Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Zambian President Edgar Lungu has blamed global warming for his country’s worsening economic problems.
According to Bloomberg;
Zambian President Edgar Lungu said global warming was partly to blame for the “unprecedented” power crisis robbing the economy of jobs and restraining productivity.
The energy shortages in the southern African nation are linked to unpredictable rainfall patterns caused by climate change, Lungu told the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. Hydro-electric generation, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the country’s energy mix, has been curbed because of a drought, putting pressure on the key mining industry to reduce its power usage.
…
I guess this is a reminder that even hydroelectricity, the only economically viable renewable, has its limitations. However there is hope – if Mr Lungu approaches the Chinese or Japanese for help, they might include Zambia in their climate finance coal infrastructure development programmes.
translation: “send money”
It’s more effective than “raise energy bills”.
Retranslation…90% renewables as primary energy sources = economic disaster
Because droughts never happened before in Zambia…
https://books.google.com/books?id=LkQnL4Gu1ycC&pg=PA302&lpg=PA302&dq=drought+record+Zambia&source=bl&ots=0RX0ZZxg6s&sig=xlcfmJuQPOaZUfC0Ng7RSTQM4ZY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCkQ6AEwBGoVChMIv4rd0tqjyAIViHI-Ch2M2gg-#v=onepage&q=drought%20record%20Zambia&f=false
Great link, John. Worth the few minutes it takes to read and captures the situation very well.
A lot of Zambian hydro power comes from the DRC.
The DRC, when fighting a protracted civil war, made a deal with Zambia to provide them free power for 20 years if Zambia gave them a pile of weapons, which happened. The deal was the pwoer was to flow south from the DRC into northern Zambia unmetered and free for 20 years. Maybe that 20 years is up.
Questions are:
When is that contract to expire?
Is there a shortage of water in the DRC?
Has Zambia become dependent on free power and they cannot adjust the tariffs in a manner the public will accept?
What is the shortfall, where is it, and how did things operate when there was ‘enough water’?
Separately:
The summer rainfall region all the way to just north of Cape Town has a 19 year (Metonic) drought cycle of 235 lunar months. The next peak low is in 2021, but there are always excursions above and below the sine wave. This could be one of them. That can’t be a complete surprise.
There is a regional grid. Is the real problem a lack of water or paying for the power?
I kept the daily rainfall records at a South African farm in the middle of this summer-rainfall area. The record goes back to 1922, with only one slight movement of the recording station (about 2 km). There were plenty of runs of wet and dry years, but, try as I might, I couldn’t find any evidence of the 18 or 19 year cycle. I first saw it mentioned by Prof Tyson of the Witwatersrand University in the 1980’s
The annual rainfall varied between about 250 and 1040 mm, almost at random. With such wild swings, any underlying cyclic variation was well hidden
There was also a suggestion that an el Nino was certain to cause a severe drought because one of the most devastating agricultural droughts coincided with the 1982-83 el Nino.
The next big el Nino in 1997-98 coincided with above average and evenly distributed rainfall, and the scare died a death.
Drought! Oh lordy lord.
Caused by man.
Caused by nature
Simple as that my friends.
With H. R. and would add if half the years from 1910 to 1966 are “drought” years perhaps “drought is over used. If the average flow had been calculated over a longer period less would have been planned on and alternatives might have been included.
Post apartheid South Africa is playing a role in reducing flow as well.
Not sure that his claims are entirely supported by this consensus oriented report, but that’s not really surprising.
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/climate/projects/undp-cp/UNDP_reports/Zambia/Zambia.hires.report.pdf
That wouldn’t by any chance be related to the fact that South Africa’s power generation infrastructure is in a state of near-collapse through politicized incompetence and mismanagement? What is the state of the dams and powerlines in Zambia and Congo? Are they by any chance falling apart? Same thing has been happening in Maduro’s Venezuela but it’s always Global Warming (and by extension, Whitey) that is held to blame.
When I last looked, climate change caused FLOODING.
You’ve missed the essential point. CO2 makes whatever was bad, worse. Including political irrationality.
… and warts, you forgot warts.
…and maybe a collapsed Lungu.
