This comes from the BBC’s description of the flights of SpaceShipTwo to take people to the edge of space, and then come back to a nice safe landing (hopefully). And all for a mere $200,000 - the world’s most expensive rollercoaster.
Of course, Richard Branson is a man who is extremely adept at being on both sides of the debate on environmental issues.
On the one hand he runs a transcontinental airline and several smaller low-cost airlines so beloved of environmental extremists AND now a sub-orbital flight company, none of which are known for their environmental friendliness or low carbon emissions.
And on the other:
“To my mind there is no greater or more immediate challenge than that posed by climate change,” said Sir Richard.
“It’s therefore more than fitting that the very first science to be conducted on board our new vehicles may be specifically directed at increasing our understanding and knowledge of the atmosphere and from there, to better inform our decisions as to the most effective ways of dealing with climate change.”
“It’s therefore more than fitting that the very first science to be conducted on board our new vehicles may be specifically directed at increasing our understanding and knowledge of the atmosphere and from there, to better inform our decisions as to the most effective ways of dealing with climate change.”
What’s the betting that no-one will be tasteless enough to point out the carbon emissions per passenger of SpaceShipTwo? Certainly not NASA/NOAA because he’s offered to put their scientific instruments on his carbon-spewing air tractor, sorry, sub-orbital first stage launcher, White Knight 2
“Almost everything Noaa does at the moment is at 25,000ft (7,600m) maximum altitude. It’s quite difficult to find research aircraft that do atmospheric testing above that,” Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic, explained.
“One of the things that we as an airline operator know is that the tropopause is rising slightly. That has had quite an effect on aircraft flying in the upper atmosphere and the amount of turbulence they get.
“This is probably related to the mix of greenhouse gases and the levels they are rising to that’s moving the tropopause up.”
…and absolutely nothing to do with the greenhouse gases coming from Richard Branson’s planes.
So here’s today’s scientific question: What’s wrong with this picture?
I rather think even Sir Isaac Newton could answer this one.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
These articles could be subtitled “I knew I was right all along” and “since when did the Conservatives start producing recognizably useful and voter friendly policies?”
Who would have guessed that in 2008, a pledge to give British people flushing toilets would be a shock vote winner?
The Conservatives this week promised to scrap the Government’s plans for 15 “eco towns” which will potentially house 100,000 people. These have been heralded as a new era in design, but you need to take a closer look at both the theory and practice to see the full, grim picture.
But enough of me.
On with the fantastic frigid fun places that are the Labour government’s new “eco-towns”. Andrew Orlowski of “The Register” shows what fun places they will be:
“What are the responsibilities we each must share in return for the freedoms we enjoy?” asked Town and Country Planning Association chief David Lock last year when introducing a report. Lock and his quango are advising the Government on the initiative. What does he mean? He means freedoms you previously enjoyed have been clawed back.
Almost every aspect of life in the eco towns is minutely regulated. The streets are too small to drive around, and if you must drive the mandatory speed limit is 15mph. Planners are particularly excited about installing eco toilets that don’t flush. Because flushing is “the worst thing ever devised by modern man,” (according to one advocate), compost toilets may be mandatory. You won’t have a choice.
We took a look at one candidate loo, and the description gives us a whiff of this fragrant, low carbon future:
“The dry fecal matter is captured by a built-in teflon-coated bowl with a turning mechanism and is ‘flushed’ into wheeled bins in the buildings’ basements. ‘Flushing’ uses sawdust, dispensed from the back of the toilet, instead of water.”
Lovely.
I can hardly wait. We are obviously behind such Green propagandists luminaries like George Monbiot who put their names down first when eco-towns were first planned.
The Times describes more life in the eco-towns:
Motorists living in Gordon Brown’s futuristic green communities face fines for driving their cars out of town, under radical proposals being drawn up by ministers, The Times has learnt.
Residents of the largely pedestrianised eco-towns may also be expected to park their cars at the outskirts and walk or cycle to their homes, up to ten minutes away.
Oh the joy.
The proposals could include a fee for a permanent car space at the edge of town, charges for driving out at peak congestion times, or penalties for taking a car out of town above a set number of agreed journeys.
