Escaping from the COP-27 insane asylum

Let’s hope climate talks finally come to grips with energy, scientific and economic reality

Paul Driessen 

“Show us the money!” climate activists demand, and rich countries are expected to pony up.
 
Do I hear $100 billion? Would you give $1 trillion? Now, then, would you give $2 trillion?
 
The climate reparations bidding war is on. What began at $100-billion-a-year at COP-21 in Paris rapidly ballooned to $1.3-trillion on the eve of COP-27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh-Down, Egypt and now stands at $2.4-trillion annually! And we’re nowhere near “going once, going twice, sold.”
 
Of course, it was always about the money – endless sums of cash supposedly to help developing countries (like China!) adapt to dangerous manmade climate change, cover entire regions with wind and solar, and secure “fair, just and equitable” reparations for soaring temperatures, rising seas, destructive storms, floods, droughts and famines allegedly caused by countries that have used fossil fuels since 1850.
 
Yes, China. The Middle Kingdom has long postured itself as a developing country, when it comes to when it might start building fewer coal-fired power plants and slowly shift to “renewable” energy.
 
Now China says it will pay non-cash climate reparations, if the United States pays in dollars. Of course, any US, UK, German, et cetera “fair share” would be exorbitant – and paid while they “transition” rapidly away from fossil fuels, regardless of the economic, social and ecological costs.
 
As Oliver Hardy would say, “Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” Joe, John and the rest of Team Biden’s climate-obsessed, fossil-fuel-eradicating, eco-justice warriors.
 
They and their activist, media and academia allies created the climate scare – the assertion that fossil fuel emissions alone are driving today’s climate and weather. Never mind that, since the last Pleistocene ice age, average global temperatures climbed significantly (Baruch Hashem); sea levels rose some 400 feet; and floods, droughts, hurricanes and other disasters ravaged planet and humanity countless times. Anything happening today, however, is due to countries that got rich using fossil fuels. Or so they insist.
 
Therefore, naturally, COP-27 organizers, activists and attendees now say the “climate crisis” requires enormous payments from rich countries to poor countries – or more accurately, from poor people in rich countries to rich kleptocrats in poor countries. That raises another inconvenient truth.
 
Not long ago, Obama “science advisor” John Holdren intoned: “Only one rational path is open to us – simultaneous de-development of the [United States and other over-developed countries] and semi-development of the under-developed countries, in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.” This de-development ideology is shared by many others.
 
Well, de-development and de-industrialization are already underway in Britain, Germany and elsewhere, because wind, solar and battery (WSB) energy cannot possibly replace abundant, reliable, affordable, non-weather-dependent fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Jobs, companies and entire industries are already disappearing across Europe, as it destroys fossil fuel power plants but has nothing viable to replace them.
 
So how are all these de-developing Formerly Rich Countries (FRCs) going to deliver billions or trillions annually, to pay climate reparations and help poor countries develop? They cannot possibly do so.
 
Even worse, eco-imperialist developed countries continue demanding that poor countries develop only to the minimal extent that WSB technologies would permit. Rich countries, the World Bank and global financial institutions refuse to finance anything but pseudo-renewable energy.
 
These unconscionable policies perpetuate joblessness, poverty, disease and death – and advance the other basic goal of “climate stabilization” programs: controlling our lives and living standards. But poor nations have inalienable, God-given rights to develop, using fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power – and petroleum as feed stocks for fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, plastics and hundreds of other miraculous life-enhancing, life-saving products (developed by countries that are now expected to pay reparations).
 
Developed nations must help developing nations reach those goals. Instead, they too often block pathways to better lives. Still more outrageous, the USA and Europe have the nerve to ask African, Asian and Latin American nations to produce more oil and gas, but only for export to the USA and Europe!
 
Meanwhile, Britain is setting up “warm rooms,” where people can go for a few hours a day, instead of freezing hungry and jobless in dark apartments. It’s as though Merry Old England has suddenly been transported back to the Middle Ages, by politicians who put climate virtue signaling above their constituents’ basic needs.
 
Meanwhile, Germany is dismantling an industrial wind power installation – so that it can extract the lignite coal underneath, to run generating plants, to keep factories operating and homes warm!
 
Even crazier, these are just a few examples of the insanity gripping the world’s political classes, especially during Conferences of Parties (COPs) on climate change. Happily, escaping this insane asylum requires little more than recognizing a few simple realities.

* The vast majority of nations signed the Paris climate treaty for the money – most of which they are now beginning to realize they will never receive. Moreover, coal, oil and natural gas still provide 82% of the world’s energy; nuclear, hydroelectric and biomass (wood and dung) provide most remaining energy needs, and less than 2% comes from wind and solar.
 
* Developing countries will be using fossil fuels for decades to come – and emitting more plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide in the process – much of it to extract the raw materials and manufacture the “green tech” they will export to the US, UK, EU and other soon-to-be-FRCs. So even if developed countries totally eliminated their fossil fuel use, atmospheric greenhouse gas levels will continue to climb.
 
* But that won’t matter, because there is no evidence that we face a climate crisis, much less a manmade climate crisis, much less changes unprecedented in Earth or human history. Humans are likely affecting temperature, humidity, climate and weather to some degree, especially around large urban “heat islands.” But that is a far cry from cataclysms allegedly resulting from fossil fuels replacing the powerful natural forces that have controlled climate and weather throughout history.
 
* The 1.5 degrees C that we are supposed to avoid to avert catastrophe is arbitrary, meaningless – and tied not just to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but to the end of the Little Ice Age. Another degree or two of warming would be mostly beneficial, whereas another little or big ice age would devastate agriculture, habitats, wildlife and humanity.
 
* The entire climate crisis agenda is based on computer models that (a) cannot possibly reflect all the forces that govern climate, and (b) consistently predict planetary warming that is two to three times greater than actually recorded by satellites, weather balloons and surface temperature monitors.
 
* Basing economy-destroying, life-altering policies on useless models is sheer insanity – especially if the replacement energy comes from WSB systems that would require mining, processing, manufacturing and installations on scales that would ravage our planet.

The only reason these realities are so little known is that climate activists, politicians, academics, and news and social media studiously demonize, harass, censor, silence, deplatform and demonetize scientists, economists and energy experts who challenge climate crisis narratives.

