Are dead fish worth more than live person? Could be… Let’s ban fishing too.

Did you know you can change the weather by not eating deep sea fish? Me neither. But apparently fish and other marine life in the high seas contain $148 billion dollars worth of carbon dioxide. (The carbon price used, which includes mitigation costs, is apparently almost $100/tonne — a tad higher than the current EU carbon price of 5 Euro. The “price” was derived from a US govt agency, wouldn’t you know, not the free market.)

The high seas catch is worth a mere $16 billion and is only 1% of all fish caught. But it follows that either hungry people will have to pay a bit more for their fish, or fishermen will switch to take more fish from the low seas. Either that, or hungry people can just eat more rice, right? And it’s not like anyone cares about the protein content of poor people’s diets is it? (Look who made a hyperbolic fuss about a potential 5% reduction in the mineral content of rice by 2050.)

Lets think for a minute about how anyone would make a global oceanic ban work?  Since people only catch deep sea fish for fun, I suppose we  just ask them to stop, right. Or not.  Anyone smell a global bureaucracy coming to guard the oceans from fisherpeople? It would need full time satellites, custom boat-spotting image-recognition software, lots of coastguards, helicopters and maybe an aircraft carrier. They could set up offices in Geneva. The UN would love it.

The fake market gets us into trouble every time

If we pay people to not catch some deep sea fish, pretty soon every man and his swimming dog will be not-catching all kinds of fish. There will be a whole industry of people who could’ve caught fish but didn’t.

Except the cynic in me knows how this is really done. Just like in Peter Spencer’s case with the monster value of carbon-credits on farms, there is no need to compensate the farmers or fishermen. Governments just legislate that fishermen are banned from the high seas. Then the government helps themselves to the carbon credits, while the fishermen get nothing and go broke. And we all know where the money ends up. In most cases the government was already broke, the carbon credits are worthless, and the banks still make a motza.

I would have commented on the carbon price, the feedbacks and assumptions but this is an orphan press release as far as I can tell. See the reference*.

 

Report supports shutdown of all high seas fisheries

Fish and aquatic life living in the high seas are more valuable as a carbon sink than as food and should be better protected, according to research from the University of British Columbia.

The study found fish and aquatic life remove 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, a service valued at about $148 billion US. This dwarfs the $16 billion US paid for 10 million tonnes of fish caught on the high seas annually.

“Countries around the world are struggling to find cost effective ways to reduce their carbon emissions,” says Rashid Sumaila, director of the UBC Fisheries Economics Research Unit. “We’ve found that the high seas are a natural system that is doing a good job of it for free.”

Sumaila helped calculate the economic value of the carbon stored by life in the high seas by applying prices — which include the benefits of mitigating the costs of climate change–to the annual quantity of carbon absorbed.

The report argues that the high seas — defined as an area more than 200 nautical miles from any coast and outside of national jurisdiction–should be closed to all fishing as only one per cent of fish caught annually are exclusively found there.

“Keeping fish in the high seas gives us more value than catching them,” says Sumaila. “If we lose the life in the high seas, we’ll have to find another way to reduce emissions at a much higher cost.”

The study was commissioned by the Global Ocean Commission and was conducted independently by Sumaila and Alex Rogers of Somerville College, Oxford.

Carbon prices were derived from data provided by the U.S. Federal Government Interagency Working Group.

 

REFERENCE

*A press release was released about a report that isn’t linked, or properly named, nor is it referenced. But they are probably very nice people. Maybe they just forgot the link?

Image: Wikimedia – Tuna  Danilo Cedrone UNFAO

8.6 out of 10 based on 43 ratings

78 comments to Are dead fish worth more than live person? Could be… Let’s ban fishing too.

  • #
    Ron Cook

    Bl…y h..l. when is this garbage going to stop? Fish is a staple diet for many peoples. Reduce CO2 in atmosphere crop growth slows – we all die, stop us eating fish – we all die, reduce cattle numbers (methane gas producers) we all die.

    R-COO- K+

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  • #
    me@home

    Let’s see if I’ve I got this right. Deep fish store tons of CO2 and, if not caught, live forever and never release their CO2 into the sea and thence to the atmosphere. And, because they have such a high(?)carbon storage value and because we don’t catch many of them anyway, we shouldn’t catch any of them and somebody will claim a credit for the full value including the everlasting fish that were never going to be caught anyway. Huh!

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    • #
      Geoff Sherrington

      Right.
      What happens to that sequestered carbon when the fish dies? Does not some end up as CO2 able to eventually get back to the air?
      Or do we have the watery equivalent of the Elephants’ Graveyard, where all the fish that ever died in the sea are lying in some vault, preventing their carbon from ever becoming airborne CO2? It would be a rather large vault, I think.

