Once upon a time, the ‘Killing the earth to save it’ meme was perhaps a little hard to quantify. This latest atrocity to ‘power’ the planet seems questionable.
Merry Christmas.
Waiting to see how the Climate Activists explain this. "It was a massacre, he stressed: “Those animals had no way of escape… they were confined within the property’s walls” and the forest that should have afforded them some protected has been denuded." https://t.co/PNfHwHQJC4
“California was the experiment, and now it is the proof: environmentalism is worse for ‘social justice’ than any degree of climate change is.
Environmentalism is the indulgent fantasy of remote political elites and their self-serving business backers. If California doesn’t prove this, what would?”
The heatwaves and the fires are natural – the electricity blackouts are not.
Events leading up to today’s power cuts follow a bizarre history. The fact that advanced economies need a continuous supply of power is well understood. Yet for three decades, the political agenda, dominated by self-proclaimed ‘progressives’, has put lofty green idealism before security of supply and before the consumer’s interest in reasonable prices. Even if the heatwaves experienced by California were caused by climate change, are their direct effects worse than the loss of electricity supply?
California’s green and tech billionaires, and its business and political elites, certainly seem to think so. But they are largely protected from reality by vast wealth, private security, gated estates, and battery banks. The high cost of…
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
–– Top Google engineers
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.
–– Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
– James Hansen (The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)
***
JUST as socialist central-planning failed miserably before it was replaced by free market economies, green central-planning will have to be discarded before Australia and other Western nations will see a return to energy security, competitive pricing and business prosperity.
GOOD to see Mexico heading in the smart direction. Led by an apparent reasoned and rational government who understands that “the only things ‘inevitable’ about the ‘transition’ to wind and solar are skyrocketing electricity prices and unstable power grids.”
As Mexico is poised to plunge into its worst recession in recent-memory the leftist president is making cuts and pulling the plug on subsidy dependent intermittent power from wind and solar that has been driving up the cost of electricity for its financially challenged population.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the 2018 election by a landslide. His approach to government spending — even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout — might best be compared to that of conservative icons Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
Recognizing that industrial wind and solar electricity bring little to no value to electrical grids, Mexico is moving to avoid the higher electrical prices experienced by Germany, Denmark, Great Britain, South Australia, California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other governments that have heavily subsidized their supply of intermittent electricity.
The only things ‘inevitable’ about the ‘transition’ to wind and solar are rocketing electricity prices and unstable power grids. As to the latter, the Mexican government has taken a stand that has sent renewable energy rent seekers into a tailspin.
The Mexican government’s concept, not without merit, is that if you are looking for a reliable electricity supply, then it does not make much sense to rely on the ‘unreliables’. Mexico needs reliable and affordable power, more than ever.
The stage is now set for yet another legal dispute between Mexico’s government and the intermittent electricity sector, with the Mexican government acting to freeze project connections in a supposed bid to underpin system stability in the COVID-19 era.
While the wind and solar industries seem eager to deliver their peculiar brand of a ‘healthy environment’ for Mexicans, their government appears more inclined to ensure the delivery of affordable electricity as and when Mexicans need it.
Whether you’re a South Australian business owner trying to keep your head above water, a farmer’s wife in Ontario trying to keep your head on your pillow and sleep despite incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound or an Eagle just trying to keep its head, you’ve probably formed a pretty strong opinion about the ‘merits’ of subsidized wind electricity.
Oaxaca is a state in southern Mexico that is home to almost two-thirds of Mexico’s wind-power capacity, including the Tehuantepec turbines. Many people in towns with wind parks seem to still favor them, but over time, people have seen less benefits than originally promised. Job opportunities, for example, have fallen short of expectations, locals say. And the touted improvements to roads or schools also have not materialized, overall.
After the trillions spent on industrial wind turbines and solar panels that do not deliver as advertised, the worldwide ecological destruction from the mining of precious minerals leave lands uninhabitable and worthless for plants and trees. Renewable taxpayer handouts have stripped landscapes. Left in the wake of intermittent electricity farms and subsidized biomass-fueled power plants is cynical at best, and mercenary in their ability to destroy nature’s ability to alleviate the coronavirus via cleaner air.
