Michael Shellenberger, Founder - President of Environmental Progress: Bill McKippen, Alexandris, Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are behind the Green New Deal in Congress. This will stop fossil fuels and nuclear and leave the government in charge of most of the things in our private lives. The Socialist revolutions of the last century all over again.
Congress Woman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D, NY launched her Green New Deal February 7, 2019. It is by far the largest plan ever for the United States government to take control of most aspects of every American's life and spend tremendous amounts of money that doesn't exist. It would far surpass the artificial economies of Communist China and the Soviet Union. This is a massive transformation of American society with clear goals and timeline. The Green New Deal resolution is a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale never seen before. It aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for all. This is preposterous: If implemented, it will replace the unmatched successful capitalism economic model with a profoundly failed socialism economic model. It will obliterate the American currency, which is already seriously compromised by four decades of accumulating a 20 trillion dollar national debt. It will exceed this national debt many times over.
Viv Forbes, Executive Director of the Saltbush Club which opposes the war on carbon energy, opposes real pollution, and promotes the rational and sustainable use of carbon energy and carbon food: Rarely has the dire future of the free world been so succinctly and precisely described. The world must not allow Green Extremists to impose wind and solar energy on those who want reliable energy from well managed fossil fuels and hydro-electric power.
Jack Ponton, Emeritus Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering: Most renewable energy enthusiasts now seem to understand that powering a modern society will require something else in addition to intermittent electricity generation. The currently fashionable ’something else’ is storage. This paper will discuss storage technologies, Britain’s current facilities and what might be needed to provide reliable power from wind, solar and tidal generation. There seems to be no possibility that any existing storage technology can handle the intermittency of wind generation. Solar plus battery storage is probably already cost-competitive for locations in or near the tropics, where year-round load factors are acceptable and so only overnight storage is required. In the UK, low winter load factors mean that essentially no useful generation takes place in December and January.
Are we returning to the 1970s, as several commentators have recently claimed? There are surprising similarities.
The humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan echoes the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. Prices are rising even as economic growth is stalling. Back then, the rising economic power challenging American superiority was Japan; now it’s China.
On closer examination, most of these analogies turn out to be superficial. But there is one where the parallels are striking, and that should worry the Biden administration greatly. We are headed for a global energy crisis.
Clean-energy technologies are more minerals-intensive to build than their fossil-fuel counterparts.
The growth of clean energy will rapidly raise demand for a set of key minerals.
Mining and processing of those minerals are geographically concentrated, often in countries with weak labor and environmental protections.
Mineral mines and processing facilities often pollute water, scar landscapes and impoverish communities.
Production may not be able to expand fast enough to keep up with demand, which could cause supply constrictions and price fluctuations and slow the transition away from fossil fuels.
Vijay Jayaraj, Climate Scientist, Contributor to Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation: Wind factories surround my hometown of Chennai, India, and our industries suffer severe losses due to the damage caused by the unstable, intermittent electricity they produce. The claim that wind energy is clean and green is a myth to environmentalists like me who have witnessed its devastating effects firsthand. If you do not raise your voice against the daylight murder of birds in your own backyards, it will be too late to save many species of birds. Before you save the planet, save your own birds.
Robert Endlich, Weather officer for the US Air Force for 21 years and meteorologist for the U.S. Army for 17 years, Michel Gay, member Environmentalists for Nuclear - International, John Shanahan, member Environmentalists for Nuclear - USA: Historical records do not support claims of man-made catastrophic global warming and sea level change. We elect leaders based on man-made global warming alarmism that the media spreads across the free world. Many accept it without question, quoting 97% consensus about climate change. Countries, like China and Russia, that don't embrace this man-made climate alarmism will end up having the strongest energy programs.
Roger Bezdek, President of Management Information Services, Inc. brought this Nuclear Energy Institute report to our attention: The federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars since WW II supporting energy technologies with large shares going to fossil fuels. Energy subsidies are drawing intense attention as policymakers grapple with a variety of incentives that are straining competitive electricity markets and driving baseload generation off the grid.
All man-made alterations to the landscape - forests, prairies, countryside, suburban, and urban areas change the local climate - surface and air temperature, range of max and minimum daily temperatures, humidity, clouds, hydrology, and vegetation.
One thing that mankind does not significantly cause is supposed catastrophic, anthropogenic, planet-wide global warming. The sun is by far the main source of warming planet Earth, not infrared excited CO2 molecules at tiny concentrations.
We are currently living in a time of never-before abundance of energy and all kinds of niceties, suggests Vaclav Smil in his new book, "How the World Really Works." Modern humans are animals, products of evolution like any other, and yet we noticeably do not spend every minute of every day struggling to get the material required to survive. Instead, we build cathedrals and watch football, we make art, we waste time on Twitter. That is because we live on the gigantic, blessing of our fossil fuel inheritance. We can’t do without them, and there’s no easy carbon-free alternative way of making them.
Most of us don’t realise how that energy is actually used. A large percentage, for instance, is used to create four materials which are the building blocks of modern society – materials which are so ubiquitous that we barely notice them, even as we depend on them. These four basic pillars of human civilisation as steel, cement, plastic and ammonia. We can’t do without them, and there’s no easy carbon-free alternative way of making them.
Germany is responsible for about 2% of global annual CO2 emissions from energy. To match Germany’s electricity demand (or over 15% of EU’s electricity demand) solely from solar photovoltaic panels located in Spain, about 7% of Spain would have to be covered with solar panels (~35.000 km2).
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This is a hugely important and very timely book. At a time when thinkers in the developed world are split between environmental catastrophism and unbridled techno-optimism, here is a firmly grounded analysis of the present day, informed by the previous history that got us here, and the likely short-term future.
Most of what we hear and read about today by way of prognostications and nostrums for the future will simply not come to pass. The complexity and inertia of the systems of the modern world – energy acquisition and use, food production, materials requirements for contemporary living – place strong constraints on the pace of change in any preferred direction. This is true even if all the world leaders should agree to move in any particular direction, say on a net-zero global economy by 2050, with a global command economy.
Michael Shellenberger, Founder - President of Environmental Progress: If solar and wind farms are needed to protect the natural environment, why do they so often destroy it?