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.
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) Apparently folks in South Australia decided that they wanted to go all in with solar and wind energy. In fact, they got their use of renewable energy up to 50% of their electricity production and usage, helped greatly by subsidized wind and solar energy projects. This effort and accomplishment got them the love and admiration of global warming advocate around the world.
But there are a number of problems with this reality:
- In South Australia the retail cost of electricity per kilowatt is 47.13 cents.
- In the United States, the retail cost is per kilowatt is 15.75 cents.
- In fact, the cost of electricity in South Australia is higher than every other country in the world.
- Thus, the United States, which has significantly annually reduced by tens of millions of tons it’s carbon output pays one third the cost for electricity than a region that has gone hog wild for solar and wind energy.
- Keep in mind that the government heavily subsidized the creation of solar and wind power in South Australia to get to 50%.
2) The Convention of States movement is a great effort to get the Federal government under control by leveraging Article V in the Constitution to get the Federal budget under control and impose term limits on career politicians. Politicians have destroyed our freedoms, the country’ financial viability, and continue to tax us into oblivion.
The Convention of States recently ran an article on some shenanigans that master politician Obama put forth regarding the myth of man made global warming:
- Kevin Dayaratna, speaking at the 13th International Conference on Climate asserted that the real cost of carbon dioxide emissions are often “all over the map” because the data can be “rigged by politicians” to get the results and public impact they want.
- Specifically: “The statistical models used by the Obama administration to set regulatory policy are flawed because they are highly prone to user manipulation, Dayaratna told conferees.”
- As background: when people build statistical models, they build in assumption structures and then calculate results using a certain set of assumptions.
- Notice I said “a set of assumptions,” most good statistical models allow you to vary assumptions which usually results in different forecasts and results.
- The trick to being a good statistical modeler and forecaster is to make sure you have the right set of assumptions that most closely match reality.
- The trick of being a bad statistical modeler and forecaster is to make sure that you have a set of assumptions that result in model calculations that give you the answer you want, not necessarily the answer that is most closely aligned with reality.
- Which is the point that Dayaratna is trying to make: Obama may have had great statistical models but it is likely he used bad assumptions to get the answer he wanted, not the best answer relative to reality.
- He could then tout the results he came up with, “see, this is what the model spit out,” and try to convince people that the answer has to be right because it is what the model calculated and ignore the fact that the assumptions were manipulated to get the result he wanted.
- Back to Obama’s model: his EPA defined the social cost of carbon as the “economic damages per metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions.”
- Dayaratna played around with the Obama model assumptions to see what might happen and test the sensitivity and reasonableness of the model and different assumption sets.
- His analysis and assumptions found that Obama’s carbon forecasts dropped anywhere from 40% to 200% with non-radical, logical changes to the assumptions.
- In fact, he found assumption sets that said increased carbon had net positive impacts on society.
- His conclusions: “The sheer fact that these models can be manipulated to get any result you want speaks volumes to their uselessness in regulatory policy and the danger of putting them into the hands of policymakers.”
Remember the inane sound bite that “97% of climate scientists support man made global warming.” Totally bogus number but a number that tortured analyses and bad assumption sets finally created to suit the needs of people like Obama and Al Gore. Or to paraphrase Dayaratna, you would not give a gun to kid so why trust politicians with statistical models that they do not understand?
3) We will finish up this post and this month’s discussion on global warming with an analysis from the Self Reliance website. It took a hard look not at what wind power does for us once in operation but also the back end and front end financial costs and environmental costs of installing and removing wind infrastructure, costs that are not pretty:
- With decades worth of wind infrastructure having been installed in this country, one set of research estimates that the U.S. will have more than 720,000 tons of wind turbine blade material that will have to be taken care of over the next 20 years since the average life of a wind turbine is only about 20 years and there are 60,000 wind turbines already in this country, i.e. this disposal problem is not going to go away anytime soon.
- Wind turbine blades are not small, they are usually about 135 feet long so taking them down and getting rid of them is not a low cost job.
- A typical wind turbine contains 8,000 components of which many are made from steel, cast iron, and concrete.
- Some components are made from rare earth metals, neodymium and dysprosium, which are mined almost exclusively in China.
- These required components require energy intensive efforts to mine, ship, refine and manufacture wind turbines that only have a 20 year life cycle.
- These “before” efforts have significant negative environmental and cost impacts.
- And the “after” efforts of taking them down also have significant environmental and cost impacts.
- The research paper, “Unsustainable Wind Turbine Blade Disposal Practices in the United States”, Ramirez-Tejeda et al. in 2017 analyzed the nightmare of taking wind turbines down after they had lived their useful life.
- They estimate there will be 43 million tons of blades around the world that will have to be disposed of over the coming decades.
- The obvious question is how and where do you get rid of these 43 million tons of metal and concrete.
The Self Reliance article also documented the massive negative wildlife impact of wind turbines:
- The Audubon Society estimates that wind turbines kill hundreds of thousands of birds a year, with their high end estimate at 328,000.
- Experience shows that eagles are especially in danger of wind turbines.
- Scientists estimate that turbines kill anywhere from 3 to 5 million bats every year.
- In fact, some bat species may face extinction in the very near future because of their migratory patterns and their always fatal encounters with wind turbines.
- Given that bats eat all kinds of other creatures like mosquitoes, making human life better, this is not a good trend.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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