Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box

The Fact Sheet on the "partnership" from the White House heralds the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate as a solid alternative to Kyoto, and :

"This new results-oriented partnership will allow our nations to develop and accelerate deployment of cleaner, more efficient energy technologies to meet national pollution reduction, energy security, and climate change concerns in ways that reduce poverty and promote economic development."

The clean technologies promoted are coal gasification, coal bed methane, and improving the efficiency of energy production and appliance efficiency. Of course, it is clear that nuclear power is also being pushed as a "clean" technology, but that is a sensitive topic globally where the US is attempting to control all nuclear development.

Meanwhile, the anti-global warming factions seem to be heating up again. In the old refrain that "it's not us" is" Plants revealed as methane source." See we have all of the "natural" sources of global warming gases that are causing the problem. Reagan, as I recall, said that it was cow farts that were causing global warming.

Since the experts are saying that we need deep emissions cuts to have any effect, we are in deep trouble. Neither Kyoto, or the "ground breaking model" offered by Bush and the Asia-Pacific Conference, are going to help us much, and certainly not fast enough to be effective.

Norway is however getting some sense of the catastrophic proportions of what is facing the world. They are going to construct a "dooms day" vault to safeguard all of the world's crop seeds from disaster. They are shooting for 2 million seeds against potential disaster. It will be carved into an Arctic mountain - location unspecified. Might be nice information to have at the end of the world as we know it.