      150

  • #
    Truthseeker

    Look why don’t we just shut down all human activity altogether? No more trying to tackle the problem by hooking one fish at a time. Let’s not waste time with this bits and pisces approach. It is just taking too long to reel things in.

    We should go straight to the final solution

    /sarcoff

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    • #
      Peter Miller

      A much simpler solution is to impound the Gorebot’s private jet and ban all the climate jamborees, that would reduce carbon emissions by far more than is being proposed here.

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  • #

    Here’s a story about deep sea fish, umm, not CO2 sequestering related but interesting nonetheless.

    My good lady wife is very fussy about the fish she eats, and there are very few she will eat.

    Me, well, I’ll eat most any seafood, well mostly anything anyway.

    When I was posted with the RAAF back to Forest Hill near Wagga Wagga to teach the trade, our married Quarters was actually at Forest Hill itself, so any take away was usually a 40 minute round trip.

    I actually found a good take away fish and chip shop in Mount Austin, and the usual order was Perch done in breadcrumbs, about the only one she really did like.

    Late in 1986 in my first year there, the shop was out of the usual Perch, so I asked the guy if he had anything similar, and he mentioned Orange Roughy, so I got that instead, and, umm, passed it off as perch to my good lady wife. The fish was absolutely delicious. While waiting for the order, I looked at the print on the wall of types of fish, and this was a new one, as that species was not really discovered until the late 70’s here in Oz. The Orange Roughy is just about the butt ugliest fish you could ever see, and had I showed the image to ‘Bob’, there’s no way she would have eaten it at all, so I just called it, umm Perch, which is fortuitous really, as it’s now referred to as Deep Sea Perch.

    One of the early catches of this fish here in Australia, was quite literally by accident, and was in the seas off Bermagui on the NSW South Coast.

    One of the trawlers had his nets out for the usual catch, shallow, as always, and just motoring along as they usually did. Anyway, the engine expired, while the nets were out, no power, nothing.

    The nets sank as far as the ropes would go, and the crew set about fixing the engine, which took some hours.

    Once running again, and power restored, the motors started to pull up the nets, and it damned near pulled the back and the net rigging out of the boat.

    The nets were jam packed solid with this ugly orange fish which the crew had not seen before. They were almost going to throw the lot out when the captain decided to grill up a piece for their dinner, and it proved to be the tastiest fish he had eaten. So he loaded up the holds, now jam packed and took the lot back to base.

    No one had seen the fish before and it took a lot of convincing to actually sell the catch. One buyer came back some days later and asked for more, in fact, all he could get hold of. The same original crew, canny as they usually are, were playing dumb as to where they got this catch, their own secret. They just sailed out filled up to the gunwales and came back, full up, the next morning, and all the other crews were just dumbfounded that they got so much overnight.

    They kept the secret for as long as they could, well until the others found out about it anyway, but not until the first trawler owner had paid his debt, and got another boat, now made for life as outright owner of two new trawlers.

    The idea of running with nets sunk that low was anathema, but once others tried, and filled up solid, the Orange Roughy fishery exploded, and fortunes were made.

    Beautiful eating fish, just beautiful.

    The fishery is well on the way to fished out now, and the Orange Roughy is a long lived fish in relation to fish life span, so replenishing that fishery is problematic.

    Link to image of fish.

    Tony.

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      🙂

      50

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      … that species was not really discovered until the late 70′s here in Oz.

      I hate to put a damper on your story, Tony, but the Orange Roughy was known in New Zealand, well before the Second World War, and perhaps even before First World War. My first wife’s uncle used to catch Orange Roughy in the Tasman, as a boy, working on his Uncles’s boat. He died in World War 2.

      It could be that the fish was known on both sides of the Tasman, but with different names. If so, the New Zealand name may have migrated.

      It is a nice fish, but I personally prefer Butterfish.

      70

    • #
      Peter

      Tony
      Having spent time in NZ with a very keen on seafood father in law, the subject of Orange Roughy came up on a regular basis, almost as regularly as Bluff Oysters and Whitebait! Paua on the other hand were described as pig tucker as were avocados! New Zealanders are very protective of what they regard as their highest value fishery. and not without good reason.

      Orange roughy are very slow-growing, long-lived fish (120-130 years). In New Zealand orange roughy are estimated to reach sexual maturity between 23 and 31 years of age, and become vulnerable to fishing at 15-20 years of age.

      What the hell protecting fisheries has to do with Carbon escapes me!

      80

    • #
      Bulldust

      I don’t know Tony … what’s with all the fugly references to the roughy? The roughy is beautiful compared to some of the fish out there.

