Is There a Climate "Crisis"? Part II: A Look at the Hard Evidence; Extreme Weather

[In Part I of this series, we examined the scientific literature and learned that the Arctic today is 2-4 C colder than it was a mere 6-12,000 years ago.]

To reiterate briefly from Part I:

"change" ≠ "crisis"

These are two very different words, with very different meanings.

"Change" means "to make or become different." 

"Crisis" means "a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger."

A few years back, all we heard was how there was a "consensus" on climate "change." But then politicians and the media gradually began to conflate the term "change" with the term "crisis," often by adding in their own commentary to "97% of scientists agree..." They would say things like, "97% of scientists agree the Earth is warming up and that if we don't do something immediate and drastic, then we're all going to perish in flames! Everyone RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

97% of scientists agreed to no such thing; but this verbal bait-and-switch has been done by politicians and media to the point that few seem to question it anymore.

Thus, [if one actually cares about what science has to say, anyway] it is extremely important to clarify that there is no consensus on a climate "crisis." There is a consensus on climate "change" (though one can strongly debate the methodology of the surveys used to determine that "consensus," and further debate whether consensus has any value in science in the first place -- but for sake of argument, let's grant that point for now anyway, because it's irrelevant), but it bears repeating that there is no consensus that this climate "change" represents any sort of "existential crisis" for the planet.

The idea that there's a "crisis" is held by a small minority of scientists, but, as this piece will show, that view is not shared by mainstream science.  

Please read that again if needed.  I'm not going to be citing "deniers" or fringe papers, I'm going to be citing mainstream organizations that are held to be the gold standard by even the most dyed-in-the-wool climate change believers.

If one accepts mainstream consensus science (which I am not necessarily condoning, mind you -- "consensus" is the business of politics, not science -- but that's a whole 'nother discussion), one will quickly see that climate "crisis" is a fringe position -- meaning: If one invokes consensus (thus implying that they accept mainstream science), then one must logically reject the idea that there's a crisis.

However, because the general public listens to the media more than they read scientific literature, many have accepted this fringe claim without question. So let's examine the claim, again using only mainstream science:

Claim:  Extreme weather events (such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, etc.) have increased; this is due to man-made climate change, which is caused by CO2 emissions

Made by:  Politicians, media, activists

Rejected by:  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), most other mainstream scientists, and The Actual Hard Data

As we'll see in a moment, there is effectively zero basis for this claim.  This lie has been repeated so often that it "seems credible" to the point that it's become akin to an urban myth that "everyone knows" -- but we'll quickly see that mainstream science rejects this superstition.

The IPCC has done not one, but two "Special Report[s] on Extreme Weather," (in 2012 and 2018) to examine precisely this exact issue, so we'll start there.  

Before we get into that, though, it bears mention that many consider the IPCC to be too heavily biased toward blaming man/CO2 for climate change.  They have repeatedly pushed out scientists who dissent from the view that CO2 is a primary driver of climate.  Further, the IPCC's mandate is to find manmade climate change and to ignore natural explanations -- which leads to "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" syndrome.  I consider them to be an alarmist organization, so when the IPCC says, "Nope, we're not seeing it," even given their heavy biases and incentive to find it... well, things don't get much stronger than that.

The full Reports (everything in blue is a live link -- some people in the comments seem to be missing this) are long reads (hundreds of pages each), which is why almost no one seems to know what's in them, so let's summarize via some screenshots of the summary highlights.

1. Floods

Here's what the IPCC says about global flood trends:  No sign that floods are increasing:

The U.S. National Climate Assessment (which examined only the USA) says there's a mixture of local increases and decreases, concluding that "approaches have not established a significant connection of increased riverine flooding to human-induced climate change":

2.  Drought

Here again, the IPCC sees no trend of increase in global droughts.  They even call out their own prior warnings as being "overstated."

This agrees with other mainstream scientific literature.  As one example:  Recently, we've been hearing a lot about California's drought -- few people realize that, to cite the paper below: 

"[S]ignificant drought conditions that were common prior to 1900 have not been experienced by the present population."

In other words, California isn't undergoing modern "climate change" as a result of your SUV -- it's merely reverting to its natural historic trends.

And both of these likewise agree with a study by Nature from a few years back.  Droughts appear to be decreasing, not increasing.

On this topic, let's take a brief moment to appreciate yet another failed negative climate prediction -- this one is from 33 years ago, and still going strong and dead wrong.  (If you saw this headline tomorrow, would it worry you?  You may be starting to realize why it shouldn't.)

3.  Hurricanes/cyclones

Here's what the IPCC says about hurricanes:  There has been a slight decrease in hurricane landfall numbers over the past century:

The IPCC's conclusion agrees with NOAA, who recently completed the largest hurricane study to date.  NOAA also finds no trend of increase -- to the contrary, they also find a slight negative trend since 1900:

The political nature of climate "science" is one the the reasons I take screenshots, such as the one above.  That study (as shown) was just done a year or so back, but they've already revised it (revised August 9 2021), and I'm not sure where the original is.  The new one still concludes:

Therefore, we conclude that it is premature to conclude with high confidence that increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations from human activities have had a detectable impact on Atlantic basin hurricane activity

So the conclusion is still the same -- no impact on hurricanes -- because the hard data is what it is, and the numbers simply aren't there (i.e.- there's been no actual increase in storms).  Nothing can make those missing storms appear, so what they do in the new report is couch those non-frightening bottom line conclusions with additional scary-sounding language warning about how awful it might get if the CO2 hypothesis ever starts working, since apparently 100+ years of data while CO2 rose steadily hasn't already proven the point that if hurricanes haven't increased yet, they're not likely to.  At least, not due to CO2, anyway.

According to World Bank, Big Climate is an $89 trillion (with a T) business, so there are plenty of vested interests with major monetary incentive to keep the public in a state of fear.  Hard to compete against that with simple hard data and mainstream science that no one reads.

Anyway, both of these newer reports continue to agree with the IPCC's findings from 2012:

These hurricane studies are pretty conclusive, with very little ambivalence.  If you've been getting your "science" from politicians and media, then I imagine it comes as a shock to learn the that mainstream scientific community does not support what you have been led to believe -- so your first reaction may be to look for ways to reject this "new" information and thus preserve those old beliefs ("cognitive dissonance").  I recommend giving this "new" data a little time to sink in.  

