FREE energy from the sun and the wind! Isn’t that a wonderful idea? And it’s clean too! Yeah, right.
No, it’s not.
So-called free clean energy from the sun and the wind is neither clean nor free. Nor is it produced when the sun does not shine or when the wind does not blow (despite the headlines and the passion with which they are both promoted).
Neither source of electricity is cheap when subject to common sense economics—the cost of the steel, the plastics (yes), the concrete and the energy needed to produce them. Then there is the cost of connecting wind and solar plants to the national grid which is born by utilities like Eskom. Not to mention the cost of their back up petroleum-fuelled generators needed to balance their output. And finally, the fact that their promised output of energy rarely if ever, materializes.
Yes, some wind and sun-generated electricity can be stored in batteries but they are not yet able to perform as well as power stations the world is familiar with – those operating on coal, diesel, gas, and nuclear fuel.
Wind and sun are, we are told, the answer to an existential threat to human survival, the alleged but scientifically unproven and unproveable theory that the world’s climate is heating up to apocalyptic levels.
Ok, ready steady go! Half of those reading this can now go outside, scream blue murder, and run to the Press Council for my daring to express a view they think is akin to religious heresy: the other half can read on for a few salient facts not often aired or written about in the media, and judge for themselves if climate hysteria is justified and the trumpeted solutions are better for the planet.
It should be hammered home that all predictions of climate doom have been made by computers fed historical temperature records than conveniently exclude periods in history that were clearly much warmer than today’s and because the thermometer was not yet invented.
All earlier temperature records (before the thermometer) are guesses or second hand deductions from tree rings or ice cores or whatever else gets thought of: other words, theoretical temperatures. Nevertheless, this mishmash of temperature data is fed into a computer, “adjusted” and used to produce graphs that project expected temperatures into the 22nd century. It is a perfect recipe for getting the future wrong and producing scary headlines to order.
Add to this method of predicting scary future temperatures, the unproven theory that the world is getting bunged up with too much carbon dioxide (that is the invisible stuff that all plants need to survive) and the confident statement that mankind’s guilty habit of keeping itself warm in winter, plus its desire to travel in comfort, and the result is a guilt trip of a power not seen since the Middle Ages and the unreformed Roman Catholic church.
In the process of constructing this Green religion in which belief rather than reason holds sway, some dirty secrets about “clean energy” sources have been brushed under a metaphorical carpet.
In contrast to the hysterical fear of nuclear radiation that has produced stringent rules for dealing with nuclear waste, the by-products of solar panel production have been allowed to go unchecked, largely one suspects because most manufacture takes place in Communist China where loud, theatrical demonstrations have about as much chance of lasting for more than a few seconds than the snowball’s chances of surviving a spell in Hades.
Yet measured against nuclear waste that does erode in toxicity over time, waste produced in photovoltaic panel manufacture lasts FOR EVER, and ever, and ever.
It has been estimated that solar panels generate 300 times more toxic waste than that produced by nuclear power stations when they generate electricity. Try finding that factoid in the main stream media of the western world. None of it is buried in concrete drums is specially selected landfills of impermeable clay. Instead it is allowed to leach from factory to farmland to the water table like so much bath water.
And what you may ask is this toxic solar panel waste? Well it’s pretty filthy, dirty enough to get every environmentalist green with anger and righteous indignation. There is a lot of it too. Solar panel manufacturer produces lots of waste, unlike a nuclear power station than barely manages a ton in a year of operation.
Already, Japan generates 10 000 tons every year. In twenty years, it will be – 800 000 tons. There are no plans to dispose of it safely. But that is nothing compared to the toxic waste generated by China where they not only make solar panels they operate twice as many as the United States. In thirty years’, time China will be producing some 20 million tons.
So much for the quantities of solar panel waste. Now for what it consists of. All those who think all nuclear waste is dangerous, however small, standby for a really shocking fact.
To make solar panels you need sulfuric acid, and phosphine gas. After use they contain lead, chromium and cadmium — all carcinogens. The manufacturing process also emits nitrogen trifluoride. This gas is the king of greenhouse gases. Its presence in the earth’s atmosphere has dramatically increased in recent years.
Surprise! You don’t hear much about it among the green enthusiasts.
Instead, we all are subjected to a steady stream of shock horror headlines, blatant misrepresentation of the science, and lately speeches in the United Nations General Assembly by Swedish teenagers angry with their parents for allegedly destroying their future.
As they say, you could not make it up.
