By Jo Nova
Does anyone care? 600 million Africans don’t have electricity
They burn wood for power. Forests are razed and no one even notices. As Geoff Hill says, they warm their homes and cook their food the only way they can — by chopping down forests and converting wood to charcoal, a fuel used by the Greeks and Romans. If they had coal fired power or gas plants they wouldn’t need to cut down 400 year old trees.
An area the size of Switzerland is being denuded every year, 70% of Africa’s forests are gone, but it’s as if the rest of the world barely registers it.
Solar panels don’t work under thick cloud, and can blow away in cyclones, hydro plants won’t work in droughts, but fossil fuel plants survive bad weather. Do the Greens really care about the environment, or the poor — does the ABC, CBC or the BBC?
His advice: don’t let them get away with propaganda that keeps people in poverty
When you see a newspaper article claiming that sandstorms and creeping desert are solely down to climate change, write a letter to the editor – even just a few lines – explaining that a loss of vegetation is what allows the sand to blow and the desert to grow. This is not a denial of climate change, but a call for action. We must make sure Africans have the same access to electricity as in developed countries, then there will be no need for charcoal.
This is really a staggering issue of suffering and loss:
Exerpts from Geoff Hill’s paper, NetZeroWatch
In Africa there’s a war against trees. … on a continent where millions have no electricity, the only fuel is wood, usually reduced to charcoal.
According to the World Bank, there are 25 countries that have less than half their people on the grid, and all bar one (Haiti) are in Africa.
Africa’s population has grown four-fold since 1960 and now stands close to 1.4 billion, and an estimated 80% of households rely on wood or charcoal. There are alternatives, including gas, kerosene and, where it’s available, electricity, but all come at a cost. Where trees are not replanted, the land degrades. Forest soil is loose and powdery, and blows in the wind; soon enough, there’s a desert where the jungle once stood.
Africa produces 60% of the world’s charcoal, around 25 million tons a year. Some is exported to Europe, but most is for local use. Yet it’s largely excluded from academic texts, and ignored by those who call for an end to oil, coal or gas.
Most civilizations had a Charcoal Age
Charcoal was a crucial fuel:
It’s the five-to-one rule that makes it work. Five tons of wood can be reduced to one ton of charcoal by burning off the moisture, gas and other elements, leaving a solid block of energy. This allows large amounts of fuel to be moved even where transport is a challenge. The seller can pack a dozen bags on a bicycle, and for buyers, a single bag (8–12 kg) can last a week.
Charcoal is among the most important materials in the story of civilization. It burns hotter than logs, with enough energy to liquify metal. Without it, the Pharaohs would not have had their jewellry and gold coffins, and the Greeks, Romans and Zulus would have fought with clubs instead of spears. It is used to filter drinking water and to keep your fishtank clean. Later came coking or mineral coal, the two often used together, and without them we’d have had no nails, barrels, warships or cannons, and no bronze or iron age. The industrial revolution and, later, the wires that made possible Edison’s capture of electricity and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, all relied on the ability to melt the various metals and blend them into alloys.’
Malawi, for example, has 21 million people, and 90% of them rely on wood and charcoal. When the government tries to ban charcoal, people smuggle it anyway.
A staggering 85% of the population is not on the grid, and Malawi has no oil or natural gas. Three quarters get by on $2 per day or less
The new hope is coal. Malawi has proven reserves of more than two million tons, with several mines in operation. A thermal power station is being built at Zalewa, a small town north of Blantyre, and the projected output of 300 MW will almost double the existing supply. Whether any of the cleaner technologies now available in South Africa will be used to limit emissions is not clear.
Tanzania to the north and Zimbabwe in the south have a growing dependence on coal, and the trend looks set to continue, even while Europe and the US seek to scale down their use of fossil fuels. In Malawi, all electricity is controlled by the state, and there have been several price hikes in recent years. Two solar plants produce just 80 MW, with another two on the drawing board, but there is a problem: Malawi has cloud cover an average of 38% of the year, peaking at close on seven days out of ten in January and February.
We can all see what’s coming. How will any tree survive?
Read it all at NetZeroWatch.
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
I believe that China was building the power station in Malawi, so the latest technology (that is banned in Australia).
