Looming ‘clean’ energy disasters off our coasts

One broken wind turbine blade shut down Massachusetts beaches. What would hurricanes do?

Paul Driessen

Photos of oil-covered seals and birds from California’s 1969 Santa Barbara blowout helped launch the environmental and stop-oil movements. Some 90,000 barrels polluted ocean waters and yet, when I was scuba diving beneath it two decades later, the same production platform support structure once again hosted a magnificent ecosystem with millions of anemones, mussels, starfish, crabs and fish.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon drillship disaster killed eleven workers and blasted 3-4 million barrels of oil and enormous amounts of natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico. Yet within a surprisingly short time after the runaway well was capped, wave action, oil-dispersant chemicals, dust-covered oil droplets slowly sinking to the seafloor, and other natural forces had cleansed the waters of oil.

Those other forces were hydrocarbon-degrading microbes that are always present in ocean waters worldwide – but rapidly reproduce when they sense oil in their environs. After depleting the hydrocarbon food sources, the microbes die off to normal numbers, and new organisms degrade the byproducts the initial foragers created, until those nutrients are also gone. Then their populations also plummet, in a newly clean ocean.

The disasters spurred industry to implement better blowout prevention technologies and procedures.

Irrelevant, anti-oil activists say, they also emphasize why we must banish oil and gas – and replace fossil fuels with clean, green wind, solar and battery power. Otherwise, wildlife, beaches and tourism will be threatened repeatedly by oil spills.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that these supposed alternatives won’t work – especially as AI, EVs, data centers, government-mandated electric heating and cooking, and charging grid-backup batteries, double or triple electricity generation demands. Intermittent electricity cannot power modern nations. Wind and solar cannot produce thousands of essential products that require petrochemical feed stocks. These energy sources are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. They endanger wildlife.

A recent mishap off the Nantucket, Massachusetts coast underscores yet another reason why hundreds or thousands of monstrous wind turbines cannot be permitted in America’s coastal waters.

Shards, chunks and finally the rest of a turbine blade fell into the ocean. One blade ... from a 62-turbine project that’s only three-fourths completed ... broken by its own weight, not by a storm.

And yet beaches had to be closed amid peak tourist season, while crews picked up pieces of fiberglass-resin-plastic-foam blades, and boats dodged big pieces floating in the water. Worse, Vineyard Wind didn’t tell Nantucket officials about the problems until two days after the blade began disintegrating.

Each blade is 350 feet long and 140,000 pounds. That’s more than a fully occupied Boeing 737 jetliner. Vineyard Wind involves 186 blades: 65,000 feet (12 miles) in total combined length, weighing in at a combined 26,000,000 pounds!

The Biden-Harris offshore wind plan calls for 30,000 megawatts of generating capacity by 2030. That’s 2,500 gigantic 12-MW offshore turbines. That won’t even meet New York State’s current peak summer electricity needs, before all these extra demands kick in. Offshore wind’s contribution toward meeting future demands for all Atlantic Coast states could easily require 5,000 such turbines: 15,000 blades, weighing a combined 2 billion pounds and spanning a combined 5,250,000 feet (995 miles)!

Even more disturbing, the entire Atlantic coastline is hurricane country. Every year, almost without fail. The only questions are how many hurricanes, how powerful, and where each one will hit.

NOAA records for landfalling hurricanes – those that actually hit US beaches and cities – reveal that 105 Category 1-5 hurricanes struck the Atlantic seaboard, from Florida to Maine, from 1851 through 2023. Add in those that remained at sea, where the turbines will be, and that number could double.

Of that total, 23 were Category 3-5 (111-157 or higher mph winds). Most struck Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. But 39 made landfall between North Carolina and Delaware – and 19 hit Northeastern States, including nine Category 2-3 monsters (96-129 mph winds).

Mind you – these turbines will be weakened by constant corrosive salt spray and frequently by sub-hurricane storms. When the inevitable big hurricane roars up the coast, devastation will follow.

Kamala Harris is bullish about offshore wind. For the last 3-1/2 years she’s helped run an administration that’s determined to convert the USA to wind, solar and battery power, expedite permits for onshore and offshore “clean energy” projects, and even waive requirements that offshore wind developers post bonds and pay for removing damaged, broken and obsolete offshore wind towers.