Thankfully, the Truth is slowly winning out. Perhaps COP-27 will bring a healthy dose of climate and energy sanity. If it doesn’t, we could end up with John Holdren’s formula for rolling back development and living standards. Just don’t expect the ruling elites and their Hollywood and Big Tech allies to lead by example.
 
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.
  

 

Quote of the Day

Wind and sunshine are free, clean, green, renewable, and sustainable. But harnessing this diffuse, unreliable, weather-dependent energy to power civilization is not.  Paul Driessen

The Coming Green Electricity Nightmare

Paul Driessen

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) wanted regulatory reform, in part to reverse some of the Biden Administration's reversals of Trump-era reforms intended to expedite permits for fossil fuel projects. 

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) needed Manchin’s vote in the 50-50 Senate to enact his latest spending extravaganza, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was primarily a massive climate and “green” energy subsidy arrangement. It gives Schumer allies some $370 billion in wind, solar, battery, and other funding, tax credits, and subsidies. In exchange, Schumer would offer a path for Manchin’s reform bill. 

Manchin voted YEA and promptly got bushwhacked. Once he’d helped enact the IRA, he had zero leverage. Schumer, he discovered, had promised an opportunity, maybe a vote, but not actual support. House and Senate members told him, we weren’t part of your secret negotiations with Schumer; we didn’t shake hands on any deal; we don’t want easier permitting for drilling, pipelines, and LNG terminals that could help send US natural gas to Britain and Europe. 

In the end, it’s probably a good thing Manchin’s bill went nowhere.

Yes, it provided some much-needed and long overdue reforms to curb the paralysis by analysis and endless litigation that have plagued fossil fuels, highways, airports, and countless other projects for decades. 

But it also had Trojan horse provisions that would have unleashed hordes of newly subsidized wind, solar, and transmission marauders on much of the Lower 48 USA, to send pseudo-clean electricity to mostly Democrat cities and states that don’t want even “renewable” power generation in their backyards. 

As the Wall Street Journal and energy analyst Robert Bryce observed, Manchin’s “reforms” would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and other bureaucrats the power to issue permits and force multiple states to acquiesce to new transmission lines and 200-foot-tall towers across their scenic, habitat, agricultural and even residential lands – if they decide (decree) that the lines are in the "national interest.” This could easily transform into federal powers of eminent domain, to take the needed acreage. 

The feds could decree that thousands of miles of new transmission lines are in the “national interest” if, for instance, the lines “enhance the ability” of faraway wind and solar facilities to connect their intermittent, weather-dependent energy to an electric grid; or enable distant blue states to reach their renewable energy goals; or help achieve Biden Administration goals of stopping manmade climate change, “advancing environmental justice” and having “a net-zero economy” by 2050. 

Populous states like New York could also work with FERC & Co. to have offshore wind turbines installed off less populated coasts, like Maine or North Carolina – and have the electricity delivered to the Empire State. New York’s peak summertime needs alone would require 2,500 monstrous 680-foot-tall 12-MW offshore turbines, operating 24/7 – when we’d be lucky if they generated electricity 40% of the year. (Imagine how many offshore ... or 6-MW onshore ... turbines we’d need to power the entire USA.) 

Compounding the energy colonialism, the Manchin reform package would also give FERC authority to allocate and “socialize” transmission line costs, so that residents of states that don’t even get any of the electricity being sent along the newly imposed transmission lines could still have to help pay for them. 

In short, the feds would be able to ride roughshod over states, local communities, and federalism. 

Let me say it again: Wind and sunshine are free, clean, green, renewable, and sustainable. But harnessing this diffuse, unreliable, weather-dependent energy to power civilization is not. 

The Green Lobby and its legislator and regulator friends think they can just pass laws and earmark subsidies, demanding energy transformations by 2050 – and it will just happen. The raw materials will just be there, perhaps with a little MAGIC: Materials Acquisition for Global Industrial Change. That is, just assume the necessary raw materials will also just be there. 

Not one of these luminaries has given a moment’s thought, much less attempted to calculate, what this net-zero transition would require: 

How many millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of EV and backup batteries, millions of transformers, thousands of miles of transmission lines – sprawling across how many millions of acres of wildlife habitat, scenic and agricultural lands, and people’s once-placid backyards? 

How many billions of tons of copper, steel, aluminum, nickel, cobalt, lithium, concrete, rare earth, and composite plastics? How many trillions of tons of ores and overburden? How many mines, across how many more acres – with how much fossil fuel energy to operate the enormous mining equipment, and how much toxic air and water pollution emitted in the process?  

To cite just one example, just those 2,500 wind turbines for New York electricity (30,000 megawatts) would require nearly 110,000 tons of copper – which would require mining, crushing, processing, and refining 25 million tons of copper ore ... after removing some 40 million tons of overlying rock to reach the ore bodies. Multiply that times 50 states – and the entire world – plus transmission lines. 

How many processing plants and factories would be needed? How much fossil fuel power to run those massive operations? How many thousands of square miles of toxic waste pits all over the world are under zero to minimal environmental standards, workplace safety standards, and child and slave labor rules? 

How many dead birds, bats, and endangered and other species would be killed off all across the USA and world – from mineral extraction activities, wind turbine blades, solar panels blanketing thousands of square miles of wildlife habitats, and transmission lines impacting still more land? 

Not only do the luminaries and activists ignore these issues and refuse to address them. They actively suppress, cancel, censor and de-platform the questions and discussions about them. They collude with chBig Tech companies and news agencies, which too often seem too happy to assist. 

The hard reality is, there are not, will not be, and cannot be, enough mines, metals, and minerals on the entire planet – to reach any “net-zero” US economy by 2050, much less a global “green” economy. 

Here’s another issue: electric vehicles and backup lithium-ion battery modules can erupt spontaneously into chemical-fueled infernos that cannot be extinguished by conventional fire-fighting means. That raises an important analog to rules Alec Baldwin should have kept uppermost in mind last year. Treat every firearm as if it is loaded. Never point your muzzle at anything you are not prepared to destroy. 

In the Biden-Newsom-Kerry energy arena: Treat every electric vehicle and backup battery system as if it is loaded and ready to ignite. Never park an EV, install a PowerWall or locate a backup power facility near anything you are not prepared to destroy. 

That includes in your garage; near other vehicles; in parking garages under apartment and office buildings; in residential neighborhoods and highway tunnels; or on cargo ships like the Felicity Ace. 

And yet we’re supposed to go along with Green Energy schemes – as we did with masks, school lockdowns, and vaccinations to stop Covid – because we have to destroy the planet to save it. 

