How Silly is Climate Change Denial?

[Tyger]

How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?
LINK: How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?

What the Science Says: "The CO2 that nature emits (from the ocean and vegetation) is balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Therefore human emissions upset the natural balance, rising CO2 to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years. In fact, human emit 26 gigatonnes of CO2 per year while CO2 in the atmosphere is rising by only 15 gigatonnes per year - much of human CO2 emissions is being absorbed by natural sinks."

Climate Myth: "Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions. The oceans contain 37,400 billion tons (GT) of suspended carbon, land biomass has 2000-3000 GT. The atpmosphere contains 720 billion tons of CO2 and humans contribute only 6 GT additional load on this balance. The oceans, land and atpmosphere exchange CO2 continuously so the additional load by humans is incredibly small. A small shift in the balance between oceans and air would cause a CO2 much more severe rise than anything we could produce.” (Jeff Id)"

TEXT: "Manmade CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year.Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 gigatonnes. The ocean releases about 332 gigatonnes. In contrast, when you combine the effect of fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, human CO2 emissions are only around 29 gigatonnes per year. However, naturalCO2 emissions (from the ocean and vegetation) are balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Land plants absorb about 450 gigatonnes of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs about 338 gigatonnes. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance. Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance.

"About 40% of human CO2 emissions are being absorbed, mostly by vegetation and the oceans. The rest remains in the atmosphere. As a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009). A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20.000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years.

"Additional confirmation that rising CO2 levels are due to human activity comes from examining the ratio of carbon isotopes (eg ? carbon atoms with differing numbers of neutrons) found in the atmosphere. Carbon 12 has 6 neutrons, carbon 13 has 7 neutrons. Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2comes from fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occurring (Ghosh 2003). The C13/C12 ratio correlates with the trend in global emissions.

"Figure 2: Annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement manufacture in GtC yr?1 (black), annual averages of the 13C/12C ratio measured in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa from 1981 to 2002 (red). ). The isotope data are expressed as ?13C(CO2) ‰ (per mil) deviation from a calibration standard. Note that this scale is inverted to improve clarity. (IPCC AR4)

"Both graphs from this page are taken from Chapter 2 of the IPCC AR4 report.

"Real Climate goes in-depth into the science and history of C13/C12 measurements.

"It's not particularly relevant to this argument but World Resources Institute have posted such a great resource, I had to put it somewhere. It's the World GHG Emissions Flow Chart, a visual summary of what's contributing to manmade CO2 (eg - electricity, cars, planes, deforestation, etc)."

 

[Tyger]

How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities? 22 December 2004
LINK: RealClimate: How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?

TEXT: "Note: This is an update to an earlier post, which many found to be too technical. The original, and a series of comments on it, can be found here. See also a more recent post here for an even less technical discussion.

"Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million (ppm). The fact that this is due virtually entirely to human activities is so well established that one rarely sees it questioned. Yet it is quite reasonable to ask how we know this.

"One way that we know that human activities are responsible for the increased CO2 is simply by looking at historical records of human activities. Since the industrial revolution, we have been burning fossil fuels and clearing and burning forested land at an unprecedented rate, and these processes convert organic carbon into CO2. Careful accounting of the amount of fossil fuel that has been extracted and combusted, and how much land clearing has occurred, shows that we have produced far more CO2 than now remains in the atmosphere. The roughly 500 billion metric tons of carbon we have produced is enough to have raised the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to nearly 500 ppm. The concentrations have not reached that level because the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere have the capacity to absorb some of the CO2 we produce.* However, it is the fact that we produce CO2 faster than the ocean and biosphere can absorb it that explains the observed increase.

"Another, quite independent way that we know that fossil fuel burning and land clearing specifically are responsible for the increase in CO2 in the last 150 years is through the measurement of carbon isotopes. Isotopes are simply different atoms with the same chemical behavior (isotope means “same type”) but with different masses. Carbon is composed of three different isotopes, 14C, 13C and 12C. 12C is the most common. 13C is about 1% of the total. 14C accounts for only about 1 in 1 trillion carbon atoms.

"CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has quite a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio – about 2% lower than that of the atmosphere. As CO2 from these materials is released into, and mixes with, the atmosphere, the average 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere decreases.

"Isotope geochemists have developed time series of variations in the 14C and 13C concentrations of atmospheric CO2. One of the methods used is to measure the 13C/12C in tree rings, and use this to infer those same ratios in atmospheric CO2. This works because during photosynthesis, trees take up carbon from the atmosphere and lay this carbon down as plant organic material in the form of rings, providing a snapshot of the atmospheric composition of that time. If the ratio of 13C/12C in atmospheric CO2 goes up or down, so does the 13C/12C of the tree rings. This isn’t to say that the tree rings have the same isotopic composition as the atmosphere – as noted above, plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes, but as long as that preference doesn’t change much, the tree-ring changes wiil track the atmospheric changes.

"Sequences of annual tree rings going back thousands of years have now been analyzed for their 13C/12C ratios. Because the age of each ring is precisely known** we can make a graph of the atmospheric 13C/12C ratio vs. time. What is found is at no time in the last 10,000 years are the 13C/12C ratios in the atmosphere as low as they are today. Furthermore, the 13C/12C ratios begin to decline dramatically just as the CO2 starts to increase — around 1850 AD. This is exactly what we expect if the increased CO2 is in fact due to fossil fuel burning. Furthermore, we can trace the absorption of CO2 into the ocean by measuring the 13C/12C ratio of surface ocean waters. While the data are not as complete as the tree ring data (we have only been making these measurements for a few decades) we observe what is expected: the surface ocean 13C/12C is decreasing. Measurements of 13C/12C on corals and sponges — whose carbonate shells reflect the ocean chemistry just as tree rings record the atmospheric chemistry — show that this decline began about the same time as in the atmosphere; that is, when human CO2 production began to accelerate in earnest.***

"In addition to the data from tree rings, there are also of measurements of the 13C/12C ratio in the CO2 trapped in ice cores. The tree ring and ice core data both show that the total change in the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere since 1850 is about 0.15%. This sounds very small but is actually very large relative to natural variability. The results show that the full glacial-to-interglacial change in 13C/12C of the atmosphere — which took many thousand years — was about 0.03%, or about 5 times less than that observed in the last 150 years.

