Pandora’s Box of Solar Panels

Solnova Solar Station in Spain

Photo: Wikipedia

A neighbor down the street proudly placed solar panels on his house. He spent $4,000 after government subsidies and whatever deductions he may have taken from his income tax. He is confident that this move will save him tons of money on electricity and will safeguard the planet from global warming Armageddon by reducing his carbon footprint from fossil fuels.

There is one fly in this perfect ointment - solar panels generate “tons of toxic waste” during the production process and during their disposal/replacement. https://fee.org/articles/solar-panels-produce-tons-of-toxic-waste-literally/

The solar energy advocates, who only see cheap electricity with rose-colored glasses, are oblivious to the reality of cost, toxic chemicals, environmental pollution, and health hazards to humans and animals. Here are some immediate concerns about solar panels.

1.      How much maintenance would be required for the massive roll out of solar panels around the planet and who will pay for installation and maintenance since they do require a lot of maintenance and replacement?

2.      Solar farms and solar panels are heavily subsidized by governments. What if the subsidies stop and they have? Solyndra went bankrupt and left taxpayers holding the bag for $535 million in federal loans. https://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/Barack-Obama-Solyndra-Scandal-Green-Energy/2015/01/29/id/621537/

3.      Producing crystalline silicon from silicon results in a lot of input loss. “Sawing c-Si into the thin wafers used in panels creates a significant amount of waste silicon dust, up to 50 percent of which is lost in the air and water used to rinse the wafers. The process of making crystalline silicon from silicon is also inefficient; as much as 80 percent of the raw silicon is lost in the process.

4.      Health issues in the manufacture, use, and disposal of solar panels:

-          Release of silicon tetrachloride, “a very toxic substance that reacts violently with water, causes skin burns, skin, eye, and respiratory irritations.

-          Sulfur hexafluoride, a potent greenhouse gas, 23,000 times worse than CO2, used to clean the reactors used in silicon production. In the west the “molecules are captured and reused in a closed-loop process,” but in China there is silicon tetrachloride pollution from PV cell factories established to fill the demand for solar energy.

-          Cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin films are made of cadmium, which is a toxic, expensive, cancer-causing heavy metal. Cadmium can be rinsed into the water table during the production process. One percent of CdTe is released into the environment as waste. Thin-film panels that might catch on fire in a home would release cadmium.

-          Copper indium selenide (CIS) uses hydrogen selenide which is toxic and very dangerous even in low concentrations.

-          Selenium dioxide, a dangerous air pollutant, forms at high temperatures, causing problems for manufacturing workers.

https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-possibility-of-a-solar-powered-nation-nitty-gritty

Dr. David Nguyen, a cancer biologist, remarked, “The toxic chemicals in solar panels include cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper indium gallium (di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, and polyvinyl fluoride. Additionally, silicon tetrachloride, a byproduct of producing crystalline silicon, is highly toxic.” https://sciencing.com/toxic-chemicals-solar-panels-18393.html

Silicon tetrachloride, the byproduct of making wafers for monocrystalline and polycrystalline panels, is highly toxic and its improper handling can cause skin burns, pollute the air, cause lung disease, and, when exposed to water it releases hydrochloric acid (HCl), a corrosive substance. Manufacturers and recyclers are directly affected and even homeowners if their homes catch on fire.

To get a picture of the environmental impact of chemicals due to solar panels manufactured and installed by 2016, a study estimates that “photovoltaics had spread about 11,000 tons of lead and about 800 tons of cadmium” into the ecosystem. https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article176294243/Studie-Umweltrisiken-durch-Schadstoffe-in-Solarmodulen.html

EPA has classified cadmium as a Group B1, probable human carcinogen. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/cadmium-compounds.pdf

There are no salvageable parts on a solar panel so it must be decomposed, and the chemicals disposed of properly.  Disposal costs are exorbitant and unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers are releasing the toxic chemicals into the environment.

Solar power may not produce greenhouse gases while consumers use it, but it does release harmful chemicals during production. One such chemical is nitrogen trifluoride, which, according to Ray Weiss, a professor of geochemistry at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is 17,000 stronger than carbon dioxide. https://www.chemservice.com/news/2015/02/learn-which-chemicals-make-solar-power-possible/

According to Deutsche Welle, Sulphur hexafluoride, a greenhouse gas released during solar panel production, is 22,800 times more potent than CO2.

Since 1997, when the U.S. produced 334.2 megawatts of solar energy, the industry has grown to 6,220.3 megawatts in 2013. For the 0.2 percent solar power usage in the U.S. (Institute for Energy Research), an insignificant amount, the solar panel production and disposal industries seem to create a lot of dangerous pollutants.

Ben Howell pointed out other issues that solar panel proponents have not entertained, the carbon footprint formed in the production, maintenance, and replacement of the following:

-          Batteries that store the generated electricity during the day so that the homeowner has electricity at night. If there are no batteries, then the power generated during sun light goes back into the grid and the owner must use utility power.

-          What is the carbon footprint and pollution from lithium mining?