Because our government, media, and “public interest” groups insist that we “follow the science,” on which there can be no doubt (certainly none permitted) that we face a “manmade climate crisis” that threatens the very existence of humanity and “the only Earth we have.” 

It’s time to short-circuit this electricity nightmare, by asking these questions, demanding answers, and ending the notion that governments can simply issue edicts and compel reality to change in response. 

Paul Driessen is a senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and the author of books and articles on energy, environmental, and human rights issues.

Biden Promises, Policies and Pesky Political Problems

Paul Driessen

Presidential candidate Joe Biden promised to reunite America following its “season of darkness” under President Trump, and “shut down the virus, not the economy.” We’ve seen how that’s working out. 

His promise that there’ll be “no more drilling, no more pipelines, no more fossil fuels” has been far more successful. Within hours of taking office, President Biden ended Keystone XL pipeline construction and began imposing leasing and drilling moratoriums, slow-walking permits, pressuring banks not to fund oil companies, and taking other steps to turn his promises into policies. 

Unfortunately, with a little assistance from Putin’s savagery in Ukraine, Mr. Biden’s war on fossil fuels brought a host of pesky political problems. 

Gasoline and diesel prices more than doubled since November 2020; they reached $9.50 per gallon in parts of California before falling slightly. Mr. Biden’s approval plummeted, as food prices and inflation soared, and farmers, families, commuters and truckers voiced outrage. 

But because allowing more drilling would anger climate cultists obsessed with the catechism of climate cataclysm, Mr. Biden asked Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran to increase their oil production, so that he could keep America’s resources locked up.

He also released 125,000,000 barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s emergency stockpiles – and on July 26 said he’d release 20,000,000 additional barrels. The administration claims this will “help lower energy costs,” “reduce the pain Americans are feeling at the pump,” and combat the “Putin price hike.” Perhaps minimally. 

Worse, Team Biden sent some 5,000,000 barrels of this oil overseas. Still more incredibly, it sold 950,000 barrels to the China Petrochemical Corporation. That’s China as in Chinese Communist Party – not Taiwan. The same Chinese government that is buying up thousands of acres of U.S. land, much of it near sensitive military installations. 

The optics are not good. And for an administration (and Democrat Party) focused on “racial justice” and America’s terrible legacy of slavery, public perceptions will only get worse, as the realities of the “green energy transition” become clear. 

First, this energy is not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. The sheer numbers of wind turbines, solar panels, and vehicle and backup batteries defy imagination. 

President Biden intends to eradicate coal and natural gas for generating electricity, gasoline and diesel for powering vehicles, natural gas for smelting and manufacturing, and natural gas for heating, cooking and water heating in homes, hospitals, schools and businesses. 

This would send America’s annual electricity requirement to almost 7.5 billion megawatt-hours per year by 2050. That’s nearly three times the fossil fuel portion of today’s U.S. electricity generation. It would require tens of thousands of wind turbines, billions of solar panels and billions of half-ton backup-power battery modules – sprawling across America. 

Oil and natural gas are also feed stocks for paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers and numerous other products. How does Team Biden plan to replace them? 

President Biden’s proposal for 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind power alone would require 2,500 enormous 800-foot-tall 12-megawatt turbines. Even if they operated at full capacity 24/7, they wouldn’t meet peak summertime electricity needs for New York State, much less the entire USA. 

But the turbines would require millions of tons of raw materials from hundreds of new mines – steel, aluminum, copper, fiberglass, concrete and others, whose extraction, processing and refining are energy- and land-intensive and highly polluting. 

Billions of solar panels would require massive amounts of polysilicon and other materials, from hundreds more mines. Billions of battery modules would require prodigious quantities of cobalt, nickel, lithium, rare earth elements, copper and other metals. More transformers and transmission lines – still more materials, from still more mines. 

Second, American environmentalists and climate campaigners steadfastly oppose these activities anywhere in the USA. The supply chains for most of these materials thus run through China – which controls the mining (in Mongolia, Africa, South America and elsewhere), processing (in China and Mongolia) and manufacturing (in China). 

China and the Chinese Communist Party achieve this because they have acquired mining properties all over the world; have huge coal-fired power plants to generate cheap electricity; don’t bother much with air or water pollution control, mined land reclamation or workplace safety standards required in Western countries; and utilize dirt-cheap, slave and child labor, most notably in Africa and Uyghur territories. 

Some 40,000 children already labor with their parents in Democratic Republic of Congo cobalt mines, for a few dollars a day, under threats of cave-ins, and with constant exposure to toxic air, mud, dust and water – just to meet today’s cobalt needs for manufacturing batteries. Those needs would skyrocket under a U.S. Green New Deal, and vastly more under an international “energy transition.” 

The cobalt ore is processed in China, under equally abominable safety and pollution conditions. Air and water pollution and an enormous toxic waste dump for rare earth effluents in Inner Mongolia have created serious health issues for plant workers and local residents. 

China also uses Uyghur slave labor to manufacture solar panels it sells to the United States. And Mr. Biden wants to suspend tariffs on Chinese solar panels, to make importing them even easier and cheaper.  

Over the past decade, the United States significantly reduced its (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide emissions, largely by replacing coal-fired electricity generation with natural gas. 

Meanwhile, in 2020 alone, China put 38,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants into operation. It relies on coal for 60% of its electricity and expects to mine 300 million more tons of coal in 2022 than in 2021. Beijing is also building, planning or financing more than 300 coal plants in Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, African countries and elsewhere, to raise their people out of poverty. India too burns millions of tons of coal annually.   

The United States could go fossil-fuel-free, and it wouldn’t affect global greenhouse gas levels one iota. 

But America could easily go from being a net oil and gas exporter two years ago, to being almost totally dependent on often unfriendly foreign sources for the materials required for its “renewable” energy, economy, manufacturing, living standards, communication, transportation – and national defense. Energy, food and consumer prices would climb even higher, hammering minority and other poor families. 

Moreover, every increase in “green” energy makes the United States more reliant on China which, like Russia, increasingly wields its energy, mineral and economic power as a weapon, to keep its client countries in line, dependent and subservient. Every increase makes us more complicitin slavery, eco-colonialism, environmental degradation and climate injustice. 

