It could perhaps have been better…

IREAD with interest the article of Keith Bryer (A cold inconvenient fact, Business Report, July 29). Then on August 3 I read, with shock, the disgraceful letter of Dr Nicholas King of the Centre for Environmental Rights, in which he launches a sustained attack against Bryer, using nasty language.

King says: “These ‘fossil fool’ denialists should be ostracised by society.” Ostracism by society is what happened to Galileo and Darwin, until it was discovered that they were actually right. Even using the term ‘denialist’ is an offensive approach.

King claims to be so scientific, but one of the fundamental tenets of science is that all opinions may be proposed and then have to be supported or demolished by scientific evidence, not by a majority consensus which King claims to exist.

King makes much of ‘ peer reviewed scientific evidence’. Good point, but it is interesting that in King’s entire tirade he does not mention the cosmic ray theory of Dr Henrik Svensmark of Denmark, in which he has experimentally shown that the sun’s magnetic field variations cause cloud cover around the earth to alter.

This in turn alters the amount of sunlight and thus heat which reaches the surface of the earth.

Interestingly, the solar activity matches the changes in global temperature, over thousands of years. The carbon dioxide theory just does not. So King should be scientific and point this out. He should also have mentioned the Oregon Petition that is signed by thousands of scientists and which states that there is little evidence for any man-made global warming.

But King says that: “Climate change implies volatility.” This is nonsense. Volatility is called weather, or is the result of obvious short term events like volcanoes. Climate change can only be measured over time spans of 30 years or more.

THE ARTICLE “Our SOEs fail us from bad decisions” (August 17, 2015) makes the claim that “Transnet, the rail, ports and pipeline operator, is an exception, having been profitable for more than a decade”. While this may be correct we should not be lulled into a sense of false security by believing that it has done its best. The question should be, how much better could they have done?

A case in point is that the National Ports Authority does, after many years, not have a container or ship repair strategy. The port authority’s growth and profits had not been of its own strategic actions, but rather an effect of economic growth in the economies of its main trading partners, especially China, Germany, the US, et al. The result is that the National Ports Authority has been making a profit despite itself. I would argue that it could do much more to contribute to greater economic growth in South Africa if it had had a targeted strategy, especially in its biggest sector – containers.

Considering that more than 90 percent of South African trade is seaborne and that the number of export and import

Climate is a state of affairs when all factors are averaged out over a period of time, it is not extreme weather events.

King says: “Renewables are IT-based technology.” What on earth does that mean? Renewables are sunshine or winds. IT-based… really. I believe what he is trying to say is that wind and solar electricity output is so variable and unpredictable that you need to add huge computer control to somehow rapidly switch electrical output to try to get a smooth supply.

King says Bryer used an “unusual combination” of events to say that Arctic Ice increased. Yes, those events may turn out to be unusual, over short time spans. But what about the unusual events of a couple of seasons ago when a lower latitude ma- commodities being shipped in containers is rapidly increasing, it is surprising that state-ownded enterprises (SOEs) spending in excess of R60 billion on port upgrades has no strategy for the expansion of the country’s container trade.

The National Ports Authority has been losing out to other southern African ports such as those in Mozambique, Namibia and even further afield. Current port expansion in other African countries (Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, etc) will further erode the SA trade, especially in container transhipments. The same sad state of affairs exists in the ship repair industry. With no clear strategy the National Ports Authority has been bumbling along for a number of years, even after approaches from foreign investors from South Korea, China and Europe.

The number of companies involved in ship repair in South Africa has declined and some have relocated to other African countries, such a Namibia. Given the increasing activity in shipping, lack of a clear targeted ship repair strategy does not bode well for economic growth.

We were told at a public briefing a few years back by the National Ports Author- jor storm broke up and scattered Arctic ice and therefore accelerated melting.

Did the Greens then point out that the resulting significant reduction in ice cover was an “unusual event”. No, they claimed it was proof of accelerated global warming. They were wrong.

It is also interesting to note that the ice thickness and the extent of Antarctica continues to grow steadily. Now, I wonder why? Does “long term global warming” only work in the north?

When King announces that climate change is probably the end of free market economics, is this maybe a desire to see the end of big business and a return to some imagined utopian state of living one-with-the-land in a simpler time? No need then ity’s general manager for strategy that he was finalising container and ship repair strategies. However, these strategies appear conspicuous by their absence.

The port authority’s chief financial officer, at another public briefing, has developed a well thought out pricing strategy for containers, but without a clear plan to retain and grow the container trade it becomes a bit meaningless.

While the assumption is that Transnet has been profitable, it must be remembered that the company has a number of entities that are cross subsidising each other. We should rather be examining the performance of each entity within the group. I would suggest that Transnet could have been much more profitable had the National Ports Authority had a clear strategic plan on how to retain and grow these key sectors.

Do the problems in SOEs in general arise from a lack of foresight, leadership, nepotism, ability or just plain sabotage?

Your guess is as good as mine, but its limiting effects on economic growth are enormous. for modern industry at all.

When King claims that there is no debating the validity of human-induced climate change, he is wrong. There is a huge debate going on. But the real scientists do not use insulting terms like ”denialist” to denigrate an opposing view.

Congratulations to Bryer for pointing out that thinking people should actually think, and not just be led by the nose by organisations like the IPCC which had to confess publicly that they were wrong about retreating ice glaciers; wrong about sea level predictions; wrong about the infamous Hockey Stick graph… you get the point.