He posited three characteristics: reliance on group thinking rather than critical independent thought, obdurate resistance to contrary opinions, and a willingness to conform.  However, Bonhoeffer might have added a fourth dimension: financial incentive.

All four of those elements are evident in the latest offering by the Presidential Climate Commission published in Business Report on October 21. Premised on alarmism and packaged with all the usual buzzwords and jargon — ‘sustainable future, climate finance, projected warming, fair and equitable, extreme weather, decarbonisation’—the spin piece strives to project confidence in a future based on implementation of the ‘just transition.’

The stupidity of this ideology is increasingly exposed by its cost and failure.  Oil-rich but green-obsessed, California now relies on 61% of its fuel needs from other states as well as a quarter of its electricity.  Google’s Principal for Global Infrastructure and Energy, Alex Smith, has warned that renewables cannot be harnessed to power data centres simply because breezes and (sun) beams are unreliable and inadequate.

Germany, which has one billion cubic meters of shale gas reserves, imported 684 terawatt hours of gas in 2025 from Russia – the EU’s supposed bogeyman – after having shut down the last of its nuclear plants. The 182-year-old Kahla porcelain factory in Thuringia has closed as it is no longer economical to run kilns at 1,000-degree temperatures.

New York State has become a case study in engineered energy scarcity. Laws all but prohibit construction of new gas pipelines; electricity costs are ballooning because of the cost overruns of offshore wind turbine energy. NYC has reverted to diesel-powered buses despite having spent $12 billion on EV buses which use enough electricity to power 200,000 homes.

Portugal’s flagship solar park is now insolvent. Oversupply on sunny days meant prices dropped into negative territory, playing havoc with projected revenue. Damage from inverter fires took 8-14 weeks to repair.

To justify their claims, the climate alarmists bury the history of climate swings involving floods, droughts, failed harvests, and heat and cold extremes that occurred long before the widespread burning of coal. The reality is that climate risks are a natural phenomenon.

The International Journal of Climatology of 2020 provides another exposure of the lie of human-driven global warming. Concerning temperatures recorded in Adelaide, Australia, since 1856, it revealed that until 2019 no temperatures exceeded those of the very hot years of 1858, 1867 and 1914-15.

Upending the global warming alarm index is the finding of scientists working on a new assessment of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They conceded that the assumptions of the Panel, commonly referred to as RCP 8.5, were “implausible,” in effect, discrediting them.  As a result, Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, notes the retraction of thousands of papers based on RCP 8.5.

The stupidity of the Presidential Climate Commission’s scientifically flawed, unaffordable  mission of decarbonisation cannot be overstated, a reality now painfully apparent by the need, unprecedented since the late 1960s, of having to import 70% of our refined fuel.

The post Stupidity of the Climate Commission Cannot Be Overstated appeared first on Duncan Du Bois.

The whining of Blessing Manale of the Climate Change Commission about ‘misinformation’ is ironic in the extreme. He wants free speech defended but only if it adheres to the narrative of the World Economic Forum that climate change is caused by fossil fuels. A confused man indeed, particularly as climate change is a natural phenomenon proven by science and history.

Immediately below Manale’s misinformation about fossil fuels is an upbeat article about the anticipated economic boom which oil and gas exploitation heralds for Namibia and its economy. Absolute common sense!

Below that positive report, Dr Adrian Blanck explains how and why Spain and Portugal had a power blackout. It’s the engineering, stupid! is what he unpacks. Renewables, which the Iberian Peninsula has embraced 100%, are unreliable and not sustainable as energy sources because, in the first place, they are intermittent in what they produce, which makes them incompatible with how grids work, besides being ultra expensive.

The best part of Dr Blanck’s broadside on the green fantasy is: “ Engineers, system architects and real specialists must reclaim their voice in energy policy debates…. Europe has no future following absurd decisions by ignorant policy makers.”

That said, one hopes that no further printing ink and space is wasted on the false rhetoric of the likes of Blessing Manale and the devious renewables agenda of the WEF.

The post Common Sense On Energy Wins appeared first on Duncan Du Bois.

By definition, unlock means open, release or liberate. By advocating acceptance of funding for so-called renewable energy, the debt implications of that direction amount to greater debt captivity. This is obvious when the advocates stipulate that investment in ‘renewable capacity’ needs to triple in the next five years – more than R1 trillion – in order to stave off the “devastating warming” consequences of fossil fuel usage (The Mercury, November 25).

As it is, South Africa’s rapidly increasing and unsustainable debt burden – now 75% of GNP (R5,2 trillion) – has prompted the IMF to advise the adoption of a debt ceiling. To “accelerate renewable energy” means, therefore, accelerating debt. It also means accelerating costs for electricity consumers. Investments in wind energy in the US and Europe have dried up. Shell has just abandoned the New Jersey Atlantic Shores project in which it had invested nearly $1 billion. The  40% increase in megawatt costs for consumers deters the viability of such projects.

The word ‘renewable’ is also misleading. Wind turbines are not only very expensive and high maintenance but in themselves are not renewable. Besides, they are unreliable as key components of a secure energy infrastructure. Germany’s social and industrial experience this winter of costly, intermittent supply provides a sobering lesson as to what happens when reliable, standard energy generation sources are sidelined.

Despite the glaring shortcomings of “renewable energy,” the claim that human efforts at decarbonisation can influence climate change qualifies such believers as modern-day Canutes and henceforth should be called ‘Climate Canutes.’

Like King Canute of England who believed his power could deter the rising tide from wetting his feet as he sat on a beach, the Climate Canutes refuse to appreciate that climate change is regulated by the sun’s modes, the variable tilt of the earth and the eccentricity of the elliptical paths of the earth around the sun, all of which is validated by science and history. There is nothing humans can do about that natural phenomenon.

