By David Wojick
Ten so-called environmental groups, including the biggest, have joined the lawsuit filed by a bunch of green States asking the Court to nullify the President’s day-one executive order putting a hold on federal approvals of wind power projects. These big green groups love wind power.
For those not familiar with the State lawsuit I wrote about it here.
It has long been known that some of the biggest green groups have abandoned environmentalism in favor of net zero industrialization. This time they were nice enough to list themselves, as follows:
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)
Citizens Campaign for the Environment
Conservation Law Foundation
Environmental Advocates NY (represented by Earthjustice)
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)
Environmental Protection Information Center
National Wildlife Federation (NWF)
New York League of Conservation Voters
Sierra Club
Southern Environmental Law Center
Collectively these groups likely make over a billion dollars a year. Here are the rounded annual revenues of the big four: EDF – $320 million, NRDC – $250 million, NWF – $120 million, Sierra Club – $120 million.
Ironically, this action is supported by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF); see their press release here (which includes email addresses for each group).
NWF is the only group that is specifically about wildlife. The one certain harm from wind power is the annual killing of millions of birds and bats. Bird death estimates range as high as 1.7 million a year, with bat deaths up to 2.8 million. That is 4.5 million critters a year killed by wind power.
We presently have about 160,000 MW of wind power, which means over 50,000 turbines and 150,000 chopping blades with tip speeds of 200 mph or so. NWF thinks this is just fine and apparently supports the 230,000 more MW that have applied to be connected to the grid.
They even have a separate portal promoting offshore wind where the National Wildlife Federation says this: “Your voice is needed to advance American offshore wind power and begin a clean energy chapter that will reduce pollution, protect wildlife, and create jobs all along the coast.”
Protect wildlife? Offshore wind kills whales and other marine mammals, likely in large numbers.
The moral bankruptcy of big money environmentalism gets no clearer than this advocacy of big wind. I wonder if NWF’s lavish donors understand the ever growing scale of wind power’s wildlife carnage?
Getting back to the lawsuit, here is a typical big green take from the NWF press release:
““Wind power is a clean, reliable resource, with projects undergoing a well-established, science-based permitting process including robust environmental review and public input to ensure projects avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts to wildlife and ecosystems. This legal challenge demonstrates a strong consensus that wind energy is an essential part of American energy independence, capable of delivering major environmental and public health benefits by reducing carbon emissions and improving air and water quality. The administration’s attacks on wind disregard both the legal framework and the scientific evidence behind these projects, threatening a clean, affordable, and reliable energy future,” said Jim Murphy, senior director of legal advocacy at the National Wildlife Federation.
Wind power is not clean, not affordable, and certainly not reliable. It is, however, deadly to millions of birds, bats, and marine mammals. No more of these deadly turbines should be allowed to be built.
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This video details the arguments to use in a court of law to expose the climate change hoax. It is long but it creates the arguments that easily expose the hoax in common sense language and arguments. Please share this video with the lawfirms that may be involved. Also, share it with anyone you know that believes this man made global warming hoax.
https://app.screencast.com/ZMpNTvkLD7DDJ
The video is absolutely useless as a counter to climate alarmism because it starts off with a junk science inference that there is a meaningful relationship between the IR radiative properties of CO2 gas (non-condensed matter) and dry ice (condensed matter). While the former exhibits a spike at 15 mu, the latter absorbs and emits IR along the entire spectrum of thermal radiation, and only coincidentally exhibits a peak intensity at 15 mu along its Planck curve due to the coincidental fact that the critical temperature of dry ice is ~195 K.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of climate alarmism, but this ain’t one of them.
A wavelength is a wavelength, condensed or not, once it leaves a radiation body, it is simply a wavelength. There is only a finite amount of energy available in those wavelengths. It is that simple. The conservation of energy argument holds. You have to prove that 15 micron LWIR from CO2 is different from 15 micron LWIR from any other body, and you can’t. CO2 doesn’t emit a blackbody spectrum, it emits a small fraction and a very specific range of radiation. Once again, we are talking about the GHG effect, the absorption and radiation of a certain wavelength. We not taling about warming CO2 up to a temperature and measuring that spectrum. Don’t confuse the two, the second has nothing to do with the GHG effect.
