By Jennifer Marohasy
IF you believe Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, it is getting hotter and hotter in Western Sydney.[1]
But scientist Basil Beamish noticed that in the Climate Commission report they only show the trend of the number of hot days from 1970-2011. There is data for Sydney, measured at Observatory Hill, back to 1890.
Dr Beamish noticed that if you use all of the hot days data back to 1890 it is clear there is a different long-term pattern in play (see blue line in chart). In fact the year with the greatest number of hot days for Sydney is 1926 (12 days) and this has not been beaten since.
But instead of reporting on the long term trend for Sydney as measured at Observatory Hill from 1890, Professor Flannery has chosen to just focus on Western Sydney and in particular use only the data for Parramatta North (see red line in chart). This data set begins in 1970, which was a low point in the hot days cycle. By choosing Parramatta and beginning in 1970, Professor Flannery can make the upward trend in hot days look dramatic.
Parramatta is further inland than the Observatory Hill site and so the summers are warmer and the winter’s colder. But if there were data for Parramatta back to 1890 it would almost certainly show the same pattern as Observatory Hill. Indeed it was almost certainly hotter in Parramatta, in Western Sydney, in 1926 than anytime since.
Once again the observational data does not support the nonsense claims made by Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Professor Flannery.
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See also this post in the UK telegraph about this Hansen like climate fairy tale leader.
FIVE years ago, Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery predicted that the nation’s dams would never be full again and major Australian cities would need desalination plants to cater for our water needs.
Yesterday, in his latest report, he said “climate change cannot be ruled out” as a factor in recent two year flooding rains, which led to some of those dams overflowing. Sounds like the UK Met Office.
By Paul Driessen
- and protect environmental values, endangered species, jobs and human welfare
Unprecedented! As bills to extend seemingly perpetual wind energy subsidies were again introduced by industry lobbyists late last year, taxpayers finally decided they’d had enough.
Informed and inspired by a loose but growing national coalition of groups opposed to more giveaways with no scientifically proven net benefits, thousands of citizens called their senators and representatives - and rounded up enough Nay votes to run four different bills aground. For once, democracy worked.
A shocked American Wind Energy Association and its allies began even more aggressive recruiting of well-connected Democrat and Republican political operatives and cosponsors - and introducing more proposals like HR 3307 to extend the Production Tax Credit (PTC). Parallel efforts were launched in state legislatures, to maintain mandates, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, and other “temporary” ratepayer and taxpayer obligations.
This “emerging industry” is “vitally important” to our energy future, supporters insisted. It provides “clean energy” and “over 37,000” jobs that “states can’t afford to lose.” It helps prevent global warming.
None of these sales pitches holds up under objective scrutiny, and their growing awareness of this basic reality has finally made many in Congress inclined to eliminate this wasteful spending on wind power.
Entitlement advocates are petrified at that possibility. Crony corporatist lobbyists and politicians have built a small army to take on beleaguered taxpayers, rate payers and business owners who say America can no longer afford to spend more borrowed money, to prop up energy policies that drive up electricity costs, damage the environment,
and primarily benefit foreign conglomerates and a privileged few.
To confront the growing onslaught of wind industry pressure and propaganda, citizens should understand the fundamental facts about wind energy. Here are some of the top reasons for opposing further handouts.
Energy 101. It is impossible to have wind turbines without fossil fuels, especially natural gas. Turbines average only 30% of their “rated capacity” - and less than 5% on the hottest and coldest days, when electricity is needed most. They produce excessive electricity when it is least needed, and electricity cannot be stored for later use.
Hydrocarbon-fired backup generators must run constantly, to fill the gap and avoid brownouts, blackouts, and grid destabilization due to constant surges and falloffs in electricity to the grid. Wind turbines frequently draw electricity from the grid, to keep blades turning when the wind is not blowing, reduce strain on turbine gears, and prevent icing during periods of winter calm.
Energy 201. Despite tens of billions in subsidies, wind turbines still generate less than 3% of US electricity. Thankfully, conventional sources keep our country running - and America still has centuries of hydrocarbon resources. It’s time our government allowed us to develop and use those resources.
