DeSmog Depressed?

The emphasis on a false climate crisis is becoming a tragedy for modern civilization, which depends on reliable, economic, and environmentally viable energy. The windmills, solar panels and backup batteries have none of these qualities. This falsehood is pushed by a powerful lobby which Bjorn Lomborg has called a climate industrial complex, comprising some scientists, most media, industrialists, and legislators. It has somehow managed to convince many that CO2 in the atmosphere, a gas necessary for life on earth, one which we exhale with every breath, is an environmental poison. Multiple scientific theories and measurements show that there is no climate crisis. Radiation forcing calculations by both skeptics and believers show that the carbon dioxide radiation forcing is about 0.3% of the incident radiation, far less than other effects on climate. Over the period of human civilization, the temperature has oscillated between quite a few warm and cold periods, with many of the warm periods being warmer than today. During geological times, it and the carbon dioxide level have been all over the place with no correlation between them.

Dr. Wallace Manheimer, Journal of Sustainable Development, February 2015

Of course, DeSmog’s readership likely went into full-blown ad hominem: Conspiracy theorists! Climate deniers! Tin Foil Hat Wearers! Oil and Gas Lovers! Of course they would. After 50 years of failed eco-apocalyptic predictions, there’s nothing left to do but throw sticks and stones — like the title of their article calling Wind Concerns an “Anti-Renewable Group.” This (as I said outright in the interview) is patently false, and the second time that DeSmog has flat-out mischaracterized Wind Concerns. We are not against renewable energy alternatives — just wind factories, because of their incredible damage to the environment on every level. In fact, renewables are so 2020. We’d rather see free energy employed and just leave the earth alone.

DeSmog still can’t believe, apparently, that we’re just a citizen’s group who don’t want 207m wind turbines beyond our farmyards, and that we’re not some oil lobbyist group. ‘Mallett insisted in a phone interview that “we’re not funded by the oil industry or anything like that'”‘, wrote DeSmog. There are four of us on the Wind Concerns team. Two members are still fighting the oil industry and its reclamation woes. None of us draws a salary and none of us has been paid a cent. Any dollars in our Wind Concerns bank account were raised by neighbours who also reject the idea of turning the beautiful North Saskatchewan River here into an ugly wind factory.

Golly, we sound like environmentalists. Well, we’ve had to be, and I’m proud to say we’re the real kind.

DeSmog wrote that Wind Concerns “describes wind energy as a mass killer of birds, bats and insects” and then quickly moved on. Um, wait a second. Isn’t this the same DeSmog that delights in writing stories on dead birds and oil tar sands? Funny how they’re suddenly mute now. Indeed, U.S. studies show birds — many of them large migratory species — are dying in the millions as wind facilities proliferate. German studies show that bats are being killed off by turbines in the millions to the point of catastrophic decline, while local insect populations may actually go extinct.

DeSmog’s response? Nada.

About that meeting… Wind Concerns did indeed spend a half hour with Premier Danielle Smith earlier in the year. But before I planned to say a word about it, I asked Ms. Smith if what we discussed could be made public. She unhesitatingly said yes. The reason is that nothing was said in the meeting on her part that she hadn’t already publicly stated. And indeed, most of those points were re-introduced to the general public again at her February 28 press conference. In other words, not much of a news story.

Crazy Alberta… or Common Sense Albertans?

DeSmog is on a mission to expose “global warming misinformation campaigns.” In other words, they are anti-science along with Facebook, YouTube, and numerous other platforms that only permit one point of view (see Desmog Debunked). Anyone who disagrees with them, no matter how many degrees they have or how qualified they are to present new data on climate, is blacklisted.¹ Not that many care what DeSmog says, but in their world, they think they’re saving the world.

But it’s not just Wind Concerns who has an entirely different point of view. Environmentalists like Michael Schellenberger, who last time I checked held DeSmog’s climate change perspective, has himself pointed out the terrible environmental damage that solar and wind facilities cause. His conclusion:

In the effort to save the climate, are we destroying the environment?… Now that we know that renewables can’t save the planet, are we going to let them keep destroying it?

