Nightmare on Oil street - Peak oil effects will arrive earlier than we think

Any planning for a sustainable future must take into account that, barring a miracle, energy will be much more expensive and less freely available than in the past.

Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets and the author of “Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller” built his reputation as one of Canada's top economists based on a number of successful predictions including the housing bust of the early 90s and the rise of oil prices. In his recent book, Mr. Rubin predicts $225 per barrel oil by 2012 and with it the end of globalization, a movement towards local sourcing and a need for massive scaling up of energy efficiency.

This video is 45 minutes long but is very well worthwhile – persevere!

Here’s some good news

Ray Anderson is founder and chairman of Interface Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet for commercial and residential applications and a leading producer of commercial broadloom and commercial fabrics. He is known in environmental circles for his advanced and progressive stance on industrial ecology and sustainability. It didn’t used to be that way until he had an “epiphany” in 1994 when he read The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken, who argues that the industrial system is destroying the planet and only industry leaders are powerful enough to stop it. This video is just Ray explaining himself with a short section where he addresses fellow “plunderers”. 

Sustainability is not just a lifestyle choice for those who feel that way, while all those who don’t carry on regardless. It’s something that everyone has to learn about and do whether they are individuals or giant corporations or governments – anything else is just irresponsible.

“Oh brave new world that hath such people in it, denied the right to stick their own foot in it”  - P.L.

The 9 billion tonne Hamster – be scared!

Today we are hearing lots of rejoicing in Britain that the recession is over and that the economy is growing once again because we got a tiny bit of "growth" in the last quarter. Leaving aside the Christmas splurge and the car scrappage effect, which are an alternative possible source of the growth which might dampen the celebrations a bit, we have to ask ourselves if the resumption of conventional growth is entirely beneficial.

Yesterday, I sent a version of the text quoted below to our Treasury Minister, the Minister for Economic Development and a couple of greenish States members. I also sent it to the local paper. Unfortunately, I could not include this video from the New Economics Foundation (as I only saw it today) but, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and I suppose a video might be worth a million? or maybe a billion... but I'm spoiling the plot...

It demonstrates why economic growth is only a good thing for a certain period. After that time it becomes dangerous - like a larger than natural hamster

Here’s my letter:

“It's time to face up to the situation we are in because it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. As the world struggles with the latest and largest "bust" in the boom and bust economic cycle, many are starting to realise that the very basis of that economy, cheap fossil fuelled growth, is no longer sensible. More economic growth, of the type that conventional economists think will solve all ills, is no longer an option. All the experts that Finance Ministers and captains of industry and such-like rely on must be now regarded as false prophets. Their discipline is, of course internally self-consistent, which gives their pronouncements a spurious gravitas but the dangerous flaw is that it is based upon an oxymoron - an impossibility - unending exponential growth.

Successful as a theory for many decades, we are now coming up against the hard-wired physical limits of the planet and the serious nature of the large holes in the foundations of that theory are starting to show. Rather like Einstein had to come up with Relativity when Newtonian mechanics were no longer adequate to describe what we knew of the physical world, so too does conventional economics have to step aside for something more all encompassing.

The elephant-in-the-room flaw is that conventional economics just doesn't take enough into account when measuring the success or otherwise of businesses or economies. A car designed solely for high miles per gallon may appear, to the naive, to be the most efficient and cheapest to run but without consideration being given to the concomitant expensive maintenance costs, or the longevity of the engine and bearings, it is not a good deal. Similarly, the theories, expectations and prescriptions of conventional economists for the economy are a threat to the much larger natural environmental economy that supports it, supplies it and absorbs its waste.

While further economic growth is no longer desirable, economic development is still possible within the environmental and ecological limits that really should not be ignored or discounted any more. Are our Ministers fully aware of this imperative or are they hiding their heads in the sand?

sincerely,

Nick Palmer”

The bigger they are, the bigger the impact?

There is a significant movement, at grassroots level, whereby individuals are making decisions to pursue a particular aspect of sustainable environmentalism and then blog about it to encourage and help others, and to act as a source of information so that others can join in. It doesn't mean they are totally going green because, in an extreme consumer society, like those we live in, that would probably be a bridge too far. Putting oneself out a lot - denying oneself various things - would be pointless if the vast majority carried on regardlessly trashing the planet. If one is a campaigning environmentalist, one will get the odd clever-clogs snarking that you can't be very green if you have a car. They miss the point that one campaigns for alternatives to the car so that just about everyone can free themselves of car dependence.

