Not convinced on climate
In a recent column (‘Taranaki – the energy hub of the Southern Hemisphere’) Stacey Hitchcock, NPDC councillor, wrote: ‘‘The world is changing, and the reliance on fossil fuels as the major energy source is shifting. The science behind climate change is more real than ever and, as a nation, New Zealand is fast developing an appetite to explore a more sustainable, renewable energy future.’’
I would suggest to you that these three statements are not supportable.
Taking her first statement that ‘‘reliance is shifting away from fossil fuels as a major energy source’’, perhaps Ms Hitchcock can explain why ‘‘overall 1600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries [and] the new plants will expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 per cent’’ (NY Times, 2017).
According to figures from The World Bank, between 1990 and 2015, renewables as a percentage of global total energy consumption rose 1 per cent from 17 per cent to 18 per cent – hardly supporting the contention that there is a unrestrained global enthusiasm for renewables (and hydroelectric generation, not wind or solar generation, accounted for almost all of that 17 or 18 per cent).
Taking her second statement that ‘‘the science behind climate change is more real than ever’’ Professor Richard Lindzen (for 30 years Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT) described (October 2018) the latest advisory from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, i.e. that we need to spend $2.4 trillion a year between now and 2035 to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change, as ‘‘an implausible conjecture backed by false evidence [which] repeated incessantly has become politically correct ‘knowledge’ and is used to promote the overturn of industrial civilization’’.
He stated: ‘‘What we will be leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable silliness as well as a landscape degraded by rusting wind farms and decaying solar panel arrays. False claims about 97 per cent agreement will not spare us.’’
As for her third statement that ‘‘New Zealand is fast developing an appetite to explore a more sustainable, renewable energy future’’ I would be grateful if Ms Hitchcock could provide us with one scintilla of empirical evidence to support this contention (and by ‘‘empirical evidence’’ I don’t mean some Green Party press release or, God forbid, some utterance from those deep thinkers at Climate Justice Taranaki).
Bob Sadler, New Plymouth