h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Did anyone else watch Channel 4's programme on global warming and climate change last night (Saturday Jan 9th. 2005)? A cause for serious concern. After following various links from the Channel 4 website, two dynamically opposed viewpoints emerged. Here are the links to both of them:

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/nature/globalwarming.html

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm#Message53

What was most worrying is the view that "Global Warming" is a conspiracy being put about to limit the USA's economic growth!

Any thoughts, anyone?

No, Chai, I didn't watch that programme. Who was it saying that 'global warming' is a conspiracy put about to limit the USA's economic growth? Mind you, the USA seems to have more than its fair share of conspiracy theorists!

That seems to be the consensus in the USA ZSF. Rather like the idea many African nations have that polio vaccinations are part of a conspiracy by the US to practise biological warfare on them.
The US is one of the worlds biggest producers of carbon dioxide but they have refused to join the Kyoto treaty. Their government backed scientists keep saying global warming doesn't exist.

Sitting here tonight, on my storm-lashed hill, with water pouring through the windows and doors and reports of houses without roofs, roads blocked by fallen trees and every village/town/city more than 15 miles downhill from us in every direction flooded/cut off or without electricity or clean water I hope the Americans are right but I very much doubt it.

What do you think about his assertion that nuclear is the only solution Chai? The New Scientist have been reporting several advances in solar technology lately and apparently the light boffins are very close to producing white LEDs economically. I'm sure renewable technologies could take most of the strain if enough of a commitment was made to them.

It seems to be a real quandary. Nuclear energy is so dangerous, so disastrously toxic if even a tiny slip-up occurs in the containment, with consequences that last so long, tens or even hundreds of millennia, that one hardly dare think of it as any kind of a solution. And yet it really seems that we may have already run out of time to develop, and convert to other energy sources.

What worries me, and what was not given more than the briefest of passing mentions in the documentary, is the likely impact of China's emerging consumer population. India was mentioned, and the figures from India alone are scarey enough. But add China to that, and you have a whole new multiplier effect.

Now, supposing China could be persuaded to move from coal ( at present the source of 75% of China's industrial energy supply ) to nuclear power, what chance is there that the quality of building and maintenance would be sufficient to guarantee its safety for, say, 100,000 years? China is great at building, but maintenance, according to friends of mine who have spent time there, is generally ignored.

Added to that, corruption is so deeply engrained in the Chinese bureaucracy, that the imposition of rigourous standards might well succumb to pay-offs. The prospect of even one more Chernobyl doesn't bear thinking about. Though to be fair, India has a reputation for corruption equal to China's, so massive nuclear development in India is not a joyous prospect either if people are prepared to cut corners for a quick pay-off.

Having said that, is there any country whose workmanship is likely to be guaranteed good for 100,000 years? In Ireland, we have felt the effects of the less-than-perfect safety record at Windscale/Seascale, which the British Government has done its best to cover up ever since the near melt-down in the 1950s.

Then there is the predictable effect of millions of new owners of cars, fridges, TVs etc., in India and China. India's pollution record is grim, as is China's, though in India the environmental movement is not actually considered a danger to the state, as it is in China.

And in all fairness, if the USA, which is producing such a huge proportion of the carbon dioxide emissions, refuses to engage with the problem, why should India and China?

I dread to think what kind of world my grand-daughter will live to see.

And as I sit here in Dublin, in the depths of winter, the wind is weirdly warm, and blowing a full gale yet again.

Yes I saw the program. Global warming is a much bigger threat to our survival than terrorism will ever be, but that seems to be mankind's thing, to stick our head in a bucket and find some diversionary tactic to avoid stark realities; much easier to make war to make certain we have enough petroleum products, so we can continue to make ourselves extinct. I'd like to see much more alternative power sources made easily and cheaply available, at the moment it seems you have to be fairly wealthy to be able to live without producing carbon dioxide. If we carry on as we do, we've no future. Tonights program is about the US's fondness for giant gas guzzling cars , entitled What Car Would Jesus Drive. You can run away from terrorism, facism and all the human squabbling but you can't run away from the weather. Outside it's raining buckets and the wind is fierce. This is what the future holds for the UK.; more wind, more rain and hot summers and it appears to be arriving much more quickly than anticipated.
Here's a link
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/E/environment/index.html

Chai
there was something on the radio about the fact that by 2010 we could all have out own power supplied by personal wind generators in our back garden (presumably a much smaller design than those on the hills outside Cardif) i want one now

Hi Moth

Did the radio also predict we would soon be travelling to work in flying cars, wearing silver jumpsuits and eating food-pills?

