What exactly is solar energy ?
Solar energy is radiant energy which is produced by the sun. Each day the sun radiates, or sends out, a huge quantity of energy. The sun radiates more energy in a second than people have used since the beginning of time!
The energy of the Sun comes from within the sun itself. Like other stars, the sun is known as a big ball of gases––mostly hydrogen and helium atoms.
The hydrogen atoms in the sun’s core combine to create helium and generate energy in a process called nuclear fusion.
During nuclear fusion, the sun’s extremely high pressure and temperature cause hydrogen atoms to come apart and their nuclei (the central cores of the atoms) to fuse or combine. Four hydrogen nuclei fuse to become one helium atom. However the helium atom contains less mass compared to four hydrogen atoms that fused. Some matter is lost during nuclear fusion. The lost matter is emitted into space as radiant energy.
It takes countless years for the energy in the sun’s core to make its way to the solar surface, and then just a little over eight minutes to travel the 93 million miles to earth. The solar energy travels to the earth at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, the speed of sunshine.
Only a small percentage of the energy radiated by the sun into space strikes the earth, one part in two billion. Yet this amount of energy is enormous.
Where does all this energy go ?
About 15 percent of the sun’s energy that hits our planet is reflected back to space. Another 30 percent is used to evaporate water, which, lifted in to the atmosphere, produces rainfall. Solar power is also absorbed by plants, the land, and the oceans. The remaining could be used to supply our energy needs.
Who invented solar technology ?
Folks have harnessed solar power for hundreds of years. Since the 7th century B.C., people used simple magnifying glasses to concentrate the light of the sun into beams so hot they'd cause wood to catch fire. Over 100 years ago in France, a scientist used heat from a solar collector to produce steam to drive a steam engine. In the beginning of this century, scientists and engineers began researching ways to use solar energy in earnest. One important development was a remarkably efficient solar boiler invented by Charles Greeley Abbott, an American astrophysicist, in 1936.
People and world governments remained largely indifferent to the possibilities of solar energy prior to the oil shortages of the1970s. Today, people use solar technology to heat buildings and water and to generate electricity.
How we use solar energy today ?
Solar power is used in a number of different ways, of course. There are two standard forms of solar energy:
* Solar thermal energy collects the sun's warmth through one of two means: in water or in an anti-freeze (glycol) mixture.
* Solar photovoltaic energy converts the sun's radiation to usable electricity.
Let us discuss the five most practical and popular methods solar energy is employed:
1. Small portable solar photovoltaic systems. We see these used everywhere, from calculators to solar garden products. Portable units can be utilised for everything from RV appliances while single panel systems can be used traffic signs and remote monitoring stations.
2. Solar pool heating. Running water in direct circulation systems via a solar collector is an extremely practical way to heat water for your pool or hot tub.
3. Thermal glycol energy to heat water. In this method (indirect circulation), glycol is heated by sunshine and the heat is then transferred to water in a hot water tank. This method of collecting the sun's energy is much more practical now than in the past.
4. Integrating solar photovoltaic energy into your home or business power. In numerous parts of the world, solar photovoltaics is an economically feasible method to supplement the power of your home. An increasingly popular and practical way of integrating solar energy into the power of your home or business is through the use of building integrated solar photovoltaics.
5. Large independent photovoltaic systems. For those who have enough sun power at your site, you could possibly go off grid. It's also possible to integrate or hybridize your solar energy system with wind power or other forms of sustainable energy to stay 'off the grid.'
How do Photovoltaic panels work ?
Silicon is mounted beneath non-reflective glass to produce photovoltaic panels. These panels collect photons from the sun, converting them into DC electrical energy. The energy created then flows into an inverter. The inverter transforms the power into basic voltage and AC electric power.
Solar cells are prepared with particular materials called semiconductors like silicon, which is presently the most generally used. When light hits the Photovoltaic cell, a specific share of it is absorbed inside the semiconductor material. This means that the energy of the absorbed light is given to the semiconductor.
The power unfastens the electrons, permitting them to run freely. Solar cells also have more than one electric fields that act to compel electrons unfastened by light absorption to flow in a specific direction. This flow of electrons is a current, and by introducing metal links on the top and bottom of the -Photovoltaic cell, the current can be drawn to use it externally.
Do you know the benefits and drawbacks of solar energy ?
Solar Pro:
- Heating our homes with oil or propane or using electricity from power plants running with oil and coal is a cause of global warming and climate disruption. Solar energy is clean and environmentally-friendly.
- Solar hot-water heaters require little maintenance, and their initial investment may be recovered in just a relatively small amount of time.
- Solar hot-water heaters can work in almost any climate, even just in very cold ones. Simply choose the best system for your climate: drainback, thermosyphon, batch-ICS, etc.
- Maintenance costs of solar powered systems are minimal and also the warranties large.
- Financial incentives can reduce the cost of the first investment in solar technologies.
Solar Cons:
- The initial investment in solar hot-water heaters or in PV electric systems is higher than that required by conventional electric and gas heating systems.
- The payback period of solar PV electric systems can be high (dependent on size of system), as well as those of solar space heating or solar cooling (solar domestic hot-water heating payback is short or relatively short).
- Solar hot-water heaters do not heat water in the central heating system (domestic radiators).
