People who have no cheap electricity burn wood or coal inside their homes to make dinner and stay warm. The smoke produces real pollution (as opposed to the fake kind which feeds plants). In India, some homes have pollution levels “three times higher than a typical London street”. Not surprisingly, living in smoke does not work out well for lungs and hearts. “Estimates suggest that household air pollution killed 3·5 to 4 million people in 2010. “
We can argue about the numbers and whether they are exaggerated, but there’s no doubt that millions of people would lead better lives if they had access to cheap electricity, which in practical terms means coal-fired power. In Niger, Africa, 17 million people use less electricity than Dubbo, NSW, a town of 40,000.
Where are the Greens? Children in poverty are suffering from lung damage now. The Greens priority is to spend billions to stop them dying in 2100 from seas rising at 1mm a year. How many people does expensive electricity kill? — Jo
———————————-
Household air pollution puts more than one in three people worldwide at risk of ill health, early death
[ScienceDaily] Household air pollution, caused by the use of plant-based or coal fuel for cooking, heating, and lighting, is putting nearly three billion people worldwide at risk of ill health and early death, according to a new Commission, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal.
A third of the world’s population use plant-based solid fuels such as wood or charcoal, or coal, to cook, heat, and light their homes, primarily in Asia and Africa. These smoky, dirty fuels are often used in an open fire or simple stove, resulting in high levels of household air pollution in poorly ventilated homes.
Studies in India have found that in some areas, household air pollution is so high that it actually increases outdoor (ambient) air pollution — leading to pollution levels more than three times higher than a typical London street, and well above WHO-recommended safety levels.
The Commission, which was led by Professor Stephen Gordon, from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, and Professor William Martin, from The Ohio State University, USA, examines evidence for the effects of household air pollution on health. They conclude that an estimated 600-800 million families worldwide are at increased risk of illnesses such as respiratory tract infections, pneumonia, COPD, asthma, and lung cancer.
Estimates suggest that household air pollution killed 3·5 to 4 million people in 2010. Although overall rates of exposure to household air pollution have been declining slowly in recent years, population growth means that the number of people exposed has remained stagnant, at around 2·8 billion people worldwide.
Despite this huge toll of premature death and ill health, coordinated international and country-led efforts to tackle household air pollution have thus far been insufficient, say the authors, and public awareness of the risks of cooking with solid fuels in poorly ventilated homes remains low in the areas most badly affected.
The women and children living in poverty who are most affected by household air pollution are also likely to have poor access to healthcare — especially the complex and expensive treatments required for much of the respiratory illness and cancer caused by household air pollution.
“Although a number of clean cooking technologies — such as advanced cook stoves, LPG or solar power systems — exist, providing affected homes with cleaner ways to cook, heat, and light their homes with biomass fuel will not be the long term solution,” says Professor Gordon. “In communities where solid fuel cooking methods are currently the norm, cleaner fuel and cooking methods need to be at least as affordable, efficient, and long-lasting as the traditional style methods they replace. They also need to be fit for the different cultures and regions in which they’re used — if families only partially adopt cleaner cooking methods, using them alongside more polluting technologies, we are potentially looking at an expensive failure, and no reduction in the millions of people currently at risk from household air pollution.”*
The Commission provides a comprehensive review of the evidence for the effect on ill health and premature death of household air pollution, examines interventions currently available, and promising future developments. It concludes by outlining research priorities which will need to be tackled if this problem is to be effectively reduced.
According to Professor Martin, “All of the evidence we examined in this Commission points to a serious need for improved commitment to tackling the problem of household air pollution. Scientists and health professionals in countries where household air pollution is still widespread need to work with governments and international health agencies to increase awareness of the huge toll that it is exacting on the population. There are many gaps in our knowledge of how to effectively measure and prevent household air pollution, but this problem cannot be solved until the global community recognises the scale of this problem and commits to coordinated and concerted action.”
REFERENCES
Gordon et al (2014) Respiratory risks from household air pollution in low and middle income countries. The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 2014; DOI: 10.1016/S2213-2600(14)70168-7
Majid Ezzati et al. A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. The Lancet, 2012; 380 (9859): 2224 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61766-8
Clean coal fired power is a point that has to be driven home to the masses, open fires in homes can get the job done but they don’t use wet scrubber system to remove harmful airborne particles as coal fired power plants do, end result drastic reduction in harmful particulate pollution and a life saving wealth creating reliable power supply.
No wonder the National Environmental Party hate the idea.
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The great advantage of an open fire is that no government can turn it off because of poor planning and ecoloon policies. Even oil and gas-fired furnaces need electrical power to operate and power suppliers are openly admitting they will be stretched to generate sufficient energy in a hard Winter. Lots of folk in the UK and across Europe are quietly reopening their open fires and installing fossil fuel and wood-burning stoves, so at least one room will be warm and one-pot cooking can take place. It’s back to the 1670’s in the NH.
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I have no problems with using open or combustion fires in homes that are correctly ventilated or constructed, I grew up in an old Victorian house with open fireplaces but very rarely had any smoke inside the house due to well constructed chimneys (I think we lured some of your best bricklayers here Kevin) and slow burn flues.
There are people reopening old fireplaces here for the same reasons (great minds think alike) but due to increasing restrictions on collecting firewood by local authorities there has been, lets say inventive, measures taken to procure the wood, years ago you could collect any dead wood on the roadside as it helped with keeping potential bushfire fuel down, now it’s illegal due to disturbing the ‘Significant roadside vegetation’ which amounts to mostly grass and weed plants allowed to overgrow and create a nice corridor for a bushfire to run up.
As an aside we had the tragic deaths of 2 young homeless people this winter using a butane gas heater/cooker in a car to keep warm on the outskirts of town, they were overcome by the fumes along with their dog and found the next day, since then if you search online you will find people in Australia asking on forums if it’s ok to use butane heaters inside, if a first world country has trouble with it’s population understanding the dangers of fumes in a confined space what chance have the impoverished and desperate got?
180
That’s exactly what we did for our last two years in England; opened up the chimney and put our little flat topped solid fuel stove in. We mostly used Welsh anthracite in it. It kept us very cosy and was an emergency cooking source; not used as such as it happens but it was nice to know it was there.
50
Kevin, it should be a Constitutional Right to keep warm by any means.
I don’t even care about the “do-gooders” and whether they are right about wood smoke. I’d rather die a few years younger around a wood hearth than die old at a government run nursing home.
That is IF you believe the “studies” about wood smoke. I don’t believe them in the cases of other than open fires in huts and even there you’ll find agenda.
20
Read all about it…..once eminent organization now 99.999% sold out to junk science
Got their backs against a wall and theyre desperate….
