GreenCities

Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:13 AM EST
world-news, china, dams, golden
Joe McDonald, AP Business Writer
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Workers walk past new construction, near the Xiaoxi hydroelectric dam, built for villagers who have been evacuated from the dam site in Changsha, China, Dec. 27, 2008. The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate, while putting lucrative "carbon credits'' into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Workers walk past the Xiaoxi hydroelectric dam as they head for their lunch break in Changsha, China, Dec. 27, 2008. The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate, while putting lucrative "carbon credits'' into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

A villager rides bicycle into a tunnel while the Xiaoxi hydroelectric dam is seen behind in Changsha, China, Dec. 27, 2008. The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate, while putting lucrative "carbon credits'' into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Workers labor at a concrete wall next to Xiaoxi hydroelectric dam in Changsha, China, Dec. 27, 2008. The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate, while putting lucrative "carbon credits'' into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

A villager rides a boat past by the Xiaoxi hydroelectric dam in Changsha, China, Dec. 27, 2008. The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate, while putting lucrative "carbon credits'' into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Workers labor at the Xiaoxi hydroelectric dam in Changsha, China, Dec. 27, 2008. The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate, while putting lucrative "carbon credits'' into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Workers labor at the Xiaoxi hydroelectric dam in Changsha, China, Dec. 27, 2008. The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate, while putting lucrative "carbon credits'' into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Villagers board a passenger boat near the Xiaoxi hydroelectric dam in Changsha, China, Dec. 27, 2008. The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate, while putting lucrative "carbon credits'' into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this April 29, 2008 file photo, the new, rear, and the old logo of German energy supplier RWE are seen at the company's headquarters in Essen, western Germany. Under a U.N. trading system, RWE plans to buy "carbon credits'' from hydroelectric dams in China that will allow the utility to emit millions more tons of carbon dioxide each year than otherwise allowed under the Kyoto Protocol. But environmentalists complain such dams, China has 763 in line for credits, don't represent real reductions in Chinese emissions. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

This Nov. 6, 2008 file photo shows an overview of the RWE coal power plant in Bergheim, western Germany. Under a U.N. trading system, RWE plans to buy "carbon credits'' from hydroelectric dams in China that will allow the utility to emit millions more tons of carbon dioxide each year than otherwise allowed under the Kyoto Protocol. But environmentalists complain such dams, China has 763 in line for credits, don't represent real reductions in Chinese emissions. (AP Photo/Roberto Pfeil, File)

The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate — while putting lucrative "carbon credits" into the pockets of Chinese developers.

But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland.

"Nobody asked if we wanted to move," said a 38-year-old man whose family lost a small brick house. "The government just posted a notice that said, 'Your home will be demolished.'"

The dam will shortchange German consumers, Chinese villagers and the climate itself, if critics are right. And Xiaoxi is not alone.

Similar stories are repeated across China and elsewhere around the world, as hundreds of hydro projects line up for carbon credits, at a potential cost of billions to Europeans, Japanese and soon perhaps Americans, in a trading system a new U.S. government review concludes has "uncertain effects" on greenhouse-gas emissions.

One American expert is more blunt.

"The CDM" — the 4-year-old, U.N.-managed Clean Development Mechanism — "is an excessive subsidy that represents a massive waste of developed world resources," says Stanford University's Michael Wara.

Forced relocations have become common in China as people in hundreds of communities are moved to clear land for factories and other projects, provoking anger and occasionally violent protests. But what happened here is unusual in highlighting not just the human costs, but also the awkward fit between China's authoritarian system, in which complaints of official abuse abound, and Western environmental ideals.

Those ideals produced the Clean Development Mechanism as a market-based tool under the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement to combat climate change. The CDM allows industrial nations, required by Kyoto to reduce emissions of gases blamed for global warming, to comply by paying developing nations to cut their emissions instead.

Companies thousands of miles away, such as Germany's coal-burning, carbon dioxide-spewing RWE electric utility, accomplish this by buying carbon credits the U.N. issues to clean-energy projects like Xiaoxi's. The proceeds are meant to make such projects more financially feasible.

