Sir David King: Climate Change and Terrorism

Well the ex-chief scientific advisor to the UK Government has been getting a great deal of media coverage over his new book the Hot Topic.

Sir David King made his global reputation with the risk assessment that "climate change was a greater threat than terrorism". Every interview with him and newspaper article covers this point.

Unfortunately Sir David was not the original author, I was. the original was a submission in 2002 to United Nations Environment and Development UK report commissioned by the UK government on the future of sustainable development. The UNED-UK being part of the United nations Environmental Programme which I believe Sir David is a member of.

This is the original assessment on climate change and terrorism, placed on a sister site. It also relates climate change and Africa, the agenda of the 2005 G8 in Scotland.

It is usual scientific etiquette and methodology to cite the original source. Something Sir David has never done. Though it did make him a global climate change superstar.

Did Gordon Brown Visit My Blog?

In my post of 10th March Professor Lindzen I Presume I took a swipe at the suggestion to turn off TVs. As can be seen from the permanent writing down the right hand side of this site I have have been at this environmental game for a good many years ( all my life). In the post I made a reference to TV on/off switches and a very brief environmental impact assessment on them. I have to hold my hand up and admit once I worked as a TV installation engineer. Previously I had been trained to and worked on MOD research, and been approached by some of the biggest bands in the world to be tour and technical manager. When I worked with TVs I had a bit of an 'approach'. Some of the OAPs thought I was ......

So on the 10th March I took a swipe at turning off TVs. Al Gore, don't try and teach your Granma to suck eggs, as they say.

On the 13th March Gordon Brown, the UK Chancellor, makes a statement he wants manufactures to put on off switches on TVs. This is even more bizarre as coincidentally I had an email to sign a Gov petition re on/off switches (after I wrote my post).

At this point I am not going to go into the links and connections. Thank you though Gordon, you knew I was right. Probably the best way is to investigate the power requirements of the stand by system. I am pretty sure you can get the stand by system to work at such a low wattage you would not need a physical on/off. Explore that route as well. I think you might find I was right.

Tory Tax Policy

Heard the Tories talking about environmental tax policy today. Something about covering the social and environmental costs of air travel. Hardly revolutionary. Virtually the same words as the Cabinet Offices draft Guide on Regulatory Impact Assessment covered here in work I did for them in 2002.

Remember these are another political party talking about "shifting tax burdens". This means the environmental damage is not being repaired etc. Again it is just talking about the sound bite "climate change". The problem is global ecological life support system collapse.

Brian from Devon and Cornwall View left a comment in Professor Lindzen I Presume which drew attention to the correct challenge, the response of the earths ecology to changing factors. Again smoke and mirrors, define the problem first. Climate change is just a symptom.

Profesor Lindzen I Presume: Tax lies and Videotape, The Great Global Warming Swindle

The Great Global Warming Swindle has generated some debate around the blogsphere. Here I have to say I do believe in climate change, to me it doesn't matter the driver, whether it is human or natural, it still has to be dealt with. I don't even believe in the Cartesian reductionism that separates human and natural factors. The next level of organisational hierarchy is as a whole and integrated planetary system, applied planetary engineering.


Right for Scotland and Devil's Kitchen both welcomed the programme and it's findings. Prior to the programme I did make make my views know about one of the contributors Prof Richard Lindzen, purely on what he had written in the Daily Mail Global Warming a bogus religion of our age.


Entering his name into Google produced a strange result, and many of the articles relate to him and other associates working as consultants for the oil and gas industry.

If you are taken to hospital and when lying in a bed the doctor comes up and says I've got some good news and bad news. First the bad, you're going to die, and the good, it's from natural causes. Now I don't agree with the Stern Report and neither do I agree with Lindzen.

Lindzen does make an appropriate quote on this though."Picking holes in the IPCC is crucial. The notion that if you’re ignorant of something and somebody comes up with a wrong answer, and you have to accept that because you don’t have another wrong answer to offer is like faith healing, it’s like quackery in medicine – if somebody says you should take jelly beans for cancer and you say that’s stupid, and he says, well can you suggest something else and you say, no, does that mean you have to go with jelly beans?

Personally I don't go with either but do have an alternative.

My take on the situation is that this whole body of knowledge and understanding of what makes a planet tick has been hi-jacked by politicians, the media and big business. Unfortunately the debate and presentation by them is only on a very small fraction of the knowledge available. The soundbite culture. Climate change=global warming=man made CO2 emissions. That is what the public are believing through the narrow slot of understanding presented to them.

Let's go to a tropical rain forest in South America. Lush and thick vegetation, hot and high levels of rainfall. This is a waste of space, it is far better to use this area as farmland to feed people, so chop down all the trees. We can make lush farm land like Cheshire or lowland Perthshire. The first thing after chopping down all the trees is the rain stops. About 85% of all the rain that falls on a TRF is made by the forest, transpiration, water passing through the tree and out through the leaves, and also evaporation. It is continually being recycled.

Next there is no soil for the crops. A TRF does not need high quality soils. Nutrient recycling is so rapid and efficient, partly due to the large number and diversity of living organisms supported by the high productivity of the forest. (The primary productivity is the amount of biomass created by the plants and trees per square metre per year).

Having cut down all the trees in a high rainfall region. You are left with arid conditions and poor soils which will grow very little. Climate change. No flights for foreign holidays, car journeys or light bulbs have been involved. Still it is climate change.

The programme also drew attention on the inverse relationship between CO2 and temperature as outlined in Al Gores "An Inconvenient Truth". Which I cannot be bothered to watch. If climate change to you Al is so important, why are you criss crossing the world in aircraft to tell us about it. It is a pointless exercise me turning my TV off and not leaving it in standby as it will take a million lifetimes to save the amount of energy you squander flying about telling me to save it. I don't need you to tell me, please stop. Anyway if you had anything that was really important to say about saving the planet, when you spoke in Scotland recently why did you not permit the media to report it. It wasn't because tables were £3000 a go, and if the press had reported anything important and useful to the public that could save lives, you wouldn't be able to fly in again and tell another group.