Economics 101. It is likewise impossible to have wind turbines without perpetual subsidies – mostly money borrowed from Chinese banks and future generations. Wind has never been able to compete economically with traditional energy, and there is no credible evidence that it will be able to in the foreseeable future, especially with abundant natural gas costing one-fourth what it did just a few years ago. It thus makes far more sense to rely on the plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity sources that have powered our economy for decades, build more gas-fired generators – and recycle wind turbines into useful products (while preserving a few as museum exhibits).
Economics 201. As Spain, Germany, Britain and other countries have learned, wind energy mandates and subsidies drive up the price of electricity - for families, factories, hospitals, schools, offices and shops. They squeeze budgets and cost jobs. Indeed, studies have found that two to four traditional jobs are lost for every wind or other “green” job created. That means the supposed 37,000 jobs (perpetuated by $5 billion to $10 billion in combined annual subsidies, or $135,000 to $270,000 per wind job) are likely costing the United States 74,000 to 158,000 traditional jobs, while diverting billions from far more productive uses.
Environment 101. Industrial wind turbine projects require enormous quantities of rare earth metals, concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and other raw materials, for highly inefficient turbines, multiple backup generators and thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines. Extracting and processing these materials, turning them into finished components, and shipping and installing the turbines and power lines involve enormous amounts of fossil fuel and extensive environmental damage. Offshore wind turbine projects are even more expensive, resource intensive and indefensible. Calling wind energy “clean” or “eco-friendly” is an extraordinary distortion of the facts.
Environment 201. Wind turbines, transmission lines and backup generators also require vast amounts of crop, scenic and wildlife habitat land. Where a typical 600-megawatt coal or gas-fired power plant requires 250-750 acres, to generate power 90-95% of the year, a 600-MW wind installation needs 40,000 to 50,000 acres (or more), to deliver 30% performance. And while gas, coal and nuclear plants can be built close to cities, wind installations must go where the wind blows, typically hundreds of miles away - adding thousands of additional acres to every project for transmission lines.
Environment 301. Sometimes referred to as “Cuisinarts of the air,” US wind turbines also slaughter nearly half a million eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, ducks, geese, bats and other rare, threatened, endangered and otherwise protected flying creatures every year. (Those aren’t song birds killed by house cats, and this may be a conservative number, as coyotes and turbine operator cleanup crews remove much of the evidence.) But while oil companies are prosecuted for the deaths of even a dozen common ducks, turbine operators have been granted a blanket exemption from endangered and migratory species laws and penalties. Now the US Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a formal rule to allow repeated “takings” (killings) of bald and golden eagles by wind turbines - in effect granting operators a 007 license to kill.
Environment 401. Scientific support for CO2-driven catastrophic manmade global warming continues to diminish. Even if carbon dioxide does contribute to climate change, there is no evidence that even thousands of US wind turbines will affect future global temperatures by more than a few hundredths of a degree. Not only do CO2 emissions from backup generators (and wind turbine manufacturing) offset any reductions by the turbines, but rapidly increasing emissions from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and other rapidly developing countries dwarf any possible US wind-related CO2 reductions.
Human Health and Welfare 101. Skyrocketing electricity prices due to “renewable portfolio standards” raise heating and air conditioning costs; drive families into fuel poverty; increase food, medical, school and other costs; and force companies to lay off workers, further impairing their families’ health and welfare. The strobe-light effect, annoying audible noise, and inaudible low-frequency sound from whirling blades result in nervous fatigue, headaches, dizziness, irritability, sleep problems, and vibro-acoustic effects on people’s hearts and lungs. Land owners receive royalties for having turbines on their property, but neighbors receive no income and face adverse health effects, decreased property values and difficulty selling their homes. Formerly close-knit communities are torn apart.
Real World Civics 101. Politicians take billions from taxpayers, ratepayers and profitable businesses, to provide subsidies to Big Wind companies, who buy mostly Made Somewhere Else turbines - and then contribute millions to the politicians’ reelection campaigns, to keep the incestuous cycle going.
It is truly government gone wild - GSA on steroids. It is unsustainable. It is a classic sWINDle.
