22 Mar 2007
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009819
Blogger Russell Roberts has a fascinating juxtaposition, starting with
the following, from an Associated Press report on Al Gore's
congressional testimony:
Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other warming gases 90
percent by 2050 to avoid a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a
ban on any new coal-burning power plants--a major source of industrial
carbon dioxide--that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the
gases.
He said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers
for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has
done for the exchange of information.
Sound familiar? Probably not, but check out this Wikipedia description
of Red China's "Great Leap Forward":
In the August 1958 Politburo meetings, it was decided that steel
production would be set to double within the year, most of the increase
coming through backyard steel furnaces. Mao was shown an example of a
backyard furnace in Hefei, Anhui in September 1958 by provincial first
secretary Zeng Xisheng. The unit was claimed to be manufacturing high
quality steel (though in fact the finished steel had probably been
manufactured elsewhere). Mao encouraged the establishment of small
backyard steel furnaces in every commune and in each urban
neighbourhood. . . .
Huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were made to
produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces the local
environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and
furniture of peasants' houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts
were requisitioned to supply the "scrap" for the furnaces so that the
wildly optimistic production targets could be met. Many of the male
agricultural workers were diverted from the harvest to help the iron
production as were the workers at many factories, schools and even
hospitals. As could have been predicted by anyone with any experience of
steel production or basic knowledge of metallurgy, the output consisted
of low quality lumps of pig iron which was of negligible economic worth.
As Roberts notes, "Giving up the economies of scale we currently use for
energy production is going to be very expensive."
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
"Consensus is neither a scientific fact nor important in science, but it
is very important in politics." Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of the
Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP.com), Former Professor Of
Climatology, University of Winnipeg
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