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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 5/28/2007 8:18:32 AM | I have had the pleasure of hearing Al Gore speak, in person, publicly about the Global Warming crisis that this planet faces. Unfortunately I was not then, nor am I now , impressed with his ability or decision to walk the general public through the explanations better. In fairness, many who have spoken against Gore's rhetoric are also easily seen thru , and carry about as much scientific weight as his arguments but I have found a few climatologists willing to forgo the pressures of their respective communities to speak the plain, honest truth.
I am sure many will find quotes from magazines etc that will back a position, all I ask is that if you read those, please read everything, both for and against. Al Gore is no better than Michael Moore. They allowed themselves to be used to make money for themselves as well as the investors or companies they work for. It was not long ago ( '70s ) that we were to face an ICE AGE, but I digress, I ask that no-one trust one side of any ecologial issue, but to inform themselves. Mr.Suzuki has dissapointed me greatly, as more and more truths or criticism's of his work come out the more despondant he gets. Not exactly the traits of a great confident scientist, but that of a back street bully. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 5/28/2007 11:57:31 AM | I have had the pleasure of hearing Al Gore speak, in person, publicly about the Global Warming crisis that this planet faces. Unfortunately I was not then, nor am I now , impressed with his ability or decision to walk the general public through the explanations better. In fairness, many who have spoken against Gore's rhetoric are also easily seen thru , and carry about as much scientific weight as his arguments but I have found a few climatologists willing to forgo the pressures of their respective communities to speak the plain, honest truth.
He made a small mistake. He pointed to the temperature chart for today and then the lowest point in the last 1000 years .. which was about 1875.. and said "This is the difference between a nice day and a mile of ice over your head...
I do not remember in 1875 that Canada was covered by 1 miles of ice...
I guess there were no people living in what is called Toronto today in 1875 ...
The last ice age was over 10,000 years ago....
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 5/28/2007 12:24:30 PM | Suzuki , sadly, is a quack, too extreme, Gore is a politician, somebody find someone to sort this out without profiting or for their own self promotion. IF this does turn out to be the begining of the end, I blame them. Not the refineries, the over population, whatever, I blame the ones who may have known but needed to use the information as their personal weapon instead of a warning.
Gore burns more fuels etc, on a DAILY basis w/o the travelling , and sadly, Mr. Suzuki has long turned to the dark side of environmental science. that is, not fixing it , just blaming others.
Somebody step up, take the reins, find out what REALLY needs to be found out. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 5/29/2007 5:05:45 AM | Is Al Gore a hypocrite? Actually it's a good question.
Where was the issue of global warming in the public eye before Al Gore came by with his book/movie "An Inconvenient Truth?" Scientists argued about the nits, and published regular reports saying "the sky is falling"again and again. Now, global warming is front page news. Canada's former MoE Ambrose was replaced because she wasn't up to the task of such a high profile portfolio. Was that Gore's doing? Or was it the EU buying in, with the Stern Review? Because of a forum thread on PoF? I'd say it's because the evidence is strong, and Gore is once again on the leading edge of an important issue.
He brought the issue profile because he believes the issue is important, not because the issue would bring him profile.
W.r.t. energy consumption. Gore drives a hybrid. Gore was purchasing carbon credits to be CO2 neutral before anyone in the MSM knew that you could. Gore does have a big house, could probably make do with a smaller one. Would anyone like to compare Gore with either Dan Quayle or****Cheney in terms of hypocrisy? | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 5/29/2007 6:23:09 AM | Actually Al Gore has THREE Hybrid Vehicles, or did a month ago, maybe more. He did not or wont answer how many standard cars he has. You think we need (ed) Al Gore to bring Global warming to the forefront of the global stage? Nein. Typically, for many, purchasing credits to be Co2 neutral will be a great way to use money to simply continue living this "destructive lifestyle" that he ranted about in Texas, and, when our group met him in Illinois.
