We face an existential crisis. It is not imminent, but for the sake of the planet's growing 7.9 billion inhabitants it must be prepared for. Those who govern, elected or otherwise, have a duty to ensure the security of those for whom they have accepted responsibility. The question is simple.
"As Fossil fuels are a finite resource, what can replace them to provide reliable energy security and protect future life?"
It is a simple question, but one that is not asked. "Climate Change" and its chosen wind and solar answers have closed down scientific debate and, with that, potential solutions.
Imagine that you have the power to decide and order the implementation of solutions to the question. You are a benign ruler, pleased that life expectancy has dramatically improved. That previously impoverished regions are enjoying increased prosperity. Advances in medicine, education, food production and manufacture fill you with optimism for the future. However, you have one worry. The energy required to guarantee this situation for future generations is going to run out. You ask for options, so that you can plan for the future. You stipulate that they must be reliable and helpful to the planet. Although not convinced, you are aware of the CO2 theory and include carbon neutral solutions in your list of requirements. CO2 is an essential growth element in nature, and you fund an investigation into the possible dangers of reducing it.
You are given a list of solutions. The top three solution presented are:
1. Produce gas from sewage and other waste. This is ecologically sound because it removes a major pollutant. It uses free raw material to make gas and inert fertiliser for crops. Small scale units can be installed in remote areas and help isolated communities. Apart from use as gas for cooking and heating, the major part can be used to produce electricity using the Allam-Fetvedt method that is carbon free.
2. Hydropower, including from waves, produces carbon free electricity cleanly.
3. In addition to existing Nuclear Power Stations, Small Nuclear Power stations are a cost effective answer too. They can provide power for a small town of 230,000 homes. Safe, clean and, like the other solutions, carbon free. As an added bonus, they will energise our engineering sector, and create thousands of jobs. The export potential is staggering too.
Other solutions proposed are hydrogen power, wind and solar. Hydrogen looks interesting and you provide a budget to speed up its development. Solutions 1, 2 and 3 are sensible and you authorise a massive program that will ensure security for centuries. You share the information with other world leaders and encourage them to follow.
You decide against wind and solar after studying an independent report. The report shows that wind turbines take up a lot of land, a 2 megawatt wind turbine requires 1.5 acres. Each one requires 1,300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fibreglass, 4 tons of copper, 4 tons of neodymium (rare earth mineral used for magnets) plus a few other minor elements. They have a life of 20 years and are very difficult to recycle. During a typical year, sited in a windy area, a turbine only operates at between 28% (onshore) and 39% (offshore) of its maximum capacity. There is less energy produced during the summer months when the wind speed becomes lower or negligible. And Solar panels? That depends on how much the sun shines. A 2 megawatt site needs ten acres of land and is between 10% to 30% efficient. Both require other reliable generation sources as a back up. You decide that as huge amounts of money are required, it is better spent on reliable, ecologically sound projects. Wind and Solar do not fit your criteria. You made your decisions based on sound advice and because it is your duty to protect everyone's future.
The reason that the above scenario has never happened is, I suggest, due to an unholy alliance of far left anarchists, cynical politicians and rent seekers in science, universities, NGOs,agriculture and businesses. It is supported by an unrelenting propaganda campaign by schools and most of the media.
Since its birth, the earth's climate has changed. Sometimes dramatically. No one disputes the fact. Devotees of 'Climate Change', are not content. Dispute any part of their dogma and be condemned as a 'Climate Change Denier'. Guilty of blasphemy, you will be derided for unscientific belief and wilful damage to the earth and future generations. Rational debate is impossible because, as with all religious fanatics, Green Eco-Warriors live with the certainty of their rightness. If, based on the science, you disagree you will get no funding. Dr. David Bellamy questioned the validity of the cult's dogma. His career as a TV presenter of nature programs ended. Eminent scientists like Judith Curry and William Happer are subjected to abuse and something close to character assassination. Dr. Curry has commented that scientists worried for their future are "Afraid" to challenge the climate religion". To do so means the end of their career. All this is reminiscent of the Catholic Church's persecution of Galileo. Science, which should thrive on debate and rigorous questioning has become a new inquisition. Rational alternative views, like those contained in Peter Kirby's brilliant article Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming a Review and a Few Facts are dismissed as heresy. The refusal to examine or debate is not just a sign of intellectual myopism. It is a certain indicator that they have something to hide.
The earth's last warm period lasted from 950 to 1400 and was followed by a mini ice age. Not long ago, scientists claimed our current warm period presaged a new ice age. The Washington Post, July 9, 1971, reported that NASA predicted a new ice age within 50 years. Those who claim extreme weather events are new, ignore history. In 1287/8 violent storms ravaged England's South and East Coast as well as what is now Netherlands and Germany. They changed geography and cost upwards of 80,000 lives. Towns were destroyed, rivers changed course. On the East coast Dunwich, which at its height was an international port of 3,000 inhabitants similar in importance to London, was washed away. It is now a small village. Nearer our own times, the violent storms of 1607, 1703, 1881, 1953 and 1987 caused devastation and loss of life. Similar events are recorded elsewhere. The 1930s drought afflicting the USA's Mid West, illustrates a different 'natural' catastrophe.
