In Parts One and Two of this series we established the Ciccone/Lehr Rule of Thumb which states that All Wind and Solar Power must be backed up with an equal or greater amount of fossil fuel power running on Standby 100% of the time.
In this concluding segment, we summarize the critical climate change facts that you need to be optimistic for a better future and do so with confidence, tolerance, and good humor. The facts are fully substantiated in the book A HITCHHIKER’S JOURNEY THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE, now on Amazon.
The climate change industry is enormous. Untold hundreds of $billions are in play each year, and charlatans are fiercely competing for the biggest bites. An editorial in the May 27 Wall Street Journal by Steve Milloy described how many Fortune 500 companies brag about what they are doing to stop climate change in their annual reports. Most scientists know that human-made CO2 caused global warming is overstated, but many continue to fight for the front row of the public funding trough.
- Global warming is not getting worse and the warming that di
d occur has been a good thing. Look at figure 1; the Earth has been cooling for the past 5,000-years, hitting bottom in the late 16-17 hundreds, and has been trying to inch back up to a more reasonable level in the past 250-years. Ignore the scary red-line at the end, that’s staged-manipulated data. If anything, we have been in a slight cooling trend since 2000. - IS CO2 rising and causing global warming? NO! CO2 has increased to 420 PPM in the past 150-years. Some say it’s caused by humans, but the increased amount is trivial, like adding 4-5 dots on a page with 10,000 dots. Scientists cannot tell the difference between human-made CO2 from volcano/tectonic made CO2.
- IS CO2 is causing the greenhouse heating of the Earth? NO! First thing, be grateful for the greenhouse effect. Without it, the world would be 30 C colder; the Earth would be a frozen sphere and all life dead-forever. The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor, which accounts for about 95%. Human-caused CO2 would be about 0.02%, but that is a guess, as scientists don’t know the facts or data.
- WILL CO2 destroy us and the planet? NO! CO2 is the basis for all life on Earth; it combines with water and sunshine and produces plant sugars. Plant sugars are the food source for all plants, animals, fish, and fowl and everything that lives on this pretty blue planet.
According to NASA, over the past 35-years, the Earth has greened, meaning more plants, by an area equal to the size of half of Australia. There also has been an enormous increase in leafing, meaning bigger plants and more leaves. NASA also tells us that deserts have shrunk, especially where it’s most needed, like in central Africa, southern Eurasia, and India-Pakistan-China.
- More CO2 means free and rich fertilizer, increased crop yields for the poorest people in the developing countries. It is also free-natural fertilizer for forests, plains, and wilderness making more food for wildlife. In Figure 2,[ii] we see four identical trees, all planted at the same time. You see the benefits of more CO2 staring at you.
- In the documentary PLANET FOR THE HUMANS, Michael Moore is worried that there are too many people on the planet, and we cannot feed them. No, Michael, thanks to the magic of fossil fuels, tractors, trucks, and ships, and a higher level of CO2, hunger in the world has been disappearing. The more limiting problem is the distribution of the excess food produced by fossil fuel and nuclear energy-rich developed countries.
- The film also worries, as many do, about the shortage of water for drinking, hygiene, and farming. This is not a crisis; it is solvable everywhere
At higher CO2 levels, plants need 40-70% less water. Look at Figure 3,[iii] the underside of the leaf. There we see the stomata, the mouths of the plants. At low CO2 levels, the mouths need to open more and stay open longer to take in sparsely available CO2. But in doing so, they lose water through them. At higher CO2 levels, the stomata quickly gobble up the CO2 and shut down before losing much water.
- · There is actually little clean-drinking water in nature. Most of our natural waters are polluted/contaminated not just by humans, but that is its natural state, swamps, algae, bugs, animal feces, etc. If you want clean water, you need pipes to carry the natural water to treatment plants and more pipes to distribute the clean-treated water to where it’s needed. Then more pipes to bring the wastewater back to the treatment plants and more pipes to bring the treated water to farms, people, and nature. AND pipes need pumps and pumps need electricity to power them. In Figure 4,[iv] we see that more fossil fuel energy consumption leads to more clean water. Especially in developing countries, we need to get them more fossil fuel energy to provide them not only with clean water but also the management and distribution of clean water.
- No one will argue that life can be improved throughout parts of the world. Here are our recommendations as to how to achieve this:
- Take 50% of all the money now wasted on the bogus CO2 research and grant it to the developing countries so they can build their modest generators to fire up their pumps, refrigerators, treatment plants and let these people have a chance for meaningful survival.
- Reduce or eliminate bogus EPA regulations on CO2 emissions and let them fire up their fossil fuel plants to make electricity for their schools, hospitals, refrigeration, hygiene, etc.Stop the madness at the World Development Bank that mandates that their grants can only be used for solar/wind plants, with no regard to their detailed failures. Support for them would dwindle if the citizenry realized that for every kilowatt of wind or solar power placed on the electric grid that much more fossil fuel burning power must be added.
Wrapping it all up:
In part one, we documented, not only the absurdities of building the solar and wind systems but we recognized in the Michael Moore movie the ravaging of the environment to solve a CO2 problem that does not exist,
In part two, we documented that in the operation and maintenance of wind and solar systems, we waste more money and energy, which results in no reduction in CO2, no reduction in pollutants, no reduction in fossil fuels. The only net positive result is the puffing of selected egos, wallets, and virtue signaling.
In this concluding segment, we recognize more CO2 is good for humanity and the planet.
Finally, everyone in the electric power industry has long known the need for backup fossil fuel power when wind and solar are added to their grid. It appears, however, that much like the well known fable, none were willing to state that “The Emperor Had No Clothes:. So, we came forward to coin our new Ciccone/Lehr Rule of Thumb which says:
All wind and solar power on an electric grid must be backed up by an equal or greater amount of fossil fuel power running at standby 100% of the time.
[i] https://kottke.org/13/09/temperature-chart-for-the-last-11000-years Temperature chart for the last 11,000 years; posted by Jason Kottke Sep 16, 2013
[ii] https://industrialprogress.com/mcffdata/ The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein-Figure 4.6: More CO2, More Plant Growth, S Henne, July 2, 2019
[iii] https://www.saburchill.com/chapters/chap0025.html HOW PLANTS BREATHE