The President's Daily Brief - December 27th, 2022. Dirty Green Energy: Wind Farms

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

It’s December 27th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ It’s day two of Dirty Green Energy — that’s this week’s updated and refreshed five part series looking at what many folks might otherwise know as Renewable Energy. And we’re focused on this issue for one simple reason:  Whether you like it or not, America is radically changing. We are being forced to drop oil, gas, and coal for things like solar, wind, and batteries to store their power. And that’s because proponents of this energy revolution say that climate change is an existential crisis.  And Renewable or Green energy will help stop it or even reverse it. But is that true? Yesterday we talked about Solar Energy and as it turns out, it is not clean, green, or renewable. It’s very dirty. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t buy it — that’s your choice. But know you know much more of the truth, and so you can purchase or support Dirty Green Solar Panels with your eyes wide open.  Well that was yesterday. Today we are talking about wind energy. So what do you think: are we going to find more dirty green facts about that wind energy? Oh yes, my friends, such much dirty to discuss. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. It's day two of dirty green energy. That's this week's updated and refreshed five-part series looking at what many folks might otherwise know as renewable energy. And we're focused on this issue for one simple reason. Whether you like it or not, America is radically changing.

We are being forced to drop oil, gas, and coal for things like like solar, wind, and batteries to store their power. And that's because proponents of this new energy say that, well, climate change is an existential crisis and renewable or green energy will help stop it or even reverse it. But is that true? Well, yesterday we talked about solar energy, and it turns out that it's not clean. It's not green and it is not renewable. It's all very dirty. And that doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't buy it. That's your choice. But, But now you know much more of the truth so you can purchase or support dirty green solar panels with your eyes wide open.

Well, that was yesterday. Today, we are talking about wind energy. So what do you think? Are we going to find more dirty green facts about that wind energy? Oh, yes, my friends, so much dirty to discuss. Let me just give you two little teases of what's to come. First, the U.S. government will not say how many eagles are killed by windblades. Because, according to the federal government, it is protected law enforcement information.

Hmm. Or how about this? Climate change advocates are now acknowledging something called global stilling. And what it means is that as climate change occurs, there will be dramatically less wind, especially in the northern hemisphere. In other words, we're installing tens of thousands of acres of wind turbines that won't be spinning as much, all while we retire other forms of energy like our natural gas. plants. That seems a bit problematic, doesn't it? All right, all right. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the very beginning. And let's do what we did with solar panels yesterday. Let's use our imaginations and pretend that we are out in a field, staring up with the parts and the pieces

of a wind turbine. Now, what you see, generally speaking, are three main sections. We got the tower, the blades, and the nacelle. Now, that last part, the nacelle, is the hollow part, up on top that houses the generator, the drive train, and the guts of the thing. Now, the tower and the nacelle actually don't give us too many dirty green problems. On the national security front, both can be and are often made here in the U.S. Now, to be fair, though, folks have written me to say, well, wait a minute, the nacelle requires all kinds of petroleum-based products to run on, like lubricants and such. And that's absolutely true.

Also, the towers are made of things like steel, and that's not. not exactly a green process from the mining to the manufacturing. Okay, yeah, totally fair as well. Still, where I would like us to focus this morning is on the last and final part of that wind turbine. It's the one way above our heads. Yeah, I'm talking about the wind blades, because those things have some very dirty green problems. So here's why.

Windblades have a lifespan of about 10 years, and that's when wind farm operators tend to upgrade their turbines. Now, to be clear, that's all depending on things like weather and market conditions. Too much wind, by the way, and those blades have to come down far earlier than 10 years. But, hmm, that leaves us with a pickle. What are we to do with those old retired blades? Because these things are huge. Let me just give you one example.

General Electric's Halliad X-blade is about the size of a football field in length. Good Lord. And if you have three of those on each tower, And then you have hundreds or thousands and thousands of towers all coming down every 10 years or so. Well, you have yourself a dirty green problem. Well, here's why, because those blades can be made of different things, but they share the same issue. You can't really recycle them. There are people trying, don't get me wrong, dozens of attempts are underway by the U.S.

government and manufacturers to figure out a solution. They're trying to pulverize them, burn them, crush them, melt them. but for now, there's only one real solution. You got to bury them. In places like Lake Mills, Iowa, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Casper, Wyoming, there are special landfills just outside of those cities that have been turned into America's dirty green dumping ground. Hundreds and soon to be tens of thousands of blades will be buried under 30 feet of earth and left to sit there forever. Those communities will always bear that legacy.

