THE THIRD OPTION

A CASE FOR FOSSIL FUEL

By: Shahin Tahmasebi – September 2017

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The question on global warming is highly politicized and turned into a black and white issue. There is no gray area in between and you are forced to make a stand and take side: you are either with it or against it. You are forced to declare your position. There is a line wider than the Grand Canyon between the climate change believers and the deniers. This line was created by the believers and the deniers have been forced to stand on the other side even thou, many of those deniers do believe in the worsening of the climate but forced adopt that position due to the pressure from work. Sometime both parties use megaphones to talk to each other at the rallies and still have difficulties hearing each other. Megaphone diplomacy in climate change is out of order.

Global warming and the climate change is real because not only it is supported by science, we can also see and experience the changes for ourselves. Historical records show human contribution and the interference with the climate. Denial of global warming is wrong and misleading. Historical records and scientific data show that the environment has changed and many factors, including human behavior, are the reason for this change. If it is proven scientifically, it should be good enough to accept. Remember Al Gore in “Inconvenient Truth” needed a scissors lift to show the top of the increase in CO2 chart.

But, …

If a group of people turn up to my factory and yelling shut it down I’ll call them liars and their cause a lie. This is what is happening to the CEOs of the industries and forcing them to confront the issue of emission and the effects on climate. They call it a lie and call the global warming a hoax because they are held responsible for the sins of the past and facing extortion for their jobs and their livelihood. No doubt that the pollution and the emission is mainly coming from the manufacturing sector, but the closing them down should not be the first option while the other options are yet to be exhausted.

If the option to resolve the global warming is to shut down our factories, sack everyone and cease operations, it is not an option at all. We are far from having a solution to the global warming. This will lead to social dysfunction and poverty. Those who lost their jobs will eventually find out that they were lied to and used as a pun to remedy other issues while other options were still available. People will find out that they lost their jobs because of some politician wanted to get elected and this was the only way. I have a feeling that people already know this too well. People already know they are price gouged on electricity, gas, and fuel; it is only a matter of time class actions will be taken to stop the greedy energy suppliers for overcharging.

The global warming has become a tool for the politicians to get elected, scientists to have a paying job, and the corporate to rip-off the public without an end on the horizon. The focus is just on closing the economies rather than offering a permanent fix to the problem with the planet. The problems of global warming can always comeback as these fixes and remedies they are on the offer now are only aimed at as a temporary solution. The economies will grow as the populations grow and the need for housing and demand for jobs will only get bigger. They can’t force people into jobless and homelessness, people need home and the housing industry needs cement, brick, steel, and timber. The demand for housing alone will force the industries to increase their energy use, and the result is more emission, not less. Population growth and emission are locked into each other. Bigger population equals bigger energy demand equals bigger emission.

We just can’t destroy lives by taking people’s livelihood away from them with a half-arsed solution.

The demand for certain amount of steel every year is not going to reduce. More people, more cars, more fridges, heaters, TVs, glasses, ……. When was the last time anyone went to a department store and looked at a television set and said and said I’m not going to buy it just because of the global warming. Number of vehicles in China increased from 59m in 2007 to 194m in 2016. Total number of cars in the world was 1 in 1885 when Karl Friedrich Benz built the first true gasoline automobile. How many we now have and how many billions since have been built. An average of 1000kg each, you do the math, that is the reason for the global warming. Houses used to be made mainly from timber and mud, some also from bricks and stone. We destroyed forests for using the trees for housing and then started using coal to melt steel to build cars. Trees are the lung of the planets and they are the one cleaning the air by storing the carbon in their trunks and releasing oxygen. With the trees gone and there isn’t anything to clean the air, the emission will rise and the climate will change.

