Man-made climate change is done for. Dead.

[Winston001]

Yes, I have never understood the logic here, so maybe you can explain it to me. They capture the methane and burn it to produce electricity and in the process they discharge CO2. So how does that result in a carbon credit?

The methane is captured from the Burwood landfill and burned to heat the QEII complex including the extensive pool.

Methane is a significant greenhouse gas - 20 times more serious than CO2. Most landfills just vent methane to the atmosphere. This system saves a huge amount - about the equivalent of 200 households worth of electricity. Plus the Council - to my surprise - gets annual payments of about $1 million/year.

Also - my bad - the carbon credits were bought by a British company.

I plant 200 walnut trees and 30 assorted other trees on 3 acres , but don't qualify for any carbon credits, because the trees are decidious.

I would love to hear an explanation of why a corporate body like a council gets carbon credits for discharging carbon into the atmosphere, but a private citizen who plants trees doesn't qualify.

Frankly I'm with you. Can't see why you shouldn't qualify.

As for the council, it is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, saving money, and using an existing resource all of which is a good result. We need to remind ourselves that CO2 is simply one greenhouse gas and other gases are also controlled.

[Winston001]

No, because an organism going about its business is natural. Local ecosystems crumble in the face of imbalance, why shouldn't the global one hiccough as a result?

It's the desire to paint humans as "the bad guys" that is going to make life really miserable for a lot of people who simply don't deserve it. We need to adapt to change, not resist it, and we need to do it in ways that improve the existence of the bulk of the world's population.

The present fixation on sequestering money under the auspices of "saving the planet", supposedly for "third world" countries to fix their ongoing ecological issues, is just going to create a vast pool of virtual money that will allow the worst polluters to keep polluting, but even that's still within the scope of an organism going about its business.

Darwin's paraphrasing of Spencer is always misrepresented as the strong eating the weak for gain. His interpretation was more along the lines of the organism best adapted for its local environment finds survival easier than its competitors. The last 300 years have seen "local" come to mean "global" and the best adapted are those with the most money. Global war has been rendered futile by the swirling and violent vortex of global economics. A country with greater foresight than just the next electoral cycle can render an opponent encumbered with democracy impotent over time by nicking all their money. China was never going to be stupid enough to challenge the US militarily, but look at what's happened. The US is struggling for manpower and money to persecute a war that they will lose, in place that has consistently sucked the wealth out of countries and empires who have attempted control the territory.

China is suddenly the best adapted player on the world stage. They'll use emissions trading to suck the lifeblood out of Western Industrial culture.

Good post Jim.

Time for me to bang on about my pet hobby-horse methinks.

IMHO the most serious issues facing mankind are:

1. Rampant population growth = disease, famine, war. 6.5 billion human beings is way way beyond a sustainable population for the planet.

2. Poisoning of the soil and water leading to a cascade failure of microrganisms. In other words, a collapse of the biosphere. The historical metaphor is Mesopotamia and Easter Island etc.

Climate change comes a mild third place by comparison.

[rainman]

IMHO the most serious issues facing mankind are:

1. Rampant population growth...

2. Poisoning of the soil and water...

Climate change comes a mild third place by comparison.

Wot, no resource (notably oil) depletion?

[Winston001]

Wot, no resource (notably oil) depletion?

Oh yeah, goes without sayin, do'n it.

I think we'll have critically harmed the bio-organisms before we run out of oil. Which of course being made of complex hydrocarbons plays a large part in the poisoning.



Actually I don't worry about oil. Tend to believe newer technologies will supplant carbon energy sources - such as fusion. The trick will be to capture the electrons and use them without heavy metals. I notice there has been an experiment sending solar energy over a long distance by microwave. The next step is a satellite sending concentrated solar to Earth.

FYI Jerry Pournelle wrote of these technologies 25 years ago.

[mashman]

Theory, Please discuss, flame, maim etc...: Methane is trapped naturally in the Earths crust right? Why do we drill into the Earth's crust? and what else, other than what we're looking for, comes up at the same time?

http://www.eurekalert.org/features/d...-tsf082205.php

[Badjelly]

Theory, Please discuss, flame, maim etc...: Methane is trapped naturally in the Earths crust right? Why do we drill into the Earth's crust? and what else, other than what we're looking for, comes up at the same time?

http://www.eurekalert.org/features/d...-tsf082205.php

Methane is trapped naturally in the Earth's crust. It's called natural gas. Quite a lot of it doesn't get burned, I believe, but gets vented to atmosphere. Reducing this loss would be a good thing all round.

The article is about methane in the Earth's mantle, which is too far down to drill. (Someone tried once. They didn't get there.)

[avgas]

China is suddenly the best adapted player on the world stage. They'll use emissions trading to suck the lifeblood out of Western Industrial culture.

Not likely.....Obviously know nothing about china and what its like there.

Put things in perspective.

NZ : New coal furnace every 10 or so years
USA/Europe: Every 2 years
Shanghai (on its own): 3 months
....China as a whole - 22 days.

I will believe the whole : China going green and ripping us off thing, when I can SEE the sky in a Shanghai Winter.

