January 5, 2008...8:48 am
Updates: Saturday January 5
Globesity replaces Global Warming?
My just-slightly tongue-in-cheek prediction that Obesity would replace Global Warming as the media’s doomsday cult du jour for 2008 began tasting sour while I was watching BBC World on Wednesday night. The lead-in to a story about an international survey of fast-food eating habits breathlessly warned the world of the “globesity epidemic.” What a word! Further research uncovered the titbit that “globesity” was coined by the World Health Organisation. Sigh. The survey was done for a forthcoming “three-part BBC investigation into global obesity” and from the story one learns that there is an International Obesity Task Force. We’re all doomed – to endless propaganda about how fat we are. But aficionados of global warming should not lose heart, there is still media mileage in your well of despair. As reported by National Radio and many newspapers, Otago University physicists Craig Rodger and Inga Smith said aircraft emissions produced while bringing tourists to New Zealand were equal to the CO2 output of all our gas and coal power generation. Offsetting them would require planting an area the size of 15 Stewart Islands in trees. This prompted the bloggers at The Hive to ask: “Given that most university research is government funded, we wonder why some coordination is not being undertaken on what topics are researched in the carbon footprint area. This is area is deeply sensitive. Even a small swing in sentiment, in a market such as the UK, could have a big impact here.” Well, university research is meant to be free from government direction, for a start, as pointed out by an alarmed Victoria University academic who emailed me after reading The Hive. Indeed. One worthy rejoinder to the Otago research not covered by the media is the fact that shipping produces twice the CO2 of aircraft, something that is rarely mentioned at all, but should be, to put into perspective some of the anti-aircraft, anti-tourism claims being heard so much these days.
Prancing political propaganda
Former Christchurch mayor Gary Moore lashed out on Tuesday at the “lazy” story in The Press that quoted National Party-compiled crime statistics but did not reveal the party was the source. Unfortunately Moore’s comments do not appear to be online anywhere, but it was good to hear somebody taking issue with the way the media is happy to run political propaganda at this time of the year, known by journalists as the “silly season” because the usual newsmakers are on holiday. Grateful reporters continued to regurgitate National media releases unquestioningly all week. The Dominion Post was particularly grateful. Its page two lead on Thursday was Simon Power complaining about LCD televisions replacing old-style TVs in prisons. The same spot on Friday carried a Katherine Rich statement, actually issued on Wednesday, saying only one in three newly-trained teachers have a full-time teaching job a year after graduating. And today’s ComPost again has Simon Power, this time prominently on page three complaining that two Corrections Department staff members turned up to a Christmas party dressed as Ahmed Zaoui and David Bain. What a scandal! How dare anyone in Corrections have a sense of humour (and nice to see David Farrar agreeing this is a non-story). The Press was also grateful. After its Monday crime figures shame, its page one second-lead on Wednesday (which seems to have been taken off the website) was Paul Hutchison claiming students were borrowing interest-free student loans to reinvest the money. Really? I’d like to have seen the reporter explain how that is possible, given that money borrowed for fees, for example, is paid to the institution, not the student. But the question was not even asked. All these examples display appallingly lazy journalism. The Government spin machine hasn’t even got out of bed in 2008 yet, but when it does, the media should not serve up its offerings unquestioned, either. As I said in my Monday article, the National Party press secretaries and researchers responsible for getting this propaganda into the media this way deserve bonuses, but the news executives who have let it slip through day after day should be demoted.
10 Comments
January 5, 2008 at 9:26 am
Didn’t you read the last paragraph of that BBC shipping story?
“The much greater tonnage carried by each vessel, compared with aircraft, meant that shipping was still a much greener form of transporting freight around the globe. ”
Given that, it hardly makes much of rejoinder at all.
January 5, 2008 at 9:30 am
Surely one is allowed to have one’s tongue in one’s cheek on Saturday morning when all around is doom and gloom?
January 5, 2008 at 10:56 am
I think the main point being made by The Hive was not that Government should control what is being researched, but that care should be taken and coordination encouraged in this space, particularly as there are as yet, no universally agreed measures for such things as carbon footprints. The Hive were challenging the Otago researchers who claimed to be using an accepted measure.
It is interesting that a Victoria University academic should be alarmed at government influence on academic activity. In today’s posts The Hive is pulling up VUW’s Jonathan Boston on precisely this point. They also seem to have it in for a Dominion Post journalist who reported Boston’s comments.
January 5, 2008 at 11:20 am
“Its estimate suggests that the world’s shipping uses between 350 and 410 million tonnes of fuel each year, which equates to up to 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.”
Is it that 2.93 to 3.43 more tonnes of matter is produced than consumed in world shipping echoing the thoughts perhaps there is a free lunch after all, or is there some other equivalence that the BBC has not eluded us to, or is it that once again the BBC has not got its facts correct?
January 5, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Following on the report from Otago, was a reference on TV3 News to the Green Party supposedly saying tourism to NZ should be limited especially from Europe because of the carbon dioxide issue. Now I have heard of wearing a hair shirt to promote moral well being but, self destruction of the economy when NZ carbon footprint is minute in the scheme of things is ridiculous and merely lends credence to the claims of alarmists such as George Monbiot who regards consuming NZ produce as a crime against the planet because of the so called food miles issue.
As many have noted this area is one where rational debate has along with Elvis long ago left the building. We are now in the arena of dogma and many on both sides make the Islamic fundementalists appear to be appallingly enlightened individuals by comparison.
January 5, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Serum,
C02 weighs 44 / 12 times the weight of carbon. This is derived from the atomic weights
of carbon, 12, and oxygen, 16. The molecular weight (MW) of C02 is 12 + (2 x 16) = 44 and the MW of carbon is 12. So C02 is 44/12 = 3.67 times heavier than carbon per molecule.
Therefore burning one billion tons of pure carbon produces 3.67 billion tons of C02.. Of course all hydrocarbon fuels (coal, oil and gas) are in the form: CxHy. (For example natural gas is methane CH4) This hydrogen content that slightly adds to the molecular weight of the “fuel” and so this reduces the actual ratio from the theoretical value of 3.67 for pure carbon to something in the range of 2.9 to 3.4 as you have correctly deduced.
January 5, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Appreciate the analysis and explanation for the fuel conundrum RedLogix . It is some while ago since I finished taking Chemistry at first year uni and ashamedly have forgotten such things, with my interests branching into other areas.
January 5, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Therefore burning one billion tons of pure carbon produces 3.67 billion tons of C02..
Thank you RedLogix and Serum (and everyone, really) for contributing such worthwhile material to this blog in such an informative way.
January 6, 2008 at 12:02 am
I agree that it is getting quite ridiculous how both politicians and also third party lobby groups (like the New Zealand Business Roundtable) so easily insert their press releases into relatively major media outlets, particularly in print but obviously also online. I posted about the NZBR on my blog, and Geoffrey Miller from the excellent ACT party analysis blog from Douglas to Dancing noted how the same thing applies for groups like the ‘Sensible’ Sentencing Trust and Family First.
Time for us perhaps to stop outsourcing decisions about article content to people in Ireland and Australia?
January 6, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Even directly comparing ship and aircraft CO2 emissions per tonne of freight is fraught. Jets emit a cocktail of pollutants (i.e., NOx and H2O in addition to CO2) directly into the upper atmosphere where their effects are less well understood. According to the IPCC the combined effect is likely to be 2.7 times that of CO2 alone!
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