Green New Death : ‘No, To The Whirlwinds, They Kill Our Birds Of Prey’

Imagine the outrage if this majestic bird-of-prey were doused in oil?

H/t @Swe_was_amazing


MUST READ : On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare


“REMEMBER when we paved the world with electronic waste
that chopped eagles and condors and made bats extinct
because we thought wind was natural and uranium evil?
– man that was a dark age!”
– Michael Shellenberger

“MUCH that passes as idealism is disguised
hatred or disguised love of power.”

Bertrand Russell

•••

TIME Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” and U.N. IPCC expert reviewer Michael Shellenberger drops another inconvenient truth-bomb in the fight against the dangerous and costly politicisation of science.

“But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.”

REGARDLESS of your position on the magnitude of anthropogenic carbon dioxide as the supposed “climate control knob“, this is a timely and important read. Especially in the dangerous new age of postmodernism that we currently inhabit where truth, reason, honesty and integrity within government, academia and the sciences is in such short supply.

Ergo, props to Michael Shellenberger. Questioning dogma objectively, in the quest to restore scientific integrity, is risky business, these days.

*

Via FORBES :

On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

  • Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
  • The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
  • Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
  • Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
  • The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
  • The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, notclimate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
  • Carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations including Britain, Germany and France since the mid-seventies
  • Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor
  • We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
  • Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
  • Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
  • Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.

In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies.

Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.

I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California.960x0 In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions

Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”

But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.

But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”

The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.”

Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.

As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.

Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened.

I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence.

And so my formal apology for our fear-mongering comes in the form of my new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes, Apocalypse Never covers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.

Some highlights from the book:

  • Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress
  • The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land
  • The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium
  • 100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50%
  • We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities
  • Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%
  • Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did
  • “Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300% more emissions
  • Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon
  • The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants

Why were we all so misled?

In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism

Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped.

Will Apocalypse Never make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it.

The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop.

The ideology behind environmental alarmsim — Malthusianism — has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.

But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power.

The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, Covid-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.

Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform.

Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.

Nations are reorienting toward the national interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables.

The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to.

And the invitations I received from IPCC and Congress late last year, after I published a series of criticisms of climate alarmism, are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment.

Another sign is the response to my book from climate scientists, conservationists, and environmental scholars. “Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” writes Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” says one of the fathers of modern climate science Tom Wigley.

“We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias,” wrote the former head of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick. “But too often we are guilty of the same.  Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets.  Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.”

That is all I that I had hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism.

I further hope that you’ll accept my apology.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here

Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (Harper Collins, June 30, 2020). He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and other publications. His TED talks have been viewed over five million times.

On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare | FORBES

•••

UPDATE

FORBES ‘cancels’ Shellenberger!

THE book-burners have been busy again. This time it’s a TIME Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” and U.N. IPCC expert reviewer, Michael Shellenberger.

HIS crime, apologising “for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.”

Here are some facts few people know:

  • Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
  • The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
  • Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
  • Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

THE use of hard facts to back up his apology didn’t please the deep-green authoritarians at Forbes, keen to protect their “climate crisis” narrative, at all costs.

FROM twitter account of Shellenberger :

*

George Orwell

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

George Orwell, 1984

•••

MORE Must Read Shellenberger :

SHELLENBERGER Related :

MUST Watch :

RELATED :

•••

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(Climate sceptics/rationalists still waitin’ for that “big oil” cheque to arrive in the mail!)

Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

Thanks to all those who have donated. Your support and faith in Climatism is highly motivating and greatly appreciated!

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Screen Shot 2020-02-12 at 5.35.38 am

•••


SCOTLAND’S Net-Zero Forest Management Program


“IF Greens love nature,
why aren’t they more concerned about
carpeting pristine landscapes with industrial wind turbines and
toxic, non-renewable solar panels?
–– ‘GREEN’ Energy Future | Climatism

“THE road to hell
is paved with good intentions.”
–– Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153)

***

Hat tip @JohnPisulaMBA

IN the good old days of real ‘environmentalism’, genuine ‘Greenies’ rallied feverishly against the wanton destruction of pristine flora and fauna.

WITHIN the twisted age of ClimateChange™️ hysteria, real environmentalists are failing us in the face of a globalist eco-religion that has allowed the development of supposed ‘planet-saving’ ‘renewables‘ that wilfully destroy forests, animals and pristine environments. 

THE latest example of ‘Green’ eco-hypocrisy has seen more than 13.9 million trees felled in Scotland for wind development from 2000 to 2019.

NATIONAL WINDWATCH with more on the ongoing effort by nature-loving ‘environmentalists’ to reach their delusional “NetZero2050” targets …

More than 13.9 million trees felled in Scotland for wind development, 2000–2019

National Wind Watch
Scottish Forestry
16 January 2020

A Scottish citizen made a freedom-of-information request, to which Scottish Forestry replied as follows:

Thank you for your request dated 26 November and received on the 5 December and the clarification dated 19 December 2019 under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs).

You asked for:

a) the number of trees felled for all onshore wind farm development in Scotland to date.

b) the area of felled trees, in hectares, for all onshore wind farm development in Scotland to date.

I enclose some of the information you requested.

Specifically data covering renewable developments on Scotland’s national forests and lands, which is managed on behalf of Scottish Ministers by Forestry and Land Scotland. The area of felled trees in hectares, from 2000 (the date when the first scheme was developed, is 6,994 hectares [70 km², 17,283 acres]. Based on the average number of trees per hectare, of 2000, this gives an estimated total of 13.9M.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Namely data on renewable developments on privately owned woodlands.

Download original document: “Scottish Forestry information request 19-02646

 

*

THIS is how the BBC and the U.N. view Scotland’s “climate change progress” …

*

SCARRED LANDSCAPES OF SCOTLAND

The shocking picture that shows how a wind farm has disfigured one of Britain’s loveliest landscapes

Before…

023stirlingDM_468x326

The site when it to be surrounded only by dramatic – and empty – hills

After…

023stirling1DM_468x312

A price worth paying? The Braes O’Doune windfarm towers over Stirling Castle

VISUAL impact map of Scottish eco-Crucifixes…

***

CONCLUSION

FOUR obvious questions to ask in this latest example of flagrant eco-hypocrisy :

  1. WHERE are the @Greens, @Greenpeace, @Peta, @ExtinctionR or @GretaThunberg™️ when pristine landscapes and old-growth forests are being destroyed to satisfy the whims and superstitions of ClimateChange™️ catastrophists and EU elites?
  2. IF Greens love nature, why aren’t they more concerned about carpeting pristine landscapes with industrial wind turbines and toxic, non-renewable solar panels?
  3. TREES are Mother Nature’s ultimate “carbon-sink”. How on earth does chainsawing millions of hectares of forest help “Save the Planet” from ‘evil’ plant food CO2?
  4. WHERE in the “Save the Planet” manual does it say to build 260 tonne, 250m high industrial windmills built from, steel, cement and rare earth minerals. Erect them by the thousands in pristine landscapes. Only to have them backed up 24/7/365 by fossil fuels or nukes anyway?