And lack of rain. Usually both at the same time, in different spots.
The Red Crosseyed folks said more floods due to global warming! Is there anything carbon dioxide CANNOT DO? 🙁
More rain = global warming.
Less rain = global warming.
Average rain = weather.
Send more money?
This is why they should not rely on dams for 90% of their energy. Drought happen, use more coal and natural gas stations.
Where were the hydrologists? Southern Africa may indeed have faced terrible droughts recently, but there is hardly any excuse for surprise when you consider the droughts before recent times, especially the one around 1800 which gave rise to the Mahlatule famine and decades of social dislocation. Just about any place can cop a severe drought (although building a desal plant in an Australian city seems to magically start the rains). If New York could dry up in the mid 1960s, why not Southern Africa at any time?
Even Scandinavia can cop serious droughts which effect hydro. Surely 90% is all wrong unless you have a trade arrangement with nuke or fossil fuel producers. (Zambia’s Pool neighbours seem to rely on hydro too.)
Dams are great, are multipurpose, look gorgeous. But burn some coal and gas too, guys, maybe get some nukes. Don’t go bleating to Green Bwana.
Moso, I don’t think they had much of a choice. Zambia is extremely poor with bad trade and violent neighbors, and they don’t have anyone to trade electricity with. Due to poor supplies and the possibility of war in Zaire/Congo again cutting off imports, Hydro was their only real choice. Dams give secondary abilities to control flooding and distribute water.
I can’t blame the guy. He’s blaming global warming for droughts because he has nothing else to do. His back’s against the wall.
Yeah, you make a good point. Some people have to make do. It’s harder to accept that coal/uranium/mineral rich Australia can’t afford to run a smelter.
Zambian government relies heavily on copper mining taxes and royalties as their main source of revenue. As with most other commodity prices the copper price has collapsed causing Zambian mines to shut or slow.
The country is desperate for revenue and cannot pay its bills including its electricity bills.
So obviously any excuse in the economic storm.
This makes sense. The Zambian economy has been a basket case for decades, and money is available to those who cry it’s all global warming’s fault.
Perhaps this is the CO2 amplification thingy they were talking about? CAGW also will create more clouds to reduce solar panel output requiring even more forest to be cut down for bigger solar “farms”. Ditto for wind turbines because CAGW causes more extremes in wind velocity, too low or too high. Bigger solar and wind “farms” will reduce land for bio fuel crops driving up the cost of bio-fuel and starving even more Africans.
It’s snowballing! We’re all doomed!
How many dams on the Zambezi River?
Two, Kariba and Cahorro Bassa.
Charloonny Church has blamed the war in Syria on Climate Change 🙂
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/charlotte-church-feels-the-heat-on-question-time/
This area has many past drought one severe enough to cause the collapse of a civilisation?
It wasn’t drought. I’ve heard about this. It’s a long-term consequence of abysmal water management practices and wasteful, primitive agriculture. The whole Middle East is drying up but not due to lack of rainfall. Guess which is the only nation in the neighborhood NOT running out of water? I’ll give you three guesses.
First wild guess: The one furthest up along the river.
Zambia has a big coal reserve to be mined. So just build a few power stations with the Asian fund money and away you go. The KPMG report notes that the mining operations and the rains are out of sync so that doesn’t help.
Yes, AGW is supposed to cause flooding. But that will be distributed unevenly. Some flooding in some places, while others see drought. And, of course, it will be the poor who suffer most, beause AGW will cause the poor who need water to suffer drought, while the poor who want it to stop raining will never see it stop. Only the rich will get water at just the right time – the science is settled on this point. And there is a lot of evidence that social inequality has been increasing, as the temperatures have been rising. So, see, it all fits together.
AGW is clever. It will only cause flooding where no dams exist. It causes droughts where dams do exist. That’s why we need to get 6 billion people out of the way so we can grow even more solar and wind farms. AGW proponents believe If you get rid of the people, you don’t need to grow food, you can grow biomass. They got it all figured out. And without the dams, the fishing will be better, too. Yes, this is intended to be sarcastic.
