Month: September 2018

Overpopulation Myth: Control Quotas for Foreign Aid

kaykiser

Population Control Quotas and Aid Denial

Recent Statistics and Mass Sterilization Clinic in India (most are not this nice)

The overpopulation myth that was started by Thomas Malthus in the eighteenth century was and is still promoted by powerful advocates and organizations to the present day. Although overpopulation was not true then and is not true today, it has been used to justify inhumane treatment of people in poor nations in the form of quotas on forced sterilizations and other involuntary population control measures as a condition for receiving foreign aid, including needed food aid during famines. In reality, it should be called elimination of the poor, since only the poor are targeted. Poverty, not overpopulation, is the problem, and that can be remedied by education, investment and job opportunities along with disease control, proper medical care, electricity and roads.

Here are a few important quotes from some of the promoters of this anti-human population control ideology.

In The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich said,

“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people … we must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”[1]

In a New York Times article, Ehrlich is quoted as saying “. . . A possibility that the government might have to put sterility drugs in reservoirs and in food shipped to foreign countries to limit human multiplication.” was envisioned today by a leading crusader on the population problem.[2]

Maurice Strong, founder and first director of UN Environment Programme (UNEP), co-founder of WWF, Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm (1972), the Rio Sustainable Development Summit (1992) and ex World Bank advisor, is quoted as saying, “Licenses to have babies incidentally is something that got in trouble some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.”[3]

He also said “Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse. Isn’t it our responsibility to bring it about?”[4]

Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, is quoted as saying “In the event that I am reborn, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.“[5]

Jacques Cousteau is quoted as saying, “World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.”[6]

POPULATION CONTROL IN INDIA
Total fertility Rate:1970 5.5
Total fertilityRate:2015 2.5
Population growth rate 1.2%
Women sterilized: total 30%
Women sterilized: married 37%
Women sterilized: unmarried, sexually active 48%
Women sterilized: informed about other contraceptive methods 28%
Women sterilized: informed procedure was permanent 66%
Men sterilized 1%
Sex-ratio at birth (males: females) 112:100

Source: Data compiled from the UN Population Division and the Demographic and Health Survey. Population Research Institute at http://www.pop.org 

Sterilization Camp in India

 

 

 

 

[1] Paul Ehrlich, 1968

[2] Gladwin Hillspecial, “A Sterility Drug In Food Is Hinted; Biologist Stresses Need To Curb Population Growth,” New York Times, November 24, 1969, https://www.nytimes.com/1969/11/25/archives/a-sterility-drug-in-food-is-hinted-biologist-stresses-need-to-curb.html. See also Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment (New York: W.H. Freeman & Co, 1977).

[3] Maurice Strong, occasion uncertain, but widely quoted.

[4] Maurice Strong, in opening remarks, UN Sustainable Development Summit, Rio de Janeiro, 1992.

[5] Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh of England, 1988, from Cawthorne, Nigel, 2015, I know I am rude, but it’s Fun: The Royal Family and the World at Large – as Seen by Prince Philip

[6] Cousteau, Jacques, “Interview with Jacques-Yves Cousteau,” The UNESCO Courier, November 1991, 13.

Solving Africa’s Energy Poverty Problem, Part 5 Geothermal

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Geothermal Power can help solve Africa’s energy poverty
The East African Rift Valley Geothermal Resources Source: Alan Hoffman at lapsedphysicist.org

Geothermal power generation is possible in broad seismically active regions of Africa such as the Rift Valley and near some volcanoes. There are 157 active volcanoes in Africa that may offer potential for geothermal energy generation (see map). Most of them are in East Africa along the Rift Valley, but some occur in North and West Africa. The Rift Valley has an estimated potential of 4,000 MW of energy, but less than 600 MW have been developed, largely in Kenya with 586 MW currently available. Ethiopia has a small 7.3 MW facility. Surface surveys and exploration are underway in several other countries. Much of the funding for these projects comes through the World Bank and Geothermal Risk Mitigation Facility (GRMF) fund, a multinational organization, which is administered by the African Union (AU).[1] GRMF has eleven-member countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Comoros Islands, Eritrea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti and Zambia.

For comparison, the “Geological Survey of India has identified 350 geothermal energy locations in the country. The most promising of these is in Puga valley of Ladakh. The estimated potential for geothermal energy in India is about 10,000 MW.”[2] None have been developed to generate electricity at this time. Surveying, exploring and evaluating potentials continues.

