RANT: Eskom the Water Hog

Much ado is made about how coal-fired power stations around the world are deemed by climate change scientists to be the number one contributor to global warming and, therefore, potential climate change. 

Much ado is also made about the obvious related air pollution issues resulting from coal-fired power stations.

Much ado is also made about the fact that, give or take a hundred years or so, coal is simply not a renewable source of energy and, therefore, cannot be considered a sustainable source of energy. 

Much ado is made against coal as an energy source for all the right reasons.

Simply put: it's a dirty, unsustainable source of energy for humanity going forward.

But another huge ill befalls the environment when coal is used to power energy: water.

The Blue Gold of the 21st century is used in phenomenal, almost unfathomable quantities in order for coal to be generated into electricity. The amounts of water needed are nothing short of stunning - and not in a good way.

I have read an excellent study released by Greenpeace Africa, who have their headquarters here in Johannesburg, and entitled "Water Hungry Coal: Burning South Africa's water to produce electricity." It's a scathing and detailed exposé of just how much water is used by the South African government-owned electricity utility, Eskom.



Below is a brilliant (and scary) graphic from this PDF article showing just how much water is consumed when coal is used to make electricity (save and then click on to enlarge if needed):

It's frightening. And this in a country that is considered 'water-scarce' by the World Meteorological Organisation and other expert groups.

Ah, yes, Eskom - the bête noir of all environmentalists and green energy activists in South Africa, myself firmly included amongst them. Firmly in the pocket of the coal and nuclear lobbies in this country, it is all-powerful and do-very-little in South Africa's energy efficiency and sustainability stakes. 



A greenwasher of note, with token efforts thus far at a solar farm, a wind farm, and energy efficient geyser and bulb replacement initiatives, Eskom is said to emit more CO₂ than the countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland combined! Makes me very proud to live (and use electricity) in South Africa.

With this excellent article, Greenpeace Africa makes the final point that all of us who care about the environment make all the time, again and again: the future can only be in renewable energies. It is not in 19th-century technology like coal or (heaven forbid) nuclear. 

Never mind that electricity from coal pollutes our air and puts the climate future of this planet in peril, it can literally make us die of thirst.

Do you get my point? 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Tom Lehrer

In light of the EU-Nobel Peace Prize debacle, the following quote by American singer-songwriter and satirist Tom Lehrer seems particularly prescient:

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."



This he famously quipped when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973, i.e. as the heinous Vietnam War dragged on and in the same year in which Kissinger connived with the CIA to overthrow Salvador Allende and replace him with Augusto Pinochet in a violent coup in Chile.

How very fitting these words are nearly forty years later...

Do you get my point?

IT SAYS IT ALL: The EU Nabs Nobel

The EU being awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize continues to irk me...more so with each passing day it seems.

I went looking for cartoons online that I felt were the funniest, smartest and even arresting (sorry, an irresistible pun) in capturing the sheer hypocrisy of this Nobel debacle. Here are some of the best I found: 


Cartoon by mackaycartoons, courtesy of Toonpool



Cartoon by Rafa Senudo, courtesy of Public Service Europe



Photos from the Occupy movement, courtesy of Richard Brenneman

And perhaps my favourite thus far:


        Cartoon by Kianoush Ramezani, courtesy of Cartoon Movement

They really do say it all.

LOL: Scottish Fiction

I have just posted on how I sincerely believe that Lance Armstrong deserves to see his career crash and burn and get stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.

Then I came across an amusing article by Jay Busbee on Yahoo!Sports on a Scottish titbit he picked up via Reddit, as quoted here:

"Of course, the lawsuits are flying, with Armstrong charging that there is no merit to the USADA's accusations, and other entities, including the federal government, looking for their pound of flesh from Armstrong. Still, you can't just come right out and say Armstrong is a doper without risking incurring his wrath; he has filed suit before to protect his name.

So a Glasgow bookstore has taken a hide-in-plain-sight step: filing Armstrong's autobiography under the heading of "Fiction." Effective statement, isn't it?"

I'll say - very effective! As this photo published on Reddit clearly shows:

It's telling that this was published almost a week ago, i.e. almost a week before Armstrong finally had his seven Tour de France titles stripped by the world cycling federation, the UCI.

You have to hand it to the Scots - they can be a dry, wry bunch. ;-)

RAVE: Cycling World Lances Armstrong

Today the big news in the sporting world was the final death blow to what was once the glittering career of cyclist, Lance Armstrong: the International Cycling Union (UCI) has stripped him of his seven Tour de France wins due to his doping over the years. 

It is a scandal that has threatened to rip professional cycling apart.



As reported online by the BBC today:

"Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles by cycling's governing body.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) has accepted the findings of the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (Usada) investigation into Armstrong.

UCI president Pat McQuaid said: "Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. He deserves to be forgotten."

McQuaid added Armstrong had been stripped of all results since 1 August, 1998 and banned for life for doping.

On what he called a "landmark day for cycling", the Irishman, who became president of UCI in 2005, said he would not be resigning.

"This is a crisis, the biggest crisis cycling has ever faced," he said."

I don't even much care for cycling, to be honest. But there is something about the Lance Armstrong scandal that really gets my teeth gritted and, yes, makes me want to (metaphorically, of course) kick him now that he's down.

It is now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that professional cycling is one of the most doped up, strung out and corrupt sports on the planet. And we all know that Lance Armstrong was certainly not the only one taking hits of 'Edgar Allen Poe' (the slang term used by cyclists for the performance-enhancing drug, EPO) during the 1990s and well into the 2000s. Nor is he the only cyclist who has been caught out and who has been stripped of their titles. Far from it.

Yet no one else has remotely commanded as much baying for his blood and stripping of his very legacy than that against Lance Armstrong. And I'm all for it.

Why?

I could say it's perhaps because I never warmed to the guy, and always found him remote and quite arrogant in his public demeanour. And I was always deep down suspicious of how he never quite enjoyed his phenomenal success as much as I thought that much success would warrant...where was the joy, I niggled?

But that would be churlish of me. No, it goes much deeper than that. 

It's because of all that he stood for - the hero worship by so many, the incredible wealth and celebrity and all the entitlement that goes with that. 

It's despite the fact that he had cancer and came back 'to win' that I hold him in contempt, not because of it that I can excuse his actions. The former is how one judges those who have failed in their character, not the latter as hackneyed redemption. 

There is nothing redeeming about what Lance Armstrong achieved either pre- or post-cancer, because the way in which he did it should never be considered redemptive. His lies and deception and cheating must degrade his accomplishments, otherwise where is the moral imperative to do the right thing? 

And, no, it is simply not good enough to excuse him because 'all the others were doing it.' That has nothing to do with it - their time and penalties will come. He must be even more vilified precisely because he was so lionized - the notoriety now directly correlates to the adoration that once was. And that is most fair.

He reaped the rich rewards of his so-called success, now he must pay the dues of his most-definite deceptions. 

Is he the scapegoat for the actions and omissions of so many others in his team and the cycling fraternity, including even the UCI? Of course he is. So many others were his accomplice, his enabler, his benefactor. But he was the lead man, the most ardently supported and respected, and therefore the target on his legacy will be the largest. As it must.

So it goes, Lance. You are not like me and millions of others. In many ways, you were far better and stronger and able than any of us could ever dream to be. And for that very reason you must be held to the higher standard on occasions such as these. That is the price of such sporting talent and all the glory that comes with it.

In the end, I am quite sure that international cycling and the Tour de France itself will recover and even be stronger than ever. The Tour and France deserve at least that.

Sometimes it is indeed good and very necessary when the once mighty fall. And fall hard.

Do you get my point?