THE THIRD OPTION

A CASE FOR FOSSIL FUEL

By: Shahin Tahmasebi – September 2017

The question of 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 stand and take a side, either with or against it. You’ll need to declare your position. There is a line wider than the Grand Canyon between the climate change believers and the deniers. The believers created this line, and the deniers have been forced to stand on the other side. Even though many of those deniers believe in the worsening of the climate, they were forced to adopt that position due to pressure from work. Sometimes, 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 climate change are real because science supports them, and we can also see and experience the changes for ourselves. Historical records show human contribution and 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 “An Inconvenient Truth,” needed a scissor lift to show the top of the increase in the CO2 chart.

But, …

If a group of people turn up to my factory and yell Shut it down I’ll call them liars and their cause a lie. This is happening to the CEOs of the industries and forcing them to confront the issue of emissions and the effects on the climate. They call it a lie and call 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 emissions are mainly coming from the manufacturing sector, but closing them down should not be the first option while the other options are yet to be exhausted.

If the option to resolve 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 global warming. This will lead to social dysfunction and poverty. Those who lost their jobs will eventually discover that they were lied to and used as a ploy to remedy other issues, while other options were still available. People will find out they lost their jobs because a politician wanted to get elected, which was the only way. I believe 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 before class actions will be taken to stop the greedy energy suppliers from overcharging.

Global warming has become a tool for the politicians to get elected, scientists to have a paying job, and corporations to rip off the public without an end in sight. 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 come back as these fixes and remedies 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 joblessness and homelessness; people need a 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, resulting in more emissions, not less. Population growth and emissions are locked into each other. A bigger population equals bigger energy demand, which equals bigger emissions.

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

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

The concrete’s half-life is 500 years. This means that an optimally built concrete structure should last at least half of that, but we destroy structures with less than their life expectancy to replace them with bigger ones. Cargo ships built by the Chinese now have a 10-year 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; we spend so much energy building and quickly throwing them into landfills. A new trend in making money in the US is mining the old landfills from the 60s and 70s, as they contain a lot of metals and plastics. Until recently, before the economy slowed down, China was building three coal power stations a day and a city the size of Brisbane a month. Reducing the size of China’s economy or even slowing it down can bring the Great Walk back, and the 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 hands.

A small fluctuation in China’s economy can have a devastating effect not only on China but also on 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, forcing China to use whatever it takes to generate energy to have a sustained economy. We don’t have the means or the expertise if something goes wrong. We have put all our eggs in someone else’s basket and given them the hens to look after. We don’t even know how hens work anymore.

We are removing coal power stations that create zero emissions for their structure. They were built 50 years ago, and during this time, they have already offset the original emissions they produced. Only part of the electricity is generated, and emissions are created. We are removing these structures at a cost to the climate by scraping them and replacing them with more structures, creating more emissions. 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 of global warming has failed us by giving us a solution to resolve this issue without hurting our economy and reducing our society. The response from the scientists and the science institutes is very plain and basic. You don’t need to be a scientist in a very specialized and narrow area of science to give that answer; anybody who looks at the smokestack where 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 science to solve our problems without sending us back to the Stone Age.

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

I remember an article printed in a science magazine a long time ago, it was around 1974. The article was about a supercomputer built in the late 60s or early 70s. This is the period before the floppy disks, and punch cards were needed for input. They put a question to the computer and expected a good answer to the problem they had. The question was: Most people trip over the last step when climbing stairs. How can this be avoided? The supercomputer took its time and went into processing the data. After many clicks and clacking, I returned a few hours or minutes later and said: Remove the last step!

Although we have come a long way from those supercomputers and advanced our technology, scientists’ answers to our problems remain very similar. 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 a choice on what to do with the carbon that comes out of the 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, this problem has no answer. We are given a gibberish, complicated, unworkable solution that is not a solution at all. Science has failed us. Let’s shut down the science and sack all the scientists. Along with sacking the politicians, let’s see if they like it. For one, for every loss of jobs in manufacturing, there should be a loss of jobs in the science sector, or a politician loses their job. I bet they’ll come up with a different solution as soon as we do this!

