<By Marina Kamenev, Sydney for Time Magazine
In Western societies, disposing of a dead body has come down to two choices: there’s burial, and there’s cremation. Occasionally, a corpse is donated to science, but even those remains usually make their way to the crematorium in the end.
But since climate change has piqued the world’s environmental awareness, it has become clear that death, despite being the most natural of processes, is bad for the environment. Coffins, most of which are made from nonbiodegradable chipboard, take up valuable land space. Even when coffins are biodegradable, embalming liquid, which often contains carcinogenic formaldehyde, can leak into the soil. Cremation, during which remains are burned at 1,562F (850C), comes with its own problems. According to the research of University of Melbourne professor Roger Short, the process can create up to 350 lb. (160 kg) of greenhouse gases per corpse, including the remains of the coffin.
In Australia, one company recently started selling a greener alternative. Aquamation Industries claims to offer a unique, cheaper, more carbon-neutral method of body disposal. Aquamation employs a process called alkaline hydrolysis, in which a body is placed in a stainless-steel vat containing a 200°F (93°C) potassium-hydroxide-and-water solution for four hours until all that remains is the skeleton. The bones, which are soft at that point, are then crushed and presented to the deceased’s family. The residual liquid contains no DNA, and the procedure uses only 5% to 10% of the energy that cremation uses, says John Humphries, a former funeral-home director who is now the chief executive of Aquamation Industries, which launched its services in August. According to Humphries, Aquamation accelerates the processes that occur in nature. Even the residual liquid can be recycled: Humphries measures the pH after the procedure is completed, and if it’s deemed too high in alkalinity, he adds vinegar or citric acid to it afterward. By that time, he says, it’s safe enough to pour on the rose bushes.
David Brynn Hibbert, a professor of analytical chemistry at the University of New South Wales, has a different interpretation of the process. “Potassium hydroxide is similar to the stuff you use to clean the oven. It has that soapy feel that strips your fingerprints if you accidentally get it on your hands. If you can imagine the way that it dissolves leftover cooking fats, well, the solution does the same thing with a human body.” Hibbert adds that the remaining liquid would have to be neutralized to be poured over living plants. “It might be too high in alkalinity initially, but the right amount of vinegar or citric acid would correct that.”
At present, the only functioning aquamation unit is at Eco Memorial Park on Australia’s Gold Coast, a tourist hot spot that seems an unusual destination for an innovative death industry. Humphries says 15 more Aquamation units have been sold to funeral homes around Australia and will be operational within the next nine months. He says more than 60 people have already paid to be aquamated, and he has been flooded with phone calls since an article about the procedure appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. In a poll appearing alongside the article, 68% of the 2,065 surveyed said they would consider being aquamated.
In truth, aquamation isn’t completely new. Alkaline hydrolysis has been used to destroy cattle infected with mad cow disease after it was found to be the only method effective in eradicating the deadly prions, or misshapen proteins, that cause the illness. It has also been used in the U.S. for the disposal of bodies donated to science, a process often referred to as resomation. Resomation has been approved in six U.S. states as a body-disposal option and is expected to be approved in the U.K. by the end of 2010. (In 2009, TIME listed resomation as one of the year’s top 10 environmental ideas.)
Still, the appeal of the practice has been limited. In 2006, New Hampshire legalized resomation, but the state banned it in 2008. It was never used in there, and senators reportedly found the prospect of flushing loved ones down the drain somewhat ghoulish. Resomation is a variation of aquamation, but unlike aquamation, resomation places the corpse into a temperature of 170F (77C) for approximately three hours. Humphries argues that the temperature, rather than the “yuck factor,” is the real reason this method of body disposal hasn’t taken off. “Can you imagine if something goes wrong in a piece of machinery that contains 170 temperatures and 45,000 kg of pressure per every square meter?” says Humphries. “Our equipment is much safer.”
In Australia, aquamation has had a mixed response from scientists. Barry Brook, an environmental scientist from the University of Adelaide, says any step taken toward saving the environment is a positive one. However, Short, who spoke out against cremation in 2008, is more ambivalent: “I just don’t see why it would be better than a natural ["i.e., free of embalming, with a biodegradable coffin or a cloth shroud with biodegradable lining"] burial. You can be buried in a forest for the cost of almost nothing, and the trees would sequester carbon dioxide from the environment for years and years.”
