AN UPDATE TO THE BELOW: Click the pic for the video:
The bottom line of this post is, “we need more slaves!” … wait… what? What is the REAL MAIN POINT?
ECON 101!
The following is merely a combination of an excellent video excerpt found at AMERICA UNCOVERED with the recent hail storm that destroyed around 14,000 solar panels (see NO TRICK ZONE) with another excerpt of an upload of “my own”: Giga Factories vs. Fossil Fuels
….The disaster underscores once again just how vulnerable to the forces of nature solar energy parks are. The system’s 25-year expected lifetime was cut to down to less than 4 years, and makes you wonder if setting up such weather-vulnerable plants make any sense at all.
Dreams vs reality
“This project will help the city achieve its goal to reduce our carbon footprint and stabilize city costs for the next 25 years,” said Nathan D. Johnson, City Manager, City of Scottsbluff. “Through projects like this, we hope to offer an affordable ‘green’ option to our residents, both residential and commercial, to reap the benefits as well.”
That was the dream. A couple of days ago we witnessed the reality.
Now residents will surely have to rely on good old, reliable fossil fuel power to keep the electricity flowing.
And how long will it take to clean up the toxic mess left behind?
…..The installation in the photo is a 5.2 MW solar farm, destroyed in a heartbeat by a hailstorm … “cheap electricity” they said …
The best parts of the article are the comments of the manager:
“Kevin Spencer, Scottsbluff city manager, told Cowboy State Daily the Nebraska Public Power District, which owns the solar farm, is still assessing the damage, but it’s going to need some repairs.”
“Gonna need some repairs”? Ya think? …
But it gets better:
“He said he was previously told the panels were hail-proof, but that might have meant hail up to a certain size.”
Ya think?
Oh, yeah, one more beautiful detail.
“The Federal Emergency Management Agency ranks this area in its the highest category for hail risk on the national index.”
Is there a Darwin Award for suicidal climate projects?
Still Waiting For The Magical Future Of Free Wind Power
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, June 26, 2023
“In the short run, don’t expect the climate doom cult to walk away from any of their grand plans. The immediate answer will be more, and still more government subsidies to keep the wind power dream alive. But at some point, this becomes, as they say, unsustainable.”
Offshore Windfarms Threaten To Pull Out Of Uneconomical Contracts
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, June 24, 2023
“Yet again we see this silly comment by the Telegraph about a global race to net zero. This is the pathetic nonsense spouted by the increasingly irrelevant Jeremy Warner and Ben Marlow.
“There is of course no such race, which implies that there is some sort of reward for those countries jumping off the clifftop first! On the contrary, most of the world is quite happy to let Britain, the EU and US continue with the madness, while they make themselves richer with the help of fossil fuels.”
Siemens Energy stocks fall 36% — turbines are degrading faster than expected
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, June 26, 2023
Comment from David Maddison: “Despite the wind being free, collecting it appears to cost a fortune. Just ask any sailboat owner!”
Offshore wind is a terrible way to reduce CO2 emissions
While I disagree with the points regarding the “Climate Crisis,” this video is solid in it’s dealing with the fears of nuclear power safety issues and how many are frightened by misinformation. They link to two other videos that are worth a watch as well. They are:
Even environmentalists concede that nuclear power is a clean source of abundant, reliable energy. But they stop short of supporting it. Why? Because of the “waste problem.” But how real are their concerns? James Meigs, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, answers this question.
Nuclear Energy: Abundant, Clean, and Safe
If you truly want to save the planet from global warming, there’s one energy source that can do it. It’s not wind or solar. It’s not coal, oil or natural gas, either. So what is it? Michael Shellenberger, founder of Environmental Progress, has the answer in this important video.
The above video mentioned Will Siri, the President of the Sierra Club a few decades ago. Here is an excerpt from Michael Shellenberger’s article from FORBES (via CLIMATE DEPOT):
…In the mid-1960s, the Sierra Club supported the building of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant to replace fossil fuels. “Nuclear power is one of the chief long-term hopes for conservation,” argued Sierra Club President Will Siri in 1966.
“Cheap energy in unlimited quantities is one of the chief factors allowing a large, rapidly growing population to set aside wildlands, open space and lands of high-scenic value,” added Siri, who was a biophysicist, mountaineer, and veteran of the Manhattan Project….
* THE BONUS BELOW WILL EXPLAIN THE FRUITION OF WILL SIRI’S POSITION – JUMP
And there is a letter the ANSis floating around as well that many are signing:
The letter: Already signed by such notables as James Hansen, Ken Caldeira, Richard Muller, Meredith Angwin, and James Hopf, the Generation Atomic letter notes that, in its early years, the Sierra Club supported nuclear technology.
“Early in the technology’s history, the Sierra Club recognized nuclear energy’s power-dense and emission-free environmental benefits,” the letter states. “Many of the Sierra Club’s members at the time were strong advocates for the energy source. Among them were Will Siri, the club’s president at the time, and the photographer and Sierra Club board member Ansel Adams.”
Nuclear waste is scary. Maybe you’ve seen it as glowing green goop in The Simpsons, or as a radioactive threat on the news. Either way, you likely know it has been a major block to the use and improvement of nuclear power. Over the last few decades, experts, politicians and the public have had heated debates over what to do with this radioactive material created by nuclear power plants.
But what if there were a way to not just store nuclear waste, but actually USE it?
This video is about the effort to make electricity out of nuclear waste. Really. It turns out, we developed the tools to do this decades ago. This story is about a technology we left behind and the people who want to bring it back.
This Environmentalist Says Only Nuclear Power Can Save Us Now
Michael Shellenberger believes The Green New Deal’s focus on wind and solar is a waste of time and money.
Calling climate change an existential threat to humanity, congressional Democrats introduced a policy proposal in February called the Green New Deal, which would mandate that 100 percent of U.S. energy production come from “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources” like wind and solar by the year 2050.
But some environmentalists say Green New Dealers are neglecting one obvious source of abundant clean energy already available: Nuclear power, which an accompanying Green New Deal FAQ explicitly states should be phased out alongside fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal.
“If you want to save the natural environment, you just use nuclear. You grow more food on less land, and people live in cities. It’s not rocket science,” says Shellenberger. “The idea that people need to stay poor… that’s just a reactionary social philosophy that they then dress up as a kind of environmentalism.”
Watch the above video to learn more about the history of nuclear energy and to hear more from Shellenberger about his case for nuclear, as well as his response to concerns about radiation, nuclear weapons, and the economic viability of nuclear energy. The video also features solar energy advocate Ed Smeloff, who served on the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District board during the shutdown of California’s Rancho Seco nuclear plant and who makes the argument that nuclear power simply can’t compete in the marketplace.
PANDORA’S PROMISE:
This documentary film is about nuclear energy and other energy sources. Its central argument is that nuclear power, which still faces historical opposition from environmentalists, is a relatively safe and clean energy source which can help mitigate the serious problem of anthropogenic global warming. The film emphasize that more deaths is caused by coal powered power plants than nuclear power plants.
— PART ONE —
— PART TWO —
— PART THREE —
The below deals with the broken promises and the amount of land in the United States in order to reach a “net zero” dream. This is actually merely a combining of a few of my past posts under one umbrella.