-          What about the control switching and circuitry required by law that disconnects the home from the grid during a storm in order to avoid electrocution of utility workers from the live wires coming from the home, intermingling with the offline grid during repairs?

-          What about the backup fail-safe safety system if the primary system fails?

-          Smart meters have the lifespan of a cell phone, are very expensive to install and do not last if the traditional old electro-mechanical meters that are known to last basically forever. Ben Howell said that “the old-school electro-mechanical electric meter on my parents’ house was installed in 1948 and is still working accurately so far for 71 years.”

-          What is the cumulative cost of insurance to replace the solar panels after a hailstorm shatters the glass?

-          What is the cost to periodically clean the dust, pollen, tree sap, bird droppings, leaves, and other debris that block the sunlight from the solar panels?

-          What is the cost of a new roof or installing new shingles nailed in when the additional cost of disconnecting, off-loading, staging, up-loading, and re-installing solar panels are factored in?

-          Will solar panel degradation, breakage, contamination, storms, normal clouds formations, and other anomalies, causing fluctuations in the voltage and current output cause the lithium batteries to go kaput more quickly? And will such cases void the warranty on the homeowner’s appliances?

Then there is the killing of massive amounts of birds that fly into the solar panels thinking that they are water pools; or they are being fried in mid-air by the powerful heat flux generated by large fields of solar panels. And, we can scarcely afford to lose thousands of acres of arable land that produces badly need food to solar panel deployment. We have lots of deserts but who is going to install and maintain them there?

And what is going to happen to solar power generation when Bill Gates will implement his idea to stop climate change by blocking out the sun? Eight specially designed jets (to be increased eventually to 100) flying 12 miles up would spray (60,000 times over 15 years) sulfate particles into the lower stratosphere to cool down our “heated” planet, block the sun, and thus interfere with photosynthesis and the production of our food which needs sunlight to grow. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/bill-gates-backing-plan-to-stop-climate-change-by-blocking-out-the-sun-183601437.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cDovL20uZmFjZWJvb2suY29t&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACj8zUV_sGAAv8togOSKpNNA6I9EIf9-nBD1AcJWoexuNcYxSwWZ-UAIWgkDLZ09GY_IJj90P_kc5rsp3Vx7YLcn6p7zKHleQIqNXMyBAFm2XVkUnnmYGcD4jrcyJMoYrW2CCdPdcc7n8n7GALnnCCJhNVrTr8sAI2X-b0fK6Fn1

Never mind that real scientists have measured a cooling of the climate as the sun is going through a solar minimum cycle. https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/news-articles/solar-minimum-is-coming

Prompted by climate change activists and U.N. climate change propaganda organizations, students and parents in Fairfax County are organizing a climate strike in Vienna (as part of an international strike) on December 9, 2019, calling for a Green New Deal for Fairfax Public Schools to “switch all of the schools to net-zero carbon emissions by installing solar panels and energy-efficient windows. The plan would also continue the push for electric school buses in the county.” https://www.tysonsreporter.com/2019/11/22/fairfax-county-students-preparing-climate-strike-in-vienna/?fbclid=IwAR3gq1m4NVzzhazx8NT8kww5SktX9Rmm9YHJpw7SfqfIl3PcY5aiZwVTf3Q

Considering all the toxicity in the production and recycling of solar panels, how is that net-zero carbon working out? Electric school buses get their electricity from fossil fuels, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear power simply because 0.02 percent is not enough electricity generated by solar power for our huge economy. It’s that simple, teachers, students, and parents.

"GlowBull Warming" and the Reindeer

“In God We Trust, all others bring data.”  - Motto of the Apollo team

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Global warming is not going away. Vice President Al Gore’s infamous words, “The planet has a fever,” referring to global warming, has been met many times with the planet’s natural and cyclical climate change response of frigid temperatures, ice, and snow.

A term has been coined, the “Gore effect,” reflecting the 2004 event when a global warming rally held by VP Al Gore was met by bitter cold weather. And it repeated in Australia in 2006. Mother Nature prepared snow and frigid weather in 2013 for global warming protesters in D.C. Environmental activists at Yale attempted to hold a global warming rally in 2015, but had to cancel due to “unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues.”

Members of the “Keep It in the Ground” anti-fracking activist group in Denver, Colorado were met this week with temperatures in the low twenties during their protest against fossil fuel drilling on public lands. Randy Hildreth wrote, “While it is clear that the national activist groups behind these efforts are not abandoning their goal to ban fracking, they picked a day to protest the use of fossil fuels when most Coloradoans are likely more thankful than ever for the affordable energy provided by domestic energy development.” https://energyindepth.org/mtn-states/bitter-cold-freezes-out-anti-fossil-fuel-protest/

Reducing one’s carbon footprint by taking all energy savings steps possible, solar panels, geothermal energy heating and cooling, low energy bulbs, caulking, turning the thermostat down, reducing consumption in general, has been an issue raised and preached by the climate change guru Al Gore.