The concrete’s half-life is 500 years. It means an optimum built concrete structure should last at least half of that, but we destroy structures with less than their life expectancy just to replace it with a bigger one. Cargo ships built by Chinese now have a 10 years lifespan before they go back to be recycled, it used to be 50 years. We are not using the products to their full life expectancy that spent so much energy to build and are quick to throw them into the landfill. A new trend in making money in US is mining the old landfills from 60s and 70s as the contain a lot of metals and plastics. Until recent time, before the economy to slow down China was building 3 coal power stations a day and a city size of Brisbane a month. Reducing the size of China’s economy or even slowing it down can bring the Great Walk back and Chinese government is aware of that. Those who have nothing to lose are the most dangerous and most destructive. If China starts to lay off workers they might have another “great walk” on their hand.

A small fluctuation in China’s economy can have a devastating effect not only to China but also to the rest of the world. We have become comfortable with the presence of China as the world’s manufacturing plant and we have become relaxed and lost our own local manufacturing force, if something happens to China and they stop the production of some sort of good, it can have a domino effect and stop the rest of the economies around the world. We have become a little too dependent on China and this is forcing China to use whatever it takes to generate energy to have a sustained economy. We don’t neither have the means nor the expertise if something goes wrong. We have put all our eggs in someone else’ basket and given them the hens too to look after. We don’t even know how hens work anymore.

We are removing coal power stations that create zero emission for own structure, they were built 50 years ago and during this time they have already offset their original emission they had created. Only the part electricity is generated create emission. We are removing these structures at a cost to the climate for scraping them and replacing them with more structures creating more emission. We need to extend the life expectancy of our assets and get more life out of what we have rather than a short cycle that puts more pressure on the environment.

The same science that has been telling us for decades that we are part of the cause to global warming has failed us by giving us a solution to resolve this issue without hurting our economy and reducing our society. The response coming from the scientists and the science institutes are just very plain and basic. You don’t need to be a scientist in a very specialized and narrow area of the science to give that answer, anybody looks at the smokestack where a black smoke comes out can conclude to shut it down and the smoke will disappear. Well, bloody boohoo. We don’t need science to tell us to close our factories and put workers off to fix the damn global warming, we can do it ourselves.

We need the science to give us a solution to our problems without sending us back to the stone age.

The scientists so far, if you think about it, haven’t really given us a real solution to the old problem that has been around for a while. Temporary fix, sure, but not a permanent solution.

I remember an article printed in a science magazine a long time ago, I think it was around 1974. The article was about a supercomputer was built in late 60s or early 70s. This is the period before the floppy disks and it needed punch cards for inputs. They put a question to the computer and expected a good answer to the problem they had. The question was: most people trip-over at the last step when they climb up a set of stairs, how this can be avoided? The supercomputer took its time and went into processing of the data. After a lot of clicks and clack came back a few hours later, or minutes, and said: remove the last step!

Although we have come a long way from those supercomputers and advanced our technology but the answer from the scientists to our problems remain in a very similar fashion. Closing a power station because it is putting out a lot of carbon is not the option we need today. We need the science to give us an option what to do with the carbon that comes out of smoke stack and how to convert the CO2 to a solid-form of C and a gas-form of O2. (Tree plantation is one of these options) Despite the truckload of resources thrown at the science it does not have an answer for this problem. We are given a gibberish, complicated, unworkable solution that is not a solution at all. Science has failed us. How about if we shut down the science and sack all the scientists? Along with sacking the politicians, let’s see if they like it. One for one, for every loss of jobs in manufacturing should be a loss of job in science sector or a politician lose their job. I bet as soon as we do this they’ll come up with a different solution!

If a manufacturing plant with thousands of employees needs access to a cheap supply of energy in order remain competitive, it needs a steady supply of cheap fuel and if it needs to use coal then that should be an option, not the option to close it down. It is not the best option but there should be solution to the emissions created by this plant. The science needs to come up with a solution to resolve the emission rather than shutting down the operation. Sometimes removing cause to the problem will not resolve the problem. It just shifts and changes the form of the problem and nevertheless the problem will remain intact.

The solution can be resolving the outcome of the problem. This means that the cause can continue to create problem and the product of the problem can be remedied. The cause in this case is the need for energy by burning coal, the problem is global warming and the product in this problem is the emission. The solution to the emission problem, so far, has been stop using coal. That is the easy way. Removing coal will not address the need for energy and it pushes it to alternative results including closing downs and loss of jobs.