"For those who are interested in the details, some relevant references are:
Stuiver, M., Burk, R. L. and Quay, P. D. 1984. 13C/12C ratios and the transfer of biospheric carbon to the atmosphere. J. Geophys. Res. 89, 11,731-11,748.
Francey, R.J., Allison, C.E., Etheridge, D.M., Trudinger, C.M., Enting, I.G., Leuenberger, M., Langenfelds, R.L., Michel, E., Steele, L.P., 1999. A 1000-year high precision record of d13Cin atmospheric CO2. Tellus 51B, 170–193.
Quay, P.D., B. Tilbrook, C.S. Wong. Oceanic uptake of fossil fuel CO2: carbon-13 evidence. Science 256 (1992), 74-79
—————————
Notes
*How much they can be expected to absorb in the long run is an interesting and important scientific question, discussed in some detail in Chapter 3 of the IPCC report. Clearly, though, it is our ability to produce CO2 faster than the ocean and biosphere can absorb that it is the fundamental cause of the observed increase since pre-industrial times.
**The development of continuous series of tree rings going back thousands of years by using trees of overlapping age, is known as dendrochronology (see the Arizona Tree Ring lab web pages for more information on this).
***There is a graph illustrating the sponge data posted here. Thanks to F. Boehm for providing this link."

 

[Tyger]

Solar and Wind Energy Start to Win on Price vs. Conventional Fuels By DIANE CARDWELL NOV. 23, 2014
LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/b...vs-conventional-fuels.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

TEXT: "For the solar and wind industries in the United States, it has been a long-held dream: to produce energy at a cost equal to conventional sources like coal and natural gas. That day appears to be dawning. The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas. Utility executives say the trend has accelerated this year, with several companies signing contracts, known as power purchase agreements, for solar or wind at prices below that of natural gas, especially in the Great Plains and Southwest, where wind and sunlight are abundant. Those prices were made possible by generous subsidies that could soon diminish or expire, but recent analyses show that even without those subsidies, alternative energies can often compete with traditional sources.

"In Texas, Austin Energy signed a deal this spring for 20 years of output from a solar farm at less than 5 cents a kilowatt-hour. In September, the Grand River Dam Authority in Oklahoma announced its approval of a new agreement to buy power from a new wind farm expected to be completed next year. Grand River estimated the deal would save its customers roughly $50 million from the project. And, also in Oklahoma, American Electric Power ended up tripling the amount of wind power it had originally sought after seeing how low the bids came in last year. “Wind was on sale — it was a Blue Light Special,” said Jay Godfrey, managing director of renewable energy for the company. He noted that Oklahoma, unlike many states, did not require utilities to buy power from renewable sources. “We were doing it because it made sense for our ratepayers,” he said.

"According to a study by the investment banking firm Lazard, the cost of utility-scale solar energy is as low as 5.6 cents a kilowatt-hour, and wind is as low as 1.4 cents. In comparison, natural gas comes at 6.1 cents a kilowatt-hour on the low end and coal at 6.6 cents. Without subsidies, the firm’s analysis shows, solar costs about 7.2 cents a kilowatt-hour at the low end, with wind at 3.7 cents. “It is really quite notable, when compared to where we were just five years ago, to see the decline in the cost of these technologies,” said Jonathan Mir, a managing director at Lazard, which has been comparing the economics of power generation technologies since 2008.

"Mr. Mir noted there were hidden costs that needed to be taken into account for both renewable energy and fossil fuels. Solar and wind farms, for example, produce power intermittently — when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing — and that requires utilities to have power available on call from other sources that can respond to fluctuations in demand. Alternately, conventional power sources produce pollution, like carbon emissions, which face increasing restrictions and costs. But in a straight comparison of the costs of generating power, Mr. Mir said that the amount solar and wind developers needed to earn from each kilowatt-hour they sell from new projects was often “essentially competitive with what would otherwise be had from newly constructed conventional generation.”

"Experts and executives caution that the low prices do not mean wind and solar farms can replace conventional power plants anytime soon. “You can’t dispatch it when you want to,” said Khalil Shalabi, vice president for energy market operations and resource planning at Austin Energy, which is why the utility, like others, still sees value in combined-cycle gas plants, even though they may cost more. Nonetheless, he said, executives were surprised to see how far solar prices had fallen. “Renewables had two issues: One, they were too expensive, and they weren’t dispatchable. They’re not too expensive anymore.”

"According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the main trade group, the price of electricity sold to utilities under long-term contracts from large-scale solar projects has fallen by more than 70 percent since 2008, especially in the Southwest. The average upfront price to install standard utility-scale projects dropped by more than a third since 2009, with higher levels of production. The price drop extends to homeowners and small businesses as well; last year, the prices for residential and commercial projects fell by roughly 12 to 15 percent from the year before. The wind industry largely tells the same story, with prices dropping by more than half in recent years. Emily Williams, manager of industry data and analytics at the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, said that in 2013 utilities signed “a record number of power purchase agreements and what ended up being historically low prices.”

