The Queen has taken delivery of two giant hydroelectric turbines that will help meet the Royal Family’s attempts to power Windsor Castle using economic sustainable energy.
10:00AM BST 08 Sep 2011
The 40-tonne Archimedes’ screws were put in place on Wednesday by crane at Romney Weir on the River Thames, just a few miles from her favourite royal residence.
The turbines are made in a factory in Holland at a cost £700,000. It is estimated that, together with other equipment, they will cost a further £1 million to install. It is estimated the turbines will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 790,000 kilos per year.
The turbines, which have the appearance of a screw, were developed by the Ancient Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes of Syracuse.
He invented the screw to raise low-lying water so it could irrigate land at the top of a slope, but its modern namesake is turned by falling water from the weir. It is connected to a gearbox and generator to produce electricity.
In 2009 plans to "power" the castle by renewable energy were halted but now Royal advisers believe the time is right embrace renewable energy.
The Archimedes Screw turbines, supplied by Southeast Power Engineering Ltd, will be ready to operate from November. The company is working in partnership with the Environment Agency, which is leasing the weir.
A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said: "I can confirm that the royal household now has an agreement in place to purchase the energy generated by the hydro scheme, implemented by SEPEL.
"We have been looking at this for a number of years. It is one of a number of green initiatives introduced at royal residences by the Queen and the Duke Edinburgh."
Palace sources said on Thursday that it was not clear whether they will be able to power the castle entirely by green electricity immediately. It could happen by next year, they added.
Community groups and developers were invited by the Environment Agency to set up hydropower schemes on River Thames weirs ranged down the river through Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
In Berkshire, the agency teamed up with Windsor and Maidenhead council to investigate schemes at Marlow, Boveney and Boulters weirs, while work is already under way to generate electricity at Osney and Goring weirs in Oxfordshire.
Weirs were originally built to control water levels for navigation and flood risk purposes but can now take advantage of new technology to provide energy, the EA said.
Hydro-power works by using flowing water to drive turbines to generate electricity.
Barry Russell, the agency's hydropower project leader, said "This is a great opportunity for developers and community groups to get involved in generating clean, green electricity in an environmentally sustainable way.
"Weirs are an untapped source of energy and the Environment Agency is keen to ensure hydropower fulfils its potential as a small but useful renewable energy source, whilst protecting the environment."
David Dechambeau, the director of EPIEL, has said he was "over the moon" to have the Queen as a customer.
He first approached the Royal Household in 2007 about developing hydroelectric power for the Castle.
Officials were "very keen" on the idea, he added before taking four years to get approval.
The Agency, which issued the permits had never previously leased its property to a private company and officials wanted to ensure that the project would not affect navigation, flood control and wildlife.
Friday, 9 September 2011
Waste to Energy Group LLC
Name: Bob Backoff
Business: Waste to Energy Group LLC
Headquarters: Irvine, Calif.
Industry: Energy and Natural Resources
Product/service: We develop landfill gas and biomass projects
Number of full-time employees: 2
Year begun: 2008
What was the challenge your business was facing as a result of the economy?
Our company has an exceptional process that helps municipalities generate hundreds of thousands of dollars from their landfills. We inject steam into the landfills or biomass reactors to extract methane gas. Our major challenge has been to finance our projects in a terrible economy.
What was the innovative idea you put in place?
We inject steam into landfills or biomass reactors to generate massive amounts of methane which reduces the hazardous methane that escapes into the atmosphere. We are the only company utilizing this patented method. We are one of the “greenest” of the USA-based green energy companies.
What significant milestone has this innovative idea lead to since Jan. 1, 2009?
Our patented process has given over 4,000 U.S. municipalities an answer to their landfill methane gas problems and has provided an alternative to outdated landfill process that the big waste management companies have used for decades. We have provided a tremendous solution to the waste problem that the U.S. faces.
Please explain your innovation at greater length.
Since the dawn of man the earth has been challenged with the waste that we humans have produced. In the past, man could merely throw out his/her waste and animals would scavenge the waste or it would decompose. Waste has perplexed man for centuries and now in the modern era of our planet waste is an even greater problem since in the USA the average man, woman and child each produce 2,000 pounds of waste every year! That figure may be hard to believe, but is the actual amount that we all produce.