As critics point out, however, if those projects were going to be built anyway, the climate doesn't gain, but loses.

Such projects "may allow covered entities" — such as RWE — "to increase their emissions without a corresponding reduction in a developing country," the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in its December review.

The system's defenders call it essential for hard-pressed industrialized nations to meet their Kyoto quotas, and say the CDM's standards are being tightened.

"It's not as if we're printing money in a garage," Yvo de Boer, U.N. climate chief, said of the credits. "Lots of legitimate questions are being asked," he acknowledged to The Associated Press, but "that's why I'm happy we have a transparent process."

That transparency — online project documents and a U.N. database — allowed the AP to analyze in detail this exploding market, which attracts projects ranging from small solar-power efforts in Africa, to emissions controls on giant chemical plants in India and China.

The AP has found that hydroelectric projects, whose climate impact is most widely questioned, have quickly become the No. 1 technology in the CDM, and China in particular is rushing in to capitalize.

The Chinese now have at least 763 hydro projects in the CDM approval pipeline and are adding an average of 25 a month. By 2012, those projects alone are expected to generate more than 300 million "certified emission reductions," each supposedly representing reduction of one ton of carbon dioxide. Even at recent depressed market prices, those credits would be worth $4 billion.

If the United States enters the Kyoto system, as proposed by President-elect Barack Obama, it would be the biggest player in a market expected to be worth hundreds of billions a year by 2030.

Here in central China's mist-shrouded Zishui River valley, evicted farmers worry not about carbon-market billions, but about the thousands of Chinese yuan doled out to compensate them for lost homes and farmland.

Xiaoxi residents said that when they were evicted in 2005 to make way for the dam and its 4-square-mile reservoir, officials paid too little for condemned homes and forcibly removed owners who held out for more.

They said payments for losing their rights to state-owned land, where they grew beans and squash, were far below China's legally required minimum, which they said requires payment of the value of at least five years' harvests.

Residents spoke with the AP on condition their names not be used, to avoid trouble with authorities.

The dam's state-owned builder, Hunan Xinshao Xiaoxi Hydropower Development Co., defended its dealings with the people of Xiaoxi.

"The compensation standard we adopted was relatively high compared with similar projects and was in accord with government regulations," said Wang Yi, assistant to the company's general manager.

For their homes, people said they were paid government-set prices of $4.60 to $5.70 per square foot. But such payments didn't go far, even in this remote town surrounded by small tin mines and steep, wooded hills.

"What I got certainly was not enough to buy a new place. We had to borrow more," said a man who stood holding his 1-year-old grandson in a street lined with new apartment buildings where some relocated families have moved.

He said officials refused to discuss compensation for thousands of yuan he had spent to fix up his family's house. "I refused their offer, but they forced us out and demolished it," he said.

The dam company says local surveys found overwhelming support for the project, with 97 percent of 212 respondents saying they were satisfied with their compensation. But people interviewed in Xiaoxi said they were not contacted for such surveys.

The CDM money has spawned an industry of consultants who help Chinese companies assemble bids for emissions credits, and of U.N.-certified "validators," firms that then attest that projects meet U.N. standards.

For Xiaoxi, the developer hired Germany's TUEV-SUED as validator, and then commissioned it again later to confirm that the project complied with European Union and German government requirements on "stakeholder consultation" — that local people approve of the project beforehand.

The TUEV-SUED report acknowledged that "the concerned villagers and their leaders were not involved in the decision process." But it contended the guidelines' "essence" was fulfilled because those affected "have improved their living environment."

The German Emissions Trading Authority approved Xiaoxi credits early last year, but that government agency's Wolfgang Seidel now tells the AP it is investigating questions newly raised about Xiaoxi. Julia Scharlemann, spokeswoman for beneficiary utility RWE, said it also was "making our own inquiries" regarding Xiaoxi.

A key question from environmentalists, led by the U.S.-based group International Rivers, is whether projects meet the CDM test of "additionality" — that they contribute to making real reductions of greenhouses gases rather than be business-as-usual projects capitalizing belatedly on the CDM bonanza.