There were problems with hydroelectric production due to a drought.
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Yes, but 2Mt as a Resource is truly tiny, miniscule, and the normal requirement of reasonable thermal properties to run a modern coal-fired power station can reduce that 2Mt by up to 30% as Reserve.
Even at a low 300MW of designed output, 2Mt as a base Resource is not a longer term proposition. Importing suitable fuel from “neighbours” like (say) Mozambique, or South Africa, is fraught with the sort of scary politics and incompetence that will make very large mountains out of very small molehills.
I wish them well. I fear however that the improvement in living standards will be quite short.
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That purple bit on the chart is wrong, all those Africans will move to Europe, Australia etc, balancing out the regions.
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Its unlikely that the rest of the world will accommodate Billions of African immigrants. They tend to be a major drain on oecd economies and heavily over-represented in crime stats.
The imminent singularity is going to rapidly change the math on all these anticipated problems – Eg energy and most manufactured goods are likely to get a lot cheaper, and the world will get a lot richer. Africans will get access to much higher levels of tech. PV does work on cloudy days, just less total output.
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In rural Vietnam in the mid 1990s it was common to see a large pit smouldering.
After being covered over to smother the fire, the people could later uncover and dig out the “coke” which would burn cleaner in the house than raw timber or coal.
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On cloudy days in the UK summer my experiments with a solar panel showed the panel working at 80% in bright sun in the 2 hours each side of noon but 20% when clouds came over.
Earlier and later in the day the output was half that in similar conditions. During winter the solar couldn’t be measured on a cloudy day and reached 20% at peak sun. These things are useless and random and could only become a player if the panel actually directly tracked the sun AND was able to store the surplus.
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Yes, they are good at driving your air-conditioning in summer but useless in warming your house in winter.
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Because the anti-energy lobby are denying Africa reliable and inexpensive electricity generation, Africans remain reliant on biomass like wood or dung for indoor cooking. This results in huge amounts of respiratory diseases.
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South Africa has been experiencing rolling blackouts.
‘The World Bank approved a $1 billion loan for South Africa on Wednesday to help it address an energy crisis that has peaked this year with the country’s worst electricity blackouts. The energy problem has forced the country to lean on its highly polluting coal-fired power stations.’ (ABC)
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There would have been fewer blackout periods in South Africa if the power plants had received the scheduled maintenance….
From the son of a former SA power company contractor….
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Once the World Bank and the IMF get involved they are really screwed. Expect austerity measures to be imposed, then the sell off of all state assets to the multinationals, outsourcing of manufacturing and banking to the West and finally foreign military bases and enforced buying of foreign military technology. RIP SA.
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That’s the bad result?
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As China re-colonises Africa, the Chicomms will solve Africa’s energy problem.
The price will be African resources shipped to China and local African slaves to work Chinese mines, plantations and factories.
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As the author said, its reminiscent of colonial days, but we are now in the 21st century so obviously its going to be different.
Xi had high hopes that the Belt and Road would uplift the African masses, supplying them with electricity so that they can join the middle class.
The focus is on a sustainable energy mix for each country, depending on their natural resources, however some of these ambitious projects may never be realised as China falls into economic depression.
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That wasn’t the true purpose of Belt and Road. Xi doesn’t care about Africans or anyone else.
It’s real purpose was to create unserviceable debt traps resulting in a debt for equity swap as in Sri Lanka.
It was mainly intended for desperate Third World countries but the Victorian Dictator Dan Andrews also signed up but had to be stopped by the Feds. Come to think of it, desperate Third World countries including Australia.
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China is Africa’s largest trading partner and its fourth-biggest source of investment, however corrupt governments still persist and if they don’t pay their dues then penalties apply.
Sri Lanka is a classic example of what can go wrong. The country had become dependent on tourism, but that dried up with Covid and they ran out of money. Debt for equity swap is not a bad outcome, hardly any ships pull in there.
Sudan wants to build a hydro dam to get some electricity, only one percent of the population enjoy the luxury. Beijing put their hand up and so did the US through the World Bank. This super power rivalry is good for impoverished Africans.
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Except as of 2022, Sri Lanka had $42B foreign debt, of which $7B was owed to China. China certainly didnt invent debt traps, ask Argentina.