Anyway most TVs at present aren't really designed to be turned on and off physically all the time the switches are very frail. Please tell me when someones TV switch breaks and a man in a van has to come round and fix it. Have much emissions have been saved in the switching off and how much have been used in the man coming round to fix it?

For every 10c rise in temperature the rate of reaction doubles. Decay and conversion of biomass to CO2 of leaf fall and other dead material in a forest could be in equilibrium with that produced. Raise the temperature slightly decays speeds up at a rate greater than new material is produced. Hence CO2 levels in the atmosphere of a closed system increase.

Even Lindzen admits CO2 may cause some (but not all temperature rise). If temperature rises say due to increased solar activity, then CO2 levels will increase. These may then feed back into the system and contribute to the increasing temperature. This is positive feedback mechanism. An increase in temperature from another factor my initiate the rise, then afterwards CO2 can still contribute. The increasing CO2 curve may be after the rising temp curve doesn't mean it still can't be contributing.

Co2 in oceans. Fully agree warming water can have less dissolved gas in it, as long as the concentration of the atmosphere remain constant. The shift in the equilibrium of CO2 concentrations in the oceans depends on the temperature of the water and the concentration in the atmosphere. We are not just talking about CO2 in terms of climate change damage. What is the effect of CO2 on increasing acidification of the water, changes in nutrients cycling and a potential reduction of productivity. This linked with increasing pollution, decreased light penetration in estuaries and coastal waters due to siltation and suspension caused by deforestation. You then have marine ecosystem collapse and no fish with your chips.

The biggest lie in the programme was environmentalism was caused by 'reds under the bed' as a result of the collapse of the communist block, Marxists have to look for targets elsewhere. The study and understanding of mans relationship with the environment is as old as man. The rise and fall of the flood waters of the Nile for the ancient Egyptians as one example. Ecology was given it's name by Haeckel in 1869, evolving with the work of Mobius in 1887, greatly influenced by the Russians Dokuchaev and Morozov through to Tansley's concept of the ecosystem in 1935.

Modern environmentalism has a major influence in the decline of the hippy flower power movement at the end of the 60's and a desire for a more practical application of sustainable ideas. The 60's also had the highly influential Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The development of the wildlife and ecological documentary in television, David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau. Psychologically but highly influential was the Apollo space missions to the moon. Not necessarily the moonlanding itself from Apollo 11 in 1969 but Apollo 8's orbit around the moon which gave those first pictures of the beautiful jewelled Earth alone in the infinite and eternal void of space. This produced the collective, cohesive, interconnected and even fragile nature of life on Earth. From this was a defining work Only One Earth by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos. Then we have Gaia by James Lovelock from 1979.

These are just mainstream well known history of environmentalism. At this point the cold war was still on and no one was even considering the Berlin Wall to come down. How the a documentary maker could even consider such complete lies and fantasy being considered for supposedly informative viewing is beyond me. That contributors could even take part when they knew what was going out was completely and 100% false has to call into question the validity of their scientific contribution.

Ask 100 environmentalists what was the most influential and galvanising book of the 1970s on environmentalism and at no 1 or at least in the top five would have to be Limits to Growth. Not having it in the list would be the equivalent of asking what were the decent albums of the 70's and omitting Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. Don't think Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is unaware of the work. Limits to Growth was written and published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The most globally influential and important book on modern environmentalism was produced 'just down the corridor' from Prof Lindzens office in 1972 and he seems to have forgotten the fact, preferring to take part in a programme which attributes environmentalism to some Marxist plot after the fall of the Berlin Wall some years 17 later.

How Channel 4 got away with such a complete and easily checkable misrepresentation is a serious question? This wasn't some informed debate presenting evidence for and against a particular view, it was quite simply lies, a deception on the viewing public. What did the makers assume, that no one watching the programme would have any knowledge of the material being presented?

There even seemed to be some confusion over the financing of the global warming swindle. There was a view presented that research into global warming attracts mega bucks funding an unlimited pot of money to further some lie to be foisted on the public. I was part of the original group involved in setting up Quest, the UK's latest generation of climatic and other models. The total funding for the entire project was £25 million. You can't buy a Premier league footballer for that. It is less than one Harrier jump jet.

Were the money is, is in the climate change industry. Instead of global capitalism we have global carbonism. The point of the exercise should be to save the planet. All we have created is some totally irrelevant global trading scheme. If you can't make big fat cat bonuses in the financial sector why not pop over to the carbon sector.

This life, this planet is the result of 14 billion years of evolution. Why do politicians and the finance industry believe that the entire knowledge of that process and it's sustainable continuation can be condensed into simple "shifting tax burdens" and other centres and forms of global trading.

I don't agree with Stern, the media know that, and I don't agree with any political party. This programme had the option of challenging the drivel politics and the media foist on us as truth and 'the way forward'. Instead the programme presented another package of lies and misinformation. Trying to disprove one set of lies with another set of lies does not produce the truth.

Professor Lindzen any of the contributors and the programme maker are quite welcome to turn up at Blairgowrie Town hall on 28th March. Famine, fire, war, terror, extinctions, drought, pollution, disease, cruelty, flood, death, injustice and all the other furies fill the news and haunt the planet. Do something about it instead of wasting time presenting one set of misinformation to attack another set!

It was a slick and excellent programme. It told me things I didn't know. Then presented sections that I knew were complete and total lies. So how can I trust what it told me about what I didn't know. A programme which lost all credibility, a wasted opportunity to present something that could have constructively addressed the cuurent world situation in a positive way. Lies to disprove lies do not make truth.