According to a recent article, citing data from Tennessee Center for Policy Research and the Energy Information Administration, the Gore residence uses “an average of 17,768 kWh per month – 1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2153179/Al-Gores-electricity-bill-goes-through-the-insulated-roof.html

Good stewardship of soil, air, and water, and pollution reduction and mitigation are great ideas and we support them. Cleaning up the Ganges, the holy river, before it dumps trillions of cubic meters of trash and raw sewage into the ocean, would be a good start. Conservation of natural resources is very important and humans everywhere agree. http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-ganges-holy-river-from-hell-20140806-100xz9.html

But the climate change industry based on reduction of man-made CO2, the gas of plant life, is a very profitable ruse worth trillions of dollars for global elites. Not giving up on the climate change fear-mongering effort, the Oscar winning author of “An Inconvenient Truth,” has announced the sequel to his documentary which will debut at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/dec/09/al-gore-inconvenient-truth-sequel-sundance

Engaging the church to influence people into believing that global warming is real, the activist Pope Francis announced in September that “global warming is a sin and man can atone by recycling and carpooling,” by stopping deforestation, not polluting rivers, protecting the soil, not destroying the bio diversity of the planet, as if reading a canned U.N. Agenda 2030 script. http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/09/01/pope-francis-global-warming-sin-man-can-atone-recycling-car-pooling/

The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the advisor to the Pope, has concluded that “global climate change is real and is caused, at least in significant part, by human activity.” Catholic.org stated in a recent post that “new priests [are] to learn about global warming as part of formation.” Why would a priest who is not a scientist need to learn about alleged global warming? “The established community of experts agrees with frightful consensus that the planet is warming because of human activity. And while nature may play a role in the natural heating of the planet, it is known that the Earth’s temperature is dynamic, humans are clearly responsible for much of the present warming.” And the public’s opinion is being manipulated by climate change skeptics on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry. “The fossil fuel industry funds nearly all of the climate change skeptics, going so far as to commission questionable studies, to financing think tanks, and even paying individual bloggers.” http://www.catholic.org/news/green/story.php?id=72433

According to this Catholic blog, the church has a duty to care for people and the environment. And I thought that the church’s mission was to care for the salvation of our souls, not for environmental stewardship, a concept pushed by U.N.’s Agenda 2030.

The blog continues in an Armageddon manner, “The Earth’s temperatures are spiking faster than at any time in history. The speed of the warming is so great, it is fueling extinctions and other crisis. Natural selection, evolution, and adaptation cannot keep up with the pace of rapid change.”

And the Vatican said, because of the “emerging planetary crisis” on the “ecological question,” all Christians need an “ecological conversion.” All future priests will then become advocates of this ecological question called global warming, “promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation….”

Taken from the Vatican’s 91-page document, “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation,” http://www.clerus.va/content/dam/clerus/Ratio%20Fundamentalis/The%20Gift%20of%20the%20Priestly%20Vocation.pdf Eric Worrall quotes in his blog the passage describing the role of the new priest in the global warming proselytization of his flock. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/10/catholic-church-new-priests-will-be-expected-to-preach-global-warming/

Dr. Ken Haapala, President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, discussed in this week’s publication the Charney Report of 1979 to the National Research Council. CO2 and greenhouse gases warm up the atmosphere but are generally beneficial – CO2 is the gas of plant life. Atmospheric water vapor was proposed by global climate modelers as a potential second cause of global warming.

Comprehensive and independent data of atmospheric temperatures gathered from weather balloons are now available, dating back to December 1978. These data reveal that, “In general, the models overestimated atmospheric warming by 2.5 times and by 3 times over the tropics, where the water vapor warming should be more pronounced.” http://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2016/TWTW12-10-16.pdf

Global warming “consensus” is not real science and global climate computer models are questionable. Scientists should use and compare reliable sources of information, independently and correctly gathered data, valid studies over long periods of time, and accurate measurements, not manufactured or manipulated statistics to fit the already-decided narrative and conclusion.

Haapala believes that the EPA did not produce data to justify the finding that “greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, … instead relied on three lines of evidence: 1) understanding of the physics of greenhouse gases; 2) a questionable study that late twentieth century warming was unusual; and 3) global climate models. The evidence is woefully incomplete.”

Additionally, “any warming of the surface is not the same as a warming of the atmosphere, and can be highly influenced by other human activities such as change in land use, change in instrument locations, and change in instrument types.”

The global warming advocates told us that polar bears were disappearing due to global warming; children were terrified in schools; solitary polar bears were depicted floating on tiny melting ice floes even though polar bears are very good long distance swimmers. It turned out that their numbers actually increased five-fold.