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Exactly.
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Nothing new about this move.
China won the war in Rhodesia / Zimbabwe, installing the appalling Robert Mugabe, with a bit of help from Malcolm Fraser and a LOT from “Lord Carrington” whose baleful presence is related to the steady flow of Chinese-made military hardware into that benighted country. Some of us notice such things.. See also: Mozambique.
They also were the logistics and “management” behind Idi Amin in Uganda. The “muscle” was supplied by a large contingent of some of the best shock-troops from North Korea. These set the “tone” of that arrangement.
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Super power rivalry in Africa is nothing new, Washington has recognised for a long time that Africa needs energy, however they have pretty much sat on their hands until Beijing showed up.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-holds-upper-hand-in-battle-with-U.S.-for-Africa-s-energy
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Japan has grown rich as it has grown old. The last person left in Japan will command a vast share of global wealth – currently valued at USD2.25tr on a net basis.
China is finding it challenging to gain wealth as it grows old because it is a late comer to the hoarding of global resources and so large in population. Africa provides a new frontier where caucasians have earnt a poor reputation. Chinese know-how combined with Africa’s population and natural resources offers some potential for ageing China to gain wealth.
China is largest creditor nation but is a long way behind Japan on a per capita basis. USA is largest debtor while Australia is not far behind on a per capita basis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_international_investment_position_per_capita
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Japan has been in Recession for over two decades and is only now showing a moderate recovery.
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The ensuing desertification will limit the carrying capacity of the land. The process is self-regulating. Starvation has a tendency to reduce fertility. Do gooders intervening just prolongs the inevitable; a new generation of breeders who face higher level of starvation. Rather than letting the problem sort itself out, it gets prolonged.
Biomass on Earth has sequestered vast amounts of carbon. Carbon based lifeforms are entwined into the evolution of Earth. If Humans in Africa come to dominate over the trees in Africa, they will be engineering their own extinction. Trees in central Africa are the reason this region remains green. Remove all the trees and it becomes desert. Broken Hill and the early days of its insatiable silver and lead smelters are testament to the importance of trees in moderating climate in potentially arid regions.
Estmates of present living plant mass is 450Gt. Human mass estimated at 0.06Gt. But humans can be quite destructive when it comes to the relative impact. The plant mass is estimated to be increasing at 0.5Gt/yr due to increased CO2 levels but maybe not in Africa where the trees are being cut down faster than they can increase mass.
China’s use of coal for smelting iron ore dates back to 206BC. Europe almost denuded forests before they started using coal for smelting iron just a few centuries ago. I expect Africa to have similar response to deforestation as Australia – equating to desertification because the sustained solar intensity over Africa is closer to Australia than Europe.
Victorian forests now open for spring wood gathering. Still damp but also plenty of fuel on the ground taking time to dry out but primed for the errant spark. My tonne or so a speck in the ocean of wood.
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Rickwill, one query, if I may …
Human mass of 0.06Gt – or 60 million tonnes – gives an average of ~ 7.5Kg per human (for 8 billion).
There are an awful lot of infants, notably in Africa, but a more realistic guess might be 35-40 Kg. Taking 40 Kg., as a plausible global average (guess), 8.1 billion humans will weigh 0.324 Gt in total.
(324 million tonnes – China’s coal burn in less than a month!)
All approximations and guesses, of course.
But still comfortably below the figure of plant biomass increase of 0.5Gt/y that you give.
Thanks!
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Remember back in 2014, almost ten years ago now, Joanne had a Post about something similar, when they tried to construct a coal fired power plant in Niger.
There’s a table at that Post showing how 23 Countries in Africa generate less power in a year than is consumed by Adelaide in that same year.
That’s whole Countries, not just cities but 23 separate Countries, with a population (at the time, 2014) of 142 million people, with less power than Adelaide.
It’s well worth looking at that table again, adding context to this article from Joanne.
Niger, Africa where 17 million people use less electricity than Dubbo, NSW
Amazing how far things have progressed in Africa in these last ten years eh!
Umm, yeah, right! Same old same old eh!
Tony.
