There is a persistent green myth that coal-fired power generation causes city smogs. It does not.
City air pollution is nothing new. King Edward I complained about London pollution in 1306, as did Queen Elizabeth I in 1578, long before the first steam engine operated.
Let’s look at the causes of some famous smogs – London/Pittsburgh, Los Angeles/Santiago, the Dust Bowls and the Asian Smogs.
The London smogs were caused by open-air combustion of newspapers, wood and cheap high-sulphur unwashed coal in domestic fires, stoves and boilers; by coal-burning blacksmiths, brewers and ironworkers in smoky forges, furnaces and coke plants; and by many smoky steam locomotives; all with inefficient combustion and no pollution controls. The smog was slowly eliminated by clean air regulations and by changing to “clean coal by pipe” (town gas) and “clean coal by wire” (electricity).
The Los Angeles smogs were caused mainly by backyard incinerators, vehicle exhausts and natural air inversions. They were reduced by using cleaner fuels, better engines and compulsory pollution-control equipment. Santiago has undergone a similar clean-up.
The Dust Bowl conditions of the Great Plains in USA were caused by drought and wind erosion of newly cultivated soils. Gobi Desert storms produced the Yellow River and the Yellow Sea and contribute to the Asian Brown Cloud today.
Today’s Asian smogs have many sources – forest fires in Indonesia; open air cremations in India; dust from volcanic eruptions and desert storms; soot, ash and other pollutants from millions of domestic rubbish fires, mosquito fires, cooking fires and heaters using anything combustible – cow dung, wood, paper, cardboard, plastic or cheap unwashed coal; and soot and unburnt hydro-carbons from millions of vehicles, many with engines needing maintenance and no pollution controls. Beijing today combines the 1950’s problems of both London and Los Angeles.
The Asian smog is NOT caused by producing electricity in modern power stations with closed boilers, pollution controls and using high-quality washed coal such as exported by Australia to Asia. The “power station pollution” pictured so eagerly in ABC and Green propaganda is actually steam from the cooling towers.
The main products released by modern coal-fired power stations are water vapour and carbon dioxide – both are essential life supporters. Neither one is dangerous. Both make our climate more liveable, but the contribution of carbon dioxide to climate is tiny. And the carbon dioxide produced by burning coal has done more to encourage the growth of plants and the greening of planet Earth than Greenpeace will ever do.
“Clean coal by wire” into every home is the one thing that could solve much of the Asian air pollution.
Disclosure: Viv Forbes has a science degree and long experience in Australia’s primary industries. He is self-employed, owns a farm and holds shares in a small Australian coal explorer which will benefit when Asia decides to solve their energy and pollution problems using “clean coal by wire”.
The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said he was surprised that a group supposedly protecting the environment are so viciously attacking the energy source that has done more to protect the environment than any other.
“Without coal, humans would have stripped every tree from every populated area to provide heating, cooking, building materials, steam power, and charcoal for smelting metals.
“Their silly opposition to coal in Britain means that now one large UK power station (Drax) is converting to burn wood, harvested in North American forests, and shipped to Britain to be burnt. Their selective blindness does not compute the net energy waste involved in this stupidity.
“Does Greenpeace support burning the forests?
“Green policies have also caused such high power prices that poor consumers in Europe’s bitter winter were stripping forests for firewood, even burning old books to keep warm.
“Does Greenpeace support high power prices, wood-poaching and book-burning?
“Green promotion of wind power is defacing the rural environment with networks of roads, power lines and whirling scythes that slaughter millions of bats and raptors all over the world. And causing duplication of generating equipment for the 70% of the time wind turbines do not deliver planned power.
“Does Greenpeace support this environmental destruction and waste of community resources?
“Greenpeace probably also believe that coal-fired power generation causes city smogs. It does not.
“Air pollution is nothing new. King Edward I complained about London pollution in 1306, as did Queen Elizabeth I in 1578, long before the first steam engine operated.
“The Asian smog is not caused by producing electricity in modern power stations with closed boilers, pollution controls and using high-quality washed coal such as exported by Australia to Asia. The “power station pollution” pictured so eagerly in ABC and Greenpeace propaganda is actually steam from the cooling towers.
“The main products of burning coal are water vapour and carbon dioxide – both are essential life supporters. The carbon dioxide produced by burning coal has done more to encourage the growth of plants and the greening of planet Earth than Greenpeace Pirates will ever do.”
Bayswater Power Station at Full Production. The wispy white vapour is steam, from the cooling towers, as harmless as what comes out of a boiling kettle. The tall stacks are the Exhaust Stacks, emitting mostly invisible harmless natural gases including nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen and argon. They all came from the atmosphere in the first place. Where is the pollution?
“Today’s Asian smogs have many sources – forest fires in Indonesia; open air cremations in India; dust from volcanic eruptions and the Gobi desert; soot, ash and other pollutants from millions of domestic cooking fires and heaters using anything combustible – cow dung, wood, paper, cardboard, plastic or cheap unwashed coal; and soot and unburnt hydro-carbons from millions of vehicles, many with engines needing maintenance and no pollution controls.