California learned years ago that hydropower is a combination of “reliable” power and “source of opportunity” power. The trick is knowing how much hydropower is “reliable”, so that adequate alternative sources of power are available during dry periods, when the additional “source of opportunity” power is not available. Zambia might have learned from California’s experience, though perhaps that was less convenient than: “Global warming done it!”
He knows the drill, just like the Pope. But the real reason is that the Chinese building boom was a bubble and now copper and other commodity prices have fallen. This follows failed attempts to extract better terms out of foreign copper mining firms in Zambia.
The obvious answer would be to make another deal with China. They have a record of building power plants, power lines and roads in Africa but only so as to better access the mines THEY run. I guess the Chinese just don’t need Zambian coal and copper quite so much what with their faltering economy.
I blame that horrible gap in his teeth!
Well …. but that was caused by …
…. it could have also been caused by lying too hard through them. A curious synergistic effect.
More likely the gap between his ears is to blame 😉
The UN has turned every third world ruler into a Global Warming cheerleader by promising them cash to play along.
We are witnessing the greatest scandal in human history.
The greatest scandal as forewarned by ……
United Nations created a monster theory.
By the United Nations climate theory everything is allowed.
More rain, less rain, more wind, less wind, higher temperature, lower temperature.
The sea level is rising anyhow. Oh – and more ice and less ice.
Any country can now claim that damages by weather are cause by climate change.
How is the United Nations supposed to be able to document that such damages are not caused by climate change. A theory which allows everything explains nothing. It´s about to get to late to recognize that now.
The general secretary of United Nations has allowed, and supported, the generation of a monster theory. It will take a monster bureaucracy do deal with it. It´s about to get to late to read Karl Popper now. Good Luck mr. Ban Ki Moon. I guess you wish you had been able to focus all effort on the major things you were supposed to care about.
“To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;”
Establishment of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by United Nations was a mistake. It was established on unscientific principles. Overwhelmingly clear for any real scientist who care to read the Principles governing IPCC work.
Karl Popper said that the best scientific theories were the false ones because scientists generated so much information while trying so hard and for so long to validate them.
That would be a profound statement with regards to the CAGW theory, but Popper assumed that scientists would be ethical. Today we have a cacophony of Chicken Little studies based on altered data and models that always generate the same graph, even when white noise is fed into them.
How much of this information will be of any use to future scientists! Probably not much.
“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” -Shakespeare
We have learned through such scenarios that third world nation leaders are pretty darn clever. We have not seen the end of “climate refugees” either. Just wait a few more years. It is going to be a circus.
This summer I exchanged two emails with a Church of England bishop, and it is relevant to this thread.
A few months ago the Daily Telegraph printed a letter from a group of religious leaders, including the bishop. The letter claimed that already the poor were suffering from a changing climate.
I emailed the bishop, asking what his justification for that claim was.
To his credit, the bishop did reply. As evidence he gave a link to the NOAA, a list of recent storms and floods. In my reply I pointed out that a list of storms proves nothing, as there have always been storms. Some of the storms were tornadoes and hurricanes. I pointed out that the data showed no increase in tornadoes and that average hurricane intensity has been falling for decades.
I then asked him to give me a concrete example of how the poor are suffering from a changing climate.
Again, to his credit, the bishop replied and gave a concrete example: the storms and floods that had occurred in Malawi in January of this year. But of course he gave no justification for thinking it had been made worse by global warming.
I managed to located data for a Malawi weather station (Chileka) that had almost unbroken precipitation data from 1930. You can see the plot here:
What a surprise! There is no trace of any long term trend that could remotely be linked to global warming. Ironically, the data for 1930 (the first group on the left, multiply the number by ten to get the year) showed slightly greater rainfall. According to the data, in 1967 there was more than 2 meters of rainfall in one day, an event of biblical proportions. The data clearly shows that the bishop’s claim is nonsense. I doubt if he ever looked at the data to see if there was a trend. Obviously, if there’s no trend it isn’t happening.
It will be interesting to look at rainfall data for Zambia.
I would suggest that, if anyone makes alarming statements about climate change and specific storms, and if there is no supporting data for the claim, then it is close to a criminal act. It is the moral equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded cinema.