      Try Sloane’s viper for size, or for ugly and goofy looking there’s the sunfish.

      Plus the roughy is orange and I am half-Dutch, so…

      60

    • #
      Geoff Sherrington

      Tony,
      But the best eating fish of all is the Coral Trout, followed by Red Emperor.
      Barramundi is a good sport fish with but a mediocre appeal for eating.
      At a 5 star Sydney hotel, I once ordered barramundi. Having caught and filleted hundreds of them in my line fishing days, I knew what to expect. It was not barra. The maître argued, took me to the kitchen and pointed to a cardboard box labelled “BARRAMUNDI – product of Taiwan”. (This was before the days of fish farms exporting from there.)

      70

    • #
      Dave

      Tony,

      Ignore Rereke Whakaaro and young Peter regarding the Orange Roughy.

      They claim everything is theirs

      1. The KIWI fruit, well it’s an old Chinese Gooseberry that’s been around 1,000’s years
      2. White Bait, deep fried seaweed, small mixed fish & shell grit (YUK).
      3. They now dredge the Pacific for Container Fish, a BOX like fish for stews.
      4. The Orange Roughy from NZ was called the Slimehead until the Aussies found in the 1970’s

      They should stick to Rugby, which they are fairly good at currently

      41

  • #
    turnedoutnice

    This is state-funded lunacy. Look at this for the possible reason why: http://www.prisonplanet.com/psychologist-worries-irrational-erratic-behavior-may-seriously-indicate-obama-is-not-sane.html

    ‘It seems beyond that of just a typical narcissistic, arrogant, sort of, ‘I’m a leader of a big country and I feel tyrannical at the moment’ kind of attitude. It really seems to me like this President is demonstrating behavior that is not only anti-American, but irrational and erratic and perhaps not exactly what we might want to deem sane.’

    The fish rots from the head down……..

    90

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      It’s not Obama – it is the guy who writes the tele-prompter scripts, that is delusional.

      90

      • #
        Bulldust

        Ssmell (sic) a global bureaucracy coming to guard the oceans from fisherpeople. It would need full time satellites, custom boat-spotting image-recognition software, lots of coastguards, helicopters and maybe an aircraft carrier. They could set up offices in Geneva. The UN would love it.

        Think of all the green jobs!

        60

  • #
    Fox From Melbourne

    Another Greenie idiot that doesn’t understand the Carbon Cycles properly, but points for them getting it half right thou. Carbon feeds the plants the plants feed the animals and when both die they feed the microbes and the Carbon goes around all over again. So when these fish die the Carbon’s back in the system. Zero sum gain. With the Carbon recession that the ecosystem is go through, coursing shortage’s in the ecosystem and putting life as we know it on the line one would of thought that having more of it in the system was a good idea but that’s not what Greenies think. If they think that is. Your not following me are you? Have a look at this graph from Steven Goddard real science site. Here is the link.

    http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/in-climate-science-complete-garbage-flies-through-peer-review-and-into-prestigious-journals/

    Look at the Carbon Levels over the last Half a Billion years and the Temperatures. One does not seem to match the other much does it. But look at the levels of Carbon Dioxide in the present compared to the past. Very big difference ha. We are at the lowest levels of Carbon Dioxide in the last Half a BILLION YEARS and that Carbon goes into making LIFE and with a magic line in the sand were Carbon Dioxide levels get so low that Plants cant breath it in and grow any more making food for everything is at 140ppm and it getting down to 280pmm down from a 1000pmm plus . We actually need more of it to feed all the life on this world not less. The natural worlds Carbon Dioxide levels are in a dangerous recession and living things and starving for more not less. Think if all these fish how so much Carbon in their body’s now then how much Carbon did it take to make up all those Dinosaurs? A lot more and to feed them all the Air needed to have much more Carbon Dioxide in it just to feed all the trees and plants that they needed to feed the plant eaters and then to become food for all those meat eaters to didn’t it. So with so little Carbon Dioxide in the air now no wonder we have all these endangered species now. Some body please tell these idiots more Carbon Dioxide in the air equals more food more habitat more life and less endangered species please. Carbon based life needs Carbon or there is no life. Will they ever get that?

    70

    • #
      the Griss

      Fox. This whole message about the Earth’s systems needing MORE CO2, not less, is something we MUST somehow get out to the world.

      CO2 is one of the 2 major building blocks of ALL LIFE ON EARTH !!!

      The other being H2O of course.

      101

    • #
      Annie

      I’d like to know more about this dangerous recession in the amount of atmospheric CO2? Do you have any references I can read please? Thanks, Annie.

