Collapse: Earth Overshoot Day

[grarpamp]

The problem isn't "Global Warming" that's a political scam,
an invisible statistical blip mooted by long term cycles.

The real problems are overpopulation yielding overconsumption
and depletion at present efficiency levels, and toxification.

There are good efficiencies still left to be wrought out
of pure renewable solar, wind, geothermal, waves, etc.
But you're still bound by their own nonrenewable
consumption curves, capacity tradeoffs, economics,
physics, etc.

The politicians are lying to you about those things.
Because they can't admit to the real problems, and
rolling out bogus new programs suits their Power Grabs,
and they're just plain dumb.

Given current limitations, efficiences, and mentalities,
the Earth will keep rejecting you until you downsize
to around 1 Billion people.




Offshore Wind Is An Economic And Environmental Catastrophe

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/11/offshore-wind-is-an-economic-and-environmental-catastrophe/

When it comes to “renewables” wreaking havoc on the environment, wind
turbines have stiff competition. For example, over 500,000 square
miles of biofuel plantations have already replaced farms and forests
to replace a mere 4 percent of transportation fuel. To source raw
materials to build “sustainable” batteries, mining operations are
scaling up, with no end in sight, in nations with appalling labor
conditions and nonexistent environmental regulations. But the worst
offender is the wind industry.

America’s wind power industry somehow manages to attract almost no
negative coverage in the press, or litigation from environmentalists,
despite causing some of the most obvious and tragic environmental
catastrophes so far this century. Last August I wrote about the
ongoing slaughter of whales off America’s northeast coast thanks to
construction of offshore wind turbines:

“When you detonate massive explosives, repeatedly drive steel piles
into the ocean floor with a hydraulic hammer, and blast high decibel
sonar mapping signals underwater, you’re going to harm animals that
rely on sound to orient themselves in the ocean. To say it is mere
coincidence that hundreds of these creatures have washed ashore, dead,
all of a sudden, during precisely the same months when the blasting
and pounding began, is brazen deception.”

Nonetheless, when the story can’t be buried, deception is the
strategy. Not one major environmental organization, government
watchdog agency, or media outlet has called for a slowdown in
industrial offshore wind projects. Instead, they repeatedly claim
these allegations are misinformation. And from that paragon of truth,
FactCheck.org, we get this: “No Evidence Offshore Wind Development
Killing Whales.”

Let’s set aside the obvious negative impact on whale populations of
tens of thousands of marine surveying and construction sorties into
offshore areas where shipping traffic has never before been
concentrated, or the impact of noise and explosions on not one site,
such as would be the case with a lone oil rig, but on thousands of
sites, each one being prepared for an offshore wind turbine. The
destruction wrought by wind turbines extends well beyond what it’s
doing to whales.

A report just released by a New England fishermen association
summarizes research they completed on offshore wind projects. Their
findings are stunning. Just the geographic extent of these proposed
offshore wind projects is unprecedented. According to the report,
“Federal regulators at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)
have designated almost 10 million acres for wind farm surveys and
development.” That is over 15,000 square miles.

Not included in that allocation are the corridors where high voltage
lines will have to cross the ocean floor to transfer electricity from
the turbines to land-based power grids. The report found that
“electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emanating from subsea cables appear to
produce birth deformities in juvenile lobster.” That’s just the
beginning.

The report also found that wind farms “increase sea surface
temperatures and alter upper-ocean hydrodynamics in ways scientists do
not yet understand,” and “whip up sea sediment and generate highly
turbid wakes that are 30-150 meters wide and several kilometers in
length, having a major impact on primary production by phytoplankton
which are the base of marine food chains.” And there’s more.

Wind turbines “generate operational noise in a low frequency range
(less than 700 Hz) with most energy concentrated between 2 and 200 Hz.
This frequency range overlaps with that used by fish for
communication, mating, spawning, and spatial movement,” and “high
voltage direct current undersea cables produce magnetic fields that
negatively affect the drifting trajectory of haddock larvae by
interfering with their magnetic orientation abilities.” Haddock are “a
significant portion of U.S. commercial fish landings and are an
important component of the marine food chain.”

Nothing to see here, right?

What’s going on off the coast of New England is being allowed to
happen because of disgraceful negligence on the part of America’s
environmentalist community. What’s about to happen in California is
just as bad, and is proceeding without any organized opposition or
serious criticism.

Earlier this year, the federal government leased 583 square miles of
deep ocean waters off the coast of California for offshore wind farms.
When the first phase of these offshore wind developments are
completed, these wind farms will deliver 4.5 gigawatts of “clean”
electricity to the California grid. That may sound like a lot of
electricity. It’s not.