During this global pandemic, dependence on China for rare earth minerals, which solar panels and wind turbines are useless without, makes clean energy a costly proposition.
The environmental destruction that wind turbines create is extraordinary – “building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic.”
Wind and solar also bring little to no value to electrical grids. When the sun does not shine, and the wind does not blow at set speeds it destroys a grid spinning reserve mode, peaking mode, and backup mode. Similarly, in Great Britain Prime Minister Boris Johnson catches coronavirus, and his country struggles with an unstable grid over widespread adoption of renewables for electricity. In the age of COVID-19 there are life and death matters if electricity is hampered for any length of time.
Renewables then make no sense when the entire world is sick. Only using Warren Buffet’s logic does chaotic wind power bring financial wealth when Mr. Buffett said: “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That is the only reasons to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
What makes the entire notion of relying on chaotically intermittent renewables dangerous is a seminal work by energy expert Robert Bryce titled, “Question of Power: Electricity and Wealth of Nations,” which highlights this startling fact:
“Roughly 3.3 billion people – about 45 percent of all the people on the planet – live in places where per-capita electricity consumption is less than 1,000 kilowatt-hours per year, or less than the amount used by a refrigerator.”
Uncertainty is the one constant the coronavirus has shown. Long-term planning is no longer in vogue – now it is understanding cratering oil prices and a possible Great Depression. If the World does not get back to work soon, trillion-dollar deficits as the new norm, and prosperity taking a backseat to police-state-like shut-ins.
More than 6,000 products come from the derivatives of crude oil, including every part in solar panels and wind turbines. Additionally, renewables cannot produce the critical medical equipment like ultrasound systems, ventilators, CT systems, and X-ray, medicines, masks, gloves, soap and hand sanitizers for hospitals, and protective gear for doctors and nurses. All those products begin from crude oil, or as the Wall Street Journal states – “Big Oil to the Coronavirus Rescue.”
More damning for renewables than endless subsidies or the billions of people needing reliable electricity, is the fact that without the products from petroleum derivatives the coronavirus would rage unchecked.
IMAGINE Our Covid-19 Response Running On Windmills And Mirrors | Climatism
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
–– Top Google engineers
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.
–– Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
– James Hansen (The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)
***
ISN’T it a little strange that a century ago electrification and its fossil fuel source was revered and now so many despise the source but think they can just keep the electricity. No one told them you can not have your cake and eat it too, or that there are no free lunches.
Imagine Our Covid-19 Response Running On Wind And Solar Power
By Dr. Jay Lehr~
UNTIL the Pandemic struck the world, the desire of the progressive political movement in the United States and much of the world was focused on ridding the planet of fossil fuels, said to be negatively altering the planet’s climate. These folks are fully convinced that the world, at its present state of technological advance, could be run entirely on renewable refuels lead by solar and wind power. They have always ignored the intermittency of these sources when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. While they know we have no economic method to store such energy, they assume one will come along.
It has been futile yet interesting to continue such a debate in the face of a calm period where conjecture was but an intellectual exercise. Then reality hit us all in the face with a disaster never seen in our life times. Where would the two million Covid-19 afflicted people be who depended on ventilators run by electricity from coal and natural gas be today, if they only had power from the wind and the sun. The obvious answer is that many more would be dead.
While not much good will come from this world wide tragedy, perhaps more of the people deluded by the climate change fear mongering will come to their senses. Eliminating fossil fuels to produce electricity or power automobiles would not support life as we know it today but only life as we knew it a century and a half ago. It may also be time to rename the electric cars, beloved by many, to what they really are, coal, natural gas or nuclear powered cars.
It is a mystery that virtually all the electric car owners believe their power comes magically out of a wall socket at home or a charging station on the road. The power really comes from a nearby power plant all of which burn coal, natural gas or obtain heat from nuclear fuel. Even if the plant gets some energy from local wind turbines or solar photovoltaic cells this amount is minimal. If we really want a huge increase in the number of electric automobiles on the road we must build more fossil fuel burning power plants, not more wind or solar farms.
