Matthew Ridley on the Myths of Fracking and Wind Power’s Environmental Harm

Prolific author Matthew Ridley rebuts the 5 myths (lies) of fracking.

Here is a snippet:

Here are five things that they keep saying which are just not true. First, that shale gas production has polluted aquifers in the United States. Second, that it releases more methane than other forms of gas production. Third, that it uses a worryingly large amount of water. Fourth, that it uses hundreds of toxic chemicals. Fifth, that it causes damaging earthquakes.

Mr. Ridley also says that Wind Power contributes to more environmental damage than fracking:

Spoiling God’s glorious creation: as Clive Hambler of Oxford University has documented, each year between 6m and 18m birds and bats are killed in Spain alone by wind turbines, including rare griffon vultures, 400 of which were killed in one year, and even rarer Egyptian vultures. In Tasmania wedge-tailed eagles are in danger of extinction because of wind turbines. Norwegian wind farms kill ten white-tailed eagles each year. German wind turbines kill 200,000 bats a year, many of which have migrated hundreds of miles.

The wind industry, which is immune from prosecution for wildlife crime, counters that far more birds are killed by cars and cats and likes to point to a spurious calculation that if the climate gets very warm and habitats change then the oil industry could one day be said to have killed off many birds. But when was the last time your cat brought home an Imperial Eagle or a needle-tailed swift? Says Dr Hambler: “Climate change won’t drive those species to extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might.”

[Here's a video of a vulture hitting a turbine blade in Crete.]

Wind turbines are not only far more conspicuous than gas drilling rigs, but cover vastly more area. Just ten hectares (25 acres) of oil or gas drilling pads can produce more energy that the entire British wind industry. Which does the greatest harm to God’s glorious creation, rev?

Read the rest of the explanation here.

Cartoon of the Day: Wind Power: All the Pain for Zero Gain

From Watts up with That (hat tip Professor Mark Perry)

Quote of the Day: Wind Power Scam

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine — despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide…

The real enemy is not wind farms per se, but groupthink and hysteria which allowed such a flawed idea to progress — with a minimum of intellectual opposition.

That’s from prolific author Matt Ridley writing at the spectator.co.uk, who is sponsoring an essay contest to challenge the “consensus-worshipping, heretic-hunting environment”, called “Matt Ridley prize for environmental heresy” with prize money of £ 8,500 (estimated 575k pesos).

Wind Farms Are Environmental Friendly...Not!

We are made to believe that wind farms, as an alternative energy source, are environmental friendly.

Telegraph’s James Delingpole says otherwise... (bold highlights mine)

So wind farms don’t just despoil countryside, frighten horses, chop up birds, spontaneously combust, drive down property prices, madden those who live nearby with their subsonic humming, drive up electricity prices, promote rentseeking, make rich landowners richer (and everyone else poorer), ruin views, buy more electric sports cars for that dreadful Dale Vince character, require rare earth minerals which cause enormous environmental damage, destroy 3.7 real jobs for every fake “green” job they “create”, blight neighbourhoods, kill off tourism and ruin lives, but they also

KILL WHALES!

According to researchers at the University of St Andrews, the sound of offshore wind farms is likely to mess with the whales’ sensitive sonar systems and drive them ashore, where they get stuck on beaches and die.

Has anyone else noticed the gentle irony here? Well, let me explain with the help of my magic sledgehammer: save possibly the polar bear and the mighty snail darter there is no creature on the planet more totemic of green values than the whale. Saving whales is what greens do. Or rather what they used to do in the days when greens were actually interested in caring for the environment instead of, say, trying to destroy the capitalist system. But now, here they are actively promoting a form of renewable energy which in the process of producing next to no energy very expensively also does the most stupendous damage to the environment and the eco-system.

Hat tip and photos from Matt Ridley

Post script: Telegraph’s James Delingpole says that following the publishing of the whale study, the man who led the research team, dissociated himself from the article. (This only reveals how politically powerful the environmental movement is)

Nonetheless, Mr. Delingpole concludes,

What this means is that, though at this stage we know for absolute certain that wind farms despoil countryside, frighten horses, chop up birds, spontaneously combust, drive down property prices, madden those who live nearby with their subsonic humming, drive up electricity prices, promote rentseeking, make rich landowners richer (and everyone else poorer), ruin views, buy more electric sports cars for that dreadful Dale Vince character, require rare earth minerals which cause enormous environmental damage, destroy 3.7 real jobs for every fake “green” job they “create”, blight neighbourhoods, kill off tourism and ruin lives, the possibility that they also lure whales to their doom remains at this stage an unproven hypothesis. (Just like Anthropogenic Global Warming theory, then.)

10 World's Largest Energy Renewable Projects

Interesting trivia on the world's largest renewable energy projects from Scientific American.

According to Sciam, ``Today, renewable energy sources generate 12 percent of electricity in the U.S. But wind, wave, sunshine and others represent more than 93 percent of the energy the country could be producing, according to the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy."

The list includes wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal or wave power, hydroelectric, solar and landfill gas...

Here are two samples of the renewable energy landmarks.


World's Biggest Offshore Wind Farm Lynn and Inner Dowsing Wind Farm Near Skegness, Lincolnshire, England

World's Largest Photovoltaic Power Plant Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park in Olmedilla de Alarcón, Spain

For the complete list and details, Pls click here