(And then reasoning out the inexorable conclusion:  It is a mistake to trust politicians and media simply because they invoke the mantle of "science."  Snake-oil salesmen of the 1800s likewise claimed that their false cures "followed the science."  It's one of the oldest con games in the book.  The media's take on climate change is more superstition than science, and politicians use the resulting public ignorance to their advantage, as we'll see in a moment.)

4.  Tornadoes

Strong tornadoes, likewise, are decreasing, not increasing:

To summarize:  The actual, mainstream science on all this is abundantly clear:  There is no link between "climate change" and extreme weather.  None whatsoever.  Next time someone in "authority" tries to tell you there is, you will be inoculated against the manipulations of such climate charlatans.

"When you get two record rainfalls in a week, that's not coincidence." "Global warming is upon us, and it's going to get worse and worse and worse unless we do something about it." "Woe is us if we don't recognize these changes are due to climate change." -- Senator Chuck Schumer

“The past few days of Hurricane Ida and the wildfires in the west and the unprecedented flash floods in New York and New Jersey is yet another reminder that these extreme storms and the climate crisis are here."  "This isn't about politics." -- President Joe Biden

As the data plainly reveals:  Politics seems to be exactly what this is about.  Get people scared, then use their fear to generate public support for policies the public would not otherwise support if they were not being placed under duress.

Sadly, this unfettered manipulation by our politicians is not harmless.  It comes with real human cost:

Wouldn't it be better to tell our kids the truth: That there is no climate "crisis"?  Have we become so desperate in our pursuit of power that we've lost our humanity?

Oh, and those earlier quotes reminded me... let's talk about wildfires, too, since that's another anti-science stance the alarmists have taken, and it keeps getting repeated to the point that many people think it's true.  It is not.  

5.  Wildfires

This first graph comes from the USDA (and is the most recent I can find from that particular agency).  It shows that wildfires declined substantially while CO2 rose:

The continuation of that data (from the National Interagency Fire Center) is similar.  Wildfires have decreased, not increased:

Data on Amazon wildfires comes from the LA Times.  Correlation is not causation, but when there's not even a correlation, you have no case whatsoever.

Linking wildfires to climate change is, again, anti-science superstitious nonsense with no data to support it.

So you can follow the science, or you can follow the politicians/media.  But you cannot follow both, because they contradict each other.

Last point, because this is more anti-science propaganda I hear repeated ad infinitum:  

6.  Heat waves

Surely heat waves have been getting worse!  After all, the theory is that CO2 causes the atmosphere to retain more heat (again, this is the actual theory underpinning "climate change"), so heat waves must be getting worse.  Right?  Remember this summer?  RIGHT?

Well, not according to the EPA.  While heat waves will always be a part of life on planet Earth, in recent decades, heat waves have decreased significantly.  Despite the fact that CO2 has been rising steadily. 

Now, the funny thing about the chart above is that it's no longer on the EPA website (that I can find, anyway; glad I screenshotted it a few months ago) -- they recently changed their new graphs so that they begin in 1960!  Look at the full chart, and see if you can figure out why they'd make that change.  Below is what happens when you leave off the "inconvenient data":  You create a false impression that heat waves are increasing over time. 

Are they removing long-term data to serve "science"?  Or politics?

Misleading graphs aside, to reiterate one last time:  There is no correlation between "climate change" and extreme weather.  And there isn't a single shred of evidence to even modestly support such claims.  

All the alarmists have is the same thing they had back in 1988:  Unsubstantiated speculation that "bUt wEatheR is gOinG to gEt wOrSe!!!111!!!"  Speculation isn't science, and climate speculation has been dead wrong for 50 years running, while the hard evidence is clear.  The data continues to refute the speculation.

The bottom line is that the IPCC, NOAA, et al, have concluded that there's been no increase in extreme weather at all, so there's zero basis for claiming an increase, and that much less of a

basis for claiming that this nonexistent increase is "due to man-made climate change"!  

Thus, the entire push to blame extreme weather on "climate change" is complete nonsense.

Mankind has always believed it can control the weather via dancing, human sacrifice, or by other means.  I assume this is why this superstition was easy to revive:  It's hard-wired into us to think weather is some kind of "punishment for our sins."  In this case, our sin is merely finding ways to survive a harsh planet in some degree of safety.  We clearly do not believe we deserve even that small grace, so now we're trying to undo it.

Which brings us to the final point:  Climate-related deaths have plummeted over the past 100 years:

(above graph from Dr. Bjorn Lomborg)

This massive reduction in climate death is due to the safety that cheap and reliable energy provides for people.  Taking that away in favor of unreliable sources such as wind and solar won't "save" people, it will harm them.  (Just as wind and solar absolutely devastate the natural environment, which I may cover in a future piece).  Isn't the goal to "save" the planet?  What does that even mean if it excludes saving your fellow humans?

Join me in saving the planet: Reject climate superstition and propaganda, and follow the science instead.  The choice is now yours.

Bonus Investigative Piece: Is There a Climate "Crisis"? An Examination of the Evidence, Part I: The Arctic

Lately we've been hearing ad nauseum from politicians that there's a climate "crisis," so the first thing we need to clarify is this:

"change" ≠ "crisis"

These are two very different words, with very different meanings.  

"Change" means "to make or become different."

"Crisis" means "a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger."

A few years back, all we heard was how there was a "consensus" on climate "change."  But then politicians and the media gradually began to conflate the term "change" with the term "crisis," often by adding in their own commentary to "97% of scientists agree..."

They would say things like, "97% of scientists agree the Earth is warming up and that if we don't do something immediate and drastic, then we're all going to perish in flames!  Everyone RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

97% of scientists agreed to no such thing; but this verbal bait-and-switch has been done by politicians and media to the point that few seem to question it anymore.

Thus, it is extremely important to clarify that there is no consensus on a climate "crisis."  There is a consensus on climate "change" (though one can strongly debate the methodology of the surveys used to determine that "consensus," and further debate whether consensus has any value in science in the first place -- but for sake of argument, let's grant that point for now anyway, because it's irrelevant), but it bears repeating that there is no consensus that this climate "change" represents any sort of "existential crisis" for the planet.

The idea that there's a "crisis" is indeed held by a small minority of scientists, but the view is not shared by the mainstream.  So climate "crisis" is a fringe position -- but because the general public listens to the media more than they read scientific literature, many have accepted this fringe claim without question. 

So let's examine the claim.  Because there's so much data to unpack, I've decided to break our examination of the evidence into several parts.

Where shall we start?

