One regularly sees in the press various comments about the world environment conference to be held in Paris in December. It is known as COP 21, which stands for ‘the Twenty-First Conference of the Parties’. COP 17 was held in Durban, and I was a delegate there, so I know how these things operate. They are mainly weird chaos.

People from around the world are making impassioned appeals for there “to be success in the Paris deliberations”. By that they mean that they want to see a binding treaty signed by many countries committing themselves to cutting back on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions “so that we can hold global warming to an under 2 °C temperature rise this century”.

Well, my personal wish is that the whole Paris conflab collapses in a spectacular cave-in and that no binding treaty is signed. This entire 2 °C story does not stand to reason. There is no science that states that a 2 °C rise in tempera- ture is a magic number. There is also little to zero evidence that man-made CO2, known as anthropogenic carbon dioxide, has anything to do with any observed warming. Very many scientists agree with my viewpoint, but, for a strange reason, the press generally censors out this viewpoint and tends to project the viewpoint that we are all going to fry and die, and that nasty industry is to blame.

Yes, there has been a slight rise in temperature over the last century – about 0.8 °C – but that can easily be explained by a theory linked to the magnetic activity of the sun. A larger global warming took place when the Vikings explored Greenland, and there was no industrial CO2 to blame. At the time of William Shakespeare and Jan van Riebeeck, there was a very cold period, called the Little Ice Age, and the Thames, in London, froze over. Indications are that the sun caused both of these; so, why on earth assume that nasty mankind is to blame now. Global warmings have happened before and always brought health, welfare and prosperity.

Meanwhile, a champion of cutting back on CO2 emissions has been Japan. The Kyoto Protocol limiting CO2 release was signed there a decade ago. But Japan is now in trouble. Its CO2 emissions are rising rapidly, and the left-liberal Japanese newspaper, Asahi, has reported that the Japanese government is now “remarkably unenthusiastic” about the climate issue.

So, why are Japanese CO2 levels rising so fast? The answer is simple. In 2011, they shut down their nuclear power stations, which had been supplying a third of Japan’s power. Japanese plans had been to push the one-third figure for nuclear up to one-half.

But, in 2011, they replaced the absent nuclear with more fossil fuels. Then the leftist government in Japan, in 2012, offered very high rates to companies which could produce renewable energy, mostly solar. This triggered 1.2-million applications, because the subsidies guaranteed by government were so lucrative.

Then the conservative government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power in 2012 and it cut the renewable-energy subsidies and relaxed obligations on industry to buy ‘clean power’. The electricity utilities had also warned that they were really worried about the lack of stability of supply with renewables. Abe’s government has started reopen- ing the nation’s nuclear power plants, and has committed the country to a nuclear power future.

Japanese electricity suppliers had said that, for renewables to be employed in any quantity, they would have to ensure that the transmission grid was “modernised to prepare for the addition of the renewables”.

So, what does this ‘modernised grid’ mean? Simply, it means that renewable-energy supply is so erratic that the electricity which is supplied in pulses destabilises the grid. So, what a utility has to do is come up with a so-called ‘smart-grid’. This sounds like fancy new technology, but, in reality, is just a desperate attempt to use loads of fancy computer control to try to smooth out all the bumps and jerks in supply so that the grid does not collapse.

There does not seem to be any man-induced climate change. No increased extreme weather events. No climate ‘tipping point’ for disaster. No validity to the 2 °C claim. CO2 is not an issue. We do not need any Paris treaty to save mankind.

The important consideration is to improve the living standards of all our people by accelerating economic growth. We need to do this with wisdom, and real science. We do not need a concrete block around our necks, of an imaginary world problem stemming from CO2. It just does not exist.