CHRISTMAS Massacre : Reindeers Slaughtered For Solar ‘Energy’

The Killing Fields

Once upon a time, the ‘Killing the earth to save it’ meme was perhaps a little hard to quantify. This latest atrocity to ‘power’ the planet seems questionable.

Merry Christmas.


MICHAEL MOORE : ‘Green Energy Is A Scam’

screen-shot-2019-08-07-at-2-40-52-am_orig
Planet of the Humans | By Jeff Gibbs, Executive Producer Michael Moore

“The documentary does a good job
at proving that conservatives
were right to say that green energy is a scam“

“This urgent, must-see movie,
a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows,
is guaranteed to generate anger, debate.”

***

A must watch.

IT gets going at around the 13 minute mark, and then, kaboom…

***

UPDATE 26 May 

“It was a bright cold day in April,
 and the clocks were striking thirteen.
George Orwell, 1984

THE Ministry Of Truth has now removed Michael Moore’s original #YouTube release of #PlanetOfTheHumans. It was tracking some 10 million views when shut-down/censored due to a “copyright claim”.

THE complainant, Toby Smith, explains why he is not filled with the obligatory totalitarian streak of the muzzle-ready Leftist …

“I went directly to YouTube rather than approaching the filmmakers because I wasn’t interested in negotiation. I don’t support the documentary, I don’t agree with its message and I don’t like the misleading use of facts in its narrative.”

YOUTUBE boss, @SusanWojcicki agreed and pulled the Moore/Flint docco that thoroughly destroys the “renewable energy” myth.

SUSAN does not trust your judgment or you ability to think for yourself.

Paul Homewood comments, “Regardless of the so-called copyright issues, this is clearly a politically motivated attempt to censor the film, as Toby Smith himself admits.”

Screen Shot 2020-05-27 at 08.02.56

Michael Moore film Planet of the Humans removed from YouTube | Michael Moore | The Guardian

*

YOU can find the video here on D.Tube :

https://emb.d.tube/#!/skywalker007/QmPQX6ZNzfnJe7XbjrejNv9rcYr1B19voz4NmFrE9iy8dM

 

SEE also :

RELATED :

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Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

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•••


CADMIUM : The Toxic Problem Of Not-So-Clean Energy

high-danger-cadmium-cancer-hazard-can-cause-lung-and-sign-1541

Cadmium Cancer Hazard Can Cause Lung And Kidney Disease | SignsToYou.com


CADMIUM and its compounds are highly toxic and exposure
to this metal is known to cause cancer and
targets the body’s cardiovascular, renal, gastrointestinal,
neurological, reproductive, and respiratory systems.
–– United State Department of Labor

“IF Greens love nature,
why aren’t they more concerned about
carpeting pristine landscapes with industrial wind turbines and
toxic, non-renewable solar panels?
–– ‘GREEN’ Energy Future | Climatism

***

SKY News Australia’s digital editor Jack Houghton blows the myth of benign, ‘renewable’ energy.

Screen Shot 2020-02-15 at 12.05.16 pm

The toxic problem of not-so-clean energy | Sky News Australia

The toxic problem of not-so-clean energy

Digital Editor Jack Houghton

As the world shuns energy sources of old in pursuit of clean alternatives a very toxic problem has been slowly building in the background.

During the construction of solar panels the soft, silver, and highly ductile metal cadmium is compressed between sheets of glass – a vital part of how sunlight is converted into electricity so that environmental leaders like Zali Steggall can charge their hypothetical electric cars.

It is a process that many – who view technology through a tribal lens – consider to be worthy of replacing coal.

The only issue is cadmium is carcinogenic and considered roughly ten times more hazardous than the lead which sits next to it in a typical photovoltaic panel.

Panels which are shattered in storms break into tiny fragments and after several months of rainfall the silver metal which once created energy is transformed into a dangerous health hazard.