At Xiaoxi, where the dam should be operating by 2010, construction began in 2004, two years before the developers applied for CDM credits, suggesting it would have been built without CDM money.

Company official Wang counters that CDM money will help pay retroactively for expensive Italian technology needed to cope with the site's complex geology. "Without the money from trading emissions credits, the project would be unprofitable," he said.

Environmentalists also point out that hydro power has long been a national priority in China. Since the 1990s — long before the CDM — the Chinese have added an average 7.7 gigawatts a year of hydro power, equivalent to six Hoover Dams annually, International Rivers reports.

In other words, Chinese planners aren't suddenly replacing emissions-heavy coal-fired power plants with emissions-free dams.

The Xiaoxi project design document, in fact, says Chinese regulations would block the building of such a relatively low-output coal plant here. But that's how planners determined the "emissions reductions" from the $183-million, 135-megawatt dam — by calculating how much carbon dioxide a 135-megawatt conventional power plant would produce instead.

That bottom line — some 450,000 tons of global-warming gases each year — would be added to RWE's permitted emissions if it buys the Xiaoxi credits, at a current annual cost of $8 million. And such calculations will be repeated at 37 other Chinese hydro projects where RWE will buy credits.

All told, the 38 are expected to produce more than 16 million CDM credits by 2012, legitimizing 16 million tons of emissions in Germany, equivalent to more than 1 percent of annual German emissions.

At today's low market prices, those credits would be worth some $300 million, paid to Chinese developers and presumably billed to German electricity customers, who by 2007 were already paying more than double the U.S. average rate per kilowatt-hour.

Utilities from Italy's Edison to Tokyo Electric are making similar deals for hydro-project credits in a dozen other countries, from Peru to India to Vietnam.

Rather than reduce their own emissions, "firms in developed countries are buying offsets that don't represent real behavioral change, real reductions in emissions," said Wara, the environmental law professor.

The U.S. GAO investigators said they learned that middlemen sometimes manipulate project paperwork to show a need for CDM financing, and they believe "a substantial number" of projects have undeservedly received credits.

The CDM system "can be 'gamed' fairly easily," said German expert Axel Michaelowa, both a critic and a CDM insider, as a member of the U.N. team that registers CDM projects.

But Michaelowa said the CDM remains "a crucial bridge between industrialized and developing countries." It has problems but they can be solved, he said.

Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican ex-member of the board overseeing the CDM, echoed Michaelowa's view. She said it's crucial to encourage China in particular, whose coal power plants make it the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, to build clean-energy facilities. And she counters critics who oppose dams in general because of their environmental impact.

"We cannot continue to demonize hydro," Figueres told the AP.

She and R.K. Sethi, the CDM Executive Board's Indian chairman, both pointed to reforms since 2007: A reinforced U.N. oversight staff, a validators' manual with stringent standards, and a growing number of board reappraisals of validator findings.

In two recent dramatic steps, the board suspended the CDM's most active validator, the Norwegian firm DNV, questioning its project assessments, and it rejected its first Chinese hydro project — after registering 139 others for credits. The project wasn't "additional," the board said, rejecting DNV's validation that it was.

But environmentalists say a total overhaul is needed, shifting from project-by-project assessments that invite "gaming," to a negotiated regime whereby the developed world, through aid funds, subsidizes emissions cuts in the developing world more broadly, industrial sector by sector.

As atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to reach record levels, threatening disruptive warming this century, the CDM pipeline continues to swell, with 4,364 projects worldwide approved or awaiting approval, one-quarter of them hydroelectric.

Here in Xiaoxi, meanwhile, where project credits await U.N. approval, dam construction jobs have produced an economic boomlet, but it's only temporary and people's grievances are not.

One group, hopeful still for a hearing, has written to authorities with their plea for more yuan for farmers' lost way of life.

"We strongly request that they give us an explanation and a satisfactory resolution," they wrote.

___

Joe McDonald reported from China, and Charles J. Hanley from New York. Associated Press Writer Patrick McGroarty in Berlin contributed.