Let's start with something that bears being emphasized:  

What I'm about to share is not controversial.  This is mainstream science.  Instead, the things you hear sensationalized on the news are frequently controversial, and often not mainstream science!

That's a major paradigm shift for most people, so I advise stopping and thinking about what that means for a moment.  "News" is a business that exists to sell advertising.  If the news doesn't have something that grabs your attention, you will not watch or read, and ratings/circulation will fall.  "Hey, everything is fine," just doesn't grab your attention in the way that, for example, "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE TOMORROW!" might.

To start off, we'll begin with a common sensationalized claim that one hears frequently on the news:  

Claim:  "Thanks to CO2, the Arctic is warmer than ever before!"

First off, to know if that claim about the present has any veracity, we would need to know what happened in the past.  Obviously, we can't know if the present is "warmer" (or colder) than the past unless we have past data to compare.

So we'll start by examining the recent past ("recent" in geologic terms, not in human lifetime terms; though we'll examine that, too).  Earth is 4.5 billion years old, which means that if we calculate an average human lifespan of 80 years, then one "year" for Earth is equal to roughly 56 million human years.  If the Earth existed on human time, then a human day would be more than 154,000 years in geologic time.  Said another way: 10,000 years ago for Earth is the equivalent of about an hour and a half ago to a human  (i.e.: tens of thousands of years represent the extremely recent past in geological time).

So, with a better grasp of geologic time frames:  What does paleoclimatology tell us about the recent past?  Is the Arctic actually warmer than ever before? 

Well... the short answer is "no."  As it turns out, the scientific data suggests that the Arctic is colder today that it was even a mere ~6,000-12,000 years ago. 

Included below are screenshots of the relevant portions of many different scientific papers, with the sources shown in the screenshots, in case anyone wants to refer to the entirety of the papers.  This is mainstream scientific literature that anyone can look up (including, I might add, our own vaunted news organizations -- if they cared to do any actual research before driving public opinion):

1. Arctic sea-surface temperatures were 3 C higher a mere ~8,000 years ago:

2.  Arctic sea ice reached its minimum not recently, but in that same 6-12K BP time frame; this paper states that it is 2 to 4 C colder today:

3.  This next paper was a study of Arctic bottom water temperatures, which, 8-10,000 years ago, were a massive 6 C warmer than modern temperatures:

4.  The next paper agrees with the above time frames and suggests that Greenland ice was 500m thinner ~8,000 years ago than it is today:

5.  Here's another paper on the Arctic's "ice free" past; again you'll note the time frames are all similar:

6.  Another; this one focused on how Alaska was markedly warmer (2-3 C) around 9-8ka:

7.  Sweden was also much warmer 8,000 years ago:

8.  More on Sweden being colder today than it was in even the geologically-recent past:

9.  In fact, Sweden was permafrost-free for much of recent history.  The permafrost that we hear (from breathless voices) is melting is actually an anomaly to begin with; its existence is not the historic norm:

10.  As we've seen, there's what you might call a "consensus" that the Arctic was warmer ~8,000 years ago.  The next paper charts Greenland temps during that time.  Do you see anything that looks like a "crisis" here?

11.  On this next, note that the 0 time axis is on the left side of the chart, not the right side -- the right edge of the chart is 10,000 years ago.  The Greenland ice sheet began increasing in volume ~5,000 years ago and is now larger than it was even as recently as the Roman Empire:

13.  Let's cap this section with some very recent data:  The Multi-Agency Sea Ice Extent chart for the Arctic from the past 15 years.  This chart shows why, every single Summer, we hear panicked news personalities and disingenuous politicians talking about the totally normal oscillation of the melt/freeze cycle as if it's the end of the world... then we hear nothing from them all Winter, as the sea ice recovers and freezes yet again:

I could go on with another few dozen papers, but you get the idea.  Again, this is mainstream science -- so why don't we hear much (or anything) about it from our vaunted media?  Or from our politicians?

I'll let readers answer that question for themselves.

Now, if you want to see something really crazy, you don't have to go back 8,000 years.  You can just research newspaper articles from the very recent past.  I'm just going to put these up as self-explanatory -- note the dates on each one.  As we'll see after this, the Arctic got colder again, though, which is why Greenland didn't "catastrophically collapse" in 1939, for example.  (Interesting that the Arctic got notably colder while CO2 was rising; seems like relevant data if CO2 is indeed an important driver of temperature.)

 

1947:

1940:

1934:  100 degrees in Alaska.  (And keep in mind that CO2 was pretty low in 1934.)

I have dozens more of these from this same time frame, but by now you're probably wondering:  What happened?  How come glaciers didn't "catastrophically collapse" 80+ years ago?  Why haven't they collapsed by now, if the planet is heating to the point of a "crisis"?  Why are we even still taking about this?

What happened was it again got colder.  The planet got colder while CO2 was rising dramatically, in fact.  From the 1940s until the 1970s, Earth's temperature dropped notably, but WWII, the Cold War, and the industrial revolution were in full swing during that time frame.  Let's stay in the recent past for a moment.

In 1989, NOAA performed a detailed study of 92 years of N. American temperature data (1895 to 1987) and found (drumroll)... no warming trend:

How about more recently?  Surely there must be a massive warming trend for the past 20-some years, right?  After all, global CO2 emissions have been steadily rising, especially from China.

Well, you can go to NOAA's website and check this yourself, but here's a screenshot of the U.S. annual temperature data as of 2/2/2021 (we'll cover the so-called "global" temperature data later):  

I know my readers know how to spot the trend on a 22 year chart.  Does the chart above look like a "warming trend" to anyone?  Or does it instead look like oscillation?  

Looks like oscillation to me.

Now, here's something interesting.  What happens if we plot, say 1921 to 1993, a period during which fossil fuel consumption rose dramatically?  (After all, few people even had cars in 1921 -- and the SUV wasn't invented until the 1930s).  So if the hypothesis that fossil fuels increase atmospheric CO2, which in turn warms the planet, is correct (and that is the hypothesis, by the way -- CO2 is not theorized to lead to cooling, but to heating.  The idea that we can blame both heat and cold on CO2 is nonsensical junk science and seems to be nothing more than a PR effort to make the claim unfalsifiable (which means it is no longer "science")), then we'd expect that heat to show up in the data.

