Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The once-greater State of Minnesota is apparently trying to play catch up to the wokesters in California with a new bill introduced in the state House that would ban gasoline powered lawn and garden tools.
The once-greater State of Minnesota is apparently trying to play catch up to the wokesters in California with a new bill introduced in the state House that would ban gasoline powered lawn and garden tools.
The bill was authored by Democrat state Reps. Jerry Newton of Coon Rapids and Heather Edelson of Edina and would take effect on January 1, 2025 with a prohibition on “fossil fuel powered” lawn and garden tools that requires “new lawn and garden equipment sold, offered for sale, or distributed in or into Minnesota must be powered solely by electricity.”
The common tools covered by the ban would be “equipment powered by a spark ignition engine rated at or below 19 kilowatts or 25 gross horsepower” such as a lawnmower, leaf blower, hedge clipper, chainsaw, lawn edger, string trimmer, or brush cutter.
While plug-in or battery-powered hedge trimmers, lawnmowers, or leaf blowers may be a tenable option for those like Reps. Newton and Edelson who live in the suburbs of the Twin Cities or don’t have much of a yard, most residents in the rest of Minnesota would find non-fossil fuel powered lawn tools useless for their properties. And likely put a serious dent in the profitability of lawn and garden service companies who wouldn’t be able to do as much per day due to downtime needed to recharge their tools or the cost of needing twice the amount of equipment to do the same amount of work as gas-powered tools.
As a writeup in the Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment notes of the proposed ban on “fossil fuel powered” equipment:
According to Bob Vila’s website, this would effectively outlaw any push-mower that is gas-powered, and it would impact most riding lawnmowers, which use engines topping out at 24 horsepower, as well.
While electric leaf blowers or hedge clippers may work fine for urban and suburban dwellers, these tools are entirely insufficient for anyone who needs to do serious work out in the country. Felling trees or cutting firewood on a wood lot with a battery-powered electric chainsaw? Give me a break.
This legislation wisely leaves snowblowers off the list of contraband, but its introduction demonstrates that urban and suburban liberals have no idea how rural Minnesotans live their lives, and it suggests that they don’t care to learn.
It’s hard to imagine hunters (such as those in this writer’s family back home in Minnesota) would be able to find a plug for their electric chainsaw while miles deep into grouse country in order to chop some trees for fire, shelter, or other needs. The only option would be to plug their “green” electric chainsaw into a gas-powered generator which defeats the entire purpose while also illustrating one part of climate warriors’ shortsighted do-goodism. All that electric equipment relies, unsurprisingly, on electricity…which comes from generation plants that are often powered by fossil fuels.
But for the Democrats in control of the Minnesota state House and Senate, pushing policies that are the norm in California and sound like something President Joe Biden would approve of in his crusade to end fossil fuels — regardless of their impact on Minnesota’s businesses and residents — is apparently just fine.
Climate alarmists falsely claim to uphold the sanctity of scientific integrity while simultaneously violating the scientific method by suppressing debate, scientific inquiry, and the free exchange of ideas.
Climate alarmists falsely claim to uphold the sanctity of scientific integrity while simultaneously violating the scientific method by suppressing debate, scientific inquiry, and the free exchange of ideas.
Spokespersons for the “Climate Inquisition” (CI) do this, they say, because they have cornered the truth concerning the causes and consequences of climate change. Because of this, the CI tars climate realists and skeptics — those who, because they follow the scientific method, point to various gaps in knowledge about climate and weaknesses in the argument that the earth is on the verge of a climate catastrophe — with various offensive labels, perhaps the most opprobrious being, “climate denier.”
Recently, Roland Lloyd Parry, in an article originally published at AFP and distributed on Yahoo News, titled “Politics, cash, fame: what motivates climate change deniers,” jumped on the ad hominem bandwagon, claiming that climate skeptics are purely motivated by greed and fame.
Parry and the people he interviewed for the article use one of the most common and lazy accusations against climate change realists: that they are in the pocket of “Big Oil” and other corporations, seeking fame and fortune. These claims lack any basis in truth, which is why evidence of such a connection is rarely, if ever, provided. Of course, Parry provided nothing of substance; just opinions of some people who have made careers out of smearing climate realists.
In reality, climate realists such as the Heartland Institute and the other organizations dedicated to the promotion of providing sound policy founded in solid science, receive a negligible amount of funding compared to the vast amount of money invested in doomsaying climate research and climate-related political causes. Most accusers are unable to look at themselves in a mirror and see that if anyone is being bought and paid for in the climate debate, it is they.
Parry, for instance, seemingly fails to recognize that people he interviewed for the article, John Cook, and Stephan Lewandowsky, have a long history of unscrupulous shenanigans against climate skeptics that could only be described as “slime tactics.”
For example, John Cook, a former cartoonist, now a postdoctoral research fellow with the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University, got where he is simply by bashing climate skeptics. His tactics included trying to sneak into a 2019 Washington, D.C. climate conference hosted by the Heartland Institute. Cook claimed to be representing the Weather Channel. Yet, his ruse failed. When he was ejected from the event, his film crew recorded the “faux outrage” he expressed for being denied entrance to a venue he was not cleared or qualified to attend as a previously registered journalist.
His partner in crime, Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor of Psychology at University of Bristol, has also made a career of hampering the pursuit of climate truth by bashing climate realists. His actions have arguably been even more nefarious than Cook’s — he has abused his credentials as a professional psychologist by remotely diagnosing the motives of climate skeptics, asserting that realists suffer from a variety of “mental disorders” without ever actually interviewing them, or disclosing his own biases.
This is a clear violation of the canons of the medical ethics of psychological practice. Lewandowsky’s misbehavior was so egregious that a paper he wrote on the psychology of those who reject claims that a climate catastrophe is in the offing was retracted by the science journal it was published in. This happened not just once, but twice. In another paper, Lewandowsky tried to claim climate skeptics’ ideas were akin to the false belief system displayed by moon landing deniers. Other scientists wrote scathing reviews of Lewandowsky and his methods.
Despite these broad ethical breaches, Parry seems to think that Cook and Lewandowsky are trustworthy. Parry also mimicked the same slimy technique used by Lewandowsky when he refused to ask any climate skeptics about their opinions in his article.
Simply put, this is a classic smear tactic, built upon numerous logical fallacies.
Testing, observation, debate, and intellectual exchange are the hallmarks of scientific rigor and societal progress.