To begin with, even offshore wind only blows intermittently. The most
optimistic projections for the actual yield of these turbines are
never more than 50 percent. This means that in terms of baseload
power, only 2.25 gigawatts will come from these new offshore wind
farms. California’s average electricity consumption is 32 gigawatts
(of which only 22 gigawatts are produced in-state), which means if
these offshore wind farms are ever completed, they’ll supply a mere 6
percent of California’s current electricity demand – the same amount
currently coming from Diablo Canyon, California’s last operating
nuclear power plant. But how many turbines will this take, and what
will they look like?

 The biggest wind turbines in the world can now produce 10 megawatts
at full output. To generate this much electricity, these machines are
1,000 feet tall, which is more than three times higher than the Statue
of Liberty from the water line to the tip of the torch. To achieve a
collective capacity at full output of 4.5 gigawatts, 450 of these
would have to be built, floated 20 miles offshore, anchored to the
seabed with cables nearly a mile long, then from each one a high
voltage line would also have to descend 4,000 feet to reach the ocean
floor, where it would then lie on the sea bed – some proposals
actually call for them to be buried – to transmit electricity to the
onshore power grid. Four hundred and fifty floating wind turbines,
each one of them with vertical dimensions that are longer than a
modern aircraft supercarrier. There are huge and unresolved
engineering hurdles involved in developing large floating wind
turbines.

Bear in mind, if California’s state legislature gets its way, and the
state goes fully electric – think all space heaters, water heaters,
dryers, along with all trucks, buses and cars going fully electric –
electricity demand will more than triple. While it’s hypothetical, the
math is simple and revealing: to get 100 gigawatts of baseload power
from offshore wind, you would need 20,000 turbines. And imagine all
the high voltage distribution lines, and all the batteries to buffer
the massive surges of intermittent power.

To somewhat return to reality, we must acknowledge that none of
California’s enlightened planners intend to use offshore wind to
generate 100 percent of California’s renewable electricity. But in one
of the most reputable mainstream studies produced to date, a professor
of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, Mark
Jacobson, completed a series of simulations, culminating in a report
released in December 2021 that called for 20 percent of California’s
electricity to derive from offshore wind. Making more conservative
assumptions regarding the size of each offshore turbine and the yield,
he predicted more than 12,000 offshore wind turbines would be
required.

Imagine the logistics.

How many ships will this take? How many submarines and divers? How
many port facilities? How many new homes for the construction workers?
What about the undersea power cables? What about the storage batteries
needed to buffer nearly 20 gigawatts of on again, off again
electricity? What about the ongoing maintenance? What about the raw
materials needed to build all these leviathans? What about the
billions and billions of dollars that will flow into the pockets of
the special interests behind this disaster of a project, paid by
taxpayers and ratepayers?

Overall, Jacobson’s study projected about one-third of California’s
electricity to come from a combination of onshore and offshore wind
turbines. Shall we reiterate what else we already know about wind
turbines? Their slaughter of raptors, bats, and insects? Their
incessant, low frequency sound that is audible for miles and, despite
“debunking” articles that defy basic common sense, drives people and
animals nuts? The visual blight? The staggering quantity of materials
required for their manufacture, and the difficult if not impossible
task of recycling the materials after they’ve reached the end of their
service life?

Where are the environmentalists?

Where, for that matter, are the economists? Is the mantra “climate
crisis” so powerful that literally anything goes, including a scheme
that delivers not only environmental but economic catastrophe? In
2020, an in-depth financial analysis by the Manhattan Institute
documented how “offshore wind’s costs will far exceed its benefits.”
And that was before the supply chain problems, inflation, and interest
rate hikes that have forced offshore wind developers from New England
to California to greatly increase required rates, or pull out of
projects altogether.

Imagine if this was an oil rig, a desalination plant, or a nuclear
power plant. The opposition would be apoplectic, and that is not
hypothetical conjecture. California had a chance to build another
major desalination plant which would have supplied 55,000 acre feet
per year of drought proof fresh water to the residents of Orange
County, population 3 million. Along with other projects in the works,
this desalination plant could have made that relatively arid coastal
county completely independent of imported water. But environmentalists
fought the project at every turn, and in May 2022, in a unanimous
vote, the California Coastal Commission denied the construction
permit.

As for oil and gas, California’s state legislators are doing
everything they can to destroy production in the state. Despite having
massive reserves of oil and gas, Californians have to import more than
75 percent of their oil and more than 90 percent of their natural gas.
And when it comes to nuclear power, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power
plant, California’s last one, narrowly escapes regulatory shutdown
every few years, despite being designed to operate well past the
middle of this century.

The scandalous double standard at work here can only be attributed to
a combination of powerful special interests representing the wind
power industry, interacting with a state legislature and
environmentalist movement that is either bought off or alarmingly
stupid. As it is, hundreds of billions of taxpayer subsidies are on
track to pay for offshore wind. If it is not stopped, it will be one
of the most egregious cases of economic waste and environmental
destruction in human history.