- The seen vs. the unseen…
- The exact year global warming ends…
- TRUMP’S CURSE: A $35 Trillion Meltdown Ahead? Robert Kiyosaki just issued his boldest warning yet — and he says the clock’s almost out of time.
Dear Reader,
Yesterday an article drifted in over the transom — “How Wind and Solar Power Helps Keep America’s Farms Alive,” by title.
From which:
- Wind energy is a significant economic driver in rural America… Nationwide, wind and solar projects contribute about $3.5 billion annually in combined lease payments and state and local taxes, more than a third of it going directly to rural landowners…
- The construction and operation of [wind and solar] projects also bring local jobs in trucking, concrete work and electrical services, boosting small-town businesses…
- Wind and solar aren’t just fueling the grid; they’re helping keep farms and rural towns alive.
Just so. Yet I would remind the article’s author — a certain Paul Mwebaze — that the wind and solar industries require government subsidy to exist.
That is, the wind and solar industries require taxpayer subsidy to exist.
They are not economically viable absent the dole.
The Seen vs. the Unseen
Yet the author fails to cite the costs. He focuses solely on the benefits — to one segment of the populace.
He does not take in the overall view.
As always, it is useful to seek the counsel of the late Henry Hazlitt. From Economics in One Lesson:
- This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups…
- The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond… The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.
What investments in other industries were never undertaken because the money went channeling into the wind and solar industries?
How many jobs in other industries were never created because the wind and solar industries diverted them?
The author does not ask. He sees merely what immediately strikes his eye.
Concentrated Benefits, Dispersed Costs
Let us assume the author is correct. Let us assume rural America is the great beneficiary of wind and solar energy.
What about urban America? What about suburban America?
What if rural America’s gain is their loss?
And if wind and solar energy are superior energies… why do they require taxpayer subsidy?
Reports the Institute for Energy Research:
- Unfortunately, wind and solar energy are unreliable and very expensive, so consumers are paying higher rates than needed for electricity, which may result in brownouts and blackouts.
- Wind and solar only exist because of government subsidies and mandates, without which they could not begin to compete with reliable and affordable energy sources such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power, which generate roughly 80% of U.S. electricity…
- Wind and solar energy are expensive, with many hidden costs in massive subsidies, government mandates, payments for discarded energy, transmission line additions, and health costs due to noise and vibration, among other non-direct costs…
- Rising electric rates from wind and solar power and government expenditures also lead to stifled economic growth, which thwarts economic investment…
Special Pleading
The drummers for subsidization concede these industries would fail absent the handout.
Yet they argue the handout is necessary. Only through the handout can the world attain “net zero” carbon emissions by the year 2050.
Earth itself dangles in the balance should carbon dioxide emissions proceed at the existing rate.
Yet let us assume all carbon emissions ceased immediately.
All gasoline-powered vehicles are banished to the scrap heap this day, all airplanes to the boneyard, all coal and natural gas is locked away.
When will Earth begin to break its supposed fever? When would Earth begin cooling from present temperatures?
Here are your choices:
A) 6 months
B) 2½ years
C) 21 years
D) 99 years
E) 213 years
F) 475 years
Are You Serious?
The correct answer is F — 475 years. Earth will cool in 2500 if all emissions cease today.
Here Nature magazine cites projections by a climate model named ESCIMO:
- ESCIMO is a “reduced complexity Earth system” climate model which we run from 1850 to 2500. In ESCIMO the global temperature keeps rising to 2500 and beyond, irrespective of how fast humanity cuts the emissions of man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions… the global temperature keeps rising for hundreds of years…
Adds the Royal Society:
- Even if emissions of greenhouse gasses were to suddenly stop, Earth’s surface temperature would require thousands of years to cool and return to the level in the pre-industrial era.
Meantime, Princeton’s crackerjacks inform us that:
- Even if carbon dioxide emissions came to a sudden halt, the carbon dioxide already in Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm our planet for hundreds of years.
We have been repeatedly warned that Doomsday will arrive by such-and-such date if we do not cease emissions immediately.
We did not cease emissions immediately. All forecasted Doomsdays passed… invariably… without incident.
Losing a Coin Flip 48 Consecutive Times!
Geophysicist Mr. Allan MacRae:
- By the end of 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 times. At 50-50 odds for each prediction, that is like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The probability of that being mere random stupidity is one in 281 trillion!…
- The global warming alarmists have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record — they have been 100% wrong about every scary climate prediction — so nobody should continue to believe them.
Thus I am convinced the next alleged doomsday will pass without incident.
And the one after that and the one after that one — and the one after that one — world without end.
Here I repeat my own forecast… which I am prepared to etch in granite… such is my supreme confidence:
The Chicken Littles among us will shriek about runaway global warming for the next 475 years.
And in the 476th year they will scream about the impending ice age.
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
