Bishop Hill The inhumanity of the true green believer
May 20, 2015 Climate: Ward Greens This morning, I asked Michael Liebreich - a green-tinged businessman and potential candidate for London mayor - about his views on aid for fossil fuel projects in Africa. He supported them.
It's generally a ban on coal projects, except in exceptional circumstances. Yes, I'm comfortable with that.
And when I suggested that his support was despite the death toll from indoor air pollution, he said this:
And all because I don't want our taxes spent on solutions that are neither cheap nor quick nor healthy. OK.
This prompted our old chum Bob Ward to go on one of his charm offensives:
so much better for poor people to die from air pollution from coal and diesel, eh? How humane!
This prompted me to get the figures for air pollution in the developing world versus those in the first world. According to this report:
PM10 refers to particulate matter with a diameter of less than or equal to 10µm; these particles are widely believed to pose the greatest health problems. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard for an acceptable annual 24-hour average of PM10 is 150μg/m3, and they state that this level should not be exceeded more than once per year. In fact, 50μg/m3 is the accepted norm for PM10 (EPA, 2006). In contrast, Smith (2000) reports that mean 24-hour PM10 concentration in solid-fuel-using households in India sometimes exceeds 2000μg/m3. Dasgupta et al. (2004) find an average of 600μg/m3 in Bangladesh, far outside the EPA guidelines. Similarly, a study of about 400 households in the provinces of Shaanxi, Hubei, and Zhejiang, China, were monitored for PM4, and it was found that most households exceed China’s Indoor Air Quality Standards (Zhang and Smith, 2007).
Meanwhile, in Scotland, where the PM10 standard is 18μg/m3, Friends of the Earth are getting their knickers in a twist about PM10 levels of just 35μg/m3 in the pollution hellhole of Aberdeen. Reducing Bangladeshi levels down to UK norms would represent a 30-fold reduction. But according to Ward, it's not worth it. How...humane.
Reader Comments (95)
So how fast should we expand the foreign aid budget to pay for coal generators in India, China and Africa do you think, Bishop?
Generated electricity for cooking and heating will always be more expensive than the biofuels the poor are using now. Generations of programs to replace the shit and soil burning cookers have not solved the problem of indoor air pollution.
IEHO, the problem is that everyone has it backwards. The issue is not indoor biofuel stoves, the problem is lack of exhausts. Eli has a solution
Steve:
quite right. renewables, solar and wind are now less expensive than coal for electricity generation in large parts of the developing world. The issue is that the renewables require more capital investment at the front end, but that is something that the developed world could easily help with if the issue were not enslaving the poor to buying coal and oil for power into the far future.
Air Pollution in Scotland an issue? We are talking about some of the highest levels of fag smoking, alcohol consuming, fried mars bar consuming registered drug addicts on this planet, right?
I would have thought with that lot any air pollution would have been a healthy option!!
Eli
When you can get the sun to shine 24/7 and the wind to blow 24/7 come back and we'll listen to you.
Until then explain why the people of India and Africa should be deprived of the benefits that have accrued to western civilisation over the last two centuries just because the eco-fascists have a bee in their bonnet and are using a totally mythical dangerous global warming to push their totalitarian agenda.
The poor of the world are going to suffer infinitely more from the behaviour of the control freak tendency then they ever are from a couple of degrees more warmth, if and when it happens which the real science (as opposed to the PlayStation® variety) suggests is unlikely.
If it made economic sense, coal fired power stations would have been built along with the grids needed to distribute the power. But neither government nor private funding has managed to provide power to millions in the last 100 years. Not even the coal companies are prepared to finance the necessary infrastructure. So how are you suggesting all those power stations and grids are financed? Foreign aid through the Wolrd Bank? I know a lot of those on the right consider foreign aid as harmful, so how do you square that circle? How fast should we expand the foreign aid budget to pay for coal generators and grids?
Raff, 8:26 PM: "So how are you suggesting all those power stations and grids are financed? "
So how are you suggesting that all those stand-alone, non-interconnected 'renewable' energy sources are going to be financed, constructed, maintained and replaced? It's going to require a 'grid' of highly trained and highly mobile engineers/technicians to do so.
I'm happy with foreign aid for that, I never claimed I wasn't. But how about the Bishop and his followers? Unless I'm misreading them, they don't like foreign aid. So how are they (and you) suggesting all those power stations and grids are financed?
Raff;" So how are they (and you) suggesting all those power stations and grids are financed?"
All those power stations and grids could be financed the same way (and probably cheaper) as your 'renewable' alternatives. Unless you are suggesting that renewables are actually cheaper - which case, why the need for subsidies to support them?
Or are you just trolling again?
China's supplying the capital since the West won't.