The bishop makes a big thing about the poor. What sickening hypocrisy. It is precisely the policies, of which the bishop no doubt approves, that is the biggest threat to the poor countries of the world.
Chris
Chris, this is the aim of environmentalists. They want to keep the poorest poor, otherwise they will consume more of the world’s natural resources, help economic growth and pollute. Look at Al Gore and his assets. One giant mansion and one villa. Suzuki is rolling in assets. The Prince of Wales is a super hypocrite. And so on…………… They want people in their own societies to do with less, so they can have more.
Example.
In a speech he gave to industrialists and environmentalists at his James’s Palace in 2009 he said that the “age of convenience” was over. He added that we have just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.” In 2007 he was labelled an eco-hypocrite by environmental campaigners for planning a 7,000 mile convenient round trip on a jumbo jet with 20 of his staff to the USA to accept an environmental award.
For his further convenience he has “161.1 full-time equivalent staff” and 4 “homes in England, Scotland and Wales.” Clarence House – 40,000 sq. feet, Highgrove Estate – 900 acres,
Prince Charles – “We are making it cool to use less stuff.” Is he using less? You decide.
“they want to keep the poorest poor” I think they wish the poor be gone! Far to many useless consumers of resources to be able to sustain a proper decorum in our “natural world”
Thanks Chris, for taking the time to patiently reason with a man who has progressed only in the art of blinding accepting the truth of the patently unreasonable.
Your examination reminds me of my earliest days of growing skepticism.
With a vague feeling of distrust of surface station temperature data, I decided to start looking at the rainfall averages recorded alongside the temperature.
Surely, we should see some long term trends.
I kept looking and looking, the trends are almost never there.
Even over the continent of Australia where there are frequent regional droughts, if we look at the continent as a whole, or if we look back over a large time period then the trends that are discussed in the fearmongering media, vanish.
When a trend does seem to exist for some region then it is just as likely to be in the wrong direction (based on the oft-touted assumption that the recorded warming should raise atmospheric humidity and hence precipitation).
In the process of looking up weather data graphs via google images I began to notice that the most common source of graphs of real-world data was this blog WUWT.
The trick of generating mass-delusion and weather fear seems to rely primarily on the restriction of the supply of data and graphs to the general public.
And it was this discovery that lead me here.
If a group of people had the science on their side then surely they would be keen to reference as much of the real-world data as possible.
For example in this post. Where reference to the Met Office data shows that the Met Office now intend to mislead the public. Luckily the controllers of the data do not seem to have discovered an excuse to “adjust” historical rainfall totals:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/09/uk-rainfall-2012-the-report-the-met-office-should-have-produced/
Hi indefatigablefrog,
Funnily enough, the Australian drought maybe five years ago was one of the things that made me think seriously about climate change.
At the time, the drought was a poster boy for climate change alarmism. The New Scientist ran an article entitled “The Continent that ran dry”. (they seem to have had quite a bit of rain since then!)
I decided to look up the data. At the time the Australian BOM had an excellent site. You could just choose a region, or the whole continent, and it would show the rainfall graph from around 1900. It was quite an eye-opener. It showed that, for the continent as a whole, rainfall had been steadily increasing over recent years. For the region affected by the drought, the recent data did indeed show a consistent but moderate fall fall.
But when you see the complete graph, it becomes obvious that rainfall had increased in the mid 20th century, and now the rainfall was simply returning to its long term average.
In other words, the data showed no trends that could remotely correspond with climate change. What a surprise!
By the way, recently I went back to the BOM site to look at the data again. It had changed, it was much more opaque and I didn’t manage to get any rainfall graphs.
If I were a cynic – which thankfully I’m not – I might think that BOM, NASA, NOAA and all the others are making the data resources more opaque and more difficult to access (e.g. ocean pH and NDVI vegetation index data), because much of the data is just too inconvenient!
Chris
He gets a two-fer by blaming “climate change”; he gets to line up for the “climate reparations” fund, plus gets to skip out on doing something constructive to fix a real problem – the need for more, and a more reliable energy source. It’s win-win.
Yes, he would claim that.
This man has sniffed the potential benefits of the $100 billion Climate Green Fund … stupid wealthy countries quite willing, with guilt, to transfer wealth from their taxpayers to benefactors like President Edgar Lungu… I dare not say the government of Zambia.
