Comments on Green Fantasy: The GND and Renewable Energy by Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute and Tom Harris of International Climate Science Coalition wrote an interesting article on the absolute absurdity of the Green New Deal (GND) program of the Democratic Socialists which is on-line at American Thinker, entitled Green Fantasy: The GND and Renewable Energy  It is well worth reading in its entirety, but I am going to note some of its interesting points here and make some comments of my own on GND.

As you should know, the Green New Deal aims to eliminate the use of hydrocarbon fuels removed from the ground over the next 12 years, because its advocates claim that once again the Earth will die along with all humans in that time-frame if we do not do so.  This sort of doomsday prediction is a common claim of religious people who are frustrated by a lack of attention.  Believe our religion or the world will end.  The Green Religion has already given us many the world-will-end deadlines, yet we have managed to survive them all to date.  There have not even been any close calls!

The GND also wants to rid us of nuclear power plants and as many hydroelectric dams as possible in 12 years as well.  For all fossil fuel energy, nuclear energy, and lost hydropower we are to substitute solar, wind, and biofuel power.  The biofuel option is an odd one, since most of the argument against fossil fuels is based on the false claim that the carbon dioxide emissions their use entails will cause catastrophic global warming.  It is as though the Green Religion advocates are ignorant of the fact that the use of biofuels also results in carbon dioxide emissions directly upon their use.

Lehr and Harris make some particularly interesting comments on solar power limitations.  Solar power farms based on silicon photovoltaics produce a national average of 5 to 7 watts per square meter.  The U.S. Energy Administration says that making the photovoltaic material uses 3,370 kilowatt hours of energy per square meter of solar collector surface.  Lehr and Harris noted that solar collectors take up a little over 50% of the area of the land of a solar farm, so one can calculate that even at the 7 W per square meter high end of the solar farm efficiency range, it takes 27.5 years of solar farm operation simply to recover the energy input cost of making the solar collector material, assuming that the collector material covers half of the solar farm land area.  Note that Lehr and Harris say it takes more than 50 years, but they forgot that the collector material covers only a little over half of the area of the solar farm. This does not even count the energy that otherwise went into building the solar farm and operating it for those 27.5 years.  It has to be noted that many solar farms to date have not operated more than a small fraction of 27.5 years before they were abandoned as uneconomical to operate.  No one actually thinks that the average solar farm of the next decade is going to last 27.5 years either.

They also note that even in very sunny areas of the U.S., a 1,000 megawattt solar farm would take 51 square miles of land.  Note that the U.S. uses energy at about the rate of 1.3 x 10¹⁴ W, which requires about 13,000 of these 1,000 megawatt solar farms to replace.  This would require about 663,000 square miles of solar farms, assuming that all of them were in the sunniest parts of the USA.  This is almost exactly the size of Alaska, but Alaska is hardly suitable and even though it is the least inhabited of our states in terms of population density, the Green Religion would never allow its being turned into nothing but solar farms.  Much of southern California might be relatively suitable, but getting all of the Democrat Socialists who live there to move out and make way would meet with their resistance and only provide less than a tenth of the necessary land area.  Probably much less than a tenth given the interference of mountain ranges.  Building such solar farms will always meet with much local resistance.  Before a few hundred such solar farms could be built, the Green Religion would turn massively against them being built anywhere with claims that some subspecies of animal would be threatened or some scenic view ruined.

The Green New Deal is indeed a fantasy.  It is also a nightmare.  Many of its backers have given no thought to whether it is possible.  Many know it is not possible and only want it to be pursued because it will destroy the energy industries we all rely heavily upon. The GND will provide much more power to the government which the Democrat Socialists plan to use to exercise ever greater control over our individual lives.  Controlling our energy use and our healthcare with a government controlled single payer system will make the people nothing but slaves to the Democrat Socialist elite.  Raw and brutally exercised power is the real motivation for the GND and for single-payer healthcare.

