Time to Right a Terrible Wrong – the Vilification of Carbon and Carbon Dioxide
Access to affordable reliable energy is the quickest way to enrich poverty stricken people.
Viv Forbes , Bio and Archives--October 5, 2015
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And it is a sad indictment of our energy engineers and industrial historians that the essential role of hydro-carbon fuels in human well-being is not recognised Hydro-carbon fuels (oil, gas and coal) have made an enormous contribution to welfare of the biosphere and the human race. They provide cheap reliable energy for heat, light, transport, industry and agriculture, and coal is essential to make steel and other metals for all our building and infrastructure needs. Their environmental benefits are considerable – kerosene lamps saved the whales being hunted for whale oil; coal gas reduced city pollution by replacing pollution-prone open fires using wood or coal. Urban air quality benefitted even more strongly with the replacement of more combustion-in-the-cities with clean-coal-by-wire (electricity). Electricity has cleared the smog from cities such as London and Pittsburgh and could even power the trains, light rail, trams and electric cars that could remove diesel and petrol pollutants from the skies of modern cities. Coal saved the forests being logged to produce charcoal, or being burnt in smelters, boilers, stoves and heaters. Steam engines saved many rivers which would have been harnessed for hydro-power. Gas is now propping up the intermittent green energy producers, wind and solar. Finally combustion of any hydro-carbon recycles valuable plant nutrients into the biosphere assisting to return Earth to the verdant green land it was when the great forests which formed the coal seams grew profusely. Surely recycling this stored solar energy of the sun is the most sensible energy option we have? Those who deny these facts need to prove their case. Finally we have the widespread pollution of land, air and waters. Observations will show that the most polluted countries, cities and suburbs are always the poorest ones where people are too busy surviving, scavenging or poaching to worry about endangered species, hazardous waste or polluted waterways. Access to affordable reliable energy is the quickest way to enrich poverty stricken people. Unfortunately the producers of hydro-carbon energy seem too cowardly, too ill-informed or too infected by climate hysteria to defend themselves or the products which contribute so much to our prosperity, industry, environment and government income. Viv Forbes
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Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.
Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.