Willie Soon sent me a wonderful conversation from the Davos 2017 meeting.







A story is here, too



A former vice-president of a highly developed country tried to offer his "wisdom" – that coal power plants shouldn't be built, not even in countries like Bangladesh. Instead, they should double the amount of cash they waste for the uneconomic sources of energy. This junk would be okayed at many places of the degenerated Western civilization.



Fortunately, Ms Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, thought differently.









Just swallow the basic numbers: Bangladesh has some 170 million people, mostly Bengalis, but it only produces 0.27% of the world's CO2 emissions. That's 20% less than Czechia's 0.34% whose population is smaller by a factor of 16. It shouldn't be shocking: the GDP per capita ($1,500 nominal, $4,200 PPP) is smaller than the Czech one by an order of magnitude or so, too.









OK, so this Al Gore arrives and tells this female leader – whose average citizen spends less in a year than Al Gore does in one hour – to avoid the construction of the cheapest possible power plants they may build, the coal power plants. Maybe they should send all this money to his carbon indulgences or at least buy photovoltaic power plants or wind mills. (As recently as last year, Bangladesh was building new solar panels at a rate beating any other country.) For the same amount of money that are hard to find in Bangladesh, they could build a "renewable" source of energy that produces some 20% of what they will get. Wouldn't it be great? No, it wouldn't.



However, the lady isn't disconnected from the reality. So she tells him about a great Rampal coal power plant that they already have and everyone is happy about it. Not a single person has ever complained that it would pollute the environment or anything of the sort. Tigers and fruits are OK with that, too.



And they plan to build an even more modern one which will also be a source of happiness for everyone. All the pollution will be removed from the smoke. And to be really sure that nothing damages the environment of the site near some UNESCO holy mangrove forest named The Sundarbans, not even aesthetically, the coal will be carried in covered cargo! ;-)



Just try to appreciate how inhuman the American jerk is and how calm and rational the prime minister of Bangladesh was in comparison. Gore should have already been taken down by the American secret forces. It's shameful that the Donald has removed Stephen Bannon before Al Gore – Trump sometimes behaves as a little ugly prick of Hillary's.



Using the most diplomatic language, the prime minister has invited the jerk to Bangladesh to see how deluded and nasty he is. Tom Friedmann wasn't invited but he invited himself, too. Well, these men are just scum.



And please, Al, stop with these insulting comments that the new power plant under construction is "dirty". The prime minister explained very clearly that and why it's state-of-the-art clean, ultra-supercritical. The only dirty objects in this discussion is you and, to a lesser but comparable extent, Tom Friedman.



A special comment for Jer: Note that it seems that the Bengali people don't mentally masturbate with conspiracy theories that CO2 has lowered their production of rubber or something similarly idiotic that Jer's neighbors in India love to say, as he told us. I guess that Jer thinks that his country is ahead of Bangladesh but there are respects in which it's clearly not.





I really don't know who was it. A Soros-funded group could have organized a false flag attack. Or not.My condolences to the former Russian capital. It's so bad – but I still admit that the attack in that cultivated city looks "further" from us than the attacks in the Western European capitals. Again, one can't be quite sure about the culprits. But in this case, I don't see a big reason to doubt that the Kyrgyzstan-born Uzbeki guy did it. Assuming this standard scenario, the attack really was totally analogous to those in Western Europe and we should sort of be ashamed that our reactions are so much weaker in this case.The YouTube server is full of Russian-language videos claiming that it was Putin's inside job and things like that. These things are primarily targeting the young generation. While I can't be 100% certain that they're wrong – or lying – I think that this new political direction wouldn't represent positive progress for Russia. In particular, when I saw how Garry Kasparov reacted to the attack and related events (by linking Putin and terrorists; and promoting his book), I was disgusted.