___

On the Net:

U.N. CDM program: http://cdm.unfccc.int/index.html

UNEP CDM pipeline: http://cdmpipeline.org/
© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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{"commentId":4989912,"authorDomain":"TheGroundsquirrel"}
The Groundsquirrel

Let's recap....internet bubble-popped.....savings and loans bubble-popped....housing bubble-popped....money market bubble-popped.....carbon credit bubble-will most likely turn into a nuclear pop, please stand back for that one. Always the same...the baby is crying and changing it's diaper, feeding it, cleaning it and reading to it arent working. In the world of normal parents we let the baby cry itself out if nothing is "wrong". On the planet If, however, we get out our advertising skills and our psych-101 notebooks and do our damndest to trick the baby into not crying. If it didnt hurt so bad, I would laugh myself to sleep.
{"commentId":4989912,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"TheGroundsquirrel"}

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      1 vote

Reply#1 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:26 AM EST
{"commentId":4990562,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
JoulesBeef

lol bubble?
they are barely for sale right now
{"commentId":4990562,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}

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      1 vote

#1.1 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:21 PM EST
{"commentId":4992433,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

Climate change is real and is caused by human activities. The fact that their is fraud and deceit in carbon trading is no surprise. What human activity does not have that element of criminality? Nevertheless, when done correctly it can be an effective weapon, one of many against manmade climate change.

LOL "lazy on line" "loud old loon" "licking our lips" "lost our lizard"
{"commentId":4992433,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      1 vote

#1.2 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:42 PM EST
Reply
{"commentId":4990451,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

Thanks for acknowledging that the climate change hoax was never anything but a weapon to be used against the flourishing democracies.  Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant anymore than the hair you cut and toss or the skin you shed continuously.

The totally contrived carbon credit scheme is nothing but a global wealth redistribution scheme.  We should all reject it.  We must escalate our resistance to this attack on freedom.  We, the climate change hoax resisters, can give new life and meaning to an old battle cry with "burn baby burn".
{"commentId":4990451,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

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      1 vote

Reply#2 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:12 PM EST
{"commentId":4990568,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
JoulesBeef

wow you must be smart

you see antartica is warming.. yall aint got a chunk of ice to stand on anymore
{"commentId":4990568,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}

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      2 votes

#2.1 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:22 PM EST
{"commentId":4990688,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

I'm standing on that chunk of ice now, right here in middle USA.  Antarctica -- part of the plan.  Some place no one sees or cares about and say how bad it is there, knowing it is not verifiable.  The polar ice packs are thicker than ever.  Try your hypnotism on someone else.  If people are that stupid, then America will certainly be defeated.

By the way, I like your enthusiam about your alleged disaster occurring.  It speaks highly of your nefarious motives.
{"commentId":4990688,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

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      1 vote

#2.2 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:30 PM EST
{"commentId":5004211,"authorDomain":"nofluer"}
Nofluer

Hey, Joules - were you aware that according to Science News, the warming occurring in Antarctica is being caused by the thickening of the ozone layer above it as the ozone hole closes, thus holding in heat that used to escape into space? Hummm... thought not.

So there, buddy. What's it gonna be? Go back to using fluorocarbons in our refrigerators and car A/C, or melting ice in Antarctica? Pick one - you apparently can't have both.

As for the whole GW scam - I've been saying for years that correlation is not causation. If you're too dense to understand that sentence, it means that just because CO2 levels rise during warming periods (going back WAAAAY before man), doesn't mean that co2 CAUSES warming. It could mean that warming CAUSES the release of CO2! They don't know!!!!! And anyone who says they do is a dam*ed liar.

"It's very complicated and I believe people who claim they understand ... are just overestimating drastically their ability to do science,"
Petr Chylek of the Los Alamos National Laboratory on atmospheric dynamics and Global Warming.

AS for the "Carbon Cap & Trade" scam -

http://grndexter.livejournal.com/91933.html#cutid1
{"commentId":5004211,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"nofluer"}

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      1 vote

#2.3 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:17 PM EST
Reply
{"commentId":4991047,"authorDomain":"bluecollarbytes"}
bluecollarbytes

LOL!