Citizens can contact senators, congressmen, congressional committees and state representatives – to demand science-based energy policies. These reasons could be a good way to start the conversation.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author or Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
Indur Goklany and Paul Reiter
Policies to reduce global warming may be doing more harm than good to public health in both developing and industrialised countries. This is the conclusion of a new report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
In his report, Dr Indur Goklany, a leading expert on human health and climate change, shows that
• Global warming does not currently rank among the top public health threats
• The contribution of much-publicized ‘Extreme Weather Events’ to global mortality is negligible and declining.
• Poverty is a much larger public health threat than global warming
• Present climate policies are already adding to death and disease
• Focused adaptation to climate change and/or economic development would provide greater health benefits at lower costs than climate mitigation policies.
The report warns that exaggerating the impact of global warming on human health seriously risks misdirecting the world’s priorities and resources in combating poverty and improving public health.
“Climate policies that hinder or slow down economic development or increase the price of energy and food threaten to augment poverty and, as a result, increase net death and disease,” Dr Goklany said.
The increase in biofuel production between 2004 and 2010, for example, is estimated to have increased the population in absolute poverty in the developing world by over 35 million, leading to about 200,000 additional deaths in 2010 alone.
“Focused adaptation designed to reduce vulnerability more broadly to today’s urgent health problems would deliver greater reductions in deaths at a lower cost than climate mitigation policies,” Dr Goklany added.
Full report is here.
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Icecap Note: The US Demagogue party wants to tax big oil to generate $41 billion in ten years. Big oil already pays more in taxes than any other industry but it an easy target because everyone pays the price at the pump or in their electric bills. Only it is the demagogue party that is responsible by blocking new coal, oil and even making attempts to slow or stop the natural gas fracking to push their green agenda which has miserably failed in Europe. It is all phony rhetoric from a talking teleprompter. Obama admitted to wanting electrictity prices to ‘necessarily skyrocket’ and his energy secretary Chu said $8 gasoline would be a benefit to his energy plans.
The wind farms not only kill hundreds of thousands of birds and bats (some birds endangered) but have been shown to have health effects on people within 1/2 miles.
Their enablers in the media who promoted every mistake “W” made (and there were many), ignores Obama’s long list of failures, the biggest of which are the energy and health care fiascos. Enviro facsists rule the country and world.
Not a word also on the administration’s willingness to go along with the UN’s request for $250 billion per year from the US alone to support their sustainability (population control), energy and climate controls and redistribution of wealth. Recall IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer in November 2010 admitted “one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.” Instead, climate change policy is about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth...”
We should instead defund the UN entirely and tell them to find another home. We can turn the UN buildings into low income housing. We would save $2.5 trillion in the process. We should then approve the Keystone pipeline and drill, baby drill. Since CO2 is a benefactor gas and has no effect whatsoever on health or climate, let’s set 1000 ppm as a goal for 2030. Crop growth will benefit and we can feed more of the world. Then lets put together class action suits against the enviro groups, the demagogue party, the professional societies and the universities and the scientists there and at the national labs who lead the way with bad science for damaging our economies and health and well being for their political and socialist goals.
H/T Ken Shock
By Andrew Bolt
The State of the Climate report released yesterday by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology is a disgrace. Its omissions, red herrings and cherry picking shame both organisations.
Here is the most startling omission in this report on global warming: the basic data on global warming.
Sure, there is a reference to the last decade being the warmest yet and even a (highly dubious) claim that 2010 was the hottest year on record. But there is not a simple graph showing the temperatures over the past few decades (although there is one smothered in decadal averages).
This graphic, taken from the UAH site, might explain why:
As you can see, no warming trend of significance for at least a decade.
This is very much not what was predicted. What’s more there’s been no warming despite the headline claim of the CSIRO/BoM report - that the world’s fossil-fuel CO2 emissions have increased by more than 3 per cent a year since 2000 - or at least 34 per cent in all.
Add that warning (34 per cent more CO2 emissions in a decade) with what the report failed to report (no warming in that decade) and you cannot easily reach the conclusion claimed by The Australian’s reporter:
In their second State of the Climate report released today, the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology say evidence shows global warming continued and human activities were mainly responsible.
In fact, when we see 34 per cent more CO2 pumped out for zero warming over the decade, we have not more reason to believe man is warming the planet dangerously, but less.
