Civil Defense Perspectives 33(4): July 2018
This year marks the 30th anniversary of James E. Hansen’s 1988 congressional testimony on “global warming,” which set off the “disastrous 30 Year War on Carbon,” writes Willis Eschenbach. It is a war on access to affordable energy, which has already claimed thousands of casualties by plunging people into “fuel poverty.” Eschenbach’s electrical bills have climbed 50%; poor people in midwinter have to choose between heating and eating (https://tinyurl.com/yafzjpp3).
When I was in 7th grade at the dawn of the Atomic Age, we read about electricity “too cheap to meter.” Then came the war on nuclear energy. Then on coal. In January 2008, then-Senator Obama said of his Clean Power Plan, “[E]lectricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” (https://tinyurl.com/ydy2ngk8).
The war actually began even before 1988 in UN agencies and transnational, nonaccountable nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Foreign, anti-American interests heavily promote climate alarmism. The political left, and since around 2000 the Democrat Party, have also unconditionally supported the “climate change” agenda (https://tinyurl.com/y9qrx9tf).
In his new book Green Tyranny, Rupert Darwell argues that the ideology driving the climate scare originated in Hitler’s Germany. In 1941, Hitler said, “Coal will disappear someday,” and “The future belongs, surely, to water—to the wind and the tides.” Darwell writes: “The Nazis’ profound hostility to capitalism and their identification with nature-politics led them to advocate green policies half a century before any other political party” (https://tinyurl.com/y85o4c7n).
Once the anthropogenic global warming theory was proposed by a tiny group of scientists, “With startling speed, their theory was soon proclaimed as being supported by a scientific ‘consensus,’ backed by governments, all the main scientific journals and institutions, environmental pressure groups and the media,” writes Christopher Booker in Global Warming: a Classic Example of Groupthink. Booker applies Groupthink theory popularized 40 years ago by psychologist Irving Janis.
“The one thing those caught up in groupthink cannot tolerate is that anyone should question it…. [Thus], they cannot properly debate the matter with those who disagree with their belief” (TWTW 2/24/18, www.sepp.org).
The Nov 30, 2017, issue of Nature, devoted to “Energy Transitions,” admits no hint of doubts. It calls the transition from wood to coal the “most momentous shift in the history of energy,” which “wrought huge changes in society” in the 16th century. “It reduced the pressure on land because energy could be found below ground,” writes Roger Fouquet of the London School of Economics and Political Science. (Now the climate alarmists want to keep the energy underground.) Wind farms began in the 1980s (see p 2). The renewable energy campaign that began in Denmark in the 70s inspired the German Energiewende.
Nature remarks on how the world’s wealthiest have an “outsized carbon footprint,” an “inequity” that needs correction. The implication is that being wealthy leads to carbon emissions —rather than that access to affordable energy brings prosperity.
The economic analysis of the cost of energy, Nature says, is dominated by increases in premature human deaths allegedly caused by “air pollution” [primarily PM2.5, see May issue and p 2]. Erica Gies writes that this accounts for more than 90% of the calculated damage costs from electricity generation from coal.
In fact, using the same logic, pollution from trucks alone kills 35% more Americans than actually die. Emissions from glider trucks, which are remanufactured from old, salvaged diesel engines, kill 4,100 per year, according to Harvard academicians (https://tinyurl.com/ydf3h2ej). Glider trucks, however, emit about the same amount of PM2.5 as new trucks, according to measurements at Tennessee Tech University in 2017, writes Steve Milloy. Only 38,000 glider trucks have ever been built, and there are 33.8 million diesel trucks on the road. Thus, new trucks hypothetically kill 3.65 million Americans per year. Yet there are only 2.7 million deaths from all causes (tinyurl.com/ybq36cxp).
Gross pollution does, however, cause some 5 million real, identifiable deaths each year in Africa: air pollution from burning wood and animal dung, and contaminated food and water.
