Power cuts cut my space.

Well we thought it was Mossad or the Chinese secret service, lists down, inability to send emails, a range of web problems but it seems more likely that global warming rather than our opposition to war or torture was the reason for these problems.

122 temperatures in California have led to power cuts as energy demand rockets in an attempt to cool the with air conditioners. This led last week to some major problems with my space, etc.....Now this could be because of seasonal freak weather but equally it could be an effect of climate change induced by increases in CO2.

So this seems a good time to introduce George Marshall’s climate denial blog which will be challenging the Lomborgs who say that there are more important things to spend the money than dealing with global warming (Trident at £24 billion any one?) and those who simple say there is no evidence for global warming.

Decentralised energy production seems like part of the solution and a shift to conservation, I guess if demand is going to peak with the heat, solar power would make sense.

The push to nuclear looks more and more like a nightmare scenario, think of all that waste, the centralised system it involves, reactors virtually on the sea shore.

OK Lovelock has called for nuclear, he is also on record as a Thatcher supporter, he is not the fount of all ecological wisdom.

For a good critique of the nuclear push see the special issue of New Internationalist on
the subject from 2005.
Lets have a look at George’s blog,


July 21, 2006
WHAT A LOVELY APOCALYPSE
George Marshall @ 4:03 pm
One of the reasons that people don’t accept climate change is that it is set too far in the future and that people only respond to immediate threats. Even if it is too late, one hopes that direct experience of freak weather will jolt people and wake them up.
Well, that’s the theory, but I am not sure that humans work like that. People across Europe and the US and being directly confronted with the excessive summer temperatures predicted by the climate models. Yesterday was the hottest July day in Britain since records began in the mid 17th century. Temperatures on buses in the hottest parts of Britain hit 52C yesterday while the London Underground reached 47C, 20 degrees higher than the maximum temperature allowed for transporting cattle.
But people are not making the connections. Everyone I talk to is saying how ‘lovely’ it is. ‘What a lovely day’ they say or ‘bit hot today- won’t it be nice to have a good lie down in the shade with a cold drink’. The media- or at least the liberally inclined parts of it- are talking about climate change, but the overall message undermines any sense of public concern.
All of the images in the newspapers are arty shots of bikini clad swimmers, people in deckchairs or, bizarrely, lions eating giant ice lollies made of blood. The evening news took us to a “local pub” to meet the people “celebrating”- yes they did use that word- the heatwave. And they they were, all ruddy faced and pickled giving a good cheer for the year long beach party to come. And then we went over to some boring and ambivalent scientist who told us that the “evidence suggested” that this “may” be due to climate change. Boring! Bring back the babes in bikinis!
People take their cues from the people and images around them. I think of all those fantastically happy people cheering Hitler’s arrival in Vienna during the Aschluss. How easy it is to be swept along by the crowd. How hard it is to stand apart.
We can choose how to respond, but at present we are actively conspiring to celebrate this catastrophe.
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Essentially it comes down to the fact that economy cannot grow for ever without wrecking the biosphere….this simple but enormous insight must made clear.

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