(See TIME’s special report about the Copenhagen Climate-Change Conference.)
Kevin Hartley, spokesman for the Natural Earth Burial Society in South Australia, advocates more-natural burials but acknowledges that land availability is problematic. “Because it has to be done within the constraints of the existing funeral industry, it doesn’t work out to be that cheap,” he says. Yet he asserts that if he could acquire a plot of land and manage it his way, he could theoretically bury 10,000 people per hectare. “We could keep burying Australians this way for the next 500 years.”
Hartley discounts the safety concerns over resomation. “There are a million industrial processes which use high-pressure equipment,” he says. “Resomation isn’t popular because no matter how you gloss it up, the process involves boiling someone’s loved one away.”
Humphries, for his part, intends to be aquamated when the time comes. “Now, since being involved in the industry, I think it’s a really nice way to go,” he says. “But before I started this business, I never really gave it much thought. I didn’t care what anyone did with me - I would be dead.”
Read more here.
By Dennis Ambler, SPPI
We have had “An Inconvenient Truth”, “The Day After Tomorrow”, “Acid Test” “The Age of Stupid”, all propaganda films pushing the central tenets of the Global Warming movement and produced by professional film-makers.
We have had scary adverts for children, warning of the planet’s imminent collapse unless we “mend our ways” and that means your parents, kids.
We now have a new low in media presentations, a film that was available on You Tube, until it was pulled today, within a few hours of the exposure it received when the Guardian highlighted it as part of their support for the 10:10 climate change campaign. I suspect they were quite surprised by the reactions even from AGW supporters. ICECAP NOTE: the video has reappeared here.
This delightful film series has the title “No Pressure” and is written by Richard Curtis, a highly successful writer with a long list of comedy successes to his name. It comes from the Franny Armstrong stable, famous for the dreadful “Age of Stupid” film, showing a world destroyed by its inhabitants. This nice little example is no comedy, although it producers think it is highly entertaining. The title of the Guardian article in which the film is linked, is entitled: “There will be blood”.
The main message from the film is that the planet has only four years left for long term survival unless we all cut back our emissions of CO2 now. Anyone who doesn’t agree is detonated, with lots of blood and guts sprayed around. It even has a rider attached that says: This film contains scenes that some viewers may find distressing. Not suitable for children.
This is what activist film maker Franny Armstrong thinks about her work:
“Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody’s existence on this planet?
Clearly we don’t really think they should be blown up, that’s just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?” jokes 10:10 founder and Age of Stupid film maker Franny Armstrong.”
This woman is so hilarious it hurts. So anyone who disagrees with them has “an affliction” and is threatening everybody’s existence on the planet. What crass, hubristic arrogance from this spoilt brat.
The Guardian interviewer asks her, “But why take such a risk of upsetting or alienating people?”
Her reply: “Because we have got about four years to stabilise global emissions and we are not anywhere near doing that. All our lives are at threat and if that’s not worth jumping up and down about, I don’t know what is.”
“We ‘killed’ five people to make No Pressure - a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change,” she adds.
Of course she has no evidence to back up this valueless claim, which comes from the United Nations, but in fact previous centuries have shown considerable mortality from extreme weather events long before carbon dioxide became flavour of the month.
They are perverting the minds of young children:
“Jamie Glover, the child-actor who plays the part of Philip and gets blown up, has similarly few qualms: “I was very happy to get blown up to save the world.”
Although again intended to be in jest, (I hope), is it an over-reaction to suggest that that sounds like a jihadist?
Richard Curtis, is equally proud of the production: “The writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Blackadder and an early 10:10 supporter, acknowledges that the 10:10 film is very direct.”
“The 10:10 team are a fearless, energetic bunch, completely dedicated to getting the public fired up about climate change. They also turn out to be surprisingly good at blowing stuff up,” he said.”
So how many eco-terrorists of the future are they fostering by this crude attempt at propaganda. Maybe their next proposal will be to “eliminate” China to stop their emissions.
Armstrong’s film, the “Age of Stupid”, was embraced by the Royal Society in March this year, when they organized a Public Symposium with the Tate Modern Gallery in London. It’s title was: Rising to the Climate Challenge - Artists and Scientists Imagine Tomorrow’s World.
“Tate and the Royal Society collaborate by bringing together scientists and artists to imagine the social and psychological impacts of climate change.