What if, …, we could continue using fossil fuel as we have and do something about the emission?

We have less than 50 years of oil left and about 150 years of coal. I would rather use coal as a fuel than storing energy in batteries made from Lithium. With the fossil fuel, it will take about another 100-150 years to clear the pollution from the environment and finally have a clean air by year 2250-2300. Even sooner if we develop a method to capture all of emission at the smoke stack. Although the climate destruction will melt the icecaps, seas will rise, civilizations will be ruined and cities will be reduced to dust. Not to mention the complete destruction of many entire species.

Batteries in the other hand, are full of heavy metal including Lithium, Lead, Mercury, Zinc, … These elements can leak and poison the underground water tables for thousands of years to come. In many countries, there are no recycling programs for these batteries, even though in some of countries that have the program still they end up in landfills. Acid-Lead car batteries came to use more than 100 years ago are not recycled in many areas and still ending up in landfill.

The dangers of heavy metals from batteries are by far higher than the emission from coal. The battery solution has a longer and most damaging to the environment than the fossil fuel.

There are small cases that capturing the emission and storing is in underground storage facilities has solved the problem to some degree (clean coal). This option is leaving the problem for the future generations to deal with. We didn’t like it when past generations left their problems for us and surely the future generations will hate us same ways we hated the past gens too. We can’t have someone else to clean up after us. Coal is dirty, but battery is worst in long term. We can plant and regenerate forest to remove the effects and damage of coal, but we cannot repair the damages of heavy metal from the batteries if they get into our water system and reserves.

Pumped hydro a proven technology used in EU and US can store more energy than Australia would ever need. South Australia still pushing with a $1b investment in solar and battery farms.

We need to resolve our problems now in our generation, not later. Our inability to resolve the issue has created a black & white mentality among all. There are no gray areas. There should be more than one solution to the shut it down solution that we currently have.

The main opposition to the climate change are coming from industries that are the heavy user or producer of energy. There are even calls on cattle farmers to reduce their production as the methane gas produced by the cattle are partially responsible for the greenhouse gases.

 

 

 

A BLUEPRINT TO FIX THE CLIMATE

The Earth’s atmosphere is what causing the problems with the climate. It is a thin layer of air that traps the heat and as the heat is transferred only in molecules it cannot escape the atmosphere and gets trapped in as there are no molecules once the atmosphere ends in about 1,000km (the size of atmosphere is about 480km). There are hardly any molecules exist after this altitude. Humans and vegetation can survive at altitudes of around to 5,000m. The city of La Rinconada, Peru, at 5,100m is the highest town.

The size of the atmosphere can grow larger in summer and smaller in winter. Air molecules have larger separation when heated and smaller when cooled. The heat causes the molecules and toms to expand and have a larger size than cooler molecules. The expansion of heated air in closed space can cause explosion. The atmosphere is no different to a canister of air when heated, it expands and increases its size.

Our contribution to the global warming is multiplied by the growing size of the atmosphere. If for example, we put a 1kg of coal in a balloon and burn, it would generate a large amount of gas in the balloon that would increase the size of the balloon and increase its temperature by 1 degree. Because the kilo of carbon converted from a solid form into expanding gas it naturally increases the size of the balloon and consequently the surface area exposed to the Sun collecting more heat and the result would be more than 1 degree as it should have been.

A larger atmosphere can expose to light rays from the Sun and can collect heat even more due to its larger body and exposure, therefore absorb more energy. The greenhouse gases are the cause of climate change but a contributing factor in extreme weather especially in creation of tornado, hurricanes, and cyclones.

It is possible to fix the problems with the climate change by manipulating it and changing our behavior without a heavy toll on industries and loss of jobs. The model you see here is not only a solution to the problem with the climate, but it also creates new jobs at no cost to industries.

