* Financialize this: ‘Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in next decade.’ If only there were some other policy option…

* The headline reads, “Turkey wants universal email surveillance from birth.”

* Ezra Klein on the House of Representatives and the intent of the Founders.

* Armenians love chess.

* In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing beneath the surface of the original city… Via MeFi.

* Fredrick Engels’s Tiger-Beat-style questionnaire. Via Greenberg.

* Moustache Sexiness Timeline.

* Have I done this one before? T.S. Eliot reads “Prufrock.”

Melting Watergate—Some facts and figures that oppose the prevailing hysteria about global warming/climate change (21:58):

References: http://www.fdrurl.com/tnclimate

Stefan Molyneux runs Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web. His books, podcasts, and videos are available free on the web. Mr. Molyneux accepts donations with the utmost gratitude.

There are a number of contra-pulling economic factors which are visible to me at least from what has been said and written recently.

The first is the double whammy of increased VAT in the New Year with a predicted reduction in ‘Quantitative Easing’.

The second of these is potentially the most serious with it having underpinned the postponement of mass bankruptcies, according to my interpretation of Sir Alan Sugar, and the RBS/Nat West Director who spoke at the Chelmsford Business Showcase recently, and others.  If they do substantially reduce ‘Quantatative easing’ as predicted then I  suggest, ceteris paribus, a significant number of business failures may follow, a potentially dismal outcome after a promising macroeconomic response to a global liquidity crisis.  This blog therefore argues that a rethink on the reduction should be considered, perhaps reducing as a series of tranches rather than one big reduction in ‘Quantitative Easing’.

The first whammy, the increase in VAT, may well have a negative effect on consumer spending, and thus on commerce generally, although it might be good in reducing imports.

However there is a bright note on the horizon, and that is the carbon reducing technologies which improve commercial interfacing, and these may well radically alter the way we do business and reduce or emissions as well. The Carbon Reduction Commitment, and the aftermath of a potentially successful Copenhagen make emission reducing technologies look hopeful.

From the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)

18 May 2009

According to research funded by EPSRC, a new type of air-fueled battery could offer up to ten times the energy storage of currently available designs

This design would affect a broad ranged of electronic products, most notably laptops and cell phones. In addition, according to the press release, development of this battery could provide a major boost to the renewable energy industry.

An early demonstration model of the STAIR cell, not an electric condom

The expanded capacity is due to a component that uses oxygen, which replaces some of the chemicals currently used in batteries.  Fewer chemicals equals more energy for the same size battery.

From the press release:

The STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell should be cheaper than today’s rechargeables too. The new component is made of porous carbon, which is far less expensive than the lithium cobalt oxide it replaces.

This four-year research project, which reaches its halfway mark in July, builds on the discovery at the university that the carbon component’s interaction with air can be repeated, creating a cycle of charge and discharge. Subsequent work has more than tripled the capacity to store charge in the STAIR cell.

Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, reports on the progress of the project: “ Our results so far are very encouraging and have far exceeded our expectations.”,  estimating that it will be at least five years before the STAIR cell is commercially available.

For year now, the major media  outlets in Spokane have steadily chanted the mantra of a global warming crisis, despite credible  evidence to the contrary.  Now significant information has emerged revealing  manipulation of scientific data and concerted efforts to  advance a global warming agenda.

The latest check with local media sources has confirmed that the sky is still falling, so plan to send more tax dollar$ to your government so it can subsidi$e  companies and political organizations seeking to protect you from the weather.

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A few more links to “Climategate” related news and opinion:

Rigging a Climate  ‘Consensus’  ~  The Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html

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Global Warmists Caught Red-Handed ~ The American Spectator

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/11/25/global-warmists-caught-red-han

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Climategate: The fix is  in ~  Real Clear Politics

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/24/the_fix_is_in_99280.html

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ClimateGate: Both sides of the pond demand probes into data manipulation scandal ~ By Michelle Malkin

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/23/climategate-both-sides-of-the-pond-demand-probes-into-data-manipulation-scandal/

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Global warming rigged? Here’s the email I’d need to see. The leaked exchanges are disturbing…  ~ From the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/23/global-warming-leaked-email-climate-scientists

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Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’? ~ Telegraph

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

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CRU scientists admit they threw away key data used in global warming calculations ~ The Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-20909-Columbia-Independent-Examiner~y2009m11d29-CRU-threw-away-key-data-used-in-global-warming-calculations

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Global Warming With the Lid Off  ~ The Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html?mod=rss_Today%2527s_Most_Popular