Al Gore is nothing more than a spokesman, plain and simple, a rich one with a memorable name. Oh, and those hybrid vehicles, he joked with us that they still had the plastic covers on the seats, yet again buying respect or trying to.
I have said it once and I will say it again, IF this is a true Global Crisis, no-one is listening to the "folksie charm " of Gore or the now too usual rants of Suzuki. Is threre anyone in Europe who is heading this crisis, any major group, etc someone with clout?
Oh and nice to see you again Brenda!
:)
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 5/29/2007 10:04:40 PM |
Is threre anyone in Europe who is heading this crisis, any major group, etc someone with clout?
Who would you consider as someone with clout? Will Gro Harlem Brundtland do? She is, along with former South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo and former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, special envoy to the UN Secretary General on the issue of climate change. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/1/2007 10:19:31 PM | The current federal governments of Canada and the US both are claiming that reducing carbon emissions will hurt the economy. But one American state, which took the initiative of reducing greenhouse gasses is beginning to reap economic rewards from the "green energy" economy.
California's determination to slash greenhouse gas emissions is touching off a "new gold rush" worth tens of billions of dollars for companies taking a stake in the booming green energy sector, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said yesterday at an economic summit in Vancouver.
Mr. Schwarzenegger said his state, which has a larger economy than all but six of the world's national governments, is eager to strike relationships with businesses that can help California meet tough new emission standards adopted last year.
"Ladies and gentlemen we have the opportunity once again. The Wall Street Journal has just said that our new fuel standard has companies eager to supply low carbon products to California's $50-billion annual transportation fuel market. They call it California's new gold rush.
As an indication of the size and scope of the opportunities, Mr. Schwarzenegger noted a decision by General Electric to concentrate its research and development investments in products that help lower emissions.
"GE sales of green clean technology products is $12-billion annually," Mr. Schwarzenegger said. "They are now just investing in green clean technology because that's where the profits and the growth is. Their goal is by 2010 to sell $20-billion worth of goods and they are already backlogged by $50-billion. So that is the kind of growth you see in that area." http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=271dd478-75e3-405c-aa40-fb42fa15ccdd&k=30593
One thing Gore commented on in his documentary was that the economic consequences that North American governments fear would happen by reducing carbon emmissions, would likely be off-set by economic opporunities in the development of green power.
Something that's begun happening in Europe already.
Quite likely, political jurisdictions that are late, joining the movement to convert to "green energy", will miss out on the economic benefits that will be enjoyed in the coming years, by areas that are among the first to develope their green energy economies.
While California develops a green energy economy Saskatchewan, will continue to generate electricity by burning coal. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/4/2007 4:08:12 AM | | CBC's Fifth Estate had the major segment of their program last night devoted to the global warming skeptics. Several of the principals were on the tobacco industry side during the smoking/cancer/addiction debates. Many are financed by Exxon, although they've managed to contort their relationship so they can deny the support. None were leading scientists in the climate science research community. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/4/2007 3:04:36 PM |
CBC's Fifth Estate had the major segment of their program last night devoted to the global warming skeptics. Several of the principals were on the tobacco industry side during the smoking/cancer/addiction debates. Many are financed by Exxon, although they've managed to contort their relationship so they can deny the support. None were leading scientists in the climate science research community.
Most of global warming skeptics. have nothing to do with Exxon if any. This seems the be what "Global Warming Alarmist" say about anyone who even asks for proof that "Global Warming" is only caused by man
watch these two videos.
CNBC Interview Sheryl Crow & Laurie David on Global Warming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i8xZopJq_U
Patrick Michaels on Joe Kernan vs Sheryl Crow & Laurie David
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcs5BpssNlQ&mode=related&search=
Joe Kernen is co-anchor of “Squawk Box,” (M-F, 6 -9 a.m. ET) CNBC’s signature morning program. “Squawk Box” is a fast paced, irreverent look at the world of Wall Street, and the longest running program on the network. Kernen is based in CNBC’s global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Prior to his anchoring duties, Kernen was CNBC’s On-Air Stock Editor and was featured throughout the Business Day on CNBC.
