Friday - August 21, 2009

ICE CAPS ARE MELTING … REALLY? WELL, MAYBE NOT SAYS GREENPEACE?

In a rush at this moment but found this and must post.
H/T Watts Up With That and James Dilingpole

Well it is that time of year again, the Arctic ice begins to melt, as it does every year, and all sorts of crazy talk starts coming out. This time from Greenpeace. I am encouraged though, as they have come around to the idea that maybe they are doing more harm than good by overselling the alarmism.

NSIDC also has taken a more moderate tone, announcing that there will “likely be no record low ice extent in 2009“. This is a sharp contrast to last year’s ridiculous press statement from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze about an “ice free north pole”. Now that Greenpeace has come clean on their statement, maybe Dr. Serreze will finally admit his statement was “a mistake”. – Anthony

From Not Evil Just Wrong:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/19/ice-capades-greenpeace-recants-polar-ice-claim/

link for more

Posted by peiper     on 08/21/2009 at 04:10 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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   Monday - August 17, 2009

The New Dark Ages of Britain & The U.S.

H/T Warning Signs
Reading this is not a waste of your time. Take a look.
It’s long so see LINK for the rest.

The New Dark Ages of Britain & The U.S.

By Alan Caruba

I have long believed that the environmental movement, particularly in America, is quite literally an internal enemy, no less insidious than the efforts of the former Soviet Union to infiltrate spies and agents of influence into our government to affect policy.

I know that sounds harsh, but one needs only look at Great Britain where environmentalism has turned that once great nation into a virtual police state where every bizarre and insane environmental policy is culminating in a nation that will soon be experiencing blackouts and brownouts to its entire system of providing electricity.

“In the frigid opening days of 2009, Britain’s electricity demand peaked at 59 gigawatts. Just over 45% of that came from power plants fuelled by gas from the North Sea. A further 35% or so came from coal, less than 15% came from nuclear power and the rest from a hotchpotch of other sources.” The problem England faces, according to the August 8th edition of The Economist, is that it will soon be dependent on “Vladimir Putin’s deeply unreliable and corrupt Russia.”

This report comes when both the Russians and the Chinese have signed agreements with Cuba, just ninety miles from Florida, to begin to explore and extract its offshore oil. America, however, denies access to 85% of all of its offshore oil and natural gas reserves along its extensive east and west coasts. It further denies access to its huge deposits of coal in its Midwestern States. We import 60% of the oil we consume; much of it comes from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela.

There hasn’t been a new refinery built in the United States since the 1970s. The bulk of our electric grid for the distribution of electricity was built in the 1950s and 60s. In the last days of his administration President Bush rescinded the ban on offshore exploration and extraction, but that ban has been reinstated by the Obama administration.

As The Economist noted, regarding the United Kingdom’s energy policy, “this is almost criminal.” It is no less so for America, a nation’s whose success has been based on vast amounts of coal, oil and natural gas. It is coal that provides just over 50% of our electricity. It is nuclear power that proves another 20%. The rest comes from our own hotchpotch of gas and hydroelectric power.

In recent years, leading environmental organizations have been crowing about having thwarted the building of more than one hundred coal-fired new plants. Wilderness areas like Alaska’s ANWR have been put off-limits to extraction despite estimated reserves of oil in the billions of barrels.

Comparable areas in America known to have vast reserves of coal have been put off-limits as well. The process of securing the permits to build a nuclear plant has slowed it to a crawl and often meets with NIMBY (not in my backyard) resistance.

If a foreign enemy denied this “master resource” of energy to America, we would go to war with it, but the enemy is internal and, at present, it occupies the White House and is in control of the Congress.

Posted by peiper     on 08/17/2009 at 08:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Environment •  
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   Sunday - August 02, 2009

DOING MY BIT TO HELP THE TREE HUGERS. NOT. JUST BOUGHT ANOTHER CASE OF 50, 100W BULBS.

Yeah, I’m still buying and hoarding.  I got 40 Brit type bayonet bulbs and 10 American screw type. Called Edison bulbs here.
So that’s 100 I’ve bought added to the heaven knows how many already saved.