Hundreds of articles posted at Climate Realism and dozens of brief informational “fact checks” posted at Climate at a Glance show the evidence — meaning measurable, recorded data — does not support assertions that climate change is making the world less livable, causing more severe or more frequent bouts of extreme weather, or has resulted in an increase in weather or temperature-related deaths. Indeed, the long-term trend data trends show the opposite is occurring.
Rather than address the evidence and valid arguments climate realists present, members of the CI resort to the tactics of dogmatists and authoritarians. When not just hurling names or using ad hominem attacks to discredit climate realists for daring to dispute “their truth” about climate change, they call for censorship, threaten careers, and even propose imprisonment for skeptics.
H.L. Mencken, a great observer of human nature, offers one possible reason for the CI’s behavior, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman offers a more charitable assessment, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” When it comes to climate change, it is sad that alarmists have so deluded themselves. However, it’s unconscionable that they continue to try to deceive everyday Americans, especially students in government-run schools, as well. In truth, there are climate deniers. We call them members of the Climate Inquisition.
Anthony Watts (awatts@heartland.org) is a senior fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. (hsburnett@heartland.org) is director of the Robinson Center.
City based greens, like the Lord Mayor of Sydney, think Australia is electric vehicle ready, that all people need is a little help to make the transition. The reality is very different.
City based greens, like the Lord Mayor of Sydney, think Australia is electric vehicle ready, that all people need is a little help to make the transition. The reality is very different.
EVs will not stop climate change, but we must help motorists make the shift
Clover Moore Lord mayor of Sydney February 20, 2023 — 5.00am
If we are to stop dangerous runaway climate change, we need to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible. Lowering transport emissions – currently around 20 per cent of all our emissions – will be crucial to this task.
We can’t expect electrification of vehicles to be the silver bullet. If we simply swap internal combustion vehicles for EVs we’ll have done more to save the car industry than the planet.
That’s why our first priority is creating a city for walking, cycling and public transport – this is the most effective way to reduce emissions from transport. We must improve accessibility while reducing the amount of driving that is necessary.
Of course, some people are not able to walk, ride a bike or use public transport easily, and we will continue to need service and delivery vehicles. Electrification of high-impact fleets and private vehicles will help complete the journey to net zero transport.
There are obvious barriers to this, not least of which is the sheer cost of electric vehicles. We need federal and state governments to introduce more stringent fuel and emissions standards for vehicles to facilitate the increased availability, affordability and diversity of electric vehicles in Australia. Costs will also go down as technology and scale of production improves
The picture at the top of the page was taken a few days ago by my satnav. Last weekend, on a whim, I decided to do a big country drive, and visit the town of Biggenden.
Biggenden is well worth a visit – one of the friendliest places in Australia.
But getting there is a real challenge. The roads I had to drive to reach this friendly town were an absolute disgrace.
Maryborough, the town featured at the start of the video, is a tourist town, the birthplace of P.L.Travers, author of Mary Poppins. One of Australia’s showpiece country towns.
Unfortunately the satnav erased some of my best clips. I encountered far worse roads than the video above.
My point is, I was driving a heavy off-road vehicle, but I still had to slow down, to avoid damaging the vehicle suspension – the roads were that bad. And there is nothing especially bad about the roads I happened to use. I wasn’t looking for bad roads. Outside cities and heavily populated rural regions, and a handful of major motorways connecting the cities, most of the roads are bad.
Imagine trying to drive an EV along such roads?
Batteries don’t like being jolted and shaken. At the very least, I suspect you could look forward to a significant reduction in battery life, and some major repair bills.
These are not the worst roads Australia has to offer. Biggenden is only 40 miles from the East Coast. Out West, the roads get really bad.
I could imagine grudgingly accepting an EV, if I never wanted to drive outside of big cities like Sydney. But the idea of driving an EV along typical Australian country roads is a joke. Even if there was a charging station on every corner, the ongoing maintenance and repair cost for that low slung weight bearing suspension, and those fragile battery packs, would be unsustainable.
The John Muir Trust supports the Scottish Government’s bold and ambitious net zero by 2045 target and understands the role that renewables, including onshore wind, have in meeting this target.
There was a bit of a discussion in the comments on For Peat’s Sake about the “carbon” payback time associated with windfarms, including some helpful links supplied by commenter “Ryelands”. At around that time, an interesting article appeared on the Shetland News website (of which, more below).
I have decided it is time to look at it again in rather more detail, not least as the issue regained my attention when I became aware of an objection last month by the John Muir Trust to the Shetland Energy Isles wind farm proposal, which reminded me of the Shetland News article.
I think it is interesting that the John Muir Trust has lodged an objection, given that the Trust is largely supportive of the net zero agenda:
The John Muir Trust supports the Scottish Government’s bold and ambitious net zero by 2045 target and understands the role that renewables, including onshore wind, have in meeting this target. We also support the expansion of community renewables for local benefit and therefore the intention of Energy Isles Limited to retain benefits within Shetland.
But then they go on to say this:
However, we believe that the Proposed Development would have an unacceptable impact on an area within the top 10% of wildest areas of Scotland, and the essential nature-based solutions it provides to both the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. As such, we must maintain our objection.
For my purposes in discussing “carbon payback”, however, this is the crux of their objection:
It is claimed that the Proposed Development will have a pay-back period of 1.7 years. This assessment has been made using the Scottish Government’s carbon calculator. However, since beingpublished in 2008 many have recognised that there are significant issues with the calculator. This includes Professor Jo Smith of the University of Aberdeen who was part of the team which createdthe calculator who said that “[t]here’s now more information available that could help reduce two uncertainties: the extent of drainage, and the efficacy of restoration of peatlands. Therefore, I’d completely agree with reviewing it.” Clifton Bain, advisor of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme, said:
‘[t]here’s a risk that impact is being significantly underestimated. I think that’s highly possible, because it’s based on assumptions, based on outdated data, there’s no oversight of how the model isused’ .The commitment by the Scottish Government to provide adequate tools and guidance to inform the assessment of net carbon impacts of development proposals on peatland (Onshore Wind Policy Statement, page 65) appears to suggest a recognition that the Carbon Calculator in its current form does not adequately do this. Without the tools to provide an accurate picture of the emissions being released from constructing wind developments on peat, the pay-back period and the greenhouse gas emission estimates for the Proposed Development should be considered withcaution.
…to support the process of determining wind farm developments in Scotland. The tool’s purpose is to assess, in a comprehensive and consistent way, the carbon impact of wind farm developments. This is done by comparing the carbon costs of wind farm developments with the carbon savings attributable to the wind farm.
