Hi Jennifer,
As you probably know, we have been annoying lots of people by daring to practice journalism and ask difficult questions of the environmental establishment. We’ve rounded up for you some of the highlights of the last few months.
The third installment of our Hypocrites series – with a look at Prince Charles’s eco-Hypocrisy as he jet sets across the world telling us to live with less – attracted a lot of publicity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhpNJAKq7dE&utm_source=NOT+EVIL+ALL+CONTACTS&utm_campaign=cb79456fee-Josh+Fox+Q+%26+A+E-blast+3&utm_medium=email
The UK Independent reported on it overseas, and closer to home, it was picked up by blogs and media including the The Washington Post and Fox News.
Then, Phelim questioned Josh Fox on the accuracy of his Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland, that claims drilling for gas with fracking method makes tap water flammable. Fox, who admitted leaving out facts, he deemed “not relevant”, got so upset about us posting online a video from the Q&A, that he got his lawyers to pull it down, first from YouTube, then from Vimeo. We don’t like inaccurate documentaries and dislike censorship even more, so we created our own website to host the video, where people can see what this environmental filmmaker was trying to hide from them.
http://fightgaslandcensorship.com/?utm_source=NOT+EVIL+ALL+CONTACTS&utm_campaign=cb79456fee-Josh+Fox+Q+%26+A+E-blast+3&utm_medium=email
The whole debacle went viral and has been featured on a series of programs and blogs including HotAir, Fox Business, the Lars Larsen Show and The G Gordon Liddy Show.
Ann was also busy, exposing the myth and dangers of sustainability at campuses in Chicago and South Carolina. On three separate occasions, she also spoke to students from across the US who gathered in Santa Barbara.
She spoke at the Reagan Ranch: at the Clare Booth Luce’s Western Women Summit and again for the Young America’s Foundation.
She also spoke twice at the Right Online conference in Milwaukee, where she exposed the new threat to America – the CINO – or Conservative In Name Only. Twitter was buzzing as she was speaking, including: “If you’re not following @annmcelhinney you may as well close your twitter account” (hint, hint).
The leader of the Palm Springs Tea Party, where she spoke said: “Ann McElhinney is truly a “one-of-a-kind” speaker. She is passionate, committed, knowledgeable, informative, and entertaining. From the very first words out of her mouth (in that endearing Irish brogue) nonstop to the very last word, the audience is totally engaged.”
And then Phelim and Ann spoke at the American Freedom Alliance conference at UCLA in California.
Now, these are momentous times for Irish people such as ourselves. Last month the Queen of England, became the first British monarch to visit Ireland in almost a century (there has been a bit of history between the UK and Ireland over the years.)
So it was probably this spirit of reconciliation that prompted British journalist James Dellingpole to write such nice things about Phelim.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100094147/frogs-scorpions-greens-lies/?utm_source=NOT+EVIL+ALL+CONTACTS&utm_campaign=cb79456fee-Josh+Fox+Q+%26+A+E-blast+3&utm_medium=email
James was visiting LA recently to promote his excellent book Watermellons – The Green Movements True Colours and so in keeping with the spirit of the times we invited him to our little piece of Ireland.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=211722012202491&set=a.208982849143074.48148.208180129223346&type=1&theater&utm_source=NOT+EVIL+ALL+CONTACTS&utm_campaign=cb79456fee-Josh+Fox+Q+%26+A+E-blast+3&utm_medium=email
Best,
Phelim and Ann
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The environmental establishment stands for waste. In every area, from land clearing to fire to energy to water, they promote waste. Conservation can only be practiced where all pious green dogmas and the cant words that go with them are rejected.
Such notions as sustainability, organics, renewables etc are the barbarous reversions typical of closed, authoritarian societies where snobs and thugs club together against the productive middle classes.
Heaping ridicule on the spokespeople for this destructive cant is absolutely necessary. One cannot pile enough shame on the high living finger waggers with their multiple battery-laden cars and multiple battery-laden homes.
J’accuse. I say that the frail and elderly are afraid to heat a room this winter, and I lay the blame for that on our green establishment, the commissars in their comfortable dachas. People will say it’s far more complex than that. It’s not.
Widespread (not redistributed) wealth in a chaotically capitalist society fueled by cheap coal power will take the pressure off land and resources. Population pressure will be eased by a dominant middle class, the only effective population control being the kindest one. (Any society or economy that can be “modeled” is, of course, a guaranteed failure.)
People who can afford to straighten their kids’ teeth can and will want to conserve, because conservation doesn’t happen in the kind of society the Left and Greens are leading us to. Wind turbines, hot burns, ploughing up prime land for fast coal-export cash…these monstrosities are just a foretaste of the wreckage our dogma driven elites will bring about.
I’m past caring if Ann and Phelim are completely accurate. They’re heaping the ridicule where it needs to be heaped, and that’s what’s needed now.