Source: India Energy Portal at http://www.indiaenergyportal.org/
Geothermal Electric Power Details

Wells are drilled into thermally active areas and hot water or steam is pumped out, often under their own pressure, to turn turbines connected to electrical generators before being condensed and returned through injection wells to replenish the reservoir. Water heated above the boiling point turns to steam as the pressure is relieved while being pumped to the surface. There are several types of plants depending on the temperature of the geothermal energy available.

  • For vapor dominated systems at the highest temperatures, 464 to 572°F (240 to 300°C), steam is forced directly from wells under its own power to turn turbines/generators.
  • For liquid dominated systems at temperatures, greater than 360°F (182°C), superheated water under pressure pushes toward the surface and, as pressure is reduced in transit, part of it boils and produces steam for turning turbines/generators.
  • For binary systems at temperatures in the range of 248º to 392ºF, (120º–200ºC), hot water pushes is pumped out of the wells, which then heats a lower boiling secondary fluid to produce “steam,” a.k.a. gas, to turn turbines/generators.

In all of these cases the water is condensed and returned through an injection well although some of it may be recycled in binary systems for further heat extraction. The secondary fluid of binary systems, usually a lower boiling hydrocarbon, is completely condensed and recycled in a closed-loop system (see diagrams below).[4]

Figure 13: Schematic diagram of a typical steam or hot water to steam geothermal power plant [5]
Schematic diagram of a binary cycle geothermal power plant

By 2020 Kenya hopes to be the first sub-Saharan African nation to reach “universal access” to electricity with 95 percent of homes having access to electricity, an increase from 2016 when 55 percent of homes had access. Over 60 percent of Kenya’s electrical power is provided by hydroelectric and geothermal power plants. Kenya plans to increase geothermal power output ten-fold to 5,000 MW by 2030, which is 26 percent of its total geothermal capacity.

[1] Waruru, Maina, “More African Countries Embrace Geothermal Power, Receive $37M in Funding,” Renewable Energy World magazine, June 23, 2016, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2016/06/more-african-countries-embrace-geothermal-power-receive-37m-in-funding.html.

[2] India Energy Portal at http://www.indiaenergyportal.org/

[3] India Energy Portal at http://www.indiaenergyportal.org/

[4] India Energy Portal at http://www.indiaenergyportal.org/subthemes_link.php?text=geothermal&themeid=1 Original source is World Energy Council, 2001 Survey of World Energy Resources at https://www.worldenergy.org/publications/2001/world-energy-resources-2001.

[5] World Energy Council, 2001 Survey of World Energy Resources at https://www.worldenergy.org/publications/2001/world-energy-resources-2001/ Original Source: Geothermal Energy, 1998, University of Utah).

Solving Africa’s Energy Poverty – Part 4 Hydroelectric

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Hydroelectric Power for a bright future
Hydroelectric dam

Hydroelectric power can provide most of present and future needs, but it will take time and investment to build dams, plants, and distribution lines so fossil fuel power is needed until that day. Africa has abundant rivers that could supply most or all of their electrical needs for the foreseeable future through dams, waterfalls, and pumped storage.

“Hydropower produces more than three-quarters of the world’s renewable energy output each year. And its carbon emissions—over the entire lifecycle of construction, operation and decommissioning—are often far lower than those from all other renewable sources, including wind and solar. Across Africa, hydropower is responsible for 84 per cent of all non-fossil fuel energy use. But in a continent rich in lakes and rivers, the opportunities for expanding hydropower are huge.”

78 percent = Proportion of global renewable energy generation from hydropower in 2012

7.5 percent = Proportion of African energy use from non-fossil fuels in 2013

84 percent = Proportion of African non-fossil fuel energy use from hydropower in 2013[1]

Africa is estimated to have 4 million gigawatts-hours per year (GWh/yr) or 4 billion megawatts-hours per year (MWh/yr) total hydroelectric generating capacity, or about 12 percent of the world’s hydropower potential, with a technically feasible output of about 1,800 terawatts-hours per year (TWh/yr) or 1.8 trillion MWh/yr. [2] Yet Africa produces only about 3 percent of the global hydropower and exploits less than 10 percent of its technical potential.[3]

Some notable systems have been built in Africa and some are under construction or planned. The largest in Africa is the Aswan, capacity 2,100 MW, followed by the Cohora Bassa in Mozambique at 2,075 MW capacity. The soon-to-be-completed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the upper Nile will have a capacity of 6,000 MW. It will triple the electrical output of the country and be capable of selling power to surrounding countries and/or multinational grids.

An example of a waterfall being used for power is Victoria Falls, Zambezi River, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, which has three power plants with a total capacity of 108 MW. A proposed hydroelectric dam below the falls on the Zambezi River at Batoka Gorge will have a capacity of 1,600 MW.