So now, our governmental units take on the service of waste disposal and hire local waste haulers to make the waste go away. The problem is – it doesn’t! It merely goes from our trash containers to a local landfill. Governments have designated large tracts of land to turn into landfills, but the population of the USA and local cities, towns and villages has increased dramatically in the 20th and now the 21st centuries. Just because the local municipality has our trash hauled to a landfill doesn’t mean that the problem is out of sight and out of mind. We are all faced with the growing levels of trash that we cumulatively throw away and the landfills are filling up rapidly. We are on a pace to literally drown in our own trash.
In the last 50 years we have instituted recycling programs for all kinds of items which has reduced the volume of trash going to the landfill, but we are still faced with the gases that the landfill generates 24 hours a day. The methane gas a landfill generates is 22 times more damaging to our atmosphere than the CO2 that people complain about.
Now there is a solution to this problem in that Waste to Energy Group LLC is working with municipal landfills all over the USA to capture the methane generated and actually turn it into electricity, crude oil or methanol. Utilizing a patented steam injection process we are able to extract massive amounts of methane from a landfill which in turn generates thousands of dollars for the municipality. As we all know municipalities are in need of revenue and we can help them out by instituting a revenue share program with them. Our process reduces the hazardous methane gas, allows the landfill to operate for more years, provides income to the municipality and is the greenest program there is.
We also utilize a steam injected biomass reactor to process animal waste, green waste, wood chips, etc. which provides methane gas to be processed. These reactors can be sited anywhere where there is a waste stream. They can also be sited on the land that solar panels are on and provide an additional revenue source for these installations.
Waste to Energy Group LLC is a 21st Century, green renewable energy company that offers common sense solutions to waste problems that have plagued man since the beginning of time.
Did you like this story? Readers are invited to vote for their favorite entries between Sept. 12 and Sept. 30 (one vote per week). The Reader’s Choice winner will be revealed when the Journal’s special report is published Nov. 21.
Bob Backoff,
Calif.,
Irvine,
Waste to Energy Group LLC,
year begun: 2006-2010
Business: Waste to Energy Group LLC
Headquarters: Irvine, Calif.
Industry: Energy and Natural Resources
Product/service: We develop landfill gas and biomass projects
Number of full-time employees: 2
Year begun: 2008
What was the challenge your business was facing as a result of the economy?
Our company has an exceptional process that helps municipalities generate hundreds of thousands of dollars from their landfills. We inject steam into the landfills or biomass reactors to extract methane gas. Our major challenge has been to finance our projects in a terrible economy.
What was the innovative idea you put in place?
We inject steam into landfills or biomass reactors to generate massive amounts of methane which reduces the hazardous methane that escapes into the atmosphere. We are the only company utilizing this patented method. We are one of the “greenest” of the USA-based green energy companies.
What significant milestone has this innovative idea lead to since Jan. 1, 2009?
Our patented process has given over 4,000 U.S. municipalities an answer to their landfill methane gas problems and has provided an alternative to outdated landfill process that the big waste management companies have used for decades. We have provided a tremendous solution to the waste problem that the U.S. faces.
Please explain your innovation at greater length.
Since the dawn of man the earth has been challenged with the waste that we humans have produced. In the past, man could merely throw out his/her waste and animals would scavenge the waste or it would decompose. Waste has perplexed man for centuries and now in the modern era of our planet waste is an even greater problem since in the USA the average man, woman and child each produce 2,000 pounds of waste every year! That figure may be hard to believe, but is the actual amount that we all produce.
So now, our governmental units take on the service of waste disposal and hire local waste haulers to make the waste go away. The problem is – it doesn’t! It merely goes from our trash containers to a local landfill. Governments have designated large tracts of land to turn into landfills, but the population of the USA and local cities, towns and villages has increased dramatically in the 20th and now the 21st centuries. Just because the local municipality has our trash hauled to a landfill doesn’t mean that the problem is out of sight and out of mind. We are all faced with the growing levels of trash that we cumulatively throw away and the landfills are filling up rapidly. We are on a pace to literally drown in our own trash.
In the last 50 years we have instituted recycling programs for all kinds of items which has reduced the volume of trash going to the landfill, but we are still faced with the gases that the landfill generates 24 hours a day. The methane gas a landfill generates is 22 times more damaging to our atmosphere than the CO2 that people complain about.