Here's another potential "flaw"- relying on Communist China for the moral right to produce electricity.

oh I forgot, China is only "marginally commie" since it now relies on "free markets"

As for various carbon trading schemes....you thought the derivatives mess is bad?  Wait till these "toxic" entirely worthless credits work their way through all the financial institutions of the world.
{"commentId":4991047,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"bluecollarbytes"}

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      4 votes

Reply#3 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:59 PM EST
{"commentId":5004280,"authorDomain":"nofluer"}
Nofluer

What I'm waiting for is the mess in China when the newly minted middle class that the government has allowed to form realises how much power they REALLY have, and starts to wield it. Whoo HA MAMA! Look out Deng!

The Chinese government created a middle class, and has NO idea what to do with one - or what one can do.  :-D
{"commentId":5004280,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"nofluer"}

#3.1 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:20 PM EST
Reply
{"commentId":4992429,"authorDomain":"ximiei"}
Thomas Kunishima SantulliDeleted
{"commentId":4996839,"authorDomain":"cdpamelajean"}
Colonialgirl

This is the biggest laugh going, Man-caused Global warming is the biggest scam going and the Obamamessiah all the idiots voted for is going to sign on to the asinine Kyoto garbage that was primarily drafted by idiotic politicians and altered by whacko environmentalist after some scientists signed on to it. There were more politicians there than scientists. Of course if you want to believe algores lies in his crappy movie, feel free BUT don't waste the American taxpayers money on fake "carbon-trading" what a hoax.
{"commentId":4996839,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"cdpamelajean"}

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      1 vote

Reply#5 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:24 PM EST
{"commentId":4997085,"authorDomain":"TheGroundsquirrel"}
The Groundsquirrel

I feel more threatened by political warming then I will ever be by global warming. Can anybody tell me what the ideal global temperature is?  What the hell is the global temperature? Am I to assume that my brothers and sisters all over the planet were cutting their lawns today in balmy overcast conditions with 70 degree (f) temps? The only butterfly effect I can detect takes place between the ears of pseudo-intellectual chimps who claim to be protecting humanity from everything but their own avarice. I am going to officially name the current administrations policies thus...."peanut butter politics".....it's all in the spreading......
{"commentId":4997085,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"TheGroundsquirrel"}

Reply#6 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:49 PM EST
{"commentId":4997761,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

Evidence please that climate change is not made made and not harmful. The current consensus among scientists is that it is manmade and it poses significant risks"The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change"

As to the comments above, "the stronger the words, the weaker the argument."

.
{"commentId":4997761,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      2 votes

#6.1 - Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:50 PM EST
{"commentId":5004740,"authorDomain":"nofluer"}
Nofluer

Luckydog.

You can't prove a negative, so I suppose you're safe.

But the "scientific consensus" has turned out to be just a few hundred "scientists" most of whom are either meteorologists (weather forecasters) or who are not geo-scientists at all.

The IPCC was begun by a NASA Meteorologist, not a climatologist.

The computer models used to "predict" Global Warming" (GW) were so crude, that the programmers didn't know how to include the effects of clouds on the world's temperatures... so they just left them out.

Data on ocean currents and phenomena were also mostly left out because much of that is still unknown. The oceans cover over 70% of the face of the world and are a HUGE factor in global weather patterns - yet they are completely left out. Why? And how accurate can your predictions and conclusions be without the data on 70% of the climate?

According to IPCC Report #1, (or #2 - I can't remember I was laughing too hard when I read it) they at first decided that Solar Forcing (the amount of GW contributed by the increases in the output of the Sun) should be ESTIMATED (NOT "measured") at about 50% of the "observed" GW. Then with absolutely NO data to support their first estimate, they decided (again, no change in data) that 50% was "too much" so they reduced it to 25%. (Thus attributing 25% more of the "observed GW" to man's activities based solely on their "estimate".)

In the IPCC report that specified methods and standards of data collection, they laid down rules for three levels of reports. The third level of data collection methodology stated that data collectors who live in places like Africa with intractable jungle should just GUESS at levels of warming and CO2 changes and submit those for inclusion in the totals.

