Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Seriously Depressing - in short we may have blown it

President Carter speaks to Americans about the "crisis of confidence" in American government, values, and way of life, as the public expresses doubt in a better future for their own children. Carter challenges citizens to unite and address the problems in America by first addressing the energy shortage...




They voted in Reagan and the era of greed and selfishness that now entraps us all

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

there was a plan?

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

Developed by Ronald D. Moore
Written by Jane Espenson
Directed by Edward James Olmos
Composer(s) Bear McCreary
Language(s) English

Production
Running time 88 minutes (aired), 126 minutes (DVD)[1]

Production company(s) NBC Universal Cable
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Distributor Universal Studios Home Entertainment (DVD)

Broadcast
Original channel Syfy
Original airing 2010

Chronology
Preceded by "Daybreak"
Followed by Caprica

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is a television film set in the reimagined version of the Battlestar Galactica fictional universe. Consisting of newly filmed material and compilation of clips from the TV show and miniseries, it reveals the Cylons' plan.

The film will premiere exclusively on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on October 27, 2009

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

So whose just sent troops to Afganistan?

Everyone Seems to Be Agreeing with Bin Laden These Days

Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message that we’re losing Afghanistan

By Robert Fisk

September 19, 2009 The Independent

Obama and Osama are at last participating in the same narrative. For the US president's critics - indeed, for many critics of the West's military occupation of Afghanistan - are beginning to speak in the same language as Obama's (and their) greatest enemy.

There is a growing suspicion in America that Obama has been socked into the heart of the Afghan darkness by ex-Bushie Robert Gates - once more the Secretary of Defense - and by journalist-adored General David Petraeus whose military "surges" appear to be as successful as the Battle of the Bulge in stemming the insurgent tide in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq.

No wonder Osama bin Laden decided to address "the American people" this week. "You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said in his 9/11 eighth anniversary audiotape. "The time has come to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby." There was no more talk of Obama as a "house Negro" although it was his "weakness", bin Laden contended, that prevented him from closing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In any event, Muslim fighters would wear down the US-led coalition in Afghanistan "like we exhausted the Soviet Union for 10 years until it collapsed". Funny, that. It's exactly what bin Laden told me personally in Afghanistan - four years before 9/11 and the start of America's 2001 adventure south of the Amu Darya river.

Almost on cue this week came those in North America who agree with Osama - albeit they would never associate themselves with the Evil One, let alone dare question Israel's cheerleading for the Iraqi war. "I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan," announces Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the senate intelligence committee. "I believe it will remain a tribal entity." And Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, does not believe "there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan".

Colin Kenny, chair of Canada's senate committee on national security and defense, said this week that "what we hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan has proved to be impossible. We are hurtling towards a Vietnam ending".

Close your eyes and pretend those last words came from the al-Qa'ida cave. Not difficult to believe, is it? Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message. Afghanistan remains for him the "war of necessity". Send yet more troops, his generals plead. And we are supposed to follow the logic of this nonsense. The Taliban lost in 2001. Then they started winning again. Then we had to preserve Afghan democracy. Then our soldiers had to protect - and die - for a second round of democratic elections. Then they protected - and died - for fraudulent elections. Afghanistan is not Vietnam, Obama assures us. And then the good old German army calls up an air strike - and zaps yet more Afghan civilians.

It is instructive to turn at this moment to the Canadian army, which has in Afghanistan fewer troops than the Brits but who have suffered just as ferociously; their 130th soldier was killed near Kandahar this week. Every three months, the Canadian authorities publish a scorecard on their military "progress" in Afghanistan - a document that is infinitely more honest and detailed than anything put out by the Pentagon or the Ministry of Defense - which proves beyond peradventure (as Enoch Powell would have said) that this is Mission Impossible or, as Toronto's National Post put it in an admirable headline three days' ago, "Operation Sleepwalk". The latest report, revealed this week, proves that Kandahar province is becoming more violent, less stable and less secure - and attacks across the country more frequent - than at any time since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. There was an "exceptionally high" frequency of attacks this spring compared with 2008.