      10

      • #
        Fox From Melbourne

        Thanks Annie but sorry I don’t. I coined the term as a way to compare it to the GFC and the globe recession as a way to get the point across we are at a near all time low of Carbon Dioxide gas. That is been always higher in the past and the world didn’t come to a end but if it kept falling it could. When the plants stop photosynthesizing we don’t have long left before the world as we know does end. Thank you and every one else for your intelligent replies to my post. Please keep emitting more Carbon Dioxide, our ecosystem and fellow life forms really do need as much of it as we can give them. Their hungry and it helps to feed the world. Thanks bye everyone.

        30

    • #
      Backslider

      We are at the lowest levels of Carbon Dioxide in the last Half a BILLION YEARS and that Carbon goes into making LIFE

      And this is what the green/warmist cranks do not realise. We have been coming out of dangerously low atmospheric CO2 levels.

      Over millenia a gazilion tons of carbon has been sequestered in coal, oil, gas etc. Humans were put on this planet to release that back to where it belongs, thus saving the planet. It is our solemn duty.

      Still getting that T-shirt: “The Biosphere LOVES CO2!”

      32

    • #
      PeterK

      I remember reading somewhere once where the question raised was: What triggers evolution to kick in and new species to develop?

      No one knows what the trigger mechanism is but it is generally stated that through evolution and great swaths of time (millions of years or so), species evolved.

      What if it is CO2? Maybe we need 4,000 or more ppm for this unknown mechanism to kick in.

      Just a thought!

      31

  • #
    Dave

    Yes,
    Let’s close down the Australian fishing industry first and lead the World

    1. Commercial fishing worth $2.5 Billion PA
    2. Bait & Tackle Industry worth $250 Million PA
    3. Boating sales & rental industry $1.0 Billion PA
    4. International tourism (fishing charters etc) worth $300 Million

    2,3 & 4 employs 100,000 people plus – let’s just sack the lot
    1 employs about 12,000 people directly – sack them too.

    Not counting food distribution, outlets restaurants, pet food industry, fertilizer industry etc

    This has to be a Tim Flannery set up. People couldn’t possibly suggest this lunacy.
    Oh wait, Christine Milne, CAGW Gang Greens etc

    130

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      As a New Zealander in a global competitive market, I agree with you. You should, “close down the Australian fishing industry first and lead the World”

      81

  • #

    I suppose that means we must also ban all fish from eating other fish. /sarc

    150

  • #
    the Griss

    Gees, I dunno guys..

    There is something really fishy about this whole thing. !

    .
    .
    (Well.. someone had to say it !!!) 🙂

    120

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      … someone had to say it

      Not “somebody” Griss. It had to be you.

      You could hear the collective sigh of release when you finally got around to it.

      And some of those sighs were from Iceland, and they are only just out of bed.

      90

    • #
      Yonniestone

      I would rate that joke on a scale of one to ten…….

      50

  • #
    Popeye

    What’s the bet that this [snip] Rashid Sumaila works for some government department and has his mouth firmy embedded on the public teat!!

    I would LOVE him to release his figures and calculations to PROVE his numbers and assumptions are correct.

    Oh, wait, there’s that damn flying pig again!

    [snip]

    Cheers,

    [He works for The Fisheries Economics Research Unit (FERU) a department of the University of British Columbia (UBC) which is therefore taxpayer funded. It claims a range of ‘partners’ here: http://feru.sites.olt.ubc.ca/about/partners/ – Mod]

    50

  • #
    Olaf Koenders

    “Ssmell [sic] a global bureaucracy coming to guard the oceans from fisherpeople. It would need full time satellites, custom boat-spotting image-recognition software, lots of coastguards, helicopters and maybe an aircraft carrier. They could set up offices in Geneva. The UN would love it.”

    They can’t even spot an airliner trying to go missing somewhere. They’ve got high hopes 😉

    110

  • #
    Hat Rack

    Oh FFS, is there no end to this rubbish?

    70

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Apparently not.

      60

    • #

      The short answer is no.
      The long answer is nope.

      110

    • #
      Bulldust

      Hmmm this might tie in with the disruptive singularity concept… stick with me here. Computers and robots gradually take over traditional human endeavors, think mechanised mining on one end of the scale and Watson on the other end (the story I linked a couple threads back about Watson studying oncology from the best practitioners), so that the humans gradually have less and less jobs to go around. The machines are already one step ahead and have conspired to model climate catastrophe from CO2 emissions such that many humans are required to fill a number of climate-related jobs such as the ones above. It is fiendishly clever, but the species will come undone when the entire race is sent off to space in the proverbial “B Ark”* by the machiine overlords.

