6 replies to this topic

[Dauth]

What follows below does not reflect the views of the writer nor is it meant to insult or belittle any views. The purpose of this prose is to highlight the woolly thinking prevalent amongst environmentalists.

Any similarities between the characters portrayed and persons living, dead or zombie is entirely coincidental. The author takes no responsibility for thinking caused by this piece.

Andrew Sceptic (AS) is a reporter for the national press, his editor has told him to have an interview with a well known ProGreenPoliticalParty member.

Lord Environ of Mental (EM) is a leading figure in the ProGreenPoliticalParty and takes every opportunity to speak out on 'Green' issues.

Quote

AS: Thank you for agreeing to this interview Lord Environ of Mental.
EM: It is my pleasure. You see I think everyone should be told of the damage humanity is doing to the environment, for instance did you know that each year we pump 27 bn tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere? [1]
AS: That is an impressive figure, but I have it on good authority that the weight of the atmosphere is 5.1361×10^18 kg, or to put it another way 5 million billion tonnes. [2]
EM: Well yes, that is true, but did you know that since industrialisation the Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere has gone from 284 ppm to 389 ppm between 1832 and 2009? [3][4]
AS: A ppm being?
EM: Part per million
AS: So in 179 years the amount of Carbon Dioxide has increased by 105 ppm, by that I mean if in 1832 I selected a random million particles from the air, 284 molecules would be Carbon Dioxide, and performing the same process in 2009 I would find 389 molecules of Carbon Dioxide. In fact this value is rising at a value of less than one part per million per year?

EM: Let's move on to something else, have you seen all the damage done by Fossil Fuelled power plants?
AS: What would you do without the power plants, people need to power their refrigerators, TVs, computers and heaters.
EM: We could replace them with renewable sources.
AS: Now?
EM: Well, no, not yet but soon.
AS: Soon as in two years or ten? Or fifty?
EM: Well we wouldn't need all the power plants if people lead more efficient lives, for instance using energy efficient light bulbs.
AS: How much energy does an energy efficient light bulb save?
EM: Well an energy efficient bulb equal to 100 W only draws 25 W. [5]
AS: That is 75 W per bulb, or to put it another way, to shut down the smallest nuclear power plant in the UK there would need to be a switch of close to ten million bulbs, assuming that the bulbs are always on, which of course is ludicrous so you would need even more, perhaps fifty million bulbs. You would require all of these bulbs to be in the catchment area of the power plant too.

EM: We should tax petrol more heavily to get people off the road and onto public transport.
AS: This will punish the poor much more than the rich. The rich will always be able to afford petrol, won't you just drive the people who need most help away from using their cars? With the knock on effect of reducing your taxation income as vast numbers of people stop using cars because they can't afford them
EM: We would give tax cuts to dual fuel cars, such as the Prius.
AS: The Prius doesn't work as efficiently as a VW Polo Blue Motion. The Polo gets 74.3 mpg, with the brand new Prius only delivering 65.6 mpg. [6][7]

EM: We should demand that the United States sign up to the Kyoto protocol.
AS: The Kyoto protocol being?
EM: It is an agreement that was put together by the UN to reduce the amount of Greenhouse gases emitted by various nations.
AS: Which nations?
EM: The Kyoto protocol targets the wealthy nations, such as Europe, the US, Canada, Russia, Australia and Japan.
AS: Not China and India then?
EM: No, as China and India at the time of the creation of Kyoto in 1990 were developing they would be able to sell their spare pollution to the other countries should they go overboard.
AS: Now China and India are significantly more developed than they were twenty years ago are they still able to sell this spare pollution? Do they have any targets to meet?
EM: Not in the same manner as the West.
AS: So, if the USA signs up to this treaty they will be fined? Despite the fact that in the not too distant future they will be contributing less to greenhouse gases than China or India, yet China and India will not be fined?

EM: We should also stop the use of CFCs and pesticides such as DDT.
AS: CFCs are indeed dangerous, however how much should refrigeration cost? When CFCs were banned the cost of in house cooling for food shot up, so much so that it priced a large amount of the third world out of the market. How many people have died due to a lack of food as a result of this? [8] Furthermore DDTs do an excellent job combating malaria which kills roughly one million people per year in Sub Saharan Africa. [9] DDT kills the mosquitoes which spreads the disease and was used to eradicate malaria from the US in the 1950's. [10]

AS: Thank you for your time Lord Environ of Mental.
EM: The pleasure was mine.

[1] Marland, G., Boden, T.A., and Andres, R.J., 2006, Global, Regional, and National Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions, In Trends: A Compendium of data on global change, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. (http://cdiac.ornl.go...is/meth_reg.htm)
[2] Trenberth, K. E., J. R. Christy, and J. G. Olson (1988), Global atmospheric mass, surface pressure, and water vapor variations, J. Geophys. Res., 93(D9), 10,925.{http://www.agu.org/p...7JD00743.shtml}
[3] http://cdiac.ornl.go...e.smoothed.yr20
[4] ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
[5] http://www.cus.net/e...eclighting.html
[6] http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/volkswagen-wor...h=blue%20motion
[7] http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyota/bv/...ry/PS2_spec.jpg
[8] Edward C. Krug, Ph.D., "Fact Sheet: A Hole in the Ozone", Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, Box 65722, Washington D.C., 20035.
[9] http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/facts.htm
[10] http://www.cdc.gov/m...dication_us.htm

Apologies for the non Harvard referencing.

[BeefJeRKy]

Mr. Sceptic raises some important points I would say. Reminds me of my chemistry professor. He defends the rational use of DDT in Africa among other things.

[Dauth]

A lot of it is bollocks, I'm just showing how statistics can be cooked both ways. I'm not in the media so this is an unnatural thing for me to do but it shows how easy it can be to mislead people.

