Study: Green-Energy Sources Not The ‘Panacea’ Climate Alarmists Claim
A study done by Irish and U.S.-based researchers is calling into question the efficacy of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar in dealing with the so-called climate crisis.
In fact, the study found that such energy sources are extremely costly and may be causing as much climate change as they purport to mitigate.
Entitled Energy and Climate Policy — An Evaluation of Global Climate Change Expenditure 2011-2018, the study raises grave questions about the feasibility and cost of switching to an energy grid powered mainly by wind and solar farms.
The study also points out several of the flaws of wind and solar energy, including the negative impacts on local environments they present.
Despite spending jaw-dropping amounts of money on wind and solar power globally since 2011, the study shows that climate alarmists and the nations that defer to them have definitely not gotten their money’s worth.
“Since 2010, the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) has been publishing the annual Global Landscape of Climate Finance reports.
According to these reports, US$3660 billion has been spent on global climate change projects over the period 2011-2018.
Fifty-five percent of this expenditure has gone to wind and solar energy. According to world energy reports, the contribution of wind and solar to world energy consumption has increased from 0.5% to 3% over this period.
Meanwhile coal, oil, and gas continue to supply 85% of the world’s energy consumption with hydroelectricity and nuclear providing most of the remainder.”
The study’s lead author Coilin OhAiseadha points out: “It cost the world $2 trillion to increase the share of energy generated by solar and wind from half a percent to three percent, and it took eight years to do it. What would it cost to increase that to 100 percent? And how long would it take?”
At the same time, the world was spending these ghastly amounts of money on green projects that have proven to be about as useful as a scuba diving suit in the desert, only five percent of global climate spending was used for adapting to extreme weather events and other alleged results of anthropogenic climate change.
Moreover, the study also found that wind and solar farms and other green energy schemes are contributing to the problem they were meant to solve or otherwise damaging the environment.
“Ironically, given that these policies are being framed as environmentally desirable, many of the criticisms are with their environmental impacts. Many researchers are concerned about the negative impacts that ‘green energies’ have on biodiversity,” the study states.
Wind farms, for example, increase the temperature of the soil beneath them, which causes soil microbes to release more carbon dioxide.
So, while wind farms may have some small effect on the reduction of “human-caused” CO2 being released into the atmosphere, their very existence might be increasing the release of CO2 from natural sources.
Solar and wind farms also require up to 100 times the land area that fossil-fuel generated electricity plants do. Such land use can be devastating to the pristine areas of nature that environmentalists claim to care so much about.
It’s not just wind and solar farms that are potential sources of environmental problems. Politicians such as the U.K.’s Boris Johnson and California’s Gavin Newsom have expressed a desire to rid the world of fossil fuel-powered automobiles and trucks.
Such a switch to electric vehicles would require a massive increase in the number of batteries used to power such vehicles.
With increased dependence on batteries as sources of power, a vast increase in the production of certain rare minerals will be needed.
The need for cobalt, neodymium, and lithium would necessarily skyrocket, which means that the environmental impacts of such mining will fall disproportionately on some impoverished countries.
Renewable energies as we currently understand them are simply not up to the task of powering the planet — they’re nowhere close.
“The average household expects their fridges and freezers to run continuously and to be able to turn on and off the lights on-demand,” said a co-author of the study Dr. Ronan Connally.
“Wind and solar promoters need to start admitting that they are not capable of providing this type of continuous and on-demand electricity supply on a national scale that modern societies are used to.”
The massive worldwide investment in wind and solar has produced very little in return thus far. Moreover, these so-called clean energies are not without environmental impacts, as this report clearly points out.
“There was worldwide coverage of the conflict between the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Dakota Access Pipeline,” OhAiseadha said.
“But what about the impacts of cobalt mining on indigenous peoples in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and what about the impacts of lithium extraction on the peoples of the Atacama Desert? Remember the slogan they chanted at Standing Rock? Mni Wiconi! Water is life! Well, that applies whether you’re Standing Rock Sioux worried about an oil spill polluting the river, or you’re in the Atacama Desert worried about lithium mining polluting your groundwater.”
Some new form of energy that is clean, easily available, and carbon-free may be found sometime in the future.
But until that happens, it makes no sense to keep throwing money at “solutions” such as wind and solar that are not practical — at least in the short term.
If climate change is an existential threat — which is extremely questionable — it’s better to spend that money learning how to adapt to it instead of wasting it on technologies that do little to mitigate CO2 emissions and cause adverse environmental impacts of their own.
Read more at New American
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Dean Michael Jackson
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“In fact, the study found that such energy sources are extremely costly and may be causing as much climate change as they purport to mitigate.”