‘A wavelength is a wavelength, condensed or not, once it leaves a radiation body, it is simply a wavelength. There is only a finite amount of energy available in those wavelengths.’
I see now. The major ‘reason’ behind your wavelength = energy fallacy is that you’re ignoring amplitude / intensity. The Planck curve of an object shows that it emits from a continuum of wavelengths, but the amount of energy, or power, emitted at any wavelength depends on its amplitude.
To borrow from Steve Case’s jet fighter analogy, you might not even take notice if one flies over your home, but if you regularly worked a carrier deck without serious ear protection, you’d inevitably experience significant hearing loss.
This is very very very simple. If you shine the entire white spectrum at pure CO2 it will simply pass through it. It is Transparent. The one and only band of EM radiation that CO2 is not transparent to is 13 to 18 micron, that is all there is. You have a blackbody earth emitting a Plank Curve with peak near 20 degrees Celsius. nearly 100% is transparent. The only wavelengths being thermalized and not transparent are the wavelengths being emitted from Antarctica.
‘If you shine the entire white spectrum at pure CO2 it will simply pass through it. It is Transparent.’
1) We’re talking about IR radiation, not the visible light spectrum.
2) 13 to 18 mu surface radiation is hardly limited to Antarctica.
3) The emission spectrums of CO2 and H2O mostly overlap over the above range.
4) Are you also trying to imply that H2O has no effect on the Earth’s surface temperature?
5) I’d like to see what a Planck Curve of the Earth’s surface looks like absent CO2 and H2O.
6) Quit digging and read the link I provided you. It might not pass muster with some skeptics, but at least it avoids the ‘CO2 doesn’t do anything because dry ice is really cold’ woo-woo.
‘pure CO2’
I almost missed this. The absorbtion and emission characteristics of ‘pure’ CO2 (or H2O) significantly differ from mixtures of these gases with non-IR active gas species like O2 and N2. Like a lot different. Again, please review the link I provided to you earlier.
Summarizing: the amplitude in quantum mechanics is not important. A single photon’s energy E depends on its wavelength l via E = hc / l, with h Planck’s constant and c the speed of light. Having N of those photons gives a total energy of N hc / l. It is not the best way to think of this as that amplitude has increased by N.
The energy of the wave is related to the amplitude of the wave as you would expect. Wave energy like you suggested is proportional to amplitude of the that wave.
However, this is not the whole story. Each EM (Electromagnetic) wave is made from lots of little particles called photons. These photons are the quanta of EM field coming from quantum theory. Think of them as tiny fundamental EM wave packets. Each of these photons have a specific amount of energy which is proportional to the wavelength of the light associated with it.
Now you may be asking how do these two two ideas intertwine. Since each EM wave is made up of lots of photons, the overall energy of the EM wave is proportional to the product of the number of photons and the energy of each photon. Think of it as the total energy of all the photons.
This leads to some interesting behavior. If you one wave made of lots of less energetic photons and another which has fewer individual photons but each photon carries more energy the energies of each of these light waves could in theory have the same energy.
‘Since each EM wave is made up of lots of photons, the overall energy of the EM wave is proportional to the product of the number of photons and the energy of each photon. Think of it as the total energy of all the photons.’
Therein lies your ‘problem’ in a nutshell; it’s the conservation of energy, not photons, that is relevant. Specifically, SW energy absorbed = LW energy radiated out to space. Different photons, different wavelengths, etc.
Ironically, your insistence on a ‘conservation of photons’ approach is very similar to why alarmists insist that radiative transfer models are applicable to the troposphere. They aren’t, and the reason they aren’t is because ‘thermalization’ of excited IR active gases by non-IR active gas species in the lower troposphere converts the energy of their absorbed photons to kinetic energy, i.e., sensible heat that is convected aloft.
In other words, photons absorbed by GHGs near the surface are effectively ‘quenched’, and are not available to radiate downward in the form of ‘back radiation’. At much higher altitudes, of course, this sensible heat convected upwards can and does excite GHG molecules, which can then more freely radiate their (different) photons to space.
Again, please take a gander at the link I provided you.
