That sinking feeling

Ripped off from Bart.

More like this

Quite unilluminating IMHO. Does a lack of holes make a lifeboat green?

By Steve Bloom (not verified) on 16 May 2011 #permalink

Actually, I think an environmentalist would ignore the ship's sinking, and spend his remaining time trying to convince the captain of the merits of a 50 year plan to replace to his smokestacks with solar panels.

Apologies for off-topic post:

This is currently up on BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0110dvk/Red_Letter_Day_Wylfa_Angl…

A vaguely interesting documentary on a Welsh nuclear power plant.

The reason for this post is a short bit 20 - 21 minutes into the programme.

13 May 1989 Margaret Thatcher visits an unnamed UK nuclear power station and is filmed standing on top of reactor vessel.

She makes a speech extolling nuclear power as solution to global warming "... we all know now about the greenhouse effect..."

Standing beside her is her favourite science advisor, Christopher Monckton. If only he'd listened more closely to what she was saying he'd have saved himself a lot of ridicule.

Please, please tell me that someone more competent than I am is saving some extracts for the deniers' family album.

It turns out the Socolow (yes, one of those famous socolow pacala, 2004) is also naive (similarly to Tim Lenton?), Nat. Geographic informs:

The Princeton colleagues even created a game out of it: choose your own strategies, saving a billion tons of emissions each, to compile at least seven "wedges," pie-shaped slices that could be stacked up in a graph to erase the predicted doubling of CO2 by 2050.

It was a mistake, he now says.

"With some help from wedges, the world decided that dealing with global warming wasn't impossible, so it must be easy," Socolow says. "There was a whole lot of simplification, that this is no big deal."

He said his theory was intended to show the progress that could be made if people took steps such as halving our automobile travel, burying carbon emissions, or installing a million windmills. But instead of providing motivation, the wedges theory let people relax in the face of enormous challenges, he now says.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/05/110517-global-wa…

Here's a website I haven't seen before, run by the Heartland Institute:

http://www.climatewiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

[Weird. They seem to have lifted most of their content from wikipedia, but then lots of people do -W]

By Holly Stick (not verified) on 19 May 2011 #permalink

Actually, I think an environmentalist would ignore the ship's sinking, and spend his remaining time trying to convince the captain of the merits of a 50 year plan to replace to his smokestacks with solar panels.

Actually crf, let me fix that for you: an environmentalist would insist on saving the ship in a way that does not involve thowing most passengers overboard ;-)

By Martin Vermeer (not verified) on 23 May 2011 #permalink

Thanks Bart, excellent info at that link.

From that, it seems the Nat. Geographic has published a PR spin piece distorting the story; it's among a group of pieces misinterpreting or misstating the opinions of people who've spoken about climate change.

I guess we're seeing the pre-election spin cycle warming up. Breakthrough, Pielke and other purveyors are mentioned in the article as well.