So far, so simple, though not surprisingly the carbon calculator tool goes into a fair amount of detail. The opening questions are:
Will the site be drained on construction of the windfarm?
Is the soil at the site highly organic?
Does windfarm construction require a significant amount of deforestation? i.e. is removal in excess of keyholing the turbines within the forest boundary?
There follow three sections dealing with core input data, forestry input data and construction input data, with the core input data alone comprising twelve pages that must be completed. In fairness, this goes into significant detail, with everything from the number and type of turbines, length of access road, depth of peat, size and number of borrow pits, and much more information having to be supplied. There is even a section asking questions about restoration of the site on decommissioning. It is all very impressive-looking.
On 30th June 2021 Ryelands commented:
The Scottish Wind Power Assessment Project published three reports on the destruction of peatland associated with wind-power development back in 2005-2007 and a fourth, “A guide to calculating the CO2 debt and payback time for wind farms” in collaboration with Dr Mike Hall, then of REF. You might find them of interest.
Of these, I think the fourth one referred to, namely the 17 years old report by Dr Mike Hall for the Renewable Energy Foundation, was particularly relevant when looking at the “carbon payback” time for wind farms built on peat. It predates the Scottish government calculator, and covers much of the same ground. It notes that:
Several papers from the wind industry in Denmark and the UK have addressed the first two points with estimates of payback time ranging from about six to 30 months.
Those first two points are:
Emissions arising from fabrication (steel smelting, forging of turbine columns, the manufacture of blades and the electrical and mechanical components);
Emissions arising from construction (transportation of components, quarrying, building foundations, access tracks and hard standings, commissioning)
Then Dr Hall notes:
However, the industry rarely, if ever, considers the last two. This is a fundamental omission as their contribution to the overall CO2 debt, in particular the last, can be far greater than all the others put together. This paper outlines a procedure for quantifying it.
The last two points being:
The indirect loss of CO2 uptake (fixation) by plants originally on the surface of the site but obliterated by construction activity including the destruction of active bog plants on wet sites and deforestation; Emissions due to the indirect, long-term liberation of CO2 from carbon stored in peat due to drying and oxidation processes caused by construction of the site
In fairness, the Scottish Government calculator (developed since publication of Dr Hall’s paper) does ask questions about these aspects of a wind farm development.
Dr Hall then went on to provide a worked example, in respect of the proposed Whinash development in Cumbria, which was described thus:
The Whinash site, which was refused consent following a Public Inquiry in 2006, would have occupied a rounded ridge between the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales National Parks. The total area of 763 hectares is composed of blanket bog in relatively poor condition, purple moor grass/rush pastures and upland heath. Compared to many sites in Wales and Scotland, it has a shallow peat covering and patchy areas of blanket bog. It is deemed to be a medium scenario site and the extent of peat degradation is thus assumed to be 50 metres.
The conclusion arrived at was that the carbon payback time, had the development proceeded, would have been 3.5 years.
Fast forward to the Viking Energy development on Shetland, which presumably used the Scottish government calculator to arrive at a conclusion about “carbon payback”, and we are told:
Updated carbon payback calculations for the wind farm were produced as part of the Environmental Impact Assessment underpinning the variation to the planning consent granted in 2019. The calculations show the expected carbon payback for the development to be less than two years, saving over 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year over the lifetime of the project.
In approving the Viking Energy development, the Scottish Government said:
Ministers are satisfied that the proposed varied development would provide carbon savings, and that these savings would be of an order that weighs in favour of the proposed varied development. There is no evidence to suggest that the proposed varied development would not offer substantial carbon savings.
Thus we see a worked example for a proposed development on a site of degraded peat with a payback time of 3.5 years, but the Viking Energy wind farm (where the developers made hay with the claim that the peat on that site was heavily degraded) with a supposed payback time of less than two years, or a little over half the time in Dr Hall’s worked example. This is despite the fact that pretty much everything connected with the Viking Energy development (including much of the workforce) had to travel (presumably via diesel-powered shipping) to Shetland from the UK mainland and despite the added complication of the undersea cabling required to bring the electricity from the windfarm to the UK mainland. The switchgear for the converter station was manufactured in Germany. The transformers for the converter station were manufactured in Sweden. And as a Viking Energy/SSE glossy brochure happily tells us (it seems that they have no shame), the turbine blades were manufactured by Vestas in Italy, so had to be transported from there to Shetland; the tower sections were manufactured in Spain; the nacelles/hubs/drives were manufactured (with what seems these days to be a sad inevitability) in China. Did the payback calculation take into account the emissions associated with transporting the components half-way round the world in some cases? Did it take into account that the Chinese components will have been manufactured using electricity mostly generated by coal-fired power stations? It seems that something doesn’t add up. At first sight, the Viking Energy development should obviously have a longer – perhaps significantly longer – carbon payback period than that at Whinash in Cumbria, yet – by quite some margin – the opposite is claimed to be the case. Could it be (as the John Muir Trust suggests) that the Scottish government carbon calculator cannot be relied upon?
The report on the Derrybrien bog slide with additional observations regarding blanket peat and windfarms also makes interesting reading. Many of the criticisms contained in the report, though interesting, can probably be disregarded for current purposes, since they are aimed specifically at the way that particular wind farm received planning approval in the Republic of Ireland over two decades ago. One hopes that lessons have been learned, and that such criticisms, though relevant at the time, are now of only historic interest. However, other aspects of the report remain directly relevant today:
Claims are made concerning carbon emissions which are incorrect and present only part of the story. It is suggested that there are no emissions from wind farms and that all carbon-balance issues are favourable. This is not so because vehicles are used to construct and maintain the wind farm and there are emissions associated with construction. While these should form part of the environmental audit, the most important issue at Derrybrien is the release of CO2 from the peat soil as it oxidises during construction and as a result of catastrophic failures. The losses from the October 2003 event alone are equivalent to the energy production of three or four turbines for the lifetime of the project.
The Viking Energy project has already witnessed some peat slides, admittedly minor when compared to the disaster at Derrybrien. However, do we know enough about the CO2 emissions associated with them? Do they have an impact on the development’s carbon payback calculation? The following statement from the report puts the issue very bluntly:
It is difficult to understand the logic of damaging long-term carbon stores to install devices whose purpose is to reduce emissions.
