Can Green Energy Save The Planet From Climate Change?

President Obama asserts that anything that is labeled “Green” power, Wind, Bio Fuel and Solar) are good for people and the climate and worth the billions of tax payer dollar “investment” that is required for their development. Whereas Coal, Oil and Natural Gas , (the three pillars of abundant, reliable and cheap energy for the US and the world) are all bad for people and the root cause of climate change and severe weather. Thus, the logic goes, must be taxed to the hilt so their costs “skyrocket” making them too expensive for anyone to afford, (especially the poor). The fact the US is estimated to be the largest source of fossil fuel in the world is never factored into the equation. So is President Obama doing the right thing by the people he serves when he enacts energy policies that forbids their use? Let’s take a look at some of the issues surrounding President Obama’s pledge to save the world from Climate Change by skyrocketing the cost of coal, oil and natural gas.

Lets look at Coal first. Are coal’s CO2 emisssions dangerously warming the planet as the President claims? By the way, to accept this premise you must also buy into the temperature data USHCN is releasing to the public** The fact is despite the rise in CO2 the planet has not warmed for 16 years . The revised temperature data from the UK Met negates the Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory (AGW) aka (climate change) that says that when CO2 goes up so do the temperatures. There has been a fifty years’ rise in CO2 without the temperature correlations the AGW models predicted. The facts are clear to anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear, CO2 emmisions have little if anything to do with climate change. The sun, ocean currents and clouds have far more impact on climate change than CO2 does.

As noted above by real world empirical data, CO2 emissions from coal are not primary cause of climate change. So it would be irresponsible to snuff out coal as a source of power for the US unless President Obama has an alternative and better source of energy. Yes? President Obama says Wind Turbines are the ticket. Or are they?

Lets examine if Wind Turbines are the ticket for replacing coal by looking at some of the data. Wind Turbines are a very intermittent and unreliable source of energy compared to coal. Lets compare the Ceres Project 600MW wind plant in Australia to an equivalent 600MW coal fired plant. If the so called “social costs” of CO2 emmisions are taken oit of the equarion here is what we get. The below calculations are based on a Wind Plant operating 25% during its estimated 15 year life span compared to a coal plant operating 80% of the time during its typical 50 year life span. If you factor in the fact a Wind Plants life span is only 12 years, not 15, the below life time power comparisons between the two are even more ridiculous. This holds true even if you shorten the life span of a coal plant to 30 years. Making one think humans are pretty stupid erecting these bird killing monstrosities. Of course, if you factor in all the government subsidies going to the Green Power companies building these things, you see the logic behind them. Greed.

Total lifetime power from the Ceres Wind Plant is 19,324  MWHq

Total lifetime power from an equivalent coal fired plant is 210,384 MWH

Over its life span the coal fired plant will deliver 10.7 times the power delivered from the Ceres Wind Plant, and deliver that power on a reliable 24/7/365yr basis as opposed to the variability of wind power. *

The Hidden Cost of Wind Energy is a good explanation of the real costs of Wind energy compared to coal. Can you see now how utterly useless Wind Power is? There is no contest. But President Obama says all this is out weighed by the fact Wind Turbines are so much better for the environment than coal is right? Oops, Wind Turbines are documented to kill lots of birds cause health problems for people, require polluting rare earth to manufacture

and as noted above very inefficient and costly to operate. They also lay waste to a lot of land to operate. Bye Bye Buffalo Mountain in Tennessee in it was nice to know you. So maybe wind turbines are not much better than coal ?

. 

So if Wind Turbines are not the holy grail of reliable, cheap, abundant energy that President Obama seeks, what about Bio fuel? Bio fuel is certainly a cleaner better source of energy than oil. Or is it? Other wise why would President Obama want to ban the second pillar of US energy, oil? Coal and Oil made modern industrial Western Civilization possible and improved the lives of billions of people. Poor people in paticular. So again, it would be a very irresponsible to make their costs prohibitive if the alternatives (wind turbines and bio fuel) do not provide an equivalent and environmentally friendly alternative. The politically incorrect truth is Wind Turbines and Bio Fuel are a bad source of energy compared to coal and gas. Moreover, the poor cannot afford the high cost of electricity they produce.

So if Wind Tubines and Bio Fuel are not the way to President Obama’s green utopia what about, solar? Solar

certainly must be better than Natural Gas that uses a method call fracking to extract it? The answer is no. The facts don’t support the Greens claims that, compared to Natural Gas, Solar energy is a clean, reliable and friendly to the environment source of energy. So if the green movement and President Obama gets their way, there goes the third pillar of energy, Natural Gas, that makes modern Western Indusrialized civilization possible.

Given all the above, it is difficult for a rational person to buy into the left’s logic that their war on climate change is justified. There are just too many incoherent dichotomies. For example, how can the left persist in their war on climate change when all the empirical evidence shows man made CO2 emissions have little if anything to do with climate change? Despite all the in your face real world data showing there is no AGW they are still doing their best to make the price of coal, oil and gas skyrocket. Never mind the alternatives are far more costly, unreliable and have their own pretty nasty impacts on mother earth. They also ignore the fact their Green Power alternatives can only provide a fraction of energy that coal oil and natural gas does. Nor do they seem to care that the high costs of energy their climate change energy policies will incur will further erode an already anemic economy putting more people out of work and in the poor house.

In conclusion, what is most troubling is according to President Obama, if he is successful in implementing his green power plans, the cost of energy will necessarily “skyrocket”. This will hurt the poor the most. But so what if the poor are hurt the left says. The left is on a mission from mother earth to save the planet from climate change. The plight of the poor is not their top priority no matter what they claim. The irony is that President Obama’s Green power initiatives are arguably doing more harm to mother earth than coal, oil, or natural gas. So how is it possible for President Obama to say with a straight face that he is the champion of the poor and savior of mother earth when his climate change policies are doing so much harm to the poor and to the environment? I guess the answer is there is another sucker born every minute. The question is, how much longer will people be suckered into believing the AGW hoax before they wake up and see the king has no clothes?

* Wind Plant vs Coal Plant life time power comparison calculations (credit to Tonyfromoz – JoNova 1/18/13)

So, for the Wind Plant:

600(MW) X 4 (hours in a day) X 365. 5 (days in a year, leap year accounted for with the 0. 25 X 0.25(CF of 25%) and the divided by 1000, (to convert from MWH to the GWH) X 15. (years) giving 19,923 GWH

And for the equivalent Coal Fired Plant:

600 MW X 24 hours per day X 365. 5 X 0.8 divided by 1000 X 50 years giving 210,384 GWH .

** last 4 Days of 2012 temperatures missing from NOAA “hottest year” claim

5 Responses to The Big NOAA 0 Cheat Continues 

harrydhuffman (@harrydhuffman) says: January 19, 2013 at 2:30 pm The scientific bottom line (I’m speaking as a physicist, for those who don’t know me by now) is that the whole process is garbage, and this little “mystery” of the last 4 days of 2012 missing just underlines that fact. It has no objective meaning whatsoever, except to show climate scientists as totally inept, deluded, and dishonest. Think of it as an episode of “World’s Dumbest Criminals,” and you will understand just how bad the situation is in climate science (all–all–of our supposedly authoritative institutions have been suborned by an incompetent consensus).