A century and a half of fraud in physics culminated in greenhouse gases. Incompetent physicists missed the fact that absorbed radiation in the atmosphere is re-emitted in femtoseconds. They didn’t see the re-emission, because the wavelength changes to broadband frequencies which mix with all other infrared radiation obscuring its visibility on graphs.
There is 500 years of accumulated scientific knowledge that determines the result; but physics was overrun by incompetents over the past 177 years. Then know-nothings in journalism and organizations got involved and imposed the fraud onto the pubic with no criticism allowed and shoved real scientists out of view and often out of science.
There are endless contradictions with real science in the claim of a greenhouse effect in the atmosphere. One point is that radiation is emitted from a transparent gas so rapidly that the air can cool 20 degrees at nights. With energy being radiated that rapidly into space, it isn’t going to be trapped by carbon dioxide.
Another point is that only low frequency infrared radiation coming from the surface of the Earth can be absorbed by carbon dioxide. Such cold surfaces emit very little radiation for carbon dioxide to absorb. So the tiny amount gets completely absorbed by a small amount of carbon dioxide and more carbon dioxide cannot absorb more radiation. That means increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does nothing.
That effect is called saturation. It was measured by real scientists more than a century ago. But the incompetents in physics were uninfluenced by the result, because they had acquired the purpose of mongering power in place of producing real science.
It is beyond disgraceful to allow know-nothings in journalism and organizations to promote propaganda on fake science and technology which is destroying energy and transportation systems. Real scientists and engineers used to explain the errors, but they were shoved out of the process by the know-nothings which society allowed to speak for scientists.
After the know-nothings convince the public of fraud being fact, incompetent physicists pretend to conduct a study which shows the effect. Their studies are nothing resembling real science. They use modeling which produces any desired result with nothing for scientific validity.
Renewable energy and electric vehicles hit a wall of absurdities long ago, while fakes pretend that forward progress is constantly being made. Renewable energy doesn’t mean unlimited supply. The low hanging fruit was gone long ago, while environments are ravaged.
No one can get past 15% renewables as wind and solar power, because fluctuations are too rapid and long-term for backups. At 15%, the cost of electricity increases by a factor of ten, as occurred in Germany and Britain forcing them to turn to coal and nuclear while lying to the greens to keep them off their backs. At 6% renewables, the cost of electricity in California increased by a factor of five.
Know-nothing frauds who have no background in science or engineering say the renewables are on par with coal. Besides making up fake numbers, they omit the transmission lines which would need to be increased by about a factor of 6,000 from the present state. The lines have needed to be increased for a long time, but it doesn’t happen due to the extreme expense and environmental damage. The lines can’t be doubled, let alone increased by a factor of 6,000.
There is six times as much energy being used in the form of fossil fuels as electricity, which means electricity would need to be increased by a factor of six to produce 100% renewables. Yet the fakes say a 25% increase would be needed for electric vehicles.
Then transmission lines would need to be about a thousand times as much length as presently exists, because renewables would need to be widely scattered, often thousands of miles from end users, while lines are presently eliminated by moving fossil fuels to the cities to generate the electricity.
Electric vehicles get equivalent of 5 to 10 miles per gallon, while ignorant bureaucrats claim they get an equivalent of 100 to 150 miles per gallon. Bureaucrats base their claim on the assumption that electric motors are 96% efficient. That assumption is beyond stupidity. No transformation of electrical energy into kinetic energy (what electric motors do) can be more than 40% efficient and is typically 25% efficient under operating conditions.
What happened is, someone took the resistive load of a motor, which is 3-5% of the energy, and claimed it was the total effect creating inefficiency, which left out the inductive load. Not knowing the difference between resistive and inductive load shows what a bunch of incompetents are imposing fraud onto the public.
I have always considered myself an environmentalist and conservationist. I worked on my doctorate with an atmospheric chemistry grant.
In the post war boom, we had problems with air pollution from factories, coal plants, cars, inefficient home heating systems and incinerators in apartments.
We had air quality issues with pollutants like soot, SO2, ozone, hydrocarbons, NOx, and lead. Smog events in Donora PA 1948 where 6,000 of the 14,000 population experienced damaged lungs, and the great London 1952 event which led to 6000 deaths helped drive global action. The problem was soot and sulfur dioxide which when there is a fog with a low level inversion preventing dispersion traps the particulates while the sulfur dioxide reacts with the water droplets to form sulfuric acid mist which causes lung damage as well as damage to property. Today in a similar industrial boom with heavy coal use in places like China, they are experiencing similar issues.
My colleagues who became part of the EPA or their advisory boards helped them set standards that had to be met by industry and automakers.
The EPA reports:
“Between 1970 and 2019, the combined emissions of the six common pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10, SO2, NOx, VOCs, CO and Pb) dropped by 77 percent. … For nearly 50 years, the Clean Air Act has brought Americans cleaner air and lower risks of adverse health effects. “
The EPA tracks the Air Quality Trends common pollutants nationally and reports that concentrations of air pollutants have dropped significantly since 1990:
Carbon Monoxide (CO) 8-Hour, down 78%
Lead (Pb) 3-Month Average, down 85% (from 2010)
Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Annual, down 59%
Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) 1-Hour, down 51%
Ozone (O3) 8-Hour, 25%
Particulate Matter 10 microns (PM10) 24-Hour, down 46%
Particulate Matter 2.5 microns (PM2.5) Annual, down 43% (from 2000)
Particulate Matter 2.5 microns (PM2.5) 24-Hour, down 44% (from 2000)
Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) 1-Hour, down 90%
We have the cleanest air in my lifetime and well below the standards set.
In fact, the global trend of PM2.5 from NASA and the WHO shows the U.S. with reliance on clean natural gas has the lowest small particulate count (along with Scandinavia and Australia) in the world.