"Especially in the interior region of the country, from North Dakota down to Texas, where wind energy is particularly robust, utilities were able to lock in long contracts at 2.1 cents a kilowatt-hour, on average, she said. That is down from prices closer to 5 cents five years ago. “We’re finding that in certain regions with certain wind projects that these are competing or coming in below the cost of even existing generation sources,” she said. Both industries have managed to bring down costs through a combination of new technologies and approaches to financing and operations. Still, the industries are not ready to give up on their government supports just yet.

"Already, solar executives are looking to extend a 30 percent federal tax credit that is set to fall to 10 percent at the end of 2016. Wind professionals are seeking renewal of a production tax credit that Congress has allowed to lapse and then reinstated several times over the last few decades. Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, who for now leads the Finance Committee, held a hearing in September over the issue, hoping to push a process to make the tax treatment of all energy forms more consistent. “Congress has developed a familiar pattern of passing temporary extensions of those incentives, shaking hands and heading home,” he said at the hearing. “But short-term extensions cannot put renewables on the same footing as the other energy sources in America’s competitive marketplace.”

"Where that effort will go now is anybody’s guess, though, with Republicans in control of both houses starting in January."

 

[Tyger]

I'm posting some long reads but I think they are valuable to show how complex the re-tooling of a society, let alone a world, will be. It's a varied landscape and nothing is certain. But there is a lot of problem solving going on which can be surprising for those deep in the denialist mode. The science is settled - as much as science is ever settled (science is never static). The details may shift but the trajectory is unambiguous. Again, if one is listening to the denialist camp, that will be a surprise. The future is inevitable - the status quo cannot sustain. No matter the drag on the forward movement, in this people are digging in and solving the dilemmas all the changes are bringing. It will change with or without government help. The areas that shift and adapt will be the secure regions that the laggards will look to for aid. JMO.

What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change
Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?
By Ross Koningstein & David Fork Posted 18 Nov 2014
LINK: What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change - IEEE Spectrum

TEXT: "Google cofounder Larry Page is fond of saying that if you choose a harder problem to tackle, you’ll have less competition. This business philosophy has clearly worked out well for the company and led to some remarkably successful “moon shot” projects: a translation engine that knows 80 languages, self-driving cars, and the wearable computer system Google Glass, to name just a few. Starting in 2007, Google committed significant resources to tackle the world’s climate and energy problems. A few of these efforts proved very successful: Google deployed some of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world, purchased large amounts of renewable energy, and offset what remained of its carbon footprint.

"Google’s boldest energy move was an effort known as RE<C, which aimed to develop renewable energy sources that would generate electricity more cheaply than coal-fired power plants do. The company announced that Google would help promising technologies mature by investing in start-ups and conducting its own internal R&D. Its aspirational goal: to produce a gigawatt of renewable power more cheaply than a coal-fired plant could, and to achieve this in years, not decades. Unfortunately, not every Google moon shot leaves Earth orbit. In 2011, the company decided that RE<C was not on track to meet its target and shut down the initiative. The two of us, who worked as engineers on the internal RE<C projects, were then forced to reexamine our assumptions.

"At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope—but that doesn’t mean the planet is doomed. As we reflected on the project, we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach. So we’re issuing a call to action. There’s hope to avert disaster if our society takes a hard look at the true scale of the problem and uses that reckoning to shape its priorities.

"Climate scientists have definitively shown that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses a looming danger. Whether measured in dollars or human suffering, climate change threatens to take a terrible toll on civilization over the next century. To radically cut the emission of greenhouse gases, the obvious first target is the energy sector, the largest single source of global emissions. RE<C invested in large-scale renewable energy projects and investigated a wide range of innovative technologies, such as self-assembling wind turbine towers, drilling systems for geothermal energy, and solar thermal power systems, which capture the sun’s energy as heat. For us, designing and building novel energy systems was hard but rewarding work. By 2011, however, it was clear that RE<C would not be able to deliver a technology that could compete economically with coal, and Google officially ended the initiative and shut down the related internal R&D projects. Ultimately, the two of us were given a new challenge. Alfred Spector, Google’s vice president of research, asked us to reflect on the project, examine its underlying assumptions, and learn from its failures.

"We had some useful data at our disposal. That same year, Google had completed a study on the impact of clean energy innovation, using the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.’s low-carbon economics tool. Our study’s best-case scenario modeled our most optimistic assumptions about cost reductions in solar power, wind power, energy storage, and electric vehicles. In this scenario, the United States would cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically: Emissions could be 55 percent below the business-as-usual projection for 2050.

"While a large emissions cut sure sounded good, this scenario still showed substantial use of natural gas in the electricity sector. That’s because today’s renewable energy sources are limited by suitable geography and their own intermittent power production. Wind farms, for example, make economic sense only in parts of the country with strong and steady winds. The study also showed continued fossil fuel use in transportation, agriculture, and construction. Even if our best-case scenario were achievable, we wondered: Would it really be a climate victory?

"A 2008 paper by James Hansen [PDF], former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change, showed the true gravity of the situation. In it, Hansen set out to determine what level of atmospheric CO2 society should aim for “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.” His climate models showed that exceeding 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere would likely have catastrophic effects. We’ve already blown past that limit. Right now, environmental monitoring shows concentrations around 400 ppm. That’s particularly problematic because CO2 remains in the atmosphere for more than a century; even if we shut down every fossil-fueled power plant today, existing CO2 will continue to warm the planet.