Jay Lehr and Tom Harris say that much of their article is based on data and arguments by Bruce Bunker, Ph.D., in his 2018 book The Mythology of Global Warming, published by Moonshine Cove.

Coal-Fired Electric Plants of China Give it Edge in World Clean Energy Market

Energy Secretary Steven Chu argues we should make ourselves more competitive in the growing green energy industries by taxing carbon with the carbon cap-and-trade Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act of Kerry and Boxer in the Senate.  He claims China is investing heavily in wind and solar power manufacturing and will clean our clock if we do not pass cap-and-trade taxation.  Marlo Lewis points out that this is nonsense.

China does not tax carbon dioxide emissions.  It is producing wind and solar products for export, not internal use.  It is producing electricity now more cheaply with coal-fired power plants.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the state of Massachusetts is one of the very foolish states already in a cap-and-trade program known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.  Ten states of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 10% by 2018.  This puts them at a competitive disadvantage for power costs and power reliability with respect to many other sates, so they are desperate to get the federal government to make at least such draconian power cuts for the remaining states of the Union.  But, let us examine how this cap-and-trade effort is benefiting manufacturer's of green energy products.

Massachusetts gave Evergreen Solar $58.6 million to build a factory in Devens, MA.  A little more than a year after opening the plant, Evergreen announced it was moving its solar panel assembly operations to China, where the costs of production are lower.  It plans to keep wafer and solar cell production in Devens.  One of the lower costs in China is that of energy.  In the first 9 months of this year, Evergreen lost $167 million.  The market price of assembled solar panels has fallen 30% in the last year.  Apparently, even with heavy subsidies, solar power companies have a very difficult time competing with both other forms of energy production and lower cost of production overseas competitors.  The free market is not kind to solar power and even extensive subsidies and favorable mandates at taxpayer expense leave many of these companies unable to compete.  Massachusetts Gov. Patrick and Obama both are going to be disappointed by the number of American jobs actually produced by green energy.

When the free market says a company is uncompetitive, it is very poor public sector policy to spend taxpayer money on it or to force consumers to buy its high-priced products.

Wind Power Delays and Limits

Recently, wind power has been in the news locally here in Maryland. In one case, the concern is that many bats are dying at the sites of wind farms in western Maryland, West Virginia, and nearby areas of Pennsylvania. For some time, there was puzzlement as to why bats would fly into turbine blades despite their sonar capabilities. A recent report in The Washington Times notes that researchers have found out that when the blades are spinning there are low pressure areas in which the pressure is low enough that the bats lungs explode and they die even without collisions with the blades. The article says this is a relief, since there is an easy solution. The bats only fly in large numbers when the wind is moderate, so the wind generators can simply be shut down when the wind velocity is moderate!

Half the time when I see a wind farm the generator blades are not turning at all. There is usually more wind at night than during the day, so a disproportionate fraction of the electricity generated is already at night when electricity use is lower than during the day. Now, in the interest of the bats, the wind turbines will be shut down an even larger fraction of the time at many eastern sites with goodly bat populations. And bats are not the only species which require protection. Here is an account of the travails in building a wind farm in western Maryland where the project was redesigned in the interests of the mourning warbler, mountain wood fern, summer sedge, Allegheny wood rat, and the timber rattlesnake. The number of turbines was reduced from 24 to 17, while the height of each generator was increased from 387 feet to 548 feet for the highest part of the blade in its sweep. The farm is rated at 40 MW, but farms commonly put out a very small fraction of their rated power.

Another interesting local story about wind generators is one of a number of farmers who bought their own smaller generators for $20,000 apiece in anticipation of getting a $10,000 refund per generator from the Federal government. But...the local authorities will not permit the farmers to put their wind generators up. So, the farmers are stuck with a useless $20,000 of capital on the ground, which is neither generating power nor Federal subsidies. Meanwhile, the time limit for the Federal subsidy money is running out.