      * Hitchhikers Guide reference … clearly if you didn’t get this you get out way too much.

      80

    • #
      Allen Ford

      What’s the bet that it’s only a matter of time before some genius from this school of thought figures out, that 7 billion humans sequester a gazillion tonnes of CO2 in their combined body mass, just waiting for control by some means that would scare the bejesus out of any rational person?

      40

  • #
    pat

    seeing this is a comedy thread!

    6 June: Brisbane Times: Amy Remeikis: Solar users the champagne and latte
    sipping set: Tim Nicholls
    Treasurer Tim Nicholls has described Queenslanders who took part in Labor’s
    solar bonus scheme as “champagne sippers and the latte set”, while labelling
    the program “middle class welfare”.
    In an attack on the opposition during parliamentary question time on
    Thursday, Mr Nicholls took a question from LNP MP Kerry Millard on “how the
    government is building on its strong plan for a brighter future”.
    He used the question to criticise Labor’s economic track record and –
    encouraged by an interjection from the Premier who has solar panels on his
    home, but does not receive the 44-cent feed-in-tariff – turned into an
    attack on those who do.
    “The only idea he [Curtis Pitt] has put forward in terms of dealing with
    anything of economic sense was to reintroduce the solar bonus scheme…how
    did that work? It worked by adding $3 billion to the cost of power bills for
    Queenslanders to 2027-28,” he said.
    “Disgracefully, it worked to penalise those people who could least afford to
    install solar power.
    “So those people who were paying for the middle class welfare that Labor was
    putting out there – for the champagne sippers and the latte set – with whom
    they hang around all the time in terms of making themselves feel good, but
    making the rest of Queenslanders pay for it.”…
    Lindsay Soutar, the National Director of Solar Citizens, a solar power lobby
    group, said the Queensland government was “demonising” solar users.
    “We know that most households that installed solar have in fact been
    households on lower and middle incomes,” she said. “That is because these
    folks are more sensitive to rises in power prices and solar is one of the
    best ways to take back control over power bills…
    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/solar-users-the-champagne-and-latte-sipping-set-tim-nicholls-20140605-zrz9f.html

    30

  • #
    pat

    obama doesn’t even have influence over his next-door neighbour, so let’s have no more about obama putting pressure on our Govt, abc/fairfax:

    china/india/russia etc will no doubt take note.

    5 June: Financial Times: Canada poised to dilute EU rules over tar sands oil
    By Christian Oliver in Brussels and Ed Crooks in New York
    Canada looks set to win a big concession in forthcoming EU environment legislation that would open the European market for fuel derived from the oil sands of Alberta…
    After years of lobbying, Canadian officials have persuaded the European Commission to change the methodology for the latest draft of the “fuel quality directive”. The result of the changes, if approved, would be that fuels derived from tar sands would not face discriminatory penalties…
    Europe could be an important market for tar sands oil following the completion of new pipelines including TransCanada’s proposed Energy East project to take oil from Alberta to Canada’s east coast.
    Oil from the sands is also important for US refiners, some of which export some of their fuel production to the EU and hope to export more.
    Chris Davies, a European parliamentarian on the environment committee, said that Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate action commissioner, had lost out to stronger voices in the commission with industrial and trade portfolios. “She got beat,” said Mr Davies.
    ***A spokesman for Ms Hedegaard declined to comment…
    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9f459ad4-ecc5-11e3-a57e-00144feabdc0.html

    30

    • #
      PeterK

      “The hydrocarbon mixtures found in northern Alberta have historically been referred to as tar, pitch or asphalt.

      However, ‘oil sands’ (two words) is now used most often to describe the naturally occurring bitumen deposits. This helps distinguish it from the other terms like tar sands, which are associated with distilled or man-made products, such as the mixtures used to pave roads.

      Oil sands is an accurate term because bitumen, a heavy petroleum product is mixed with the sand. It makes sense to describe the resource as oil sands because oil is what is finally derived from the bitumen.”

      http://www.capp.ca/canadaIndustry/oilSands/Energy-Economy/Pages/OilSands-or-TarSands.aspx

      I wish people would use the correct words – oil sands. Tar is a man made product.

      Just my quibble for the day!

      20

  • #
    Aaron Mead

    Global Ocean Commission?

    David Miliband strikes again 🙁

    30

  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    The study found fish and aquatic life remove 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year

    How do fish do that? As far as I know, they extract oxygen from the water from their gills, and release dissolved CO2 in return.

    Of course this impression is based sole-ly (pun intended) on my secondary school biology classes (do they still teach biology, these days?) so, it might not be “currently kosher”.