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/csiro-almost-100-sure-humans-causing-temperatures-to-rise-20140904-10c7y4.html
What are the chances the world could clock up 353 consecutive months with average temperatures higher than the norm of the 20th century without humans being responsible?
CSIRO’s now-defunct climate adaptation flagship crunched the numbers and found the chances were less than one in 100,000.
In other words, there’s a 99.999 per cent certainty that human activities – from burning fossil fuels to land-clearing – are responsible for the warming conditions.
“Everyone since February 1985 has lived in a warm world,” said Mark Howden, a CSIRO chief research scientist and author of the peer-reviewed report published on Thursday in the Climate Risk Management journal. “In my view, that’s pretty extraordinary.”
I never thought you could stack nonsense this high!
100
I’m actually surprised by this. Who would have thought a paper by 3 CSIRO employees could get published in a journal edited by another member of CSIRO? Still nice to see them not wasting tax payers money by paying the $1500 submission fee, although if they’d waited until next year, I understand there is a BOGOF deal.
I wonder if James Hansen, Associate Editor, was a reviewer?
80
I wonder how much of this could have been averted if the senseless climate change funding had been used to solve these issues instead. It is a travesty. Likewise the number of people in less developed countries dying needlessly to common preventable illnesses such as tuberculosis and malaria. I am always reminded of this incisive video:
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/swine-flu-alert-news-death-ratio-tuberculosis/#.VAf26fVBvMI
Hans Rosling, the stats geek’s hero.
172
Well said. That is the elephant in the room. This is the result of policy based on ideology not science. When science is wrong and policy is wrong people die. But you wont see the enviroloons caring about that
20
“Where are the Greens? Children in poverty are suffering from lung damage now. The Greens priority is to spend billions to stop them dying in 2100 from seas rising at 1mm a year. How many people does expensive electricity kill? — Jo”.
Every Aussie should be shown the paragraph above. Once understood they will never vote Greens again, nor ALP for that matter – I mean why vote for a Party that wants to ramp up electricity prices by insisting on “decarbonization”, ie eradicate “cheap fossil fuel generated power stations” for base load energy generation and replace them with mega expensive “Renewables”, thus effectively killing thousands of our poorer Aussies in the process who have no means of paying for these escalating electricity prices. Look what’s happened in the EU – fast tracking to “Renewables” has brought many of their member countries to an economic standstill and sent many of their citizens into abject poverty. The next “Coalition Electoral Slogan” should read something like this – “Vote for us because the “Socialists (Greens & ALP)” will kill you with their obsession with “Renewables”.
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Where? In every jurisdiction the Greens have policy documents. If you have not checked them why would you want “every Aussie” to know something that might not be true. For instance – this is Greens policy in NSW (my bold)
116
and this
113
What is your point Gee Aye?
60
His point is that the Greens know these facts,
and yet they STILL fight against the delivery of reliable energy systems that would significantly alleviate the problems in third world countries.
One can only take one conclusion from this.
and that is that this is what the Greens WANT !
90
Gee doesn’t ever have much of a point , he’s mainly here to correct spelling and punctuation errors.
KK
10
Gee Aye, get back to us when the Greens insist on a global agreement to ensure poor people get access to cheap coal fired electricity. Tell us about it when they demand a tax to prevent Indian children from dying from wood smoke.
140
thanks Jo. Which federal political party does?
00
Sorry but does
13
crap that didn’t go well – so ignoring the above although feel free to link it to this…
I mean does your statement mean I cannot reply in any way unless the greens release a statement specifically addressing the content of this blog topic?
in reality the other parties don’t comment on this at all, in any of their policy statements, or in hansard. If they don’t recognise the problem then the only way they will solve it is by accidentally having other policy that solves it (notwithstanding the whole nonsense that we are talking domestic policy influencing international problems).
Your problem seems to be that evidentially Greens agree with you about the problem, a problem unrecognised in policy of major left/right parties, but they don’t agree with you about the solution.
11
Gee Aye, the Greens can write a policy saying they care about everything and everyone. What they can’t do is prioritize everything at number 1. Clearly they think it’s more important to stop seas rising at 1mm a year than to stop people dying right now from a lack of electricity.
In this case “clean electricity” means coal powered. It won’t soot and fume up their homes, it doesn’t generate domestic pollution. It saves lives.
The Greens make a big deal about caring for the poor of the world. Their priorities say otherwise.
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Jo – I think you’ll also find that the greens showing “concern” over wood smoke, wood fires and wood stoves is primarily so they can BAN them.
There are plenty of references of that happening now in the USA, but here’s one:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/01/29/epas-wood-burning-stove-ban-has-chilling-consequences-for-many-rural-people/
They want to stop people burning wood. First fossil fuels, now wood. How soon before fire itself is banned?
They don’t care how many people die in the process, they want us back in the Stone Age.
51
We don’t need to go to Hansard to understand something of basic common sense.
Basic nous tells us that indoor coal fired room heating and cooking which existed in my home just over sixty years ago was probably not healthy, even with chimneys.
Basic statistics of life expectancy of New Guinea natives was known fifty years ago to depend on location.
Highlanders needing fire to keep warm died much sooner than those living on the more moderate coast where the only fires needed were outside for cooking.
As a combustion engineer, amongst other skills, I can vouch for the fact that coal gives off some nasties when burnt but mostly these can be limited in off gases from modern power plants.
The combustion of wood/ trees/ biofuels etc – the new “Green” alternative – is not by any means safe and anyone who sees burning wood as a better alternative to coal is not thinking straight.
Poisonous, toxic, expensive.
KK
10
My grandmother cooked and heated with wood for 60 years before her kids built her a new house with oil heat and gas range. She lived to 96. Her sister heated and cooked with wood for 10 years longer and also lived into her 90s. The wood was timbered off their own land in a cycle of about 30 years, meaning that they started on one end of the property and cut to the other. By that time the starting point had regrown.
PS: Both their husbands died in their 60s from cutting said timber. Hard life, but it was all they knew.
20
Hi James interesting.
Your ancestors, like me, obviously had very effective chimneys.
Primitive people’s don’t get to be protected like that.
KK
10
Reminds me of an old song by Don and Phil Everly:
“Green, Greeen green
Green, Gre ee een green
When I need you, In the night
I love you so, In the night
Whenever I want you all I gotta do is
Gree ee ee ee een”.
KK
Yeah, I know its stupid but this is about the greens and so it fits right in.
10
So the Greens acknowledge that open fires are more harmful to human health than modern fossil fuel power generators. Why are the various Green NGO’s not campaigning for relatively cheap modern fossil fuel generation in the poor brown-skinned countries to vastly improve the quality of life for up to 3.5 billion human beings? As to your second quote, is that $A or $US and to what geographical area does the statistic apply?