As the authors go on to say:
Even without the events of October 2003, it is too simplistic to talk of a 60 MW wind farm representing such a total saving of carbon emissions. If a true carbon balance is to be calculated, it should include the carbon released from peat excavated for the turbine bases or drainage activities, carbon released during the manufacture of raw materials and turbines components, in the hundreds of truck loads, regular maintenance journeys and in decommissioning the wind farm…
…The story that has unfolded in this report seems to cast doubt on the wisdom of wind farm development on any area of deep blanket peat. Whilst the prospect of a few 15 x 15m undrained holes accommodating turbine bases does not at first sight seem incompatible with the processes that maintain the peat blanket, the reality of wind farm construction and maintenance requires comprehensive disruption of a site’s hydrology through drainage and thus of the peat itself – either relatively safely through wastage or, as the residents of Derrybrien have discovered, through catastrophic failure.
Those comments bring us almost full circle, to the interesting article on the Shetland News website, which I mentioned above. It builds on the story with which I opened this piece, namely the criticism by the John Muir Trust of the Scottish government carbon payback calculator and the limited reliance that should be placed on it. It is dramatically headlined “Experts warn wind farms should not be built on peatlands: With governments pledging to accelerate the construction of onshore wind power until 2030 to help meet climate targets, scientists call for an urgent review of the policy of building turbines on peatlands.”
The problem with the Scottish government calculator is reiterated:
But the government calculator used to reach these figures is flawed, according to experts.
Professor Jo Smith, who led the Aberdeen university team which created the spreadsheet tool, said: “The science has moved forward. There’s now more information available that could help reduce two uncertainties: the extent of drainage, and the efficacy of restoration of peatlands.
“Therefore, I’d completely agree with reviewing it.”
Clifton Bain, advisor of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme, said: “There’s a risk that impact is being significantly underestimated. I think that’s highly possible, because it’s based on assumptions, based on outdated data, there’s no oversight of how the model is used.”
One of the biggest factors in bringing down the carbon payback time from decades to just a few years is how far out the bog will drain as a result of tracks and turbine bases being built on it.
It can be given as low as 10 metres. In Shetland, Viking Energy’s calculations used ranges between 10 and 50m, while Energy Isles, in Yell, used 17-39m.
According to Dr Guadaneth Chico, who has studied peat bog erosion at wind farms in Spain, the impact varies for every peatland but can be “up to hundreds of metres”.
One of the problems is that drainage is hard to evaluate in the short-term, he added. “It’s a long-term habitat. Restoration tends to be monitored for a few years, then we forget about it. But in three years, it doesn’t change much.”
Promises of restoration are also crucial to reaching a short payback time. Degraded peatland emits greenhouse gases at an extraordinary rate – it’s estimated that Shetland’s peat, in poor condition from centuries of over-grazing, cutting and climate, is emitting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2 equivalent every year.
Much (with regard to carbon payback times) depends on the rigour with which promises of peat restoration are carried through by the developer. And this carries its own problems:
Oversight is the job of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), and planning departments within local authorities are struggling with recruitment and workload.
“I have seen estimates on the restoration potential using very high figures, whereas estimates on the damage seem to use low figures,” said Bain.
“This illustrates there’s not consistency in carbon numbers and impacts, and it’s left to the developers’ judgement – there needs to be much clearer guidance on which numbers are used.”
He warned that “otherwise it is potentially possible to inflate numbers for restoration and reduce numbers for damage…”
Does the Scottish government, with its gung-ho attitude to wind farm developments, acknowledge the problem? Barely, and only in its usual weasly manner. A (rather desperate, it seems, in a clutching at straws sort of way) “Scottish Government spokesperson said they “note the limitations” of the payback calculations, but said the calculator still provided “the best available means” to get figures in a “consistent and comparable format”.” That’s not the same thing as saying that the calculator enables the provision of payback calculations that are accurate. It’s not a glowing vote of confidence. But never mind – those windfarms will be built, even on peat, regardless of the damage they cause to the environment.
In the last six months, a study titled Quantifying the land-based opportunity carbon costs of onshore wind farms was published on 20th August 2022. Its abstract tells us:
…the construction of 3848 wind turbines in Scotland generated 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from land use change. On average the emission intensity of land use change in peatland is 560g CO2 kWh−1, in forestry is 88g CO2 kWh−1, in cropland is 45g CO2 kWh−1, and in pastureland is 30g CO2 kWh−1. In the worst land use change scenario, the displacement of Dystrophic basin peat habitats generated 1760g CO2 kWh−1, which is comparable to the life cycle emissions of fossil-fuel technologies such as coal and gas-fired electricity generation.
Sadly, it also reminds us “that, out of the 21 terrestrial habitats identified in Scotland, 14 habitats were affected by the construction of onshore wind farms”, though that’s a different, albeit extremely bothersome, story.
A tabloid interpretation of that study can be found in the Scottish Mail on Sunday here.
Postscript
Whatever the rights and wrongs of claims regarding “carbon payback” times for windfarms, it seems clear that the manufacturers of the turbines are struggling with financial payback. Vestas – one of the manufacturers for Viking Energy – has announced very poor financial results in its 2022 Annual Report. In announcing to shareholders that the board was recommending no dividend payment, its CEO said:
Vestas and the wind industry remained challenged in 2022 as external headwinds and industry immaturity hampered profitability and resulted in unsatisfying financial results for the full year.
As is the way with these things, the rest of his statement went on to put a positive spin on the results, but they are very downbeat. The reality is that revenue declined against the previous year; earnings before interest and tax were “hampered by supply chain disruptions, inflation, higher warranty provisions and offshore impairments”; turbine orders were down 19%; and the company’s strategy is to restore profitability in the “turbine segment”.
Tough times, it seems, with much to review, but that’s for another day.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists set out to address one of the biggest uncertainties about how carbon-rich permafrost will respond to gradual sinking of the land surface as temperatures rise.
IMAGE: ORNL SCIENTISTS CREATED A HIGH-PERFORMANCE SIMULATION OF THE ARCTIC TUNDRA THAT FOUND THE PROCESS OF SOIL SUBSIDENCE DUE TO PERMAFROST THAW WOULD BE SELF-LIMITED IN THE DECADES AHEAD.view more CREDIT: DAVID GRAHAM, ORNL/U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists set out to address one of the biggest uncertainties about how carbon-rich permafrost will respond to gradual sinking of the land surface as temperatures rise. Using a high-performance computer simulation, the research team found that soil subsidence is unlikely to cause rampant thawing in the future.
