These updates have been collated from articles published on line around the world in the last few days.  For me they’re all interconnected and relate strongly to an increasing acceptance worldwide that green /sustainable energy solutions lack practical elements in the real world.  No matter where you look, the policies put forward by green ideologues have failed miserably.  Not only have they forced up energy costs and bankrupted businesses and whole nations, the environmental costs of alternative systems are being revealed and it ain’t pretty.  In some cases the data behind the “settled science” has been twisted and tweaked to get desired results/ favourable funding outcomes.

The article below on hexafluoroethane, nitrogen trifluoride, and sulfur hexafluoride is disturbing.  Dig deeper and the real cost of wind energy is revealed.  The process used to extract neodymium has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology and that’s without even considering the impacts of the machines to wildlife and amenity.  The media has been complicit on perpetrating alarm about global warming/climate change/climate disruption/loss of biodiversity etc and Australian journalists have lapped up the alarmism peddled by the likes of Tim Flannery, David Karoly and Joelle Gergis.  Flannery gets bucketed on a regular basis but Gergis takes centre stage today.  What an amazing meltdown of “settled science” we’re witnessing.  

Sustainable/renewable is too expensive in more ways than financial.  Nuclear Gas and Shale are realistic alternatives to sustainability dreamtime solutions and it appears that the free enterprise world agrees with that as Carbon credits tank and solar companies fail. 

All the best

Aussie Pete

 Adieu, green revolution

It looks like the “green revolution” has entered the long slide into “What was all that about?”

In January, the Spanish government removed lavish subsidies for its renewable-energy industry, and the industry all but imploded. You could say it was never a renewable-energy industry at all, but a government-subsidy industry: The government gave the makers of inefficient windmills and solar panels piles of cash that consumers never would.

“They destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium [on subsidies],” European Wind Energy Association CEO Christian Kjaer told Bloomberg News.

The Spanish example shows how the whole green-energy “revolution” was really an ideologically driven boondoggle from the start.

Read more here

Media has a responsibility to publish independent analysis of climate change ‘consensus’

Benny Peiser writes for The Australian:

Despite the majority view among climate scientists, science organisations and governments, there is a sizeable minority of researchers, economists and political observers who are concerned about the apocalyptic nature of climate hype and the growing risk this form of collective hysteria poses for political and economic stability. Sceptical researchers will continue to publish critical papers and critical columnists will publish comments that question the so-called climate consensus.

Should the mainstream media provide a platform for these critics? Should they discuss the weight of their evidence and the validity of their arguments? Or should the media simply ignore challenges to the status quo?

The integrity of Western media depends on whether they encourage critique and fault-finding analysis – or whether they will drift more and more towards gullible campaign journalism.

Read it all here

Solar Cells Linked to Greenhouse Gases Over 23,000 Times Worse than Carbon Dioxide

BERKELEY, Calif., June 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Solar cells do not offset greenhouse gases or curb fossil fuel use in the United States according to a new environmental book, Green Illusions (June 2012, University of Nebraska Press), written by University of California – Berkeley visiting scholar Ozzie Zehner. Green Illusions explains how the solar industry has grown to become one of the leading emitters of hexafluoroethane (C2F6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). These three potent greenhouse gases, used by solar cell fabricators, make carbon dioxide (CO2) seem harmless.

Hexafluoroethane has a global warming potential that is 12,000 times higher than CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is 100 percent manufactured by humans, and survives 10,000 years once released into the atmosphere. Nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more virulent than CO2, and SF6, the most treacherous greenhouse gas, is over 23,000 times more threatening.

How embarrassing must the atmospheric sulfur hexafluoride levels be for the IPCC when so called clean energy source Solar may be responsible.

Read it all here

Rio+20 descends into farce

The Rio+20 Earth Summit on Sustainable Development, which starts in two weeks, will be a farce, even if everybody keeps a straight face. The grand UN-based system conceived to co-ordinate the activities of all mankind has proved utterly unsustainable, a dysfunctional mess that generates nothing but endless meetings, agendas and reports.  That sustainable development would inevitably collapse under its own contradictions was inevitable. What is fascinating is why every country on Earth — including Canada — would earnestly have committed to a concept hatched by a cabal of ardent socialists. Equally fascinating is the almost universal reluctance to acknowledge the organizational disaster that has ensued.

Read it all at Financial Post here

Australian Climate Scientists in retreat

For those who haven’t been following this,  J. Gergis, R. Neukom, S.J. Phipps, A.J.E. Gallant, and D.J. Karoly, published  “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” in the  Journal of Climate, earlier this year.  AM lapped it up with this story but not everyone was convinced.  Anthony Watts had a bit to say and it turned out that Gergis was a climate activist as well.  How interesting, it appears that all the links to Gergis and the paper have now been removed.

Anthony Watts has the full story:

UPDATE: It appears the paper has been withdrawn and credit acknowledgement given to Steve McIntyre, see below:

Read it all here

Is a nuclear renaissance

around the corner?

It may just happen. For example, Japan has just announced its intention to restart some of their nuclear power plants (NPPs). France is planning to increase its electricity production by NPPs from currently 50%      to 90% of its national needs. Pakistan, India and China are rapidly expanding their NPP construction programs. Even in the US, new NPPs are on the drawing boards and in the permitting stage.  The green  ideology, first conjured by The Green Party in Germany a few decades ago, saw nuclear power as its anathema. With large deposits of coal, and cheap oil from the Mid-East, there was no shortage of electricity to   drive the economy. Still, Germany built 17 NPPs which have provided steady power for the past four decades.

Then, in 2011, the earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima, Japan, caused some politicians to panic. Nuclear power plants were to be phased out and “green” power (from wind turbines and solar panels) was to replace their energy production. Indeed, Germany built thousands of wind turbines and the generous feed-in tariffs offered to private citizens had many invest in solar panels on their houses’ roofs. However, the demand for electricity could not be met.

Read more at Principia Scientific International here

Read more at Australian TEA Party