I think I need some 75Watt as well.  Can’t remember exactly why though. But hey ... since the EU has ruled and the Brits have gone along with it, I need to make certain I have enough to last till the day we can get the heck outta here. And that might be two years down the road.  Damn, at my age that’s a life sentence.

So while we’re on planet saving ...... and the hoax of things gween ...........

Here’s my favorite Climate Change guru on unmasking the hoax of the church of Bore.  The greens hate him so you know we have to love the guy.

Oh. btw. The MET office mentioned here is the weather bureau in our terms.  And for the official Peiper Flannel PJs journal, which I just made up.

In the entire month of July there weren’t more then maybe 7 nights that I wore cotten as it got that cool at night the rest of that month. Which is nice. Am still wearing flannel here in August although I admit I have changed from the heavier flannel to the lighter weight flannel.  Hope it stays this way the rest of the summer coz we have no air cond. here. When it does get hot, it gets very much so and humid too.

Weather records are a state secret
The IPCC’s computer models have proved just as wrong in predicting global temperatures as the Met Office has been in forecasting those mild winters and heatwave summers, says Christopher Booker.

By Christopher Booker
Telegraph

Everyone has enjoyed the discomfiture of the Met Office, caught out over its April forecast that we were in for a “barbecue summer” – not least because this is the third year running that our weathermen have got their predictions for both summer and winter hopelessly wrong. In 2007 and 2008 they forecast that summers would be warmer and drier, and winters milder than average – just before temperatures plunged and the heavens opened, deluging us with abnormal rain or snow according to season.

One cause of the blunders that have made the Met Office a laughing stock is less widely appreciated, however. It is that the multi-million pound ($) computer it uses to assist its short-term forecasting for Britain is also one of the four main official sources of data used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to predict global warming. In this respect the IPCC’s computer models have proved just as wrong in predicting global temperatures as the Met Office has been in forecasting those mild winters and heatwave summers.

Back in 1990, Mrs Thatcher, temporarily under the spell of the prophets of runaway global warming, authorised lavish funding for the then-head of the Met Office, Sir John Houghton, to set up its Hadley Centre in Exeter, as a “world-class centre for research into climate change”. It was linked to the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, to create a record of global temperatures based on surface weather stations across the world, a data set known as HadCrut. Sir John himself played a key role at the top of the new IPCC as chairman of its scientific working group.

Sir John was a fervent believer in the theory that the cause of global warming is man-made CO2, and the HadCrut computer models, run by his CRU ally Professor Phil Jones, were programmed accordingly. Sir John (and the Hadley Centre) continued to play a central part in the running of the IPCC, selecting many of the contributors to its reports that were the main driver of global warming alarm. He and Prof Jones were also prominent champions of the IPCC’s notorious “hockey stick” graph, which rewrote climate history by suggesting that global temperatures had suddenly shot up in the late 20th century to easily their highest level in history.

In recent years, however, the whole theory has come under increasing fire because, as CO2 levels continue to rise, temperatures have failed to follow suit as the IPCC’s computer models predicted they should. Part of the reason why the Met Office has made such a mess of its forecasts for Britain is that they are based on the same models which failed to predict the declining trend in world temperatures since 2001.

In recent months, in fact, a curious little drama has been unfolding over attempts by Steve McIntyre, a Canadian statistical expert, to get the Met Office and the CRU to divulge the computer data on which they base their temperature record. Mr McIntyre was not only the chief demolisher of the “hockey stick”, showing how it was based on a seriously skewed computer model, but later exposed the “adjustments” which had skewed the other official record of surface temperatures, run by Dr James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. (The two other official sources of temperature data are based on satellite measurements.)

When Mr McIntyre made Freedom of Information requests to see the data used to construct the HadCrut record (as he has chronicled on his ClimateAudit blog) he was given an almighty brush-off, the Met Office saying that this information was strictly confidential and that to release it would damage Britain’s “international relations” with all the countries that supplied it.

The idea that temperature records might be a state secret seems strange enough, but when the policies of governments across the world are based on that data it becomes odder still that no outsider should be allowed to see it. Weirdest of all, however, is the Met Office’s claim that to release the data would “damage the trust that scientists have in those scientists who happen to be employed in the public sector”.

