'Carbon neutral' driving - thanks to BP 24 August 06

BP’s decision is a very natural commercial step and arguably a helpful environmental step too. Carbon dioxide emissions are already regulated and priced via the European emissions trading scheme but this only affects larger energy users in the UK. Extending regulation to the domestic consumer will be much trickier. As there is no compulsion for the domestic sector, the ideal of tangibly reducing energy use must realistically come second to the ethical and educational benefits of promoting the idea of paying for CO2 emissions on a voluntary basis. So SUV owners can now slap a “green tax paid” sticker on their windscreens and argue that they are doing their bit. Theoretically drivers could do this by buying a few trees but what a hassle. Making it easier for the average person to participate in managing the cost of their emissions must help improve the chances of voluntary action working. After all this has got to be a pragmatic alternative to doing nothing! The ideal of owners trading in their vehicle for a hybrid was never going to have a big impact. The majority of the car owning population have older vehicles and cannot afford a Toyata Prius to advertise their action or concern but everybody can afford this. Hopefully this money will now help reduce CO2 production somewhere on the planet. Helping the development opportunities of the third world to be greener seems very worthwhile. There are bound to be problems of double counting etc. as with any novel idea but good regulation of projects is an essential part of the Kyoto flexibility mechanisms. Whether this is a sustainable trend is another issue but logically best practice can usually be incentivised by green project grants over a cheaper higher emissions alternative. Returning to the UK, whether peoples’ consiences will deliver a significant impact remains to be seen. But awareness of climate change is increasing and every little contribution helps. Apart from drivers, it may help appease those who fly away on several holidays a year to pay the CO2 cost too and I am sure that travel companies offering “green-flight” options will prosper. It is not the ideal solution in a global situation where we are hungry for tangible emissions cuts. However, the hard green message of radically changing a lifestyle to engage with the climate change challenge is not an appealing message to the masses. This idea by BP (and its logical extensions) offers a more attractive middle ground.

Birds do it, government ministers do it, even educated fleas do it, let’s do it, lets offset our carbon. Hooray for a truly staggering amount of brass neck and hypocrisy. Good old BP. They really are the oil company who cares. Their marketeers are good. They not only saturate the airwaves and broadsheets to win the hearts and minds of the intelligentsia, (doing the governments job of bringing climate change to the masses, banging the drum for renewables and now biofuel) they use their obscene profits made from creating global warming, polluting Alaska etc, doing business with human rights abusers to carry on CO2nning us. Beyond Petroleum, beyond the pale more like.

Mark talks about it being the first step. The only problem is that it is a step forward called PR and a horrible great big, hop, step and jump backwards. I also agree it is the first step. BP’s propaganda has stolen a march on their competitors, so instead of getting free glasses on the forecourt, very soon all of them will be able to free our conscience and, hell maybe increase your mileage, because, remember, carbon offsetting is good, not only for allowing us to dangerously delude ourselves, but hey it helps those poor folks in that poor underdeveloped world and, there’s something else, isn’t there… oh the biggie, it combats global warming. It’s a win, win, win situation.

Please see New Internationalist NI 391. Tree planting monocultures do not offset the immediate affects of greenhouse gas emissions, affects water supplies, biodiversity, soil acidity, pesticide contamination evicts indigenous people from their homes – the resulting conflicts have lead to death. And if the ‘devils orchards’ (as they are referred to by indigenous Amazonians) are not managed they release all that sequestered carbon through fire, disease and timber harvesting.

This isn’t just Coldplay offsetting their CD’s or middle class bridal couples; the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, part of the Kyoto Protocol is a big player in this tree planting scam. This enables countries to claim carbon credits for planting new trees. The only problem is that first you have to clear some land, which release huge amounts of CO2. Offsetting is big business,

Fortunately some environmental NGO have pointed out that this is not a good practice. Unfortunately the UN’s CDM moved into biofuels… Which once again will be grown in the majority world tropics to ‘help’ those poor people. Only it is bad for water supplies, biodiversity, human rights, soil quality, the world supply of food and releases massive amounts of CO2, which… causes global warming.

The same people that we are helping by offsetting our carbon, will be the worst affected by our carbon, that was produced at the same time as it was supposed to have been permanently sequestered. This is quite apart from the fact that we have produced 80% of the historical man made greenhouse gas emissions. Mark is right; offsetting is another form of colonialism. How pleased would we be when the neuvo rich of China and India want to feel good about driving their new SUV’s and fund a project that sticks a great big pine forest in a sink estate in one of our inner cities.