Now, to emphasize, the wind industry knows that they have got this dirty green problem with blades, and they're working on it. But according to the wind energy giant Vestus, they don't anticipate a solution until the year 2040. So we've got 25 years or so of burying tens of thousands of blades. But you know what? That's not the only dirty green problem that we have with these blades. There are so many more. Let's just consider those massive offshore blades made by General Electric.

the ones as big as football fields. So last summer, I briefed you on a concern with these, but let me just refresh our memories here. These blades are so big and so specialized that they require a very special ship and a very special crew to take those blades and the towers out to sea and install them. Well, unfortunately, America doesn't have any of those ships. In fact, there are only four in the world that can handle those big old boys, and none of them are American flagged.

So if we want any of this offshore stuff with the big blades, which are the ones, more efficient ones, create the most energy. We're going to have to rely on foreign ships with foreign crews, by the way, operating on a budget of around $200,000 a day to install them. But that might not matter at all, because we may not even have those blades to install anymore. Last fall, a federal judge in Boston ruled that General Electric can no longer manufacture or sell their big blades because of a patent infringement issue with the Spanish company.

Now, interestingly, the judge in the case is going to let GE wrap up two projects with these knockoff blades because he said, quote, the world is currently facing a rapidly developing climate crisis. Delaying large-scale wind energy projects can impact efforts to combat this crisis, end quote. Hmm, there you go. And what a perfect segue into why we're talking about wind energy in the first place. It's all about the climate crisis, right? That is the driver for why wind energy is so important, all as we retire our natural gas and coal plants and replace them with, yes, wind and solar.

But we have ourselves another very big problem here, and it's something that we really have to talk about. It has to do with an issue called global stilling or wind droughts. So let me explain. First by asking you this, why does the earth have wind? What drives that process? Well, what fancy people with big fancy degrees will tell you is that it all comes down to differences of temperatures, especially cold ones at the North and South Poles with warm ones along the

tropics or the equator. Now, that imbalance or difference of temperature causes wind on planet Earth. Okay, all right, with that, let's assume that climate change is real. Now, even if you don't, just for arguments sake, stick with me. So as climate change happens and our polls up, that creates less of a difference with the tropics. And that means less wind globally, but especially in the northern hemisphere, where the North Pole has become notably warmer over time. That's what climate advocates say. Well, that's called global stilling all and all, or wind drought. And it's been happening for a while now. They point to data from the International Panel on Climate Change, showing that for decades now, wind speeds have dropped

globally about 2.3% per decade. Now, the speeds have apparently popped back up for around 10 years or so, but now they're dropping again, with forecasts showing a continuous drop for decades to come. But I'll be darned, that is a problem, isn't it? Because less and less wind globally, now that means as we install all this onshore and offshore wind turbine stuff, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, well, that ain't going to work because it's going to be. spinning less frequently, creating less electricity. And all the while, we're taking offline the stuff that does work consistently, things like coal, natural gas, and so forth. So on all, we're kind of setting up a system here that seems unworkable and bad. Anyway, I'll let you sit with that.

By the way, Europe is experiencing this right now, a pretty dramatic wind drought. In fact, just this past summer and winter. In the United Kingdom, they dropped to about 3% of their normal wind production, which caused them to fire up their natural gas plants. In Germany and Northern Europe, they're experiencing the same thing too, a wind drought, making them more reliant on coal and natural gas. So all of that is to say, we've got a fundamental reliability problem with wind energy. I mean, not only does the wind not blow sometimes, it's going to blow even less and less in the years to come. That's according to climate change scientists. So why then would we ever install? all the stuff to begin with.

Hmm. Well, all of that is a great way of pivoting to the other environmental costs of wind energy. And it comes down to three things. First, they are ugly. They are noisy. And they kill animals. Let's talk about the animals first, birds specifically. Good data on this is pretty hard to come by, in part because counting dead birds

turns out to be kind of tricky business. Varmats of all kinds pick them up on land, or the carcass will sink to the ocean floor. But there have been a couple studies that estimate that anywhere from 140,000 to 570,000 birds are killed in the U.S. each year because of wind turbines. Half a million dead birds, folks, just because of these wind turbines. But as biologists have highlighted, it's not just about the numbers here. It's the type of birds that are killed that matter too. Losing small numbers of endangered birds, especially say eagles in California, that is a big impact on the overall population. And that leads us to a very important conversation about America's national bird, the bald eagle.