110
Heres my read. It’s because they know that the vast majority of energy poor nations in the world aren’t likely to have incidences of people freezing to death because they live in warmer climates. A convenient reality that relieves them of intellectual rigour. What they arrogantly fail to recognise is that these people tend to rely on wood fires to cook on, generally within their houses. I’m pretty sure these people would love the convenience of electric or gas fired stoves. Barack wants them to adopt solar panels and wind turbines because green fascists and their minions in the MSM intimidate him. Please Scotty, beam him up?!!.
The particulate argument has been prevalent here in Christchurch. It’s a city whose site was badly chosen, on swampland in the lee of a mountainous peninsular – a smog trap. Coupled with this a population which has consistently underestimated the severity of Christchurch winters (bravado), a preponderance of draughty wooden and minimally insulated houses and a heavy reliance on wood fires meant years of winter smog. Now the great and the good whose philosophical forebears built those houses are removing wood fires systematically. The people of Christchurch have exchanged emphysema for pneumonia. And all of this because from the start they’ve had leaders who’ve made dumb decisions and compounded the problems.
Most politicians are people who take their whims, prejudice and arrogance and make a career out of it.
90
mixing your greens there Kevin
02
Gee Aye,
The more industrial and wealthy a country gets, the longer its people generally live. It’s financial poverty and energy poverty that yields short life expectancy and both kinds of poverty is what the Greens would not only bring us, but actually wish to bring us. Like the Islamists, they hate the West. They don’t care about your lungs and they don’t care whether you freeze either. Their only interest in particles in the air is in how they can use them to political advantage. They are actually more concerned about the feelings of the IS head hackers than your well being. That’s unless you are one of them . . . and even then.
100
thanks for the rhetoric. Some evidence would be great.
19
OK, but I just found this late, so it’ll be tomorrow or the weekend.
00
Gee Aye,
I don’t wish to go to the trouble of replying in a used-by thread so I’ll prepare my reply and save it for an ‘Unthreaded Weekend’ or a new thread that, like this one, is discussing the Green’ menace.
20
The real issue is that that so-called “green” agenda is world wide.
It is stopping the development of solid, reliable energy production is many third-world countries.
The Green agenda zealots with their billions etc are trying to stop funding for efficient, reliable energy delivery projects that could save millions of lives in third world and developing countries.
And this is all because of the utter stupidity of trying to decrease the output of the building block of all life on Earth, CO2.
These third world countries are being force to rely on wood, dung, and goodness knows what else, for cooking. Certainly so-called, but very mis-named “Green” energy sources can NEVER provide a replacement or a reliable alternative.
THIS IS THE REAL TRAGEDY, and all those involved, and who support this agenda, should be figuratively hung, drawn and quartered. !
Or turned into leaf mulch. !
101
A few things I’ve discovered about the green agenda :
(1) Reducing energy reduces economic activity. The general plan seems to wreck our way of life.
(2) Creating an energy “crisis” creates dependency on the govt for handouts – this is Socialism 101
(3) The green agenda also has population reduction woven through it – in the first world this is through killing off grannies in cold houses. In the 3rd world this is achieved through rationing power to people so they cant run fridges or hospitals reliably.
(4) Power rationing seems to be a big thing for the green control freaks – smart meters allow additional form of control/monitoring. The 3kw limit in Italy I think is just the tip of the iceberg.
(5) the RET scheme that has caused so much pain in Spain is an example of how a honey pot trap can be set so well…..and used to crash an economy.
102
I think your point (2) could be broadened to sum up the entire “progressive” agenda.
The aim is always to create problems, not solve them. That we you can “employ” a constant stream of dim-bulb drones to shuffle paper round all day and wail to the media how awful everything is.
As a US commenter put it: “What on earth would the Democratic Party do if there weren’t any homeless people on the streets of US cities?”
70
Greens would ban you from burning wood or even lighting a fire, while making electricity so expensive you have no alternative.
Taking The Rise of The Greens & the Banny State to save us from our kettles, toasters and open fires.
110
The grate Bob Brown should be CC’d into this !
31
We’ve seen a few govt employees actually killed over environmental issues – this is not a good state of affairs at all, however if the screws get tightened more and more, I predict violence in the streets.
Having said that, it seems the plan is to drive people to riot so then they can crack down on us, the classic excuse to implement martial law.
Like it or not, it seems like we are being herded into a dead end with social & economic “gun emplacements” on each side…
Its pretty insidious but that seems to be the state of play..
61
thanks for the evidence
06
Gee… Aye….. just open your eyes.
30
Except of course if you are Bob Brown……
20
Just for those not up wityhnthe “Bob Brown ” thing
There was a classic picture of him complaining about carbon”pollution” from coal fired power stations, while behind him was his house, with wood smoke billowing from his chimney. 🙂
20
whoops , major typo in first line.. sorry !
should read, “not up with the Bob Brown thing”
00
the Indians and the Chinese are losing interest in CAGW! no doubt they have more important things on their minds:
4 Sept: Bloomberg: Sangwon Yoon/Mark Drajem: China and Indian Leaders Said to Skip UN Climate Summit
The top leaders of China and India aren’t planning to attend this month’s United Nations summit on climate change, signaling tepid support for a global pact to cut greenhouse gases among two of the largest emitters…
“I was completely shocked and very disappointed to read today that Chinese President Xi and Indian Prime Minister Modi may not make it to Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit,” said Tony deBrum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, in the northern Pacific Ocean, in a statement. “For the small island states of the world, the science says we might be forced to pay the biggest price of all — the loss of our countries. We expect solidarity from our developing country compatriots, not excuses.” …
“The issue for us is really on the commitments that countries will bring and the secretary general expects member states to come with strong and bold commitments on climate change,” Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said yesterday in New York. He said he has nothing to add when asked about the leaders’ attendance…
The summit comes as scientists are increasingly warning of the risks of climate change…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-03/xi-and-modi-said-to-skip-un-climate-summit-later-this-month.html
40
hahahahahaha….
3 Sept: Bloomberg: Matthew Carr: Carbon Credits Give $664 Benefits Per Ton, Imperial Says
Carbon-reduction projects generate benefits beyond climate protection of about $664 per metric ton of emissions, according to an Imperial College London University survey.