Being a hero is all very well , but the majority have to fall in line or there is no point! Up until the point at which systems are brought in that enable the majority to automatically "do the decent thing", the pathfinders will necessarily have to be more dedicated and endure more than the usual amount of fuss that life throws at us to show the way.

The following individuals are heroes. They go beyond normal effort in pursuit of their targets. If they success in converting sufficient numbers of others to at least want to follow in their footsteps, they will be creating an increasing market pressure on manufacturers and suppliers to green up their act, redesign their methods and products, and generally to operate in a sustainable way. This then, in a snowball-down-a-mountain way, will make it easier for the heroes to recycle everything effectively; to reduce their residual waste yet further and reduce the embodied carbon footprint of the goods and services they buy. The easier it gets - the less dedication it takes - the more the general population will join in exponentially

Three great examples that I regularly monitor are:

THE RUBBISH DIET where “almost Mrs Average” (Karen) asks herself -“can an average person really create Zero Waste?”  The challenge was set and during the week 10-17 March 2008, this mother in Bury St Edmunds gave it a go. She only threw out a plaster. Now she runs a regular blog about the subject and is frequently invited onto radio shows and is featured in articles in the press. Here’s a sample post explaining her general principles, although there are tons more.

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MyZeroWaste.com is a website run by “Mrs Green” (aka Rachelle Strauss) with her family “Mr Green” and “little Miss Green” regularly featuring. Some of the videos on the site are pretty funny with Mrs Green sniping gently at Mr Green. Again, it is about a family’s efforts to reduce or eliminate their household waste. These were initially just personal targets but have expanded to the point where both website/bloggers contact manufacturers and lobby to make the products and packaging that we buy more recyclable or re-usable. Bravo!

Here is a cartoon from their mission statement

And this is a link to their very busy and informative blog

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Further afield we have the heroic Beth Terry at Fake Plastic Fish in the U.S. who is trying to eliminate all plastic waste from her life - indeed not to use plastic at all - in California!!

This website came about because she saw film of the horrendous plastic garbage “gyre” in the Pacific ocean and decided not to contribute. Again she now has lots of media attention.

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So, why did I call this post “The bigger they are, the bigger the impact”?

Did I imply individuals making an effort can’t make much of a difference? That only large moves are worth it? Not in a million! The three individuals I have highlighted have made a difference not only in their own lives but also by blogging about it online, whereby they act as a source of information and encouragement to many others. They might have started out “small” but they’re rapidly getting “bigger”. Suggestions they make are taken up by readers and pressure on manufacturers is slowly but surely increasing.

Every single person may be only a drop in the ocean but never forget that the ocean is only made of drops. The more “drops” willing to choose the path towards zero waste, the more manufacturers will alter their designs and processes to reflect that, and the easier it will become for people to reduce waste. It's hard right at the start but it gets rapidly easier as time goes by.

That still sounds a bit idealistic, along the lines of “if everybody was nicer to each other, then wouldn't it be a wonderful world?” but wait! Hard evidence follows, that is rather under-reported in the main stream media, that shows some of the biggest "collections of drops" around are taking up the same challenges and winning.

The story that sparked off this whole post was about how the Subaru car plant in Indiana set itself a zero waste to landfill target and achieved it!

The Subaru of Indiana Automotive (SIA) manufacturing plant in Lafayette, Indiana, became the first auto manufacturing plant to achieve a zero landfill status. None of the plant’s manufacturing waste goes into a landfill, because all of it is recycled and reused.

Here’s a 7 minute Youtube video – Subaru Sustainablity Story – that is inspiring stuff. They did it because it was right, and the groundswell of popular support for zero waste initiatives certainly got through to these chief executives. A small but growing number of drops had an effect on at least one manufacturing sea of drops.

Difficult nit-picky types might snipe here "only one manufacturing sea? – but surely there are oceans of industry out there?". What would you say if one of the biggest “oceans” out there was to commit to sustainability and zero waste? That would be a huge driver for change. A huge retail ocean demanding that all of its suppliers adopted sustainable environmental practices would be a gigantic victory for the movement that started with the voices of the individual “drops”. N’est-ce-pas?

