Obama’s National Park Service Director Goes Full Stupid: Jarvis: ‘From now on, the single most important issue facing the National Park Service is, and will forever be in your lifetimes, climate change’
…Analysis: Aussie’s NSW Fires Have Nothing To Do With Global Warming
…New study finds most people won’t spend even $55 to ‘protect the climate’
New study finds most people won’t spend even $55 to ‘protect the climate’
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/10/new-study-finds-most-people-wont-spend.html
A new study finds most people won’t spend even €40 or $55 US to “protect the climate.” Perhaps that’s because most know that man has a trivial influence and cannot control the climate, but the researchers did not consider that possibility.
Would you rather have $50 or save the climate? When the question is put in such stark terms, the common sense answer is obviously: “stop climate change!” After all, we are well-informed individuals who act for the common good and, more particularly, for the good of future generations. Or at least that’s how we like to think of ourselves. Unfortunately, the reality is rather different.
People Don’t Put a High Value On Climate ProtectionOct. 23, 2013 — People are bad at getting a grip on collective risks. Climate change is a good example of this: the annual climate summits have so far not led to specific measures. The reason for this is that people attach greater value to an immediate material reward than to investing in future quality of life. Therefore, cooperative behaviour in climate protection must be more strongly associated with short-term incentives such as rewards or being held in high esteem.Would you rather have €40 (about $55 US) or save the climate? When the question is put in such stark terms, the common sense answer is obviously: “stop climate change!” After all, we are well-informed individuals who act for the common good and, more particularly, for the good of future generations. Or at least that’s how we like to think of ourselves.Unfortunately, the reality is rather different. Immediate rewards make our brains rejoice and when such a reward beckons we’re happy to behave cooperatively. But if achieving a common goal won’t be rewarded until a few weeks have gone by, we are rather less euphoric and less cooperative. And if, instead of money, we’re offered the prospect of a benefit for future generations, our enthusiasm for fair play wanes still further.An international team of researchers led by Manfred Milinski from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology has shown how poorly we manage collective risk. “Our experiment is based on an essay which Thomas Schelling, the Nobel laureate in economics, wrote back in 1995,” explains Milinski. Schelling pointed out that it was today’s generation which would have to make the efforts for climate …
Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise Activists Charge Reduced To Hooliganism – Now Face Only 7 Years Prison Time in Russia
Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise Activists Charge Reduced To Hooliganism – Now Face Only 7 Years Prison Time
Various reports are coming out claiming that Russian authorities have reduced the charges against the Arctic Sunrise activists from piracy to hooliganism.
Russia’s RT here reports the lesser hooliganism charge carries a maximum sentence of 7 years in prison.
‘The actions of those involved in the criminal case have been reclassified to the charge of hooliganism,’ the spokesman for the Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, told the RIA Novosti news agency.”
There seem to be conflicting claims on how long the activists may have to spend time in jail if convicted of hooliganism. CTV news here reports that the charge carries 15 days in prison only.
The piracy charges carry a 15-year prison term, while hooliganism is usually punished by 15 days in jail or a fine.”
That is likely very inaccurate. Back in the 1980s a young nutjob German pilot Matthias Rust famously flew his small Cessna through then Soviet airspace and landed on Red Square in Moscow, embarrassing the Soviet empire. For that deed he was, according to Wikipedia, “sentenced to four years in a general-regime labor camp for hooliganism, disregard of aviation laws and breaching of the Soviet border. He was never transferred to a labor camp and instead served his time at the high security Lefortovo temporary detention facility in Moscow. Two months later, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to sign a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, and the Supreme Soviet ordered Rust to be released in August 1988 as a goodwill gesture to the West.”
Should the activists are convicted of hooliganism, they’ll probably be sentenced to a couple of years and be out within a year or so. That probably won’t be long enough to teach a number of them a lesson. In fact, expect them to be given a hero’s welcome when they return.
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Analysis: Thanks to Natural Gas and Climate Change, U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Continue Downward Trend
Thanks to Natural Gas and Climate Change, U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Continue Downward Trend
Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
Carbon dioxide emissions in the United States from the production and consumption of energy have been on the decline since about 2005, after generally being on the rise ever since our country was first founded.
The decline in emissions between 2012 and 2011 was 3.8 percent, which, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) was the largest decline in a non-recession year since 1990 and the first time that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell while the per capita economic output increased by more than 2 percent. In other words, we are producingmore while emitting less carbon dioxide.
The big player in 2012 was the continued switch from coal to natural gas for electrical generation. It is generally accepted that gas-fired generation results in about half as much carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt-hour as coal-fired.
While some would glibly say this is a result of increased regulation of greenhouse gases, it’s much more just good-old economics and the profit motive that are responsible. Hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling, and inherently less expensive physical plants mean it is cheaper to produce electrical power from gas than from coal. In fact, as the figure below shows, there’s been pretty much a one-for-one switch between the two sources, with coal-fired down by 215 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) and gas up by 212.
Despite the fact that “renewable” electricity generation declined in 2012, carbon dioxide emissions per kwh still went down, by 3.5 percent, thanks to the overwhelming effect of natural gas substitution.
In 2012, the CO2 reductions from the combination of a more energy-efficient economy and a lower carbon-intensity energy supply were larger than the combined increase in gross domestic output and growth in population.
One signature of greenhouse-effect driven climate change is that winters (and especially the lowest temperatures of winter) should warm preferentially to summers. According to the EIA, “much more energy is needed for space heating than for air conditioning” and the very warm winter of 2012 saved much more energy than was cost by the warmer-than-average summer. …