The EPA notes “During this same period, the U.S. economy continued to grow, Americans drove more miles, and population and energy use increased.”
So CO2 is not a pollutant and we have shown here the other CO2 driven climate claims are either not shown to exist or can be explained by natural factors.
World prosperity and decreased poverty and death has resulted form the benefits of the use of fossil fuels to mankind.
Whatsmore CO2 is a plant fertilizer that has enabled us to feed a growing global population and the vegetation that feeds the people and produced the materials like wood that houses them.
Notice CO2 was not on the list of EPA pollutants. CO2 is a trace gas (.04% of our atmosphere). It is NOT a pollutant but a beneficial gas.
CO2 is essential for photosynthesis. CO2 enriched plants are more vigorous and have lower water needs, are more drought resistant. Ideal CO2 levels for crops would be 3 to 4 times higher. Many greenhouses worldwide pump CO2 to promote and speed growth.
Dr. Craig Idso of CO2 Science noted recently “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and it is most certainly not causing dangerous global warming. Rather, its increase in the atmosphere is invigorating the biosphere, producing a multitude of benefits for humanity and the natural world, notwithstanding the prognostications of the uninformed.” See his video here.
Dr. Will Happer, Princeton Physicist talks about the great benefits of CO2 to the biosphere and to all of humanity.says we are coming out of a CO2 drought and humanity would benefit from CO2 being 2 to 3 times higher. See an interview here.
Dr Patrick Moore, ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace says we are coming out of a CO2 drought and humanity would benefit from CO2 being 2 to 3 times higher. See the interview here.
So CO2 has enormous benefits to mankind.
It’s not the first time we were told we faced an existential threat due to ‘climate change’. In 1970, Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich warned that because of population growth, climate stress (then cold) and dwindling energy that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off” which was too late to stop. Even as each subsequent dire forecast failed (see how the alarmist/media record is perfect (100% wrong) in the 50 major claims made since 1950 here), the alarms continued, each pushing the date forward – 2000, 2020, and now 2030. Last summer, at Glacier National Park signs “Warning: glaciers will be gone by 2020” were quietly removed as ice and snow has increased.
The real costs are in the actions pushed on Americans and corporations by government and environmental caving to radical environmentalism.
That is because they are using failed assumptions and models tuned to manipulated (fraudulent) data. See detailed peer reviewed studies on this here.
In the U.S., through 2020, low cost energy, low taxes and elimination of stifling regulations, we had the lowest unemployment for the nation in decades or history and for the first time in a long time significant wage increases! The U.S. is energy independent, a long time thought unachievable goal. Our air and water is cleanest in our lifetimes well below the tough standards we put in place decades ago.
The real existential threat comes would come from radical environmentalism and their prescribed remedies. The climate scare is politically driven, all about big government and control over every aspect of our lives. AOC’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti in May 2020 admitted that the Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing” – nothing more than a thinly veiled socialist takeover of the U.S. economy. He was echoing what the climate change head of the UN climate chief and the UN IPCC Lead Author said – that is was our best chance to change the economic system (to centralized control) and redistribute wealth (socialism).
The economy in every country that has moved down an extreme green path have seen skyrocketing energy costs – some 3 times U.S. levels.
Green carbon taxes or reduction cause electricity prices to rise.
See the RGGI northeast states join crazy green California.
Under green friendly Biden/Kerry it will get worse. Chamber of Commerce Global Energy Institute’s Energy Accountability Series 2020 projects:
Energy prices would skyrocket under a fracking ban and would be catastrophic for our economy. If such a ban were imposed in 2021, by 2025 it would eliminate 19 million jobs and reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $7.1 trillion. Natural gas prices would leap by 324 percent, causing household energy bills to more than quadruple. By 2025, motorists would pay twice as much at the pump ($5/gallon).
This will lead to soaring energy prices and life-threatening blackouts.
The green countries worldwide have electricity prices three times our levels. We are at the very bottom of the list. But for how long?
If I were to apply the Chamber’s projections to my modest family home and lifestyle, we would pay much more for energy ($13,000 per year!).
Some believe the Obama/Chu goal of $8, gallon could be revived and may even be targeted at $10 which would increase household energy costs another $3000/year. That would not include the cost of forced abandonment of gas-powered vehicles for electric autos, fuel oil or natural gas heating and cooling for electric.
That would be about what many families bring home yearly ($20,000). Not to worry… big government would come to the rescue by subsidizing lower or no income families and adding more to the exploding tax burden for everyone else.
This will lead to soaring energy prices and life-threatening blackouts. Retirees and lower income families pay the highest % of income (over 40%) for energy in recent years when energy costs have been low. They would suffer the worst as other parts of the world learned.
Millions perhaps tens of millions of people working hard to keep you warm in winter and cool in summer will be out of a job (cancellation of Keystone was the first volley). These people helped make the US energy independent for the first time ever. The talk of green jobs is nonsense as Europe found out here. New York Post (4/9/21) reports: “Last week, the Biden administration announced ‘a bold set of actions’ that it said will ‘catalyze’’ the installation of 30,000 megawatts of new offshore wind capacity by 2030.”
“A White House fact sheet claimed the offshore push will create ‘good-paying union jobs’ and ‘strengthen the domestic supply chain.’ One problem: It didn’t contain a single mention of electricity prices or ratepayers. The reason for the omission is obvious: President Biden’s offshore-wind scheme will be terrible for consumers. If those 30,000 megawatts of capacity get built – which, given the history of scuttled projects like Cape Wind, is far from a sure thing – that offshore juice will cost ratepayers billions of dollars more per year than if that same power were produced from onshore natural-gas plants or advanced nuclear reactors…the cost issue is the one that deserves immediate attention because any spike in electricity prices will have an outsized impact on low- and middle-income consumers. Those price hikes will be particularly painful in New York and New England, where consumers already pay some of America’s highest electricity prices…Thus, the electricity from 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind could cost consumers roughly $7.6 billion more per year than if it came from advanced nuclear reactors and about $11.1 billion more than if it were produced from gas-fired generators.”