"We decided to combine our energy innovation study’s best-case scenario results with Hansen’s climate model to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise. Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use. So our best-case scenario, which was based on our most optimistic forecasts for renewable energy, would still result in severe climate change, with all its dire consequences: shifting climatic zones, freshwater shortages, eroding coasts, and ocean acidification, among others. Our reckoning showed that reversing the trend would require both radical technological advances in cheap zero-carbon energy, as well as a method of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon.

"Those calculations cast our work at Google’s RE<C program in a sobering new light. Suppose for a moment that it had achieved the most extraordinary success possible, and that we had found cheap renewable energy technologies that could gradually replace all the world’s coal plants—a situation roughly equivalent to the energy innovation study’s best-case scenario. Even if that dream had come to pass, it still wouldn’t have solved climate change. This realization was frankly shocking: Not only had RE<C failed to reach its goal of creating energy cheaper than coal, but that goal had not been ambitious enough to reverse climate change.

"That realization prompted us to reconsider the economics of energy. What’s needed, we concluded, are reliable zero-carbon energy sources so cheap that the operators of power plants and industrial facilities alike have an economic rationale for switching over soon—say, within the next 40 years. Let’s face it, businesses won’t make sacrifices and pay more for clean energy based on altruism alone. Instead, we need solutions that appeal to their profit motives. RE<C’s stated goal was to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, but clearly that wouldn’t have been sufficient to spur a complete infrastructure changeover. So what price should we be aiming for?

"What’s needed are zero-carbon energy sources so cheap that the operators of power plants and industrial facilities alike have an economic rationale for switching over within the next 40 years

"Consider an average U.S. coal or natural gas plant that has been in service for decades; its cost of electricity generation is about 4 to 6 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. Now imagine what it would take for the utility company that owns that plant to decide to shutter it and build a replacement plant using a zero-carbon energy source. The owner would have to factor in the capital investment for construction and continued costs of operation and maintenance—and still make a profit while generating electricity for less than $0.04/kWh to $0.06/kWh. That’s a tough target to meet. But that’s not the whole story. Although the electricity from a giant coal plant is physically indistinguishable from the electricity from a rooftop solar panel, the value of generated electricity varies. In the marketplace, utility companies pay different prices for electricity, depending on how easily it can be supplied to reliably meet local demand.

" “Dispatchable” power, which can be ramped up and down quickly, fetches the highest market price. Distributed power, generated close to the electricity meter, can also be worth more, as it avoids the costs and losses associated with transmission and distribution. Residential customers in the contiguous United States pay from $0.09/kWh to $0.20/kWh, a significant portion of which pays for transmission and distribution costs. And here we see an opportunity for change. A distributed, dispatchable power source could prompt a switchover if it could undercut those end-user prices, selling electricity for less than $0.09/kWh to $0.20/kWh in local marketplaces. At such prices, the zero-carbon system would simply be the thrifty choice.

"Unfortunately, most of today’s clean generation sources can’t provide power that is both distributed and dispatchable. Solar panels, for example, can be put on every rooftop but can’t provide power if the sun isn’t shining. Yet if we invented a distributed, dispatchable power technology, it could transform the energy marketplace and the roles played by utilities and their customers. Smaller players could generate not only electricity but also profit, buying and selling energy locally from one another at real-time prices. Small operators, with far less infrastructure than a utility company and far more derring-do, might experiment more freely and come up with valuable innovations more quickly.

"Similarly, we need competitive energy sources to power industrial facilities, such as fertilizer plants and cement manufacturers. A cement company simply won’t try some new technology to heat its kilns unless it’s going to save money and boost profits. Across the board, we need solutions that don’t require subsidies or government regulations that penalize fossil fuel usage. Of course, anything that makes fossil fuels more expensive, whether it’s pollution limits or an outright tax on carbon emissions, helps competing energy technologies locally. But industry can simply move manufacturing (and emissions) somewhere else. So rather than depend on politicians’ high ideals to drive change, it’s a safer bet to rely on businesses’ self interest: in other words, the bottom line.

"In the electricity sector, that bottom line comes down to the difference between the cost of generating electricity and its price. In the United States alone, we’re aiming to replace about 1 terawatt of generation infrastructure over the next 40 years. This won’t happen without a breakthrough energy technology that has a high profit margin. Subsidies may help at first, but only private sector involvement, with eager money-making investors, will lead to rapid adoption of a new technology. Each year’s profits must be sufficient to keep investors happy while also financing the next year’s capital investments. With exponential growth in deployment, businesses could be replacing 30 gigawatts of installed capacity annually by 2040.

"While this energy revolution is taking place, another field needs to progress as well. As Hansen has shown, if all power plants and industrial facilities switch over to zero-carbon energy sources right now, we’ll still be left with a ruinous amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It would take centuries for atmospheric levels to return to normal, which means centuries of warming and instability. To bring levels down below the safety threshold, Hansen’s models show that we must not only cease emitting CO2 as soon as possible but also actively remove the gas from the air and store the carbon in a stable form. Hansen suggests reforestation as a carbon sink. We’re all for more trees, and we also exhort scientists and engineers to seek disruptive technologies in carbon storage.

"Incremental improvements to existing technologies aren’t enough; we need something truly disruptive to reverse climate change. What, then, is the energy technology that can meet the challenging cost targets? How will we remove CO2 from the air? We don’t have the answers. Those technologies haven’t been invented yet. However, we have a suggestion for how to foster innovation in the energy sector and allow for those breakthrough inventions. Consider Google’s approach to innovation, which is summed up in the 70-20-10 rule espoused by executive chairman Eric Schmidt. The approach suggests that 70 percent of employee time be spent working on core business tasks, 20 percent on side projects related to core business, and the final 10 percent on strange new ideas that have the potential to be truly disruptive.