The study into 59 projects showed they bring ecosystem gains including soil protection, water regulation and biodiversity conservation, the university said. The survey’s estimate compares with an average price of $4.90 a metric ton in the voluntary carbon market, where companies and individuals buy credits, Ecosystem Marketplace data show. The research was commissioned by the International Carbon Reduction and OffsetAlliance, an emissions industry group…
The study, the first to measure non-climate benefits for a wide grouping of projects, seeks to help attract demand in the voluntary market, which shrank 28% last year to $379 million, according to researcher Ecosystem Marketplace…
***The Imperial College analysis calculated $609 a ton of ecosystem benefits. There was $52 a ton in fuel savings, about $3 a ton in economic benefits and 56 cents a ton of skills and jobs improvements…
Average prices in the voluntary market dropped 17 percent last year, according to Ecosystem Marketplace’s research.
***They are still above prices in the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, where benchmark credits settled yesterday at 16 euro cents ($0.21) a ton on ICE Futures Europe in London. Those contracts, which can be used for a portion of compliance needs in the European carbon market, were as high as 23.38 euros a ton in July 2008.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-03/carbon-credits-give-664-benefits-per-ton-imperial-study-shows.html
the “56 cents a ton of skills and jobs improvements” out of a total of $664 is, surely, the funniest bit in this piece.
70
where are the Greens? where are Greenpeace, Jo?
(2 pages) 3 Sept: Environmental hypocrisy? Greenpeace embarrassed by leaders’ jet-setting carbon footprint
Pascal Husting’s commute, dubbed ‘Flygate,’ angers environmental activists, repels donors
by Gordon Darroch – Special to The Washington Times
THE HAGUE — For two years, Pascal Husting’s employer chartered a jet to shuttle him most weeks between his home in Luxembourg and his office in Amsterdam…
Mr. Husting’s weekly commute prompted a chorus of derision from Greenpeace opponents after “Flygate” was revealed in Dutch media this summer…
In the Netherlands alone, nearly 700 donors have canceled contributions to Greenpeace in response to the news of Mr. Husting’s flights.
As the public relations disaster became clear, more than 40 Greenpeace staff members signed a letter in July demanding Mr. Husting’s resignation and asking Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo to “reflect” on his own job…
Mr. Husting was unable to relocate his family to Amsterdam, so Mr. Naidoo exempted him from an in-house rule to take overland routes for trips of less than 320 miles…
“Externally, this flying scandal seriously undermines our credibility as an organization,” the employees wrote in the July letter, which was printed in Dutch media. “Every time we criticize politicians or companies, this story will come back [to haunt us]. If Greenpeace does not walk the talk, why should others do so? You do not seem to understand how public opinion works.”
Some say Flygate is only the beginning…
Dutch journalists also revealed that the head of Greenpeace’s Dutch office, Sylvia Borren, had flown to Bangladesh, New Zealand, Peru and South Africa in the same year for business and personal reasons. Ms. Borren, who has family in New Zealand, issued a statement saying the flights were “of vital importance for my work and [only] in part for my private life.”
Greenpeace has since hired a new finance director and commissioned external audits to prevent further scandals…
Greenpeace spokesman Andrew Kerr said the organization’s international board ultimately would decide whether Mr. Naidoo handled the situation properly.
“It was an error of judgment which everybody regrets and Pascal has apologized for,” the spokesman said. “Kumi has not asked for Husting’s resignation. Ultimately, that’s the decision he has to make as executive director.”
But, Mr. Timmermans said, “I don’t think there is a way back.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/3/directors-frequent-flights-leave-big-carbon-footpr/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
40
where are GetUp, Jo? u won’t believe it:
4 Sept: SMH: Peter Hannam: Australia’s first fossil-free super fund launched
A global movement to divest from fossil fuels will get some local impetus with the launch on Thursday of the country’s first fossil-free superannuation fund.
***The fund, Future Super, aims to secure $1 billion in funds within “the next few years”, said Simon Sheikh, a former activist with GetUp! and the fund’s co-founder and managing director.
“That will send a message to the fossil-fuel industry that their social licence is being taken away from them,” Mr Sheikh said.
“There’s no doubt that the market is heading in this trajectory.”…
Mr Sheikh credited US climate hawk Bill McKibben as an inspiration for Future Super with his view that “if it’s wrong to wreck the climate then it’s wrong to profit from its wreckage”.
The fund will not only screen out companies that extract or process fossil fuels but all the banks that finance such projects – meaning it will avoid ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac.
Bendigo Bank has provided seed funding and advice to Future Super…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australias-first-fossilfree-super-fund-launched-20140904-10bu4l.html
20
So, like all eco loons, they will only profit from those industries that use “fossil” fuel generated power and use oil, gas or coal derived feedstocks in their products. They will also profit from industries which use products that rely on them. That’s pretty much everything so chalk up another one for tissue thin hypocry-eco-symbolism.
When I see one of these tree huggers fly to some environmental “conference” in Rio De Janeiro in a Gulfstream made with wood from trees that have fallen and died “naturally” I’ll still be unimpressed with their commitment to the cause. Now, if that plane’s made with tooling of hand knapped stone or tools and parts made from metals whose ores are dug by hand and smelted in furnaces powered only by deadwood (also collected by hand) I’ll be mildly impressed. If they can power that EcoGulfstream with the finest natural latex rubber bands (harvested and cured by hand) or wood fired steam boilers I’ll reconsider their massively hypocritical lifestyles… assuming that they can wind those rubber bands with windmills also made with stone age technology.
Until then I will continue treat them with the disdain they deserve and I will continue to rely on naturally occurring complex hydrocarbons from Mother Earth to provide an endless array of chemicals and materials along with the energy to use them to improve the human condition.
40
C’mon, the greens are right there! On target! It’s been called the ‘population trim project’. Just imagine if all economies were reduced to ‘sustainable energy’ and horse and cart for farming. Just one reduced growing period in the Northern Hemisphere will kill MILLIONS. Two or more reduced growing periods and world faces armageddon.
The cold is coming.
70
“risks tarnishing” Vanessa? call it for what it is…hypocrisy:
3 Sept: WSJ Blog: Vanessa Mock: Coal Renaissance Risks Tarnishing the EU’s Green-Energy Credentials
The European Union prides itself as the being the world’s green crusader…
But a revival of coal as an energy source across Europe is leaving a dark spot on the EU’s green credentials, according to a new report by several environmental pressure groups…
At the center of Europe’s coal renaissance is the region around the German-Polish border, already home to five of Europe’s most polluting coal plants, says the report, which was compiled by CAN Europe, WWF, the European Environmental Bureau, the Health and Environment Alliance and Climate Alliance Germany. Swedish power firm Vattenfall GmbH is now planning to expand the number of open-cast mines in the Lausitz area to exploit its deposits of lignite, a particularly polluting type of coal.
