Steel maker ArcelorMittal has reached an agreement on CO2 quotas at its Liege plant and promised to restart its blast furnace on the condition of the granting of a 'polluter's permit', Agence France-Presse reported, citing Belgian government sources.
South Africa's power crisis is having wider repercussions
AT THE big Sandton mall in northern Johannesburg, idle shoppers stroll in darkness. They have been caught in one of the many blackouts that have plagued South Africa for three weeks. Shops are closed, unable to open their tills or process credit cards. Ice-cream shops watch their merchandise dissolve; food stalls are unable to offer coffee or anything hot to eat. In Cape Town a power cut trapped tourists in the cable car that goes up Table Mountain, and in Pretoria angry commuters whose trains stopped running set them on fire. In Johannesburg, which is congested at the best of times, the roads become gridlocked when the traffic lights go out.
Most shocking of all, the country's largest gold, platinum, coal and diamond producers shut down their underground mines on January 25th, after being told that their electricity supply could not be guaranteed. Five days later, having been promised a stable supply, they resumed production. But they will have to limit their power consumption to 90% of the usual level. On January 29th the authorities said power cuts and rationing would continue until July.
The impact is also felt beyond South Africa's borders. Eskom is rationing the electricity it exports to Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Swaziland. The interruption of mining has pushed up the prices of gold and platinum. The crisis is likely to affect global platinum markets, where supply has been tight for a few years, particularly: South Africa produces over 75% of the world's supply. Carmakers, which buy over half of global platinum production for use in catalytic converters, must be praying South Africa will soon emerge from the darkness.
Indonesia is a land in turmoil, home to massive volcanoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes. On Monday, January 14, it experienced a brand new type of disturbance, the world's first food riot caused by another nation pandering to the global warming mob. Indonesians took to the streets, demanding that their government to do something about the price of soybeans, a dietary staple.
All over the world, food prices are on the rise. For most of the late 1990s and up until 2005, the price of beans on the Chicago Board of Trade had remained stable at about $5 a bushel. Since then, they have shot up over 150 percent, to around $13. Corn has doubled, to $5. Wheat prices have tripled.
Simon Linnett, Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild, has called for a new international body, the World Environment Agency, to regulate carbon trading.
In a recently published paper, Trading Emissions, for the Social Market Foundation, Mr Linnett argues that the International problem of climate change demands an international solution.
Unless governments cede some of their sovereignty to a new world body, he says, a global carbon trading scheme cannot be enforced and regulated.
Right-wing Czech President Vaclav Klaus slammed the EU's sweeping new measures to fight climate change as a "tragic mistake" in an interview with a German newspaper on Thursday.
"I believe that our government and others will stand up against these bureaucratic ideas," Klaus told the Handelsblatt business daily.
"This package is without doubt a tragic mistake, a misunderstanding of nature and an unnecessary limitation of human activity," the outspoken Eurosceptic leader added.
"For me it is almost a tragedy."
Will global warming increase hurricane activity? Two studies published in the last week arrived at opposite conclusions.
A link between warmer sea surface temperatures and increased North Atlantic hurricane activity “has been quantified for the first time,” according to a study by University College London researchers that was published in Nature (Jan. 30). They claim to have associated a 0.5 degree Celsius increase in sea surface warming with a 40 percent increase in Atlantic hurricane activity during 1996-2005 as compared to the average activity during 1950-2000.
South Africa is experiencing an energy crisis that has all the dimensions of a national disaster. Last Friday all South Africa's gold, platinum, diamond and some coal mines closed. This was because of the dangers to miners during unexpected power failures. Energy-demanding ventilation and dewatering are critical requirements for our mines. Large energy-consuming aluminium and other smelters have closed down. Tens of thousands of workers are out on the streets. Gold and platinum account for about 25% of South Africa's exports. Losses are estimated to exceed R200 million per day from these sources alone.
Our only energy supplier is the semi-state body Eskom. The mining industry uses 12% of Eskom's capacity, accounts for 7% of the economy, 30% of exports and 25% of foreign exchange earnings.
This is only one of the consequences of the energy crisis. There are many examples of how the crisis is affecting all aspects of life in this country. Our national economy has already been adversely affected. On two occasions I visited local shopping centres. The lights were out, doors were closed, and the staff were waiting in the corridors for the power to come on again.
In order to overcome the problem, the authorities intend imposing severe reductions in electricity use. These will be in place for the next five years at least. The reductions include industries (10%), commercial use (15%), shopping centres and hotels (20%), large office complexes (15%), agriculture (5%) and household use (10%). The target is the reduction of national energy demand by 10% to 15%. No mention is made of the mining sector or of the natural growth in demand.
The relative use of electricity of the various sectors is as follows: households (35%), industry (35%), mining (12%), commercial use (9%), export to neighbouring states (4%), agriculture (3%) and transport (2%). The economies of our neighbouring states will also suffer.