A study lead by Steve Albon of the James Hutton Institute in Scotland found that “over the past 16 years, the weight of adult reindeer in Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic has dropped by 12 percent, likely due to global warming.” AFP quoted Steve Albon, “Twelve percent may not sound very much, but given how important body weight is to reproduction and survival, it’s potentially huge.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/reindeer-shrinking-warming-threatens-xmas-icon-000845791.html

But the study published in August 2016 actually stated that “The cumulative effects of climate warming on herbivore vital rates and population dynamics are hard to predict, given that the expected effects differ between seasons. … We explored the causes and consequences of variation in body mass of wild female Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) from 1994 to 2015, a period of marked climate warming.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13435/full

Climate, weather, climate warming, global warming, terms are interchangeable for the general public who peruse headlines in a hurry or listen to fake-news MSM to interpret the news for them. We can now scare children that Santa Claus may not have enough reindeer at Christmas as they are threatened by global warming. https://www.yahoo.com/news/reindeer-shrinking-warming-threatens-xmas-icon-000845791.html

Blaming humans for the natural changes and variations in climate over the millennia, to the exclusion of all other variables such as solar flares, underwater volcanic activity, and oceanic currents, is not real science. And priests are no experts in climatology, they are spiritual guides.

 

 

 

 

The Climate Change Industry and the Hoax of Global Warming

Cherry Blossoms Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

It’s late April 2015 and it is still quite cold and the growing season is behind – an unusual late and frigid spring. The trees are just now sprouting green leaves and a few brave ones have even bloomed. If you ask the environmentalists, it is global warming. If it snows, it is global warming. If it’s hot, it is global warming. Everything is global warming and must be redressed immediately or the earth will perish. Hundreds of billions have already been spent around the globe on a deliberately manufactured panic.

I am not sure who coined the term “climate change industry” but it is an apt description of the snake oil salesmen who have become billionaires on the unfounded and irrational fear of debunked global warming and of climate change based on manufactured consensus science. The climate has been changing for millennia in cyclical periods dominated by either unusually cold or unusually hot temperatures.

It is convenient to the promoters of the climate change industry to purposefully confound weather events with climate. Having declared that the “science is settled,” the global warming scaremongering environmentalists are moving on to the next target of limiting our property rights and freedoms via carbon footprint and draconian, coal-industry destructive EPA regulations.

After all, the number one threat to our national security has been declared to be climate change. It is not the crushing out-of-control debt, it is not the planned and unchecked flood of immigrants into countries around the world, changing the demographics and eliminating sovereignty to the benefit of global elitist control, it is not ISIS beheading Christians and occupying the formerly liberated towns and provinces in Iraq, and it is not Iran with its nuclear bomb program, threatening to wipe Israel off the map, our ally and the only sane patch of reality in the Middle East.

The climate change industry has admitted through a Freudian slip that their agenda of climate change is “disrupting national economies, costing us dearly today and even more tomorrow.” Of course climate has been changing and we are in a cooling period now but truth cannot impede the liberal political advocates’ agenda of taxing rich countries more, spreading the wealth, and destroying our economy in the name of protecting the Earth.

The climate change industry has managed to transform a natural phenomenon of climate change into a global disaster that needs to be addressed by bureaucrats through fundamentally changing how we live, what we own, how our economies are run, by carbon footprint taxation, Smart Growth, Green Growth state and local programs around the world, and through weather modification spraying of chemicals into the atmosphere. This spraying of chemicals (chemtrails) is really affecting the weather and the growing season for agriculture, reducing yield. The climate change industry has become such a religion of environmentalism gone berserk that they are now trying to ban farming.

Electricity costs are going up, smart meters that catch on fire have been installed everywhere in order to control people’s energy consumption and in-home ambient temperature, and many electricity generation plants are scheduled to be closed due to draconian EPA regulations. The government’s all-out assault to redress climate change through regulatory planning and financial control is having a serious impact on our economy, the coal industry, the oil industry, and on everybody’s lives.

The hypothesis that rich nations caused climate change by burning fossil fuels to produce energy has never been proven by IPCC’s computer modeling. The fact that now the hypothesis changed its name from global warming to climate change in the face of obvious 18 years of global cooling is enough evidence that the purveyors of the industry of climate change are desperate but are not giving up. There is never a shortage of young, idealistic rioters-for-hire who, for a nominal fee will demonstrate anywhere against global warming, even in Quebec in the snow. Fleecing rich countries with carbon taxes is too lucrative a scam to give up the agenda.

The real reason behind the global warming scare and why the United Nations’ alarmists have been driving us into forced submission of environmentalist stewardship is that they want capitalism destroyed and replaced with their vision of a utopian communist economy that has never worked across the centuries.  These progressives have a problem with the Industrial Revolution, with “fossil fuels,” (They are not so fossil since the earth keeps producing them), with the only successful economic model that has provided generous income to all these hot-air spewing, idle bureaucrats, who have nothing better to do than meet in exotic locales planning the destruction of the goose that lays the golden eggs that feed their exorbitant lifestyles, salaries, bonuses, and pensions.

Christina Figueres, Executive Secretary of U.N.’s Convention on Climate Change, disclosed the real reason for the climate change industry when she told us that they are not interested in saving the world from global warming Armageddon but they want to destroy capitalism. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

By Hook and By Crook, You Are Going to Pay for Climate Change

“Science has become the new stepchild of politics.” – Michael Savage

It’s the first day of spring and we are having snow again. Not much, a couple of inches, just enough to prove that March always goes out like a lion. Undeterred, global progressives, intent on sending us into the stone age of technology, are forcing their agenda of redistributive taxation of man-made global warming/climate change on everyone.