The schemes that buy renewable lightbulbs for people with different coloured skin are of course better, but isn’t charity supposed to start at home? It still sounds a bit like the white mans burden, or another hangover from our colonial past. Or is just good charity and what sells in the market place? Why don’t we just give the majority world the lightbulbs as reparations for the climate change we have also given them, or why not start by just delivering the Millennium development Goals and increase our aid funding to 0.7% GNP as promised? And at the same time drive less or stop.

Back to BP – The NI says that BP is a major investor in the World Bank’s carbon funds which sponsor those monocultures in the majority world. It already offsets customer’s petrol in that bastion of good climate change governance, Australia. BP has nearly finished the Baku-Ceyhan –Tbilisi pipeline which has been criticised by Amnesty International re: those pesky human rights and according to backuceyhan.org the pipeline will emit more carbon than every car, truck, bus and train in the UK.

That’s an awful lot of trees or lightbulbs. Perhaps this revelation means that we will actually have to double our driving in order to buy the offsets to deal with the pipeline and make us feel good about ourselves?

BP and the Sustainable Development Commission and the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group whose public consultation involved the Carbon Neutral Company all trumpet offsetting as a solution for global warming. They are not being honest about offsetting because they are not being honest about the terrible realities of climate change. No one talks about the reduction that is necessary to ensure our joint survival.

Jonathon Porritt feels that ‘the scheme should help raise awareness of the links between driving and climate change.’ Jonathon Porritt must have a more optimistic view of the human psychology. There is a vast amount of denial about climate change. This helps life go on as normal. This is exactly what offsetting does. It is deeply, deeply dangerous and in ten years time when we will have the beauty of hindsight, but a lot less of the beauty of nature, we may ask why we were so easily deluded.

Ian.

I think it you raise very valid concerns that Porritt would largely agree with. Although he supports this initiative for consumers, he leads the Sustainable Development Commission which clearly believes that:

On no account should The Government seek to fill the 10 million tonnes carbon gap by buying up carbon savings from other countries.

Yet, consumers are not the UK Government, and the challenge of getting appropriate action is different.

As Jonathan Porritt has written in Capitalism as if the Word Mattered, Jonathan Porritt (2005) p.269 “… consumer behaviour (is) the most problematic of all today’s potential drivers for change.”

In other words, it is a way of getting people to think about these things – and then realize that what they are doing is probably not enough!

Peter

ps . Hey, I got the HTML hyperlink to work!!

BP have never been the worst of the oil companies, but neither have they been the best; in fact it really is difficult to make any decision about the morals of an oil company if it is an intrinsically bad thing to be. Oil production is vital to the survival of modern society, and hence, the survival of (probably) hundreds of millions of people, yet oil is not vital to human survival. There is the contradiction really – the oil companies claim to be providing a vital service, but only because through their activities we have come to depend on them.

I really have a problem with style over substance. Substance would be producing a significant proportion of a company’s turnover through renewable energy, plus the promotion of alternatives to an oil dependent lifestyle. Style is what BP are masters of (others call it “spin” or “greenwash”), and do not believe for a moment that this is significant; not until BP urge us to use less oil.

Commercial suicide? No, just plain old compassion. A world without compassion is a world in which humans do not deserve to exist.

Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.reduce3.com

This is off-topic, but I just got this:

Scores “Die” at Saturday Katrina Anniversary Protest in D.C. Area

As the names of hundreds of people victimized by Hurricane Katrina and government negligence were publicly read out, scores of people lay down for 15 minutes on the sidewalk on Saturday in front of the Silver Spring, Md. headquarters of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (see attached pictures).

This large scale die-in was the culmination of a rally attended by several hundred people organized by the U.S. Climate Emergency Council (U.S. CEC). The action called for housing, jobs, health care, environmental clean-up and justice for Katrina survivors who want to return to their hometowns.

The action also called for an end to the cover-up by the politically-appointed leadership of NOAA of the continuing series of scientific reports, six so far, which show a connection between global warming and stronger and more frequent Category 4 and 5 hurricanes.

Mike Tidwell, Director of the U.S. CEC, explained: “The leadership of NOAA openly denies this connection and censors its own scientists, according to articles in several media outlets. Their actions are placing tens of millions of coastal Americans at greater risk of experiencing, over the coming years and decades, storms like Katrina.”