There was a 108 per cent increase in roadside bombs. Afghans are reporting that they are less satisfied with education and employment levels, primarily because of poor or non-existent security. Canada is now concentrating only on the security of Kandahar city, abandoning any real attempt to control the province.

Canada's army will be leaving Afghanistan in 2011, but so far only five of the 50 schools in its school-building project have been completed. Just 28 more are "under construction". But of Kandahar province's existing 364 schools, 180 have been forced to close. Of progress in "democratic governance" in Kandahar, the Canadian report states that the capacity of the Afghan government is "chronically weak and undermined by widespread corruption". Of "reconciliation" - whatever that means these days - "the onset of the summer fighting season and the concentration of politicians and activists for the August elections discouraged expectations of noteworthy initiatives...".

Even the primary aim of polio eradication - Ottawa's most favored civilian project in Afghanistan - has defeated the Canadian International Development Agency, although this admission is cloaked in truly Blair-like (or Brown-like) mendacity. As the Toronto Star revealed in a serious bit of investigative journalism this week, the aim to "eradicate" polio with the help of UN and World Health Organization money has been quietly changed to the "prevention of transmission" of polio. Instead of measuring the number of children "immunized" against polio, the target was altered to refer only to the number of children "vaccinated". But of course, children have to be vaccinated several times before they are actually immune.

And what do America's Republican hawks - the subject of bin Laden's latest sermon - now say about the Afghan catastrophe? "More troops will not guarantee success in Afghanistan," failed Republican contender and ex-Vietnam vet John McCain told us this week. "But a failure to send them will be a guarantee of failure." How Osama must have chuckled as this preposterous announcement echoed around al-Qa'ida's dark cave.

