4.7 Wouldn't Electric Cars, Wind Turbines and Solar Panels be Better for the Environment?
IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, estimates that there will be twice as many tons of worn-out solar panels by 2050 as there are of all today’s plastic waste. Solar panels are hard to recycle which is why they wind up in landfills where lead and carcinogenic cadmium leach out of them when it rains. If lead gets into drinking water and children drink it, it can affect their brains so that they have trouble learning, it can make it harder for them to hear and it can slow down their growth.
Companies that install solar panels have called me saying that if they install solar panels on my roof that will save me electricity. The last one that called to see if it was feasible asked me if there were any trees in the way. That brings up a big disadvantage of solar it competes with trees for sunlight, you have to kill trees to get solar energy. Another problem with solar panels is that they can only collect significant amounts of energy during the daytime when the sun is shining, if you want to use the energy at night you have to store it in batteries which are expensive and can cause fires. The companies that call me tell me that they'll install the panels for free but that's because the government pays them to do so and we have to pay those expenses with taxes. Once the batteries stop working the homeowner (me) is responsible to replace them and that is very expensive. If solar is combined with coal energy or other sources of energy so that batteries are not needed, it's still expensive, just not as expensive.
There is another way to use solar energy which doesn't require solar panels, which is to focus light onto water towers. The heat generated causes build up of steam which turns generators and generates electric power. It requires fossil fuel to build these and to get the water hot enough every morning. This is discussed in the clip below from Michael Moores documentary Planet of the Humans. The video in this clip starts out black but it comes on after 13 seconds.
An alternative to using the sun is using the wind for energy. Wind turbine blades are massive.
Their blades are designed to withstand hurricane force winds. What happens when they've lived out their useful life and have to be disposed of? They are very hard to recycle because they were built to last and to be so strong. So they pile up in landfills. The problem is there aren't enough landfills. So some are sent to landfills in Africa. One problem with that is that they are made of materials such as Bisphenol A that has been reported to be toxic and can leach into the landfills. In fact normal wear and tear of the wind on the turbine blades cause peeling off of small particles that fall into the ocean. Another problem is although the blades are designed to withstand hurricane force winds they don't always do that. On July 13, 2024 a massive blade from a wind turbine fell into Nantucket sound forcing the closure of miles of ocean beaches because of shards of fiberglass and other debris washing onto the beaches. The blade didn't fall off during a hurricane in fact the weather wasn't bad when it did.
The magnets in wind turbine generators are made from neodymium and dysprosium, rare earth minerals mined almost exclusively in China, which controls 95 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth minerals. The processing of which has covered whole tracts of China with fields of toxic waste and giant toxic lakes. Rare earth minerals for batteries are also mined in the United States. One byproduct is radioactive waste as is discussed in the clip below.
Wind turbines alter the local climate. There is growing evidence that they lead to drought. There is evidence that wind turbines increase night time temperatures. It has been reported that noise from wind turbines can lead to such symptoms as dizziness, nausea, the sensation of ear pressure, tinnitus, hearing loss, sleeping disorders, headache and other symptoms. People have had to leave their homes because they couldn't sleep because of the noise from wind turbines.
Wind turbines and solar farms displace plants and wildlife. Wind turbines kill birds that fly into the blades. In fact Jim Steele, biologist and director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Office, told The Epoch Times that about one million birds and one million bats are killed by wind farms every year. Wind turbines offshore probably worries me even more because I’ve watched these massive migrations where more than 300,000 birds migrated by in less than half an hour near Pacifica, California,” Mr. Steele said, referencing the small coastal town near San Francisco. As many birds traverse the California coast on annual migratory routes, experts fear the new installations will wreak havoc on their populations.
Power lines connecting wind farm installations to power grids are also responsible for significant bird deaths due to electrocution, according to experts. There is construction of wind turbines in the ocean and whales are washing up dead on beaches in NJ and Long Island.
If an industry that wasn't green did this they would be penalized heavily as discussed in the video below. There is a craziness that takes over when people think they are saving the planet by going green. Reality is ignored.