By the way, perversely, when families can’t afford to pay for the energy (heating oil, gas or electricity) to heat their homes in winter, they revert to burning wood. This introduces the particulate matter and other ‘pollutants’ we have worked so hard to remove at the source.
Whatsmore we have shown that when we factor in natural cycles in the oceans, on the sun and volcanism, we can explain all the variability the last century (see) meaning CO2 has no effect. We also see no non-natural changes in extremes of weather.
Renewables are unreliable as the wind doesn’t always blow nor the sun shine. And don’t believe the claims millions of green jobs would result. In Spain, every green job created cost Spain $774,000 in subsidies and resulted in a loss of 2.2 real jobs. Only 1 in 10 green jobs were permanent. Industry left and in Spain unemployment rose to 27.5%.
Many households in the countries that have gone green are said to be in “energy poverty” (25% UK, 15% Germany). The elderly are said in winter to be forced to “choose between heating and eating”. Extreme cold already kills 20 times more than heat according to a study of 74 million deaths in 13 countries.
Politicians in the northeast states are bragging that they stopped the natural gas pipeline, shut down nuclear and coal plants and blocked the Northern Pass, which would have delivered low cost hydropower from Canada. In Concord and surrounding states, they are now scurrying to try and explain why electricity prices are 50 to 60% higher than the national average here and are speculating they have not moved fast enough with wind and solar. Several states have even established zero carbon emissions. This will lead to soaring energy prices and life-threatening blackouts. And by the way, in Europe where this plan was enacted or planned, many will lose their jobs. They are being told what (if) they can drive and what they can eat. Prosperity always delivers a better life AND environment than poverty.
REALITY CHECKS LARGELY GETTING NO MEDIA ATTENTION
There are a few recent important reports that show what the impact of these plans are likely to be. The radical environmentalists and globalists believe that people are stupid and can be counted on to believe what government leaders, progressive think tanks and the well paid scientific cabal say. There are a few recent reports that show what the real impact of some of these plans now on the drawing board are likely to be and they are very scary.
U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE’S GLOBAL ENERGY INSTITUTE’S ENERGY ACCOUNTABILITY SERIES 2020
Candidates for elected office have pledged to ban the very technology that has enabled the boom (and the never thought possible energy independence) – fracking. This raises an important question: what would happen to American jobs and the economy if fracturing was banned? In this report, the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute has undertaken the modeling and analysis to answer that question.
Simply put, a ban on fracking in the United States would be catastrophic for our economy.
Our analysis shows that if such a ban were imposed in 2021, by 2025 it would eliminate 19 million jobs and reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $7.1 trillion. Job losses in major energy producing states would be immediate and severe; in Texas alone, more than three million jobs would be lost. Tax revenue at the local, state, and federal levels would decline by nearly a combined $1.9 trillion, as the ban cuts off a critical source of funding for schools, first responders, infrastructure, and other critical public services.
Energy prices would also skyrocket under a fracking ban. Natural gas prices would leap by 324 percent, causing household energy bills to more than quadruple. By 2025, motorists would pay twice as much at the pump ($5/gallon). We are well on our way there.
THE NORTHEAST PETRI-DISH – MASSACHUSETTS CASE STUDY
Massachusetts lawmakers have been aggressive in enacting policies they believe to combat climate change. Policymakers passed the Global Warming Solutions Act and joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative intending to reduce the state’s GHG emissions. As a result you can see Massachusetts joined the neighbor RGGI states of Connecticut and Rhode Island as the most expensive of the other lower 48 states in the cost of electricity according to the EIA (176.6% of the average of the lower 48 states). Right up there are all the other northeast RGGI states and not surprisingly California. Connecticut is #1 now with 187.6%.
These numbers were before the recent actions that are driving up process everywhere.
For Massachusetts this is before the introduction of the Transportation Climate Initiative or TCI, the next big over the cliff proposed effort to kill fossil fuels
They write “The Transportation and Climate Initiative of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States (TCI) describes itself as “a regional collaboration of 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia that seeks to improve transportation, develop the clean energy economy and reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector.” Massachusetts is a participating state.
The founding document for the TCI is a “Declaration of Intent,” issued in 2010 and signed by transportation and environmental officials in 11 states. The declaration states that the purpose of the TCI is “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, minimize our transportation system’s reliance on high-carbon fuels, promote sustainable growth, address the challenges of vehicle-miles traveled and help build the green energy economy.”
The Initiative is “facilitated” by the Georgetown Climate Center, which worked closely with the Obama administration to design and implement climate change (fossil fuel elimination) policies.
BHI examined three scenarios – plans for 20%, 22% and 25% reductions of CO2 emissions from gasoline and diesel vehicles.
The midpoint TCI analysis for the period 2022-2026 for a 22% reduction of gasoline and diesel emissions would lead to a total loss of 36,533 jobs with increased energy cost per household of $3,037 in Massachusetts.
The Green New Deal presented the ideal radical left desires to change life as we know it. It is more likely change will continue to be incremental. And these studies show, the actions are not supported by real data and honest science, and the pain will be significant.
