Blue Starlite North
Bryce a Stooge for Oil and Coal?
RECEIVED Sun., Dec. 9, 2007
Dear Editor,
After reading Robert Bryce's opinion piece, "If More CO2 Is Bad … Then What?" [News, Dec. 7], I concluded that Mr. Bryce is either an intellectual lightweight, a stooge for the oil and coal industries, or both.
Rather than dissect the many factual inaccuracies and fallacious claims in his article, it would behoove Mr. Bryce to actually examine some of the "developing countries" that he so dearly claims to care for.
Angola, a country in southwest Africa, is one of the fastest growing oil-exporting nations in the world. According to the World Bank, Angola received $30 billion in oil exports last year. However, the average worker in Angola lives on the equivalent of $2 per day, according to the World Bank, and approximately 25% of all children die before their 5th birthday. Angola also calls itself a "democracy," but due to rampant corruption, it has never held an election.
Then again, those are just facts, and for a man who uses charts supplied by British Petroleum to exaggerate global energy consumption, facts are either too difficult to comprehend or a mere nuisance to be overlooked.
After reading Robert Bryce's opinion piece, "If More CO2 Is Bad … Then What?" [News, Dec. 7], I concluded that Mr. Bryce is either an intellectual lightweight, a stooge for the oil and coal industries, or both.
Rather than dissect the many factual inaccuracies and fallacious claims in his article, it would behoove Mr. Bryce to actually examine some of the "developing countries" that he so dearly claims to care for.
Angola, a country in southwest Africa, is one of the fastest growing oil-exporting nations in the world. According to the World Bank, Angola received $30 billion in oil exports last year. However, the average worker in Angola lives on the equivalent of $2 per day, according to the World Bank, and approximately 25% of all children die before their 5th birthday. Angola also calls itself a "democracy," but due to rampant corruption, it has never held an election.
Then again, those are just facts, and for a man who uses charts supplied by British Petroleum to exaggerate global energy consumption, facts are either too difficult to comprehend or a mere nuisance to be overlooked.
Kevin Miner
[Robert Bryce responds: I knew this letter would be coming. I just hoped it would raise something substantive. Kevin Miner doesn't like it that I used data from BP (and it is BP, not British Petroleum) and claims the data is "exaggerated." Were he as informed as he claims, Miner would know that the BP Statistical Review is one of the energy industry's standard references. Further, the chart was not "supplied" by BP. It was one I created, in Excel, from BP's data. Alas, Miner is too busy to "dissect the many factual inaccuracies" in my story. Instead, he provides ad hominem attacks on my character and intellect while discussing corruption in Angola. Perhaps in his next letter he'll discuss the price of sushi in Tokyo? Alas, Miner's diatribe is all too typical of the shallow rhetoric surrounding the real conflict posed by concern about carbon dioxide, while there is rampant energy poverty in the developing world.]
