carter71

Sadly not veneer journos! Actually, your cancer comments earlier bought back another memory I had about the good old Telegraph and their veneer journalism.

Many years ago, a BMW travelling above the legal limit crashed through the central reservation of a dual carriageway, crossed two lanes of traffic, and veered into a head-on collision with a tanker travelling in the opposite direction at under the legal speed limit. Despite the impact, which killed the BMW driver (drunk?), the tanker remained in one piece and none of its cargo was spilt.

The Telegraph was quoted as saying something along the lines of: "The tanker was carrying a highly flammable, carcenogenic material, and it's a disgrace that dangerous chemicals like these are transported on our road network every single day."

Fast forward several months later when another tanker driver in another town was actually speeding when he took a mini roundabout too fast and overturned, causing the tanker to rupture and spilling the contents all over the road and into the drainage system. An estimated 5,000 people were evacuated from local homes and business and the environmental cost would have been high.

The contents of this tanker were far more flammable and SIGNIFICANTLY more carcinogenic than the those in the first tanker - and so you would have anticipated an even more direct response from our friends at the Telegraph.

Quote in the telegraph: "This unfortunate accident could could been avoided with better road markings and signage".

So what gives? Completely innocent tanker chastised in a national newspaper for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Tanker driver not obeying the speed limit causes an environmental disaster but gets the thumbs up?

Oh, sorry. Did I forget to mention... the more dangerous, more carcinogenic material in the second tanker had a name?

It was called petrol..., so that's OK then!

Econ

You keep quoting journalistic views from years ago to put down a newspaper 'what! does this mean you are right?'... maybe you should take the problems you have with the Telegraph up with them they where not the only reference given to the issues I mentioned.

You strike me as someone determined that you are the one that knows better than the scientists, journalists and publications. It's obvious you do not have the same views as me and I don't agree with yours so maybe best left at that...

rugbymatt

... and the award for the poster who understands little about how the world works goes to....

carter71

Time will tell who's right and who's wrong. I still have my money on impending disaster narrowly avoided more by luck than any political will. That won't stop whoever is in power at the time taking full credit or blaming those before them if it all goes belly up.

Neither side in this "debate" plays fair, and there going to be no "easy answers"

But nothing wrong in some healthy debate in the meantime!

rugbymatt

But time is telling. While I don't for one second believe in "global warming" climate change is definitely happening and to say we are not contributing in a heavy way is short sited and strikes me as a little bit of burying your head in the sand....

... but hey, what do I know, you seem to know all the answers.

Cape Blue

Its chump change, tiny, miniscule - there are very few politicians and they have extraordinary jobs that often require large vehicles for their protection and flights to meet their international counterparts.

There are around 650 UK MPs - you could put them all in big cars and then fly them around all week and it would still be tiny in comparison to the 60,000,000+ people in the UK. Ignore them, it means zero when it comes to setting up the infrastructure for the average person and is a classic diversion technique for people to focus on MP X flying to Y rather than looking at their own life.

You can see the idiocracy use the same argument all the time with Al Gore, doubtless stoked up by the coal and oil lobbyists who pull the ill-educated's strings like puppet masters.

Standby power in the UK accounts for 8% of UK domestic power usage - 8%! or the equivalent of 4.8 MILLION peoples home power usage - and yet the focus ends up on a few MPs and a "if they are not doing it, I am not doing it" child-like argument. How is 4.8 Million peoples-worth of electricity pathetic?

Perhaps the MPs are turning off their TV's standby, perhaps they are trying to reduce their mileage by 5 miles, who knows? But it actually means zilch.

China is both making stuff for us and rapidly industrializing as a country and become wealthier and more fuel-hungry as a result. We have off-shored some of our CO2-creating manufacture to a country with worse CO2 efficiency than us - hence we need international agreements and pressure such as the next Copenhagen meeting to try and minimize this problem - regardless of the tiny amount of C02 the leaders will use flying to the meeting.

carter71

No, of course I don't have all the answers - but I can spot when newspapers are trying to pull the wool over people's eyes by diverting from the real issues.

Yes - we are heading for disaster - or at least hopefully a near miss - caused by us.

The more we try and fool ourselves that it's "all the fault of a handful of ships out in the North sea", which is the real aim of the article, the more we really ARE burying our heads in the sand.

carter71

I can never understand that figure. I have never come across an appliance, computer or piece of equipment made in the last 20 years that used more than 1% of normal operating power when on standby. Typically, things that have standby are all things like TVs which only use small amounts of power anyway - so cookers, heaters, immersion, etc aren't included anyway - therefore representing even less of a fraction of used power in the home.

So how anyone can calculate 8% is beyond me. Unless people use TVs from America from the 1950's where standby kept the heater circuit live on all the valves - I can't see how that computes!

Cape Blue

I am vaguely aware of this EU thingy, however the vast majority of ships are not moving between EU countries but between Asia and the EU, they can often hold enough fuel for a round-trip. No individual country wants to ban ships of a certain type (pollution level) on their own as only that country loses out on cheap freight - it needs international agreements of a global nature.

Suggesting that "Brussels" is filling its pockets is the usual cheap-shot and has nothing to do with the discusion.


You are coming up with the classic argument "because X hasn't been done then we shouldn't bother doing Y" - perhaps governments have prioritized the pollution importance (and associated costs) of various measures and the ships pollution is small in comparison to say, encouraging people to not use standby power.