Suppose a manufacturing plant with thousands of employees needs access to a cheap energy supply to remain competitive. In that case, 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 a solution to the emissions created by this plant. Science needs to devise a solution to resolve the emissions rather than shut down the operation. Sometimes, removing the cause of 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 problems, 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 of this problem is the emission. So far, the solution to the emission problem has been to stop using coal. That is the easy way. Removing coal will not address the need for energy, pushing it to alternative sources, including closures and the loss of jobs.

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

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

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

The dangers of heavy metals from batteries are far higher than coal emissions. The battery solution is longer-lasting and less damaging to the environment than fossil fuels.

In minor cases, capturing and storing the emissions in underground storage facilities has solved the problem (clean coal). This option is leaving the issue for future generations to deal with. We didn’t like it when past generations left their problems for us, and surely the coming generations will hate us the same way we hated the past generations, too. We can’t have someone else clean up after us. Coal is dirty, but batteries are worse in the long term. We can plant and regenerate forests to remove the effects and damage of coal, but we cannot repair the heavy metal damage from the batteries if they get into our water system and reserves.

Pumped hydro, a proven technology used in the EU and the US, can store more energy than Australia would ever need. South Australia is 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-and-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 climate change comes from industries that are heavy users or producers of energy. There are even calls on cattle farmers to reduce their production, as the methane gas produced by the cattle is partially responsible for the greenhouse gas.

Annual Greenhouse Gas Emission by Sector (Wikipedia)

World Crude Steel Production (Wikipedia)

Top 10 Crude Steel Production (Wikipedia)

A BLUEPRINT TO FIX THE CLIMATE

Atmosphere

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?

Hurricane September 10, 2017 – intellicast.com

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, the US is receiving a lot of criticism from the public and harsh punishment from the climate for something that they have a small part in causing the problem in the first place. Sure, the US has been the biggest polluter in the past 200 years at least, but that amount of pollution compared to the reason for climate change plays a small part. The US is a large contributor to climate damage and change for its part, but the amount of damage and punishment comes from extreme weather alone, which 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 the number of hurricanes is something else.

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

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

This was almost the case before the industrial era, in 1760. After the industrial era started, the need and demand for energy continued, which put a lot of pressure on the energy providers and increased coal consumption. No oil or gas options were available at that time. Every industry has its supply of energy. It was unlike today’s practice that suppliers and industries are separate entities. If a smelter needs energy for its furnaces these days, it goes to gas and electricity providers and arranges for an energy supply. In the 1760s, no energy providers existed; factories and smelters provided their own energy.

The condition of equal size of atmosphere all around the planet can, and still, happen from 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 away. The Earth orbits the Sun in an oval path rather than a circle, putting the planet closest to the star and furthest from it at two points. Equal distance at the other two points. The equal distance creates milder temperatures and milder weather conditions that allow the atmosphere to return to an equal shape.

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

The opposite happens when the seasons change, as illustrated in image C, but with a lesser effect. The atmosphere moves to the southern hemisphere in much smaller amounts 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-shaped corridor where 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 altitudes. The sudden introduction of a large warm and humid air mass to the cool, dry air in the upper atmosphere generates heavy rains mixed with wind that lead to the formation of hurricanes and cyclones. When cooler air moving low from the south crosses paths and meets the moving air high from the east, it creates a small vortex pattern that would turn horizontal and, if intensified and a large and long supply of such a pattern continues, turn into a hurricane. In September, the large end of the funnel is in the northern hemisphere, and it is upside down in spring; the larger end moves to the southern hemisphere.

The intensity of hurricane Sandy, Katrina, Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria, …, is directly related to the balloon’s size increase and the speed at which it deflates, returns to its original size, and moves back to the center at the end of the season. Tracking of these movements, temperature, and size of the atmosphere will allow the prediction of 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. A category five hurricane can be downgraded by engineering the climate to a tropical storm. This also reduces the likelihood of El Niño and La Niña occurrences.

Five hurricanes in a short period of 3 weeks in the same area show how fast the atmosphere is moving back and brings with it 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 higher atmospheric pressure; naturally, the path becomes from high to low and pushes the system northerly.