First, we need to understand what the problem is with the climate and the effects of greenhouse gases. Global warming is the direct result of greenhouse gases. We are putting more gas into atmosphere than it can consume and resolve and as the result, like anything else, too much of one thing can clog up the system. In normal condition, the environment needs CO2 for the growth of the forest and vegetation, too much of CO2 can be deadly to the planet.

The size of the atmosphere is not discussed by the scientists and mentioned in the media very often.

It is hard to remember the time the size of the atmosphere was discussed at length anywhere and cannot find any literature on the effects of greenhouse gases on the size of atmosphere.

There are a lot of factors in global warming but the size of the atmosphere is the direct result of the extreme weather. A-thousand-year floods of Houston and the destruction of Harvey, Irma and presence of four hurricanes over Mexico, US, and Caribbean within the period of 2 weeks in September 2017 is a good example of direct link between the size of atmosphere and the extreme weather. The cost of Irma and Harvey is going to exceed $290b combined. Half of that could have fixed the problem and saved lives and removed the likelihood of such future weather events.

The question would be why this extreme weather happens mostly, if not only, to this region and Southeast Asia?

Although the recent events of hurricanes in that region are unusual but not out of expectations. You put too much air in a balloon and it will burst. The atmosphere is no different to a balloon, it won’t burst but it will change the weather. You mess with the environment, damage the climate and you get 4 hurricanes in-a-row!

 

Interestingly, US is receiving a lot of criticism from the public and a pondering and harsh punishment from the climate for something that they have a small part in causing the problem in the first place. Sure, US has been the biggest polluter in the past 200 years at least; but that amount of pollution compared to what is the reason for the climate change plays a small part. US is a large contributor to the climate damage and change for its part, but the amount of damages and punishment come from the extreme weather in US alone is not the result of those contributions. The problem with the climate goes back at least 20,000 years when the inland seas started drying up. We just made contributions and sped it up.

The reason for the extreme weather and number of hurricanes is something else.

The problem is somewhere else …., …. Africa. North Africa to be more precise. All these hurricanes in Atlantic originate and start formation in around the west coast of North Africa.

The atmosphere and the Earth are like a basketball inside an inflated balloon. In normal condition, the atmosphere should be distributed equally all around the Earth (image A). The size of atmosphere should be almost equal in northern and southern hemispheres. The shape of the atmosphere always remains the same and a sphere. Regardless of our damages to the climate and emissions, the atmosphere shifts on its own at different time of year.

This was almost the case before the industrial era, 1760. After the industrial era started the need and demand for energy continued and this put a lot of pressure on the energy providers and it increased the consumption of coal. No oil or gas options were available at that time. Every industry had own supply of energy. It was not like today’s practice that suppliers and industries are two separate entities. If a smelter needs energy for its furnaces these days they go to gas and electricity providers and arrange for a supply of energy. In 1760s there were no energy providers, factories and smelters provided own energy.

The condition of equal size of atmosphere all around the planet can, and still, happen in around late March to early June and late September to early November.

This is due to equal distance from and to the Sun when the Earth is getting closer to the Sun or going further from. The Earth orbits the Sun in an oval path rather than a circular, and this puts the planet at the closest proximity to the star and furthest at two points. Equal distance at other two points. The equal distance creates a milder temperature and milder weather condition that allows the atmosphere to come back to an equal shape.

In northern hemisphere summer, when the Earth is closest to the Sun, the atmosphere becomes warmer and expands. This expansion increases the size of atmosphere in the northern hemisphere and this pulls the air and the atmosphere from the south towards north and causes the size of atmosphere in the southern hemisphere to decrease (image B).

The opposite happens when the seasons change, as illustrated in image C, but at lesser effect. The atmosphere moves to the southern hemisphere at much smaller amount and this is due to the planet’s distance from the Sun and therefore lesser heat.

With the balloon moving up and down only in two seasons, spring and autumn, it creates a funnel shape corridor that one side is larger than the other side and this movement creates a sudden large low pressure that moves up a lot of air from the surface towards higher altitude. The sudden introduction of a large warm and humid air to the cool dry air in upper atmosphere generates heavy rains mixed with wind that lead to formation of hurricanes and cyclones. When cooler air moving low from south cross paths and meets the moving air high from east it create a small vortex pattern that would turn horizontal and eventually, if intensified and large and long supply of such pattern continues, turn into a hurricane. In September, the large end of the funnel is in the northern hemisphere and upside down in spring, the larger end is moves to the southern hemisphere.