Global Warming Swindle, Guilty, But A Butterfly Made Me Do It

Having watched the Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4 last night I have to admit my guilt in the crime, but it was a butterfly that made me do it. I produced the assessment that climate change was a greater threat than terrorism for a UNED-UK report commissioned by the UK Gov in 2002. The UNED-UK is part of the UNEP IPCC.


In 2004 the UK Gov's Chief Scientist Prof Sir David King produced an article in Science magazine that "climate change is a greater threat than terrorism". This got him and the assessment global publicity. Sir David is a member of the UNEP IPCC. Those of you who have having seen him interviewed may have noticed that he is always rather vague about where he got the idea from. As a scientist he really should be able to cite and reference his source.


This then gave the whole climate change movement some simple tabloid banner headline. In 2004 the BBC did a whole week of programmes on 'climate change is a greater threat than terrorism" by the UKs Chief Scientist. I contacted them, told them I was the original author, the BBC read the original work, agreed that I was the original author not Sir David. As I was not a media personality or celebrity they did not feel it was appropriate for me to take part. The BBC did a weeks programming on the work but did not have the original author.


What was not done was to read the other 200 articles I had produced. I did not think climate change was entirely man made neither do I think it is a problem, it is a symptom. Neither do I think it is the greatest environmental challenge. I just wanted to deflect some of the lunacy of the war against Iraq and try and get some focus on the environment.


It the Butterfly Principle of Chaos theory, some one in the UN read my work (I have the draft summary and it is there), decided it was catchy and it became a major part of the whole global band wagon. Yes climate change is dangerous, yes it can kill billions, but it has become a simple political soundbite. Politicians don't have to know anything about the wide and total environmental agenda, all they have to say is climate change.


I found the programme excellent, it told me things I didn't know and importantly for me other people were there expressing the same concerns that had been niggling me. Concerns that I had thought I had been on my own with.


Remember it doesn't matter what causes it, it can still kill you. One little bit of the challenge seems to have been hi jacked by the media and politicians, probably because they haven't spent a life time studying and trying to understand what makes a planet function. It only takes 5 minutes for them to learn the phrase climate change, rising CO2 emissions and they suddenly appear knowledgeable on life the universe and everything.


I checked and no where on the permanent parts of this page do I mention climate change. Neither in the one page summary of the use for the Millennium Dome did I mention climate change. Many other environmental organisations such as WWF and Stop Climate Chaos use my work, "climate change is a greater threat than terrorism" on their sites to raise awareness and raise, I don't even use it on my own and I wrote it.

It's Getting Hotter, Does it Matter What is To Blame?

Let's have a quick blog before 9.00 pm and The Great Global Warming Swindle. "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows". sung Bob Dylan more than 45 years ago. You don't need 10,000 scientists with 100 squillion terra flops of super computers to tell you it's getting hotter.


Oh it's to do with the increasing man made CO2 emissions says one side. No it is not man made says the other. Climate is dependent on many, 1000s of factors. All interrelating with each other. Fact, increasing CO2 emissions do increase global warming. It's to do with very simple physics of wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum and absorption spectrums.


It is and may not be the only factor in global warming. I accept there may be another 1000 reasons as well. Some of these reasons such as solar activity we have not control over.


You have a child and it gets hit by a car, a man made incident. It is going to die. Do you try and stop the death by taking them to hospital for treatment. Yes you do most people would answer. You have a child it is going to die of a cancer, a natural occurrence. It is going to die. Do you try and stop the death by taking them to hospital for treatment. Yes you do most people would answer.

Climate change will very soon kill 5 billion people. It is a very complex subject. Now the voice is being raised that it may not all be due to man made factors. Do you breathe a sigh of relief and say thank goodness for that I don't mind being killed by none man made factors.

It doesn't matter. When you are juggling all that matters is the ball in your hand. If in theory there are 8 factors causing global warming. If you can only affect one of them, then it is more important that you achieve that 100% to reduce the overall 8 factor implication.


It doesn't matter if 80% of global warming is caused by solar activity or what ever. Some of it is due to man made CO2 emissions. That means the bit you can control you have to work harder and more intensely to control to offset the rise in temperature you cannot control.


Climate change is not even a problem, it is a symptom. If a child has a fever and it is caused by cholera. You do not focus on the symptom you treat the disease. How did they stop cholera, they provided clean water and sanitation. They did not stop cholera by apply damp towels.

If any politician says climate change is a problem, they do not know what they are talking about. I have lived a bit of a Forrest Gump life which has resulted in me being taught by and having worked with the most eminent and world respected ecologists and engineers. I have written things that world leaders discuss and most people with access to the media have heard of. I admit they don't know it was me.

Our lives and the future of existence of this planet are being compromised by politicians and people in the media that go climate change, that's a nice two word soundbite, if I say it often enough people will believe I know what I am talking about, and I can make a nice career. Climate change is smoke and mirrors. Get a grip of the situation and stop the spin.

The Great Global Warming Swindle?

Yesterday in Trusting My Life and this Planet to Politicians I expressed my dissatisfaction with Sir Nicholas Stern's report on climate change as "get a red pen mark it and send it back to them with see me on it". Today in the Daily Mail there is an article by Professor Lindzen of the MIT, Global Warming: the bogus religion of our age. He too is critical of Stern and expresses it as:



"I agree with the economist critic who noted: 'If a student of mine were to hand in this report as a masters thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood, I would give him D for diligence, but more likely I would give him an F for fail".



The one good thing about blogging is you can write things and get them 'out there' even before Professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have got them into print.



Just because I am critical of Stern and Professor Lindzen is critical of Stern doesn't mean I agree with him either. They are both wrong in their own way. The article is a leader to tonight's Channel 4 will broadcast The Great Global Warming Swindle.



