In the recent debate among Democrat presidential candidates, global warming, and the proposed actions proposed in response to it, was a major topic. However, the prevailing orthodoxy among left-wing politicians, pundits, and educational bureaucrats, about man-made global warming is being challenged.
The facts opposing the theory are substantial.
- Long before the industrial revolution, Earth had periods when it experienced a warming trend, some more so than the current era.
- During the latest period of global warming, other planets in the solar system, quite removed from human activity, also displayed some warming.
- In the past 15 years, it appears that global warming has stopped.
- The ice cover, when measured on a planetary wide scale, does not appear to be significantly receding.
- Despite President Obama’s contention that the concept is “settled science,” vast numbers of scientists disagree.
- Astronomers specializing in the Sun assert that solar activity is the engine of planetary temperatures, not human activity.
- Scandals have erupted over various institutions falsifying data to make claims of global warming seem more genuine.
- Some scientists even contend that global warming, if it did occur, could do more to help than harm the environment.
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Former Governor O’Malley focused heavily during the Democrat debate on his proposal for a carbon-free energy deadline of 2050. Is that goal, whether necessary or not, attainable? We reviewed available facts about the affordability, practicality, viability, and potential side effects of eliminating carbon-based energy.
The United States currently obtains energy from a variety of means. According to the Energy Information Administration In 2014, the United States generated about 4,093 billion kilowatthours of electricity. About 67% of the electricity generated was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum). Major energy sources and percent share of total U.S. electricity generation in 2014 were:
- Coal = 39%
- Natural gas = 27%
- Nuclear = 19%
- Hydropower = 6%
- Other renewables = 7%
- Biomass = 1.7%
- Geothermal = 0.4%
- Solar = 0.4%
- Wind = 4.4%
- Petroleum = 1%
- Other gases < 1%
While the pollution caused by carbon-based energy is frequently discussed, other forms of energy production have their own drawbacks. Opposition to nuclear power is well-publicized, but wind and solar pose daunting problems, as well.
The Wildlife Society Bulletin estimates that 888,000 bat and 573,000 bird fatalities/year (including 83,000 raptor fatalities) at 51,630 megawatt (MW) of installed wind-energy capacity occurred in the United States in 2012.
According to the Brookings Institute, “Adding up the net energy cost and the net capacity cost of the five low-carbon alternatives, far and away the most expensive is solar. It costs almost 19 cents more per KWH than power from the coal or gas plants that it displaces. Wind power is the second most expensive. It costs nearly 6 cents more per KWH.
“To place these additional costs in context, the average cost of electricity to U.S. consumers in 2012 was 9.84 cents per KWH, including the cost of transmission and distribution of electricity. This means a new wind plant could at least cost 50 percent more per KWH to produce electricity, and a new solar plant at least 200 percent more per KWH, than using coal and gas technologies.”
The Energy Reality Project describes the challenges that would be encountered in moving to more emphasis on solar and wind: to generate America’s baseload electric power with a 50 / 50 mix of wind and solar farmsit would take a sufficient amount of land to cover land area totaling the size of Indiana. It would cost over $18 Trillion with Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) farms in the southwest deserts, on parcels of land totaling the area of West Virginia.
“Tad W. Patzek, PhD, Chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin, and David Pimentel, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University stated … in Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences: “We want to be very clear: solar cells, wind turbines, and biomass-for-energy plantations can never replace even a small fraction of the highly reliable, 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year, nuclear, fossil, and hydroelectric power stations. Claims to the contrary are popular, but irresponsible…”