Climate, Climate, and More Climate
What the Proponents of 'Green' Energy Aren't Saying
(Also, see the legislative update at the bottom of this newsletter.)
I imagine you are pretty tired of hearing about climate change and its existential threat. Is the global temperature rising? Is it dangerous? Consider the sources saying it’s a climate emergency. And why. What they propose. What that means to the elites and what it means to the ordinary people. Who and what has the biggest carbon footprint? What will governmental proposals solve?
Let’s look at some of the less publicized aspects. There are plenty of reliable sources with answers out there. You have to search.
I haven’t seen a study on the actual comparison of pros and cons of the Green New Deal. We hear almost daily how we’re killing our planet, but what about other considerations?
‘Green’ energy has a high price, from mining the materials needed to build the wind and solar items, to making the batteries, to disposal of wind turbine blades, solar panels, batteries, and more. And that’s just the financial cost.
Mines, Minerals, and "Green" Energy: A Reality Check. No energy system, in short, is actually “renewable,” since all machines require the continual mining and processing of millions of tons of primary materials and the disposal of hardware that inevitably wears out. Compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy.
What You Need to Know About Biden’s Climate ‘Emergency’ - Unrealistic, expensive, ineffective for the harm it causes, and inaccurate as to the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Just one factor from Congressional testimony by four panel experts - Average global temperatures were roughly 11 degrees Fahrenheit COLDER than they are today (per Zurich University of Applied Science). Stated differently, global temperatures have risen, on average, roughly 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century over the past 20,000 years. [Other sources say 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8 degrees per century.]
Harmful effect on bird and animal populations. While touted as green technology, alternative energy sources are not always Earth friendly. Production of solar panels, for example, results in pollution emitted into the environment. More widely known are the adverse impacts of wind and solar farms on animals, particularly birds.
Understanding cobalt’s human cost. One study in Africa’s Democratic Republic of the Congo shows that social consequences of green energy must be assessed in addition to environmental impacts. They found cobalt mining was associated with increases in violence, substance abuse, food and water insecurity, and physical and mental health challenges. Community members reported losing communal land, farmland and homes, which miners literally dug up in order to extract cobalt. Without farmland, Congolese people were sometimes forced to cross international borders into Zambia just to purchase food.
“You might think of mining as just digging something up,” Young said. “But they are not digging on vacant land. Homelands are dug up. People are literally digging holes in their living room floors. The repercussions of mining can touch almost every aspect of life.” Waste generated from mining cobalt and other metals can pollute water, air and soil, leading to decreased crop yields, contaminated food and water, and respiratory and reproductive health issues. Miners reported that working conditions were unsafe, unfair and stressful. Several workers noted that they feared mineshaft collapses.
Is there really a climate emergency? Here are three videos that you’ll enjoy.
- For a good overview, watch this 5-minute video, Is there really a climate emergency? with Steve Koonin, former Undersecretary for Science in the Obama Administration.
- Here’s one from Mark Mills, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute, What’s Wrong with Wind and Solar. (5 minutes)
- How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment. Michael Schellenberger’s TED Talk (15 minutes)
Mike Huckabee said in his July 16th email, ‘EV could be an okay choice if you have plenty of money to buy a new car, don’t drive much, have a short commute, never take long driving trips, never tow a trailer, and live in a city with lots of high-speed charging stations and no regular blackouts.‘ In the same article he references a study that shows you get less for more. Wait… that doesn’t sound good.
A 172-Year Cycle? This one is very data-intense for those who like the details and stats.
This Forbes article on Massive Ecological Impacts of Renewables, is very informative.
From Nature.com, Climate 'models' are varied, tricky, and require a lot of assumptions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to its credit, has recognized this ‘hot model’ problem. Earth is a complicated system of interconnected oceans, land, ice and atmosphere, and no computer model could ever simulate every aspect of it exactly. Models vary in their complexity, and each makes different assumptions about and approximations of processes that happen on small scales, such as cloud formation.
Why Green Energy is Impossible. Wind and solar are low-intensity energy sources. It takes many acres of wind turbines to produce, on a best-case scenario, what a single power plant can produce. And solar panels are even worse. A single 3 MW wind turbine uses 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum, 2 tons of rare earth elements, and 1,200 tons (2.4 million pounds!) of concrete. If we take seriously the idea of getting all of our electricity from wind and solar, where will all of those materials come from? [As you likely know, it comes from gas, diesel, and coal operated machines. Wind turbines sometimes use generators. Again, back to the electricity required.]
NASA reports that satellites have measured a 25 percent decrease in global acreage burned from 2003 to 2015. (So, that means fires aren’t increasing due to emissions?)
The truth is, in the U.S. we are not at a “record” for wildfire burning by a longshot. Check out the charts in this report, Two Charts Destroy Big Lie About ‘Climate Change’ And Wildfires
Consider this: more than half of the world’s human greenhouse gas emissions are produced by 25 cities, all but two of them in China, none of them in the U.S.
From Alex Epstein's book, ‘Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas - Not Less’:
'Fossil fuels, which provide 80 percent of the world’s energy, have and will continue to have the unique benefit of providing low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people in thousands of places - a benefit that is desperately needed in a world where some 3 billion people still use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator. Contrary to claims that solar and wind are rapidly replacing fossil fuels, fossil fuel use is still growing, while intermittent solar and wind energy, after generations on the market, provide just 3 percent of the world’s energy - and that 3 percent is totally dependent on fossil fuels, especially natural gas, for 24/7 backup. Solar and wind are nowhere near being able to replace the energy that fossil fuels provide today, let alone the far greater amounts of energy humanity needs going forward.'
The Environmental Impact of Lithium Batteries.