Doesn’t the Met Office realise that trust in it has already been damaged enough by its batty predictions of “barbecue summers”? If it wants to restore that trust, it should first come clean about its data, and then reprogramme its computer to give us forecasts that are not skewed by its obsession with global warming – which is not happening.

BOOKER

Posted by peiper     on 08/02/2009 at 01:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Environment • UK •  
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   Sunday - June 28, 2009

The argument is over re. gorebal warming? Is when nobody wants to listen or debate.

I can hear that collective gasp of disbelief from BMEWS regulars.
Nah ... they wouldn’t bar the guy just because he has another POV.  Noooooooo.

I,ve been reading this guy and posting his comments on a fairly regular basis.  He isn’t well received of course among the tree huggers. Another reason to appreciate him.  But this one wins a prize of some kind.

Here ... catch this.

Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views ‘are extremely unhelpful’ , reveals Christopher Booker.

Christopher Booker
Sunday Telegraph

Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists’ agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.
Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week’s meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming.

So in other words, the question is settled and not open to debate.  Another case of, don’t fill my head with facts, my mind is already made up.

The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor’s, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: “it was the position you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition”.

Dr Taylor was told that his views running “counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful”. His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was “inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG”.

So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of “scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice”. But also check out Anthony Watt’s Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year’s recovery from its September 2007 low, this year’s ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine.

And the USA is finally signing on to this crap, as I understand it.
Well, they’ll love ya in Europe.  For awhile.

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH



[Drew sticks his nose in, sniffs around, and adds a little to this post:]
What, you mean this “vanishing” sea ice? Allowing for a little seasonal variation, it looks to me like things are perfectly normal up there. Perfectly. Normal.
More data at good old Cryosphere Today.
Yes, it really does appear that “the seas began to heal” the moment we elected Obama. Damn!

You know what impresses me most about these graphs? Look at those 2 anomalous melting spikes in May. Now notice how the ice froze right up again afterwards. In May. Late Spring. And the ice re-froze. Twice.

Also, don’t draw conclusions that some of the ice packs are at a lower level right this second than average, when compared to the base 1979-2000 data. It’s summer time, remember?

Posted by peiper     on 06/28/2009 at 12:25 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Environment •  
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   Monday - June 22, 2009

Bloody Druids

Stonehenge left littered with rubbish after 36,500 revellers descend on ancient site for summer solstice

Stonehenge was littered with rubbish this morning after record numbers of people descended on the site for the summer solstice.

Around 36,500 people enjoyed the carnival atmosphere at the ancient stone circle on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire - but pagan worshippers were left disappointed after fellow revellers left the site strewn with rubbish.

Druid Jim Saunders, 33, from Reading, is a member of the Aes Dana Grove order.

‘It is nice to see a lot of people here because there is no better place to learn about our culture and history.

‘But it is upsetting to see so much litter, and some people can be disrespectful.’

Posted by Drew458     on 06/22/2009 at 11:58 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment • History • Typical White People: Stupid, Evil, Willfully Blind • UK •  
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   Monday - June 15, 2009

New gween plan for recycling. Bigger fine for those who don’t, then for those who shoplift.

New gween plan for recycling. Bigger fine for those who don’t, then for those who shoplift.
Hey ... this is the UK and, logic rules? 
Just how many containers will households have to keep track of and store?

Here’s what’ll happen I predict.  More people who have the room in their back gardens (and some who don’t) will be making greater use of bonfires. Which btw is legal here.  Can be a bother too when the wind gets in the right (wrong from your pov if you’re in the path) direction and the fumes come indoors.  It’s happened to us here more then once.  I think more folks will be doing that.  Then too I think the idiots who already do, will flytip to a greater degree.
That is, dumping rubbish on the roadsides or in out of the way but still public places.

Recycle your waste or face a £100 fine, says Government
By Steve Doughty

Every household will be forced to recycle their rubbish under new Government plans.

Those who fail to comply are likely to face £100 on-the-spot fines - rising to £1,000 for persistently flouting the law.

