A longer read this one, but I feel very strongly, that it’s needed.
PDF version for those who want to share or print
Recently a loved one was harangued in a shop by a climate zealot claiming that my loved one was ‘the problem and killing the planet’ because she questioned the narrative.
The person made some bizarre claims that supported her stance, none of which have any basis in scientific fact of course.
How do we counter this ridiculous, childlike, agressive and seemingly programmed behavior?
We could talk about the ‘programming’ and NLP all day, but let’s stick to challenging the narrative.
Here are a few of her claims, albeit at a lower volume and without the hand wringing:
1) 99.9% of scientists agree?
2) Michael Mosley died of climate change!?!?
3) Carbon reduction is paramount for survival.
4) On shore wind and solar is the answer.
5) Onshore will change the climate and make farming better and more productive.
6) Turbines are good for the environment.
7) Meat eating and methane is killing the planet.
8) People like you questioning the narrative are dangerous and killing the planet.
9) We have to follow the narrative, or the planet will die.
10) It’s a good job you haven’t got kids, nice.
11) I can’t talk to a ‘Climate Denier!’
As a parting shot, she shouted, and I quote:
‘I hope you don’t die of climate change!!!!!’
Apart from the aggression, these are bizarre claims, but clearly a position held by a lot of people and until we challenge and break the narrative, we will continue the ever accelerating downward spiral to climate driven totalitarianism.
So, let’s examine each point.
99.9% of Scientists Agree
Simply put, no, they don’t.
The world’s top climate Scientist Prof Judith Curry, the founder the Greenpeace Patrick Moore and (sadly now deceased) top TV botanist Dr David Bellamy are three prime examples of very esteemed scientists that don’t agree for example.
Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace addressing the Global Warming Policy Foundation on October 14th 2015.
The claim of the US Climate Tsar, John Kerry was that 97% of scientists agree, but this a very twisted statistic and also never stated exactly what they ‘agreed’ on.
The truth is that 97% of the funded scientists agree with whoever pays them and 3% don’t, perhaps in order to make it look more realistic and less contrived. From personal experience of academia, I know that in order to keep the grant money coming in and, thus the wages and mortgages, book deals, after dinner speaking appointments, paid endorsements, etc, etc, you have to tow the line and agree and support the narrative or you will not get funded.
I also know that the majority of science graduates don’t work in science, for that very reason.
The culture of the academic world is very much a left of center one that supports the narrative unquestionably as its very financial existence depends on pleasing government.
Below is the World Climate Declaration, a document going strongly against the narrative supported by over 1,900 leading scientists that disagree. These include the founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore and two Nobel Laureates.
The World Climate Declaration website link
https://clintel.org/
The Global Warming Policy Foundation website link, lots of very well researched and well written, peer reviewed scientific papers there, founded by Lord Nigel Lawson of all people and pro CO2 emission reduction but wanting a rigorous debate rather than an all-out blind rush to ‘renewable’ energy at any cost.
https://www.thegwpf.org/
The International Climate Science Coalition Canada website link, lots of good research here as well, another project involving Patrick Moore.
https://www.icsc-canada.com/
A few more valuable research sites that also call out the current narrative and are supported by very eminent scientists.
https://stopnetzero.org/
A very well researched Sub Stack that holds some very alarming statistics:
Michael Mosley died of Climate change
Very strange claim this, but it is one she made, and we need to address it.
The BBC (I know), says he fell off a cliff while taking a walk on holiday.
To claim he died of climate change is bizarre, how you would die of climate change is a question in itself.
Even if ‘global warming’ made his holiday island too hot to exert yourself then as a doctor he should have known this and not overly exerted himself, mad dogs and Englishmen and all that.
Weird but a clear example of how far those consuming mainstream media have moved away from rational thought.
I fear that the only proper reaction to such claims is raucous laughter.
Carbon reduction is paramount for survival.
I reference my post on atmospheric chemistry but in short:
1) Carbon is what we are made out of.
2) Carbon Dioxide is a compound of Carbon and Oxygen and vital to all life.
3) Carbon dioxide is what all vegetables and fruit effectively eat.
4) No CO2 = no food for anyone, even vegans.
5) Commercial salad growers deliberately increase CO2 in their greenhouses 5 times over. The farm workers still work in the greenhouses and the crop yields are much increased.
6) A couple of minor technical points that we don’t even need to consider of course:
a. CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere, 400 parts per million.
b. We breathe in 0.04% CO2 but we breathe out 4% CO2, as people we are CO2 amplifiers, ban breathing to save the planet!
One last point on this, it is often claimed that CO2 levels are much higher than they were in pre-industrials days.