"Wouldn’t it be great if governments and energy companies adopted a similar approach in their technology R&D investments? The result could be energy innovation at Google speed. Adopting the 70-20-10 rubric could lead to a portfolio of projects. The bulk of R&D resources could go to existing energy technologies that industry knows how to build and profitably deploy. These technologies probably won’t save us, but they can reduce the scale of the problem that needs fixing. The next 20 percent could be dedicated to cutting-edge technologies that are on the path to economic viability. Most crucially, the final 10 percent could be dedicated to ideas that may seem crazy but might have huge impact. Our society needs to fund scientists and engineers to propose and test new ideas, fail quickly, and share what they learn. Today, the energy innovation cycle is measured in decades, in large part because so little money is spent on critical types of R&D.

"Perhaps technology would change the economic rules of the game by producing not just electricity but also fertilizer, fuel, or desalinated water

"We’re not trying to predict the winning technology here, but its cost needs to be vastly lower than that of fossil energy systems. For one thing, a disruptive electricity generation system probably wouldn’t boil water to spin a conventional steam turbine. These processes add capital and operating expenses, and it’s hard to imagine how a new energy technology could perform them a lot more cheaply than an existing coal-fired power plant already does.

"A disruptive fusion technology, for example, might skip the steam and produce high-energy charged particles that can be converted directly into electricity. For industrial facilities, maybe a cheaply synthesized form of methane could replace conventional natural gas. Or perhaps a technology would change the economic rules of the game by producing not just electricity but also fertilizer, fuel, or desalinated water. In carbon storage, bioengineers might create special-purpose crops to pull CO2 out of the air and stash the carbon in the soil. There are, no doubt, all manner of unpredictable inventions that are possible, and many ways to bring our CO2 levels down to Hansen’s safety threshold if imagination, science, and engineering run wild.

"We’re glad that Google tried something ambitious with the RE<C initiative, and we’re proud to have been part of the project. But with 20/20 hindsight, we see that it didn’t go far enough, and that truly disruptive technologies are what our planet needs. To reverse climate change, our society requires something beyond today’s renewable energy technologies. Fortunately, new discoveries are changing the way we think about physics, nanotechnology, and biology all the time. While humanity is currently on a trajectory to severe climate change, this disaster can be averted if researchers aim for goals that seem nearly impossible.

"We’re hopeful, because sometimes engineers and scientists do achieve the impossible. Consider the space program, which required outlandish inventions for the rockets that brought astronauts to the moon. MIT engineers constructed the lightweight and compact Apollo Guidance Computer, for example, using some of the first integrated circuits, and did this in the vacuum-tube era when computers filled rooms. Their achievements pushed computer science forward and helped create today’s wonderful wired world. Now, R&D dollars must go to inventors who are tackling the daunting energy challenge so they can boldly try out their crazy ideas. We can’t yet imagine which of these technologies will ultimately work and usher in a new era of prosperity—but the people of this prosperous future won’t be able to imagine how we lived without them.

"About the Authors
"Ross Koningstein and David Fork are engineers at Google, who worked together on the bold renewable energy initiative known as RE<C. They dedicate this article to the memory of Tim Allen, who led the project. Allen inspired them to question their assumptions about what it would take to reverse climate change. “He wasn’t married to one approach,” Koningstein says. “He was intent on solving the problem.” "

 

[flipper]

How many there talked about catastrophic warming and human extinction in the next 50 years because of 'runaway' co2 flipper please.

I would imagine the majority were just well meaning people, each with their own set of enviromental concerns.

You know a kinda AA group meeting for greens to pour out their hearts.

''Hi everyone my name is wayne and im an environmentalist'' HI WAYNE

Well, no they are doing many different actions. The next meeting is about the amount of CO2 produced by meat and food production and what we can do to change our ways. We live in a big meat producing area. They have organized a climate change march around our city which is where I first encountered them. They had people in the Santa Claus parade letting people know that about CO2. Also there have been two decisions on pipelines in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta which have may stopped pipelines from being built.
There name is about CO2:
"The number 350 means climate safety: to preserve a livable planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 400 parts per million to below 350 ppm.


We believe that a global grassroots movement can hold our leaders accountable to the realities of science and the principles of justice. That movement is rising from the bottom up all over the world, and is uniting to create the solutions that will ensure a better future for all."

They are doing all they can legally.

 

[manxman]

Aye i read it flipper, the site i mean, theres no climate data on the site, they only really talk about organising demo's and march's.
They dont actually discuss climate change, as that to them is forgone conclusion, they are 'activists'.

So why not just call themselve's activists ?, climate change is just one of the drums they beat, but i asked how many believe the claim of catastrophic global warming.

To me the level of belief or alarm ism, about 'extinction levels etc, would indicate whether i was joining a green group, whose hearts are in the right place, or activists.

Lets not forget eventually these activist groups of fanatical greens, like animal rights groups, who again were formed by well meaning people, and then hijacked by activists, will become enemies of the state.

Just like animal rights groups, they will split, some will become benign charities, and some groups will try to impose their will, as have animal rights nut's, like car bombing research scientists, touching laboratories etc, poison whole kennels of fox hunting hounds etc, TERRORISTS.

The 1000s of obama sponsored activists in climate change will melt away, once political ends have been met, and the cash funds stops flowing but the hardcore activist will not.

 

[pixelsmith]

Well, no they are doing many different actions. The next meeting is about the amount of CO2 produced by meat and food production and what we can do to change our ways. We live in a big meat producing area. They have organized a climate change march around our city which is where I first encountered them. They had people in the Santa Claus parade letting people know that about CO2. Also there have been two decisions on pipelines in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta which have may stopped pipelines from being built.
There name is about CO2:
"The number 350 means climate safety: to preserve a livable planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 400 parts per million to below 350 ppm.


