Every day we read about the need to accelerate the exit of coal from our power supply in the interests of decarbonization to meet a target of emission reduction to keep the heating of the planet down to 1.5C, in case it matters.
So much about that agenda is wrong that it makes my head hurt to think where to start so instead I will speak on behalf of the poor planet which is being grievously wounded by our efforts to get more intermittent wind and solar power into the grid.
Chemotherapy in medical practice is a high-risk strategy to fight cancer while inflicting a deal of collateral damage on the body. Mercifully, medical advances have occurred in recent years and targeted therapies that are available for some cancers can be quite benign compared with the wrecking ball of chemo in the past.
Decisions on medical treatment of course depend on cost/benefit calculations which are bound to be highly conjectural and subjective as well.
Building industrial scale wind and solar facilities can be seen as a kind of chemo for the planet, inflicting some local damage for the sake of the whole thing. However it is all cost and no benefit, except for the people who make money out of wind and solar.
As for the need to worry about climate change over the last century or so, check out the trend in weather-related deaths.
No need to labour the point around here, of course the robust climate science indicates that warming in the last couple of centuries has been unequivocally beneficial and more will be ok except that it is more likely to turn cold. And the plants could do with a whole lot more CO2, after all commercial nurseries amp up the supply by a factor of two or three.
DOWNSIDE OF WIND AND SOLAR POWER
Many good books could be written to describe the carnage to the planet of the wind and solar industries, not just the invasion of farmland and forests but the whole supply chain from mining to disposal of the toxic waste at the end of life.
This collection by my colleague Bill Stinson is a handy source, no need to read it, just keep it handy to enlighten wind and solar devotees. See also the short films of the vandalism by wind facilities in North Queensland in our information pack.
Someone has a better way of cooling the planet…
Rogue start-up launching reflective clouds into Earth’s stratosphere to cool planet?
Last 2 paragraphs from the article
The number of private jets on the ground here peaked at 32 over Christmas.
The global elite don’t believe in Climate Change, they do however believe in impoverishing you and subjugating you.
The wealth and freedom for you to get on a plane and go anywhere in the world is slowly but surely being ended.
Maybe somebody with more knowledge than I have about this stuff could chime in. Can the “energy” that’s produced by windmills and solar panels be stored for days when the wind is calm and the sun isn’t shining?
I’d love to have alternatives to oil, but the alternatives don’t seem viable.
Treating someone with chemo who doesn’t have cancer would be deliberately poisoning them. Anyone who did so would be gaoled.
Which is exactly what the climate activists deserve, since there’s nearly no actual warming going on in the real world data. Certainly nothing harmful, and probably beneficial. The only cancer the planet is suffering from is a surfeit of insane lefty activists.
Can the “energy” that’s produced by windmills and solar panels be stored for days when the wind is calm and the sun isn’t shining?
This is the whole crux of the issue. Wind and solar have low efficiency to begin with. If you find a viable storage medium then you incur further losses getting that energy in and out of the storage, maybe even losses while it’s in storage (eg. Friction losses in Flywheels).
Oil and coal is very neatly and usefully packaged energy, that is available on demand if you have the right engine. Why end the energy sources that revolutionised human existence by eliminating the competition between food production and energy production?
The ABC greenie reporters are still operating under the illusion that Snowy 2 will deliver cheap energy, (that is, if it is ever completed) and that it will be sufficient to prop up the grid when coal plants are decommissioned.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-06/snowy-hydro-could-change-our-electricity-grid-bring-cheap-power/101795640
And at the BBC we have lots of enthusiasm for the possible development of viable batteries using processed tree fibres . https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221215-the-batteries-made-from-wood
I am reminded of an old saying, “If wishes were fishes what a good fisherman I would be”.