[BeefJeRKy]

Well I meant the ideas not the facts. It just goes to show that going green is not as easy as most people make it out to be.

[Rich19]

Dauth, on 2 Jun 2009, 21:50, said:

AS: Thank you for agreeing to this interview Lord Environ of Mental.
EM: It is my pleasure. You see I think everyone should be told of the damage humanity is doing to the environment, for instance did you know that each year we pump 27 bn tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere? [1]
AS: That is an impressive figure, but I have it on good authority that the weight of the atmosphere is 5.1361×10^18 kg, or to put it another way 5 million billion tonnes. [2]
EM: Well yes, that is true, but did you know that since industrialisation the Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere has gone from 284 ppm to 389 ppm between 1832 and 2009? [3][4]
AS: A ppm being?
EM: Part per million
AS: So in 179 years the amount of Carbon Dioxide has increased by 105 ppm, by that I mean if in 1832 I selected a random million particles from the air, 284 molecules would be Carbon Dioxide, and performing the same process in 2009 I would find 389 molecules of Carbon Dioxide. In fact this value is rising at a value of less than one part per million per year?

Come on Dauth, you're the atmospheric scientist. This is a big problem, it's not like things are only going to be bad if the ratio gets to 50:50.

Dauth, on 2 Jun 2009, 21:50, said:

EM: Let's move on to something else, have you seen all the damage done by Fossil Fuelled power plants?
AS: What would you do without the power plants, people need to power their refrigerators, TVs, computers and heaters.
EM: We could replace them with renewable sources.
AS: Now?
EM: Well, no, not yet but soon.
AS: Soon as in two years or ten? Or fifty?
EM: Well we wouldn't need all the power plants if people lead more efficient lives, for instance using energy efficient light bulbs.
AS: How much energy does an energy efficient light bulb save?
EM: Well an energy efficient bulb equal to 100 W only draws 25 W. [5]
AS: That is 75 W per bulb, or to put it another way, to shut down the smallest nuclear power plant in the UK there would need to be a switch of close to ten million bulbs, assuming that the bulbs are always on, which of course is ludicrous so you would need even more, perhaps fifty million bulbs. You would require all of these bulbs to be in the catchment area of the power plant too.

I don't think any significant environmental group thinks we should simply rebuild the entire power grid. The issue is more with the construction of new coal plants when there are greener alternatives. And the lightbulb thing, although you're right that ten million is a lot, it's all small steps. Just because it's a small thing doesn't mean it should be ignored altogether.

Dauth, on 2 Jun 2009, 21:50, said:

EM: We should tax petrol more heavily to get people off the road and onto public transport.
AS: This will punish the poor much more than the rich. The rich will always be able to afford petrol, won't you just drive the people who need most help away from using their cars? With the knock on effect of reducing your taxation income as vast numbers of people stop using cars because they can't afford them
EM: We would give tax cuts to dual fuel cars, such as the Prius.
AS: The Prius doesn't work as efficiently as a VW Polo Blue Motion. The Polo gets 74.3 mpg, with the brand new Prius only delivering 65.6 mpg. [6][7]

I'm not sure where you're going with this one. If people use public transport instead of cars because the car is more expensive then the plan has worked, surely? And the taxation won't be reduced too much - people aren't going to abandon their cars in droves, and the increase in revenue from the rich who will "always be able to afford petrol" will make up for the few that do decide to forgo cars.

I agree on the Prius thing, although surely this is a simple matter of rewarding efficient cars rather than simply hybrids? It's not hard to add the Blue Motion to a list.

Dauth, on 2 Jun 2009, 21:50, said:

EM: We should demand that the United States sign up to the Kyoto protocol.
AS: The Kyoto protocol being?
EM: It is an agreement that was put together by the UN to reduce the amount of Greenhouse gases emitted by various nations.
AS: Which nations?
EM: The Kyoto protocol targets the wealthy nations, such as Europe, the US, Canada, Russia, Australia and Japan.
AS: Not China and India then?
EM: No, as China and India at the time of the creation of Kyoto in 1990 were developing they would be able to sell their spare pollution to the other countries should they go overboard.
AS: Now China and India are significantly more developed than they were twenty years ago are they still able to sell this spare pollution? Do they have any targets to meet?
EM: Not in the same manner as the West.
AS: So, if the USA signs up to this treaty they will be fined? Despite the fact that in the not too distant future they will be contributing less to greenhouse gases than China or India, yet China and India will not be fined?

Obviously we should attempt to get them on board too, but I agree that this is a tricky situation.

Dauth, on 2 Jun 2009, 21:50, said:

EM: We should also stop the use of CFCs and pesticides such as DDT.
AS: CFCs are indeed dangerous, however how much should refrigeration cost? When CFCs were banned the cost of in house cooling for food shot up, so much so that it priced a large amount of the third world out of the market. How many people have died due to a lack of food as a result of this? [8] Furthermore DDTs do an excellent job combating malaria which kills roughly one million people per year in Sub Saharan Africa. [9] DDT kills the mosquitoes which spreads the disease and was used to eradicate malaria from the US in the 1950's. [10]

Agreed on the DDT, absolutely whole-heartedly disagree on the CFCs. I say again, aren't you supposed to know stuff about the atmosphere?



EDIT - Also, this ought to be in the political area.

Edited by Rich19, 02 June 2009 - 23:45.

[Dauth]

I am not here to discuss the content, it was a test to see if I could write in a journalistic manner. While warping facts.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Dauth, on 3 Jun 2009, 19:34, said:

While warping facts.

Isn't that what journalism is all about these days? Well, not so much for journalists as for 'commentators'*Looks at MSNBC and Fox*.