We believe that a global grassroots movement can hold our leaders accountable to the realities of science and the principles of justice. That movement is rising from the bottom up all over the world, and is uniting to create the solutions that will ensure a better future for all."

They are doing all they can legally.

They are nuts. All life on earth ceases to exist at 150 ppm. Stay away from those idiots flipper.
And stay away from Tyger burnt and Mike too.

 

[pixelsmith]

Mike, You really can't complain when you are part of the problem.

 

[pixelsmith]

Its actually you whos been conned by big business, fooled , had the wool pulled over your eyes.

They want you to focus on CO2, because they know in distracting you with it, they can hide the real problems

You are playing right into big biz/big govts hands with your arguments.

This way they can continue to pollute for profit, continue to endorse growth for profit.

You can see the lie with the most recent agreement, china agrees to cut emissions to global applause, and then set about opening new coal mines
Australia did the same thing, rolled out a solar panel scheme and threw up the "savings" they generate, but when you compare those "savings" to the output of the new coal mines they opened the environment gets nothing, on the contrary it gets more emissions



Penny Wong, in her last speech to the Poznan Conference identified Australia’s population growth as a serious impediment to achieving the Rudd Government’s own 2050 emission reduction target. Yet every state government, with the full support of Federal Government policy, is chasing population growth and growth in per capita consumption, very substantially increasing, rather than decreasing environmental impact of which GHG emissions are only one symptom.
“The recently released State of Environment Report for Victoria says that humanity would need four Earths if all were to live like Victorians. What’s true for Victoria is true for Australia as a whole.
“If the Rudd and successive governments continue with the present course of rapid population growth (another million Australians every three years) combined with naked economic growth then it will be between two and four times harder to achieve its 60% 2050 emission reduction target.
“Garnaut showed that the very weak 5% 2020 reduction adopted by Rudd and Wong would require a 15% per capita reduction because of our rapid rate of population increase.
“Jonathan Porritt, advisor to the UK Government on sustainability has recently pointed out, ‘…..every single one of the environmental problems we face today is exacerbated by population growth, and the already massive challenge of achieving an 80% cut in greenhouse gases by 2050 is rendered completely fantastical by the prospective arrival of another 2.5 billion people over the next 40 years.

Emulate China & achieve emission targets (Dec) | Sustainable Population Australia

End Population Growth to Achieve Climate Targets | Sustainable Population Australia

Climate change and population growth implication, CO2 emission targets | (We) can do better

Big Biz/Govt love people like you, you help them sell the lie that what they are doing to the planet in the name of profit is just fine and dandy

See this is why you lose any credibility in this discussion.. HUMAN CO2 CONTRIBUTION IS THE VERY FOUNDATION OF THE CAGW MOVEMENT! Go back and read all IPCC reports, then read the rebuttals to them, then read global climate policies so you can discuss this intelligently without looking so ignorant.
And take your "sustainability" BS and shove it. That is a buzz word for population control. Check into Agenda 21.
The fact that you do not know this shows you have NOT researched this subject in depth.

 

[pixelsmith]

Someone PM hypocritical Tyger The Chicken Little again. I want to ask him why he is still emitting CO2 and using fossil fuel produced products and energies because small amounts add up and he is killing whales. Tyger! I would bet everything you own and use was produced from fossil fuels and coal. WHY are you such a hypocrite?

You are seriously quoting James Hanson and NASA after the many times they have been busted for manipulation climate data? Check your players.. you are not the brightest CFL on the tree are you? Please follow the scientific method instead of a belief system. Science by definition is skeptical. SkepticalScience is an oxymoron and quite understandable of a title considering it is run by a washed up cartoonist. LOL. Real Climate is almost as bad. If you really want to have an intelligent debate you have to know both sides. You don't because you are making this a religion based on belief coming from prophets seeking profit.

 

[Tyger]

Filmed February 2012 at TED2012
James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change

James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change | Talk Video | TED.com

TEXT: "Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future."

 

[pixelsmith]

Here are just a few NASA altered data sets.. There are lots more. Hansen and NASA are corrupt. Period. And our forum "experts" know nothing about it because they view this science from one side only.
NASA Massively Tampering With The US Temperature Record | Real Science

 

[pixelsmith]

40 years ago we were doomed from cooling. Tyger will tell you its not true but then we know he is not that bright.

 

[pixelsmith]

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to
know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC
Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical
chemist.

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of
scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S Government
Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of
NOAA.

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for
Physics, Ivar Giaever.

 

[pixelsmith]

CO2 notes
Bob Day 8 November 2014

This year the world will enjoy its greatest grain crop on record. Let me say that again. This year the world will enjoy its greatest grain crop on record. After the world food security crisis of 2007, which saw civil unrest in some countries, it is fantastic to see that in just 7 years we are producing record amounts of food for a growing world population. The US Department of Agriculture recently raised global crop predictions for corn, soy and wheat. Yet the World Bank indicates that over the last 10 reporting years, the percentage of agricultural land worldwide has not changed.

So what is driving this world food production boom?

Carbon dioxide. Plants are thriving on the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. A recent study showed that climate modelers over-estimated the amount of carbon dioxide that would remain in the atmosphere. Lo and behold, they have now discovered that plants are soaking up the additional carbon dioxide and growing more vigorously. Plants and trees and crops will absorb 130 billion tonnes more carbon dioxide this century than expected. It’s called the ‘carbon dioxide fertilisation effect’. This is not just a benefit to food crops – it is a boon to native vegetation, from the ancient forests to desert scrub that environmental activists have been trying to preserve for decades. Then there is the latest science on how the oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide with plankton growing faster than previously thought.