‘I say that the frail and elderly are afraid to heat a room this winter’….
Fuel poverty had been killing off the old people in the UK at an alarming rate, until the authorities decided to do something about it.
Ask them why, when an off-grid concentrated solar PV plant at Windorah costs $109,000 per Kw and $4,000 per avoided ton of CO2 do we persist with the madness of enormous solar subsidies.
Some results of getting carried away with environmental establishment recommendations:
http://webecoist.com/2009/05/04/10-abandoned-renewable-energy-plants/
The consequence of EE madness, unintended or otherwise, is that 1 ton of CO2 produced onshore by local jobs gets transferred into 2 tons produced offshore c/w lost jobs.
The Greens obviously want our steel industry to move out. How on earth do they calculate that will reduce ACO2?
Jennifer,
I don’t know if you read Pielke Jr, but knew you would be interested in this parallel in the US to the Wivenhoe management questions:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/07/american-wivenhoe.html
From comments by
Ted Rado:
at http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2011/07/more-wind-craziness.html
”
Bottom line: Every alternative energy scheme I have looked at is absurd once you run the numbers rather than just say “Oh, we can use hydro or compressed air storage, molten salt, or whatever”. While anything is theoretically possible, very few are engineering-wise or economically doable. Those pushing some energy scheme need to run a few calcs before becoming too enamored of their idea. Meanwhile, our super-efficient USG marches on, pushing our tax dollare out the door in support of schemes which any engineer could show to be nonsense in an afternoon. Government money is corrupting us all. They should get out of the way and let normal technical and economic forces lead the way. Whether or not we ahall ever come up with a viable alternative energy scheme remains to be seen, but wasting our resources chasing idiot projects is not the way to find out. Some engineering studiea BEFORE charging off Don Quixote- style would be a blessing indeed.
P.S. I am sure someone can come up with somewhat differsnt numbers, depending on location, etc., but please spare me “but the Spaniards are doing it, so it must be a good idea”.”
The EE can make that ABC [Asian Brown Cloud] do anything they want, too.
Caused by coal burning and producing huge amounts of CO2, it is now being blamed for lack of warming.
What a travesty!
“but the Spaniards are doing it, so it must be a good idea”.
Yeah, Spain’s a great example. Their most efficient solar energy plant delivers at $33 per average watt. Several times higher than the cost of wind, geo or nuclear.
http://theenergycollective.com/nathan-wilson/58791/20mw-gemasolar-plant-elegant-pricey
Link to the Asian Brown Cloud:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/04/an-explanation-for-lack-of-warming-since-1998/
But the EE have no sense of humour:
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/
Here is the religion defending itself. Thousands of Labour and media luminaries await any drop of wisdom dribbling from the chin of Bob Carr, for a start.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3216474.htm
spangled,
it’s going to be a difficult thing to make something like this sink in to those green followers.
People will see an article like this and think that a base load requirement can actually be filled by a concentrating solar power plant.
Again there is emphasis on the wrong thing, even though they think it might be a pertinent fact, that cost of $33 per Watt delivered. It is immensely high, but an even more important thing is missed because journalists reporting on something like this have no concept of the engineering aspects that are indeed more important.
What needs to be placed into perspective is not the up front Nameplate Capacity (NP), the supposed 19MW, but the power actually delivered to the grid, in this case 110GWH per year.
So, just the one plant I use for conformity sake, Bayswater actually is delivering 17.500 GWH per year.
So at NP solar 19MW vs Bayswater 2640MW you might think you’ll only need 140 of these plants to replace just that one Bayswater.
However, actual power delivered Solar 110GWH vs Bayswater 17,500GWH, you will need 160 of them.
See the difference.
Now on a comparison of $33 per watt, the actual cost may seem nebulous.
160 plants at that $US419 Million, probably $500 million in Oz, you’re looking at $80 Billion.
Now see the real perspective, and that’s just for Bayswater alone.
The problem is the weight of the generator itself.
The ones at Bayswater weigh 1342 tons.
There are now 1000MW generators that weigh this same amount.
Ever wondered why they don’t just hook up one of those generators to a solar plant.
A generator of that weight requires a (very) large three stage turbine to drive that weight, and a monstrously huge amount of high pressure high temperature steam to turn that over at 3000RPM, or 50 times a second.
A solar plant cannot, and never will be able to generate that amount of steam.
That 1000MW generator would not even begin to move, ever.
The best they can currently manage is 50MW for around 18 hours max with molten salts diversion.
They hope to get to 100MW in five to seven years, but the total of 1000MW is not even (theoretically) possible, ever.
The possibility of solar ever being able to fill a base load requirement is not feasible, either in engineering terms or more importantly in economic terms.