The recycling thing is wrong - occasionally when commodity prices were low a local authority could have messed up their contracts and ended up landfilling recyclables - again, tiny, miniscule, hardly ever happens - but was great press for the reactionary media when it did occur.

The EU has enacted various waste Directives - on electronics goods, cars, packaging etc that have price-support mechanisms built-in and have legal targets for the manufacturers of these items to meet - Sony has to make sure so much of each TV is recycled, Tesco has to ensure a high percentage of packaging it sells is recycled (they do this partly by paying Local Authorities to do it for them).

Part of the "UK exports waste" issue is a technical one down to the definition of waste - the UK exports shredded steel from the recycling of cars, its worth $400/tonne when iron ore is only worth $50/t and is far more refined than iron ore requiring only 10% of the energy to make a new steel billet - the UK Env Agency still calls this material a "waste" - so the several million tonnes of this sold abroad each year to steelworks around the world who bid for this valuable material are several million tonnes of "waste export" on paper. There is some export of "real waste" which the Env Agency is slowly getting to grips with - there are very clear laws on export that are EU ones.

Cape Blue

Perhaps the computer/TV left plugged-in for 8 times the duration it is used?

i.e. if the TV uses 100 watts when working for 2 hours and 1 watt for the standby power for the remaining 22 hrs we have:

Usage - 100W * 2 = 200W
Standby - 1W * 22 = 22W

This would give 222W power use for the day, of which 10% (22W) was standby.

Econ

Well it wasn't the full 'or real' aim actually, it was part of the issue in making a point about the hypocrisy of the politicians and how our money is spent and we are taxed to get 'us' to save a little when they allow the shipping problem which is a much bigger pollution issue 'sulphur, CO2 or whatever' that they should have and could have been on top of by now and actually made more money in tax from it if they use their heads, never mind the fact that we are preached at on the importance of clean fuel and pay for it while the left over is used by these large ships for fuel (around 5400 of them as far as I know) . I mentioned the sulphur side of it' and pointing their energies in that direction would probably be more productive. It just happened that you picked up on the shipping issue which in all fairness was being used as a major part of the point but still the point I was actually trying to make was the politicians in this and how they spend our money and tax us for small change green issues when they could actually do something with a problem that is fairly dam big.

Econ

They are moving between Asia and EU, yes international agreement between Asia and the EU, we are buying the products so we have the scale on our side.

Please don't say that we need their products...... because if Europe had any sense then we could be making a lot of the stuff here in EU countries.... No! not being vastly more expensive, more expensively maybe but by probably not by that much, it is just a case of EU using their heads a little... taxation would be a good place to start.

I think it has to do with the discussion, because basically it is all connected at the end of the day, taxation, green issues, global warming... we need to pay more to be greener and then the taxes collected don't go there.

BBC news

Guardian

Sky video, think this is about 8 months old

I prefer to see and read than someone 'just telling me' everyone except them is wrong.

Cape Blue

We want their products and we could not dream of producing them for the prices they do - some of this is down to poor safety and environmental controls and some down to paying someone in China 50p an hour who will work faster than someone in the UK at 10GBP/hr.

The EU does not set domestic taxation policy, as you think they are already filling their pockets I am not sure you want them to?

The hackneyed wailing of EU bureaucrats filling their pockets has nothing to do with the discusion of global warming, recycling or any other issue - it is just a side-line that the anti-EU brigade can't stop repeating.

You have read, but you have not comprehended nor have you understood.

You have absolutely zero idea how much "ewaste" is exported nor do you have any idea of the WEEE Directive, the TFS Regs and you were unable to comprehend my post where I said.
I was actually referring to the recent cases of ewaste and mixed recyclables - they are important, but are a tiny percentage of the "waste" exports which are predominantly metals, paper, plastics etc all of which are valuable - selling recovered copper at $5,000/tonne is, in the eye of the UK Env Agency, still an export of waste.

Makingthemove

I am sorry but I am extremely sceptical of any messages re global warming from any government.

You can shoot me down now, but my own approach to the green agenda goes back to my upbringing - 'you don't buy anything you don't need ' and 'you don't waste anything'

Global corporations are using global warming to encourage us to buy more stuff, be it cars, designer bags (in place of carrier bags) or more efficient washing machines...

The householder is getting the pressure whether it's from ads (eg the 5 miles one), Love Food Hate Waste, etc, etc whilst the largest contributors to CO2 emissions, ie industry, get off scot free.

In the same way air travel gets the 'environmental evil' tag but when compared to emissions from other sources, its CO2 contribution is tiny.

Sorry to rant and I am not a conspiracy theorist but I do think when companies see the words 'green agenda' they hear 'selling opportunity'

Cape Blue

The messages have been coming from NGOs for the past 20+ years and from governments for the past 10+. I don't see Greenpeace getting in bed with the UK Gov, nor FoE with the US gov.

Nothing wrong in that.

Of course they are, this doesn't mean that MMCC is not real and signifcant though does it?

That's not true, you are just unaware of legislation like the Packaging Directive that makes Tesco and Heinz pay for the recycling of baked bean cans or cap and trade which costs large energy users to comply with. What we really need is a straight carbon tax which would make energy more expensive and incentivise people and business to minimize their use, perhaps in conjunction with a reduction in income taxes.

Small, but growing rapidly - around 3.5% now but could be 15% by 2050. The other significant is that high-altitude emissions are thought to be much worse than those at ground-level.

Of course they do, that their job to try and make money, the key is trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Just because companies want to make money it does not mean that MMCC is any less real or any less of a problem for us.