CLIMATE CHANGE

Get used to the consequences as lip-service conferences and diverse combatting efforts are simply toying with the issue at government level. Boris has succeeded with his undertaking to get the next global climate conference in Glasgow later this year. 30,000 delegates are scheduled to hit the city although God only knows where they’ll all stay. It’s the tourist off-season so most will probably take the 45 minute commuter train trip from Edinburgh.

But what staggering hypocrisy! 30,000 to fly in from all over the globe to listen to predictable speeches, doubtless including attacks on jet fuel damage. These utterances could have been simply read online.

Critics may say there will be attempts to reach agreements on reducing carbon burning but common sense says that will only involve a handful of people, while history says such agreements in the past have proven empty air.

International conferences are a joke, their underlying motives either a tax-deductible or free (paid for by someone) holiday abroad. My favourite ever was after befriending a New York couple in Vienna one night in 1971, they there to attend an international heart-attack prevention conference. I was delighted the following evening when we met up for our arranged dinner, to learn the outfit’s president had dropped dead of a heart-attack while delivering his opening address.

But back to climate-change.

Australia for example, still largely provides its electricity through burning coal, a fuel it’s the world’s second largest producer of and which is its main export industry.  It’s a rich country and with the cost of capital currently almost free, it should be embarking on substituting nuclear power to replace coal. Most of France’s electricity is nuclear power sourced and as a major uranium producer, Australia has a head start. But as in Germany, doubtless the idiotic Greens would oppose it. Then again, so would the public, specially Queenslanders once they learnt the financial cost through the loss of coal export revenues. Nevertheless, the Greens opposition to nuclear power brings to mind one of the key Greenpeace founders who walked from the movement to devote his life to nuclear power promotion, once he did his homework. As he remarked at the time, his Greenpeace colleagues were driven by a feel-good sentiment and were spectacularly ignorant on matters scientific. Has anything changed since? if so, it’s certainly not evident.

Much, if not all of the world is in for a very rough time in the next two decades. But mark my word, as catastrophe follows catastrophe, we will see nearly everyone eventually embrace nuclear power. The single criticism lies in the radioactive waste. That should not be (and never has been) an issue if, as it is, handled right.

Hopes for clean fusion power, despite the massive global scientific efforts, have yet to bear fruit. It’s actually now achievable but to date, only at a greater electricity expense than it’s production cost.

Still, as pointed out recently in Britain, the goal of cold fusion power will probably eventually be achieved, solely because it’s attracting the very best scientific brains, drawn by the challenge.

Let’s hope so.