But instead, for 1921 to 1993 we end up with another flat, or maybe slightly down-trending, temperature series:

How about if we look at 1930 to 1970?  This period was the height of the industrial revolution, with WWII falling inside that time frame and CO2 increasing notably.  And interestingly, instead of the steady warming we might expect based on the hypothesis, we instead end up with a VERY CLEAR downtrend in temperature for those 40 years:

And this is exactly why we never saw those "catastrophic collapses" people were worried about in the 1940s, and why the 1970s were the height of the Global Cooling scare.  For excellent context, I highly recommend watching this brief clip of Leonard Nimoy describing the terrifying descent into the next Ice Age (and an ice age is truly terrifying, I might add.  Warmth brings life, but cold brings death -- for all living things, especially plants, which form the bottom of the entire food chain.  If plants freeze or die, all life will die.)

In 1970, the New York Times reported on Arctic sea ice becoming "ominously thicker":

Time Magazine featured several memorable covers and articles that are the exact opposite of the covers and articles they feature today:

In fact, global cooling was the "scientific consensus" of the 1970s:

Did you know that scientists in the 1970s were proposing we cover Arctic ice with black soot, so that it would absorb sunlight and melt, to help warm the planet?  

Now they're proposing the exact opposite -- because (most) scientists are people, and (most) people don't even know their own recent history well enough to see past their own arrogance and hubris. 

  

So for several decades, CO2 was steadily rising, yet Arctic temperatures were steadily falling.  We all know that "correlation is not causation," but what do you call it when there's not even a weak correlation between the hypothesis and the hard data?  (that's a rhetorical question)

To sum it up, what does all this tell us?

Well, for one, it tells us that where we begin and end our temperature data series can give us very different apparent trends.  Warming, cooling, flat -- all can be found over multiple decades, depending on the start and end dates we choose.  So even if we grant the argument that it's been warming for 100 years (which, as we'll see later, is increasingly questionable data), would that even mean anything?  

As far as the Earth alone is concerned, is there anything special about 1895?  Or 1920?  Or 1998?  Aren't these all completely arbitrary starting points, in terms of Earth's climate?

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old -- what does a snapshot of a mere 100 years even tell us?  I would say, "Not much," and the alternating modern "cooling" and "warming" scares seem to agree.  (Imagine looking at a stock chart of only the past 30 seconds and then attempting to use that to make confident declarations about the long-term future trend.  Would anyone be so foolish?)  But we'll return to this point later, when we look at the long-term and very long-term paleoclimatology temperatures.  

It also tells us that humans don't learn much from their own past mistakes.

So, to wrap up this little introduction: 

• 6-12K years ago, the Arctic was considerably warmer than it is today (with CO2 at "background" levels), but we didn't have media and politicians around to tell us that was the end of the world.
• In the 1930s and 40s, the Arctic was melting (while CO2 was relatively low) and it was the end of the world.  
• In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the Arctic was getting colder (while CO2 was rising) and it was the end of the world.  
• In the early portion of the 2000s, the Arctic was melting and it was, again, the end of the world.

Maybe trying to judge long-term climate trends based on short-term human time frames is a fatal mistake.

And, to return to the original claim made by media and politicians:  As we've seen from the data, the Arctic is most definitely not "warmer than ever before."  Quite the opposite:  The Arctic is colder than it's been in even Earth's recent past.  Again, this is not "controversial" science.  So why doesn't the general public already know this?

This concludes Part I.

Climate "Crisis" Part III: Are "Renewables" Good for the Environment?

"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer:

If it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. 

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher."

-- Abraham Lincoln, Jan. 27, 1838

Most people have busy lives and full-time careers that leave little time for deep dives into scientific research, so, often out of necessity, we find ourselves trusting the news and politicians to tell us what "The Science" is.  And, since we're not cynics, we presume they're doing this in good faith.  In recent years, we've heard many claims about "renewable" energy, which is almost always presented as an unalloyed good.

So, today we're going to examine an aspect we hear little about, in an attempt to answer a simple, yet fundamental, question:  

Are "renewables" good for the real environment?

When I say "real" environment, I am referring to the environment that can be objectively measured and observed through scientific methods. This means that the impacts are verifiable and not dependent on hypothetical scenarios or speculative models that can be manipulated for financial or political gain.

In other words:  Good old fashioned hard science.  

Stay through the end for some shocking revelations, but if you've already read Parts I and II, you can skip past the italics immediately below.

(Previously, on Is There a Climate "Crisis":  In Part I, mainstream paleoclimatology showed us that the Arctic is notably colder today than it was a mere 7-10,000 years ago.

In Part II mainstream science from the IPCC, NOAA, NASA, et al, debunked the claim that extreme weather has "gotten worse due to climate change."

Finally, as we've discussed previously, "change" and "crisis" are two very different things.  There's a scientific consensus on climate change, but there is zero consensus that this change represents any sort of "crisis."  The use of the term "crisis" originated with politicians and media and is not shared by (not all, but) most scientists.)

There's plenty more to examine in terms of climate, but for today's deep dive, we will simply look at "renewables" to see whether they are indeed "good for the planet."  Since we've all heard the argument in favor (which essentially begins and ends with "renewables don't emit CO2 during operation"), we're not going to rehash that argument here and will instead examine the aspects of renewables that are less common knowledge, starting with:

Wind Power

According to the Wall Street Journal, one single wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic.  

Thus, a larger wind farm requires hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, steel, and plastic.  Obviously, that's not a "green" operation -- but we haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet, because the biggest thing wind requires is land.  How much land?  Prohibitive amounts, because wind is not a dense energy source like nuclear, gas, and oil.  

To meet present electricity needs for the continental United States, wind turbines would need to cover an incredible 12% of the country's land mass.

That's 374,000 square miles of wind turbines.  

Since it's hard to envision how large 374,000 square miles is, here's ~369,500 square miles outlined in black on Google maps (some of the lines have extra squiggles because I got tired of starting over):

Envision a massive wind farm that basically covers all of the following states:  New York State, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and D.C., Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and all of Florida, including the panhandle.

(Yes, I know they wouldn't put them there (at least, I hope), but we're trying to envision how much land is involved.)

In other words, we'd have to plaster wind turbines across every inch of the original 13 Colonies, plus Vermont and Florida -- and then we'd ALMOST have enough to meet the electricity needs of the United States.

Does that sound like a pipe dream?  Of course it does.  But even if it didn't... does that sound like it would be at all "good for the environment"?  Especially when we remember that every single wind turbine needs its own massive 2,500-ton concrete base.  A quick calculation suggests we'd need about 40 million tons of concrete for this windfarm, enough to pave over the entirety of several whole states with a durable 4-inch-thick concrete slab.  Sounds great for wildlife and plants, yeah?