But that’s not all. According to Dr. Klaus Kaiser, Central Europe experienced a Mother Nature event – a total solar eclipse around 9 a.m., March 20, 2015, the spring equinox,  and a super-moon. It will be interesting to see how electric power plants dependent heavily on solar power fared in a shut-down during the day when energy demand is at its peak. And the most vulnerable was Germany which derives a larger percent of its electricity needs from solar power. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/70574

Dr. Kaiser said, “With well over 10,000 wind turbines in operation, the European electric grid has already experienced instability close to collapse.  The (far) offshore system Bard-1 in the German Bight, built for approximately $5 billion two years ago is slowly rusting in the sea. It is a real money maker—for the legal profession.”

Dominion Virginia Power has offered customers in their monthly billing the whimsical “Green Power,” to reduce the family’s carbon footprint in 2015, a “voluntary option that enables customers to match their electricity use with clean, renewable energy from wind (78%), solar (1%), and biomass (21%).”  Dominion offers two choices:

-          100% Option, matching 100 percent of a customer’s electricity use with Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), at a cost of 1.3 cents per kWh.

-          Block Option, purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) in fixed monthly increments; each $2 supports 154 kWh of renewable energy.

Such voluntary options are nothing more than customers subsidizing unnecessarily expensive energy generation that is not really clean, it is the industry’s “dirty little secret,” as someone called it years ago.

Having researched the wind and solar power generation extensively, and having written a bestseller and numerous articles on the topic, I know that renewable energy is neither cheap, nor clean, nor victimless. There are millions of animal casualties, chopped birds by wind turbines and fried birds by solar panels’ heat flux; animals experience bizarre behavior, fertility issues, and spontaneous abortion of fetuses when living in close proximity to wind farms; humans experience serious health effects as well when in close proximity to wind turbines and from their home smart meters attached to the smart grid.

One of the more interesting presentations I heard at CPAC 2015 was the panel on “Climate: What Tom Steyer Won’t Tell You.”

Representative Bill Flores (TX-17) addressed the global warming alarmism, pointing out that this administration has done everything in its power to stop domestic energy production in this country, spending billions of dollars for bankrupt solar energy producers like Solyndra. He enumerated the six “inconvenient truths” of those promoting the climate agenda:

1.       It kills U.S. jobs.

2.       It costs trillions of dollars.

3.       It’s based on junk science.

4.       It uses fantasy technology that is yet to be developed.

5.       It manipulates cost/benefit analysis by using junk economics.

6.       It fails the smell test.

Rep. Flores stated that Obama’s energy agenda, via EPA’s tightening regulations such as ozone levels and Waters of the U.S., kills 3 million American jobs, exporting them to China and India, and importing their pollution back to the United States. “By 2020, the EPA’s ozone regulations will eliminate $3.5 trillion of economic output.” There is no credible evidence that ozone levels cause increased health issues for Americans but poverty does, Rep. Flores added. Because the EPA knows that California cannot meet its stringent ozone standards, then California is excluded from the equation.

It is EPA regulatory malpractice, said Rep. Flores, as evidenced by the attempt to change the definition of water in the Waters of the U.S. from “navigable waters” to any puddle of rain that falls in a farmer’s field.

Tom Steyer, a “green” energy devotee, has pledged $100 million in 2014 to Democrats who oppose the Keystone pipeline and favor the disuse of fossil fuels over renewables.  Steyer opposes coal in an attempt to boost the value of his solar projects.  According to John Hinderaker, “Steyer owes his fortune in large part to the fact that he has been one of the world’s largest financiers of coal projects.” http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/the-epic-hypocrisy-of-tom-steyer.php

Myron Ebell, Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, jocularly introduced as the “enemy number one to the climate change agenda,” talked about the environmental noose that was put around the world’s global economy in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro and the decades since then that tightened that noose. Obama took control of the economy through ever more stringent environmental regulations even though there has been no global warming in the last 18 years.  

Pointing out that the entire global warming fiasco is based on faulty IPCC computer modeling, Ebell said, “Do you trust the models or the actual data?” Ninety-seven percent of climate change scientists say, trust us, we have the models. “If the models and the data don’t agree, change the data.” The deception was exacerbated by the infamous hockey stick graph, Ebell added.  Every agency of the federal government views global warming as the greatest national security threat.  John Kerry, our Secretary of State, said in a speech that climate change is his number one priority.

Gary Broadbent, representing Murray Energy Corporation, the largest privately held coal mine in the U.S., highlighted Obama’s “war on coal” via regulations passed by EPA alone in the last five years totaling 25,000 pages.  Quoting Robert E. Murray, Chairman of Murray Energy Corporation, Broadband said, “Prior to the election of President Obama, coal provided 52% of the electricity generation in our country. Today it is 37%. In our judgement, it will further decline to about 30%, at a maximum.”