So why is the Abbott government spending billions of dollars to reduce this airborne saviour of vegetation and food crops? I am stunned by the number of politicians who are either ignorant or wilfully misleading the public on this topic. A whole political industry has developed around new arcane language to describe what we have known for centuries about producing food and improving our environment. A whole false economy has developed, fuelled by taxpayer funding through an Emissions Reduction Fund, An Emissions Trading Scheme, Renewable Energy Targets, The Renewable Energy Agency, The Climate Change Authority, Climate Change Departments and more. Greg Hunt and Clive Palmer’s newly passed Bill seeks to subsidise activities because they have so-called ‘co-benefits’ – well, if there are benefits in activities that also arguably help the environment, people should be doing them anyway without massive taxpayer subsidies – just as landfill operators have been doing for years, and I commend them for doing so over – in capturing gas emissions from landfills. Until, of course, the rent seeking, carpet-bagging, bootlegging crony capitalists jumped on the climate change bandwagon to suck money from the taxpayer.

With the carbon tax, families felt and could clearly see for the first time the direct impact on their personal budgets that comes from spending money to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This latest Emissions Reduction Fund is no different, but by sleight of hand people will be less able to see how their taxes will need to stay higher than they should be in order to pay for this scheme.

Taking money from low-income families and spending it on dodgy activities with a spurious scientific basis punishes the poor, rewards the rent-seekers and churns money in taxes, grants and rebates. Australia cannot afford this Emissions Reduction Fund; particularly during what the government has told us is a ‘budget emergency’.

While many families struggle with the cost of living, while mums and dads struggle to find jobs to make ends meet, the government spends their money appeasing high-income elites enthralled by this latest cause and championed by celebrities, self-promoting ‘experts’ and certain elements of the media.

Rent-seekers, like the wind tower companies and solar panel manufacturers, get paid handsomely and advocates in the climate change industry are living very nicely off the system flying around in private jets irrespective of whether these schemes improve the environment, or human living conditions, or not.

Now we are committing $2.5bn of taxpayers money to be spent on reducing carbon dioxide to stop so-called global warming while Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is growing. Growing, not shrinking. It’s bizarre! I am dismayed that honest, intelligent people can sit mute and watch this blatant trashing of both science and economics.

I have a science background but any high school student can tell you that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. CO2 in the atmosphere is not pollution.Now, I know there are members of parliament who agree with me on all or much of the above but feel they must toe a party line. I am not so constrained, and perhaps I speak for some of them in saying that I will not sit mute and support this nonsense.

Mathias Cormann told the Senate last week, and I quote: ‘Coal is good. Coal is good. It is at the heart of our economic prosperity here in Australia and around the world. It has helped lift living standards for people right across the world. It will continue to help lift living standards around the world.’

If that is so, if intelligent and like-minded people believe in all good conscience that the Coalition’s Emissions Reductions Fund is wrong, then I urge them to speak up, too. Don’t be scientific girlie men!

Bob Day AO is a Family First Senator for SA

 

[pixelsmith]

Co Founder of Greenpeace has a few words too

We need more carbon dioxide, not less

• PATRICK MOORE
• THE AUSTRALIAN
• NOVEMBER 24, 2014 12:00AM

AUSTRALIAN politics has been more influenced by the climate debate than any other country. Yet Australia is responsible for only 1.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions. Perhaps this speaks of Australia’s extraordinary commitment to the international community. Yet Australia has threatened to hobble its own economy while much larger nations take a pass while making pious pronouncements.

I am sceptical that humans are the main cause of climate change, and that it will be catastrophic in the near future. There is no scientific proof of this hypothesis, yet we are told “the debate is over”, the “science is settled”.

My scepticism begins with the warmists’ certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model. The entire basis for the doomsday climate change scenario is the hypothesis that increased CO2 due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to unlivable temperatures.

In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonised Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionised civilisation.

Looking back over millennia, today the Earth is colder, and has a lower level of atmospheric CO2 than during nearly all the history of modern life. The idea that it would be catastrophic if CO2 were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous.

Recently, the IPCC announced for the umpteenth time that we are doomed unless we reduce CO2 emissions to zero. Effectively this means either reducing the population to zero, or going back 10,000 years before humans began clearing forests for agriculture. This proposed cure is worse than adapting to a warmer world, if it comes about.

By its constitution, the IPCC has a hopeless conflict of interest. Its mandate is to consider only the human causes of global warming, not the many natural causes changing the climate for billions of years. We don’t understand the precise workings of the natural causes of climate change any more than we know if humans are part of the cause at present. But if the IPCC did not find that humans were the cause of warming, or if it found that warming would be more positive than negative, there would be no need for the IPCC under its present mandate. To survive, it must find on the side of the apocalypse. Either the IPCC should be reconstituted with a larger membership of UN bodies (it is now a partnership between the World Meteorological Organisation and the UN Environment Program), and its mandate expanded to include all causes of climate change, or it should be dismantled.

Climate change has become a powerful political force for many reasons. First, it is universal; we are told everything on Earth is threatened. Second, it invokes the two most powerful human motivators: fear and guilt. We fear driving our car will kill our grandchildren and feel guilty. Third, a powerful convergence of interests among key elites support the climate “narrative”. Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; science institutions raise billions in grants, create whole new departments, and engage in a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; business wants to look green, and get huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as large wind farms and solar arrays. Fourth, the Left sees climate change as a perfect means to redistribute wealth from industrial countries to the developing world and the UN bureaucracy.

