Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "What is COP? - The Climate Question, BBC World Service" video.

  1. I get emotional when I think about all the unnecessary poverty future generations may have to endure because a bunch of carbon-cult nutters decided to spaff all our wealth and energy up the wall just to virtue signal about a non-problem. The rest of the world are going to sail past the West laughing as we regress back to the Dark Ages on what is, in reality, a warmer, greener planet.
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  2. Everything we do releases carbon dioxide, so the Carbon Cult want to control everything. There will be global starvation if fossil fuels are eliminated. At risk in coming decades will be half of the world’s 8.5 billion to 10 billion people who are fed by crops grown with fertilizers derived from fossil fuels. Getting to Net Zero by 2050 would cost $9.2 trillion a year globally (McKinsey). That's not going to be good value for money. That's nearly one-tenth of global GDP. That money would be better spent on a myriad of things including educating the fifth of humanity who are illiterate and represent a 7% annual loss to the world's economy. Any country that attempts it will be indebted or impoverished. Example: For the UK to reach net zero by electrification of its transport fleet and heating system, it will require a tripling (as a minimum) of its current electrical generation capacity among other things. This will essentially require the UK consuming all of the current global supply of copper and other rare metals for the next 25 years. The cost will be unaffordable and the skilled manpower levels unattainable. And that is just to eliminate the 1% of the global CO2 emissions that the UK is responsible for. So times that by 100 for the Earth. 10,000 child slaves in the cobalt mines of the Congo not enough for you? Make it a million. Imagine all the human suffering and environmental damage done from all that resource extraction! It's pointless anyway. In just 8 years (prior to 2021) China emitted more CO2 than Britain did since the start of Industrial Revolution that began over 220 years ago! And China plans to vastly increase its coal fired generating capacity. An electric vehicle requires 6 times the mineral input compared to a conventional one, and the carbon cost is greater until you reach 80,000 miles. Production of all of these minerals has been mastered by China: a totalitarian communist regime that thinks nothing of the mass murder of its own citizens, imagine how much it cares about the rest of us. And why are we embarking on this great net zero crusade? For what? So someone can virtue signal by driving around in a Tesla. Maddeningly, there is no climate crisis. The Earth was warmer in the recent and distant past.
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