Even though my mothers family is Scottish, even though I live and work in Scotland, even though I write about Scotland etc etc. If I ran naked, on fire, through Edinburgh, juggling custard, burst into Holyrood, straight into the chamber and peed in Jack McConnell's ear I would not get any coverage from the Scottish media. One person who does take my comments is Benedict Brogan, Political Editor of the Daily Mail, due to the small number he publishes he seems to be very selective, reciprocating I always try to give him something accurate and analytical. At his blog my concerns over Stern have been running for a while. Brogan's blog is always good as a teaser, very often a snippet of a story will appear there before becoming front page mainstream days or weeks later.



The one thing I do agree with Professor Lindzen is "Politicians love the green agenda, of course, because it means more control, more regulation, more taxes, more summits, and more opportunities for displays of self-important zeal. " The whole environmental issue is one big ******* mess.

7.30pm 28th March Blairgowrie Town Hall

Climate Change Technology

Richard Branson has offered a prize of $25 million for someone to develop technology to combat climate change.

Over at NASA they are looking at different ideas as well, 5 Ways to Save the World will be shown on 19 February at 9pm, I really don't know why I even wasted cyberspace mentioning it, I won't be watching. Why? Three words, they won't work.

The technology already exists. It was developed in 1982 as a solution to climate change. Even 10 Downing Street accepts it exists, but nothing can be done as that would amount to a commercial endorsement, better to let 5 billion people die.

Lord Tebbit and David Miliband in Bizarre Connection

On Question Time BBC 1 15th February 2007, Lord Tebbit in an answer to a question about high bonuses paid to some who work in the City, referred to the large amounts of money also paid to people like David Beckham for just kicking a leather ball about.

Defra head man David Miliband has put forward the idea for personal carbon credits. Here is a contribution to a Defra consultation from 2004. Probably written in a cynical 'can we get serious' mood on climate change the concept of personal carbon credits was replaced by climate change death equivalents. (Metal Bands looking for a name please apply for permission).

The nice lads from Defra had it posted for a few days before losing their bottle and contacted me to ask if it was all right to change a 'few things'. Of course I didn't mind, Defra had let me get away with so much prior to that, I was surprised they still let me on the site anyway.

Here is Lord Tebbit and David Miliband connected in spirit. You might think I meant !*$"/ *!£%*/, I couldn't possibly comment.

Sustainable Development: The UK Government's Approach

Date posted: 06/10/04 19:32:00

Author: Roger Thomas

Message: The unsustainable media and popular unsustainable culture seems to consider the (Some Sportspeople) as role models.

Now (Some Sportspeople) contribution to society seems to be kicking a bag of air up a field. He works in Spain but as his wife wants the kids to be educated in the UK he commutes by jet between the two countries.

Tens of 1000's of miles many by private jet. He just contributes above the norm to climate change. Those islands that are going to be flooded, those starving through drought, making penguins homeless.

What we need is some sort of lifestyle indicator, such as CCDE, climate change death equivalents. Similar is employed in the nuclear industry to measure the affects of a radio active escape.

As well as having a high CCDE due to a selfish and uncaring attitude to the rest of the planet, (Some Sportspeople) also thinks its good to show off and persuade others to indulge in his lifestyle of shallow materialism, 10 cars etc.

His attitude is insulting to many people who care about the planet and others by recycling, saving energy etc.

(Some Sportspeople) is a bad influence on society especially young people and should be banned. If your choice in life is just to kick a bag of wind, then live near the football ground with your family so you can walk to work and not undo the good work others are trying to do to make the world a better place.

Roger Thomas

MP2 Applied Planetary Engineering

Miliband v Brown: Just What is It?

Benedict Brogan, Political Editor Daily Mail, asks the question "Just what is Miliband up to?", in his blog of 12th February. As someone caught in the connections of Miliband, Stern, Brown, sustainable development and a few other things as well, the question intrigued me. Brogan seems to be implying that Miliband "harbours persistent doubts about the pm-to-be".

So it was straight off to Environment Minister David Miliband’s DEFRA blog. After a few seconds pondering where to go, familiarity struck. There on the left of his blog was a little section headed "Worth a visit". Only six links and the top one was "What is a sustainable community?" For those that don’t know the number of people who have written more in DEFRAs consultations and reports than myself this century is probably less than the number of fingers of a couple of leaves of Dave’s favourite botanical specimen.

I turned up at a conference a couple of years ago and after the formalities the lads from DEFRA asked my why I hadn’t responded to a consultation paper on sustainable development. Well I had to go on one, my little rant how everything I had done on economic growth had been virtually ignored the last time. I have this thing about DEFRA wanting ‘blue sky thinking’ but prefixing nearly every question or inserting somewhere high and stable levels of economic growth and the need for etc, in some form or another. Now the Treasury was well represented as well. If anyone wants to know who was there, just Google, Roger Thomas Sustainable Development.

Well Miliband tempted me, I clicked his in your face, worth a look top link, What is a sustainable community? I was ready for the usual flawed Defra presentation. The page opened and I read and read. Yes economic was hardly mentioned, even when it was it had words like viable, support, prosperity, integrating or development around or near it. It wasn’t shouting like some lunatic as the basic meaning for the totality of existence, high and stable levels of economic growth every other line. I’d given up with DEFRA and sustainable development. Every time they wrote "high and stable levels of economic growth" I’d write "why", to which the reply would always be "because we need high and stable levels of economic growth".

I could write a book on ‘why’, but in fact I am and that’s going to be part of it. If we have a theoretical economy of £1000 billion per annum, and environmental degradation costs £200 billion of it. If by a change in attitude and action we reduce that to £100 billion. Then the theoretical economy is only £900 billion. The economy has deceased, quality of life could go up, the environment is improved, so why always always always say we need high and stable levels of economic growth.

Miliband had directed me to a vision without the bloody stupid meaningless phrase "high and stable levels of economic growth".

Well Benedict wants the answer to what doubts Miliband has of Brown. To judge like for like, and on a level playing field Gordon Brown should be assessed on his most famous speech on the environment. At the World Bank 20th April 2006.