(Also:  If one is concerned about CO2 emissions, then one should be aware that cement manufacturing already accounts for about 8% of global emissions.)

I mean, we could probably just stop there on wind, because anyone who's looked at these logistics knows that wind is largely just "feel good talk" ("wind talk is just a lot of wind" - ha!) -- but we won't, because as the full picture emerges, we'll see that wind doesn't even qualify for that.  

To understand the impacts of local wind use, let's explore how devastating wind power is to wildlife:

As we see above, wind turbines effectively become the apex predator in whatever ecosystem they're introduced to... but it gets worse.  

The following screenshot was from the Spanish Ornithological Association (I can no longer find the original link since their previous website crashed and is being rebuilt, but here's a link to an abridged version of the original article, reprinted at Save the Eagles International).

TL;DR -- the meat of their report is this:

In 2012, breaking the European omerta on wind farm mortality, the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO/Birdlife) reviewed actual carcass counts from 136 monitoring studies. They concluded that Spain’s 18,000 wind turbines are killing 6-18 million birds and bats yearly. 

Extrapolating that and similar (little publicized) German and Swedish studies, 39,000 U.S. wind turbines would not be killing “only” 440,000 birds (USFWS, 2009) or “just” 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats (Smallwood, 2013), but 13-39 million birds and bats every year!

Wind turbines are particularly deadly to birds because there's something of an optical illusion at play with the center of the blade moving slowly, so it's hard for even humans to realize how fast the edges of the blades are actually spinning:

Cover that dying bird with oil and we'd have a week of news coverage of the environmental catastrophe, instead of complete silence from corporate media and our leaders.

Oh, and since "offshore wind turbines" are now being promoted, let's discuss those, too.  First off, of course, you still have the issue of what is, essentially, a large industrial site being installed at sea.

Some environmental groups claim that offshore wind farms kill whales, but, surprisingly, those who promote offshore wind farms (businesses who sell wind tech; governments and their rubber-stamp "science" organizations) claim they don't.  

Having personally listened to humpback whale song for many years while snorkeling off the west coast of Maui, I do not find the claim (made by several environmental groups) that "the noise of wind farms and wind farm construction damages whales' ears and confuses them" to be at all outlandish.  I'm not saying it's a correct claim, because I just don't know -- I'm simply saying it makes sense to me, and since the government is not a disinterested third party here, I'm inclined to be skeptical of their claims that "installing massive industrial structures in the ocean has no impact at all on whales!"  That claim, at least, seems outlandish on its face.

Postscript:  In researching this further, I just discovered that NOAA has, for a single wind project survey, in essence authorized the potential killing of: 

• 42 Whales 
• 2,534 Dolphins 
• 142 Porpoises 
• 1,472 Seals 
• Total = 4,190 adversely impacted marine mammals

And that's just for the survey!  Not for the construction or long-term operation phase, which is undoubtedly far more disruptive and would stretch far into the future.

So I take back what I said earlier:  Apparently, it's a known fact that offshore wind farms kill marine life and those advocating for this agenda are well aware of that but are deliberately deceiving the public for PR purposes.

In the further quest to answer this question in an unbiased (though now decidedly annoyed) manner, I found this study from Nature to be helpful.  In all, Nature identified 867 findings of environmental pressures and ecosystem impacts due to offshore windfarms, the vast majority of which were negative.

So negative environmental impacts due to offshore wind farms (OWF) are significant -- and as the study from Nature stresses, there are still many unknowns:

Impacts may spread far from the OWF area (e.g., lower number of organisms of migratory populations at the final destination), as is the case for land-based wind farms. It is, therefore, fundamental to consider the spatial and temporal distribution of the most sensitive species when determining the risks associated to a given project. For the adoption of such an approach, better data is required.

I think we can safely speculate that the "unknown" environmental impacts will likewise end up being predominantly negative.  Thus, I'm sure offshore wind farms appeal to politicians and businesses who don't care about the environment, but for those of us who truly love the ocean and marine life (I chose to live in Hawaii for a reason!), offshore wind farms are an abomination.  

In conclusion, wind power:

• Requires unfathomable amounts of land, which devastates the environment the same way any other large commercial or industrial site does.
• Would kill millions of birds and bats each year (though I imagine it would kill fewer each year, until eventually there are few birds alive wherever they constructed these monstrosities).
• Damages the ocean ecosystem, including the ecosystem far away from the physical site.
• Will kill otherwise-protected and/or endangered marine life.

So... what's the idea here?  We're going to "save the planet" by destroying it?  Keep in mind that these are real impacts on the real environment -- not speculative "doomsday scenarios" that have little-to-no basis in hard evidence.  It's a bit like burning your house down solely because you're worried that your house might burn down, so you decide to "take charge" and make certain it's done right.

Either we've lost our collective minds... or... and bear with me here... maybe this agenda isn't really about "the environment" at all.  I'm not going to go too far into the woods here, but suffice to say we don't need to speculate in that regard, because they've told us it's not about the environment:

So why aren't we listening?  I have no answer for that.  Truly.

[Note:  Just before publication, but two days after I wrote this piece, the Biden Administration announced a plan to promote environmental "justice" -- the spirit of which sounds exactly like the agenda disclosed above by Ottmar Edenhofer way back in 2010.  They've been telling us plainly what this is really about, and it sure ain't "the planet."  So, again:  Why aren't we listening?]

Anyway, I don't want to digress, so let's return to hard data that doesn't make us uncomfortable.

I believe we've seen enough to eliminate wind from "green" energy contention, but one last tidbit:  Wind turbine blades usually only last about 20 years and are typically made of composite materials that are difficult to recycle due to their size, shape, and composition. As a result, many blades end up in landfills or are incinerated, which releases harmful chemicals into the environment.  Calling wind turbines "renewable" energy should be classified as false advertising.

It doesn't require binoculars to see that the politicians pushing for wind power are not "green" -- they are the opposite of "green," and are either completely ignorant of these issues (in which case, it's their literal civic duty to educate themselves), or they have zero regard for the real environment.

But next time you see wind turbines, see them for what they really are:  A massive industrial power plant, serenely chopping birds to death and destroying the environment.