Many speakers at the Saturday rally called for a dramatic shift from the burning of fossil fuels to energy efficiency and renewables, to a “green economy” and for a “clean energy revolution” to reduce the likelihood of such a dangerous future.

Speakers included Tidwell, Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign, Melody Drnach, Vice President of the National Organization for Women, Jenice View of the Just Transition Alliance, Karen Wimpelberg and Forest Bradley-Wright of the New Orleans-based Alliance for Affordable Energy, George Friday of United for Peace and Justice, Jared Duval of the Sierra Student Coalition, Kevin Zeese of Democracy Rising and Allison Fisher of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light.

Protesters vowed that their campaign for justice, truth-telling, and a clean energy revolution from NOAA and the federal government will continue and be stepped up.

I went to your blog and read your thoughts and did not know that “China’s total carbon emissions have just exceeded (as of 2006) those of the USA.”

I liked your graph on population and carbon emissions and I really liked your thoughts using 3 dimensional variables creating the emissions of a country, namely your variables of P, S and R. Is this an original concept of yours? Can S and R each be quantified as a specific number with a certain level of precision for each country like P? If this is possible, then please email Mark Lynas so we can have a direct dialogue.

I like what you wrote and I have an educational product in mind based on what you shared on your blog where I would want your direct participation in.

I hope you continue to share your thoughts with us.

Best Wishes, Dan

After consultation with others, your statement that “China’s total carbon emissions have just exceeded (as of 2006) those of the USA.” on your blog site appears to be bogus information.

How can you make this claim?

Dan

I’ve just used the BP site to work out the cost of running a hytpothetical car for 12,000 miles at 30mpg – Â14.33 (for 2.99 tonnes of CO2). That works out at Â4.79 per tonne.

British Airways have been running a similar scheme for almost a year now. On a return flight from Heathrow to JFK it comes out at Â9.43 for 1.26 tonnes of CO2, or Â7.48 per tonne.

I’ve also totted up the “cars neutralised” by the projects in place so far – it adds up to 3,492 (that’s a little over 0.01% of the 25 million or so private cars currently in the UK).

I really should get out more … :)

I tend to agree with the greenwashing statement, though. It makes BP (etc) look good, it may provide a handful of consumers with a way to salve their conscience, but the impact is going to be miniscule.

I seem to recall a discussion on RealClimate a few months ago when Ford launched a similar scheme in the US. I don’t know how well that’s going.

so I’ll not criticize them too much.

When I was looking for Greenmountain Energy on the net, a page came up that denounced Greenmountain, for one thing because BP is a backer. I almost decided not to go with Greenmountain, then thought maybe that webpage was put up by some nefarious electric or coal company.

My thinking now is that BP, Shell, and Arco (but not Exxon) perhaps consider themselves “energy companies” rather than “oil companies,” and it seems they are willing to move into other forms of energy (like wind & solar), of course if there’s some profit for them. In that way they’re different from tobacco.

So it’s really up to us to make our gov restructure incentives, tax-breaks & subsidies to favor alt energy & disfavor harmful energy. At least take away the incentives from bad energy, and provide good energy a level-playing field.

Dan

Hard as it is to believe (and worrying too), my original statement was taken from a press release from a reputable organisation – I forget the source.

But, being a scientist I went right to the horse’s mouth (the USA EIA, one of the few honest US Government agencies) and copied the figures into Excel.

What I got seems to back this up:

So we really must take this threat seriously.

Hi Dan

Please have a look at my response to your doubt of my figures in this same thread, just in case you miss it – sadly the figures for China are not bogus.

I believe that R and S can be quantified. In general, it is easy to look at the gross per capita energy consumption figures, but S and R certainly produce a more graphical demonstration of the importance of the type of activity we carry out compared to the number of people who do it.

Realistically R and S would be combined to give this former figure, but at a fine level it would be fairly easy to look at different consumption sectors, such as private vehicle use, home appliances, food consumption etc. to see the impact of, for instance, reducing the per capita vehicle ownership vs reducing the permitted per vehicle emissions.

If you wish to talk please write to me at the address on The Earth Blog contact page and you will get straight through to me (if I post it here I will get spam up to my eyeballs, and I’d rather not bother Mark to contact someone else). I have a VERY big idea – possibly the answer to the entire climate change issue, but it needs bouncing around a bit – maybe you could help.

Regards

Keith www.theearthblog.org www.reduce3.com

I went to your site and saw this and need not ever go back. That machine violates the laws of physics. Case closed!