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gotta keep dem dare blaks on de hommi range after all
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That was a great article you did too Tony. I hadn’t forgotten it. I just wondered if the numbers have changed…
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The only hope for Africa’s animal life is western zoos – and given how the west is travelling, that must be a long-term forlorn hope.
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yum… inner city food
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Africa is huge. African animals will be around long after Aussie zoos have closed . .
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My view- and this is just one example- is that we’ve caused and continue to increasingly cause massive damage to our environment, without even considering the climate.
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Peeing in the river won’t raise temps , dumping garbage in the river won’t raise temps , fossil fuel use “may” raise temps by one fifth of .0000 of a pifteenth. Yes man pollutes the environment but climate ? Got a link ?
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Who is this “we” you belong to?
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We are throwing away trillions on a religious belief system, instead of using some of that to address real problems like real pollution, or providing cheap energy to those who need it.
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A blast from the past;
It’s An indication of what the NSW EPA thinks about pollution.
https://joannenova.com.au/2019/08/submission-due-for-the-west-australian-epa-on-monday/#comment-2181784
Lib or Lab both the same looking to minimise costs for their masters at the expense of our environment.
That cyanide release could have been stopped or minimised with a barrier around the mud while it was taken out and dumped carefully.
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check Robert Bryce’s second paper – Women, Electrified
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Here in Sydney today temperature reached 15deg C.
Bugger it I have lit my woodfire this afternoon.
About 4-5 kg of locally acquired timber should do it . .
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This African had the right idea. (LINK below.)
He bypassed the UN and WEF and their useless random energy plans and he built his own hydroelectric plant to provide inexpensive 24/7 power for his village.
I don’t think Westerners appreciate how much difference electricity can make to the life of a Third World person. Even providing night time lighting makes a huge difference and it means children can read and study.
https://youtu.be/9YrcruOIAPs Under 3 min.
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This African built his own windmills.
Nice story.
https://youtu.be/YoIGMdUjUUM Under 3.5 mins.
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Some one send them some eucalyptus and acacia seed of an appropriate species and teach them how to grow seedlings “Australian colonization”
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And create the wildfires that eucalypts bring with them? Gum trees create and love wildfires. They need them to aggressively remove other plants and animals, and promote their own seedlings. Dont know if Africa really needs that. Let them have coal power stations instead.
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Wattles too.
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Jo you forgot the most important use of charcoal, filtering whiskey !
https://whiskipedia.com/fundamentals/charcoal-mellowing/#:~:text=Charcoal%20(also%20known%20as%20activated,also%20occur%20as%20a%20result.
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Commented on a similar post a few years ago. About 20 years ago I had several trips into Tanzania for work. We did road trips to the south and into the capital Dodoma. We used a young local driver from Dar es Salaam and he said at home they only had limited electricity sufficient to run a fridge and a few lights and used charcoal to cook with, even in the largest city. On our country drives it was common to see vehicles heading to Dar es with multiple bags of charcoal strapped to the roof. Much of the country side had been stripped of forest for charcoal production with Reserves and Nation Parks being the only forest left.
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Thanks for that, here is a little more on Tanzania’s energy mix.
https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/tanzania-energy
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Should have added, wonderful country, beautiful people. Have a lasting image of being out in the middle of no-where and the the kids in immaculate English style uniforms all “marching” off to school, education really important to all, no matter what. Oh and also their love of soccer (or football if you prefer), mad followers of EPL. If I ever visit again I’ll take a bag of (deflated) soccer balls to replace the tied up plastic-shopping-bag versions most kids were using.
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And Tanzania now – very probably – has a greater population than the UK – about 68 million.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/tanzania-population/
About 1500z 29 October ’23.
And growing fast – about 3% a year, or about 2 million a year.
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No wonder our forebears left Africa.
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Deforestation?
Don’t know if anyone is noticing, but this is just one of the older and slower rolling Virtue Agenda anthropogenic (in the true meaning of the word) catastrophes that seem to be bringing us to some sort of multi faceted cataclysm.
Virtue Agenda, that’s what I’m calling it … today at least.
(Something is happening, and we don’t have a names for it yet, it’s like the Crusades, or a neo pagan human sacrifice cult … A Mass formation of overfed zoo animals … or something. Like every college student has become Sinead O’Conner.)