I gave up counting, Gordon Brown has a type of Tourettes Syndrome, it doesn’t matter what he says, he has an obsession with adding economic growth. At one point after outlining the threat of climate change, he gleefully sees that preventing it could contribute to economic growth

.

OK we could be looking at 5 billion people dying, 40% of the world’s species of animals and plants becoming extinct and Gordon Brown sees it as an opportunity of increasing economic growth. Horse, cart; chicken, egg; armpits, crocodiles, drain swamp: whatever.

Perhaps there is a difference in views, a cleavage in policy. There were mutterings around Davos of a ‘new development model’. Is Gordon Brown going to try and fix today's and tomorrow's challenges with yesterday’s model, which never really worked properly then.

Half a dozen of us stood talking. Someone from the Treasury asked me how I got into ecology and what influenced me. I said I was always into the natural world, I was completely hooked on Jacques Cousteau as a child, so much I got myself to read so I could read his books. All six of us had read the same book at the same age.

Milibands doubts, as a start this v that. An obsession with economic growth and not the whole integrated planetary system. What’s that phrase, one trick pony.

From Scotland to Greenwich via Westminster: Flood, Domes and Jeers

While over in Millennium Dome land Greenwich Watch, Cllr Nigel Fletcher and Iain Dale expose the secret congestion charge, the Daily Mail report on the big secret facing Greenwich and the rest of London. Thames to Flood in 8 Years, a little warning from Sir Nicholas Stern.

Has somebody been asking questions? Letter to Greenwich MPs and Councillors, let the political representatives of Greenwich know the Government were told about the flood threat to London and had the solutions in April 2001. Behind all this SNP MP Pete Wishart has written to Jim Fitzpatrick MP, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, regarding the criteria of assessment in the Millennium Dome competition. That’s SNP, the same political party that started the ‘cash for peerages’ investigation.

Back to the Daily Mail and political editor Benedict Brogan reveals more of the tit for tat, between Chancellor Gordon Brown and Sir Nicholas, in Stern’s Revenge. You can tell that ecology has become the political mainstream when ‘in-jokes’ are made about it.

Perthshire View

The frost was hard in the shadows, sun chased it away in the open. A wasp buzzed around me while out walking with Ruskin the Dog. Landing on my chest hitched a ride for a while, before flying down to the wall. Frost and wasps.

Millennium Dome Loss in Climate Change Chaos

The 2001 proposal to give the Millennium Dome ‘iconic status’ as a centre of global environmental management, 30th January, Millennium Dome: The 2001 Proposal the Government's Consultants Wanted To Support has now involved the Dome in a new and perhaps the most bizarre twist so far. Following the publication of the United Nations Environmental Programme report on climate change on Friday 2nd February, President Chirac of France has called for nations to support his idea of a ‘global environmental management’ body.

Exactly the same words and exactly the same concept as the proposal the Government's consultants Jones Lang LaSalle wanted to support to take over the running of the Millennium Dome 6 years ago.

Greenwich Councillor Nigel Fletcher recently referred to the ‘curse of the dome’, if the press reports are true then this is it’s ultimate damnation. If the Government had followed the criteria of the competition for the Dome the winner in 2001 would have been the global environmental management centre.

In 2001 the Labour Government turned down the equivalent sized project as NASA, Microsoft and U2 all moving their centre of operations to Greenwich for the chance of gambling they might get a casino there instead. This latest instalment now moves into the realm of the only imaginable, or unimaginable, depending on how much you can imagine.

Imagine going back a few hundred years. The Government gather Joshia Wedgwood, Abraham Darby, George Stephenson, James Watt, Hargreaves et al all into a room. The Government of the day tells them they have decided they are not going to have an industrial revolution and they must all stop what they are doing. The Government having decided they are going to base the future development and economy of the UK on bear dancing and gin palaces.

Just try to imagine how much of the total economic wealth of the UK has been generated from the last few hundred years of the industrial revolution. Imagine that the Government has decided that they didn’t want that wealth and development creating. Everything the UK had created from the industrial revolution never ever existed.

Well that is what Prime Minister Tony Blair’s New Labour Government has done to Britain's future in the global ecological revolution. David Miliband, Minister for Environment has had the front to make a vacuous and pathetic ‘call to action’ over climate change. Nothing more than a smokescreen for an incompetent Government to hide behind while giving the global ecological revolution away, because they wanted a casino instead. Why don’t they resign, I do not want my life, my family’s life, my friends lives or this planet endangered any longer by their complete and total stupidity.

Climate change is serious, so stop gambling and playing games with our lives!

So now France has taken a 6 years lead straight off the UK. I leave that for Al Murray’s Pub Landlord to comment on. Makes more sense than a New Labour Government.

Millennium Dome: The 2001 Proposal The Government's Consultants Wanted To Support

The original one page synopsis of the proposal entered into the competition for the Millennium Dome April 2001. This is the proposal that the Government's own consultants wanted to back. Some formatting has been lost in transfer.

MP2
millennium project two

Introduction

The use of the Millennium Dome and Greenwich Peninsula as a centre of excellence in environmental management, research, consultancy, co-ordination and education.

Status

Pentagon:Defence The City:Finance NASA:Space Dome:Environment
Iconic Definitive Unambiguous

Concepts

Future Sustainable Interactive Progress Locally Relevant Globally Significant

Range

Accessible for a child with a computer, connected to an inner city tree planting scheme, a resource for local and regional authorities, interactive with national governments and international organisations. Applicable to anywhere and everyone in the world. A project that will benefit every single person on the planet. A fusion of ecology and IT interfacing with socio-economic, commercial and political systems

Components

Visitor centre, interactive exhibition and experience, media and IT networked, conference venue, research, education, entertainment, forum and co-ordination for agencies and organisations, consultancy, policy and strategy development.