I have been a member of the Alternative Technology Association for nearly twenty years. This is based at the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth. I can assure you that we will not see wodespread personal energy production in our lifetimes. Every person who has attempted to do so has to first jump through dozens of bureaucratic hoops, and thats before the NIMBY neighbours find out.

The energy and utility companies in particular have legal departments set up just to fight such dangerous ideas. One even tried to claim it owned the rain and so could charge water rates on a small-holding with its own water supply and a reed-bed sewerage system.

I wish you luck though . CAT has reams of material for you if you are serious.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Hi Chai

I have worked in China a number of times over the last two decades and have seen its already appalling environmental standards decline still further in the rush to embrace capitalism.

I cannot understand the justification for any 'democratic' government having anything to do with the Chinese regime. I know the reasons they do do business, but at a human level, no, it just doesn't make sense.

Tibet, Tianamen Square, PLA Gulags masquerading as modern factories. Does none of this make any impression on anybody?

One plant guys, one planet.

Blessings from an old hippy,
Matholwch /|\.

Hi Moth, long time no hear. Good to see you back. And hi Math. I'd no idea you'd been to China. China's relationship with its environment is truly alarming. It is still reckoned that upwards of 80% of all its industrial and domestic waste is dumped, untreated into the water supply.

Some years ago, the Chinese "Green Party" founder, in exile as an "anti-state subversive element," told me that the two major causes of death in China were related to pollution of the air ( heart/lung disease ) and of the water ( gastric/liver disease ).

Meanwhile, China is losing arable land to industrial sprawl, urban expansion, and desertification, at the rate of nearly 1 million hectares per annum. Added to that, the 50-year history of deforestation has led to extreme water shortages resulting from topsoil erosion-silting up of rivers-massive industrial waste. The Hwangho no longer even reaches the sea.

The media still refer to China as a "1.3 billion people" market. The reality is somewhat different, as 900 million are landless peasants who fall into the categories of poor, seriously impoverished, or destitute. So the real number of free-market capitalists scrambling onto the consumer bandwagon is nearer to 400 million. Of these, an even smaller proportion have incomes in excess of US$5,000 per annum, the threshold at which "consumer" economic take off.( Compare with Ireland, where average discretionary spendable income is US$28,000 p.a.)

My point being that although China's car purchases, and general domestic polluting goods purchases are doubling yearly, it will be a long time before the more alarming projected statistics for China become a reality. India is more likely to make the grade as a consumer nation sooner. And, not having a one-child policy, India's population is set to overtake China's by 2040.

Meanwhile, maybe we should consolidate the two threads I've initiated on this topic. The other, which seems to have produced the greatest response, is at the Forum:
F135418?thread=563535

Cheers, from another ageing hippy.

C \|/

Hello Math

I've visited the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth a few times, firstly way back in the eighties. (They used to serve a great veggie trifle ) I think what you've said is exactly what I meant by, expense and unavailability. I'd vote for a government that promised and delivered these technologies and side-swiped the mainstream power providers.

Chai
Have been absorbed with Uni course, which is now finished.

China , is after all, (as are many so called third world countries- which it was but no longer) only copying and desiring what we have. We've shown them the route. Gobble up all you can before somebody else gets their hands on it.
After the 'first' world (is that a phrase?) went throught their industrial and nuclear revolutions and discovered that they were wanting, how do we now have the right to reprimand them for doing exactly as we have done?
I noted way back that we were playing into China's hands by buying practically everything we could from them - because it was cheap (and never mind the workers) We are as responsible for being the buyers of the cheap trainer , without us there would be no sweatshops perhaps. So now we buy cheap from the far east and supply them with money to become - like us and play around with the big boys toys. Call it a nuclear energy source with the added 'quality' by-product of 'defensive' weaponry.