* BONUS *
“Apocalypse Never” – Michael Shellenberger Talks With Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager had Michael Shellenberger on his show to discuss his new book entitled “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” (Amazon: ). In an article by Michael, you see him transitioning into a “Bjorn Lomborg” type of category. Here is the opening paragraph of that article:
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. (ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS)
Facts through reason and common sense have made it through to this gentleman, and this is nice to hear. In another review of the book, it is noted that Mr. Shellenberger is a long time environmentalist and contributed “rationalism [that] is in woefully short supply in present day environmental discourse. Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never succeeds in providing a welcome boost” Here is the opening of that review:
The way to a cleaner, sustainable planet is not to eliminate fossil fuels and nuclear power, but rather to expand their use, especially in developing countries to bring economic growth and prosperity, the way such sources did for the developed world.
This is one of the primary themes in the new book, Apocalypse Never, written not by a “climate denier” or “corporate shill.” Instead, author Michael Shellenberger is a 30-year environmental activist with street cred in various causes including saving California’s redwood forests and co-founding a “progressive Democratic, labor-environment push” in 2002 for the New Apollo Project, a renewable energy initiative that long predated the Green New Deal. He also is a Time magazine “Hero of the Environment.”…..
Do wind turbines and solar farms hold the keys to saving the environment? Michael Shellenberger, founder of Environmental Progress and noted climate activist, used to think so. Now he’s not so sure. He explains why in this important video. (See my previous Prager audio with Michael)
The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin | Shellenberger
“It was the West’s focus on healing the planet with ‘soft energy’ renewables, and moving away from natural gas and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply.” — Michael Shellenberger
Why were federal tax subsidies extended for wind and solar by Congress? Again. For the umpteenth time! We are against subsidies because they distort markets. Those politicians who support these market-distorting policies should at least be forced to answer the question: “How much is enough?” Taxpayers have been subsidizing wind and solar corporations for more than 40 years! These companies have gotten fat and happy on your money, and Congress keeps giving them more of it. This video is based on a Texas Public Policy Foundation report that explains why it’s long past time to stop wind and solar from stuffing their bank accounts with your tax dollars.
To give you a sense of scale, to replace the energy from one average natural gas well, which sits on about four acres of land, would require 2,500 acres of wind turbines. That is a massive amount of land. You would have to cover this entire nation with wind turbines in an attempt to replace the electricity that we generate from coal, natural gas, and nuclear power, and even that would not get the job done. (CFACT)
At his international climate summit in April, President Joe Biden vowed to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The goal will require sweeping changes in the power generation, transportation and manufacturing sectors. It will also require a lot of land.
Wind farms, solar installations and other forms of clean power tend to take up more space on a per-watt basis than their fossil-fuel-burning brethren. A 200-megawatt wind farm, for instance, might require spreading turbines over 13 square miles (36 square kilometres). A natural-gas power plant with that same generating capacity could fit onto a single city block.
Achieving Biden’s goal will require aggressively building more wind and solar farms, in many cases combined with giant batteries. To fulfill his vision of an emission-free grid by 2035, the U.S. needs to increase its carbon-free capacity by at least 150%. Expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota, according to Princeton University estimates and an analysis by Bloomberg News. By 2050, when Biden wants the entire economy to be carbon free, the U.S. would need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.
Earth Day 2021 is April 22nd. Therefore, eco-activist groups will be preaching the gospel of wind & solar power and the importance of biodiversity. What those trying to “save the planet” fail to understand (or more likely ignore) is that these two priorities are in direct conflict. Wind & solar require far more land than nuclear, natural gas and coal power. They are also far more destructive to regions of high biodiversity as well as large birds, bats and endangered species. As we celebrate Earth Day, let’s consider the significant environmental consequences of attempting to provide electricity through low density, unreliable sunshine and breezes.
Vice President Joe Biden aims to be the most progressive president on the issue of climate change. The man who spent most of 2020 hiding in the basement believes the future of energy is renewable energy like wind and solar. Biden should go back to the basement, watch Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans,” and rethink his advocacy for renewable energy. Wind and solar are not the answer, and the idea of converting our fossil fuel-based economy into renewables could be a devastating take-down to society.
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.
Remember when Google joined the common sense era?
FLASHBACK
We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
[…..]
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
Google Joins the Common Sense Crew On Renewable Energies ~ Finally! (RPT)
What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change: Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will? (SPETRUM)
Shocker: Top Google Engineers Say Renewable Energy ‘Simply won’t work’ (WATTS UP WITH THAT)
Polluting the Beauty and Cleanliness Of Our World With Renewable Energy (RPT)
Wind and Solar More Harmful To Environment Than Helpful (RPT)
Typical gasoline-powered auto engines are approximately 27% efficient. Typical fossil-fueled generating stations are 50% efficient, transmission to end user is 67% efficient, battery charging is 90% efficient and the auto’s electric motor is 90% efficient, so that the fuel efficiency of an electric car is also 27%. However, the electric car requires 30% more power per mile traveled to move the mass of its batteries. (See more here)
GREEN ENERGY GRID
But manufacturing the famous gasoline-electric hybrid can be a dirty business.
Toyota studied the car’s total environmental impact from factory to junkyard.
In fact, when looking at the “materials manufacturing” phase of the car’s life cycle, the Prius was worse than the class average across all five emissions categories. (AUTO SPIES)
Also, this from Reuters a few years back to put an emphasis on Dr. Lomborg’s $44 dollars of savings subsidized with $7,500 in tax-payers monies:
(REUTERS)– General Motors Co. sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August — but that probably isn’t a good thing for the automaker’s bottom line.
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce….
SO, to be clear… it requires A LOT MORE energy to produce the electric or hybrid car, and takes more energy to “fuel” them.
It is time to stop our green worship of the electric car. It costs us a fortune, cuts little CO2 and surprisingly kills almost twice the number of people compared with regular gasoline cars.
Electric cars’ global-warming benefits are small. It is advertised as a zero-emissions car, but in reality it only shifts emissions to electricity production, with most coming from fossil fuels. As green venture capitalist Vinod Khosla likes to point out, “Electric cars are coal-powered cars.”
The most popular electric car, a Nissan Leaf, over a 90,000-mile lifetime will emit 31 metric tons of CO2, based on emissions from its production, its electricity consumption at average U.S. fuel mix and its ultimate scrapping. A comparable diesel Mercedes CDI A160 over a similar lifetime will emit 3 tons more across its production, diesel consumption and ultimate scrapping.
[….]
Comparing Apples to Apples
[….]
Yes, in both cases the electric car is better, but only by a tiny bit. Avoiding 3 tons of CO2 would cost less than $27 on Europe’s emissions trading market. The annual benefit is about the cost of a cup of coffee. Yet U.S. taxpayers spend up to $7,500 in tax breaks for less than $27 of climate benefits. That’s a bad deal.
(See also WUWT, where Lomborg notes that “…large battery pack [cars]… avoids nothing or even *increases* total CO2 emissions”)
This post will deal with two areas, the main one will be to simply compare the lifetime environmental impact of electric cars to regular gas cars and diesel cars and their carbon footprint. I will add some newer information here as well as combining some older posts herein. The second part is simple, where does the energy come to charge these Electric Vehicles (EVs).