On 19 and 20 March, Tate and the Royal Society collaborate to bring you a screening of the film The Age of Stupid following, (sic) by a discussion and a public symposium about the social and psychological impacts of climate change.”
If that is what passes for science today from the august 300 year old Royal Society, it’s no wonder they had so many complaints from their members that they have had to re-write their treatise on climate change to remove a lot of the non-science.
Franny Armstrong has a film company called “Spanner Films”:
“Former pop drummer and self-taught filmmaker Franny Armstrong, born 1972, has directed three feature documentaries - The Age of Stupid (2008), McLibel (2005) and Drowned Out (2003) - which have together been seen by 70 million people on TV, cinema, internet and DVD worldwide. In the early days of the internet in 1996 she founded the McSpotlight website, which Wired magazine described as “the blueprint for all activist websites”.
Through her company, Spanner Films, “Franny” pioneered the “crowd-funding” finance model, which allows filmmakers to raise reasonable-size budgets whilst retaining ownership of their films - Age of Stupid is the most successful known example, raising 900,000+pounds from 300+ investors - as well as the “Indie Screenings” distribution system, which lets anyone make a profit by holding screenings of independent films - Stupid was screened locally 1,100+ times in the first six months.
Then in September 2009, a million people watched Stupid’s Global Premiere event - featuring Kofi Annan, Gillian Anderson & Radiohead’s Thom Yorke - in 700 cinemas in 63 countries, linked by satellite. In September 2009 Franny founded the 10:10 climate campaign, which aims to cut the UK’s carbon emissions by 10% during 2010.
It seems that she has found considerable traction and no doubt funding, from public companies and government bodies.
The campaign has amassed huge cross-societal support including Adidas, Microsoft, Spurs FC, the Royal Mail, 75,000 people, 1,500 schools, a third of local councils, the entire UK Government and the Prime Minister, (then Gordon Brown, no doubt the new incumbent has been happy to go along with it as well) 10:10 launched internationally in March 2010 and, as of July 2010, has autonomous campaigns up and running in 41 countries, where some of the key sign-ups include the French Tennis Open, the city of Oslo and L’Oreal.
Armstrong’s parents are both in the environment game and also feature on the spannerfilms website.
Her step-mother is co-founder of the OneWorld Network and co-director of OneWorld UK.
Her father, Peter, is co-founder of the OneWorld Network and director for the OneWorld International Foundation, although their site shows no activities since 2008. He is described as a former BBC radio and TV producer and a policy advisor to governments and international bodies on the use of information and communications technology for global sustainable development.
Let us hope that this excursion into the ridiculous will make her sponsors think again about their relationship with this type of distorted propaganda.
Read the blog post here.
By Dennis Ambler on SPPI
A new paper at SPPI looks at the history of extreme weather events.
The on-going claims of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming have been ramped up again lately because of the opportunities presented by the heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan, which are also being claimed as attributable to anthropogenic CO2. If the amount spent on global warming were to be diverted to mitigating and preventing the worst effects of natural disasters, then the desperate plight of the people of Pakistan would be relieved more quickly.
The paper can be downloaded here.
The Author, Dennis Ambler, concludes:
Extreme Weather - The Blame Game
The Aztecs had sophisticated irrigation systems and "astrolonomical" observatories, (apparently a mix of astrology and astronomy), to attempt to predict the weather and reservoirs. But the unseasonal frosts and cold, followed by severe, prolonged drought, may have taken them to the brink of collapse. Once the climate became more benign again, they praised their gods with human sacrifice.
"When rainfall and agriculture had resumed, the Aztecs responded by massively increasing the number of human sacrifices to their rain god Tlaloc. It is thought that hundreds of thousands of people were sacrificed."
In the Little Ice Age, witchcraft was blamed for the devastating climate:
Fagan's The Little Ice Age (Basic Books, 2000):
“Witchcraft accusations soared, as people accused their neighbors of fabricating bad weather… Sixty-three women were burned to death as witches in the small town of Wisensteig in Germany in 1563 at a time of intense debate over the authority of God over the weather.”
"Almost invariably, a frenzy of prosecutions coincided with the coldest and most difficult years of the Little Ice Age, when people demanded the eradication of the witches they held responsible for their misfortunes."
These days we don't blame witchcraft for the weather, instead we blame it on our emissions of carbon dioxide, describing it as a pollutant that must be controlled by Government taxes and vilifying anyone who dares to challenge the orthodoxy.
