Many People Think What Few Dare To Say

Published on August 20, 2016,  Principia Scientific International

Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser

From climate doomsters to media politicos, the world is being bombarded with mis-constructs, unfounded claims and outright lies. Some listeners and readers may fall for such deceits but many others are thinking to themselves and quietly walking away. 

Time and again, I have experienced that phenomenon after giving a talk to (mostly) retired professionals from a variety of disciplines. They approach me in private with statements like “fully agree with you but am afraid to speak out.” Too few speak up in public – though they may voice their views indirectly at the ballot box.

However, times are slowly changing. Many people have become dissatisfied with main stream media reports and become more willing to stand up against misleading advertising, destructive policies and rapidly rising costs. In my perception, the recent Brexit vote is a harbinger of more of such “rebellions” to come, some likely to be equally surprising.

Bureaucratic overreach is just one aspect of widespread dissatisfaction; waste and falsehoods are others.

Waste and Lies

The waste of taxpayers’ funds on alternative energy plans pales in relation to the real costs of totally misguided energy policies that one can find in a variety of jurisdictions, both here and abroad. Most of these wasteful projects center around one (and WRONG !) idea, namely of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) being a driver of the climate on earth.

That CO2-climate idea came about nearly two-hundred years ago (a hypothesis at the time) and was shown to be incorrect one hundred years ago. However, it is still “making the rounds” for three simple reasons:

• For many scientists applying to agencies to obtain any research funds is rather futile if the grant proposal does not pretend to show how “bad” CO2 is.
• Many “politicians” (real or wanna-be’s alike) simply go “with the flow,” following the path of least resistance and, consequently, blow the same CO2-climate horn.
• There is next to no accountability for bureaucrats or politicians that do so.

Waste – who cares; independent thought – who needs that anyway and, in any event, the voters are expected to have forgotten all bad deeds by the time the next election rolls around.

But it is not just money and resources that have been lost to the futile pursuit of CO2 and air conditioners as the proclaimed global evils extraordinaire. There are even greater costs to mankind; one is the time lost to really advance mankind’s wellbeing.

Lost Time

Time lost is gone for good. No space age technology or pokemons found can bring back time. The estimated trillion dollars spent over the last few decades, on “alternative” energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels have had next to no impact on global fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas) consumption in the world. At the same time and despite the (entirely avoidable) disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, new nuclear power plants are now being built in many countries around the world, for example even in hydro (water) power-rich Switzerland.

Even in Japan many of the nuclear power plants that were all shut down following the Fukushima tsunami-caused disaster have been or are being restarted as well. China, India and Russia are all in the process of massive expansions of their nuclear power generation capabilities as well. While these countries may pay lip service to the Paris 2015 Climate Agreement, these projects having absolutely nothing to do with any perceived climate threats from CO2 that have been proclaimed by the United Nations IPCC or U.S. President Obama. They are simply wise diversification among energy resources.

In contrast, Germany is on the way to becoming a “green” energy pauper, all because of the CO2-climate hoax.

“Green” Germany

One of the most blatant examples of wasting time and resources must be Germany. That country had many great developments to its credit in the period of roughly 1960 to 1990. That was the time of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” when science, engineering and technology grew by leaps and bounds, energy was affordable for consumers and industry alike. Coal and nuclear power plants provided ample electricity and government regulations were fostering competition and efficiency throughout the land.

However, instead of building on its developed expertise and teaching new generations of scientists and engineers to learn the trade, “green power” activists and politicians persuaded people that biofuels, sun and wind were all that was needed. By now, the generation of people capable of designing, building and operating the complex nuclear facilities have mostly retired, emigrated or died. It would likely take another generation just to get to the state of expertise available there in 1975.

For example, the newest nuclear power plant that’s still in operation in Germany was built around 1985. Since then not a single new plant has even been considered. In fact, the opposite is going to take place in a few years. All remaining operating nuclear plants are going to be shut down by government decree, the last ones in 2022. Similar actions are planned for the remaining coal and natural gas fired power plants. From then on, German households and industries are largely expected to live by the whims of sunshine, wind and imports from nearby countries like Czechia and France — if available then. That ideology has been decreed as “energy-change” (“Energiewende”).

Availability of Power

Availability of electric power when needed is rapidly becoming less guaranteed as well. That’s why the latest German government schemes are encouraging local, i.e. community level power generation cooperatives that push the responsibility down the line towards the end consumer. And oh, it’s all going to work with “smart” systems that, presumably, work along the principle of the biblical supply of wine at the wedding at Canaan.

Actually, when I read news items on the touted “smart” electricity grid and kitchen technology (e.g. in new fridges), it seems the “smart” part is less to guarantee that they run with less power but to turn them off when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow, or someone wants to cut your power off altogether. It could foster politically correct thinking too and you will be happy to know that you will still be charged for “delivery” during such times of brownouts or blackouts to come.

In this context, an interesting email (copy) I recently received from overseas, written to a well-known proponent of solar power there reads (paraphrased) as follows:

“As energy expert you made the interesting discovery that the sun does not send a bill. I did not entirely understand why, despite that, several hundred thousand households are unable to pay their electricity bills and entire types of industries are emigrating due to the high electricity costs. Why are electricity costs much lower in countries that use less sun energy?”

Benefits – What Benefits?

Indeed, where or what are the benefits and who is benefiting from this alternative energy development? It couldn’t be the consumers whose hydro bills are rising much faster than governments’ inflation numbers. It probably is not even the operators of wind and solar power farms – despite their high feed-in tariffs and other prescribed “goodies.” That only leaves the producers of such equipment and, who could have guessed, the governments themselves. That’s also evident from recent moves by some jurisdictions to tax people on their own solar photovoltaic panel-produced electricity for their own consumption.

With the world swamped by cheap natural gas, crude oil, and coal (with the mines in western countries are being relegated to heritage status), who, really needs expensive and intermittent electricity from the wind and sun?

If you have the answer, drop me a line.