SUBSIDY for CARS
These subsidies mainly benefit the rich, Tesla’s increased sales are directly linked to tax breaks offered to the wealthy on the backs of gas and diesel drivers:
…This means that CDA leader Sybrand Buma’s comments that ‘prosecco-drinking Tesla drivers’ have profited from the tax break at the ‘expense of the ordinary man in the street’ are largely true, the paper said.
It points out that the subsidies for electric cars are mainly funded by higher taxes paid by petrol and diesel car owners…
Follow the sources below to subsidy sites in purchasing an electric vehicle:
California just put another $116 million toward clean vehicle rebates(source)…. Administered by CSE for the California Air Resources Board, the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP) offers up to $15,000 in electric vehicle rebates for the purchase or lease of new, eligible zero-emission and plug-in hybrid light-duty vehicles (source).
A side note. California, as a government, does not make money like a normal business. It CAN ONLY tax people to get the money it spends. If it gets money from the Federal government, THEY [the Federal government] can only tax people or print money [weakening the dollar if it does this too much]. So, this $116-million comes from somewhere, and, is really just a redistribution of peoples money to an area the State thinks is important ~ but! is in fact, based on bad science.
TOYOTA SAYS!
So let’s start with some Prius examples. AUTOMOTIVE NEWS documents a study done by Toyota that bursts greenies bubbles:
The Toyota Prius is among the greenest cars to operate. But manufacturing the famous gasoline-electric hybrid can be a dirty business.
Toyota studied the car’s total environmental impact from factory to junkyard.
Not surprisingly, the fuel-efficient Prius was better than average in its class of vehicles in lifetime emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide, according to Toyota.
But it was slightly worse than average in emissions of nonmethane hydrocarbons and particulate matter. Toyota says this is because producing hybrid-only parts such as motors, inverters and nickel-metal hydride batteries consumes more energy and creates more emissions.
In fact, when looking at the “materials manufacturing” phase of the car’s life cycle, the Prius was worse than the class average across all five emissions categories.
One proponent (now detractor) of EVs is Dr. Ozzie Zehner who has written quite fairly on the issue of alternative energy, and has an open chapter in his book for people to read.
…An environmental activist who once pushed for EVs and now works as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley now calls electric vehicles “unclean at any speed” in a recent article for the engineering journal IEEE Spectrum (via Weasel Zippers and UPI):
The idea of electrifying automobiles to get around their environmental shortcomings isn’t new. Twenty years ago, I myself built a hybrid electric car that could be plugged in or run on natural gas. It wasn’t very fast, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t safe. But I was convinced that cars like mine would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence.
I was wrong.
I’ve come to this conclusion after many years of studying environmental issues more deeply and taking note of some important questions we need to ask ourselves as concerned citizens. Mine is an unpopular stance, to be sure. The suggestive power of electric cars is a persuasive force—so persuasive that answering the seemingly simple question “Are electric cars indeed green?” quickly gets complicated.
Ozzie Zehner, who worked on the experimental EV-1 at GM before it got shelved, says some of the complications are due to the economics of science and scientific research. Most of the funding comes from interested parties, which tends to produce research that supports their positions…
The article HotAir references is actually really long, well balanced, and informative. I suggest the serious reader delve in as “Unclean At Any Speed” touches on the many aspects of the alternative energy push right now. One aspect noted in the article is the large rare-earth metals needed (mined) and energy used in the extraction of these and the destruction of large swaths of land mass in order to produce the batteries and magnets involved in EVs.
Prius vs. Hummer
I will combine a graphic from Dr. Zehner article with another noted study comparing the Prius to a Hummer (the better comparison will come later with a diesel and electric cars):
(click to enlarge)
A Prius has a life span of 100,000 miles.
A Hummer has a life span of 300,000 miles.
Over its lifetime, a Prius costs $3.25 per mile driven.
In contrast, the Hummer costs $1.95 per mile driven, and
The Toyota Scion xB costs $0.48 per mile driven.
The original fuel economy estimates for Hybrids were inflated 30% by the EPA.
One of the Prius’s battery factories causes so much environmental damage that NASA uses the lifeless land nearby to simulate moon landings.
Some have called the Hummer/Prius comparison into question, some of which is even hashed out in the comment section of the post where the bullet points are from, fine. (A diesel Hummer H2 would surely beat the total lifespan footprint of the comparison.) But the impact on the environment (note the moon-landing stat) and overall comparisons to diesel’s is what interests me. The author of the above article updated his post with this [for the curious]:
UPDATE: Apparently the Prius was only ranked #12 in overall green-ness, behind several diesels, city roadsters, and smart cars. Experts expect the ranking to be even worse next year.
This brings me to another idea noted in the aforementioned article, even given a growth pattern in alternative fuels diesel in 2030 is still projected to be the best in low impact on the environment:
Environmental Impact
This is an area that might be surprising. At face value, with high gas mileage and low emissions, hybrids seem like the easy answer. But as we have previously covered at Digital Trends, vehicles with batteries may not be nearly as “green” as is often claimed.
This is a complicated issue. Essentially, batteries – particularly lithium-ion batteries – are both incredibly energy intensive and also toxic to produce. This means that the carbon footprint for hybrid production is much larger than a gasoline-only or even diesel-powered car.
In fact, according to some studies, fully electric vehicles have a bigger carbon footprint than diesel powered vehicles in areas where most electricity is produced using fossil fuels.
Modern diesel-cars should not be compared with truck engines that blast clouds of panda-killing soot into the air. Thanks to improvements in technology, current diesel cars are comparable in terms of particulate emissions to any other gasoline-powered car. In fact Volkswagen and Audi’s clean diesel technology makes cars like the Passat TDI cleaner than 93 percent of other cars on the road.
As with price, there will be specific exceptions to this rule, but diesel is greener than hybrid technology.
So diesel hybrids are the ideal for those concerned about the environment. But the rare-earth metals and substances used to make the batteries and magnets are in much less supply than coal, oil, and the like. In fact, in the 70’s it was predicted that we would be running dry of oil this year, but in fact we have at least 200-years worth of supply, the highest ever in the history of man (see point #3). To be clear, the impact on land and energy to get these materials is worse than normal automotive choices:
This section is a response of sorts to Dr. Lomborg, who is interviewed in the opening video. And it is very simple, alternative energy sources create more pollution than they will save (carbon footprint wise).
Thousands of Britain’s wind turbines will create more greenhouse gases than they save, according to potentially devastating scientific research to be published later this year.
The finding, which threatens the entire rationale of the onshore wind farm industry, will be made by Scottish government-funded researchers who devised the standard method used by developers to calculate “carbon payback time” for wind farms on peat soils.
Wind farms are typically built on upland sites, where peat soil is common. In Scotland alone, two thirds of all planned onshore wind development is on peatland. England and Wales also have large numbers of current or proposed peatland wind farms.
But peat is also a massive store of carbon, described as Europe’s equivalent of the tropical rainforest. Peat bogs contain and absorb carbon in the same way as trees and plants — but in much higher quantities.
British peatland stores at least 3.2 billion tons of carbon, making it by far the country’s most important carbon sink and among the most important in the world.