She supports banning plastic straws but has never asked how many plastic straws it would take to equal 15,000 offshore wind turbine blades. (Using nautical terms, an unfathomable number.) Moreover, plastic straws don’t contain dangerously sharp fiberglass shards, and can’t sink fishing boats that collide with enormous but hard-to-see slabs of turbine blades.

Ms. Harris, Tim Walz and other wind zealots ignore worries about hurricanes wiping out forests of offshore wind turbines as anti-wind fearmongering. History says otherwise.

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane clobbered Florida with 200+ mph devastation, Georgia with Category 1 winds. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 smashed into New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts with 115-120 mph force. 1944’s Great Atlantic Hurricane – punished the coast from North Carolina to New Jersey and Massachusetts with Category 2 winds.

Edna hit the Northeast with Category 2 winds in 1954, Donna did it again in 1960, and Gloria clobbered the region with 96-115 mph blasts in 1985, even reaching New Hampshire and Maine! Isabel hit North Carolina and Virginia in 2003. The “minor” Category 1 hurricane of 2012, better known as Superstorm Sandy, was also devastating.

This summary includes just some that hit North and Mid-Atlantic States, and a few that slammed Florida, Georgia and South Carolina – all prime territory for forests of offshore turbines, fixed to the seafloor or insanely sitting atop enormous floating platforms off Maine and other states. They’d all flounder.

Replacing hundreds or thousands pf torn, damaged and smashed turbines and blades would take years, perhaps decades. Meanwhile, there would be no electricity in a Harris-Biden-Walz-Democrat government-mandated all-electric Eastern Seaboard. The absence of heating, air conditioning and power for homes, hospitals and everything else would displace millions and kill thousands.

Hopefully, politicians and bureaucrats could expedite new gas turbine and modular nuclear power plants. That would mean only a few years of deprivation and blackouts, instead of many years, perhaps decades.

Otherwise, floating slabs of broken turbine blades would endanger boats for months or years, until they are retrieved, hauled ashore and landfilled. Cleaning up billions of sharp shards of fiberglass – each an inch to a couple feet in length, and nearly invisible – would likely take decades, during which time they would impale and imperil beach walkers, swimmers, fish, whales, dolphins and other marine life.

I’m not a microbiologist, but I’m not aware of any microbes that devour fiberglass, resin or plastic foam.

With no bonds or requirements that Big Wind cover cleanup and turbine removal costs, electricity-bereft taxpayers and ratepayers would be left holding the bag.

Before we rush any further into this “renewable energy transformation,” can we first have some realistic, commonsense analysis? Can we at least think before casting our ballots this fall?

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues. 

Con Edison Launches Campaign To Deflect Blame For The Coming Energy Disaster

June 17, 2024/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

The electric utility for most of New York City is Consolidated Edison, usually shortened to Con Edison, or even Con Ed. When I moved to New York almost 50 years ago, Con Ed was what they call “vertically integrated,” meaning that it was responsible for all aspects of the electricity system, from generation of the power, to high-voltage wholesale distribution, down to delivery to individual homes. That ended in the late 1990s. As part of the deregulation of that era, Con Ed sold off almost all of its generation facilities to independent operators who since then must bid for access to the grid. Today Con Ed is almost entirely in the distribution business, including both wholesale and retail.

Although it no longer generates the power, Con Ed does have competent grid engineers working for it, and it is in a position to have a bird’s-eye view of New York’s so-called energy transition. Clearly, they are very well informed about the looming energy disaster in this state. Also, of all the companies involved in some way in providing electricity in New York City, Con Ed is the main one that has direct contact with most of the ultimate consumers. They are like a sitting duck, waiting to take the blame when everything falls apart.

So, suppose you were Con Ed. What would be your strategy to deal with what you clearly know is an impending catastrophe?

If you found yourself in their position, there would be only one honest and righteous thing to do. You would sound the alarm, as loud as possible. You would shout from the rooftops that this can’t work. You would warn of the danger to human life of a predominantly wind/solar generation system that could fail completely for weeks in the dead of winter.