Under the scheme, everyone will have to keep a kitchen slopbucket to hold their food waste and scraps.

Glass, cans, wood and paper will be banned from wheelie bins to force people to separate them in recycling boxes.

The idea of councils charging bin taxes was killed off earlier this year by then Waste Minister Jane Kennedy.
But within hours of her resignation from Government yesterday, Environment Minister Hilary Benn announced a consultation on compulsory recycling.
He said: ‘It’s time for a new war on waste.’

The scheme follows four years of controversy over fortnightly collections, bin taxes and other Government efforts to enforce recycling and reduce the amount of refuse sent to landfill sites.

Under the system, food waste will have to be kept in a caddie in the home until collection by binmen.
Ideally this should be weekly, but many cash-strapped councils will only commit to fortnightly collections.

Once collected by binmen, the waste will be taken to central ‘anaerobic digestion’ plants and used to generate energy.
The process, however, has never been used profitably in past years.

Mr Benn said: ‘Take food, glass, aluminium or wood - why would you want to put any of them into landfill when they can be recycled, or used to make energy? What sort of a society would throw away aluminium cans worth £500 a ton when producers are crying out for the raw material?’
A consultation paper on compulsory recycling will be published this year, followed by a detailed consultation next year.

Compulsory recycling has been tried out in four London boroughs. The schemes, which require householders to put certain materials in specified bins, apply only to those living in houses, not flat dwellers.

In one borough, householders failing to comply face £100 on-the-spot fines.  This compares with £80 fines for shoplifters who steal goods worth under £200.

In other areas, fines of up to £1,000 are imposed by courts on those who persist in breaking the rules. Doretta Cocks, of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections, said: ‘They just are not getting the message.

‘Who is going to police this system? It means bigger and bigger rubbish-police forces. ‘How else are they going to work out if someone has put vegetable peelings in their wheelie bin?  ‘Taxpayers and council tax payers will be footing the bill. It’s ridiculous.’

(of course it’s ridiculous. it’s labour, int it?)

Tory communities spokesman Caroline Spelman said: ‘More needs to be done to increase recycling.
‘But Labour ministers’ heavyhanded approach is all about forcing councils to cut rubbish collections, sneak in bin taxes and hit families with unfair fines.’
‘Under the Government’s plans, a convicted shoplifter will receive a smaller fine than a family home for making a minor mistake in putting out their household rubbish.
‘Hard-pressed council taxpayers deserve much better than that.’

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 06/15/2009 at 01:46 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Environment • Government • UK •  
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   Sunday - May 24, 2009

Our Masters in Brussels to switch off the watt rating on light bulbs. It’s to be lumens.

No link to the story I found on the subject and so had to wing it, mostly.
But I got it in the Telegraph and the original article was written by,
Louise Gray.

Light bulbs are to be labeled in ‘lumens’ rather than watts under new European rules that critics fear will lead to a “complete mess and consumer confusion.”

Since so called energy saving bulbs no longer accurately reflect the amount of light given out, from Sept. 2010 bulbs will be labeled in lumens, which are units of light.

The heck with the tree huggers and their environment nonsense. The sky will still be there long after they’re gone and frankly, I don’t give a damn! I’m concerned with NOW.

Posted by peiper     on 05/24/2009 at 06:27 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Environment • EUro-peons • UK •  
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   Wednesday - May 20, 2009

One By One They All Fall

As the Obama administration considers further steps to fight air pollution, a recent report from a Washington think tank shows that air quality in the United States has improved significantly over the last decade.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research analyzed data collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and concluded that levels of numerous gases linked with air pollution have fallen off since 2001.

Among the findings: Carbon monoxide decreased by 39 percent, ozone by 6 percent, and sulfur dioxide by 32 percent.

“Pick any category you want and pollution levels are generally lower than they were seven years ago,” said Steven Hayward, the policy analyst who authored the report, titled “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators,” for the conservative think tank.

“(Environmental groups) said air pollution was out of control, but this was always more about politics than it was fact,” Hayward said.