Enumerating the 411 power plants designated for closure through 2016, “101,000 megawatts of the lowest cost electricity in America,” CEO Murray wrote that electricity, generated by coal at the plant cost of 4 cents per kWh, will be replaced by “Mr. Obama and his appointees” with 15 cent per kWh electricity from natural gas and 22 cent per kWh electricity from wind and solar power, not to mention the huge subsidies to solar power from American taxpayers.

In CEO Murray’s opinion, the Obama Administration has bypassed illegally Congress, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the States and their Public Utility Commissions, which are “empowered to regulate the availability and cost of electricity.”

According to Chairman Murray, while we came within 700 megawatts of reducing loads to 61 million Americans in 13 states during the Polar Vortex of 2014, “China has been building a new 500 megawatt coal-fired plant every week for years, [and] burned about 4.0 billion tons of coal last year.”

CEO Robert E. Murray offered multiple examples that “the global ‘climate change’ scare is purely political and not based on any science:

-          According to NASA satellites and ground-based temperature measurements, the earth has not warmed for the last eighteen years and five months. But CO2 levels have risen almost ten percent since 1997.

-          Seventy percent of the years since the Ice Age were warmer than today.

-          There has been a decline in the world land area under drought in the past thirty years.

-          Rates of sea-level rise remain infinitesimal, averaging only about one millimeter per year as measured by tide gauges.

-          Satellites show that a greater area of Antarctic sea ice exists now than any time since space-based measurements began in 1979.

-          2012 and 2013 IPCC reports concluded that there has been no significant increase in either the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events in the modern era.

-          The past year was not the warmest on record, as Mr. Obama claimed during his State of the Union address, which I attended, on January 20.”

On this sunless first day of spring, with cold temperatures, rain, sleet, and snow in the northeast, we should be thankful to the cold industry for producing enough energy to keep us warm and our large economy running smoothly. There is no secret that the environmental NGOs such the Sierra Club, Natural Resource Defense Council, and rich individuals promoting “Beyond Coal,” are influencing EPA’s overregulation of the manufacturing sector under the guise of saving the planet, to the detriment of our economy, and destroying wealth and the middle class in the process. The war on coal is real and so is the war on our free market-based way of life.

 Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

"Climate Change" Hypocrites and Their Fossil Fuel Guzzling Jets

Vostok Ice Core Team in Antarctica
Photo: Wikipedia

While the northeast is preparing for Snowmaggedon, 2-3 feet of snow, as if we’ve never had a few feet of snow before, the global warming turned climate change crowd is preparing for the upcoming global climate negotiations in December in Paris.  Pharrell Williams tweeted “Let’s unite a billion voices to take #ClimateAction now” urging climate change awareness from his private jet in which he is pictured sitting alone.   http://twitchy.com/2015/01/22/does-this-private-jet-make-pharrells-carbon-footprint-look-fat-singer-plugs-live-earth-agenda/

A crowd of influential rich people, 40 heads of state, 2,500 business leaders, and former VP Al Gore has gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, Jan. 21-24, 2015, to discuss climate change and “how to make fabric from recycled plastic.” Other topics included the IMF’s forecasting of 3.5% economic growth, European Central Bank’s quantitative easing package, the decline in oil prices, Japan’s monetary easing, and technology. http://www.weforum.org/sessions/summary/global-economic-outlook-5

Co-chaired by Oxfam’s executive director, Winnie Byanyima, the five day conference also highlighted inequality and the need to further spread the wealth, a “larger share of the economic pie,” to the rest of the impoverished world.  Oxfam is calling for “free universal public services by 2020, including education and health” and living wages for people who have no qualifications.

Felipe Calderon, former Mexican President, told USA Today, “Decision-makers meeting in Davos must focus on ways to reduce climate risk while building more efficient, cleaner, and lower-carbon economies.”

Keep in mind that, while the attendees discussed “income inequality,” how the globe’s rich do not pay their “fair share,” and gender inequality keeps women economically repressed, the conference tickets cost $40,000. Who decides what is a “fair share” and how? When is wealth redistribution through taxation and welfare to poor countries enough?

It does not matter that thousands of real scientists and the Vostock ice core samples have debunked the man-made global warming/climate change theory, what rich liberals care about is lining their pockets with more economic activity taxation based on the non-polluting CO2, the gas of life, which they call carbon.

Global warmists know we are not God and we cannot change the climate and climate change existed for millennia. The globe’s climate underwent major ice ages, small ice ages, and warmer periods even in times when humans did not roam the earth.  Solar activity, volcanic activity, and oceanic currents play a significant role in the ever-changing climate.

The prominent liberals in the media and Hollywood sure hate global warming but they love their private jets, yachts, multiple homes, cars, helicopters, and other gas guzzling toys while urging the rest of us to drive tin can, preferably bicycle everywhere, and live in jail cell-sized tiny homes.

No hypocrisy here in needing extra airport space in Switzerland to park the 550 or so extra jets that arrived for the conference in Davos. The military opened up their airport to accommodate them. Only the “climate change” hypocrites flying alone can burn more fossil fuels in a few hours than most of us burn in years and then have the gall to lecture us on protecting the earth.