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Leaked Climate Change Emails Expose Tricks and Manipulation ~ Now Public

http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/leaked-climate-change-emails-expose-tricks-and-manipulation

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U-turn on climate change ‘cover up’ as university says it will publish leaked email data  ~ Mailonline

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231788/U-turn-climate-change-cover-university-says-publish-leaked-email-data.html

*

ClimateGate’s Michael Mann Being Investigated By Penn State ~ News Busters

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/11/28/climategates-michael-mann-be-investigated-penn-state

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Hacked E-Mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics by Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times ~ Climate Realists

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4413&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+co2sceptics%2FOnRA+%28CO2sceptics+News+Blog%29

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Councilman Bob Apple has requested that  both Liberals and Conservatives  view the following video:

Make mine Freedom from 1948

*

Quote of the week: ” Green-Job – Much like other popular  and often illegal jobs, but way more expensive and not nearly as satisfying”

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Spokane dENSA will meet at the Red Lion Tavern on Wednesday, December 2nd.

A couple of weeks ago, I- and 15 others in my university’s physics society- went to CCFE, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, located near Abingdon, Oxfordshire. It’s home to the MAST (Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak) reactor, a UK project on small-scale fusion, and JET (Joint European Torus), currently the world’s largest fusion reactor. It was in a winding-down phase, having finished its campaign of experiments for this year, allowing the engineers and robots to refit it for next year’s campaign.

One of the guides told us that this would be focusing on replicating as closely as possible a small scale version of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, pronounced eat-er), the vast reactor being built in the south of France that should be the final experimental step before commercial fusion reactors start being built around 2050. This will allow them to have two- once ITER is operational- sets of data from identically fitted reactors, the only variable being size, thereby allowing approximate extrapolation for comparison with other variables affected by size, such as power output, density, temperature gradients, magnetic containment effectiveness, etc. More data points would, of course, be preferable, but as each reactor costs several billion Euros/Pounds/Dollars to build, this seems unlikely to happen any time soon. The next step after ITER should be DEMO, a series of even larger demonstration reactors built in the seven ITER participants- Europe, the US, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and India. These should be the first reactors to run commercially, and will be the final stage before commercial deuterium-tritium fusion reactors start being built worldwide in around 2050.

Back to the present day; we got a minibus from Uni at about 8am for the roughly 4 hour drive. We arrived at Culham Science Park at around one o’clock, having stopped for lunch at a service station. After recieving our ID badges from the reception building, we drove around to the first stop; the building containing MAST. It’s also home to Culham Lightning, who were testing lightning strikes on aircraft nose cones at the time of our vist, so added to the huge amount of machinery and systems in there, things were pretty noisy. First we were given a short presentation on fusion, but as the majority of vistors there are A-level students (11th/12th graders US equivalent), this didn’t expand at all on the introductory lecture we’d arranged the previous week from Professor Howard Wilson, a plasma physicist at York University and a researcher at Culham. Here are some pictures from the presentation room:

MAST reactor in operation- it's a miniature sun.

Slice of one of the field shaping electromagnets. The holes are for cryogenic refrigeration.

One of the high power cables. I'm not sure the picture does its size justice.

We then moved onto taking a look at MAST itself. Several people were working on it at the time, so photo opportunities were limited:

The control system for injecting gas into MAST.

MAST neutral beam injection and analysis ports.

Neutral Beam Injection is one way of feeding deuterium into the reactor. It works by ionising deuterium and accelerating it into a chamber of gaseous deuterium. It hits the atoms and accelerates them towards the reaction chamber at a few km/s. The other method is to freeze deuterium and tritium into small (a couple of mm) pellets at about 10K (-263°C; 1K=1°C), which are shot into the centre of the chamber at several hundred m/s. Current tokamaks fire 10 pellets a second for 10 seconds, whereas ITER should be capable of 16/s for an hour, in line with its much greater energy output and operating period.

Laser interferometer for measuring plasma density inside MAST.

After this we moved onto JET, which was further into the science park, and allowed me to get a picture of the type of building the reactors are in. Very unglamorous for the technology that seems to be in line to solve the world’s energy needs within a few decades.

The unassuming MAST building exterior.

Once inside the JET building- which, unlike the MAST building, is entirely dedicated to the JET reactor- there were many more interesting things to see:

Beryllium is being used in many reactor components due to its ability to handle extreme temperatures.

Training duplicate of the JET reactor allows easy experimentation.

Remote handling access port.