•••

SEE also :

POLAR BEARS and THE ARCTIC :

EXTREME WEATHER Related :

STATE Of The Climate Report :

ORIGINS Of The ClimateChange™️ Scam :

•••

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Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

Thanks to all those who have donated. Your support and faith in Climatism is highly motivating and greatly appreciated!

Citizen journalists can’t rely on mastheads, rather private donations and honest content. Every pledge helps, heaps!

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•••

 


CREDLIN : ‘Climate Cult’ Using Environmentalism As A ‘Trojan Horse’ For Marxism


“BEING stupid enough to open the gates and
let the Trojan horse in, only to find it’s nothing about
water, the sky, the bush, or indeed humanity
is madness.

Peta Credlin

“THE urge to save humanity is almost always a
false-front for the urge to rule it.”

H.L. Mencken

***

COUNTRY born-and-bred girl Peta Credlin is a political contributor for Sky News and host of (ratings killer) Credlin on Sky News Live.

CREDLIN holds a keen insight into the machinations of Australian and global politics, having served as Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Tony Abbott from September 2013 to September 2015. She was previously chief of staff to Abbott as Leader of the Opposition. Since 2016, she has been the host of Credlin and co-host of Jones & Credlin on Sky News Live.

HER reasoned and logical approach to current affairs and politics of the day, highlighted by her unique ability to speak the language of the people, have made Credlin one of Australia’s most watched, revered, highly rated and influential political commentators of our time.

*

SEE Credlin here, in this must watch 5’44”, as she identifies that “Climate Change” policies and prescriptions represent “nothing about water, the sky, the bush, or indeed humanity“, rather, are a “Trojan horse for Marxism”.

(click image to redirect to YouTube. Original YouTube video linking to another dams video)

‘Marxist-left’ using environmentalism as a ‘trojan horse’ for Marxism

06/02/2020|6min

Sky News host Peta Credlin says extreme environmentalists are using climate change as “socialism masquerading as environmentalism”.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Thursday electric car sales have tripled, but Ms Credlin said the “devil is always in the detail,” with sales growth increasing from 0.2 per cent to an “almost as insignificant” 0.6 per cent.

Ms Credlin said the “climate cult” argues the government must begin subsidising not only the electric car market, but also the “fast charging stations” in order to make them cheaper.

“More taxes, more subsidies, more regulations, more government control,” Ms Credlin said.

Once again, the left are arguing for “rampant taxpayer-funded subsidisation” to achieve an environmentalist agenda, but Ms Credlin said after losing the “argument over economics” the “Marxist left” are “having another go via the trojan horse of environmentalism”.

‘Marxist-left’ using environmentalism as a ‘trojan horse’ for Marxism | Sky News Australia

•••

CLIMATE ‘Marxism’ related :

ORIGINS Of The ClimateChange™️ Scam :

•••

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(Climate sceptics/rationalists still waitin’ for that “big oil” cheque to arrive in the mail!)

Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

Thanks to all those who have donated. Your support and faith in Climatism is highly motivating and greatly appreciated!

Citizen journalists can’t rely on mastheads, rather private donations and honest content. Every pledge helps, heaps!

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•••

 


UNEQUIVOCAL Evidence Of Industrial Wind Farms’ Horrific Toll On Wildlife


“REMEMBER when we paved the world with electronic waste
that chopped eagles and condors and made bats extinct
because we thought wind was natural and uranium evil?
– man that was a dark age!”
– Michael Shellenberger

“THE wind is free, but everything else costs money [and lives].” – (old sailor saying)

“IT will be interesting to see whether more research will be carried out into just how many birds are being killed by the Irish Sea wind farms. My hunch is that many people would rather keep that information under their hats. So much money invested in offshore wind means that bad publicity would be very unwelcome and it is common for critics of the industry to be ridiculed.”Jason Endfield

***

H/t @ClimateRealists

AS a cohesive and sensible society, what price are we willing to put on supposed ‘green’ energy sources that are supposedly meant to “save the planet”?

WHAT cost to our economies and to our environment are we willing to endure whilst we to-and-fro between energy reality and energy fantasy?

ENERGY and ‘keeping the lights on’ are perhaps the most fundamental requirements to, not only advancing human existence and our very survival, but also ironically (to some) promote the very health and wealth of our environment.

WHY? Because, the greatest threat to the environment is not affluence, rather, poverty.

THE border between Haiti and The Dominican Republic is a great example of this.

GUESS which country contains eco-criminals that can afford to use “dirty” fossil fuels, and which country contains nature-lovers who are dependent on natural renewable organic biomass for energy?

UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity And The Environment | Climatism

HAITI is almost 99% deforested, as they rely almost entirely on natural ‘biomass’ (wood) for domestic and industrial fuels and building materials.

ON the other side, the forests of the fossil fuel burning, eco-terrorists – The Dominican Republic – remain lush and green.

*

INDUSTRIAL wind ‘farms’ and solar panels are sold to us as “clean, green, and renewable”, under the spurious, suspicious and fashionably-globalist brand name of “sustainability“.

IF there ever was a case of “buyer beware”, then this is it.

GERMANY, the makers of BMW, Porsche and Mercedes have experimented with wind and solar ‘power’ under the banner of Energiewendefor now a decade. Energiewende, (German for energy transition) being “the planned transition by Germany to a low carbon, environmentally sound, reliable, and affordable energy supply” (wiki). 

AFTER hundreds of €BILLIONS of taxpayer’s hard-earned money spent on sunshine and breezes, Germany’s Energiewende program has been exposed as a catastrophic failure, with carbon dioxide emissions higher now than in 2009, the year before massively subsidised ‘green’ energy was signed into German law.

GERMAN emissions last year were actually higher than in 2009, and have been on the rise again since 2014.

NUCLEAR power is still supplying 12% of Germany’s power. When this is finally phased out in a few years time, the country will be more reliant on fossil fuels than ever.

*

GERMANY’S RECORD COAL BOOM

THE ‘green’ dream is on ice as a ‘coal frenzy’ grips Europe and unreliables lose their attraction:

With Greenpeace successfully forcing the shutdown of nuclear power, and keeping out fracking for gas, what’s left? A boom in coal. In fact, over the next two years Germany will build 10 new power plants for hard coal.  Europe is in a coal frenzy, building power plants and opening up new mines, practically every month. It might sound odd that a boom in German coal is the result of Greenpeace’s political success. –Ezra Levant, Toronto Sun, 7 January 2014

*

WITH all that in mind. What is the point of an industry that can only survive on massive taxpayer funded subsidies and not on ‘sunshine and breezes’?

IN the current era of ‘man-made’ climate change theory-obsessed hysteria, it is difficult to convince our politicians and law makers that industrial wind and solar ‘power’ can NEVER supply anything more than morality and virtue to an increasingly, energy-dependant global community.

PERHAPS, quantifiable and visible evidence of the cataclysmic destruction of some of our most beloved and rare avian species can ruffle a few feathers – excuse the pun.