Vattenfall says the Lausitz mines, with their vast deposits, are there to take up the slack when renewable energy sources fail to meet Germany’s needs. “Without flexible and reliable brown coal, we wouldn’t be able to provide stable electricity supplies at stable prices,” the company says on its website…
According to the report, Germany — along with the U.K. — had the highest number of coal plants with especially high CO2 emissions in the EU in 2013.
The study,which ranks the top 30 most-polluting power plants based on their absolute CO2 emissions in 2013, with Germany and the U.K. each having nine of these lignite or hard-coal plants. Germany uses more coal to generate electricity than any other EU country, says the study.
“It’s the availability and low price of coal that’s driving the growth in coal in Germany,” says Darek Urbaniak of WWF. “There’s a risk that coal is here to stay.”…
Recent plans by the Obama administration in the U.S. to curb emissions from power plants could result in more exports of cheap U.S. coal to Europe…
Powerful business groups in Europe say that “carbon leakage” — when companies with high emissions move to places where they bear a lower financial burden — could undermine Europe’s economic recovery.
http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2014/09/03/coal-renaissance-risks-tarnishing-the-eus-green-energy-credentials/
20
What on earth did they expect? They try to shut down nuclear which doesn’t generate CO2, and want to replace it with part time generation from wind farms. Since everybody wants full time electricity, the loss of capacity has to be taken up by coal or gas fired generation.
When the wind farms actually work ( or solar does) the surge of electricity is dumped onto the market. The hydro (pumped storage) operators are sick and tired of this and have started charging to take it. That means dumping onto the inter-connected euro grid brings more in so long as the price is positive (the subsidies help reduce the loss). Cheap intermittent wind power stuffs the market for low emission methods, so they go out of business.
The result is that increasing the level of wind power increases emissions of CO2.
The next disaster will be France where the “snips” want to get rid of one third of nuclear and “replace” it with wind!!?? Do they think that wind blows all the time? The result will be that French emissions will rise, and the loss of nuclear capacity will adversely affect both the UK and Belgium.
They in turn will increase their emissions as they scramble to keep their grids working.
60
4 Sept: Bloomberg: Rachel Morison: U.K. Power Plants Use More Coal With Profit Near Five-Month High
Coal-fired power plants in the U.K. are making profits near the highest in five months, encouraging more burning of the fuel to fill a gap left by halts of nuclear reactors after natural gas became less competitive.
The next-month clean-dark spread, a measure of coal-plant profitability, has more than tripled from a four-year low in July, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Power generation from coal reached the highest level since May yesterday, National Grid Plc figures showed…
Coal and gas plants are needed to generate power around the clock after Electricite de France SA halted four of its U.K. reactors last month following the discovery of a defect in a boiler at one unit…
“The recent increase in coal-fired generation is predominantly to do with reduced nuclear capacity and subdued wind generation,” Dorian Lucas, an energy market analyst at Lytham, England-based Inenco Group Ltd., said Sept. 2 by e-mail…
Wind generation fell to the lowest level in a month yesterday, according to National Grid data…
Coal generation reached 12.3 gigawatts yesterday, the highest since May 20, while wind power touched 232 megawatts, the lowest since Aug. 2, according to National Grid figures…
Coal accounted for 31 percent of U.K. generation yesterday, compared with 43 percent for gas, 17 percent for nuclear and 1.9 percent for wind, according to National Grid data…
“Over the winter, during periods of peak demand all forms of generation will be required,” Lucas said. “However, it is likely that coal-fired generation will make up a larger proportion of the baseload mix.” …
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-04/u-k-power-plants-use-more-coal-with-profit-near-five-month-high.html
10
4 Sept: Hindustan Times: Anupama Airy: Blackouts from north to west, power crisis set to get worse
Of the country’s 100 thermal power stations, 56 have less than seven days of coal stocks, including 27 with supplies to last under four days, government data showed Wednesday.
Long outages in the last few days have hurt operations in tens of corporate towers in Mumbai and adjoining areas while the national capital’s suburbs in Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad have also been left in the dark.
Regular blackouts have led to street protests in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Bihar.
A patchy monsoon has kept water levels in reservoirs low, impacting hydro power generation…
Adding to the problem is a surge in demand. “This year, power demand has gone up 29%,” said Ashok Khurana, who heads an association of private power producers…
This sharp jump in plant capacity in the last two months has resulted in the coal shortages. “Companies did not anticipate this extra demand… orders for imported coal were based on last year’s demand,” Khurana said…
Authorities are also monitoring supply from the grids to power-deficit states such as UP and Haryana to prevent a collapse similar to the one in August 2012, which had left 600 million across north and east India powerless for nearly 24 hours…
The crisis has been exacerbated by at least two large producers, Tata Power and Adani Power, cutting back on their supplies to Punjab and Maharashtra, not only because of falling coal stocks but also over disputes related to settling dues.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/north-india-stares-at-worsening-power-crisis-after-crippling-coal-shortage/article1-1259550.aspx
4 Sept: India Today: Power crisis: Power plants running out of coal stocks
“We have stocks of less than a day at our plants at Badarpur, Dadri and Jhajjar all of which feed Delhi and NCR,” the official disclosed. Public sector NTPC is the biggest power producer in the country…
The quality of coal supplied to the power plants has also been an issue. Imported coal has to be mixed with domestic coal to fire the plants as the poor quality of Indian coal tends to damage the plants. Investments in washeries to upgrade the quality of Indian coal has also been tardy…
Coal fired thermal plants account for over two-thirds of the country’s power generation capacity. Senior officials point out that as many as 12 major power projects entailing an investment of `36,000 crore and having a total generation capacity of 7,230 MW are stranded due to a shortage of coal…
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/power-crisis-power-plants-running-out-of-coal-stocks/1/380785.html
10
the Greens are the greatest hypocrites in the country. The certainly don’t seem to be on the same planet as the rest of us, and they seem to believe that money grows on trees, or just happens…
50
I don’t doubt the figures about the deaths attributed to poorly ventilated fires, as wood smoke contains a lot carcinogens, and carbon monoxide is always present. In Launceston wood smoke has been a problem due to the winter inversion layer, and you can see it driving in from all directions. Now electricity prices are up people will get back to their wood heaters, the main problem is people trying to burn green wood ,particularly overnight; dry wood gives out far more heat and less smoke.
50
A wood fireplace is the only source of cost effective heating for us in winter, but the Department of Environment and Primary Industry try to make is as difficult as possible for people to source wood from our vast forests, only offering the mankiest and awkward places for collection. National parks are off limits, even though there are literally millions of dry sticks that were once healthy trees, killed by numerous bushfires, standing or fallen within. I sometimes feel that we’re in a third world country, or very soon will be one.
80
Well yes, that would be the idea…..although faced with the alternative of freezing….