You need to seriously reconsider your cost benefit analysis as it is clear there are ALL cost and NO benefit to a ‘zero carbon’ suicide.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else.” Yogi Berra
WHERE IS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC? WHY THE FULL LOCKDOWN? ANNUAL TOTAL DEATHS IN ALBERTA AND CANADA SHOW NOTHING UNUSUAL TO 30June2020
Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., April 3, 2021
From the total deaths plotted for Alberta and Canada, there were NO significant excess total deaths to 30June2020, and so there was NO justification for the incredibly costly Covid-19 lockdown, which is estimated to have caused 10 to 100 times more current and future harm than the Covid-19 illness.
From the total deaths plotted for Alberta and Canada, there were NO significant excess total deaths to 30June2020, and so there was NO justification for the incredibly costly Covid-19 lockdown, which is estimated to have caused 10 to 100 times more current and future harm than the Covid-19 illness.
The important question is why the lockdowns were ever enacted, and why the tried-and-tested Alberta Emergency Management Plan was tossed out and a young medical officer given the impossible task of managing the alleged pandemic – that in the first half of 2020 was a hugely exaggerated, false crisis.
In addition to needlessly destroying the economy, the impacts of the lockdown continue to cause harm:
Hospitals were emptied for ~2 months to make room for a “tsunami of Covid-19 cases” THAT NEVER HAPPENED;
Cancer tests, surgeries and other needed medical procedures were delayed and backlogged;
Deaths from opioid overdoses more than doubled, resulting in an increase of tens of thousands of years-of-life-lost;
Societal problems including substance abuse, family violence, poverty, and mental illness all increased;
The education system was disrupted and the harm to students will continue for years.
There is ample evidence that lockdowns and masking had little impact on Covid-19 mortality. Sweden and South Dakota that did not lock down had similar or better mortality outcomes to those that did.
In fact, the lockdowns encouraged the longevity of the Covid-19 illness and the development of more deadly variants. Most flu’s die out in the summer season, but lockdowns and masking allowed Covid-19 to survive through the summer. The Covid-19 problems since 30June2020 with renewed contagion and more dangerous variants were enhanced by the lockdowns – the lockdowns were a total debacle.
Furthermore, the incessant testing and reporting of positive PCR tests as “cases” is harmful nonsense, needlessly creating fear and bad policy. A “case” exists NOT from a positive test, which is often asymptomatic, but from a real illness that requires treatment.
I correctly concluded that the Covid-19 lockdowns were a huge error in early March 2020, and published that conclusion on 21&22March2020. All we needed to do, which I published at that time, was over-protect the very elderly and infirm (which we failed to do) and get everyone else back to work and school. The data shows that the lockdowns were not justified and were hugely harmful.
Alberta and Canada are now in a far worse situation than if we had done nothing – no lockdowns, no masking, etc. How do we get out of the needless mess our governments have created? First, stop reacting in panic to overblown test results and other scary propaganda. Adults should take 4000IU of Vitamin D3 daily. Cease all lockdowns, masking and distancing measures now. Get everyone back to work and school.
Let’s walk out into the sunshine and get back to enjoying our lives.
Regards, Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
Notes on the Data
The data is from Statista.com, a private company, which sourced its data from Statistics Canada.
At 30June2020 the population of Alberta was 4,421,876 and that of Canada was 37,742,154.
Alberta has a younger population than Canada and a significantly lower death rate per capita.
The upward slope in both plots reflects increasing populations and the aging of those populations.
After a high-mortality-winter like 2014-2015, the subsequent year is typically lower-than-trend, because there are fewer very-elderly-and-infirm remaining to die the next winter. The reverse is true after a low-mortality winter, such that the total mortality numbers tend to oscillate above and below the trend line.
Data from other countries may show similar results. The abysmal quality of Covid-19 data from some countries, such as the USA, makes analysis difficult. It is clear that many USA deaths from other causes have been falsely attributed to Covid. It is also clear that the panicked response by so many countries to a relatively mild flu, which was only dangerous to the very elderly and infirm, destroyed the credibility of health authorities around the world. The Covid-19 lockdown did much more harm than the illness.
This is Part 5 of the series Watch Out! Biden wants to save the planet. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
US President Joe Biden has made fighting global warming a top priority in all spheres of government activity and vows to make the US electric power system 100% carbon dioxide-free by 2035. He has not, however, spelled out how the administration intends to achieve this goal. The choice of technology plays a key role.
Many climate activists – but by no means all – are pushing for a plan based exclusively on so-called renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar power, without any use of nuclear energy. But without nuclear energy, Biden’s green effort will be doomed to disaster.
If the magnitude of financial and physical resources that would need to be invested are taken into account, it is clear that this scenario will never be carried through to the end.
Instead of the promised nirvana of 100% renewable energy, the overhaul would inevitably end in chaos with exploding electricity costs, frequent blackouts, rationing of electricity consumption and repressive measures to cut energy consumption. Many power plants would most likely still be burning fossil fuels, as the country would not be able to get along without them.
Long before that, a powerful political backlash would likely have swept the Democratic Party out of power – along with anyone else identified with the plan. So what is so problematic about the “100% renewable” scenario?
First: the output of wind turbines and solar cells fluctuates over a wide range on time-scales of minutes, depending on weather conditions. Solar cell output varies depending on cloud cover and time of day, being zero at night.
Due to the erratic variations in wind strength, the average output of an onshore wind turbine is generally only about a third of its maximum rated capacity (the figure is about 38% for an offshore turbine). About 2000 typical-size 1.5 megawatt wind turbines are needed to generate as much average electric power as a standard one-gigawatt nuclear power plant. Unlike wind turbines, nuclear plants generate a constant, controllable flow of electricity.
To obtain a dependable supply based on wind and solar, supplementary electricity sources are needed to step in when their output drops. That costs money. In most present-day practice – where fossil fuels have not yet been banned – this is done mainly with the help of auxiliary gas turbines, diesel generators or – when nuclear plants are available – by “load-following” that constantly adjusts nuclear plant outputs. Load-following can work as long as the ratio of nuclear to wind-plus-solar is large enough.