Instead, sad to say, Con Ed’s strategy is just as you would expect from people of no backbone and no principles. Today, the President of Con Ed, a guy named Matthew Ketschke, had an op-ed in the New York Daily News, titled “NYC’s power must be clean and reliable.” (unfortunately behind pay wall, but I will quote some substantial sections). Rather than leveling with the people, Ketschke goes the route of kowtowing to the political powers of the moment, while attempting to set up a narrative to deflect blame as best he can away from his own company. Oh, and while also preparing to cash in big by building a vast amount of new transmission capacity, with guaranteed return from the ratepayers, that will only exist to serve some near-useless wind and solar generators that will contribute almost nothing to useful electricity.

Before going into some detail, a few words on the Daily News. It was once the largest circulation newspaper in the country, with 2+ million daily subscribers in the 1940s and 50s. Since then it has shrunk continuously, until now it has fewer than 200,000 subscribers. Unlike the New York Post, which is not paywalled, the Daily News is almost entirely paywalled. As a result, I rarely look at it. Its editorials run substantially in line with the latest woke orthodoxy. (For example, today there is an editorial criticizing the Supreme Court’s bump stock case, and another advocating for free transit fares for low income people). However, to its credit, the Daily News has published a number of op-eds recently on both sides of issues of New York’s energy policies.

Here’s how Ketschke starts off:

New York’s energy system is at an inflection point. Energy use is rising — but due to climate change so are temperatures and the frequency of storms. Unfortunately, generators have been slow to meet that increasing demand with the clean energy we need to combat climate change, and now some are questioning the reliability of the power system. But I am here to tell you that New York City doesn’t need to sacrifice reliability to address climate change. We can have both.

I guess genuflecting to the climate change cult is a basic qualification for the job of President of Con Ed. But you could do that and still be honest when politicians are mandating the impossible. Instead, the gist here is that we are doing our part, and the looming problems are someone else’s fault. We can have “reliability” at the same time as we “address climate change” with wind and solar power. It’s just that those evil “generators” (not us!) have been “slow to meet the increasing demand with the clean energy we need.”

But what about the “gap” identified by the New York Independent System Operator, likely to manifest by 2030 or so in the form of insufficient generation to meet demand? Ketschke starts by acknowledging the looming gap:

[T]he NYISO report . . . found that in the coming decade, the buffer between New York’s peak energy use and ability to generate power is going to tighten — threatening reliability. That trend is a concern for those of us responsible for keeping the lights on and the air conditioners running, and a clarion call to move faster on building more sources of energy that are renewable and a system that is more reliable.

But hey, we don’t build generators, just transmission facilities. The generators are someone else’s problem. Rest assured, we are doing our part!:

Con Edison is currently investing more than $2 billion on infrastructure projects to ensure the grid can meet the increased demand for power as buildings and vehicles move away from fossil fuels and become electrified. . . . Con Edison is enhancing its electric delivery system to deliver more clean energy from solar arrays, wind turbines, hydro and other renewable resources to support New York State’s climate goals. The company is investing in energy efficiency programs, new substations, transmission lines to carry renewable energy, incentives for electric vehicle chargers, and other measures to usher in a clean energy future.

But what then about the generating facilities to provide the electricity? Sorry, not our job.:

The good news is that the NYISO report also found that the state is moving in the right direction, even if it’s slower than we want. In the last year, New York has added 452 MW of clean energy resources to the grid. We need that number to be in the 1000’s moving forward, but it’s a good start.

Those other guys just have to step up their game in a big way.

And then Ketscheke wraps up with some more genuflection, followed by kissing the feet and licking the toes of the climate cultists:

Opponents of New York’s clean energy plans would argue that we need to go back and embrace burning fossil fuels to ensure reliability. It’s a head scratching conclusion. . . . [W]e also know that the best long-term option for the state is to address climate change directly through smart investments that mitigate future climate change, while adapting to current reality.  New York needs to build more clean energy resources to allow the retirement of high polluting peaker plants. And we need to invest in research and development to spur new technologies that will help deliver electricity 24/7.