Solar Power

Is solar any better?  We'll start by looking at the same issue of land.  According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, an association involved in promoting solar (i.e.- they want to paint solar in a positive light), solar requires 5 to 10 acres of land per Megawatt (MW):  

So let's average that and say 7.5 acres of land per MW.  By way of comparison, the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona is the largest nuclear power plant in the United States with three reactors and a total electricity generating capacity of about 3,937 MW.  Which means that in order to replace that one single nuclear reactor with solar, it would require 29,527 acres, which is 46 square miles.  Which is why a study from Princeton University concluded that solar needs 300-400x more land than traditional sources; in fact, as Michael Shellenberger explores: Solar needs 379 times more land than nuclear:

A 200-megawatt wind farm,” notes Bloomberg, “might require spreading turbines over 19 square miles (49 square kilometers). A natural-gas power plant with that same generating capacity could fit onto a single city block.

There's a lot of competing information about how much land a national solar farm would truly require, but on the low end of the credible estimates (i.e.- not made by vested interests, and accounting for weather and for the fact that solar panels decrease in efficiency every year), we have the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimating that the nation could generate enough power by covering "just .6%" of the United States with solar panels.  Well!  That doesn't sound like much.  Lemme do the math here... okay, so that's "just" 22,780 square miles! 

Let's see how that looks on the map:

Okay, simple.  So basically, we could just level the whole corridor from Boston to D.C., including the entire states of Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Delaware, pave over all that land with solar panels, and voila!  "Green" energy!

So, in that scenario, Pennsylvania (where I grew up) would go from this:

to this:

Lovely!  I can hardly imagine anything "greener"!  Or better for the natural environment!  Can you?  Plants and animals would undoubtedly thrive with their habitats entirely paved over by solar panels.  We are truly "saving" the planet now, yes?  Who needs forests anyway?

"Oh," I hear readers object through my screen, "but they would NEVER replace forests with solar panels!"  

They already are.  Killing forests to put up solar, that is.  And we're nowhere near the end game of "Net Zero" yet -- in fact, we've barely started.

This "tiny" (by comparison to the amount of energy it's generating) solar plant used to be a forest in Montana:

And this little "solar forest" is in North Carolina:

There are plenty more, but you get the picture.  Just keep in mind how little power those giant solar plants are generating when compared to nuclear or natural gas.  

"Oh, but we could just install solar panels out in the desert Southwest where no one lives."  

Okay, but "no one" is not "no THING."  I lived in the desert Southwest for years, and there's plenty of life in those vast stretches we describe as "desert."  Unlike what many East Coasters think (I know because I used to be one of them), most "desert" is not rolling sand dunes like the Sahara, it's small plants and animals as far as you can see.  Just because it's not as pretty as a forest doesn't mean it's not still a living part of Earth's natural environment and ecosystem.

(Above: The stereotypical landscape of the "desert" Southwest)

Besides, the Southwest is prone to hail and very high winds -- up to and including tornadoes! -- and solar panels aren't exactly known for their durability.  Imagine a nation without reliable power for an indefinite time period after a hail storm:

Or after a windstorm:

Is it really a good idea to level 22,780 square miles of the environment, then pave over it with a million of these things, only to have them entirely wiped out a year or two later by Mother Nature, leaving us high and dry?

So, while solar power may not be quite as devastating as wind power on environmental land (only because it doesn't require as much land), it's still plenty bad, and too fragile to rely upon.  In cold weather and in hospitals, people will be in real trouble if the grid goes down for any meaningful length of time.  Major weather events have always and will always occur with regularity.  Our large, fragile "national solar farm" would be all-but guaranteed to be destroyed, probably several times.

And of course, even if we put our giant solar or wind farms NIMBY ("Not in MY Backyard!"), we still have to get that power to the rest of the country.  And that requires a lot of new power line infrastructure.  Here's Princeton/Bloomberg again:

So, in order to convert to wind and solar, we'd not only need to level entire-states worth of environmental land, but we'd need to more than triple the number of power lines. Princeton describes power transmission lines as "the most difficult land use challenge," even worse than the solar/wind power plants themselves.

Not to mention, the manufacturing process for solar is very energy intensive, and panels require silicon, glass, nickel, copper, silver, indium, and tellurium, the latter several of which require significant mining. 

But who cares, let's pretend we're politicians and skip right over that.  After all: We need to do this because some speculative model that's failed at every prior prediction said so!  You darned "science" deniers with your concerns about the stupid environment!

Instead, we'll talk about solar panel disposal, because these things only last (at best, if there's ZERO significant weather in the meantime) 25-30 years -- a shorter lifespan than your home's metal roof -- and panels decrease in efficiency every year they're in use.  But unlike your home's roof, which is easily recycled, there's little solar panel recycling occurring in America (see:  Researchers and Companies Are Preparing for a Looming Tsunami Full of Photovoltaic Waste), so most solar panel waste ends up in landfills.

Which means, just like wind, solar power is anything but "renewable." 

Referring back to the Wall Street Journal piece quoted earlier, by 2050, solar panels alone would more than double the tonnage of the entire world's plastic waste: 

If we think we have a problem with plastic in the oceans now, how will that be with more than double the plastic?  And that's just from solar panels.  That would dwarf the global plastic from plastic straws by an order of magnitude, yet we're told straws are "bad" but solar is "green."

To make matters worse, some solar panels are considered Hazardous Waste by the EPA.

[D]ifferent varieties of solar panels have different metals present in the semiconductor and solder. Some of these metals, like lead and cadmium, are harmful to human health and the environment at high levels. If these metals are present in high enough quantities in the solar panels, solar panel waste could be a hazardous waste

So, here again, we've been sold a bill of goods by vested interests.  

Solar panels in "Net Zero" quantities would: 

• Destroy entire-states-worth of natural habitats.
• Produce massive amounts of waste (including hazardous waste, as well as doubling the tonnage of global plastic waste), which would be ongoing, creating more and more waste at each future replacement cycle.
• Require significant mining and manufacturing processes.
• More than triple the number of power lines in the United States.
• Be prone to being entirely destroyed by stormy weather.

To classify solar as "green energy" is pretty outlandish.  Unless one believes for-profit-and-politics doomsday models (that currently have a 0% success rate at future prediction) should be prioritized over, you know, the actual planet.

(And the actual reality of their hypothetical "doomsday" is going to shock you by the end of this piece.)

Both solar and wind also require giant banks of batteries, to store power for when the sun isn't shining or the wind's not blowing.

And we haven't even gotten to the batteries yet. (insert ominous music here)

"Batteries Not Included"

How many batteries does it take to store electricity for an entire country?  According to the Department of Energy, the answer is just over 6.0 TWh in the USA's "zero carbon" scenario.  Cool.  What does that mean?