For comparison, India has become the 7th largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world. India’s installed utility-scale hydroelectric capacity is 44,594 MW, from major power plants plus many smaller plants. Its potential is over 155,000 MW from large and small plants and 94,000 MW pumped storage potential, with 4800 MW installed to date. Its many waterfalls are used as well as hydroelectric dams and pumped storage reservoirs.  The hydro-electric power plants at Darjeeling and Shivanasamudram were established in 1898 and 1902, respectively. They were among the first in Asia. India has been a dominant player in global hydroelectric power development. India also builds hydroelectric plants in other countries and may be a resource for countries in Africa and similar energy poor regions.

Hydroelectric Power Details

Hydroelectric plants are classified as Large if their capacity is over 500 MW, Medium if over 10 MW, and Small: Mini (10 MW), Micro (100 kW), or Pico (5 kW). Many more Small facilities are and can be built with much lower capital investment up front. Smaller hydroelectric facilities can be scaled to more closely meet local needs in isolated areas, and several of these can be connected to a distribution grid to provide electricity to a wider area.

Hydroelectric power plants use the force of falling water to turn turbines attached to generators, so that heating water for steam and subsequent cooling is not needed. Hydroelectric dams also provide flood control and create reservoirs to provide a reliable source of clean water, irrigation water, aquaculture, fishing and manufacturing industries, and much needed water transportation. Reservoirs resupply the water table by lateral seepage.

Pumped storage in conjunction with hydroelectric dams can help to reliably supply needs in seasons when water flow is reduced or demand peaks. The way it works is that water is pumped up to fill a mountaintop reservoir when demand is below capacity, and the stored water is used when demand is high. The efficiency of many of these systems is above 70 percent.

A good example in my personal experience is Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Reservoir near Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is located above Nickajack Lake Reservoir on the Tennessee River. Water is pumped from the reservoir at the base of the mountain up to the mountain top reservoir during low demand periods and released to generate additional power for the TVA system of hydroelectric dams in peak demand periods. At present there are more than three dozen pumped storage facilities in nineteen countries with 1,000 MW capacity or greater and many more with lower output capacities.

Racoon Mountain Pumped Storage hydroelectric generation[4]

Waterfalls can provide power without the need to build a dam. Part of the natural gravity-fed flow is channeled through turbine generators to supply power. One long-standing example is at Niagara Falls, straddling the US and Canadian border. This area has had a succession of hydroelectric power plants in both countries as both demand and capacities have increased. Hydroelectric power generation in this area has remained uninterrupted since local service began in 1882 in the US and 1892 in Canada. The famous Adams Power Plant, built by Westinghouse with Tesla designed turbines, opened in 1895 to supply power to New York counties nearby. Currently operating plants include a pumped storage facility, Lewiston Pump-Generation Plant, in conjunction with the Robert Moses Power Station in the US.

Smaller hydroelectric facilities can use run-of-the-river systems. In this system, no dam is needed if there is a gradient. Some of the water is diverted from the river using a sloping or vertical channel through turbines to generate electricity and then is returned to the river downstream. As a rule, the higher the drop, the greater generating capacity, but Micro and Pico plants can run on as little as a one-meter drop to supply local power or to connect to a larger network.

Even in relatively arid areas, hydroelectric power can provide most of the electrical power in rainy seasons and can be backed up with fossil fuel thermal power plants to fill in any gaps during dry seasons. As an added bonus, in dry seasons the reservoirs behind hydroelectric dams can provide needed water for agriculture and homes, especially if power generation is switched to backup power to conserve water in the reservoir. The combination of hydropower and thermal power generation can provide reliable power throughout the year.

[1] Source: International Energy Agency/BP.

[2] Abbreviations: GWh/year = Gigawatt-hours/year or billion watt-hours/year; MWh/year = Megawatt-hours/year or million watt-hours/year; TWh/year = Terawatt-hours/year or trillion watt-hours/year. Tera- is 1000x Giga-, which is 1000x Mega-.

[3] Appleyard, David, “Africa’s Hydropower Future,” Hydroworld.com, January 1, 2014, http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/print/volume-22/issue-1/regional-profile/africa-s-hydropower-future.html.