Bloomberg, Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills.
Renewable Energy Paradox: Solar Panels and Their Toxic Waste from Interesting Engineering. Cradle-to-grave solar panels are not as "green" as we are led to believe. This article provides answers to several questions. What materials are used to make solar panels? What are the environmental impacts of solar panel production? Are solar panels hazardous to the environment throughout their lifetime? What happens to old solar panels? Can solar PV panels be recycled? Can old solar panels be repurposed or resold? What can be done to deal with the coming solar PV waste problem?
Also from Interesting Engineering: Are EVs really that "clean"? Let's take a look at this very real paradox.
‘Classic Cars,’ says a Motorious headline from late last month, ‘are Greener Than Electric Vehicles. A classic car notching up the national average of 1,200 miles emits 563kg of CO2 a year. For an electric vehicle, the [carbon] footprint is several times greater. A battery-powered Polestar 2 creates 26 tonnes of CO2 during its production, emissions that would take a typical classic more than 46 years to achieve. By which time, the EV’s cutting-edge lithium-ion battery would have long since lost its ability to hold a charge and been consigned to the nearest recycling facility.’
It’s not all about cars and gasoline. The same Issues and Insights article says this about famine:
‘Famine. A presidential ban on chemical fertilizers last year wrecked Sri Lanka’s harvest. Even though the ban was lifted “after widespread protests,” says Reuters, “only a trickle of chemical fertilizers made it to farms, which will likely lead to an annual drop of at least 30% in paddy yields nationwide.” Other media reports indicate that a “spiraling food crisis looms,” in the country. Similar environmental nincompoopery is threatening food production in the agriculturally rich Netherlands, where the government has proposed cutting nitrogen oxide and ammonia emissions by half by 2030.’
International famine, food shortages caused by green initiatives in the news recently - Dutch farmers tell of livestock reduction. Thousands of farmers in the Netherlands protesting proposed emissions reduction rules targeting their fertilizer and livestock were joined this weekend by groups in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland amid fears that the so-called “anti-farming” policies could soon spread to their countries as well. Similar rules have caused unrest in other countries, notably Sri Lanka, which was forced to repeal its ban on all chemical fertilizers after less than a year and now faces massive political upheaval. Ted Nordhaus, the executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, a global research center, said in an interview. “And the reaction we're seeing [from the protesters] is pretty representative of the degree to which these ideas are pretty out of touch with the basic, biochemical economic realities of the global agriculture system.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on June 24 that “there is a real risk that multiple famines will be declared in 2022,” adding that “2023 could be even worse.”
People in developing countries are going hungry and shoppers in the U.S. are seeing empty shelves and higher prices. Daren Bakst of the Heritage Foundation explains that the Biden administration's climate and energy policies are at fault.
In Britain, overdependence on wind turbines built to cut carbon emissions leaves inhabitants at the mercy of the weather. When the wind doesn’t blow, the economy doesn’t work.
in Germany, the world’s fourth-biggest economy, calm summer air means turbines stand idle, incapable of producing electricity and jacking up energy prices irrespective of the nation’s equally asinine overdependence on gas supplies from a recalcitrant Russia.
This Limbaugh Letter gives us information on cobalt, lithium, nickel, coal and dangerous waste.
Why aren’t we hearing more about nuclear power?
3 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate. If we believed our own rhetoric about the climate crisis, support for nuclear would be much higher.
Nuclear Power Is The Only Viable Solution To Climate Change
Could 100% Green Energy Destroy the Planet? Rasmussen reports.
Interested in all the Executive Orders Biden has signed?
Are you a veteran, or do you know one? Association of Mature Americans (AMAC) has great veterans’ services.
Watch this public service announcement for New York City’s nuclear plan. (Are they serious?)
Additional sources: https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/newsletters/environment-climate-news, http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Mar22-ECNvWeb.pdf, https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/07/theres-nothing-the-u-s-can-do-to-affect-global-temperature/, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/dutch-farming-protests-spread-eu-costs-climate-goals, https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/interest-in-electric-vehicles-and-low-carbon-fuels-survey-a8457332578/, https://www.westernjournal.com/journalists-tow-camper-behind-electric-truck-end-stunning-failure-make-85-miles/, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/the-real-world-consequences-of-green-extremism, https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/05/confirmed-again-the-green-agenda-is-taking-us-backward/, https://heartlanddailynews.com/2022/07/rip-climate-realist-pat-michaels-ph-d/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Environment+%26+Climate+News%3A+White+House++Disinformation++Campaign+Against+Climate+Policy+Critics+Sparks+Litigation&utm_campaign=ECN+%2807-19-22%29&vgo_ee=5a3ijNJpFf5CkJfQtZI1OtSYFmrMikCwlKFARSZoYAo%3D
Legislative update - Know about and fight the CHIPS Act (H.R. 4346)
Heritage Foundation
Heritage Foundation has been watching versions of this bill for over a year - elements of the CHIPS Act are inherited from the COMPETES Act and USICA. Ultimately, the CHIPS Act is deeply-flawed, and that is why we have issued a KEY VOTE ahead of the Senate’s vote this week.
It’s a $250 billion package with over $52 billion in financial incentives to the highly profitable semiconductor industry. This spending is sold as being necessary for our national security, but the bill does not bar companies that do business in China from receiving the subsidies.
As the Heritage Foundation lays out, because money is fungible, a semiconductor manufacturer can take a subsidy to build a plant in the United States and use that money to bolster their manufacturing operations in China. There should be unanimous opposition to helping China build its industry and infrastructure, yet this legislation may help companies do just that. Listen to what The Heritage Foundation President Dr. Kevin Roberts has to say on the matter.
Until next time…
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