http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825265.400
[reg. req.]
22 Nov
"THE drive for "green energy" in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction
The rush to make energy from vegetable oils is being driven in part by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels to be blended with biofuels, and by subsidies equivalent to 20 pence a litre. Last week, the British government announced a target for biofuels to make up 5 per cent of transport fuels by 2010. The aim is to help meet Kyoto protocol targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."
Someone/thing has to pay.
This sucks. But what can we do about it?
The depressing thing about the news is that you read all this shit, but then you can't do anything about it, because that's just the way things are. That sucks.
Scrap Kyoto, which does nothing but costs trillions, and instead do GOOD research on the impact of humans on the environment, and work diligently towards viable means to replace carbon-based fuels with renewable ones instead of subsidising the industry.
> GOOD research
Meaning research that says what you want it to say, am I rite?
There's lots of good research being done all the time, if you just manage to look past the politics on all sides. http://realclimate.org/ is a decent resource.
And what makes you say that such isn't being done? Not saying that there isn't a lot of junk research being done, but by what reasoning do you dismiss all of it?
SPOILERS: EVERYTHING DIES
>Good, scientific, objective research.
There is quite a lot of research like that. And in the climate field, it strongly backs Kyoto (if we ignore the fact that Kyoto doesn't restrict emissions nearly enough, really).
>and work diligently towards viable means to replace carbon-based fuels with renewable ones instead of subsidising the industry.
This sounds like a good idea. However, I see no contradiction between these ideas and Kyoto.
You can't just say 'good, scientific, objective research' to anything that supports you view or unspecific things like that. You have to specify a project and say, "That is BS" or "That is GSOR".
Global warming is a liberal conspiracy DURR
>There is quite a lot of research like that. And in the climate field, it strongly backs Kyoto (if we ignore the fact that Kyoto doesn't restrict emissions nearly enough, really).
Oh? source?
>>7
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Of course there is good research being done. But there is need of more. Far more than being done now.
Mixing politics, economics and science is concerned, such as what Kyoto attempts to do, is guesswork, especially when scientists don't understand the environment as much as they need to. To be honest all I can understand from studies is that we still don't know what's going on in the environment.