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Logic fail Salopian. Just because one or other solution is cheaper doesn't mean that Africans can afford either. So subsidy is probably needed either way - the Bishop was complaining about subsidy for coal not being provided. Subsidy from foreign aid budgets, remember. You seem in favour of foreign aid, which is a plus. How many others here are?
Maybe coal stations + a grid + ports/roads + indefinite coal supplies + replacing stolen cables indefinitely is cheaper than localized renewables. Or maybe not. You don't know and they are not the same so comparison is not so easy anyway. And either way you have to persuade people to switch to electric stoves that they can't afford. Ventilation as Eli suggests, seems likely to be cheaper by far if you are actually interested in cutting PM10s.
I'm surprised also that there are no charities like Coal for Africa (maybe there are) that could accept donations from you good people here to provide funding for all the necessary infrastructure. I'm certain that you and the Bishop would be generous donors.
Salopian and Raff, the issue with coal is not the cost of the power station. That is relatively low, but the continued cost of paying for the coal. and, of course, maintaining the grid and power poles
Coal power plants are like ink jet printers, you can give the coal power plant away, because the user is then condemned to pay for the coal forever (or at least until they get smart).
So Salopian, how long are you going to sign up for paying for the coal in Africa?
Eli
I take your point about modern electrical equipment being a lot more energy efficient with all that that implies but that doesn't alter the fact that wind and solar are not going to provide the amount of energy needed to give Africa the benefits that Europe and the US have enjoyed starting with the industrial revolution.
So how did North America manage to reach the blissful state it is in and what is to stop Africa doing something similar, except for this arrogant western obsession with making sure it doesn't?
Eli why do you have such a romanticized view or 3rd world peasant life there is nothing honorable about it.
You think that a few solar panels windmills and they will be sorted and no more walking miles in bare feet collecting twigs.Bollocks Where do you get the water to clean the solar panels and the tools to service them for starters.Dont forget the Engineers need a 4x4 to gets from village to village to service the solar panels
Factories have tarmacked roads and power and water and sewers and telephone lines etc .3rd World villages don't.
Environmentalist are just smug arrogant western metropolitan elitist living a wealthy western lifestyle.
The immigrants scrambling to jump on the back of any passing HGV in Calais or 900 hundred odd people in an open topped boat capsized in the middle of the Mediterranean.If they had normal Westernized jobs in their own countries would they be there .They don't want Solar Panels on the corrugated sheet roofs of their shanty town they want a better life.Complaining about UKIP but denying the 3rd world full industrialization how racist is that.
They have a 4.2 Earthquake in Maidstone Kent and everyone laughs about it on Twitter ,they have similar in Nepal and they have thousands and dead thousands homeless and we in the west are collecting money and sending medical supplies and rescue teams.Hello doesn,t that fucking tell you something.
Plenty more tarmacked roads ,call centers in Mumbai are good but plenty more Chinese owned factories making Hyundis and XBoxes and 44 inch Flatscreen TVs.
Fuck Solar panels they ,re useless (alright for Caravans next to a Propane gas stove but that's about it) bring on full Capitalism that is what the 3rd world needs.
Interesting how the Green Party are opposed to a high speed Rail Line from London to Boring Birmingham and a Chavy McDonalds in Hamspstead High Street or a third runway at Heathrow but they don't mind Cross Rail and another underground line in up market Hoxton ,Shorditch and their spiritual homeland Islington.
One of the reasons Climate Change Deniers hate Climate Change Greenies Groupies they,re not anti humanity (unless it they that put themselves in charge of humanity) but because they are anti growth anti progress.
Build 3rd world power stations and the roads and the factories and wealth come with it and the poverty vanishes.
3rd World need is for full industrialization and that is what environmentalists are really against.
"Global Warming" ,"Climate Change"," Weather Weirding" what ever you call it is basically a cover for back door Socialism
Socialist Enviromentalist Authoritarian Oppressors and the Climate Change Deniers are this planet,s Luke Skywalker and i want to be Han Solo.
Eli unfortunatley solar panels don,t work in the dark and socialism doesn,t work in peacetime.
Eli - try running one of these off a solar panel - http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.
Raff, Eli, your vision is for the people to stay scattered across wide stretches. The solution is to draw people together where it becomes viable to supply them with conventional utilities and all the other benfits of urban living. Instead of scratching an existence in the scrub, they industrialise like every other sucessful country. As jamspid writes, instead of migrating to the UK, they should just gravitate towards their nearest city.
This has the added advantage of clearing vulnerable wild environments of humans.
Eli - and now try living without one all together - http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.
My question stands unanswered.
Not in all parts of Africa, no, but China and India have made the jump.
Jamspid, the Nepal quake was Richter 7.8 that is a few thousand time stronger than the 4.2 quake in Kent. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was about as intense as the Nepal quake and it destroyed the city, that and the ensuing fires.