Perhaps a little history of the electrification of our nation is in order. It was the development of our fossil fuels that made possible the greatest contribution to health and prosperity which was to make electricity affordable everywhere. In 2000 the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced “the 20 engineering achievements that have had the greatest impact on the quality of life in the 20th century”. The achievements were nominated by 29 professional engineering societies and ranked by a distinguished panel of the nation’s top engineers. They ranked electrification as the number one achievement.
It powered almost every pursuit and enterprise in modern society. Aside from lighting the world, it impacted countless areas of daily life including food production and processing, air conditioning, heating, refrigeration, entertainment, transportation, communication, health care and eventually computers.
In the NAE announcement regarding electrification it stated : “One hundred years ago life was a constant struggle against disease, pollution, deforestation, treacherous working conditions and enormous cultural divides ……. By the end of the 20th century, the world had become a healthier, safer and more productive place, primarily because of this engineering achievement”.
Fossil fuels brought electricity to the homes and workplaces of billions of people around the world. Wind and solar power in anyone’s wildest dreams can never support what electricity provided us in these past 148 years since Thomas Edison built the world’s first coal fired generating plant on Pearl Street in New York City in 1882.
Part of our collective problem as to energy and electricity is that technology has past us by. We all once understood how an automobile engine worked, how a home was wired, what a fuse was. When computers and GPS and smart phones came along most of us gave up trying to understand. Many believe there really is a cloud up there keeping our data safe. So why not think electric cars reap the magic from the wall socket and the wind and sun can keep us doing all that we do. And that scientists have high tech crystal balls to tell us the climate decades from now. It should become clear as technology advanced beyond the average persons ability to comprehend, we have actually become dumber. Perhaps being rationally ignorant of things we do not need to know is okay. Unfortunately people in leadership positions are then able to lead us astray. The elimination of fossil fuels is a poor path to follow.
Isn’t it a little strange that a century ago electrification and its fossil fuel source was revered and now so many despise the source but think they can just keep the electricity. No one told them you can not have your cake and eat it too, or that there are no free lunches.
Note: Portions of this article were excerpted from Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels (CCRII: Fossil Fuels), produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) published by The Heartland Institute, with permission of the editors Joseph Bast and Diane Bast. The authors strongly recommend the book for a complete exposé of the fallacies behind the climate delusion.
Dr Jay Lehr contributes posts at the CFACT site. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition, and he is the author of more than 1,000 magazine and journal articles and 36 books.
“The documentary does a good job at proving that conservatives were right to say that green energy is a scam“
“This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate.”
***
A must watch.
IT gets going at around the 13 minute mark, and then, kaboom…
***
UPDATE 26 May
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
– George Orwell, 1984
THE Ministry Of Truth has now removed Michael Moore’s original #YouTube release of #PlanetOfTheHumans. It was tracking some 10 million views when shut-down/censored due to a “copyright claim”.
THE complainant, Toby Smith, explains why he is not filled with the obligatory totalitarian streak of the muzzle-ready Leftist …
“I went directly to YouTube rather than approaching the filmmakers because I wasn’t interested in negotiation. I don’t support the documentary, I don’t agree with its message and I don’t like the misleading use of facts in its narrative.”
YOUTUBE boss, @SusanWojcicki agreed and pulled the Moore/Flint docco that thoroughly destroys the “renewable energy” myth.
SUSAN does not trust your judgment or you ability to think for yourself.
Paul Homewood comments, “Regardless of the so-called copyright issues, this is clearly a politically motivated attempt to censor the film, as Toby Smith himself admits.”
“CADMIUM and its compounds are highly toxic and exposure
to this metal is known to cause cancer and
targets the body’s cardiovascular, renal, gastrointestinal, neurological, reproductive, and respiratory systems.
–– United State Department of Labor
“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
***
SKY News Australia’s digital editor Jack Houghton blows the myth of benign, ‘renewable’ energy.
As the world shuns energy sources of old in pursuit of clean alternatives a very toxic problem has been slowly building in the background.
During the construction of solar panels the soft, silver, and highly ductile metal cadmium is compressed between sheets of glass – a vital part of how sunlight is converted into electricity so that environmental leaders like Zali Steggall can charge their hypothetical electric cars.