Offshore wind farms affect the water currents. Modeling predicts that these wind farms result in less oxygen getting into the water which will hurt marine wildlife.
Wind turbines take up a lot of land. In the video below (also from the documentary, Planet of the Humans) people from Vermont express concern about the removal of a mountain top so that giant solar wind turbines can be installed.
Scotland has cut down about 16 million trees to make way for wind turbines.
Those 16 million trees produced a lot of oxygen that we need to breath. No one seems to worry about that. Climate madness is causing people to kill trees to build wind turbines that kill birds and bats in order to save the planet. Aren't birds and bats and trees part of the planet?
I haven't seen anyone mention this but it makes sense that wind farms will reduce the flow of wind. On a hot summer day that nice summer breeze that cooled you down might be gone because of wind farms and you might have to turn on a power guzzling air conditioner to cool off. To read more about wind turbine problems click here.
The Biden administration and Congress in 2023 plan immense offshore wind farms near Rhode Island and Massachusetts. J. William Middendorf, former Secretary of the Navy warned that he developments “will destroy the ocean habitat, decimate marine animal populations, cripple ocean-dependent industries, and obliterate the quality of life that proximity to the ocean gives residents and visitors. “They will also enrich foreign national energy companies at the expense of American taxpayers and jeopardize national security, military operations, and maritime safety,” Middendorf added. “Offshore wind complexes will raise energy costs and create an enormous environmental liability that will endure until the last turbine falls — all without ever reducing our carbon emissions or taking a single fossil fuel plant offline.”
How did Middendorf know that it wouldn't reduce carbon emissions? The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) assessed that the wind turbines will have “no measurable influence on climate change.” The entire Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board quit en masse to protest the 84-turbine Sunrise Wind project. They wrote that "We will not allow our names to be connected in any way to Council approvals now amounting to wholesale ocean destruction.”
Solar farms that work by focusing light and heat on a water tower with mirrors also kill birds because the birds fly into the heat. Solar panel farms don't kill birds but they take up a lot of land on where plant life and wildlife might otherwise be and plant life is a source of food for birds.
In Japan, Mount Aso's animal and plant habitats were bulldozed to make way for 200,000 solar panels, as a sacrificial offering by the Net Zero cult to the "climate change" gods.
California built a huge solar plant in the desert. They had to remove a vast number of desert tortoises many who then died. There is a lot of concern about carbon dioxide but where is the concern for the loss of oxygen when plant life is replaced with solar cells? Here is a video clip from the documentary Planet of the Humans, of a football size solar array that can only provide the power needs of 10 homes. That doesn't include the power needs for the cars of the people owning those homes.
Solar panels contain toxic chemicals. Many are shipped to poor African nation landfills. Instead of compensating poor countries for the effects of climate change maybe we should stop poisoning them with solar panel waste.
The high cost of energy from wind turbines and solar panels is a big problem because replacing cheap fossil fuels with them leads to more poverty and energy blackouts. It costs the same to drill one oil well as it does to build one large wind turbine. While the wind turbine generates the equivalent of one oil barrel of energy per hour, an oil well produces ten oil barrels per hour. That means that you would have to build 10 wind turbines to get the same amount of energy as you get from one oil well. Another way to look at it is energy from a wind turbine is 10 times as expensive as energy from an oil well. Wind energy is actually more expensive than that because it has to be stored. One oil barrel of energy costs about $0.50 to store whereas you need $200 of batteries to store the same energy from a wind turbine. Another problem is that wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine.
Wind turbines are made in China and sold to America. If Americans are dumb enough to buy something China will make it and sell it to those Americans. China however isn't stupid. They've been starting a new coal plant practically every week in 2022. China knows that wind energy can't meet its energy demands.
Tony Heller made the following video showing wind turbines in Wyoming. The song he chose for the video is "She's like the wind" What message is Tony trying to get across?
Notice how the blades of the wind turbines are not turning. Notice the trucks moving on the highway. What is powering them, the solar turbines, or fossil fuel? An enormous amount of money went into building those wind turbines. People are just fools to believe that wind power has what they need.
