The Vatican Goes for Solar PowerI found this story on Bloomberg, which I think is an interesting example of something that I have from time to time blogged about. Global warming is not happening. It is a chimera, which an awful lot of people find quasi-religious validation in. However, the loss of energy resources, particularly oil and gas, and the inability to bring coal on again quickly pose an immediate and pressing problem for Europe and America.
Even though we are clearly in a deep depression--the human cost in terms of bankruptcy in this country just being one example--oil is still 'sticky' at around $50 dollars per barrel. The Kurds may have found a new field, and I have no doubt that there are high-yield fields available so long as oil is expensive; but the facts that oil is tied to the dollar, which will soon suffer inflation, and that oil pipelines cross (not coincidentally) some of the world's worst troublespots, mean that oil at high prices is likely in the future.
The facts that the world cannot sustain five or six great economic zones all dependent on oil, that nuclear fusion is still an experimental (but hopeful) idea, and that very little new oil discovery operations are being financed, make high energy costs a virtual certainty.
There is a criminal neglect of energy grids within countries going on too; I think it's now a fair bet that Britain will face regular power cuts within the next decade, for example.
In the face of all of this, we all need to rediscover conservation, and, on a municipal or regional basis, or even a domestic basis, to discover ways both to save and to generate energy. The Vatican schemes, which employ some of the high-tech solar research associated with the Pope's homeland as well as what seem to be CO-free hypocaust ideas, suggest such an 'energy from limits' model to me. They also raise echoes of the case that gave rise to EU power, Costa v ENEL, in which the messy energy grabs of the Italian State raised issues of EC law.
So--and it's no surprise that you read this on this blog--well done to the Vatican on an energy technology scheme that will see the Holy See exporting electricity to Italy within a few years.
The picture, of course, is from Rome, and is of Christ as Sol Invictus; a Greek idea of a Roman God based on a Jewish messenger of love.
Comments
I won't propose to debate your stance on global warming. It has merit. At the same time, rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are tough to ignore. You might be interested in Freeman Dyson's stances on the topic, if you aren't already acquainted with them.
I love Freeman Dyson's work, though I barely understand most of it. A good part of my childhood and youth was spent hanging around the physics and astrophysics sections of the public library, attempting to understand things, and reading science fiction. His crazy Dyson sphere idea was just brilliant. I'd love that to be true, wouldn't you, somewhere? Where are the aliens and why cant we see them? Because they built a big cover over their sun and went inside :) Wokka wokka, as Fozzy bear would have said.
I am not a scientist, but science should be explicable and not the preserve of a priesthood. Priests are for church, and moral guidance, and that sort of thing, unless they are also scientists, in which case, they shouldn't behave like priests.
I wouldn't ignore CO2 in the atmosphere; but there are many persuasive scientists, it seems to me, who suggest that CO2 follows warming, and possibly enhances it in certain places, but does not cause or continue it over time. It's also only a bit more of a 'pollutant' than oxygen and H2O. I wouldn't of course, say that if I was trapped in a carload of the stuff.
I also think that it's becoming clear from Anthony Watts' work on the surface stations, and the sort of meticulous stuff he hosts on his blog, that cooling is now evident.
What started me thinking--sorry for the long reply--were two things.
One was data showing that the whole solar system, or at least the inner planets, warmed in the 1990s.
The other was something I'm prone to, and which got me into trouble with the Ayn Rand crowd the other day, on the baroque piece (it's done it before) of judging ideas by their supporters and by the behaviour of those who have ideas--and that's not always a very useful thing to do. I guess I could come up with some pale justification of essential cognitive heuristics, but I won't...
The Global warming crowd strike me as tax-raising self righteous, and delusional, in a hectoring tradition to which some of the Western religious were prone.
I also have always heard the voice of class interest in them. So, maybe I am wrong; but my interpretation of the precautionary principle is that you don't commit billions of taxpayers' money to lobby groups that validate themselves but that can't really describe what they want, except that winter should be warmer and summer should never be too Hot. Unfortunately, we can't live in Camelot the musical.
I also just don't trust the politicians any more. At all. Oddly enough, I find that sad, though you might call it wisdom, I don't know. I saw them at Oxford, playing their silly games in the junior common rooms, and it depressed me, though I did once stand for a minor city council seat myself.
Thank you for your comment, as ever. I'm off to contribute less to global warming by shutting up, but more by having a hot bath.