It is a process that many – who view technology through a tribal lens – consider to be worthy of replacing coal.
The only issue is cadmium is carcinogenic and considered roughly ten times more hazardous than the lead which sits next to it in a typical photovoltaic panel.
Panels which are shattered in storms break into tiny fragments and after several months of rainfall the silver metal which once created energy is transformed into a dangerous health hazard.
Just like the 16,000 wiped out by hurricane Irma in the Virgin Islands in 2017.
The wreckage is pictured above.
If not destroyed by wild weather these panels last about two decades.
After that point much of their construct becomes useless hunks of toxic waste which will collectively weigh 1500 kilotonnes by 2050 in Australia alone.
That figure is roughly 300 times what a nuclear power plant would have created to produce the same energy.
But surely those seeking to radically reform Australia’s energy grid through a Green New Deal must have considered this looming ecological crisis?
Well, no, according to authors of a study released last year titled “Drivers, barriers and enablers to end-of-life management of solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage systems: A systematic literature review”.
As the title suggests the study provided a meta-analysis of 191 research papers into solar panel waste management.
Its findings were damning to say the least.
“Little attention has been paid to the potential environmental and human health related impacts associated with PV systems, if not managed properly at the end-of-life,” the authors wrote.
“PV panel and BESS contain hazardous materials such as lead, lithium, tin and cadmium which can harm the environment and human health if they are not properly managed at the end of life-cycle.
“Exposure of heavy metals embedded in both of these technologies will cause various negative health effects.
“For example, cadmium is associated with its impact on lung, kidney and bone damages once absorbed into the body whilst exposure to lead will cause damages to nervous system.”
The authors even went as far to suggest that the technology should not really be classified as renewable because the issues with waste and the fact many rare minerals cannot be salvaged.
They must be mined again and again.
“The current linear take-make-consume-dispose economic system practised within PV systems will inevitably undermine renewable status of this technology without an effective end of life strategy,” they said.
Questions were also raised about the true CO2 impact of solar panels considering the role mining plays in their formation.
These issues don’t mean solar won’t form a crucial part of Australia’s energy grid.
What they do mean – however – is we must be far more reasoned and cautious before rapidly seeking to switch 81 per cent of our energy grid from fossil fuel sources to emerging technologies.
What is dramatically unhelpful is failed politicians such as Malcolm Turnbull using the tragedy of bushfires to attempt to speed up this process before adequate solutions are found.
“Have we now reached the point where at last our response to global warming will be driven by engineering and economics rather than ideology and idiocy,” he wrote in the Guardian last week.
“Our priority this decade should be our own green new deal in which we generate, as soon as possible, all of our electricity from zero emission sources.
“If we do, Australia will become a leader in the fight against global warming. And we can do it.”
This process should not be rushed and leaders in the Coalition must resist calls to do so – especially by those who wish to re-write history as environmental saviours.
There are quite incredible solutions to climate change being discussed in academic circles and according to all the science this writer has read – the climate catastrophe is still a long way away.
And there are far bigger fish to fry over in China before we should be despairing about our tiny geo-centric emissions tally.
Let’s pause and reflect before we poison the next generation with the very technology we hope will save it.
United States Led Entire World In Reducing CO2 Emissions In 2019 | The Daily Wire
“Action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all.”
–– GretaThunberg™️
***
CLIMATISM has reported here, here and here on the inconvenient fact that the United States, under the Trump administration (and reluctantly under Obama), has witnessed a decline in CO₂ emissions thanks to technology (Fracking/natural gas extraction) and private sector innovation.
THE mainstream media refuses to report ‘planet-hating’ Trump’s America reducing ‘evil’ CO₂ emissions, while the rest of the planet, in particular the ‘green’ centrally-planned EU, has seen rises in its emissions.
DON’t expect the mainstream media or GretaThunberg™️ to send Trump a congratulations anytime soon!
The United States led the entire world in reducing CO2 emissions last year while also experiencing solid economic growth, according to a newly released report.