[4] Tennessee Valley Authority

Solving Africa’s Energy Poverty – Part 3 Solar Power

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Why SOLAR Power is a poor choice for developing countries

The main practical problem with solar panels is that they produce power intermittently and variably depending on the latitude, the time of day, the season, and weather events such as clouds, rain, and windblown dust that block sunlight. Another factor that affects output of solar panels is heat, which further reduces output and lifetime. That is why most rooftop solar panels are mounted on supports above the roof surface. In hotter climates, it may be necessary to provide cooling water to maintain efficiency, all of which reduces photovoltaic efficacy. They do not provide power at night and so there must be a reliable backup power source such as banks of batteries. Present battery technology is not feasible for this purpose except for single home systems, so thermal and hydroelectric energy must be used.

Solar panels are inefficient by their nature. Single junction panels are based on high-tech silicon wafers and the more efficient multi junction types require silicon wafers layered with exotic metals such as gallium, indium, phosphorus, gallium arsenide, and germanium to broaden their power spectrum and enhance output. The sun provides roughly 1 kW power per square meter at vertical and solar panels or mirrors provide only a fraction of that. Typical efficiency of solar photovoltaic cells is from typically 15 percent up to a possible 30 percent.

Peak output occurs only when the panel is pointed directly at the sun so computer-driven tracking mechanisms would be needed to maintain peak power throughout each day. At higher latitudes, the sun is never directly overhead, so the sun would be at an angle from the vertical and power would be reduced by the greater depth of the atmosphere even with compensating angled support. This varies with season by up to 23.5 degrees above and below the equatorial plane because of the tilt of the earth’s axis. So in winter, the angle could be 47 degrees or more from vertical, depending on the latitude. Even near the equator, only near the equinox will the sun be directly overhead at noon and could be as much as 23.5 from the vertical. Many solar arrays use fixed panels so that they operate outside peak performance most of the time.

All of these factors will reduce average output considerably. Maintenance teams are needed to maintain the tracking mechanisms and water cooling circulation systems, as well as for regular cleaning of the panels.

The next hurdle is the lifetime of the solar panel. Efficiency decreases with age and typical solar panels will last only twenty years with typically 1 percent loss in efficiency per year. Then you have to factor in how much energy is expended in manufacturing, installing, and maintaining units. This can be a significant percentage of the typical output over time. It will usually take about a year to recoup the energy balance. With short lifetimes, high-tech materials, low efficiency, intermittency, and maintenance requirements, it is clear that solar power through photovoltaic panels is totally unsustainable. Never mind that the power source, the sun, provides renewable power, the panel itself makes this method totally unsustainable.

Ivanpah mirror array in California, Washington Times

Solar power using mirrors is a bit more reliable since it eliminates exotic materials and high-tech manufacturing. However, it has most of the same limitations as Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. These limitations include no night power production as well as weather, and latitude reductions in efficiency. Some now use molten salt as a heat reservoir to supply supplemental power at night. Maintenance teams are needed to keep the mirrors free from dust. A major problem with mirror systems is that many mirrors must surround and be aimed at a central steam generator to produce the kind of heat needed to produce the steam for a turbine. The heat from these systems can kill birds in flight, and the glare can blind airline pilots.

Both types of solar arrays require a large expanse of land to produce a reasonable amount of power. This necessarily disrupts the environment. Rooftops of warehouses, where available, can be used for PV panels, but the mirror arrays cannot because they must be aimed at a central tower containing a generator at the top. Fires on rooftop PV arrays are all too common from breakthrough shorts and wiring issues.

Solar Panel on thatched roof hut

From this, it seems all too obvious that solar power is inadequate even for home use in poor countries and can only be a temporary “Band-Aid” to assuage the consciences for feel-good well-heeled environmentalists in Western countries. Climate agreements envision solar panels on huts, not reliable, long term power as provided by fossil fuel, hydroelectric, geothermal or nuclear power grids. International organizations invest only in wind and solar while discouraging or prohibiting these more reliable power sources that could support infrastructure development, industrial investment, hospitals, schools, provide jobs that can raise the economy and improve health and longevity.

 

Solving Africa’s Energy Poverty, Part 2

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Why Wind Power is a poor choice for developing countries
Wind turbines share pastures with native herdsmen

In an energy starved developing country an all-of-the-above approach is best, combining fossil fuel, hydroelectric, geothermal, and nuclear, where available, and possibly supplemented by wind and solar “renewable” and “sustainable” methods which are recommended and allowed by environmentalists, but which are the worst possible alternatives.