Now some, not Eli to be sure, might take your claim that the Nepal and Kent quakes were to be compared, is, as good evidence to not play games of chance with you, but Eli merely uses it to judge the rest of your claims.
Still, as Raff puts it, who is stepping up to fund Coal for Africa, build those plants and fund them into perpetuity?
Mike Jackson asks
Eli responds that as is the case of telephones, where Africa
is goinghas gone cellular with cell towers and not telephone poles, underdeveloped countries can develop along more modern pathways rather than replicate London in the 1900s.Yet another interesting thread derailed and now as dead as a proverbial parrot thanks to Eli and Raff the tag-team trolls.
Not quite dead.
"Ghl (May 21, 2015 at 12:00 AM): you have a good point there. However, merely putting the smoke outside does not fully resolve the problem – witness the smog of the British cities in the earlier part of the last century, as people continued to burn coal in the house grates, with its smoke being piped up the chimneys. "
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It's not that simple. As Eli and his pals' derailing demonstrated, a lot of people don't or won't understand the history of technological progress.
Child and infant mortality rates in the rural districts that people fled to London and Birmingham and so on were over 50%. I'm not saying that the coal smog was good for them, but at least they weren't freezing or starrving to death on the Yorkshire moors. They voted with their feet.
Derailed? Not at all. Brought back to land of Reality from the unreal world of Hypocrisy Hill. If you actually care about PM10s in Africa or Bangladesh, say how you prefer to pay for reducing them. If yu want to use public funds, then say how much, 'cos it is going to cost an arm and a leg. If you object on principle to the use of public funds for development aid, as at least some have said to me here, then you are a hypocrite and should Shut The Frack Up on your claims against greens.
Yes, Johanna, I am aware of that. It is just that there are some people for whom we have to address the situation one problem at a time; any more tends to confuse them – mind you, there are some for whom even one problem leads to confusion. You only need to see the activists clad in fossil-fuel derived clothes, charging about in their fossil-fuel powered vehicles, trying to stop access to … well, fossil fuels. I suspect many have trouble tying their own shoelaces.
RR - good point.
Fanatics are defined by the fact that they will not contemplate the good, because it is not perfect.
Apparently, humanity should have skipped the Industrial Revolution and gone straight from crofts to Apple HQ.
If you actually care about PM10s in Africa or Bangladesh, say how you prefer to pay for reducing them.
Why should we pay?
They industrialise, and pay for it themselves.We can lend them the money, if they want. We can provide expertise. But we don't need to pay.
This idea that the West needs to keep paying (and paying) is verging on racist. It stems from the idea that only we caused their problems and that only we can solve them.
How about we just get out of their way and let them do it? It worked for Taiwan, Korea etc. It will work for Africa too.
But making them keep uneconomic options -- peasant farming, "renewables" and socialist economics -- is not helping them. It merely keeps them in poverty.
Johanna: there are two excellent examples on this thread: both are convinced that the considerably more expensive “renewables” would be cheaper than coal; both will also probably accept that, for every GW of “renewable”, one GW of coal would be needed as backup, yet even with that scenario presented, neither seems able to see that it would be far, far cheaper to skip the “renewables”, and just provide the coal. Like, d’uuhh!
That this could be provided by investment rather than “aid” also seems to skip by them – provide the incentive (i.e. do not penalise the country for wanting to build the installations, and allow those companies seeking to take the risk to do so) to build the power stations and install the grid seems a far better option than merely sending money in the hope that it will not be spent on weaponry or whisky.
As you say, Johanna, that is how the “western” countries grew; mistakes were made, but, having learned from those mistakes, it should be easier to repeat that in the developing nations.
Mooloo, those who are so wilfully blind are unable to see that there might be alternatives to their own particular view – it HAS to be done by aid! Though, perhaps they could be of the opinion that Africans are too stupid to work it out for themselves.
Not completely on topic but might be of use as starting points for interested parties:
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of Baraka Patenga Power Limited
at South Patenga, Chittagong
http://www.barakapower.com/documents/BPPL-EIA-Report.pdf
African dust outbreaks over the Mediterranean Basin during
2001–2011: PM_10 concentrations, phenomenology and trends, and
its relation with synoptic and mesoscale meteorology
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/1395/2013/acp-13-1395-2013.pdf
Salopian, Eli's singing from a common hymn sheet on solar panels for Africa.
From Desmog:
http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/05/22/power-all-shows-peabody-real-plan-end-energy-poverty
The utter futility:
I see, you want to "lend" Africa many billions of your own (taxpayer) money to build infrastructure and then "lend" them money to buy the coal. And then you will write it all off in 20 years when they can't repay. If you can see a difference between that and giving the money to them, please explain.