You miss the point. We aren’t talking about a radiating body of a certain temperature, emitting a certain spectrum. That isn’t the GHG effect. If I warm a volume of CO2 to a certain temperature, it will emit a broad spectrum of wavelengths. So would O2 and N2, so the thermal radiation is irrelevant. What is important are the wavelengths that are thermalized by CO2. Those wavelengths are 13 to 18 peak 15 microns. Those are the only applicable wavelengths. Those wavelengths are emitted by a blackbody of -80 Degree C. If you are disagreeing with that you either don’t understand the GHG Effect, or you don’t understand how to read a spectrum and Plank curve. Once gain, we aren’t taking about the radiation from a hot body, we are talking about the energy of thermalizing a narrow band of LWIR spectrum. How can something that is emitting radiation from dry ice warm anything? If that was the case, we would warm everything with very low energy. We could literally warm our homes with ice if you can magnify the energy of certain wavelengths.
‘If I warm a volume of CO2 to a certain temperature, it will emit a broad spectrum of wavelengths. So would O2 and N2, so the thermal radiation is irrelevant.’
If you’re speaking about CO2, O2 and N2 in their condensed phases, I don’t disagree with you. The issue is that neither you nor I live on a planet where that is applicable. And no, thermal radiation isn’t ‘irrelevant’, it’s what the Earth’s surface emits, much of which escapes directly to space via the aptly named atmospheric window.
The portion of thermal radiation that doesn’t escape directly to space is mostly absorbed by H2O and CO2 and then predominantly converted to sensible heat, i.e., thermalized, within meters of the surface by collisions with N2 and O2. And because the thermalization of GHGs occurs much faster than the spontaneous emission of photons by these molecules, the resulting sensible heat is mostly convected aloft rather than ‘back-radiated’ downward towards the surface.
‘If you are disagreeing with that you either don’t understand the GHG Effect, or you don’t understand how to read a spectrum and Plank curve.’
This, and the rest of your comment is either physical nonsense or outright ad-hominem. Suffice it to say that if you and your block of dry ice ever appeared in a public hearing, the science and legal advisors to big wind, solar and/or climate alarmism would mop the floor with you.
This graphic gives you everything you need. Note how the only part of the spectrum that earth emits that CO2 absorbs, ie is not transparent to, is that small band between 13 and 18 microns. That is all the energy that is relevant to CO2. That is it. Also, note the intensity. They are barely recognizable. That is all the energy we are talking about. Follow the 15 microns up to the plank curve and it hits to the right of the peak of the 210K. 210K is -62 Degrees C. 15 lines up with -80C, what part of that graphic don’t you understand?
I have no problem ‘understanding’ that the (very) small emission peak at 15 mu is from CO2 emitting from about 80 km. What you are missing is that the so-called ‘notch’ in the Planck Curve around that wavelength represents a ‘serious misinterpretation of the OLR spectrum.’ Per the Shula & Ott link I keep asking you to look at:
‘The “notch” occurs because water vapor emissions begin to overlap with the CO2 absorption band, and the water emission is being absorbed by CO2. What the emission curve does not reveal is that the CO2 is then thermalized via collisions and that sensible heat energy drives additional thermally excited emission by water vapor. The reason there is such a tiny emission peak for CO2 at the bottom of the “notch” is that almost all the radiation has been emitted to space by water vapor and there is little work remaining for CO2 to do.’
Again, this might not pass muster with some skeptics, but it’s certainly much more plausible than your ‘CO2 doesn’t do anything because dry ice is really cold’ explanation.
This is pure nonsense:
1) Go to Modtran and you will see that the CO2 signature isn’t even recognizable until H2O precipitates out of the atmosphere.
2) CO2 does absolutely nothing to the energy balance in the lower troposphere, why? Because as you pointed out, H2O and CO2 both absorb the 15 micron LWIR. H2O can be 4%, CO2 is 0.04%. Clearly H2O is far more likely to absorb the Photon than CO2.
3) There is a finite amount of 15 LWIR and H2O easily absorbs 100% as does CO2, so with our without CO2 100% of outgoing 15 Micron LWIR gets absorbed.
4) The 15 micron peak isn’t from 80km, it is from any spectrometer. CO2 has 3 vibrational states, 2.3, 4.7 and 15 microns.
