We've been told lots of great things about wind and solar. These are supposedly the 2 biggest renewable energy sources that we will be relying on when we completely replace fossil fuels.
There are several things that we have not been told about how environmentally UNfriendly they are.
Solar panels and wind turbines only last around 25 years, for instance.
After they are used up, they are bad news.
Here is some information that I'll bet you didn't know............because they don't tell you this. They only tell you about a made up climate crisis(during the current climate optimum) and green fairly tales about how wonderful and environmentally friendly that solar and wind energy are.
https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/
Photovoltaic panels are a boon for clean energy but are tricky to recycle. As the oldest ones expire, get ready for a solar e-waste glut.
But we’ll need to develop one soon, because the solar e-waste glut is coming. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually.
Solar panels are composed of photovoltaic (PV) cells that convert sunlight to electricity. When these panels enter landfills, valuable resources go to waste. And because solar panels contain toxic materials like lead that can leach out as they break down, landfilling also creates new environmental hazards.
This week Bloomberg Energy issued an attention-grabbing report on a serious waste problem with wind turbines: retired turbine blades are clogging up landfills.
This problem is only going to get worse, as Bloomberg reports, because right now the blades at the end of their lifespan are from wind power built over a decade ago. There’s been a fivefold increase in installing wind turbines since, powered in large part by federal and state incentives and mandates. What are we going to do when all those turbine blades reach their end?
This problem isn’t news to John Locke Foundation readers. We discussed the huge problem of turbine blade disposal in January. In December research intern Nick Wilkinson wrote about wind power’s noise pollution, visual pollution, disruptions of aircraft and military radar, and turbine blade waste. We’ve also recently discussed two Harvard studies that found transitioning to wind and solar would require so much land that it would actually contribute to global warming.
JLF readers have also read about studies showing that transitioning away from nuclear energy costs lives, that transitioning into more expensive energy costs lives, and that because of intermittency issues, wind and solar are actually the most costly ways of reducing emissions. We have also discussed the problem of wind power “takings.” That’s the euphemism used by the Obama-era U.S. Fish and Wildlife Division to refer to eagles slaughtered by wind turbines, as the division approved permits for such slaughter for 30 years, up from five.
Companies are searching for ways to deal with the tens of thousands of blades that have reached the end of their lives.
What makes disposing of wind turbine blades so bad for landfills and the environment? All these things:
In short, disposing of wind turbines is a significant problem, with negative impacts on communities and the environment.
It is reminiscent of the negative community and environmental impacts of solar panel disposal. Carolina Journal has reported for years about chemical waste components from used solar panels, including such things as gallium arsenide, tellurium, silver, crystalline silicon, lead, and also GenX and related compounds in solar panel components.
The saddest thing about all of this is that this supposedly "green" energy we are told is far, far more environmentally friendlier than fossil fuels................but this switching is based entirely on a made up stuff............just the opposite on all accounts.
Its a lose, lose, lose....LOSE situation.
1. No climate crisis. Its a climate optimum.
2. Higher costs.
3. Less reliable, less efficient, less convenient.
4. More environmentally unfriendly.
The environment/planet loses. The US economy loses. The people lose the most, especially regarding their intelligence being stolen by this historic brainwash.
China wins big.
China will be building new coal plants and increasing CO2 emissions for at least the next 9 years. Building more new coal plants than the US even has in existence right now.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/68502/#68568
This all sounds astounding and impossible to believe. It's based entirely on authentic facts that are shown above and on the climate, proven in the discussions below.
They are proposing a very large solar farm near by. Thousands of acres of some of the best farm land around and the locals are totally against it. None of this solar would be done accept for the government funding for it. But a few very large farmers- land owners are making it possible.
IMHO a bunch of BUll @*&#
Thanks cutworm!
https://www.ibj.com/articles/solar-farm-boom-hits-hoosier-backlash
https://energynews.us/2020/05/11/wind-energy-increasing-in-illinois-and-indiana-despite-challenges/
metmike: Some of these same people that are environmentalists and are for natural habitats to be untouched or restored but acres of huge wind turbines that kill birds are just great.
RENEWABLES, LAND USE, AND LOCAL OPPOSITION IN THE UNITED STATES
metmike: Look at the power density difference between wind, solar and fossil fuels.
In a state like Indiana, which is not the greatest for solar or wind, those 2 sources are 50-100 times less dense/more diffuse than fossil fuels which means they have to eat up massive amounts of land to produce a similar amount of power.
The worst part is that after 20-25 years, they are used up! You have massive waste at that point.