The intensity of hurricane Sandy, Katrina, Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria, …, is directly related to the amount of increase in size of the balloon and the speed it deflates and returns to its original size and moves back to the center at the end of season. Tracking of these movements, temperature, and size of the atmosphere will allow prediction and the size of hurricanes. Once we know when, where, and the size, not only we can predict formation of hurricanes months in advance and per-allocate resources; but also, we can engineer and manipulate the climate in a way so we can have a slower and softer movement of atmosphere in which would lead to avoidance of any sever change in weather. By engineering the climate, a category 5 hurricane can be downgraded to a tropical storm. This also reduces the likelihood of El Nino and La Nina occurrence.

Five hurricanes in a short period of 3 weeks in the same area shows how fast the atmosphere is moving back and brings with is a sudden low pressure introducing it in a very humid area. The path of these hurricanes is interesting, the systems always move east to west and when they reach land they move north. North has a lower atmospheric pressure and south has a high atmospheric pressure, naturally the path becomes from high to low and pushes the system northerly.

Summers in southern hemisphere are generally milder than the summers in northern hemisphere. In January, we get lots of rain and storm in Australia; large amount of air moves from South East Asia over Java and Timor Sea. This weather pattern is due to the atmosphere moving to southern hemisphere related to high temperature in central Australia.

This warm weather meets cooler weather from south and creates thunderstorms in southern states never seen before. This pattern increases the SOI (Southern Oscillation Index), low precipitation in winter and decreased SOI is very common. Long-term low SOI can lead to El Nino. Extreme cold winter in the northern hemisphere is also the result of this pattern. Snow and icy weather in US and Europe are becoming regular especially in southern states of US and in Middle East. Winter of 2016 brought snow to the deserts in Saudi Arabia.

The movement of atmosphere creates a few events: in winter, it decreases the atmosphere in the southern hemisphere and creates a higher than usual atmospheric pressure. This means no-events-weather for the southern hemisphere winter, drier and warmer than usual, as we had in winter of 2017 in Australia. It also creates a corridor of air at around the Equator and the air is pushed against the sea that would cause more evaporation and fast air movement. The air pushed against the land also creates and stores a lot of static electricity in the clouds that results in electrical thunderstorms.

 

Hurricanes originate in Atlantic

View from North Pole

Cyclones Originate in Pacific

This movement also cools the air over the water while picking up moisture and when the cooler air meets warmer air, coming from Africa over the Atlantic, it results in cyclones and hurricanes. This fast-moving body of air can pick up a lot of moisture from the sea and turn to tropical cyclone and hurricanes just north of the Equator. A larger in size atmosphere in the northern hemisphere will catch more sun rays that makes it even warmer. It is the warmer weather from the southern hemisphere combined with the warm weather in the northern hemisphere that ends up at the top of this balloon and melts the North Pole icecap.

We get two sets of weather in Australia, one in September, beginning of spring, and the second in January middle of summer. Then 2 more sets later in autumn and winter in a similar manner and duplication of the first two sets. The change in spring is when the atmosphere shifts back to its original place in the middle from the north. The shift in January is the one crucial to the north winter. If we get one of those record breaking hot summers, the atmosphere moves south and it is very likely the northern hemisphere will get an eventful and cold winter with one of those polar vortexes from the north pole moving all the way to southern states.

On the opposite side, if the summer in the northern hemisphere is a record breaking and hot summer, we get a warm and dry winter in Australia. This is due to the larger movement of the atmosphere in northern hemisphere summer than the south. The shift is larger in north’s summer.

Americans in recent time received a lot of punishment undeservedly for their sins of damaging the climate. The punishment did not fit the crime. It appears the pollution, emission, and damages to the climate in the southern hemisphere ends up in northern hemisphere and combined with the emissions of their own the effect of climate change is magnified.