- Some hvac (solar space heating and the solar cooling systems) are very expensive, and rather untested technologies.
- The efficiency of solar powered systems is rather determined by sunlight resources. The distance from the equator has significant impact on the amount of solar energy reaching your solar panel. The closer you are to the equator, the more electricity your solar panels generate.
Who am I ? - Barbara Young writes on http://www.12voltsolarpanels.net/ her personal hobby site. Her work is devoted to helping people save energy using solar powered energy to eliminate CO2 emissions and energy dependency.
URBAN ENERGY
Our mission: “To provide and install, sustainable, world class, clean energy products with the highest level of service and care."
Urban Energy is an innovative organisation specialising in the financing, design and installation of economic and environmentally sound solar powered energy systems for commercial property (private and public) and domestic dwellings. Our expertise in the field of Government sponsored funding programmes and solar power products will provide individuals and organisations with an excellent opportunity to overcome capital cost barriers, save money on energy bills, increase profit margins, increase the value of their property and reduce their carbon footprint.
Urban Energy employ the very best engineers in this field, all of which are fully qualified, MCS certified and Government approved to carry out this task, complying with strict guidelines and are members of the Solar Trade Association.
For further information about Urban Energy products and services:
Call: 0800 232 1624
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Showing posts with label CO2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CO2. Show all posts
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Friday, 5 March 2010
Solar Aid: enabling some of the poorest communities on the planet to receive clean, free energy!
Urban Energy actively supporting Solar Aid, enabling some of the poorest communities on the planet to receive clean, free energy:
Hi all at Urban Energy!
During my recent trip to Kenya and Tanzania last month, my colleagues and I made a series of short films about our work on the ground and how our donors and supporters are having a real impact on the lives of thousands of people. I’d love you to watch this short film. Please simply type: urbanenergy.mysolaraid.org into your web browser to view the special web page and to watch the short film. I hope you enjoy it! I look forward to catching up soon.
All the best,
Anna
Marketing Manager
SolarAid
http://defaultrecord1.mysolaraid.org/links/Microsites/8f9a5b31_fe4c_4056_9c05_a40fed929aa8/www/index.html?enc=5e6zaFEYMp2YYTDybwVAt/nvcnURQhK020/eECFlH6vHCX/dRH3w/7znXH9cNDzs7AXY3ug2BgQxdW4PJBfuXIQfcydyvoufunwoibyzTHVEFiTrvbTTS/wLZOLuXyksTG0Ny5VpY4SN93RY4Bdy9BMZxNmDnaqRzjrWh6UQIwURLCOWTnyEbxNJy4CyrxRq2KaLM4RjAAwcUpIXk1FRsEdpdTay7BxtU5BgR3uDJces0KJeluvdKGd2a8ArhEKSRyRzfTE3W1OhJDePILJzabs4I27GE7QGhBOhcJooibg=&
For further information about Urban Energy products and services:
Call: 0800 232 1624
Email: info@urbanenergy.org.uk
Website: http://www.urbanenergy.org.uk/
Hi all at Urban Energy!
During my recent trip to Kenya and Tanzania last month, my colleagues and I made a series of short films about our work on the ground and how our donors and supporters are having a real impact on the lives of thousands of people. I’d love you to watch this short film. Please simply type: urbanenergy.mysolaraid.org into your web browser to view the special web page and to watch the short film. I hope you enjoy it! I look forward to catching up soon.
All the best,
Anna
Marketing Manager
SolarAid
http://defaultrecord1.mysolaraid.org/links/Microsites/8f9a5b31_fe4c_4056_9c05_a40fed929aa8/www/index.html?enc=5e6zaFEYMp2YYTDybwVAt/nvcnURQhK020/eECFlH6vHCX/dRH3w/7znXH9cNDzs7AXY3ug2BgQxdW4PJBfuXIQfcydyvoufunwoibyzTHVEFiTrvbTTS/wLZOLuXyksTG0Ny5VpY4SN93RY4Bdy9BMZxNmDnaqRzjrWh6UQIwURLCOWTnyEbxNJy4CyrxRq2KaLM4RjAAwcUpIXk1FRsEdpdTay7BxtU5BgR3uDJces0KJeluvdKGd2a8ArhEKSRyRzfTE3W1OhJDePILJzabs4I27GE7QGhBOhcJooibg=&
For further information about Urban Energy products and services:
Call: 0800 232 1624
Email: info@urbanenergy.org.uk
Website: http://www.urbanenergy.org.uk/
Saturday, 27 February 2010
The Denial Industry
For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco. In the first of three extracts from his new book, George Monbiot tells a bizarre and shocking new story.
ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?
The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".
Among the organisations that have been funded by Exxon are such well-known websites and lobby groups as TechCentralStation, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Some of those on the list have names that make them look like grassroots citizens' organisations or academic bodies: the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, for example. One or two of them, such as the Congress of Racial Equality, are citizens' organisations or academic bodies, but the line they take on climate change is very much like that of the other sponsored groups. While all these groups are based in America, their publications are read and cited, and their staff are interviewed and quoted, all over the world.
By funding a large number of organisations, Exxon helps to create the impression that doubt about climate change is widespread. For those who do not understand that scientific findings cannot be trusted if they have not appeared in peer-reviewed journals, the names of these institutes help to suggest that serious researchers are challenging the consensus.