This is the most fundamental - and I suspect deliberate - omission or smudging in State of the Climate. I can only suspect that the authors omitted played down the most highly relevant data about global warming to prevent others from realising there is less to the warming scare than they may have feared.
Nor is that the only example of cherry-picking. Others include:
Claim:
“Global-average surface temperatures were the warmest on record in 2010...”
In fact:
Most data sets of global temperatures - UAH, RSS and HadCRUT - give 1998 as the warmest year on record. Trust State of the Climate to go searching for something scarier.
Claim:
“Recent drying trends across southern Australia in autumn and winter have been linked to circulation changes. The causes of these changes are an area of active research.”
In fact:
Good, that the report concedes we do not know what caused the drying trends. But what State of the Climate fails to add is that this is a row-back from an earlier report by the CSIRO/BoM blaming global warming. From The Age, 30 August 2009:
A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.
Scientists working on the $7 million South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative say the rain has dropped away because the subtropical ridge - a band of high pressure systems that sits over the country’s south - has strengthened over the past 13 years.
These dry, high pressure systems have become stronger, bigger and more frequent and this intensification over the past century is closely linked to rising global temperatures, they found…
“ reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,” said the bureau’s Bertrand Timbal.
Icecap Note: two years of flooding rains reflect the real cause of these dry and wet periods, ENSO and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.That is what controls the high pressure. We have returned to the weakened high of the 1970s, when flooding like the last two years occurred last.
Shouldn’t we be told when there is a major revision like this in global warming theory?
Claim:
“Global-average mean sea level rose faster between 1993 and 2011 than during the century as a whole.”
In fact:
As State of the Climate’s own graphs show, the seas have risen steadily for more than a century, long before what’s said to be the on-set of man-made warming after World War 2. That alone suggests an underlying natural trend. but more importantly, here is the sea level as calculated by the respected Sea Level Research Group of the University of Colorado:
Why didn’t State of the Climate cite this apparent evidence of a cooling?
That the CSIRO and BoM put together something so heavily skewed suggests the obvious question: what else aren’t they telling us? Are they perhaps fooling even themselves?
EPW
Washington, D.C. - This afternoon, the Obama-EPA issued its first federal air rules for natural gas wells that are hydraulically fractured. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said that contrary to President Obama’s reelection rhetoric, these new regulations are the latest in his administration’s war on natural gas production.
“The Obama EPA has been working aggressively to assert control over natural gas production so that they can regulate it out of existence - and this rule is just the latest in that grand scheme,” Senator Inhofe said. “It’s no secret that EPA has been trying hard to manufacture a correlation between groundwater contamination and hydraulic fracturing, but in each case, they were unable to find sound scientific evidence to make this link. So now, they’re attempting to usurp control through air regulations. EPA has given us few details about the rule, and while I look forward to seeing it in full, I have serious concerns about its potential impacts, particularly on smaller producers.
“If anyone thinks this isn’t the latest aspect of the President’s war on natural gas production, remember Big Green, including the Sierra Club, joined together today to give President Obama their most enthusiastic endorsement, calling him a ‘champion’ for their cause. Everyone knows that these groups are no friend to natural gas: as Sierra Club Director Michael Brune said, ‘It’s time to stop thinking of natural gas as a “kinder, gentler” energy source.’ They must know that if President Obama wins reelection, he’ll have the ‘flexibility’ to do just that.”
By Paul Driessen
Government tax and subsidy schemes waste billions. We need real energy and jobs.
Having had it with $4-per-gallon gasoline and the Obama Administration’s squandering billions of taxpayer dollars on phony “green” energy schemes, angry voters have told their senators “Enough!”
Their calls provided sufficient spinal implants in enough senators to defeat three proposals to extend the wind energy “production tax credit” (PTC). The credit gives wind project developers taxpayer greenbacks whenever they generate high-priced electricity, even if there is no market for the power at the time it’s generated. Worse, the PTC is paid on top of other subsidies, fast-tracking of wind projects through environmental review processes, and exemptions from endangered species, migratory bird and other laws.
Confronted by the gale of public outrage, Senate Democrats tried a new tack.
