Demands that the world replace fossil fuels with wind, solar, and biofuel energy – to prevent supposed catastrophes caused by manmade global warming and climate change – ignore three fundamental flaws.
1) In the Real World outside the realm of computer models, the unprecedented warming and disasters are simply not happening: not with temperatures, rising seas, extreme weather, or other alleged problems.
2) The process of convicting oil, gas, coal, and carbon dioxide emissions of climate cataclysms has been unscientific and disingenuous. It ignores fluctuations in solar energy, cosmic rays, oceanic currents, and multiple other powerful natural forces that have controlled Earth’s climate since the dawn of time, dwarfing any role played by CO2. It ignores the enormous benefits of carbon-based energy that created and still powers the modern world, and continues to lift billions out of poverty, disease, and early death.
It assigns only costs to carbon dioxide emissions, and ignores how rising atmospheric levels of this plant-fertilizing molecule are reducing deserts and improving forests, grasslands, drought resistance, crop yields, and human nutrition. It also ignores the huge costs inflicted by anti-carbon restrictions that drive up energy prices, kill jobs, and fall hardest on poor, minority, and blue-collar families in industrialized nations – and perpetuate poverty, misery, disease, malnutrition, and early death in developing countries.
3) Renewable energy proponents pay little or no attention to the land and raw material requirements, and associated environmental impacts, of wind, solar, and biofuel programs on scales required to meet mankind’s current and growing energy needs, especially as poor countries improve their living standards.
We properly insist on multiple detailed studies of every oil, gas, coal, pipeline, refinery, power plant, and other fossil fuel project. Until recently, however, even the most absurd catastrophic climate change claims behind renewable energy programs, mandates, and subsidies could not be questioned.
Just as bad, climate campaigners, government agencies, and courts have never examined the land use, raw material, energy, water, wildlife, human health, and other impacts of supposed wind, solar, biofuel, and battery alternatives to fossil fuels – or of the transmission lines and other systems needed to carry electricity and liquid and gaseous renewable fuels thousands of miles to cities, towns, and farms.
It is essential that we conduct rigorous studies now, before pushing further ahead. The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, and Interior Department should do so immediately. States, other nations, private sector companies, think tanks, and NGOs can and should do their own analyses. The studies can blithely assume these expensive, intermittent, weather-dependent alternatives can actually replace fossil fuels. But they need to assess the environmental impacts of doing so.
Renewable energy companies, industries, and advocates are notorious for hiding, minimizing, obfuscating, or misrepresenting their environmental and human health impacts. They demand and receive exemptions from health and endangered species laws that apply to other industries. They make promises they cannot keep about being able to safely replace fossil fuels that now provide over 80% of U.S. and global energy.
A few articles have noted some of the serious environmental, toxic/radioactive waste, human health, and child labor issues inherent in mining rare-earth and cobalt/lithium deposits. However, we now need quantitative studies – detailed, rigorous, honest, transparent, cradle-to-grave, peer-reviewed analyses.
The back-of-the-envelope calculations that follow provide a template. I cannot vouch for any of them. But our governments need to conduct full-blown studies forthwith – before they commit us to spending tens of trillions of dollars on renewable energy schemes, mandates, and subsidies that could blanket continents with wind turbines, solar panels, biofuel crops, and battery arrays; destroy habitats and wildlife; kill jobs, impoverish families, and bankrupt economies; impair our livelihoods, living standards, and liberties; and put our lives under the control of unelected, unaccountable state, federal, and international rulers – without having a clue whether these supposed alternatives are remotely economical or sustainable.
Ethanol derived from corn grown on 40 million acres now provides the equivalent of 10% of US gasoline – and requires billions of gallons of water and enormous quantities of fertilizer and energy. What would it take to replace 100% of U.S. gasoline? To replace the entire world’s motor fuels?
Solar panels on Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base generate 15 megawatts of electricity perhaps 30% of the year from 140 acres. Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear power plant generates 900 times more electricity, from less land, some 95% of the year. Generating Palo Verde’s output via Nellis technology would require land area ten times larger than Washington, DC – and would still provide electricity unpredictably only 30% of the time. Now run those solar numbers for the 3.5 billion megawatt-hours generated nationwide in 2016.
Modern coal or gas-fired power plants use less than 300 acres to generate 600 megawatts 95% of the time. Indiana’s 600-MW Fowler Ridge wind farm covers 50,000 acres and generates electricity about 30% of the year. Calculate the turbine and acreage requirements for 3.5 billion MWH of wind electricity.
