{"id":571,"date":"2010-07-10T18:03:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-10T22:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/energyrealist.com\/?p=571"},"modified":"2010-07-10T19:36:57","modified_gmt":"2010-07-10T23:36:57","slug":"energy-policy-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/?p=571","title":{"rendered":"Energy policy needed"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE NEWS<\/strong> – is all pointing to the need for a radical overhaul of energy policy – (Now, please).<\/p>\n

1. The oil is still spilling<\/strong> \u2013 getting on to month 3.<\/p>\n

There is an interactive NOAA map at http:\/\/gomex.erma.noaa.gov\/erma.html<\/a><\/p>\n

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BP, apparently with the assistance of government at all levels, is trying to minimize the amount of information available about the spill.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/opinion\/glenn_greenwald\/2010\/07\/05\/bp<\/a><\/p>\n

The big question for me is how much damage there will be from the oil\/dispersant mix floating along below the surface.\u00a0 Out of sight (of the press and public), out of mind.<\/p>\n

The head of the International Energy Agency<\/strong>, Nobuo Tanaka, stated that higher oil prices would be a likely result of the Gulf oil spill, and all the downstream effects of that spill.<\/p>\n

What is pointedly NOT<\/em> reported (by the lead US media anyway) are the following statements by Tanaka \u2013 who can hardly be counted as a foe of the coal, oil and gas industries:<\/p>\n

\u201c..the industrialized nations need to separate themselves from oil as a fuel, we need more electric vehicles and the required infrastructure.\u00a0 Photovoltaics need to become more efficient\u2026Foremost, we need a price for carbon dioxide to speed the change.\u00a0 Countries need to become serious about their agreements \u2026 [\u2026to carbon emission reductions].\u00a0 Also, countries must stop subsidies for oil and coal.\u00a0 If subsidies were abolished by 2020, we could save 2.4 gigatonnes of CO2.<\/sub> Half of all Saudi oil would no longer be needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

[My translation from this German article<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Why are these statements only reported as lead articles in countries, like France and Germany, where a comprehensive energy policy is already well established and a fact of everyday life?<\/p>\n

2. In the NE US we have a heat wave<\/strong>, with high humidity \u2013 just the sort of weather to burn up lots of energy to heat up the environment in an effort to keep cool (for an explanation of this paradox see \u201cheat pumps<\/a>\u201d)<\/p>\n

3. Hong Kong<\/strong>.\u00a0 In a massively dense place (dense with humans and buildings) like Hong Kong overuse of air conditioning is making a real difference.\u00a0 From Agence France-Presse<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cScientists predict that Hong Kong will have almost no winter by the end of the century as the electricity guzzlers help heat up the city.<\/p>\n

Local temperatures are rising at a speed of 0.6 degrees Celsius each decade, more than three times the global average,” said Lee Boon-ying, director of the Hong Kong Observatory.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve always marveled at the thinking in Singapore and Hong Kong where you need to bring a woolen sweater to work, drink lots of hot tea to keep warm and the hotel provides feather doonas (coverlet, bedspread, whatever\u2026) to sleep under, while outside the city sweats and melts in equatorial heat and humidity.\u00a0 Not sure if this is true but the saying goes that the average indoor temperature in Singapore is colder than in Toronto.<\/p>\n

4. The <\/strong>story of energy waste, energy use and global warming<\/strong> goes on \u2013 see this Salon collection<\/a> for a list of items.\u00a0 The telling story in this string is the retraction by the Sunday Times (The Sunday Times of London is owned by News Corporation, headed by Rupert Murdoch, and is a stable mate of Fox News).\u00a0 This Newsweek quote<\/a> puts it pretty bluntly:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times<\/em> of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its central claim\u2014namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40 percent of the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was \u201cunsubstantiated.\u201d The Times<\/em> also admitted that it had totally twisted the remarks of one forest expert to make it sound as if he agreed that the IPCC had screwed up, when he said no such thing.\u201c<\/p>\n

Of course issuing a retraction some months after (deliberately?) publishing a false story does little to undo the damage.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n