Friday 21 August 2015

Green Illusions. The hidden environment costs of solar energy.

           Solar cells do not offset greenhouse gases or curb fossil  fuel use according to a recent environment book by University of Nebraska Press written by Dr Ozzie Zehner of University of California.   It reveals how the solar industry has grown to become one of the leading emitters of hexafluoroethane(C2F6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) and sulphur hexafluoride(SF6).  These three potent greenhouse gases are used by solar cell fabricators.  
          Hexafluoroethane hasa  global warming potential that is 12000 times higher than CO2 according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  It is 100 percent manufactured by humans and survives 10000 years once released into the atmosphere.  By contrast carbon dioxide which we humans breathe out stays in the atmosphere for at most five years.  Nitrogen trifluoride is 17000 times more virulent than carbon dioxide and SF6 the most treacherous greenhouse gas is over 23000 times more threatening.
        The solar photovoltaic industry is one of the fastest growing emitters of these gases, which are now accumulating alarmingly in the earth atmosphere according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  A NOAA study shows that atmosphere concentrations of SF6 have been rising exponentially.   Clearly the solar cell industry should be abandoned.

Wednesday 19 August 2015

Scottish windfarms causing pollution of drinking water supplies. SNP government response please!

               
 Anti wind campaigner Susan Crosthwaite is calling(July 2015) for an immediate and full independent investigation into the pollution of surface and groundwater of all Scottish windfarm developments sited on river basin districts. She says the construction of giant wind turbines is damaging water quality and public health.
She said from her Ayrshire home " windfarm development in Scotland is clearly breaching the Environmental Liabilities Directive and the Water Frameworks Directive." She says  that the Scottish government and Scottish Water have failed in their legal duty to protect the water environment.  She said "most wind farms are constructed on unspoilt moss, heather and deep peat often with associated forestry.  Construction vehicles churn up the ground to make access roads and clear the forests(approximately three million trees were cleared at Whitelee, Scotland`s largest wind farm development).  The churched up peat with carbon products is washed into the river system by heavy rain which the water treatment system is unable to cope with.

      She goes on "the construction teams then blast quarries and pits to provide rock foundations for access roads.  Six quarries. 85 articulated dump lorries ferried almost 6 million tons of excavated rock around the Whitelee site for roads and turbine foundations. These excavations allow access to the numerous faults(fractures) and dykes(intrusions) which crisscross Scotland and act as conduits for ground water.  Chemical and diesel spills therefore have an immediate channel to the aquifer.
               She says "it is also a great irony that  anti fracking greens make spurious claims about potential water pollution and then support the construction of industrial wind turbines which are demonstrably causing widespread pollution to water supplies in Scotland!

                The evidence of pollution discovered by radiologist Dr Rachel Connor stems from her own experience of living close to Whitelee, the largest windfarm in Europe, and experiencing first hand the results of drinking contaminated water. Evidence of this pollution was brought before a public inquiry where Dr Connor underwent a five hour cross examination.  The results of this inquiry have not yet been published by the SNP government. There was evidence that private water supplies were rendered unfit to drink!  Member States in the EU are required by law to monitor water supplies within each river basin district. Incidents have been reported by a planning monitoring officer to the regulatory authorities but have not been investigated.  This is clearly against the law.  Information from such officials may be difficult for the public to access so developments proceed unchallenged!

      Scottish water test results have indicated high levels of colour at, iron manganese, coliforms, E coli and turbidity but these were not investigated.   the disinfection procedures meant that drinking water failed to meet European and UK regulatory standards leading to increased levels of Trihalomethanes,  recognised by the WHO as possible human carcinogens.  Such a deterioration in water quality has now also been observed in Loch Bradan, Afton Reservoir and Penwhapple reservoir associated with wind farm development.  this means that many people in South and east Aryshire are drinking water below the drinking water regulatory standards.  Statutory authorities in Scotland have not informed the public of the risks to their health despite EU Directives that insist the public must be protected from contaminated drinking water.  This is entirely the responsible of the SNP government.
Arecleoch windfarm along with Hadyard hill, assel Valley, Millenderdale and Straid windfarms are all sited within the River Stinchar water catchment protected area.  none of these developments according to a FOI have been adequately monitored or assessed.

Friday 14 August 2015

China Coal Power Capacity to dwarf the US


Financial Post article by Lawrence Solomon. Abandonment of climate change theory?