This Land of the Free must change course. As America reflects on its past, seeks “a more perfect Union,” reassesses the Separation of Powers, and endeavors to be a world leader in environmental protection and human rights, it must chart a future based on reality and true justice for all people. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

 

Preventing future forest infernos

Getting past the climate scapegoat, and taking steps that could actually make a difference 

By Paul Driessen

 The 2020 fire season is nearing its end. But monstrous wildfires continue to rage across America’s western states, devastating towns and habitats, and killing hundreds of people and millions of animals. Politicians and environmentalists continue to rage that climate change is the primary factor, allowing few responsible, commonsense forest management actions that could actually reduce the risks.

Manmade climate change is a convenient scapegoat, but it cannot be separated from natural climate fluctuations and effects. Moreover, even assuming fossil fuel emissions play a dominant role in the human portion of this equation – and even if the Pacific Northwest or entire USA eliminated coal, oil and natural gas – China, India and scores of other nations will not do so anytime soon.

And they will certainly be using fossil fuels to manufacture the wind turbines, solar panels and batteries envisioned by Green New Dealers – and to mine and process the raw materials those technologies require.

The key ingredient in these monstrous, devastating forest fires is fuel. A century of Smokey the Bear fire suppression, coupled with half-century bans on timber harvesting, tree thinning and even insect control has filled western forests with dense concentrations of brush, fallen branches, needles and leaves, skinny young trees and huge older trees – many of them dead or dying – ready to be turned into conflagrations under hot, dry summer and autumn conditions that prevail most years in California and other western states.

It’s a recipe for disasters like the 1871 Peshtigo Fire, 20 miles north of where I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin, on the very same day as the Great Chicago Fire. Blistering flames a mile high moved south at 100 mph, creating “fire tornados” that threw houses and rail cars into the air. Over a million acres of forest were obliterated in two days; up to 2,500 people died, many of them cremated into little piles of ash.

I also recall how American and British bombers deliberately turned Hamburg, Germany into an inferno in July 1943. The first waves of planes dropped “blockbuster” bombs that leveled arms factories and parts of the city known to have mostly wooden structures. They were followed in subsequent days by attacks with incendiary bombs, which turned the wood debris into a firestorm, with tornado winds up to 150 mph, and temperatures of nearly 1500 F. Operation Gomorrah killed over 40,000 people.

A few days ago, I picked up my latest issue of Wired magazine. Daniel Duane’s 12-page article “The fires next time” made a couple now-obligatory references to climate change, but was one of the most detailed and insightful articles I’ve read on the causes and nature of these horrific wildfires. He vividly explains why we are witnessing a “trend toward fires dramatically more catastrophic” than in the past.

Above all, the reason is fuel buildup. CalFire, he notes, has some 75 aircraft and 700 fire engines, and is very good at extinguishing thousands of wild-land fires annually. But CalFire has virtually no fuel-management authority and must simply watch the trees and other fuel get “more and more dense,” creating prime conditions for ever-worsening crown fires that US Forest Service scientist Mark Finney says are big because landscapes are full of tinder and long-burning, heavy fuels. Ditto in other states.

More trees of course generate more roots competing for the same water, further drying everything out. In California alone, this and the 2011-2016 drought and pine bark beetles killed 150 million trees!

Another key ingredient, Duane writes, is the simultaneous burning of many small fires (caused by multiple lightning strikes, eg) that combine light and heavy fuels over a large area, amid mild ambient winds. “As that broad area continues to burn with glowing and smoldering embers over many hours, the separate convective columns of all those many little fires begin to join into a single, giant plume.”

As hot air in the plume rises, air at its base is replaced by air “sucked in from all directions. This can create a 360-degree field of wind howling directly into the blaze ... oxygenating the fire and pushing temperatures high enough to flip even ... giant construction timbers and mature trees into full-blown flaming combustion. Those heavy fuels then pump still more heat into the convective column.... [which] rises ever faster and sucks in more wind, as if the fire has found a way to stoke itself.” The timbers, branches and entire trees become “firebrands” that can be carried high into the air, a mile or more from the primary fire, then dropped into timber stands and homes, igniting still more firestorms.

Smaller blazes can be controlled, even extinguished. But massive firestorms can be impossible to suppress, saving homes equally hopeless. The primary order of business with mass fires is getting people out of harm’s way, before escape routes are clogged, cars run out of gas, and walls of flame close in.

That means building more escape roads from communities through forests to safety, even in the face of environmentalist opposition and lawsuits. Roads are far less intrusive or harmful than conflagrations. Yet radical greens battle these roads, while praising these unnatural conflagrations as “nature’s way.”

People lived in these areas long before pressure groups, politicians and courts made conflagration conditions this horrific. Actions need to be taken now to prevent more deadly fire cataclysms. That has to begin with removal of diseased, dead and excessive trees and brush. It will take years, decades even, and a lot of effort and money. But failure to halt and reverse the buildup of fuel in our forests is undeniably irresponsible – and deadly. Apache Indian forestry programs prove sound management saves forests.

Blaming climate change is useless and irresponsible. It means waiting 30-50 years or more, just to see if China and India finally replace fossil fuels, perhaps with nuclear power – in the hope that reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide actually reduces climate change, droughts, extreme weather and infernos.

Policymakers, land management agencies and regulators, Native tribes, community associations, industry groups and less obdurate environmental groups should seek collaboration and cooperation, especially on forest management and tree thinning. This is already happening but needs to be expanded greatly.

Educational programs should teach homeowners how to harden and fireproof houses and other buildings against small to midsized fires – and teach judges and politicians the hard realities of modern fires. Above all, those with ultimately life-or-death decision-making authority must understand that the price of bans on timber harvesting and responsible forest management is too often measured in homes and habitats obliterated, wildlife and humans killed, soil organisms incinerated, soils washed away by rainstorms and snowmelts, and millions of acres denuded and desolate for decades.

Tougher building codes for new construction in these areas would save homes, heirlooms and lives. Roofs especially should be made of fireproof or fire-resistant materials. Special financing and low-interest loans would make such new homes and hardened existing homes and buildings more affordable.

Local, state and federal budgets are already stretched to their limits. Funding will have to be redirected from other programs. Another approach could require forestry work for welfare checks. Besides saving habitats and lives, that would build skills, self-esteem and strong work ethics, improve physical fitness, replace a sense of entitlement with a sense of accomplishment, and create connections and opportunities

Another source of funds could be billionaires like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who recently gave $791 million to climate activist groups, as part of his commitment to his $10-billion Earth Fund. Certainly, helping to stop these deadly fires – and the incalculable air pollution, soil erosion, and habitat and wildlife destruction they cause – would be one of the boldest and most effective actions anyone could take to protect Earth’s future, including the majestic at-risk forests in his own backyard.