Environmentalists worried over fossil fuels may be thrilled or disappointed depending on the outcome of the five-year plan, 2017-2022, that may allow drilling in the Atlantic Ocean. The Washington Examiner said that “the president is likely to permit exploration and drilling off the coast of Virginia and possibly the shorelines of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.” http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-expected-to-allow-drilling-in-atlantic/article/2559140?utm_campaign=Prospect:%20Politics%20Today%20pmi&utm_source=Prospect:%20Politics%20Today%20pmi%20-%2001/25/15&utm_medium=email

The Washington Post announced that President Obama is proposing to block 12 million acres of Arctic refuge from oil and gas drilling by “designating the area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness, the highest level of federal protection that would ban oil and gas drilling.”

Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, new Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell during a phone call, “What’s coming is a stunning attack on our sovereignty and our ability to develop a strong economy that allows us, our children and our grandchildren to thrive.” She continued, “It’s clear this administration does not care about us, and sees us as nothing but a territory. . . . I cannot understand why this administration is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska. But we will not be run over like this. We will fight back with every resource at our disposal.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/25/obama-administration-to-propose-new-wilderness-protections-in-arctic-refuge-alaska-republicans-declare-war/

And any Snowmageddon should be worrisome to Americans for a very good reason. EPA’s over-regulations have shut down almost 20 percent of the coal power plants which means that your electricity during severe cold spells could become unstable, unreliable, and a matter of survival. Natural gas can be used instead but the spot prices are expensive and delivery more difficult.

But don’t worry too much about your family’s finances and survivability as long as your carbon foot prints are very small. You’ll look environmentally-smug, unsafe, and duped behind the wheel of a Smart Car or something running on renewables such as solar, wind, or whatever unaffordable form of energy the “climate change” hucksters develop. Meanwhile, the U.S. oil futures have surged following the death of the Saudi King Abdullah.

 

Green Scam, I Am

More and more liberal MSM outlets and environmental groups with deep bank accounts and lavish support from Hollywood celebrities are expanding their propaganda and indoctrination of GREEN to the low information Americans who only hear sound bites delivered with such assurance and expensively made videos that the information seems true. But I see the scam of GREEN, the Green Growth of wealth being redistributed by Uncle Sam, with the help of environmentalists with an agenda that coincides with U.N.’s Agenda 21.

USA Today dedicated on March 1, 2013 a special report and a video to the indoctrination of the masses that had little basis in fact. It enumerated how climate change is responsible for a host of problems in America: “More American children are getting asthma and allergies, and more seniors are suffering heat strokes. Food and utility prices are rising. Flooding is overrunning bridges, swamping subways and closing airport runways.  People are losing jobs in drought-related factory closings. Cataclysmic storms are wiping out sprawling neighborhoods. Towns are sinking.” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/28/climate-change-remaking-america/1917169/

My question is, if this is true, and flooding will swallow beaches, islands, and any state with an opening to the sea, why do Hollywood celebrities and political elites build lavish homes on the water front, beaches, and tropical islands? If it is not sustainable for us to use fossil fuels, build where we want, and emit CO2, why is it sustainable for them to live in a McMansion, fly in personal jets, own numerous cars, and leave behind a huge carbon foot print? Why not ride bikes, five minutes from home and work like the rest of us are supposed to do?

Do sound principles of Economics explain that the price of food, utilities, and the unemployment rate are caused by global warming? One only needs an elementary knowledge of economics to know that such statements are false. Where do current government regulatory, monetary, and fiscal policies come into place as a cause of the above ills?

The fear mongering does not stop there. The glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park are going to melt, the sea levels are rising and the oceans are becoming more acidified. Climate change, heat waves, downpours, drought, wildfires, flooding are the result of burning fossil fuels and are likely to increase. It is so bad that “a remaking of America is likely in our lifetimes – a flicker in geological time. This will transform how and where we live, work, and play.”

I happen to agree that there is a remaking of America in our lifetime, affecting every facet of economic activity, where we live, work, and play, but it is accomplished by U.N. Agenda 21 which has been implemented across the world since 1992. I have discussed this in great detail in my book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy.” http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3AUN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy&keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy&ie=UTF8

The author of the USA Today article, a self-described “reformed luddite,” who built an eco-friendly home in 2011, defines the planet as being affected this year by the highest concentration of “heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions in at least 800,000 years.”

According to real science, not political consensus, the planet has actually cooled in the last 17 years. Climate change does occur all the time and should not be confused with catastrophic weather events which may come in a cyclical pattern. No mention is made of the Little Ice Age which affected Europe from 1350-1850.

Sebastian Luning and Fritz Vahrenhold wrote in The Cold Sun about the impact of sun on the earth’s climate. The Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715, with only 50 sunspots during a 30 year period (normal sunspots 40,000-50,000), coincided with the Little Ice Age. During this period, agricultural production was seriously reduced and the widespread human suffering was painfully evident in the historical records of that time.

