Dick Smith and other Mixed Nuts.
by NCTCS Secretary Anthony Cox
Dick Smith has a
track record of elitism and moral self-indulgence. He is a rich man who now
seems to want poorer folk to pay the price of his moral concerns about the scam
of AGW.
Smith is a disciple of Ehrlich. Ehrlich is
a loon who in turn is a modern disciple of Malthus. Malthus was an 18thC preacher
who thought that like animals humans would breed themselves beyond the
environment’s ability to sustain.
Malthus at least based his theories on what
he though was beneficial to humanity. The modern Malthusian is a misanthrope,
and Ehrlich is no
exception.
Like Ehrlich, Smith wants fewer people. Most
recently he is advocating this on the basis that energy is going to run out, or
at least become so dear at 10 bucks a litre
that no one could afford it.
To give him his due Smith does go into bat
for nuclear and gives renewables a serve. So there is some sense there because
unless you only want electricity for 40% of the time and even then in a
completely unpredictable way and at a huge cost renewable energy only makes
sense to the ideologically brainwashed or those making a buck from it.
Those who advocate renewable energy are
caught in a web of fanciful nonsense. The aptly named Will J. Grant writing at
the ironically named The
Conversation is a typical example. After listing the marvellously
speculative renewable forms on the drawing board, Grant concludes:
Some – perhaps all – of these technologies may be economically viable one day or in particular niches.
This is self-indulgent elitism given the
crying need for macro-grid energy to maintain living standards in the West and
to raise living standards in the third world. The only niche markets for
renewables are expediently non-conformist wealthy urbanites who take social
infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, modern transport exigencies and the
requirements of city power for granted.
So Smith is not on the same level of
hypocrisy as Grant and he has shown an interest in promising
speculative energy sources such as Low
Energy Nuclear Reactions {LENR]. But like Grant Smith is a devotee of
AGW and more importantly AGW’s evil sister, peak energy.
Peak energy is straight out of the Erhlich
book of doom and gloom. This doom and gloom is wrapped up in the purity of
nature and the negative effect human demand for energy has on nature.
If anything this combination of reverence
for nature and the idea that energy is running out is even more damaging than
AGW. It is certainly more expensive with renewable energy costing
billions in Australia alone.
None of this money spent on renewables
needs to be spent. There are multifarious types of energy, both old and new
waiting to be developed. The Japanese are about to begin to exploit methane
hydrate on the ocean floor, the world is awash with natural
gas from all sources and Thorium, a wonder energy source with literally
centuries of supply has not even been looked at.
Smith’s position about peak energy is
therefore unsustainable; his position on this issue is as badly thought out as
is his position on AGW. The irony is there is absolutely no indication that
renewable energy is going to replace fossil fuel. The global statistics show
that renewable energy plateaued in the late 1990’s:
And the US Department of Energy shows
little chance of the use of renewables increasing into the future:
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| Image Source here. |
The point is emphasised by the fact that
most of the renewable energy being used is biomass, mainly wood; as Matt
Ridley notes about the IPCC
report:
It turns out that the great majority of this energy, 10.2% out of the 13.8% share, comes from biomass, mainly wood (often transformed into charcoal) and dung. Most of the rest is hydro; less than 0.5% of the world’s energy comes from wind, tide, wave, solar and geothermal put together.
At best Smith is ill-informed; at worst, like other advocates of
Malthus, he is motivated by misanthropy. One would like to think not; but in any
event a harm done with good intentions is still a harm and Smith is pursuing harmful
ideas.