Fortunately, we are going to be spared the studied ignorance of the Climate Canutes because where the US goes, the world follows. President Trump’s bold rejection of the unscientific and exorbitantly costly Paris Climate Accord is restoring common sense and sanity. History will reckon with the Climate Canutes.

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Dr Lehohla’s condemnation of the official embrace of renewables is premised on an incontrovertible reality: the economically illogical abandonment of the country’s ‘black gold’—coal—in exchange for expensive, imported so-called renewables.

Expanding on that, Lehohla points out that the costs of the so-called just energy transition (JET)  are what is driving up Eskom’s new, unaffordable tariff charges. In that regard, he dismisses as a false narrative Eskom’s claim that load shedding was mitigated by the generation of 6,000 megawatts by renewables.

Indeed, the entire JET exercise is based not only on false science but on utterly disingenuous economics, which is why Dr Lehohla brands JET as a “Trojan horse that will further damage our energy security.”

It is deliberate, educated ignorance to premise decarbonisation and its corollary, de-industrialisation, on the falsehood of human-driven global warming. But unfortunately, the Orwellian agendas of global power elites which have captured all but a few political leaders like Donald Trump and Javier Milei of Argentina, prevail in South Africa.

A superb example of the Trojan horse direction of which Dr Lehohla warns features in the Business Report of October 15. Deceitfully, the report claims the newly formed Investment Forum will “unlock funding for renewable energy.”

The key word in that is “lock” because its meaning is ambivalent. For the investors, it promises an unlocked cascade of financial returns from its captive client, South Africa. But for South Africans, it means being locked into ever-higher electricity costs and state indebtedness to global controllers.

The projection that annual investment in renewable capacity will have to triple every year until 2030 to reach the false, unscientific target of staving off a 1,5° C temperature increase, makes it clear that financial enslavement to an oligarchy is what the future holds.

This direction is more than an exercise in stupidity, as Dr Lehohla states. It is brazen betrayal and treason. The absolutely unaffordable 36% tariff increase that Eskom is demanding is largely the result of JET madness and carbon tax.

The effect of a 36%  tariff hike is going to result in terminal impoverishment as the prices of everything will become unaffordable for all except the elites and the politicians. Unless the GNU wakes up to the JET Trojan horse, whatever else it may achieve will be worthless.

The post 36% Tariff Increase Reflects Falsehood And Betrayal appeared first on Duncan Du Bois.

Nowhere in these columns have I denied climate change. Instead, repeatedly I have emphasised that it is a natural and historical phenomenon. Repeatedly I have cited two warming periods over the past 2000 years when fossil fuels were unknown. Repeatedly, I have pointed out how none of the environmental catastrophes predicted since 1970 has occurred.

Exceptional weather has occurred in every century proving that fossil fuel emissions have nothing to do with such extremes. The violent weather front that engulfed the whole of Natal from May 31 – June 2, 1905 – when fossil fuel usage was minimal – remains the worst ever recorded in the province.

Driving climate alarmism is the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Apart from a small contingent of bought scientists, the IPCC is a political body. The models it uses to conjure up climate alarmism are deeply flawed according to Dr John Christy of the Earth System and Science Centre at the University of Alabama. Dr Christy’s application of substantiated data refutes the IPCC projected global warming narrative.

As cited in previous letters, many scientists not only recognise climate alarmism as false but emphasise how necessary CO2 is for plant and crop life. Significantly, the present ‘warm’ period is actually less warm than the one which ended 800 years ago when fossil fuels were underground.

In affirming his support for “transitioning to renewable energy sources,” has it occurred to Dr Baker how those sources could be mined, manufactured and transported without equipment that requires fossil fuel energy and lubrication?

Has Dr Baker considered why scientific and historically based rejection of the narrative on climate change is disparaged and ignored? Has it not occurred to him that the censoring of such dissent by the globalists, in lockstep with their bought politicians, scientists and mass media, constitutes a conspiracy?

The post Globalist Climate Narrative Questioned appeared first on Duncan Du Bois.

Besides the billions that this totally unnecessary direction will add to the existing and increasingly unserviceable debt, the blatant contradictions in the scheme expose the farce that it is.

Development Bank of Southern Africa CEO Patrick Dlamini claims that the “clear goal is to improve energy security because South Africa is suffering from climate change.” His assertions are absolute nonsense. In the first place, South Africa is not “suffering” from climate change because climate change is a natural, historical reality devoid of man’s influence. Dlamini’s projection that wind and solar energy will improve energy security is refuted by California and Germany’s energy insecurity because of their extreme reliance on those sources.

Beyond those irrefutable realities, the renewable energy narrative descends into cloud cuckoo land. While reducing CO2 emissions by 3,6 million tonnes – which means reducing coal mining by tens of millions of tonnes – renewable energy will “create hundreds of new jobs.” So, in return for cancelling thousands of jobs in coal mining, transportation of coal, and loading onto ships for export, we may expect just a few hundred new jobs.

But, wait, it gets even better.  This whole exercise, according to European Investment Bank vice-president, Ambroise Fayolle, will be a “just transition.” So plunging the country into new depths of debt for the sake of proving, ultra-expensive, unreliable energy sources, exacerbating unemployment in pursuit of the falsehood that decarbonisation will save the planet – all that equates to a “just” deal.

The only beneficiaries of this illogical renewable energy narrative are the international bankers and China which manufactures wind turbines, solar panels and most lithium batteries. Like the Covid/vax mania, the renewable energy narrative is a scam to diminish national sovereignty through debt and extend the dependence of populations on state welfare by exacerbating unemployment.

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