We ignore thousands of years of climate evidence, in favour of an agenda based upon a century and a half of sometimes distorted and often-disputed temperature records, coming out of a known Little Ice Age and we call it "Science".
Have we really left the Dark Ages behind?
See more here.
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It appears not:
New Low: Desperate Warmist Video Detonates Deniers into Dead Meat
By John O’Sullivan
UK cinemas see national release of ‘fun’ new climate activists campaign video showing killing of global warming deniers. Film marked with a parental advisory warning. Touted in The Guardian newspaper the film labeled, “Not suitable for children” marks a new low in environmentalist cinematic propaganda. Announcing the film’s release the national newspaper boasts, “Our friends at the 10:10 climate change campaign have given us the scoop on this highly explosive short film, written by Britain’s top comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis, ahead of its general release.” (hat tip: Barry Woods).
Last Ditch Attempt in Failing Campaign
The offering is being dismissed as a lamentable a last ditch attempt to salvage something of the British government’s futile and soon redundant ‘10:10 climate change campaign’ (an initiative to persuade Brits to cut 10% from their carbon emissions in 2010). Official figures show that UK household emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased by more than 3% this year as domestic fuel use rose due to colder temperatures.
Guardian readers are invited to guffaw as role models and authority figures depicted in the film press a red button and detonate global warming ‘deniers’ into gory lumps of offal. Packaged in the guise of humor this naked hard sell seems a pitiful attempt at convincing the ‘one or two’ of us who are still left that the sky really is falling despite no rising temperatures globally since 1998.
Gillian Anderson (X-Files) and Radiohead join the motley collection of B listers and has-been former soccer stars. Along with indifferent school kids and non-compliant office workers the naysayers all have their innards exploded. No doubt an enhanced 3-D high-definition sequel will be in the pipeline if the premier of this ‘offaling’ goes well. For your edification you can watch a nay-saying soccer player and movie star vaporize into gory pulp - all for ignoring their carbon footprint!
Bad Year for Hollywood’s Warmist Cinema
Sadly, 2010 is fast turning into a bad year for tree-hugging film makers. It started with so much promise with the general release of James ‘Chicken’ Cameron’s animated full length feature, ‘Avatar.’ But, Cameron, the new Hollywood darling of the warmist crazies, turned tail and ran after canceling at the very last minute after demanding a climate debate with prominent skeptic, Marc Morano of Climate Depot.
On this evidence, Curtis and Hamilton have so much in common: both appearing to be intellectually bankrupt yet filled by self-loathing as they mournfully concede that public interest in climate-related issues just walked off a cliff.
Setting the bar so low with its most simple (or should that be simplistic?) message, this mercifully short film, also showing on Youtube, is literally tripe and speaks more to the converted than non-believers. But as they say, all publicity is good, right?
WARNING: the following has some graphic scenes that may upset /should upset many viewers.
The following is series of emails from 10:10 explaining their intent:
From the Washington State 10:10 office to Climate Depot’s Marc Morano:
Hi there,
The film was intended for a British audience, and has had a variety of responses, mostly positive, but not from a global perspective. I appreciate your email and am forwarding it to UK headquarters. Please know that there was a technical glitch and the film wasn’t intended to be on the global sites, only the British site. It has been removed from all sites and here is the statement for me to send to you from the UK. Thank you again for your email. JXX
From the UK:
Sorry.
Today we put up a mini-movie about 10:10 and climate change called ‘’No Pressure’. With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britain’s leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis - writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others - agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn’t and we sincerely apologise
to anybody we have offended.
As a result of these concerns we’ve taken it off our website. We’d like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project.
At 10:10 we’re all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn.
Onwards and upwards,
Eugenie, Franny, Daniel, Lizzie and the whole 10:10 team.
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Green Panic in Holland
By Hans Schreuder
The turning tide against climate idiocy is gaining strength, at last!
After months-long coalition talks, the Dutch have finally got a new government, leaning heavily towards common sense.
One of the consequences is the removal of “green energy subsidies” and the “green investment funds” have promptly closed their doors to new investors.
Use an online translator for further details on this story.
Criminals and Muslims who refuse to abide by Dutch law have also been given notice - this is news you won’t see in a hurry on your TV screens. So far not a word on the BBC web pages.
Hans Schreuder
www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com