Fixing Africa will fix the extreme weather although the problem with the pollution and greenhouse gases will remain unchanged. Fixing Africa will also bring change in climate to Saudi Arabia, Middle East, and Central Asia. It will increase precipitation in these regions and cooler weather will allow vegetation to grow. As the result, the balloon will not grow large and shift north, so the icecap will not melt.

The improvement in Central Asia is a very important point. Twice a year India, Bangladesh and regions of South East Asia receive lots of floods. Although Bangladesh is sitting on a delta and low-line land flooding seems part of landscape, but in North of India, in Kashmir region also get a lot of rain and floods. This is due to the balloon shifts to north and that brings a lot of moisture from the Indian Ocean. If you look at the images from Nepal and Himalayan highlands, you’ll notice the land and mountain have green vegetation on the south-side and dry on the north-side of the ranges. The moisture from the sea hits the cold south-side of the land and converts to water where it is deposited into the soil, no moisture remains in the air to travel to the north-side and it remains dry. This also is the case in north east of Afghanistan where the mountain facing south and west have vegetation than those facing north and east.

Fixing Africa will reduce the large weather movements and reduces the flooding. It also reroutes the air moving from Mediterranean and Black Sea to move east over Caspian Sea and bring moisture to the Central Asia and north of Himalaya.

One fix to one region will fix many issues with many regions. It will bring back the Dead Sea, Aral Sea, and Lake Uremia to life. Imagine just the damages from the airborne salt from the remains of these dead seas will do to those farming land already under threat from the global warming. This fix combined with increased vegetation will cool the balloon and brings the climate closer to normal. Perhaps, in about 100 years, the moisture that moves from Indian Ocean will pass to the other side of Himalaya and turn the deserts back to lakes and seas again. All these deserts we have now, all the way from Sahara Desert in Africa, to Taklamakan Desert west of China and Gobi Desert in Mongolia were inland seas before and were holding a lot of water, as the result the planet was much greener. Now that water has evaporated and gone to the oceans combines with the melting ice sheets from north and south poles have increased the ocean levels.

The link between the Himalaya and the floods of South East Asia, Indian sub-continent, east of China has always been the case for the extreme weather in this region. The Simpson and Gibson deserts in Australia also create a low pressure in the center and cause the moisture from the Indian Ocean to rise and pass over eastern regions and turn to rain over the South Pacific rather than Australian Alps. This has made the eastern states drier and created years of droughts. Empty dams have forced the electricity generators to turn to coal instead of hydro and that has put an extra pressure on the emission and the climate. The emission from Australia adds to the growing size of the balloon in northern hemisphere winter.

By making repairs to 4 regions in North Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, and Australia, as shown in red below, can have direct results in adjacent regions in green and an indirect result in climate improvement in yellow.

The international community is beneficiary of the correction in climate. Every country will benefit from this correction. The jobs created by this project in north of Africa will not only stop flood of economic refugees to Europe, and the future climate refugees from South Pacific region and Indian sub-continent. We don’t need to meet 100% of repairs to the climate, all we need is to help the atmosphere to reduce its size and that will cool the planet and reduce the movements and that will lead to less extreme weather. Although the emission and greenhouse gases from using fossil fuel will continue to damage the environment, but the repaired area will help the growth of new forests that will store some of the carbons in trees.

The cost of repairs compared to a never ending annual disasters sustained from the extreme weather is very minimal and it should be shared with all members of the United Nations.

It is possible to engineer and manipulate the climate. We should plan globally and act locally in those 4 regions to fix the problem. The results of repairs won’t come overnight and will take at least 10 years to start and 2 decades to show signs of improvements. The engineering and the repairs will be a permanent solution to a lifelong problem that we have, rather than a band-aid solution they are proposing.

