Saturday 23 January 2010

Glaciergate: Now the scandal spreads to India

From Christopher Booker's Sunday column in the DT.
I can report a further dramatic twist to what has inevitably been dubbed "Glaciergate" - the international row surrounding the revelation that the latest report on global warming by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a wildly alarmist, unfounded claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Last week, the IPCC, led by its increasingly controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to issue an unprecedented admission: the statement in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis, and its inclusion in the report reflected a "poor application" of IPCC procedures.

This has become big news in India and Dr Richard North, one of the most outspoken critics of the whole AGW scam, was interviewed on India's leading English-language TV news channel discussing the issue with Dr Vijay Raina, a glaciologist who had also criticised Pachauri.



As Dr North points out, it's another 'follow the money' scandal, and his barbs at Pachauri's penchant for £1,000 suits and high living really hit home.

Friday 15 January 2010

Drastic Cuts in Carbon Emissions Make No Economic Sense

So says Bjorn Lomborg, in an op-ed for The Washington Times (no, really!)
...trying to force cuts in carbon emissions is a solution that will cost far more than the problem it is meant to solve.

So what does he suggest instead? Well, spending $100 billion per year on green energy research and development with the goal of making green energy as cheap as fossil fuels.

This is much more in-line with this website's thinking. We want a greener future but see no point in hobbling, or even destroying, our economy in pointless and politically motivated attacks on the current (primarily fossil fuel) methods of delivering cheap energy.

Sunday 10 January 2010

Kite Power Generation

The turbine may be the icon of modern wind power generation for now but it could be replaced by the kite in most, if not all, wind generation applications sometime in the next couple of decades.




Here is an excellent summary of developments in this area of renewable energy research from 'Black Hole Sunset' posting at The Daily Politics website.