Wind farms, and the miles of new roads and tracks needed to service them, damage or destroy the peat and cause significant loss of carbon to the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change.
[….]
“This is just another way in which wind power is a scam. It couldn’t exist without subsidy. It is driving industry out of Britain and driving people into fuel poverty.”…
Wind power cannot meet demands, and are dependent on weather conditions, as the above graph shows. Here is a snippit of the issue at hand with Germany’s electric grid:
You can see the extreme volatility of wind power. Such volatility plays havoc with the electric grid and makes fossil fuel backup generation more expensive to run because it must constantly change production rate; it cannot be run efficiently. Those constant changes cause production of more emissions than would be produced without having to contend with the quirky wind power contribution.
Gosselin (a US citizen living in Germany, who received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona) notes that “Resistance to wind power in Germany is snowballing.” “The turbines, which the German government says will become the ‘workhorse’ of the German power industry, ran at over 50% of their rated capacity only for 461 hours [out of a possible 8,766], or just 5.2% of the time.”
In addition to the unreliable power produced by allegedly “green” wind power, it is becoming increasingly obvious that wind generation is taking a large toll on wildlife and has deleterious effects on human health.
[….]
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and American Bird Conservancy say wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese and other birds every year in the United States, along with countless insect-eating bats. Wind turbines killed 600000 bats last year.
“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 global warming
alarmism and former NASA climate chief)
(LINK TO ARTICLE IN POWER PLANT PICS)
Put another way:
“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge” ~ George Gilder
Interview by Dennis Prager {Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works. Only the free-market can do this. [See my post on Capitalism.]}
….But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.
Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world’s largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost 1C as more turbines are built.
This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms.
It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.
It is reported China is now erecting 36 wind turbines every day and Texas is the largest producer of wind power in the US.
Liming Zhou, Research Associate Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of New York, who led the study, said further research is needed into the affect of the new technology on the wider environment.
“Wind energy is among the world’s fastest growing sources of energy. The US wind industry has experienced a remarkably rapid expansion of capacity in recent years,” he said. “While converting wind’s kinetic energy into electricity, wind turbines modify surface-atmosphere exchanges and transfer of energy, momentum, mass and moisture within the atmosphere. These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.”
The study, published in Nature, found a “significant warming trend” of up to 0.72C (1.37F) per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to near-by non-wind-farm regions.
The team studied satellite data showing land surface temperature in west-central Texas….
….According to Prinn and Wang, this temperature increase occurs because the wind turbines affect two processes that play critical roles in determining surface temperature and atmospheric circulation: vertical turbulent motion and horizontal heat transport. Both processes are responsible for moving heat away from Earth’s surface.
In the analysis, the wind turbines on land reduced wind speed, particularly on the downwind side of the wind farms, which reduced the strength of the turbulent motion and horizontal heat transport processes. This resulted in less heat being transported to the upper parts of the atmosphere, as well as to other regions farther away from the wind farms….
Not only do wind farms kill off high-profile bird species like golden and bald eagles and California condors, the farms also cause global warming. After hundreds of millions in blown taxpayer money and thousands of dead birds the latest research shows that wind farms cause warming. Reuters reported, via Free Republic:
Large wind farms might have a warming effect on the local climate, research in the United States showed on Sunday, casting a shadow over the long-term sustainability of wind power…
…The world’s wind farms last year had the capacity to produce 238 gigawatt of electricity at any one time. That was a 21 percent rise on 2010 and capacity is expected to reach nearly 500 gigawatt by the end of 2016 as more, and bigger, farms spring up, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany analysed the satellite data of areas around large wind farms in Texas, where four of the world’s largest farms are located, over the period 2003 to 2011.
The results, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, showed a warming trend of up to 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade in areas over the farms, compared with nearby regions without the farms.
“We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms,” the study said. The temperature change could be due to the effects of the energy expelled by farms and the movement and turbulence generated by turbine rotors, it said.
“These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate,” the authors said.
But the Democrats will continue to dump billions into the costly energy source anyway. It makes them feel good.
Can you imagine the polluted, destroyed world we would have if the left had their way with green energy?
Environazis, like all progressives, care about two things: other people’s money and the power entailed in imposing their ideology. Prominent among the many things they do not care about is the environment, as demonstrated by a monstrosity planned for Loch Ness:
A giant 67 turbine wind farm planned for the mountains overlooking Loch Ness will be an environmental disaster thanks to the sheer quantity of stone which will need to be quarried to construct it, according to the John Muir Trust. In addition, the Trust has warned that the turbines spell ecological disaster for the wet blanket peat-land which covers the area and acts as a huge carbon sink, the Sunday Times has reported.
According to global warming dogma, carbon sinks are crucial in preventing human activity from causing climatic doom.
The planet isn’t the only victim of this ideologically driven enterprise:
Around one million people visit the picturesque Loch Ness, nestled in the highlands of Scotland each year, bringing about £25 million in revenue with them. Most are on the lookout for the infamous monster, but if Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) get their way the tourists will have something else to look at: the Stronelairg wind farm – 67 turbines, each 443ft high, peppered across the Monadhlaith mountains overlooking the Loch.
Is “green” energy, particularly wind and solar energy, the solution to our climate and energy problems? Or should we be relying on things like natural gas, nuclear energy, and even coal for our energy needs and environmental obligations? Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress explains.
NEW INFORMATION on the low frequency noise made by wind farms shows a direct connection to the health of ones heart.
Interviewed in Allgemeine-Zeitung, Vahl said that the Low Frequency Noise generated by wind turbines can weaken the heart muscle and change the blood flow.
Prof. Wahl became interested in infrasound and its impact on health after a friend who lived near a wind park had complained of feeling continuously sick. It is known that all around the world people living near wind parks often experience health issues – some being severe.
The group led by Prof. Vahl conducted an experiment to find out if infrasound has an effect on heart muscle strength. Under the measurement conditions, the force developed by isolated heart muscle was up to 20 percent less.
The strength of the heart muscle is important in the event the aortic valve becomes caked up and thus more narrow. According to Dr. Vahl: “This changes the blood flow and the flow noise.”
Now researchers are discussing whether these changes can pose an additional risk to the function of the heart, the Allgemeine Zeitung reported.
Citing the results, Prof. Vahl said: “The fundamental question of whether infrasound can affect the heart muscle has been answered.”
The researchers conclude: “We are at the very beginning, but we can imagine that long-term impact of infrasound causes health problems. The silent noise of infrasound acts like a heart jammer.”
There has long been anecdotal evidence that wind turbines are injurious to human health. I first heard these stories myself on a visit to Australia in 2012 when I met several people who had experienced serious health problems from the effects of wind turbine infrasound – and had been forced to abandon their homes. Subsequently, I also spoke to people in the UK who were also victims of Wind Turbine Syndrome.
You can read the first report I wrote on the subject here.
The wind industry is a massive class action suit waiting to happen. [Especially now that the World Health Organisation has confirmed the health risks – which, of course, just like Big Tobacco, Big Wind has been covering up for years] Indeed, of all the scandals to emerge from the great global warming scam, the wind industry is in my view the worst….