Michael Shellenberger is President of Environmental Progress, TED Talk, January 4, 2019; youtube.com

Such statements are anathema to the Green movement — akin to suggesting in 1600 A.D. that the earth is round. Shock, horror. Ah, but (authentic) science and common sense eventually won the day, and they will again.

The Alberta government isn’t fighting against Trudeau’s Green regime because it loves pumping smog into the atmosphere. Most of the exhaust coming out of oil refineries today is water vapour — something few greenies seem to understand or will admit. Rather, without a stable power grid, lives are literally at risk since common winter temperatures out here can easily hit the -30’s, sometimes for weeks.

Wind turbines, however, start shutting down around -28C. They also produce nothing if there’s no wind. It’s morally irresponsible for the province not to ensure there’s proper base power.² There’s no Niagra Falls here. There’s no nuclear power plant (yet). But there is natural gas, one of the cleanest burning fossil fuels, and we have it in abundance in this province.

Burning natural gas for energy results in fewer emissions of nearly all types of air pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO₂) than burning coal or petroleum products to produce an equal amount of energy.

U.S. Energy Information Administration

Natural gas does produce water vapour, and for the climate cult, this too, is a bad thing since water vapour produces a “greenhouse” warming effect. However, studies show “Water emissions from fossil fuel combustion are highly localized in space and time.” Irregardless, what Albertans’ furnaces pump out is utterly negligible compared to Mother Nature. A paper on the recent Hunga-Tonga underwater volcanic eruption stated:

The eruption of the submarine Hunga volcano in January 2022 was associated with a powerful blast that injected volcanic material to altitudes up to 58 km. From a combination of various types of satellite and ground-based observations supported by transport modeling, we show evidence for an unprecedented increase in the global stratospheric water mass by 13% as compared to climatological levels, and a 5-fold increase of stratospheric aerosol load, the highest in the last three decades.

“Global perturbation of stratospheric water and aerosol burden by Hunga eruption”, July 28th, 2022

Instead of dust and ash, most of this eruption was actually water vapor, and water vapor traps heat. According to NASA, “It’s responsible for about half of Earth’s greenhouse effect — the process that occurs when gases in Earth’s atmosphere trap the Sun’s heat.”³ Hunga-Tonga boosted water content in the stratosphere by a massive, weather-altering 10%.⁴ Scientists believe this may explain some of the unusual weather patterns this year and in coming years. Anyone else think this was an unusual winter?

And what Alberta produces in emissions is also negligible compared to China, who is investing hand over foot into coal. It’s rather suspicious that Trudeau and his allies are obsessed with Alberta.

But blaming volcanoes or China doesn’t make energy corporations money. Selling carbon credits does — one of the biggest scams invented yet to transfer wealth on a mass scale, all in the name of “saving the planet.” Sure, sure it does. Between taxpayer-funded incentives and the lucrative exchange of credits, the rich keep getting rich, and the poor keep getting… colder.

In the meantime, a new peer-reviewed study shows that all this apparently evil carbon dioxide is actually greening the planet, which means healthier food, more food, and a thriving planet. Since the UN declared an impending food crisis in 2022, this should be good news. Nope. Rather than call the nations to grow more wheat, Western leaders are trying to cover our croplands with solar panels and wind turbines while billionaires attempt to block out the sun. When I call this a “climate cult,” I am not being facetious.

They can call us Albertans anti-this or anti-that. Call us pro-oil, right-wing, redneck, backwards…. Sticks and stones may break our bones — but common sense will keep the lights on and food on our tables.

1. read what honest climatologists and experts are saying: Hot Air — Behind the Wind[↩]
2. cf. Alberta’s Warning: Who Wants to Freeze in the Dark?[↩]
3. climate.nasa.gov[↩]
4. cf. here and here[↩]