When the Green Climate Fund does get to redistribute the wealth, I urge people to take note of the leaders of all these third world countries playing the ‘climate hustle game’, and watch the number of Swiss Bank Accounts being opened in their names.
In the names of wives and children. They are not stupid.
I don’t know when that $100 billion figure is going to be reached. The Green Fund was established in 2010.
Deduct well paid ‘salaries’ and overheads and you probably have 4 billion to date.
Guess his just found what he wants out of the Lear Jet catalogue and his is looking how he use a ‘climate doom shake down ‘ to fund it.
Much more of this to come in the run up to and during Paris .
Of course, government corruption has nothing to do with it.
Well, it seems that a former vice president ( and resent acting president ) of Zambia disagrees with president Lungu, about this.
( link below.)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-30/zambia-caused-crisis-by-draining-biggest-reservoir-ex-vp-says
Very interesting – write it up as a story, send it to Anthony.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/submit-a-story/
I have a special interest in this topic, as my fiancee is Zambian. The wisdom on the ground is that the government of Zambia has been selling its electric power to Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa and other neighbors, the while subjecting its own population to “load-shedding” 9 hours out of the day. This is a great way to prevent a discontented people from using telephones, computers, etc., while the profits go into the pockets of the well-connected. She has never commented that the long-term weather patterns are any different, and we are now heading into the rainy season.
The effects of load-shedding are so pervasive, even the urban dwellers have been forced to resort to cooking on charcoal braziers, which has resulted in a devastation of the local forests for firewood. The emerald and amethyst mines are other sweetheart-kickback arrangements. Don’t argue over climate physics or meteorology when the real problem is traditional African corruption.
Michael, ask your fiance if she knows about the power deal with DRC. When I was in Lubumbashi it was an issue because the power was going out and no money was coming in. I think that arrangement is coming to an end soon, or already did.
Here in Ontario, Canada our power supplier has raised energy costs, but sells “excess” power to Quebec and New York. As one factory owner points out, the government is in effect giving money to his competitors.
I guess they haven’t heard that warming increases precipitation 6.5% per degree of global temperature increase. They are barking up the wrong Mann tree. GK
Its funny, I just leafed through “The Skeptical Inquirer” at the newstand (I no long buy it), and they had an article about a conference where, among other things, climate change skeptics were tried and convicted of being poopy-heads. I may have misread the details so don’t quote me, but that was the gist.
Another part of the conference, beyond the usual battles against the woo-woo that is homeopathy and quacks etc., was that the third world really, really needs to allow GMO plants like golden rice to be grown to save the planet from starving.
It’s not really all that funny. It’s actually quite sad.
I commented on this only a few days ago. Apologies for repeating my comment. But this may help to explain the situation:
“Unfortunately the so-called Center for Skeptical Inquiry morphed in the mainstream science lovers fanboy club, and in the process has ceased to take a skeptical approach to examining claims regards man’s influence on the climate and weather.
That’s why these guys all got into a big funk when the CSI co-founder James Randi announced that he held a skeptical position regarding this topic.
Here out of interest is James Randi’s essay. It is also easy to find the outraged reaction of the appalled self-styled skeptics in his group, who were deeply shocked by the skepticism of their master skeptic.
Since they now deign that skepticism must have clear and precise limits.
If anyone from CSI is reading this, then can we please have a list of what we are allowed to be skeptical about. How about modern psychology, pharmaceutical research, social sciences, nutritional science? Are these areas all “official established science”, which is infallible?
How will we know what we are allowed to be skeptical about and what is in their opinion, establish FACT?
So, a detailed list is needed, immediately.
And then, are we to be skeptical of the contents of the list?
Or, will the list also be infallible?
I’m sorry to point this out, but defining skepticism as having only a small number of legitimate targets, is silly childish nonsense.
Here’s the Randi essay that caused the big stir”:
http://archive.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/805-agw-revisited.html
Nice post, but I was actually being ironic with saying it was “funny”. I didn’t mean “haha”. You know, like its funny that the people who are telling us that the sea level is rising are actually still buying ocean-front property…” .