Joe Kernen holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Colorado in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Master’s Degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his graduate studies he worked at the MIT Center for Cancer Research, one of the world’s premier institutions. His work focused on mouse erythroleukemia cells, and resulted in a series of publications in well known scientific journals including CELL, Developmental Biology, and Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology.
I guess someone who has a Master Degree from MIT and worked as a cancer researcher... must not know as much about science as a rock star like Cheryl crow . | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/4/2007 6:16:19 PM | Sheryl Crow and Laurie David are not particularly credible spokeswomen on the global warming issue, I agree. Neither is a scientist. David's background is in entertainment and activism; she was a producer of the film "An Inconvenient Truth".
Joe Kernen has a science background, fifteen years ago, in cancer research. That doesn't make him an expert on global warming. His assumptions are wrong. The "documentary" GGWS has been discounted by the experts. He sounds more credible than Crow and David, because he's asking the questions, and they don't really have answers, but David does note that most of the points Kernen raises from the GGWS were addressed by Gore in AIT.
Here is a rebuttal of GGWS from the day after it was aired in Britain:
Climate Change Denial
http://climatedenial.org/2007/03/09/the-great-channel-four-swindle/ | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/14/2007 8:46:02 AM | I am pleased to see that many of the people posting here have rejected the intrusion of Al Gore into our political life in Saskatchewan.
I would like to first of all begin by agreeing with many of the people here, that regardless of the current focus or elevated concern over the worlds "climate" it is important to be good stewards in all our endevours - not only the environment of which climate is a natural by-product. That said, it is important to realize that Green issues in Saskatchewan are about the most ridiculous politics, irrelevant and exploitive, that anyone could raise; there are two reasons for this.
Firstly and most importantly Saskatchewan has nothing but Blue-Skys and Clear-Clean-Water. Anyone who is really interested in Green Party's should make immediate plans to move to a region like Ontario (smog riddent Toronto) or New York City where polution is a real issue. Moreover, Saskatchewan's miniscule population of 1 million souls will never have anything like the impact of the the 400 Million people who also inhabit the North American Contenant nor the over 6000 Million who are poluting the planet today.
Secondly, given the first point above, it far more likely that another political agenda is at work when foreign politicians ever set foot across our borders to influence Saskatchewan politicians or public opinion here. Promotion of Green technologies is highly motivated by the desire of countries like the United States to access Saskatchewan resources on more and more free and prolific basis. This has been going on for many decades under changing political methodologies - all of which are bad for Saskatchewan's citizens and Saskatchewan herself. The rent economy that the NDP's Blakney blabbered about, for example, is nothing more than the prostitution of Saskatchewan - a desire strong within and inherent to the NDP foundational character.
The inconvenient truth of this situation is that the foreigners who desire to influence public opinion in Saskatchewan are doing nothing more than the bidding of their own countries governments in order to carry out their own foreign agenda's of increasing the resource exploitation of Saskatchewan. The only thing that will stop this is a foot on their throats and greater awareness of such motives along with a complete destruction of local political parties such as the NDP, Saskparty, and Liberals whose economics facilitate this resource misappropriation in Saskatchewan. The NDP for example has signed every accord for the last 70 years that has allowed greater and greated rape of Saskatchewan natural resources and the Saskparty is promising nearly free access to polution producing resources on a greater and freer scale for the United States - theft to be sure.
I for one would like to say Al Gore may be an interesting character from a narrow perspective in a carfully managed aspect, however, I just can't feel any real care in the world for a guy who one day says he "invented the internet" and the next says he is responsible for beginning the global green movement. The best place for Al Gore's exceptionally unique ego and desire to express it is in a Psychiatrists office.
