Articles: Sierra Club at the Metropolitan Club

The Sierra Club campaign against coal is motivated by a desire to reduce CO₂ emissions to prevent global warming. But since global warming skepticism and global warming fatigue are widespread, the club has opted for a junk science approach to reach its goals.  The club tells people that their babies will die, or at least get asthma, if coal plants continue to operate.  Although the cause of asthma is not known, it is suspected that it is related to the high levels of cleanliness in advanced countries that denies children and their immune systems exposure to the dirt and filth found in primitive places.  This is known as the hygiene hypothesis.  The incidence of asthma is about 50 times higher in developed countries compared to rural Africa.  For all the Sierra Club knows, coal plants may prevent asthma.  Given the hygiene hypothesis, that seems plausible.

With junk science, it is easy to scare people...

One of the most vexing problems for the Sierra Club is that windmills kill birds.  The birds have trouble getting out of the way of the blades, which may be traveling at 200 miles an hour.  The effect on the bird population is probably minor, but the publicity about birds killed by oil spills has raised the profile of things that kill birds.  The bird kill problem was raised several times at the Metropolitan Club.  It was quite amusing to watch the panelists squirm under the verbal assaults of the bird-lovers.

...Green energy is a parasitic sector of the economy.  It exists through political influence and connections.  There are green jobs -- for example, the jobs of the panelists.  The burden of supporting green jobs falls on the rest of the economy because green energy requires large subsidies...

Panelist Karen Weigert was a producer for the global warming propaganda film Carbon Nation.  See this film if you enjoy being patronized by people who don't know what they are talking about.  The film suggests, unscientifically, that sea level will rise by 20 feet and create millions of climate refugees.  We are urged to support green industry lest China develop a larger parasitic sector than we have.

The Reference Frame: Australian senate approves carbon tax

Polls indicate that the left-wing parties will be beaten during the next elections and the carbon [dioxide] farce will be abolished but the episode still shows the "tipping point" connected with the left-wing parties' having over 50 percent in a Parliament: an out-of-control, exponentially growing, self-feeding departure from freedom, democracy, and capitalism always has a nonzero probability to start.

Cape Wind: The Air Traffic Safety Issue of a Government-enabled Project — MasterResource

Earlier this year, Industrial Wind Action Group (home) wrotehow turbines sited within fifty miles of U.S. radar installations are now disrupting our navigation aids and impairing U.S. national security.

FAA and military radar experts in the field are well aware of the compromises to radar resolution caused by poorly sited turbines. But with the debate surrounding energy policy dominated by politics and money, they’ve bowed to the pressure.

Keystone and the Carbon Budget | Planet3.0

The short version is this; to have a 50% chance of staying below 2 C warming, we have only about 500 GT of carbon left to burn (assuming no major sequestration effort kicks in). The Alberta tar sands alone contain 230 GT. On the other hand, proven coal reserves worldwide appear to be about 634 GT. But on the other other hand, there is an argument for not encouraging new types of fossil fuel to enter the mix.