The fact that it appears that you don’t even know the basics pretty much proves you are blowing smoke. Care to explain where you get that 80km statement and why spectrometry changes with altitude?
https://youtu.be/TMLnUmbLwUI?si=6zp9uz9VZTULQhjB
If you bothered to read the link I provided, you would see that the authors heartily agree with you that CO2 is not a problem. The only issue here is your crazy insistence that the reason for this is because dry ice is really cold.
As for CO2 emitting from above 80K, that comes from van Wijngaaarden and Happer (see panel b in the attached figure). Feel free to disagree, but please show your work.
First thing in your video is the 15 micron same as dry ice argument. I’ve used that one too HERE, and you can follow down to Frank from NoVa’s comment. Frank’s comment is hard to follow, at least it is for me. Elsewhere someone pointed out that a microwave oven puts out wave lengths a lot longer than 15 microns. More like millimeters and yet a microwave will boil water for your afternoon tea. There’s a lefty web page, (I could put up the link, but why give them the publicity,) that contains this statement:
“If a material is capable of absorbing electromagnetic radiation
of a particular wave length, then that wavelength is capable of
heating the material, without any temperature limit.”
There are way too many arguments that say CO2 is NOT causing any “Climate Crisis” and way too many arguments pointing out the benefits of a warmer world with more rain and CO2 induced greening of the planet. There are also way too many examples of biased science and media propaganda. (Polar bears, Coral bleaching, Extreme weather etc.) In simple terms, we are being lied to.
With all of that and more on your side, making an argument that doesn’t hold water will only cost you loss of credibility.
Is the only defined mechanism by which CO2 can cause warming the GHG Effect? If yes, what spectrum relevant to the earth does CO2 emit? 13 to 18 peak 15 microns. What temperature blackbody emits that wavelength? One of -80 Degree C. Those are the undeniable physical facts. You aren’t arguing with me or the video, you are arguing with a calculator.
I once walked front of a jet fighter where the maintenance crew
was running a test on the radar. I could feel the heat from it.
Google says:
Military radars typically operate within the microwave portion
of the electromagnetic spectrum, using wavelengths ranging
from several centimeters to a few millimeters
Well anyway, do yourself a favor and look into it.
Someone working for a company (Raytheon?) was working with WW2 era radars (a cavity magnetron, I think). He noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted.
Long story short:
The first microwave ovens were called “Radar Ranges”.
Heat can be transferred in 3 ways, conduction, convection and radiation. The GHG only involves radiation. That is -80 degree C for CO2. People are confusing the radiation given off by an already hot body. That would be a broad speactrum but 100% no related to the GHG effect. The GHG Effect is the thermalization of a very very narrow band of very very low energy radiation. Just imagine the would we would live in if you could use the radiation from ice to warm a house. That is what is being claimed by the climate alarmists. If anything they way is true, we would increase the temperature of a house by 1 degree C for every increase in CO2 by 100 ppm. We could bubble wrap our homes in CO2 and CO2 backradiation would simply warm our homes. That is absurd, but that is what is being claimed.
‘The GHG only involves radiation.’
Wrong, and you even noted ‘thermalization’, which is another mechanism GHGs undergo in the presence of non-IR active gas species.
‘Just imagine the would we would live in if you could use the radiation from ice to warm a house. That is what is being claimed by the climate alarmists.’
Actually, you’re making their case that radiative transfer, i.e., the spontaneous absorbtion and emission of photons by GHGs in the troposphere is a big deal. It’s not, and it’s because of the aforementioned thermalization process.
Thermalization => no radiative transfer => no radiative transfer model => no ‘back radiation’ => no climate alarmism.
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Shula_Ott_Collaboration_Rev_5_Multipart_For_Wuwt_16jul2024.pdf
hoax is intended to deceive, scam is intended to defraud. This is a scam
Shock move on $1bn wind farm
News tip – Australian QLD government axes $1billion industrial wind factory.
Save the whales (and birds and bats)!
…. And feed the plants using CO2 producing fuels ! 🙂
Once again:
Never gets old.
And poor widdle Gavin in CA doesn’t like his EV mandate being removed..
Gavin Newsom Is Seething After Congress Repealed California’s Gas Car Ban – Climate Change Dispatch
Story Tip ?
Alpha Ventus – the touted offshore German wind facility- is unprofitable and is closing after 15, not 30, years of operation. The full cost of electricity, FCOE, as outlined in our earlier paper (Journal of Management and Sustainability Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2022) can now be determined for Alpha Ventus, and as well as for wind or PV facilities, gas turbines of all types, coal-fired power plants, nuclear including breeder reactors, hydroelectric, biomass, and more, all of which have completed their full operational life. The analysis leaves no freedom to torque numbers into favorable values for the sake of rent-seeking.
Finding these numbers, even for publicly funded developments, is not easy. Grok helps a bit, but does not find what is not in a public data base. My very capable student,Vinny Gu, is able to ferret out reliable numbers. We have completed a basic survey, and have now formulated FCOE fully. FCOE is not as simple a metric as LCOE, levelized cost of electricity.
LCOE is the Lazard promoted metric that acts as a facade to facilitate rent-seeking. LCOE does not pretend to provide actual cost of electricity, The metric does facilitate loan arrangements that guarantee rapid repayment of loans to banks, inserted between governments and manufacturers for intermittent renewable energy (IRE) facilities.
Naturally, these banks happily spend a few $billion for ‘lobbyists’ to reap a few $trillion in profit, especially when the risk is negligible. Such is the deep corruption in IRE development. The attached EIA pie chart from 2024 shows that – after 2.5 decades of intense repayment of ‘investment’ – the result is: Fossil fuel and nuclear energy still provide 91% of primary energy, while IREs yield 3 %, the remainder is hydro and biomass. IRE investment is a mirage, promoted via LCOE, as a replacement for fossil fuels and we now have the demo graveyards to prove it.
The usual suspects are up to no good again.
Simple solution, allow the construction to go forward with new environmental impact studies requiring potential bird kill numbers for onshore sites and bird and fish/mammal impacts offshore. AND must be rebid and built without Government Subsidies as the current state of the deficit no longer allows for subsidies.
Strange how projects to “Save the Planet!” never seem to require an environmental impact study.
(Or, at least, are never stopped by one. I supposed “The end justifies the means” type rational is involved.)
If offshore wind power costs three times as much as CC natural gas, as it does, I submit that it takes more energy to construct and operate offshore wind than it will ever produce. And with the now reduced 15 year lifespan of this huge German wind power installation, it is ever more apparent that it is a net energy consumer.
If it weren’t for Subsidy Farming, Wind and Solar would produce nothing of value at all … and produce nothing useful regardless.
Ideal for national suicide.
Milliband is doing his best to cripple UK
The article grossly understates the carnage caused by wind turbines. This link shows bird mortality per turbine in various countries.
Spain: 333-1000 birds/bats per year
Germany: 309 birds per year.
Sweden: 895 birds per year.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230331030649/https://windmillskill.com/blog/spanish-wind-farms-kill-6-18-million-birds-bats-year
There are now 300,000 wind turbines in the world which means that they are killing 150 million birds per year.
Fascinating, Bill! My numbers are the high end of what simple search finds. These Euro numbers are 10 times bigger so something is up. Worth looking into. Thanks.
Do not forget the bees and other benign insects!
“…. ensure projects avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts to wildlife and ecosystems…”
While extremely annoying humans. The same people will complain about the land destroying suburban lifestyles Americans prefer- but they have no problem covering landscapes with wind and solar “farms”.
AKA we have to destroy the planet to save it.
It really ticks me off- because those same greenies have fought to stop all forestry here in Wokeachusetts. The idiot state put together a committee of idiots and called it “the climate smart forestry committee”. They concluded that much less tree cutting should occur and what timber harvesting occurs should be lighter and less often! They have no clue about forestry. And of course none about the climate.
Reading the cynical propaganda from these Eco-Nazi “organizations” makes me want to puke.
Preferably, in their faces.
David, you had a typo.
It has long been known that some of the biggest green groups have abandoned environmentalism in favor of net zero deindustrialization.
Except the million MW of new wind and solar currently in the grid connection queue looks like a form of industrialization. But you are right as far as shutting down productive industries.
“Wind power is a clean, reliable resource”
Clean?? Tell that to the birds.
Reliable?? Since when?
I think it is time for the green giants to pay taxes. If I have to pay taxes everybody and organization should.