GOOGLE
This realization has hit Google scientists squarely in the common sense thinking center. Google (and Apple) had grand dreams of going 100%-powered by alternative means. They have all but given up:
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
I must say I’m personally surprised at the conclusion of this study. I genuinely thought that we were maybe a few solar innovations and battery technology breakthroughs away from truly viable solar power. But if this study is to be believed, solar and other renewables will never in the foreseeable future deliver meaningful amounts of energy.
Low-Tech Magazine notes that new “research shows, albeit unintentional, that generating electricity with solar panels can also be a very bad idea. In some cases, producing electricity by solar panels releases more greenhouse gases than producing electricity by gas or even coal.” Continuing, they point out that…
Producing electricity from solar cells reduces air pollutants and greenhouse gases by about 90 percent in comparison to using conventional fossil fuel technologies, claims a study called “Emissions from Photovoltaic Life Cycles”, to be published this month in “Environmental Science & Technology”. Good news, it seems, until one reads the report itself. The researchers come up with a solid set of figures. However, they interpret them in a rather optimistic way. Some recalculations (skip this article if you get annoyed by numbers) produce striking conclusions.
Solar panels don’t come falling out of the sky – they have to be manufactured. Similar to computer chips, this is a dirty and energy-intensive process. First, raw materials have to be mined: quartz sand for silicon cells, metal ore for thin film cells. Next, these materials have to be treated, following different steps (in the case of silicon cells these are purification, crystallization and wafering). Finally, these upgraded materials have to be manufactured into solar cells, and assembled into modules. All these processes produce air pollution and heavy metal emissions, and they consume energy – which brings about more air pollution, heavy metal emissions and also greenhouse gases.
So an electrical grid powered by alternative fuels or “renewable energy is really a pipe-dream. Take the projections of that giant bird killing plant on the California-Nevada border:
….A solar power plant in the Mojave Desert that’s attracted negative attention for its injuries to birds is producing a whole lot less power than it’s supposed to, according to Energy Department figures.
According to stats from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a number-crunching branch of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in San Bernardino County has produced only about a quarter of the power it’s supposed to, with both less than optimal weather and apparent mechanical issues contributing to the shortfall.
[….]
As Danko points out, Ivanpah’s owners have recently sought extensions on the repayment schedule for the $1.6 billion in government-backed loans that paid for Ivanpah’s construction, hoping to delay writing checks until the firms can secure a government grant they hope to use to pay down the loan… .
In an excellent post linking to a German documentary (30-minutes) and study showing the devastation to Chili of lithium mining, we find the following:
German ZDF public television recently broadcast a reportshowing how electric cars are a far cry from being what they are all cracked up to be by green activists.
The report titled: “Batteries in twilight – The dark side of e-mobility” [now not available] shows how the mining of raw materials needed for producing the massive automobile batteries is highly destructive to the environment. For example, two thirds of the cobalt currently comes from the Congo, where the mining rights have been acquired by China. Other materials needed include manganese, lithium and graphite.
Every electric car battery needs about 20 – 30 kg of lithium.
The mining of the raw materials often takes place in third world countries where workers are forced to work under horrendous conditions and no regard is given to protecting the environment. When it comes to “going green”, it seems everything flies out the window….
The production of lithium through evaporation ponds uses a lot of water – around 21 million litres per day. Approximately 2.2 million litres of water is needed to produce one ton of lithium. (EURO NEWS)
AGAIN… here is a Facebookpost of the same thing regarding Lithium Fields:
This is a Lithium leach field.
This is what your Electric Car batteries are made of.
It is so neuro-toxic that a bird landing on this stuff dies in minutes.
Take a guess what it does to your nervous system?
Pat yourself on the back for saving the environment.
Chile, 2nd largest lithium producer, is having water-scarcity problems as this technology takes so much water to produce battery-grade lithium. 2000 tons: 1 ton.
And the current version of the “inflation reduction act” wants 100% of EV battery components produced in the US.
Lead, nickel, lithium, cadmium, alkaline, mercury and nickel metal hydride.
Batteries are a collection of things that are extremely deadly.
Alternative fuels/energy is a DIRTY BUSINESS… but the left who live in the seclusion of the New York Times and MSNBC would never know this. I can show a graph showing skyrocketing carbon emissions worldwide for the past decade and that the temperature has dropped during this time by a small amount, and it is like showing them instructions to build an IKEA bookcase with instructions written in Gaelic!
What about the impact and supply of the materials needed to produce batteries? TreeHugger has a good post that mentions some of these environmental pitfalls. These issues involve many devices we use daily (cell phones, lap-top computers, rechargeable batteries, etc.), but add to this burden a mandated or subsidized car industry:
…lithium batteries take a tremendous amount of copper and aluminum to work properly. These metals are needed for the production of the anode & the cathode, cables and battery management systems. Copper and aluminum have to be mined, processes and manufacturing which takes lots of energy, chemicals and water which add to their environmental burden.
[….]
First of all, this study emphasizes that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market. It also states the fact that some of the largest concentrations of Lithium in the world are found in some of the most beautiful and ecologically fragile places, such as The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. The authors note:
“It would be irresponsible to despoil these regions for a material which can only ever be produced in sufficient quantities to serve a niche market of luxury vehicles for the top end of the market. We live in an age of Environmental Responsibility where the folly of the last two hundred years of despoilment of the Earth’s resources are clear to see. We cannot have “Green Cars” that have been produced at the expense of some of the world’s last unspoiled and irreplaceable wilderness. We have a responsibility to rectify our errors and not fall into the same traps as in the past.”
[….]
The report estimates that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market, as demand is rising for competing markets, such as cellular telephones and other electronic devices. At the same time, due to a great concentration of Lithium found in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina (70% of the world’s deposits), the United States and other developed countries needing the material will be subject to geopolitical forces similar to those they have already encountered from the member countries of OPEC…
Click HERE to go to larger file (use mouse wheel to zoom in)
In an excellent article we see the projected demands on other metals involved in the battery and transit goals:
….Regarding the demand for the different minerals, in the case of aluminum, according to our results, the demand for minerals from the rest of the economy would stand out, with the requirement for batteries having little influence. Copper would have a high demand from the rest of the economy, but it would also have a significant demand from vehicles, infrastructure and batteries. Cobalt would be in high demand because of the manufacture of batteries with the exception of the LFP battery that does not have this mineral, in the case of its demand from the rest of the economy it can be stated that it would be important but less influential than the demand for batteries. Lithium would have very high requirements from all the batteries and with a reduced demand from the rest of the economy. Manganese would have an important but contained demand coming from LMO and NMC batteries, since the requirements for this mineral would stand out in the rest of the economy. Finally, nickel would have a high demand from NMC and NCA batteries, but its main demand would come from the rest of the economy.
The batteries that would require the least materials are the NCA and LFP batteries. The NMC battery has been surpassed in performance and mineral usage by the NCA. The LiMnO2 battery has a very poor performance, so it has been doomed to disuse in electric vehicles. In addition, the LFP battery, the only one that does not use critical materials in the cathode (other than lithium), also has poor performance, requiring very large batteries (in size and weight) to match the capacity and power of batteries using cobalt.
Charging infrastructure, rail and copper used in electrified vehicles could add up to more than 17% of the copper reserve requirement in the most unfavourable scenario (high EV) and 7% in the most favourable (degrowth), so these are elements that must be taken into account…..