This is not to claim that all the science these groups champion is bogus. On the whole, they use selection, not invention. They will find one contradictory study - such as the discovery of tropospheric cooling, which, in a garbled form, has been used by Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday - and promote it relentlessly. They will continue to do so long after it has been disproved by further work. So, for example, John Christy, the author of the troposphere paper, admitted in August 2005 that his figures were incorrect, yet his initial findings are still being circulated and championed by many of these groups, as a quick internet search will show you.
But they do not stop there. The chairman of a group called the Science and Environmental Policy Project is Frederick Seitz. Seitz is a physicist who in the 1960s was president of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 1998, he wrote a document, known as the Oregon Petition, which has been cited by almost every journalist who claims that climate change is a myth.
The document reads as follows: "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
Anyone with a degree was entitled to sign it. It was attached to a letter written by Seitz, entitled Research Review of Global Warming Evidence. The lead author of the "review" that followed Seitz's letter is a Christian fundamentalist called Arthur B Robinson. He is not a professional climate scientist. It was co-published by Robinson's organisation - the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine - and an outfit called the George C Marshall Institute, which has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. The other authors were Robinson's 22-year-old son and two employees of the George C Marshall Institute. The chairman of the George C Marshall Institute was Frederick Seitz.
The paper maintained that: "We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."
It was printed in the font and format of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: the journal of the organisation of which Seitz - as he had just reminded his correspondents - was once president.
Soon after the petition was published, the National Academy of Sciences released this statement: "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal. The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy."
But it was too late. Seitz, the Oregon Institute and the George C Marshall Institute had already circulated tens of thousands of copies, and the petition had established a major presence on the internet. Some 17,000 graduates signed it, the majority of whom had no background in climate science. It has been repeatedly cited - by global-warming sceptics such as David Bellamy, Melanie Phillips and others - as a petition by climate scientists. It is promoted by the Exxon-sponsored sites as evidence that there is no scientific consensus on climate change.
All this is now well known to climate scientists and environmentalists. But what has been discovered while researching this issue is that the corporate funding of lobby groups denying that manmade climate change is taking place was initiated not by Exxon, or by any other firm directly involved in the fossil fuel industry. It was started by the tobacco company Philip Morris.
In December 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency published a 500-page report called Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking. It found that "the widespread exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in the United States presents a serious and substantial public health impact. In adults: ETS is a human lung carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in US non-smokers. In children: ETS exposure is causally associated with an increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. This report estimates that 150,000 to 300,000 cases annually in infants and young children up to 18 months of age are attributable to ETS."
Had it not been for the settlement of a major class action against the tobacco companies in the US, we would never have been able to see what happened next. But in 1998 they were forced to publish their internal documents and post them on the internet.
Within two months of its publication, Philip Morris, the world's biggest tobacco firm, had devised a strategy for dealing with the passive-smoking report. In February 1993 Ellen Merlo, its senior vice-president of corporate affairs, sent a letter to William I Campbell, Philip Morris's chief executive officer and president, explaining her intentions: "Our overriding objective is to discredit the EPA report ... Concurrently, it is our objective to prevent states and cities, as well as businesses, from passive-smoking bans."
To this end, she had hired a public relations company called APCO. She had attached the advice it had given her. APCO warned that: "No matter how strong the arguments, industry spokespeople are, in and of themselves, not always credible or appropriate messengers."
So the fight against a ban on passive smoking had to be associated with other people and other issues. Philip Morris, APCO said, needed to create the impression of a "grassroots" movement - one that had been formed spontaneously by concerned citizens to fight "overregulation". It should portray the danger of tobacco smoke as just one "unfounded fear" among others, such as concerns about pesticides and cellphones. APCO proposed to set up "a national coalition intended to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers of 'junk science'. Coalition will address credibility of government's scientific studies, risk-assessment techniques and misuse of tax dollars ... Upon formation of Coalition, key leaders will begin media outreach, eg editorial board tours, opinion articles, and brief elected officials in selected states."
APCO would found the coalition, write its mission statements, and "prepare and place opinion articles in key markets". For this it required $150,000 for its own fees and $75,000 for the coalition's costs.
By May 1993, as another memo from APCO to Philip Morris shows, the fake citizens' group had a name: the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. It was important, further letters stated, "to ensure that TASSC has a diverse group of contributors"; to "link the tobacco issue with other more 'politically correct' products"; and to associate scientific studies that cast smoking in a bad light with "broader questions about government research and regulations" - such as "global warming", "nuclear waste disposal" and "biotechnology". APCO would engage in the "intensive recruitment of high-profile representatives from business and industry, scientists, public officials, and other individuals interested in promoting the use of sound science".
By September 1993, APCO had produced a "Plan for the Public Launching of TASSC". The media launch would not take place in "Washington, DC or the top media markets of the country. Rather, we suggest creating a series of aggressive, decentralised launches in several targeted local and regional markets across the country. This approach ... avoids cynical reporters from major media: less reviewing/challenging of TASSC messages."
The media coverage, the public relations company hoped, would enable TASSC to "establish an image of a national grassroots coalition". In case the media asked hostile questions, APCO circulated a sheet of answers, drafted by Philip Morris. The first question was:
"Isn't it true that Philip Morris created TASSC to act as a front group for it?
