Today (January 7, 2008) the New Zealand Herald printed a story in their business section about the greed and dishonesty currently fueling the push to subsidize "alternative" energy sources, rallied by Global Warming phobia, rather than follow a more reasoned and scientific approach to developing the fuel sources of the future. I'm sorry to see that my power engineer brethren in New Zealand are suffering under the same insane politicians and activists that we are suffering here in Utah. You can find the entire article at the following link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10485514&pnum=0.
Following is an excerpt from the story by Brian Leyland:
The draft New Zealand Energy Strategy is dominated by the Government's conviction that climate change (more properly described as "man-made global warming") is happening and that we must develop renewable energy to save New Zealand from disaster.
The strategy ignores the uncertainties in the evidence claimed to support the belief that man-made global warming is real and dangerous. It cannot explain why, before the days of man-made CO2, the world was warmer during the Middle Ages, Roman and Minoan warm periods. The whole of the Energy Strategy is based on the assumption that the "scenarios" and "projections" of dangerous warming generated by unproven climate models are accurate predictions.
The surface temperature record used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that the world has not warmed since 1998. If cooling continues for a few more years then the hypothesis, the theories and the computer models supporting claims that CO2 causes dangerous man-made global warming, will have to be re-examined.
The strategy ignores the increasingly strong evidence that solar emissions related to the sunspot cycle and cosmic rays have a major influence on our climate. Unlike the carbon dioxide driven hypothesis, this theory explains climate change in the past and predicts that the climate will cool until 2030.
It seems to me that the Government has been badly advised. The primary duty of any scientific adviser is to report on the science objectively and to make sure that the politicians understand the uncertainties in the science.
It is for the politicians to decide how they will handle the uncertainties. Many climate scientists and other advisers have taken it upon themselves to hide the uncertainties from the politicians and to put forward supposition as fact. This is wrong and risky. For them and the nation.
A comprehensive and objective investigation into the credibility of the science underlying the hypothesis that man-made carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming is urgently needed.
The primary aim of the National Energy Strategy should be to ensure that New Zealand has a reliable and economic supply of energy. This we can easily get from our huge reserves of coal. An alternative is nuclear power which has been endorsed by the IPCC.
There is one thing we can be absolutely sure of: no one can predict exactly where our energy resources will come from in 50 years time - any more than they could have done so in 1906 when Henry Ford said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, it would have been faster horses."
History teaches us that human ingenuity and technology have the potential to provide sufficient energy for our needs. All that is needed to make sure that this happens is good science and common sense. The strategy lacks both.
The National Energy Strategy must be developed on a rational basis. It must recognise that meeting our legitimate needs for energy is important; minimising damage to our economy is important; and, most of all, it is important that we know exactly what it might be costing us - or what we are giving up - in order to meet the Government's obsession with dangerous man-made global warming and renewables.
Unless this is done, the strategy will turn out to be yet another expensive, misleading and futile exercise.
The strategy makes much of biofuels even though all the evidence points to the fact that growing crops to make biofuels is bad for the environment, deprives people of much needed food and in most cases does nothing to reduce carbon emissions. The only beneficiaries are those that grow rich on the billions of dollars in subsidies paid for biofuel production.
New Zealand would be better off without a strategy than it would be with the one outlined in "Powering Our Future".
Support for it comes from those who believe that economic development is incompatible with the environment, those who see it as a way of making profits from carbon trading, those (like Al Gore and his Generation Investment Management company) who are pushing heavily subsidised renewable energy projects and those academics that see it as a bottomless source of research money and an excellent way of getting recognition, promotion and income.
The Government sees it as a way of making even higher windfall profits from Meridian and
Mighty River Power and gaining votes and exerting more control over the economy and our lives. And no one shows any concern for domestic and industrial consumers who will pay more and more for an increasingly unreliable power supply.
* Bryan Leyland is a power engineer and consultant.
Following is an excerpt from the story by Brian Leyland:
The draft New Zealand Energy Strategy is dominated by the Government's conviction that climate change (more properly described as "man-made global warming") is happening and that we must develop renewable energy to save New Zealand from disaster.
The strategy ignores the uncertainties in the evidence claimed to support the belief that man-made global warming is real and dangerous. It cannot explain why, before the days of man-made CO2, the world was warmer during the Middle Ages, Roman and Minoan warm periods. The whole of the Energy Strategy is based on the assumption that the "scenarios" and "projections" of dangerous warming generated by unproven climate models are accurate predictions.
The surface temperature record used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that the world has not warmed since 1998. If cooling continues for a few more years then the hypothesis, the theories and the computer models supporting claims that CO2 causes dangerous man-made global warming, will have to be re-examined.
The strategy ignores the increasingly strong evidence that solar emissions related to the sunspot cycle and cosmic rays have a major influence on our climate. Unlike the carbon dioxide driven hypothesis, this theory explains climate change in the past and predicts that the climate will cool until 2030.
It seems to me that the Government has been badly advised. The primary duty of any scientific adviser is to report on the science objectively and to make sure that the politicians understand the uncertainties in the science.
It is for the politicians to decide how they will handle the uncertainties. Many climate scientists and other advisers have taken it upon themselves to hide the uncertainties from the politicians and to put forward supposition as fact. This is wrong and risky. For them and the nation.
A comprehensive and objective investigation into the credibility of the science underlying the hypothesis that man-made carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming is urgently needed.
The primary aim of the National Energy Strategy should be to ensure that New Zealand has a reliable and economic supply of energy. This we can easily get from our huge reserves of coal. An alternative is nuclear power which has been endorsed by the IPCC.
There is one thing we can be absolutely sure of: no one can predict exactly where our energy resources will come from in 50 years time - any more than they could have done so in 1906 when Henry Ford said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, it would have been faster horses."
History teaches us that human ingenuity and technology have the potential to provide sufficient energy for our needs. All that is needed to make sure that this happens is good science and common sense. The strategy lacks both.
The National Energy Strategy must be developed on a rational basis. It must recognise that meeting our legitimate needs for energy is important; minimising damage to our economy is important; and, most of all, it is important that we know exactly what it might be costing us - or what we are giving up - in order to meet the Government's obsession with dangerous man-made global warming and renewables.
Unless this is done, the strategy will turn out to be yet another expensive, misleading and futile exercise.
The strategy makes much of biofuels even though all the evidence points to the fact that growing crops to make biofuels is bad for the environment, deprives people of much needed food and in most cases does nothing to reduce carbon emissions. The only beneficiaries are those that grow rich on the billions of dollars in subsidies paid for biofuel production.
New Zealand would be better off without a strategy than it would be with the one outlined in "Powering Our Future".
Support for it comes from those who believe that economic development is incompatible with the environment, those who see it as a way of making profits from carbon trading, those (like Al Gore and his Generation Investment Management company) who are pushing heavily subsidised renewable energy projects and those academics that see it as a bottomless source of research money and an excellent way of getting recognition, promotion and income.
The Government sees it as a way of making even higher windfall profits from Meridian and
Mighty River Power and gaining votes and exerting more control over the economy and our lives. And no one shows any concern for domestic and industrial consumers who will pay more and more for an increasingly unreliable power supply.
* Bryan Leyland is a power engineer and consultant.
No comments:
Post a Comment