But before we dive into that, let's take a quick break. For my subscribers on the Apple platform, no ads for you. For everybody else, not to worry, we will be right back. And when we do, we'll keep talking about wind energy and those poor eagles. Plus, a lot more. We'll be right back. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new Elixir Collection, featuring three perfum intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord paired with vanilla,

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Now, we've covered a lot of ground today, but next we're going to talk about America's national bird, bald eagles, but also eagles more generally. It turns out that those animals get slaughtered by wind turbines with some degree of frequency. But how many are we talking about? Because that's kind of important. Well, you are not allowed to know that. Let me explain.

Back on September 30th of 2022, to Fortune magazine ran one of the best headlines that I've ever read about this issue. And here it is. Quote, Joe Biden rolls out a huge new wind farm program. The only catch, it kind of kills eagles, end quote. As the folks at Fortune highlight, back in September, the Biden administration proposed new permits to install wind farms all around America, including and most especially in the American West.

But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged that that will absolutely. mean more eagles will be slaughtered. Now, here's something that you might not know. The U.S. government already allows wind companies to kill these protected and vulnerable species. They actually issue permits to kill them as a normal part of wind farms operations. Wow. Okay. Well, again, I want to know how many dead national birds are we talking about? Well, we don't get to know that because, as Fortune magazine noted, federal officials will not divulge that data because, quote, it's sensitive law enforcement information. What? We can't know how many eagles get slaughtered each year by green energy wind projects. It's what, top secret information? That just

doesn't make any sense. So look, to just underline how bonkers that is, let's do a thought experiment. Let's say that an oil rig was spilling oil into the ocean and killing fish. And a concerned citizen like you or an environmental group asked, okay, wow, this is bad. How many fish are Are you killing? And the oil company and the federal government both said, stop asking, you're not allowed to know that. We refuse to tell you. So folks, seriously, what do you think would happen in that scenario?

And I mean that. Because I think I have an idea. I think that environmental groups would be so hopping mad that you'd think somebody put a firecracker in their dairy air and let a rip. I mean, you would have headlines and TV pundits full of outrage about how big dirty oil it was slaughtering fish and big government was protecting them. And you know what? Good.

That outrage would be appropriate. That should be the reaction. But wind energy is not getting that same treatment. Why? Isn't that odd? Instead, we're told that wind energy is green and clean, renewable. Hmm. I will let you stew on that very strange difference of treatment.

But folks, it's not just birds that we should talk about. For offshore wind project, it endangers a host of other animals, too. Consider a project close to Santa Barbara, California, and another more remote site off of Humboldt County in Northern California. The coastal shelf drop off into the deep Pacific waters there will require developers for these projects to build wind turbines on floating platforms, all of which will be attached to the seabed by cables. Well, that's going to cause a host of problems for,

area fishermen, most especially. Their nets and lines will likely get caught up in the floating platforms cables. Meanwhile, according to the National Wildlife Federation and the National Resources Defense Council, these things will also affect sea turtles, sharks, and other species that will get caught on the anchoring lines and other cables. So to address that and to save those animals, the environmental groups want the blades to stop spinning four months at a time, especially during high-risk periods for migrating birds and such. Which means, my friends, that very expensive offshore wind energy projects just got a lot more expensive and a lot more unreliable.

So let's recap here where we're at with these wind turbines. They are not green or clean or renewable. What we've discovered is that they are very dirty. These blades cannot be recycled. They're buried, leaving people in some of the poorest cities in America to deal with that environmental legacy forever. Meanwhile, the blades are killing animals of all kinds, especially birds like America's national bird, the bald eagle.

But don't you dare ask how many the U.S. government will not tell you. It's top secret, which takes us to our final dirty green fact this morning. Wind farms, as we all know, are ugly and they are noisy. And people do not want them in their backyards. Just put them in yours. But before we get to that, let's take a final break. When we come back, we wrap up this special brief on Dirty Green Energy Part 2. Focusing, of course, today on wind energy.

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Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Welcome back to the PDB. We're wrapping up our focus today on dirty green wind energy. And boy, oh boy, has it been dirty. Because wind turbines just have it all. aren't they? Landfills, the size of small cities filled with old wind blades. And of course, there's the dead eagles, but just don't ask how many. Finally, there's the issue of wind droughts or wind global stilling. So to remind ourselves on that one, because it's so important, those blades

that we're installing are not going to turn and create energy as much down the road because climate change is causing less wind globally to begin with, that according to climate scientists. but we still have one last dirty green fact to cover. As we all know, wind farms are ugly and they are loud. Now, to be fair, how ugly or how noisy those things might be, that is in the eye and the ear of the beholder. But to help us think about this issue, I want you to ask yourself a few questions. If you were to look out at the ocean, is there any value at all in just seeing the ocean? or if you're in a prairie or up in the mountains,