In the rarefied and unpolluted air of the audiophile world, there is a concept called Diminishing Returns. [and everywhere else in life too, but the audio world is really eXtreme, so it makes a great example] A $500 CD player does a much better job of playing your disc than a $20 player. If you have really fine gear, a $2000 CD player sounds better than a $500 player.  But a $5000 player only sounds a little bit better than the $2000 model, and you can only tell the difference if the rest of your stereo is worth ... a bit more than the price of a new car. And CD players are CHEAP compared to audiophile record players!! $250 speaker cables sound a lot better than plain old zipcord wire. $1500 speaker cables sound better than the $250 ones. But the $25,000 wires are only such a slight improvement over the $1500 models that it’s a subjective judgment. And you need a quarter million dollar system in it’s own custom built sonically perfect room to tell the difference.

Yes, in the 60s the air stank. There was litter all over the roads. Love Canal. Dirty rivers that caught on fire. And so on. And yes, there are still some places today that have some industrial smoke and other kinds of smog. But how much is good enough? I think we are already past the point of reasonableness. When will enough ever be enough? Especially since a huge part of the rest of the non-white world doesn’t give a fig about air pollution, water pollution, environmental damage, waste-water treatment, conservation, or any of that stuff. As South Park’s Eric Cartman put it when stepping off the plane in a foreign land, “This whole country smells like ass!”

Posted by Drew458     on 05/20/2009 at 12:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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   Monday - May 18, 2009

LIGHT BULBS,LIGHT BULBS.  AGAIN.

This isn’t new except for me. 
I just found it while looking for 100w bulbs (trying to re-locate a company I mentioned here some weeks ago) and there it was listed and so I watched and thought why not share.

I’m not familiar with this fellow, and maybe some of you aren’t either. ??  Thing is, he makes some good points and as I know you folks already know,
this issue is one of my hobby horses. 

So I’m posting it and hope I’m not boring anyone.

Posted by peiper     on 05/18/2009 at 11:14 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •  
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   Saturday - April 25, 2009

Green Conundrum

A greenie concludes that carbon caps may kill off more species than climate change. Oh Noes!!!11! What to do?

Even if we consider the impact of environmental degradation on humanity, deforestation has a more significant and immediate impact on local weather, water availability, water quality, and soil erosion than does global climate change from greenhouse gases. The roots of trees and native brush hold loose, nutrient-rich topsoils together, slowing erosion and absorbing precipitation. You can see the impact of habitat loss on local climate by poking a stick into the parched soils of the Brazilian cerrado or wandering along the boundary of the expanding Sahel Desert in Africa.

[These days] being green is all about greenhouse gases: Neighborhood moms are more apt to fret over food miles than felled forests; organic cattle farmers are more interested in offsetting the methane coming from cow burps than pondering squished tadpoles in hoof prints. Even scientists have grown bored with question of habitat loss, tweaking their grant proposals to emphasize the climate angle no matter how tenuous the connection. Saving the Amazon is so 1980s.

Climate change has the potential to displace the most impoverished human populations and bring about food shortages, flooding, and drought. But from the perspective of saving species, it’s a MacGuffin: a plot device that may impel the tired conservation narrative forward but is hardly a pragmatic strategy for preserving biodiversity. Today, environmentalists tend to describe forests as little more than “carbon sinks,” sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If you really want to conserve plants and animals, though, that may be their least significant attribute.

Well, how about that? Thanks to Doc for the link.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/25/2009 at 11:51 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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   Sunday - April 19, 2009

THE PEOPLE SPEAK BUT … DOES ANYONE LISTEN OR CARE? NO!  THE FREEKIN EU HAS SPOKEN! PERIOD.

Pisses me off as usual. Hell, I wasn’t even aware there were anymore left to buy?  WHERE?  Not in these parts.
Oh well, we still have a cabinet full. For now.

But the EU gweenie jellyfish have spoken and the UK must go along.  Never mind only the tree huggers believe in this crap.
EU sneezes and UK catches the cold. 
Hey ... don’t be tooooo complacent there back home.  According to my embassy newsletter and listening to news here, BO wants to co-operate more with euro-peons and they are excited that the USA is “finally listening.” I don’t see that as a good sign.

You think you HATE the UN?  Ha!  Just wait till we sign on to the eu crapola.