Well, the easiest part to answer is the dollar cost, which, if purchased from Tesla, would be just over $2 trillion.  Trouble is, that order won't be filled anytime soon (if ever) -- at least not without a bunch of people going without power for a few decades -- because Tesla claims that after its newest Shanghai Megafactory comes online in 2024, then it will have global production capacity of 83 GWh per year.  

There are 1000 GWh in a TWh.  This means that (assuming this factory indeed goes online in 2024 without delay or snafu) it would "only" take Tesla 72.29 years to fill a 6.0 TWh order!  And that's if they ceased all other production and worked on nothing else!

This is one of the many reasons I laugh when people say things like, "We have the ability to switch to 'renewable' energy RIGHT NOW!"  No, we don't.  Again, though, saying "we don't" assumes we want a humane transition that doesn't involve the broader populace starving and freezing to death.  (And given what we're learning here, I'm not entirely sure it's 100% correct to assume that.  I'm kidding, of course!  (No I'm not.))  Anyway, those are the easy parts of the equation.

The real questions we need to address are the environmental impacts of battery manufacturing.

One of the worst environmental impacts of lithium battery manufacturing is the extraction and processing of the raw materials needed to make the batteries. Lithium is often extracted through a process known as evaporation, which involves pumping approximately 500,000 gallons of water (to extract each and every single ton of lithium) into underground lithium-rich brine deposits. This can cause contamination of groundwater, soil, and nearby ecosystems:

Here’s a thoroughly modern riddle: what links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river? The answer is lithium – the reactive alkali metal that powers our phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars.  

In May 2016, hundreds of protestors threw dead fish onto the streets of Tagong, a town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. They had plucked them from the waters of the Liqi river, where a toxic chemical leak from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine had wreaked havoc with the local ecosystem. 

There are pictures of masses of dead fish on the surface of the stream. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing cow and yak carcasses floating downstream, dead from drinking contaminated water. It was the third such incident in the space of seven years in an area which has seen a sharp rise in mining activity, including operations run by BYD, the world’s biggest supplier of lithium-ion batteries for smartphones and electric cars. After the second incident, in 2013, officials closed the mine, but when it reopened in April 2016, the fish started dying again.

Cobalt, another key component of lithium batteries, is often mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where child labor and other human rights abuses have been regularly reported.

The mining and processing of cobalt can also lead to water and soil pollution, habitat destruction, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity. In addition to the environmental impacts of raw material extraction and processing, the manufacturing of lithium batteries also requires significant amounts of energy.

So, here again, we find that absolutely nothing about the mining, extraction, and/or manufacturing process of electric batteries is the least bit "green."  

The justification for the environmental destruction and human rights abuses that are both inherent in "green energy" is entirely predicated on the assumption that a bit more CO2 (which is not a "pollutant," CO2 is the most important gas for life on Earth, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms) will cause the planet to warm slightly, which in turn, is speculated to be "bad."  Despite the fact that (as I covered in the last piece), the hard evidence that anything "bad" is actually happening is nearly nonexistent.

In other words, support for "green" energy can only be achieved by keeping the populace in the dark about all this, and/or by some serious mental gymnastics.

But hey, okay, sure, whatever, batteries destroy the environment, so what -- at least they're reliable sources of power, right?  RIGHT?  

SA Wind Farms, Big Tesla Battery, Fined Nearly $4 Million over Separate Breaches

Hornsdale Power Reserve was fined when its Tesla battery in Jamestown failed to produce power during an unexpected outage in Queensland.

Three other South Australian wind farms, including those at Snowtown, Hornsdale and Clements Gap, have been previously fined a total of more than $2.5 million for similar breaches.

In a separate judgement, Justice Besanko fined Hornsdale Power Reserve --- which owns the 150-megawatt Tesla battery at Jamestown -- $900,000 for failing to provide grid stabilization services that it had been contracted to provide. The failure was identified when an unexpected outage at the Kogan Creek coal plant in Queensland in 2019 caused grid disturbances. At the time, the battery had been paid to be on stand-by to rapidly produce power to help restabilize the grid in the event of such outages.

 But he said the battery did not power up when needed.

And that's what's happening right now out in the real world where people are just trying to use this stuff as backup power.  So yeah, if we actually tried to make this transition, be prepared for a complete nightmare of unreliable power, constant blackouts, and unforeseen problems.

Further, as everyone already knows, lithium-ion batteries are toxic waste -- and sometimes catch fire and/or explode.  I wonder what sort of environmental catastrophe would occur if the USA's massive 6.0 TWh battery bank were to catch fire and explode?  (Not to mention the long-term power outages.)  Don't worry, I'm sure they'll have some solution for that, which, since this is the U.S. Government we're talking about, will fail spectacularly in practice.

Here's some more interesting information from the EPA:

Li-ion batteries are made of materials such as cobalt, graphite and lithium which are considered critical minerals. Critical minerals are raw materials that are economically and strategically important to the U.S., have a high risk of their supply being disrupted and for which there are no easy substitutes.

In other words:  

These minerals are called critical because their supply chains are complex and their availability is limited, which makes them vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, market fluctuations, and supply disruptions.

Oh.  So we'd be making ourselves completely dependent on something we might not even be able to replace in an emergency, or even when it reaches the end of its use cycle in 15 odd-years.

Which immediately makes me picture a worst-case scenario, because, as I've warned my youngest son many times:  "It's easy to picture what happens if things go perfectly-right -- but remember that one out of every so-many attempts, everything will go precisely wrong.  Plan for it."

So, here's what I immediately pictured.  Imagine this:

It's the 15-year anniversary of the day the last fossil fuel plant in the USA was finally decommissioned and dismantled.  Although our power grid has been unreliable and prone to problems, at least we're no longer emitting CO2!!!, so the minor inconvenience of a handful of our friends and relatives freezing to death has been worth it.  At least that finally made our Thanksgiving cheaper, since we only needed to buy a small bug-based turkey-substitute last year.  

But now, there's trouble in Paradise:  Our worst adversary knows our replacement cycle and sees that we are in a weakened economic state due to stagflation.  War looms on the horizon and this hostile power has blockaded our access to critical minerals... at exactly the wrong time.  Our batteries are dying and desperately need to be replaced.  But alas, we have no way to replace them and are growing weaker by the day.  And the weaker America becomes, the stronger our adversary grows in comparison.  A few months later, the power grid can no longer be sustained.  The USA goes dark.