Are Electric Vehicles really clean? | They run on dirty energy and blood of children as young as 6. | Electric cars drive human rights abuse and child labour. | China is one of the villains in this story. | Are electric carmakers equally guilty too? | Palki Sharma Upadhyay tells you.
…. lithium is also not the only battery ingredient with a dark side. Perhaps the darkest of all is cobalt, which is commonly used, alongside lithium, in the batteries of many electric vehicles.
Worse still, UNICEF estimates 40,000 of the workers in these mines are children under the age of 18, with some as young as 7 years old. Cobalt mining also comes with serious health risks. Chronic exposure to dust containing cobalt can cause the potentially fatal lung disease “hard metal lung disease.” Many fatal accidents have also been caused by mines not being constructed or managed safely.
Clearly then, in the face of such widespread environmental damage and human rights abuses, the ethics of electric vehicles is far more complicated than the expensive car adverts and glowing newspaper headlines would have us believe…..
This is pretty lame. I wonder how many people think this power just comes out of the ground? Perhaps these greentards think this is magic solar power that is leached from the sun and stored in invisible floating Tesla flywheels. Bet that went right over most heads. Anyway this is a real problem for shoppers at WalGREENS. Weather they are asked or not they are subsidizing this climate hoax and paying for the fuel that is getting these FARCE-CARS from point “a” to point “b.”
And there are a lot of tax-monies/incentives used even for the above charging stations. Wiki has some pretty good references in regards to this:
Plug-in conversion kits
The 2009 ARRA provided a tax credit for plug-in electric drive conversion kits. The credit is equal to 10% of the cost of converting a vehicle to a qualified plug-in electric vehicle and in service after February 17, 2009. The maximum amount of the credit is $4,000. The credit does not apply to conversions made after December 31, 2011.[142][149]
Charging equipment
There was (through 2010) a federal tax credit equal to 50% of the cost to buy and install a home-based charging station with a maximum credit of US$2,000 for each station. Businesses qualified for tax credits up to $50,000 for larger installations.[144][150] These credits expired on December 31, 2010, but were extended through 2013 with a reduced tax credit equal to 30% with a maximum credit of up to US$1,000 for each station for individuals and up to US$30,000 for commercial buyers.[][]
Another factor regarding optimal output and electric vehicles is hot and cold weather. I will let a wonderful WIRED MAGAZINE article explain:
…EV drivers have other factors to consider in winter weather: How far they can go, and how long it will take them to recharge.
Cold temperatures can hurt both, especially when it gets as severe as Winter Storm Jaden, which has triggered states of emergency across the country and will subject more than 70 percent of the US population to subzero temperatures over the next few days. That’s because the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs (as well as cellphones and laptops) are very temperature sensitive.
“Batteries are like humans,” says Anna Stefanopoulou, director of the University of Michigan’s Energy Institute. They prefer the same sort of temperature range that people do. Anything below 40 or above 115 degrees Fahrenheit and they’re not going to deliver their peak performance. They like to be around 60 to 80 degrees. As the temperature drops, the electrolyte fluid inside the battery cells becomes more sluggish. “You don’t have as much power when you want to discharge,” says Stefanopoulou. “The situation is even more limited when you want to charge.”
Modern cars are designed to take that into account, with battery thermal management systems that warm or cool a battery. But while an internal combustion engine generates its own heat, which warms the engine and the car occupants, an EV has to find that warmth somewhere else, either scavenging the small amount of heat that motors and inverters make or running a heater. That takes energy, meaning there’s less power available to move the wheels.
Additionally, to protect the battery—the most expensive component of an EV—the onboard computer may limit how it’s used in extreme low temperatures. The Tesla Model S owners manual warns: “In cold weather, some of the stored energy in the Battery may not be available on your drive because the battery is too cold.”…
In a conversation between EV owners and others at WATTS UP WITH THAT, a comment that sums up the above but in a short paragraph, reads:
It’s not just bigger, it’s huge. Unlike an IC powered car, where cold weather won’t really affect it much, an electric car is severely disadvantaged. Drop outside temperatures down to -10 degrees F (not uncommon in Chicago) and that 300 mile range drops to 75 miles. Commute 20 miles to work on a frigid winter morning and 20 miles home in slooow traffic in a snowstorm with lights, wipers, and defroster on hi, and you just might not make it.
And another story of Minnessota doo gooders plans failiung them:
The Twin City buses were supposed to go 150 miles on a single charge, but the actual range was closer to 75 miles.
Minnesota cities worked to shift toward clean energy in public transit, but complications from acquired electric vehicles have prompted significant overhauls and additional expenditures to keep the buses operational.
In Duluth, Minn., technicians installed diesel-powered heaters on electric buses as the city’s electric fleet struggled to perform. In 2015, the city received a $6.3 million federal grant, according to MinnPost, for seven battery-electric buses from Proterra, which were delivered in 2018.
Proterra, which went bankrupt in August, sold 550 buses. The company enjoyed outspoken support from the Biden administration, but the buses have given transit districts across the country extensive problems. Many of the buses, which were purchased with sizable federal grants, have broken down, and repairs have been slow going as a result of a lack of parts.
The Proterra buses in Duluth struggled to make it up steep hills and to keep riders warm in winter. Proterra technicians installed diesel-powered heaters on the buses and increased the battery capacity so they could handle steep hills and subzero temperatures, which degrade the performance of electric vehicles.
In the Twin Cities, meanwhile, the transit department received another $1.7 million federal grant for eight more electric buses from Canada-based New Flyer. The Twin City buses were supposed to go 150 miles on a single charge, but the actual range was closer to 75 miles. The buses further failed to meet 20% of their scheduled operating miles because of needed battery replacements. In 2021, the buses were out of service for most of the year because of charging station issues at the garage…..
Reality is a Bitch!
THE DAILY MAIL notes that “[e]lectric cars have 40 per cent less range when the temperature dips below freezing, new research has revealed.” Wow. Canadians are well-aware of the issue — as are the people in the northern states.
IN~OTHER~WORDS, this “venture is a giant boondoggle and these charging-stations would never survive outside of transferring wealth from business owners and those that drive the economy to cover this failure of a “choice.”
AGAIN:
“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge” — George Gilder
Interview by Dennis Prager {Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works. Only the free-market can do this. [See my post on Capitalism.]}
References for the above bullet point can be found here: “ENERGY TRANSITION”
The bottom line is that when it is needed most (extremely hot or extremely cold), wind has failed Texas, and instead of these failures being lionized in a national grid and subsidized ad infinitum.
Top German economist Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Hans-Werner Sinn says supplying Germany’s energy needs with wind and sun is “disillusionment”…. In Dr. Sinn shows the failure (cost, promises vs. reality) of Germany’s endeavor, and like Texas is now asking, Dr. Sinn notes: “How much volatile power can the power grid take?”
[wind]…Sinn shows just how volatile wind and solar energies in Germany are, using 2014 as an example. At the time Germany had installed just over 24,000 turbines with a total rated capacity of almost 36 gigawatts: [GRAPH]However those turbines delivered on average only 5.85 gigawatts, well under 20%…
[solar]…Installed in Germany in 2014 were 37.34 gigawatts of rated solar capacity. Delivered however were merely a tenth of that amount, an average of 3.70 gigawatts. What is does, says Sinn: [GRAPH]
[wind & solar]…It costs a horrendous sum of money, reduces standard of living and blights the landscape. This simply cannot be!”