I would be interested to know how accurate the instruments were that measured the CO2 level in 1750 or even if they did measure it?
Good enough to measure 0.04%, I doubt it?
To put that in context 0.04% is equivalent to finding a pint of lager in 999,600 pints of lemonade that make up over 450 tonnes of shandy. Not easy today never mind several hundred years ago.
As you will see on the videos shared earlier on this ‘thought shower’ (trust me that is a real term, I laughed out loud when it was used in a business meeting and now use it in a satirical way), as well as the World Climate Declaration website, that there is also no empirical evidence that increasing atmospheric CO2 raises global mean temperature. As a point of order there is also no agreed or practical way of actually measuring global mean temperature either.
There is solid evidence that increasing temperatures releases captured CO2 from peat bogs and sea water, etc. this is simple school chemistry, there is a substantial lag between the two events though, several hundred years in fact. Planet warms, CO2 increases, plant life increases, humidity increases, planet warms further, etc..
Climate change is a natural cycle this island has enjoyed since the retreat of the ice 10-12,000 years ago and one that has been on going as long as we have had an atmosphere. It will only end when the sun finally burns away our atmosphere in a few billion years. Again, part of the natural cycle and life of a star and its solar system.
On shore wind and solar is the answer.
A confused claim this one in my mind.
So called ‘renewables’ have a place, my own home runs off grid using solar panels. However, the type of ‘renewable’ used, its scale and the route for recycling at the end of its working life has to be taken into account, cradle to grave environmental impact must be considered.
There are also a number of unavoidable issues/facts facing the national grid that also have to be talked about, sorry inconvenient physics again.
1) The grid and our homes run on AC, Alternating Current, ‘Renewables’ are DC, Direct Current. These two electrical systems are not compatible, current inversion is required.
2) The grid has a base load requirement to run vital equipment in hospitals, mains gas and water pumps, sewer pumps, telecommunications, etc. and also underground infrastructure such as road and rail tunnels have sump pumps, street lamps need to run in the dark, and even when there is no wind, etc.. There will always be a fairly substantial base load requirement. Battery storage is proposed but also DC and batteries hate sudden large loads.
3) High voltage wires, such as the ones you see hanging off the huge pylons, have an electrical inertia to them making it very difficult to get the electricity moving in the first place due to resistance. Consider how much strength is needed to start pushing a car compared to keeping it moving. Inertia. This piece of physics puts further emphasis on needing a controllable and powerful AC base load. We can not achieve this with wind and solar alone.
Putting the physics aside, as it is rather uncomfortable and inconvenient, let us move on to where we put ‘renewables’ and the scale of the schemes.
I discuss Greenfield vs Brownfield site locations in my blog ‘Go Brown’ for a more detailed summary.
But in short:
How can we justify building huge ‘renewable’ energy parks on farmland we need for food production and irreplaceable, remote wilderness when huge amounts of brownfield development areas are not fully utilized first?
How can we justify cutting down trees and hedges, destroying habitats and wildlife to save the planet, what is it we are saving exactly?
One last comment here on recycling, the BBC (I know, again) estimate that by 2050 there will be 43,000,000 tonnes of used turbine blades with no recycling route.
To put that into perspective that is the weight of over 20,000,000 Range Rovers!
Onshore wind will change the climate and make farming better and more productive.
That is a very strange claim as we have to ask two questions here:
1) If wind turbines can change the climate, how exactly? We do know from studying the aerodynamics around wind parks that large parks slow down the wind and thus stall rain clouds and storm systems from moving through at natural speeds, thus increasing cloud cover and rain fall and reducing direct sun, this can and has been measured. So just what we need in Wales, more cloud and rain and less sun. Good for artic duck farmers, but not so good for crops.
2) With all the turbines in place and the access roads and foundations, not to mention the falling debris and ice exclusion zones, where will the farmers farm? Reducing the available land doesn’t sound better for farming to me. (yes debris exclusion zones are a real concern, turbines shed microplastics from wearing wing leading edges, and in cold weather shed chunks of ice from great height, very dangerous to be under that)
3) Reducing available atmospheric CO2 is detrimental to plant growth, but let’s not mention that.
Turbines are good for the environment.
I could write a huge blog on this, and no doubt will in the future.
This is a very dodgy claim indeed.
The, 230m tall turbines proposed by Galileo each use:
· Over 50 tonnes of plastic and steel composites per blade, there are three and there is no recycling route for what is, effectively, a consumable part. Think of it as the tyres on your car slowly wearing out.
· Over 400 tonnes of structural steel in the tower and nacelle.