The bottom line is so simple we shouldn’t even have to state it.

If we don’t act, nature will. We have created this massive fuel-for-fires problem. We can and must fix it. Either we thin out trees, or nature will – with devastating consequences. For people who claim to care deeply about saving our forests for Bambi, spotted owls and other beloved creatures, guaranteeing horrific infernos is quite literally a hellish way to demonstrate our love for Mother Earth.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

Climate Hustle 2 premieres this Thursday ,

Ignore the Climate Alarm, Clean Energy and Cancel Culture Industry con artists. See the movie. 

Paul Driessen

Weekly, daily, even hourly, we are told that global temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting, and hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods and droughts are all getting more frequent, intense and destructive because of climate change. Not just climate change, of course, but manmade climate change, due to humanity’s use of fossil fuels – which provide 80% of all the energy that powers America and the world.

The claims assume Earth’s climate and weather were unchanged and unchanging until recent decades. That presumption is belied of course by multiple glacial and interglacial periods; the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods; the Little Ice Age; the Dust Bowl, Anasazi and Mayan droughts; the Galveston, Texas hurricane of 1900 and Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935; the 1925 Tri-State Tornado; and countless other climate eras and extreme weather events throughout history.

But all would be vastly better, we are further misinformed, if the world simply stopped using those fuels, and switched to “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” wind, solar, biofuel and battery technologies.

Climate alarm messages are conveyed repeatedly in classrooms, newspapers, television and radio news programs, social media, movies and other media – while contrarian voices and evidence are routinely and vigorously suppressed by an increasingly powerful Big Tech, political and academic Cancel Culture.

These messages, and green energy agendas justified by them, are likely to gain far more influence under a Harris-Biden Administration, especially one pushed further and further to the left by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her vocal, often violent “progressive” allies.

In 2016, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) released its documentary film Climate Hustle. The factual, often hilarious movie featured scientists, weather forecasters and other experts who challenged claims that our cars, factories and farms are causing catastrophic climate. It was featured in 400 U.S. movie theaters, where it made a persuasive case that the climate apocalypse is “an overheated environmental con job.”  

Now, this Thursday, September 24, CFACT is releasing Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy. The worldwide streaming event will go live at 8:00 pm local time, in every time zone on Earth, wherever you live.

You can get your tickets here to watch the online world premiere – with unlimited replay viewing through September 27, in case you miss the opening.

For those who missed it or want a refresher, CFACT is also offering a re-broadcast of Climate Hustle 1 for instant viewing. You can get combined tickets for both events here.

Climate Hustle 2 is masterfully hosted and narrated by Hollywood’s Kevin Sorbo, who played Hercules in the television movie. Like CH1, it features a superb lineup of experts who challenge claims of “climate tipping points” and “extreme weather cataclysms.” Equally important, they also expose, debunk and demolish the tricks, lies and hidden agendas of global warming and green energy campaigners.

CH2 exposes the campaigners’ and politicians’ real agendas. Not surprisingly, as Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs demonstrate in their Planet of the Humans documentary, those real agendas are money, power, ideology and control. Especially, control over our energy, economy, industries, living standards and personal choices. The campaigners and politicians also have little regard for the ecological, health and human rights consequences that inevitably accompany the ever-widening adoption of wind, solar, biofuel and battery technologies.

Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy hits hard. As CFACT says, “Lies will be smashed. Names will be named. Hypocrites unmasked. Grifters defrocked. Would-be tyrants brought low.”

Accompanying Sorbo is CFACT and Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, who hosted Climate Hustle 1. The journal Nature Communications has called Morano the world's most effective climate communicator. He is also the person climate alarmists most want blacklisted and banned from public discourse. 

Meteorologist and WattsUpWithThat.com host Anthony Watts says CH2 highlights numerous instances of “hypocrisy, financial corruption, media bias, classroom indoctrination, political correctness and other troubling matters surrounding the global warming issue.” It offers a true perspective of just how hard the media and climate alarmists are pushing an agenda, and how equally hard climate skeptics are pushing back.” Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presents rhetoric, doom and misinformation. But “if you want a practical and sensible view of what is really happening with climate, watch Climate Hustle 2.”

The Wall Street Journal cites scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., who points out that hurricanes hitting the U.S. have not increased in frequency or intensity since 1900. The Journal also notes that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said “it is premature to conclude that human activities – and particularly greenhouse gas emissions ... have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.” And let’s not forget the record twelve-year absence of Category 3-5 hurricanes making landfall in the United States. (Was that due to more atmospheric carbon dioxide?)

As to tornadoes, a Washington Post article clearly shows that many more violent F4 and F5 tornadoes hit the United States between 1950 and 1985, than during the next 35 years, 1986-2020. Even more amazing, in 2018, for the first year in recorded history, not one violent tornado struck the U.S.

Canada’s Friends of Science says, once you see Climate Hustle 2, “you can’t unsee the damage the climate monarchy is doing to every aspect of scientific inquiry, to freedom and to democratic society.”

CFACT president Craig Rucker says “Politicians have abandoned any semblance of scientific reality and are instead regurgitating talking points from radical pressure groups to a media that has little interest in vetting their credibility.” In fact, the Cancel Culture is actively suppressing any climate skeptic views.

Twitter actively banned Climate Hustle 2 and froze CFACT’s Twitter account. On appeal the account was unfrozen, but the ban adversely affected thousands of CFACT Twitter followers.

Amazon Prime Video has removed Climate Hustle 1 from its website. CFACT tried to appeal, but Amazon didn’t respond. You can watch the trailer, but the actual film is now “unavailable in your area.” Amazon only lets people buy new DVDs through the film’s producer, CDR Communications ($19.95) – while also processing fulfillment for third party vendors who sell used DVDs (for over $45). 

Wikipedia claims Climate Hustle is “a 2016 film rejecting the existence and cause of climate change, narrated by climate change denialist Marc Morano ... and funded by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a free market pressure group funded by the fossil fuel lobby.” (CFACT has received no fossil fuel money for over a decade, and got only small amounts before that.)