Just like the 16,000 wiped out by hurricane Irma in the Virgin Islands in 2017.

The wreckage is pictured above.

If not destroyed by wild weather these panels last about two decades.

After that point much of their construct becomes useless hunks of toxic waste which will collectively weigh 1500 kilotonnes by 2050 in Australia alone.

That figure is roughly 300 times what a nuclear power plant would have created to produce the same energy.

But surely those seeking to radically reform Australia’s energy grid through a Green New Deal must have considered this looming ecological crisis?

Well, no, according to authors of a study released last year titled “Drivers, barriers and enablers to end-of-life management of solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage systems: A systematic literature review”.

As the title suggests the study provided a meta-analysis of 191 research papers into solar panel waste management.

Its findings were damning to say the least.

“Little attention has been paid to the potential environmental and human health related impacts associated with PV systems, if not managed properly at the end-of-life,” the authors wrote.

“PV panel and BESS contain hazardous materials such as lead, lithium, tin and cadmium which can harm the environment and human health if they are not properly managed at the end of life-cycle.

“Exposure of heavy metals embedded in both of these technologies will cause various negative health effects.

“For example, cadmium is associated with its impact on lung, kidney and bone damages once absorbed into the body whilst exposure to lead will cause damages to nervous system.”

The authors even went as far to suggest that the technology should not really be classified as renewable because the issues with waste and the fact many rare minerals cannot be salvaged.

They must be mined again and again.

“The current linear take-make-consume-dispose economic system practised within PV systems will inevitably undermine renewable status of this technology without an effective end of life strategy,” they said.

Questions were also raised about the true CO2 impact of solar panels considering the role mining plays in their formation.

These issues don’t mean solar won’t form a crucial part of Australia’s energy grid.

What they do mean – however – is we must be far more reasoned and cautious before rapidly seeking to switch 81 per cent of our energy grid from fossil fuel sources to emerging technologies.

What is dramatically unhelpful is failed politicians such as Malcolm Turnbull using the tragedy of bushfires to attempt to speed up this process before adequate solutions are found.

“Have we now reached the point where at last our response to global warming will be driven by engineering and economics rather than ideology and idiocy,” he wrote in the Guardian last week.

“Our priority this decade should be our own green new deal in which we generate, as soon as possible, all of our electricity from zero emission sources. 

“If we do, Australia will become a leader in the fight against global warming. And we can do it.”

This process should not be rushed and leaders in the Coalition must resist calls to do so – especially by those who wish to re-write history as environmental saviours.

There are quite incredible solutions to climate change being discussed in academic circles and according to all the science this writer has read – the climate catastrophe is still a long way away.

And there are far bigger fish to fry over in China before we should be despairing about our tiny geo-centric emissions tally.

Let’s pause and reflect before we poison the next generation with the very technology we hope will save it.

The toxic problem of not-so-clean energy | Sky News Australia

*

CONCLUSION

THE obvious question that needs to be answered by UNreliable-energy-obsessed policy makers is this …

Hey @TimWilsonMP why is the RE industry immune from EPA and work place safety regs?

If my business produced this amount of hazardous material I would be fined millions and also do time in the slammer – and rightly so.

via No longer quiet on Twitter (@matthew25496877)

***

TOXIC UNreliables related :

UNreliables related :

ENERGY POVERTY related :

•••

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Screen Shot 2020-02-12 at 5.35.38 am

•••


LETTER To Telegraph

INDUTSRIAL WIND TURBINES - THE FLAWS

UNreliables – Climatism


“It is unfortunate that politicians and environmental campaigners are ignorant of the technicalities of energy supply, or wish to ignore them. MPs may have the power to change the laws of the land, but not to change the laws of physics.”

MEANWHILE, China continues to manufacture UNreliables (wind/solar) for the gullible, CO2-theory-obsessed West, using “dirty” coal as the catalyst.