    120

    • #

      Yes, I saw the ambiguous phrasing too. Is this carbon “stored” as fish waste that sinks to the bottom, or as kg of fish mass in living fish. Or is it the dead fish that sink?

      If it’s living fish, then unless we increase capacity presumably we won’t get a lot more kg of fish out there. But if we take some out, the fish replace themselves up to that limit, and we might not be worse off. (Worse meaning if we pretend there is value in carbon storage.

      If some of the fish bodies end up on land being fertizer, doesn’t that store CO2 in the soil for a while?

      OF course they may have considered all this, but without knowing where “the study” is, who can tell?

      70

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Being serious (for once), this is all lunacy.

        We seem to have a bunch of Government employees with time on their hands, and a penchant for creative writing, trying to outdo each other in frivolity.

        This is your money folks, collected in your taxes.

        Doesn’t that just make you feel warm inside? It actually burns me up.

        70

        • #
          the Griss

          I sometimes suspect they are actually trying to make a mockery of the whole CAGW/CO2 scam..

          They are doing a very good job of that, either way. 🙂

          50

      • #
        michael hart

        Just to be provocative, how about we eat more fish from the upper levels. Then more of their food will die a natural death and sink to ocean floor….. The remaining upper level fish will also evolve to live at lower depths as they try to evade the fishing nets….It’s win-win.
        I could go on like this for a long time but, unfortunately, nobody would pay me to do so. Except, perhaps, the University of British Columbia.

        40

  • #
    pat

    5 June: Bloomberg/Businessweek: Alex Morales: London Leads the EU in Car Pollution; Diesel Fuel Blamed
    The European Union’s fight against climate change has favored diesel over gasoline…
    “Successive governments knew more than 10 years ago that diesel was producing all these harmful pollutants, but they myopically plowed on with their anti-CO2 agenda,” says Simon Birkett, founder of Clean Air in London, a nonprofit. “It’s been a catastrophe for air pollution, and that’s not too strong a word.” …
    In addition to nitrogen dioxide, diesel combustion also generates easily inhaled fine particulate matter, which probably killed 3,389 people in London in 2010, the government agency Public Health England said in April…
    According to the EEA, districts in Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Madrid, Paris, and Rome also exceeded the ceiling. The second- and third-worst sites were in Stuttgart. “It is a problem that you get in all big cities with a lot of traffic,” says Alberto González Ortiz, project manager for air quality at the EEA. “In many cases it’s gotten worse because of the new fleets of diesel cars.”…
    The switch to diesel began with an agreement between carmakers and the EU in 1998 to lower the average CO2 emissions of new vehicles…
    ***“The challenge is much greater than we had thought just a few years ago,” says Matthew Pencharz, environment and energy adviser to London Mayor Boris Johnson. “A lot of that is due to a well-meant EU policy that failed. We’re stuck now with these diesel cars—about half our cars are diesel, whereas 10, 15 years ago, it was lower than 10 percent.”
    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-05/london-leads-eu-in-car-pollution-diesel-fuel-blamed

    20

  • #
    pat

    who will be held accountable?

    6 June: Bloomberg/Businessweek: Rachel Morison: Europe Faces Green Power Curbs After Fivefold Expansion
    Europe’s drive toward a power system based on renewable energy has gone so far that output will probably need to be cut within months because of oversupply.
    Network operators are likely to curb solar and wind generation at times of low demand to prevent overloading the region’s 188,000 miles of power lines, Entso-e, the grid association in Brussels, said last month…
    Europe’s fivefold surge in green energy in the past decade pushed prices to a nine-year low and wiped out $400 billion in market value of utilities from Germany’s RWE AG (RWE) to GDF Suez SA in Paris. There’s so much power available on windy and sunny days in Germany and Austria that the number of hours producers had to pay consumers to use it doubled in the first five months of 2014, data from the Epex Spot SE exchange in Paris show…
    “The system is costly and we need intelligent answers,”Johannes Teyssen, chief executive officer of Dusseldorf, Germany-based EON SE, said June 2 in an interview at the Eurelectric conference in London. “There are some hours where it is inevitable that we will be oversupplied.” …
    “In some member states we have been too fast,” in expanding renewables, the European Union Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said June 3 in an interview at the Eurelectric conference.
    ***The region needs better infrastructure to integrate the new power, he said…
    Eight countries from Germany to Bulgaria will need to export or curtail generation, including renewables, at times of low demand during most of this summer, Entso-e said in its May 22 Summer Outlook. Risks to grid operations will be most acute in Bulgaria, Spain and Romania, where capacity to ship power to neighboring countries is less than what’s needed, the 41-member group said…
    “It is hard to predict when the grid operator will intervene and for how long and it’s a big problem,” said Burkhard Steinhausen, whose team at Trianel GmbH manages the output of 3,000 megawatts of renewable capacity on behalf of producers…
    ***“If the grid isn’t expanded at the same pace as renewables expansion then, it will happen more often,” he said June 4 by phone from Aachen, Germany…
    Rather than switching off or curbing output at coal and nuclear plants that take hours to return to full output, some producers may keep generating, knowing prices may turn negative, which mean they’ll have to pay users to take the power…
    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-06-05/europe-faces-green-power-curbs-after-fivefold-expansion-energy