Newspapers, TV and radio news programs, social media sites, schools and other arenas should present all the news and foster open discussion and debate. But many refuse to do so. Instead, they function as thought police, actively and constantly finding and suppressing what you can see, read, hear and say, because it goes against their narratives and the agendas they support.

Climate and energy are high on that list. That makes Climate Hustle 1 and 2 especially important this year – and makes it essential that every concerned voter and energy user watch and promote this film.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

The Green New Deal means monumental disruption

Not just for energy, but for every aspect of our lives, living standards, culture and freedoms

David Wojick and Paul Driessen

Kamala Harris co-sponsored the Senate resolution to support the Green New Deal. Now Joe Biden has endorsed the plan. Naturally, people want to know what the GND will cost – usually meaning in state and federal government spending. But that is the wrong question.

The real question is, how much do Green New Dealers expect to get out of it, at what total cost? Mr. Biden says he wants the feds to spend nearly $7 trillion over the next decade on healthcare, energy and housing transformation, climate change and other GND agenda items. But that is only part of the picture.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who has a degree in some socialist version of economics) and the folks who helped her write Biden's so-called Climate Plan have a clear idea of how much money they want, and pretty much know where they expect the money to come from. Here it is in its clearest form, as stated by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s then chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti:

“The resolution describes the 10-year plan to transform every sector of our economy to remove GHG [greenhouse gases] and pollution. It says it does this through huge investments in renewables, at WW2 scales (which was 40-60% of America’s GDP).” [emphasis added]

World War II was a time of great sacrifice and hardship, as part of a dramatic and historic mobilization to win a horrific global war. However, that hard reality doesn’t matter to these folks. They say we are now waging a war to stop catastrophic climate change. So money, sacrifice and disruption are irrelevant.

Our nation’s GDP is around $20 trillion a year, or $200 trillion in ten years. 40-60% of that is $80-120 trillion. For simplicity, let’s call it an even $100 trillion to finance the Green New Deal utopian dream.

$100 trillion! The ways and means of raising this stupendous sum are also clear in their minds. It will be done the same way WW2 was financed, however that was. To them, it’s obvious that we can simply do this, because we did it before. The specifics don’t matter. Government elites will figure them out.

But even this arrogant, cavalier attitude is only part of the picture.

If you read what Green New Dealers say, confusion arises because people think the GND is an ordinary policy proposal: “Here’s what we want done, and this what it should cost.” It is nothing like that. The Green New Deal is more along the lines of, “Here’s the level of effort we require to transform our entire economy, and this is what we should be able to do with that much money.”

People tend to interpret Green New Dealer talk of a WW2-like mobilization as a simple metaphor. But these folks mean it as an actual measure of what they are determined to do. So far they have glossed over and ignored the extreme hardships of mobilization. Here’s just one example – not from front lines mayhem, but from the United States home front during World War II.

Gasoline, meat and clothing were tightly rationed. Most families were allocated three US gallons of gasoline a week, which sharply curtailed driving for any purpose. Production of most durable goods, like cars, new housing, vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances, was banned until the war ended. In industrial areas housing was in short supply as people doubled up and lived in cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled. [Harold Vatter, The US Economy in World War II]

No doubt the Green New Deal mobilization would impose different hardships. But all mobilizations are oppressive. You can’t commandeer half of the GDP without inflicting severe disruption on people’s lives.

The argument is sound in its way, provided there is a need for all-out war – which there is not. The minor to modest temperature, climate and extreme weather changes we’ve been seeing (in the real world  outside computer models) explain why most Americans see no need for a painful war. So does the fact that China, India and other emerging economies are not about to give up fossil fuels anytime soon.

In fact, polls show that roughly half of Americans do not even believe in the idea of human caused global warming, much less that it is an “existential threat,” as Senator Harris claims it is. The latest Gallup poll found that only 1% of US adults consider “climate change/environment/pollution” to be “the most important problem facing this country today.” That’s down from a meager 2% in the May 28-June 4 poll.

Even more revealing, a 2019 AP-NORC poll found that 68% of adult Americans were unwilling to pay even an extra $10 on their monthly electricity bill to combat global warming. Indeed, 57% of them would not be willing to pay more than $1.00 in added electricity charges to fight climate change!

Just wait until they see what the Biden-Harris-AOC-Democrat Green New Deal would cost them.

And it’s not just that their costs would likely skyrocket from an average US 13.2¢ per kilowatt hour (11.4¢ or less in ten states) to well beyond the nearly 20¢ per kWh that families are already paying in California and New York, or the 30¢ that families are now paying in ultra-green Germany. Or that factories, businesses, hospitals, schools and everyone else would also see their costs escalate – with blue collar families, the sick and elderly, poor and minority communities hammered hardest.

It’s that the GND would force every American to replace their gasoline and diesel cars and trucks with expensive short-haul electric vehicles; their gas furnaces and stoves with electric systems; their home, local and state electrical and transmission systems with expensive upgrades that can handle a totally electric economy. They’ll see their landscapes, coastlines and wildlife habitats blanketed with wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines and warehouses filled with thousands of half-ton batteries. Virtually every component of this GND nation would be manufactured in China and other faraway places.

The cost of this massive, total transformation of our energy and economic system would easily reach $10 trillion: $30,000 per person or $120,000 per family – on top of those skyrocketing electricity prices. And that’s just the intermittent, unreliable energy component of this all-encompassing Green New Deal.

These are stupendous, outrageous costs and personal sacrifices. Every American, at every campaign event and town meeting, should ask Green New Deal supporters if they think America needs to – or can afford to – cough up $10 trillion or $100 trillion over the next ten years. And not let them get away with glib, evasive answers, or attempts to laugh these questions off as meritless or irrelevant.

The American people are not about to be mobilized into an all-out war against dubious climate change, with price tags like these coupled with repeated blackouts, huge personal sacrifices, and massive joblessness in every sector of the economy – except among enlightened government ruling classes.

They’ve already seen news stories about the latest rolling blackouts in California (here, here, here and here) – resulting from one-third of that state’s electricity coming from “renewable” sources, and with another third of the state’s electricity imported from other states that also get heat waves. They should ponder what their lives, livelihoods and living standards would be under 100% wind and solar power.

And yet, once again, even all this insanity is only a small part of the picture.

Remember, the Green New Deal is also about government run healthcare – and an economy and nation where “progressive” “woke” legislators, regulators, judges and activists tell companies what they can manufacture and sell ... and tell us what we can buy, eat and drink; how and how much we can heat and cool our homes; and what we can read, hear, think and say, as they “transform” our culture and traditions.