Mission and Historical Precedent

21st Century Catalyst Millennium Defining Epoch Making
Agrarian Revolution:The Fertile Crescent Industrial Era:North West England The Next Way: The Millennium Dome and Greenwich Peninsula

Project Creation
All ideas, concepts and intellectual property by Roger Thomas 1988,1991/8,2000/1. Creative direction and project management. Simple solutions to complex challenges.

Good Intentions

There is a ship on a beach, climate change now causes George W Bush to announce he wants 20% of US fuel from sustainable sources, the Olympics are costing more and more, raising complaints from Scotland over that and Trident, terrorism and war still are in the news, and cash for peerages . All separate?

Six horses gallop through our daily news their reins trace back in time to the clutched hand of February 2001: An odyssey in time.

Well that was how the story started for the next post. Come 11.30 last night and still writing it was getting obvious that story was proving to large for a single sharp approach in a short one article format. Making the connections and putting in the references for the forensic reader to follow to make an definitive account of the last 6 years was being defeated by the length to do it justice. Perhaps better to break it down and if any connections are questioned or queried, be assured they do exist and are valid.

Carbon Offsetting: The Gold Standard Part 2

Coincidentally just after putting the post of 20th Jan Carbon Offsetting, a message was received from the Sustainable Development Research Network (SDRN) to take part in the consultation exercise in carbon offsetting the Government has proposed.

It’s going to be a time of calculators, Avogadro’s Number, dry mass and time graphs. We will do our best to ensure the carbon offsetting proposals are of the highest standard. The only problem that occurs with these consultation exercises is sometimes when you get all the science and the strategy correct, everything then seems to defer to some political goal which wasn’t previously part of the plan.

MP2 will offer a carbon offsetting service in the near future. Whether it will be the one the Government decides or one we think will be more effective, we will be literary setting the standard.

Carbon Offsetting: The Gold Standard

The Government has recently proposed a standard for carbon offsetting schemes. MP2 will in the near future be offering such a scheme. Anticipating the proposal and as a information resource on carbon offsetting we started to produce a Q&A section last year. Using the technologies we have developed we plan to move the standard of offsetting to another level over and above anything the Government may consider as a gold standard.


The World Wild Fund for example run a carbon offsetting scheme. As part of their awareness and fundraising programme they use the quote "climate change is a greater threat than terrorism", which they attribute to the Governments Chief Scientist Sir David King, especially in ther participation in the Stop Climate Chaos campaign. Though Sir David was not the original author of the concept. MP2 was with a submission, Changing Futures, to a UNED-UK report commissioned by the UK Government 13 months before Sir David published.


Even though the WWF do not pay any money to MP2, it is our R&D base which is assisting their and many other organisations offset schemes. That report from 2002 also linked Climate Change and Africa, which became the agenda for the G8 in Perthshire in 2005. Influence or prediction? How much is MP2 already contributing to carbon offsetting around the world, with it's leading edge work assisting other organisations. Even without planting a tree MP2 has helped change the consciousness of a planet for the better. How many tonnes of carbon has that offset?


The exploration of carbon offset figures make for an interesting journey into the world of planetary ecology and political policy. The figure given to the Government consultants in the Dome bid of 2001, as the Domes market potential as an environmental management centre was $1000 billion per year, the damage to the global environment. The UN and other organisations gave a figure of $200 billion, but this was for climate change alone. What about pollution, species extinction, loss of bio-diversity related stability and all the other damage being inflicted on to the environment as a consequence of human activity, plus the exponential nature of the rise of this damage (cost)? Both the consultants on 17th April 2001 and Pete Wishart MP on 9th January 2006 accepting the figure on the basis of it's rationale.


When PM Tony Blair gave a keynote speech on the environment to the world's media on 14th September 2004 he gave the cost of damage to the environment as $150 billion per year. Less than a sixth of the figure supplied to the Government's consultants 3 years before.


Take the figure for the market potential of the Dome. $1000 billion is in dollars, so to make it more understandable, lets us convert it to £s. Here we have to realise the dollar has recently fallen against the pound. If we use a recent rate as if by magic it would look like the damage to the global environment has reduced. If we use an exchange rate of 1.76 dollars to the pound, similar to the rate in place at the time this will give a more realistic assessment of damage.


This figure is:£568,181,818,181 £568 billion of damage per year to the global environment due to human activity.


If we are going to look at carbon offset we need to consider how much oil we consume a year. This is 80 million barrels a day or 29,200,000,000 barrels per year.


For those like to ask "Do you know....."
The world uses just over 1 cubic mile of oil a year.


A barrel is 42 US gallons, which is less than a UK gallon, so we have to convert from barrels to US gallons (at 1.2 US to the imperial gallon) to the UK gallon we are familiar with, giving 1,022,000,000,000 UK gallons.


It could be said that this is not a true picture as some of this oil may be used in the production of plastics or other products and not burned as fuel and that gas or coal have not been brought into the equation. Again the fuel could have been used in a chain saw to cut down a rain forest, being used as a 'multiplier' increasing the destruction of the planets ecological life support systems. The intention here has been to give an overview of the situation, to make those large global figures understandable, tangible and human in scale.


To find the amount of damage to the environment in pounds caused by oil use divide the environmental cost by the number of gallons giving
55.6p per gallon or 12.25 p per litre


With many politicians reading this site and with all the political parties working out their environmental taxes perhaps we should leave this article on carbon offsetting there for now, with our damage to the environment based on the £1000 billion figure.

Scottish Olympic Costs

For many months MSP Alex Neil has been simmering away in the media as a regular commentator on the spiralling cost of the London Olympics and the effect it will have draining resources from Scotland. Yesterday the debate came to the boil with cross media news reports on the loss Scottish charities and other organisations will suffer as a result. The number of comments to an article by Michael Howie from The Scotsman underline a public discontent to match.

