The sky is not falling
Mark Greathouse
(1/2023) Nuclear energy? Arrrgh! Nagasaki! Hiroshima! Three Mile Island! Chernobyl! Fukushima! Kaboom! Horrors galore are immediately thrown at a fear-saturated public by the environmental elite. Panic! Global warming disaster? The sky is falling? Not!
To be clear, I agree that our planet’s climate is changing. I support the protection of our environment and the wonders of its wildlife. I disagree with most of the means being ballyhooed by climate extremists to protect mother earth. Global warming per se is not "settled science." In fact, y’all will find that science is hardly ever "settled."
I believe – and so should you – that nuclear energy is the cleanest, most efficient, most productive way to solve most of our residential and industrial energy needs. However, biased academia, media, climate activists, and politicians serve to complicate the nuclear energy solution. Radicals Saul Alinsky and Rahm Emmanuel are laughing at the irony of a made-up crisis that proponents dare not let go to waste. The "Greenies" take full advantage of we humans’ tendency to exaggerate our own importance in the scheme of things.
Let’s all agree that the success of an industrialized society requires an abundant source of sufficient uninterrupted power. Intermittent, fluctuating power sources like wind and solar simply will never ever be sufficient even with vast arrays of expensive back-up batteries.
By way of a perspective on climate, visualize my great great grandfather raising longhorns on about 20,000 acres near Alice, Texas in the 1870s through 1890s. While dodging occasional tumbleweeds and dealing with droughts and rustlers, the least of his worries were cattle emissions and smoke from wood-burning cooking fires. Fossil fuels weren’t a concern. Global warming? Ho-hum.
Incidentally, oil and natural gas are abundant worldwide with supplies sufficient for many centuries to come. Oil is actually not a so-called fossil fuel. It’s a hydrocarbon that seeps from several miles beneath the earth’s mantle, picking up fossilized detritus in its path to accessible pools closer to the planet’s surface. There have never been enough dinosaurs and plants in earth’s history to turn into oil in the huge near-surface deposits currently identified. But enough of the fossil thing. Check out studies by the Russian Academy of Sciences, Thomas Gold’s The Deep Hot Biosphere, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s 2004 report on deep earth methane deposits among much other research the Greenies, uninformed politicians, and herd-instinct press choose to ignore.
Are wind and solar energy "clean?" Not on your life. In addition to its impracticality, so-called green energy is not so "green." Don’t ignore the environmental disasters of mining cobalt, nickel, and lithium for batteries powering electric vehicles; the annual burial of 3 million tons of used wind turbine blades and of used solar panels that damage water tables and never sufficiently biodegrade; the acres of ugly, government-subsidized solar panel farms barely meeting community energy needs; and the inefficient and murderous wind turbine farms constructed directly in the paths of migratory insects, bats, raptors, and other birds which they kill by the hundreds of thousands annually. Last but hardly least, we dare not ignore that those wind turbines use lots of oil for their gearboxes; up to 60 gallons that gets changed every two to three years. Better keep drilling and refining that oil!
Are wind and solar sufficient? With widespread wind turbines and solar panels, we just might save a tiny fraction of a degree of global warming over the next century, assuming all nations are onboard. Maybe a glacier won’t melt. Perhaps, New York City won’t be flooded. The answer surely isn’t in the artificially-induced panic surrounding the Green New Deal. And how much money from Green agendas is fattening the wallets of the likes of Al "Carbon Credit" Gore and John "Climate Reparations" Kerry?
What’s the most efficient energy source from a land use perspective? According to research by the Strata Group at Utah State University, "coal, natural gas, and nuclear power all feature the smallest physical footprint of about 12 acres per megawatt produced. Solar and wind are much more land intensive technologies using 43.5 and 70.6 acres per megawatt, respectively. Hydroelectricity generated by large dams has a significantly larger footprint than any other power generation technology, using 315.2 acres per megawatt." It would take a land area the size of Texas and California combined to supply U.S. energy needs with wind and solar power. My grandfather Nick is likely turning in his grave at the mere thought of such waste of good grazing land. Better to let cattle fart.
Let’s "circle back" to nuclear power. Is it safe? Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger quotes in his best-selling Apocalypse Never a 2018 World Health Organization report, "when the worst occurs with nuclear – and the fuel melts – the amount of particulate matter that escapes from the plant is insignificant in comparison to the particulate matter from fossil- and bio-mass burning in homes, cars, and power plants, which killed eight million people in 2016." Is hydroelectric power safer? The Banqiao hydroelectric dam in China collapsed in 1975 killing upwards of 170,00 to 230,000 people. Shellenberger references a 2007 Lancet article that concludes, "Nuclear is thus the safest way to make reliable electricity." Contrary to green extremist scare claims, the death toll from nuclear energy is vanishingly small. Moreover, nuclear fuel efficiency and waste reduction is achievable by reprocessing to recover unused uranium that can be used in
breeder reactors to produce more fuel. Oh my! It’s renewable!
The economic and world health impacts of the perpetuation of the climate extremist myths are alarming. The price of just about everything revolves around oil from plastics to gasoline and diesel fuels to moving goods to market. Global consequences are huge. Underdeveloped nations are even being held economically hostage by industrialized countries that already have abundant sources of sufficient uninterrupted power by forcing them to use wood and coal as primary energy sources.
Our nation’s security is at great risk. The misguided energy policies of the current administration that stifle oil and gas production and nuclear energy development have not only contributed to runaway inflation and looming recession but have created a serious national security threat. They’ve placed China in the energy "driver’s seat" for materials for so-called renewables. We’ve further jeopardized national security by moving from oil and gas independence in 2020 to oil dependence in 2022.
The United States stands as the cleanest nation on earth. However, per the law of diminishing returns, we dare not destroy our nation’s economy in exchange for the minimal gains of the gross spending for the Green New Deal panic. The United States must deal from strength on the world diplomatic stage.
As we ponder the green panic, it’s worth reminding ourselves of a prescient quote from John F. Kennedy, "The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and realistic."
The myth of the climate change crisis is easily solved. Let’s move forward with oil and gas energy and build new nuclear power plants while we seek a practical, affordable, and enduring energy solution other than the ephemeral practicality of costly wind turbines and solar panels. Let’s build our nation’s economic strength to permit our science and tech industries to develop that ultimate energy solution, one that stands steadfastly on its own as an advance of humankind. Meanwhile, be assured that the sky is not falling.
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