In the Debrief this week, we wrap up some continuing stories from the Sunflower Movement, but then take a turn to look at UN’s climate change report and contraception in the Philippines. Finally, a sex party on a train in Taiwan sparks legal debate over privacy and moral norms:
- On Thursday, April 10, student protesters that have been occupying Taiwan’s parliament vacated the premises, ending a three and a half week demonstration over the Cross Straits Services Trade Agreement…
- Levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have risen twice as fast from 2000 to 2010 than they did in the 1990s, due to a boom in coal plants in developing countries, especially China, while developed countries are slow to cut carbon emissions…
- In 2012, Philippines president Benigno Aquino signed into law a bill providing for access to contraception and family planning. The legislation enables government health centers to distribute free condoms and contraceptive pills and have sex education taught in schools without fear of prosecution…
- Two years ago, a man in Taiwanorganized a private sex party in a rented suite on a train. The sex party involved an underaged 17 year old girl, and 18 men who paid a small admissions fee…
(Featured image by Jonathan Kos-Read, CC BY-ND 2.0)
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These are interesting leads but it goes no further then just headlines, no indepth. In other words, we know all of this already.
As for the climate change topic; this is politically correct but leaves out real science, which contrary to the UN – IPCC has a far more realistic -less dramatic- view on the whole matter. Yes CO2 emmisions have rissen but no it is not the major climate driver and if the world would really follow IPCC’s recommendations, for CO2 reductions the effects on global warming would be minimal, but against huge costs and it would reshape the world as we know it. Big question is whether we would be happy with that change….
Besides, the real undisputable data show out that it hasn’t been warming for over 17 years now and it seems more likely that a light global cooling is coming. So why would several UN institutions and certain global environmental organisations make such dramatic claims and mislead us ? It’s all about politics, power and money, coupled to some ideologies that aim for a central reorganizing of world’s structures. However, that such an unrealistic operation will have many negative side effects, often actually opposite to what one says they want to achieve, is something they willfully close their eyes and ears for.
And almost inevitably energy and climate politics are coupled here in your newsflash again, mentioning that renewables are made expensive by not acting enough on climate change, and of course bringing up ‘dangerous’ nuclear energy and polluting coal plants. Yes coal plants are extremely polluting but not so much for their CO2 emmisions since scientifically speaking CO2 is no pollutant. Only -how convenient- in political sense it is. Don’t forget Taiwan’s main energy source is coal and that the biggest coal plant in the world is located here. It’s also an incredible inefficient plant.
According to the WHO annually hundred of thousands of humans directly or indirectly die from coal and other pollutions, and this of course already for decades. I’d like to put in perspective the very small number of casualties from accidents in nuclear power plants. Japan is slowly turning back to nuclear energy for very sound reasons, and so will Germany not long from now.
Safety and waste management are important issues but can be managed well, certainly in the light of development of amazing new technologies in the past years. The issue here is more to guarantee thorough and transparant control systems, in other words to avoid corruption.
Speaking of which; through out the world numerous small and quite some really big scandals have occured in financing renewable energy projects. In many cases of course it turnes out to be self-enrichment, by the very people that say to wish to make a better world for all of us. Not suprisingly these persons have often strong ties with bodies as the Worldbank or IMF or ‘green’ investment banks, and pseudo multinationals / lobby organisations like WWF or Greenpeace.
So should we be so naive and believe and follow all these persons and organisations, no matter how credible they at first sight might be ? I think not.
Ray, your long rant against renewable energy contains no specific facts. You should read what all these scientific associations and societies are saying before going on another misguided tirade.
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus
Nuclear power, like natural gas, is something to tide us over while we transition from hydrocarbons to the Sun. Even if there had been scandals involving the financing of renewable energy projects, that is an illogical argument against such projects. Are you saying there had been no scandals involving hydrocarbon energy projects or ventures? Please.
Scandals occur because of self-interested decision-makers, not because of the purpose or the goal of the projects themselves.
See 10 facts investigated by Popular Mechanics:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/top-10-myths-about-natural-gas-drilling-6386593#slide-1
Unless Popular Mechanics is considered a propaganda magazine…though not a stretch at all for someone who considers international scientific societies to be propaganda organizations.
Well David, if I see a website with the claim about 97% consensus on top, I don’t need to expect much objectivity further on, no matter how much scientific associations are mentioned under it. The 97% is plain crap, and already been debunked by scientific reports made by independent scientists with integrity. There are a lot of those all over the world who seriously disagree on, for instance the sensitivity of the climate for CO2 emmisions. And look at the chart; you can’t really say the Nasa Goddard en NOAA are credible right ? It is proven that until recently they have been falsifying historic temperature and extreme weather data to make current situations look bad, which they actually aren’t. Obviously all the statements of those scientific associations are political ones, and that is not so hard to imagine, they all need to keep line with the IPCC and EPA and so on.
The 97% is supposed to be a convincing number that ought to exclude further discussion or debate.
You tell me to read what all those associations have to say and that I give no specific facts myself, but are you aware of the non-scientific procedure and weird interpretation this 97 number showed up ? It is just fabricated nonsense.
By all means I would very much want to see a future on renewables, or on Sun as you call it. I just doubt the feasibility of it from where technology stands now. Then again, I can well imagine that within a few decades technologies are perfected to a level we cannot dream of yet. That wouldn’t be for the first time. Or new ones will come up, perhaps we’ll eventually figure out Tesla’s free energy. In that case nuclear and fossil power will help us to get us through the time.
I do wonder why there is so much resistance to even the thought that nuclear energy can become totally safe and with little to no waste problem. Recent designs for those issues are already way better than what we’ve seen for decades, so why would we give that a chance too ?
The fear for radiaton is out of proportion. Radiation is all around us you know, we even need it to a very little extent, and recent research showed that for istance fly ashes comming from coal plants are radio active to a degree that it exposes us to a much higher degree than nuclear accidents have ever done.
Not that that justifies for nuclear mishaps, but just to put things in a wider perspective of what’s going on.
A pretty urgent reason the more by the way to get rid of coal plants as soon as possible.
Apart from that, as long as we don’t solve our problems globally it just won’t work, and I don’t believe that the international political lanscape as we know it now will ever be able to come to consonance and put effective policies in motion. Nor do I believe in a world government in the coming centuries, is that so strange ?
As to the scandals, you are absolutely right that there seems no difference between the doings and dealings between the old industries and the new green ones, which was quite to be expected indeed. What bothers me here is that the whole integral issue of (catastrophic) climate, and energy policies are heavily being sold to us by people and organizations that say they want to save us and the planet and therefor automatically want to count on our belief in them. That would be ligitimate if those are all honest and transparent but they are not and therefor a reasonable doubt in them is no more then fair.
The new green, as all other political directions is totally penetrated by people with self-interests, aiming for power and money. Basicly their goals will be good and noble, but they oversell the message and exagerate the claims, in order to let us follow.
I made no misguided tirade David, because I am a realist. And I think I can judge misinformation from objective information.