Recognizing its early mistakes, the English-speaking world is abandoning its infatuation with climate change theory
The greatest constellation that the world has ever created of free markets, property rights, the rule of law and economic liberty — the Anglosphere of Britain and the former colonies that broadly adopted its ever-adaptable culture and resilient political structure — has been dominant now for centuries, first through the British Empire, then through America’s supremacy. The same virtues that allowed Anglo-exceptionalism to flourish is leading the way again in the greatest environmental controversy of our age, as evidenced by the Anglosphere’s flirtation with, then rejection of, the global warming orthodoxy.
The first flirt among world leaders to warn about global warming was U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who in 1988 helped establish the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in 1990 funded and opened the government’s Hadley Centre, which with the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit became one of the world’s premier alarmist organizations. Only later, after many billions of research dollars failed to find evidence of harm from man-made climate change, did cooler heads  emerge. Thatcher herself became a skeptic, deriding global warming “doomsters” and highlighting the absence of evidence in her 2003 book, Statecraft, in a passage entitled “Hot Air and Global Warming.”
The public turned, too, in the recent U.K. election choosing the Conservatives under David Cameron after he promised to cut wind subsidies and “to get rid of all this green crap” in order to lower electricity bills. The new U.K. government has cut wind and solar subsidies and last month ended the previous government’s flagship “Green Deal” program, which had been described as the greatest energy saving program since the Second World War. The U.K. now promises to go “all out for shale,” to emulate the success of the Anglosphere’s largest economy and ever-skeptical country, the United States.Although President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 and his vice president, Al Gore, became the poster boy for global warming, Clinton never submitted the treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification, to avoid an embarrassing defeat. The Senate, sensitive to the views of the electorate, the previous year had voted 95-0 against ratifying the treaty. No subsequent president, including Obama, dared attempt ratification either. Obama’s attempt to pass carbon cap and trade legislation, the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act, also failed. This week, in recognition that he will never succeed in passing lasting global warming legislation, Obama attempted to curb carbon emissions by executive order, a tactic that will last as long as the next president wants it to, if the courts don’t first strike it down during his remaining time in office.

As Gallup polls have shown, despite the media hype global warming ranks dead last among the environmental concerns of Americans. In fact, Americans are the world’s biggest global warming skeptics, according to Global Trends 2014, a study by United Kingdom’s Ipsos MORI that polled 16,000 people in 20 countries. The second biggest global warming skeptics? The British. The third biggest? Australians, who like the Americans are born of British tradition.

Little wonder, then, that Australians, in a 2013 election considered a referendum on carbon taxes, turned against a government headed by global warming alarmists to elect a new prime minister, Tony Abbott, who viewed the climate change theory as “absolute crap.”  Australia then proceeded to become the first developed country to repeal its carbon tax and is now dismantling subsidies to its renewables industries. It will retain its rank as the developed world’s No. 1 per capita emitter of carbon dioxide.

Close behind, ranked No. 2, is another developed Anglophone country that also reversed a historic error in conforming to the global warming orthodoxy: Canada. To Canada’s grief, Prime Minister Jean Chretien signed onto the Kyoto Treaty. To Canada’s relief, Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2011 mitigated the damage by announcing Canada’s withdrawal from Kyoto, setting a precedent soon followed by other signatories, including New Zealand and Japan.

One other country in the Anglosphere – India – also bears mentioning, though unlike the British colonies it was not founded in the British tradition. Yet this, the world’s largest democracy and now the world’s fastest growing large economy, also owes its rise to an adoption of British institutions and also shows a willingness to dismiss the global warming orthodoxy. India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, recently suggested climate change is a natural process that we should accept, rather than resist, and he made clear his intention to buck the alarmists who would restrain India’s growth.
“The world guides us on climate change and we follow them? The world sets the parameters and we follow them? It is not like that,” Modi said in April, in asserting that India would be rapidly expanding its coal use as part of its drive to liberate hundreds of millions of its citizens from poverty.
The Anglosphere is special, driven by inquiring minds that ever-question received wisdom. That spirit, supreme in the world for centuries, has repeatedly delivered us from harms and guided us to better places. The global warming orthodoxy is but one example of the Anglosphere’s ability to peer through the murk, recognize reality, and lead the world.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

Wednesday 12 August 2015

Piers Corbyn London climate skeptic supports brother for Labour leader. Times report

Piers Corbyn London climate skeptic supports brother for Labour leader

While critics of Jeremy Corbyn question his electoral appeal, his brother is already looking ahead to his potential tenure as prime minister.
Piers Corbyn, the elder brother of the frontrunner in the Labour leadership race, is a weather forecaster and climate change sceptic. He has been using WeatherAction, his website for long range predictions, to question the accuracy of global warming theories and, in recent months, to support his brother’s campaign(Callum Jones Times Political Reporter 12 August).  He recently criticised a political intervention by the Prince of Wales regarding what he describes as the false warmist CO2 theory. Acknowledgement to the Times for photograph.

Saturday 1 August 2015

Arctic ice--worst conditions in 20 years so says Canadian Coast Guard. When will the Guardian report this?

The ccgs Pierre Radisson caught in Arctic ice.  The worst conditions in 20 years forces change of plans for icebreaker global warming research program. Heavy ice in Hudson Bay derailed the ccgs Amundsen`s research plans with a team from the University of British Columbia to study(would you believe it!) global warming! The coast guard said it is the worst conditions they have seen in 20 years. The Amundsen has been rerouted to escort commercial ships to resupply communities in Northern Quebec on the eastern side of Hudson bay.(CBC Report).

               UK scientists from University of Reading, University of Southampton, University of Northumbria all predict the earth is heading for a new ice age.  When will we see this reported by the Guardian and other UK media?  Abroad the Indian Institute of Solar Technology and the St Petersburg Polkovo Observatory likewise predict the earth is heading towards a Maunder solar minimum with an ice age dawning quickly.  When will the  Guardian and other alarmist media  abandon alarmist climate reporting and report reality?  when?.  The public demand a change.
Fossil fuels are not changing the climate, the sun is!