LET that sink in.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

A very good letter in today’s Telegraph:

SIR – As a chartered engineer who worked in the electricity supply industry for 39 years, I despair to hear politicians like Rebecca Long-Bailey claiming that renewables will provide for most of our energy needs by 2030.

Renewable generation – solar, wind and tidal – is, by definition, non-synchronous and it is technically impossible to operate our electricity transmission system solely on non-synchronous generation. There is a real danger of system instability and consequential widespread blackouts once non-synchronous generation exceeds around 30 per cent of total generation at any one time.

The National Grid report on the recent major outage makes numerous references to the lack of inertia in the system. This resulted from insufficient large synchronous generators (nuclear, coal, gas) being connected.

Given the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the only option is to increase significantly nuclear build rapidly. Both Labour…

View original post 66 more words


UNRELIABLES UPDATE : Households Will Be Offered Cash To Switch Off Their Air Conditioners And Help Prevent Blackouts This Summer

CASH payments for Energy Poverty - CLIMATISM.png

CASH payments for Energy Poverty – CLIMATISM


“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers

“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett

“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)

***

WESTERN climate change-theory-obsessed politicians continue their ruinous and costly obsession with wind and solar ‘energy’. UNreliable ‘power’ that repeatedly fails the environment, communities and economies wherever installed.

ENERGY poverty, blackouts, skyrocketing power bills, business and heavy industry closures, grid instability and the destruction of pristine landscapes, among the many deleterious effects of the mad rush into low energy-density, weather and fossil-fuel dependent windmills and solar panels.

IN the latest round of insane proposals offered to hard-working taxpayers, in order to cover ‘renewable’ energy shortfalls, the Victorian State Government of Australia is offering cash payments to consumers to “switch off their AC’s to help prevent blackouts this summer”.

AND, you thought that you were living in the 21st Century? Wrong again…

Via 7 News Melbourne :

*

CONCLUSION

THE twisted merry-go-round of ‘renewable’ energy payments to keep the lights on gives true meaning to the old adage, “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

ENERGY poverty, rising insurance premiums, business closures, job losses and the highest electricity prices in the world is the grim reality of what life looks like under the totalitarian rule of the feel-good ‘Greens’. The zero-emissions zealots who want to force us backwards down the energy ladder to the days of human, animal and solar power.

JUST as socialist central planning failed miserably before it was replaced by free market economies, green central planning will have to be discarded before Australia and other Western nations, crippled by pseudoscientific climatology and the mad rush into costly and intermittent ‘green’ energy, will see a return to energy security, competitive pricing, business prosperity, job opportunities and a ‘liveable’ existence for our most vulnerable.

•••

“BLACKOUT” UPDATE AUGUST, 22

MORE than a million Victorian households are at risk of being without power this summer during extreme heat if coal and gas plants are not returned to service in time for peak periods, the energy market operator has warned…

NSW, Victoria warned of summer blackout risk if power supply doesn't improve - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

NSW, Victoria warned of summer blackout risk if power supply doesn’t improve – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

•••

SEE also :

ENEGRY POVERTY Related :

STATE Of The Climate Report :

IPCC Extreme Weather Report 2018 SR15 :

EXTREME WEATHER Related :

TEMPERATURE Related :

ORIGINS Of The Global Warming Scam :

•••

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(Climate sceptics/rationalists still waitin’ for that “big oil” cheque to arrive in the mail!)

Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

Thanks to all those who have donated. Your support and faith in Climatism is highly motivating and greatly appreciated!

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•••

 


MUST READ : China And India Will Watch The West Destroy Itself – OpEd

china-economic-power-Climatism

PIC source : Rising Powers in Global Governance


“Those who can make you believe absurdities,
can make you commit atrocities.”
– Voltaire

We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.

– Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

***

THOSE sceptical of the “Save The Planet” inspired, mad rush into supposedly ‘green’ energy sources by the climate change theory-obsessed West, leading to skyrocketing power prices, rampant energy poverty and an exodus of jobs and industry to China, will be keenly aware of the poignant and concerning realities expressed in this must read op-ed by Todd Royal :

“Without having a basic understanding that every single wind turbine and solar panel is intermittent and has to be continually backed-up by fossil fuels, the west is committing environmental degradation, and putting itself at risk against China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Based on self-interest rightly understood, India will then choose aligning with countries hostile to western interests over environmental concerns.”

“Without energy you have nothing…”

READ it all …

*

China And India Will Watch The West Destroy Itself – OpEd

China and India will allow the west – led by the United States (US) and European Union (EU) – to destroythemselves through dysfunctional, domestic, and continent-wide politics. This isn’t a Donald Trump or EU issue, but electorates having a vague understanding of how societies function, particularly, when it comes to energy.

The “Green New Deal” is evident of that fact, which has no chance of ever working under current technology, taxpayer monies available, and the first “New Deal” was a failure. China and India will allow the US, EU, NATO and their Asian allies to:

“Muddle through endemic crises menacing to its very existence (e.g., economic stagnation, demographic decline, rising unassimilated Islamic populations in many EU democracies, high taxes, mounting debt and the fiscal unsustainability of Western European social democracy)”

Without energy you have nothing. China and India understand this better than the west since their citizenry and leaders view energy through the lens of what will help over two-billion-combined-citizens; join the prosperous, western, consumer-driven world. Most western, environmentally sensitive nations believe fossil fuels are evil. Instead, western countries strive for a renewable energy, carbon-free world. Even if the US were to cut its CO2 emissions, “100 percent it would not make a difference in abating global warming.”

China and India have never bought into that notion of energy, or economies based on supposedly carbon-free renewables that inspire their nations toward a cleaner world. I wish they would, but that isn’t reality. Both countries will continue importing, exporting, and excavating tankers full of coal, oil, and natural gas from countries that are authoritarian, human right abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Nigeria, Angola and Algeria.

Furthermore, Chinese and Indian politics, and increasingly Africa, will never allow lack of pipelines, domestic politics, or sensitivity to western environmentalists keep them from first world status enjoyed by the US, EU, and Asian nations like South Korea and Japan.

Naïve-thinking, bordering on western suicide, believes China and India will stop using fossil fuels, led by coal. Each country understands coal is plentiful (“estimated 1.1 trillion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide that at current rates of production will last 150 years”), and it is scalable, reliable, cost-effective to the end user, and has the best energy density of all fossil fuels or renewables available.

China is currently building hundreds of new, coal-fired power plants. To counter China, “India has 589 coal-fired power plants, they are building 446 more, bringing their total to 1,036.” These figures are after both governments signed the Paris Climate Agreement, and touted their green credentials.

Since the US, Russia, China and India have the largest global coal reserves, and each country is vying for geopolitical dominance, they will continue using coal in record amounts. Energy is then a geopolitical weapon. Europe does not understand this fact.

Only Trump seems to have gained clarity on this issue, with the US using their newfound shale oil and natural gas power, to their geopolitical and global advantage. Daily global, media onslaughts, US Democrats, and Never-Trump Republicans constrain Trump at every turn, and facilitate the US’ waning power. China and India sit back and do nothing, knowing the west is too weak to come to the US or Trump’s rescue.

Renewable energy advocates can speak, write and publicly lobby that solar and wind-produced electricity is the same cost, or dropping compared to oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear. This claim is false. Renewables cost more to ratepayers and nations compared to fossil fuels or nuclear.

Without having a basic understanding that every single wind turbine and solar panel is intermittent and has to be continually backed-up by fossil fuels, the west is committing environmental degradation, and putting itself at risk against China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Based on self-interest rightly understood, India will then choose aligning with countries hostile to western interests over environmental concerns.

A great power struggle has broken out between the world’s largest democracy – India – and the world’s largest authoritarian state – China – and whichever country uses the most energy will win Asia for the rest of this century. National security and the competition between them over Asia are at the crutch of why they will watch the west destroy their economies over bad energy policies.