Sorry to be blunt but I do not have time for this. Go away!

Dan

I presume you are talking about the little picture I put up next to an article about a supposed perpetual motion machine on Reduce3.

I don’t understand your problem – I was commenting about an article in the Guardian. Why do you feel you can tell me to “Go Away!” because you didn’t like a picture of an imaginary machine that I used to illustrate a theoretical idea, and you don’t even know me?

If you really think my site is destroyed by the presence of a picture then so be it – but I am amazed that someone who made the effort to attend Climate Camp can (appear to) be so narrow minded that they reject an entire person’s thoughts on the basis of one library picture. Have you ever seen the pictures BBC News use? Will you refuse to visit there because some of them are not relevant?

Now I went to a lot of effort to find you an answer to your (rather rude) query about Chinese growth; at least could you acknowledge that before you decide to be rude to me again.

Regards

Keith

I am very sorry that I responded this way and you are correct that I was very rude to you. I am sometimes rude to climate skeptics but you did not deserve this at all. Your site is well intentioned and my rudeness represents a character flaw I exhibit at times and need to change. So I am glad you responded back.

I did enjoy many ideas presented in your website and they have great value. And one idea I object to does not disqualify the rest of your thoughts which are articulated very well. Still credibility is at stake on some ideas so let me explain why I reacted so abruptly.

Keith, I am an engineer and we are trained on classical thermodynamic principles. One concept we learned was that perpetual motion machines violate the First Law of Thermodynamics. I am well acquainted with it plus other laws of physics. I taught physics. The First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation) states that energy is always conserved and that energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one state to another.

Perpetual motions machines, a quest of centuries past, violate this fundamental law of nature. It suggests energy can be created from nothing. The closest we come to perpetual motion are planetary orbits but this does not violate the First Law. No energy is taken out because in the vacuum of space, there is no friction to do that. Imagine a spinning wheel on nearly frictionless bearings. We spin it and it goes. We transferred a part of our internal energy to the wheel by spinning it. If there was no friction, the wheel would remain spinning. However, the wheel will slow down. If the wheel was to provide a source of mechanical energy to perform a function, then it would slow down very quickly depleting its energy.

A perpetual motion machine must have a physics which allows a wheel to spin on its own and supply energy by creating it from nothing. Our own intuitive experiences deny this physics exists and the physics we have today has supported the First Law as rock solid. I have never heard of anyone who thinks it is a false construct except for those not trained in science. The pursuit of perpetual motion machines from ages past is similar to the quest by alchemists to use chemical processes to change lead into gold. It is not possible.

Keith, when I saw what appeared to be a perpetual motion machine on your site, I did have a knee jerk reaction and treated you like a menacing climate skeptic. I was wrong. Not everyone has the benefit of my education and even non-technical journalists can be influenced by someone showing a clever but flawed idea. That plus the idea of China surpassing the USA in emissions seemed incredulous at face value since a friend commented to me that this would be making front page news everywhere if really true.

In this light, I did make a snap judgment as I did not thoroughly research your claim and felt I did not have the time to do this. I may later take another look at it.

I hope this dialogue does not discourage you but helps to offer an explanation you requested. Granted I was rude but I acknowledge your honorable intentions and we need more people like you. We are on the same team.

The dialogue we are having has pointed out to me a flaw and I must correct and never be rude again. This quality does not serve me well. Likewise, what I have shared points out the need to make sure our numbers are correct and not to support ideas which violate fundamental laws of nature. Being candid about my rudeness benefits me and I hope what I shared will benefit you. In the end, we both grow and I hope you forgive me for my bluntness.

Again, my sincere apologies!

Best Wishes, Dan

Keith, I see now, as you explained, that you were simply commenting about an article in the Guardian and about the picture you put next to the article about a supposed perpetual motion machine I equated this to your previous statement in your response to me:

“I have a VERY big idea – possibly the answer to the entire climate change issue, but it needs bouncing around a bit – maybe you could help”

I was very curious about your very big idea and when I went to your site, I quickly scrolled down and saw that picture, read a few paragraphs, and then quickly reacted. Most engineers would tend to do that. It is almost a natural visceral response.

For the blog readers the source which Keith used was from the Gaurdian and I show it below. Keith did not originate this and there is extreme skepticism as the Gaurdian explained. For me, this investigation by credible scientists is to make sure a claim is valid. Many people were hopeful about Cold Fusion long ago. Until we see an actual device work and run something, then these claims are to be treated with caution since physics has to change to accomodate them and this is not likely to happen.

