The road to Net Zero goes round the bend
David Wright The Conservative Woman August 9, 2024
Let Me start by saying that all the wind farms, solar farms and
electric vehicles in the entire world are a waste of time, space and, above all, money. Why? Two reasons. First and foremost because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has zero influence on the world’s climate, as has been unequivocally proved by real, empirical, historical evidence from Antarctic ice cores, lake sediments and other unimpeachable geological sources. The world was much warmer in past centuries when wine was produced in northern England and crops were grown in Greenland. It has also been much colder in the past when, for example, the Thames regularly froze over in winter and ice fairs were celebrated on it. All the foregoing climate events occurred long before the Industrial Revolution started adding man-made CO2 to the atmosphere. A paper by two climate scientists published in January this year shows that Antarctica has not warmed at all in the last 70 years. And a paper published by retired physicist Ian McNaughton on June 20 2024, which can be read here,
https://scienceofclimatechange.org/ian-l-k-mcnaugton-2024-temperature-versus-co2-population-growth/ shows conclusively how CO2 does not drive global warming; rather the reverse.
Secondly, wind turbines, especially, and solar panels never repay the CO2 debt incurred in their manufacture, transportation to site and installation (never mind the unaccounted costs of dismantling and disposal after the end of their short lives), all of which is achieved by the use of fossil fuel-generated power, almost exclusively coal in China, and vast quantities of copper, cobalt and many rare earths mined using diesel-powered machinery (or child labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Since 1997 mankind’s production of CO2 from burning fossil fuels has increased by 54 per cent. Meanwhile all the nations in the West are doubling down on the installation of unreliables (as renewables should be called).
Various figures in the trillions of dollars have been quoted as having been invested worldwide in global warming amelioration action from 2014 to 2023. So far this expenditure has resulted in the reduction of fossil fuels’ contribution to the energy use of the world in the same period from 84 per cent to 82 per cent.
Here in Australia the far left government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is rabidly opposed to nuclear power generation, is proposing offshore wind farms in the path of the annual migration of hundreds of humpback whales. An article revealing how turbines directly cause the deaths of humpbacks off the east coast of the United States can be viewed here.
Offshore wind turbines have 20-year life spans and huge maintenance costs in the harsh marine environment. End-of-life disposal? Nobody mentions it. Onshore wind farms have a lifespan of around 25 years and already graveyards of unrecyclable turbine blades are appearing, leaching poisons into the soil. Even worse poison leaching is coming from millions of discarded solar panels, the recycling of which is possible but costly and therefore never done. Quantities of both wastes are set to increase. It is worth noting that gas- and coal-fired power stations have lifespans of 50-plus years and nuclear plants 70-80 years.
In the UK from this year, at least 22 per cent of cars sold by manufacturers must be electric, and the figure rises to 80 per cent by 2030. In 2035 the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned. This has caused Stellantis, the owner of two Vauxhall plants, to state that it would be forced to close them with the loss of 1,000 jobs if these laws were not relaxed.
The other huge problem with renewables, barely mentioned in the mainstream media and speeches and articles by warmist public figures and politicians, let alone actually costed, is the vast increase in transmission lines and their supporting pylons needed to bring power from remote and widely scattered windy and (sometimes) sunny places to the urban centres and manufacturing hubs that will need it. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that meeting the global decarbonisation goals would require adding or refurbishing 80million kilometres of transmission grids by 2040, which is the equivalent of the entire existing global grid in 2023. One cannot help wondering if the calculation (?) and promulgation of such a preposterously impossible target was published by the IEA as a continuation of the scaremongering rather than a serious attempt to persuade the world to act. In Australia, the Labor government’s drive to achieve Net Zero by 2050 will require 100,000 kilometres of new transmission lines, with 200,000 pylons to support them. Where is the skilled manpower, the steel, the aluminium and other supplies and services to come from?
So Generation Z, Millennials and even some later Boomers will be faced with astronomical electricity bills, frequent power cuts, defaced landscapes and seascapes, no air or sea travel and short-distance-only road travel.
The man-made global warming scam is the gift that keeps on giving for the warmist scaremongers. Every hurricane, every forest fire, every drought anywhere in the world immediately results in catastrophists such as the BBC and the Guardian (by far the worst two) blaming climate change. But it also keeps on giving for the sceptics or deniers who can always bowl out the scaremongering simply by quoting real, empirical data from published historical records both recent and way into the past to show that none of the so-called extreme weather events is unprecedented.
Interestingly, anthropogenic warming (AGW) is beginning slightly to lose traction among the younger generations in the West. Nevertheless I believe that even if the Thames freezes over again, the warmists and rent-seekers whose lucrative jobs and research grants depend on it will continue to hammer the myth that it is caused by mankind burning fossil fuels.
Unfortunately all the austerity, privation, cost and ugliness will be wasted because Net Zero, as well as being pointless, is totally unachievable by 2050 or for many decades after that.