Delving more deeply, generating 20% of U.S. electricity with wind power would require up to 185,000 1.5-MW turbines, 19,000 miles of new transmission lines, 18 million acres, and 245 million tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass, and rare-earths – plus fossil-fuel back-up generators for the 75% to 80% of the year that winds nationwide are barely blowing and the turbines are not producing electricity.
Energy analyst David Wells has calculated that replacing 160,000 terawatt-hours of total global energy consumption with wind would require 183,400,000 turbines needing roughly: 461,000,000,000 tons (461 billion tons) of steel for the towers; 460,00,000,000 tons of steel and concrete for the foundations; 59,000,000,000 tons of copper, steel, and alloys for the turbines; 738,000,000 tons of neodymium for turbine magnets; 14,700,000,000 tons of steel and complex composite materials for the nacelles; 11,000,000,000 tons of complex petroleum-based composites for the rotors; and massive quantities of other raw materials – all of which must be mined, processed, manufactured into finished products, and shipped around the world.
Assuming 25 acres per turbine, the turbines would require 4,585,000,000 acres (1,855,500,000 hectares) – 1.3 times the land area of North America! Wells adds: Shipping just the iron ore to build the turbines would require nearly 3 million voyages in huge ships that would consume 13 billion tons of bunker fuel (heavy oil) in the process. And converting that ore to iron and steel would require 473 billion tons of coking coal, demanding another 1.2 million sea voyages, consuming another 6 billion tons of bunker fuel.
For sustainability disciples: Does Earth have enough of these raw materials for this transformation?
It gets worse. These numbers do not include the ultra-long transmission lines required to carry electricity from windy locations to distant cities. Moreover, Irina Slav notes, wind turbines, solar panels and solar thermal installations cannot produce high enough heat to melt silica, iron, or other metals, and certainly cannot generate the required power on a reliable enough basis to operate smelters and factories.
Wind turbines (and solar panels) last just 20 years or so (less in salt water environments) – while coal, gas, and nuclear power plants last 35 to 50 years and require far less land and raw materials. That means we would have tear down, haul away, and replace far more “renewable” generators twice as often; dispose of or recycle their component parts (and toxic or radioactive wastes); and mine, process, and ship more ores.
Finally, their intermittent electricity output means they couldn’t guarantee you could boil an egg, run an assembly line, surf the internet or complete a heart transplant when you need to. So we store their output in massive battery arrays, you say. OK. Let’s calculate the land, energy, and raw materials for that. While we’re at it, let’s add in the requirements for building and recharging 100% electric vehicle fleets.
Then there are the bird and bat deaths, wildlife losses from destroying habitats, and human health impacts from wind turbine noise and flicker. These also need to be examined – fully and honestly – along with the effects of skyrocketing renewable energy prices on every aspect of this transition and our lives.
But for honest, evenhanded EPA and other scientists, modelers, and regulators previously engaged in alarmist, biased climate chaos studies, these analyses will provide some job security. Let’s get started.
Apr 21, 2016 Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy
To make earth cleaner, greener and safer, which energy sources should humanity rely on? Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress explains how modern societies have cleaned up our water, air and streets using the very energy sources you may not have expected–oil, coal and natural gas.
https://youtu.be/BJWq1FeGpCw
I agree that the green fuel industry has been basing their scheme on non-scientifically based and idealistic goals. For example, many drivers of the all electric vehicles really do think that the car uses zero emissions. This could not be further from the truth, especially when one factors in the mining and industrial activities that must be involved to manufacture the cars. But we do need to search for renewable resources and conserve the fossil fuels we have. Solar on roof tops would be a start. It does not require the long transmission lines that are mentioned in the article; we could integrate roof top solar for personal use on homes and use the existing lines for power when the sun is not shining. I agree more environmental impact of green energy needs to be in place. The threat on migratory birds for huge solar array and huge wind farms has been ignored and we can’t keep threatening wild life by quenching our thirst for green energy. As far a anthropogenic global warming, it is possibly the biggest scam to control the poor and working class ever perpetuated on people. Thank the previous president for that. We have a lot of undoing to do.
I will suggest you qestion and research everything and do not discriminate with your feelings or emotions. Like this that most do not know.