Thank gawd Texas is set to improve their dilemma for future times. They are at a crossroads… invest in more failure, or invest in nuclear and fossil fuels. Also remember that the experts told us children would forget what snow looks like… lol. (More at NO TRICK ZONE)
Rumble — the green energy industry has hijacked civilization, the environmental movement, and common sense. (See Real Climate Science’s posts HERE, and HERE)
Tony Heller notes about the following: “The helicopter is working just fine!”
Chuck DeVore is interviewed by Larry Elder on these (and more) topics regarding California’s regulatory arm and environmental groups and the affect they have on forest health, power grids, and the rising cost for the poor. The conversation is based in large part on these two articles:
California’s Climate Extremism: The pursuit of environmental purity in the Golden State does nothing to reverse global warming—but it’s costing the poor and middle class dearly.
In the above two article (and the ones to follow) are detailed failures of our state legislature (a super majority in both houses are Democrats) to bring California into the 21st century.
These policies of pushing alternative energy goals retards the power grid, and hurts the poor the most where it counts — the pocket book:
These are important topics that SHOULD be looked into by Californians. However, the urge to FEEL “angelic” (on the side of angels) far outweighs the reality of the road we are paving. Here is the “CS LEWIS” of politics from a related post: “Deadly Altruism Marks the Left ~ Illiberal Egalitarianism and the NYFD“
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the proprietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.†
* No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
†As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 116-117, 12
I wanted to share two articles to exemplify and introduction to a HERITAGE FOUNDATION article about competition between states. The first is this article found over at HOT AIR, and it shows the damage that distortions to supply and demand for some sort of egalitarian or environmental concern can have on productive endeavors that increase the wealth of the common man. Wealth creation in other words:
If you know anything about New York in the modern era (both the state and the Big Apple), you’re likely aware that it’s not exactly a friendly landscape for the oil and gas industry. The “Keep it in the ground” crowd has a lot of influence with the Democrats who control the government. That[‘s] why, back in 2013, when the new Constitution Pipeline was proposed to carry natural gas from Pennsylvania’s rich shale oil fields to New York, activists were able to block the construction despite it already having been approved by federal regulators. Similarly, when National Grid (the local energy consortium) requested an extension to the Williams Co. Transco pipeline, they were also tied up because of the outcry from environmental activists.
Here comes the surprise that nobody could have possibly seen coming. The city and its surrounding downstate region are still expanding with new construction projects, but their energy suppliers have told them that they will not be able to supply natural gas to any new customers because they’re already at capacity. (NY Post)
Long Islanders were recently hit with bad news. National Grid, which provides natural gas for nearly 600,000 Long Island residents, announced it won’t be able to provide fuel for new customers if the proposed Williams Co. Transco pipeline expansion isn’t approved by May 15.
Earlier this year, energy company Con Ed imposed a similar moratorium on new natural-gas service in parts of Westchester County due to limited capacity on existing pipelines. These crises are completely avoidable…
For too long, politicians like Gov. Andrew Cuomo and their ill-considered energy policies have hampered the development of safe, efficient energy infrastructure, subjecting American consumers to unnecessarily high energy costs and unreliable service.
So you don’t want pipelines, eh? But you say you’d like to build more houses, apartments and office buildings? Well, you’d better figure out how to cook your food and heat your living spaces with solar panels pretty quickly because (to borrow a phrase from GoT) winter is coming. And so is lunchtime…..
The second article deals with on the one hand a Utopian [mis]understanding of alternative energy and it’s own “supply-and-demand” features built into the environmentalist hypothesis (that in the end do not fit reality). I have said for years that the supply of heavy metals and lithium which are the main ingredient to make power cells for cell phones and laptops (small/reasonable), to a whole swath of them in rows in electric cars (unreasonable).
Let me explain why I just said “unreasonable.” These ventures with Tesla and other manufacturers of electric vehicles are not a “supply-and-demand” by the free market. These ventures into wind, solar, and electric vehicles ONLY EXIST because our government has funded their “viability” in a world that if left to stand on their own would go out of business. The technology is old and never really worked, and the only people that buy Teslas, as an example, are the rich, and they are given a form of welfare to do so. (In other words, the rich are getting a form of bailout by environmentalists that say the rich are ruining the environment.)
“Green” advocates aspire to power the entire U.S. electrical system with wind and solar energy. How are they going to do that, given that wind turbines produce electricity only around 40% of the time, and solar panels produce electricity, in most areas, less than 25% of the time? The truthful answer is that whenever utilities build (or contract with) a wind farm or a solar installation, they also build a natural gas plant to provide electricity during the majority of the time when the “green” resources are idle. This is why wind and solar energy, unlike nuclear power, actually lock us into fossil fuel use for the indefinite future.
Of course, green power advocates don’t admit that they plan on using natural gas forever. They hold out hope that electricity produced by wind and solar facilities will be stored in batteries–giant ones, I assume–so that it can be used when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. No such batteries exist, of course, which is why they are not already in use. And any existing or foreseeable battery technology would rely on vast amounts of lithium, which must be mined.
Recently, the Australia-based firm Battery Mineral Resources Ltd. asked the federal government for permission to drill four exploratory wells to see if the hot, salty brine beneath the valley floor contains economically viable concentrations of lithium. …
The drilling request has generated strong opposition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Defenders of Wildlife, who say the drilling project would be an initial step toward the creation of a full-scale lithium mining operation.
That is the idea, I suppose.
[….]
Does it matter? There is great demand for lithium used in existing technologies–phones, laptops, electric vehicles, and so on. But the idea that batteries of any foreseeable design will combine with wind turbines and solar panels to satisfy America’s need for electricity is a fantasy. For one thing, batteries of the requisite capacity would be prohibitively expensive. It has been calculated that, using the most advanced battery technology on the market, Tesla’s 100 MW, 129 MWh battery in use in South Australia, it would cost $133 billion to store the electricity needs of my state, Minnesota, for 24 hours. That is more than one-third of the state’s annual GDP…..
AGAIN, the immutable law of supply-and-demand will come into play in rising prices of “alternative energy” and scarcity of availability… based on egalitarian environmental concerns.N O W, here is the intro to the HERITAGE FOUNDATION article noting the differences between blue-state policies and red-state policies… much of which is based on supply-and-demand regarding energy needs:
The competition among the states is becoming more intense as businesses become more mobile. Toyota and Boeing are two high-profile employers in America that have crossed state borders because of the policy advantages of one state over another. Toyota moved from high-income-tax California to no-income-tax Texas, and Boeing, based in Washington, a forced-union state, opened a new plant in South Carolina, which has a right-to-work (RTW) law. Texas Governor Rick Perry and California Governor Jerry Brown have openly sparred in recent years about which state is more pro-business. Interstate competition allows governors and legislators to learn from each other about which policies create wealth and which policies diminish wealth inside their borders.