Plants gobble up the CO2 left from burning fossil fuels and say thank you by growing robustly!
Planet earth is burdened by the massive waste after solar cells and wind turbines are used up and disposed of after 25 years....and says OUCH!.....for the 4th time!
The first time was when natural resources were mined to build them.
The 2nd time was when they covered large land areas that were previously used for life/growing plants or nature and turned them into aesthetic monstrosities.
The 3rd time, in the case of wind, was when they killed large amounts of birds.
And this is supposed to be a solution?
It’s actually THE environmental problem And a way for one group of people to take advantage of the ignorance of the majority of people, many well intentioned.
These factors and especially the massive waste left from solar and wind after 25 years make them MEGA, ANTI green energy sources!
We are messing up the planet to supposedly save it!
I found the discussion at this link to be fascinating. Not quite sure how they come up with such extreme differences in calculations between solar, wind and fossil fuels but if one wanted to really show how solar and wind use up massive area/land compared to fossil fuels, this would be the source. They clearly know their math.
https://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/greatworks/pdf_sum10/WK8_Layton_EnergyDensities.ashx
If society had been limping along on mostly solar and wind, with failures during extreme temperature events, like we saw in Texas and using up of precious land while dumping massive amounts of waste disposing of used up solar panels and wind turbines....and suddenly, fossil fuels were discovered.....everybody and their brother would be fighting to implement fossil fuels ASAP because of all the incredible superior aspects of them in almost every realm compared to solar and wind.
But we are doing the complete opposite.
Why is that?
The world has been convinced that we already have a climate crisis and we must do this to save the planet.
What is the climate crisis based on?
Entirely on things that we've been told. Not on what you have verified but based on trusting, that things that we've been told are all true.
I prove that every single part of the false narrative suggesting that we are having a climate crisis is not true with empirical data and authentic science:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27864/
But this information has been censored by the gatekeepers for some time.
That's how they won the war. Repeating the lies, unchallenged for decades until people now, believe that the lies are the truth.
What is really happening is insane.
Biden And Kerry Get Humiliated by China
Started by metmike - April 25, 2021, 3:54 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/68502/
Ex-KGB on Ideological Subversion: How the UN/IPCC hijacked science/brainwashed the world. Previously warmer. Polar bear hoax. Sept. 2019
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/38156/
Renewable energy: When can it replace fossil fuels? August 2019
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/35846/
NYT has noticed an awful lot of toxic mineral extraction and wholesale open cut ecological destruction would be required, to satisfy President Biden’s clean electric vehicle vision.
The electric-vehicle race is creating a gold rush for lithium, raising environmental concerns.
May 7, 2021
The United States needs to quickly find new supplies of lithium as automakers ramp up manufacturing of electric vehicles.
Lithium is used in electric car batteries because it is lightweight, can store lots of energy and can be repeatedly recharged. Other ingredients like cobalt are needed to keep the battery stable.
But production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people, Ivan Penn and Eric Lipton report for The New York Times. Mining is one of the dirtiest businesses out there.
…
“Right now, if China decided to cut off the U.S. for a variety of reasons we’re in trouble,” said Ben Steinberg, an Obama administration official turned lobbyist. He was hired in January by Piedmont Lithium, which is working to build an open-pit mine in North Carolina and is one of several companies that have created a trade association for the industry.
"NYT neglected to put a number on the Lithium shortage, but I’ve seen estimates that a 2000% increase in Lithium extraction rates would be required, along with a broad range of other toxic minerals such as Rare Earths (used in high efficiency electric motors). There would be no opportunity to be dainty about ramping up production on that scale – Once easily accessible Lithium brines were exhausted, Lithium miners would have to rip the countryside apart, digging up low grade Lithium containing minerals in vast open cut mines, creating enormous toxic waste dumps in their effort to feed the EV production market.
And none of this would be a one-off – the search and extract process would be ongoing.
Good thing the motive for this proposed wholesale planet wrecking is to save the environment, right?"
China's rare earth monopoly:
OK, way too much data at this link to process!
An excellent way to undermine Western economies is to render their power generation unreliable and expensive. That objective of Green thinking is progressively being achieved by government policies throughout the Western world, but without popular mandate.
If the objectives of using Weather Dependent Renewables were not confused with possibly “saving the planet” from the output of the UK’s and Europe’s relatively minor and diminishing proportion of CO2 emissions, (for electricity generation, less than 25% of 1.1%, the UK 2019 portion of Man-made Global CO2 emissions), their actual cost, in-effectiveness and their inherent unreliability, Weather Dependent Renewables would have always been ruled them out of any engineering consideration as means of National scale electricity generation.