is there value in just seeing a prairie or a mountain? Nature. Now, most reasonable people will say, yeah, nature has value, even if it's not doing anything for us, just by being untouched, unspoiled, it gives us value. We have some pretty famous cases of environmentalists and politicians

saying exactly this, especially related to dirty green energy. When Senator Ted Kidd, Kennedy of Massachusetts was alive, he and his family were absolutely opposed to the Cape Wind Farm because, well, it was ugly. They liked their ocean views from their house on the beach. But I'll tell you, it's not just the Kennedys or in Massachusetts where we see this kind of reaction. There's been deep opposition for it just because of this aesthetic issue in desert towns in California's San Bernardino County, for example, or there's a project in the San Diego backcountry.

same two for projects in eastern Washington State, the San Francisco Bay Area, Nevada's Mormon Mesa, and in Laramie, Wyoming. It's all because the wind farms are ugly and noisy. People don't want that stuff in their backyard. In fact, we have some pretty good data on that. According to a 2019 study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, he found that most homeowners actually like wind farms, they just don't want to live next to one. Although, opposition does lessen a little bit, the more that those homeowners are given cash as part of a profit sharing program or a buyout. Before we wrap up today, I want to highlight some feedback that you all gave me the last time that we discussed this. A few of you correctly noted that there is absolutely research underway to make these very deadly blades, well, a lot more easy to recycle and less deadly to birds. And again, that's true.

I mentioned it a little bit earlier in this brief. and before. But the most important part here is we will see if that research leads to new advancements or not, because it's early stage stuff. Meanwhile, another listener said something else, and I think it's pretty important for us to consider, because I think it shows us what folks in the climate change community are really thinking about this problem. So listen to this. Joe, I believe in Hill Country, Texas, said that it may be that wind turbines kill birds and eagles. And it may be that those blades get buried and that poor people have to deal with that environmental legacy. But you know what?

We're all going to be dead anyway. And the birds and eagles, if we don't stop climate change. So you know what? Put up those wind turbines. It's got to be done. So I'll tell you, you can decide if that is a compelling argument or not. And that, folks, ends today's presentation of data and facts on what we can now fairly say is dirty green wind energy, and it puts us squarely into analysis and opinion. I'd only offer you this as my counsel.

There's no such thing as clean energy, is there? It all has costs. We saw that yesterday with solar energy, with the panels made by slave labor in concentration camps. They work at factories owned by communists and powered by coal energy, making over 80% of the world's solar panels. Meanwhile, Joe Biden knows this, but he issued a declaration in June. of 2022 allowing those panels or those from Southeast Asia to come into America, all because the climate change crisis calls for it. In other words, those solar panels are more important than stopping slavery and shutting down concentration camps, all because the climate crisis requires sacrifice. That's what his administration would say if they were being honest. And we're seeing that same

dirty green ethos here with wind energy too. Wind blades spin for about 10 years, killing hundreds of thousands of birds each year, including America's national bird, the bald eagle. And then when the blades are done spinning, and energy companies take them down, they get tossed into special landfills. Now, it's true that by the year 2040 or so,

we should have some recycling programs worked out, but until then, they get buried. Now, not in your backyard or mine, of course. studies tell us that we don't want that dirty green waste in our community, just put it in somebody else's backyard. In fact, put it in the poor people's backyard. Just don't scratch my Tesla as you do it. Now, look, none of this is unique to wind energy or solar panels.

Oil and gas have its sins too, but we don't hear a lot about the sins of dirty green energy, do we? Nobody is showing the dead eagles, but you can bet that we would be seeing the image of dead birds after an oil spill. But why the difference? Why aren't we being told how dirty green energy is?

Why aren't journalists and the media covering this like it's an oil spill? Well, that, my friends, is the point of this entire dirty green series. And it's why, here on the PDB, I'm going to keep bringing you the dirty green facts, no matter how many people might be mad about that. Because if not me,

who else has the spine to do? do it. I don't see many other voices in the media doing this. So that means we push on. Tomorrow we are going to be talking about mining for batteries, batteries that are so critical for solar and wind energy to even be useful. And then after we cover all those facts about mining, as always, you can decide what to think about it. You can decide if dirty green energy is ultimately worth it. Or maybe, just maybe, we should proceed with a time. touch more caution and frankly a lot more honesty. And that ladies and gentlemen concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show reminding each other of why we are here,

talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8 verse 32. And you shall know the truth. And the truth shall make you free. Good day.