Industrial wind companies use coercive, predatory tactics to manipulate landowners into signing their property rights away in the name of green energy. Contracts often require that farmers agree to keep their mouth shut on the details of the contract so that other people who would object to the wind turbines won't find out.
People who defend solar power say it's cheaper than fossil fuel energy and that the price has come down. They leave out the reason why solar is cheaper which is that the government subsidizes solar power. Once you take into account how much of your tax money is paying for solar energy it becomes clear that fossil fuel is cheaper. If solar and wind energy was really cheaper government subsidies would not be needed. Oil companies would switch to making solar panels and wind turbines or be outsold by other companies that made them.
The Biden administration is spending vast amounts of our tax money to pay for wind turbines. They wouldn't have to if wind turbines were cheaper. The Biden administration plans to increase taxes to pay for all of this. If they tax the oil companies they drive up the cost of oil. That in turn drives up the cost of everything that depends on the cost of oil, like heating homes, driving cars, getting food to supermarkets and so on.
The Biden administration tells us that what they are doing will increase the number of jobs. It is true that they will hire people with the money they are spending. What the Biden administration doesn't tell people is that when they take money away from people with taxes they reduce the number of jobs. If people have less money to buy things then there are fewer jobs for the people who make those things. If the government spends our money on more expensive energy in the end there will be fewer jobs not more.
There are a lot of people who think they can help save the climate by switching over to electric cars. They call electric cars zero emission vehicles. Those people forget that those electric cars have to be charged and that wind turbines and solar cells can't provide enough energy to charge them. If you live in Coalinga California, you might say, but wait, we have lots of electric charging stations and we have lots of solar and wind power. You might say, look at all this electric charging station we have here in Coalinga.
Investigative journalist Edward Niedermeyer discovered that the station was powered by diesel generators hidden behind a Shell station. Why do they hide the generators? Energy analyst and writer David Blackmon, author of the “Energy Transition Absurdities,” told Cowboy State Daily that he used to shop at a Whole Foods in Houston. The company had installed a charging station in front of the store for its customers. He said there were diesel generators behind the store and whenever someone was using the chargers, the generators would kick on.
The electricity that is used to power the electric vehicles that are on the road now, comes mostly from fossil fuel and coal plants which emit lots of carbon dioxide. Therefore they are not zero emission vehicles.
Just mining and purifying the lithium needed for the batteries of electric vehicles results in emission of a lot of carbon dioxide. In addition mining results in the release of toxic metals into the environment a problem that gas internal combustion engines do not have. One of the people who unfortunately buys into the electrical vehicle nonsense is the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul. She signed into law a requirement that new off-road vehicles and equipment sold in New York should be zero-emissions (electric) by 2035, and new medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles by 2045. New York is closing fossil fuel plants. Governor Hochul and N.Y. Democrat lawmakers have passed a law banning gas-powered stoves, furnaces and propane heating. The law requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and in taller buildings by 2029. This is going to bring about disaster because it will make everyone more and more dependent on electricity while reducing the amount of electricity available. The Biden administration aims to force two-thirds of new cars to be all-electric by 2032.
Switching to electric cars and trucks is also being pushed by the Biden administration. Electric vehicles are a lot more expensive to build than gas cars and trucks. The only reason that people buy electric cars is the government subsidizes those cars with our taxes. Electric cars require electric charging stations that have to be built all over the country. Fast charging cars still need at least a half hour to get a decent charge. With gas cars we can usually fill them up in about 5 minutes. Electric cars require very expensive lithium batteries. Lithium batteries for cars have a life span of about 8 years or 100,000 miles. Pete Colan wrote that a Chevy Bolt that costs around $28,000 new will be worth about $7,200 in 8 years. The cost to replace the battery? $16,000. If you don't pay to replace it when the battery is done for, your car won't move. Modern gas cars last for 200,000 miles. You have to buy 2 electric batteries to get that kind of distance.