They offered an amendment that would eliminate various tax deductions for five major oil companies, turn the supposed new revenue stream into more subsidies for wind turbine, solar panel and electric car makers - and use any leftover crumbs to “pay down” the skyrocketing budget deficit they helped engineer.
The ploy needed 60 votes -but got only 51, despite President Obama’ vocal support. “Members of Congress,” the president said, “can stand with big oil companies, or with the American people.”
Not exactly. The American people are no longer buying the partisan rhetoric. They increasingly understand that new taxes and restrictions on oil companies are not in their best interest. In fact, a recent Harris Interactive poll found that over 80% of US voters support increased domestic oil and gas production to create and preserve jobs, lower pump prices and increase government revenues.
They realize that only 12% of what they pay for gasoline goes to oil companies for refining, marketing and distribution. Another 12% is state and federal taxes. Fully 76% is determined by world crude oil prices - and thus by global supply and demand, and confidence or fear about world events.
They know that eliminating tax deductions for expenses incurred in producing and refining oil is the same as imposing new taxes. Those taxes would result in curtailed drilling and production, reduced royalty revenues, worker layoffs, still higher gasoline prices, and increased costs for everything we grow, make, transport and do with petroleum. Blue collar, poor and minority families would be hurt worst.
Every US business claims deductions for new equipment, facility depreciation, utilities, payroll, research and other expenses. This ensures that businesses, like individuals, recover their costs and get taxed only on their net incomes. Five oil companies should not be punished as the sole exception to this rule.
Legitimate expense deductions are very different from subsidies. Subsidies involve government taxing individuals and profitable companies, and transferring their money to politically favored companies and products that could not survive without perpetual support.
The system is even more insidious when subsidized entities return substantial portions of their taxpayer largesse as campaign contributions to President Obama and other politicians who arrange the wealth transfers. It’s still worse when hard-earned taxpayer money is used to reduce risks for wealthy investors who buy into boondoggles arranged by bureaucrats who are much better at choosing losers than winners.
As voters are learning, the Solyndra, Evergreen, Fisker, A123 and dozens of other “green energy future” scandals and insolvencies are only a small part of the subsidy cesspool.
Subsidies, punitive taxation schemes and “alternative,” non-hydrocarbon energy are often justified by claims that we face imminent manmade catastrophic global warming. In reality, virtually no empirical evidence supports hypotheses, assertions or computer model projections about melting polar icecaps, average global temperatures, storm frequency and intensity, sea levels and other natural phenomena.
Wind, solar and biofuel energy are also justified by claims that we are running out of oil and gas. In fact, America is blessed with vast proven petroleum reserves and even greater undeveloped prospects that government has made off limits. The natural gas and hydraulic fracturing revolution is merely a hint of the energy, jobs and revenues Americans could produce, if certain politicians would end their obstinacy.
“Renewable” energy is further justified by claims that petroleum “keeps us trapped in the past.” In truth, we need to worry about the present, especially our unemployment and debt crises. Oil and gas provide 60% of America’s energy. By contrast, despite untold billions in subsidies, wind and solar combined still provide barely 0.60% - and are unlikely to do much better for decades to come.
The $2-billion Shepherds Flat wind project in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge area involved $500 million in outright subsidies, plus a subsidized loan guarantee of $1.1 billion for General Electric, plus production tax credits. At the whim of the winds, its 338 gigantic turbines will generate electricity for California, in wild swings between zero and their combined rated capacity of 845 MW - chopping up eagles, falcons, herons, bats and other protected species as they spin.
In 2010, GE generated over $5 billion in US profits - but paid no US income taxes, and no fines for the thousands of protected birds and bats that its Cuisinart wind turbines slaughtered.
By contrast, White House villain ExxonMobil (one of the companies targeted by the failed tax bill) earned $30.5 billion in profits that year, on revenues of $383 billion, paid $1.6 billion in US income taxes, and made combined lease bonus, rent, royalty, tax and other federal payments of almost $10 billion. When a few birds are killed on oil company property, companies pay substantial fines.
