Menzies House

The insanity of renewable energy

How ironic that the renewable energy sector is going to be the next boom for mining companies…

Via Climate Central

Three French CRNS scientists – Olivier Vidal and Nicholas Arndt of the University of Grenoble and Bruno Goffé of Aix-Marseille University – issue this warning in Nature Geoscience.

They say that to match the power generated by fossil fuels or nuclear power stations, the construction of solar energy farms and wind turbines will gobble up 15 times more concrete, 90 times more aluminum and 50 times more iron, copper and glass. Right now wind and solar energy meet only about 1 percent of global demand; hydroelectricity meets about 7 percent.

The trio argue that if the contribution from wind turbines and solar energy to global energy production is to rise from the current 400 terawatt hours to 12,000 terawatt hours in 2035, and 25,000 terawatt hours in 2050, that will require 3,200 million tons of steel, 310 million tons of aluminum and 40 million tons of copper to construct state-of-the-art generating systems.

This in turn would mean an annual increase in global production of these metals of from 5 percent to 18 percent for the next 40 years, and that would be in addition to the already accelerating demand for metals of all kinds in both the developed and the developing world.

In addition, each and every wind turbine has a magnet made of a metal called neodymium. There are 2,500 Kg of it in each of the bird chomping behemoths.

The mining and refining of neodymium is so dirty and toxic - involving repeated boiling in acid, with radioactive thorium as a waste product - that only one country does it - China.  Two years ago China flexed its trade muscles and briefly stopped exporting neodymium from its inner Mongolian mines. Forget Middle East oil, how’s that for dangerous reliance on a volatile foreign supply.

So the Ecotard Greens push for 90% renewables by 2030 is actually a boom for BHP, RIO and FMG.

The bottome line is this: The mining of required commodities and the heavy industrial manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels will emit far more Carbon Dioxide emissions than what they will ever save when they finally become operational. When wind and solar energy plants are thwarted by the weather, the void will be filled by gas fired power plants.

It makes no sense whatsoever to use wind and solar. If we’re going to spend the money, then build new hydro dams (the only real renewable power source) and bite the bullet and install carbon dioxide emission free nuclear power.

 

 

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The Global Warming Gas Fails to keep us Warm

The climate alarmists claim that the tiny quantity of invisible carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere is causing dangerous global warming.

Two recent nights at our farm at Rosevale make me wonder.

The first night had perfectly clear skies, allowing carbon dioxide full scope to absorb the radiant energy leaving the surface and radiate half of it back, supposedly keeping us warm.

I was working outside as the sun went down after a warm sunny day. Immediately the sun dipped below the horizon, temperature dropped dramatically, and coats shed during the day were quickly put back on. Temperature fell steadily all night reaching 2 ℃ by sunrise the next day.

Kevin Rudd Wins the Golden Fleece Award

The Carbon Sense Coalition has awarded its Inaugural Golden Fleece Award to Kevin Rudd and coal industry leaders for “flagrant fleecing of community savings" writes Viv Forbes

Its appropriate that the Golden Fleece award would recognise futile ‘research’ on Carbon Capture & Sequestration. A costly and complex process designed to capture and bury carbon dioxide gas produced by burning carbon fuels such as 'coal, oil and gas'.

It is obviously possible, in an engineering sense, to collect, separate, compress, pump and pipe gases, so new “research” is largely a waste of money. Engineers know how to do these things, and their likely costs. But only foolish green zealots would think of spending billions to bury a harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in hopes of cooling the climate some time in the century ahead.

The Year of the Living Dead.

Jim's sci-fi look at Labor politics is clearly understood by most Australians. The only faction in disagreement is Labor. GC.Ed.-at-Large

Undead, unalive, the zombie slouches across Australia. Never sleeping, but never fully awake, it moves sluggishly with glazed eyes towards a goal it cannot understand. Its body is corrupt, its soul pieced, divided and parts sold off. The scraps of soul left only contain half remembered slogans; it gets its energy from the remnants of its last remaining instinct – the instinct to survive…

Its principal quality is a remorseless mindless persistence. It ignores signs in the heavens, signs on the earth, pain. Dogs may bark warnings, men may shout peril. It ignores them even when its fellow zombies, ABC and SMH, growl uncertainly behind its drooping haunches.

It is the walking corpse of the Labor Party.

No other explanation can account for its devotion to its self-destructive ‘Carbon’ Tax.

Death again, by a thousand fools!

Jim reminds us yet again about political ineptitude via knee-jeck reaction. This one by Malcolm Turnbull may be forgotten by many, but not those who curse and cuss when they have to buy a light bulb at triple cost, half the light and shorter life span. Another Turnbull flub! GC.Ed.

Compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs – twirly bulbs – can provide the same amount of light as incandescent light bulbs, using one quarter of the energy. A belief, as strong as any religious one, is that they will make a difference to dreaded carbon emissions, and perhaps to the household budget.

Under the grip of worldwide mania, a wild-eyed messianic Malcolm Turnbull persuaded his brain challenged mates in the Liberal Party to make their use compulsory.

There was not the slightest evidence that their use would have an effect on Global Warming, or Son of Global Warming, or Climate Change but there was just a chance that it might – and that was what did it.

The Precautionary Principle.

The Precautionary Principle?

Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

 Put it another way – it means ‘just in case’.

The principle is applied everywhere now, but it started as a Green mantra to chant in debate as a substitute for thinking.

Another "Flannery" from the prophet

Tim Flannery's batting average is rather dismal. Here is another one for the fridge door under "Flannery." If there is any room remaining.

"What we can now see is the emerging inevitability that renewables are going to be running the economy at some point in the future."

Suffer more:www.abc.net.au