*

STATE-SANCTIONED RARE BIRD SLAUGHTER

WIND lobbyists say that bird deaths are small compared with millions that collide with windows etc. This is a fallacy. The argument ignores affected species. If, fifty pigeons fly into windows, it has no effect on the population. But, when a breeding raptor is chopped, it represents a significant loss for the species.

*

INDUSTRIAL WIND TURBINES : The New “Apex Predator”

TWO articles that grabbed my attention this week that should, not just interest the likes of “Extinction Rebellionist (sic)” Greta Thunberg, the RSPCA, PETA et al, and every genuine ‘environmentalist’, but, rather, should shock them into real “action” on the real environment …

*

Via PA Pundits – International :

Growing Evidence Of Wind Farms’ Horrific Toll On Wildlife: This Time From India

Posted on Sun 06/23/2019 by

 

By Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. ~

Eagles, hawks, bats – these are among the most prominently cited avian wildlife regularly slaughtered by industrial-sized wind-power facilities that – thanks to taxpayer subsidies and state renewable-energy mandates — continue to spread like wildfire across rural America.

The affliction is by no means restricted to the United States, however. A new study sheds light on the carnage giant wind turbines are inflicting on wildlife in India. Researchers at the Indian Institute for Science at Bengaluru studied bird and lizard populations at three wind turbine sites in Western Ghats. They found that the mass killing of avian predators by wind turbines is having a “ripple effect” across the food chain, with lizards and small mammals adjusting to substantially reduced numbers of predators in the sky.

Wind Turbines: The New “Apex Predator”

As reported by the Daily Mail last November (and otherwise largely ignored by the media), researchers in India found almost four times fewer buzzards, hawks, and kites in areas with wind farms – a loss of about 75%. Startled by the data, scientists are now referring to wind turbines as “the new apex predator.”

In areas without wind turbines about 19 birds were spotted every three hours, while in areas with the spinning blades the number dropped to five. Fewer winged predators have been good news for the fan-throated lizard, a species found only in certain areas of the Indian Sub-Continent. The lizard is usually easy pickings for hawks, buzzards, and other birds, but with their numbers reduced by the wind turbines, the lizard’s numbers are multiplying.

“We have known from many studies that wind turbines kill birds and bats. They kill them and disrupt their movement. But we took that one step further and discovered that it affects lizards, too,” study coauthor Maria Thaker told the Daily Mail.

“Every time a top predator is removed or added, unexpected effect trickle through the ecosystem,” she added. “What is actually happening here is that wind turbines are akin to adding a top predator to the ecosystem.”

The study, which was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, compared populations of raptors and lizards on a plateau that has had a wind farm on it for about 20 years to an adjacent valley that has no turbines.

“Humankind’s Most Pervasive Influence on the Natural World”

A recent study by an international team of scientists found the decline of apex predators is” arguably humankind’s most pervasive influence on the natural world.”

None of this is of any real concern to green groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund, who parrot the party line that the real threat to wildlife is “climate change,” not industrial-scale wind facilities and giant solar arrays they have been supporting for decades.

While India has made great strides in electrification in recent years, much still needs to be done. According to official data, “only 1,417 of India’s 18,452 villages or 7.3% of the total, have 100% household connectivity, and about 31% are still in the dark,” Forbes reported last year.

India’s future should not be dependent on interment, unreliable, unaffordable, and, as we now know, environmentally destructive wind power.

Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D. is a senior policy analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

*

Via @ClimateRealists and Jason Endfield :

Isle Of Man Seabird Populations Plummet As Wind Farms Overwhelm The Irish Sea

21/6/2019

Herring Gulls are down 82%, European Shag down 51%, Razorbills down 55%. The list goes on….
* The world’s biggest offshore wind farm is just a few miles away.
* Isn’t there a conspicuous connection?

The Isle Of Man wildlife charity Manx Birdlife has reported a shocking 40% decline in the populations of many species of sea birds around the island’s coast.
The worrying figures emerged following a comprehensive census that took place over two years. Whatever the reason for the sharp decline of the birds, it illustrates that something has gone very wrong.
I’ve noted with interest that this unprecedented drop in populations, of several of the island’s maritime species, coincides with the proliferation of wind farms in the Irish Sea – something which has worried me during the past few years, as I have witnessed the frenzied development of the wind industry in the waters off the western coasts of England and Wales.

World’s Biggest Offshore Wind Farm just a few miles away….
We know that offshore turbines kill birds and bats, though it is almost impossible to estimate the number of casualties because there are no retrievable carcasses to count at sea….
It is also highly likely that wind farms adversely affect many marine mammals.
The world’s largest offshore wind farm is now in operation off the Cumbrian coast at Walney, just 40 miles or so from the Isle of Man, and, with the news that nearby bird populations are in free-fall, we must seriously ask whether the huge turbines might be killing more birds than we ever anticipated.
The Isle of Man study was, ironically, partly supported by the Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm Project. How paradoxical would it be to find that the project itself, with its giant 640 feet turbines, was responsible for the plummeting numbers of sea birds.
The report is full of depressing statistics. Herring Gulls are down 82%, European Shag down 51%, Razorbills down 55%. The list goes on.

Marine Protected Areas “may not necessarily be major barrier to new projects…”
I’ve been increasingly concerned at the feverish pace of industrial offshore wind farm development in this country and especially in the Irish Sea. Such a high density of turbines in a confined area – an area renowned for its wildlife – has been watched with dismay by many environmentalists, especially since large parts of the sea have been designated Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s), supposedly limiting the scale of industrial development in precious areas that provide important habitat for so many species.
Alas, development has been allowed in vast parts of the sea that fall just outside the protected zones – and there have even been hints that the MPA’s themselves may not be off limit for future wind farm expansion.  Last year, a
report carried out for the Welsh government suggested that “this protection may not necessarily be a major barrier to new projects” – which sounds shockingly irresponsible to me.

Isle of Man plans might seriously threaten birds’ survival
Though the Isle Of Man currently has none of its own offshore wind farms, their government is reportedly close to approving industrial wind development off the island’s coast as early as next year. Such plans might seriously threaten the survival of species already struggling to cope with the industrialisation of their habitat.
Wind energy companies might flaunt their green ideologies for all to see – but their industry nevertheless hides a grim reality. Their ‘green’ energy kills wildlife.

Money Vs Wildlife…
Speaking about the alarming drop in bird populations, managing director of Manx Birdlife, Neil Morris, suggested that “there are a number of causes for these declines and the solutions, such as protecting nesting sites, restoring food chains and mitigating climate change, will be challenging.”
It will be interesting to see whether more research will be carried out into just how many birds are being killed by the Irish Sea wind farms. My hunch is that many people would rather keep that information under their hats. So much money invested in offshore wind means that bad publicity would be very unwelcome and it is common for critics of the industry to be ridiculed.
It seems likely that vast swathes of our coastal seas are likely to be further industrialised by the wind giants – even if it is at the expense of wildlife.

photo-1548337138-e87d889cc369

Photo by Nicholas Doherty on Unsplash

*

CONCLUSION

ONE of the great falsehoods and dangerous myths pushed by reckless global warming climate change zealots and the mainstream media is that ‘renewable energy’ – wind and solar – is “clean, green and renewable”.

