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How much economic harm, environmental damage and human suffering will be caused by South Africa’s Climate Change Act, signed into law by President Ramaphosa on 23 July 2024? This is difficult to quantify but it will be enormous.
(I suggest readers flick through the tedious extracts from this Act I felt obliged to quote.)
Climate alarm, the fear that rising CO2 will cause dangerous climate change, is the folly of our age, showing a terrifying ignorance of science. It is a retreat to a dark age of irrationalism, comparable to the witch-burning madness of Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Below I have repeated some of the science showing that rising CO2 is doing nothing but good, and I have given some new evidence.
Yet this folly is believed by politicians, the academic establishment and the mass media all over the Western world. This dreadful Act has the full support of the DA and of course every mainstream newspaper in South Africa. Here are some extracts from the opening words of the Bill, now an Act (I emphasise extracts, I haven’t got space for more).
BILL
To enable the development of an effective climate change response and a long-term, just transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy and society for South Africa in the context of sustainable development; and to provide for matters connected therewith.
PREAMBLE
AND WHEREAS anthropogenic climate change represents an urgent threat to human societies and the planet and requires an effective, progressive and incremental response;
AND WHEREAS the Republic—
(a) has a role to play in the global effort to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions identified by the international community as the primary drivers of
anthropogenic climate change, and for which the implementation of appropriate mitigation responses is urgently required;
AND WHEREAS climate variability in the Republic, including the increased
frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, will affect, amongst other things, human health, access to food and water, biodiversity, habitats and ecosystems, the coast and coastal infrastructure and human settlements;
Most of this is nonsense. “Anthropogenic climate change” is not an “urgent threat”. It is not a threat at all. It does not exist. Climate change, which happens in all ages, is natural. The present climate is rather cooler than the average climate of the last 10,000 years, but not uniquely so. In the last fifty years there has been no “increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events”. Worldwide and in South Africa, there has been no increase in cyclones, storms, floods or droughts, nor would you expect there to be. Recovering from the unusual cold of the Little Ice Age (LIA), about 1300 to 1850, there has been a slight rise in global temperatures of about 0.8 degrees C over the last 150 years. But warmer weather always decreases weather extremes. The LIA had the worst sustained cold period of the last 10,000 years and saw horrible weather extremes, much worse than now. Having failed to give any scientific evidence that rising CO2 will cause climatic harm, the Act then proceeds in grim detail to prescribe crippling, onerous, mandatory measures to tackle the non-problem.
CHAPTER 2 of the Act deals with POLICY ALIGNMENT AND INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS, CHAPTER 3 with CLIMATE CHANGE RESPONSE: PROVINCES AND MUNICIPALITIES, and CHAPTER 4 with NATIONAL ADAPTATION TO IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. (I have given the official bold and capitals of the Act). Notice that these chapters are dealing with adaption to climate change rather than trying to reduce greenhouse gases, which only happens in CHAPTER 5. The idea of planning and preparing for bad weather is a good one. It is essential we do so. I have said that climate change is natural, but that doesn’t stop its being very important and sometimes very destructive. The cold weather of the Little Ice Age caused terrible storms, floods, famines, wars and revolutions. The last big Ice Age lasted 90,000 years and had nightmarish weather extremes, beyond our comprehension. (Fortunately it only happened in higher latitudes. The equator and the tropics were hardly affected at all. Africa, straddling the equator, is the continent least affected by climate change.) We must make sensible preparations for floods and droughts that might come. For example, the Western Cape must learn from the drought of 2017, which it dealt with well, and prepare for another with a plan for managing dams, water flows and water demand. KZN, which has suffered floods over the last hundred years or more, must plan for more, which will likely come, with better drainage, more robust dams and piping, building regulation and so on. All of this can be dealt with by specialist departments. None of this requires the appalling bureaucracy of planning, reporting, publishing, strategy evaluation, “assessment of the Republic’s vulnerability to climate change and related risks at sectoral, cross-sectoral and geographic levels” and “available adaptation response options to reduce identified vulnerabilities by building adaptive capacity and resilience, in the context of actual or anticipated social, economic and environmental costs” that the Act requires of economic sectors, economic sub-sectors, National Government, provinces and municipalities.
I fear the Act will result in kilometres of red tape and tons of paperwork. I fear that responsible people will be judged not on how they manage the next flood but on how many truckloads of paperwork they have produced showing how they will do so.
CHAPTER 5 deals with GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND REMOVALS. It is by far the worst. Whereas the previous three chapters had a silly solution to the real problem of adaptation, this chapter has an even sillier solution to the non-problem of rising CO2. An extract:
Listed greenhouse gases and activities
23. (1) The Minister must, by notice in the Gazette, publish a list of greenhouse gases which the Minister reasonably believes cause or are likely to cause or exacerbate climate change.
(2) The Minister must, by notice in the Gazette, publish a list of activities which emit, or [have] the potential to emit, one or more of the greenhouse gases listed in terms ofsubsection (1).