Yep. Free, democratic society in action. Better stay in the town then - or if you’re poor, you have no choice.
Town plans will differ, but most shops, schools and GP surgeries will be within walking or cycling distance. People usually reliant on cars will have a far more difficult journey — walking to the edge of towns to get their car, driving it back to pick up shopping, with few parking spaces available, unloading at home and then taking the car back to the edge.
I know. You’re thinking “where can I sign up for this green utopia?”
Other “eco-measures” include plans to install underground vacuum recycling, where residents have chutes for different types of waste, which is then automatically taken to a recyling centre on site. Solar panels and wind turbines will be used for power, as well as biomass boilers, fuelled by wood chips from the surrounding forests. Electric vehicles charged from shops and schools would also be encouraged.
Underground vacuum recycling? And you thought your town sucked…
Here is the brave new low-carbon world in bullet points:
Glimpse of future
— Penalties for cars driving out of eco-towns in peak times and exceeding journey limits
— Electronic noticeboards in homes to give bus times and locations
— Wood from local forests will be used to fuel biomass boilers
— Recycled waste will be processed underground after being sorted in household chutes
— Residents with electric cars will be able to charge their vehicles in shops and schools
It’s a Soviet planner’s wet dream only with even fewer employment opportunities. What brutalism did to city architecture, so eco-towns will do to town planning for decades to come.
It’s amazing to me that any progressive party, let alone one in power, would actually envisage such an appalling future, but then I live in interesting times, don’t I?
Life’s pretty exciting these days when you’re a climate researcher, a lobbyist or an environmental activist. There’s a neverending schedule of conferences on climate change around the world to attend.
It’s a shame that very little science actually goes on at these conferences. Just lots and lots of shoulder-rubbing with politicians, scientists, writers, activists and the press. Especially press, because you can never have too much publicity.
As Bob Carter reports(pdf) on three such conferences held in Australia and New Zealand:
The three conferences shared the features of widespread pre-meeting publicity, and of sponsorship by major science organisations (CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, Royal Society of New Zealand), government departments (governments of Victoria, South Australia and New Zealand, foreign embassies (U.K., Holland), Greenhouse organisations and lobby groups (Australian Greenhouse Office, Greenpeace, World Wide Fund for Nature, Pew Center for Climate Change), and a wide range of companies and business organizations.
Press coverage before and during each meeting often gave the impression that the science of climate change was to be the focus, but in fact the conferences were dominantly concerned with greenhouse politics and governance, with a special emphasis on the development of presumed environmental-good “command and control” measures such as carbon taxes. As the organizer of the Wellington meeting noted, “This is a policy conference, not a science congress or a diplomatic negotiation”.
I present here an analysis of the face that was presented to the public by the Wellington conference, Climate Change and Governance, hereafter often called simply the climate conference. The conclusions that I draw are, however, applicable also to the Melbourne and Adelaide meetings and to others of like kind. I assess the intentions of the Wellington conference organizers, the degree to which the general and policy discussions were informed by an adequate understanding of the science of climate change, the role played by the media in informing the public, and assess the outcomes. Troublesome ethical issues emerge, the most important of which include the role in society of scientific organizations and universities, and the way in which government-employed and other scientists are today constrained in the public comment that they can make on controversial issues of the day. Another major concern is the way in which scientific results are now routinely deployed into the public domain with a clear greenhouse propaganda intent.
That’s problem with being a skeptic - I just don’t get out enough.
Just a note about something I enjoyed reading.
From Slate magazine
Just as you were slammed as a Japan-basher, you’ve been called a denialist (and worse) for your climate-change views. Do you think that stands as another example of how the media stifle debate?
The truth is, we live in an age of astonishing conformity. I grew up in the 1950s, supposedly the heyday of conformity, but there was much more freedom of opinion back then. And as a result, you knew that your neighbors might hold different views from you on politics or religion. Today, the notion that men of good will can disagree has disappeared. Can you imagine! Today, if I disagree with you, you conclude there is something wrong with me. This is a childish, parochial view. And of course stupefyingly intolerant. It’s truly anti-American. Much of it can be laid at the feet of the environmental movement, which has unfortunately frequently been led by ill-educated and intolerant spokespersons—often with no more than a high-school education, sometimes not even that. Or they are lawyers trained to win at any cost and to say anything about their opponents to win. But you find the same intolerant tone around considerations of defense, taxation, free markets, universal medical care, and so on. There’s plenty of zealotry to go around. And it’s hardly new in human history.