‘RENEWABLES’ are neither “clean, green, or renewable”. In fact, they are pure embodiments of fossil fuel technology, with oil and “dirty” coal derivatives required for :

SEE :

•••

SEE also :

Read the rest of this entry »


KILLING THE EARTH TO ‘SAVE’ IT : Rainforest Trees Cut Down To Make Way For Industrial Wind Turbines


“IF this had have been a transmission line connecting a coal power station,
 these far left brainwashed climate change believing nutters,
would have been there in their thousands.”
John Clarkson

***

H/t @JohnClarksonGSM  @MRobertsQLD

IN the good old days of ‘Greenism’, genuine environmentalists rallied against the wanton destruction of pristine flora and fauna.

IN the twisted age of Global Warming Climate Change hysteria, real environmentalists are failing us in the face of a global religion that has allowed the development of supposed ‘planet-saving’ ‘renewables‘ that wilfully destroy forests, animals and pristine environments. 

IN the latest example of ‘Green’ eco-hypocrisy, 200 year-old rainforest trees have been cleared to make way for wind ‘farm’ transmission lines in Tasmania’s Tarkine.

THE obvious question is a simple one: Where are the @Greens or @Greenpeace or @GretaThunberg when pristine landscapes and old-growth rainforests are being destroyed to satisfy the whims and superstitions of Global Warming Climate Change catastrophists and EU elites?

 exposes the latest eco-hypocrisy that seems to haunt consistently the globalist climate change do-gooders…

*

Old-growth trees cut down for windfarm transmission corridor

TASMANIA CORRESPONDENT

 

Rainforest trees 200 years old have been cleared to make way for a wind farm transmission line in Tasmania’s Tarkine, prompting claims of green “hypocrisy”.

Myrtle and sassafras trees were among those felled along a 10.5km corridor widened for transmission lines associated with the $280 million, 112 megawatt wind farm at Granville Harbour, in Tasmania’s remote northwest.

Special species timber advocate Andrew Denman, who discovered the felled trees, said it raised concerns about environmental impacts, wastage of high-value timber and wind power’s “green” credentials.

He estimated that some of the felled trees, highly valued in specialty timber production, were 200 years old, given they typically grow at 0.3cm a year and were 60cm in diameter.

With more wind farms planned for Tasmania, including another in the northwest requiring a 170km transmission line, he believed any further clearing, if it must occur, should be co-ordinated to ensure timber was not wasted. “With much of the special timbers in short supply … there could have been a more co-ordinated effort in utilising it to make sure that timber was going to a sawmiller in a timely manner so it could be processed and not wasted,” said Mr Denman, a boatbuilder.

While not critical of the wind farm proponent, whom he did not doubt had complied with regulatory requirements, he understood clearing for electricity infrastructure was exempt from the Forest Practices Code, which seeks to mitigate impacts on keys species.

He believed it was hypocritical of the Greens to oppose “sustainable” harvesting of rainforest timbers while backing the Granville Harbour wind farm and, by implication, associated logging of such trees. “An old-growth tree is an old-growth tree,” Mr Denman said. “Why is it acceptable to cut it down for a transmission line but not acceptable to cut it down sustainably and regenerate that area and put it to good use?”

A Greens spokeswoman said while the party was a “strong supporter of renewable energy”, it “consistently opposed logging or clearing within reserves”.

The wind farm’s website says the transmission line, providing power to the grid at the Reece Dam, was being handled by state-owned TasNetworks.

A spokeswoman for project developer Granville Harbour Operations said it required all works to comply with approvals. “These impose clear procedures and requirements on us and our contractors to mitigate and manage environmental impacts, including impacts to native vegetation,” she said.

TasNetworks said its widening of an existing transmission corridor was “considered optimal”. “It reduced the extent of clearing required to connect the wind farm to the electricity distribution network,” a spokesman said.

TASMANIA CORRESPONDENT
Matthew Denholm is a multi-award winning journalist with 25 years’ experience. For the past decade, he has been Tasmania correspondent for The Australian, and has previously worked for a variety of newspaper an…

•••

SEE also :

RELATED :

ENEGRY POVERTY Related :

STATE Of The Climate Report :

IPCC Extreme Weather Report 2018 SR15 :

EXTREME WEATHER Related :

TEMPERATURE Related :

ORIGINS Of The Global Warming Scam :

•••

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Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

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•••


DR TIM BALL MUST READ : Environmentalism – Evidence Suggests It Was Always And Only About Achieving World Government

western-nations-driven-by-a-global-agenda-of-climate-alarmism-are-destroying-their-industries-with-carbon-taxes-and-promotion-of-expensive-intermittent-green-energy-climatism.jpg

‘Man-made’ Climate Change = Global Socialism / Communism


The Earth has cancer
and the cancer is Man
.”
– Club of Rome,
(environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations)

We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.

– Timothy Wirth,
(President of the UN Foundation)

***

“They don’t have to worry about CO2 because it is not a pollutant and is not causing climate change. No significant environmental problems are threatening the world. All the stories about impending environmental doom are fictions deliberately created to make people surrender control to the government.  It is time to break the emotional stranglehold of those who used the environment to create global socialism.”

Dr. Tim Ball, in a must read piece, unveils the cloak behind the ‘man-made’ Global Warming Climate Change hoax that has absolutely nothing to do with the “environment” or “Saving The Planet”, rather, everything to do with power, control and “World government”…

*

Via WUWT :

(Climatism bolds and links added)

Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

It is common sense to protect our environment, but what has occurred for 50 years is exploitation of that idea for a socialist agenda. We wasted 50 years believing that humans are not natural, and everything they do is destructive. We wasted and continue to waste trillions of dollars on unnecessary policies and useless technologies, all based on false assumptions, pseudoscience, and emotional bullying.

We now know 50 years later that every single prediction concerning the environmental demise of the Earth and the people made in the original Earth Day Report was wrong. We also know that every additional claim, such as overpopulation, global warming, sea level rise, desertification, deforestation, and sea ice collapse, among many others, were wrong. I challenge anyone to produce empirical evidence that proves anything happening today is outside any long-term record of natural activity.

Convince the people that the entire world is threatened, and you can convince them that no nation can save it. It is then easy to convince them that a world government is the only way to save the planet. The trouble is that none of it is true. The World is in good shape, and people are living longer and healthier lives in every nation.  

Like the majority of people, Elaine Dewar assumed environmentalists were commendable even heroic people. She began research for a book singing their praises. It didn’t take long to learn the basic premise was wrong. Following the traditional and proper methodology, rarely seen these days, Dewar identified the duplicitous characters involved in the Canadian environmental movement and laid them out in her book Cloak of Green. She spent five days at the UN with Canadian Maurice Strong arguably the world architect of official environmentalism. He was praised excessively, as in this article, “The World Mourns One of its Greats: Maurice Strong Dies, His Legacy Lives On.” Another article recognized the evil he personified, “Who is Global Warming Propagandist Maurice Strong?” After the five days, Dewar concluded,

“Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.”