[mashman]

Methane is trapped naturally in the Earth's crust. It's called natural gas. Quite a lot of it doesn't get burned, I believe, but gets vented to atmosphere. Reducing this loss would be a good thing all round.

The article is about methane in the Earth's mantle, which is too far down to drill. (Someone tried once. They didn't get there.)

I've had a theory for a while now, and i've always been "flamed" for it...

Global Warming, maybe it's not "all" about the atmosphere. It's not an oil bashing theory, well not much really, but you have to wonder: The core of the Earth is pretty fuckin hot right! Oil, methane and plenty of other solids, liquids and gases generally hold up to heating quite well, i mean they keep their state "relatively" unchanged given the pressure they are under (HUUUUUGE ASSUMPTION).

Consider if you will the following: We remove oil and various other minerals from below our feet, sometimes drilling for thousands of meters. Would it be logical to assume that oil/minerals are acting as a thermal blanket between ourselves and the Earth's core, and therefore would it be logical to assume that some of the "escaped" gases now in our atmosphere are being heated by the sun and hence heating up our atmosphere? I honestly can't see why this isn't plausible, BUT...

[Badjelly]

Would it be logical to assume that oil/minerals are acting as a thermal blanket between ourselves and the Earth's core,

Rocks do the insulation thing pretty well on their own. There is flux of geothermal heat from the rocks (the lithosphere) to the atmosphere and ocean, but it's pretty small bikkies compared to the flux from the sun. However a Google search on "geothermal heat flux" just found this

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/200...GL036078.shtml

which suggests geothermal heating of the abyssal ocean does affect the circulation.

But I think the effect of removing gas and oil on the geothermal heat flux will be really tiny.

and therefore would it be logical to assume that some of the "escaped" gases now in our atmosphere are being heated by the sun and hence heating up our atmosphere? I honestly can't see why this isn't plausible, BUT...

The methane we're releasing into the atmosphere from natural gas is causing some warming via the greenhouse effect (according to the greenie leftie alarmist scientists who are promulgating the global warming hoax ). If you want an estimate of how significant this is, you can probably find it in the IPCC report.

[James Deuce]

Not likely.....Obviously know nothing about china and what its like there.

Put things in perspective.

NZ : New coal furnace every 10 or so years
USA/Europe: Every 2 years
Shanghai (on its own): 3 months
....China as a whole - 22 days.

I will believe the whole : China going green and ripping us off thing, when I can SEE the sky in a Shanghai Winter.

That has to be the most outrageous misinterpretation of anything I've ever written.

I didn't suggest for a minute that China would "go Green". SImply that they now own the US and the the ETS gives them an opportunity to extort more money out of the "West's" financial systems. The pollutters will continue to pollute at growing rates (China amongst them) while the rich get richer and the bourgeoisie of the world pay for it with cash and falling living standards.

[mashman]

Rocks do the insulation thing pretty well on their own. There is flux of geothermal heat from the rocks (the lithosphere) to the atmosphere and ocean, but it's pretty small bikkies compared to the flux from the sun. However a Google search on "geothermal heat flux" just found this

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/200...GL036078.shtml

which suggests geothermal heating of the abyssal ocean does affect the circulation.

But I think the effect of removing gas and oil on the geothermal heat flux will be really tiny.

PAH!!! and they wonder why there's chunks of ice floating around where there weren't any (theoretically)...

Ya see BJ, you're thinking again, that's dangerous, the government will find you and remove your brain cell!

The methane we're releasing into the atmosphere from natural gas is causing some warming via the greenhouse effect (according to the greenie leftie alarmist scientists who are promulgating the global warming hoax ). If you want an estimate of how significant this is, you can probably find it in the IPCC report.

I hate that written techno babble, to be honest it just sends me to sleep...
I love leftie alarmists (ha ha ha) (currently i'm a fence sitter), they ask questions, they don't just take what's being said as "law"... and to be honest if a few more scientists had done that we may not have the great global warming rock n roll swindle theory to sidetrack the debate...

Either way, i can't believe that they haven't stopped what they're doing... agreed that the instrumentation that they have is now good enough to capture the information they require, and just start over again.

As stupid as it sounds, what the hell else can you do! What do scientists usually do in these scenarios (other than burying their heads in the sand and hoping that noone notices hee hee).

[Badjelly]

PAH!!! and they wonder why there's chunks of ice floating around where there weren't any (theoretically)......What do scientists usually do in these scenarios (other than burying their heads in the sand and hoping that noone notices hee hee).

What are you smoking, man?

[mashman]

What are you smoking, man?

I guess not as much as you ... So the Atlantic Conveyer wouldn't carry the geothermal heat?

[Badjelly]

So the Atlantic Conveyer wouldn't carry the geothermal heat?

Yes, in a thousand odd years. It's still a small amount of heat compared with the sun. It has an effect in the deep ocean (according to the paper I cited) only because the water isn't going anywhere very fast.

[mashman]

Yes, in a thousand odd years. It's still a small amount of heat compared with the sun. It has an effect in the deep ocean (according to the paper I cited) only because the water isn't going anywhere very fast.

So it could be a combination of everything that we're doing, everything being the limit of what one can imagine? Can i have my money back please