My normal instinct would be to feel some sympathy for the President of Con Edison, who is caught in a difficult to impossible position. He and his company will likely get a big share of the blame for the coming disaster. But between the genuflection to the cult and the profiteering off useless new transmission lines, he completely loses me. Con Ed, if you don’t have the courage to say the obvious truth here, you deserve whatever is coming to you.

Obamacare's legacy: More spending, lower life expectancy

But former president accused Republicans of 'misinformation' 

By Art Moore April 6, 2022

When Barack Obama returned to the White House on Tuesday to a rock-star welcome that further diminished the stature of the current president, he complained that Republicans had spread "misinformation" about what he regards as his signature achievement, the Affordable Health Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

But on the 12th anniversary of the legislation, it's clear that Obama spread "misinformation" to get the bill passed, including his promises that you can keep your health care plan and your doctor, a typical family will see an annual reduction in health care expenses of $2,500, and the bill won't add to the deficit.......To Read More.....

Why Are Obamacare Exchange Policies So Bad?

Mises Daily: Thursday, December 12, 2013 by Hunter Lewis

As millions of people began to lose their old medical insurance policies, President Obama and other Obamacare supporters replied that the new exchange policies were better. This was another lie.

Obamacare exchange medical insurance policies are much worse than previous private policies. They not only restrict access to hospitals and doctors more severely than ever before. They also pay doctors much less, in some cases 50 percent less.

In the past, private insurance companies paid doctors more than Medicare, and Medicare more than Medicaid. No longer. Now private Obamacare policies will pay barely more than Medicaid. Consumers should avoid these new exchange policies if at all possible....To Read More.....

Marx and the City: Will the World's Financial Capital Survive de Blasio?

By Thomas Basile Sep 28, 2013

New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio is dangerous because he’s as close as you can get to being a Marxist without actually standing on a street corner handing out little red books.  Political pendulums swing. After a certain number of years where there is political dominance by one party or another, it is not unusual in our system for voters to grow restless and want change. Our nation’s largest and most influential city is in the midst of one of these shifts. It’s been 20 years since a Democrat was elected Mayor of Gotham, and today the left is salivating at the possibility of regaining its seat of power in lower Manhattan.

Here’s the problem: New York’s notoriously late primary has led to the selection — as primaries often do — of an extremist; a man David Webb and I recently dubbed “the most dangerous man in New York,” Bill de Blasio.

Let’s be clear, Bill de Blasio isn’t dangerous simply because he represents a leftward shift for New York. He’s not dangerous because he’s a Democrat in a city of Democrats. He’s dangerous because, as the New York Times Magazine pointed out in its exposé this past Sunday, because he’s as close as you can get to being a Marxist without actually standing on a street corner handing out little red books. For all we know, he may have done that too……To Read More......

Genocidal Green Quotes

This is the next installment in Alan's expose of the Green Movement leading up to Earth Day. Alan publishes daily at Warning Signs, and he is worth reading daily. RK

By Alan Caruba

As Earth Day 2012 occurs on Sunday,  April 22, I offer a selection of quotes from leading figures in the environmental movement that are worth reading so that you can draw your own conclusions.

In 1970, the first Earth Day generated the following quotes:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” - George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” - Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” - New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” - Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” - Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day in 1970.

Truth meant (and means) little to environmentalists.

“What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-CO)

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace.

Many of the environmental movement’s leaders harbored genocidal dreams as the best way to “save the Earth.”

“We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!” – Steward Brand, writing in the Earth Catalog.

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.” - Dave Forman, founder of Earth First

“I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” - John Davis, editor of the Earth First Journal

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing….This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.” - An editorial in The Economist.

Al Gore

One could devote an entire column to quotes by former Vice President, Al Gore, but one of my favorites is from his 1993 book, Earth in the Balance. “It ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five year period.”

He was talking about the engine in every car, every truck, every tractor, every motorcycle, and every airplane, among other uses. Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize, shared with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and an Oscar for his apocalyptic documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

There are, of course, voices of reason who have sought to warn us against the true agenda of environmentalism.

“The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.” --Paul Johnson, historian

And, finally, this warning from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclac Klaus: “They hate us, the humans, they consider us selfish and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world—called communism—and I know that it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced.”

Sources:

1970 Earth Day Quotes:
Green Quotes:
More Green Quotes:

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