The environmental movement as the basis for a socialist world government was in the minds of people like Strong and fellow members of the Club of Rome in the late 1960s. However, it was launched on the world on April 22, 1970, by a small group centered at Stanford University. The date is critical because it was the first Earth Day. It is also very important to know the choice was deliberate because it is the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. The environmental movement was a deliberate program to impose communism on the world.

The underlying theme of the environmental movement makes the following false assumptions.

  • That almost all change is a result of human activity. The UN claim, using computer models, that 95%+ of temperature increase since 1950 is due to human-produced CO2. This works because they don’t consider most natural causes.
  • That humans are unnatural. The 1990 “Greenpeace Report on Global Warming” says CO2 is added to the atmosphere “naturally and unnaturally.”  Yes, that unnatural production is from humans.
  • That we are not part of nature. Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) comment explains.

“Mankind is a cancer; we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” “If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”

  • That we should be eliminated or dramatically reduced in number. In May 2015, the Pope produced Laudate Si an Encyclical about his view of the state of the Earth. It is a socialist diatribe, but that is not surprising since the main contributor was Hans Schellnhuber, a pantheist. This group believes the world population should be below 1 billion people.
  • That if the western world reduces levels of CO2 production, the rest of the world will follow. China has 2,363 coal plants and is constructing 1,171 more. The US has 15 and is not constructing any.

The US can build as many clean-burning coal plants as they want and burn coal pollution free. They don’t have to worry about CO2 because it is not a pollutant and is not causing climate change. No significant environmental problems are threatening the world. All the stories about impending environmental doom are fictions deliberately created to make people surrender control to the government.  It is time to break the emotional stranglehold of those who used the environment to create global socialism.

***

SEE also :

RELATED :

STATE Of The Climate Report :

IPCC Extreme Weather Report 2018 SR15 :

EXTREME WEATHER Related :

TEMPERATURE Related :

ORIGINS Of The Global Warming Scam :

•••

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Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

Thanks to all those who have donated. Your support and faith in Climatism is highly motivating and greatly appreciated!

Citizen journalists can’t rely on mastheads, rather private donations and honest content. Every pledge helps!

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Thank You! Jamie.

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•••


INCONVENIENT : ‘The World Is Literally A Greener Place Than It Was Twenty Years Ago’ – NASA


“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” – Bertrand Russel

***

DON’T expect to see this ‘good’ environmental news on the mainstream media anytime soon.

WHEN you’re in the business of demonising carbon dioxide and frightening the Thunberg’s kiddies for political and ideological ends, such good news comes as a rather unwelcome message!

Via NASA Earth Observatory :

China and India Lead the Way in Greening

The world is literally a greener place than it was twenty years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage. A new study shows that China and India—the world’s most populous countries—are leading the increase in greening on land. The effect comes mostly from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries.

Ranga Myneni of Boston University and colleagues first detected the greening phenomenon in satellite data from the mid-1990s, but they did not know whether human activity was a chief cause. They then set out to track the total amount of Earth’s land area covered by vegetation and how it changed over time.

The research team found that global green leaf area has increased by 5 percent since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25 percent of that gain came in China. Overall, one-third of Earth’s vegetated lands are greening, while 5 percent are growing browner. The study was published on February 11, 2019, in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The maps on this page show the increase or decrease in green vegetation—measured in average leaf area per year—in different regions of the world between 2000 and 2017. Note that the maps are not measuring the overall greenness, which explains why the Amazon and eastern North America do not stand out, among other forested areas.

“China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9 percent of the planet’s land area covered in vegetation,” said lead author Chi Chen of Boston University. “That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation.”

globalgreening_tamo_2017

globalgreening_tamo_2017

This study was made possible thanks to a two-decade-long data record from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. An advantage of MODIS is the intensive coverage they provide in space and time: the sensors have captured up to four shots of nearly every place on Earth, every day, for the past 20 years.

“This long-term data lets us dig deeper,” said Rama Nemani, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and a co-author of the study. “When the greening of the Earth was first observed, we thought it was due to a warmer, wetter climate and fertilization from the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now with the MODIS data, we see that humans are also contributing.”

China’s outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part from its programs to conserve and expand forests (about 42 percent of the greening contribution). These programs were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution, and climate change.

Another 32 percent of the greening change in China, and 82 percent in India, comes from intensive cultivation of food crops. The land area used to grow crops in China and India has not changed much since the early 2000s. Yet both countries have greatly increased both their annual total green leaf area and their food production in order to feed their large populations. The agricultural greening was achieved through multiple cropping practices, whereby a field is replanted to produce another harvest several times a year. Production of grains, vegetables, fruits and more have increased by 35 to 40 percent since 2000.

countrieschart_tamo_2017

countrieschart_tamo_2017

How the greening trend may change in the future depends on numerous factors. For example, increased food production in India is facilitated by groundwater irrigation. If the groundwater is depleted, this trend may change. The researchers also pointed out that the gain in greenness around the world does not necessarily offset the loss of natural vegetation in tropical regions such as Brazil and Indonesia. There are consequences for sustainability and biodiversity in those ecosystems beyond the simple greenness of the landscape.

Nemani sees a positive message in the new findings. “Once people realize there is a problem, they tend to fix it,” he said. “In the 1970s and 80s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss was not good. In the 1990s, people realized it, and today things have improved. Humans are incredibly resilient. That’s what we see in the satellite data.”

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data courtesy of Chen et al.,(2019). Story by Abby Tabor, NASA Ames Research Center, with Mike Carlowicz, Earth Observatory.

*

GLOBAL GREENING…

“A quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.” – NASA

NASA previously reported on the ‘greening of the earth’ thanks to the CO2 ‘fertilisation’ effect.

HOWEVER, such good news was again carefully omitted by the mainstream media and environmental activists keen to preserve their ‘catastrophic’ global warming climate change narrative and continue their demonisation of life-giving gas carbon dioxide, deceptively referring to it as “carbon pollution” :

NASA ON (inconvenient) GLOBAL GREENING

“A quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.” – NASA

*

BIAS BY OMISSION – THE WORST FORM OF PROPAGANDA

CSIRO Censoring Their Own Climate Research

IN 2013, the CSIRO commissioned a study that found “Deserts ‘greening’ from rising carbon dioxide: Green foliage boosted across the world’s arid regions.”

THE ‘greening’ of deserts, thanks to rising CO2, happens to be a very unwelcome message for the environmental movement and apparently for the CSIRO, too! So, they simply removed the study from their website!

CSIRO’s peer-reviewed study can be found at Science Daily :

H/t @FrankWi74044551

•••

MORE on Global Greening :

STATE Of The Climate Report :

IPCC Extreme Weather Report 2018 SR15 :

EXTREME WEATHER Related :

TEMPERATURE Related :

ORIGINS Of The Global Warming Scam :

•••

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(Climate sceptics/rationalists still waitin’ for that “big oil” cheque to arrive in the mail!)

Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

Thanks to all those who have donated. Your support and faith in Climatism is highly motivating and greatly appreciated!

Citizen journalists can’t rely on mastheads, rather private donations and honest content. Every pledge helps!

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Thank You! Jamie.

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•••


NOW That We Know Renewables Can’t ‘Save The Planet’, Are We Really Going To Stand By And Let Them Destroy It?


“REMEMBER when we paved the world with electronic waste
that chopped eagles and condors and made bats extinct
because we thought wind was natural and uranium evil?

– man that was a dark age!”
– Michael Shellenberger

***

ONE of the great falsehoods and dangerous myths pushed by reckless global warming climate change zealots and the mainstream media is that ‘renewable energy’ – wind and solar – is “clean, green and renewable”.

‘RENEWABLES’ are neither “clean, green, or renewable”. In fact, they are pure embodiments of fossil fuel technology, with oil and coal derivatives required for :

SEE : WHAT I See When I See a Wind Turbine | Climatism

*

LAND INTENSITY

WIND and solar power are incredibly land intensive owing to the inherent low-energy density of their electrons. And, the small fact that the sun only shines and the wind only blows 10-40% of the time.

HOW much land and how many wind turbines would be needed just to supply the planets ‘new’ demand for energy?

If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth but no more, how many would need to be built each year? The answer is nearly 350,000, since a two-megawatt turbine can produce about 0.005 terawatt-hours per annum. That’s one-and-a-half times as many as have been built in the world since governments started pouring consumer funds into this so-called industry in the early 2000s.

At a density of, very roughly, 50 acres per megawatt, typical for wind farms, that many turbines would require a land area greater than the British Isles, including Ireland. Every year. If we kept this up for 50 years, we would have covered every square mile of a land area the size of Russia with wind farms. Remember, this would be just to fulfil the new demand for energy, not to displace the vast existing supply of energy from fossil fuels, which currently supply 80 per cent of global energy needs.

WIND TURBINES Are Neither Clean Nor Green And They Provide Zero Global Energy | Climatism

*

NATURE LOVERS?

IF Greens love nature, why aren’t they more concerned about carpeting pristine landscapes with industrial wind turbines?

*

“SAVING THE PLANET”

IF ‘Greens’ were serious about “Saving The Planet”, they would be embracing (CO2-free) nuclear energy.

THE fact that they are not, says a lot about today’s New Green Climate Warrior – concerned more about totalitarian power and control than tangible care of the physical environment.

IMHO, ‘Climate Change’ has absolutely nothing to do with the environment or “Saving The Planet”. If it did, every global warming climate change bedwetter would be castigating China for unlimited emissions until 2030.

CLIMATE CHANGE activism has everything to do with economic, political and cultural power and control.

*

NUCLEAR POWER

THIS brilliant piece from (old-school) environmentalist Michael Shellenberger has been touring social and mainstream media in a big way, and rightly so, but wanted to pin it here for Climatism followers to enjoy and hopefully share with friends, family and their local energy/environment representative!

From Quillette :

Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet

When I was a boy, my parents would sometimes take my sister and me camping in the desert. A lot of people think deserts are empty, but my parents taught us to see the wildlife all around us, including hawks, eagles, and tortoises.

After college, I moved to California to work on environmental campaigns. I helped save the state’s last ancient redwood forest and blocked a proposed radioactive waste repository set for the desert.

In 2002, shortly after I turned 30, I decided I wanted to dedicate myself to addressing climate change. I was worried that global warming would end up destroying many of the natural environments that people had worked so hard to protect.

I thought the solutions were pretty straightforward: solar panels on every roof, electric cars in every driveway, etc. The main obstacles, I believed, were political. And so I helped organize a coalition of America’s largest labor unions and environmental groups. Our proposal was for a $300 billion dollar investment in renewables. We would not only prevent climate change but also create millions of new jobs in a fast-growing high-tech sector.

Our efforts paid off in 2007 when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama embraced our vision. Between 2009–15, the U.S. invested $150 billion dollars in renewables and other forms of clean tech. But right away we ran into trouble.

The first was around land use. Electricity from solar roofs costs about twice as much as electricity from solar farms, but solar and wind farms require huge amounts of land. That, along with the fact that solar and wind farms require long new transmissions lines, threatened local communities, and conservationists trying to preserve wildlife, particularly birds.

Another challenge was the intermittent nature of solar and wind energies. When the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing, you have to quickly be able to ramp up another source of energy.

Happily, there were a lot of people working on solutions. One solution was to convert California’s dams into big batteries. The idea was that, when the sun was shining and the wind was blowing, you could pump water uphill, store it for later, and then run it over the turbines to make electricity when you needed it.

Other problems didn’t seem like such a big deal, on closer examination. For example, after I learned that house cats kill billions of birds every year it put into perspective the nearly one million birds killed by wind turbines.

It seemed to me that most, if not all, of the problems from scaling up solar and wind energies could be solved through more technological innovation.

But, as the years went by, the problems persisted and in some cases grew worse. For example, California is a world leader when it comes to renewables but we haven’t converted our dams into batteries, partly for geographic reasons. You need the right kind of dam and reservoirs, and even then it’s an expensive retrofit.

A bigger problem is that there are many other uses for the water that accumulates behind dams, namely irrigation and cities. And because the water in our rivers and reservoirs is scarce and unreliable, the water from dams for those other purposes is becoming ever-more precious.

Without large-scale ways to back-up solar energy California has had to block electricity coming from solar farms when it’s extremely sunny, or pay neighboring states to take it from us so we can avoid blowing-out our grid.

Despite what you’ve heard, there is no “battery revolution” on the way, for well-understood technical and economic reasons.

As for house cats, they don’t kill big, rare, threatened birds. What house cats kill are small, common birds, like sparrows, robins and jays. What kills big, threatened, and endangered birds—birds that could go extinct—like hawks, eagles, owls, and condors, are wind turbines.

In fact, wind turbines are the most serious new threat to important bird species to emerge in decades. The rapidly spinning turbines act like an apex predator which big birds never evolved to deal with.

Solar farms have similarly large ecological impacts. Building a solar farm is a lot like building any other kind of farm. You have to clear the whole area of wildlife.

In order to build one of the biggest solar farms in California the developers hired biologists to pull threatened desert tortoises from their burrows, put them on the back of pickup trucks, transport them, and cage them in pens where many ended up dying.

As we were learning of these impacts, it gradually dawned on me that there was no amount of technological innovation that could solve the fundamental problem with renewables.

You can make solar panels cheaper and wind turbines bigger, but you can’t make the sun shine more regularly or the wind blow more reliably. I came to understand the environmental implications of the physics of energy. In order to produce significant amounts of electricity from weak energy flows, you just have spread them over enormous areas. In other words, the trouble with renewables isn’t fundamentally technical—it’s natural.

Dealing with energy sources that are inherently unreliable, and require large amounts of land, comes at a high economic cost.

There’s been a lot of publicity about how solar panels and wind turbines have come down in cost. But those one-time cost savings from making them in big Chinese factories have been outweighed by the high cost of dealing with their unreliability.