The Reports and "evidence" that were supposedly "peer reviewed" were sent to people in the appropriate scientific disciplines for review. I've read the statements of at least ONE of these scientists who says that he had SERIOUS problems with the evidence cited AND the conclusions drawn - but his review comments were "disappeared" and disregarded as were apparently all other negative "reviews." He and a host of others from the original "3000 scientists" who formed the original "consensus of opinion on AGW" have since left the organization.

And your comment "The stronger the words, the weaker the argument" is a logical falicy. They totally disregard the passion for truth in the face of the wrongness of lies that many of us have.
{"commentId":5004740,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"nofluer"}

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      1 vote

#6.2 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:42 PM EST
{"commentId":5005238,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

Passion for truth is no excuse for rhetoric like "Man-caused Global warming is the biggest scam going and the Obamamessiah all the idiots voted for is going to sign on to the asinine Kyoto garbage that was primarily drafted by idiotic politicians and altered by whacko environmentalist" or "pseudo-intellectual chimps" and it reflects poorly on the writer as well as her cause. Any logical arguments submitted would simply be lost in the noise.

Given that many prestigious scientific institutions have examined the evidence and found it overwhelming, the layman has to conclude that the scientific concensus is in, that it is correct and that we need to take appropriate measures. Not every question has been answered and may never be but when the boat is filling with water you don't wait for it to sink before you conclude that it is sinking. By then it is too late to alter events.
{"commentId":5005238,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      2 votes

#6.3 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 1:10 PM EST
{"commentId":5006263,"authorDomain":"nofluer"}
Nofluer

Anyone in America who believes in global warming is exercising their US Constitutional Right to free exercise of religion, which is okay because religion doesn't require valid scientific data gathering methodologies or independent verification of results and inputs. Anthropogenic Global Warming must be taken on faith because there is absolutely NO verifiable evidence for it.

1. Insufficient evidence of real world existence of GW (All data submitted are within "norms" for historic Earth conditions without man's influence.)

2. Unscientific data production methodology voids ANY possible conclusion that might have otherwise been drawn.

3. Proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) resort to propaganda techniques and character assassination of anyone who dares to question or challenge their statements of belief, thereby calling attention to the weakness of their arguments. Were their arguments able to stand on their own merit, they should be willing to debate the issues with opponents. They are not.

4. The original stated "consensus" of "scientists" mostly consisted of the "3000" "scientists" who were members of IPCC - 3000 "scientists" does NOT constitute a "consensus" of the world's scientific body - far from it. And the number of these "consensus scientists" has since dwindled as hard evidence that does not support the original premise is gathered.

5. A basic examination of the numbers involved in the volumes of gasses under discussion would give ANY person with a functional brain cause to question that the miniscule portion of these target gasses "created" by man could make a difference in global climate.

6. The cycle of warming and cooling of the Earth's atmosphere has been occurring for hundreds of thousands, probably millions of years WITHOUT man's help. It is not rational to think that the small short-term changes supposedly observed in gas levels (see my comment on unscientific data gathering above) has any significance at all.

7. And finally - as before, correlation is NOT causation. The purported rise in atmospheric CO2 levels cannot be attributed to any specific cause since nature is presently pouring out more CO2 in a year than man has poured out throughout human history. (See Co2 and methane releases from melting tundra and from the South Atlantic anomoly).

Face it, dude. You're riding a dead horse that has no legs. Learn critical thinking skills - then examine the "evidence" yourself. The conclusions drawn by the IPCC are NOT supported by the submitted evidence - even if it WAS accurate.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled religious devotions.
{"commentId":5006263,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"nofluer"}

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      1 vote

#6.4 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:00 PM EST
{"commentId":5006554,"authorDomain":"nofluer"}
Nofluer

Luckydog - I have a challenge for you.

Show me the "downside" of global warming. ie Why should we CARE if the world is warming up?
{"commentId":5006554,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"nofluer"}

#6.5 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:13 PM EST
{"commentId":5008217,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

    boat is filling with water you don't wait for it to sink before you conclude that it is sinking. By then it is too late to alter events.