Lately, I have been seeing an ad on TV for photovoltaic power plants in which rows of solar arrays seem to stretch very far beyond the woman touting solar power for miles. The panels are large and raised well off the ground and the ground looks absolutely flat, packed down, and barren. She talks about covering many square miles of the Southwest with such environmentally friendly and non-CO2 producing operations. Now, can anyone be in their right mind who believes that the environmentalists will allow many, many square miles of the southwest to be covered with such barren structures. Within these areas there are to be no flora and no fauna. These areas are to become as barren as the area shown in the ad. Well, I don't think so. The environmentalists will come to champion all the lizards, birds, rats, spiders, cactus plants, and tumbling tumble weed species for sure. You can count on it. No such projects of any great scale will be allowed to be built.

Global Warmer's Attack on Science

Those who claim that man is responsible for the global warming between about 1970 and 2000 are fond of claiming that this theory has been proven beyond any reasonable scientific doubt. Despite this, there are hundreds of climatologists and other scientists interested in the science of the atmosphere, the seas, the sun, the flora and fauna, and the history of climate both in recorded history and during prehistoric periods who are unconvinced. The world has generally warmed since the last Ice Age, but there have been many back and forth temperature movements. There have been ice ages with carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere many times what it is now. There was the Roman Warming, then the cooling that helped to bring on the end of the Roman Empire, then the Medieval Warming, then the Mini-Ice Age that ended about 1850. While warming has generally dominated since, there was a cooling period from 1940 until about 1970. Indeed, in the late sixties, there was alarm in the media about the coming Ice Age. Indeed, such a cooling as would accompany an on-coming Ice Age would be a human disaster, while the general warming after the last Ice Age, the Roman Warming, the Medieval Warming, and the present post-Mini-Ice Age have all been very kind to man.

Despite these well-known facts, some computer modelers have determined that an increase of carbon dioxide due to the use of organic fuels must lead to great temperature increases. This despite the high carbon dioxide levels of previous Ice Ages. Despite the fact that the models cannot make predictions consistent with the known history back to the pre-Roman historical periods. Despite the fact that the models predict that the temperature should increase with altitude in the lower atmosphere, while in fact it falls. There is a problem in that carbon dioxide increases seem more often to follow than precede global temperature increases. This makes sense, since as the temperature increases, then the seas will evaporate off dissolved carbon dioxide. No matter how little truth is revealed by these models of carbon dioxide induced warming, they have many eager believers.

The fact is that variations in the sun's radiance accounts for most of the variations in the earth's temperature. There are also effects due to cosmic radiation and to cycles in the ocean currents which seem to be of importance. What is missing is evidence that man has significantly changed the world temperature.

These eager believers are largely socialists who have become somewhat weary of directly supporting socialism with its many known failures. They have turned to other arguments for essentially the same ends. They seek power over their fellowman, though always in the name of a paternalistic, or now an increasingly maternalistic, concern. There is always the pretense that the would-be thug-hirers have only the interest of the people at heart even as they threaten constantly to use force to get those many who are full of Original Sin to do their bidding.

Science draws men to pay attention to reality. This is not at all what those who seek power wish. It is much easier to control men who do not understand reality. So, the claim that science supports the idea that man has caused global warming, has two purposes. It may give those who claim this power in the short-run. If, however, there is a failure in time to convince men that man is destroying the world by using organic fuels, then the unconvinced will turn against science. This too suits the purpose of the power seekers.

The anti-man environmentalists seem to be on the road to the power to squeeze the economy and to deny men the advantages of inexpensive and sufficient power. They have shut down the construction of further nuclear power plants and brought on so much uncertainty about the future of coal-burning power plants that many projects to build them have been canceled. They supposedly support wind power, geothermal power, and photovoltaic power plants, except in their backyard or anywhere where some living animal might be inconvenienced or at least they might make a case that it might be. It is impossible to believe that the proposal in the January 2008 issue of Scientific American to cover 46,000 sq. mi. of the American Southwest with solar arrays will ever be allowed to happen. The environmentalists themselves will surely turn against any such project. Only projects to starve Americans of power are ever fully embraced for the long haul.