“Clean, silent, non-polluting, low-cost electricity (“Clean coal by wire”) into every home is the one thing that could solve most of the Asian air pollution. Greenpeace will be believable when they can demonstrate that they use nothing made by coal energy and they can survive with their pleasant western lifestyle in world bereft of carbon energy from coal, oil and gas.”
A virulent virus is being spread at international climate conferences.
Called the GW Virus (short for Manmade Global Warming Virus), the symptoms are a psychotic fear of the word “carbon”, a compulsion to blame man’s industry for every bad weather event, an urge to weave a warm bias into every weather report and forecast, and a morbid fascination with windmills.
The GW virus was first identified in the British Parliament in 1988 and spread quickly to the vulnerable BBC. It is an airborne virus and was soon spread by junketing politicians to NASA and the UN, thence to an Earth Conference in Rio in 1992, and then to Kyoto in 1997. The infection peaked in Copenhagen in 2009, when thousands of politicians, academics, officials and reporters became feverish.
Because of its isolation, Australia had not developed immunity to this virus, and it quickly took root in the ABC, thoroughly infected many politicians especially the governing ALP/Greens coalition, and then spread via government grant meetings to the CSIRO and every University in the land.
In Australia, incurable cases are sent to an isolation ward called the Climate Commission, headed by chronic MGW sufferer, Tim Flannery. Like vultures perched on a dead tree, these dedicated doomsters see droughts and heat waves in every weather event, even when large areas of the country are suffering floods and unseasonal cold.
The only protection against the GW virus is immunisation with a shot of climate history vaccine. This helps “at risk” alarmists to accept that there is nothing new about fires, floods, droughts, cyclones, heat waves, snow storms or variations in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
To curb the further spread of this virulent and destructive virus, infected sufferers must be banned from climate conferences and all infected politicians must be quarantined in their offices.
Professor Cliff Ollier of the School of Earth and Environmental Studies, the University of Western Australia, recently presented a paper in Poznan, Poland, in which he described the sun as the major control of climate, but not through greenhouse gases.
Abstract. The threat of dangerous climate change from anthropogenic global warming has decreased. Global temperature rose from 1975 to 1998, but since then has levelled off. Sea level is now rising at about 1.5mm per year based on tide gauges, and satellite data suggests it may even be falling. Coral islands once allegedly threatened by drowning have actually increased in area. Ice caps cannot possibly slide into the sea (the alarmist model) because they occupy kilometres-deep basins extending below sea level. Deep ice cores show a succession of annual layers of snow accumulation back to 760,000 years and in all that time never melted, despite times when the temperature was higher than it is today. Sea ice shows no change in 30 years in the Arctic. Emphasis on the greenhouse effect stresses radiation and usually leads to neglect of important factors like convection. Water is the main greenhouse gas. The CO2 in the ocean and the atmosphere are in equilibrium: if we could remove CO2 from the atmosphere the ocean would give out more to restore the balance. Increasing CO2 might make the ocean less alkaline but never acid. The sun is now seen as the major control of climate, but not through greenhouse gases. There is a very good correlation of sunspots and climate. Solar cycles provide a basis for prediction. Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect serious cooling. Many think that political decisions about climate are based on scientific predictions but what politicians get are projections based on computer models. The UN’s main adviser, the IPCC, uses adjusted data for the input, their models and codes remain secret, and they do not accept responsibility for their projections.
Prominent climate alarmist James Hansen claims that the wisps of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere could melt all the ice caps, cause the ocean to boil and that would be the end for all of us.
Listen to the him trying to scare us witless:
Are we and the fishes and the corals in danger of being cooked?
The diagram below shows that the Pacific Ocean surface temperature is not rising – in fact it looks to be slowly turning into a cooling phase. The seasonal variations caused by the sun are obvious, but there is no correlation between this horizontal trend of temperature and the rising trend of the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.
Politicians are continually increasing the risks of electricity blackouts with their dangerous climate policies. It is foolish in the extreme to believe that humans can change the future climate by collecting carbon taxes and covering the hills with wind turbines.
We should ask them: which is worse – gradual man-made global warming or sudden electricity blackout?
Alarmists try to scare us by claiming that man’s activities are causing global warming. Whether and when we may see new man-made warming is disputed and uncertain. If it does appear, the world will be slightly warmer, with more evaporation and rainfall; plants will grow better and colonise some areas currently too cold or too dry; fewer old people will die in winter and sea levels may continue the gradual rise we have seen since the end of the last ice age. There may even be a bit more “green” in Greenland. There is no evidence that man’s production of carbon dioxide is causing more extreme weather events. Any change caused by man will be gradual and there will be plenty of time to adapt, as humans have always done. Most people will hardly notice it.
What is certain, however, is that global warming policies are greatly increasing the chances of electricity blackouts, and here the effects can be predicted confidently – they will be sudden and severe.
Those pushing Agenda 21 deliberately seek to trash traditional Australian values, remove private property rights, destroy Australian sovereignty, independence and prosperity, while at the same time deliberately preventing Australians from making an informed democratic choice. The carbon tax, “sustainability”, smart growth, regional planning etc are all part of this UN sponsored destruction of individual human rights.
This quote from the great H.L. Mencken captures perfectly the religious nature of those in the climate cult:
“The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be, for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.”
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