So you want to start drilling holes in the bottom of the economy boat to let the water out.

We're not sinking, scientists too have political agendas and for the most part are funded by governments, and I don't care how many people tell me something that I can see myself as untrue.  The GD communist turds have picked up this global climate change hoax as a weapon to accomlish social and economic engineering, plain and simple.  If they can't beat us militarily and they can't compete economically or ideologically, then trying scaring them into submission, as the next resort, with global warming/cooling/flooding/acidyifying/congealing/storming/droughting/quaking/rotational slowing or speeding/expansion of the universe/sunspots/salination/oxygen depletion/etc.  The enviornmentalist wackos couldn't care less what happens to man, so that alone tells us they don't care if the globe floods because they would like to see man extinct.  The enviornmentalists just want man to fail, by whatevr means.
{"commentId":5008217,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

#6.6 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:30 PM EST
{"commentId":5008705,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

    So you want to start drilling holes in the bottom of the economy boat to let the water out.

Converting from muscle power to steam power did not destroy the economy during the industrial revolution and changing from a carbon based economy to a carbon neutral economy will not damage this one either. Jobs will be created, economic activity stimulated, environment improved. Sorry but the coal companies will have to stop leveling mountain tops in W. VA. and dumping toxic waste into communities and streams. So sad. End of story.
{"commentId":5008705,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      2 votes

#6.7 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:51 PM EST
{"commentId":5008867,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

    Luckydog - I have a challenge for you.

    Show me the "downside" of global warming. ie Why should we CARE if the world is warming up?

I have a challenge for you. Do your own research. The effects are myriad and well documented and 5 minutes on Google should provide you with ample examples. I am not going to waste my time rehashing an argument that has already been settled here on Newsvine and elsewhere. The question now is not "is manmade climate change occuring?" or "how will it impact us?" but "how best to slow it and minimize the impact?"
{"commentId":5008867,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      2 votes

#6.8 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:58 PM EST
{"commentId":5009811,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

You are not wanting to change to an energy source that is available or realistic.  The government didn't mandate changing from muscle to steam, free enterprise and the reality of the situation made the welcomed change.  You've cut off coal, nuclear, and oil, and want faux wind and solar power.  And even then you don't want the generators/collectors around you, NIMB.  The renewable energy plan is a sham, at best a supplement to the standard proven energy sources.  It is a payoff to insiders, subsidized wastefullness, doomed to failure, and a certainty to pull America down.

Jobs will be created.  Low paying manual labor jobs tending and harvesting crops, grave digging, police to quell food riots, guards for expansive prisons, and soldiers to fend off the angry starving masses.  Enviornmentailists are sad and reckless lot.  End of story.
{"commentId":5009811,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

#6.9 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:40 PM EST
{"commentId":5010151,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

    The government didn't mandate changing from muscle to steam, free enterprise and the reality of the situation made the welcomed change.

No, you could still row a boat and get passed by a government subsidized and monopolized steamboat or have your horsedrawn wagon compete with a government subsidized railroads carrying the mail. coal, nuclear, and oil is so yesterday and wind, solar, geothermal and other sources are the power of the future. Get used to it.
{"commentId":5010151,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      2 votes

#6.10 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:54 PM EST
{"commentId":5010658,"authorDomain":"nofluer"}
Nofluer

I've done my research and the things that the Religious Nuts who believe, REALLY believe in global warming keep saying are things like weather pattern shifts (so you grow the wheat in N Canada instead of Kansas) and flooding of the cities (happened before, will happen again - and besides, look at it as Nature's Urban Renewal.). They talk about warm-weather diseases - but there are more people who die of other diseases when it's COLD than when it's warm - a factor overlooked by your Faithful.

Since YOU'RE the one spouting about global warming, since YOU'RE the local priest, I want YOU to tell me what YOU think the benefits would be of stopping the warming that you have yet to prove exists, and while you're at it, tell me how you propose to correct any possible OVERkill and causing an ice age - which would be FAR more devastating than warming.