Consider California. Between 2011–17 the cost of solar panels declined about 75 percent, and yet our electricity prices rose five times more than they did in the rest of the U.S. It’s the same story in Germany, the world leader in solar and wind energy. Its electricity prices increased 50 percent between 2006–17, as it scaled up renewables.

I used to think that dealing with climate change was going to be expensive. But I could no longer believe this after looking at Germany and France.

Germany’s carbon emissions have been flat since 2009, despite an investment of $580 billion by 2025 in a renewables-heavy electrical grid, a 50 percent rise in electricity cost.

Climatism support :

SEE also : IF CO2’s Your Poison, Renewable Energy Is No Antidote | Climatism

*

Meanwhile, France produces one-tenth the carbon emissions per unit of electricity as Germany and pays little more than half for its electricity. How? Through nuclear power.

Then, under pressure from Germany, France spent $33 billion on renewables, over the last decade. What was the result? A rise in the carbon intensity of its electricity supply, and higher electricity prices, too.

What about all the headlines about expensive nuclear and cheap solar and wind? They are largely an illusion resulting from the fact that 70 to 80 percent of the costs of building nuclear plants are up-front, whereas the costs given for solar and wind don’t include the high cost of transmission lines, new dams, or other forms of battery.

It’s reasonable to ask whether nuclear power is safe, and what happens with its waste.

It turns out that scientists have studied the health and safety of different energy sources since the 1960s. Every major study, including a recent one by the British medical journal Lancet, finds the same thing: nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity.

Strange as it sounds, nuclear power plants are so safe for the same reason nuclear weapons are so dangerous. The uranium used as fuel in power plants and as material for bombs can create one million times more heat per its mass than its fossil fuel and gunpowder equivalents.

It’s not so much about the fuel as the process. We release more energy breaking atoms than breaking chemical bonds. What’s special about uranium atoms is that they are easy to split.

Because nuclear plants produce heat without fire, they emit no air pollution in the form of smoke. By contrast, the smoke from burning fossil fuels and biomass results in the premature deaths of seven million people per year, according to the World Health Organization.

Even during the worst accidents, nuclear plants release small amounts of radioactive particulate matter from the tiny quantities of uranium atoms split apart to make heat.

Over an 80-year lifespan, fewer than 200 people will die from the radiation from the worst nuclear accident, Chernobyl, and zero will die from the small amounts of radiant particulate matter that escaped from Fukushima.

As a result, the climate scientist James Hanson and a colleague found that nuclear plants have actually saved nearly two million lives to date that would have been lost to air pollution.

Thanks to its energy density, nuclear plants require far less land than renewables. Even in sunny California, a solar farm requires 450 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a nuclear plant.

Energy-dense nuclear requires far less in the way of materials, and produces far less in the way of waste compared to energy-dilute solar and wind.

A single Coke cans worth of uranium provides all of the energy that the most gluttonous American or Australian lifestyle requires. At the end of the process, the high-level radioactive waste that nuclear plants produce is the very same Coke can of (used) uranium fuel. The reason nuclear is the best energy from an environmental perspective is because it produces so little waste and none enters the environment as pollution.

All of the waste fuel from 45 years of the Swiss nuclear program can fit, in canisters, on a basketball court-like wearhouse, where like all spent nuclear fuel, it has never hurt a fly.

By contrast, solar panels require 17 times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create over 200 times more waste.

We tend to think of solar panels as clean, but the truth is that there is no plan anywhere to deal with solar panels at the end of their 20 to 25 year lifespan.

Experts fear solar panels will be shipped, along with other forms of electronic waste, to be disassembled—or, more often, smashed with hammers—by poor communities in Africa and Asia, whose residents will be exposed the dust from toxic including lead, cadmium, and chromium.

Wherever I travel in the world I ask ordinary people what they think about nuclear and renewable energies. After saying they know next to nothing, they admit that nuclear is strong and renewables are weak. Their intuitions are correct. What most of us get wrong—understandably — is that weak energies are safer.

But aren’t renewables safer? The answer is no. Wind turbines, surprisingly, kill more people than nuclear plants.

In other words, the energy density of the fuel determines its environmental and health impacts. Spreading more mines and more equipment over larger areas of land is going to have larger environmental and human safety impacts.

It’s true that you can stand next to a solar panel without much harm while if you stand next to a nuclear reactor at full power you’ll die.

But when it comes to generating power for billions of people, it turns out that producing solar and wind collectors, and spreading them over large areas, has vastly worse impacts on humans and wildlife alike.

Our intuitive sense that sunlight is dilute sometimes shows up in films. That’s why nobody was shocked when the recent remake of the dystopian sci-fi flick, “Blade Runner,” opened with a dystopian scene of California’s deserts paved with solar farms identical to the one that decimated desert tortoises.

Over the last several hundred years, human beings have been moving away from what matter-dense fuels towards energy-dense ones. First we move from renewable fuels like wood, dung, and windmills, and towards the fossil fuels of coal, oil, and natural gas, and eventually to uranium.

Energy progress is overwhelmingly positive for people and nature. As we stop using wood for fuel we allow grasslands and forests to grow back, and the wildlife to return.

As we stop burning wood and dung in our homes, we no longer must breathe toxic indoor smoke. And as we move from fossil fuels to uranium we clear the outdoor air of pollution, and reduce how much we’ll heat up the planet.

Nuclear plants are thus a revolutionary technology—a grand historical break from fossil fuels as significant as the industrial transition from wood to fossil fuels before it.

The problem with nuclear is that it is unpopular, a victim of a 50 year-longconcerted effort by fossil fuel, renewable energy, anti-nuclear weapons campaigners, and misanthropic environmentalists to ban the technology.

In response, the nuclear industry suffers battered wife syndrome, and constantly apologizes for its best attributes, from its waste to its safety.

Lately, the nuclear industry has promoted the idea that, in order to deal with climate change, “we need a mix of clean energy sources,” including solar, wind and nuclear. It was something I used to believe, and say, in part because it’s what people want to hear. The problem is that it’s not true.

France shows that moving from mostly nuclear electricity to a mix of nuclear and renewables results in more carbon emissions, due to using more natural gas, and higher prices, to the unreliability of solar and wind.

Oil and gas investors know this, which is why they made a political alliance with renewables companies, and why oil and gas companies have been spending millions of dollars on advertisements promoting solar, and funneling millions of dollars to said environmental groups to provide public relations cover.

What is to be done? The most important thing is for scientists and conservationists to start telling the truth about renewables and nuclear, and the relationship between energy density and environmental impact.

Bat scientists recently warned that wind turbines are on the verge of making one species, the Hoary bat, a migratory bat species, go extinct.

Another scientist who worked to build that gigantic solar farm in the California desert told High Country News, “Everybody knows that translocation of desert tortoises doesn’t work. When you’re walking in front of a bulldozer, crying, and moving animals, and cacti out of the way, it’s hard to think that the project is a good idea.”