Now there is a solution to this problem in that Waste to Energy Group LLC is working with municipal landfills all over the USA to capture the methane generated and actually turn it into electricity, crude oil or methanol. Utilizing a patented steam injection process we are able to extract massive amounts of methane from a landfill which in turn generates thousands of dollars for the municipality. As we all know municipalities are in need of revenue and we can help them out by instituting a revenue share program with them. Our process reduces the hazardous methane gas, allows the landfill to operate for more years, provides income to the municipality and is the greenest program there is.
We also utilize a steam injected biomass reactor to process animal waste, green waste, wood chips, etc. which provides methane gas to be processed. These reactors can be sited anywhere where there is a waste stream. They can also be sited on the land that solar panels are on and provide an additional revenue source for these installations.
Waste to Energy Group LLC is a 21st Century, green renewable energy company that offers common sense solutions to waste problems that have plagued man since the beginning of time.
Did you like this story? Readers are invited to vote for their favorite entries between Sept. 12 and Sept. 30 (one vote per week). The Reader’s Choice winner will be revealed when the Journal’s special report is published Nov. 21.
Bob Backoff,
Calif.,
Irvine,
Waste to Energy Group LLC,
year begun: 2006-2010
How to ensure climate change finance is well spent
Those deciding how to best use money for climate mitigation in poor countries can learn from 50 years of debate on aid effectiveness. But some new rules are also needed
Most commentators agree that the additional funding developing countries need to respond to climate change will require a major flow of finance from richer countries to poorer ones. The 2010 World Development Report estimated that the overall incremental cost of mitigation and adaptation in poor countries will be between $170bn and $275bn per year by 2030. The sourcing and spending of such a large amount of money represents an extraordinary challenge for the global development finance system.
Climate finance, which is meant to pay for climate mitigation and adaptation in poor countries, is set to reach $100bn a year, according to the promises of rich countries. As with traditional forms of aid, quality will be as important as quantity, if not more so.
We have written a paper suggesting some ways to judge the quality of climate finance spending.
We argue that the results of climate spending should be judged according to three criteria. First, how well actions that are funded lead to the desired result, in this case the mitigation of carbon emissions and the strengthening of adaptive capacity to climate change. Second, how such results can be achieved with the least amount of waste, or at the least cost. And third, the impact of such actions, in particular whether they meet the needs of the most vulnerable people.
While there are similarities between aid and climate finance, there are also important differences, which is why the Paris Principles on aid effectiveness, agreed by the major donors and recipient countries in 2005, are insufficient.
These differences include the fact that while aid is voluntary, there are strong calls within the UN framework on climate change negotiations for climate finance (UNFCC) transfers to be mandatory within a legally binding global agreement. This reflects the polluter pays principle – those who caused the problem should bear the financial burden of clearing it up. Also, climate finance comes from private as well as public sources, making it more complex to regulate.
The aims of aid and climate finance also differ. Climate finance has a global objective (to keep the world within a 2C global temperature rise – mitigation) as well as the more aid-like objective to help the most vulnerable become more resilient to an already changing climate – adaptation.
Linked to these differences are strong reactions against the kind of conditionality common in aid transfers – they seem inappropriate for climate finance. And the architecture that governs aid effectiveness, in which the donor club of the development assistance committee of the OECD holds a pre-eminent position, is inappropriate for a new era and understanding of power relations.
So while recognising that there is a lot for climate finance practitioners to learn from 50 years of thinking about aid effectiveness, we suggest 10 new principles to cover climate finance, building on work done by others. They include equitable representation, fair distribution and complementarity, but need to be taken as a whole package.
We agree with those who say that the aid effectiveness principles of Paris are broadly appropriate for climate finance, but should be built on to take account of the consensus within the UNFCC negotiations on the principles appropriate for climate finance. But we go further, arguing that the emerging principles of climate finance could equally well be applied back to the delivery of aid. In other words, the two have plenty to learn from each other. The aid effectiveness sector is full of wizened sages, but they are trying to turn round a tanker. Meanwhile, the climate finance lobby are the nouveau riche, flush with cash and ideas, with the advantage of a fairly clean slate on which to build.
As climate finance increases, the world of development financing will become even more complex. Attempts to bureaucratise and co-ordinate these flows have met with limited success. An important lesson from the aid effectiveness debate is that principles and declarations are hard to convert into incentives and real change.