· Over 300 liters of highly toxic gearbox oil (yes, oil) suspended 500 feet up in the air.
· 3,000-4,000 tonnes of steel reinforced concrete in the foundations, depending on ground conditions.
· Permanent access roads in and power infrastructure out.
For whatever wildlife survives the construction phase, please consider that a 100m radius circle has a circumference of 628.4m. this means that for every rotation of the turbine each blade tip has travelled 628.4m, over 2,000 feet.
At 1 RPM (Revolution Per Minute) this equates to a tip speed of 37.7kph. Anyone who has ridden a motorcycle through a hailstorm can testify as how damaging even that speed can be.
Large wind turbines rotate at about 15-25 RPM, 15 RPM gives us a blade tip speed of 565kph, 353mph, 25 RPM an amazing 589mph!!!!!!
Aircraft speed, no bird is quick enough to avoid that. For reference a 0.22 hunting rifle bullet flies at about 1,000 mph.
On top of this we also have to consider:
· Noise, large turbines generate over 100dB of noise. A petrol lawn mower is about 90dB.
· 15-25 RPM rotations of heavy machines produce huge subsonic noises that we can not hear, but that have a huge effect on the ground and wildlife.
· Shadow, 230m tall structures cast considerable shadows. Anyone living South of a 230m turbine will be in shadow for at least some of the day.
· Flicker, Rotating structure will create rotating shadows, i.e. stroboscopic flicker, with 3 blades rotating at 25 RPM with will be at about 1.25 Hz. Flicker below 200 Hz is human perceptible and results in eye strain and headaches in the short term and can be very harmful for long term exposure. This will occur when the sun is lower the sky so most likely for only 10 months of the year.
· Navigation lights, 230m tall structures at on top of 400m tall mountains require nighttime and bad weather navigation lighting for low flying aircraft such as light aircraft, air ambulances, military, etc. This will be on during the hours of darkness or in low visibility weather. Goodbye dark skies Wales and goodbye a good night’s sleep for the locals.
· 5G communication networks, Each turbine will contain a 5G hub allowing communications between them and from the park to the engineering team responsible for maintenance and the team responsible for controlling output and demand. These hubs will need to be very powerful as there is no network locally to link to. There are many papers and much research on the harms posed by the 5G network and this will no doubt for the basis of another blog but I do point to you to the work of Barry Trower in this field.
I think Barry Trower deserves a whole blog so I will return later with that but there are lot of YouTube videos to watch.
So, in short:
No!
large Onshore wind turbines are not good for the environment!
Meat eating and methane is killing the planet.
Methane is 0.00017% of the atmosphere.
The NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) in the USA states that the maximum safe methane concentration for workers in a 8 hour period is 0.1%. We are a factor of 588 away from that.
Methane is a greenhouse gas, but is at such low concentrations that is really is not important.
Cow flatulence is not killing the planet.
People like you questioning the narrative are dangerous and killing the planet.
We have to follow the narrative, or the planet will die.
I lumped these two together as they are essentially the same thing and probably the most dangerous of all the statements made.
Essentially, they are saying ‘I’m a good girl doing what I am told, and you are a bad girl for breaking the rules, you will get us all into trouble!’
We are not at school anymore.
You can, and indeed should, ask questions.
The unquestioning, irrational following of a narrative compares to those people brainwashed by a cult and is very dangerous. We must apply critical thinking and abandon blind belief.
I hear the term ‘I believe the science’ used, always gets me going that does.
You don’t ‘believe’ science or ‘trust’ science, you question it, science is never settled and finished, our understanding is a fluid thing. If you want to ‘believe’ then it’s time to go to church, that is where faith will help you, but science is about asking, why and how?
As discussed in this blog blindly following the narrative without asking a few simple questions will result in a very dystopian future with depleted environments, habitat loss, extreme control and poverty, and eventually starvation.
All in the name of net zero.
It’s a good job you haven’t got kids, nice.
Just rude really, what can you say to that. It is a further demonstration of how far away from logic and critical thinking some people have got.
The temptation is to return the insult, but it will fall on deaf ears or result in you being some sort of ‘ist’ I am afraid.
I can’t talk to a ‘Climate Denier!’
You can easily talk to this:
1) How can you deny ‘Climate?’ What an absurd thing to say.
2) The ‘Climate’ is changing, it always has and always will. It is part of the natural cycle of things.
3) About the year 200 the Romans grew grapes and exported wine to Rome from Hadrian’s wall, this would require a climate about 5°C warmer that today. True story, Rome was too warm and dry at the time to produce its own wine from that particular grape (very detailed Roman records remain to tell us this).