Unfortunately the way the figures are represented, perhaps that should be unrepresented, hide the true enormity of a blunder of gold medal proportions. The Millennium Dome is to be used as part of the Olympic programme. On the basis of the competition criteria for the Millennium Dome, obtained by Perth MP Pete Wishart, the winning proposal should have been that of the global environmental management centre. The proposal the Government's own consultants, quite rightly, wanted to back and as recent media and political attention on the environment as shown, would now be generating the £50 billion per year figure presented in the submission; supplying the solutions to the planet's ecological challenge such as climate change.

Over 10 years, leading up to the Olympics, £500 billion lost to the UK economy, on an approximately 10% of the population pro rata basis of the UK, £50 billion lost to Scotland, by virtue of deciding to use the Dome as part of the Olympic bid instead. Add on to this the environmental and social costs. The environment proposal did contain an early warning and alert system for natural hazards. How many more would now be alive from the South East Asia Tsunami, hurricane Katrina and the numerous other extreme events since, (500,000?), if the Government hadn't gambled on taking the venue/casino option?

If the 2012 Olympics ever go ahead the real full audit of the cost to the UK will be £500 billion and lives around the world. It would be unbelievable, if it wasn't true.

Perthshire Flood Damage: A Case Against the Government?

Synopsis

The UK Government knew about and were given the solutions to the recent flooding in Perthshire on 17th April 2001. On that day there was a discussion with the consultants Jones Lang LaSalle appointed by the UK Government and English Partnerships to find a use for the Millennium Dome. The proposal submitted was to use it as a global environmental management centre, providing the solution to climate change and most importantly global ecological life support system collapse. This was the proposal the consultants wanted to back as a use for the Dome. That proposal contained the threat, to Perthshire and elsewhere, and the solutions. The final decision was to have a venue/casino complex instead. No alternative attempt or strategy was made by the Government to protect Perthshire and other places from environmental damage to the same degree or appropriate magnitude. Is there a case for Perthshire to take action against the Government for civil or criminal neglect or other legal action?

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On 9th January 2006 I had a meeting with Pete Wishart MP for Perth and North Perthshire at his Perth office. At that meeting Mr Wishart was given an outline of the bid and process to use the Millennium Dome as a global environmental management centre. Though at the time, in 2001, of the competition for the Dome the UNEP IPCC and other sources had put the cost of global damage due to climate change at $200 billion per year, my submission to the consultants that the true cost of total environmental damage was nearer $1000 billion per year. Due to the effective argument in support of that revised figure both the Government consultants in 2001 and Mr Wishart in 2006 accepted it as a valid reasoning. A figure in October 2006 supported by the Stern Report.

As the proposal had been removed from the competition despite it’s short listing, by default, due to the non supply of the competition criteria to allow it to continue in the process, Mr Wishart said he would try and obtain the competition criteria.

Mr Wishart did eventually obtain the criteria, though these came from Jim Fitzpatrick MP Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, not Tessa Jowell DCMS as we had both originally thought.

The criteria of the competition were: a worthwhile and sustainable use for the dome; value for money; deliverability of the deal; and regeneration benefits. As the proposal for the use of the Dome as a global environmental management centre would have beaten the venue/casino on all these grounds, the question must be asked, were these withheld to ensure another, but not the best, proposal won?

What Perthshire and elsewhere are now doing, is paying the cost of the decision not to use the Dome as an environmental management centre. Perthshire is in fact subsidising AEG to run a venue and casino in London. The environmental and social costs of the decision being imposed on Perthshire and everywhere else as environmental damage. A decision that was not made on the true criteria of the competition, which the tax payer paid to have run.

Even without going into detail ask yourself would you rather have, 1) the problem of climate change resolved or 2) a casino/venue in London, what would you choose? The Government chose a casino/venue.

Perthshire should consider whether it has a legal case against the Government for the damage it has suffered as a result of that decision.

As a damage limitation exercise, which was in the interests of Perthshire, when I was invited to make recommendations to DEFRA on sustainable policy. I very specifically and strongly pushed for changes in the Common Agricultural Policy to allow the provision of land to be taken out of production allowing the development of natural flood plains etc. together with other land use changes to reduce the damage of flooding by smoothing out river surges.

When the Cabinet Office asked me to review Regulatory Impact Assessment; Guidelines for Legislation, I took the model for multiple goal analysis of economic, social and environmental factors and made strong recommendation that this be changed to a concept of optimum win win scenarios, specifically using the example of river hydrology and flood prevention.

The implementation of these recommendations will have resulted in some minimisation of the recent flood damage to Perthshire, but not to the extent which could have been achieved had the criteria for the Millennium Dome competition been adhered to.

In submission to a United Nations Environment and Development -UK report commissioned by the UK Government the article Changing Futures gave the original and now globally known risk assessment "climate change is a greater threat than terrorism". Please use this link then, go to the specific document from within that text ‘published’. Most importantly for Perthshire, the original outline for the agenda of the G8 Summit in 2005.

An assessment of the Millennium Dome competition criteria has been sent to Mr Wishart as requested. I have asked him for his advice on launching an inquiry into the running of the competition, which as Perthshire is now paying the costs of that competition it is particularly relevant. At present I am awaiting his reply.

Suggestions

1) Consider is there a legal case against the Government in view that the damage to Perthshire could largely been avoided?

2) What support can Perth and Kinross Council give to setting up a global environmental management centre in Perthshire as laid out in the consultancy document Scotland: The World’s First Ecological Superpower, sent to all MSPs at the start of April 2006. All the solutions to climate change already exist they only need implementing?

3) We are the leading and most influential authority on sustainable planetary evolution and are local. As such would be delighted to provide any consultancy, strategy and other services to Perth and Kinross to overcome the environmental challenges and ensure a safer better future for the area and the planet.