Wind power relies on huge wind turbines on towers to generate electricity in a narrow range of wind speeds.  The amount of power generated is both unpredictable and intermittent because wind is not constant and wind speed unpredictably varies widely from none to gale-force levels that would damage the system if not switched off. Another power source must be available to supply backup power. Fossil fuel power plants require hours to start up due to the time required to heat water to steam. Such a process is both time consuming and expensive. Therefore, they must be kept at the ready constantly to provide backup power more quickly. Wind power, at best, can be only a supplemental source. Here are a few other negative facts:

  • Wind turbines require expensive regular maintenance and replacement, and their efficiency declines with age. Estimated to last twenty to twenty-five years, more typically they require frequent repair over ten to fifteen years of life.
  • Most wind turbines require large rare earth magnets (neodymium and dysprosium) obtained from Mongolia by a mining and refining process that results in mountains of toxic and radioactive solid wastes and contaminated lakes. The rare earth elements are called that because they are not found in rich veins like other ores, but are diffusely dispersed, so they produce huge amounts of wastes, including radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium, when refined. Since neodymium/dysprosium magnets are ten times stronger than conventional magnets, they are needed to convert the slow rotation of the rotor into useful electricity; otherwise complex gears would be needed to achieve the 1500 RPM generation speeds necessary with conventional magnets. Rare earth metals are used in small amounts in catalytic converters, display screens, audio speakers and miniaturized electronics, but the amounts are tiny compared to the hundreds or thousands of pounds needed for a single turbine.
  • Wind turbines kill large numbers of birds and bats, including endangered raptors. Birds and bats are needed to reduce populations of insects such as mosquitoes. Insect eating species of bats can eat one thousand insects an hour, or five to six thousand each night. While the environmental activists claim to be protecting wildlife, they don’t seem to be concerned about wind turbines killing bats and birds, especially large predators.
  • Wind turbines produce low frequency sound, including infrasound that our ears cannot detect. However, infrasound can cause unsettling and harmful physical symptoms such as “nausea and confusion, blurred vision, vertigo, headaches, tachycardia, heightened blood pressure, pain and ringing in the ears, difficulties with memory and concentration, anxiety, depression, irritability, and panic attacks.”[1] If the sound of wind turbines does that to us, what is it doing to animals, especially those that use infrasound like elephants and whales? More research is needed.

[1] Parker, Helen Schwiesow, PhD, LCP, “Science Deniers in the wind industry,” Watt’s Up With That, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/08/science-deniers-in-the-wind-industry/. Parker is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and a Past Clinical Supervisory Faculty member at the University of Virginia Medical School. Her career includes practical experience in the fields of autism, sensory perception, memory and learning, attention deficit and anxiety disorders, including panic disorder and PTSD.

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The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries will be published on October 23, 2018. Print and e-book will be available online and in bookstores.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and e-book, on line only, through World Net Daily store, Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.  See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com  for related posts and pages.

 

 

 

Solving Africa’s Energy Poverty Problem, Part 1

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Gathering wood for cooking in Africa

Based on an assumed need to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2), climate change advocates and international agreements generally provide investment funding and technical support only for so-called sustainable renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, both of which are unreliable, intermittent, and unsustainable, while they discourage or prohibit development of power plants based on abundant fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas), hydroelectric, geothermal, or nuclear energy. It is well documented that environmentalists have stopped or prevented the construction of more than two hundred hydroelectric dams in Africa[1], although it is the cleanest, most reliable and safest energy source available, and uses conventional materials and proven technologies. Hydroelectric power is also “sustainable” over time and returns the water used to the environment. Power in the form of electricity, natural gas, and petroleum products are essential for economic development, industry, transportation and medical infrastructure as well as home cooking, heating and refrigeration, which are needed to provide a safe, clean food supply and to reduce deadly indoor air pollution from bio-fueled cooking and heating fires.

Without adequate power, the continent’s health and economy cannot improve as it should. The answer to Africa’s energy poverty is an all-of-the-above solution. Environmentalists from developed countries and international governmental and non-governmental organizations have no business denying African nations the chance to better their citizens through the same means that developed countries used in the past to raise themselves out of energy poverty for their own development. (They have an “I got mine, to hell with you” attitude.) Coal, oil, and natural gas electricity generation must be allowed to continue and grow for the foreseeable future until other means such as hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear facilities can be built.

Africa can’t afford the luxury of skipping these vital steps toward ending energy poverty in order to adopt unreliable solar and wind alone. It would be like giving a dying man an aspirin and expecting him to survive.

