Egypt leads the world in climate change and even if it gets worse and too hot and the Nile dries up and there is no food Egypt’s wealth will mean everyone can live in air conditioned cities 24 hours a day. What farm field workers will do will be ‘worked out’.
Maybe not.
MIT, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) dreadful imperialist Muslim haters and awful scientists, have done some regional estimates on heat which say the gulf and the Red Sea will be hot boxes by 2100. That means the reef will be dead, transit through the canal affected and life in the Russian brewery’s and distilleries very expensive with a quadrupling of air conditioning. Going outside might be a problem and the Red Sea uncomfortably hot.
In reports going back to 2015 they say the Gulf could become deadly. http://news.mit.edu/2015/study-persian- ... -heat-1026
Even one brave Egyptian bureaucrat says that its accelerating at a faster rate in Egypt than the Gulf and that rising sea levels are lifting the water table in the delta and its saline level. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/sear ... an-n899921
The Egyptian government is on top of it and that brilliant Army scientist who developed a machine which cured AIDS and HepC has a solution to this world problem to be announced after 2 weeks of work and at a Presidential press conference in 48 hours.
These regional studies of climate change impacts are a bit doubtful because the rate of change is still unclear and its specific impacts in particular areas far from certain. For example some Nobel Prize winners in this country are deeply pessimistic about the likely success of the Paris deal and frank on the need to plan now for a worst case scenario in excess of 2C globally and accelerating at certain points in ways we are unsure about. There is also new data on Methanol let off by land tillage which is 25 times more dangerous than CO2 but its very early days with this and scientists are sprinting to work it out.
The MIT view is not inconsistent with the Max Planck (MPI) assessment of the region which is considerably worse. In this area the MPI is probably world leader. https://www.mpg.de/10481936/climate-cha ... rth-africa and https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 016-1665-6
Here is the MIT regional map 2100 with the red hot boxes.
The tourist beach areas of Thailand and the west coast of India look fine - except they have lots of Russian bears in residence.
From Egypt’s point of view MIT gets it always wrong – because they are headed by a Jew, Reif.
Its not relevant to the Middle East but a good, simple powerful graph of very warm nighttime’s on the left and daytimes on the right for the US since before 1920. Its interesting that nighttime’s in recent decades have a stronger contrast with the past.
Evaporation in Lake Nasser will increase a lot, no government work on this, in the flood irrigation fields, sand storms will increase and substantial areas of the Delta will be flooded unless expensive and complex engineering is done. Beaches will reduce and even after engineering the delta will become more salty – it already is. Storms and sea winds might increase but its hard to know at this stage. What is certain is that evaporation of Nile water in that immense swamp in the south of Sudan, the Sud, will reduce flow unless someone can finish the often interrupted Jonglei Canal - but the Christian South Sudanese are no friends of Cairo.
The Economist speculates that high heat could increase social and political restlessness. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-a ... -miserable
As I understand it Egypt’s scientific research in this area, forward planning by academics and bureaucrats and the development of industry, living and food plans for the future are close to zero. It also seems clear that Egypt has no plan B if things get unexpectedly worse or the military options that might follow. I have never heard of or read about any invitation to world scientists or agronomists to visit Egypt on this although I have read of junk conferences in Egyptian 5 star hotels of 3rd rate farming specialists – all Egyptian. No proper consultants have been hired at any stage because this would admit the locals aren’t perfect.
A not uninteresting article written about Luxor archaeology describing anecdotes about climate change in Luxor and its impacts on the arch. sites. Do you think the Supreme Antiques care? https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and- ... -treasures
Off point but the article includes the following photograph, allegedly form late 2017, showing the great achievements of millions to make Luxor beautiful and archaeological. Note the dead and struggling palm trees, the great efforts to screen the shambolic buildings from the ‘beauty’ of the site and how all the digging/house destruction/money has exposed hundreds of beautiful ancient objects.
The Sphinx Avenue is a great beauty, a tourist attraction and superbly designed and made. Farag’s tens of millions of western money have been well spent on it and worth every penny.