“The United States saw the largest decline in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 on a country basis – a fall of 140 Mt, or 2.9%, to 4.8 Gt,” The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported on Tuesday. “US emissions are now down almost 1 Gt from their peak in the year 2000, the largest absolute decline by any country over that period.”
“A 15% reduction in the use of coal for power generation underpinned the decline in overall US emissions in 2019,” the IEA continued. “Coal-fired power plants faced even stronger competition from natural gas-fired generation, with benchmark gas prices an average of 45% lower than 2018 levels. As a result, gas increased its share in electricity generation to a record high of 37%. Overall electricity demand declined because demand for air-conditioning and heating was lower as a result of milder summer and winter weather.
– – – – –
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) responded to the news by writing on Twitter, “FACT you will NEVER see on the 6 o’clock news: U.S. emissions FELL 2.9%, or by 140 million tons, continuing the trend of the United States LEADING THE WORLD IN TOTAL EMISSIONS DECLINE since 2000.”
The news came after the media promoted far-left climate extremists like socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Greta Thunberg who demonized the U.S. and economic growth for polluting the world.
Thunberg attacked the U.S. last month during a speech she gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland for leaving the Paris Climate Accord, despite the fact that the U.S. leads the world in reducing CO2 emissions.
“The fact that the U.S.A. is leaving the Paris accord seems to outrage and worry everyone, and it should,” Thunberg said. “But the fact that we’re all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn’t seem to bother the people in power even the least.”
IMAGINE the red-faces if the mainstream media, for once, honestly reported that spending hundreds of billions of €uros, of other people’s money, on unreliable energy – wind and solar – was actually increasing CO₂ emissions, where fracking for natural gas (a “dirty” fossil fuel) was lowering them!
PARIS ACCORD – ‘BAD DEAL’
ANOTHER smart move by Trump in not signing the latest UN wealth redistribution scheme when Europe, the epicentre of draconian climate change policy and green energy madness, cannot meet its own emissions ‘commitments’ despite spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer €uros on failed ‘green’ energy.
EUROPE’S GREEN ENERGY FAILURE: CO2 EMISSIONS RISING
GLOBAL CO₂ emissions continue their steady climb, despite the trillions of dollars committed to green energy sources worldwide and efforts to curb CO₂ emissions.
BUT, AREN’T WIND AND SOLAR ‘POWER’ MEANT TO LOWER CO₂ EMISSIONS?
URELIABLE-energy propagandists claim that wind, solar and other weather-dependent ‘energy’ sources will “Save The Planet” by lowering plant-food CO₂ emissions. But, the opposite is the case.
WHY ARE CO₂ EMISSIONS RISING WHEREVER ‘GREEN’ ENERGY IS PROLIFERATED?
ONE inconvenient reason for the rise in ‘green-CO₂’ emissions that you won’t hear reported on MSM news, ever…
Marques et al., 2018
⇑ Wind Power Installation Amplifies
The Growth Of Fossil Fuel Energies
“[A]s RES [renewable energy sources] increases, the expected decreasing tendency in the installed capacity of electricity generation from fossil fuels has not been found.” – Marques et al., 2018
WHAT’S happening in Germany is, unfortunately, a bellwether for what is to come in other CO₂-theory obsessed Western nations attempting to make UNreliables the kingpin of their electricity grids.
GERMANY’s wind and solar experiment has been exposed as a catastrophic failure with rampant energy poverty and an industrial heartland decimated, leading to an expansion of new generation HELE coal-fired power plants.
IT seems forever unlikely that the climate communists will ever concede and promote smart energy solutions like HELE-coal, gas or nuclear. All proven base-load technologies that reduce CO₂ emissions while maintaining a high standard of living by keeping power prices down. A far better result than ‘green’ Germany’s efforts under the 1/2 trillion Euro Energiewende debacle.
PERHAPS they don’t want solutions to their CO₂ hysteria? Perhaps it’s more lucrative to kick the climate can down the road and see how much more climate coin and political power it spits out?
“It is unfortunate that politicians and environmental campaigners are ignorant of the technicalities of energy supply, or wish to ignore them. MPs may have the power to change the laws of the land, but not to change the laws of physics.”
