Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not reflect the stance of The Friday Times
Recap: The first part of this series presented facts and analyses relevant to the climate debate. For instance, the weather is not climate; the climate is the long-term average, typically a 30-year average, of the variables of weather. 102 temperature simulation (computer) models, including those used by the UN, when compared to actual data observations, were all wrong. All overstated the increase in climate temperature, even by up to two to four times more or higher, and so reached an attention-grabbing or scary number. Actual climate data shows no significant global change trend one way or the other. CO2 is essential for human life on Earth. The projected additional warming by CO2 is too small to matter.
Currently, global energy supply is more than 80 percent from fossil fuels and around 6 percent from renewables. The higher the percentage of renewables in the energy mix, the more expensive the energy/electricity supply is. There is a clear correlation between energy use per capita and resulting GDP per capita.
With current technology, solar and wind energy on a large scale is simply not economically feasible without massive subsidies; it is a reverse robin hood to rob the poor and give to the rich. Precipitous policy prioritisation of renewables is absolutely unrealistic and would deprive billions of people in low-income countries of developing and improving the standard of living of their people.
The Moral Side
In many developing countries, the biomass energy transportation system is the backs of women. Each morning, they need to walk perhaps 10 kilometres to get wood and haul it on their backs. The UN estimates that more than two million children die each year from respiratory illnesses due to the use of biomass/wood as energy in stoves and such. Studying without/or by intermittent electricity is a terrible disadvantage for students in poor households. “That energy system kills people, if you value life, do away with that,” says Christy, Director of Earth Systems Science at the University of Alabama.
There is a correlation between energy used per capita and the length of life; the more energy people use, the longer and better their life can be. Some six billion people are using much less energy than those in the developed countries.
Assuming that there was a climate crisis and sacrifices had to be made in the form of foregoing fossil fuels, then those who most exploited natural resources/fossil fuels so far, the developed world, ought to make the sacrifice. Six billion people in developing countries should not be asked to bear the burden
Most of the projected energy growth requirement is in Asia, in developing countries. Some developing countries currently consume 1/30 energy per capita compared to the US. To improve their standard of living, energy consumption has to rise. Curry, Professor Emerita at the Georgia Institute of Technology, calls it ‘green colonialism’, to deprive the global south’s underdeveloped areas of available energy.
Interestingly, the climate emergency proposition has the most support among the affluent areas of cities in developing countries. It is generally believed that the environmental degradation caused by the elite often contributes to an improved standard of living for the common man. Helping the poor means lowering energy costs; hurting the poor means increasing energy costs.
Assuming that there was a climate crisis and sacrifices had to be made in the form of foregoing fossil fuels, then those who most exploited natural resources/fossil fuels so far, the developed world, ought to make the sacrifice. Six billion people in developing countries should not be asked to bear the burden.
In that case, the developed world should either share the wealth amassed by their unjustified exploitation of fossil fuels or else pay massive reparations for what they have done.
National Development Perspective Of The Developing World
Dr Steven Koonin, Professor of Physics at CALTECH and NYU, says: “A ‘climatic crisis’ has scant scientific support. Fears of future catastrophes depend upon extreme scenarios fed into models that are entirely unsuited to the task. Precipitous and ill-considered responses to climate fears are a greater threat to well-being than anthropogenic climate change”.
Solar and wind do not make sense. They are not technically or economically feasible. Nuclear could be practical, but there are other hindrances to that. Developing countries should not compromise national development because of models that do not work. “More CO2 is an overall benefit, so costly mitigation schemes are harmful. We should do nothing about CO2 emissions. More CO2 actually benefits the world. Plants grow better, a little less harsh winter, slightly longer plants growing season,” explains Dr W. Happer, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Princeton University.
No one should want for women to walk 10 kilometres each day to get wood and biomass and haul it on their backs; children are gravely sick from respiratory diseases; students in poor households have to study in candlelight; skyrocketing price of electricity makes industry absolutely uncompetitive in developing countries; and the cost of energy and new regulations devastate agricultural production.
