jennifer

It is not enough to say “excuse me” when you next fart. According to a new company ‘Easy Being Green’, if you really care about the planet you should be prepared to pay something. That’s because flatulence contains methane, a greenhouse gas thought to be contributing to global warming.

The front page of today’s The Australian, features a story today about a grandmother who’s whose daughter spent A$20 to offset two years’ worth of flatulence.

So now, when Mrs Cracknell farts she feels OK because the damage to the planet has been offset.

It seems a rather Catholic approach; the idea that it’s OK to do something as long as you pay some sort of penance and in this way is pardoned.

That’s what it’s really all about isn’t it? That you can buy the right to fart?

Some diets are likely to result in more farting. At least I think I have more flatulence when I’ve eaten a lot of lentils. Maybe we should ban lentils?

Maybe we should just ban capitalism? It has after all created the wealth to support a large intellectual class with nothing better to do than count the number of times its members fart over a two year period.

I mean how else would Mrs Cracknell know that $20 was enough?

According to Kurt Volker, US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs speaking in Berlin a couple of days ago, the US is doing more than its bit to reduce greenhouse gas emmission infact:

“The United States, and this Administration, care deeply about climate change. We agree that human activity contributes to global warming. We support the recent IPCC report, in which U.S. scientists played a leading role.
We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We have made tremendous investments in reducing emissions. We are working multilaterally to do so. We are continuing these efforts.

These efforts are producing results that stand up favorably against anyone in the world.
Just because we haven’t joined the Kyoto Protocol doesn’t make any of these statements less true.”

Furthermore, according to Mr Volker:

“Now, I know there is a deeply held view among many in Europe that the U.S. Government doesn’t get it. That we don’t care about climate change, that we are doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that Europe, while perhaps not perfect, is doing a far better job of tackling the issue than the United States. This proposition–no matter how simple, no matter how widely held, and no matter how much it fits a pop-culture “blame-the-United States” paradigm–is completely wrong, on every point…

Read the full speech entitled ‘Post-Kyoto Surprise: America’s Quiet Efforts to Cut Greenhouse Gases Are Producing Results’ here: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/80465.htm

Now does he have a point, or not?

Danish physicist, Henrik Svensmark, is a bit different from your average climate change skeptics. He has an alternative theory of climate change and he has just written a book about it.

Published this week by Icon books, but not yet available at Amazons, it is called ‘The Chilling Stars – A New Theory of Climate Change’ and its apparently all about cosmic rays.

According to the book’s co-author and former editor of New Scientist, Nigel Calder, the new theory can explain why Antarctica is not warming. Indeed the most recent ‘summary’ from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that while temperatures have increased by almost twice the global average at the Arctic, there has been no warming at the Antarctic.

I’ve always been fascinated by bits of information that don’t fit neatly within an accepted theory, i.e. no warming trend at the Antarctic, and I’m always intrigued when there is a new theory to explain the apparent anomaly.

Anyway, along with the book there is a new journal paper by Dr Svensmark ‘Cosmoclimatology: A New Theory Emerges’ in Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 48 Issue 1, February 2007.

The abstract states: Changes in the intensity of galactic cosmic rays alter the Earth’s cloudiness. A recent experiment has shown how electrons liberated by cosmic rays assist in making aerosols, the building blocks of cloud condensation nuclei, while anomalous climatic trends in Antarctica confirm the role of clouds in helping to drive climate change. Variations in the cosmic-ray influx due to solar magnetic activity account well for climatic fluctuations on decadal, centennial and millennial timescales. Over longer intervals, the changing galactic environment of the solar system has had dramatic consequences, including Snowball Earth episodes. A new contribution to the faint young Sun paradox is also on offer.

Here’s an opinion piece from the Sunday Times Online entitled ‘An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change’ by Nigel Calder which includes comment that:

“Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.”

Read the complete article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece.

The issue was previously discussed at this blog here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001674.html

Sir Richard Branson is offerering a prize of $32 million to the inventor who can come up with a design which removes harmful greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Great idea?

What about genetically modified diatoms designed to consume more carbon dioxide for every tonne of iron dumped in Antarctic waters?

We could stop fertilizing them when carbon dioxide levels were low enough?

OK! So you don’t like the idea. Got a better one?