Otherwise, the only alternative is to import electricity from somewhere else, assuming it is available when you need it, or to store part of the output of wind and solar sources and inject stored electricity back into the grid when their output falls. The most-cited option is to use batteries – a lot of them.
The second basic problem is the low power density of wind and solar energy. Aside from hurricanes and tornadoes, wind is a diffuse form of energy that requires large areas to “harvest” it. The same applies to sunlight on the surface of the Earth.
Compared to nuclear plants or state-of-the-art fossil fuel plants, wind and solar require hundreds of times as many individual units, hundreds of times more land area and tens of times larger amounts of steel, concrete and other materials to produce a given average power output.
The figure below illustrates what low power density means: a 260-meter tall 12 MW GE Haliade X offshore wind turbine, compared with the size of a nuclear power plant – in this case an advanced-generation reactor being developed by the ThorCon company for Indonesia.
GE’s Heliade X is two-thirds the height of the Empire State Building, or half the height of the former World Trade Center! But for a nominal rating of 12 megawatts, we will be lucky to get 5 MW average output – a hundredth of the output of the “tiny” nuclear power plant at the right.
That’s similar for land use. Michael Shellenberger, a staunch environmentalist who has become an outspoken advocate of nuclear energy, compared the land area required for a given level of power production by typical nuclear plants, wind farms and solar parks in various countries.
For example, the nuclear plant in Borsella, Netherlands, occupies about .16 square kilometers of land and produces 3.46 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, while Holland’s Gemini Offshore Wind Farm occupies 68 square kilometers and produces 2.6 billion kilowatt-hours. The nuclear plant produces 570 times more power per unit area than the wind farm – and 370 times more than the solar park Sunport Delfzijl.
In South Korea the factor was 625 times for nuclear versus onshore wind and 468 times for nuclear versus solar. Figures in the nine other countries examined are analogous.
Note also that wind turbines degrade the quality of life of people unfortunate enough to live in the vicinity. Ironically, irrational environmentalism has caused an unprecedented scale of destruction of the natural landscape.
This has given a new meaning to the term blowback. In Germany, the resistance of local populations has brought the expansion of wind energy to a standstill. Large solar parks are not popular, either.
There is no question that wind and solar power are mature technologies, that have an important role to play as complementary energy sources in specific contexts. But as far as the economics of large-scale use is concerned, the lobby of commercial interests linked to wind and solar energy – which is now much larger than the nuclear lobby ever was – has done everything possible to pull the wool over the eyes of the public.
We are constantly told that the cost of wind and solar energy has dropped dramatically and that they are already the cheapest power sources.
Common sense, and the electricity prices in California, Germany, and Denmark – which have all gone big on renewable energy – tell a different story, as do many independent studies. See for example the detailed study by Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh, “Wind Power Economics – Rhetoric & Reality.”
The real costs of wind and solar are obscured by subsidized prices, renewable energy credits, production tax credits, green bond discounts, accelerated depreciation, property tax exemptions and tax credits.
Competing fossil fuel sources are “punished” by imposing carbon taxes and by giving first preference to renewables in the purchase of electricity by network providers. (See Chapter 3 of the excellent book Electrifying Our World, by ThorCon co-founder Robert Hargraves.)
The real costs of wind and solar energy also include the investments needed to integrate them into a national power system that must reliably meet demand. A 100% renewable energy scenario means transforming a vast electrical system that was designed to operate on the basis of stable fossil fuel and (later) nuclear energy sources.
That means putting up over 320,000 kilometers of new transmission lines. In addition, the US would need huge amounts of additional electricity storage capacity. How much electricity would have to be stored in batteries and other storage systems to make sure the lights don’t go out when it gets dark and the wind drops off ?
This is a complicated question, but it is worth citing a couple of crude estimates.
Willem Post, a former engineer and frequent writer on energy issues, addresses this issue: “According to weather data, the US has multi-day, wind/solar lulls covering at least 25% of the land area. They occur at random times throughout the year. A lull is defined at 15% of normal electricity output for that time of year.”
Estimating how much electricity would have to be supplied by storage systems in order to make up for missing wind and solar output during such a one-day lull, he comes up with 67 billion kilowatt-hours.
For comparison, the battery of a Tesla model S electric car can store about 85 kilowatt-hours. Dividing that into his estimate, we get the equivalent of 788 million fully-charged Tesla S batteries.
Tesla founder Elon Musk has promised that battery storage costs will come down to $100 per kilowatt-hour – a 30% improvement from today. The price-tag would then be $6.7 trillion for the first full set of batteries. Let’s hope they will not have to be replaced too often.
Results of a much more elaborate study were reported last year in the engineering magazine Bridge. The authors utilized data for the hourly electricity load and weather conditions in the seven New England states of the US during 2018, scaling up wind and solar capacities to match the annual energy consumption. The study takes into account the entire regime of operation of the system of sources and storage, which shows strong seasonal variations.
The authors come up with an estimate of 14 billion kilowatt-hours for the amount of electricity storage capacity that would be needed to ensure a reliable supply for New England in a “100% wind and solar” scenario. If we scale this estimate up to the whole US – whose electricity consumption is 35 times larger – we get the terrifying figure of 490 billion kilowatt-hours.
Assuming all-battery storage at the optimistic price of $100 per kWh, the price-tag would be $49 trillion!
The actual amount of storage capacity required would presumably be much less than this extrapolation suggests. Among other things, climate and weather conditions differ greatly among US regions.
In addition, building 320,000 kilometers of new transmission lines, as mentioned above, would allow electricity to be constantly shipped back and forth all across the country, according to the weather and time of day.