Or... hummm... maybe you don't KNOW what the purported "benefits" are? Yep - that's probably it 'cause you don't seem to be able to resppond to my scientific criticisms. You just continue to spout the Mantra of the Faithful.

And finally - your "the question is" is false. It's only settled for the True Believers like yourself and the rip-off artists and scammers like the Envirofreaks and professional crooks like Al Gore with their Cap & Trade scams. Unless you can come back with something with some scientific substance in it, I'll take this opportunity to appologise for making fun of your religion, 'cause you SURE don't know anything substantive about the subject so must just be taking it on faith.

And on a slightly different subject - you seem to think yourself environmentally conscious... so besides talking the subject to death - what are YOU doing to clean up the environment? (While Global Warming is a BS-for-money scheme, environmental pollution is a REAL issue.)
{"commentId":5010658,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"nofluer"}

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      1 vote

#6.11 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:17 PM EST
{"commentId":5015359,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

As I have pointed out Nofluer, the science has been talked to death on Newsvine and elsewhere. The scientific consensus is that climate change is occurring and that it is man-made so I am not going to step back years into the past here on Newsvine and start debating it with you again. That debate is over but you may certainly look up the seeds,articles and posts if you have a mind too.

I do a number of things for the environment Nofluer not that I couldn't do more as we all could and should. Specifically I do not answer to you nor do I owe you an explanation for any aspect of my life including my religion, which by the way is not the subject of this seed.
{"commentId":5015359,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      2 votes

#6.12 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 9:55 PM EST
{"commentId":5035723,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

The scientific consensus was a global ice age is upon us 30 years ago. If we just wait it out another few years, the consensus will change again, with the politics of the day.
{"commentId":5035723,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

#6.13 - Wed Jan 28, 2009 8:43 AM EST
Reply
{"commentId":5011449,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

    Get used to it.

No, I choose not to get used to it.  In fact, I am going to be extremely intolerant of ecoterrorists who are trying to turn America into a government of, by, and for the elites.  I am preparing for the revolution surely to come when the people can't get heat, gas, electric, food, or transportation because of idiotic government intrusions.  The carbon hating alternative energy nazis are no friends of America and deserve the retribution that is their fate.
{"commentId":5011449,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

Reply#7 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:57 PM EST
{"commentId":5015409,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

No feverish wild eyed rhetoric from you is there Donkey? Glad to see folks like you sticking up for the poor downtrodden oil companies, coal companies and electric utilities against the "elites" as you call us common folk. May you live in interesting times my friend.
{"commentId":5015409,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      1 vote

#7.1 - Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:00 PM EST
{"commentId":5035683,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

We'll see whose side people take when you shut dowm the companies providing the essential products and services the people need. We will make it clear, with names, who perpetrated the misery.
{"commentId":5035683,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

#7.2 - Wed Jan 28, 2009 8:40 AM EST
{"commentId":5041359,"authorDomain":"luckydog"}
luckydog

    We'll see whose side people take when you shut dowm the companies providing the essential products and services the people need. We will make it clear, with names, who perpetrated the misery.

Aw threats, a scary weapon. However as the effects of climate change are felt I think the ones who resisted change will feel the wrath of the people. As for shutting down companies, that will only be necessary for ones that refuse to change their business model. Oil companies and coal companies with their vast wealth can easily diversify (some are already) into other energy sources and allied businesses and their will always be some demand for their products. Producing more efficent appliances and lighting and cars opens up new opportunities, it does not decrease them.
{"commentId":5041359,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"luckydog"}

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      1 vote

#7.3 - Wed Jan 28, 2009 12:46 PM EST
{"commentId":5048343,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

Yeah, we're all feeling the climate change right now. I'm digging out of the record snow and ice in the midwest right now.

It is Global Pollitical Climate Change that is being pushed -- communism for all.
{"commentId":5048343,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

#7.4 - Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:16 PM EST
{"commentId":5048626,"authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}
DonkeyRidder

PS.

There are no other realistic energy sources, another key partof the Global Political Climate Change hoax.
{"commentId":5048626,"threadId":"480750","contentId":"2352212","authorDomain":"donkeyridder"}

#7.5 - Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:34 PM EST
Reply
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