The annual UK CO2 emissions output is well surpassed just by the annual growth of CO2 emissions in China and the Developing world. It is essential to ask the question what is the actual value of these Western government mandated excess expenditures to the improvement of the environment and for the possibility of perhaps preventing virtually undetectable temperature increases by the end of the century, especially in a context where the Developing world will be increasing its CO2 emissions to attain it’s further enhancement of living standards over the coming decades.
Reducing CO2 emissions in just the Western world as a means to control a “warming” climate seems even less relevant when the long-term global temperature trend has been downwards for last 3 millennia, the world is entering a Grand Solar Minimum, which is likely to last for several decades and as the coming end of our current warm and benign Holocene interglacial epoch approaches.
Board of Commissioners
Klickitat County, Washington
May 4, 2021
RE: Public Comments on Industrial-Scale Solar Arrays in Klickitat County
My name is Bonner Cohen, and I am a senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a Washington, D.C.-based organization that focuses its research and advocacy on how environmental and energy policies affect ordinary citizens.
As someone who has written widely on renewable energy, I am pleased that the commissioners have agreed to hold a hearing today, at which local residents will have a forum to express their opinions on the building and operation of large-scale solar arrays near their homes and places of business. County residents are rightly concerned about the long-term environmental and public-safety impacts of industrial-scale solar arrays to be operated by out-of-state utilities with little regard for how their generation of intermittent energy will lower the quality of life in Klickitat County.
With taxpayer subsidies, Wall Street money, and government mandates behind it, Big Solar, like Big Wind, is a force to be reckoned with. And that’s exactly what Klickitat residents are finding out.
Environmental and Safety Issues
Solar panels have a life expectancy of 20 to 30 years. They are notoriously difficult to recycle, because the cost of recovering the materials outweighs the cost of extracting what can be recycled. As a result, most end up being dumped in landfills or shipped off to developing countries. The dead panels are laden with toxic chemicals that can leech into groundwater if landfills are not properly lined. By 2050, the world will have to deal with nearly 80 million tons of solar waste. An even greater risk is posed by batteries used to generate power when the sun isn’t shining such as at night. These batteries are also loaded with toxic chemicals, and when the batteries die and must be disposed of, the chemicals inside them can also contaminate soil and groundwater. What is being billed as “clean” energy has the potential to create a new class of hazardous waste sites.
Threat of Wildfires
Another subject advocates of renewable energy are reluctant to address honestly is the threat these industrial-scale facilities pose of igniting or spreading wildfires.
This is not just a hypothetical threat.
In June 2019, a bird flew into two wires at a California solar farm, creating an electrical circuit and a shower of sparks. The resulting fire scorched 1,127 acres, adding to California’s perennial wildfire woes.
Klickitat County has already had its first wildfire courtesy of renewable energy. The county currently has over 600 wind turbines, and in 2019 one of them caused the Juniper fire, which destroyed 500 acres. County officials are eagerly pushing for more giant solar facilities but have steadfastly refused to update ordinances so as to protect residents from wildfires caused by solar arrays. Klickitat’s dry, windy climate makes for an ideal setting for wildfires. The more high-voltage solar farms there are in the county, the higher the risk of potentially catastrophic blazes.
Solar Array Tax Revenues vs. Quality of Life
County officials should not let their desire for the solar industry’s promised tax revenues take precedence over safeguarding landowners from wildfires and the numerous other hazards associated with giant solar arrays. This is why the proposed Lund Hill project, with its 1.8 million large solar panels on 6,000 acres of prime farmland, all surrounded by an eight-foot-high fence, is such a terrible idea. That this monstrosity would be erected in the name of “clean energy” is simply absurd.
Solar arrays are an intermittent, land-intensive source of power that benefits Wall Street investors, out-of-state utilities, and Chinese suppliers to the detriment of ordinary working people.
Thank you very much.
Respectfully,
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D.
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
Added to this post:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/25/it-is-necessary-to-destroy-the-environment-to-save-it/
"The fact is that in order to transition the electric energy system to wind and solar resources will require enormous numbers of turbines and panels. New York’s current wind capacity is just under 2,000 MW of on-shore wind and no off-shore wind. A recent study of the resources necessary for the New York transition estimated 35,200 MW of on-shore wind and 21,063 MW of off-shore wind. Comparing the space necessary for just the wind turbines needed to the amount of agricultural land suggests that if all the wind turbines were sited on agricultural land it would take up over half. There is no way that this won’t be a significant land use issue.