But whatever the millions or billions of batteries will cost, the very prospect of a nation basing its entire energy security on intermittent, weather- and climate-dependent power sources ought to frighten any sane person.
Meanwhile, some climate activists such David McDermott Hughes have come up with a much cheaper and quicker solution: Abandon the traditional goal of providing a reliable energy supply to meet the demands of society. Instead, require the population to adapt its consumption to the available supply.
Under this prescription the US population should simply come to accept rationing and power interruptions, of the sort that are unfortunately still common in underdeveloped countries. That would be the necessary price for averting the climate apocalypse.
Caution: read this before the lights go out.
Jonathan Tennenbaum received his PhD in mathematics from the University of California in 1973 at age 22. Also a physicist, linguist and pianist, he is a former editor of FUSION magazine. He lives in Berlin and travels frequently to Asia and elsewhere, consulting on economics, science and technology.
More than 400 cows have died mysteriously since a wind park was built near a herd in 2012. Local residents also suffering health issues: “permanent fatigue, muscle aches, headaches, insomnia”
Earlier we wrote about the adverse health impacts of wind turbines and on humans and animals, read here and here. Also search NTZ zone using the search word “infrasound”.
Cause unknown
Recently French farmer Didier Potiron reported that 400 of his cows had died since a wind park was built close by in 2012. Veterinarians cannot find a cause and remain puzzled. People are also feeling ill.
According to French site actu.fr, “In Puceul, near Nozay (Loire-Atlantique), cow breeders Didier and Murielle Potiron registered in mid-December 2020 their 400th dead cow since the construction of the wind farm.” Since the unusual deaths began in 2012, that’s a rate of about 1 lost cow a week.
Then on January 4th, 2021, the Potiron family announced that three more cows had died – again due to unknown reasons. Since the wind park was built, the family has seen significant excess mortality among the herd, and health issues among the family.
The Potiron family have even stopped autopsies being performed by the veterinary school in Nantes because they always got the answer: “no explanation as to the cause of death”.
“Clearly linked” to nearby wind park
“For Didier and Murielle Potiron, but also for their neighbor breeder Céline Bouvet, the origin of this excess mortality of their animals is clearly linked to the nearby wind turbines,” reports actu.fe. All the more so since they themselves have been suffering the effects on their health for all these years: permanent fatigue, muscle aches, headaches, insomnia… so many problems that disappear as soon as they move away from their farms.”
The family pushed to shut down the wind park for seven days, but the wind park operator refused, reminding that the park “complies with French installation standards”.
Power blackouts that rolled across California cities and towns during an August 13-14 heat wave offer a warning glimpse of much more dire consequences we can absolutely count on occurring with enactment of the Biden campaign’s “Build Back Better” proposal to immediately eliminate fracking on all public lands, and virtually eliminate fossil-fueled power plants over the next 15 years.
In concert with the aspirational Green New Deal co-sponsored by his running mate Senator Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Biden’s plan calls for humongous expenditures in renewable energy, including installing 500 million solar panels and manufacturing 60,000 wind turbines.
Add to this that Biden proposes to have taxpayers finance a half-million electric car chargers across America – along with funding to help car makers convert their factories to electric vehicle (EV) production.
Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newson has now ordered his state to ban new gas vehicles by 2035 in order to weaponize its gigantic car market as a hammer to force automakers to concentrate on EVs.
All of this, of course, will shift even greater energy demand from petroleum to the electrical power sector. Producing and recharging those EVs will require that energy sufficiency is constantly available. That wasn’t the case when that August heatwave left millions of perspiring Californians in the dark as power demand outstripped supplies.
Now imagine adding several tens of thousands of EVs to drain further dwindling supplies of reliable energy. Not explained are any bright ideas regarding how to recharge all those power-hungry plug-ins on windless nights.
For a reality check, let’s first recognize that about 80 percent of all U.S. energy (always measured in BTUs) comes from fossil sources, with another 8.6 percent contributed by nuclear. Of that total U.S. energy amount, solar and wind combined presently contribute barely over three percent, with solar contributing less than 0.1 percent.
Even the best wind power and sunlight systems produce energy averaged over the year at 25%-30% of the time or less. By comparison, conventional natural gas plants have very high availability in the 80%-95% range, and often higher.
Wind and solar energy intermittency demand an equal amount of “spinning reserve” power typically provided by natural gas turbines that must be inefficiently throttled up and down like a car driving in stop-and-go traffic to balance the energy grid.
Any excess energy that is produced must either be dumped or stored for times when it will be useful – like, for example at night when large populations of EV owners will simultaneously wish to replenish their large power-thirsty batteries.
There’s also another big problem with producing those batteries.
China controls about 70% of the world’s lithium supply and 83% of the anodes to make them. And a lithium project that has been seeking approval to mine the material in a Nevada desert has been blocked from doing so for more than a decade by environmental groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity.
Nevertheless, limited capacities and unreliability issues aside (and they are big ones), wasn’t that “green energy” still supposed to be environmentally clean?
Certainly not when we consider what goes into making those systems.
As reported by my friend Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute, building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than 10 times the quantity of materials, compared with building equivalent systems using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy.
Consider the massive material requirements needed to replace a single 100-MW gas-fired turbine about the size of a typical residential house with at least 20 wind turbines, each about the size of the Washington Monument and covering about 10 square miles of land.
Wind and solar power also require huge amounts of more land and expansive transmission lines to deliver electricity from remote sites to high power demand metropolitan centers. Those long-distance power transfers also add significant transmission losses.
The wind alternative would consume about 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the huge blades. A solar plant with the same output – enough power to supply about 75,000 homes – would require half again more tonnage in cement, steel and glass.