President Obama promised that he would “fundamentally transform” America and ensure that electricity prices “will necessarily skyrocket.” His Energy Secretary has said Americans should pay $8-10 per gallon for gasoline. His Environmental Protection Agency and Interior and Agriculture Departments have systematically foreclosed access to our nation’s oil, gas, coal and uranium resources.
Meanwhile, Mr. Chu’s Department of Energy recently awarded $10 million of taxpayer money to Philips Lighting for making an “affordable” light bulb - that costs $50 per bulb
And it is working overtime to promote, subsidize and install thousands of onshore and offshore wind turbines that generate too much ultra expensive electricity when it’s not needed and too little when it’s most needed, require too much land and too many raw materials, kill too many birds, cost too much money, and require perpetual subsidies and exemptions from environmental laws that apply to all traditional forms of energy.
This “green” energy “future” is unsustainable.
Oil companies do make a lot of money, because they produce, refine and sell enormous quantities of fuel and other petroleum products. But they pay billions in taxes and royalties - and produce real energy.
Wind, solar, algae and switchgrass companies take billions in Other People’s Money. They pay virtually no taxes, and provide virtually no usable energy, except in the minds and press releases of their promoters.
Expecting that higher taxes on oil companies will produce more oil at lower prices is like saying we will get cheaper bread, and more of it, by eliminating tax deductions for bakeries’ electricity and equipment.
American voters and consumers understand this. It’s time our elected officials and unelected bureaucrats did likewise.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
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Forlorn New York Times Asks: Fuel to Burn - Now What?
The reversal of fortune in US energy supplies in recent years could have profound effects on what people drive, domestic manufacturing and American foreign policy. The new fuel produced in North America (primarily domestic shale oil and gas, Canadian oil sands and deepwater production from the Gulf of Mexico) could reduce shipping and manufacturing costs, trim heating and cooling bills, improve the auto market and provide tens of thousands of new jobs. Cheaper energy costs - particularly for natural gas - would benefit a variety of domestic industries, like chemicals, pharmaceuticals and fertilizers. An energy analyst with research firm Wood Mackenzie forecasts that by 2030 the US could be exporting 500 million tons/year of coal, 3.2 billion cubic feet/day of natural gas and 2.5 million barrels/day of oil products.
For the NY Times, the dark side of this abundance is the damping of enthusiasm for “clean” energy and derailing of efforts to wean the nation from its wasteful energy habits.
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Climate Coup: The Science and the Politics
David Evans, who consulted for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) 1999-2005 and 1998-2010, and was a believer in AGW until the evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself in 1998 to 2006, when he became a skeptic. Dr. Evans has written two companion articles: Climate Coup - The Science (16 pages) and Climate Coup - The Politics (18 pages).
In the science article Dr. Evans compares predictions of global temperature by James Hansen and the IPCC to reality: satellite data for atmospheric temperatures and Argo buoys for ocean temperatures. On pages 11 and12 he focuses on the structural flaw in the climate models - their assumed 3x amplification of the direct effect of CO2, when the data indicate a 0.5x damping effect.
The politics article describes a “regulating class” of believers, consisting of the UN, western governments, major banks and finance houses, NGOs and greenies, totalitarian leftists, government-funded scientists, academia, renewables corporations and the mainstream news media. Against them are the doubters: independently-funded scientists, private-sector middle class, and amateurs. The regulating class does not try to hide its belief that it is cleverer and morally superior. Their solution is regulation of the whole world’s economy by themselves, which was the object at the failed Copenhagen climate conference. On climate change, the regulating class has won over the leadership of most professional and business organizations by lobbying and pressure.
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It did not take long. Last month, Matt Ridley argued in a Spectator cover story that the wind farm agenda is in effect dead, having collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. The only question is when our ministers would realise.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, climate change minister Greg Barker admits that his department has adopted an ‘unbalanced’ approach to wind farms and will now look at other options. ‘Far from wanting thousands more, actually for most of the wind we need… they are either being built, being developed or in planning. The notion that there’s some new wave of wind [farms] is somewhat exaggerated.’
Indeed, the phrase ‘somewhat exaggerated’ applies to the case for wind farms itself. There are a staggering 3,500 wind turbines in Britain, what to do with them all? Ridley had this suggestion:
‘It would be a shame for them all to be dismantled. The biggest one should remain, like a crane on an abandoned quay, for future generations to marvel at. They will never be an efficient way to generate power. But there can be no better monument to the folly of mankind.’