Reminder to me ... quick. find source ... buy more 100w .... screw their carbon footprint.

what. me worry?

Customers buy up traditional light bulbs before switch to low energy alternatives
Householders are clearing the shelves of hardware stores by bulk-buying traditional light bulbs ahead of a looming EU ban.

By Alastair Jamieson
Last Updated: 11:14AM BST 19 Apr 2009

Shopkeepers say customers are “panic-buying” armfuls of the 100 watt bulbs, which are becoming increasingly scarce since many supermarkets agreed to phase them out ahead of the end-of-August deadline.

The ban on sales is supported by the government, which wants consumers to switch to low energy compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) to help meet its climate change targets.

CFLs typically cost more than four times as much as a traditional incandescent bulb – starting from £2 each compared to 50p or less – but use one fifth of the energy and can reduce electricity bills by £7 a year for each light in the home.

Many householders, however, believe the switch is unnecessary and say CFLs produce harsh and flickery light, while campaign groups blame them for triggering migraines and skin rashes. Most CFLs do not work properly in dimmer switches and those that are compatible can cost up to £12.

“Some shops have seen customers taking as many as they can carry, 20 or even 50 at a time,” said Mick Weedon, from the British Hardware Federation. “There has been mild panic-buying because it is becoming harder to get hold of the 100 watt bulbs now that the bigger stores are not stocking them.”

The 100w bulbs, as well as less common 80w bulbs, will no longer be sold after August 31. Frosted glass bulbs of all types will also be banned.

Many supermarkets and high street chains have already agreed not to replenish existing stocks as part of a voluntary agreement with the government. Traditional 60w bulbs will be allowed until the end of August 2011, with all phased out by 2013.

The trade body for light shops, the Lighting Association, says most consumers accept the need to adopt a more efficient form of lighting than the traditional bulb, which has changed little since it was invented by Thomas Edison in 1879.

However Brian Smillie, managing director of Edinburgh general store Gray’s of George Street, said: “A lot of our customers are not convinced that these new bulbs, which will end up on landfill sites, are any better and do not see why they should not have the choice to buy what they wish. We are selling lots of the traditional bulbs, sometimes at up to 50 at a time, and we keep having to scrap around to find new suppliers to restock the shelves.”

The charity Migraine Action has called for more research into the health effects of CFLs and said it was still receiving calls from sufferers who believe CFLs trigger their migraines. A spokeswoman said it was advising them to “stockpile the old type of incandescent bulb if you can”.

Argos, Tesco and Asda have already stopped replenishing stocks of 100w bulbs. A spokeswoman for Sainsbury’s said: “We have stopped selling incandescent light bulbs of 100w or over but we still sell 60w incandescent bulbs and have seen some bulk buying of these.”

Chris Gardiner, who runs three hardware stores in Cheshire including Vikings in Wilmslow, said: “We got 10,000 of the incandescent bulbs in stock because everyone was coming in asking for them. It tends to be older customers who prefer them and can’t get them anywhere else.”

Mr Weedon added: “The profit margins on a light bulb are tiny but independent stores are just happy to be seeing customers through the door at the moment and this rush to buy 100w bulbs has helped.”

Patrick Hodgell, managing director of online retailer Light Bulbs Direct said: “We have been taking large orders both from individuals and from shops. It is possible a lot of these bulbs will be turning up on offer at car boot sales once the changes take effect.”

The European Commission has admitted the bulb switch may lead to the loss of as many as 3,000 jobs in Europe because most incandescent bulbs sold in the EU are made there, while most integrated electronic lights such as compact fluorescent lamps are made in the Far East.

Posted by peiper     on 04/19/2009 at 10:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment • EUro-peons • UK •  
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   Wednesday - April 01, 2009

A partial solution

City Calls On California To Give Citizens Choice Over Junk Mail

SAN FRANCISCO, March 31—The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today passed a resolution calling on California to create a Do Not Mail Registry giving its citizens the choice to stop receiving unwanted junk mail.

Though non-binding, the resolution represents the first time American lawmakers have withstood pressure from the direct mail industry and the U.S. Postal Service to side with the majority of Americans.