Step forward Walmart, the world’s largest public corporation by revenue. Walmart is not usually flavour of the month environmentally or socially and has attracted lots of flak for its employment practices and the way its giant economic clout can rip the heart out of smaller businesses – link to wiki article about criticism of Walmart.

However, two years ago, they came out with a rather remarkable sustainability strategy. This built on earlier work that had led arch greenie website Treehugger to say that - “It's Getting Harder to Hate WalMart”.

At Walmart’s sustainability summit in 2007, the main event was a speech by CEO Lee Scott in which he stated in no uncertain terms that Wal-Mart is in this for the long haul, and expects its suppliers to be in it for the long haul too. Scott pointed out that while his company is aiming for zero waste and 100% renewable energy, this still only accounts for 8% of its footprint, and that WalMart must green its supply chain if it has any chance of becoming sustainable. This is a very remarkable insight (for a corporation) that one's environmental responsibility does not extend solely to the energy etc that one's corporation uses directly but also to the footprint of the suppliers one deals with and their energy and materials choices too. Incredible.

Walmart has colossal influence on its suppliers, who jump to their every word, which has often proved a bad thing in the past but it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Every other retailer just might have to tag along now “the boss” is going green.

Walmart announced its sustainability index last July which will evaluate every WalMart product's environmental impact throughout its entire lifecycle, and will condense the data into an easy-to-understand rating for shoppers. Choosing Green will get a lot easier. If any company wants to supply Walmart, they will be forced to be greener or lose the business.

Here’s a link to a 90 minute Walmart DVD entitled Sustainability 2.0 which they sell (for $1) or you can watch it online free. Walmart is working to be supplied by 100 percent renewable energy, create zero waste and sell sustainable products. Included are strategies for energy efficiency, making waste profitable, developing sustainable packaging, upgrading manufacturing, reducing product energy intensity, offering affordable fair trade and organic products, addressing environmental trends, designing lifecycles, solving network problems and engaging associates in sustainability.

Here’s an up to the minute link suggesting that Walmart are actually fulfilling their pledge about renewable energy as they announce three new solar energy installation projects in Southern California.

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So, in conclusion. To all those who never do anything because they feel like they’re just an insignificant drop in the ocean – remember that enough drops moving together make an unstoppable tsunami…

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Disclaimer – Subaru or Walmart haven’t given me anything at all to write about them positively – it’s just that some things need to be shouted out louder than they are.

Sustainability and stuff (at last)

Breaking the expectation of exponential growth being the solution to all problems will not be easy – it is hard wired into the very basis of classical economic theory and even how fiat money is created by such as the US Federal Reserve. Most people who have career type employment have accepted the status quo as the way to get ahead and, no matter how they may originally have been capable of understanding the inherent drastic flaws in the system, when they were still at college, life somehow clouds their minds – they end up so occupied with squirrelling away the excess amount of nuts for the winter that their insecurities force them too, that they lose sight of the fact that their actions may actually be generating one helluva winter that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred.

Last night I went to a presentation, by Peter Taylor, to the CIGPE (Channel Islands Group of Professional Engineers).

It was called "Making sense of carbon foot printing in the built environment"

Mr Taylor is a founding partner of CarbonPlan, a London based sustainability consultancy that specialises in work related to the built environment.

I’m bringing this up as an example of the difficulty we may face ahead which will be caused by the old problem of the “good being the enemy of the best”. The situation reminds me of the late 80's/early 90's when I was patronised by Pierre Horsfall, the then President of the Finance and Economics committee. I had been trying to point out the errors in the "unending growth is good" argument when he metaphorically patted me on the head in an avuncular fashion and metaphorically said "don't you realise, naive little green person, that we must have more economic growth to pay for the environmental clean up that you say we need?" I then went on to introduce him to the concept of ecological economics, which he had the grace to admit looked interesting.

Early on in his talk, Mr Taylor - professional sustainability consultant from London - said something along these lines “although there are many who are criticising the idea of further economic growth, I do not share this idea”. This sort of dangerous complacency unfortunately goes down well here in Jersey, which is full of financiers etc schooled in the dogma of conventional economics. If even sustainability consultants haven’t all “got it” yet, I think there is still a lot of work left to do.