As a footnote Al Gore used a program called "Pages" on produced by Apple Computers for the computers to make his touted slide show. The program and Apple's inovation are far more responsible for the slickness of the presentation than Al Gore's ingenuity ever was. The images and videos he shows are all readily available through the internet. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/14/2007 5:55:24 PM | Firstly and most importantly Saskatchewan has nothing but Blue-Skys and Clear-Clean-Water. Anyone who is really interested in Green Party's should make immediate plans to move to a region like Ontario (smog riddent Toronto) or New York City where polution is a real issue. I assume that the point of this comment was meant to be that pollution is having no huge effect on Sask at the moment????
The purpose of this thread was Gore's message on climate change. The topic wasn't really about pollution.
Climate change will have an impact on people in Saskatchewan, in many ways:
-agriculture. I doubt that a civil servant realises the impact of agriculture to the economic livelihood of Saskatchewan but, Agriculture is still the province's most economically important industry. Scientists have theorised that raising the earth's temperature a couple degrees could turn the plains of southern Saskatchewan into a desert, as the evaporation rate would increase significantly. This would destroy the province's economy.
-severe storms. The severityo f storms is expected to increase. Here in Sask it could mean more losses of crops and property to wind, hail and tornados, effecting us directly.
Elsewhere in the world, particularly coastal areas, damages from could become even more severe. If you think that doesn't effect us in Sask, then maybe you're assuming the Canadian government won't spend significant amounts of your tax dollars on foriegn aid to help affected areas. Also, if you're totally unaware of how the world works, I'll let you know that when an insure company suffers monetary losses, they recover those loses by increasing the premiums charged to policy holders.
-disease. Diseases that were once confined to warmer areas have begun spreading. West Nile is a good example of a disease that was unheard of in North America until a few years ago. Within a couple of years after appearing on the east coast, it spread across the continent and it's a real threat here.
Not only do new diseases put each of us at risk, they add costs to our tax-payer funded health system.
-water. Many cities and towns in Sask rely on water from River systems that originate in the Rocky mountains. If the snow pack in these mountains were to disappear, these river systems would be threatened. If the South Sask River were to dry up, it wouldn't be an easy task to find an alternate water source for a city the size of Saskatoon.
I could go on listing examples of Climate change's potential effects on Sask for quite awhile. But I think I've already made the point that climate change does have an effect on Saskatchewan
Moreover, Saskatchewan's miniscule population of 1 million souls will never have anything like the impact of the the 400 Million people who also inhabit the North American Contenant nor the over 6000 Million who are poluting the planet today. Our 1 million souls are making an impact as we speak. Much of our electricity that we're using comes from the coal fired generating plants at Estevan and Coronach.
Also, our 1 million souls have a much higher standard of living, than most of the world. We contribute to the problem by driving, heating our homes, relying on consumer goods that are transported by truck, flying on planes, etc, that much of the world can't afford to do.
The few souls in Sask have a potential to make some impact on the levels of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere by using more efficient transportation methods, making homes and workplaces more energy efficient, and using greener sources of electricity such as wind, hydro, or newer cleaner-burning coal plants.
Saskatchewan's huge, under-popluated land base can also be considered a large "carbon sink". Acres of trees and grasslands can trap carbon from being released into the atmosphere. Also converting farmland from convential tillage to "zero till" furthers Saskatchewan's potential as a carbon sink.
Al Gore used a program called "Pages" on produced by Apple Computers for the computers to make his touted slide show so what?????
It is 2007. People paying $75 to see his presentation, likely weren't expecting him to draw on a blackboard with a piece of chalk.
The fact that he used an effective, modern medium to convey his message, shouldn't diminish from the message. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient temporaryTruth
Posted: 6/14/2007 9:57:04 PM | From childhood on; the environment, and our abuse of the planet have been continually brought to the forefront, Al Gore is but one of many doom sayers. I watched his presentation and it did increase my knowledge and I became more concerned about emmisions of carbon dioxide. Concern lead to research reseach lead to A Crude Awakening. I no longer fear global warming, as we will run out of fossil fuels long before permenant damage is done.
http://www.crudeawakening.org/ | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/15/2007 8:09:51 AM |
Our 1 million souls are making an impact as we speak. Much of our electricity that we're using comes from the coal fired generating plants at Estevan and Coronach.
