THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS WITHIN ONE HUNDRED SECONDS OF MIDNIGHT According to the United Nations the greatest level of peril to humanity since its creation in 1947 is the threat posed by climate change and the growing nuclear threat. On climate, two major UN summits fell dismally short of the action required to limit the […]
AS GOES FOSSIL FUELS AS GOES HUMANITY To a first approximation, everything we’ve done since 1900, including agriculture, has been the result of our use of fossil fuels. The biophysical driver of fossil fuel energy transcends all political boundaries and philosophies. Fossil fuels have supplied 89% of the total primary energy used throughout the world […]
“ANTHROPOGENIC WARMING NOW ABOUT ONE DEGREE ABOVE PRE-INDUSTRIAL LEVELS” But what if global temperatures exceed the tipping point for one or two years and then drop away like they have in the past, just as they had during the thirty nine year cooling period that took place between 194o-1979, despite a rapid increase in GHG […]
NEED FOSSIL FUELS FOR MANUFACTURE-TRANSPORT-INSTALLATION-MAINTENANCE The fact that oil is a “finite” material is not a problem. Every material is finite. Life is all about taking the theoretically finite but practically limitless materials in nature and creatively turning them into useful resources. The fossil fuel industry does it, renewable actually, the unreliable energy industry doesn’t. […]
“A SOCIALIST IN IDEOLOGY A CAPITALIST IN METHODOLOGY” Five years ago, Quadrant Online published this profile of Maurice Strong, the man who, more than any other, redefined a trace gas as the meal ticket for tens of thousands of climate functionaries — the same people whose light-fingered heirs are today gathered in Paris. To mark […]
NOISE REDUCTION AND IMPROVED AIR QUALITY IN OUR CITY Manningham Council had planned to develop and implement a green electric car program on Doncaster Hill to achieve 15% adoption of green electric vehicles – with the aim to have 1 in 3 households owning an electric car by 2025. It will be our most efficient […]
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVE FOR CONSENSUS AT ANY COST “It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints”. Paul MacCrae. The overwhelming need for […]
“DON’T WAIT UNTIL YOUR THIRSTY TO DRINK WATER” The original marketing campaign for a water consumption habit was to convince people that dehydration is dangerous. The message was that you should carry a bottled of water with you at all times. Better to pay 300 times more for bottled water than from the tap and […]
Environmental activists thought they had found a new weapon to use in their battle with global warming realists: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a law enacted by Congress in 1978 to battle the mafia. Environmentalists had hoped to use RICO to criminalize any exercise of free speech that was critical of their […]
“We are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction. … There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.” .These comments […]