Permanently. 

Chaos ensues as all services (police, fire, medical) and food supply lines cease operation.  Starving populations riot; roving gangs pillage others for survival.  But in cities, even the stolen food runs out quickly.  Ultimately, only a handful of people will survive, primarily those who defied the bans and kept their old gas-powered cars hidden away despite the threat of felony convictions.  

But even they will eventually be hunted down and captured or killed by the enemy.  

America, once the shining city on the hill, is no more.

Yes, sure, that's a worst-case -- but the general idea is not so far-fetched as to be a zero-percent chance.  In fact, given that the one constant throughout world history has been regular and cyclical war, I would say that while the timing is unknown, a similar event would almost be guaranteed to happen eventually.  

In my view, it's myopic and stupid to even consider making our nation's very survival entirely dependent on the actions of foreign governments.  For me, this ends the discussion entirely, frankly.  Solar, EV, wind, whatever -- it's fine for people who don't know any better or who don't care about the environment to use that stuff as supplemental power, but it's out of the question for this nation to make itself critically dependent on resources that lie beyond its borders.  

*****

Slight digression there, but in any case, I think we're answered the question we set out to answer:  "Are 'Renewables' Good for the Environment?"

The answer is a resounding and emphatic "NO."  Frankly, when I started writing this piece, I knew "renewables" had some environmental issues, but even I had no idea how truly horrendous and destructive they really are.  Renewables are not even "somewhat" good.  Renewables are absolutely devastating to the real environment.

So, with that answered, let's drive it all home and conclude with:

What Would Net Zero Accomplish?  How Much Would Temperatures Change?

Now here's where it really gets interesting.  And shocking.  

According to the U.N., if our fossil fuel use continues on its current trajectory, global temperatures are predicted (let's assume they get a prediction right for once, for sake of argument) to rise a total of 2.7 °C by 2100.  Now, keep in mind that this is not "an additional 2.7°C from today," because these targets are always backdated to pre-industrial temperature levels.  

Temperature has reportedly already risen 1.1°C from pre-industrial levels, so the "1.5°C target" we often hear bandied about is actually only a 0.4°C increase from today.  (Let's ignore the complete and utter absurdity of all this and just run with their numbers.)

Using their numbers above, we've had 1.1°C rise already, so, with a 2.7°C target, they're speculating that temperatures may increase another 1.6°C from today.

Okay, so let's assume that's all correct.  What percentage of that 1.6° would come from the USA if nothing changed from our current way of life?  

The USA is responsible for 14% of global emissions, so the answer is approximately 14%.

Thus:  1.6°C x 14% = 0.224°C

So, if the USA went dark tomorrow, then, according to the UN, that would stop... err... 0.224°C of "global warming" over the next century.  

Silliness, right?  But wait, it gets better.

According to the U.S. EIA, electricity generation from fossil fuels in the United States only accounts for 31% of U.S. emissions!

So we have to take 0.224°C and multiply that by 31%, which means that if the USA did all the destructive "green" energy stuff we just spoke about in order to completely eliminate fossil fuel from the power grid, then, using the UN's own alarmist figures and assumptions about CO2, it would stop the global temperature from rising by... 

0.0694°C ! (add more exclamation points here as needed)

That's right, less than seven-hundredths of a degree.  Not even one-tenth of one degree.  THAT is what all this would accomplish. 

I mean, really, stop and think about that for a few minutes.

Now, since you're not (I assume, correct me if I'm wrong) a politician who's seeking to influence votes via fear or a vested interest that stands to make a huge profit on "green" energy, ask yourself:  

Does destroying the real environment in all the ways we just discussed make any sense whatsoever in order to potentially avert a hypothetical 0.0694°C temperature rise?

Does it make sense to put the USA's very sovereignty and independence into a compromised position to possibly avert the dreaded prospect of... a 0.0694°C warmer planet?

While you're wearing your "Question Authority" cap, ask yourself:  Even if they're 100% right, would less than one-tenth of a degree REALLY "destroy the planet"?  Would it make any difference at all to the planet?  I mean, really?  

I'll tell you right now:  No.  No, it wouldn't.  I don't care how much doomsday speculation they throw at us, I'm done pretending that it would matter one iota.  I know this will create cognitive dissonance in some, because we're expected to abdicate all common sense to every doomsayer who invokes the term "science," but the temperature difference between 9 a.m. and noon is considerably more significant.  And, for crying out loud, this planet and every species alive on it today, including humanity itself, already survived an 18°F (10°C) temperature increase in the course of only a single decade!

So no, the climate isn't changing "faster" now (obviously).  Things aren't somehow "worse than ever" today.  Nothing happening today is even close to being "unprecedented."  It's all fearmongering, anti-scientific baloney.

Sorry, helplessly watching us railroaded into this garbage upsets me sometimes, because if they succeed, it's going to cost many human lives.  Mark my words.

Anyway, to sum it all up:

• on one hand, we have hard science conclusively demonstrating how devasting and destructive renewables are to the real environment, no speculation needed.
• on the other hand, we have speculative "science" running around screaming that if the United States doesn't switch to "renewables" right now, then Earth's temperature will rise 0.0694 degrees, which (if it happened) would somehow magically be worse than all the real and measurable damage that "renewables" are 100% guaranteed to do.

It's complete absurdity.  

And I think we've put this issue to bed: "Renewables" are anti-environment and, at scale, nonsensical.

To be completely blunt:  After more than two decades and thousands of hours of research into the "climate" topic, I've concluded that if there's a true threat to the planet (and particularly to the well-being of humanity), then that threat comes from the powerful interests who are pushing this agenda.

*****

Epilogue:  I have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, but few sources openly highlight the downsides, so it's painstaking research and I will gladly correct errors if there are any.  Incidentally, unlike those who are (in my view) working against humanity's interests, I gain nothing by writing these pieces.  They're very time consuming, earn me 0 dollars, and sometimes make me unpopular.  I do it as a public service because people cannot make informed decisions without access to the whole truth, and neither our media nor our leaders are providing that to them.  These climate pieces carry a personal cost for me; my motivation is the slim hope that if enough people are educated, then maybe we can avert the environmental, economic, and humanitarian disaster we're being railroaded into under the false guise of "saving the planet."  I cannot sit idly by and do nothing, even if it hurts me to speak up.  I hope this inspires others to, to quote Glengarry Glen Ross:  "Go and do likewise, gents.  Go and do likewise."