Adding to that, also imagine periodically replacing a utility-scale battery storage system for that same 100-MW wind farm comprising at least 10,000 tons of Tesla-class batteries. Producing each of them requires mining, moving, and processing more than 500,000 pounds of materials using hydrocarbon-fueled equipment. This amounts to some 20 times more than the 25,000 pounds of petroleum that an internal combustion engine uses over the life of a car.
Applied for transportation, and averaged over a 1,000 pound EV battery life, imagine that each mile of driving an electric vehicle “consumes” about five pounds of earth moved by hydrocarbon powered devices, whereas a comparable petroleum-fueled vehicle only consumes about 0.2 pounds of liquids per mile.
Again, for comparison with hydrocarbons, it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of storage batteries that can store a single barrel of oil-equivalent energy. Put still another way, about 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent to that in one pound of hydrocarbons.
Mark Mills reminds us that by 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out, non-recyclable solar panels will double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades.
By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries, including rare earth elements such as dysprosium they contain, will become landfill garbage.
As a 2017 World Bank study concludes, “Technologies assumed to populate the clean energy shift … are in fact significantly more material intensive in their composition than current traditional fossil-fuel-based energy supply systems.”
In addition, banning gasoline vehicles is going to cost California lots of funding needed for roads and public works, including the state’s bullet train to nowhere. The state currently collects about $8 billion in fuel taxes and $3 billion in cap-and trade revenues annually.
Getting to 100% electric by 2035 will require massively more money for subsidies to pay for those cars and an enormous vehicle-charging network to expand from a mere 6.2% of the auto market represented by EV sales last year.
Finally, as for wind, solar and EV’s eliminating either “carbon pollution” or climate change, don’t believe that for a moment. The only thing “green” about any of them will come from the pocketbooks of taxpayer subsidies and hiked-up energy cost consumers.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of several books, including “Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity” (2019), “Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations” (2018), “Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful” (2017), “Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self” (2016), and “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom” (2015). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, “Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles.”
One thing we learned from the debate in Cleveland last Tuesday, when Trump wasn’t interrupting, is that Joe Biden makes up numbers on the fly. There was a lot of fibbing going on. Consider this exchange between the two candidates:
BIDEN: We handed (Trump) a booming economy. He blew it. He blew it.
TRUMP: It wasn’t booming.
WALLACE: Sir, wait. Is it fair to say he blew it when … there was record low unemployment before COVID?
BIDEN: Yeah. Yeah, because what he did, even before COVID, manufacturing went in the hole. Manufacturing went in the hole.
He went on to say that President Barack Obama created manufacturing jobs, but they fell under President Donald Trump.
The claim that Trump “blew it” when he became president is quite a claim given that the unemployment rate, the poverty rate, the interest rate and the inflation rate hit all-time lows in 2019, according to the Census Bureau and the Department of Labor. Employment, wages, median incomes and wealth hit an all-time high. Median households saw a $6,400 gain in real income in three years under Trump, compared with the approximately $4,000 increase made in eight years under Obama and Biden. As one who served as an economic adviser for Trump, I can say definitively that these were exactly the results from our tax cuts, deregulation efforts and pro-America energy policies. They worked like a charm.
One of our proudest results was the surge in blue-collar employment under Trump.
Here are the numbers for the eight years of Obama’s presidency and the first three years under Trump (prepandemic):
Manufacturing
Obama: -192,000
Trump: 475,000
Mining
Obama: -112,000
Trump: 63,000
Construction
Obama: 280,000
Trump: 746,000
Yes, under the early months of the pandemic, when government-imposed shutdowns ground industrial production to a virtual halt, the factories were bolted shut. That would have happened if Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Mother Teresa or Hillary Clinton were president during this public health crisis. What matters is the status of blue-collar jobs before the pandemic and since the economy has started to reopen.
Since the shutdowns ended, blue-collar jobs have been surging back. Several hundred thousand manufacturing jobs have come back, and many factories and construction sites now have “for hire” signs in the windows.
Biden is right that we still need to get hundreds of thousands of these high-paying blue-collar jobs back in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and New Jersey, among other states. Trump wants to do that by continuing to cut taxes and promote American energy production. Biden wants to do it by raising taxes by $4 trillion. Americans will have to decide which approach will work better.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy.”
Thanks to the Energiewende (transition to green energies), which is tantamount to a vegan energy diet, Germany’s electricity prices have soared 27% over the past decade to become the most expensive in Europe, if not the world, according to the STROM-REPORT.
Taxes, surcharges, and a catalog of other fees make up 53.6% of Germany’s electricity price, only Denmark has a higher share at 67.8%.
Only five European countries have seen electricity prices drop over the last 10 years.
Soaring prices in Latvia and Great Britain
No country has seen electricity rates rise more than in Latvia and Great Britain, where the price has risen a whopping 55% and 46% respectively over the past 10 years.’
What’s behind the high electricity prices? According to the STROM-REPORT:
“The biggest intra-European differences are caused by taxes and duties. The EU average is 36.6%. But the values vary from country to country and are highest in Denmark with 63.7%.
“In Germany, where the government-induced price components also account for more than half [52.3%] of the price, the EEG levy, which enables the expansion of renewable energies, is included at 21.5%.”
California’s on fire, and so are climate change alarmists: Fires are burning out of control in California, and the environmentalists and Sacramento politicians are seizing the opportunity to blame global warming. They’re laying the groundwork for new legislation that will transfer even more power to the state and government unions.
Gov. Newsom said this week that he has “no patience” for those skeptical that the historic fires are anything other than a direct result of climate change: “You may not believe it intellectually, but your own eyes, your own experiences, tell a different story….” To paraphrase Groucho Marx: Who are you going to believe, Newsom or your lying brain?