I was directly involved in the imposition of water restrictions during the severe drought of the 1980s. These were very difficult to implement. The control of electricity use will be even more difficult. Voluntary reductions on the required scale will not be achieved. It will take at least a year to implement enforceable measures.
Other long-term measures are proposed. They include the compulsory use of energy-saving light bulbs and the installation of solar water heaters. It is not a coincidence that these restriction measures have long been proposed by climate change activists. They are also the basis for South Africa's support for internationally enforceable and economically damaging greenhouse gas control measures.
Now the South African public will directly experience the consequence of these measures long proposed by climate alarmists. There is little prospect of South Africa meeting its goals of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014. Economists are also predicting that we will not achieve the targeted 6% annual economic growth within the foreseeable future.
The South African authorities have acknowledged that the crisis is the result of not taking heed of warnings issued in 1998 that this would happen if our power generation network was not expanded to meet the growing demand. There is some suspicion that the delay was also the result of pressures from environmental activists.
This is a very good example of what will happen to the fragile economies of other developing countries with large disadvantaged populations. It also demonstrates the consequences when developing countries are forced to comply with compulsory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions imposed by developed counties such as the EU for example.
The UK sent Nicholas Stern and David King to South Africa in order to persuade the South African authorities to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and to persuade other developing counties to follow suite. Now we see the result.
Chris Horner, CEI, posted on PlanetGore
With my internet in rural Virginia finally back up…again, for now…I cannot resist noting Bill Clinton's most recent re-insertion of himself into presidential politics, claiming that "We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy" to fight global warming".
This candor harkens back to an even more bizarre, if still remarkably similar, comment during a 2003 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. Then, according to colleagues in the room (I have not located a hearing transcript) Sen. Joseph Lieberman explained away 2002 temperatures not having come through as warm as some advocates had predicted with the rationale that, well, the economy had slowed down. Ah.
Each and every candidate should of course be immediately asked for a substantive response to the former president's argument, which really makes the climate realists' case that the economic pain from the various proposals is real even though no one claims any proposal ever tabled would yield climatic gain.
What with the raging debate about the key issue of the climate's sensitivity to greenhouse gas forcing, it may also be an opportune time to ask candidates if they accept Lieberman's claim of a remarkably responsive climate system and, if so, tell the voters what year they liked the weather best. We will then know their plan is to cap economic activity at the corresponding, previous year's level. It all just makes sense.
Jonah, I can't believe I'm writing this, but I'm not sure Jake Tapper is being entirely accurate when he characterizes Bill Clinton's remarks on global warming yesterday as "We just have to slow down our economy." Clinton's remarks actually suggest that doing that would not help as "China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren," which is an accurate assessment of the situation. Bill could have gone further and said that it is actually immoral to suggest otherwise, but, hey, you take what you can get.
Where Bill goes off the rails is in his pie-in-the-sky vision of a green tomorrow, which brings to mind the end of the Goobacks episode of South Park:
If you want that in America, if you want the millions of jobs that will come from it, if you would like to see a new energy trust fund to finance solar energy and wind energy and biomass and responsible bio-fuels and electric hybrid plug-in vehicles that will soon get 100 miles a gallon, if you want every facility in this country to be made maximally energy efficient that will create millions and millions and millions of jobs, vote for [guess who?]
The idea that completely changing our energy system will create millions of new, extra jobs, is like suggesting, as one commentator noted in The Guardian of all places, that the permanent abolition of the wheel would lead to a bonanza of new jobs in the blacksmithing, livery and farriery (?) industries. Planet Gore's own Ken Green noted in Congressional testimony recently that the promise of green jobs is largely illusory, and yesterday drew attention to the fact that current global warming legislation will actually lose jobs:
Economist Anne Smith testified to Congress that her state-of-the-art economic modeling estimates that Warner-Lieberman would cause net reduction in 2015 GDP of 1.0% to 1.6% relative to the GDP that would otherwise occur. That loss rises to the range of 2% to 2.5% after 2015. Smith found that the annual loss in GDP would increase to the range of $800 billion to $1 trillion, which is serious money. By 2020, Smith estimates losses of 1.5 to 3.4 million jobs – and that is net jobs, after adjusting for the new "green" jobs that might be created by the bill.
So while Tapper isn't entirely accurate in characterizing what Bill said, he's pretty accurate in summarizing the effects of the policies he recommends. Bill Clinton's economic stimulus plan is to slow down our economy.
Sheldon Richman, in his article “Most presidential seekers want energy socialism” makes this comment: “One of the great unnoticed curiosities of the presidential campaign is that even the party that claims devotion to free enterprise is full-out socialist — or, more precisely, fascist — when it comes to energy policy.” He continues, ‘At a recent ABC forum, these candidates recited a list of things “we must do to end our dependence on foreign oil.” “We” means the “we who are forced by government.” Not one of the five showed even a glimmer of understanding that a truly free market would be more than up to the task of ensuring steady and plentiful supplies of energy.’
“And good ol’ boys were drinking whisky and rye, singing this’ll be the day that I die.”
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