Posted on 07/25/2008 3:44:53 PM PDT by Delacon
What we really need from the climate modelers is an accurate 50-year projection of global politics. Will people believe the computer's dire prophecy enough to change their lifestyles? While we wait for 50 million lines of code to reveal the supposed future, consider how things look to one very knowledgeable energy analyst, Vinod K. Dar, who runs Dar & Company, a consultant to the energy industry, in Bethesda, Md. What follows is my own gloss on Dar's analysis. Everything he says, however, squares with all that I've seen and learned in the 30 years I've watched energy markets here and abroad.
A number of influential people in Russia, China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam say the planet is now entering a 30-year cooling period, the second half of a normal cycle driven by cyclical changes in the sun's output and currents in the Pacific Ocean. Their theory leaves true believers in carbon catastrophe livid.
To judge by actions, not words, the carbon-warming view hasn't come close to persuading a political majority even in nations considered far more environmentally enlightened than China and India. Europe's coal consumption is rising, not falling, and the Continent won't come close to meeting the Kyoto targets for carbon reduction. Australia is selling coal to all comers.
On the far side of the environmental curtain China already mines and burns more coal than any other country. Together, China and India control more than one-fifth of the planet's vast coal reserves. Dar predicts--very plausibly, in my view--that the two countries may fire up a new coal plant as often as once a week for the next 25 years, adding about twice as much coal-fired generating capacity as the U.S. has today. Persian Gulf states are planning significant coal imports, because coal generates much cheaper electricity than oil or gas.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
ping
That made the industrial revolution what it ultimately became.
We are at a similar point. Either we take the right road or we become a stagnant 3Rd world country.
Interesting that we often say that Islam wants to turn the clock back to the 7Th century.
We have people in our government that want to turn the clock back to 1960 and freeze it there forever.
A carbon curtain has descended across this consonance.
Of course our leaders will be aware of this and act accordingly, right?
Vinod Dar is right: "Contingency planning should entail strategic responses to a warming globe, a cooling globe and a globe whose climate reverberates with laughter at human hubris."
I just farted.
But, hey, who's paying attention?
what a meaningful contribution to the discussion.
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