Too often simple reasoning will not get a job done. You can wear yourself out explaining some very logical arguments. Too many folks already know everything they want to know.

Wind and solar electricity are renewable energy. How nice to pluck energy out of the air and the sky. Its a scam. Big money corporations and uneducated dreamers, many called environmentalists, are cooperating to keep the scam going.

The big lie is that wind and solar are competitive with other sources of electricity. The reality is that wind and solar are subsidized by seventy percent. The scam is clever. Taxpayers and consumers of electricity are swindled with the cover story that they are saving the Earth.

Apparently, it has not dawned on the supporters of the scam that solar does not work at night and wind only works when the wind is blowing. The core characteristic of wind and solar is that these are erratic sources of electricity. The supply is randomly intermittent. Who thinks this dumb energy is a good way to supply electricity?

The wind and solar promoters demand that the grid be reengineered to become a smart” grid. The idea is that if the grid is smart enough, that will compensate for the dumb wind and solar energy. Thats actually what they have in mind. The point of the smart grid is to make the grid more agile, the better to follow the ups and downs of wind and solar.

Wind and solar are unreliable, dangerous to the electrical grid, and, without subsidies, far more expensive than conventional sources of electricity. The environmental benefits are non-existent, and the economics only make sense if you think that healthy industries are industries on government welfare.

The numbers are clear, the engineering is clear, and the science is clear. Why is this scam succeeding? Many writers have made the same points Mr. Rogers makes in this book. Yet, government-subsidized wind and solar installations are still being built.

The national obsession with renewable energy distracts from the real problems of the electric grid. The grid is vulnerable to a long-term collapse from sabotage, or even from a natural magnetic storm originating in the sun. Public money should not be spent for a wind and solar environmental fantasy.

This critique is a serious book, filled with facts and numbers.

The Effect of Human Passion

The renewable energy scam survives because some people are making money and because some people have made renewable energy into a religion. The ideologues provide respectability for the profiteers.

Extracting energy from wind and sunlight is a seductive theory. But, the theory is impractical. The installations are too expensive. The power produced is erratic, changing with the comings and goings of the wind and sun.

The renewable energy industry is financed by government subsidies and sweetheart deals that are hidden from consumers.

Ridiculously impracticable renewable energy finds wide support in circles populated by thinkers accustomed to mobilizing the power of the state to promote impractical ideas with the taxpayersmoney.

Arguing facts with a believer in renewable energy is generally futile. Their belief is not based on facts, but based on passion. Rarely will a serious believer change his mind because he is presented with facts. Fortunately, most people are not true believers, but victims of constant propaganda. One can plant a seed of doubt in such persons by presenting facts. It is often helpful to point out that birds are sliced up by wind turbines.

The Populist Enemies of Wind Turbines

Groups of rural residents are furious at having wind farms foisted on them. They object to having landscapes they treasure contaminated by massive windmills. They object to the whump-whump noise and the flickering shadows. Some of those groups advance beyond their esthetic objections to exposing the full scope of the scam. Sixty seven such projects have been defeated by their communities in the past year.

Greg Hubner, a resident of South Dakota wrote: Paradise Destroyed: The Destruction of Rural Living by the Wind Farm Scam. His book is rooted in deep knowledge gained from the political fight against wind farm developers in South Dakota. He wrote the following:

Powerful corporations and politicians have legislated their way to wealth by passing laws for their own financial benefit. Wind energy is a prime example. Instead of capitalism and a true free marketwhere the state simply acts as a referee to establish a level playing field, the government is hi-jacked through politics to hinder competitors and give select businesses an unfair advantage.

Fallacies of Renewable Energy

The idea of renewable energy as a reliable, comprehensive solution to future energy needs is an error, resting on these faulty assumptions:

1) We will run out of fossil fuels in the foreseeable future.

2) Burning fossil fuels is dangerous to health and inevitably creates ugly contamination of the atmosphere.

3) Renewable energy is financially competitive.

4) Carbon dioxide emissions will create a climate disaster.

These dubious assumptions are disputed in this book.

As a practical matter, renewable energy is mainly wind electricity and solar electricity. In the U.S. over $100 billion has been spent on heavily subsidized wind turbines and a lesser amount on solar electricity. The aspiration of the industry and its supporters is to greatly increase that spending. Ultimately, if the promoters have their way, our electric rates will double or triple as they have in certain European countries.