SIR – As a chartered engineer who worked in the electricity supply industry for 39 years, I despair to hear politicians like Rebecca Long-Bailey claiming that renewables will provide for most of our energy needs by 2030.
Renewable generation – solar, wind and tidal – is, by definition, non-synchronous and it is technically impossible to operate our electricity transmission system solely on non-synchronous generation. There is a real danger of system instability and consequential widespread blackouts once non-synchronous generation exceeds around 30 per cent of total generation at any one time.
The National Grid report on the recent major outage makes numerous references to the lack of inertia in the system. This resulted from insufficient large synchronous generators (nuclear, coal, gas) being connected.
Given the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the only option is to increase significantly nuclear build rapidly. Both Labour…
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)
***
WESTERN climate change-theory-obsessed politicians continue their ruinous and costly obsession with wind and solar ‘energy’. UNreliable ‘power’ that repeatedly fails the environment, communities and economies wherever installed.
ENERGY poverty, blackouts, skyrocketing power bills, business and heavy industry closures, grid instability and the destruction of pristine landscapes, among the many deleterious effects of the mad rush into low energy-density, weather and fossil-fuel dependent windmills and solar panels.
IN the latest round of insane proposals offered to hard-working taxpayers, in order to cover ‘renewable’ energy shortfalls, the Victorian State Government of Australia is offering cash payments to consumers to “switch off their AC’s to help prevent blackouts this summer”.
AND, you thought that you were living in the 21st Century? Wrong again…
Households will be offered cash to switch off their air conditioners and help prevent blackouts this summer. @sarinanastasi #7NEWSpic.twitter.com/g7nphggRcA
THE twisted merry-go-round of ‘renewable’ energy payments to keep the lights on gives true meaning to the old adage, “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
ENERGY poverty, rising insurance premiums, business closures, job losses and the highest electricity prices in the world is the grim reality of what life looks like under the totalitarian rule of the feel-good ‘Greens’. The zero-emissions zealots who want to force us backwards down the energy ladder to the days of human, animal and solar power.
JUST as socialist central planning failed miserably before it was replaced by free market economies, green central planning will have to be discarded before Australia and other Western nations, crippled by pseudoscientific climatology and the mad rush into costly and intermittent ‘green’ energy, will see a return to energy security, competitive pricing, business prosperity, job opportunities and a ‘liveable’ existence for our most vulnerable.
•••
“BLACKOUT” UPDATE AUGUST, 22
MORE than a million Victorian households are at risk of being without power this summer during extreme heat if coal and gas plants are not returned to service in time for peak periods, the energy market operator has warned…
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
– Voltaire
“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.“
– TimothyWirth,
President of the UN Foundation
***
THOSE sceptical of the “Save The Planet” inspired, mad rush into supposedly ‘green’ energy sources by the climate change theory-obsessed West, leading to skyrocketing power prices, rampant energy poverty and an exodus of jobs and industry to China, will be keenly aware of the poignant and concerning realities expressed in this must read op-ed by Todd Royal :
“Without having a basic understanding that every single wind turbine and solar panel is intermittent and has to be continually backed-up by fossil fuels, the west is committing environmental degradation, and putting itself at risk against China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Based on self-interest rightly understood, India will then choose aligning with countries hostile to western interests over environmental concerns.”
China and India will allow the west – led by the United States (US) and European Union (EU) – to destroythemselves through dysfunctional, domestic, and continent-wide politics. This isn’t a Donald Trump or EU issue, but electorates having a vague understanding of how societies function, particularly, when it comes to energy.
The “Green New Deal” is evident of that fact, which has no chance of ever working under current technology, taxpayer monies available, and the first “New Deal” was a failure. China and India will allow the US, EU, NATO and their Asian allies to:
“Muddle through endemic crises menacing to its very existence (e.g., economic stagnation, demographic decline, rising unassimilated Islamic populations in many EU democracies, high taxes, mounting debt and the fiscal unsustainability of Western European social democracy)”
Without energy you have nothing. China and India understand this better than the west since their citizenry and leaders view energy through the lens of what will help over two-billion-combined-citizens; join the prosperous, western, consumer-driven world. Most western, environmentally sensitive nations believe fossil fuels are evil. Instead, western countries strive for a renewable energy, carbon-free world. Even if the US were to cut its CO2 emissions, “100 percent it would not make a difference in abating global warming.”