This permanently frozen landscape in the Arctic tundra, which has kept vast amounts of carbon locked away for thousands of years, is at risk of thawing and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified the possibility of soil subsidence leading to a feedback loop that could trigger a rapid thaw as a major concern in the decades ahead. Accelerated thawing caused by uneven land subsidence has been observed on smaller scales over shorter time frames, but the IPCC’s assessments were uncertain as to what may happen over the long term.
That’s where ORNL stepped in with its Advanced Terrestrial Simulator, or ATS, a highly accurate, physics-based model of the region’s hydrology fed by detailed, real-world measurements to help scientists understand the land’s evolution.
What they found is that even though the ground will continue to sink as big ice deposits melt, the uneven subsidence also leads to a drier landscape and limits the process’s acceleration through the end of the century, as described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Improved drainage results in a drier landscape over a decadal timescale, and the process then becomes self-limiting,” said Scott Painter, who leads the Watershed Systems Modeling group at ORNL.
The scientists focused on a large region of the tundra characterized by ice wedges — long pieces of ice that crack the surface and extend belowground to create polygonal forms in the Arctic landscape. The cryo-hydrology simulations were informed by measurements gathered in the polygonal tundra.
The ATS was first developed for the Department of Energy’s NGEE Arctic project led by ORNL, focused on observations, experiments and modeling of the environmental processes at play in the region to improve climate predictions.
“We looked at the microtopography caused by these ice wedges in the subsurface and how that controls the flow of water,” Painter said. “Ours is the first capability to capture the effect of changing microtopography and represent it in climate models.”
Painter added that the team has a high degree of confidence in the model since it was developed for NGEE Arctic and has been evaluated against the project’s real-world observations.
He noted that most models, including ORNL’s, are in agreement in generally projecting large amounts of carbon thaw in the Arctic as temperatures rise. “But here, we have identified that one of the most worrisome processes, this runaway thawing due to subsidence, is unlikely to occur over a long time frame.”
The study pointed out other implications of a drying landscape. “As the polygonal tundra gets very dry, by the year 2100 it could have ecological impacts for migratory birds, which use these ecosystems as breeding grounds,” Painter said.
Other scientists collaborating on the study include ORNL’s Ethan Coon; Ahmad Jan, formerly of ORNL and now at the NOAA-affiliated Office of Water Prediction; and Julie Jastrow of Argonne National Laboratory.
The research was supported by NGEE Arctic, which is sponsored by the DOE Office of Science’s Biological and Environmental Research Program and led by ORNL, and BER’s Environmental System Science Program at Argonne. NGEE Arctic supported the original development of ATS as well as recent enhancements to incorporate subsidence into the model.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
One of the Government’s leading Net Zero advisers is facing questions over whether he correctly declared his interests after it emerged that his company advised a firm specialising in clean energy projects.
One of the Government’s leading Net Zero advisers is facing questions over whether he correctly declared his interests after it emerged that his company advised a firm specialising in clean energy projects.
Lord Deben, who chairs the climate change committee (CCC), is also the chairman of a consultancy that has worked with an investment firm responsible for financing “environmental infrastructure markets”.
The CCC is a statutory body advising the Government on greenhouse gas emissions targets. In 2019, it recommended that ministers adopt a target for Net Zero greenhouse gases by 2050.
Lord Deben founded and chairs Sancroft, which bills itself as an “international sustainability consultancy”. Last month, Sancroft posted an online job advertisement for a “sustainability/ESG (environmental, social and governance) senior analyst or analyst”. The job advert listed a number of “recent clients” of Sancroft, including a company called Sustainable Development Capital.
According to Sustainable Development Capital LLP’s website, it is a “specialist investment firm” with a “proven track record of financing and developing clean energy, energy efficiency and decentralised energy infrastructure projects”, including in the UK.
“SDCL was launched to facilitate investment into environmental infrastructure markets,” the site says. “It has always focused on investing in projects that are good for the environment, good for people and commercially sustainable. Indeed, it has always said that ‘if it is not commercial, it is not sustainable’”.
However, Sancroft’s role advising the firm is not listed in Lord Deben’s House of Lords register of interest. This register does include other clients of Sancroft, noting that the firm has been “asked by Bain & Company (management consultants) to work with them in advising the Qatari government on their sustainability programme”.
It also notes that Sancroft has advised “Greencoat Capital Ltd on sustainability”. The company, now known as Schroders Greencoat, is a “specialist manager dedicated to the renewable energy infrastructure sector”.
There is also no reference to Sustainable Development Capital in the CCC’s latest register of interests for the 2022-23 financial year, although the register once again mentions the fact that Sancroft has worked with Greencoat Capital.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Graham Stringer, a Labour MP who sits on the Commons science and technology select committee, said Lord Deben should urgently make sure he had correctly registered his interests.
He said: “Politicians, particularly Lords, have got a bad name at the moment, and people who don’t declare their interests are undermining trust in politics.”
Marcus Fysh, a Conservative MP, said: “It’s important to be transparent about these matters. I think it’s a risk that there is the perception of a bias if this stuff is not declared.”
Mr Stringer claimed Lord Deben had “proved resistant about declaring his interests at different bodies” in the past. Full story
We are in the midst of history’s greatest wealth transfer. Government subsidized wind systems, solar arrays, and electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy members of society and rich nations.
“Since 2000, the world has spent more than $5 trillion on green energy. More than 300,000 wind turbines have been erected, millions of solar arrays were installed, more than 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest were cut down to produce biomass fuel, and about three percent of agricultural land is now used to produce biofuel for vehicles.”
We are in the midst of history’s greatest wealth transfer. Government subsidized wind systems, solar arrays, and electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy members of society and rich nations. The poor and middle class pay for green energy programs with higher taxes and higher electricity and energy costs. Developing nations suffer environmental damage to deliver mined materials needed for renewables in rich nations.
Since 2000, the world has spent more than $5 trillion on green energy. More than 300,000 wind turbines have been erected, millions of solar arrays were installed, more than 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest were cut down to produce biomass fuel, and about three percent of agricultural land is now used to produce biofuel for vehicles. The world spends about $1 trillion per year on green energy. Government subsidies run about $200 billion annually, with more than $1 trillion in subsidies spent over the last 20 years.
World leaders obsess over the need for a renewable energy transition to save the planet from human-caused global warming. Governments deliver an endless river of cash to promote adoption of green energy. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided $370 billion in subsidies and loans for renewables and EVs. But renewable subsidies and mandates overwhelmingly favor the rich members of society at the expense of the poor.