2009 Independent News and Media.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Todd Terje

1. Adam & The Ants - Ant Rap (Todd Terje Re-Edit)
2. Afro Cuban Band - Something's Gotta Give (Todd Terje Rekutt)
3. Alicia Keys - You Don't Know My Moonflowers (Todd Terje Edit)
4. America - Horse With No Shame (Todd Terje aka Wade Nichols Edit)
5. Andreas Vollenweider - Belladonna (Todd Terje Re-Edit)
6. Antena - Camino Del Sol (Todd Terje Remix)
7. Arbeid Adelt - Death Disco (Todd Terje Edit)
8. Astrud Gilberto - Black Magic (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
9. August Darnell - Friendly Children (Todd Terje Edit)
10. Azoto - Havah Nagilah (Prins Thomas & Todd Terje Mix)
11. Bangles - Dub Like An Egyptian (Todd Terje Edit)
12. Bappi Lahiri - Jimmy Jimmy Aja (Todd Terje Edit)
13. Barrabas - High Light (Todd Terje Rekutt)
14. Belle Epoque - Bamalama (Todd Terje Omskjæring)
15. Blehorkestar Bakija Bakic - Fizheuer Zieheuer (Todd Terje Edit)
16. Boney M - Nightflight To UR Anus (Todd Terje Tynneterje Edit)
17. Brothers Johnson - Ain't We Funkin´Now (Todd Terje Radio Miks)
18. Canned Heat - Wanda Rode Again (Todd Terje aka Wade Nichols Edit)
19. Chaka Khan - Fate (Todd Terje Tynneterje Edit)
20. Chaz Jankel - Glad To Know You (Todd Terje Re-Edit)
21. Cherrelle - Dub On You (Todd Terje Edit)
22. Chic - I Want Your Love (Todd Terje Edit)
23. Chilly - For Your Love (Todd Terje Re-Edit)
24. Chris Rea - On The Beach (Todd Terje Edit)
25. Claudja Barry - I Wanna Dance (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
26. Common - I Am Music (Todd Terje Edit)
27. Curtis Mayfield - Give Me Your Love (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
28. David Astri - Dancing Digits (Todd Terje Mix)
29. Dee Dee - Easy money (Todd Terje Re-Kutt)
30. Demis Roussos - I Dig You (Todd Terje Housemix)
31. Dennis Parker - Like An Eagle (Todd Terje Mix)
32. Devadip Carlos Santana - Golden Hours (Todd Terje Tangoterje Mix)
33. Diana Ross - Love The One You're With (Todd Terje Edit)
34. Disco Very - Get It On (Todd Terje Tangoterje Re-Edit)
35. Discognosis - Step By Step (Todd Terje Re-Step)
36. Dolle Jolle - Balearic Incarnation (Todd Terje's Extra Doll Mix)
37. Double - Woman Of The World (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
38. Earth, Wind & Fire - Kalimba Tree (Todd Terje Edit)
39. Edwin Birdsong - Cola Bottle Baby (Todd Terje Rekutt)
40. Emotions - Love Vibes (Todd Terje Rekutt)
41. Fatback Band - Street Dance (Todd Terje Rekutt)
42. Felix Laband - Whistling In Tongues (Todd Terje Remix)
43. Fox N Wolf - Claws Against Knives (Todd Terje Remix)
44. George McRae - I Get Lifted (Todd Terje Tangoterje Re-Edit)
45. George Shearing - Aquarius (Todd Terje Tangoterje Re-Edit)
46. Giorgio Moroder - Utopia (Todd Terje Edit)
47. Glen Larson & Stu Phillips - Night Rider (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
48. Guns 'n' Roses - Welcome To the Jungle (Todd Terje Re-Edit)
49. Herbie Hancock - Magic Number (Todd Terje Edit)
50. Herbie Mann - High Jack (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
51. Hypnosis - Bormaz (Todd Terje Edit)
52. Imagination - Just An Illusion (Lindstrom Vs Todd Terje Dub)
53. Isaac Hayes - Zeke The Freak (Todd Terje Rekutt)
54. Jose Gonzalez - Killing For Love (Todd Terje Brokeback Mix)
55. Kaoru Inoue - The Secret Field (Todd Terje Remix)
56. KC & The Sunshine Band - Boogie (Todd Terje aka Wade Nichols Edit)
57. Kitty Winter - New Morning (Reworked) (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
58. Kraftwerk - Home Computer (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
59. Krikokos - Life Is A Jungle (Todd Terje Re-Edit)
60. Lindstrom - Another Station (Todd Terje Remix)
61. Lindstrøm & Solale - Let's Practice (Todd Terje aka Wade Nichols Dub Mix)
62. Madeline Bell - That's What Friends Are For (Todd Terje Tangoterje Mix)
63. Massara - Margeritha (Todd Terje Edit)
64. Michael Henderson - Let Love Enter (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
65. Michael Jackson - I Can't Help It (Todd Terje Tangoterje Remix)
66. Modern Talking - You're My Heart You're My Soul (Rune Lindbaek & Todd Terje Edit)
67. Moodymann - Lake Shore Drive (Todd Terje Rekutt)
68. Nina Hagen - Cosma Shiva (Todd Terje Jackmix)
69. Paul Simon - Diamonds (Todd Terje Tangoterje Dub Remix)
70. Peech Boys - Don't Make Me Wait (Todd Terje Edit)
71. Quantic - Mishaps Happening (Todd Terje Remix)
72. Reverso 68 - Piece Together (Todd Terje Spinning Star Mix)
73. Rinder & Lewis - Willie And The Hand Jive (Todd Terje Re-kutt)
74. Rogue Cat - Magic Journey (Todd Terje Remix)
75. Rolling Stones - Under My Dub (Todd Terje Remix)
76. Roni Griffith - Love Is The Drug (Todd Terje Edit)
77. Sam-Jam - Dance N Chant (Todd Terje Tangoterje Remix)
78. Simon Baker - Plastik (Todd Terje Tuerkatech Remix)
79. Skip Jackson - Microwave boogie (Todd Terje Re-kutt)
80. Stealers Wheel - Stuck In The Middle With You (Todd Terje Edit)
81. Stevie Wonder - All I Do (Todd Terje Edit)
82. Stevie Wonder - Superstition (Todd Terje Edit)
83. Studio - Lifes A Beach (Todd Terje Beach House Mix)
84. The Bee Gees - You Should Be Dancin' (Todd Terje Edit)
85. The Bottom Line - Abracadobro (Todd Terje aka Wade Nichols Edit)
86. The Crusaders - My Lady (Todd Terje Tangoterje Edit)
87. The Osmonds - I, I, I (Todd Terje Edit)
88. The Turtles - Happy Together (Todd Terje aka Wade Nichols Edit)
89. Thin Lizzy - Fox On The Run (Todd Terje aka Wade Nichols Edit)
90. Titanic - Macumba Macumba (Todd Terje Tangoterje Rekutt)
91. Turtles - Sjefen Sjefen (Todd Terje aka Wade Nichols Re-Edit)
92. Wally Warning - Land Of Hunger (Todd Terje Edit)
93. Wham - Club Tropicana (Todd Terje Edit)
94. Willow Band - Willowman (Todd Terje Re-Edit)
95. Zaza - Dschungel Liebe (Todd Terje Edit)
96. Zoo - Roboterotikk (Todd Terje Edit)