Extremely costly? Try astronomically costly…
As I’ve been telling readers since October 2019, when I posted at my blog the article, ‘SINKHOLE: THE GREEN NEW DEAL’S RENEWABLE ENERGY COSTS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENTS’ BUDGETS’
https://djdnotice.blogspot.com/2020/02/october-3-2019-updated-1252020-sinkhole.html
Let’s draw on one small aspect that my article covers in order to make the point as clear as possible, where the costs are literally humanity-destroying…
The astronomical cost of shifting to non-carbon based energy sources would literally send humanity back to the Stone Age, with consequent population decline; annihilation of the species, per the Satanic purpose for destroying the globe’s economies. Let’s make this abundantly clear by noting the shocking cost for just one critical component of the United State’s energy needs:
STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE
The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve is currently at 635.2 million barrels of oil. 635 million barrels of oil equals 1,079,123,092,000 megawatts. 1,079,123,092,000/100 = 10,791,230,920; 10,791,230,920 X $3.6 billion[1] = $3,884,831,310,000,000,000,000,000,000 (octillion).
The United States’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2017 was $19,390,000,000,000 (trillion). Battery storage to replace the strategic petroleum reserve would cost more than 100,000 GDPs!
THERMODYNAMICS AWOL
Climate change mechanics conspires to do away with the physics of the atmosphere, where action and reaction is abandoned. When a new gas molecule is introduced into the dense troposphere, dislocation takes place, where if the new molecule is denser than the atmosphere (contains less heat energy), such as carbon dioxide, the gas molecule sinks displacing upwards the warmer nitrogen and oxygen molecules, thereby cooling the area of dislocation. Conversely, if the new gas molecule has more heat energy than the nitrogen-oxygen based atmosphere (such as methane), the new molecule rises, displacing relatively cooler nitrogen and oxygen molecules downwards, which displaces upwards relatively more heat retaining nitrogen and oxygen molecules, thereby cooling the area of dislocation. Thermodynamics in action in the atmosphere that keeps the Earth cool when increased radiation isn’t the new variable introduced.
At my blog, read the articles…
SINKHOLE: THE GREEN NEW DEAL’S RENEWABLE ENERGY COSTS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENTS’ BUDGETS
‘House of Cards: The Collapse of the ‘Collapse’ of the USSR’
‘Playing Hide And Seek In Yugoslavia’
Then read the article, ‘The Marxist Co-Option Of History And The Use Of The Scissors Strategy To Manipulate History Towards The Goal Of Marxist Liberation’
Solution
The West will form new political parties where candidates are vetted for Marxist ideology/blackmail, the use of the polygraph to be an important tool for such vetting. Then the West can finally liberate the globe of vanguard Communism.
My blog…
https://djdnotice.blogspot.com/2018/09/d-notice-articles-article-55-7418.html
[1] $3.6 billion is the cost for a 100 megawatts battery. In 2006, during peak power in the summer, Washington, DC used approximately 6,888 MW of power: 6,888/100 MW = 68 MW; 68MW X $3.6 billion = $244.8 billion for Washington, DC to switch from petroleum to renewable energy sources. Washington, DC’s annual budget is $12.8 billion.
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James
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where if the new molecule is denser than the atmosphere (contains less heat energy), such as carbon dioxide, the gas molecule sinks displacing upwards the warmer nitrogen and oxygen molecules
Has this stratification been experimentally observed? It would seem to contradict Dalton.
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Dean Michael Jackson
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“Has this stratification been experimentally observed? It would seem to contradict Dalton.”
There is no stratification, since the atmosphere is constantly in flux. But no matter the flux, the denser, and therefore ‘cooler’, carbon dioxide will always, and immediately, displace ‘warmer’ nitrogen and oxygen. With methane, the process takes an additional step in order to achieve the cooling.
Why would atmospheric thermodynamics contradict Dalton?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Dean,
In the troposphere water contains the majority of energy and heat.
Denser does not mean cooler. Kinetic energy is a function of both the mass and energy of a molecule, so in convection, when equilibrium is established, a less massive molecule will have more energy (velocity^2) than a molecule with more mass.
Gravity of the Earth attracts all molecules the same regardless of their mass. You cannot separate tritium and deuterium from hydrogen by cooling even though they are 3 and 2 times the density of the hydrogen atom.
Herb
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James
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All intermittent supplies should be provided with the same power rated back-up capacity, gas or oil or water driven, at the point of delivery to the network. It would then be possible to analyse the value of power delivered against total investment and evaluate the return on capital using some form of Discounted Cash-Flow method. Then various types of investment can be graduated based on experience without risking network collapse due to lack of input power.
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