So one of our main conclusions is that making the best use of the money available will require strong management at a national level. Rather than wait for global consensus or harmonised systems, such national systems will need to manage the complexities as effectively as possible.
Without quick action there is concern that climate finance will be spent in a way that is not part of an overall national strategy, complementing other sources of money. Allowing parallel systems of spending to emerge would signify a huge waste of effort.
• Neil Bird is a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute
Most commentators agree that the additional funding developing countries need to respond to climate change will require a major flow of finance from richer countries to poorer ones. The 2010 World Development Report estimated that the overall incremental cost of mitigation and adaptation in poor countries will be between $170bn and $275bn per year by 2030. The sourcing and spending of such a large amount of money represents an extraordinary challenge for the global development finance system.
Climate finance, which is meant to pay for climate mitigation and adaptation in poor countries, is set to reach $100bn a year, according to the promises of rich countries. As with traditional forms of aid, quality will be as important as quantity, if not more so.
We have written a paper suggesting some ways to judge the quality of climate finance spending.
We argue that the results of climate spending should be judged according to three criteria. First, how well actions that are funded lead to the desired result, in this case the mitigation of carbon emissions and the strengthening of adaptive capacity to climate change. Second, how such results can be achieved with the least amount of waste, or at the least cost. And third, the impact of such actions, in particular whether they meet the needs of the most vulnerable people.
While there are similarities between aid and climate finance, there are also important differences, which is why the Paris Principles on aid effectiveness, agreed by the major donors and recipient countries in 2005, are insufficient.
These differences include the fact that while aid is voluntary, there are strong calls within the UN framework on climate change negotiations for climate finance (UNFCC) transfers to be mandatory within a legally binding global agreement. This reflects the polluter pays principle – those who caused the problem should bear the financial burden of clearing it up. Also, climate finance comes from private as well as public sources, making it more complex to regulate.
The aims of aid and climate finance also differ. Climate finance has a global objective (to keep the world within a 2C global temperature rise – mitigation) as well as the more aid-like objective to help the most vulnerable become more resilient to an already changing climate – adaptation.
Linked to these differences are strong reactions against the kind of conditionality common in aid transfers – they seem inappropriate for climate finance. And the architecture that governs aid effectiveness, in which the donor club of the development assistance committee of the OECD holds a pre-eminent position, is inappropriate for a new era and understanding of power relations.
So while recognising that there is a lot for climate finance practitioners to learn from 50 years of thinking about aid effectiveness, we suggest 10 new principles to cover climate finance, building on work done by others. They include equitable representation, fair distribution and complementarity, but need to be taken as a whole package.
We agree with those who say that the aid effectiveness principles of Paris are broadly appropriate for climate finance, but should be built on to take account of the consensus within the UNFCC negotiations on the principles appropriate for climate finance. But we go further, arguing that the emerging principles of climate finance could equally well be applied back to the delivery of aid. In other words, the two have plenty to learn from each other. The aid effectiveness sector is full of wizened sages, but they are trying to turn round a tanker. Meanwhile, the climate finance lobby are the nouveau riche, flush with cash and ideas, with the advantage of a fairly clean slate on which to build.
As climate finance increases, the world of development financing will become even more complex. Attempts to bureaucratise and co-ordinate these flows have met with limited success. An important lesson from the aid effectiveness debate is that principles and declarations are hard to convert into incentives and real change.
So one of our main conclusions is that making the best use of the money available will require strong management at a national level. Rather than wait for global consensus or harmonised systems, such national systems will need to manage the complexities as effectively as possible.
Without quick action there is concern that climate finance will be spent in a way that is not part of an overall national strategy, complementing other sources of money. Allowing parallel systems of spending to emerge would signify a huge waste of effort.
• Neil Bird is a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute
The world needs to prepare for a climate sceptic defeating Obama
Barack Obama is losing his grip on the White House - and climate sceptic Rick Perry is favourite to succeed him
A year or so ago, the very idea that the most powerful person on the planet could, within just a couple of years, be someone who refuses to accept the science that underpins our knowledge of anthropogenic climate change was almost laughable.
Sarah Palin – who is no stranger to climate scepticism - has long been on people's lips as a future candidate for the US presidency. But most analysts thought that Barack Obama would likely see off any challenge from any Republican who flirted with the extremes of the Tea Party movement and its anti-science agenda. And that was before Obama received a political fillip after green-lighting the assassination of Osama bin Laden in May.
