Is CO2 from fossil fuels a pollutant? What the extreme Greens want. (Kelvin Kemm) South Africa

Is carbon dioxide from fossil fuels a pollutant? If so, what should be done about it? Intentions of the extreme greens.

Kelvin Kemm December 27, 2019 This is a most interesting discussion. My take is: Part A: The public environmental discussion (including nuclear) is not about accurate science, it is about power and politics. The extreme greens, worldwide, are fighting for public attention, by which they want to influence politicians and certain business leaders, like bankers.

Part B: The real objective is not to ‘save the planet’ but the redistribution of wealth. They want a ‘more equal society’ and so they want to move vast amounts of money from rich countries to poor ones. As a result they create the stories that some islands are about to be flooded and that rich countries ‘who caused the problem’ must pay damages. But it goes much further than that. They don’t want individuals to be better off than other individuals within one country. So the calls to ban the eating of red meat and the reduction in air travel and similar are all aimed to say ‘why should you wealthy people be able to do that, but poor people can’t’. So their solution is government control of what you can do. That is done via COP 21 agreements, UN approaches and other similar, such that governments are obligated to control their citizens to reach the national commitments under the environmental agreements.

Part C: So one would imagine that nuclear would be a desirable power source because it does not produce CO2. But no, an objective of theirs is to limit electricity production because electricity allows people to produce more cars, process more meat and so on. So any inexpensive electricity is not good in their eyes. You should see European greens coming to Africa and telling Africans not to follow in the footsteps of the bad first world example, but to rather ‘live in harmony with nature’ and avoid using pumps, cars, tractors, and so on. So they are opposed to any solution which produces inexpensive electricity. They glorify the idea of ‘home produced’ power with your own solar panel on your roof because that is so naturally limiting.

Part D: I think that many political leaders like Trump, Johnson, Macron, and more, know this but they have to get some measure of public support to be able to make moves. So, the greens keep the Greta-type actions going without bothering too much if it is honest. Us scientists are trained to be accurate and honest, which becomes a liability in a confrontation like this. Note I am not saying be dishonest but if a scientist is asked ‘How much is Pi?’ and he answers ‘about 3’ then often other scientists howl and say ‘no it is 3.14159’, at which point you lose the interest of the public. So we have to try to follow two lines of action: one is to produce information that people like Trump can use; 1

the other is to try to get public interest articles into the public domain somehow which carry some sort of emotional link. Interestingly I think that Greta may be doing our cause a world of good. She went so over the top that many journalists and public commentators started to ask if her story were actually true and started to find out that it is not. For the Trump et al group we need to figure out messages like “All the spent fuel waste from a nuclear power plant over its entire lifetime will fit in a school hall”. We have to have the background fact like: take 2000 or 3000MW for 60 years and calculate the volume of spent fuel and then assume an ‘average hall’ so that the claim is defendable. I have had people at social functions tell me that the nuclear waste is as much as the giant pyramid of Egypt and is dumped on garbage heaps. So we are after ‘order of magnitude’ simple statements for much of this, not highly accurate physics conference data.

A while ago I was near Koeberg nuclear power station near Cape Town and I was told that working class people in the region were anti-nuclear. I wondered how they knew enough to be able to make such a value judgement. So, I walked down some back streets and knocked on doors and asked them. I was in the lounge of a fellow who told me that he did not want nuclear electricity, he wanted the proper electricity like people like me used, not the bad stuff. I was mystified so I asked him what was wrong with ‘nuclear electricity’. He told me that it was radioactive and so as his children sat and watched TV the nuclear radiation was coming out of the wall and damaging his children, but that people like me received safe electricity that was not radioactive. That was such a way-out story that I could not have invented it if you asked me. So, I asked him who told him that. He told me that Greenpeace people had come door to door some time before and explained it and told them to reject ‘nuclear electricity because of the nuclear radiation’.

So that is what we are up against. Then Greenpeace easily whipped up a few street demonstrations for the media, with local residents carrying anti-nuclear placards.

Kelvin Kemm CEO Nuclear Africa Pretoria, South Africa

Spring wildflowers in the wilderness of South Africa. This is not a private garden. The world is beautiful even with all the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power to make living better for 8 billion people. Problems can be improved with good management and leadership. Should the world be forced to stop using or pay taxes for use of fossil fuels?

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