To Ridley, this was - at root - an intellectual error. An example of how the establishment, and entire government machine, can sponsor something that makes no economic or environmental sense - but no one dares point this out, because the cause is seen as noble. He has generously sponsored the 8,500 pound Ridley Award for essays that expose similar environmental fallacies and entries close on 30 June. We’ve had plenty of brilliant entries so far - but keep them coming. Click here to find out more.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, climate change minister Greg Barker admits that his department has adopted an ‘unbalanced’ approach to wind farms and will now look at other options. ‘Far from wanting thousands more, actually for most of the wind we need… they are either being built, being developed or in planning. The notion that there’s some new wave of wind [farms] is somewhat exaggerated.’
Indeed, the phrase ‘somewhat exaggerated’ applies to the case for wind farms itself. There are a staggering 3,500 wind turbines in Britain, what to do with them all? Ridley had this suggestion:
‘It would be a shame for them all to be dismantled. The biggest one should remain, like a crane on an abandoned quay, for future generations to marvel at. They will never be an efficient way to generate power. But there can be no better monument to the folly of mankind.’
To Ridley, this was - at root - an intellectual error. An example of how the establishment, and entire government machine, can sponsor something that makes no economic or environmental sense - but no one dares point this out, because the cause is seen as noble. He has generously sponsored the £8,500 Ridley Award for essays that expose similar environmental fallacies and entries close on 30 June. We’ve had plenty of brilliant entries so far - but keep them coming. Click here to find out more.
By William Tucker, American Spectator
As a faithful tool of the environmentalists, the president betrays his main constituents.
There is a fundamental contradiction in the philosophy of President Obama that he is going to have to resolve before the electorate hangs him out to dry in the coming presidential campaign.
As the first African-American President, Barack Obama has come to embody the hopes of other groups that felt excluded from American society—Hispanics, women, gays and lesbians, the handicapped and so on. There is an openly articulated strategy among his supporters that these out-groups can be forged into some grand coalition—along with young people, pensioners and government employees—to outvote the only group that does not seem to respond to the President’s ministrations—white men employed in the private sector.
But there is a problem with this strategy. In climbing through the ranks of academia and the liberal political world, the President has found himself welcomed at every level by people who saw in him the qualities of leadership that could represent their case. But in making this ascent through academia, he has imbibed the reigning ideology of this world—environmentalism. Although the President may not recognize it, environmentalism works in direct opposition to the groups he purports to sponsor—the poor, the disenfranchised, the unemployed, and so forth.
When stripped of its homilies about the beauties of the nature and virtues of a “sustainable” economy, environmentalism is basically an ideology for the protection of privilege. It works in favor of those who feel satisfied with current levels of consumption and against those who are trying to achieve greater levels of prosperity. As Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus expressed it in their landmark essay, “The Death of Environmentalism”:
Environmentalists… aim to short-circuit democratic values by establishing Nature… as the ultimate authority that human societies must obey. And they insist that humanity’s future is a zero-sum proposition—that there is only so much prosperity, material comfort and modernity to go around. If too many people desire such things, we will all be ruined. We, of course, meaning those of us who have already achieved prosperity, material comfort and modernity.
Environmentalists make a living going around stirring up local opposition to all manner of development—drilling for oil, harvesting forests, building power plants. The premise is always that this is the “wrong place” for such development and that whatever needs to be done is better taken care of somewhere else. What never gets noticed is that environmentalists are also doing the same thing in the next valley and the one after that and the sum of all this is that nothing gets done. They urge people to “think globally, act locally,” but what this means in practice is professing some grand support for a “sustainable” economy built on “renewable” technologies while opposing the same things at the local level.
The Sierra Club, for instance, constantly opposes all manner of conventional electrical generation on the premise that it is supports “renewable” forms of energy. Hydroelectricity is considered a form of “renewable energy,” but this means building dams and the Sierra Club is opposed to all forms of dams. For years it has been carrying on a quixotic campaign to tear down the Hetch-Hetchy Dam in the Yosemite Valley, built in 1921, that provides San Francisco with one-third of its electricity and most of its drinking water. “Oh, but we don’t mean big dams,” they respond. “We’re in favor of small dams.” Yet when Free Flow Power, a Boston company, announced plans to try to build a 3 megawatt dam near Bellingham, Washington in January 2011, the Sierra Club announced its opposition the next day.