Predictably Egypt is not forthcoming on either its problems or solutions in this climate/energy area and last reported on its emissions in 2012 where an astounding 41% of the dangerous emissions came from one source owned by the government – electricity generation. Egypt had not submitted its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (on climate change/emissions reduction) to the UN in 2015 but produced a brief and fatuous document a year later that was awful even by low Egyptian standards http://www4.unfccc.int/ndcregistry/Publ ... NDC.pdfand has not announced national greenhouse gas mitigation targets. In a 2016 report to the UN they used 2005 figures on emissions so no one is doing anything.
The Egyptian government policy on climate change is about as hard to work out as responsibility. Whilst there is a ‘show off’ at international conferences its fatuous with no targets. Within Egypt there are many agency specific plans which are not integrated onto one and with dispersed responsibility, endless meetings and much infighting. As is usual there are left hand/right plan problems with a new law in 2015 granting select industries connected to the army and connected persons the right to use coal for energy whilst prohibiting it for others. Very oddly, and its hard to be certain, the government owned electricity system might actually be increasing the coal share of its energy mix even coal has to be imported. https://www.madamasr.com/en/2017/02/08/ ... te-change/
Controls on factory emissions seem scant and there are no initiatives for vehicles. Overwhelmingly it’s a strategy of big government initiatives controlled by government and a complete aversion to incentives to people of companies to adopt new power sources. One harbors the suspicion that specific handouts to specific people gives rise to ‘opportunities’, means everyone is screened and that individuals not feel they can go their own way with a subsidy based on just legal rights or, god save us, initiative.
There is nothing others have done to reduce demand or encourage industry to build solar plants and feed their surplus electricity into the system for profit. Its all like ‘Moscow central’ with individuals, communities and companies told to stay away and leave it to their masters. There is nothing to bring in low carbon E10 petrol in Egypt and I think burning of sugar cane fields is largely unregulated. Building design is hopeless both for apartments and faux Georgian houses in the gated suburbs. More efficient electrical equipment/appliances attracts no government support. Very new science says that farming techniques, soil tillage in particular, is a much bigger source of dangerous gasses, Methane, than previously thought but Egypt and its 10’s of thousands in the Ministry do nothing. Economist April 28.
Solar power installation in Egypt is powering ahead in a strange way hard to understand except that local solar companies are excluded but connected persons with no experience included. Major international companies that do this seem either excluded or not interested. At this stage Egypt produces no solar equipment but the giant Chinese GCL has been given the go-ahead, without competitive tender, to build a factory and, very oddly, ‘approved by the National Authority for Military Production’ and not approved by agencies concerned with electricity or climate. It smells. . https://www.pv-tech.org/news/gcl-group- ... rint-plans
Solar plans are primitive and based on static photovoltaic panels not on tracking systems to follow the sun, not on parabolic systems not on concentrated solar thermal systems, not on the French solar furnace system. Its Mini Minor technology and sure to be a waste of money. With the wind and solar farms the government has agreed long term contracts to buy their power at a set price. That set price is a state secret so its hard to know how the taxpayer/power user will fare and whether the deals with the investors are competitive – I suspect not.
On the energy side the government has a New and Renewable Energy Agency that’s only interested in big projects. Its Chair, Mohamed Mostafa El-Khayat, appears to have no experience or achievements worth mentioning because his official CV is brief and mentions almost nothing relevant to his new job. They are being swamped with UN and EU debt which might reflect that commercial banks won’t loan.
Brains might be short but money isn’t.
‘In October, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group (a corporation worthy of a full investigation), completed a $653 million debt package to finance building 13 solar power plants near Aswan.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) also approved financing a total of 16 solar projects in Egypt at a total capacity of 750MW with $500 million under the same scheme.’ https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/3/37 ... -companies
Overall action is fragmented, data hopeless, science no good, no co-ordination, big difficult to manage projects over small, put all your eggs in one basket, lots of quick fix, new and probably expensive energy over simple energy saving and almost no urgency in facing a future that could be deadly let alone preparing any long term plans requiring careful and focused work. As ever management is given to friends or people who can be dominated and in both cases they have no relevant skills or experience.
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