Sure, India and China will use natural gas, nuclear and oil, but coal is where each economy finds its basic energy resource. Horrible for world emissions, air pollution and global health, but how do westerners, the United Nations, and environmental organizations tell both, growing countries they cannot have access to the same energy opportunities and growth the west has now had for over seventy years?

It simply won’t happen; world health organizations, research universities, think tanks, and multinational corporations interested in global longevity and clean air should begin working towards clean coal technology.

All great nations, including China and India, view energy as a domain of power. The west already has their power, but no longer knows how to use it the way it did during the Cold War. Global warming, abortion, gay marriage, and renewables versus fossil fuels have overtaken realism in all facets of government, military strategy, economics and countering the global threats from China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

Raw, amoral geopolitics that will grow economies, engage realist strategies, house militaries and feed energy-hungry populations is the new Cold War. Social issues are important, but unless you are talking about the unintended consequences of abortion in the US and China, these issues have no valid correlation within energy geopolitics. Energy and electricity are at the forefront, of which ideological viewpoint, will win the 21st century.

Accessible energy becomes more important than ever, as the competition between China and India heats up. Unless something drastically changes the west will diminish significantly – ushering in the “Asian century” – with China and India biding their time to take over the US-led, liberal order that was created after World War II ended.

China And India Will Watch The West Destroy Itself – OpEd – Eurasia Review

H/t Not A Lot Of People Know That

•••

SEE also :

STATE Of The Climate Report :

IPCC Extreme Weather Report 2018 SR15 :

EXTREME WEATHER Related :

TEMPERATURE Related :

ORIGINS Of The Global Warming Scam :

•••

THE Climatism Tip Jar – Pls Help Keep The Good Fight Alive!

(Climate sceptics/rationalists still waitin’ for that “big oil” cheque to arrive in the mail!)

Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.

Thanks to all those who have donated. Your support and faith in Climatism is highly motivating and greatly appreciated!

Citizen journalists can’t rely on mastheads, rather private donations and honest content. Every pledge helps!

Click link for more info…

Thank You! Jamie.

Donate with PayPal

•••

 


ENERGY POVERTY UPDATE : Wind & Solar Obsession Causing Skyrocketing Power Prices & Frozen Grannies

“ELDERLY people are dying in their cold homes or being rushed to hospital because they can’t afford to put the heater on.
MORE than 130 people were admitted to NSW emergency departments last winter with cold-related problems including hypothermia, a 34 per cent increase from 10 years ago.
Over the same period power prices have increased by 117 per cent.”

ENOUGH said.

WAKE-UP politicians, addicted to UNreliables to feather their ‘green’ credentials. Enough is enough. @sussanley

STOP THESE THINGS

Australia’s wind and solar obsession has driven power prices through the roof and the poor and elderly to early graves. Staying warm in the depth of winter is no longer just a matter of turning up the dial on the AC, for the poorest and most vulnerable it’s a daily battle for survival.

In the space of a decade, power prices have doubled and so too the number of households disconnected from the grid; because they can no longer afford to pay their bills.

A generation ago, Australians enjoyed the world’s cheapest power prices; thanks to its suicidal renewable energy policies, they now suffer among the highest.

That all of this was perfectly predictable, and perfectly avoidable, makes it all the more outrageous. Here’s Peta Credlin expressing just that.

‘What a joke’ that Australians are ‘too frightened to turn on appliances’
Sky news
Peta Credlin, Luke Grant and Jeremy Cordeaux

View original post 1,282 more words


WARREN BUFFETT Rejects All-Renewable Future With $10 Billion Bet on Oil & Gas

STOP THESE THINGS

Australian voters just shredded the notion that the proletariat is wedded to heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

Labor’s Bill Shorten sought to ram a 50% Renewable Energy Target down voter’s throats; a concept which the vast majority of them duly rejected.