The Origins of Oil – falsely defined in 1892
Col Fletcher Prouty explains how oil was falsely classified a “fossil fuel” in 1892 and how that deception was advanced further in the 70’s by Kissinger and Rockefeller. Prouty also explains that Nixon/Kissinger/Rockefeller were seeking a ‘world oil price’.
https://youtu.be/vdSjyvIHVLw
Oh boy…………this is so outlandish! How come coal has fossil leaves in it? Oil is a product of fossil organic matter, and it is formed by similar process as coal. They both from organic peat in marshes; the peat is then submersed below tons of sedimentary rock. Plate tectonics can fold anticlines and synclines in folded mountains. Just like forming solar systems from planetary nebulae, we will never live long enough to see one solar system form; however we see many different stages of solar systems being formed through our telescopes. They don’t hardly change over the entire life of a human, but we can see the story in their development in the many different stages. The same thing occurs with peat turning into coal and oil. There are lots of examples on earth of young peat beds that will become oil long in geologic time. The argument that fossils don’t appear deeper than 16,000 feet is ludicrous. Who is milling around 16,000 feet to find them? This organic matter in peat can be buried a mere 30,000 feet. There is no limit to how deep these oil trapping anticlines can be.
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” Mark Twain
I agree with you on coal. Oil origin are being question. The Eastern European, rather good chemists and engineers, have long questioned the standard view of trapped surface life. Peat bogs have some pretty distinct marker compounds just not present in oil. (And yes, I am a retired chemist with an interest in this area.)
@notesorotius. Apples and oranges. Coal and oil are quite different. As you say most coal is compressed organic matter, but coal does not normally become oil. You might consider James McCanney http://www.jmccanneyscience.com/ for a quite different understanding why oil is abundant, not fossil, and from a surprising cosmic process.
Coal is indeed fossil swamps. Therefore coal and coal ash contain nothing that wasn’t in the swamps in the first place.
Oil & gas are primarily formed thermogenically from carbonates. 99.8% of all the carbon on earth is sequestered as sediments. 72.7% of this is in the form of carbonates. 27.1% is in the form of carbonaceous sediments.
When carbonates are subjected to heat & pressure with hydrogen from the heath’s core, they are converted to hydrocarbons. Example: CaCO3 (limestone) + 2H2 + heat => CH4 (methane) + CaO (quicklime, an element of basalt, the principal form of tectonic magma)
Most, if not all, electric cars are charged from “fossil” fuel power plants. Think about what happens if you are charging more than 15 miles from the plant. Your “gas mileage” is now lower than the cars you’re trying to replace due to basic physics of electrical power transmission. Consult your local Electrical engineer or physicist for details.
The environmental crusaders are unaware that solar and wind turbines that are slaughtering millions of birds and bats annually, are only able to provide intermittent electricity to the grid, but they are not alternatives to the hydrocarbon products that are the basis of every component of modern civilizations’ industries and infrastructures. From refined and separated crude oil, we can make transportation fuels, kerosene, asphalt, chemical feed stocks, and pharmaceuticals. The last two categories, chemical feed stocks and pharmaceuticals cover almost all consumer products.
I disagree. The environmentalists are FULLY aware of the slaughter of birds and bats, but they don’t care! Their true goal is to force the death of capitalism and establish a socialist ideology for the entire world. Remember the hyped false concerns about the spotted owl, which forced many companies out of business? Isn’t it odd that the number of spotted owls killed by wind turbines no longer matters?
Simple: Anthropic Constants 144 (so far -more to come)
Here are three, check out Gravity.
1)Moon-Earth Gravitational Interaction
If the interaction were greater than it currently is, tidal effects on the oceans, atmosphere, and rotational period would be too severe. If it were less, orbital changes would cause climatic instabilities. In either event, life on earth would be impossible,
2)Carbon Dioxide Level
If the CO2 level were higher that it is now, a runaway greenhouse effect would develop (we’d all burn up). If the level were lower than it is now, plants would not be able to maintain efficient photosynthesis (we’d all suffocate)
3)Gravity
If the gravitational force were altered by 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000001 (37 0’s) percent, our sun would not exist, and, therefore, neither would we.
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These basic constants, World Globalist’s will not divulge to average citizens…Trump knows this as do every cone-headed, P-K (philosopher-king). Folks, there really is a God. Pray. Amen. God Bless America and ALL Americans. Read A Bible (disregard ALL MSM) NKJV Psalm 128 (God’s Law).
Actually the moon was much closer than it is right now in the past so the tidal interactions were larger than they are at the moment. The moon is slowly moving way from earth. You may wish to read any of Robert Hazen’s “The Story of Earth”.
Sorry messup, you are way of base on the CO2 thingy. Many times in the past we have greatly exceeded the 1000PPM limit. In fact, we would be better off at 1000PPM now giving us warmer temps, greener forests and enough food to feed the masses. A trace gas (.0039%) has little effect on the atmosphere where water vapor (3.5%) is predominant. And the USN has tested submariners at 10,000PPM with no harmful side effects.