I think it’s natural that those of us who became active on climate change gravitated toward renewables. They seemed like a way to harmonize human society with the natural world. Collectively, we have been suffering from a naturalistic fallacy no different from the one that leads us to buy products at the supermarket labeled “all natural.” But it’s high time that those of us who appointed ourselves Earth’s guardians should take a second look at the science, and start questioning the impacts of our actions.

Now that we know that renewables can’t save the planet, are we really going to stand by and let them destroy it?

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” and president of Environmental Progress, an independent research and policy organization. Follow him on Twitter @ShellenbergerMD

Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet – Quillette

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MUST READ : Climate Science, Red in Tooth and Claw – Yapping Hyenas Attack a Lion

GLOBAL WARMING GROUPTHINK SHEEP - CLIMATISM

Global Warming Groupthink ‘Siyanz’ | CLIMATISM


Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to 
know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC 
Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itohan award-winning PhD environmental physical
chemist.

“The whole climate change issue is about to fall apart — Heads will roll!” – South African UN Scientist Dr. Will Alexander, April 12, 2009

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for
Physics, Ivar Giaever.

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FASCINATING article by author Norman Rogers on how the siyanz science of global warming climate change has been fatally corrupted by a culture of groupthink and doomsday hysteria that has snowballed into a viciously protected $2,000,000,000,000 US per year (2 Trillion) global Climate Crisis Industry.

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Climate Science, Red in Tooth and Claw: Yapping Hyenas Attack a Lion

From American Thinker

By Norman Rogers

William Happer is one of the most important scientists in the United States.  He is an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton and a long-serving adviser to the federal government.  His scientific discoveries and inventions are extensive.  Currently, he serves in the White House as a senior adviser to the National Security Council.

The Trump administration is thinking of forming a “Presidential Committee on Climate Security.”  The press has been told to direct questions to Dr. Happer.  That is enough to bring out the climate hyenas. They can’t stand the thought that Trump might have some solid scientific advice concerning climate change.  The hyenas are running an all-out attack against Dr. Happer.

Following Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the camp followers of the global warming industry try to create polarization.  In a Time magazine article, a former admiral says Happer is a fringe figure.  A climate scientist at Georgia Tech says Happer has “false, unscientific notions.”  We are reassured that the global warming scare is absolutely solid science, as everyone except climate deniers knows.

What everyone may not know is that climate science is an industry, and the product is the global warming scare.  If the global warming scare is discredited, the huge industry will collapse.  Climate scientists used to be unimportant academics in an unimportant academic field.  The global warming scare made them into celebrities jetting around the world.  They won’t give up the glory without a fight.

Climate computer models, the basis of the doomsday predictions, disagree with each other and disagree with the climate of the Earth.  But according to the climate science mafia, anyone who brings up such embarrassing information is a tool of the fossil fuel industry.  As far as the climate mafia is concerned, the business plan of the fossil fuel industry is to wreck the Earth and wreck the global warming industry.  The reality is that the fossil fuel industry is wimpy and not inclined to take on the global warmers.

Climate science has gone off the rails.  President Eisenhower nailed the problem in his 1961 farewell address.  He expressed the fear that because science had become heavily dependent on federal financial support, scientists would color the science in order to increase the flow of federal money.  Nothing works better for increasing the flow of federal scientific money than predicting a future disaster.  If scientists predict a disaster, we have to give them more money to research methods of preventing the disaster.

Since Eisenhower’s address, we have been treated to a parade of scientific doomsday predictions, none of which measured up to the hype.  There was global cooling that preceded global warming.  There were acid rain, DDT, the ozone layer, overpopulation, and many others.  It is not only scientists who use a parade of disaster predictions.  Environmental organizations need doomsday predictions, too, in order to keep their members interested.  The press has a bias for sensationalism, so it too promotes the latest doomsday predictions.

Many professions are supposed to adhere to high ethical standards. For example, lawyers are supposed to put the interests of their clients above their own interests.  Doctors are supposed to put their patients’ welfare above their own pecuniary interests.  Journalists are supposed to be objective and not color their work with their own political preferences.  We know that not every professional adheres strictly to his ethical code.  Scientists are not different.  They are supposed to search for scientific truth and to exercise objectivity in their work.  They are not supposed to hype weak theories in order to improve their professional standing.  But these things happen.

Most scientists are not in a position to contradict global warming hype.  Science is a profession characterized by ideological schools and groupthink.  Groupthink is worst in sciences where the rules are not clear and the data are confusing — for example, climate science.  Young scientists depend on older, more senior scientists for recognition and promotion.  They are in no position to contradict groupthink.  They have families to feed.  The senior scientists may be running large scientific enterprises financed by federal money.  To express doubts about the mission or the truth of the groupthink would be to threaten their money and the jobs of people in their organization.

The consequence of the groupthink atmosphere is that dissenters come from the ranks of scientists removed from the pressure to conform — for example, retired scientists, amateur scientists, and scientists so accomplished as to be immune to threats and group pressure.  There are thousands of such scientists who are skeptical of the global warming hype.  When they speak out, they are attacked, and the attacks are usually vicious.  The members of the global warming establishment will almost never debate skeptics.  When this was done years ago, the skeptics were too credible.

Science is great, and our modern world is a product of science.  But scientists are humans, not gods.  They play the same games that other beneficiaries of federal money play.  We have been fooled over and over again by fake predictions of disasters or one sort or another.  The fake predictions are never completely fake.  There is usually some real science buried in all the hype.  For example, it is reasonable to expect that some global warming might be caused by adding CO2 to the atmosphere.  What is probably a modest effect has been twisted and exaggerated into a doomsday scenario that demands that we save the planet.  The good effects of CO2 that are well known and that are solid science are ignored.  Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere makes plants grow better with less water.  Greenhouse-operators use CO2-generators in their greenhouses.  CO2 is greening deserts.  How often to you hear about these benefits of CO2?

DDT was banned because it supposedly thinned birds’ eggs and perhaps because some people screamed cancer.  But DDT is highly effective against mosquitos that cause malaria.  The World Health Organization finally lifted the ban on DDT because thousands of children were dying in Africa.  DDT will never be rehabilitated in the U.S. because the propaganda has been permanently imprinted in the minds of the populace.

Science has created institutions that serve to enhance the image of science.  For example, peer review often degenerates into pal review.  Scientific journals are often filled with papers of dubious value generated by a system that values quantity over quality.  The National Academy of Science pretends to give objective advice to the government, but often the advice is to appropriate more money for science.

Typically, when science invents a new doomsday theory, the environmental organizations embellish it with unscientific flourishes.  The scientist inventors of the theory don’t correct the environmental organizations because that would slow the momentum toward a new surge of federal money.  That should be an ethical violation.  Scientists should have a duty to set the record straight in such circumstances.

There is no simple solution to the parade of doomsday theories.  It would help if the government understood better that throwing more money at an alleged problem may exaggerate rather than alleviate the problem.  Massive spending may not solve difficult scientific problems, but massive spending always creates bureaucracies that exist to sustain the spending.

Norman Rogers is the author of the book Dumb Energy: A Critique of Wind and Solar Energy.

H/t WattsUpWithThat

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