The GND is being promoted by politicians, news and social media, “educators” and “reformers” who also want to eliminate free enterprise capitalism; have totally open borders, even for criminals and people who might have Covid and other diseases; and want to defund the police, put anarchists, looters and arsonists back on our streets, and take away our right and ability to defend ourselves, our homes and our families.

The time to think long and hard about all of this is NOW. Not sometime after the November 3 elections.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues. David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and human rights in public policy, and author of numerous articles on these topics.

Food Security in a Post-Covid World

European Conservatives and Reformists Party hosts another ‘Europe Debates’ webinar

Paul Driessen

US-EU trade talks are already stalled over agriculture issues. And yet the European Union’s new “Farm to Fork” strategy doesn’t just double down on the EU’s contentious agricultural regulations. It promises to use access to European markets to compel the United States and other countries to adopt EU-style organic farming, precautionary and other regulations if they want to remain trading partners with Europe.

“Farm to Fork” (or F2F) is being billed as “the heart of the European Green Deal.” Like recent energy, climate and other initiatives, it is largely an environmentalist wish (or demand) list – with little basis in science, practical experience or real world impacts. It sets out three primary objectives, which the EU intends to implement fully by 2030, barely nine years from now:

* Bring “at least 25% of EU agricultural land under organic farming” – from its current 7.5%
* Reduce “overall use and risk of chemical pesticides by 50% – forcing greater use of “natural” chemicals
* Reduce the use of manmade chemical fertilizers “by at least 20%” – again forcing “natural” substitutes

F2F is being billed as a continental and global agricultural transformation that will ensure a “just transition” to a “more robust and resilient food system,” guarantee “affordable food for citizens,” and simultaneously improve human health, protect biodiversity, and promote environmental sustainability.

It will almost certainly end up doing just the opposite. Which is why the European Conservatives and Reformists Party is hosting a ‘Europe Debates’ webinar on the topic this Wednesday, July 29.

The problems with “organic” farming are well documented, though largely ignored by environmentalists, policy makers, regulators, journalists and academics.

Organic agriculture requires far more land and much more human labor than modern mechanized farming with manmade fertilizers and crop-protecting chemicals, to get the same crop yields. Many of the “natural” fertilizers and other chemicals that organic farmers employ are equally or more dangerous to bees, other insects, birds, fish and terrestrial animals than modern manmade alternatives.

Low-yield organic agriculture raises food prices for consumers, particularly harming poor families and countries, many of which have been especially hard hit by the Covid pandemic. It makes EU farmers increasingly uncompetitive in world markets. It creates a less resilient food system that is increasingly vulnerable to plant diseases, invasive species, floods, droughts and insects. As a result, it inevitably undermines the climate, “sustainability,” biodiversity and nutrition goals it promises to achieve.

Finally, Farm to Fork will also likely exacerbate the EU’s growing trade frictions with other nations. Even before F2F, agriculture issues were already imperiling US-EU bilateral trade agreements. Meanwhile the US and some 35 other nations had formally complained to the World Trade Organization that current EU regulations on agricultural imports clearly violate internationally accepted norms, because they are not based in science. And now F2F promises to impose similar productivity-destroying regulations on even its poorest trading partners: African countries. In fact, the European Commission (EC) itself has admitted:

“It is also clear that we cannot make a change unless we take the rest of the world with us.… Efforts to tighten sustainability requirements in the EU food system should be accompanied by policies that help raise standards globally, in order to avoid the externalisation and export of unsustainable practices.”

Now the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECRP) is offering an opportunity to learn more.

This Wednesday, July 29, US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and new European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski will appear together in a webinar hosted by the ECRP.

The event is free and open to the public. It will be the first high-level discussion of these agriculture and trade issues between the US and EU since Farm to Fork was released. Other debate participants include:

* Anna Fotyga, Member of European Parliament, Poland & Acting President of the ECR Party
* Hermann Tertsch, Member of European Parliament, Spain
* Jon Entine, Founder and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project
* Richard Milsom, Executive Director, ECR Party
Please tune in: Wednesday * July 29 * 10 am ET / 4pm CET

Go here for more information and here to register.

(The European Conservatives and Reformists Party https://www.ecrparty.eu/ is a conservative Eurosceptic European political party primarily focused on reforming the European Union on the basis of “Eurorealism,” as opposed to totally rejecting the EU. Its more than 40 political parties are united by center-right values, under the Reykjavik Declaration, and dedicated to individual liberty, national sovereignty, parliamentary democracy, private property, limited government, free trade, family values and the devolution of power away from a centralized EU and EC) .

Quite clearly, humanity’s brief encounter with food uncertainty in the early days of COVID was a stark reminder that even the most advanced, technologically capable nations on Earth cannot take the safety and security of their food supply for granted. Poor countries are still dealing with Covid-related food uncertainty. Among the other topics the panelists will be discussing are the following.

What lessons have we or should we have learned from the Covid crisis? From past experience with organic agriculture, pesticide and fertilizer policies and practices?

What policies could give our vast and complex food supply system the strength and resilience it needs to withstand whatever shocks and dislocations may hit us in the future?

How will the US respond to these EU demands and threats under the Farm to Fork initiative?

Inside the EU, who will bear the costs involved and how can the EU and EU nations assure equity, given the vast regional disparities across the EU?

How will F2F impact the global competitiveness of European farmers?

Does growing political opposition to the EU’s agreements with Latin America and Canada signal a reassessment of its broader trade strategy?

Will the EU take an evidence-based scientific approach to the climate, sustainability, biodiversity and safety shortcomings of organic agriculture?

How does the EU demand that impoverished African countries adopt European ideas – on organic farming, agro-ecology, the precautionary principle, pesticides, fertilizers and sufficient affordable energy, for instance – reflect EU ideals on justice, human rights and self-determination?

This week’s debate promises to be an invigorating and informative program.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

Buckets of Icy Cold Reality

Paul Driessen Sep 10, 2019

CNN just hosted a seven-hour climate bore-athon. That climate cataclysms are real, imminent and indeed already devastating our planet is an article of faith. So host Wolf Blitzer and ten Democrat presidential wannabes vied to make the most extravagant claims about how bad things are and who would spend the most taxpayer money and impose the most Green New Deal rules to restrict our freedoms and transform our energy, economy, agriculture and transportation, in the name of preventing further cataclysms.