In recent years, governors have generally divided into two competing camps, which we call the “red state model” and the “blue state model,” raising the stakes in this interstate competition. The conservative red state model is predicated on low tax rates, right-to-work laws, light regulation, and pro-energy development policies. This policy strategy is now common in most of the Southern states and the more rural and mountain states. Meanwhile, the liberal blue state model is predominantly found in the Northeast, California, Illinois, Minnesota, and, until recently, Michigan and Ohio. The blue states have doubled down on policies that include high levels of government spending, high income tax rates on the rich, generous welfare benefits, forced-union requirements, super-minimum-wage laws, and restrictions on oil and gas drilling.
In no area are the effects of these competing models more evident than in tax policy changes of recent years. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, and Oregon have raised their income tax rates on “the rich” since 2008.[1] In four of these states, the combined state and local income tax rate exceeds 10 percent, reaching 13.3 percent in California and 12.7 percent in New York.[2] Meanwhile, the “red states” of Arizona, Arkansas,[3] Kansas,[4] Missouri,[5] North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Idaho[6] have cut their tax rates. This has widened the income tax differential between blue states and red states for businesses and upper-income families.
Similarly, red states such as Oklahoma, Texas, and North Dakota have embraced the oil and gas drilling revolution in America. Blue states such as New York, Vermont, Illinois, and California have resisted it. Blue states have raised their minimum wages; red states generally have not.
The answer is that the states’ policy choices on taxes, regulation, energy policy, labor laws, educational choice, and so forth have a large and in most cases a statistically significant impact on the prosperity of states over each 10-year time frame examined on a rolling basis from 1970 to 2012. There are always exceptions to the rule, but in most cases the red state model is substantially outperforming the blue state model.
We find in particular that two policies matter most. Right-to-work states substantially outperform non–right-to-work states, and states with no or low income taxes have a much better economic record than high-income-tax states…..
WTH is wrong with California?? Oh yeah, D E M O C R A T S:
Due to moonbattery, California is headed off the rails; let’s hope it doesn’t take the rest of the economy with it. The irresponsible kook Gavin Newsom — who has promised free healthcareto any illegal aliens who can sneak into the state — hasn’t even taken office as Governor yet, and plans to impose absolute lunacy are already underway:
The state assembly on Tuesday passed S.B. 100, a proposal to transition California to 100 percent emissions-free electricity sources by 2045.
You can’t run the world’s fifth largest economy on wind turbines, solar panels, and pious green thoughts….
The DAILY CALLER discusses another great reversal of Obama Era regulations meant to choose winners and losers:
…..Wind turbines kill hundreds of thousands of birds every year, and thermal solar plants in California have scorched hundreds more. These killings are unintentional, and represent a small percentage of accidental bird kills overall.
But while wind turbines and solar arrays killed migratory birds, the Obama administration exempted them from prosecution for years.
The Obama administration prosecuted more than 200 cases from 2009 to April 2013 involving the taking of protected birds and eagles, but never brought wind turbines to task, the Associated Press found.
Obama officials, however, did fine oil and gas companies for unintentionally killing birds. For example, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in a 2009 federal court case to charges of killing 85 federally protected birds and agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.
PacifiCorp was fined in 2009 for killing birds and paid $1.4 million in fines and restitution for the killing of 232 eagles in Wyoming that were electrocuted by power lines.
In fact the Obama administration didn’t prosecute wind power producers until Nov. 2013 for bird deaths at wind farms when they ordered a subsidiary of Duke Energy pay $1 million in fines….
“We are experiencing a state-wide outage which means we have no supply from the upstream transmission network,” electricity distributor SA Power Networks told clients late Wednesday.
In an unprecedented development, the state was cut-off from the national electricity network, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said “resulting in a state-wide power outage in South Australia”. As a result, the entire electricity market in the state had been suspended as it sought to work with electricity transmission company ElectraNet “to identify and understand the severity of the fault, as well as determine a power restoration time”.
[….]
The extensive disruption follows the narrow avoidance of widespread blackouts in South Australia in July. At that time, the state government brought pressure to bear on a local power company for an idled power station to be restarted to avoid potential disruptions, following a lack of electricity generated from wind and solar sources at a time when it was unable to “import” sufficient supply from Victoria.
But Wednesday’s event will trigger renewed debate over the state’s heavy reliance on renewable energy which has forced the closure of uncompetitive power stations, putting the electricity network in South Australia under stress.
[….]
These issues are different to those South Australia is battling at the moment. But the increasing complexity of electricity networks, which are dealing with a more diverse location of power generators such as wind farms in remote locations rather than a small number of big power stations, means that at times of stress such as extreme storms which occurred in the state on Wednesday, outages can take longer to resolve .
South Australia relies more heavily on renewable power than any other region in the developed world. This has put it at the forefront of confronting, and resolving, the issues involved — as Wednesday’s storm has served to remind its residents.
Between January 9 and February 4 this year, 29 sperm whales got stranded and died on English, German and Dutch beaches. Environmentalists and the news media offered multiple explanations – except the most obvious and likely one: offshore wind farms.
Indeed, that area has the world’s biggest concentration of offshore wind turbines, and there is ample evidence that their acoustic pollution can interfere with whale communication and navigation.
However, Britain’s Guardian looked for answers everywhere but in the right place. That’s not surprising, as it tends to support wind energy no matter the cost to people or the environment. After consulting with a marine environmental group, the paper concluded: “The North Sea acts as a trap.… It’s virtually impossible for [whales] to find their way out through the narrow English Channel.”
No it’s not. These intelligent animals would naturally have found their way to and through the Channel by simply following the coast of England or continental Europe. But the author seems determined to pursue his “explanation,” even when it becomes increasingly illogical. “The [trapped] whales become dehydrated because they obtain their water from squid,” he argues, before acknowledging that “the dead Dutch and German animals were well-fed,” and that the North Sea’s squid population has increased in recent years.
The article discards Royal Navy sonar and explosives, because “big naval exercises in UK waters are unusual in midwinter.” Finally, the author concludes with this quote from his purported expert: “When there’s a mass stranding, it’s always wise to look at possible human effects. But, at the moment, I don’t see anything pointing in that direction.” He should look a bit harder. Not everyone is so blind.
Indeed, “researchers at the University of St. Andrews have found that the noise made by offshore wind farms can interfere with a whale’s sonar, and can in tragic cases see them driven onto beaches where they often die,” a UK Daily Mail article observed….
[….]
Modern 8-megawatt offshore turbines are 656 feet (200 meters) above the waves; their rotating blades sweep across a 538-foot (164-meter) diameter. Those enormous blades create powerful pulsating infrasound and exact a toll on many species of marine birds, and even on bats that are attracted to the turbines as far as 9 miles (14 km) offshore.
In a February 2005 letter, the Massachusetts Audubon Society estimated that the proposed Cape Cod wind project alone would kill up to 6,600 marine birds each year, including the roseate tern, which is on the endangered list.
Do we really want to add marine mammals to the slaughter of birds and bats, by expanding this intermittent, harmful, enormously expensive and heavily subsidized energy source in marine habitats?…
That was Germany… other stories popped up about Whales beaching themselves in Lincolnshire, England. According to the BBC, a fifth whale washed up on shore. So, I was curious about if there are wind farms nearby that would similarly affect these creature environmentalists seem to care so much about. This story from a 2013 Daily Mail article:
