Wind Facts 

PSA: Your tax dollars are being spent by the billions to subsidize wind turbines, which are killing 600,000+ birds every year including eagles, rare owls, and migratory birds. Is this really environmentally friendly?

Do wind turbines and solar farms hold the keys to saving the environment? Michael Shellenberger, founder of Environmental Progress and noted climate activist, used to think so. Now he’s not so sure. He explains why in this important video. FOLLOW us! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/do-we-have-to-destroy-the-earth-to-save-it/ Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful. SHOP! Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/ JOIN PragerFORCE! For Students: http://l.prageru.com/2aozfkP JOIN our Educators Network! http://l.prageru.com/2aoz2y9 Script: Do we need to destroy the environment to save it? That's the question I faced a few years ago. I co-founded a movement that was the precursor to the Green New Deal. It was called "The New Apollo Project." If we could send a man to the moon, we reasoned, surely we could save our own planet. All we had to do was harness the power of the wind and the sun and get rid of fossil fuels. Compared to the original Apollo mission, how hard could that be? Well, it turned out to be very hard—practically impossible, in fact. The basic laws of physics and chemistry proved to be very stubborn. But, as I did more and more research, something else began to trouble me: the prospect that pushing the planet toward wind and solar energy would actually cause more harm to the environment than good. There's no better example of this than what wind and solar energy do to birds.  Industrial wind turbines—those giant generators of wind power—are the greatest new threat to golden and bald eagles. But the eagles are hardly the only ones threatened. Condors, owls, hawks and falcons all fall prey to the turbines’ mighty blades.    Big Wind—and believe me, there's a Big Wind industry now, just like there's Big Oil and Big Pharma—claims that house cats kill more birds than wind turbines. That's true. But whereas cats kill small, common birds like sparrows, wind turbines kill big, threatened-with-extinction and slow-to-reproduce species like bald eagles and condors. Indeed, industrial wind farms are killing fields for birds. The more turbines you put up, the more birds you're going to slaughter.  According to the American Bird Conservancy in 2017, "Research shows that hundreds of thousands of birds and bats die every year when they accidentally collide with the…turbine blades. That number grows with each turbine built." The Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds reports that wind farms built off the coast of Britain could be the "final nail in the coffin" for endangered sea birds. The Center for Biological Diversity calls the Altamont Pass wind farm in California "a population sink for golden eagles as well as burrowing owls." As for solar farms, they produce an entirely different set of problems, although they also are very harmful for birds. In California, according to a federal report, massive solar arrays produce heat up to 900 degrees. When birds fly into those arrays, they simply burn up. Building a solar farm is a lot like building any other kind of massive industrial facility. You have to clear the whole area of wildlife. For example, in order to construct the Ivanpah solar farm in California near the Nevada border, developers hired biologists to pull threatened desert tortoises from their burrows. The tortoises were then loaded on the back of pickup trucks and caged in pens where many ended up dying.  Solar farms also need millions and millions of gallons of water to clean the mirrors and to generate power. Since most solar farms are built in the desert, we're talking about a precious resource already in short supply. "When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable [solar] energy," according to Michael Webber, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.  Then there's the issue of what to do with solar panels that wear out. The panels contain lead and other toxic chemicals that can't be removed without breaking up the entire panel. Since it's far cheaper for solar manufacturers to just buy the raw materials than recycle old panels, those old panels end up in landfills—or, as the New York Times discovered in a 2019 investigation, dumped in poor African nations. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/do-we-have-to-destroy-the-earth-to-save-it/

Are wind, solar, and batteries the magical solutions to all our energy needs? Or do they come with too high a price? Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, analyzes the true cost — both economic and environmental — of so-called green energy. FOLLOW us! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/whats-wrong-with-wind-and-solar Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful. SHOP! Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/ JOIN PragerFORCE! For Students: http://l.prageru.com/2aozfkP JOIN our Educators Network! http://l.prageru.com/2aoz2y9 Script: Have you ever heard of "unobtanium"? It's the magical energy mineral found on the planet Pandora in the movie, Avatar. It's a fantasy in a science fiction script. But environmentalists think they've found it here on earth in the form of wind and solar power. They think all the energy we need can be supplied by building enough wind and solar farms; and enough batteries. The simple truth is that we can't. Nor should we want to—not if our goal is to be good stewards of the planet. To understand why, consider some simple physics realities that aren't being talked about. All sources of energy have limits that can't be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the sun's photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%. So, we're pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming, there just aren't any possible. And wind and solar only work when the wind blows and the sun shines. But we need energy all the time. The solution we're told is to use batteries. Again, physics and chemistry make this very hard to do. Consider the world's biggest battery factory, the one Tesla built in Nevada. It would take 500 years for that factory to make enough batteries to store just one day's worth of America's electricity needs. This helps explain why wind and solar currently still supply less than 3% of the world's energy, after 20 years and billions of dollars in subsidies.  Putting aside the economics, if your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they're built from nonrenewable materials.  Consider some sobering numbers:  A single electric-car battery weighs about half a ton. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving, and processing more than 250 tons of earth somewhere on the planet.  Building a single 100 Megawatt wind farm, which can power 75,000 homes requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the huge blades. To get the same power from solar, the amount of cement, steel, and glass needed is 150% greater.  Then there are the other minerals needed, including elements known as rare earth metals. With current plans, the world will need an incredible 200 to 2,000 percent increase in mining for elements such as cobalt, lithium, and dysprosium, to name just a few.  Where's all this stuff going to come from? Massive new mining operations. Almost none of it in America, some imported from places hostile to America, and some in places we all want to protect.  Australia's Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global "gold" rush for energy materials will take miners into "…remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven't yet been disturbed." And who is doing the mining? Let's just say that they're not all going to be union workers with union protections.   Amnesty International paints a disturbing picture: "The… marketing of state-of-the-art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks." And then the mining itself requires massive amounts of conventional energy, as do the energy-intensive industrial processes needed to refine the materials and then build the wind, solar, and battery hardware. Then there's the waste. Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries have a relatively short life; about twenty years. Conventional energy machines, like gas turbines, last twice as long. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/whats-wrong-with-wind-and-solar

Michael Moore presents a film by Jeff Gibbs, Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late. Donate: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ANDNYNJC7MTCY&source=url (100% of donations go to translation, further articles and viewing & maintaining wide distribution) Interview with Jeff, Michael, and Ozzie (1hr 16min): https://youtu.be/HBGcEK8FD3w Hill TV Response to critics with Jeff, Michael and Ozzie (17min): https://youtu.be/Bop8x24G_o0 FAQ, Discussion Guide, Media: https://planetofthehumans.com/ Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end—and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars? No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs (lifelong environmentalist and co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine"). This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late. Featuring: Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Richard Branson, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Vinod Khosla, Koch Brothers, Vandana Shiva, General Motors, 350.org, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nature Conservancy, Elon Musk, Tesla. Website: https://planetofthehumans.com/

Check out this video of the wind farm on Rt. 65 between Indianapolis and Chicago. It's a quite a beautifully interesting sight during the day, but at night - it's like a scene from War of the Worlds.

Most people enjoy a beautiful sunset, my parents not so much.

More than 100 people shuffled into a warm room at the Comanche Community Center last week, on June 18th. These rural Texans gathered to tell stories of the real-life impacts of wind development—the side that is often unheard. “There is flicker and there is noise,” one gentleman recounted, echoing numerous comments about the hours of lost sleep caused by their unwanted neighbors. Another spoke up for the Comanche he knew before, offering a dire warning for others: “You won’t ever see that Milky Way again.” But it wasn’t all scenic overlooks, sunsets, and star-studded skies. The audience commented on the faltering economic logic of the projects and the closed-door meetings that make them possible. “How come our taxes are going up? The papers were full. This was going to pay for new schools!” Abatements under Texas Property Tax Code Chapter 312 and 313—those given to the local wind farm—upset the citizens, who saw their local officials handing out incentives away from public scrutiny (deliberations about the agreements are exempt from Texas’s open meetings and public information laws) with little or no benefit. Without subsidies, recent Texas Public Policy Foundation research indicated wind farms often aren’t feasible. And even with the abatements, wind farms don’t provide many jobs; more than 50% of all Chapter 313 agreements had the requirement to bring jobs reduced or waived, with 87% of those in the renewable industry. The tension is heightened in small towns, where an elected official is often a friend. One gentleman spoke for all present when he said, “I hate that it pits neighbor against neighbor.” It was obvious: secrecy and cronyism did not mesh with local values. “It’s important to get people organized and stay in their faces. I don’t care if they have closed-door meetings, you just tell them you are going to vote them out and you need to make that happen.” Tough words to the lawmakers met with applause. Those gathered were not there because their voices were heard; they came together because they weren’t. Preventing this from happening elsewhere need not be complicated. It’s high time to repeal laws that allow undue secrecy in governing and end crony policies that grant favors to the select few at the expense of the many. It might be too late to roll back wind development in Comanche, but it is not too late for others.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation released the paper “Texas Wind Power Story: Part 1 – How Subsidies Drive Texas Wind Power Development,” which shows that the growth of the wind industry in Texas is spurred by – and only viable because of – subsidies such as the production tax credit, along with tax breaks at the state and local level. Check out the report https://www.texaspolicy.com/content/detail/texas-wind-power-story-part-1

Big corporations are profiting from taxpayer-funded wind farms. The PUC should end operating procedures that favor renewable generation, such as subsidizing their transmission and allowing them to fail to dispatch electricity when needed without penalty. The Texas Legislature should end local 312 and 313 tax abatements for renewable generation and mandates for purchasing electricity from renewable sources. And it should tell the PUC to eliminate the distortions caused by the PTC. Markets have already declared renewable energy outdated. It is time for policy makers to do the same.