The tomes published by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), Climate Change Reconsidered, are a strong scientific rebuttal to United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The recorded temperatures in the 1900s do not form an up and down slope that follows the industrial revolution’s spikes in carbon dioxide (CO2). Instead, the temperatures follow the up and down pattern of naturally caused climate cycles. “Temperatures dropped steadily from the late 1940s to the late 1970s.”

From late 1970s to late 1990s, the natural cycle turned warm and the global warming alarmists used it to their advantage. However, “satellite measured global atmospheric temperatures show less warming during this period than the heavily manipulated land surface temperatures.”

How are land surface temperatures manipulated? According to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), every 25-30 years the oceans undergo the natural cycle of colder water from below roils to replace the warmer water at the surface, affecting global temperatures by fractions of a degree. PDO was cold 1940s-1970s and warm 1970s-1990s. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) was similar. (Peter Ferrera)

United Nations’ IPCC made in 2000 the prediction that global temperatures would rise by 1 percent by 2010 which was obviously wrong. Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University, predicted that temperatures would cool and he was right because he knew PDO had turned cold in 1999.

Peter Ferrera explained that “natural climate cycles have already turned from warming to cooling, global temperatures have already been declining for more than 10 years, and global temperatures will continue to decline for another two decades or more.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/05/31/sorry-global-warming-alarmists-the-earth-is-cooling/

The International Climate Change Conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute held a conference in Chicago, May 21-23, 2012, discussing the economic implications of high cost energy as a result of unnecessary regulatory schemes, carbon taxes, carbon swaps, and the push to replace fossil fuels with renewables. http://climateconferences.heartland.org/iccc7/

Real scientists can explain with irrefutable data what causes weather events and temporary changes in temperature. Political scientists and journalist alarmists who promote climate Armageddon cannot defend in a public debate how humans are the cause of “global warming.” Yet based on their alarmist theory, world governments are expanding regulation and taxation in lock step with the dictates of U.N. Agenda 21.

Thinking Americans are skeptics – we do not believe in the “human-induced climate change” environmentalist consensus. The following examples given in the USA Today article do not constitute irrefutable scientific evidence of global warming:

-         “My windows and doors are rotted away and the village is sinking” (Stanley Tom on flooding risk in Alaska)

-         "My house isn't straight anymore. It's tilted." (Jeff Miskill on repeat flooding in Norfolk, Va)

-         "Who's going to hire me now?" (Barbara Roberts on beef processing plant closing its doors in Texas)

Could it be that floods in coastal cities occur because they are built below sea level like New Orleans? Is it not possible that land is naturally sinking? Could it be that some homes are built on unsteady terrain? Is it not possible that oceanic air currents, cold/hot air mass collisions, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes are contributors to catastrophic weather events? Could it be that solar flares are contributors to unusual high temperatures? Is it not possible that sink holes and sinking in general develop naturally in certain prone areas regardless of human activity?

Dr. Heinz Hug, citing peer reviewed sources said, “IPCC assertion that increased global greenhouse gas water vapor causes global warming is wrong.”

Dr. Kaiser said, “The reality also is that all the models used by the IPCC and their followers make untenable assumptions, contain internal inconsistencies and totally disregard the physical basis necessary.”

Science is exact; it does not work by “consensus” as declared by United Nations or activist environmentalists. “Consensus is a societal or judicial term which has no place in science.”

In the same article, Dr. Klaus Kaiser gives a very good explanation why the tropospheric CO2 causes a net cooling effect on our planet, not a greenhouse “blanket.”

“Look at planet Mars. Its atmosphere contains 950,000 parts per million (ppm) CO2 versus 400 ppm on Earth. Yet, on the side of Mars facing the sun, the temperature is about 30 °C like on Earth, but on the opposite (night) side it is well below MINUS-100 °C (approximately MINUS-200 °F). The thick layer of CO2 on Mars does not at all provide a “warm blanket” on its night side – au contraire – all that CO2 in the Martian atmosphere produces a cooling effect through outward radiation of IR energy its molecules.”

Al Gore’s global warming predictions that the sea levels will rise, flood, and swallow islands and lands opening to the ocean are wrong. Nils-Axel Mörner, sea level expert, has recently criticized main stream media alarmists, including the United Nations IPCC, for claiming that Bangladeshi floods are caused by man-made global warming. Independent scientists have proven that floods in Bangladesh are caused by rain over the Himalayas and cyclones that push water inland. “This has nothing to do with the sea,” said Mörner.

We are transforming our way of life fundamentally, our cities, in the name of “greening” them or “smart-growing” them, at great expense and pain to all, based on environmental lies, scientific misinterpretation of data, faux “consensus,” and U.N. Agenda 21’s schemes to redistribute wealth and to control every facet of life. Would it not be easier if the U.N. and its ardent supporters just came in and confiscated our “ill-gotten wealth” overnight instead of stealthily stealing from us in the name of saving the planet?

No matter how much logical and scientific explanation we bring to shed light on the global warming/climate change hoax, and the deliberate misinformation of our population, coupled with the brainwashing in school into the scam of GREEN, we are losing ground to the powerful progressive media that controls the irrational and hypocritical debate.