Energy, the environment, or for that matter Public Health, are not the actual focus of the Virtue Agenda driving the WEF, the UN, or most western governments.
They are exhibiting tail chasing at this very moment over the Mid East, having trouble deciding which side wins the historical oppression blue ribbon.
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I was sickened by the sight of Albo sucking up to Biden on climate change and what a great leader he was! Biden was reciprocating from cue cards. Both raved about submarines that neither of them had a hope of seeing in Australian waters.
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What a surprise, notorious criminal linked to forest green scheme.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/road-rage-killer-kenneth-noye-31270948
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They should make EV’s
True costs of EVs revealed by bombshell report out of a Texas think tank
By Olivia Murray
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That’s a punchy “good news” article: picks apart the lyes and mistruths publicly so that those who read it can begin to see just how much we, the trusting taxpayers, have been taken for a ride.
Now that the Truth of the renewables fantasy is becoming more public maybe we could start planning the nature and timing of the Day of Reckoning.
Perhaps the legal system and those judges engaged in Lawfare against Trump could be put to work to deal with the instigators of the Renewables blight and MAGA.
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Here’s an article from Matt Ridley in 2022 about the vast improvement he found in Kenya and Tanzania since 1968.
As I’ve often said African population and human flourishing since 1950 is the highest and fastest in Human history.
BUT Africans need BASE-LOAD energy ASAP, because so few of them have even enough to run a fridge.
Here’s the start of Matt Ridley’s essay and the link.
“PLAINS OF PLENTY – MATT RIDLEY”
“Published on: March 10, 2022”
“The Masai Mara has defied gloomy predictions of decline
My article for The Critic”:
“When I was ten years old, in 1968, my parents took me and two of my sisters on a safari through Kenya and Tanzania. Having lived there when they first married in the 1950s, they wanted us to see the wildlife before it was all gone. Newly independent Kenya, its population booming, would soon have few lions or elephants left. This was not intended as a political criticism, it was just that there was unlikely to be room for such luxuries in a poor nation striving to feed its expanding population.
The first of the game reserves we visited, the Masai Mara, with its abundant big game and beautiful birds, left an indelible impression on my young mind. It helped turn me into a bird watcher and then a biologist. This winter, 53 years later, I returned to the Mara for the first time. To say that my parents’ pessimism was unjustified is to understate the matter — vastly. The grassy plains either side of the Mara river are as rich as ever in zebra, topi, eland, wildebeest, waterbuck, gazelles, impala, giraffe and buffalo.
There are plenty of elephants and — the poaching threat having faded at least for now — they are breeding like rabbits. Rhinos are increasing again and in 2020 not a single one was lost to poachers in all of Kenya.
We watched a herd of more than a hundred hippos splashing about in the river and chasing crocodiles. Lions, leopards, hyenas, jackals, baboons, mongeese, hyraxes, oribi, reedbuck, bushbuck — we saw them all. Every third tree seemed to have an eagle on it, not to mention vultures, harriers, kites and buzzards. Huge flocks of swallows and martins of several different species feasted on the insects disturbed by buffalo or cars. The Garden of Eden, with all its abundance, would have looked like a municipal park by contrast.
I consulted the book we had with us in 1968 — John Williams’s Guide to the Game Reserves of East Africa, which had been published the previous year. Its description of the Mara, and its list of species to be seen there was exactly right even today. This does seem to be at odds with the claims of those who insist that nature is everywhere in terminal decline, or in worsening crisis. Conservation does work. The hard work of those who set up, protect and manage such reserves is betrayed by apocalyptic talk”.
https://www.mattridley.co.uk/blog/plains-of-plenty/
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Yes, a good news story, but is it like that through all the “former colonies” ?
Sounds like Kenya, has come out on top. 🙂
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BTW here’s a recent Sky News interview with Dr Will Happer talking about co2 benefits for plant life and certainly co2 levels of 420 ppm are not high compared to the last 500+ million years.
And greenhouse co2 levels of thousands of ppm produce better and higher crop levels and more profits for the operators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQyvUJ1k9_M
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The good news about Kenya just above, now this.
Can the world handle all this reality and “truth telling”.