The UK Nuclear Deterrent: An Applied Planetary Engineering Analysis

Synopsis

The UK cannot have a new nuclear deterrent due to the resources used and CO2 emitted in it's production and implementation. Costs to the environment which are not covered or payed back later. The budget approx £25 billion should be used to produce ships, equipment, training and research making Scotland a world leader in oceanographic research and marine management. These jobs and investments will be sustainable both for the benefit of Scotland and the planet as a whole. This is in line with the Scottish: Ecological Superpower summary sent to all MSPs at the start of April 2006.

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On the 12th January 2007 Prime Minister Tony Blair said he wants the UK to be a warrior nation for decades, (and in so doing demonstrates that he doesn’t know the true meaning of warrior). On 20th April 2006 Chancellor Gordon Brown at the World Bank said he wanted the environment to be at the centre of policy.

Both want a new nuclear deterrent for the UK, indicating that neither understand the environmental challenge and agenda. The Scottish National Party oppose the nuclear option on moral grounds, but many are concerned this with also cause job losses in Scotland.

One aspect of planetary engineering is foresight. This situation, as a win win scenario, was covered in the consultancy document and executive summary, Scotland: The World’s First Ecological Superpower? Produced at the suggestion of Perth Business Gateway in February 2006, as an update from the original 2001 proposal to use the Millennium Dome as a global environmental management centre. The document was sent to every Member of the Scottish Parliament at the start of April 2006.

So Tony Blair and Gordon Brown want a nuclear deterrent. Well they can’t have one. The reason? They have given that themselves. Climate change is the greatest threat to the international community. (It isn’t, planetary ecological life support system collapse is, which climate change is a symptom of, but that’s another story).

The process of a £25 billion defence project consumes resources and emits CO2. A consequence of which is the moving of the Extinction Horizon (EH) closer to the present. This is a point of no return sometime close in the future. After this date, the degrading of the planet’s ecological life support system will occur reducing it’s capacity to support life. This includes human society, civilisation and individuals. The ‘Mad Max’ scenario.

Some such as James Lovelock believe we have already passed this point of no return, and the deaths of billions is now inevitable. The reason billions aren’t dying at this exact moment is there is a lag time between reaching that point and it’s physical manifestation. This is the ‘time zone’ we are not occupying as a human society. The end of days. This extinction of human society may be true if taking a passive approach, allowing the Earth’s ecological systems alone to recover after the extinction of human civilisation has reduced the loading and destruction imposed on them.

Taking an interventionist approach, which is where human society and civilisation works with and assists the earths ecological systems to recover, could move this Extinction Horizon to some time into the near future as opposed to being at some point in the recent past. The interventionist approach involves massive and immediate applied planetary engineering implementation. The time frame which we are working to is the period between the non assisted extinction horizon, which is in the past, and the point in time of it’s physical manifestation.

Climate change and the overemphasis on reducing CO2 emissions is a convenient political over simplification sound bite, which does not address the true situation. An analogy would be having a vehicle and in preparing it for an MoT or other vehicle inspection test, talking of and only concentrating on the tyres. These may well be essential and important to the vehicle passing the test, but they are not the only important thing. The vehicle as a whole must pass the test and that includes brakes, steering, suspension and every other component and system involved in the safe an continued progress of the vehicle on the highway.

The test and objective of applied planetary engineering is to grab this Extinction Horizon, which is behind us, in the time frame of planetary evolution. Having grabbed it, move it into the present, then push it away into the future. Applied planetary engineering is about moving the Extinction Horizon further away into the future. Each and every action, by one degree or another is moving this Extinction Horizon relative in time to where we are now.

If we move further into the time zone of the lag time between potential extinction and physical manifestation, we can no longer grab behind us in time and move the Extinction Horizon into the future. Game Over.

Applied Planetary Engineering is the development and implementation of the strategies to move the Extinction Horizon further into the future.

Now assessing Tony and Gordon’s desire to have a new nuclear deterrent in terms of applied planetary engineering, this is a none starter.

1) The resources used and CO2 emitted do not push the Extinction Horizon into the future. The results of the project bring and make more inevitable the ecological backlash or Armageddon due to it’s contribution to the destruction and destabilisation of the Earth’s ecological life support system.

2) This is a long term project. By the time the new nuclear deterrent is ready, this point in time will be after the physical manifestation of the Extinction Horizon, if not resolved, which the resource use and emissions released in building a nuclear deterrent will have contributed to. We cannot afford the luxury of any large projects which do not contribute to moving the EH further into the future. There will be nobody left to make war against.

3) Every single person and most species of animal and plant are now under threat from global ecological life support system collapse. This is the great unifier. We must all work as one, as one planet to rescue our collective future. If we do not do this, there will be no future in which to fight each other in. When we are as one with one common cause, why do we need weapons of mass destruction?

4) Production of military products do not pay back the initial resource use and pollution footprint in their creation. Use resources in waste water treatment for example and this improves the stability of the ecosystem, giving a stability return on the projects initial environmental cost. Military projects do not do this, and jaw jaw is less detrimental than war war.

5) Strategy to manage the planet and push the Extinction Horizon into the future will require climate and oceanographic monitoring, research, assessment and implementation. The £25 billion can finance the new generation of ships and research vessels to do this. Building these in Scotland still provides jobs which push the Extinction Horizon into the future, not moving it into the past.

6) Vast maritime clean ups are required of chemical dumps and dangerous ship wrecks containing cargo and materials which should not be in the oceans. The oceanic ecosystems are not just under stress and hence losing stability and productivity due to climate change, they are being affected by pollution. This needs cleaning up. The £25 billion can go towards the ships and technology required to do this. Jobs will be created in Scotland which will contribute to the continuation of the sustainable evolution of the entire planet.

The executive summary Scotland: The World’s First Ecological Superpower gave the main areas for investment. Applied Planetary Engineering needs the tools to do the job of ensuring a future for all of us and this planet. Make that investment.

If Tony and Gordon go for their nuclear toys instead, it will be over all our dead bodies