Locking people out of parks and great swathes of land is UN Agenda 21 in action.
70
It is far easier to control cold, hungry peasants huddling around a fire or hot thirsty peasants swarming to the edges of rivers and lakes when they must spend all the daylight hours doing manual labor for food. Not much time to think about revolt. It’s far more difficult to control comfortable, educated, well fed people who can see through the scams of the liberals, Socialists, Fascists and Progressives (who pack the worst of all the “isms” into their philosophy.)
Since we started overthrowing monarchies a couple of centuries ago, and really accelerated the process in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the self styled “elites” have been trying to get us back into that feudal mindset. Originally they told us they ruled by Divine Right and perpetuated the myth that they were anointed by God (or gods) to rule us poor huddled masses. We’ve thrown that yolk off in many places around the world and they’ve been desperately trying to get it back around our necks ever since… the current Eco Lunacy is just another hank of traces they’re using to hitch us back up to their carriages and plows so we can create the wealth and power they wish to take and use for their own ends. That experiment that started in 1215 with the Magna Carta and was hammered into real freedom in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence is in real danger of destruction. Our brief century and a half of freedom will be gone unless we take it back from these self styled “aristocrats.”
40
Thrown off the yoke?! (not yolk!).
00
Jo
Opening the broader issue here to wider public understanding and debate is very much needed. Thank you!
The socio-babble phrase “decarbonising the economy” now pervades so much discussion in eco-political forums. This is a meaningless political mantra.
To many voters in comfortable societies (especially young people who have been filled with eco-fervour by school curricula) this seems to be automatically translated to a simple “cut man-made carbon dioxide emissions” crusade.
Industrial improvements over recent decades have seen particulate carbon pollution massively reduced in western countries/economies. This has been a major public health benefit.
Manipulation by environmental socialism of the meaning of “carbon pollution” still plays on ignorance or misunderstanding by the public. Media articles about colourless, odourless and biologically-essential carbon dioxide often feature an old photo of a sooty smokestack or of deliberately mis-represented water vapour above cooling towers.
Separating the issues of particulate air pollution and the level of carbon dioxide in the otherwise clear atmosphere is a major current problem for public understanding.
By deliberately blurring that distinction, the Greens policy commits developing and under-developed countries to endless energy deprivation at every home’s level.
Please keep this simple but mis-understood distinction raised at every appropriate opportunity.
60
In 1968 I made a solar powered oven as a school science project. Although it was hailed as a scientific breakthrough at the time, it took 20 minutes to cook an egg in the middle of a summers day. After 40 minutes I produced a half cooked Anzac biscuit!
The exact same problems beset solar systems today. No wonder they are all solutions for problems in Africa. No one on the first world, even the poor, would put up with such useless technology.
70
When I was in Lightning Ridge I had a solar powered fry pan. Just sit it out in the sun, crack an egg into it and Bob’s your aunty, fried eggs! 😛
Simply a good cast iron fry pan actually… gets a little warmish up that way….
40
O/T but interesting.
Bob Carter says in “Taxing Air” that HAD 4 is the data set used by the IPCC. I’ve just compared the trend from 1900 to 1950 and 1950 to 2000 using HAD 4 and it is much higher in the first 51 years. So how does that work????
BTW HAD 3 is much closer but still higher from 1900 to 1950. Can anyone give me an answer?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/to:2000/trend
21
Neville,
On both series, change 1950 to 1960 and redraw.
Explanation of the gap?
Geoff
20
Extremist Sir Paul Nurse says climate sceptics should be crushed and buried. What a wanker.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2743255/Climate-sceptics-crushed-buried-Sir-Paul-Nurse-attacks-politicians-distort-facts-global-warming.html
10
Western environmentalism is an ideological fashion statement more than anything else. It is certainly not something rooted in concern for others; concern for obscure toads and guppies, yes; people, no.
30
Where do you start on something like this?
The already Developed World became developed because it had access to a ….. RELIABLE ….. source of electricity.
Look at this link, and I know it’s probably tricky to understand, but it’s for total electricity generation.
Scroll down the list of Countries there and you can pick straight away which of them are Developed.
There’s probably 2 Billion people who have no access to electricity at any level at all, let alone what we have, a reliable source of electricity, and in our World, in ANY World, that only comes from fossil fuel sources, in the main coal fired power.
The Greens and their followers want those non Developed Countries to do without fossil fuel.
So, having said that, what they also call for is for us to not have fossil fuel electricity either.
So, in effect, they want us to go back and live like those who do not have it.
Trust me on this.
There is no politician anywhere who will allow us to go back and live like that. What they need to be told is exactly that, not to just surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear, where the most votes will come from, but what life would really be like without coal fired power.
The life we have now will just end. It’s as simple as that.
Let the Greens believe whatever it is they want to believe.
Let the rest of us live our lives.
And, begin the process to allow those in the Developed World to start the climb towards what we have. It will take time, but at least make the start.
THAT is the civilised way of doing things.
When the people finally get told the truth, (huh! good luck with that Tony) then and only then will things change.
It makes me sick to see that there are people willing to sacrifice life as we know it on the alter of what they think they know.
Tony.
80
Why, busy hacking away at the western economies, of course. It’s their real job, isn’t it?
30
The Greens priority is to spend billions to stop them dying in 2100 from seas rising at 1mm a year.”
I think this grossly misrepresents them. Then Green priority is to ensure that we DON’T stop Hamas or ISIS killing people. The impossible happened in Parliament: Whish-Wilson made me puke harder than your Senator.
11
I wonder how many people know not to burn CCA treated wood – the wood with a greenish tinge. It’s treated with a preservative containing arsenic, chromium and copper.
Burning treated wood concentrates and releases the preservative chemicals in the ash and smoke of a fire and is dangerous when inhaled.
20
Being “green” is a hobby of the elite.
Rule 1, in common with all progressives, is to tell others how to live their lives, whilst not conforming whatsoever to their own dictates.
You might be green if you ride an expensive bike in good weather in purpose built bike lanes in the country while wearing silly but expensive clothing, then decry cars as polluting and wish the poor to commute by bike in all weather and traffic.
You might be green if you buy “organic” foods at botique shops for higher prices, while boycotting stores that offer better values to the ordinary workingman.
You might be green if you have solar panels on your roof, feeding back into the grid, forcing the power company to buy your dirty DC and dump it which raising rates for everyone.
You might be green if you can force folks to give up their 30C US light bulbs in favor of $10 bulbs that require a hazmet suit should you have the misfortune to break one.
You might be green if you kill a logging and lumber industry to save the spotted owls, only to discover that you have to shoot the other owls who like the habitat and crowd out the spotteds (the logger have no brief).