The media might stand as a corrective, cool and a bit detached, showing by example how to approach information and controversy. Instead, the media has clearly caught the fever of our intolerant times. Formerly, news people would never openly state their allegiance; young reporters understood it was poor form, and a senior person would carry the caution born of the experience that at least some of what one believes in the course of one’s life turns out to be wrong. But it’s a new era. Now, media reporters are proud to pound the table and declare their advocacy. Since so few of them have any training in science, they don’t really know what they are pounding about, when it comes to global warming. They couldn’t tell you even in general terms how the global mean temperature is calculated, for example. But it doesn’t matter anyway. They just want to declare they believe what “everyone” believes. Who values such a news source?
I want a news service that tells me what no one knows, but is true nonetheless. That’s what I would value.
Second, the media narrows the expression of viewpoints to an extraordinary degree. We’ve already discussed the small population of talking heads on cable shows. At the same time, the interest aroused by figures like Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul occurred because, in my view, the American public had never heard people talk that way. Similarly, the Rev. Wright is espousing views that are hardly rare, but people react with shock and awe. People should take it as a sign that something is wrong—the media isn’t giving them the full story. By a long shot.
I always enjoy reading Michael Crichton when he talks about current events or culture. I find his novels latterly, to be ever more contrived in plot and character that they’re nearly unreadable.
I enjoyed immensely “The Andromeda Strain” and one he wrote under a pseudonym called “A Case of Need” (which is about abortion). “Jurassic Park” was also, incredibly, better than the film.
But latterly his thrillers seem much less interesting than his marginal notes or epilogues. I just wish he’d write or collect a book of his essays.
This is one of a number of posts dealing with the fundamental concepts explored by Nigel Lawson in a previous post.
Organic food, so beloved of eco-conscious mums at the behest of their propagandized children, is heading for a big crash as household budgets are squeezed. This article from James Delingpole is one of a number of articles I’ve noticed recently that fail to tilt at the green windmills and simply tell the real economics of food like it is
Despite the claims of bodies like the Soil Association, there has never exactly been a mountain of evidence that organic food is any better for you - or indeed for the world.
That famous research “proving” that organic milk was richer in Omega-3 than the ordinary stuff, for example, turned out to be skewed. It compared the produce of an organic herd lovingly outdoor-reared in lush pastureland, with the produce from non-organic cows (non-organic? They’re still ruddy animals, aren’t they?) which had been kept mostly indoors and fed on dry food.
Nor is it clear that organic saves the environment. A biochemist at Edinburgh University, Anthony Trewavas, has shown that organic uses more energy per tonne of food produced because the yields are lower. Also, because it requires more land - roughly twice as much as conventionally grown food - it means there is less available to be left unfarmed for biodiversity.
As for the oft-cited claim that organic food stops you ingesting tons of deadly cancer-causing pesticides - this got short shrift from Sir John Krebs of the Food Standards Agency. He wrote in Nature magazine: “A single cup of coffee contains natural carcinogens equal to at least a year’s worth of carcinogenic synthetic residues in the diet.”
Quite. But who is going to believe mere scientists saying something that is palpably true? John Krebs must have links to an evil capitalist plot somehow (you know, the Usual Suspects).
So if organic food isn’t saving Junior from carcinogens, or the world from soil erosion and eco-Armageddon, what is it for?
Good Question:
… the organic craze was never really about hard science or pragmatism. It was about nostalgia for an idealised rural past where man lived in harmony with nature. As the American author Michael Pollan put it in his investigation of the US food industry, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, organic “gratifies some of our deepest, oldest longings, not merely for a safe food, but for a connection to the earth”
Its about deeply held religious beliefs about the righteousness of a simpler life, and its held by people who have never lived such a life and would run a country marathon from it if they tried it for more than a week. Especially the soccer moms of the middle classes who think that growing your own herbs is a part of saving the planet.
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