Sponsored by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, the board approved the resolution by a 9-2 vote.

“Until now, junk mailers have stifled all efforts to give Americans what they want: an enforceable, comprehensive solution to junk mail’s waste and annoyance” said ForestEthics Executive Director Todd Paglia. “San Francisco is the first city in the United States to take political action against junk mail, marking the beginning of a long-awaited government intervention to protect citizens from relentless and predatory junk mailers.”

Bills calling for Do Not Mail Registries have failed in more than 20 states, despite widespread frustration with junk mail. A 2007 Zogby poll revealed that 89% of Americans support the creation of a national registry.

“Reducing junk mail is in keeping with our nation’s efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and lead more sustainable lifestyles,” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, upon passage of his Do Not Mail Resolution. “Just as Do Not Call overcame industry opposition to become the most popular consumer rights bill in history, I hope that this resolution will empower our representatives on the state and federal level to represent their constituents on this issue.”

I have a much better solution, but nobody listens: eliminate the bulk mail rate at the US Post Office. There was NO junk mail before it existed. And now, every year the price of stamps goes up, the Post Office is overwhelmed with work, two thirds of what shows up in your mailbox is crap, think of the trees, etc.

There is no reason on earth why the Post Office should essentially underwrite commercial advertising. If some schmoo wants to send me some ad, let him pay full price, just like I do. Kill the Bulk Rate and you’ll have to lay off lots of PO workers. Hey, too bad. They’re just as bloated as the rest of government. But with 2/3 less work, the ones left will be able to handle the job. And let’s put a 10 year moritorium on the price of stamps too. Gosh, the Post Office is losing money? Tough shit. Tighten your belts like the rest of us. Or get government out of the private sector entirely and let UPS or somebody else do the job ... faster, and for less.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/01/2009 at 04:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Environment • News-Briefs •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Monday - March 30, 2009

Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told.  Oh dear. What facist thinking, right?

Well now Mr. Booker and those he quotes will surely earn more brick-bats from the vocal smarmy loony tune left.

Booker writes on the ecology hoax in all it’s guises every week.

This is a wordy editorial but it is surely well worth the reading.

Oh btw ... Did any of you folks celebrate that earth day thingy last week? You know, turn off your lights and read in the dark or whatever.
We had ALL lights burning including one room all night. Just for the hell of it.  Pretty silly tho as electric here is VERY expensive.  It isn’t something I do all the time due to cost.  But I just can’t resist doing the exact opposite of whatever the greens are asking when they come up with this stuff.

I am determined to leave as big a footprint in their carbon whatever as I can.

The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story, writes Christopher Booker.

Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 6:31PM GMT 28 Mar 2009

If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.

Although the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, “the sea is not rising,” he says. “It hasn’t risen in 50 years.” If there is any rise this century it will “not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm”. And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by
Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on “going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world”.

When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.

One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC’s favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a “corrective factor” of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they “needed to show a trend”.

When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an “expert reviewer” on the IPCC’s last two reports, he was “astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one”. Yet the results of all this “deliberate ignorance” and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.

•For more information, see Dr Mörner on YouTube (Google Mörner, Maldives and YouTube); or read on the net his 2007 EIR interview “Claim that sea level is rising is a total fraud”; or email him – morner@pog.nu – to buy a copy of his booklet ‘The Greatest Lie Ever Told’

FINED, FROZEN AND NOW JAILED

The Marine Fisheries Agency was certainly onto a winner when it enlisted the aid of the Assets Recovery Agency in its ruthless war against our fishermen. In December 2007 Charles McBride and his son Charles, from Kilkeel in Northern Ireland, were fined £385,000 for under-declaring catches of whitefish and prawns in the Irish Sea, threatening the loss of their homes and boat. But the Assets Recovery Agency, using powers designed to recover money from drug dealers, also froze all their assets. To pay the fines, the McBrides tried to borrow against their assets. Now, for this effort to pay the fines, Liverpool Crown Court has sentenced the two men to two and three months in gaol for “contempt of court”.