To prioritise renewables and work towards net zero would require massive subsidies that developing countries simply cannot afford:
- Subsidies for solar and wind,
- subsidies for the back-up (probably by natural gas),
- subsidies to convert power plants and
- subsidies to keep the industry from abandoning the country.
For low-income countries, the priority is food for the people, jobs, healthcare, education, social protection and security. For that, with the present technology, the main energy sources will remain fossil fuels (natural gas, oil, coal), hydropower and nuclear. Low-income countries that have any of these energy sources ought to make full use of them.
The top priority is not net zero, which is a manufactured consensus.
For the last many years, scholarships to study in the West have been available in the climate field. Now, a large cadre of graduates is in the market whose bread, butter, and careers are dependent on a climate crisis. Similarly, for organisations that receive foreign funding to work on climate crisis advocacy and mitigation. Now, the climate crisis industry has a clear self-interest in advocating climate as a crisis – and that ought to be kept in mind by national policymakers. These people and organisations could be better engaged in doing practical research on climate for the government.
Climate change has been turned into a dogma, couched almost in quasi-religious terms of believers and non-believers or deniers. It has become more an ideology than a scientific proposition. Facts and arguments do not matter in this environment. But science is numbers and facts; hypothesis is tested against observations, and evidence proves or disproves. In science, other points of view are not silenced by de-platforming from the media, manipulating rankings and listing on search engines, refusing promotions and tenure to faculty who dare to disagree, and controlling scientists through funding decisions for research or for labs and departments. But in this case, people are just told that climate is the greatest issue facing humanity, and it is not up for discussion. This is not science, this is a faith-based ideology for the susceptible, a ‘green cult’.
“Nothing needs saving. The threat of climate catastrophe is completely imaginary, there’s nothing to it,” Prof Happer rightly concludes, and policymakers, especially in the global south, ought to pay heed and protect the interests of their people.
Predictions Proved Wrong
It would take many articles to talk about all the climate catastrophe predictions that have been proven wrong. A little Internet research will show that there are major accusations being made of collusion, compromise and even fraud about climate data. However, there is no doubt that the so-called Climategate (2009) did expose email exchanges between climatologists discussing data manipulation to get desired climate ‘heating’ data trends.
In science, other points of view are not silenced by de-platforming from the media, manipulating rankings and listing on Search engines… people are just told that climate is the greatest issue facing humanity, and it is not up for discussion. This is not science, this is a faith-based ideology for the susceptible, a ‘green cult’
There are also accusations that where proper data was lacking for large parts of the Earth, such as in the southern hemisphere, the missing data was filled in as required for desired results. There is even incredulity about how disparate the US entities came up with almost the same revised climate data trend when there is not even enough data available to generate a coherent global long-term temperature record, let alone achieve a close agreement among independent agencies. Obviously, the climate crisis industry is powerful and almost drowns out the voices of so-called deniers, and eminent scientists/university professors even receive death threats.
Most people don’t even know that in the decades before 1980, the story was that the Earth would soon cool to a new ice age. This was a topic of discussion in a 1970 Boston Globe story, titled Scientist Predicts a New Ice Age by the 21st Century. Also in 1970, a The New York Times story said: “[researchers] are mounting large scale investigations… why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of the cover contributes to the onset of ice ages”. In 1971, the Washington Post, citing a NASA scientist, wrote that the world could be as little as 50-60 years away from a disastrous ice age.
In 1972, based on a conference attended by American and European investigators, a letter was written to the US government that within a century, temperatures might reach icy glacial levels. Anyone interested in the subject could research further on what’s sometimes described as ‘disaster porn’.
While writing for the New American, Alex Newman says, “based just on the laws of probability, a monkey rolling the dice would have done far better at predicting future temperatures than the UN models. That suggests deliberate fraud is likely at work.”
It was predicted that Pakistan would approach absolute water scarcity by 2025. There is just one year to go, and no discernible difference has been noticed yet. How was this dire forecast made? What is the compelling data on the basis of which this calculation was done? The national government ought to inquire and hold accountable.