4) The medieval warm period from about 950 to 1250 saw a period much warmer than today when civilization grew and empires expanded.
5) It was followed a few hundred years later by the little ice age from about 1500 to 1700 where temperatures were much cooler than today. During this period we had war, famine and plagues of course.
6) The early Victorians held ice fairs on the frozen river Thames. This is why Christmas cards are all snowy and icey.
7) Let’s not talk about the ices ages though, we had to warm up from the last one, quite a lot to melt the ice sitting on most of the UK and sea levels rose hundreds of feet swallowing up Doggerland and thus making the UK an island. There were no Range Rovers then so we must ignore that.
‘It’s a cycle, a natural cycle.’
Do people and industry contribute and accelerate the cycle?
Logically, of course we do but even the Climate Zealots tell us that our contribution to CO2 levels is 3%.
As we discussed earlier CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere.
3% of 0.04% is 0.0012%
It’s important that we don’t pollute our fish tank, and that we live responsible lives, but the current narrative has twisted the whys and hows to a grotesque level, and Net Zero is actually damaging to the earth and those living on it.
So why does climate fluctuate?
Let’s first talk about solar cycles, energy input to the planet vs our industrial output.
www.universetoday.com tells a few interesting facts:
Our planet is orbiting the sun at 66,615 mph
The sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way at 536,865 mph
Wikipedia tells us that the 174PW of energy are sent to Earth each year by the sun and that the clouds reflect about 30% of that.
These means that we absorb about 122PW
A Petawatt is 1x1012 KW
Or 1,000,000,000,000 KW
Thus, the energy received from the sun:
122,000,000,000,000 KW
Huge, inconceivable amounts of energy.
Total world energy consumption a year is 19.6 TW, according to our friend Wikipedia.
Wikipedia also tells us that the total power generation on earth is 19.6x109 KW.
So that’s
122x1012 KW from the sun vs 19.6x109 KW from humans.
122,000,000,000,000 KW vs 19,600,000,000 KW
The sun sends us more than 6,200 times as much energy as our civilisation uses.
An often-stated fact tells us that the sun sends us more energy in 1 hour that the entire planet uses in a whole year
I wonder what warms the planet?
Because of all this rapid movement of our solar system and within it, there are two major effects happening, mostly down to gravity:
Image above from NASA.
Our protective Magnetosphere gets pulled around by the other planets, the sun, distant large objects like other galaxies, black holes, etc.
The Magnetosphere helps protect us from the sun’s radiation and fluctuations in its intensity and position will of course allow small and larger amounts of solar radiation to reach earth atmosphere.
Given the colossal amount of energy coming from the sun these fluctuations only need to be minuscule in percentage terms make a large impact that affects global weather.
Secondly looking at the sun itself, it is also getting pulled around by other celestial objects and thus being squeezed a squished about resulting in a massive fluctuation in its activity, sunspots, mass coronal ejections and so on. It is a huge ball of gas that is on fire after all and anyone who has every sat by a campfire can see it is very volatile.
The work of people like Ben Davidson on his you tube channel and website ‘suspicious observers’ talks in great detail about the solar cycle and its effect on earths weather and climate.
https://suspicious0bservers.org/
Data from NASA
The chart above shows observations of past sunspot activity and clearly corelates to the mini ice age during the Mauder Minimum and the more recent increase in activity since 1900.
In short there are huge forces at work outside of our planet, most working on a cycle as we hurtle through space at over 500,000 mph. We warm, we cool, it should happen.
As a civilisation we have a responsibility to look after the planet and not pollute it, but we don’t have the power to massively influence climate unless we deliberately try to do so, and that is a whole other blog and new tin foil hat will be required for that.
‘I hope you don’t die of climate change!!!!!’
There is not really anything you can say to this other than thank you and its extremely unlikely.
Stay lucky
Keep asking questions
the ‘science’ is never settled
Try not to die from climate change!
Sorry to hear that Josie had to go through a verbally abusive attack from a woman who had obviously been entirely sucked in by the current widely regurgitated narrative around climate change and renewables.
Fortunately, you have been able to turn this nasty experience into something constructive and which clearly illustrates the necessity for all of us to ask questions and do research before we formulate our own opinions in this regard, so very well done!
I only hope that through exposing the inaccuracies of the verbal diarrhoea that emanated from that woman's mouth, you will encourage more people to investigate the propaganda being pumped out by the onshore renewables lobbyists.
This is just what is needed, Jason. Challenging the propaganda by taking it apart and showing a scientific disproof of each component part. I'm sorry that Josie had to experience the stupid woman's effusion, but it was too good an opportunity for you to miss. Very well done! More power to your elbow! Jeremy.