Earth In Crisis As Wildlife Numbers Plummet

[HareBrain]

Until quite recently, WWF was mostly involved in species and habitat conservation rather than spreading a general environmental message. Such work doesn't often conflict directly with oil company interests, and there's no reason they shouldn't have funded it.

[JimBraiden]

Originally Posted by wonkishere

Uh....

I'm stunned by what you just wrote. You think that because Shell threw these guys a few dollars, that means green groups aren't facing a sustained campaign against them funded by big oil? The fact that one company gave them money, means that others aren't spending millions on advertising and public relations to refute everything that green groups do?

I''ve seen the numbers, I've seen the studies. Your reasoning is nonsense. Oil companies do all kinds of things to prevent the spread of competing forms of energy generation. They do that with solar, wind, they'd probably do it more to prevent nuclear if it weren't for the fact that almost nobody is building nuclear power plants right now anyway. Occasionally they even spend money in token research on renewable energy R&D, but it amounts to less than 0.1% of their total R&D. Then they spend more money advertising the fact that they did the research, then they spent on the research. That's no joke.

Oil companies have a huge amount of capital tied up in resources designed to deliver (and use) oil. I believe it actually accounts to more then $50 trillian, (yes that a T) in circulation. Many of it was built recently in the form of new refineries, new freighters, and so on. If you suddenly did a massive shift away from oil, they wouldn't even be making their investment back on all this stuff they put in circulation. Of course they fight the green movement.

If you can seriously sit there and claim that Oil companies don't go after green groups, then... wow. That's one of the silliest things I've read in weeks. Do you liike, work for an Oil company or something?

No I don't like, work for an oil company.
I just like, do my own thinking.
I am simply pointing out that many of the Green/CAGW supporting organisations, while attacking oil and gas companies with one hand, are only too happy to accept money from said oil and gas companies with the other hand.
And that the oft made claim that those groups and individuals who are sceptical about Green claims- and in particular about CAGW- are mounting a "sustained campaign funded by big oil" proves on examination to have no basis in fact.
The amounts of funding given by oil and gas companies to the Sceptical side of the CAGW argument pales into insignificance when compared to the hundreds of millions they have contributed to various Green groups and causes.
And I would add that as I pointed out any report which claims that the energy needs of a developed world can be met from the "wind and the sun" has about as much basis in reality as the story of the tooth fairy- in fact come to think of it the evidence for the latter is probabaly stronger.

[JimBraiden]

Ursa,

The figures are correct. As to why- well I can hazard a guess in at least one case

The Sierra Club took $26.1 million in contributions from McClendon and Chesapeake-affiliated companies between 2007 and 2010. Cheseapeake is a natural gas company. One of its biggest competitors is the coal industry- The Sierra Club is opposed to coal power.
Begin to see a picture emerging?

[wonkishere]

I'm stunned. I didn't think that it was possible for people to not be aware of all that funding. And frankly, I see no evidence that some funding given to the fund, a long time ago, when it's focus was different, is greater than the massive public relations and advertising efforts that go on now. The entire "green" movement lacks the capital to match the funding of even the five biggest oil companies. Their advertising and public relations budgets dwarf them by a massive amount.

Right now, the shale oil fields in Canada have seen a massive PR campaign, moving into the United States only now, but having started in Canada, to refute the idea that (for instance,) wildlife in Canada was being hunted by predatorial wolves, even though ecologists attributed the deaths to developed of the fields. I've seen so many of these campaigns over the year, many billions in spending, that it didn't occur to me that people like you still existed.

Well i'm guessing this is a fruitless conversation. Have a nice day.

Originally Posted by JimBraiden

No I don't like, work for an oil company.
I just like, do my own thinking.
I am simply pointing out that many of the Green/CAGW supporting organisations, while attacking oil and gas companies with one hand, are only too happy to accept money from said oil and gas companies with the other hand.
And that the oft made claim that those groups and individuals who are sceptical about Green claims- and in particular about CAGW- are mounting a "sustained campaign funded by big oil" proves on examination to have no basis in fact.
The amounts of funding given by oil and gas companies to the Sceptical side of the CAGW argument pales into insignificance when compared to the hundreds of millions they have contributed to various Green groups and causes.
And I would add that as I pointed out any report which claims that the energy needs of a developed world can be met from the "wind and the sun" has about as much basis in reality as the story of the tooth fairy- in fact come to think of it the evidence for the latter is probabaly stronger.

[JimBraiden]

I am sorry that the facts don't match you world view, Wonkshire.
But they remain the facts.
The Green movement is awash with hundreds of millions of dollars of oil and gas money.
And in the CAGW area in particular far from funding a sustained campaign against the proponents of the theory the fossil fuel multinationals have given hundreds of milions to various Green and pro CAGW organisations.
For example ExxonMobil has donated $100 million to Stanford university for the study of global warming.
BP is coughing up $30 million for a similar study at Princeton.

[Huttman]

Originally Posted by JimBraiden

For example ExxonMobil has donated $100 million to Stanford university for the study of global warming.
BP is coughing up $30 million for a similar study at Princeton.

