Re: [asa] Eminent scientist's documentary set to rock the accepted consensus

On 3/5/07, Dave Wallace <wdwllace@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>
> Very good points! Much of money sent through government programs just
> gets wasted in graft or does not fit in and essentially "rusts in the
> field" because it stopped working or was not acceptable in the culture
> or just due to lack of understanding. ... This is some of the reasons
> why low tech solutions are appropriate with sometimes a high tech boost
> and need to be introduced carefully over a slow time period.

> ....The programme claims efforts to reduce CO2 are killing Africans, who
> have to burn fires inside their home, causing cancer and lung damage,
> because their governments are being encouraged to use wind and solar panels
> that are not capable of supplying the continent with electricity, instead of
> coal and oil-burning power stations that could.
>
>

So, this program suggests the same large scale/industrial programs we know
don't work over the de-centralized small scale ones that do. The small scale
projects also allow greater sensitivity to local cultural factors as you
noted above. (The experts at our meeting stated that these "soft" factors
were around 70% of the reason for the failures rather than failed
technology.) The wind and solar panels supply a village's electricity. You
don't do alternative energy in the large like the UN is prone to do. You do
it in the small. There is no grid out in the country and applying solutions
that presuppose it fail. It has nothing to do with CO2 and everything to do
with applying the wrong scale of technology. Ironically, the program
proposes the same known-to-fail large scale technology as to what it
replaces and adds aerosol pollution to boot. Good going, guys.

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Received on Mon Mar 5 16:18:32 2007