Quickly-snapped picture of the remote handling access port on the training reactor model. It’s used to get the remote handling equipment inside the reactor. There are two, at opposite sides, allowing two operations to proceed simultaneously, shortening refit and repair downtime.

Remote handling manipulator.

The end of the remote handling equipment- a long, multiple-articulated computer-controlled robotic arm mounted on a crane- that does the actual manipulating. it is operated either by computer, or by remote operator who uses a similar-looking piece of equipment to convert his large hand and arm movements into the delicate and precise motions required intside the torus itself.

The real JET.

JET itself. A huge piece of machinery- the largest fusion reactor in the world- but tiny by commercial requirement standards. ITER will dwarf it, and DEMO will be even larger again. That yellow wall, by the way, isn’t a wall. It’s a 2-metre-thick concrete-and-steel sliding door, to protect the operators from the high-energy neutrons being flung out by JET. ITER and subsequent reactors will have built-in shielding, so that they are safe to operate in a commercial environment- which is what all of this is leading up to.

The control centre.

The vast amount of computers- which go off the left, right and back of the picture, and the room to the right of this is filled with servers and hard drives to store all the data about every JET experiment in its 25+ year history. As this is a joint European venture, teams of scientists from other nations will come up with some parameters- certain temperatures, fuel ratios, desities, etc- for an experiment and ask CCFE to include it in its next campaign. They search the archives to see if it has been done before. If it has, they pass along the data. If not, then they include it in either the next campaign or the one after. This room holds the on-site staff monitoring the experiment, and sometimes foreign teams who come over to watch their experiment run. It’s possible for them to stay at home if they prefer, however, and watch the experiment proceed over the internet.

Well, that’s it. Hope you enjoyed seeing the current state of fusion technology. I firmly believe that it’s going to solve most, if not all, of our energy problems. Perhaps not overnight, but sooner rather than later. And the best news of all is that it’s carbon (and other greenhouse gases)-neutral, we have enough fuel to last for centuries, probably millenia (half a bath of seawater and  one laptop battery contain enough deuterium and lithium (which, when reacted with the neutrons generated by the fusion, produces tritium) to supply a person’s energy needs for a year) and produces no radioactive waste other than some of the reactor components when it’s eventually decommissioned.

Feel free to leave comments or questions.

~Rob

Here’s the story from Steve McIntyre. (H/T Story from Watts Up With That via ECM)

Excerpt:

“Hide the decline” refers to the decline in the Briffa MXD temperature reconstruction in the last half of the 20th century, a decline that called into question the validity of the tree ring reconstructions. (I’m going to analyze the letters on another occasion.) In the IPCC Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, IPCC “hid the decline” by simply deleting the post-1960 values of the troublesome Briffa reconstruction – an artifice that Gavin Schmidt characterizes as an “a good way to deal with a problem” and tells us that there is “nothing problematic” about such an artifice (see here.

Not only were the post-1960 values of the Briffa reconstruction not shown in the IPCC 2001 report – an artifice that Gavin describes as being “hidden in plain sight”, they were deleted from the archived version of the reconstruction at NOAA here (note: the earlier Briffa 2000 data here does contain a related series through to 1994.)

Here’s the graph, with the decline added back in.

Hide The Decline

Wow, look at that decline that somehow wasn’t included in the graphs made the global warming alarmists. Did they use a trick to hide the decline?

Hide the decline

And here’s a catchy video to help you remember all of this. (H/T Lex Communis)

The scary part is that two of my leftist friends still kept their faith in global warming after this scandal broke. It’s a religion, but one that is diconfirmed by the evidence.

Related posts

• Climate Research Unit servers hacked, e-mails made public
• Comparison of hockey stick graph data to a larger data set in the same area
• Government-funded research unit destroyed original climate data
• The state of the debate about catastrophic man-made global warming
• Peer-reviewed article in journal Science says solar activity impacts climate
• Famous UN IPCC hockey stick graph is based on cherry-picked data
• Princeton physics professor testifies to Senate about global warming
• Global warming advocates refuse to give their data to skeptics
• Peer-reviewed article in journal Science says prior ice melting caused by solar variation
• Oceans are not warming now
• Polar ice caps are not melting now
• Polar bear populations are not decreasing now
• Global warming is not caused by humans

A cool organisation that advertises a variety of speakers as a way to lead the transition to a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable world. Linked here.

• Oil and gas producer Origin Energy Ltd says the federal government’s proposed emissions trading scheme (ETS) should be passed in order to provide certainty.