These problems of poverty could be solved with affordable electricity. However, the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks stopped financing coal-fired power generation in 2010, and plan to stop funding oil and gas exploration by poor countries. Instead, MDBs devote $34 billion to “climate finance” —which is anti-development (https://tinyurl.com/yatexbul).
The War on Reason and Facts
“Global warming hysteria has raged for 30 years,” writes Cal Thomas. “Predictions…of global significance, should be rigorously examined to see if they have come true. In the case of Mr. Hansen, it’s apparent they have not” (Albuquerque J 7/1/18).
Instead, alarmists make dire future projections based solely on computer models, and “homogenize,” “correct,” and manipulate original data, adjusting records by as much as 3.1 °F (1.7 °C), writes Paul Driessen (https://tinyurl.com/yaes4yag). According to former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist John Bates, NOAA had knowingly released “unverified” global temperature data in order to influence policy agendas favored by the Obama administration at the 2015 Paris climate conference, reports Larry Bell (https://tinyurl.com/y9uravkk).
In 1993, the New York Times printed a classic article by Julian Simon and Aaron Wildavsky: “Facts, Not Species, Are Periled.” They stated that there was no evidence that the rate of extinction of species was going up rapidly, or at all. Still, children are being “prepared for planetary crisis”: S.F. Said cites the claim that “nearly one-quarter of mammals are globally threatened or extinct” (Nature 4/26/18). But one-fifth of all species were in danger of being gone by 2003 (NYT, op. cit.). The predictions are based on computer models; only about 800 extinctions have been documented in the past 400 years, out of 1.9 million species (https://tinyurl.com/y9828mw2).
Richard Lindzen stated that historians will wonder “how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda,… enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone…that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world” (Bell, op. cit.).
Political pollution of science, on the other hand, is something truly worthy of concern.
Energy Facts
Upon the retirement of Vindeby, the first off-shore wind farm, we learn that it spent 75% of its 25-year life paying off the cost of its construction, and most of the rest paying for maintenance, for a return on input cost of about 1:1. Before the Industrial Revolution, England operated on an energy return investment of 2:1, as do some parts of Africa today. For a typical fossil-fuel plant, the return is 50:1 for the plant alone and 15:1 if fuel cost is included. For nuclear, the ratio is 70:1, and fuel costs are negligible compared to total cost (tinyurl.com/y6uf7x9g).
Availability in disasters: Wind and solar receive energy input at the whim of Nature. A bad storm shuts them down and can even destroy them. Gas plants need just-in-time delivery from a pipeline. Coal plants can store 90 days of fuel on site. Nuclear plants need refueling about every 2 years (WSJ 6/20/18).
More Fake Science
Yet another indictment against PM2.5 pollution: not only is it “associated with” birth defects (see May issue), but with premature birth. Coal and oil plant retirements in California were associated with a tiny but statistically significant decrease in the proportion of preterm births in women residing within 5 km of the plant in pregnancies beginning in the year after plant closure compared with two years before (-0.019, 95% C.I. -0.031, -0.008). That was 6.1% out of 272 live births after closure vs. 7.5% out of 316 live births before. Actual exposure was not measured. Authors speculate that pollution “may increase risk” of prematurity due to intrauterine growth restriction, preeclampsia, etc.—somehow (Am J Epidemiol 5/16/18, doi: 10.1093/aje/kwy110).
Statistician William Briggs writes: “The epidemiologist fallacy strikes again” (http://wmbriggs.com/post/24601/).
EPA Scandals in Obama Years
Unethical Human Experimentation: EPA deliberately exposed hundreds of unwitting subjects to diesel exhaust after telling Congress that this could be lethal (Larry Bell, Forbes 11/13/12, https://tinyurl.com/yd7nnz5q).
Obstruction? Administrator Gina McCarthy deleted 6,000 text messages days after Congress notified EPA that it might be violating laws on preserving records (tinyurl.com/yac79pqq).