Today’s coal fired power plants with modern air cleaning technology are not the dirty, polluting monsters they once were, even though they are still portrayed that way. In developed countries, technology to remove particulates, heavy metals, and sulfates have long been utilized. Emissions consist mostly of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Modern power plants use coal, oil, or natural gas to heat water for steam to turn turbines attached to electrical generators. This steam and hot water are not released directly into streams but are cooled to condense the steam and reduce the water temperature to a level compatible with life in the streams. Some of the hot water is recycled to efficiently produce more steam for power generation. The huge towers seen at power plants are not emitting pollution as environmentalist propaganda suggests. They are cooling towers that are used to cool the water and steam before returning it to its source so that only water vapor is emitted. Similar air cleaning and cooling facilities can be added to any existing power plant in developing countries.

____________________

[1] For example, twenty years ago, Brent Blackwelder, president of  Friends of the Earth bragged that FoE and other environmental groups have succeeded in blocking almost 300 dam projects in the Third World on a TV documentary series, ‘Against Nature,’  hosted by Martin Durkin, London Channel 4 Television Corporation, 1997

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If you like this post share it with your friends, and sign up to follow this blog by email. Thank you.

The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries will be published on October 23, 2018. Print and e-book will be available online and in bookstores.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and e-book, on line only, through World Net Daily store, Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.  See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com  for related posts and pages.

Energy Poverty Keeps Poor Countries Poor

kaykiser

Energy Poverty as a Reality

42.6 Percent of Africans have access to electricity, mostly in cities and towns.  600 million Africans have no access to electricity

Source: International Energy Agency

Let’s take a mental trip to what life is like in most of Africa. Imagine what would happen if the developed world suddenly was without electrical power, maybe a massive snowstorm or an electromagnetic pulse, (EMP), wiped out the grid for months or years. At first, it would be inconvenient to be without lights, phones, cell phones, TV, radio, heating and cooling, cooking, or refrigeration at your home or business. Hospitals and other emergency facilities would go to emergency backup generators that run on gasoline, diesel, or natural gas. Most gas stations without backup generators could not pump gas because the pumps run on electricity. Without gasoline or diesel fuel, transportation would soon grind to a halt.

No deliveries mean even these backup generators would soon be useless. No deliveries would mean gas pumps, pharmacies, grocery, and other stores would run out of supplies. You would not be able to buy food or gasoline or refill needed prescription medicines. You would have to walk or ride a bicycle to a doctor, your job, a school or a library because cars would be useless. Many businesses would grind to a halt. Hospitals would not have power to preserve medicines or lighting to perform surgeries.

Without electricity, municipal or private water pumps would not work, so you would need to collect water from gutters or streams. Water purification would be a problem because water from streams is not usually safe to drink due to chemicals and biological contaminants. Filtering through sand, along with chemically treating with bleach and/or boiling would be required to avoid diseases and parasites. Sewer systems would not function, so alternative outdoor toilets would need to be dug and built. For those on private septic systems, it would be possible to use existing toilets by pouring water into them for flushing, but that would require carrying and storing more water from sources. What about toilet paper? That would run out and alternatives would be needed: newspaper, other papers, leaves, corncobs like they did in the not too distant past. All frozen and refrigerated food would spoil unless immediately preserved in another way, such as canning, drying, or pickling. If a disaster like this happened in winter, some foods may keep temporarily outdoors or in sheds.

Even if you had stored several months of survival foods, your chances of survival may depend on what season of the year such an event occurred. If it occurred at the end of winter, the chances would be best for nonperishable food supplies to last until you can plant and harvest your own food, but if it happened in the fall, you would have to keep yourselves warm and fed, not just until spring, but until harvest the following summer and fall, assuming you have seeds and a place to plant them. Nicely trimmed lawns would be impossible and would have to be turned into gardens for food production or pastures for livestock. If you have a fireplace, trees could supply wood for a time, but most trees would be destroyed in a few months to supply wood for heating and cooking. Would you make it through the first winter? Many would not.

If you are in a safe community, neighbors would probably help each other, and working together would offer the best chance for survival. In an urban setting, criminal activity by helpless and desperate people may be a problem. You would be on your own, stranded, relying on your meager food supplies that would soon run out. You would need to cook many of the foods, but even with gas grills, fuel would only last a short while. You may end up burning furniture, fences, sheds and trees for cooking and to keep you from freezing to death. Then what?

If you are lucky enough to own a little land and have seeds to plant, in several months, through backbreaking manual labor, you could have garden vegetables to eat, but you wouldn’t be able to get fertilizer or insecticides after initial supplies run out. You won’t have refrigeration, much less a freezer, to preserve your crop, so you will need a cellar for fresh vegetable storage and would need to can, pickle, or dry foods that can’t be saved that way. Canning requires heating a water bath, using precious firewood or dwindling supplies of propane from leftover tanks, so it is less desirable than drying.