The Paris agreement is an unworkable solution that aims at slowing down the developed countries from developing further rather than offering a real solution. It gives the chance to developing countries to develop without a reduction to their emission at a cost to others. It plays a catch-up at the cost of workers and loss of jobs in the developing countries. It forces countries like US and Australia to reduce their emission by 20% while it allows India is to double their cap in the same period. It appears the Paris Agreement is more about the wealth distribution than a solution to the climate change. The Paris Agreement is a socialism model of the climate change.

The climate is a glossy cover for a poor content in the name of an agreement.

We have laws and EPAs (Environmental Protection Agency) in almost every country. Except China’s EPA, they have taken a long-service-leave as it appears from the air quality in Beijing! We can empower EPA and tighten the laws regarding pollution. If EPA can impose heavy fines on those polluting the waterways, it can impose heavy fines on those polluting the air. EPA can force the industry to create a carbon trading of their own. I don’t see why a company can get away with releasing their sewer into the air but not those releasing theirs into the creek. Pollution is pollution, smokestack or sewer pipe; we should give enough power to EPA so they can force the polluters to change their habits. Through UN we can ask all members to create EPA, if they don’t have one, and give it enough power to enforce the clean-air laws. Carbon trading and tax on pollution will not work as they shift the emission to different area and is more of a revenue raising than a deterrent; polluters will adapt to these changes and steer through.

The reduction in emission is good only if applied equally to all. If a factory in US needs to shut down for pollution it should be the same in India, instead of allowing to double its pollution. Otherwise, under this system, all the polluters in US and west will move to India and China as they have in the past 3 decades. Lots of manufacturer’s production lines for US firms in China have already started moving to India due to India’s lose emission laws.

Unfortunately, our priorities seem to sway differently when it comes to climate. Saudi Arabia for example, spent nearly $300b in the past 3 years on military hardware, the money that could have fixed their problem with their hot climate while helping to reduce global warming. Not only Saudis make money from selling pollutant products, but also the money they earn from it goes back to the smelters and manufacturers that make the military tanks and sold back to them. There are many nations like this. Pakistan spends billions every year on nuclear weapon than health or education. Iran also spends billions on developing nuclear weapon while their deserts expand and the lakes turn to dust bowl and disappear. This is a good one: Ethiopia and Eritrea spend on military hardware instead of food for their nation and then expect handouts from other nations. Large amount of money and resources are dedicated to production of warfare while the climate is damaged and the damages are denied and ignored.

Since early 1900 and the discovery of oil the Middle East has been the front for the control of the energy supply, but not for long. There is a little left in the ground and not worth a long fight for it. The front is moving to Afghanistan and Africa. Afghanistan is as big as OPEC for its lithium used in batteries, but the resources and minerals in Africa are mainly untouched. China has already started making friends in most countries in this continent by building a lot of infrastructure for them. The laws are catching up with China and the pressure is mounting over the reduction in emission, they are finding and making friends with countries with lose emission laws. Soon, we are going to see a lot of manufacturers in China move to Africa. It would be very easy to setup world’s biggest smelter in Eritrea or Rwanda with cheaper labor and no cap on emission. If India gets to double its emission at the cost of loss of jobs in developing countries, Eritrea would probably get even more credits.

Climate treaties will never work since they only scratch the surface of the problem and offer a band-aid solution. Kyoto and Paris climate agreements will never work because they are intended to correct the economy and industrial imbalance between the developed and developing countries rather than addressing the climate. Although they are dressed up as climate solution but they remain nothing but a band-aid solution. It is only a matter of time the insurance companies refuse payouts to hurricane victims as man-made rather than natural disasters. If person has ever paid for their electricity or owned a car has contributed and they suffered a pre-existing consequence.

The problem with climate will never be fixed when used as a football. Nevertheless, the pollution will continue.

Something is defiantly wrong with the world and the climate is not the number one on the list, greed is. With all these wrongs, they want us to feel bad about our usage and ignore the rest. The noise about the solution to the global warming is just a distraction and remains just as a noise. Global warming has become a pressure tool to demand and bargain on other issues and force nations to cave-in. Lots of people are exploiting the situation while the planet is suffering.

To fix the climate we need to fix our perception first.