But everything has changed now. The US economy continues to wade through treacle and, as a result, there seems to be growing talk that Obama is destined to be a one-term president. And currently leading the polls as his most likely Republican successor is Rick Perry, the governor of Texas.
Last night, during the first of three televised debates between the current nominees for the Republican presidential candidacy (Palin continues to play her strategic game of "let 'em brew"), we got to see in high definition what it might be like to have a full-blown climate sceptic as US president. Here's the exchange between the moderator, John Harris, editor in chief of Politico, and Rick Perry on the issue of climate change:
Harris: Just recently in New Hampshire, you said that, weekly and even daily, scientists are coming forward to question the idea that human activity is behind climate change. Which scientists have you found most credible on this subject?
Perry: Well, I do agree that there is - the science is - is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans' economy at – at- at jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet, to me, is just - is nonsense. I mean, it - I mean - and I tell somebody, I said, just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell. But the fact is, to put America's economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I will suggest to you is not necessarily good science. Find out what the science truly is before you start putting the American economy in jeopardy.
It's one thing to question the economic impact and legacy of current climate policy proposals – you would expect and wish for politicians to debate this – but for a politician to question the science in this way is striking. (It's worth recalling that in 2009 Perry also hit out at the "radical green energy crowd" when assuming the chair of Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.) Note how he studiously ignored the moderator's well-crafted question: who exactly are these "Galileos" that you believe have so comprehensively cast doubt on the canon of climate science? Perry couldn't – or wouldn't – name them.
Following the debate, Ray Sullivan, Perry's campaign communications director, told ABC News to expect Perry to continue pushing his climate scepticism. In other words, it's a pre-meditated campaign strategy to win over voters:
I think the governor answered consistent with his philosophy, consistent with what frankly a lot of Americans and a lot of Republicans believe — that the climate it changing. We're not sure that it's manmade. In fact, there's a lot of questions about whether it's manmade. And we shouldn't jeopardise the jobs and the economy and the future of this country on science that's not proven. That's what the governor has said, said tonight and will continue to say going forward.
With canny timing, some fascinating polling was published yesterday by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Contained within a report called "Politics & Global Warming: Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and the Tea Party" are the survey results of 1,010 adults questioned from April-May this year about their views on climate change. Here are the headline findings:
* Majorities of Democrats (78%), Independents (71%) and Republicans (53%) believe that global warming is happening. By contrast, only 34% of Tea Party members believe global warming is happening, while 53% say it is not happening.
* While 62% of Democrats say that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, most Tea Party members say it is either naturally caused (50%) or isn't happening at all (21%).
* Democrats are more likely to agree that the record heat waves of the summer of 2010 (not 2011) strengthened their belief that global warming is occurring, while Republicans and Tea Party members are more likely to disagree.
* By contrast, Tea Party members are more likely to agree that the record snowstorms of the winter of 2010-2011 in the US caused them to question whether global warming is occurring.
* A majority of Democrats (55%) say that most scientists think global warming is happening, while majorities of Republicans (56%) and Tea Party members (69%) say that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening.
* A large majority of Democrats (72%) worry about global warming, compared to 53% of Independents, 38% of Republicans, and 24% of Tea Party members. Over half (51%) of Tea Party members say they are not at all worried about global warming.
* Nearly half of Democrats (45%) say that global warming is already harming people in the US, while 33% of Republicans and 51% of Tea Party members say it will never harm people in the US.
* Tea Party members are much more likely to say that they are "very well informed" about global warming than the other groups. Likewise, they are also much more likely to say they "do not need any more information" about global warming to make up their mind.
After Obama's victory in late 2008, many around the world let out a collective sigh of relief that the era of climate intransigence and indifference under George W Bush was finally over. Sadly, it now appears that Obama's brief window for action is over and he is unlikely to ever regain the political capital he needs to implement any serious climate policies. But, most alarming of all, the whole world – not just the US – needs to start seriously preparing for the very real possibility that a staunch climate sceptic could, within 16 months, have his cowboy boots under the desk in the Oval Office.
A year or so ago, the very idea that the most powerful person on the planet could, within just a couple of years, be someone who refuses to accept the science that underpins our knowledge of anthropogenic climate change was almost laughable.