The full text below from the Guardian Friday August 25, 2006, as shared on Keith’s site follows.

Keith’s site has many interesting ideas and I will go back to it again.

Kind Regards, Dan

• Guardian Article Below * These men think they’re about to change the world

Heard the one about the two Irishmen who say they can produce limitless amounts of clean, free energy? Plenty of scientists have – but few are taking them seriously. Steve Boggan investigates

Friday August 25, 2006 The Guardian Do you remember that awful feeling as a child on Christmas Day when Santa left you the toy you wanted . . . without any batteries? This feeling comes to me as I meet Sean McCarthy and Richard Walshe, two men making the claim that they are about to change the world – for ever.

These dynamic and personable businessmen from Dublin insist that they have found a way of producing free, clean and limitless energy out of thin air. And they are so confident that they have thrown down the gauntlet to the scientific community in a bid to prove that they have rewritten the laws of physics. Last week, frustrated that they couldn’t persuade scientists to take their work seriously, McCarthy, Walshe and the other 28 shareholders of Steorn, a privately owned technology research company, took out a full-page advertisement in the Economist. In it, they called upon scientists to form a 12-member jury to decide whether their free-energy system is real, hoaxed, imagined or incorrectly well-intentioned.

So, as they prepare to demonstrate this wonder of science to me at their modest offices near the Liffey, I feel all the excitement of Christmas Day. There is a test rig with wheels and cogs and four magnets meticulously aligned so as to create the maximum tension between their fields and one other magnet fixed to a point opposite. A motor rotates the wheel bearing the magnets and a computer takes 28,000 measurements a second. The magnets, naturally, act upon one another. And when it is all over, the computer tells us that almost three times the amount of energy has come out of the system as went in. In fact, this piece of equipment is 285% efficient.

That’s a lot of “free energy” and, supposedly, a slap in the face for one of physics’ most basic laws, the principle of conservation of energy: in an isolated system (the planet, say), energy can be neither created nor destroyed; it can only be converted from one form into another.

“We couldn’t believe it at first, either,” says McCarthy, chief executive of the company. He is a 40-year-old engineer born in Birmingham but brought up in Dublin. After a couple of decades in the oil industry, McCarthy, Walshe and two others set up Steorn as a technology and intellectual-property development company. “We did difficult things. If someone had an idea that they wanted to make work, we’d work on it with them, help them recruit staff and get them through to their first product.”

Then, by chance, came their “discovery”. They were called upon by the police to help gain forensic evidence against “skimmers” who cloned the cards of people using ATMs. Subsequently, when banks approached asking how they could prevent such fraud, Steorn advised that the best way was to catch the small number of people committing most of the crime. They came up with a system of 16 tiny CCTV cameras that could guarantee recording the identities of the perpetrators.

“We wanted the cameras to be independently powered, so we tried out small solar and ambient wind generators,” says McCarthy. “We wanted to improve the performance of the wind generators – they were only about 60-70% efficient – so we experimented with certain generator configurations and then one day one of our guys [co-founder Mike Daly] came in and said: ‘We have a problem. We appear to be getting out more than we’re putting in.’” That was three years ago. Since then, McCarthy says, the company has spent £2.7m developing the technology. Steorn has also gone into partnership with a European micro-generator company to develop prototypes.

In Steorn’s theory, fixed magnets could act upon a moving magnet in such a way as to make it a virtual perpetual motion generator. In an electrical appliance – a computer, kettle, mobile phone or toy – that would provide all the power for its lifetime. Of course, free-energy cars, power plants and water-pumping systems could follow. A better world indeed. But then that Christmas Day feeling kicks in; doubts about the power source. According to McCarthy and Walshe, the marketing manager, there have been no fewer than eight independent validations of their work conducted by electrical engineers and academics “with multiple PhDs” from world-class universities. But none of them will talk to me, even off the record. I am promised a diagram explaining how the system works, but then Steorn holds it back, saying its lawyers are concerned about intellectual property rights. And that European partner, the one with the moving, almost perpetual, prototypes? It won’t talk to me either and Steorn has undertaken not to name it.