BLOWN AWAY

The Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, timed his jibe impeccably last week when he said that opposing wind farms is as “socially unacceptable” as “not wearing a seatbelt”. Britain’s largest windfarm companies are pulling out of wind as fast as they can. Despite 100 per cent subsidies, the credit crunch and technical problems spell an end to Gordon Brown’s £100 billion dream of meeting our EU target to derive 35 per cent of our electricity from “renewables” by 2020.

Meanwhile the Government gives the go-ahead for three new 1,000 megawatt gas-fired power stations in Wales. Each of them will generate more than the combined average output (700 megawatts) of all the 2,400 wind turbines so far built. The days of the “great wind fantasy” will soon be over.

BOOKER

Hey .. I can’t leave it here without posting a comment made by Chris Edwards in a BMEWS comments section.  The topic was something else but Chris went off and said this, and so unknowing at the time Hit This Particular Nail Square on The Head!!  And I really like the way it was put.
Typical of this guy too. Thanks Chris.

“This is just another reason to only allow global warming deniers the vote. To be eligible to

vote we should all be given a history test, not a nu lab cleansed version but a real warts and all

test and then fail gets one vote and pass get 2 anyone sucked in by the global warming

cult/scam cannot vote as they have proven their lack of sanity.”
Chris Edwards

Posted by peiper     on 03/30/2009 at 08:39 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Editorials • Environment •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Tuesday - March 17, 2009

Households to face ‘re-education’ visits for producing too much rubbish, says Big Brother.

And you think that things are hinky in NJ?

Minds a blank right now. Maybe up too long? This really floors me. No kidding.

Alright I do understand there are damn sloppy ppl about who are pretty careless. But overall, “re-education visits?”
That just smacks of Chairman Mao and little red books and Comrade Stalin and every other sort of mind control and more social engineering.
See, I do NOT see it ending there.  Once they can easily do one thing, why not a host more of other things? 

Remember Red Buttons, for those old enough?

“STRAAAAANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING”

What?  Ya think not?

Knock, knock: it’s the council bin snoops
Householders face ‘re-education’ visits for producing too much rubbish after microchipping of two million bins.
Steven Swinford
HOUSEHOLDERS are facing “re-education” home visits for producing too much rubbish after figures released under freedom of information laws revealed that councils have quietly microchipped 2m bins.

The chips can be used to record the amount of rubbish families are throwing away. Those recycling too little will be sent warning leaflets, then visited by council officials who will advise on cutting waste.

Details of the scheme resurrect the long-term prospect of a pay-as-you-throw bin tax, which many thought had died when councils failed to take part in government trials.

Councils in Oxfordshire hope to escape controversy by using the technology to educate rather than charge residents. But officials admit it could eventually pave the way for a full-blown bin tax.

South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils have put microchips in 100,000 bins as part of a new £8m waste contract in which bins will replace sack collections from June.

The councils have also invested in sensors and weighing equipment that have been fitted to the back of each rubbish lorry.

As the bin is raised, the chip passes across an antenna fitted to the lifting mechanism that reads a serial number assigned to each property. The bin is weighed and information downloaded to a database that allows officials to see how much waste and recycling each household is putting out.

Officials will then use the data to target errant streets and households. They are also considering publishing league tables of the best and worst roads for recycling. The councils hope to increase recycling rates from 43% to 60%.

In June last year a similar trial of microchipped bins in South Norfolk failed after a series of computer problems and a 250% increase in fly tipping. South Oxfordshire, however, remains undeterred.

David Dodds, the council’s member for environmental services, said: “This will enable us to work out where recycling is happening the most and target people who are recycling less.

“Our teams will go out and leaflet first of all and in the end will call and say, ‘Are you recycling as much as you can, can we give you some advice on what you can do better?’ We’re about trying to do the best for the whole community.”

Some were worried about intrusive technology. “This is the kind of thing you’d expect from a communist state,” said Ann Midwinter, an independent councillor.

“I accept that recycling is important but does the council really need to go to these lengths?”

A survey of 200 local authorities using freedom of information laws found that 42 town halls have installed 2m microchips in their bins.

TIMES ONLINE

Posted by peiper     on 03/17/2009 at 01:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Environment • Government • UK •  
• Comments (8) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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