Ricky Phillips posted on Facebook that:
This photo below is a Tesla model Y battery.
It takes up all of the space under the passenger compartment of the car. To manufacture it you need: --12 tons of rock for Lithium (can also be extracted from sea water) -- 5 tons of cobalt minerals (Most cobalt is made as a byproduct of processing copper and nickel ores. It is the most difficult and expensive material to obtain for a battery.) -- 3 tons nickel ore -- 12 tons of copper ore You must move 250 tons of soil to obtain: -- 26.5 pounds of Lithium -- 30 pounds of nickel -- 48.5 pounds of manganese -- 15 pounds of cobalt To manufacture the battery also requires: -- 441 pounds of aluminum, steel and/or plastic -- 112 pounds of graphite The Caterpillar 994A is used to move the earth to obtain the minerals needed for this battery. The Caterpillar consumes 264 gallons of diesel in 12 hours. The bulk of necessary minerals for manufacturing the batteries come from China or Africa. Much of the labor in Africa is done by children. When you buy an electric car, China profits most. The 2021 Tesla Model Y OEM battery (the cheapest Tesla battery) is currently for sale on the Internet for $4,999 not including shipping or installation. The battery weighs 1,000 pounds (you can imagine the shipping cost). The cost of Tesla batteries are: Model 3 -- $14,000+ (Car MSRP $38,990) Model Y -- $5,000–$5,500 (Car MSRP $47,740) Model S -- $13,000–$20,000 (Car MSRP $74,990) Model X -- $13,000+ (Car MSRP $79,990) It takes 7 years for an electric car to reach net-zero CO2. The life expectancy of the battery is 10 years (average). Only in the last 3 years do you start to reduce your carbon footprint, but then the batteries must be replaced and you lose all gains made. But by all means, get an electric car. Just don't sell me on how awesome you are for the environment. Or for human rights.
Or for animal rights. One third of Africa’s gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees are at risk because they live in areas that overlap with mining operations for metals critical to the global clean energy transition. Nearly 180,000 great apes in Africa are under threat as mining activities drive deforestation, according to a study published on April 3, 2024 in Science Advances.
Lithium is a very light high energy metal. It's important to use a light weight metal because the heavier the battery the heavier the car and the more electricity is needed to move it. Lithium can store more energy than other metals. There is not enough lithium to make all the batteries that would be needed if everyone bought an electric car. Making batteries involves strip mining, toxic chemical leaching, and massive water consumption of rare metal lithium extraction for non-recycled car batteries. Electricity to charge those batteries comes from power plants. Increasing demands on those plants from electric cars will mean there will not be enough electricity left to power the lights and appliances in private homes. In order to cope the electric utilities provide electricity to different areas part of the time while other areas have blackouts. Lithium batteries when they catch on fire burn with a fire 4x as hot as a gasoline fire. Pouring water on a lithium fire to put it out results in lithium pulling oxygen from water leaving hydrogen gas which explodes.
According to the fire department of London, England, fire involving lithium batteries is the fastest growing fire risk in London. They wrote: "So far in 2023 we've been called to, on average, an e-bike or e-scooter fire once every two days. In 2022, we attended 87 e-bike and 29 e-scooter fires, a total of 116 fires." Fires caused by batteries that power e-micromobility devices are a significant problem in New York City, growing from 44 in 2020 to 220 in 2022. These fires are particularly severe and difficult to extinguish, spreading quickly and producing noxious fumes.
On April 10 2023 a 7 year old and a teen died in a fire in Queens N.Y. sparked by a battery on an ebike. If a lithium battery does catch fire use a fire extinguisher, not water. If lithium comes in contact with water it ignites. Some fire men advice in general to leave and call the fire department instead of trying to put fires out yourself.
The video below shows examples of things containing lithium batteries exploding.
Here is a video of a Tesla car on fire. Imagine if you were in the Tesla you are watching in the video.
What would happen if a Tesla caught on fire in a parking lot full of other Teslas? What if the parking lot was in a building?