CSI used to be about reproducible results. That was certainly the simple purity of Randi’s test of those who thought they had (or at least said that they had) “superpowers”: Claimed water diviner would set up his own test and would fail. Case closed.
I actually believe Mandia was on the panel I mentioned, so that does explain a bit…
Below is why scepticism is good. Consensus is meaningless. I think CAGW has gone through the following process but the failure of the IPCC projections is being denied.
Consensus can have dire consequences such as wasting your time and laying off butter production workers.
The real problem is that power generation in Zambia comes from just 2 power plants . The Kariba power station was built in colonial times in 1956 and Kafue Gorge power station in 1970. Since then despite the rise in population and electricity consumption the government has done nothing to develop alternate sources, indeed the signed agreements to sell cut price electricity to Mozambique and South Africa. Of the remaining capacity over 70% goes to the copper mines which leaves precious little for domestic consumers.
Worse the Kariba dam is deteriorating due to a complete lack of maintenance and its entirely likely that the dam sluice gates will have to be opened to prevent a collapse.
The state electricity company had plans to meet this shortfall with a new coal fired station but funding for this has been held back by the government which has been affected by the Green Madness and decided that solar power was the answer but of course they cant afford it. The transport infrastructure is so run down that it is essentially impossible to move coal from the countries collieries to market. As a result it is just being stockpiled forcing domestic consumers ship coal in to the country from Zimbabwe while would be buyers from China and India are forced to go elsewhere.
The drought is a convenient excuse for multiple government failures.
This is not new for this African leader. He has been on the climate money gravy train for some time now. It was the Pope that was slow to catch the wave.
Well, yes, they’ve been hurt by weather conditions, if that counts as climate change. They’ve been held back more by the climate change (aka global warming) movement and the convenient excuse for forcing “renewable” and its hardships, instead of bringing coal powered development and affluence to make his country productive in the world market.
My gut says Asia is willing to step up and finance what Zambia needs to join the modern world.
That would be right, except for playing the Clinton Foundation as a side game.
Hmmm, it seems like nothing a nice coal fired power plant or two wouldn’t help, and tra la, China to the rescue.
These BRICs gotta stick together and also help out the more downtrodden among them.
=================
Dang, shoulda read the comments first. Point already made, in spades.
==============
…but your style is more elegant.
Gee, I wonder what the Obama trip to Africa taught leaders there?
Zambia?
Sheesh the whole CAGW meme will vanish if we could impose a simple clause; Pay all “researchers” and “victims” in Zimbabwe dollars.
Everyone will be satisfied, the taxpayer costs will be severely curtailed and the concerned ones will received cheques with totals that vindicate their dedication.
Until they attempt to cash them.
Is this the same Zambian president who sent me an email saying that if I send him $2,000 today, he will send me $1,000,000 next month? The con seems similar.
No that was his relative in Nigeria
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment … UN battle looms over finance as nations submit climate plans”
“”Divisions over money between rich and poor countries re-emerged as nations submitted their plans for tackling climate change to the UN.
India, the last big emitter to publish its contribution, said it would need $2.5 trillion to meet its targets.
The Philippines said that without adequate climate compensation, their cuts in emissions wouldn’t happen.”
The only reason these developing nations have joined the crazy climate gang is because of the scent of money. India alone is looking for $2.5 trillion. The dumbasses running Europe and the USA thought they could exert control over the third world with the climate scam but now it is coming back to bite them in the the arse.
Even Obarmy is not going to give away half the USA’s GDP to the clamouring masses and the only thing the masses want is the loot. He can keep his ruddy wind turbines and solar panels because China and Japan will sell them coal power stations which they will pay for with the climate loot from the West, The loons have opened a huge can of worms and they are not going to be able to stuff them back in in Paris. Popcorn all round methinks.
The klepocrats are the most likely cause of their economy going belly up.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
Thank god for the UN ‘green climate fund’. Now Zambia can have financial security – compensation for evil mankind creating erratic rainfall patterns.
If he is blaming climate change for poverty he should power his nation by wind and solar, then he will know real poverty. BTW, if solar won’t work in Africa it won’t work anywhere.