Obtaining and preserving meat would be more difficult unless you were able to either raise chickens, ducks, rabbits, goats, or small game, or to fish and hunt enough game to support yourselves. Remember, everyone else would also be hunting and fishing those same areas, so raising your own would be more secure. If such a condition continued for years, seeds would need to be saved for subsequent years, small animals would need to be kept, fed and bred to provide an on-going supply of protein from meat, milk, and eggs. Those that survive would necessarily become small farmers just to live. Over the years, homes and farm buildings would need repairs and you may not be able to get needed supplies so you must improvise with whatever you can find. It would also be important to protect gardens and farm animals from poaching and from animals.

Such a disastrous loss of electrical power is about as close to the conditions in Africa as developed nations would come. Even at that, we still have certain advantages many Africans don’t have because of the infrastructure already present, such as secure, insulated houses with doors and windows to keep out the cold, insects, and rodents; roads and railroads to get from place to place by foot, bicycle, or horse; trained medical personnel, albeit with dwindling supplies; hospitals; and schools. There would be no more Internet or YouTube videos to learn almost any skill needed, so books would make a big comeback. We also have the advantage of knowing about the microscopic world that causes disease and food spoilage.

Now imagine if most of Africa and other underdeveloped countries had electricity. Everything involved in economic development and community well-being runs on electricity, including the infrastructure that provides gas and oil, water purification, sewage systems, development and maintenance of transportation systems, industry, medical clinics and hospitals, and schools, trade schools, and universities. Clean water and sewage systems could replace unsafe water carried from streams and open pit toilets at best, or open defecation in fields and streams that breed disease carrying flies. Screens on doors and windows could prevent insects from getting inside, and electric fans could be used for cooling. Refrigeration could provide safe food storage. Clean electric or natural gas burners could replace smoky bio-based heating and cooking fires that cause indoor air pollution.

With electricity, gas and oil exploration, pumping and refining could supply needed fuels for transportation and heating. Gas pipelines could pump natural gas to local community service centers and into homes. With adequate fuels and gas stations, roads and railroads could be built to accommodate trucks, buses, and cars and provide transportation to get to doctors, hospitals, schools, and other places. Industry, agriculture, and mines can provide jobs for millions and raise people’s living standards; improved roads and railroads could transport products and produce to markets. Needed fertilizers, insecticides, and medicines could be manufactured locally and transported to areas where they are needed.

The two greatest needs for Africa are power and disease control.

With these two needs met, Africa has a bright and promising future. Without them, much of Africa will continue to wallow in disease, poverty, and misery. Of these two, electrical power is the greatest need because it will facilitate solving the other problems and connect isolated areas. Disease control is also very important because healthy workers are needed for industry, agriculture, infrastructure, medicine, and mining. It would be very difficult to run any kind of business if a significant portion of the workforce is absent each day because of diseases such as malaria, TB, or dysentery. It is important to address both power needs and disease control simultaneously, along with education, to raise their standard of living and kick start a potentially booming economy.

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The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries will be published on October 23, 2018. Print and e-book will be available online and in bookstores.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and e-book, on line only, through World Net Daily store, Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.  See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com  for related posts and pages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How The War On Climate Change Slams The World’s Poor — NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

Quote kaykiser

By Paul Homewood The latest contribution from Bjorn Lomborg: When a “solution” to a problem causes more damage than the problem, policymaking has gone awry. That’s where we often find ourselves with global warming today. Activist organizations like Worldwatch argue that higher temperatures will make more people hungry, so drastic carbon cuts are […]

via How The War On Climate Change Slams The World’s Poor — NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

The Overpopulation Myth as Excuse to Control the Poor

kaykiser
Communism, Environmentalism and the Overpopulation Myth

In 1798 the English economist and statistician Thomas Robert Malthus,[1] whose father was a friend and admirer of Hume and Rousseau, published An Essay on the Principles of Population[2] in which he predicted future starvation based on the assumption that the rate of population growth would far surpass the growth rate of food supplies. Using this, he proposed draconian measures to “fix” an assumed overpopulation problem at a time when world population was below one billion. Even to this day, with 7 billion people, the world is not overpopulated except in certain crowded city neighborhoods, but population control advocates still push the myth.

Malthus made two major erroneous assumptions:

  1. Genetic inferiority and enhanced fertility of less accomplished peoples
  2. No improvement in crop yields per acre.

Malthus recognized two types of solutions to the “problem”: positive and preventative. The positive restraints were things like wars, disasters, starvation, and epidemic diseases that keep populations and lifespans low. In this sense, such tragedies were seen as a good thing. The preventative restraints were government and voluntary control over marriages, self-restraint, and reduction of public charity. Aid to the poor was seen as a bad thing, perpetuating the supposed population problem.