A parliamentary vote on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRD) is expected on Monday. Speaking to ABC’s Inside Business program, chief executive Grant King said choices would be clearer for the industry if Australia had an ETS. ‘In the context of the Australian energy industry, a scheme would bring certainty as to future decision-making,’ Mr King said. ‘The question we would ask simply is ‘what choice would society want us to make about fuel, what fuel should we use?’ and if that choice is not clear, we can’t build the power stations that the community needs in the long run to make sure we have a safer, competitive and less carbon intensive supply of energy.’ Mr King said he could not confirm Goldman Sachs’ estimate that the company would receive an earnings upside of four to nine per cent from the CPRS, but said Origin was well positioned to benefit if an ETS was introduced. ‘We’ve quite consciously positioned ourselves such that we don’t believe there’s any downside if the world decides to implement an ETS or a carbon reduction scheme,’ he said. ‘I’m not blessing the four or nine per cent, it sounds like a forecast, but we would expect to do better if a carbon scheme was introduced, but our business isn’t premised on a carbon scheme being introduced.’

It has been fun to watch the various players in the political arena of climate change test each other’s commitment and slowly make their moves to the dance floor in Copenhagen. This weekend it was the Commonweath that held talks and took a stand about the nature of climate agreements concerning carbon emissions. An AFP new report on the outcome can be found here.

Of course, many of these Commonwealth nations belong to other negotiating groups and it is likely that these other groups will now start to shift discussion in similar directions. Still, it would be foolish to try to predict outcomes of such a complex set of relationships between nations. Small things early in the process can lead to big changes during the conference that are nearly impossible to predict.

Still, we need to act and be active participants. The best way to learn is to learn through experience and it looks like we are certain to learn more than a few steps of the dance about to begin in Demark.

Protesters disrupt Gore book-signing event in Chicago
Article: Truth Is Contagious

Justin Mangano, from Australia, was beaming after Al Gore signed his book Tuesday when his star-struck moment was interrupted by a protester being hauled out of the Borders bookstore in the Chicago Loop.

Gore was at the book store promoting the just released “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.” Fans were there to get his autograph and opponents came to challenge his message. Members of the group, We Are Change, were the most outspoken of Gore’s naysayers at the former vice president’s appearance at 150 N. State St. Gore’s security guards escorted the protesters from the store.

The We Are Change group contends that Gore’s message of global warming is a hoax, that he is a puppet of a new world order and that he is propagating a eugenics program.

The group claims it is “a citizens based grassroots peace and social justice movement working to reveal the truth behind the events of September 11th, as well as the lies of the government and corporate elite who remain suspect in this crime.”

“We need to wake up to this now, or it’s going to be too late. They want to tax the air we breathe and the meat we eat,” said activist Saad Ali, one of about 30 protesters at the event. ‘There are 30,000 scientists trying to sue this bum,” he screamed as he was escorted from the building.

But Gore’s fans weren’t interested in what the protesters were shouting.

Monika Hinterman, who got Gore to sign her book, said she was impressed that he was paying so much attention to climate change.

Gore’s fans weren’t interested in what the protesters were shouting because? Because they’re probably a bunch of mindless liberal drones who don’t care about facts, scientific evidence, and anything that proves that “global warming” is, in fact, a complete hoax. Just like “Barack Obama is BLAAAACK” is a lie. He’s so not. Of course Monika was impressed he’s paying so much attention to climate change. Teen fiction literature is one of today’s hot topics. He’s been busy writing these fictional books and making up fraudulent evidence… it takes a lot of work to fool this many people. Well, actually it doesn’t. It takes a lot of work to educate the libtards on the TRUTH.

“I think he’s trying to make people more aware of the issues that have gone unnoticed for too long,” Hinterman said.

Some who came to meet Gore at the book signing said that while they support free speech, the event was not the best place for a protest.

“If you have a point of view, put some facts and figures to it. Express yourself with support behind it,” said Sabolch Horvat, who carried a signed copy of the book under his arm.

Nicole Lynch bought the book to make up her mind about the science that the protesters questioned. She said she approves of his efforts to get people to take better care of the planet.

“I’m not saying he’s perfect, and I would call him out if I knew he screwed up,” Lynch said. “I’m not afraid to speak my mind.”

Well, Nicole; allow me to help you. Read my post on Al Gore and his fraudulent global warming scam HERE: An Inconvenient Al.

