If you measure climate change measures that each country adopts by money spent and targets you get a fair idea of the importance that each nation places upon climate change. Of course measuring targets is foolish; targets are fairly meaningless, can be easily fiddled and often miss the point. For example the United Kingdom measures renewable energy by including in the measure energy produced by means that create vast amounts of greenhouse gas – burning of wood biomass, for example. Now the renewable energy target is just that – in the UK it is not an indication of anti-rapid climate change measures but simply a measure of renewable energy, be it good for the environment or bad for it.
Money spent may be a better measure, in comparative terms, notwithstanding that much spent is wasted by governments. In the UKI there have been many Photovoltaic systems installed in the past two years and that is a good thing, but by making the feed in tariff overly generous the government has got very poor value for money and has unfortunately spent more than it should have spent on this form of renewable energy. Similarly wind turbines have been over – subsidised. I expect that these subsidies are relatively small excesses compared with those enjoyed by the nuclear power industry but nevertheless more could have been done with the same amount of money.
The world expenditure on renewables, country by country show the USA in the lead followed by China. These are both ruthless capitalistic economies and if they deem it important to make this expenditure then perhaps, notwithstanding all the “buts” and “howevers” with which I started this essay, it might be important for all nations to realise that any attempt to reduce anthropogenic climate change has got to cost something. Last year it cost the United States $48 billion.
China comes second in the spending list for 2011, and if you count the European Union as a single nation then it comes very close to the USA and China.
Most spending is on photovolatics and wind turbines, both of which produce electricity intermittently, so the spending is not always well directed. Counting the number of wind turbines that a nation has is becoming a bit like an international equivalent of the biggest penis contest – interesting but not necessarily a sign of effectiveness when it comes to combating global warming.
Throughout all nations we need to see more spending on renewable heat; after all heat can be stored in an environmentally safe and cost effective way, unlike electricity, but renewable heat lags far behind renewable electricity notwithstanding that in most nations throughout the world people spend more in terms of carbon dioxide production, particulate production and kWh used on space and water heating than they do on power.
I suppose that we should be grateful for small mercies and that something is being spent on renewables. However, it is time that the politicians grew up and stopped boasting and concentrated on small effective climate change and air quality measures, rather than trying to figure out how many wind turbines can dance on a shoreline.
Filed under: carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, climate change, electricity, energy, global warming, microgeneration, solar, solar energy, solar panels Tagged: | climate, environment, rapid climate change, wood biomass
A bit closer to home
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9468604/The-great-wind-delusion-has-hijacked-our-energy-policy.html
The reason why the government help the wind and PV alternatives is, the hot water route actually gives the purchaser something that they can see and feel, something the owners have as another arrow to their bow that makes them independant of the other two.
Hot water can be stored ans used for after dark, the PV has one hooked and controlled and there is little in return for those doing the work.
Global warming is heating up certain areas of the globe and cooling others, this can be seen and felt, but the fact that the Norse who set sail looking for Iceland ans happened on Greenland instead, hensce the title Green-land and stayed there for around 450 years practicing cathedral type dairy farming, tells us all the answers we ever needed to know, a three degree warmer paradice to behold.
This alone puts the global issue to bed in terms of manking creating a token addition to the overall picture.
Hot water can be cooled easier than heating it using another fuel, the law of conservation tells us one cannot create nor destroy energy, one can only convert it from one form into another at a cost to those using it.
Solor power is thw only one true energy source that men and their governments cannot control, solar hot water is that free energy and why it takes the back seat, period.
The farmer workers now stand upon the shoulders of giants at a negative cost through sheer waste and invented global warming because there are other alternatives, find them and back them for your own well being.
When the last tree has been cut down and the last drop of oil has been burned only then will we look to the true alternatives the the earths mother has given us continually for free, the answers my freinds and countrymen is not only blowing in the wind and winding its way down the wires.