You might be green if you ban inexpensive paper bags made from purpose grown trees and recycled pulp from the grocery, then ban plastic because it’s oil based, leaving cloth reusables and an order of magnitude increase in bacterial infection.
You might be green if you shut down a power plant for months because of one nesting pair of Osprey, but support a countryside full of bird cuisinarts and barbques.
One could go on for quite a while.
Kermit the frog was right.
“It’s not easy being green!”
If fact, from my view greens are so full of it that green is the new brown.
91
Brilliantly said!
20
Interesting how people react to this tragedy of millions dying from carbon combustion. Some want more carbon combustion (must be down to a question of “pollution”). The short to medium term solution to the problem is renewables: wind, solar. mini-hydro etc. The cost to Africa, especially, of building a capable electricity distribution network would be beyond their economies let alone the additional costs of mining development, transport and the construction of the power stations to meet the demand from am enormous populace. Cheap clean coal fired power is a long term solution that won’t impact the short to medium term fuel source need nor resolve the current needless death. Private capital investment won’t be cheap. PS I eat Greens!
16
How is that a short or medium term solution? Hydro is very site specific to be reliable and the “mini hydro” might as well be a mill from 3 centuries ago. If you want to run some light bulbs and a tv or two they’re fine. If you want to run any kind of industry or civilization… nope. Wind and solar, unless heavily subsidized, are far a more expensive an investment than coal. Neither of those technologies will pay for themselves without the subsidies. Wind cannot return the investment in energy to build and maintain nor is it remotely affordable per unit of delivered power. The only reason anyone is putting these things up is tax breaks and
kick backssubsidies.Solar is almost as bad, they are almost energy neutral but still massively expensive without being propped up with other peoples money. Neither wind or solar are reliable nor remotely capable of supporting basic industry. Why on earth would you spend what little money you have on either of them unless your goal is to maintain a subsistence economy and not a growing one? (We know the answer to that.) Coal has worked really well for over a century without subsidies and current technologies minimize the pollution concerns. Power infrastructure is far cheaper to install than hundreds or thousands of unsubsidized wind and solar farms that each work for a couple of hours a day. They have their place, but if you have limited funds, like so much of the third world, they are mostly a waste of money.
31
“The short to medium term solution to the problem is renewables: wind, solar. mini-hydro ”
MULE C**P !!
These things are a total waste of time and money.
If you want to pay for the inefficiencies and irregularity of supply, then do it on your own dime.
The best solution is to do exactly what we were doing before this anti-CO2 idiocy started.
Use coal-powered electricity from modernised power stations which control the output of real pollution while feeding the biosphere.
51
Well, as the Greens now see Homo sapiens as the most dangerous species on the planet, and should be seriously restricted in its range and breeding habits (though they have balked at culling – for now), the deaths of a few would appear to be of little consequence to them; that the victims are poor might stir a few, but only to bemoan that fact that they are not of “The Rich”. Which is ironic, really, as many of the higher echelons of Brownwar and WTF are quite wealthy – as is Al Gore, and others of his mould (and many are Marxists, or of communistic tendencies, which makes it doubly ironic). It is curious how so many Greens clamour for active reduction of population, yet do little themselves in that endeavour, so one has to wonder quite how committed they really are.
Ain’t fate cruel? So many of these Greens have been carrying their personal petards around, seeking to destroy the fortifications of industrial civilisation; when are they going to be hoist by them?
41
The thesis of the opening post, that coal-fired electricity would prevent deaths and health effects from in-home wood-burning stoves, is a complete non-sequitur.
That would require replacing those wood stoves with electric grills, requiring an extensive and _reliable_ power grid to _every house_, issues and costs simply not addressed here. It’s also a false dichotomy, in that while improved electrical supplies will be helpful, other measures exist that would be more effective for this issue.
In particular, better stoves (see the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, as but one organization leading this), whether natural draft rocket stoves, fan stoves, semi-gasifier stoves, natural draft top lighting stoves, or shared institutional stoves. Any of these reduce soot and internal pollution by as much as 90% and fuel use by ~50% – and can cost as little as $25. Solar stoves are a possibility in some regions (Haiti is a good example), although they only address cooking, not heating. None of these require anywhere near the infrastructure build as coal/electricity, and can be implemented on an immediate and ongoing basis.
It’s disappointing to see a serious health issue (inside wood-burning stoves) tied to a nonsense approach (coal generating electricity, neglecting the infrastructures and costs in 3rd world countries) to make policy arguments.
13
KR – yes, white goods and transmission lines are not cheap.
Perhaps cheaper though that stopping the seas rising?
Eg.
If we focus on deaths now, rather than theoretical badly modeled ones in the future, that same kind of money could go a long way.
Not to mention that Greenpeace have protested before at coal power stations in Africa.
21
Again, I consider this something of a false dichotomy, a fallacy of the excluded middle, as the question isn’t simply A or B. There’s really no reason why addressing CO2 levels would keep us from improving 3rd world cookstoves, or vice versa.
Many of the “think of the children/poor” arguments that have been presented in this vein suffer from being inappropriately cast as strictly either-or choices.
13
Which is assuming that CO2 levels are something that needs to be addressed, of course.
31
KR,
Sorry about the delay in replying.
There is a reason — money. The more money we waste fighting a non-problem, the less money there is to deal with real problems. All the billions I cited were used to run giant conferences and trading schemes, build useless wind farms, feed financial types, and run global warming propaganda ads. If that money were used instead to build coal fired stations in Africa, millions of lives could be saved.
You ignored my point.
You yourself would have to agree that if all that money were spent buying better cleaner stoves it could save millions of lives too.
My point was that the Greener types claim to care about poor Africans — but their priorities show that they don’t. They use the poor Africans as a token to pretend they are ethically or morally superior. I just expose their hypocrisy. The Greens hate coal more than they care about Africans.
22
See my comment at 27.2.1 – taking care of emissions now saves money that can be used for other purposes (like cook stoves), limits agricultural impacts that will disproportionately hit the poor and the 3rd world, etc. iMO the sensible approach for anyone caring for the 3rd world would be limiting the effects of AGW, not polluting more.
This is really one of my major objections to BAU – it’s a long term waste of money, economic foolishness. Yes, you disagree. For my part, however, the science compiled in the various IPCC WG1 and WG2 (impacts) reports make that clear – and objecting to those on the basis of conspiracy theories (such as by Radical Rodent on this thread) is absurd.
Adieu.
00
Unfortunately “taking care of emissions” requires a never ending supply of money, so there will never be any for real problems.