Wind systems receive production tax credits, property tax exemptions, and sometimes receive payments even when not generating electricity. Landowners receive as much as $8,000 per turbine each year from leases for wind systems on their land. Lease income can be quite high for a landowner with many turbines. In England, ordinary taxpayers pay hundreds of millions of pounds per year in taxes that are funneled as subsidies to wind companies and wealthy land owners.
In the US, 39 states currently have net metering laws. Net metering provides a credit for electricity generated by rooftop solar systems that is fed back into the grid. Solar generators typically get credits at the retail electricity rate, about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is a subsidized rate, which is more than double the roughly five cents per kilowatt-hour earned by power plants. Apartment residents and homeowners that cannot afford to install rooftop solar pay higher electricity bills to subsidize homes that receive net metering credits. Rooftop solar owners also receive federal and state tax incentives, another wealth transfer from ordinary citizens.
US federal subsidies of up to $7,500 for each electric car purchased, along with additional state subsidies, directly benefit EV buyers. The average price of an EV in the US last year was $66,000, which is out of reach for most drivers. A 2021 University of Chicago study found that California EV owners only drive 5,300 miles per year, less than half the mileage for a typical car. Most electric cars in the US are second cars for the rich.
A mid-size electric car needs a battery that weighs about a 1,000 pounds to provide acceptable driving range. Because of battery weight, EVs tend to be about 50 percent heavier than gasoline cars, which causes increased road damage. But EVs don’t pay the road tax included in the price of every gallon of gasoline. EVs should pay higher road taxes than traditional cars, but today this cost is borne by everyday gasoline car drivers.
Renewable systems require huge amounts of special metals. Electric car batteries need cobalt, nickel, and lithium to achieve high energy density and performance. Magnets in wind turbines require rare earth metals, such as neodymium and dysprosium. Large quantities of copper are essential for EV engines, batteries, wind and solar arrays, and electricity transmission systems to connect to remote wind and solar sites. According to the International Energy Agency, an EV requires about six times the special metals of a gasoline or diesel car. A wind array requires more than ten times the metals of a natural gas power plant on a delivered-electricity basis. The majority of these metals are mined in developing countries.
Almost 70 percent of cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Indonesia produces more than 30 percent of the world’s nickel. Chile produces 28 percent of the copper. China produces 60 percent of the rare earth metals. These nations struggle with serious air and water pollution from mining operations. Workers in mines also suffer from poor working conditions and the use of forced labor and child labor practices. But apparently no cost is too great so that rich people in developed nations can drive a Tesla.
To top it off, the European Union recently approved a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The CBAM will tax goods coming from poor nations which aren’t manufactured using low-carbon processes. CBAM revenues will be a great source of funds for Europe’s green energy programs that benefit the wealthy.
In January, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Washington proposed a wealth tax on billionaires. It’s interesting to note that all seven of these states mandate and heavily subsidize wind and solar arrays and electric vehicles, which transfer wealth from poor and middle-class residents to those same billionaires.
How did something that was considered a slightly oddball theory in the late 80s morph into a multiheaded monster that seems to have every world government, including ours, in its thrall?
The issue of Climate Change stormed across our TV screens at the recent federal election (Australia). Funded by a renewables investor, the Climate 200 candidates mopped up – taking eight seats from the major parties.
How did something that was considered a slightly oddball theory in the late 80s morph into a multiheaded monster that seems to have every world government, including ours, in its thrall?
By any measure, the Climate Change industry is huge. It’s quite common to hear people use the term ‘big oil’, but given that the Climate Change industry is now, at $1.5 trillion, rapidly catching up to the oil industry ($2.1 trillion), it’s entirely valid to use the term ‘big climate’. Andrew Urban recently pointed this out, with several cases of people that have cashed in big-time from Climate Change alarmism.
How did it get so big? How did it become the colossus that it now is? As it happens, there is a back story that few people outside of the scientific sector are aware of.
From Jo Nova in 2010 US$. In 2015 Climate Change Business Journal reported: “The $1.5 trillion global “climate change industry” grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008” The $1.5-trillion price tag appears to exclude most of the Big Green environmentalism industry, a $13.4-billion-per-year business in the USA alone.
In simple terms, it was a perfect storm of four factors that all came together in the late 80s. As I was doing my PhD at the time, I got to see this firsthand. Very few people understand this process, largely because those outside the sector don’t know that science is just as prone as any other industry to the shifting sands of zeitgeist – trends that emerge that shape and mould how science is done, funded, and perceived.
These four factors were to revolutionise science, and although not all the changes were bad, their lasting legacy will be the entry of science into political discourse, the grubby touching of research funds by hands soiled by self-interest, greed, and corruption.
Revolutionary Factor 1: Chernobyl Ended Science’s Golden Age
The first of these factors was the accident at Chernobyl in 1986. What? What on earth does Chernobyl have to do with climate change?
The answer is that there is no direct connection. It was, however, the final nail in the coffin of science’s golden age. Coming out of the second world war, science was seen as having the answers to all the world’s ills. It was seen as having won the war (largely due to the atomic bomb) and was the way of the future. This optimism is expressed beautifully in the film A Beautiful Mind where the incoming students at Princeton in 1948 are given a stirring lecture by the mathematician Hellinger of the future of science in the post-war world.
And so science flourished.Antibiotics became readily available, DNA was characterised, and the contraceptive pill introduced a new era of sexual freedom. The synthetic chemical industry also boomed, as did the nuclear power industry. We had wonder chemicals like DDT that eradicated malaria-carrying mosquitoes, aerosol fly sprays, and cheap reliable power thanks to the power of the atom.
But then, over time, mistakes happened, largely because environmental science, as a discipline, didn’t exist. Or, to put it another way, the world was seen as an infinitely-sized bucket into which chemicals could be poured, and the concept of man-made chemicals exerting any influence on the world in which we live just didn’t exist. It just never occurred to anyone.
But then reality began to impinge on this mindset. Amongst other things, the persistence of nonbiodegradable pesticides like DDT became a problem, CFC propellants threatened the ozone layer, and we had Sellafield and Three Mile Island. Neither of these two incidents actually killed anyone but they gave everyone an awful fright.
But Chernobyl was the last straw. Scientists, it seemed, couldn’t be trusted after all. It was the China Syndrome for real.
Revolutionary Factor 2: Global Recession Crashed Research Funding
This mistrust brought with it added scrutiny, and this coincided with the second factor in this list – the worldwide recession in the late 80s (as Paul Keating famously said, the recession we had to have).