He then went on to do a population analysis by suggesting that the only way that global population will stabilise is by female education in the third world combined with economic growth. He conveniently left it for the audience to miss that he was backing economic growth generally (i.e. in the rich nations too) but was justifying it by reference to the needs of the third world – a bit of a magic trick…

I don’t think that any of us would dispute that economic growth, in areas which have very little economy to start with, is not a good idea, if we assume that it will be achieved using a different model from that which the West has used up to date – ever increasing amounts of non-renewable energy and ever increasing amounts of material resources extracted and not recycled.

The problem with the “vanilla” economic growth juggernaut is that it requires increasing amounts of energy and materials throughput to achieve ever higher levels of “stuff”, which it believes is essential to keep the whole shooting match going. Its advertisers and marketers have been brainwashing us for decades that it is our patriotic duty to use more stuff – they play on our psychological weaknesses (you gotta save more nuts!) to make us think that more stuff is the answer because they believe it!

Economic development can achieve higher levels of sustainably desirable “stuff” for those undeveloped nations, who currently don’t have enough, without increasing demands for energy or materials – indeed it can, and must, lead to decreasing demands for energy and materials.

A cute example of growth versus development is personal music systems. In the seventies, they were carried on your shoulder – conventional economic growth principles applied to stereos would have meant that personal stereos would be the size of a house by now. Instead they “developed” and now they are incredibly “Ipod” small. I know this is not a bulletproof example, as it’s possible that the extreme technology involved in creating Ipod’s may use more energy and toxic materials than the 70’s beat box but what the hey!

Ice Ice baby - latest Denier "Crock of the Week"

It's been a while since Pete Sinclair came out with one of his marvellous Climate denial "Crock of the week" videos but here is the latest. It's a revisit of the old denier scam which goes - "whatever happened to global warming? - because its flipping cold here".

In his usual sardonic fashion he shows us the big picture, which the deniers never do. Just because it's very cold where you are doesn't mean that it's very cold everywhere. Australia is currently frying.

One of the first rules of propaganda, designed to inculcate a certain belief in the minds of the public, is to appear to be helpfully giving out information whilst the public never realises that it is highly specific cherry-picked information - if the public's mind ever zoomed out from the specific info that the deniers want them to only look at they would clearly see how they were being misled. The denial industry and blogosphere also rely on too many stupid people only wanting to listen to what they want to hear. Those silly people who live as if believing their glass is always half full actually impacts on reality a jot should grow up and get a sense of responsibility.

The Story of Cap and Trade

I posted a long comment (comment #4) on this article on triplepundit.com, so I thought I would re-use it here, with a little editing.

The article linked to above was a critique of Annie Leonard’s new video “The Story of Cap and Trade” which is a very harsh criticism of carbon “cap and trade” - it basically suggests that it would all be too corrupt and useless to be worth it. This particular market mechanism is seen by many as a way of getting the “free” market to take action to avoid the worst of the problems that climate change will bring.

Annie was responsible for the wildly successful viral video “The Story of Stuff” which held our ever increasing consumer society up to the light for examination – consumerism was found seriously wanting (wordplay intended!).

I am a great fan of "The Story of Stuff" and have linked to it several times here to enhance a point I was making. The film was clear and made extremely good points. It deservedly became very popular.
I did not like the "Story of Cap and Trade", although Annie is still loveable in it. It seemed as if Annie was letting an ideology blind her to the potentially overwhelming usefulness of the concept - the baby was thrown out with the bathwater - worse, she constantly suggested that either there was no baby or it would grow up to be an evil adult.

Her point about how the virtually unregulated simple market has forced us towards our current dire predicament is, of course, accurate. She goes from this point, in a pseudo-logical fashion, rather like this: markets have brought us to this point - this point is bad - therefore any further market based solution will also be bad - therefore she must then exploit the credibility and warm fuzzy feelings that people remember from "Story of Stuff" to show them that market based "cap and trade" will inevitably be a bad thing.