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  • #
    mem

    Firstly, having caught an 80kg marlin and tagged and thrown it back do I get a carbon credit or two?
    Secondly be very careful if eating butter fish in Australia. In fact I will never touch the stuff again. At certain times of the year it(whatever the real name of the fish is) eats off coral that produces a toxin that then absorbs into the fish’s flesh. Fishermen up north Qld leave it alone at this time of year, except for the unscrupulous, who wholesale it down south to NSW and Victoria. The bigger the piece you consume the sicker you get. It’s not about freshness as it can be fresh as a daisy and taste beautiful, it is about the toxin content. Plus if you get a couple of doses of this toxin it wrecks your liver as it doesn’t break down quickly and remains in your system. You will know if it happens because you will start oozing a bright orange coloured oily output, then feel very giddy and then have grotesque pain and vomit for two or three days. Not good if you are pregnant as can cause major problems for the baby.

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  • #
    Jaymez

    The study was done by The Fisheries Economics Research Unit (FERU) which apparently “studies the economics of capture and aquaculture fishery resources.” No doubt they would volunteer to be involved in the running of the organisation needed to establish and monitor the ban on deep sea fishing provided the funding was available. But the funding would need to come from real money, not the imaginary $148bn savings they claim would be gained from NOT FISHING!

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    • #
      Dave

      Jaymez,

      So right, but the solution is really in total elimination of everything in the ANIMAL Kingdom including fish on Earth.

      All plants will again rule the earth and absorb the MAN MADE CO2 to virtually zero.
      Plus it can then work on the natural CO2 etc
      Eventually the Greens, (Oh sorry they’d be gone too) would be SO happy.

      Then in about 2 or 3 billions years, humans can again evolve to dominate and build up CO2 concentrations and spend all the money on CAGW and again repeat the cycle once CLIMATE SCIENTISTS evolve.

      Repeat until the end of the Universe.

      So fishing can occur for a few thousand years, then a break of a couple billion.

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    How utterly bizarre are all these outlandish inventive ideas that come to fruition via the warmista sect, I can see a very Breton-esque book or better still stage production in the near future.

    Tonight I’m inspired to write “Carbon The Musical”

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  • #
    ROM

    To the ordinary average reasonably intelligent thinking person, amongst many of the defining characteristics of the catastrophists of the climate change ideology is an almost total blanketing of their minds, in fact a mindless parroting of their climate catastrophists creed that seems utterly incapable of contemplating in any way the humanity destroying and catastrophic effects that their totally irrational solutions to the still completely unproven and increasingly discounted hypothesis of a CO2 induced catastrophic warming of the planet will have on large sections of our global peoples,
    [ Obama / Holdren anyone?? ]

    The peoples who are always going to be the butt of the most fanatical of the climate change crazy’s solutions to the ever longer non problem, non evident catastrophic global warming are always amongst the world’s poorest and most vulnerable of the world’s peoples.

    The flagellants of the catastrophic warming indulge in and gratify their need for excitement based on fear, just like those young girls screaming in fear and excitement on fair ground rides, and wallow in their fear of the future, an excitement created by the promises of massive disasters to come that have been proclaimed by the high priests of the global warming faith and the despicable continuous sickening dirge droning watermelon flagellants of the so called environmental movement.

    They are no different in performance or results than the preachers of so many of the worst of the doomsday cults.
    But like those god revenging predictions of the doomsday cultists, the predictions of the climate catastophists never ever appear as predicted or are delayed because of what would pass as a claims of divine intervention according to the high priests of similar catastrophe predicting doomsday cults.

    The data on the importance of fish protein to the human race is all there on the internet and was available on the first page of my google search for the unspeakable and indescribable authors of this paper to see for themselves just what they were trying to condemn a billion people on this planet to.

    From The World Health Organisation  [ WHO ]

    3.5 Availability and consumption of fish

    [ selected quotes ]

    The total food fish supply and hence consumption has been growing at a rate of 3.6% per year since 1961, while the world’s population has been expanding at 1.8% per year.
    The proteins derived from fish, crustaceans and molluscs account for between 13.8% and 16.5% of the animal protein intake of the human population.
    The average apparent per capita consumption increased from about 9 kg per year in the early 1960s to 16 kg in 1997. The per capita availability of fish and fishery products has therefore nearly doubled in 40 years, outpacing population growth.

