And I wonder what our real priorities as human beings really are and where they lay.
Do we really need the massive expense and on going expenditure to try and define some supposed still in the future problem down to the N'th degree and for what ultimate purpose?
Is global warming / Climate change, the apparent scourge of the western alarmists so utterly important to the human race or is it something more mundane like this?
Mankind needs four things to survive;
1 / water
2 / Food; We have in plentiful quantities and with our modern and highly integrated system of transport and communications across the globe we can move food from regions with an excess to areas of shortage very quickly.
3 / Shelter; Including items such as clothing is also cheap and readily available just about anywhere one likes to look
4 / Energy ; The key to our entire civilisation is around us in abundance if we ever overcome the crazies who refuse to countenance any sources of energy that does not meet their quasi religious beliefs, beliefs which are simply rooted in their perceived and supposed dangers of nearly every source of reliable and cheap energy on this planet.
Only extremely expensive, extremely unreliable and completely unpredictable sources of energy seem to meet the criteria of these anti-progress, anti-energy crazies.
Water is number one on mankind's list of absolute essentials to survive.
So how are we doing?
The UN costs some $15 billion a year to run and considering their record it is money nearly all wasted.
The USA alone has spent some $79 billion on global warming climate change research and programs from 1989 to 2009, a period of 20 years. $32 billion of this went just on climate related research so any one can seethe colossal amounts of money financing the global warming gravy train
And this was the USA alone.
Close to doubling this would approximate the amounts spent on the so called global warming / climate change research around the world and nearly all of this has gone exclusively to the GW / CC researchers and only a pittance to the "skeptical" climate researchers.
And despite this immense tax payer funded expenditure on just one area of [ climate related ] research there still is no Earth covering system of quality controlled weather stations which PD has suggested should be set up.
USA expenditure on Global warming related research and mitigation
And Water?From the;
Blue Planet networkThe Facts About The Global Drinking Water CrisisOne-in-six people in the world lack safe drinking water.
Water-related illnesses are the leading cause of human sickness and death.
In many countries, the water problem is the primary reason people are unable to rise out of poverty. Women and children bear the burdens disproportionately, often spending six hours or more each day fetching water for their families and communities.
But there is hope. Proven solutions to the water problem currently exist, such as digging wells and rainwater harvesting. Proper funding and a collective will can make universal safe drinking water a reality.
[Edit; like most such following statistics I would like to see the actual source of a lot of these figures and the data to back them! Call me skeptical about some figures here! ]
• 1.1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water, roughly one-sixth of the world's population.
• 2.2 million people in developing countries, most of them children, die every year from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
• Half of the world's hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water related illnesses.
• In the past 10 years, diarrhea has killed more children than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II.
• Despite the size of the problem, we have made little progress against it. There were only 181 million fewer people living without safe drinking water in rural settings in 2004 (899 million) vs. 1990 (1.08 billion)*1.
• 50 percent of people on earth lack adequate sanitation. Another way to look at it: Nearly half of the world's population fails to receive the level of water services available 2,000 years ago to the citizens of ancient Rome.
• Lack of sufficient funding.
It is estimated that, in 2004, only US$4b in overseas development assistance was provided to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) around water*2, versus a projected need of approximately US$10b annually for basic water and sanitation services and an additional US$15b to US$20b annually to provide a higher level of service and to maintain existing services.*
Note that the MDG goal, reducing the number of people living without safe drinking water and sanitation by half by 2015, still leaves hundreds of millions of people without water and sanitation.
Women and Children
• Some 6,000 children die every day from disease associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene - equivalent to 20 jumbo jets crashing every day.
• The average distance that women in Africa and Asia walk to collect water is six kilometers.
• Tens of millions of children cannot go to school as they must fetch water every day.
• 80 percent of diseases in the developing world are caused by contaminated water
• If we did nothing other than provide access to clean water, without any other medical intervention, we could save 2 million lives a year.
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
--
www.water.org•
The UN estimates it would cost an additional $30 billion to provide access to safe water to the entire planet. That’s a third of what the world spends in a year on bottled water.So what is more important?
Perhaps a hundred million dollars spent on chasing the elusive rainbow of proving global warming is all due to a minor greenhouse gas and then continue spending further immense sums on still trying, even after nearly three decades of trying without success, to prove this same unverified, unproven, supposedly catastrophic climate warming is under way and secondly, to continue to try and prove it is due to a minor greenhouse gas, a supposed global warming that is the object of some well off westerner's paranoiac fears.
Or just getting to and spending far less money on supplying good clean drinkable water, an absolute basic necessity for the survival of any human being, to every citizen of this planet?
Previous Topic
Index