It is a troubling fiction for anyone to say Saskatchewan makes an "impact" as the Saskatchewan coal emissions are but 0.06 percent of the polution produced in Canada; an amount that pales in comparison to Calgary's polution-belching-can't-see-down-the-block problems. Calgary alone is responsible for 430 times more polution in one day that all of Saskatchewan. That's an inconvenient truth to be sure! Green Party people should move to Calgary to fight for clean issues there. Saskatchewan has a good environment and will stay that way if keep the immigration at a normal level. Have you ever read the story about Chicken Little...
There are many versions of the story, but the basic premise is that a chicken called Chicken Licken (or Chicken Little) eats lunch one day, and believes the sky is falling down because an acorn falls on her head. She decides to tell the King, and on her journey meets other animals who join her in the quest. In most retellings, the other animals have similarly rhyming names. Finally, they come across Foxy Loxy, a fox who offers Chicken Licken and her friends his help. After this point, there are many endings. In the most famous one, Foxy Loxy eats Chicken Licken's friends...
I think someone should make a slideshow that renames Al Gore and all the other Sky-is-falling folks Chicken Littles. Like Foxy Loxy in Chicken Little, many people who are offering to help us regular hard-working citizens are simply interested in setting themselves up as our Enviromental Overlords, complete with the self-proclaimed higher consciousness, simply to consume something we have or taking something from us; whether it be something as simple as our dignity or as damaging as our savings, these issues always end up costing regular citizens more to foot the bill on. For example, I denounce completely anyone who who sacrifice our Seniors well-being in order to raise the price of natural gas or some other product these elderly people need to heat their homes or live their lives... and don't be fooled, I would crush such a person in an instant if it was a choice between seniors who built Saskatchewan's quality of life and some Enviromentalists Agenda...
Anyway, all this talk about coal fired plants you are raising unfortunately only plays into the hands of foreigners and people from other parts of Canada who desire to gain access to our resources. I know that's not your goal but just be aware of it and it will improve our stewardship and unite us. I can see from reading your statements that you don't want to argue with your fellow citizens over green issues as that is not productive. Unlike your enlightened statements, unfortunately, there are some few people out there who I have a far greater issue with who attempt to set themselves up as Environmental Overlords and divide and distract Saskatchewan people by parroting foreigners concerns over issues important to poluted cities (places like Toronto NewYork etc) that have nothing to do with Saskatchewan.
I assume that the point of this comment was meant to be that pollution is having no huge effect on Sask at the moment????
The purpose of this thread was Gore's message on climate change. The topic wasn't really about pollution.
Not quite the point: the point was that anyone who feels it is central to their life and needs to fight a "Green Party" issue would find much greener fields in which to do battle in a place like Toronto or Calgary where there are days that you cannot see down the block due to smog created by out of control immigration into densly populated centers. There has never been a day in Saskatchewan where any citizen has not been able to see all the way to the horizon.
Because of that, I encourage Green Party people to get to a place like Toronto as soon as possible! It's imperative that the fight for our environment be fought in places like Toronto where polution is an issue. I for one an not going to let "Foxy Loxy" or some "Chicken Little" either try to convince me the sky is falling or eat me alive over something that is a non-starter issue in Blue-sky-clean-water Saskatchewan.
I was glad to read your commments, you make good statements that go along the line of stewardship and I applaud you! | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/15/2007 9:23:32 AM | http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/01/31/biofuel-nightmares-indonesian-palm-plantations/
Mandated usage of ‘clean fuels’, to individually allocated levels, have been imposed on European states. Since these states do not have sufficient land to grow the crops required for biofuel production, they’re attempting to meet their biofuel quota through imports from developing countries like Malaysia and Indonesia instead.