Pennies at the bottom of a large bucket of profit to give them the 'image' that they really do care.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Huttman

Pennies at the bottom of a large bucket of profit to give them the 'image' that they really do care.

All BP filling stations have a windmill on their roof. The energy they produce probably wouldn't power the lighting inside. It is good PR, that's all.

If JimBraiden is correct (and he is the only one who claims to have read this report) “We can meet all of our energy needs from sources like wind and sunlight that are clean and abundant” is a ridiculous statement.

But neither are fossil fuels the answer.

[wonkishere]

Originally Posted by Dave

All BP filling stations have a windmill on their roof. The energy they produce probably wouldn't power the lighting inside. It is good PR, that's all.

If JimBraiden is correct (and he is the only one who claims to have read this report) “We can meet all of our energy needs from sources like wind and sunlight that are clean and abundant” is a ridiculous statement.

But neither are fossil fuels the answer.

It's very true that wind and sunlight are nowhere near as efficient as oil, or many other sources of power. People who measure these things usually take an "ROE" measurement, meaning return on energy. Put simply, for every unit of energy you put into building it, how much does that technology give back?

With current technology, Solar is only running about 2:1 or better. In other words, you get about twice as much energy back as you put into it in order to make it. That will get better over time but it isn't there yet. Wind has a better return on investment, but it's harder to place wind because they can be noisy and there are issues with birds and wildlife. You can't put a windmill just anywhere. Oil is about 15:1 so it's very difficult to make enough energy with other forms to compensate for getting rid of it.

On the other hand, if you're going to be honest about analyzing these things, the question is this. How much does it cost you to clean up all of the crap that you generate when you burn oil, to remove CO2, damage to the atmosphere and so on? Until you factor that in, it's stupid to compare the forms of energy generation side by side. Solar and wind gives you consequence free energy, but less of it. Oil harms are atmosphere a great deal, and coal is even worse.

[JimBraiden]

To repeat a belief that the energy needs of a modern society can be met from sun and wind is on a par with believing in the tooth fairy.
Wind for example currently supplies less than half of one percent of the world's energy.
The choice is bewtween nuclear or fossil or mass starvation.

[Dave]

To put aside the Climate Change issue for one moment (JimBraiden and wonkishere are at opposite poles and will never agree) Uranium is a finite resource just like fossil fuels. Nuclear Fission is only a short term answer itself, but the long term answer would come from Fusion (which may always be science fiction) or from sunlight (but you would need to think very big i.e. shadow squares in orbit with the energy collected beamed back down to Earth.) The main problems with wind and sun are that the sources are intermittent and cannot be turned on when more power is needed. Another problem with Nuclear Fission is it cannot be turned on and off quick enough either. And our current ability to store energy is extremely poor.

Putting all of that aside - I'd very much doubt that any Climate Change at present is responsible for a current fall in wildlife numbers (I'm not saying it won't be in the future) but I'd have thought that it was much more due to loss of soils due to deforestation and urbanisation, cutting of wildlife corridors; damming of rivers and loss of floodplains and wetlands; mining and mining spoil waste; the pollution of air, water and land; over-fishing; and a whole host of other items that we are responsible for.

I don't understand why there is a belief that our modern civilisation is invincible. A quick look at the historical record would give a different perspective. Sorry to be morbid. We may have a lot of technology but it is just a pack of cards.

Can I suggest a book for you both:
The God Species (How the planet can survive the age of humans) by Mark Lynas.

It is not an eco-doom book. He presents a case for using new technologies to protect and nurture the biosphere, against current green orthodoxy.

[JimBraiden]

Dave,

I read his Six Degrees and was not particularly impressed -pretty much CAGW boilerplate ( pun intended) still £4.99 for the Kindle edition is not too bad- will give it a look.

[wonkishere]

I'll take a look at the book.
[book]

Can I suggest a book for you both:
The God Species (How the planet can survive the age of humans) by Mark Lynas.

It is not an eco-doom book. He presents a case for using new technologies to protect and nurture the biosphere, against current green orthodoxy.[/QUOTE]

I suppose that Jim and I look pretty opposite, but I'm really not the flip side of the pole, because I don't agree with a lot of people you would characterize as being part of a green movement. If you'd read what I said, you'd see that I just outlined limitations of green power, and then got a response that indicated you were still arguing with me. I'm pretty sure I just said that solar and wind aren't as efficient, with a lot more specific detail. Did anybody bother to read what I wrote?

Unfortunately, the truth is that we don't have anything to replace not only Oil, but we can' t even replace Coal, which is worse than Oil. Unfortunately, global warming, according to pretty much every scientist I know, is already doing measurable damage. For instance, the change in growing seasons is beginning to lower the amount of food for sale across the world, and that is forecasted to continue.

It isn't really possible to link global warming to what happens to species, but it isn't really possible to separate it either, because the stuff that people blame for harming different species around the planet is usually indirectly linked with things which are effected by global warming.