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Keith, Stay Kalm.
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🙂
Tomorrow.
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Now desert where once forests stood,
As Africans forced to burn wood,
With the power of coal,
Under tight control,
By those who pretend to do good.
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Ho Hum , I don’t know! I watch. I read. “war against trees” eh? Well yes I did see a programme some few years back where Helicopters were used to carry forestry vandals ( if you like) up Mountain areas to CUT DOWN trees! – all in the name of SAVING WATER for the landsfolk.( S Africa). Now watching many and various Documentaries on the usual channels + these new ones: WildEarth & EarthXTV, I have NEVER seen anything about deforestation … would that be clear fells by manual labour or machine? I don’t know. What I do know / have seen is that there are many schemes with small PV panels and introducing simple light bulbs, etc. This is all getting a bit confusing / populist.
Now I can agree with using charcoal for cooking … and the amount of timber used to even make it, whether in Africa or Eastern Europe where it is still done by hand on a large scale,so it seems almost outrageous that we in the affluent West, “demand” barbecue charcoal. – does it really need to be charcoal? But yes, why cannot the Africans ( It’s a CONTINENT – not just a few towns with their own individual Power Stations)have Cheap power. I believe they are Streets ahead of us in the UK with Mobile Internet services, – but obviously have to be able to charge their devices. So where is this discussion taking us? Greater use of NITROGEN fertiliser to aid Grass growth in the wet season to provide soil cover for growing trees and feeding livestock on less acres – leaving more acres to grow secured plantations of trees WHICH MOP UP WATER as per our BBC Landward prog tonight … growing more trees to save the planet – so you know what they are really trying to do!
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I’m looking forward to getting my copy of Magatte Wade’s book, The Heart of a Cheetah. It has been a long time coming but hopefully it will have been worth the wait.
https://magattewade.com/book/
Magatte Wade
The Heart of a Cheetah
How We Have Been Lied to about African Poverty –
and What That Means for Human Flourishing
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJH1MKN2 but hopefully it will also be available as a real book.
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Climate change is a brand and should be seen as such.
It’s a propaganda product mainly amed at gullible children through the school systems.
It’s only connection to science is political science.
It’s aimed at causing friction and serious division in the family unit.
The global governance cabals know that the biggest knowalls on the planet are 15 year olds.
We will be replacing turbines and solar panels constantly once the first lot go
Now is there anywhere that constantly opens up coal fired power stations that could possibly make them?
Dumb question.
Now do they have to sell them to us?
That is the crucial question.
Most likely they will be used as a blackmail product.
Imagine the demand as all the idiot government leaders scramble and suck up to keep the power on.
Germany/ Russia/ gas.
Trump warned them and the Marxist leaders of the world’s big democracies laughed.
If we don’t stop this lunacy now we will lose our sovereignty.
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“Climate change is a brand ” …. or a fashionable trendie thing.. Yes probably. A Millennial thing / association even.
I think the Millennials’ parent’s generation have a lot to answer for… in what they controlled and in it’s manner. Covers such a large spectrum of age so that you get good / enlightened mixed with the others. – “The Swamp” and likely BECAUSE it’s Donald Trump who is doing the telling, “they” don’t like it. psychology ?
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Kariba project is one of the planet’s largest carbon projects. IE Carbon offset for not cutting down trees.
It is in Zimbabwe and surprise surprise, it ” overestimated its climate benefits by at least a factor of five while delivering less money than indicated to communities”.
The project manager also “described an untraceable way of routing funds into Zimbabwe.”
There is a worldwide back-up fund to cover losses but Kariba “could wipe out between 38% to 51% of its whole buffer pool.”
How can you ask simple Zimbabweans not to cut down trees to cook. I bet they don’t see the
money from it…
Ref; https://leaderpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/a-shaky-mega-project-risks-throwing-carbon-offsets-into-chaos
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Chami,
“How can you ask simple Zimbabweans not to cut down trees to cook. I bet they don’t see the money from it… ”
I wonder if the Wa-Benzi might get new cars every two years …
Auto, just wondering …
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The answer is easy. Move all Africans to Europe. They will get then get access to “fossil fuel” energy and we save the forests. Sarcasm, of course.
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