Eco-friendly? Environmentalism

[Soldier4Christ]

Eco-friendly? Environmentalism

Study: Ethanol emissions understated

A new report disputes the purportedly eco-friendly benefits of biofuels like ethanol.



The report out of England shows that biofuels from corn and rapeseed create 50 to 70 percent more greenhouse gases than oil. Corn is the prime crop for biofuel in the U.S. and is used in the production of ethanol.

Scientists from Britain, the U.S., and Germany found that the use of biofuels released twice as much nitrous-oxide as previously realized. And they found that three to five percent of the nitrogen in fertilizer was converted and emitted, compared to the two percent figure used by the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change.

Carrie Lukas, vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women's Forum, says the study is another reminder of the need to be cautious when exploring alternatives to oil. "We all are excited about the possibility of things like biofuels, which might make cheaper energy and cleaner energy. But we need to recognize that we are not entirely there yet -- and we need to let the market work and to encourage cleaner and more efficient fuels to come on market," she explains.

Lukas says that this new report highlights the dangers of "putting all of our eggs in one basket." She hopes the new research will prompt lawmakers to slow their push to increase taxpayer subsidies for ethanol production.

"I think it will help us move in the right direction. I think there has been a lot of information that's been coming out about ethanol -- about how it's not as efficient as an energy source, and about the potential environmental effects, not all of which are positive," she points out. All of which, she argues, "has to start giving politicians some pause before they continue this real push towards [subsidizing] ethanol production and to really skewer energy markets towards greater increases in ethanol."

She says it is that unfortunate most legislation in Congress related to renewable fuels involves regulation of the energy industry and greater subsidies for ethanol.

[Soldier4Christ]

This has become the normal deceptions used in supposed eco-friendly statements and global warming misconceptions. It follows suit with the CFL's that are not eco-friendly and the fact these people are still standing on statistics of temperature increases that have been proven false.

[Soldier4Christ]

Gore calls for 'global Marshall plan' 
Urges Bush to commit to mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide emissions

Al Gore, the former US vice-president, on Wednesday called for a “Marshall plan” to make job creation and measures to address climate change compatible and urged President George W. Bush to commit to mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

“This is an emergency,” Mr Gore told the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative. “I think that the key to fighting global poverty is to have the wealthy nations and the developing nations join together to reduce global warming … I think what we need is a global Marshall plan to make the creation of jobs around the reduction of carbon the central principle for how we develop this.”

Mr Gore said Mr Bush should follow the example of former US president Ronald Reagan, who after an initial delay responded to the 1985 discovery of a hole in the ozone layer by supporting a marked reduction in chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.

“We have to have a binding reduction on carbon,’’ he said.

Robert Zoellick, the head of the World Bank, sounded a sceptical note on the developing world’s ability and desire to reduce carbon emissions, however. Poorer countries are worried aid is going to be “hijacked” by the climate change agenda, Mr Zoellick said.

Countries such as China and India threaten to become the world’s top producers of carbon dioxide, as they ramp up energy use to feed rampant economic growth. The rapid development of poorer countries is considered by many scientists and economists to be one of the chief challenges in tackling climate change.

“There is some sensitivity in the developing world that resources that can be channelled to climate change will come at the expense of other development needs,” Mr Zoellick said. “It needn’t be that way, it shouldn’t be that way… but it is the responsibility of the developed world to reassure the developing world that it doesn’t come at their expense and instead can come in support of their aims of overcoming poverty.”

“Every place I went, people are very worried that developed countries are going to hijack spending,” he added. “We have to explain how it fits their energy and growth needs.”

Mr Zoellick said the bank could assist developing countries combat climate change through advice in taking part in carbon-trading markets, assisting in accessing technological advances and innovations, but “always putting the focus on development”.

The World Bank estimates that 1.6bn people around the world do not have access to electricity. The developing world currently has a funding gap of around half of the $160bn investment needed annually to fulfil growing demand for electricity, the bank says.

Bill Clinton, the former US president whose organisation is hosting the philanthropic forum for world leaders and top businesses, also called on the World Bank to promote ways of dealing with climate change to the governments it deals with. He argued that the organisation needed to persuade developing countries that they could grow in ways that would alleviate damage to the environment and benefit economic growth.

“We don’t have a right to ask anybody in the world to stay poor, but if you can show them that they can get rich quicker … by pursuing a cleaner energy path… that would be a valuable role for the World Bank,” he said. “People can’t seize options they are not aware of.”