The combination of the loss of trust in scientists with the fact that there wasn’t as much money to splash around as before, resulted in a massive change in the emphasis of scientific research. Before this time it was pretty easy to get funding for any pet project that you had, and you didn’t have to you justify it much in terms of its importance or relevance. But after this time, suddenly funds became much more difficult to get. To get funding, you had to prove the relevance of your research. You had to justify why it was important in terms practical outcomes.
In scientific terms, we could say that the emphasis switched from pure research to applied research.
This change in emphasis had a dramatic effect on university faculties. Prior to this time if you went onto any campus you would find a science faculty that contained four departments – physics, chemistry, geology, and biology. When this change from pure to applied research happened, it hit the physics departments hardest. Of the four classic sciences, physics is the most fundamental, and the least applied. That is, it forms the basis on which knowledge in the other three disciplines are developed, but it is not as directly applicable to the real world.
And so, suddenly, people that were either physics academics or postgraduate students had very bleak career prospects. Consequently, from about this time physics departments began to disappear from university campuses, being subsumed into faculties with titles such as ‘Physical Sciences’ and so on. Suddenly, there were a lot of highly qualified physicists looking for work.
Revolutionary Factor 3: Warming Replaced the Cooling Trend
The third factor that came into play at about this time was that the world had started warming again. It cooled from about 1940 until 1975, but by the late 80s a warming trend was emerging. And, as it happens, this fed right into Margaret Thatcher’s political agenda – the fourth and final factor in our list.
Revolutionary Factor 4: Power Struggle Thatcher vs. Coal Unions
Thatcher had an awful problem with coal unions and wanted to break their power. She did this by approaching the Royal Society and essentially saying that she wanted to demonise coal and get people to use nuclear power, and there was money on the table if they could do that.
Thus, the IPCC was born, and every government department around the world devoted to ‘climate science’ dates from about this time.
But who could they employ – the term ‘climate scientist’ didn’t exist. Well, as it happens, questions of heat transfer fall squarely into the lap of physicists, and, oh look, there are plenty of them looking for work. They had a precious job offer if they would just say the right things.
Thus, the discipline of ‘climate science’ was born, degrees were established, and people began selecting it as a career option from the undergraduate level.
Well, so far so good. When new scientific knowledge is revealed, new career paths, and even new language is established. For example, with the advent of electricity in the early 19th Century largely as a result of the efforts of Volta, the term ‘electrician’ was coined.
Climate Science Discredited Early On
But here is where the similarity between ‘climate science’ and other new technologies like electricity (or quantum mechanics or biogenetics) ends. In each of these latter cases, the science has developed from its infancy into a mature discipline, as research and enquiry revealed further information and deeper understandings.
With ‘climate science’, however, the very opposite happened. It was barely a decade old when it was comprehensively disproved, by two discrete mechanisms. That is, it was proven that the notion of CO2 warming the world had no scientific basis, and the computer models that predicted its influence were wrong.
The first of these was the absence of the ‘tropospheric hotspot’ that was predicted by the computer models. Anthony Watts has a very good, even-handed discussion of it on his website.
The second, and more significant study, resulted from a set of ice-core studies from Vladivostok in 1999, that showed that atmospheric CO2 concentration followed temperature changes, not the other way around.
As an Analytical Chemist, it was this second study that struck a chord with me. From the time I first saw Al Gore’s graph with overlaid temperature and CO2 charts, the first question I asked was, ‘How do they know which one is cause and which one is effect? Haven’t they ever heard of Henry’s Law?’
Henry’s Law, for the layman, relates the concentration of a compound in the aqueous phase to its concentration in the vapour phase above it. In simplest terms, the solubility of a gas in a liquid decreases with temperature. That is, the hotter a liquid gets, the less of the gas that can dissolve in it. So if the ocean was heating, it would release CO2 into the atmosphere, resulting in higher gaseous concentrations.
The question of which one is cause and which one is effect is determined simply by which one leads, and which one lags, and the Vladivostok ice cores showed that CO2 changes lagged behind temperature changes by about 10,000 years. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
In other words, the Vladivostok ice core data comprehensively disproves the notion that man-made CO2 is heating the planet. A theory was advanced, accepted by many, but then disproven.
This has happened many times in science, and it is the very mechanism by which scientific knowledge is advanced.
Perhaps the most spectacular example of this is luminiferous ether theory. It was a theory that was spawned by a simple observation. It was observed that if an alarm clock was placed in a glass bell, and a vacuum was drawn, then when the alarm went off, no sound was evident, despite the fact that you could see the hammer striking the bells.
They concluded, correctly, that sound requires air to move through, but light didn’t. Why was the clock still visible in the vacuum? Why, the only explanation possible, it seemed, was that there was some other, as yet unknown, medium through which it moved. Thus, the luminiferous ether was proposed.
This was widely accepted, until Michelson and Morley sought to measure it, in 1887. They discovered, in simple terms, that it just wasn’t there. Thus, the theory was overturned, almost overnight. As it happens it took Michelson and Morley some time to realise the implication of their experiment, but when they did, the conclusion was inescapable – there was no luminiferous ether.
This led to further studies into the nature of light, and before long the photoelectric effect was discovered, and the passage of light through a vacuum was elegantly explained. Thus, the luminiferous ether theory has been consigned to the dustbin of history, along with phlogiston theory and a whole lot of other theories that seemed like a good idea at the time.
Anthropogenic Global Warming Escaped Scientific Death
Why hasn’t that happened to the notion of Anthropogenic Global Warming? Why, when it was discovered that CO2 concentration followed temperature, and not the other way around, didn’t people say ‘temperature is the dog, and CO2 is the tail’? Why, in 2023, is the tail wagging the dog?
The simple answer is that science is no longer driving the bus.
What is happening is the type of positive feedback loop that climate scientists talk about, despite the fact that these things are almost unheard of in the physical world. It is alive and well in politics.
It is always in a government’s interest to create a crisis. It is a well-known political phenomenon that people cling the incumbents in a crisis, and the governments go to great lengths to make people think that they are saving people from the crisis. Many people, for example, attribute John Howard’s success in the 2001 election to the Tampa Crisis, and George W Bush’s popularity shot up after 9/11.
The other side of this feedback loop is that if you are employed to investigate ‘climate change’, well, you’d jolly well better find it, or the government money will dry up.