"A: No, not at all. As a large corporation, PM belongs to many national, regional, and state business, public policy, and legislative organisations. PM has contributed to TASSC, as we have with various groups and corporations across the country."
There are clear similarities between the language used and the approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which appear to have been invented by Philip Morris's consultants. "Junk science" meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking was linked to cancer and other diseases. "Sound science" meant studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognised that their best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." Both industries also sought to distance themselves from their own campaigns, creating the impression that they were spontaneous movements of professionals or ordinary citizens: the "grassroots".
But the connection goes further than that. TASSC, the "coalition" created by Philip Morris, was the first and most important of the corporate-funded organisations denying that climate change is taking place. It has done more damage to the campaign to halt it than any other body.
TASSC did as its founders at APCO suggested, and sought funding from other sources. Between 2000 and 2002 it received $30,000 from Exxon. The website it has financed - JunkScience.com - has been the main entrepot for almost every kind of climate-change denial that has found its way into the mainstream press. It equates environmentalists with Nazis, communists and terrorists. It flings at us the accusations that could justifably be levelled against itself: the website claims, for example, that it is campaigning against "faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas". I have lost count of the number of correspondents who, while questioning manmade global warming, have pointed me there.
The man who runs it is called Steve Milloy. In 1992, he started working for APCO - Philip Morris's consultants. While there, he set up the JunkScience site. In March 1997, the documents show, he was appointed TASSC's executive director. By 1998, as he explained in a memo to TASSC board members, his JunkScience website was was being funded by TASSC. Both he and the "coalition" continued to receive money from Philip Morris. An internal document dated February 1998 reveals that TASSC took $200,000 from the tobacco company in 1997. Philip Morris's 2001 budget document records a payment to Steven Milloy of $90,000. Altria, Philip Morris's parent company, admits that Milloy was under contract to the tobacco firm until at least the end of 2005.
He has done well. You can find his name attached to letters and articles seeking to discredit passive-smoking studies all over the internet and in the academic databases. He has even managed to reach the British Medical Journal: I found a letter from him there which claimed that the studies it had reported "do not bear out the hypothesis that maternal smoking/ passive smoking increases cancer risk among infants". TASSC paid him $126,000 in 2004 for 15 hours' work a week. Two other organisations are registered at his address: the Free Enterprise Education Institute and the Free Enterprise Action Institute. They have received $10,000 and $50,000 respectively from Exxon. The secretary of the Free Enterprise Action Institute is Thomas Borelli. Borelli was the Philip Morris executive who oversaw the payments to TASSC.
Milloy also writes a weekly Junk Science column for the Fox News website. Without declaring his interests, he has used this column to pour scorn on studies documenting the medical effects of second-hand tobacco smoke and showing that climate change is taking place. Even after Fox News was told about the money he had been receiving from Philip Morris and Exxon, it continued to employ him, without informing its readers about his interests.
TASSC's headed notepaper names an advisory board of eight people. Three of them are listed by Exxonsecrets.org as working for organisations taking money from Exxon. One of them is Frederick Seitz, the man who wrote the Oregon Petition, and who chairs the Science and Environmental Policy Project. In 1979, Seitz became a permanent consultant to the tobacco company RJ Reynolds. He worked for the firm until at least 1987, for an annual fee of $65,000. He was in charge of deciding which medical research projects the company should fund, and handed out millions of dollars a year to American universities. The purpose of this funding, a memo from the chairman of RJ Reynolds shows, was to "refute the criticisms against cigarettes". An undated note in the Philip Morris archive shows that it was planning a "Seitz symposium" with the help of TASSC, in which Frederick Seitz would speak to "40-60 regulators".
The president of Seitz's Science and Environmental Policy Project is a maverick environmental scientist called S Fred Singer. He has spent the past few years refuting evidence for manmade climate change. It was he, for example, who published the misleading claim that most of the world's glaciers are advancing, which landed David Bellamy in so much trouble when he repeated it last year. He also had connections with the tobacco industry. In March 1993, APCO sent a memo to Ellen Merlo, the vice-president of Philip Morris, who had just commissioned it to fight the Environmental Protection Agency: "As you know, we have been working with Dr Fred Singer and Dr Dwight Lee, who have authored articles on junk science and indoor air quality (IAQ) respectively ..."
Singer's article, entitled Junk Science at the EPA, claimed that "the latest 'crisis' - environmental tobacco smoke - has been widely criticised as the most shocking distortion of scientific evidence yet". He alleged that the Environmental Protection Agency had had to "rig the numbers" in its report on passive smoking. This was the report that Philip Morris and APCO had set out to discredit a month before Singer wrote his article.
I have no evidence that Fred Singer or his organisation have taken money from Philip Morris. But many of the other bodies that have been sponsored by Exxon and have sought to repudiate climate change were also funded by the tobacco company. Among them are some of the world's best-known "thinktanks": the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the Reason Foundation and the Independent Institute, as well as George Mason University's Law and Economics Centre. I can't help wondering whether there is any aspect of conservative thought in the United States that has not been formed and funded by the corporations.
While they have been most effective in the United States, the impacts of the climate-change deniers sponsored by Exxon and Philip Morris have been felt all over the world. Their arguments are seen endlessly repeated in Australia, Canada, India, Russia and the UK. By dominating the media debate on climate change during seven or eight critical years in which urgent international talks should have been taking place, by constantly seeding doubt about the science just as it should have been most persuasive, they have justified the money their sponsors have spent on them many times over. It is fair to say that the professional denial industry has delayed effective global action on climate change by years, just as it helped to delay action against the tobacco companies.
Reference: George Monbiot
URBAN ENERGY
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ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?
The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".
Among the organisations that have been funded by Exxon are such well-known websites and lobby groups as TechCentralStation, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Some of those on the list have names that make them look like grassroots citizens' organisations or academic bodies: the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, for example. One or two of them, such as the Congress of Racial Equality, are citizens' organisations or academic bodies, but the line they take on climate change is very much like that of the other sponsored groups. While all these groups are based in America, their publications are read and cited, and their staff are interviewed and quoted, all over the world.
By funding a large number of organisations, Exxon helps to create the impression that doubt about climate change is widespread. For those who do not understand that scientific findings cannot be trusted if they have not appeared in peer-reviewed journals, the names of these institutes help to suggest that serious researchers are challenging the consensus.
This is not to claim that all the science these groups champion is bogus. On the whole, they use selection, not invention. They will find one contradictory study - such as the discovery of tropospheric cooling, which, in a garbled form, has been used by Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday - and promote it relentlessly. They will continue to do so long after it has been disproved by further work. So, for example, John Christy, the author of the troposphere paper, admitted in August 2005 that his figures were incorrect, yet his initial findings are still being circulated and championed by many of these groups, as a quick internet search will show you.
But they do not stop there. The chairman of a group called the Science and Environmental Policy Project is Frederick Seitz. Seitz is a physicist who in the 1960s was president of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 1998, he wrote a document, known as the Oregon Petition, which has been cited by almost every journalist who claims that climate change is a myth.
The document reads as follows: "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
Anyone with a degree was entitled to sign it. It was attached to a letter written by Seitz, entitled Research Review of Global Warming Evidence. The lead author of the "review" that followed Seitz's letter is a Christian fundamentalist called Arthur B Robinson. He is not a professional climate scientist. It was co-published by Robinson's organisation - the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine - and an outfit called the George C Marshall Institute, which has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. The other authors were Robinson's 22-year-old son and two employees of the George C Marshall Institute. The chairman of the George C Marshall Institute was Frederick Seitz.
The paper maintained that: "We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."
It was printed in the font and format of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: the journal of the organisation of which Seitz - as he had just reminded his correspondents - was once president.
Soon after the petition was published, the National Academy of Sciences released this statement: "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal. The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy."
But it was too late. Seitz, the Oregon Institute and the George C Marshall Institute had already circulated tens of thousands of copies, and the petition had established a major presence on the internet. Some 17,000 graduates signed it, the majority of whom had no background in climate science. It has been repeatedly cited - by global-warming sceptics such as David Bellamy, Melanie Phillips and others - as a petition by climate scientists. It is promoted by the Exxon-sponsored sites as evidence that there is no scientific consensus on climate change.
All this is now well known to climate scientists and environmentalists. But what has been discovered while researching this issue is that the corporate funding of lobby groups denying that manmade climate change is taking place was initiated not by Exxon, or by any other firm directly involved in the fossil fuel industry. It was started by the tobacco company Philip Morris.
In December 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency published a 500-page report called Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking. It found that "the widespread exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in the United States presents a serious and substantial public health impact. In adults: ETS is a human lung carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in US non-smokers. In children: ETS exposure is causally associated with an increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. This report estimates that 150,000 to 300,000 cases annually in infants and young children up to 18 months of age are attributable to ETS."
Had it not been for the settlement of a major class action against the tobacco companies in the US, we would never have been able to see what happened next. But in 1998 they were forced to publish their internal documents and post them on the internet.
Within two months of its publication, Philip Morris, the world's biggest tobacco firm, had devised a strategy for dealing with the passive-smoking report. In February 1993 Ellen Merlo, its senior vice-president of corporate affairs, sent a letter to William I Campbell, Philip Morris's chief executive officer and president, explaining her intentions: "Our overriding objective is to discredit the EPA report ... Concurrently, it is our objective to prevent states and cities, as well as businesses, from passive-smoking bans."
To this end, she had hired a public relations company called APCO. She had attached the advice it had given her. APCO warned that: "No matter how strong the arguments, industry spokespeople are, in and of themselves, not always credible or appropriate messengers."
So the fight against a ban on passive smoking had to be associated with other people and other issues. Philip Morris, APCO said, needed to create the impression of a "grassroots" movement - one that had been formed spontaneously by concerned citizens to fight "overregulation". It should portray the danger of tobacco smoke as just one "unfounded fear" among others, such as concerns about pesticides and cellphones. APCO proposed to set up "a national coalition intended to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers of 'junk science'. Coalition will address credibility of government's scientific studies, risk-assessment techniques and misuse of tax dollars ... Upon formation of Coalition, key leaders will begin media outreach, eg editorial board tours, opinion articles, and brief elected officials in selected states."
APCO would found the coalition, write its mission statements, and "prepare and place opinion articles in key markets". For this it required $150,000 for its own fees and $75,000 for the coalition's costs.
By May 1993, as another memo from APCO to Philip Morris shows, the fake citizens' group had a name: the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. It was important, further letters stated, "to ensure that TASSC has a diverse group of contributors"; to "link the tobacco issue with other more 'politically correct' products"; and to associate scientific studies that cast smoking in a bad light with "broader questions about government research and regulations" - such as "global warming", "nuclear waste disposal" and "biotechnology". APCO would engage in the "intensive recruitment of high-profile representatives from business and industry, scientists, public officials, and other individuals interested in promoting the use of sound science".
By September 1993, APCO had produced a "Plan for the Public Launching of TASSC". The media launch would not take place in "Washington, DC or the top media markets of the country. Rather, we suggest creating a series of aggressive, decentralised launches in several targeted local and regional markets across the country. This approach ... avoids cynical reporters from major media: less reviewing/challenging of TASSC messages."
The media coverage, the public relations company hoped, would enable TASSC to "establish an image of a national grassroots coalition". In case the media asked hostile questions, APCO circulated a sheet of answers, drafted by Philip Morris. The first question was:
"Isn't it true that Philip Morris created TASSC to act as a front group for it?
"A: No, not at all. As a large corporation, PM belongs to many national, regional, and state business, public policy, and legislative organisations. PM has contributed to TASSC, as we have with various groups and corporations across the country."
There are clear similarities between the language used and the approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which appear to have been invented by Philip Morris's consultants. "Junk science" meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking was linked to cancer and other diseases. "Sound science" meant studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognised that their best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." Both industries also sought to distance themselves from their own campaigns, creating the impression that they were spontaneous movements of professionals or ordinary citizens: the "grassroots".
But the connection goes further than that. TASSC, the "coalition" created by Philip Morris, was the first and most important of the corporate-funded organisations denying that climate change is taking place. It has done more damage to the campaign to halt it than any other body.
TASSC did as its founders at APCO suggested, and sought funding from other sources. Between 2000 and 2002 it received $30,000 from Exxon. The website it has financed - JunkScience.com - has been the main entrepot for almost every kind of climate-change denial that has found its way into the mainstream press. It equates environmentalists with Nazis, communists and terrorists. It flings at us the accusations that could justifably be levelled against itself: the website claims, for example, that it is campaigning against "faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas". I have lost count of the number of correspondents who, while questioning manmade global warming, have pointed me there.
The man who runs it is called Steve Milloy. In 1992, he started working for APCO - Philip Morris's consultants. While there, he set up the JunkScience site. In March 1997, the documents show, he was appointed TASSC's executive director. By 1998, as he explained in a memo to TASSC board members, his JunkScience website was was being funded by TASSC. Both he and the "coalition" continued to receive money from Philip Morris. An internal document dated February 1998 reveals that TASSC took $200,000 from the tobacco company in 1997. Philip Morris's 2001 budget document records a payment to Steven Milloy of $90,000. Altria, Philip Morris's parent company, admits that Milloy was under contract to the tobacco firm until at least the end of 2005.
He has done well. You can find his name attached to letters and articles seeking to discredit passive-smoking studies all over the internet and in the academic databases. He has even managed to reach the British Medical Journal: I found a letter from him there which claimed that the studies it had reported "do not bear out the hypothesis that maternal smoking/ passive smoking increases cancer risk among infants". TASSC paid him $126,000 in 2004 for 15 hours' work a week. Two other organisations are registered at his address: the Free Enterprise Education Institute and the Free Enterprise Action Institute. They have received $10,000 and $50,000 respectively from Exxon. The secretary of the Free Enterprise Action Institute is Thomas Borelli. Borelli was the Philip Morris executive who oversaw the payments to TASSC.
Milloy also writes a weekly Junk Science column for the Fox News website. Without declaring his interests, he has used this column to pour scorn on studies documenting the medical effects of second-hand tobacco smoke and showing that climate change is taking place. Even after Fox News was told about the money he had been receiving from Philip Morris and Exxon, it continued to employ him, without informing its readers about his interests.
TASSC's headed notepaper names an advisory board of eight people. Three of them are listed by Exxonsecrets.org as working for organisations taking money from Exxon. One of them is Frederick Seitz, the man who wrote the Oregon Petition, and who chairs the Science and Environmental Policy Project. In 1979, Seitz became a permanent consultant to the tobacco company RJ Reynolds. He worked for the firm until at least 1987, for an annual fee of $65,000. He was in charge of deciding which medical research projects the company should fund, and handed out millions of dollars a year to American universities. The purpose of this funding, a memo from the chairman of RJ Reynolds shows, was to "refute the criticisms against cigarettes". An undated note in the Philip Morris archive shows that it was planning a "Seitz symposium" with the help of TASSC, in which Frederick Seitz would speak to "40-60 regulators".
The president of Seitz's Science and Environmental Policy Project is a maverick environmental scientist called S Fred Singer. He has spent the past few years refuting evidence for manmade climate change. It was he, for example, who published the misleading claim that most of the world's glaciers are advancing, which landed David Bellamy in so much trouble when he repeated it last year. He also had connections with the tobacco industry. In March 1993, APCO sent a memo to Ellen Merlo, the vice-president of Philip Morris, who had just commissioned it to fight the Environmental Protection Agency: "As you know, we have been working with Dr Fred Singer and Dr Dwight Lee, who have authored articles on junk science and indoor air quality (IAQ) respectively ..."
Singer's article, entitled Junk Science at the EPA, claimed that "the latest 'crisis' - environmental tobacco smoke - has been widely criticised as the most shocking distortion of scientific evidence yet". He alleged that the Environmental Protection Agency had had to "rig the numbers" in its report on passive smoking. This was the report that Philip Morris and APCO had set out to discredit a month before Singer wrote his article.
I have no evidence that Fred Singer or his organisation have taken money from Philip Morris. But many of the other bodies that have been sponsored by Exxon and have sought to repudiate climate change were also funded by the tobacco company. Among them are some of the world's best-known "thinktanks": the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the Reason Foundation and the Independent Institute, as well as George Mason University's Law and Economics Centre. I can't help wondering whether there is any aspect of conservative thought in the United States that has not been formed and funded by the corporations.
While they have been most effective in the United States, the impacts of the climate-change deniers sponsored by Exxon and Philip Morris have been felt all over the world. Their arguments are seen endlessly repeated in Australia, Canada, India, Russia and the UK. By dominating the media debate on climate change during seven or eight critical years in which urgent international talks should have been taking place, by constantly seeding doubt about the science just as it should have been most persuasive, they have justified the money their sponsors have spent on them many times over. It is fair to say that the professional denial industry has delayed effective global action on climate change by years, just as it helped to delay action against the tobacco companies.
Reference: George Monbiot
URBAN ENERGY
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Global Warming? Rubbish! Just another way of taxing the public, isn't it?
1. People say the world isn’t really getting warmer, some years are just hotter than others, and it varies/goes around in cycles.
a. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997. That’s a fact, based on recorded temperatures since 1850 (when reliable records began). Over the last 100 years the Earth has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius and the speed it is warming at is getting faster. These days the UK Spring arrives about 10 days earlier than it did in the 1970s. In 159 years of records, the 10 hottest years have been in the last 12 years.
b. Arctic sea ice is melting, the extent it reaches has shrunk by about 10% every 10 years since the late 70s. The smallest amounts of Arctic summer ice on record were in the last 3 years: 2007-2009. In a few decades, large parts of the Arctic Ocean are expected to have no late summer sea-ice at all.
2. People say we’ve nothing to do with it.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have gone up 38% since 1750 - the year the industrial revolution started. Rising levels of greenhouse gases are directly linked to human activity like burning fossil fuels and clearing forests. There is a clear link between more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global warming.
3. But not all scientists agree though, right?
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that human induced climate change poses a huge threat to the world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not run by any government – ‘intergovernmental’ means it answers to all 192 governments signed up to it. Its reports are written by independent scientists. It is one of the most rigorous scientific bodies that exists. It brings together many thousands of scientists from countries all over the world to put together the best assessments of climate science available. What about the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia? Don’t they undermine the science? There is an independent review looking at this incident. But there is an overwhelming consensus, based on decades of climate science and the work of thousands of scientists around the world which says that climate change is real and a major threat.
4. It’s too late, we just need to accept it.
This international scientific panel says we need to stop the world getting more than 2 degrees warmer if we want to avoid dangerous climate change. After that it becomes harder to produce food and competition for water, sea level rises and loss of species get much worse. We've got the technologies we need for a low-carbon world we just need to go for it now. It'll cost much less to go low carbon than it will to let climate change happen.
5. A bit of melting ice and slightly hotter summers, what’s the problem?
Global sea levels have already risen by 10 centimetres in the last 50 years, thanks to melting ice and warming oceans. This is already threatening low-lying countries, such as islands and Bangladesh. Millions more people are expected to be flooded every year by 2080. Latest predictions suggest the sea could rise by 1 metre this century. In Europe alone this could affect over 20 million people. And it looks like the sea is rising more quickly now than in the 20th century.
6. Some countries have always had droughts, it’s nothing new.
Severe droughts are now twice as common as they were in 1970. More drought is affecting which crops we can grow effectively. Global demand for food is expected to nearly double by 2050. But by 2025, lack of water could mean we produce a third less of the volume of cereals we currently eat – that’s the same as losing the entire grain crops of India and the US combined.
7. Global warming is just to do with natural changes in the Sun.
Scientists are clear that there is strong evidence that changes in solar radiation could not have caused the rapid warming we have seen over the past fifty years. The Met Office has stated that since the Industrial Revolution, additional greenhouse gases have had about ten times the effect on the climate as changes in the Sun’s output.
8. We’ve all got a lot on our plate – let’s worry about it later.
Even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, we are already locked into a global temperature rise of at least 1.4 degrees Celsius (since 1750) because of the delayed impact between emissions and temperature. It is already happening, and we need to act now to stop it getting much worse.
9. It won’t happen to us though.
Developed countries suffer impacts too. The 2003 heat wave in western Europe, which caused 35,000 deaths (2,000 in the UK), is already twice as likely to happen again next year. By the 2040s Europe will consider such a summer normal. By 2060s they will consider it cool.
10. Surely it’s only the odd polar bear, who cares?
Species are already being forced to migrate or adapt. Scientists think that around 20% of species will become extinct with 2 degrees of warming – and it will be a real challenge, even if we act right now, to keep to that limit.
Reference: Act On CO2penhagen
URBAN ENERGY
Our mission: “To provide and install, sustainable, world class, clean energy products with the highest level of service and care”.
The Feed in Tariff (FiT) announced earlier this month, for introduction in April 2010, means that some households installing solar electric photovoltaic (PV) panels could earn > £1000/year for 25 years.
These new tariffs will allow people to turn their homes into mini-power stations. For householders who have a south-facing roof, PV panels are really worth looking at. Not only are they a sound financial investment, they will also allow you to do your part in tackling climate change.
0% interest instalment payment program available for domestic solar thermal and photovoltaic systems.
For further information about Urban Energy products and services:
Call: 0800 232 1624
Email: info@urbanenergy.org.uk
Website: http://www.urbanenergy.org.uk/
a. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997. That’s a fact, based on recorded temperatures since 1850 (when reliable records began). Over the last 100 years the Earth has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius and the speed it is warming at is getting faster. These days the UK Spring arrives about 10 days earlier than it did in the 1970s. In 159 years of records, the 10 hottest years have been in the last 12 years.
b. Arctic sea ice is melting, the extent it reaches has shrunk by about 10% every 10 years since the late 70s. The smallest amounts of Arctic summer ice on record were in the last 3 years: 2007-2009. In a few decades, large parts of the Arctic Ocean are expected to have no late summer sea-ice at all.
2. People say we’ve nothing to do with it.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have gone up 38% since 1750 - the year the industrial revolution started. Rising levels of greenhouse gases are directly linked to human activity like burning fossil fuels and clearing forests. There is a clear link between more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global warming.
3. But not all scientists agree though, right?
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that human induced climate change poses a huge threat to the world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not run by any government – ‘intergovernmental’ means it answers to all 192 governments signed up to it. Its reports are written by independent scientists. It is one of the most rigorous scientific bodies that exists. It brings together many thousands of scientists from countries all over the world to put together the best assessments of climate science available. What about the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia? Don’t they undermine the science? There is an independent review looking at this incident. But there is an overwhelming consensus, based on decades of climate science and the work of thousands of scientists around the world which says that climate change is real and a major threat.
4. It’s too late, we just need to accept it.
This international scientific panel says we need to stop the world getting more than 2 degrees warmer if we want to avoid dangerous climate change. After that it becomes harder to produce food and competition for water, sea level rises and loss of species get much worse. We've got the technologies we need for a low-carbon world we just need to go for it now. It'll cost much less to go low carbon than it will to let climate change happen.
5. A bit of melting ice and slightly hotter summers, what’s the problem?
Global sea levels have already risen by 10 centimetres in the last 50 years, thanks to melting ice and warming oceans. This is already threatening low-lying countries, such as islands and Bangladesh. Millions more people are expected to be flooded every year by 2080. Latest predictions suggest the sea could rise by 1 metre this century. In Europe alone this could affect over 20 million people. And it looks like the sea is rising more quickly now than in the 20th century.
6. Some countries have always had droughts, it’s nothing new.
Severe droughts are now twice as common as they were in 1970. More drought is affecting which crops we can grow effectively. Global demand for food is expected to nearly double by 2050. But by 2025, lack of water could mean we produce a third less of the volume of cereals we currently eat – that’s the same as losing the entire grain crops of India and the US combined.
7. Global warming is just to do with natural changes in the Sun.
Scientists are clear that there is strong evidence that changes in solar radiation could not have caused the rapid warming we have seen over the past fifty years. The Met Office has stated that since the Industrial Revolution, additional greenhouse gases have had about ten times the effect on the climate as changes in the Sun’s output.
8. We’ve all got a lot on our plate – let’s worry about it later.
Even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, we are already locked into a global temperature rise of at least 1.4 degrees Celsius (since 1750) because of the delayed impact between emissions and temperature. It is already happening, and we need to act now to stop it getting much worse.
9. It won’t happen to us though.
Developed countries suffer impacts too. The 2003 heat wave in western Europe, which caused 35,000 deaths (2,000 in the UK), is already twice as likely to happen again next year. By the 2040s Europe will consider such a summer normal. By 2060s they will consider it cool.
10. Surely it’s only the odd polar bear, who cares?
Species are already being forced to migrate or adapt. Scientists think that around 20% of species will become extinct with 2 degrees of warming – and it will be a real challenge, even if we act right now, to keep to that limit.
Reference: Act On CO2penhagen
URBAN ENERGY
Our mission: “To provide and install, sustainable, world class, clean energy products with the highest level of service and care”.
The Feed in Tariff (FiT) announced earlier this month, for introduction in April 2010, means that some households installing solar electric photovoltaic (PV) panels could earn > £1000/year for 25 years.
These new tariffs will allow people to turn their homes into mini-power stations. For householders who have a south-facing roof, PV panels are really worth looking at. Not only are they a sound financial investment, they will also allow you to do your part in tackling climate change.
0% interest instalment payment program available for domestic solar thermal and photovoltaic systems.
For further information about Urban Energy products and services:
Call: 0800 232 1624
Email: info@urbanenergy.org.uk
Website: http://www.urbanenergy.org.uk/
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