Climate changes, I do not dispute that. But, we need action to preserve our way of life. I am concerned that, instead of a logical sequence of a valid questions seeking valid answers, we are in thrall to a movement that is trying to fit a question to their chosen answer. Disregarding science, scientists have fallen into the trap of seeking a question to justify a predetermined answer. It is a process so flawed that it questions the legitimacy not just of science, but the political order too.
It is striking that the Eco-Warriors ignore the fact that in 200 years the world's population has grown from One billion to almost Eight. In 16 year time, it is predicted to reach Nine billion. Nine billion people who will have to be fed, housed, employed, require infrastructure, medical care, schooling. Why is this ignored? In 2014, Patrick Moore Ph.D. co-founder of Greenpeace, told a US Senate hearing "I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective". He has elsewhere remarked that warmer temperatures would enable more food to be grown. He dismisses the Carbon warming theory as unproven, stating that historically CO2 levels have been ten times higher than now.
Why don't Eco-Warriors want to discuss population? Is it that even they understand that pre-modern societies burned coal and wood to cook and keep warm. That meat provided protein? Or is it that they would welcome the return of other aspects of pre-modern existence. Disease, famine and war?
Unless we suffer disease or war on a scale hitherto unimaginable, population increase is the world's biggest crisis. With finite fossil fuel resources, how to provide energy security, is politicians biggest responsibility. It is a responsibility that they (Worldwide) have ignored. Instead, they have bought into a monumental scam dressed up as a moral crusade. I repeat the real question. "As Fossil fuels are a finite resource, what can replace them to provide reliable energy security and protect future life?" It has never been asked by those with the authority and power to answer it.
The 1970s were a time of good music, increasing prosperity and hope for a better future for all. It was also the era when the United Nations was taken over by a vociferous left-wing confederation of developing nations and western socialists. It saw the birth of the today's Green agenda. Those, now in control of the agenda, but spending the West's money, were heavily influenced by Martin Heidegger. In his 1954 essay, "The Question Concerning of Technology," he condemned the view of nature as a mere resource for human consumption. The solution, he argued, was to yoke human society and its economy to unreliable energy flows. He condemned hydroelectric dams, for dominating the natural environment, and praised windmills because they "do not unlock energy in order to store it." The use of "modern technology," he wrote, "puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such". American Anarchist Murray Bookchin, an influential pioneer in the environmental movement, explained the goal in his 1962 book, Our Synthetic Environment. "The goal of renewables" he wrote "was to turn modern industrial societies back into agrarian ones".
We might dismiss this as student politics except for the role played by the UN. They established a Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). Opening the Rio Earth Climate Summit in 1992, its Environment Program Executive Director Maurice Strong stated "We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrialised civilisation to collapse. Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?" The conference report stated "It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class ... involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, ownership of motor vehicles, golf courses, small electric appliances, home and workplace air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable ... A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns".
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC is the source of almost all the scare stories. Unsurprisingly because its remit is:
The risk of:
Human-induced climate change,
Its potential impacts, and
Possible options for prevention.
Without producing endless scares, there would be no funding, no foreign trips or diplomatic privileges.
The IPCC has been criticised by many scientists including Dr. Frederick Seitz, former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, who commented on their 1996 report: "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer review process than events that led to this IPCC report." This organ of the UN sets the agenda. It focuses on a question used to fit the 'Green Agenda' not to answer the question that the earth's 7.9 billion inhabitants want answered.
Cop 26 aims include:
Mobilise finance: To deliver on our first two goals, developed countries must make good on their promise to mobilise at least $100bn in climate finance per year by 2020. International financial institutions must play their part and we need work towards unleashing the trillions in private and public sector finance required to secure global net zero. Commenting in Money Week, John Stepek explained: The Green agenda is also proving a way to raise cheap money. "The government has launched its 'green savings bond' that offers investors just 0.65%. But, that pitiful return is in many ways the point of 'green' finance". "Green finance is the future – and the future is financial repression".
Work together to deliver: "We can only rise to the challenges of the climate crisis by working together. At COP26 we must: finalise the Paris Rulebook (the detailed rules that make the Paris Agreement operational) accelerate action to tackle the climate crisis through collaboration between governments, businesses and civil society".
Not a word about population. In 2015, the Washington Times reported that "The $1.5 trillion global 'climate change industry' grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008, slowing to between 4% and 6% following the recession with the exception of 2011's inexplicable 15% growth, according to Climate Change Business Journal". It is not unreasonable to assume that today's figure is near $2 trillion. Then, of course, there are the subsidies, restarted in the UK this year. Huge amounts of money concentrate the mind. It also can seal lips.
Our government has a duty to all of us, and future generations, to provide energy security. UK governments have allowed themselves to be bamboozled. The current cost of their mistakes is bad enough. The potential cost, not just of money, but life itself, in the future is terrifying. It takes leadership to admit mistakes. Leadership to break away from a perverse cult and put the nation's interests first. Whatever Boris Johnson thinks his legacy will be, is his affair. When the lights go out because there is to much or not enough wind or because it's too hot or cold. When, as a result, infrastructure breaks down, everywhere from transport to hospitals. When reserves and back ups are not available to bridge the gap. Then, quite rightly, he will be condemned for blindly following a monstrous scam and deliberately endangering life and freedom.
It is time to embrace an ecologically sound future. A future that delivers clean reliable energy. A future not dependent on the vagaries of weather, the UN or anarchists.