Global warming and Malta
COP26 is over. All the gathered global warming experts were loath to admit the world needs to follow France’s example and phase out all fossil fuel power stations and replace them with nuclear (zero-carbon emissions) ones.
The backup of power stations will always be needed, particularly when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. “Green” hydrogen is estimated to only supply about 10 per cent of global electricity by 2050. Hydrogen needs a lot of electricity to produce from water and it’s “green” only when the electricity used comes from zero-carbon sources.
Germany, pretending to be a leading, avant-garde economy, gave other European countries a very bad example when it closed down its nuclear power stations and invested in coal-fired ones when its Greens threatened Angela Merkel’s coalition government following their misinterpretation of Japan’s tsunami disaster, which killed tens of thousands by drowning and none by nuclear station meltdown.
Nuclear power has been demonised by those ignorant of the safety record of modern nuclear power station design. Our planet is threatened not by modern nuclear power and decommissioning of spent nuclear fuel but by fossil fuels and, obviously, by other negative human activity such as destruction of forests.
What about Malta and global warming? We should aim at getting the bulk of our electricity by cables from the European grid, if not by local solar and wind, and we should tell the EU that we expect zero-carbon electricity from their grid by 2050, or before.
Mind you, we do need to do some homework. For example, our builders and architects pretend to be ignorant of roof and external wall insulation. Some newly-built external walls in Malta are still single brick, with a single concrete brick with two holes inside it being interpreted as an external wall air gap requirement. More heat transfer across roof and external wall structures means higher heating and air-conditioning bills and fossil fuel emissions.
Albert Cilia-Vincenti – Attard
We finally got there!
I must have been one of the first regular writers to this paper to warn all and sundry that Gozo would also soon become a victim of our Planning Authority’s total unfitness for purpose and total inability to foresee disasters resulting from permits, which it issues like pastizzi.
The picture on page 5 of November 13 of the Times of Malta amply proves what I had foreseen.
The formerly beautiful Gżira tat-Tliet Għoljiet, which could be seen from everywhere, is now no longer so and all the building and construction magnates are singing hooray.
Next stop, Comino.
After that, Filfla.
Shame on us all.
John Consiglio – Birkirkara