The fate of these forests did hang momentarily in the balance some time ago, but in an horrific example of the power of the WTO (World Trade Organisation) to overpower local considerations, the chainsaws were effectively given the go-ahead:
In the report it published last month, when it announced that it will obey the European Union and ensure that 5.75% of our transport fuel comes from plants by 2010, it admitted that “the main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and South East Asia (for palm oil plantations).” It suggested that the best means of dealing with the problem was to prevent environmentally destructive fuels from being imported. The government asked its consultants whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The answer was yes: “mandatory environmental criteria … would greatly increase the risk of international legal challenge to the policy as a whole”. So it dropped the idea of banning imports, and called for “some form of voluntary scheme” instead. Knowing that the creation of this market will lead to a massive surge in imports of palm oil, knowing that there is nothing meaningful it can do to prevent them, and knowing that they will accelarate rather than ameliorate climate change, the government has decided to go ahead anyway. - Monbiot
For more info on the huge influence world trade is having on our environment, see The Corporation. But for now, let’s see the latest on the Palm Oil nightmare:
Just a few years ago, politicians and environmental groups in the Netherlands were thrilled by the early and rapid adoption of “sustainable energy,” achieved in part by coaxing electrical plants to use biofuel — in particular, palm oil from Southeast Asia.
Spurred by government subsidies, energy companies became so enthusiastic that they designed generators that ran exclusively on the oil, which in theory would be cleaner than fossil fuels like coal because it is derived from plants.
But last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare.
Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.
Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Considering these emissions, Indonesia had quickly become the world’s third-leading producer of carbon emissions that scientists believe are responsible for global warming, ranked after the United States and China, according to a study released in December by researchers from Wetlands International and Delft Hydraulics, both in the Netherlands.
“It was shocking and totally smashed all the good reasons we initially went into palm oil,” said Alex Kaat, a spokesman for Wetlands, a conservation group.
The production of biofuels, long a cornerstone of the quest for greener energy, may sometimes create more harmful emissions than fossil fuels, scientific studies are finding. - New York Times
It’s interesting how this is phrased - “scientific studies are finding”, as if this is a recent discovery. Even as far back as 1979 a U.S. government initiated study concluded that the EROEI (Energy Returned Over Energy Invested) made biofuel production unviable, but those studies clashed with industry interests at the time - and ever since.
I’m relieved that this topic is starting to get a little attention. But why, why, why, does it take environmental disasters to bring it home to policy-makers? The results of importing palm oil into Europe for biofuels should have been astonishingly easy to predict, and, indeed, were predicted. Regardless, governments have encouraged the destruction of rainforests by not only subsidising their use in Europe, but, worse, allowing their importation from outside her borders - where environmental regulations are virtually non-existent or difficult to enforce.
As a result, politicians in many countries are rethinking the billions of dollars in subsidies that have indiscriminately supported the spread of all of these supposedly eco-friendly fuels for vehicles and factories. The 2003 European Union Biofuels Directive, which demands that all member states aim to have 5.75 percent of transportation run by biofuel in 2010, is now under review.
… Biofuelswatch, an environment group in Britain, now says that “biofuels should not automatically be classed as renewable energy.” It supports a moratorium on subsidies until more research can determine whether various biofuels in different regions are produced in a nonpolluting manner.
Beyond that, the group suggests that all emissions arising from the production of a biofuel be counted as emissions in the country where the fuel is actually used, providing a clearer accounting of environmental costs.
The demand for palm oil in Europe has soared in the last two decades…. The increasing demand has created damage far away. Friends of the Earth estimates that 87 percent of the deforestation in Malaysia from 1985 to 2000 was caused by new palm oil plantations. In Indonesia, the amount of land devoted to palm oil has increased 118 percent in the last eight years.
In December, scientists from Wetlands International released their calculations about the global emissions caused by palm farming on peatland.
Peat is an organic sponge that stores huge amounts of carbon, helping balance global emissions. Peatland is 90 percent water. But when it is drained, the Wetlands International scientists say, the stored carbon gases are released into the atmosphere.
To makes matters worse, once dried, peatland is often burned to clear ground for plantations. The Dutch study estimated that the draining of peatland in Indonesia releases 660 million ton of carbon a year into the atmosphere and that fires contributed 1.5 billion tons annually.