Sure, there were plenty of other issues that sank the Green/Labor Alliance. However, it should be remembered that 2019 was billed as the ‘Climate Change Election’, with wind and solar pitched up as the only panacea to what has now become a ‘climate emergency’.

Pundits professed, with great certitude, the notion that the Australian public just can’t get enough intermittent, unreliable and unaffordable electricity. Well, that didn’t quite pan out. Bill Shorten slunk off the political stage, a wounded and embittered hero of renewable energy zealots and rent seekers, alike.

Another part of the meme was that the markets had already turned their back on fossil…

View original post 1,112 more words


WHY “Green” Energy Is Futile, In One Lesson

Greening The Land (high res) - Cartoons By Josh

Greening The Land | Cartoons By Josh


“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers

“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett

“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)

***

H/t @FriendsOScience

A MUST READ for all policy makers if they have any respect for the families, workers and the most vulnerable in their communities whose lives are being broken as a consequence of the mad rush into feel-good UNreliables – wind and solar ‘power’…


WHY “GREEN” ENERGY IS FUTILE, IN ONE LESSON

POSTED ON BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ENERGY POLICY, ENVIRONMENT

Here in Minnesota, we are enduring a brutal stretch of weather. The temperature hasn’t gotten above zero in the last three days, with lows approaching -30. And that is in the Twin Cities, in the southern part of the state. Yesterday central Minnesota experienced a natural gas “brownout,” as Xcel Energy advised customers to turn thermostats down to 60 degrees and avoid using hot water. Xcel put up some customers in hotels. Why?

Because the wind wasn’t blowing. Utilities pair natural gas plants with wind farms, in order to burn gas, which can be ramped up and down more quickly than coal, when the wind isn’t blowing.

Which raises the question: since natural gas is reliable, why do we need the wind farms? The answer is, we don’t. When the wind isn’t blowing–as it wasn’t yesterday–natural gas supplies the electricity. It also heats homes, and with bitter cold temperatures and no wind, there wasn’t enough natural gas to go around. The resulting “brownout” has been a political shock in Minnesota.

Isaac Orr, a leading energy expert who is my colleague at Center of the American Experiment, explains this phenomenon in detail:

[W]ind is producing only four percent of electricity in the MISO region, of which Minnesota is a part.

While that’s not good, what’s worse is wind is only utilizing 24 percent of its installed capacity, and who knows how this will fluctuate throughout the course of the day.

Coal, on the other hand, is churning out 45 percent of our power, nuclear is providing 13 percent, and natural gas is providing 26 percent of our electricity.

This is exactly why the renewable energy lobby’s dream of shutting down coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants and “replacing” them with wind and solar is a fairy tale. It simply cannot happen, because we never know if and when the wind will blow or the sun will shine when we need it most.

“But the wind is always blowing somewhere” ~ a renewable energy lobbyist

Renewable energy apologists often argue that although the wind may not be blowing in your neighborhood, it’s blowing, somewhere. All we have to do, they argue, is build wind turbines and transmission lines all over the country so we can have renewable energy everywhere. It turns out this old chestnut is also completely wrong.

For example, the wind isn’t blowing in North Dakota or South Dakota, where more than 1,800 MW (a massive amount) of wind projects are operating or planned, at massive cost, by Minnesota electric companies.

In fact, the wind isn’t blowing anywhere.

Just look at California, the state that is consistently the most self-congratulating about how “green” they are. Wind is operating a 3 percent of installed capacity, solar is operating at 12 percent, natural gas is running wide open, and California is importing a whopping 27 percent of its electricity from Nevada and Arizona.
***
Days like today perfectly illustrate why intermittent, unreliable sources of energy like wind and solar would have no place in our energy system if they were not mandated by politicians, showered with federal subsidies, and lining the pockets of regulated utilities that are guaranteed to profit off wind and solar farms whether they are generating electricity, or not.

