Allan Duffy (Press and Journal, August 26), makes a number of assertions and claims which invite challenge.
First, there are far more than a “small number of people” opposing “windfarm sites”.
Second, the cause of this opposition is about more than the potential impact on tourism.
And, finally, they will never generate “excess power” that can be sold to the national grid to enhance Scotland’s economy.
Much of the opposition to windmills relates to their inability to produce electricity when required, combined with their negligible impact on CO emissions because of the expensive associated need for “spinning” back-up from conventional CO-emitting generators.
In his time in Germany, Mr Duffy may have noted that, for all their thousands of windmills, the Germans have not shut down one conventional power station and, in fact, are having to build new coal-fired power stations to meet demand.
If he were to look at the NETA (New Electricity Trading Arrangements) website, he would see that, with all the windmills at present operating in the UK, wind contributes only about 0.1-2% of daily national demand.
Yes, renewable energy must be a component of our future energy mix, but unreliable and expensive windmills are not the answer.
Yet again, while travelling through the Glens of Foudland, I was struck by a distinct lack of movement by even one of the many wind turbines you drive past.
Another bad day in Scotland’s fight against global warming… sorry, I forgot for a moment that climate change seems to have been adopted as a more appropriate term now.
In the meantime, the landowners, renewable-energy companies – through massive subsidies – and overseas manufacturers of said turbines continue to get rich at the expense of the taxpayer. Strange times indeed.
This paper provides a factual and objective view of the reality of the effects of some of the world’s greatest oil spills. It particularly deals with the geography of the region in which the spill occurred, the climatic effects on the spill, the probable volume oil spilled, the cleanup actions that followed and the long-term environmental effects.
As an introduction, Part 1 of the paper deals with some of the commonly held beliefs that the world is about to run out of fossil fuels, that oil spills and leaks are universally ‘environmental catastrophes’ and challenges the long term view that the effects are persistent and adverse to the environment. The seemingly endless alarmism that follows each spill is highlighted and the reader is asked to read the remainder of the paper with an open mind, comparing the predictions of doom with the evidence revealed by the reality of hindsight.
It is concluded that the effects of the relatively few spills that have occurred have been exceptionally exaggerated for political purposes by both politicians and environmental activists. Both these alarmist cliques loudly report claims in every case that go far beyond the actual effect of the spill itself. Some of the unfortunate claims by scientists are also exposed as political activism unrelated to scientific method.
Finally the paper provides a ‘prophesy’ (based on the history of previous spills) as to the long-term results and effects of the recent BP Macondo Well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that commenced on 20th April 2010 and was capped on 29th July 2010, 100 days later.
The author writes under a pseudonym to protect his privacy. However any comments or corrections will be passed onto him. He has experience and contacts in this field and is skilled at extracting and documenting facts.
The report is presented in six parts, with subsequent parts appearing over time:
Part 4:The Ixtoc I Well Blowout, Gulf of Mexico, 1979. Despite forecasts of disaster for the environment, within five years the effects of this huge spill were undetectable. In fact the fisheries recovered quickly because they were relieved of fishing pressure, and locals swapped low paying fishing jobs for high paying cleanup or oil industry jobs. As in all spills, the biggest loser was the well owner.
Available as PDF, 88KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-4.pdf
Part 5:The BP Macondo Well Blowout, Gulf of Mexico, 2010. This may be the second largest man made oil spill in history, and at times the slick covered 6,500 sq km. However about 74% of the oil lost evaporated, dissolved, bio-degraded, or was burned, skimmed or captured. Just 5 days after the leak was plugged, the US government agreed that the oil was no longer a problem. Once more the damage was forecast to be catastrophic, once more it was not. The Gulf of Mexico copes with natural leaks of this size every year. The real costs were political and losses by BP shareholders.
Part 6:Conclusions & Comments. In 2009, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rohm Emanuel said: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste… it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was a marvellous crisis used by the Obama administration and extreme environmentalists to weaken Big Oil, demonise carbon fuels, and drive the so-called “clean fuel” agenda. Foreign oil producers and the green energy promoters are the beneficiaries. Innocent local businesses and BP were the victims, both of the oil spill but more so of the government actions designed to benefit from the crisis.
Oil is a natural product and the oceans have been coping with it for millennia.
Author’s Profile
The author retired from the Australian Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1986. He served in various postings in Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. He is a frequent contributor of book reviews, short stories and the occasional article to several journals. He works internationally as a self-employed project manager and project management trainer and consultant.
He has worked part-time for 9 years in the oil and gas industries in the Middle East (Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi) and in North and Central America, and has made it his business to question the experts. Everything he quotes is on the web (except where it is stated as an opinion.)
Sea levels have been rising and falling for as far back as we have evidence, and current sea levels are lower than they were during the Roman Warm Period.
Robert Endlich has looked at the evidence still visible today:
An important turning point in British history occurred in 1066, when William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings. Less well-known is that, when William landed, he occupied an old Roman fort now known as Pevensey Castle, which at the time was located on a small island in a harbor on England’s south coast. A draw bridge connected it to the mainland. Pevensey is infamous because unfortunate prisoners were thrown into this “Sea Gate,” so that their bodies would be washed away by the tide. Pevensey Castle is now a mile from the coast – further proof of a much higher sea level fewer than 1000 years ago.