The environmental problem is cumulative environmental impacts. In New York one wind farm environmental impact analysis estimated that 85 bald eagles would be killed at a 124 MW wind facility over the 30-year lifetime of the project. Extrapolating that to the total number of turbines needed comes up with an estimate of hundreds of bald eagles per year. Keep in mind that this is just the direct environmental cost. That does not include the impacts of rare earth metal mining for the materials needed for the turbines or construction impacts of the sprawling wind facilities.
The innumerate of society that imagine the transition to Biden’s 2035 carbon pollution-free electricity target will have such insignificant environmental impacts that they should be ignored because of the existential threat of climate change are wrong on many levels. Every time we see this baloney, we all need to speak up and say check the numbers. Otherwise, we could see the environment destroyed to save it from a non-existent threat."
Very relevant to this discussion is the fact that most so called experts tell us that we will soon be running out of oil and natural gas(with another 100 years of coal left, which may be the true fossil fuel-made from biologic processes)
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/70824/
Somebody(s) is not being honest here.
If we really are going to run out of gas and oil that soon, THAT is the REAL reason to develop solar and wind.............because CO2 is a beneficial gas greening up the planet in every authentic scientific realm........biology, agronomy, zoology, climate, etc
It's only politics that has declared that CO2 is pollution.
The planet is massively greening up from the real green energy.........hydrocarbons which give the booming biosphere more food from the indisputable law of photosynthesis and key role of CO2.
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When will fossil fuels(hydrocarbons) run out?
Abiotic oil/gas created deep in the earth(not from fossils/plants/animals)
The greenest energy source by a very wide margin...............is the one that is currently greening up the planet with beneficial CO2 emissions.
Fake beer crisis/Death by GREENING!
10 responses |
Started by metmike - May 11, 2021, 2:31 p.m.
This was my comment:
Mike Maguire
August 7, 2021 9:40 am
There is only 1 authentic green energy.
It’s the one that’s massively greening up the planet based on the irrefutable law of photosynthesis and the key role of CO2.
Every single authentic measurement proves that to be true…..and it will continue, as long as CO2 continues to increase, along with the current, scientific climate optimum for life.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/69258/
The political climate crisis, featuring CO2 = pollution is just a manufactured reality. It’s best support has been computer simulations of the atmosphere going out 100 years, using subjectively chosen equations……. that have been too warm for 4 decades but never get reconciled to the empirical data of the real world.
Those solutions(that double the real world warming) have too much value politically to be adjusted to reality.
do not know what you all so worried about. There are enough solar panels on Obama's new mansion they will power the east coast......wait unless they are very well hidden I don't believe there is a single panel on this hypocrites mansion
Couple points I will make regarding lithium and lithium batteries.
As Mike has already stated, Lithium is a rare earth metal and only occurs in a few known deposits across the globe that are commercially viable for mining.
On top of this, lithium batteries have inherent dangers. No doubt most of you have read about the results of when a Tesla car (or really any EV) ends up in an accident. There is really no good way to put out a lithium metal fire, at least, nothing that your typical fire house has at it's disposal.
Case and point, the Tesla battery project at Victoria, Australia. Recently, this massive battery bank build project caught fire. It burned for 3 days!
You can't just throw water onto a lithium battery fire, most chemical fire extinguishers don't work either.
Currently there are really only 2 options that I am aware of for dealing with a lithium battery fire. The first option is to smother the fire with sand. Lots of sand. In the RC hobby community, where we all use Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries now, we are advised to bring a bucket full of sand with us whenever we enjoy our hobby. In case a battery overheats and catches fire. It is also advised to invest in a "fire pouch" to put the batteries in while charging and had a bucket full of sand nearby in case batteries catch fire while charging.
*LiPo batteries are basically a variation on the Lithium Ion battery with an even higher energy density.
The second tactic for dealing with a lithium fire is to just let it burn until it burns itself out. All the while the fire is emitting all kinds of toxic chemicals into the air. This is what happens with most Tesla (and EV) fires, the responding firefighters are usually incapable of dealing with the lithium fire itself, but instead have to focus on fire containment. IE, making sure the lithium fire doesn't ignite nearby combustible fuel sources.
Firefighting technology needs a huge technology revolution to deal with lithium battery fires. Firefighters can deal with "conventional" fires, including non-EV car fires, but they are ill-equipped to deal with EV fires or large battery bank fires.
This new discussion fits in perfectly with the topics in this thread.
How we generate electricity
Started by madmechanic - Aug. 7, 2021, 2:17 p.m.
Fake Green energy killing wildlife/environment
Started by metmike - Feb. 22, 2022, 11:47 p.m.