For the time being, it will be cheaper to adapt to climate change rather than to force the developing nations towards a world without fossil fuel.
Richard Lindzen is a world renowned climatologist. Surely, his opinion should count for a lot?
I thought it wise to post this article here on Henry’s Blog. There are similarities between Africa and India….
I should mention that the step from proposing a world war especially affecting people in the developing countries to suggesting people to ‘stop breeding’ in order to mitigate ‘climate change’ is but a small one….
Reposted from the American Thinker
By Vijay Jayaraj
In this age of green craze, the most likely response to legitimate concerns about the lack of access to energy for the world’s poor is advocacy for so-called renewable technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels.
see also here: https://breadonthewater.co.za/2021/10/09/the-green-illusion/
As embarrassing as that suggestion should be to advocate such unreliable and impractical energy sources, there are sometimes even more cringe-worthy replies that verge on the inhumane. A recent tweet of mine prompted one such response.
The tweet was directed to attendees of COP26, a United Nations climate conference that gets underway this month at Glasgow. The annual conference seldom addresses third-world energy poverty, which deprives billions of people of basic needs like clean water, lights, and modern medical care. Many of these people are subjected to indoor pollution from cooking and heating with wood and animal dung while bureaucrats and politicians preach the banning of the very fossil fuels necessary to alleviate their suffering.
When I questioned in a tweet the evident lack of empathy for poor people in developing parts of the world, a person responded that India has too many people.
“I want COP26 attendees to ask themselves a simple question,” my tweet stated. “What are they going to do about those in the third world who still do not have access to affordable & reliable energy — both for cooking and for electricity? We need gas, oil, and coal. Do not enforce energy apartheid on us.”
The response tweet said, “India is seriously overpopulated, they need to breed less.”
Breed less? How can an Indian like myself not be insulted by such an anti-human suggestion? Are the 1.3 billion people of India lab rats with no right to procreate as we see fit?
Moreover, the idea that population increase is a problem is outdated. During the 1960s and 1970s, there was media-supported fear-mongering that overpopulation would bring down the world due to scarcity of resources. This notion died with late 20th-century advancements in the agricultural and industrial sectors that made food more plentiful than ever. Virtually every metric of human well-being has increased in the last fifty years. The proposition that we are overpopulated is wrong.
Persons harboring such thoughts should note that the Indian breeding ground gave the world brilliant thinkers such as the present CEOs of Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Adobe. Ironically, the person apparently ridiculing my country used the Twitter platform whose current chief technological officer is from India and did his schooling in a city a few hundred miles from where I live. And then there have been the likes of Mother Teresa; Mahatma Gandhi; polymath scholar and founder of the republic B. R. Ambedkar; and numerous other leaders in politics, business, education, and science.
Having noted the cultural slight, I return to the lack of concern for energy poverty in developing countries as the larger issue. It is the religious fervor of the climate-alarmist cult driving a misanthropic view that would deny people basic needs — even life itself — to achieve the fantasy of a carbon-free economy. All to purportedly avert a fabricated climate crisis.
If this disregard for our very humanity goes unchallenged, we could be in for some dark times indeed. Watch COP26 at Glasgow for trends.
Vijay Jayaraj is a research associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a Master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
Before you throw your heart into ‘green’ energy, take some time off to watch these 2 documentaries and hear what people are saying.
After watching all this, you don’t have to be any kind of a genius to figure out that wind and solar generation are never going to replace fossil fuels in powering the world economy. The main reason is that the wind and sun only work part time, indeed well less than half of the time at best. With wind, you never know when it might work, and over a year a given facility might on average produce about 30-35% of rated capacity, with long and random periods of nothing. With the sun, you know from the get-go that you will get nothing fully half the time (i.e., night); and cloudy days wipe out half and more of the remaining half, again at random times. Averaged over the year, you’ll be lucky to get 20% of rated capacity from a solar facility.
With the world economy finally bouncing back (hopefully) from the year-and-a-half of pandemic, this is the moment for wind and solar to step up and show what they can do. All the advanced economies (Europe, UK, U.S., Canada, Australia) have been pushing wind and solar for a couple of decades, with tens of billions of dollars of various subsidies and tax breaks. There are now wind turbines and solar panels all over the place. Simultaneously the same countries have shuttered coal plants, reduced nuclear, banned fracking in many places (Europe, the UK, and much of the U.S.), and discouraged fossil fuels of every sort in a hundred different ways. Now there is a surge in demand for manufactured goods of every sort. That will take some energy. Let’s see what the wind and the sun can do:
The answer is that when they are needed they are useless.
Which brings me to two front page articles in the Wall Street Journal the past two days. Yesterday it was “Coal Shortages Weigh on global Economies.” Excerpt:
Coal supply shortages are pushing prices for the fuel to record highs and laying bare the challenges to weaning the global economy off one of its most important—and polluting—energy sources. The crunch has many causes—from the post-pandemic boom to supply-chain strains and ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions. And it is expected to last at least through the winter, raising fears in many countries of fuel shortfalls in the months ahead.
Like I always say: north, east, south, west: gas best!
(no sulphur and 50% less carbon emission compared to coal and wood).
A few weeks ago, I watched the TV series: Midnight Mass. The story eventually turned out to be a horrible one, quite literally, so don’t watch it. But I must admit that they dug out the most beautiful music and hymns for the series. I went to the internet and found some of it. Take a listen and let me know what you think.
It is a bit of a tradition here now that come my birthday we take the first step in our pool. Unfortunately, this year the water was really too cold…..
We did take the plunge a few days later, though!
Contrary to popular belief, temperatures in South Africa have not increased over the past 40 years. On average, they stayed more or less the same.
In fact, minimum temperatures here in Pretoria have dropped by about 0.8 C compared to 40 years ago. I suspect this is the reason for the pool water being too cold on my birthday (We don’t have a pool cover).
A few years ago, I wrote a report about the subject of temperature in South Africa. If you are interested (Farmers!) you should read this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tps2cd4kuds8o6g/SUBMISSION%20by%20Henry%20Pool.docx?dl=0
Pity I never got a reply from the government/ANC.
Never mind that, compared to many countries overseas, we should count ourselves blessed with the weather that we do have. I think warmer is still a bit better than cooler?
It is always good to remember that no matter what many people say or think, and no matter how turbulent and upsetting the weather sometimes can be: God is in control. He is with us in His boat called Earth! He is the only one who can see the end and the beginning at the same time.
Wishing you all a blessed Spring!
Henry and Annette
Recent Comments