Rental car companies are buying electric cars because of zero emission laws that will make gas cars illegal. A commentor on an article in frontpagemag.com wrote:
It’s a scam. I recently rented an electric car for a few days in NYC – and not by choice. I reserved a gas only car and expected to get one, but when I got to the AVIS/Payless site, all that was available were EV’S. I had a choice – to take the EV or wait around till God knows when for a gas car to come in. I wasn’t the only one with this problem. There were several other people who also got stuck with EV’s they had not reserved and were waiting. I was constantly anxious about running out of electric and where I could recharge in and around Queens and Long Island. When I finally found a place, it was FIFTY BUCKS for what would have been at most fifteen dollars of gas.
Blackouts that will result when the only source of energy is solar and wind will have serious consequences. For one thing refrigerators stop keeping food and medicines cold and fresh. It becomes more dangerous to drive as traffic lights and street lights stop working. Sewage pumps stop running and sewage gets into the water supply. Companies won't be able to produce their products because of electricity. Criminals will take advantage of the dark. Phone towers won't work so people won't be able to call for help.
The source of power for electric cars is discussed in the video below.
Burning coal to product electricity is likely to pollute the environment far more significantly than any gas-powered vehicle. Disposing of carcinogenic, half-ton batteries will also pollute the environment. Green energy sources can't provide enough energy to meet demand. California already has rolling blackouts. During bad weather Texas couldn't provide electricity because of reliance on wind power. During those blackouts gas cars were able to move. If people had been driving electric cars they would run out of electricity and passengers would have been stranded until the electric grid was restored and they were all recharged.
John Stossel created videos about the problem of electric batteries. Here is part 2.
My brother created a music video about electrical vehicles with the help of Artificial Intelligence. Here it is:
Slave labor is used to mine ingredients for electric cars as the video below by John Stossel shows.
Here is a short video of children in the Congo who work on getting the cobalt needed for car batteries.
Paul Driessen wrote that if the government remains obsessed with bringing CO2 emissions down to zero:
Weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels would require billions of battery modules, to stabilize power grids and avoid blackouts every time wind and sunshine don’t cooperate. All that Net Zero transformation equipment – plus transmission lines, substations and transformers – will require billions of tons of cobalt, lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, iron, aluminum, rare earths and other raw materials at scales unprecedented in human history. That will necessitate mining, ore processing, manufacturing, land disruption and pollution at equally unprecedented levels.
Some people believe that burning down trees and other plants is the answer because when new trees are planted and grow they will remove carbon dioxide from the air. The idea is that the carbon dioxide that is released by burning trees will become part of the new trees that grow. What's wrong with that idea is explained in the following clip taken again from Planet of the Humans.
High costs of energy affect everyone. They hurt the poor the most because they can make it too expensive to stay warm in winter or cold in summer or even to pay for groceries. This has actually killed people and is discussed in another lesson. The cost of groceries goes up when the cost to transport them goes up and the cost to transport them goes up when the cost of energy goes up. These costs don't just mean more poverty. They could lead to hyperinflation in which money loses its value and everyone except the top leadership becomes poor. The most recent country where hyperinflation happened is Venezuela. It could happen in the United States. There is already a lot of inflation in the United States.
Considering all the disadvantages of solar farms and wind turbines fossil fuels aren't that bad. Carbon dioxide emissions are not what is wrong with burning coal, pollution is. There are two ways to reduce pollution from coal, one is to burn gas instead and the other is to use less energy. During the Covid pandemic many people worked from home. They were able to do this because of computers and the internet. Maybe we could keep doing this as much as possible to cut down on the use of energy for transportation. In addition ordering from a company that delivers goods in ones neighborhood requires less fuel than driving to the store every time one needs to buy goods. If we're worried about warming another thing we could do is replace concrete where ever possible with grass or other plants. Think of walking barefoot next to a swimming pool on concrete vs grass on a hot summer day and you'll know why I make that suggestion.
Additional References:
https://nypost.com/2023/06/13/greens-want-electric-cars-but-not-the-things-required-to-run-them/
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How much land would we need to power our needs with green energy.