This book presents facts to counter the massive propaganda promoting renewable energy. The propaganda comes from government agencies, the media, environmental pressure groups, and scientific associations. These groups are shirking their responsibility to present careful and factual analysis.

Wind generates electricity when the wind blows, and the sun generates electricity when the sun shines. Adding wind or solar to the conventional electric grid imposes adaptation costs. The grid has to be reengineered and operated differently in order to accommodate the erratic nature of wind and solar electricity. The more wind and solar there is, the greater the adaptation cost. The sudden arrival or sudden departure of thousands of megawatts of electricity, according the mood of the wind or the clouds, stresses a grid that was designed to operate in a more sedate and predictable manner.

The construction of wind and solar generating plants should be stopped immediately. The plants are unreliable, undermine the electrical grid, and generate electricity at a cost vastly greater than the traditional alternatives. But for many proponents of renewable energy, increased costs might be worth it if renewable energy has substantial environmental benefits. Those supposed benefits are illusory.

The Global Warming Justification

Subsidizing wind and solar is often justified on the ground that wind and solar dont emit carbon dioxide (CO2), and thus help prevent global warming. Global warming is based on dubious computer projections contradicted by the Earths climate trends. The evidence is overwhelming that the global warming scare is scientifically flawed. Carbon dioxide is a harmless gas that helps plants grow. It may well influence the climate, but the evidence is that the effect of CO2 is small, and probably beneficial due to improving the growth of plants.

Global warming is promoted by self-interested scientists. The idea that scientists are disinterested big thinkers pontificating from on high is not to be taken seriously. Like any other interest group, scientists are susceptible to pursuing self-interest at the expense of the public interest. In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned against the capture of public policy by a scientific elite dependent on government money. Eisenhowers worst fears have come true. Global warming alarmism has become official government policy.

For certain scientific groups, green ideas and global warming alarmism are the geese that lay golden eggs. The golden eggs are not just money, but also prestige. Scientists, particularly climate scientists, benefit from global warming alarmism. They are reluctant, individually or as a group, to express skepticism or to critically examine the theories behind global warming alarmism. Peer pressure to conform is so great, that to contradict the group think is heresy, and often professional suicide. Global warming has transformed climate scientists into celebrities.

Discovering an impending catastrophe is a way for scientists to get attention and research grants. As a consequence, we are deluged with a parade of impending catastrophes that never materialize. When one catastrophe dies of over-exposure, it is replaced by a new impending catastrophe. Global warming will die slowly due to the vast size of the enterprise and the vested interests. When global warming dies, look for ocean acidification to be the replacement impending catastrophe.

Risks to the Electric Grid

Its easy to be complacent about the electric grid. It always just works, except for occasional blips. But this complacency is ill-advised: the electrical grid is vulnerable, and renewable energy is increasing that vulnerability.

The Dysfunction of Environmentalism

The business plan of the major environmental organizations is based on the exaggeration of environmental threats. The global warming scare is the most important current exaggeration. Wind and solar energy are promoted because they dont emit CO2 and because the environmentalists imagine they can be substituted for fossil fuels.

The environmental lobby has boxed itself in with past alarmist campaigns against dams and nuclear power. Hydro and nuclear are logical ways to get CO2-free power. They are a logical step in the crusade to reduce the delusional global warming. But, the environmental organizations cannot damage their credibility by changing their position on hydro and nuclear. Instead they support wind and solar technology; technology that is ineffective, either for generating electricity or for reducing CO2 emissions.

The environmental movement is detached from economic and engineering realities. The movement traffics in impracticable and romantic ideas that will encourage naive supporters to write checks. The voice of the critics is muted by the medias leftist orientation and the medias love of sensationalism. Norman Rogers makes it clear in his book that truly evil corporations must be resisted. Any critic of environmental dogma is attacked as a tool of capitalist interests. Environmental organizations are hostile to capitalism and friendly to government regulation.

Most readers at CFACT.org are knowledgeable toward our US energy resources but most likely wage the wrong arguments toward their misinformed, friends, neighbors and colleagues. This easy to read 136 page comprehensive narrative of truth as to our economic energy will give the reader outstanding opportunities to set the record straight.

Copyright Norman Rogers