We’re Going ‘Green’ At Our Peril

Rusting Wind Turbines On The Big Island Of Hawaii

I took the photo above in 2012 when my wife and I travelled near the Big Island of Hawaii coast. As you can see, these rusting towers of 'green' energy are a blight on the landscape. Their effective life span is 20 years, and they often deteriorate before that time.

This brings me to what I feel is one of the most dangerous agendas of the modern age. It's something that, ironically, the greenies believe to be an existential threat, and that is climate change or global warming. Initially, global warming was all the rage, but climate change allows alarmists to have a bet both ways. If it gets colder, it's climate change; warmer, it's the same. In their world, "I win, you lose".

However, if we drill down to the fundamental basis behind this whole movement, we can think of it as Anti-humanism. These people have to believe that humans have few redeeming features and that everything that humankind does through growth, development and modernization is evil and destroying the planet. In other words, there aren't many fulfilling values for humanity.

The people pushing for net zero emissions of CO2 are basically stating that it doesn't matter what we do to humanity; it's a means to an end. There is no assessment of what will be the ultimate result, nor do they contemplate any other options. It's full steam ahead, regardless of the consequences.

Oh, the irony. California, that bastion of kookiness, has been telling its citizens not to put their A/Cs below 78 degrees Fahrenheit recently and to limit recharging their electric cars. You see, solar and wind farms can't handle the extra load. In their minds, coal, gas, oil and nuclear power are all evil. 

California is not the only place going down this path. Australia is determined to follow, and Europe is now finding out that it cannot rely on so-called renewables, especially as Russia is putting the screws to their gas supplies. You have to wonder how the leaders of modern civilization can be so irrational in their thoughts and actions.

Humanity cannot survive without oil and gas, and arguably nuclear power––which doesn't emit CO2–should be in the mix.

Deaths From Climate Have Decline Dramatically 

Every time a severe storm, drought or flood occurs, the panic merchant politicians and their media lackeys spew out a narrative using words like 'unprecedented' or 'catastrophic'. The reality is that in the last 100 years, climate-related deaths have decreased by more than 90%. This is despite some warming and an increase in CO2.

CO2 Is Not A Poison

In the atmosphere, CO2 is not a poison; it's necessary for life. In confined spaces like children wearing face masks, studies show CO2 can get to toxic levels of hypercapnia, causing symptoms such as dizziness and increased heart rate. 

CO2 is a trace greenhouse gas in the atmosphere at 0.04%, with about 415 parts per million (ppm). Experiments have been done to see the effects on people raising CO2 to 3,000 ppm. for several hours. The result has been no effect. This is different from breathing and re-breathing CO2 within the confines of a mask.

CO2 is necessary for life. Over the past 100 years, the warming has resulted in more greening of the planet with more plentiful crop yields. It has coincided with a diminution of poverty and a higher standard of living globally.

For those concerned about CO2 emissions, there has been a reduction in the past 20 years in America. Australia has had a slight increase though not dramatic. We have improved the efficiency of our cars and other technological devices, which is a positive.

Renewables Are Not Renewable At All

Wind turbines and solar panels do not make themselves. It takes a lot of energy and material to construct them. Below is a list of what it took for MidAmerican Energy Company to construct one 2.3 megawatt wind turbine:

• required 40 to 100 geo-piers installed for stability

• Set 96,000 pounds of reinforcing steel rebar = 48 tons

• 53 concrete trucks poured foundations.

• Moved 1,650 tons of soil

• natural gas plants to balance intermittent energy

• mining of the ores for iron and steel

• crushing of rocks to make cement/concrete

• fossil fuels in the tons of epoxy, and so on to make the 900 short tons of material

All this for one wind turbine.

Land Use Of Solar And Wind Farms Is Excessive

For two reasons, coal, natural gas and nuclear plants are much more efficient at energy production than wind or solar. They take up much less real estate and have less heat loss, as in the case of solar panels, which have up to 80% heat loss. The irony is that some are concerned that this could impact the climate if constructed on a massive scale.

Here is the acreage needed per megawatt of power produced by the various forms of energy:

Coal: 12.21

Natural Gas: 12.41

Nuclear: 12.71

Solar: 43.5

Wind: 70.64

You can see that wind and solar need five times as much acreage as coal, natural gas and nuclear to produce the same amount of power. However, the figures get even worse because wind and solar depend on the weather's vagaries. So pound for pound, coal, gas and nuclear are much more efficient.

I've travelled through the Texas countryside many times, and in places, there are vast wind farms that overtake the landscape. They are an eyesore. One of these is the Roscoe Wind Farm, one of the largest ones in America. The wind farm is 100,000 acres in size, five times the Manhattan land area. It houses 627 wind turbines with a total capacity of 781 megawatts. Has anyone thought about what a complete conversion––if you could do it––to wind and solar would do to the landscape. 

The U.S. requires a total of 4 terawatts of power. How much is a terawatt? The answer is a million. So America needs 4 million megawatts of power. If we extrapolate for the Roscoe plant, you would need 512,163,892 acres or 800,000 square miles. How big is that? It's roughly the size of Alaska and California combined! 

What about the energy demands of the whole world? The globe consumes over 15 terawatts of power. Based on our calculation above, we would be looking at an area of 3 million square miles of wind farms, which is Australia's land area! Solar farms would take up somewhat less, though still a large land area. What would all that heat reflecting back up into the atmosphere do?

The greenies' big concern is the impact humans have on our planet. As Alex Stein points out in his book Fossil Future, the extremists want an unimpacted world. This is a bit like the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Physics, discovered by physicist Werner Heisenberg. It states that subatomic particles are described by a nebulous state where we don't know their precise location or velocity until we observe or measure them. That's when they exist.

Similarly, the earth has all this incredible potential: water, air, mineral resources, and productive soil. Yet without us humans to make use of these untapped features, civilization doesn't actually exist. Everything we have in modern society is thanks to reliable and safe energy. 

There is actually a benefit to global warming as opposed to cooling. Many more people die from cold than from warmth. We should not demonize some elevation in CO2 levels along with causing anxiety in our children. The charts below show how we have benefited from increased warming and CO2 in the past 100 years.

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So do the greenies want to revert back to the dark ages? Perhaps this is ultimately what these anti-humanists actually want. In that case, what is the planet's point if we can't enjoy its treasures?