The problem with markets (up to date) is that their bottom line only contains measurements of money in versus money out and unfortunately the processes that make the money do not take "externalities" into account such as carbon emissions, volume of waste generated, general non-sustainable damage to the environment, reduction in bio-diversity, public health, social well being etc. etc.

The damage that economic activity/growth inflicts on these "externalities" can be (if we're lucky) controlled and moderated by legislation and voluntary codes of practice but the problems are systemic and huge and legislation is a very slow and blunt weapon - sadly, the legislators also tend to be high up members of the same society, with the same set of values, that created the situation in the first place by not valuing the environment or social values enough. Expecting them to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps (by re-evaluating everything that is familiar and comfortable to them) is optimistic to say the least.

Concerted campaigning and citizen action can generate enough pressure to compel some companies to adopt a greener, more sustainable, outlook but it's not enough. The company that continues to maintain a cavalier approach will mostly tend to be more profitable; that is the problem with markets-to-date. Putting the full costs, financial, environmental and social onto the accountants' bottom line will have an extremely powerful, almost automatic, effect that will drive companies and economies to "do the right thing" because, if they don't, they will become less profitable or go out of business altogether.

Markets have historically been bad for sustainable ways. Putting a cost/value on carbon emissions (and all the other externalities too - but that's for later...) that will direct greedy people to be keen to take the green option - purely to save money - will be a great start - it may just solve the whole shooting match.

Annie's basic premise is to suggest that any market will end up being totally corrupt. Well, it's up to us to keep them straight - she can't just point to teething problems or far-fetched theoretical dangers to reject the whole idea. The bad possibilities she enumerates are there because we have had a whole generation of enthusiastic "yuppies", with their selfish short term outlook, driving the market mechanisms to Madoff like breaking points. It was in their financial (short to medium term) interests to do so! Change the financial interests of people like that - make it (not) so!

Monetise the externalities - put considerate, wise, prudent, sensible environmentally and socially sound economic drivers onto the bottom line and watch society transform itself far faster and more efficiently than even the most draconian legislation could do. Watch people's personalities and the world zeitgeist change too.

Nothing big ever worked right first time - it will take a lot of effort, tuning and tweaking and monitoring to hack it into shape but imagining that markets, that were predisposed to generate corrupt selfish greedy types, who don't care about anything apart from their own "bottom line", must always do that is truly throwing the fantastic baby out with the murky water.

A market which uses full cost (or ecological or environmental) accounting would be transformative and constructive, not destructive. It all depends what you measure when you tot up the bottom line. Make the bad guys, environmentally and socially, less profitable. Make the good guys more profitable. Make it so!

“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.” Well, that was then…

I almost titled this post "Peak Everything" but that will be for another day. Anyone who follows environmental matters will, by now, be sick of hearing about climate change - although it's going to have a huge impact on our future. If we voluntarily take action to avoid the worst by transitioning to a non-fossil fuelled sustainable economy A.S.A.P., then a whole lot of the ways we do things now will have to change, or be radically modified. If we don't take any action, or if we don't take enough action, then a whole lot of the ways we do things now will change, whether we like it or not. It won't be voluntary or under our control - we will be forced.

Food security in the future, although less publicised, is another huge problem that we are going to have to contend with. Conventional agriculture cannot give us the security of supply that the 6.7 billion (so far) inhabitants of Earth need. The only way we are feeding that many people is because of artificial fertiliser, which is made - in an energy intensive process – from fossil fuels. Literally, feeding the current world depends on us "eating" oil. If we take no voluntary action now to head off the forecast problems, they will likely overwhelm us as Nature forces changes on our civilisation that will be much worse than any possible effects of the prudent action we should have taken.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Perhaps even bigger than the food security problem is "peak water" which refers to the even less publicised problems ahead with fresh water. Both quality and quantity. Water is even more vital to life than food.

Below is, first, a trailer to “Flow” Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis. After that, in bite-size 10 minute chunks, is the documentary itself. Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question "CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?"

Here is a link to the website of the film.

As this is such a huge topic to cover, the film obviously has to simplify and skate over some aspects but that shouldn’t be a criticism – just concentrate on the overall feel of the narrative and the massive relevance to everyone’s future.