Sarah Palin – who is no stranger to climate scepticism - has long been on people's lips as a future candidate for the US presidency. But most analysts thought that Barack Obama would likely see off any challenge from any Republican who flirted with the extremes of the Tea Party movement and its anti-science agenda. And that was before Obama received a political fillip after green-lighting the assassination of Osama bin Laden in May.
But everything has changed now. The US economy continues to wade through treacle and, as a result, there seems to be growing talk that Obama is destined to be a one-term president. And currently leading the polls as his most likely Republican successor is Rick Perry, the governor of Texas.
Last night, during the first of three televised debates between the current nominees for the Republican presidential candidacy (Palin continues to play her strategic game of "let 'em brew"), we got to see in high definition what it might be like to have a full-blown climate sceptic as US president. Here's the exchange between the moderator, John Harris, editor in chief of Politico, and Rick Perry on the issue of climate change:
Harris: Just recently in New Hampshire, you said that, weekly and even daily, scientists are coming forward to question the idea that human activity is behind climate change. Which scientists have you found most credible on this subject?
Perry: Well, I do agree that there is - the science is - is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans' economy at – at- at jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet, to me, is just - is nonsense. I mean, it - I mean - and I tell somebody, I said, just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell. But the fact is, to put America's economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I will suggest to you is not necessarily good science. Find out what the science truly is before you start putting the American economy in jeopardy.
It's one thing to question the economic impact and legacy of current climate policy proposals – you would expect and wish for politicians to debate this – but for a politician to question the science in this way is striking. (It's worth recalling that in 2009 Perry also hit out at the "radical green energy crowd" when assuming the chair of Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.) Note how he studiously ignored the moderator's well-crafted question: who exactly are these "Galileos" that you believe have so comprehensively cast doubt on the canon of climate science? Perry couldn't – or wouldn't – name them.
Following the debate, Ray Sullivan, Perry's campaign communications director, told ABC News to expect Perry to continue pushing his climate scepticism. In other words, it's a pre-meditated campaign strategy to win over voters:
I think the governor answered consistent with his philosophy, consistent with what frankly a lot of Americans and a lot of Republicans believe — that the climate it changing. We're not sure that it's manmade. In fact, there's a lot of questions about whether it's manmade. And we shouldn't jeopardise the jobs and the economy and the future of this country on science that's not proven. That's what the governor has said, said tonight and will continue to say going forward.
With canny timing, some fascinating polling was published yesterday by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Contained within a report called "Politics & Global Warming: Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and the Tea Party" are the survey results of 1,010 adults questioned from April-May this year about their views on climate change. Here are the headline findings:
* Majorities of Democrats (78%), Independents (71%) and Republicans (53%) believe that global warming is happening. By contrast, only 34% of Tea Party members believe global warming is happening, while 53% say it is not happening.
* While 62% of Democrats say that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, most Tea Party members say it is either naturally caused (50%) or isn't happening at all (21%).
* Democrats are more likely to agree that the record heat waves of the summer of 2010 (not 2011) strengthened their belief that global warming is occurring, while Republicans and Tea Party members are more likely to disagree.
* By contrast, Tea Party members are more likely to agree that the record snowstorms of the winter of 2010-2011 in the US caused them to question whether global warming is occurring.
* A majority of Democrats (55%) say that most scientists think global warming is happening, while majorities of Republicans (56%) and Tea Party members (69%) say that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening.
* A large majority of Democrats (72%) worry about global warming, compared to 53% of Independents, 38% of Republicans, and 24% of Tea Party members. Over half (51%) of Tea Party members say they are not at all worried about global warming.
* Nearly half of Democrats (45%) say that global warming is already harming people in the US, while 33% of Republicans and 51% of Tea Party members say it will never harm people in the US.
* Tea Party members are much more likely to say that they are "very well informed" about global warming than the other groups. Likewise, they are also much more likely to say they "do not need any more information" about global warming to make up their mind.
After Obama's victory in late 2008, many around the world let out a collective sigh of relief that the era of climate intransigence and indifference under George W Bush was finally over. Sadly, it now appears that Obama's brief window for action is over and he is unlikely to ever regain the political capital he needs to implement any serious climate policies. But, most alarming of all, the whole world – not just the US – needs to start seriously preparing for the very real possibility that a staunch climate sceptic could, within 16 months, have his cowboy boots under the desk in the Oval Office.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