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

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

The movement of the atmosphere creates a few events: in winter, it decreases the atmospheric pressure in the southern hemisphere and creates a higher-than-usual atmospheric pressure. This means there is no winter event weather for the southern hemisphere, which is drier and warmer than usual, as in winter 2017 in Australia. It also creates a corridor of air around the Equator, pushing the air against the sea, which 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, which results in electrical thunderstorms.

Hurricanes originate in Atlantic

View from North Pole

Cyclones Originate in Pacific

Cyclones Originate in the Pacific

As indicated above, cyclones and hurricanes need a vast ocean area to form before they reach the mainland.

We get two sets of weather in Australia, one in September, the beginning of spring, and the second in January, the 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 crucial to the northern winter. If we get one of those record-breaking hot summers, the atmosphere moves south, and the northern hemisphere will likely get an eventful and cold winter with one of those polar vortexes from the north pole moving 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 the northern hemisphere summer than in the southern hemisphere. The shift is larger in the north’s summer.

Recently, Americans have received a lot of undeserved punishment for their sins of damaging the climate. The punishment did not fit the crime. The pollution, emissions, and damages to the climate in the southern hemisphere end up in the northern hemisphere, and combined with their own emissions, the effect of climate change is magnified.

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

The improvement in Central Asia is a critical point. Twice a year, India, Bangladesh, and Southeast Asian regions receive lots of floods. Although Bangladesh is situated on a delta and low-lying land, flooding seems part of the landscape, but in the North of India, the Kashmir region also gets a lot of rain and floods. This is due to the balloon shifting north, bringing a lot of moisture from the Indian Ocean. If you look at the images from Nepal and the Himalayan highlands, you’ll notice the land and mountains have green vegetation on the south side and are 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 humidity remains in the air to travel to the north side, and remains dry. This is also the case in north northeast of Afghanistan, where the south and west mountains have more vegetation than those facing north and east.

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

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

The Himalaya is acting like a wall blocking moisture from Indian Ocean to travel to the north and results in floods in India and Bangladesh. (GOOGLE)

The link between the Himalayas and the floods of South East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and the east of China has always been the case for the extreme weather in this region. The Simpson and Gibson deserts in Australia also create low pressure in the center and cause the moisture from the Indian Ocean to rise and pass over eastern regions, turning to rain over the South Pacific rather than the 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 extra pressure on emissions and the climate. The emission from Australia adds to the growing size of the balloon in the northern hemisphere winter.

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

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

The cost of repairs compared to a never-ending annual disaster sustained from extreme weather is minimal and 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 it will take at least 10 years to start and 2 decades to show signs of improvement. The engineering and the repairs will be a permanent solution to our lifelong problem, rather than a band-aid solution, as they propose.

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 allows developing countries to grow without reducing their emission at a cost to others. It plays a catch-up at the cost of workers and loss of jobs in developing countries. It forces countries like the US and Australia to reduce their emission by 20% while it allows India to double their cap in the same period. The Paris Agreement is more about the wealth distribution than a solution to climate change. The Paris Agreement is a socialism model of climate change.

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

Almost every country has laws and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Except for China’s EPA, they have taken an extended service leave, as it appears from the air quality in Beijing! We can empower the EPA and tighten the laws regarding pollution. If the 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 its own. I don’t see why a company can get away with releasing its 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 the EPA so they can force the polluters to change their habits. Through the UN, we can ask all members to create an 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 emissions to different areas and are more of a revenue measure than a deterrent; polluters will adapt to these changes and steer through.

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

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

Since the early 1900s 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 that is not worth a long fight for. 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 on 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 emissions; they are finding and making friends with countries with lax emission laws. Soon, we are going to see a lot of manufacturers in China move to Africa. It would be easy to set up the world’s biggest smelter in Eritrea or Rwanda with cheaper labor and no cap on emissions. If India gets to double its emissions at the cost of losing 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 economic and industrial imbalance between the developed and developing countries, rather than addressing the climate. Although they are dressed up as a climate solution, they remain a band-aid solution. It is only a matter of time before the insurance companies refuse payouts to hurricane victims as artificial rather than natural disasters. If a person has ever paid for their electricity or owned a car, they have contributed to and suffered a pre-existing consequence.

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

Something is 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 global warming is just a distraction and remains just as noise. Global warming has become a pressure tool to demand and bargain on other issues, forcing 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.