The fallacy that as more come on line, the cheaper they will get is in fact just that, a fallacy, because that immense construction cost needs to be recovered over the life of the plant, still barely 25 years compared to Bayswater’s 50 to 75 years.
Again, I apologise for taking so much space here.
Tony.
Tony,
I’m certain our chilly future will be littered with many of these sorts of disasters.
Reason is not an EE trait:
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/lord-monckton-hung-up-on-in-heated-interview-with-abc-radio/story-e6frfku9-1226089614992
More EE logic. California long term cooling trend evidence of AGW:
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/07/06/californias-long-term-cooling-trend-cited-as-evidence-for-global-warming/
Tony, why apologise? A few inches of space on a webpage is probably less of an extravagance than basing a developed economy on solar and wind energy.
I’ve been trying to think of historical parallels for a society legislating its own ruin for mysterious reasons. Hard task. I’m not talking about complex decline, mass panics or major blunders. It’s about wilful self-harm on a nationwide scale with no possible advantage in sight. Clearly, there is no real fear of climate change or scarcity of resources, since all the prominent campaigners lead lavish, energy-intense lifestyles. It’s their trademark. And no rising seal level can stop that waterfront purchase!
Which leads me to think that this is exclusively about money, as you’ve said before. It can’t be about reducing dependence on “fossil fuels”, “dirty coal” etc. Clearly, if the feeble and primitive devices postulated as alternatives cannot even be used to manufacture more feeble and primitive devices, coal’s future is secure. Like most sceptics, I’m actually very interested in alternatives, which is why I’m not at all interested in the decrepit pea-shooter technologies of wind and solar.
I lack the mentality to believe in global conspiracies by the likes of Soros and Maurice Strong. Like Gore, they are empty people, and that endows them with a special negative energy which may seem like brilliance, but isn’t. Maybe, considering Brown and Gillard, we are looking at what happens when empty people turn to the only things that entertain empty people after their idealism is exhausted by real experience: the purposeless heaping of money and the impoverishment of those to whom they feel inferior. Maybe it’s as simple and pathetic as that.
Robert.
I wasn’t one for global conspiracies either and in fact said the following in a recent post elsewhere:
“There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. When a band-wagon starts rolling and there’s money to be made and agendas or beliefs to be pushed and advanced, the carpet-baggers will come running!”
However, I found http://green-agenda.com/index.html which has a comprehensive history of the Club of Rome together with many worthwhile articles and links to information on other relevant organisations.
It’s also an excellent resource for tracking down quotes by various “players”. I’ve listed a few examples below. Have a browse round the site and like me, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of food for thought.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and Executive Officer for Reform in the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations.
(Strong was instrumental in setting up the UNIPCC)
“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
(Note:Tim Wirth organised the appearance of James Hansen before the US Senate in 1988 and admitted he chose the predicted hottest day of the month and had opened all the windows of the meeting room the night before so the air conditioning would not work!)
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
– Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.”
– Dr David Frame,
climate modeler, Oxford University
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
– Al Gore,
Climate Change activist
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It doesn’t matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson,
co-founder of Greenpeace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to
frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
Robert,
If there was as great a fear as they tell us there is, then they would be just closing those plants down immediately, full stop. Just shut them down.
They KNOW that would be absolute political suicide.
So, they postulate this ridiculous Tax that they tell us will drive down emissions.
It cannot, and will not, because people will always require electricity, and with 60 to 65% of every watt of power being generated required absolutely, 24/7/365, the ONLY way they can actually get that power is from large scale coal fired power.
Those existing plants will just keep humming along as they always have without changing.
The only change will be that now they will be giving the Government hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
Governments have only one fear. That fear is that an large scale electricity provider will find that after counting the beans, it’s cheaper to close the (now worthless and unsellable) plant than pay the Tax.
That’s why this Carbon Tax has in place measures to provide money to plants in difficulties, proving again how fair dinkum they are about reducing emissions. They even call it security of power delivery. How insane is that. Forcing a tax on them to lower emissions and then paying them to stay in operation.
Incidentally, of those 500 top emitters who will be paying. 15 of the very top 20 are electrical power providers.
Don’t ever try telling me this is about the environment.
It IS just about the money.
Tony.
Robert,
Beautifully put. Send it to The Age, just concise enough that it may get a run. Always worth a try.
Any suggestions for these EEs?
http://suggest.getup.org.au/forums/60819-getup-campaign-suggestions
Tony
As I noted lo! these many moons ago – this is an income tax surcharge on higher income earners, draped in a pious green cloak
Here’s a question for the environmental establishment: Why do global warming models ignore the 20 terawatts of energy generated in the Earth’s core that passes through the Earth’s surface due to breakdown of transuranic elements, and roughly the same amount is emitted as residual heat from the planet’s original coalescence?
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/earth-still-retains-much-of-its-.html
A different kind of ‘missing heat’ problem, one might say.