Cory Booker opened the bidding at $3 trillion. Kamala Harris and Julian Castro raised it to $10 trillion, and Bernie Sanders upped it to $16 trillion. Then they got down to the business of which personal choices and living standards would be rolled back the furthest. Among the proposals:

Ban all commercial air travel, except for ruling and privileged classes. Change our dietary guidelines or ban beef outright. “Massively” increase taxes, to “make polluters pay” for emitting greenhouse gases. Eliminate onshore drilling, offshore drilling, fracking, coal-fired power plants and internal combustion engines. No pipelines. No new nuclear power plants. Ensure “climate justice.”

The first bucket of icy cold reality is that we simply do not face a climate emergency. Computer models certainly predict all kinds of catastrophes. But both the models and increasingly hysterical assertions of planetary doom are completely out of synch with reality.

The second, even colder bucket of reality is that the wind and sun may be free, renewable, sustainable. and eco-friendly. But the technologies and raw materials required to harness this widely dispersed, intermittent, weather dependent energy to benefit humanity absolutely are not. In fact, they are far more environmentally harmful than any of the fossil fuel energy sources they would supposedly replace.

Biofuels. US ethanol quotas currently gobble up over 40% of America’s corn – grown on cropland nearly the size of Iowa, to displace about 10% of America’s gasoline. Corn ethanol also requires vast quantities of water, pesticides, fertilizers, natural gas, gasoline and diesel, to produce and transport a fuel that drives up food prices, adversely affects food aid and nutrition in poor nations, damages small engines, and gets one-third fewer miles per gallon than gasoline.

Replacing 100% of US gasoline with ethanol would require some 360 million acres of corn. That’s seven times the land mass of Utah. But eliminating fossil fuel production means we’d also have to replace the oil and natural gas feed stocks required for pharmaceuticals, wind turbine blades, solar panel films, paints, synthetic fibers, fertilizers, and plastics for cell phones, computers, eyeglasses, car bodies and countless other products. That would mean planting corn on almost 14 times the area of Utah.

Solar power. Solar panels on Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Basegenerate a minuscule 15 megawatts of electricity, about 40% of the year, from 72,000 panels on 140 acres. Arizona’s Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant generates 760 times more electricity, from less land, 90-95% of the time.

Generating Palo Verde’s electricity output using Nellis technology would require acreage ten times larger than Washington, DC. And the solar panels would still provide electricity only 40% of the year.

Generating the 3.9 billion megawatt-hours that Americans consumed in 2018 would require blanketing over ten million acres with solar panels. That’s half of South Carolina – a lot of wildlife habitat and scenic land. And we’d still get that electricity only when sufficient sun is shining.

Wind power. Mandated, subsidized wind energy also requires millions of acres for turbines and new transmission lines, and billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, rare earth metals and fiberglass.

 

Like solar panels, wind turbines produce intermittent, unreliable electricity that costs much more than coal, gas or nuclear electricity – once subsidies are removed – and must be backed up by fossil fuel generators that have to go from standby to full-power many times a day, very inefficiently, every time the wind stops blowing. Turbine blades kill numerous raptors, other birds and bats every year – a million or more every year in the USA alone. Their light flicker and infrasonic noise impair human health.

Modern coal and gas-fired power plants can generate 600 megawatts some 95% of the time from less than 300 acres. Indiana’s Fowler Ridge wind farm also generates 600 megawatts – from 350 towering turbines, located on more than 50,000 acres, and less than 30% of the year.

Now let’s suppose we’re going to use wind power to replace those 3.9 billion megawatt-hours of US electricity consumption. Let’s also suppose we’re going to get rid of all those coal and gas-fired backup power plants – and use wind turbines to generate enough extra electricity every windy day to charge batteries for just seven straight windless days.

That would require a lot of extra wind turbines, as we are forced to go into lower and lower quality wind locations. Instead of generating full nameplate power maybe one-third of the year, on average, they will do so only around 16% of the year. Instead of the 58,000 turbines we have now, the United States would need some 14 million turbines, each one 400 feet tall, each one capable of generating 1.8 megawatts at full capacity, when the wind is blowing at the proper speed.

Assuming a barely sufficient 15 acres apiece, those monster turbines would require some 225 million acres! That’s well over twice the land area of California – without including transmission lines! Their bird-butchering blades would wipe out raptors, other birds and bats in vast regions of the USA.

But experts say every turbine needs at least 50 acres of open airspace, and Fowler Ridge uses 120 acres per turbine. That works out to 750 million acres (ten times Arizona) – to 1,800 million acres (ten times Texas or nearly the entire Lower 48 United States)! Eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, geese and other high-flying birds and bats would virtually disappear from our skies. Insects and vermin would proliferate.

 

Manufacturing those wind turbines would require something on the order of 4 billion tons of steel, copper and alloys for the towers and turbines; 8 billion tons of steel and concrete for the foundations; 4 million tons of rare earth metals for motors, magnets and other components; 1 billion tons of petroleum-based composites for the nacelle covers and turbine blades; and massive quantities of rock and gravel for millions of miles of access roads to the turbines. Connecting our wind farms and cities with high-voltage transmission lines would require still more raw materials – and more millions of acres.

All these materials must be mined, processed, smelted, manufactured into finished products, and shipped all over the world. They would require removing hundreds of billions of tons of earth and rock overburden – and crushing tens of billions of tons of ore – at hundreds of new mines and quarries.

Every step in this entire process would require massive amounts of fossil fuels, because wind turbines and solar panels cannot operate earth moving and mining equipment – or produce consistently high enough heat to melt silica, iron, copper, rare earth or other materials.

Not once did any of CNN’s hosts or Green New Deal candidates so much as mention any of this. To them, “renewable” energy will just happen, like manna from Gaia, or beamed down from the Starship Enterprise.

They should no longer be allowed to dodge these issues, to go from assuming the climate is in crisis, to assuming “reliable, affordable, renewable, sustainable, eco-friendly” alternatives to fossil fuel (and nuclear) energy will just magically appear, or can just be willed or subsidized into existence.

Citizens, newscasters, debate hosts and legislators who are more firmly grounded in reality need to confront Green New Dealers with hard questions and icy cold facts – and keep repeating them until the candidates provide real answers. No more dissembling, obfuscation or incantations permitted.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate, environmental and human rights issues.