http://moveyourfeettothebeat.blogspot.com/2009/05/96-editsremixes-of-todd-terje.html

Friday, September 18, 2009

What century is this

Just finished reading The Strain. Cracking read.

First part of a trilogy. Next two parts to be published Annually.

WTF who waits that Long In our digital age

Arggh so bummed out. Can't see me Bothering

That


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A Somber Warning on Afghanistan

By ALISON SMALE

September 14, 2009
"New York Times"

Western powers now in Afghanistan run the risk of suffering the fate of the Soviet Union there if they cannot halt the growing insurgency and an Afghan perception that they are foreign invaders, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

In a speech opening a weekend gathering of military and foreign policy experts, Mr. Brzezinski, who was national security adviser when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, endorsed a British and German call, backed by France, for a new international conference on the country. He also set the tone for a weekend of somber assessments of the situation.

He noted that it took about 300 U.S. Special Forces — fighting with Northern Alliance troops — to overthrow Taliban rule after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Now, however, with about 100,000 U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, those forces are increasingly perceived as foreign invaders, much as the Soviet troops were from the start, Mr. Brzezinski said.

For President Barack Obama, Afghanistan is the foreign policy issue that has “perhaps the greatest need for strategic review,” said Mr. Brzezinski, who met with Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign last year, and endorsed his candidacy but was not a formal adviser.

“We are running the risk of replicating — obviously unintentionally — the fate of the Soviets,” Mr. Brzezinski said in his speech Friday night.

The presence of so many foreign troops underpins an Afghan perception that the Americans and their allies are hostile invaders and “suggests transformation of the conflict is taking place,” he added.

A new international conference would help devise a more refined strategy, Mr. Brzezinski said in a brief interview Sunday. Using the military to support a development strategy would help prolong the European presence, he suggested — “our European friends are less likely to leave us in the lurch.”

If the United States is left alone in Afghanistan, Mr. Brzezinski said Friday night, “that would probably spell the end of the Alliance.”

A discussion on Afghanistan on Saturday featured, among others, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British foreign secretary’s special representative for Afghanistan and a former British ambassador to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“All is not doom and gloom in Afghanistan,” Sir Sherard told the conference, the Global Strategic Review of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, a nongovernment organization. But “walking away would destroy everything that has been achieved.”

“The pullout option is not one that any government could responsibly follow,” he added, emphasizing, that America’s role was crucial. “While Obama remains committed, we remain committed.”

In calling last weekend for a conference on Afghanistan, Britain and Germany seemed anxious both to dispel the tension that has arisen surrounding the election there last month, in which foreign observers say there were clear incidents of fraud, and to shift emphasis away from the rising numbers of foreign troops.

Sir Sherard suggested the solution lay in devolving political power back to tribal elders who have traditionally held sway in Afghanistan, and funneling money for development through them.

With 68,000 troops from the United States expected by the end of the year and some 40,000 from other countries, numbers — and the rising number of deaths and casualties — are going to influence not only hostile Afghans but Western public support for the Afghan mission.