Funding could be raised the same way the d.light guy did it, from capitalists. You'd have to take the skew out of the market, but with a level regulatory playing field, FF power would be cheaper and more reliable, so more able to pay back the investors.
In mirrorland, the problem with fossil fuels isn't the pollution they spew and the greenhouse gases they emit, it's that they're TOO regulated. What we need is more of the world to look like London in the 1950s (and some urban areas are on the way there). Then everyone would be happy.
Energy production is like food production. When localised it means a lot of unnecessary work, and inevitable famines. How can Eli and the others be so blatantly idiotic about that, I can't fathom.
Some dumb bunny said, "Generations of programs to replace the shit and soil burning cookers have not solved the problem of indoor air pollution."
Err..... When was the last time someone in the US, Europe, much of Latin America, or most of China died or was poisoned due to indoor cooking fuel fumes?
I think the problem has in fact been well solved, and that the solution is replicable world wide. Except for the irrational misantrhopes of the climate community.
And.... biofuels like dung, wood, charcoal are not cheaper than electricity or natural gas/propane. They are far more expensive: Collection, storage, going stale, getting damp, time spent in collecting, slow, to heat, etc.
The opportunity costs of pre-tech fuels and cooking methods are significant.
But not important to the cliamte obsessed.
As to the subsidy scam that the climate obsessed rely on: Solar and wind are at best niche suppliers, even in places with much sun. Fossil fuels only have subsidies when the term "subsidy" is twisted beyond all legitimate use by the anti-progress ocmmunity.
As the economies of Africa finally start escaping the statist corruption that plagued the decolonialization, investments and their benefits will become more reliable and wide-spread. Like electricity and potable water.
Raff thinks he is bringing the discussion to a more realistic direction.
Heh. After watching my neighborhood in lovely Houston get flooded this week, humor by unwitting clowns is greatly appreciated.
Thanks much, Raff.
All the time in the US. As to China there is a significant problem with indoor coal stoves
Some bunny should consider that his examples proves he is wrong, not right: The US article you posted demonstrates the danger of bad tech and broken tech.
Coal stoves are hooked to a power grid exactly how? The title of the article:
Household Air Pollution from Coal and Biomass Fuels in China: Measurements, Health Impacts, and Interventions.
At least bunnies make civil trolls.
The Onion pointed to this issue some time ago.
"Scientists: 'Look, One-Third Of The Human Race Has To Die For Civilization To Be Sustainable, So How Do We Want To Do This?'
http://www.theonion.com/article/scientists-look-one-third-of-the-human-race-has-to-27166
Raff May 25, 2015 at 2:18 PM
Your question is nonsense. It is not coal-fired power stations against nothing. It is coal-fired power stations against the World Bank's preference for renewables. Compare and contrast developing an electricity network with renewables (wind and solar) with coal. I will use the example of Britain, with some 'O' Level Geography.
1. Coal-fired power stations can be built either near the source of supply (Yorkshire, South Wales etc.) or near the centers of population. In other countries they could be built near a port. Grids can be minimized. For Wind you are confined to where the wind blows strongest and longest. These are exposed places, where people do not want to live. There is then the issue of joining all these diverse sources together and directing them to the centres of population. Renewables give a far more complex grid network.
2. Coal-fired power stations are capable of generating 90% of the time. Downtime for maintenance can be usually planned. Having multiple plants allows a constant base load, and allowance for unscheduled downtime. Solar in Africa is great during the day. But in the evenings when people are at home, power does not exist, except with extremely expensive backup. Wind power is highly variable.
3. Coal power is much cheaper than renewables. In Britain, onshore wind receives twice the revenue of coal or gas, offshore three times. This is even with the higher costs of coal and gas as a result of reduced capacity utilisation due to wind power getting priority. The extra grid costs of renewables are hidden in electricity bills.
The demonstration of the lower costs of coal over renewables is in the choices that successful developing countries have made. China, India and South Africa have all gone for coal, with renewables very much a secondary power source.
Those without a grid, and too poor to afford one, tend to use diesel power stations. Unit costs of electricity are much higher than for coal, and output a small fraction of a large coal-fired station. But 50-200MW of despatchable power is better than nothing. Recent examples of such investments are in Eritrea and Bangladesh.
Josh
Why the pseudonym and why the reference to yourself in the third person? It all looks so arch.
Everyone knows who you are, and your views don't disgrace you, so I can't understand why you don't post under your own name and use the first person like what normal people do.
David Shipley (not the journalist, another one)
Those in the third world use diesel generators because the grid fails like at least once a day, and coal is more expensive when you consider the cost of the non-functioning grid and the fuel costs. At this time the break even point is about 2 km of grid from the generating station per community
But still, Eli wants to know when you folks are going to donate serious money to Coal for Africa?
Hunter, and here Eli thought there were no deaths from indoor air pollution in the US and China and elsewhere. Guess there are.