January, 2020, Part 2, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: The Total Story On Clean Energy and The Total Story On The Wildfires in Australia

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) Global warming advocates have always been in love with solar and wind power as ways to avoid the disasters that will occur, but never do occur, with carbon based fuel sources. But they never look at the whole picture of how the mass installation of solar and wind power facilities might have a tremendous negative impact on the environment, as described in a recent American Enterprise Institute analysis by Mark J. Perry:

• Jason Hickel has written a piece called, “The Limits of Clean Energy.”
• It’s sub-title is, “If the world isn’t careful, renewable energy could become as destructive as fossil fuels.”
• He correctly points out that once solar and wind infrastructure is in place, the energy is indeed “clean.”
• However, it can be extremely “dirty” getting to that point before solar and wind is generating energy.
• Building clean energy infrastructure results requires the extraction of rare earth metal ores which requires a lot of energy, the shipping of those ores over tremendous distances which requires a lot of energy, the manufacturing of those solar panels and wind generators which require a lot of energy, the transportation of those panels and generators for installation which requires a lot of energy and the installation of those panels and generators which require a lot of energy, with almost all, if not all, of that extra energy being created by fossil fuels.
• In 2017, the World Bank did a little known study which tried to model the entire life cycle of clean energy products.
• They estimated how much mining and extraction of needed ore would be required to create a world and energy infrastructure that got half of its electricity, 7 terawatts, from solar and wind sources by the year 2050.
• Their estimates show that to get just half of our electrical power from clean energy sources we would have to mine 17 million metric tons of copper, 20 million metric tons of lead, 25 million metric tons of zinc, 81 million metric tons of aluminum, and 2.4 billion tons of iron.
• Thus, over 2.5 billion tons of ores wold have to be mined, transported and then turned into clean energy solar panels and wind generators. 
• The environmental impact would be devastating and the fossil fuels needed to mine, transport, manufacture, ship and install the clean energy infrastructure would also be staggering.
• And keep in mind that while fossil fuel infrastructure and plants last for decades and decades, wind generators have a life of about only 20 years which means there would quite quickly be more energy needed to dismantle, safely recycle, and install new wind generators, all of which needs to be figured into the financial and environmental cost of wind energy.

Clean energy is not free and clean if you look at the whole life cycle of the process from mining, to transportation, to manufacturing, to installation to replacement. In other words, there is no free lunch when it comes to clean energy. Or as Thomas Sowell once said: “There are no solutions. There are only trade offs.”

2) As you probably know, Australia is in the midst of devastating wildfires that are raging across the country. Of course, like they always do without facts or analysis, global warming advocates immediately claimed that global warming/climate change is the cause of these horrible wildfires. But is that immediate, knee jerk reaction true? Consider a recent article by Mike Shedlock from January 9, 2020 that poses another theory based on some realities:

• The fires are truly devastating, having burned through over 15 million acres, killing at least two dozen people, and a large, unknown number of animals.
• The article proposes some alternative reasons why the fires are so bad, none of which include man made climate change.
• First, the country is in the midst of a drought, something that has happened for millions of years.
• Second, a wide range of useless but dangerous government regulations prevent landowners from clearing excess scrub, brush and trees.
• Late last year a fire chief in Victoria took a swipe at that state’s “minimalist approach” to clearing to controlled burns to clear out excess growth.
• Combine stupid government regulations on clearing excess brush with a drought and the reality that 180 people have been arrested and charged with arson relative to these wildfires and you can see that there may be other reasons besides “climate change” for these fires.
• Note: while 80 people have been caught and charged with arson, it is unknown how many more arsonists haven't been caught.
• One example from news reports: "A volunteer firefighter in Australia has been charged with deliberately lighting blazes during the nation’s bushfire crisis. Police arrested the man, 19, for seven counts of alleged arson in an area south of Sydney, New South Wales."
• In addition, before the current and regular drought cycle set in, Australia enjoyed a very rainy stretch of weather that encouraged growth of bushes and trees, extra growth that was never kept under control.
• And when the rainy season ended and drought set in, the amount of dried out plant fuel was sky high.
• But this situation had been forecasted since in 2015 in an article in Age, David Packham, the former head of Australia’s National Rural Fire Research Centre, warned that excess growth had raised the potential fuel for fires to the most dangerous levels in thousands of years and that this unchecked growth was the result of “misguided green ideology.”
• The article cites a piece written by ecological criminologist Paul Read several years ago: “A 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997-2009 confirmed what we have known for some time – 40 percent of fires are deliberately lit, another 47 per cent accidental. This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were suspected or deliberate arson, and 37 per cent accidental. Combined, they reach the same conclusion: 87 per cent are man-made.”
• Another major contributor to wildfire in both Australia and California is the increased use of eucalyptus trees, a tree that is full of a natural oil that is highly flammable.
• As the popularity of using eucalyptus trees for landscaping has grown, the fuel they carry has increased the intensity of wild fires once they start, a man made phenomena.

So did manmade global warming/climate change cause the wild fires? If so, that may have been a small factor compared to at least 180 arsonists, excess growth due to a rainy spell, and government regulations that prevent good forest and brush management. Which is why knee jerk reactions to these types of situations is never productive.

More reasons and logic why I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science: in science you look at the entire process for understanding, a trait not usually common with global warming advocates. Looking at the entire supply chain process for clean energy and the entire environmental situation on wildfires and you come up with a different set of realities vs. the typical advocate knee jerk panic.

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