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups all profess to be in favor of wind and solar energy as “clean, green and sustainable.” But these energy sources are extremely dilute and involve covering huge amounts of landscape. On the east coast the best place to put them is on mountaintops, which always generates opposition. In California, however, there is always the possibility of the desert. Yet when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power proposed in 2005 to build the Green Path North, a transmission line designed to bring wind and solar power from the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles, the project was opposed by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, the California Desert Coalition, The Redlands Conservancy, Friends of Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, Stop Green Path North and every municipal government in its path. After six years of fighting opponents, the LADWP finally gave up on the project last year.
The truth is, when it comes right down to it, environmentalists don’t want much of anything. They are happy with the way things are. In fact they wouldn’t mind going back a bit to a time when there weren’t so many cars, so many power plants and—let’s face it—so many people around all clamoring for a piece of the pie. This philosophy may work for those comfortably ensconced in a mountain hideaway but it hardly speaks to the vast majority seeking some improvement in their lot.
President Obama has not yet grasped this contradiction. He thinks he wants economic prosperity but he wants to please his friends in the environmental movement as well. As a result, he finds himself in ridiculously contorted positions such as traveling to Oklahoma to celebrate the construction of a pipeline that he is preventing from being built or responding to criticisms about high gas prices by asking Congress to revoke the oil industry’s modest tax breaks, which can only drive prices even higher, or bragging about the production of American oil when he has achieved the lowest rates of production in recent history from federal lands.
This problem is not going to go away. There is no limit to what the President’s environmental supporters will demand in terms of thwarting prosperity. The talk this week is that even if we have discovered much greater oil and gas resources than previously recognized, we should not develop them for fear of falling into the trap of “resource poverty” that supposedly afflicts states like Nigeria and Indonesia. Someone should tell this to the Canadians who are buying second homes by the drove in Arizona or the Russians who the New York Times tells us are snapping up million-dollar apartments in Manhattan, all because Canada and Russia have decided to develop their own resources.
Everyone is an environmentalist when it comes to answering a pollster or buying a Sierra Club calendar. But when the economy is visibly wounded by efforts to make oil a “fuel of the past” and replace it with immature and flawed technologies—or nothing at all—the electorate is eventually going to rebel. If the President doesn’t figure this out soon—and it doesn’t seem likely he will—he is likely to face a huge backlash in November.
In the first months of his presidency, Barack Obama addressed the National Academy of Sciences to speak about U.S. science policy and a renewed commitment to fund scientific research. In this speech he charged: “We have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas” (White House 2010) He described his enviro facist agenda to a tee.
Nigel Lawson, GWPF
Sir David Attenborough is one of this country’s finest journalists, and a great expert on animal life. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to global warming he seems to prefer sensation to objectivity.
Had he wished to be objective, he would have pointed out that, while satellite observations do indeed confirm that the extent of arctic sea ice has been declining over the past 30 years, the same satellite observations show that, overall, Antarctic sea ice has been expanding over the same period.
Had he wished to be objective, he would have pointed out that the polar bear population has not been falling, but rising.
Had he wished to be objective, he would have mentioned that recent research findings show that the increased evaporation from the Arctic ocean, as a result of warming, will cause there to be more cloud cover, thus counteracting the adverse effect he is so concerned about.
Had he wished to be objective, he would have noted that, while there was indeed a modest increase in mean global temperature (of about half a degree Centigrade) during the last quarter of the 20th century, so far this century both the UK Met Office and the World Meteorological Office confirm that there has been no further global warming at all.
What will happen in the future is inevitably unclear. But two things are clear. First, that Sir David’s alarmism is sheer speculation. Second, that if there is a resumption of warming, the only rational course is to adapt to it, rather than to try (happily a lost cause) to persuade the world to impoverish itself by moving from relatively cheap carbon-based energy to much more expensive non-carbon energy.