China and India have never bought into that notion of energy, or economies based on supposedly carbon-free renewables that inspire their nations toward a cleaner world. I wish they would, but that isn’t reality. Both countries will continue importing, exporting, and excavating tankers full of coal, oil, and natural gas from countries that are authoritarian, human right abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Nigeria, Angola and Algeria.
Furthermore, Chinese and Indian politics, and increasingly Africa, will never allow lack of pipelines, domestic politics, or sensitivity to western environmentalists keep them from first world status enjoyed by the US, EU, and Asian nations like South Korea and Japan.
Naïve-thinking, bordering on western suicide, believes China and India will stop using fossil fuels, led by coal. Each country understands coal is plentiful (“estimated 1.1 trillion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide that at current rates of production will last 150 years”), and it is scalable, reliable, cost-effective to the end user, and has the best energy density of all fossil fuels or renewables available.
China is currently building hundreds of new, coal-fired power plants. To counter China, “India has 589 coal-fired power plants, they are building 446 more, bringing their total to 1,036.” These figures are after both governments signed the Paris Climate Agreement, and touted their green credentials.
Since the US, Russia, China and India have the largest global coal reserves, and each country is vying for geopolitical dominance, they will continue using coal in record amounts. Energy is then a geopolitical weapon. Europe does not understand this fact.
Only Trump seems to have gained clarity on this issue, with the US using their newfound shale oil and natural gas power, to their geopolitical and global advantage. Daily global, media onslaughts, US Democrats, and Never-Trump Republicans constrain Trump at every turn, and facilitate the US’ waning power. China and India sit back and do nothing, knowing the west is too weak to come to the US or Trump’s rescue.
Renewable energy advocates can speak, write and publicly lobby that solar and wind-produced electricity is the same cost, or dropping compared to oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear. This claim is false. Renewables cost more to ratepayers and nations compared to fossil fuels or nuclear.
Without having a basic understanding that every single wind turbine and solar panel is intermittent and has to be continually backed-up by fossil fuels, the west is committing environmental degradation, and putting itself at risk against China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Based on self-interest rightly understood, India will then choose aligning with countries hostile to western interests over environmental concerns.
A great power struggle has broken out between the world’s largest democracy – India – and the world’s largest authoritarian state – China – and whichever country uses the most energy will win Asia for the rest of this century. National security and the competition between them over Asia are at the crutch of why they will watch the west destroy their economies over bad energy policies.
Sure, India and China will use natural gas, nuclear and oil, but coal is where each economy finds its basic energy resource. Horrible for world emissions, air pollution and global health, but how do westerners, the United Nations, and environmental organizations tell both, growing countries they cannot have access to the same energy opportunities and growth the west has now had for over seventy years?
It simply won’t happen; world health organizations, research universities, think tanks, and multinational corporations interested in global longevity and clean air should begin working towards clean coal technology.
All great nations, including China and India, view energy as a domain of power. The west already has their power, but no longer knows how to use it the way it did during the Cold War. Global warming, abortion, gay marriage, and renewables versus fossil fuels have overtaken realism in all facets of government, military strategy, economics and countering the global threats from China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.
Raw, amoral geopolitics that will grow economies, engage realist strategies, house militaries and feed energy-hungry populations is the new Cold War. Social issues are important, but unless you are talking about the unintended consequences of abortion in the US and China, these issues have no valid correlation within energy geopolitics. Energy and electricity are at the forefront, of which ideological viewpoint, will win the 21st century.
Accessible energy becomes more important than ever, as the competition between China and India heats up. Unless something drastically changes the west will diminish significantly – ushering in the “Asian century” – with China and India biding their time to take over the US-led, liberal order that was created after World War II ended.
California’s green and tech billionaires, and its business and political elites, certainly seem to think so. But they are largely protected from reality by vast wealth, private security, gated estates, and battery banks. The high cost of…
Climatism 
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