Energy

Professor Says ‘Madness’ Of Fighting Global Warming Will Impoverish Everyone

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Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
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Cambridge University electrical engineering professor Dr. M.J. Kelly concluded in a peer-reviewed journal article that attempts to fight global warming with green energy will impoverish the world.

The Monday article found reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions enough to actually slow global warming in a measurable way simply isn’t possible without significantly reducing standards of living by plunging most of the world into poverty, destitution and starvation.

“Over the last 200 years, fossil fuels have provided the route out of grinding poverty for many people in the world,” states the article. “This trend is certain to continue for at least the next 20 years based on the technologies of scale that are available today. A rapid decarbonization is simply impossible over the next 20 years unless the trend of a growing number who succeed to improve their lot is stalled by rich and middle class people downgrading their own standard of living.”

The article found current CO2 emissions aren’t falling rapidly enough to slow global warming largely because most public policy has focused exclusively on developing wind and solar power, which may actually increase emissions. Continued support for wind, solar and other forms of green energy like biofuel “represents total madness” as these energy systems don’t justify the massive costs of the subsidies required to support them.

“It is clear to me that every further step along the current pathway of deploying first-generation renewable energy is locking in immature and uneconomic systems at net loss to the world standard of living,” Kelly wrote in a press statement. “Humanity is owed a serious investigation of how we have gone so far with the decarbonization project without a serious challenge in terms of engineering reality.”

The article confirms previous criticism of environmental policies which state the total amount of energy created by solar and wind is relatively small, even though both systems have been heavily subsidized since at least the 1970s. In 2010, wind power alone received $5 billion in subsidies, swamping the $654 million oil and gas received. Solar and wind power get 326 and 69 times more in subsidies than coal, oil, and natural gas per amount of energy generated.

In 2015, solar and wind power accounted for only 0.6 and 4.7 percent of electricity generated in America, respectively, according to the Energy Information Administration.

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