- BBC has found that we have not observed any increase in global temperatures for the last 11 years. Yes, that’s over ONE DECADE

- The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth’s oceans has significantly cooled since 2003

Society’s obsession with electronic gadgetry has escalated to such a fever pitch over the last few years that in many ways it seems doubtful that we will ever be able to contain our use to a reasonable extent… and quit having to charge so many of our darn accessories. It is undeniable that the way we communicate with not only loved ones but the entire outside world is now bound up in the use of energy resources. The article that I detailed a few days ago with regards to the 10:10 pledge in Stoke-on-Trent cited a pensioner’s worry that it would be the young people who had such a hard time coming around to the idea that they had to do rely less on electricity. The man noted that he himself would be able to just switch all of his appliances and energy consumptive belongings off at the source at the end of the night. It was young people he worried about, with their addiction to electronics. How many of us just leave our phones on all day, without a thought to how often we unnecessarily charge them as a result? How many people leave their laptops plugged in all day long when they aren’t in use? How many gadgets are sucking up energy in a room occupied by a twenty something? Or, a teenager? ..A lot. ..Lights, television, laptop, Xbox, mobile phones that will soon need recharging… And that’s all I could come up with in our relatively Luddite living room.

But WePC is running a feature on green gadgets this month! Kicking off the list is the Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Meter, which will measure the efficiency of any gadget you plug into it. I might be slightly partial to this one as I enjoy measuring pretty much anything. (The little distance and heart monitor screens on work out equipment are the only things that can make going to the gym even remotely fun, as far as I’m concerned.) But beyond the Kill A Watt thingamajig, there is also an energy saving laptop made of bamboo and a washing machine attachment that uses oxygen and peroxides to clean clothing rather than contaminating detergents.  They also discuss a plexiglass spiral that amplifies sound from the iPhone – acting as a travel speaker that you don’t have to charge.

A lot of these gadgets prove that if we had enough time we probably would be able to adapt and evolve into a less wasteful species. We can do pretty much anything when we put our minds to it.  The gadgets on WePC are probably the tip of the iceberg and it would be a pretty exciting development if green gadgetry became totally fetishized. I could dig it. Even if I barely know how to use my mobile phone.

This is one of the best articles I’ve read yet about the roots of global warming skepticism. I occasionally have a hard time explaining their existence myself — as noted a couple of posts back. But David Aaronovitch roots their beliefs in a pretty visceral, scared place. Combined with defending the interests of old-fashioned industry, you have quite the healthy explanation. Here’s a fancy dancey excerpt:

They are only sceptical about what they don’t want to be true.

They somehow believe that the whole global warming schtick is an amazing confidence trick performed upon the peoples of the world by a group of scientists and socialists, and pursued by politicans keen to get their hands on green taxes (though for what nefarious purpose we do not know), and which has taken in almost all the governments of the world, from the US to China.

They suggest that they are open-minded, but their foundations and articles are designed to reassure the witless that their attachment to their Porsche Cayenne Turbos and their hatred of recycling are somehow acts of non-conformist courage. The Lawson argument is a masterpiece in disingenuousness. A Magic Flute of guile. A Mona Lisa of chutzpah. Don’t buy it.

Enjoy.

Consisting of more profound front fascia wider fenders new exhaust aero wing for starters, and a sleu of performance features this Lambo is going to turn heads with the exhaust note and the slick purposeful styling.

with wider fenders and slightly deeper dams this is sure to give your cls a subtle yet profound change to set you apart from the rest of your crew.

The first travel firm to offer consumer carbon offset schemes says they are a "distraction" from the real urgency of climate change…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: gatwick airport. The blog is also related to: travel flights.

Some more updates of the c63 widebody D2 wide version.
Sport Exhaust

seductioninc.wordpress.com

As I stated I would show some more pics of the completed wide body C63 with some of the performance upgrades. check out info and pics below. For more information on acquiring this kit contact GTPRO.COM.

Conversion contents

D2 complete wide chassis:
−D2 front wide bumper
−D2 front carbon lip
−D2 front wide fender
−D2 side skirt extension
−D2 rear apron
−D2 rear wide fender

C63 D2 optional eye Thames:
−D2 rear carbon diffuser
−D2 stainless steel sport muffler
Blackout inside – front headlight
−D2 front headlight carbon trim
−AMG Styling W 19inch
−D2 suspension kit by H&R

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EMISSIONS will continue to grow, but less rapidly than the economy as a whole…. From The Australian. Full story

This site may contain information about: china spring. The blog is also related to: trips china.