The total is equivalent to 8 percent of all global emissions caused annually by burning fossil fuels, the researchers said. “These emissions generated by peat drainage in Indonesia were not counted before,” said Mr. Kaat. “It was a totally ignored problem.” For the moment Wetlands is backing the certification system for palm oil imports.
But some environmental groups say palm oil cannot be produced sustainably at reasonable prices. They say palm oil is now cheap because of poor environmental practices and labor abuses.
“Yes, there have been bad examples in the palm oil industry,” said Arjen Brinkman, a company official at Biox, a young company that plans to build three palm oil electrical plants in Holland, using oil from palms grown on its own plantations in a manner that it says is responsible.
“But it is now clear,” he said, “that to serve Europe’s markets for biofuel and bioenergy, you will have to prove that you produce it sustainably — that you are producing less, not more CO2.” - New York Times
Great, Europe is learning an important biofuel lesson. But, unfortunately, this doesn’t get the rainforests in southeast Asia replanted. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/15/2007 5:46:23 PM | Have you ever read the story about Chicken Little... kind of a stupid comparisson.
In the "Chicken Little "story, the chicken stated that the sky was falling, when it was not falling.
In real life, people have pointed out that increased levels of carbon in the atmosphere, are raising the earth's temperature, when it is happening.
These claims aren't based on a chicken's assumption. They're based on scientific data.
I encourage Green Party people You mention "Green Party people" numerious times in your response to me.
I hope you're not incorrectly assuming that I'm simply an uninformed, but well-meaning green party supporter.
I've never voted for them. Have no immediate plans to do so, and likely never will.
When I see "Green Party Supporter", I assume it's a reference to an unemployable animal right's activist, who's spent 11 years in University but can't get a job, and is taking up a stand for every fringe issue on the far left of the political spectrum. Which really doesn't describe me at all. | |
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| Al Gore: A LIAR, A fool, a LOOSER
Posted: 6/16/2007 4:29:18 PM | Hello PPL, wake up AL is a POLITICIAN...= LIAR in it for HIS Gain. He dosent practice what he preaches (chooses to preach his current tune as no one cared for his old ones). HIS OWN HOME IS NOT ENERGY EFFICIENT! He flies around in a PLANE..perhaps the most inefficient way to travel!
Wake UP. You dont need some bafoon to tell you theres problems, just change yer lightbulbs... walk to work, and dont burn yer garbage! OK thats all you can do! | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/17/2007 7:45:01 AM | HeyYou/ReginaSK
The argument you make, that Saskatchewan is too small to matter is the same argument made by people too apathetic to vote. - I'm one of 5,000 or 50,000, or 5,000,000, or 5,000,000,000, of what consequence are my actions? So it doesn't matter. - Ask the Americans, where Al Gore won the 2000 election, or didn't, depending on which votes you count, whether it matters.
You claim no responsibility for your actions, because your impact is so small.
If I steal one cookie from the cookie jar, nobody will notice. If twenty people steal cookies from the cookie jar, will anyone notice? Eventually, you'll notice. Saskatchewan has fewer citizens than Alberta, but so what? If I take away your rights, but let everyone else keep theirs, what does it matter? You're of little or no consequence, right? Rights and responsibilities are a matched pair. | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/17/2007 7:58:16 AM | niceguy and I agree on something. Biofuels are not the solution to our transportation problems, and they will most likely increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Who'dathunkit? | |
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| Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth
Posted: 6/23/2008 8:02:32 AM | | What most of you are missing with Al Gore is that he DID do something when he was Vice-President of the US. He signed the Kyoto protocol. Most of you may wonder at that, why the US doesn't abide by Kyoto if that's true? The reason is that the US Senate, which he presided over as VP, passed a resolution against Kyoto's implementation (and the count was 98-0, not even the most environmental Senator would come to Kyoto's defense). That wasn't Gore's "fault," if you will. | |
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