Using his erroneous assumptions of an overpopulated world on the brink of starvation as a reason, Malthus advocated government measures to reduce population growth rates among the poor such as regulating marriage and educating for moral abstinence. However, he opposed nutritional relief and improved hospital access among the poor that would have reduced infant mortality and extended life spans. In his opinion, helping the poor only made the supposed overpopulation problem worse and prevented the development of the ideal utopian dream of the materialists of the day, such as William Godwin, Rousseau, and his father Daniel Malthus, who envisioned a utopian future of anarchic communism, absolute equality, and elimination of poverty. However, raising the standard of living of the poor by education, employment opportunities, and improved healthcare would have been a better way of accomplishing his stated goals of stabilizing both the population and food supplies.

“Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpations of particular disorders.”

—Thomas Malthus

Malthus also never considered the fact that a larger population would allow for a greater division of labor and result in increased efficiency and prosperity. People were seen only as consumers, not as contributors to the economy. He never envisioned that these “lower classes” would be capable of improving their lives with proper care and education. Instead, he viewed them as genetically inferior and incapable of improvement or accomplishment. In his opinion, lower classes were in a permanent social class by birth and genetics. He extended this same philosophy to Africa where he observed, as a positive, that the tsetse fly and malaria helped to keep human population numbers low and life spans short, thus preserving wildlife and its habitat. Here are the first seeds of environmentalism and its link to the overpopulation myth.

“We are bound in justice and honor formally to disclaim the right of the poor to support.”

—Thomas Malthus

He assumed that the only way to grow more food was to increase the number of acres under cultivation, which limited the total “carrying capacity” of any region and indeed the world. Thanks to the Green Revolution of modern agriculture, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, and later technological developments, we now know that yields have improved by orders of magnitude through things like introduction of more prolific, disease resistant plant varieties and high yield hybrids, nitrogen and mineral fertilization, mechanization, and control of weeds and crop destroying pests like insects and rodents.

Nor did Malthus foresee the natural reduction of family size that usually occurs when people are raised beyond near-starvation subsistence and when diseases are controlled, thereby reducing high childhood mortality rates. Gradual shift from purely agrarian to free-market trade and industrialization also reduces populations because larger families are not needed for subsistence farming.

            Karl Marx, a contemporary of Darwin, read Malthus’ book but disagreed with his premise of limiting the poor to further society. Instead Marx argued that the exploitation of the poor by the rich, that is, oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeois, was the cause of poverty. However, rather than help raise their standard of living through economic means within the system, Marx sought to use the poor to overthrow established authority, which had in reality supplied both charity and employment to raise the standard of living of the people.

            The utopian dream and the exploitation themes were the early seeds of socialism and Communism. Both the Malthusian and Marxist views were detrimental to the poor; on the one hand denial of aid to the poor to raise their standard of living, and on the other hand use of the poor in attempts to overthrow authority that might have supplied such aid. Note that Malthus and his communistic associates lived over seventy years before Marx put the Communist philosophy on paper in the Communist Manifesto (1848).

It is also true that the racial superiority attitudes of the seventeenth century and earlier ages have been a persistent, though often not fully recognized, thread throughout the history of Western civilization of kings, serfs, slaves, and colonization of other lands. This same perverted philosophy persists today among progressives who only typically want to manage the poor while keeping them poor and “in their place,” that is, controlled.

Malthus was pushing evolution and eugenics long before Charles Darwin and Frances Galton, the supposed originators of these theories. Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, founders of the theory of evolution, both had copies of Malthus’ book, which talks about changing conditions causing physical changes, the genetic inferiority of the poor and less developed cultures and races, and the need to control them. Darwin, in his own book, On the Origin of Species (1859), explains evolution as, “this is the doctrine of Malthus applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms.” Like Malthusian philosophy, the mechanism of evolution, survival of the fittest through natural selection, depends on competition for scarce resources as the basis of survival.

[1] The popular press calls him a minister, but he was no more a minister than Charles Darwin was, although both had studied theology for their wealthy families and had been assigned an Anglican ministry.

[2] Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population (London, 1798).

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If you like this post share it with your friends, and sign up to follow this blog by email. Thank you.

The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries will be published in October, 2018. Print and e-book will be available online and in bookstores.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and e-book, on line only, through World Net Daily store, Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.  See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com  for related posts and pages.