Former coal and oil investor Tom Steyer added, “We didn’t have to be here. Corruption and inaction are what got us here, and only immediate, bold, transformational action will prevent these climate tragedies from getting even worse.” Climate change is real, but is it the sole culprit of the fires ravaging the state?
Green radicals are responsible for red forests: In his most recent analysis, CPC contributor Edward Ring brings much-needed balance to the discussion. He explains how the environmental movement fiercely prevented – and continues to prevent – basic forest management. Ed is an expert in this field. Before cofounding CPC, he founded EcoWorld.com and the popular “GoingGreen” investor conferences. His piece is required reading for anyone looking for a more nuanced view of why the state is on fire. He writes:In 1999, the Associated Press reported that forestry experts had long agreed that “clearing undergrowth would save trees,” and that “years of aggressive firefighting have allowed brush to flourish that would have been cleared away by wildfires.” But very little was done. And now fires of unprecedented size are raging across the Western United States.
“Sen. Feinstein blames Sierra Club for blocking wildfire bill,” reads the provocative headline on a 2002 story in California’s Napa Valley Register. Feinstein had brokered a congressional consensus on legislation to thin “overstocked” forests close to homes and communities, but could not overcome the environmental lobby’s disagreement over expediting the permit process to thin forests everywhere else.
Fire suppression along with too many environmentalist-inspired bureaucratic barriers to controlled burns and undergrowth removal turned the hillsides and canyons of Southern California into tinderboxes. Climate change spares private forests: Katy Grimes, editor of the California Globe, points out that the disparate impact of climate change on public and private forests suggests another factor is at play, namely the lack of proper forest management in government-run forests: For decades, traditional forest management was scientific and successful, until ideological, preservationist zealots wormed their way into government and began the 40-year overhaul of sound federal forest management through abuse of the Endangered Species Act and the no-use movement…Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) … has warned, “Our forests are now catastrophically overgrown, often carrying four times the number of trees the land can support. In this stressed and weakened condition, our forests are easy prey for drought, disease, pestilence and fire…. Forest fires, fueled by decades of pent up overgrowth are now increasing in their frequency and intensity and destruction… Excess timber will come out of the forest in one of only two ways. It is either carried out or it burns out….”The same climate change impacts private lands as public lands, but private forests are not burning down because they are properly managed. Or if a fire does break out on privately managed forest land, it is often extinguished more quickly and easily because the trees aren’t so close together and the underbrush has been cleared away.
Unions have cartelized firefighting: As Steven Greenhut explains in Reason, firefighter unions’ exorbitant compensation demands have led to fewer boots on the ground. Citing CPC’s own analysis, Steve argues that if firefighters were paid a market salary, California would have a lot more troops necessary to fight these fires: Frankly, union power drives state and local firefighting policies. The median compensation package for firefighters has topped $240,000 a year in some locales. California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters earn less, but their packages still total nearly $150,000 a year. The number of California firefighters who receive compensation packages above $500,000 a year is mind-blowing. Obviously, if the state spends scarce resources in this manner, it will have fewer resources to hire additional firefighters and buy equipment that’s now in short supply…
We all appreciate the work that firefighters do, especially during another grueling fire season, but we shouldn’t forget that firefighting resource shortages are caused by a legislature that is more interested in preserving union wage levels than in creating a firefighting system that works best for the public.
Firefighters unions block fire suppression strategy: Over at Flash Report, Richard Rider explains his decades-long quest for a simple yet significant fire suppression strategy: supplemental volunteer firefighters: The most significant reform I have proposed — over and over through the years — is the establishment of a large supplementary volunteer fire brigade for just such conflagrations.
Our professional firefighters need our help. But the sad part is that they definitely don’t WANT our help. For brush fires, they want “boots on the ground,” but only UNION boots on the ground. Their goal is to get California governments to hire more professional union firefighters at $180K+ cost annually — to sit around at more and more firehouses 24/7 until — every few years — a major brush fire sweeps the area. And even then, they will not be able to save most homes in such a fire.
Just 1 percent of Americans surveyed identified the combined category of “Climate change/Environment/Pollution” as “the most important problem facing this country today,” in a newly released Gallup poll.
Coronavirus the Top Concern
The Wuhan Coronavirus remained the top concern among the 1007 adults polled by Gallup between July 1 and July 23, with 30 percent of those surveyed identifying it as “the most important problem facing the country today.” “Government/Poor Leadership,” came in a distant second among the list of concerns, with 23 percent of respondents saying it is the top problem facing the nation.
All economic problems combined were identified by 9 percent of those polled as the most important problem facing the country, with 4 percent saying the “Economy in general” is the top problem and 2 percent saying “Unemployment/Jobs” is the nation’s top concern.
With protests and riots continuing to plague parts of the county, “Race Relations/Racism” ranked as the third most important problem facing the country, with 16 percent of respondents listing it as such. This represents a significant increase in concern about race relations since April, at which time only 1 percent those polled said it was America’s top problem.
Climate Ties for Last
Only 1 percent of those polled identified all environmental issues combined, including climate change, as the most important problem facing the country.
This result indicates strong disagreement with Democrat Party leaders who regularly refer to climate change as the most dangerous threat facing the United States and the world, and with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who said, “There’s no more consequential challenge that we must meet in the next decade than the onrushing climate crisis,” when presenting his Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice.
Five percent of poll respondents ranked “Crime/Violence” as the nation’s most important problem, 3 percent cited the “Judicial System/Courts/Laws,” and 2 percent said “Ethics/Morals/Religious/Family Decline,” “Lack of respect for each other,” “The media,” or “Healthcare” is the most important problem facing the country, ahead of environmental problems in general and climate change in particular.
redneckusa.wordpress.com 