Speakers at the conference said that Americans are unlikely for long to support maintaining many times the number of troops from Britain, Germany and France, the three European allies who have sent the most soldiers to Afghanistan.

What is needed now is “the intelligent application of military force” alongside long-promised development strategies, Sir Sherard said, evoking what he called a dream that, by 2011, a truckload of pomegranates would be able to pass unhindered from Afghanistan through Pakistan and into India, that Western students could study Afghan archaeological ruins, and that posters in the Pashto language inviting Pashtuns to “come on over” from the Taliban would be tattered remnants — unneeded rather than unheeded — on the roadsides of southern Afghanistan.

“That,” he stressed, “is the dream.”

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Carl Craig

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Sunday, September 13, 2009

13.1.1.1

Clip shows...

Toe clippers...

Somehow, someway, I shall find the gold at the end of the rainbow... someday.

Pike you're up next.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Friday, September 04, 2009

Not Even Wrong

We need a radical new approach to cutting greenhouse gases, and it might have arrived.


By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 1st September 2009.

At least - until a few months ago - government targets for cutting greenhouse gases had the virtue of being wrong. They were the wrong targets, by the wrong dates, and they bore no relationship to the stated aim of preventing more than two degrees of global warming. But they used a methodology which even their sternest critics (myself included) believed could be improved until it delivered the right results: the cuts merely needed to be raised and accelerated.

Three papers released earlier this year changed all that. The first one, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February, set the scene(1). It showed that the climate change we cause today “is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop”. Around 40% of the carbon dioxide produced by humans this century will remain in the atmosphere until at least the year 3000*. Moreover, thanks to the peculiar ways in which the oceans absorb heat from the atmosphere, global average temperatures are likely to “remain approximately constant … until the end of the millennium despite zero further emissions”.

In other words, governments’ hopes about the trajectory of temperature change are ill-founded. Most, including the UK’s, are working on the assumption that we can overshoot the desired targets for temperature and atmospheric concentrations of CO2, then watch them settle back later. What this paper shows is that wherever temperatures peak, that is more or less where they will stay. There is no going back.

The other two papers were published by Nature in April. While governments and the United Nations set targets for cuts by a certain date, these papers measured something quite different: the total volume of carbon dioxide we can produce and still stand a good chance of avoiding more than two degrees of warming. One paper, by a team led by Myles Allen, shows that preventing more than two degrees means producing a maximum of half a trillion tonnes of carbon (1830 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide) between now and 2500 - and probably much less(2). The other paper, written by a team led by Malte Meinshausen, proposes that producing 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 between 2000 and 2050 would deliver a 25% chance of exceeding two degrees of warming(3).

Writing elsewhere, the two teams gave us an idea of what this means. At current rates of use, we will burn the ration that Allen set aside for the next 500 years in four decades(4). Meinshausen’s carbon budget between now and 2050 will have been exhausted before 2030(5).

There’s another way of expressing these limits. The World Energy Council (WEC) publishes figures for global reserves of fossil fuels(6). A reserve means the minerals that have been identified, quantified and are cost-effective to exploit; in other words those that are more or less ready to be extracted. (The total amount of a mineral found in the earth’s crust is called the resource). The WEC says that 848 billion tonnes of coal(7), 177,000 billion cubic metres of natural gas(8) and 162 billion tonnes of crude oil(9) are good to go. We know roughly how much carbon a tonne of coal, a cubic metre of gas and a barrel of oil contain. You can see the calculations and references at the bottom of this article: the result suggests that official reserves of coal, gas and oil amount to 818 billion tonnes of carbon.

The molecular weight of carbon dioxide is 3.667 times that of carbon. This means that current reserves of fossil fuel, even when we ignore unconventional sources such as tar sands and oil shale, would produce 3000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide if they were burnt. In other words, if we don’t want to exceed two degrees of global warming, we can burn, according to Allen’s paper, a maximum of 60% of current fossil fuel reserves by 2500(10). Meinshausen says we’ve already used one third of his 2050 budget since 2000(11), which suggests that we can afford to burn only 22% of current reserves between now and 2050(12). If you counted unconventional sources (the carbon content is much harder to calculate), the proportion would be even smaller.