(3) A notice published in terms of subsection (2)—
(a) must apply to greenhouse gas emitting activities which have already
commenced and new greenhouse gas emitting activities;
(b) must determine quantitative greenhouse gas emission thresholds expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent to identify persons to be assigned a carbon budget, in terms of section 24(1), and who are required, in terms of section 24(4), to submit greenhouse gas mitigation plans to the Minister;
And so on, in excruciating, idiotic detail, backed with compulsion and the menace of harsh penalties (see below). Let me at this stage repeat the rather simple science behind rising CO2 and the climate. About 10 million years ago, CO2 had dropped to a terrifying low, threatening mass extinction, because most plants cannot live below a certain limit of CO2. The Ice Ages made it worse but fortunately ended about 11,000 years ago. In the 19th Century, humans began burning fossil fuels on a large scale, increasing CO2 in the air, rescuing plants and the planet with them. CO2 is still far too low but a lot better than in the last few centuries. CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, which only absorbs IR radiation strongly up to about 150 ppm (parts per million). Above that, no warming from CO2 has ever been seen. We are now at about 430 ppm. Rising CO2 will have no effect on global temperatures or the global climate, but will strongly improve plant growth, including forests and food crops. For most of the last 10,000 years, temperatures have been higher than now while CO2 was lower than now. The recent Little Ice Age was an exception.
Overwhelming data, scientific evidence and historical record backs everything I have said. Nothing I have said is original; I have just repeated the findings of the best climate scientists. Since I last wrote about this, more evidence has come in repudiating the climate scare. Two examples.
The graph above comes from the USA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It shows the dates of record high temperatures in each state since instrumental measurements began. Notice that 75% of states recorded record highs before 1955 and most in the 1930s.
The graph above shows that the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, a coral reef, is today in better shape than it’s ever been in since records began. Yet for years the climate alarmists have been screaming that rising CO2 is “bleaching” it, reducing it, destroying it. Actually coral just loves CO2. It uses it to make the calcium carbonate of its shells. The more CO2, the better.
The Act suggests that solar and wind are cheaper, cleaner energy alternatives than fossil fuels. They are not. They are quite bad for the environment and horribly expensive for useful energy, and every country that has tried them on a large scale has seen electricity prices soaring. Hydro and nuclear are good alternatives but South Africa has few rivers and most of the greens (not all) hate nuclear. If South Africa does move strongly away from fossil fuels, the economy will be devastated, and poor people will die. Fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, have made Europe prosperous, healthy and clean. The greens are determined to stop them doing the same for Africa. This Act is in line with their plan.
Many of the ANC’s disastrous policies, such as BEE, are unique to South Africa. Climate folly is not. Here South Africa is in line with the rest of the West, which is poised to commit economic suicide by climate hysteria. This raises a real fear: the threat of international sanctions and tariffs against South African goods produced with a release of CO2. A rational person might say, “OK, climate alarm is nonsense but the political fact is that Western countries might use it as an excuse to protect themselves against South African imports by citing her high CO2 emissions.” The EU, for example, is looking for any excuse to block African fruit imports, and would be delighted to use CO2. But how about imports from the world’s biggest emitter of CO2, China? China is the world’s biggest producer of solar photovoltaic panels, which need enormous amounts of energy to make, most of it coming from coal power stations. Have you noticed much resistance in the West to the imports of Chinese solar panels?
Chapter 6 is the chapter the greens will adore. It provides for force, compulsion and punishment. Extracts:
32. (1) A person commits an offence if that person—
(a) fails to provide data, information, documents, samples or materials to the
Minister in terms of section 20(1);
(b) provides false and misleading data, information, documents, samples or
materials to the Minister in terms of section 20(1);
(c) fails to prepare and submit a greenhouse gas mitigation plan to the Minister in terms of section 24(4);
(d) fails to comply with or contravenes the notice of the Minister in terms of
section 25(1); and
(e) fails to comply with the measures contemplated in section 25(3)(b).
(2) A person convicted of an offence in terms of subsection (1) is liable to a fine not exceeding R5 million or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years, and in the case of a second or subsequent conviction to a fine not exceeding R10 million or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding 10 years, and in both instances to both such fine and such imprisonment. (My emphasis in bold.)
10 years in prison if you disobey the climate czars! This happens to be the same punishment that Deputy President Ramaphosa warned us about in 2016 for violations of BEE laws. Greenpeace will be purring with delight.
Climate alarm is not science. It is a religion, a corrupted religion. You can tell this by the response of the faithful to any questioning. If you hear the term “Denialist!”, you know you are dealing with religion, not science. It is like “Heretic!”. The same if they say, “97% of scientists believe in climate catastrophe.” Actually, in that silly survey, fewer than 0.5% of the scientific papers briefly looked at found that these scientists believed in dangerous manmade climate change. More important, you cannot do science by consensus. You do science by experiment and observation. Suppose in Galileo’s time, someone had said, “97% of scientists believe the Sun goes round the Earth”.
In Cape Town, where I live, the subject of global warming will bring rueful smiles. We’ve had horrible wet, cold weather for weeks and weeks. The dams are overflowing. I seem to remember the alarmists were warning of unusually mild winters; I seem to remember that the drought of 2017 was “the new normal”. I see by my rain gauge that the rain so far is by no means exceptional, but it still has been pretty awful.
I do not know whom to turn to, to prevent the environmental and human suffering that this stupid, malignant Act will cause. I am ashamed of the DA for supporting it. If, like me, you care about science and the welfare of the planet, what can you do? Tell the truth? Where? To whom?
SOURCE:The Climate Change Act 2024: destructive, anti-science – Daily Friend
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