[Soldier4Christ]

Unfortunately the things they want people to do would actually make them poorer and have more health risks than what is current.

[nChrist]

Unfortunately the things they want people to do would actually make them poorer and have more health risks than what is current.

You are completely right. There are all kinds of examples over the years that have resulted in the deaths of many millions. One example is the ban of DDT and the resulting millions who are still dying with Malaria. But, this still hasn't been corrected and probably won't be. People like Al Gore never make mistakes, so it's impossible for them to admit little ones or whoppers. Catalytic converters is another example. We don't know yet how many people eventually die from the deadly poisons they create.

Everything Al Gore says has already been debunked and shown to be completely false, but there's big money involved and it doesn't appear that the Al Gore money machine will be shut down anytime soon. One immediate plus would be for Al Gore to admit what he's done for money and sit down. There are some REAL fixes to the energy crisis, but the irony is that environmentalists block them. Wind energy might make birds mad or hamper Kennedy's view of the golf course. The only thing that matters to Gore is who writes the check.

[Soldier4Christ]

Dem plan uses taxes to fight climate change 
Includes 50 cents on gasoline, scaling back breaks for some home owners

ealing with global warming will be painful, says one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. To back up his claim he is proposing a recipe many people won't like _ a 50-cent gasoline tax, a carbon tax and scaling back tax breaks for some home owners.

"I'm trying to have everybody understand that this is going to cost and that it's going to have a measure of pain that you're not going to like," Rep. John Dingell, who is marking his 52nd year in Congress, said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

Dingell will offer a "discussion draft" outlining his tax proposals on Thursday, the same day that President Bush holds a two-day conference to discuss voluntary efforts to combat climate change.

But Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that will craft climate legislation, is making it clear that he believes tackling global warming will require a lot more if it is to be taken seriously.

"This is going to cause pain," he said, adding that he wants to make certain "the pain is shared in a way that is fair, proper, acceptable and accomplishes the basic purpose" of reducing greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

Dingell said he's not sure what the final climate package will include when the House takes it up for a vote. The taxes measures he's proposing, in fact, will be taken up by another House committee. And the Senate is considering a market-based system that would set an economy-wide ceiling on the amount of carbon dioxide that would be allowed to be released.

Dingell says he hasn't rule out such a so-called "cap-and-trade" system, either, but that at least for now he wants to float what he believes is a better idea. He will propose for discussion:

_A 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline and jet fuel, phased in over five years, on top of existing taxes.

_A tax on carbon, at $50 a ton, released from burning coal, petroleum or natural gas.

_Phaseout of the interest tax deduction on home mortgages for homes over 3,000 square feet. Owners would keep most of the deduction for homes at the lower end of the scale, but it would be eliminated entirely for homes of 4,200 feet or more.

He estimates that would affect 10 percent of homeowners. He says "it's only fair" to tax those who buy large suburban houses and create urban sprawl. Historic and farm houses would be exempted.

Some of the revenue would be used to reduce payroll taxes, but most would go elsewhere including for highway construction, mass transit, paying for Social Security and health programs and to help the poor pay energy bills.

In the interview Wednesday, Dingell acknowledged he's tackling some of the most sacred of political cows. He's not sure if they will end up in the climate legislation, but he wants to open them for discussion.

"All my friends tell me you can't do this, it's going to be political poison," said Dingell, 81, who has served longer in the House than any of his colleagues and heads one of the chamber's most powerful committees.

Widely known for protecting the automakers who are so prominent in his state, the Michigan Democrat first raised the tax ideas this summer. Some people immediately suggested he was offering proposals he knows won't pass to sidestep other issues such as automobile fuel economy increases.

Dingell rejects such criticism and said he wants to trigger "an intelligent discussion of the whole question."

Many economists have long maintained that a carbon tax is a more-efficient, less-bureaucratic way to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide than a cap-and-trade system, which could be difficult to administer.

A carbon tax would impact everything from the cost of electricity to winter heating and add to the cost of gasoline and other motor fuels. But economists say a cap on carbon also would raise these costs as burning fossil fuels becomes more expensive.

Such tax proposals have gained little traction.

Rep. Pete Starke, D-Calif., has been trying unsuccessfully to get a carbon tax for 16 years. In the early 1990s the House passed a modest "BTU" tax on the heat content of fuels, only to have it die in the Senate. Dingell acknowledged that there are still people who blame the Democrats' loss of Congress in 1994 on the ill-fated tax.