There are some obvious conclusions from these three papers. The trajectory of cuts is more important than the final destination. An 80% cut by 2050, for example, could produce very different outcomes. If most of the cut were made towards the beginning of the period, the total emissions entering the atmosphere would be much smaller than if most of the cut were made at the end of the period. The measure that counts is the peak atmospheric concentration. This must be as low as possible and come as soon as possible, which means making most of the reductions right now. Ensuring that we don’t exceed the cumulative emissions discussed in the Nature papers means setting an absolute limit to the amount of fossil fuel we can burn, which, as my rough sums show, is likely to be much smaller than the reserves already identified. It means a global moratorium on prospecting and developing new fields.

None of this is currently on the table. The targets and methodology being used by governments and the United Nations - which will form the basis for their negotiations at Copenhagen - are not even wrong; they are irrelevant. Unless there is a radical change of plan between now and December, world leaders will not only be discussing the alignment of deckchairs on the Titanic, but hotly disputing whose deckchairs they really are and who has the responsibility for moving them. Fascinating as this argument may be, it does nothing to alter the course of the liner.

But someone, at least, does have a radical new plan. This afternoon the team that made the film The Age of Stupid is launching the 10:10 campaign: which aims for a 10% cut in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions during 2010. This seems to be roughly the trajectory needed to deliver a good chance of averting two degrees of warming. By encouraging people and businesses and institutions to sign up, the campaign hopes to shame the UK government into adopting this as its national target. This would give the government the moral leverage to demand immediate sharp cuts from other nations, based on current science rather than political convenience.

I don’t agree with everything the campaign proposes. It allows businesses to claim reductions in carbon intensity as if they were real cuts: in other words they can measure their reductions relative to turnover rather than in absolute terms. There’s an uncomfortable precedent for this: cutting carbon intensity was George Bush’s proposal for tackling climate change. As economic growth is the major cause of rising emissions, this looks like a cop-out. The cuts will not be independently audited, which might undermine their credibility with the government.

But these are quibbles. 10:10 is the best shot we have left. It might not be enough, it might not work; but at least it’s relevant. I take the pledge. Will you?

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Susan Solomon, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Reto Knutti, and Pierre Friedlingstein, 10th February 2009.
Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions. PNAS, vol. 106, no. 6, pp1704–1709.
Doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812721106. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html

2. Myles R. Allen et al, 30th April 2009. Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions
towards the trillionth tonne. Nature 458. doi:10.1038/nature08019. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08019.html

3. Malte Meinshausen et al, 30th April 2009. Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C. Nature 458, 1158-1162. doi:10.1038/nature08017. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08017.html

4. Myles Allen et al, 30th April 2009. The exit strategy: Emissions targets must be placed in the context of a cumulative carbon budget if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. Nature
doi:10.1038/climate.2009.38. http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0905/full/climate.2009.38.html

5. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 30th April 2009. On the way to phasing out emissions: More than 50% reductions needed by 2050 to respect 2°C climate target.
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/on-the-way-to-phasing-out-emissions-more-than-50-reductions-needed-by-2050-to-respect-2b0c-climate-target

6. http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/default.asp

7. http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/coal/627.asp

8. http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/natural_gas/664.asp

9. http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/crude_oil_and_natural_gas_liquids/638.asp

10. On average, one tonne of coal contains 746 kg carbon - http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

One cubic metre of natural gas contains 0.49 kg carbon - http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

The figure for oil is less certain, because not all of its refinery products are burnt. But the rough calculation here suggests that the use of a barrel of oil releases 317kg of CO2 - http://numero57.net/?p=255. There are roughly 7 barrels to the tonne, giving an approximation of 2219kg CO2, or 605kg of carbon.

So the carbon content of official known reserves of coal, gas and oil amounts to:

848 x 0.746 = 633
+
177,000 x 0.00049 = 87
+
162 x 0.605 = 98

Total conventional fossil fuel reserves therefore contain 818 billion tonnes of carbon.

11. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, ibid.

12. 667/3000.