Before modern Italy, the region was dominated by the famous City States of the Mediterranean, among which is Pisa, with its picturesque Cathedral Square and famous Leaning Tower. Located near the mouth of the Arno River, Pisa was a powerful city, because maritime trade brought goods from sailing ships right into the port. Its reign ended after 1300 AD, the onset of the Little Ice Age, when sea levels fell and ships could no longer sail to her port. Once again, some say “river silting” was the cause.
However, Pisa is now seven miles from the Tyrrhenian Sea, with large meanders upstream from Pisa and little meandering downstream. When a river is “at grade,” the downstream gradient is as low as possible, as with the meandering Mississippi River and delta in Louisiana. Rivers with a strong downstream gradient flow to the sea in a direct route, with few meanders, as with the Rio Grande in New Mexico.
The facts of history are clear. Sea level was 400 feet lower at the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age, 18,000 years ago. Sea levels rose rapidly until 8,000 years ago. As recently as 1066, when the Normans conquered England, sea levels were quite a bit higher than today.
During the Little Ice Age, 1300 to 1850 – when temperatures were the coldest during any time in the past 10,000 years – snow and ice accumulated in Greenland, Antarctica, Europe and glaciers worldwide. As a consequence, sea levels fell so much that important Roman Era and Medieval port cities (like Ephesus, Ostia Antica and Pisa) were left miles from the Mediterranean.
Since the Little Ice Age ended about 160 years ago, tide gages show that sea level has risen at a steady rate – with no correlation to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Sea level is a dynamic property in our planet’s climate cycles, which are closely linked to changes in solar energy output and other natural factors. It is unlikely to change in response to tax policies that make energy more expensive and economies less robust – no matter what politicians in Washington, Brussels or the United Nations might say.
Much to their chagrin, Mother Nature doesn’t listen to them. She has a mind of her own.
Robert W. Endlich served as a weather officer in the US Air Force for 21 years and a US Army meteorologist for 17 years. He was elected to Chi Epsilon Pi, the national Meteorology Honor Society, while a basic meteorology student at Texas A&M University. He has degrees in geology and meteorology from Rutgers University and the Pennsylvania State University, respectively, and has studied and visited the ancient sites of Rome, Ostia Antica and Pisa.
Speech by Hon Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic. March 4, 2008.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,
I would like first of all to thank the organizers of this important conference for making it possible and also for inviting one politically incorrect politician from Central Europe to come and speak here. This meeting will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the moving away from the irrational climate alarmism to the much needed climate realism. (more…)
“I object to having to pay more for electricity that is produced inefficiently and erratically because some people are worried about the end of the world. In the 1980s, solar energy looked a possible way in the future of protecting our small and diminishing reserves of oil – because even then there were experts telling us that ‘Peak Oil’ had already arrived. It would never have occurred to me that we would be considering it as a source of baseline power. How would we store overnight the energy gained during the day? No one had the answer then, and no one has produced an efficient working model of the answer today. For isolated settlements and properties? Yes. For the grid? No.”
The letter below by Prof. Berkhout was published recently in the largest Dutch daily, de Telegraaf:
In recent years we have seen the strangest things happening to our universities. Professors must be extremely careful about what they teach. If they present scientific results that do not fit the ideology of activist movements, their lives are made difficult and they even run the risk of being excommunicated. Joining the consensus is by far the safest. The Boards of Governors do not protect their professors; on the contrary, they are solidly behind the activists.
The University of Amsterdam believes that every student should become ‘woke’. It is no longer about developing talents, but about making white, heterosexual, serious students feel guilty. After all, their ancestors have blood on their hands and they are the new generation of oppressors. Radboud University in Nijmegen has bowed to climate activism and has just decided that all students must be taught the sustainability narrative. The climate crisis is central to this, whether that is scientifically correct or not, that does not matter in Nijmegen. (more…)
Although
Greenpeace relies heavily on marketing, advertising, and free market
principles, they promote socialist and anti-capitalist ideals in their
messaging.
Greenpeace
have successfully created a public perception that they are fighting to
protect humanity, nature and the environment from the evils of corrupt
industries and vested interests. This perception is so popular and
wide-spread that whenever Greenpeace speaks out on an issue it is
automatically assumed to be true, and anybody who questions Greenpeace’s
claims is assumed to be corrupt. However, as we will discuss in this
report, the reality is almost exactly the opposite…
The 97% Scientific Consensus that CO2 is
dangerously warming the planet is based on a
postal survey response sample of over 10,000
which was selectively whittled down to just 77
on the basis of the responses to just two
questions, neither of which even mentioned the
supposed villain Carbon-dioxide.
We are confident that all of our readers have read or heard for a number of years that 97% of all scientists believe that mankind has played a role in changing the earth’s climate. While it should have been recognized long ago as an urban myth, one of those stories that hang around regardless of a lack of any supporting facts. Rarely a day goes that a global warming alarmists do not use it to promote their cause of enlarging government and reducing personal freedom through the promotion of fear about our future.
Many articles have been written to refute this claim but they all dig into the statistical weeds. Common sense alone should set you straight. If the reader wishes he or she read could read the original paper by Naomi Oreskes that started it all in Science Magazine in December of 2004. Be aware you might die laughing. (more…)
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