Approaching end of civilisation-as-we-know-it

The image below is from David Strahan’s website – lastoilshock.com He is the author of “The Last Oil Shock” – a book about Peak Oil and what it will mean for human civilisation. I urge anyone who hopes and thinks that business as usual – further GDP measured economic growth – recovery from the recession to “normality” etc etc - is even slightly sane, to go to this page (or click on the image) where you will find the actual interactive map; mouse around – click a country – compare red zones with green (coloured) zones.THINK what it means. REALLY THINK about what it will mean.

Poop-Poop. CHP rocks!

Readers of this blog, and other stuff I've published, should know that I am completely against the mass burn incineration of municipal waste. When I see the words "energy from waste plant" being used to greenwash an industrial "solution" to the mountains of non-sustainable waste that modern societies generate, I get rather annoyed. Readers will know that we recently lost the battle to prevent Jersey replacing its aging incinerator with a horrendously expensive new one, instead of the portfolio of alternative technologies and methods that we came up with. It was only tax payer's money after all - a helluva lot of it. That is now water under the bridge but just remember that I didn't make a £10 bet (that the incinerator would be seen as a disastrous mistake within 10 years) with our former Chief Minister expecting not to collect it. Keep watching and waiting!

Here is a link to an article from cleantechnica.com that highlights the entirely different energy-from-waste plants that actually would make a difference. Anaerobic decomposition (AD) of bio-mass; human waste (poop!) and food waste etc. into natural gas, adopted by much of the third world that has no current sewage treatment, would kill two birds with one stone. Firstly, hygiene would be vastly improved and secondly they would get a fair amount of renewable energy to develop without increasing their carbon footprint. I already highlighted domestic scale AD equipment that is being used now in India in this blog post from June 2009. Scroll past the hot air balloons to the Youtube video which I have relinked to here.



Anaerobic digestion combined with a CHP (combined heat and power unit) can power your house, supplying electricity and hot water.

Here's a great link to a website all about AD and one about on-farm AD . Once you've got your natural gas, sell it to a gas grid or why not look at this link from Honda who have produced a micro CHP unit. Here's another link to a British company who are also launching a CHP unit.

Edit 5/2/10 Particularly exciting is this Australian company, Ceramic Fuel cells ltd (with a factory in Germany) who are gearing up to sell a CHP unit that uses a virtually silent fuel cell and natural gas to create more electricity than the average house uses - the excess can be sold to the grid. The bonus is that the waste heat can be used for your hot water too. Very efficient at over 80% with none of the transmission losses that ate unavoidable with the ordinary electricity supply.

See how easy it is to make your own digester out of scrap on this site

Here's some links from Aleksandar's Energy Type blog which has useful and often quite technical posts on various types of energy.

Biomass Energy Sources and Bioenergy Utilization

Homemade Biogas Plant. How to build own digester and biogas production

Biogas (biomethane) production by Anaerobic Digestion Process

Biogas Energy from Waste Biomass

I also can't resist linking to this post I did on "poop" but I'll have more to say on this at a later date as a story develops.

Candlelit vigil for Copenhagen

A bit late to report this but several members of J-CAN (Jersey Climate Action Network, including me, were at this vigil outside St Helier’s Town Hall on December 12th. It was organised by Maria Barnicoat.  This photo of her taken from the JEP article – copyright acknowledged.

We all turned up on a windy night (not ideal for candles!) for Jersey’s version of several thousand similar events around the world co-ordinated by Avaaz (see http://www.avaaz.org/en/). Around 50 people (including children) were there on a cold evening, but the communal spirit was warm. Our congratulations go to Maria for organising the event.

Here's a link to the Jersey Evening Post's article trailing the event. It's worth looking at the comments section for the wall to wall numbers of useful idiots who've been suckered by the denialist propaganda and regurgitate it like good little clones.

Rational scientist vs shouting moron Morano

This Youtube video clip of Professor Andrew Watson versus arch US motor-mouth denier Marc Morano, on a December 4, 2009 live broadcast of BBC’s Newsnight program, is worth watching for the last few seconds when the rational academic gets irritated. Do not for one second think that what Morano says is of any value whatsoever, although it must be said that the explanations offered by the academic aren't that great at clearing things up for the general audience. People familiar with the material, of course, can see the denier getting demolished. No-one ever said that great scientists were always great communicators...