Isaac’s real-world message is starting to break through, at least here in Minnesota. Tomorrow morning the Star Tribune is running Isaac’s op-ed headlined “Bitter cold shows reliable energy sources are critical.”

Lawmakers considering doubling Minnesota’s renewable energy mandate to 50 percent by 2030 should use this week’s weather as a moment to reconsider their plans to lean so heavily on wind and solar.
***
[C]oal-fired power plants provided 45 percent of MISO’s power and nuclear provided 13 percent — most of this from Minnesota’s Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear plants (which we should keep open, by the way). Natural gas provided 26 percent of our electricity use at that time, and the remainder was imported from Canada and other U.S. states.

Natural gas also heated the homes of approximately 66 percent of Minnesotans this week, by far the most for any home heating fuel, but there wasn’t enough gas to combat the frigid temperatures.

Because of the extreme cold, Xcel Energy urged its natural gas customers in Becker, Big Lake, Chisago City, Lindstrom, Princeton and Isanti to reduce the settings on their thermostats, first down to 60 degrees, then to 63, through Thursday morning to conserve enough natural gas to prevent a widespread shortage as temperatures remained 14 below zero. Some Xcel customers in the Princeton area lost gas service, and Xcel reserved rooms for them in nearby hotels.

This week’s urgent notice from Xcel to conserve natural gas shows there is real danger in putting all of our eggs into the renewables-plus-natural gas basket. At a minimum, pursuing a grid powered entirely by solar, wind and natural gas would require more natural gas pipeline capacity, which is likely to be opposed by the factions that are currently challenging the replacement of the Line 3 pipeline.
***
If Minnesota lawmakers are sincere in their belief that we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible, they must lift Minnesota’s ban on new nuclear power plants, which has been in place since 1994.

Not only would nuclear power plants be essentially guaranteed to run in minus-24-degree weather, but a forthcoming study by American Experiment has found that new nuclear power plants could not only achieve a lower emissions rate by 2030, but also save Minnesota $30.2 billion through 2050.

Stay tuned. We will release that report in two weeks. I think it will be a bombshell, not only in Minnesota but in other states that are fecklessly mandating ever-higher utilization of intermittent, unreliable, inefficient “green” energy.

•••

UNreliables related :

Read the rest of this entry »


CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION : Global Warming Death Toll Rising

EXCESS WINTER DEATHS - CLIMATISM

Excess Global Warming Deaths | BBC


“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” – Bertrand Russell

***

COLD ‘weather’ is killing more people than usual.

THE BBC reports :

Excess winter deaths in Wales almost doubled in 2017-18 – rising from 1,850 the year before to 3,400.

Public health experts said adverse weather and influenza were to blame for the increase, hitting older people in particular.

Experts said it was the highest number of excess deaths since the winter of 1975.

But officials said spikes in winter deaths were not uncommon – with eight peaks over the past 40 years.

Across England and Wales, there were 50,100 excess deaths last winter.

However, this is half the number of excess deaths recorded in the winter of 1950 – when there were 106,400 extra winter deaths.

Excess winter deaths almost double in Wales – BBC News

*

MEANWHILE, BBC Climate Change activist, Roger Harrabin, notes the declining energy habits of UK consumers…

ACCORDING to Harrabin, via website Carbon Brief, UK energy consumers are using 25% less electricity, now, than they were in 2015.

Climate change - LED lights making dent in UK energy demand - BBC News

Climate change: LED lights making dent in UK energy demand – BBC News

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ONE wonders if Harrabin thrives in the virtues of energy rationing without feeling bothered to mention the obvious negative effects of draconian climate change policies and symbolic gestures that fuel energy poverty, leading to a dramatic increase in winter-related deaths.

PERHAPS it’s because Harrabin can afford ‘green’ luxuries, unlike many of the silent majority, or the 1.3 billion people without any electricity at all.

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