So we are told CO2 is a “toxic” “pollutant” that must be curtailed when in fact it is a colourless, odourless, tasteless, gas present at 400 parts per million of the global atmosphere and the most important food for life on earth. Without CO2 above 150 parts per million, all plants would die.

Over the past 150 million years, CO2 had been drawn down steadily (by plants) from about 3000 parts per million to about 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution. If this trend had continued, CO2 would have become too low to support life on Earth. Human use of fossil fuels and clearing land for crops have boosted CO2 from its lowest level in the history of the Earth back to 400 parts per million today.

At 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for CO2. While one wing of CSIRO promotes the IPCC line, another is demonstrating the positive impact of the small increase in CO2 over the past 50 years due primarily to fossil fuel use — a 10 per cent to 30 per cent increase in plant growth in many regions. Australia is benefiting more than most because its vegetation evolved for dry conditions. Increased CO2 means plants don’t need as much water, so our deserts are lusher.

The optimum level of CO2 for plant growth, given enough water and nutrients, is about 1500 parts per million, nearly four times higher than today. Glasshouse growers inject CO2 to increase yields of 50 to 100 per cent. Farms and forests will be much more productive if CO2 keeps rising.

We have no proof increased CO2 is responsible for the slight warming over the past 300 years. There has been no significant warming for 18 years while we have emitted 25 per cent of all the CO2 ever emitted. Yet we have absolute proof CO2 is vital for life on Earth and plants would like more of it. Which should we emphasise to our children?

The IPCC’s followers have given us a vision of a dying world due to CO2 emissions. I say the Earth would be a lot deader with no CO2 and more of it will be a very positive factor in feeding the world. Let’s celebrate CO2.

Patrick Moore was a co-founder, and leader of Greenpeace for 15 years is now an independent ecologist and environmentalist based in Vancouver, Canada.

via The Australian

 

[pixelsmith]

ATMOSPHERIC Physicist, MIT Professor of Meteorology and former IPCC lead author Richard S. Lindzen, examines the politics and ideology behind the CO²-centricity that beleaguers the man-made climate change agenda. His summary goes to the very heart of why Carbon Dioxide has become the centre-piece of the ‘global’ climate debate:

“For a lot of people including the bureaucracy in Government and the environmental movement, the issue is power. It’s hard to imagine a better leverage point than carbon dioxide to assume control over a society. It’s essential to the production of energy, it’s essential to breathing. If you demonise it and gain control over it, you so-to-speak, control everything. That’s attractive to people. It’s been openly stated for over forty years that one should try to use this issue for a variety of purposes, ranging from North/South redistribution, to energy independence, to God knows what…”

•••

“CO² for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? – it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality.”

 

[pixelsmith]

Deserts 'greening' from rising CO2
Increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years through a process called CO2 fertilisation, according to CSIRO research.

• 3 July 2013

In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue.

"In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water very efficiently," Dr Donohue said. "Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilisation.
Deserts 'greening' from rising CO2 | CSIRO

 

[pixelsmith]

 

[pixelsmith]

a sampling of quotes below showing the doubt, the corruption and the hate for industrialization and humans.
these are the heros of our forum warmists.. pretty f'ing telling of the agenda at hand. it has nothing to do with climate.

Quote by Paul Watson, a founder of Greenpeace: "It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true."

Quote by Jim Sibbison, environmental journalist, former public relations official for the Environmental Protection Agency: "We routinely wrote scare stories...Our press reports were more or less true...We were out to whip the public into a frenzy about the environment."

Quote by Ottmar Edenhoffer, high level UN-IPCC official: "We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy...Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization...One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore."

Quote by Al Gore, former U.S. vice president, and large CO2 producer: "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis."

Quote by Stephen Schneider, Stanford Univ., environmentalist: "That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have."

Quote by Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

Quote by Timoth Wirth, U.S./UN functionary, former elected Democrat Senator: “We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Quote by Richard Benedik, former U.S./UN bureaucrat: "A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."

Quote from the UN's Own "Agenda 21": "Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level."

Quote by Maurice Strong, a billionaire elitist, primary power behind UN throne, and large CO2 producer: “Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?”

Quote by Gus Hall, former leader of the Communist Party USA: "Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible."

Quote by David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."

Quote by Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government."

Quote by Gordon Brown, former British prime minister: "A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis."

Quote by Dixy Lee Ray, former liberal Democrat governor of State of Washington, U.S.: "The objective, clearly enunciated by the leaders of UNCED, is to bring about a change in the present system of independent nations. The future is to be World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises - whether real or not - is expected to lead to – compliance”

Quote by John Holdren, President Obama's science czar: “A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States...De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation...Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being."

Quote by Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth: “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.”

Quote by Michael Oppenheimer, major environmentalist: "The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are."

Quote by Louis Proyect, Columbia University: “The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now.”

Quote by UK's Keith Farnish, environmental writer, philosopher and activist: "The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization...Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine."

Quote by James Lovelock, known as founder of 'Gaia' concept: “I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

Quote by René Dubos, French scientist, environmentalist, author of the maxim "Think globally, act locally": "Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature."

Quote by Club of Rome: "...the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million people but less than one billion."

Quote by Susan Blakemore, a UK Guardian science journalist: "For the planet’s sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we’re doomed."

Quote by Bill Gates, Microsoft billionaire, and large CO2 producer: "The world today has 6.8 billion people...that's headed up to about 9 billion. If we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent."

Quote by Chris Folland of UK Meteorological Office: “The data don't matter. We're not basing our recommendations [for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions] upon the data. We're basing them upon the climate models.”

Quote by David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University: “Rather than seeing models as describing literal truth, we ought to see them as convenient fictions which try to provide something useful.”

etc etc etc..