hysteria is the way the Corporation and its fellow obsessives try to seize the moral high ground and do so exclusively. Thus, if you are a MMGW ‘denier’ then, ipso facto you’re also a rainforest burning, baby seal clubber.
It’s possible to be both concerned about the environment and deeply sceptical about some of the nonsense spouted by watermelons like Greenpeace, FOE and their PR agency, the BBC.
GCooper writes: “It’s possible to be both concerned about the environment and deeply sceptical about some of the nonsense spouted by watermelons like Greenpeace, FOE and their PR agency, the BBC.”
It is indeed. I find the present policy of building on large swathes of green fields in the South East a criminal act of vandalism.
This is being done by the “climate champions of the world” New labour – If they link the rise in CO2 to GW then how is this going to cut down CO2 emmisions. Cement production is a high producing CO2 process.
“The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker): The UK calculates emissions from cement production as part of the greenhouse gas inventory. Emissions occur both from fuel combustion in the cement sector to provide heat for the calcination process, and from the calcination process itself.
Emissions of CO2 in 2004 from fuel combustion in the cement industry amounted to 4,661.6 thousand tonnes and emissions associated with the cement production process were 5,455.7 thousand tonnes. This equates to a total emission of 10,117 thousand tonnes of CO2. Total clinker (the main raw material for making cement) production was 10,813 thousand tonnes—emissions of carbon dioxide from the UK cement industry in 2004 were therefore approximately 0.94 tonnes per tonne of clinker produced.”
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldhansrd/text/70321w0001.htm
This production will increase with greater house construction unless they are going to be made from mud!!!
This is from a government who know that the CO2 link to GW is tenuous but they don’t want to admit it.
As I said before on another thread:
The BBC used to use the weather forecast as an ident for its sports coverage (showers are expected over Twickenham tomorrow during the England V France rugby international which you can watch exclusively live at 3.00pm on BBC 2).
Now the BBC uses the weather forecast as a party political broadcast on behalf of the Green Party (better to stay at home over the Easter Bank Holiday as temperaturesare are expected to be higher here than in southern Europe: translated that means don’t get on that reactionary thing called an aeroplane).
And how long will it be, I wonder, before the BBC weather forecast becomes an ident for ‘virtual’ weather (tune in at midnight to hear a storm brewing over the Azores and the sound of the tide going out)as it campaigns to stop us going anywhere?
Bert Ford – where are you now?
Just seen an advert for BBC’s new TV shocker, “Superstorm”. Something about storms and floods in New York. And the little catchphrase at the end,
“Science not fiction”
?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Superstorm is just another DESPERATE attempt by the BBC to one, attack the USA, and two….to get into the US market, where they are still seen as a cheesy, low production qaulity PBS broadcaster..or in other words, the lowest of the low on the media Totem Pole……
Amercia is wise to the BBC, even the Washington Post and New YorK Times have recently run reports saying that the BBC is in fact “on the other side”….meaning they think the BBC is in bed with Islamo Fascism…and of course, they are right.
The BBC will never break into the US market…….they shows are too cheap and tacky…..hell, even in the UK, millions are turning away from their lies and cheap tacky TV…….
Not from the beeb, though I suspect it won’t be long before they pick up onit,but it is now “reported” that there is a link between global warming and crime.
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=548292007
It ain’t only the U.S. that’s suffering the cold. Here in Alberta, we’re on track for the coldest April on record, and we’re not even half way through. We’ve already broken a few daily cold temperature records, and it appears there are more to come. Bring on global warming!
Allan@Aberdeen
BTW, when does it become economic for coal to be converted to car fuel in the same manner as (the white regime of) South Afica did?
Allan,
I have looked at the economics of gas to liquids (though not coal to liquids) technology a number of times recently for private equity clients (I am an economic analyst in the energy industry). The price at which such technology becomes economic is slightly opaque because not all GTL / CTL technology is the same, not all of it scales up from the laboratory bench to worthwhile sizes, and not all gas costs the same at the input point to your plant. There are still only 2 or 3 plants of any size – Shell’s in Bintulu, another coming up on Oman IIRC, and Sasol’s in SA.
Sasol is thought within the industry to make money out of converting coal to liquids at any price greater than about $15 a barrel of oil. The cost of production is pretty static because it is 20% feedstock (coal) and 80% process (running the plant). The coal Sasol has relied on in the past had very little alternative value – too sulphurous and ashy – so there wasn’t a lot else to do with it except liquidise it. So Sasol makes very nice money above a certain floor and, unlike a conventional oil refinery, its input cost does not rise in tandem with the value of the products. This has made Sasol stock a very good buy in the past for anyone who wanted exposure to the price of oil, but unfortunately the South African government – who are Marxists – are trying to impose a supertax on Sasol that will severely damage the company.
Sasol’s economics aren’t a great guide to what anyone else’s would be if they entered the CTL business, because its technology development cost and its plants are largely written off. For other players, you have to look at what your gas would cost and what the resulting products would be worth. The products GTL yields are mainly very clean diesel, jet, and Group III lubricant basestock, plus some waxes that are so pure they are fit for human consumption (that’s what Shell makes in Bintulu). Stranded gas, i.e. gas locked away somewhere you can’t easily export it, is favoured, because in places like the Ob River basin in Siberia, there’s infrastrcuture to get liquids out but not to get gas out. So your gas should be cheap.
With all that said, last time I looked at this the oil equivalent price for gas that breaks you even in GTL applications is about $25 a barrel. So we are well into favourable territory and a lot of these projects are being quite seriously looked at. There are various obstacles that you have to negotiate to get into this business, notably around patents; you need either iron or cobalt as catalysts and both are patented. You also need a gas supply and about five billion dollars. GTL breaks even on much smaller volumes than any other way of monetising gas – you only need about 2 or 3 trillion cubic feet whereas for LNG, say, you really need 6 to 8.
the camp commandant writes:
“I have looked at the economics of gas to liquids (though not coal to liquids) technology a number of times recently for private equity clients (I am an economic analyst in the energy industry”
Thank you for that clearly highly informed and very interesting analysis.
What a shame we rarely here anything so enlightening on the BBC.
Re Superstorm: Check out Chris Landsea’s letter of resignation from the IPCC. CL is an expert in the field and resigned owing to, as he described it, the ‘politicization’ of the IPCC.
Here is the link for the Chris Landseas open letter – reffered to by AO above.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/landsea.html
AO fasinating stuff.
Jon writes:
“Here is the link for the Chris Landseas open letter – reffered to by AO above.”
Why do I get a strange sense that this is a GW story we won’t be hearing about on the BBC?
camp comm.., thanks for the info. The bottom line would appear to be that whenever oil obtained by drilling depletes and becomes grossly expensive, a replacement will kick in at a certain threshold level of price. It would appear that humanity will never run out of oil, although its cost will rise.