The federal 18.4-cent gasoline tax also has been a subject of discussion, but not about increasing it. As gasoline prices soared above $3 a gallon last year a chorus of lawmakers called for suspending the tax.

[Soldier4Christ]

Yep, the democrats are all for the poor people. All for making them poorer and making it harder for them to get out of the grips of poverty and government controlling their every move.

This just shows all the more what the true agenda is of democrats on the global warming issue.

[Soldier4Christ]

Bush changes tune on climate change 
Rice: World must cut emissions or sacrifice the planet

The world must cut emissions or sacrifice the planet, Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, told a meeting of governments on Thursday, in the most strongly worded statement on global warming yet made by the US administration.

She told representatives of 16 governments gathered for talks on climate change in Washington: “It is our responsibility as global leaders to forge a new international consensus on how to solve climate change . . . If we stay on our present path, we face an unacceptable choice: either we sacrifice global economic growth to secure the health of our planet or we sacrifice the health of our planet to continue with fossil-fuelled growth.”

She asked the governments present, which account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, to agree a long-term goal on emissions reduction, establish mid-term targets for the same and to help develop markets for low-carbon technologies.

Her words reflected how far US rhetoric on climate change has moved in the past six months.

President George W. Bush, who rejected the Kyoto protocol, had previously called into question the state of scientific knowledge on global warming, and the US has been seen by other governments as holding up progress on international talks.

His decision to host a meeting of big emitters took the world by surprise.The two-day meeting, which finishes on Friday, is intended to be the first in a series whose conclusions will next year be included in the United Nations process on finding a successor to the Kyoto protocol when its main provisions expire in 2012.

Despite the newly warm rhetoric on the climate, however, stark differences remain between the US and other countries which are unlikely to be resolved in this meeting. For instance, the US did not table a proposal for what the long-term goal on emissions cuts should be, suggesting that it sees the issue of emissions targets as contentious.

Yvo de Boer, executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told the Financial Times: “It’s difficult to organise a meeting to ask others to come up with proposals but not make one yourself.”

Mr de Boer said that despite differences, the US decision to hold a meeting was “a very useful, positive contribution” to international progress on tackling climate change.

He told the meeting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-convened body of the world’s leading climate scientists, had concluded that emissions needed to peak in 10-15 years and be halved by 2050, compared with 1990 levels.

Another point of contention is whether reduction goals should be set by international treaty, such as a successor to the Kyoto protocol, or at a national level.

Ms Rice indicated that goals on emissions cuts should be set at a national level rather than being international in scope.

She said: “Every country will make its own decisions, reflecting its own needs and its own interests [and] tackle climate change in the ways that they deem best”.

The US also favours voluntary targets for cuts rather than legally binding commitments.

But the UN argues that the best way to cut emissions is through a market in carbon dioxide, which would put a price on emissions and enable poor countries to gain access to finance for clean technology, and which, for its proper working, would require medium- and long-term legally binding commitments to cut emissions.

“Voluntary targets are a waste of time,” Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, a US lobby group, said.

[Soldier4Christ]

Study: CO2 didn't end ice age 
Counters major premise of global-warming theory

A new peer-reviewed scientific study counters a major premise of global warming theory, concluding carbon dioxide did not end the last ice age

The study, led by University of Southern California geologist Lowell Stott, concluded deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before the rise in atmospheric CO2, which would rule out the greenhouse gas as the main agent of the meltdown.

"There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change," said Stott. "You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages."

The study will be published in the next issue of Science magazine.

Another new study published in Science refutes the "Hockey Stick" temperature graph, used by man-made global warming theorists such as former Vice President Al Gore to argue for a recent spike in average global temperature after centuries of relative stability.

Stott's new study suggests the rise in greenhouse gas likely was a result of warming. It may have accelerated the meltdown, he says, but was not its main cause.

He cautioned that the study does not discount the role of CO2.

"I don't want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesn't affect climate," he said. "It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change."

Stott's collaborators were Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii and Robert Thunell of the University of South Carolina. Stott, an expert in paleoclimatology, was a reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.-commissioned group that has published reports blaming warming on human sources.

Stott's study found a correlation between melting Antarctic sea ice and increased springtime solar radiation over Antarctica, suggesting this might be the energy source.