“It’s the Pons-Fleischmann factor,” says McCarthy, and he and Walshe look at each other darkly. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were the last experts to excite the scientific community with free-energy claims when, in 1989, they reported producing a nuclear-fusion reaction at room temperature – what happens in the sun at millions of degrees centigrade. The subsequent controversy resulted in the scientists being pilloried, even though the scientific community remains divided to this day over claims of “low-energy nuclear reactions”.

“No one in the scientific community wants to become embroiled in the kind of controversy that Pons and Fleishmann faced,” says McCarthy. “With our challenge, we’re hoping to provide a respectable public platform for serious evaluation of the technology. Then, perhaps, scientists will feel confident enough to challenge the conventional view.” Certainly, the Steorn team seems genuine and well-intentioned. Walshe says that if the technology is accepted it will be licensed to manufacturers, but given away to electrical and water projects in developing countries. And, until their claims have been assessed by the jury, McCarthy says they won’t be accepting any investor offers. So if this is a hoax, it would appear not to be a money-making scheme; Walshe says the Economist ad alone cost £75,000.

“Before we went public, we realised that if we’re wrong it could have a very adverse effect on our business, so we’re not doing this lightly,” says McCarthy. “We expected stick, and we’re getting it already. We’ve had a lot of abusive emails and telephone calls -people telling us to watch our backs, that sort of thing. Someone even published my home address on a website.”

The conspiracy theorists are, indeed, having a field day in a forum section set up by the company on its website, www.steorn.com. “We’ve been accused of being a publicity stunt for the next Microsoft Xbox gaming system because some of the artwork on our website was similar to theirs,” says Walshe. “Some people have said our offices don’t exist and one accused us of simply being a call centre in Australia because one of our telephonists has an Australian accent. My favourite is the one that says we are a CIA or oil-industry front intended to discredit research into free and clean energy. In other words, our claims are deliberately false and when they are found out to be, it will be a blow for all free and clean research.”

Steorn says it has seven patents pending on its technology, though it is difficult to see what can be patented; magnets already exist and so do the 360 degrees of a circle. Yet it is the positioning of the magnets that seems to be at the heart of this “new” energy. And, as McCarthy points out, the Patent Office rejects inventions that fly in the face of such fundamental principles as, say, the conservation of energy. Nevertheless, as of yesterday, almost 3,000 people claiming to be scientists had expressed an interest in sitting on the Steorn jury. The 12 best will be chosen at the end of the month and then testing will begin.

“We’ve been advised it could take between a week and 10 years,” says McCarthy. “We don’t have any doubts. We’ve conducted meticulous research and we’re getting such phenomenal results – up to 400% efficiency – that small glitches and errors in testing can be ruled out. We really believe we’ve found something that can change the world.” The rest of us can only wait and see. In the meantime, I ask Martin Fleischmann, the cold-fusion scientist, now 79 and retired, what he thought of the Steorn project.

“I am actually a conventional scientist,” he says, “but I do accept that the existing [quantum electro-dynamic] paradigm is not adequate. If what these men are saying turns out to be true, that would be proof that the paradigm was inadequate and we would have to come up with some new theory. But I don’t think their claims are credible. No, I cannot see how the position of magnetic fields allows one to create energy.” With great charm, Dr Fleischmann wishes the Steorn team luck. And if their “free” energy can light up a developing-world village or the eyes of a child with a toy, then perhaps we all should.

• End Article

Thank you for your gracious reply Dan, and for rechecking the article in your other post.

Please get in touch when you have the time – I am sure that an engineer and a geographer (for that is what I was originally trained as before my IT career) can think up some pretty special things.

keithATtheearthblog.org (replace AT with @) will do the job.

My latest article is now posted on The Earth Blog, which is a radical departure from, well, just about everything. Hope you like it.

The Big Idea is a bit of a hybrid of my 4 Essential Ways To Save The Earth and the GCI’s Contraction and Convergence, with something more. I just need a few people to check the structure before I let it take over my life.

Kind regards

Keith

I am glad we cleared up that misunderstanding. No harm done!

I see the BIG Idea was NOT the energy machine I originally assumed. From now on, I will hopefully refrain from making quick judgments and at least ask a qualifying question first.

I will be contacting you. Thanks for accepting my explanation and apology.

Best Wishes, Dan

I found your source data from EIA and the numbers for 2004 match your graph.

This means that in 2004, China’s carbon emissions were 80 percent that of the USA!

Using the data from 2003 to 2004, the projection to 2006 would make the lines cross and China would be higher in emissions than the USA.

Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Kind Regards, Dan