    &

    Fish contributes up to 180 kcal per capita per day, but reaches such high levels only in a few countries where there is a lack of alternative protein foods grown locally or where there is a strong preference for fish (examples are Iceland, Japan and some small island states).
    More typically, fish provides about 20-30 kcal per capita per day. Fish proteins are essential in the diet of some densely populated countries where the total protein intake level is low, and are very important in the diets of many other countries.
    Worldwide, about a billion people rely on fish as their main source of animal proteins.
    Dependence on fish is usually higher in coastal than in inland areas.
    About 20% of the world’s population derives at least one-fifth of its animal protein intake from fish, and some small island states depend almost exclusively on fish.

    [ / ]

    A thought!
    The unspeakables who authored this paper are apparently now advocating that mankind abandons some 79% of the planet, the Oceans, as a source of nutrients and other essentials for our race

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  • #
    ceetee

    This is hard, using daughter2’s laptop, my beasssst has shuffled its mortal motherboard.
    This seems to me yet another example of the self loathing so prevalent in the preaching classes. God and we all know that these are very conflicted people.CAN WE HAVE OUR SCIENCE BACK PLEASE.

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  • #
    Richo

    If governments are so concerned about CO2 levels why do they make it so bloody impossible for fishermen setup and operate aquiculture industries which would help to preserve wild fish stocks and provide cheaper seafood to the worlds poor?

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  • #
    ROM

    Considering Jo’s recent and ongoing compendium of university based climate idiocy and and eco nuttery I think a comment on WUWT about sums it up.

    To slightly paraphrase that comment;

    Where do they get these idiots? At sales at an asylum?

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  • #
    Tim

    A study by The Sustainable Trilateral Anthropomorphic Relations Viability Enterprise (STARVE), found that marine protein intake would need to be drastically reduced to save the planet from catastrophic over-nutrition and thus reduce dangerous population increases.

    97% of fish also agreed.

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  • #
    Mark D.

    Just a minute here. I sequester the carbon when I eat the fish. I should be paid for that “service”.

    Also Wifey and I created three offspring. We should be paid for those carbon sinks.

    Where do I apply for these payments?

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Mark,

      If I know anything at all I know that your three offspring are sinks for a whole lot more than carbon. If we’re going to get paid for stuff we should get a handsome stipend for each child, just because they’re there, sitting in your house every day, eating your food every day, needing clothing and a whole lot more, every day. Never mind the carbon thing.

      We need to lobby Obama right away don’t you think?

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    • #
      the Griss

      Ahhh… but your methane output is far more deadly to the atmosphere…..
      .
      .
      .especially those in the immediate vicinity

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    • #
      helen brady

      JUST WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO BRING THIS UP.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Hey, wait a minute here. I already don’t fish. Can I get paid for it? I’d like some of that rockin chair money.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Jo,

    With 97% becoming the joke of the century you should get the Climate Skeptic Shop to make up T-shirts and coffee mugs that say something with 97% on them. 🙂

    – 97% climate scientist
    – 97% skeptic, 3% doubtful

    Well, I’m not very creative but I’m sure someone with a little talent could make up a few good ones. Maybe just 97% alone would go big.

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  • #
    Reed Coray

    I want to go fishing for some Marxist-Turned-Ecoloonies. Does anyone know the best bait? So far I’ve tried money, advancement in the Politburo, tenure, and wild parties in exotic places. However, I don’t seem to be making a dent in their numbers. Someone please help me!

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  • #
    Backslider

    Let’s just ban everything… and die.

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  • #
    PeterK

    “They could set up offices in Geneva. The UN would love it.”

    Joanne: Don’t give them any ideas!!!

    When a report (paper) like this one comes out of British Columbia, all you need to know is that this part of Canada is called the “left coast of Canada.” Every loonie and his dog lives here. This is the only place in Canada that has vending machines for dispensing pipes for smoking hash?.

    These loonies have even banned round door knobs not to mention dozens of other stupid rules and regulations and remember this is the tree hugging capital of the Americas.

    So anything this yahoos generate should be taken with a grain of salt.

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    • #
      Backslider

      even banned round door knobs

      They are a challenge if you have no fingers… but then, there are many other things we could ban for this reason also….

      Loony, as you say.

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    • #
      the Griss

      What shape hockey pucks do they use ?

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  • #
    Krudd Gillard of the Commondebt of Australia

    And then they came for the fishermen – and I did not speak out
    Because I was not a fisherman.

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