00
British Columbia has implemented a revenue-neutral carbon tax, with balancing reductions in personal and corporate taxes (with the lowest personal income tax rate in Canada for 2012). A five-year review of the effects indicate carbon emissions dropped by 17.4% per capita, while BC’s GDP growth kept pace with the rest of Canada – i.e. no discernible economic penalty.
So – higher energy prices, but lower taxes, meaning costs shift around but do not go up in total, no extra monies spent. And in the process causing a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Seems like a general win to me. And I wouldn’t mind a lower personal tax rate one bit.
10
KR, when you look at the billions that is being wasted on promoting this global scare, you have to wonder what improvements could have been made to the conditions for the poor of the world if that money had been directed to providing them with some reasonable technology instead.
Mind you, on a visit to Nigeria a few years ago, when my accent was noticed, I was asked where I was from. When I replied, “England,” I was then asked if I was there to make reparations. For one of the few times in my history, the answer rose immediately: “Reparations for what? We gave you roads, railways, electricity, water, telephones, television, radio, schools, hospitals, public buildings… Exactly what do you want reparations for?”
The meek reply was, “Oh. I hadn’t thought of it that way before…” The sad thing is that an awful lot of countries stopped expanding the infrastructure as soon as they had kicked out the hated English. For some reason, that stop was (and still is) blamed on the English (look no further than Zimbabwe, once the bread-basket of Africa, now just a basket-case and one of the poorest countries in the world – all, according to their leader, because of British rule that ended over 40 years ago).
41
Again, binary decisions are a false casting of the issues.
Mitigation, not incidentally, will be cheaper than adaptation (German Institute for Economic Research, also Watkiss et al. 2005, and research by Google, among others) British Columbia’s carbon tax has reduced emissions by 19-20%, with no discernable impact on the economy (Elgie & McClay 2013). Multiple studies have shown that carbon taxes for the US would impact GDP by only 1-2% at most,
The old saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” holds true for climate change as well.
11
Ah, yes… taxation: the universal solution for the socialist-minded.
CO2 emissions are continually being reduced by simple application of capitalism: if you can reduce your consumption, you will improve your profits. Thus, cars nowadays have engines a fraction of the capacity of the cars in the 1930s, yet are more powerful, and consume less fuel. The same could probably be said of every form “fossil” fuel consumption, be it the lawn-mower or the gigawatt power station, the vacuum cleaner or the hairdryer.
Socialists, though, seem unable to see that, preferring their dream of being in strict control of every aspect of our lives, for which taxation has to be applied, especially if the intention is to “squeeze the rich until the pips squeak.” (Dennis Healey, circa 1978).
Now, of course, we have to discuss whether any reduction of CO2 emission will have any effect whatsoever upon climate change. The evidence to date that it will not, so why impose such strictures upon human development?
01
All the studies that show that changing the weather is “cheaper” than adapting too it make two mistakes:
1/ They assume we can change the weather despite the failures of unverified models, and the lack of empirical evidence supporting it.
2/ Their result depends on the discount rate they choose.
Multiple studies may have shown carbon taxes would impact GDP by 1 – 2% but none of them show that those carbon taxes (at those levels) would change the weather.
If the US used 1 – 2% of it’s GDP on foreign aid – building an electrical grid in Africa — you think it would not save more lives than spending it on windmills and solar panels in the USA — in the hope that someday the profits from those will pay for research that discovers how to finally make them cost effective? Or perhaps you think those windmills and solar might actually save enough CO2 to cool the world and hold back the seas? Numbers are not your friend here.
The old saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is a pointless cliche which is just as often wrong.
00
” … requiring an extensive and _reliable_ power grid to _every house_, issues and costs simply not addressed here.”
So, the infrastructure to provide electricity to every house is simply too costly to contemplate, but NBN fibre to every door is a brilliant idea that will transform lives.
Have I got that right?
10
KR, Better stoves was my first thought as a short term solution to this problem. But that doesn’t exclude access to cheap electricity as a long term goal.
00
Agreed, both are worthwhile goals! But addressing one doesn’t prevent addressing the other, and the extreme “either-or” presentation in the opening post strikes me as ideological rather than realistic.
10
But…but…I thought saving the planet was more important than saving people.
20
So much for the concern of our governments for the welfare of those whose welfare it is their job to look out for.
They are AWOL when it comes to their basic responsibilities.
Life has been very cheap for a very long time and becomes more so when an imaginary problem takes precedence over real ones. With probably more than 7 billion of us to point the finger at it’s not hard to see how they can dismiss as many as several billion to save an “ailing” planet.
I have no way to verify the number of fellow human beings at risk. But the cold iron fist of disregard for their basic needs has been around a long time.
30
Rather more than sixteen and a half centuries ago, the Roman emperor Julian nearly died from Carbon monoxide poisoning, arising from the fumes from an indoor stove, but he survived, to tell the tale. In the year (364) following Julian’s death (from other causes), his successor, Jovian, actually was killed by Carbon monoxide, emanating from an indoor stove. Isn’t it amazing that millions and millions of people today are using stoves of similar lethality to the one that poisoned a Roman Emperor one thousand, six hundred and fifty years ago?
10
[…] Negotiator 1: It’s not. Something like 4 million people die annually from indoor air pollution. But now they want electricity, and they want it from something cheap like coal, something that […]
00
I remember clearly the filthy air in Missoula in the 70’s before we outlawed wood stoves. And I recall the filthy condition of the Clark Fork River so it was a place to avoid rather than the valuable recreational and tourism area it is today. And I look to present day W. Virginia and North Carolina mass poisonings and just honestly have to ask what’s wrong with laws to protect clean air and water? They provably and visibly work and the economy and life go on, in fact the states with some of the strongest regulation also have the most robust economies. The cost of doing nothing on Climate Change is too high to contemplate. BTW, nobody is being put out of the logging business because of environmentalists, there are thousands of acres of areas available for harvest and no bidders are showing up because multi-national corporations control everything and they’re getting a better deal in Canada. The small sawmills and independent loggers have been run out of business-my family was one of those victims. A major factor affecting the timber mills is the tripling of energy bills in Montana after our last two Republican Governors “deregulated” the energy industry in the 90’s and destroyed Montana Power and it’s tens-of-thousands of jobs and taking the aluminum smelter and it’s 3500 jobs as a bonus. Now SCOTUS has thrown out our century old campaign laws making it harder to stop them from doing this crap again. Montana and America need to review just why we enacted those laws to begin with and remember we started this whole experiment to prove the many could govern themselves without our blessed Royalty looking after us…
00
“The cost of doing nothing is too high.” Not so.
There is no empirical evidence that spending billions will make even 0.1C difference to global temperatures. But we know that money could save millions if it were spent on real problems.
10