If global warming causes the winds to change, and one area is afficted with drought, with the rains they used to get passing to another region, and that then causes the mosquito population to explode, this can then cause a massive increase in dengue fever to travel throughout South America. It's not a new disease, but the numbers of people afflicted by it soared to new heights recently. And dengue fever effects some animals, not just humans. Guess what? Dengue fever can potentially eradicate a species if it was already on the edge.

The irritating thing about these sort of conversations, is that I already know what's going to happen. Absolutely nothing is going to happen, until several major catastrophes do. And when those catastrophes happen, people are going to conclude they have no choice but to go with cleaner alternatives, because they will have figured out that they are, in fact, cheaper. Because the other stuff causes disasters, which cost billions to clean up.

And everybody who argues the point, invariably doesn't really know much about the facts. But nobody wants to pay for any of this, because it's absolutely true that solar and wind do not replace Oil. We may still need nuclear but that won't cover us either. In order to solve the problem, we'd have to get used to living with less energy production then we have and change our lifestyle. And we aren't going to do that. We'd rather kick the can down the road and live like we can, for as long as we can.

We are all very much like an obese 300 pound man who is in danger of having a heart attack, and chooses to go eat another cheeseburger anyway. I don't suffer from the delusion of thinking that we will do things any differently.

[JimBraiden]

It would appear that the WWF Report has even less validity than I though.
A statistican frined of mine has drawn my attention to the Living Planet Index which is used by the WWF to calculate the decline in species numbers.
It looks at around 2100 species.
At the last count there are roughly 2 million species on the planet.

As for changing our lifestyle and using less energy- well yes we can do that.
We can return to say a late neolithic life style- of course that does mean the death of around 99% of the human race.
Or perhaps we could settle for a medieval life style- we could probably manage that with only a 75% decline in the human population.

[wonkishere]

Originally Posted by JimBraiden

It would appear that the WWF Report has even less validity than I though.
A statistican frined of mine has drawn my attention to the Living Planet Index which is used by the WWF to calculate the decline in species numbers.
It looks at around 2100 species.
At the last count there are roughly 2 million species on the planet.

As for changing our lifestyle and using less energy- well yes we can do that.
We can return to say a late neolithic life style- of course that does mean the death of around 99% of the human race.
Or perhaps we could settle for a medieval life style- we could probably manage that with only a 75% decline in the human population.

Using less energy automatically does not take us all the way back to a medieval state, or cause the death of 99% of the population.
The last time I checked we wanted to increase our energy requirements by something like 5% next year. Every year we use more energy. If we reversed the trend, and decided to increase prices a bit, and make do with say 5% less energy next year, it would effect our lifestyle somewhat, but it wouldn't be a medieval culture by any means. We'd have pretty much the same technology we always did, but we'd have to change our lifestyle a little.
If we reduced energy use with a tax, we could use all the money gathered by that tax to build solar, wind, and geothermal sources, maybe even nuclear if we can find a state willing to build it. (That is usually the problem.)
If we don't do that, you will find that in time, our lifestyle will change even more as we have to do adapt to the new ecology. Rising sea level, a massive increase in hurricanes and typhoons, and rising food prices from droughts and changes to growth cycles will ultimate be far more damaging then what I just suggested. What I suggested is a picnic in comparison.

It isn't a choice between 99% of the human race dying, or being forced to go back to the medieval area. That's nuts.... and it's not really an effective response on your part.

[JimBraiden]

A 5% cut in energy consumption might not be a big deal to the developed countries- it would be a heavy blow however to those third world societies trying to improve the lot of their citizens.

As for an energy tax to support renewable energy sources most of the developed world already have then inn place- in the UK such taxes are estimated to add an additional £300/$500 per annum to household fuel bills.
Germany, Spain, Holland and Denmark all have similar schemes and the US have ploughed billions of stimulus money into solar and wind power.
And all have been totally ineffective.
Well apart from making a small group people very wealthy- in the UK the landed gentry have taken to wind power like the proverbial duck to water and are enjoying a huge surge in income by allowing the useless things to dot their rolling acres.
Spain threw away billions on solar power- destroying jobs and helping to put drive the Spanish economy into its current dire straits- my favourite story is the Spanish solar farm that was so efficient it was able to supply power at night! Turns out that because of the huge subsidies that it was paid for solar power it was actually worth its while to hook up a diesel generator and pump fossil fuel power into the grid when the sun went down.
Germany facing huge power bills and a potential energy shortage that will effect an estimated 150000 homes, is quietly dropping its subsidies for wind and solar power- a move given further impetus when the leaders of the German steel and chemical industry informed Angela Merkal that they would relocating Eastwards if their energy prices continued to rise.
And in Australia the hated Carbon tax is on track to destroy the Gillard government- opinion polls and state elections pointing to a landslide defeat for the Labour party.
But the good news is that with new technology and new natural gas resources coming on line it looks as if we have enough power to hand to keep our civilisation growing and pull the third world level with the rest of the planet.
As for rising sea levels- not happening.
Nor are hurricanes or typhoons increasing.
Nor droughts.
And food production continues to rise- most of the human race is better fed and healthier than it was even a generation ago.