So if the scientists say the right things, they get employment and ‘research’ funding. The greater the crisis they report on, the happier the government is, and the more money they get paid.
This is the reason that these ‘climate scientists’ avoid scrutiny. They don’t have to justify their research to an ARC or CRC committee. They don’t have to produce results for scrutiny, in order to justify their research. It’s already guaranteed, in perpetuity, with a blank cheque.
No scientist is going to say ‘there is no climate crisis’ or he will be out of a job, and no government is going to say ‘there is no climate crisis’ or they’ll be out on their ear.
Energy to be The Sacrificial Lamb Instead
The consequence of this is an energy crisis. People dying from the cold because they cannot pay their bills. Game shows in the UK now offer the payment of energy bills as a lucrative prize, and here in Australia we face the prospect of skyrocketing energy bills because of the comically inept Chris Bowen, and his massive uncosted plan to completely replace our electricity with renewables.
So what do we do about it? I think there is hope for sanity to return, but we have to prosecute the case in the right way.
The Biden Administration, for its part, withdrew the idea immediately, maintaining they were never planning to impose such a “no-gas-stove” regulatory mandate.
Many were surprised and angered when a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., floated the idea of phasing out new gas stoves and ovens. To many, it seemed random at the time.
The Biden Administration, for its part, withdrew the idea immediately, maintaining they were never planning to impose such a “no-gas-stove” regulatory mandate. This is hardly believable though coming from an administration that has shown a willingness to regulate dishwashers, toilets, showerheads and cars.
Thanks to massive public backlash, it appears this whole matter of a gas stove ban has been placed on the metaphorical back burner. But exaggerated or phony reasons to eradicate consumer products and rights are likely to keep on coming.
The same deceptions being used to justify them, all linked to tackling “climate change”, are still being wielded despite their impacts on our industrial base, economy, habitats and wildlife. It’s all part of an effort to move our energy production to something called “net-zero” – a fanciful notion that society should attempt to reach a goal of putting out “zero” greenhouse emissions to avert a climate catastrophe.
This would necessarily mean changing our production of electricity from coal and natural gas to wind and solar power. They argue this could be done in such a way as to actually boost the economy and move humanity forward to a more sustainable future.
But they’re being less than truthful. Families, schools, hospitals and industries cannot survive when everything is electric and powered by intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar – with electricity costing 30-40 cents per kilowatt-hour, instead of the 12-15 cents we’re paying now. Just the batteries needed to stabilize the increasingly fragile grid and provide backup power for every hour, day or week that wind and sunlight disappear would cost trillions of dollars. Green activists seem to have little clue how “net zero” can actually be achieved.
Basic questions they should be required to answer include: How many wind turbines and solar panels would be needed? How many millions of acres are torn up and in whose backyards should they be placed? How many millions of tons of raw materials are needed, and from which faraway countries will they be obtained because climate agitators bitterly oppose mining and processing in America? The answers aren’t likely to be pretty.
Just meeting New York State’s peak summertime electricity needs, for example, would require the full use of President Biden’s entire offshore wind program – all 30,000 megawatts and 2,500 turbines of it off the mid-Atlantic coast. The state’s battery backup power plan would meet just 0.2% of those electricity requirements, and would require some 300,000 Tesla long-range, half-ton 80-kilowatt-hour battery modules!
Providing metals and minerals for such batteries, as well as other wind and solar technologies would also mean putting aside the Administration’s efforts to address “eco-racism.” That’s because many of these minerals are being imported from developing countries that employ poverty-stricken African, Asian, and Latin American workers – including in some cases child and slave laborers.
Then there are the environmental considerations. Wind and solar wind installations blanket habitats and kill wildlife. Disposing of thousands of 350-foot-long, 60-ton, non-recyclable blades from these turbines requires landfills of unimaginable scales. Wind turbines already kill hundreds of thousands of raptors, other birds, and bats every year, including bald and golden eagles.
The Biden “green energy transition” might put the annual death toll into millions, because the best wind areas are also the best bird areas, along mountainous crests, seacoast, and the Central US Migratory Flyway. Humpback and right whales have been beaching and dying along our Atlantic coast in previously unheard numbers – and offshore wind projects are being investigated as responsible.
Experts say rapid-fire sonar guns used in offshore wind “site characterization” (ocean bottom) surveys frighten and harass whales and affect their communication and navigation abilities. Turbine vibration noise and infrasound from offshore wind installations can also interfere with whale and dolphin sonar and navigation, disorienting them and sending them onto beaches, where they often die.
Oddly, environmentalists who typically demand years of study for mine, pipeline, and drilling proposals are mum when it comes to renewable energy projects. Under glaring double standards, they seem to gloss over the eagle and whale deaths as being incidental, unintentional, and unfortunate – and perhaps a necessary price to be paid for the “greater cause” of stopping climate change and achieving net zero.
Unless the brakes are put on their efforts to push net zero, our planet will be truly endangered. Not from climate change, but from their actions taken to prevent climate change.
Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy grilled a climate witness on Wednesday after the witness said he believes Chinese President Xi Jinping would cooperate on climate issues.
Founding partner at Kepos Capital and chair of the Climate-Related Market Risk subcommittee Dr. Robert Litterman testified Wednesday during a hearing to consider “climate-related economic risks and their costs to the Federal Budget and the Global Economy.”
Kennedy first asked how much it would cost to go carbon neutral by 2050, with Litterman saying he was not sure.
“So you’re advocating we do these things, but you don’t know the ultimate cost?” Kennedy pressed.
“Yes, absolutely, I certainly don’t know the ultimate cost,” Litterman said.
Kennedy then asked another witness, President of the American Action Forum Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the same question, who estimated $50 trillion.
“If we spend $50 trillion … how much will that lower world temperatures?” Kennedy asked, with Holtz-Eakin saying he doesn’t know because it would be contingent on China.
Kennedy then asked Litterman who provided a similar answer, saying it’s about working with other countries, but Kennedy again pressed about the possibility of China and India not cooperating.
“If China and India do not help, I don’t know [how much lower temperatures would be],” Litterman said.
Kennedy then asked Litterman if he believes Xi would do anything “inconsistent with China’s best interests in the name of global climate change?”
“Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy?” Kennedy asked.
“No sir,” Litterman said.
“Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?” Kennedy responded.
“No sir.”
“Do you believe that Jimmy Hoffa died of natural causes?”
“No sir,” Litterman said.
President Joe Biden outlined in 2021 steps the federal government needs to take to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, though questions about how it will be funded and its benefits have arisen.
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