Cover-up? EPA allegedly knew of the dangers of a catastrophic blowout at an abandoned Colorado mine before it triggered the release of toxic heavy metals (https://tinyurl.com/y94wkuos), but covered up evidence to shield its agents from prosecution (https://tinyurl.com/ybdvqotd).
Travel Expenses: Gina McCarthy spent $629,743 on airfare and security for international trips between 2013 and 2016. In all, Obama’s EPA administrators spent $961,856 on international travel, 7.75 times the amount spent by Scott Pruitt, without the media outcry (https://tinyurl.com/ybfc49v5).
Hiding Data: EPA concealed the results of a human experiment that directly contradicts the Obama EPA’s 2015 decision to tighten the air quality standard for ozone from 75 ppb to 70 ppb, one of the most expensive EPAs rule of all time (https://tinyurl.com/y9w5nugx).
39 more: https://tinyurl.com/yd3fkpgn
Danger, Pollution from “Clean” Energy
Destroying Water Supplies: Concrete wind turbine bases extending 30 ft below ground interfere with ground water flow, blocking or polluting supplies to homes and livestock in Scotland (https://tinyurl.com/y7z2hs56). In Ontario, farmers are using bottled water for livestock because of contamination with “toxic sludge” (https://tinyurl.com/yb3vmwbl).
Ticking Time Bombs: Germany’s 30,000 wind turbines, many now more than 20 years old, are failing catastrophically with increased frequency. A 100-tonne turbine plunged to earth. Razor-sharp fiberglass shards from blades of a 115-meter tall turbine flew 800 meters. They could perforate the stomach of grazing animals. Turbines are exempt from the rigorous inspections required for other industries (https://tinyurl.com/yarvyjj8).
Toxic Waste: Giant wind turbine blades cannot be recycled because they are made of composite materials that cannot be separated. Incineration is difficult, toxic, and energy intensive. By 2021 Germany may have 16,000 tonnes per year to dispose of—probably in African landfills (https://tinyurl.com/ycmqk2po).
Hansen on Renewables: “The notion that renewable energies and batteries alone will provide all needed energy is fantastical. It is also a grotesque idea, because of the staggering environmental pollution from mining and material disposal, if all energy was derived from renewables and batteries” (tinyurl.com/y9jrphqo).
Beyond Fuel
Reiterating that “exposure to air pollution is the fifth ranking human health risk factor globally,” Brian McDonald et al. examine what’s in it. As emissions from motor vehicles are reduced, volatile chemical products (VCPs) are emerging as the largest petrochemical source of urban organic emissions. VCPs include pesticides, architectural coatings, adhesives, printing ink, cleaning agents, and personal care products. These emit secondary organic aerosols (SOAs), which are a major component of PM2.5. Concentrations indoors, where most people spend most of their time, are about 7 times higher than outdoors. “Nonfossil” contributions to SOAs, such as wood burning, cooking, and biogenic, are not considered (Science 2/16/18).
“When smog has as much deodorant as diesel in it, you know the Earth is in trouble,” writes James Conca. Personal chemical products are 20 times as effective as gasoline and diesel at producing smog, and they “mostly come from processing petroleum anyway. Unfortunately,regulations exempt many of these chemicals from environmental concern.” Conca catalogs human depredations of Earth; for example, we allegedly “extinct [sic] about,000 species every year.” (Forbes 2/20/18, https://tinyurl.com/y9xxypvh). He makes no suggestions about how to go beyond petroleum with renewables for these useful products.
Though acknowledging that indoor air pollution is “almost 10 times worse” than ambient, Conca apparently forgot this in his laudatory comments about the study of premature births referenced above. Coal tops the list on the “Deathprint for Energy,” he writes. “If coal is a significant part of a country’s energy mix, then health care costs increase about 10%.For America, that is about $400 billion a year” (Forbes 5/30/18, tinyurl.com/y9fcoheo). Was the shutdown of eight coal or oil plants in California linked to a decrease in actual medical costs in the surrounding area? Not likely. That was not included in the study.