“To get the same amount of energy from solar and wind that we now get from fossil fuels, we’re going to have to massively increase mining.
By more than 1000%.
This isn’t speculation. This is physics.”
This post is well worth your time, either through viewing the video presentation, or for a more devastating effect, via the transcript.
How an ideology can take such a fervent foothold and do so much damage to civilisation, at rapid pace, is perhaps, an inferior question to how the physics of UNreliables were/are so casually overlooked as to render current civilisation, inoperable.
Are we heading toward an all-renewable energy future, spearheaded by wind and solar? Or are those energy sources wholly inadequate for the task? Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The Cloud Revolution, compares the energy dream to the energy reality.How Much Energy Will the World Need?
Video Transcript
We’re headed toward an exciting all-renewable energy future. Wind and solar will power the world of tomorrow.
And tomorrow isn’t far off!……..
…It’s time to wake up.
You’re having a dream.
Here’s the reality.
Oil, natural gas, and coal provide 84% of all the world’s energy. That’s down just two percentage points from twenty years ago.
And oil still powers nearly 97% of all global transportation.
Contrary to headlines claiming that we’re rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels, it’s just not happening. Two decades and five trillion dollars of governments “investing” in green energy and we’ve…
Wind power is, by definition, a wholly weather-dependent power source. So, it should come as no surprise that – whenever a burst of calm-weather hits – those charged with responsibility for delivering power, as and when we need it, scramble to obtain it from any convenient and, more importantly, reliable source. Which is why Germany and the UK have reverted to reliance on their ‘dreaded’ and purportedly ‘dirty’ coal-fired power plants.
Back in January this year, the Germansmandated the closure of 11 coal-fired power plants(with a total combined capacity of 4.7GW). But the legislative shutdown barely lasted a week, with all of those plants being hastily brought back online in response to an outbreak of, you guessed it, calm weather.
Likewise, the Brits have been forced to bring old (thought to be redundant) coal-fired power plants…
There may even be ample room to facilitate future UN COP meetings next to, said, kiddies playparks if “Net Zero” requires such intesne and massive deforeastion to house industrial wind and solar ‘playparks’.
Oh, the irony… kids and globalist bureaucrats all playing (and paying) together in the future playparks of denuded-forest-gulags.
Windy Standard wind farm, Scotland [credit: RWE.com] Ideas, opinions, feedback etc. are invited here. It could be said they’ve already had decades to think about this, but any negativity will no doubt be ignored. Existing uses include children’s play areas and bike sheds, but there’s only so many of those that would find a place.
– – –
One wind farm company is looking for imaginative ways to repurpose turbines at the end of their lives, says BBC News.
When Windy Standard was built in Dumfries and Galloway in the mid-1990s, it was Scotland’s second largest wind farm.
Now it is coming to the end of its functional life and the old turbines are set to be replaced by more powerful machines.
But what happens to the original turbines? Owner Fred Olsen Renewables wants to find creative and sustainable ways to ensure they do not end up in…
“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.”
“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)
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.
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?
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?
“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.
Windy Standard wind farm, Scotland [credit: RWE.com] Ideas, opinions, feedback etc. are invited here. It could be said they’ve already had decades to think about this, but any negativity will no doubt be ignored. Existing uses include children’s play areas and bike sheds, but there’s only so many of those that would find a place.
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…
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