The authors' model also showed how changed ocean conditions could have been responsible for the release of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, also accelerating the warming.

The scientists derived their results from a study of a unique sediment core from the western Pacific composed of fossilized surface-dwelling and bottom-dwelling organisms. The organisms incorporate different isotopes of oxygen into their shells depending on the temperature, enabling the researchers to reconstruct deep and surface ocean temperatures over time.

If CO2 caused the warming, surface temperatures should increase before deep-sea temperatures. But the scientists found the water used by the bottom-dwelling organisms began warming about 1,300 years before the water used by the surface-dwelling ones.

"The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms," Stott said. The complexities "have to be understood in order to appreciate how the climate system has changed in the past and how it will change in the future."

[nChrist]

I never cease to be amazed that scientist rarely consider GOD'S CREATION:

Trends of the Sun and natural events controlled by GOD on the Sun and other planets, including Earth.

Earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, water movements, jet stream movements, and other natural events that only GOD has control of.

It's really silly for scientists to believe that mankind can control GOD'S CREATION. I'm not hinting that mankind should abuse GOD'S CREATION, rather that GOD is still in CHARGE and HE always will be!

[Soldier4Christ]

That would be to admit that they are wrong and that they do not have the control over all things, that they are not God.

[Soldier4Christ]

Al Gore's fans make 2008 draft pitch 
Full-page letter in N.Y. Times: 'America and the Earth need a hero'

Draftgore.com, which describes itself as a group of grass-roots Democrats, underwrote a full-page open letter to Al Gore in Wednesday's New York Times, imploring the former vice president to enter the presidential campaign.

The ad, which says 136,000 people have signed Draftgore's online petition, was published two days before this year's Nobel Peace Prize is expected to be announced. Gore has been nominated for the prize because of his campaign to bring attention to global warming.

"America and the Earth need a hero right now—someone who will transcend politics as usual and bring real hope to our country and to the world," Draftgore's letter said.

Monica Friedlander, founder and chair of Draftgore.com, said the timing of the $65,000 ad was a coincidence and not related to the prize.

"All we're trying to do is persuade him that it's a moral imperative for him to be a candidate," said Friedlander, 47, a public relations specialist in Oakland, Calif. She said the group raised the money for the ad with an e-mail solicitation sent out last week, receiving more than 2,000 donations.

Although Gore has said he has no intention of becoming a presidential candidate, several groups around the country are trying to persuade him to enter the race.

"He deeply appreciates the heartfelt sentiment behind this ad and understands where this comes from, but he has no intention of running for president," said Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider.

As the Democratic nominee in 2000, Gore won the general election popular vote but lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush after a legal challenge to the Florida result that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since then, the former Tennessee senator has worked against global warming and served on corporate boards, including Google and Apple Inc.

[Soldier4Christ]

"America and the Earth need a hero right now—someone who will transcend politics as usual and bring real hope to our country and to the world,"

Looking in all the wrong places.

[Soldier4Christ]

Judge: Gore film requires guidance notes 
Ruling aims to prevent political indoctrination in schools

A judge on Wednesday ruled that Al Gore's award winning climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" should only be shown in schools with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination.

High Court judge Michael Burton's decision follows legal action brought by a father of two last month claiming the former US vice-president's film contained "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush".

Stewart Dimmock wanted to block the government's pledge to send more than 3,500 secondary schools in England and Wales a DVD of the documentary to demonstrate the need to fight global warming.

Judge Burton said the Oscar-winning film should be accompanied by government guidance notes and to distribute it without them would breach education laws prohibiting the promotion of unbalanced political viewpoints.

But the victory was only partial, as Dimmock failed to get the film totally banned from schools.

The lorry driver said after the case that he was "elated", but disappointed he had not secured an outright ban.

"If it was not for the case brought by myself, our young people would still be being indoctrinated with this political spin," he told reporters.

Dimmock is a member of the New Party, a fringe political organisation which describes itself as "a party of economic liberalism, political reform and internationalism."

Its supporters include industrialists and small- and medium-sized businesses. The party accepts climate change is a major issue but says the argument that it is man-made is not unequivocal.

Instead, it argues for developing new technologies, building new nuclear power stations and providing "positive incentives" for developing countries to support cleaner technologies.

[Soldier4Christ]

Ruling aims to prevent political indoctrination in schools

If that is the aim then this film needs to be left out of schools altogether because the entire film has nothing to do with anything but political indoctrination.