The President's Daily Brief - September 13th, 2022. Dirty Green Energy: Part 2 of an Exploration Into the Corrupt and Dishonest Nature of Green Energy.

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

It’s September 13th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ It’s day two of this week’s series called Dirty Green — we’re asking whether renewable energy is really green or instead there are environmental and national security costs that people would rather we not discuss. Yesterday we talked about Dirty Solar. And my goodness it is dirty.  Today we’re talking wind energy. And we have got some dirt to discuss. That’s coming up. As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, an update on last week’s story out of California and the new law increasing Fast Food workers minimum wage to $22 an hour. Second, most Americans want less immigration. That’s the finding of a new poll from Gallup. We’ll discuss it. And finally, the last thing before I let you go. A question from a very cranky listener who doesn’t like what I have to say about China and climate change. ------ 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

It's September 13th. 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. First up, it's day two of this week's series called Dirty Green. We're asking whether renewable energy is really green or instead, there are environmental and national security costs that people would rather we not discuss. Now, yesterday we talked about dirty solar and my goodness is it dirty today we are talking about wind energy and we have some dirt to discuss that's coming up as always i'm keeping an eye out for developing stories put these two on your radar first an update on last week's story out of california and the new law increasing fast food workers minimum wage to 22 bucks an hour second most americans want less immigration that's the

finding of a new poll from Gallup, we'll discuss it. And finally, the last thing before I let you go, a question from a very cranky listener who doesn't like what I have to say about China and climate change. But first, let's get started with today's main brief. It is day two of Dirty Green this week's series looking at renewable energy. And we are 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 and gas and coal for solar and wind. And that's because proponents of this idea say that climate change is an existential crisis. And that's why we need renewable energy. It'll stop climate change, they say. Plus, it's largely without environmental costs or national security concerns.

But is that true? Well, yesterday we talked about dirty solar. And as it turns out, it is very dirty indeed. Well, today we are talking about wind energy, and it's got its own set of dirty challenges too. So let's dive in. I want you to imagine you are looking at a standard wind turbine or windmill, as some people would say, and that could be either onshore or offshore, out in a lake or the ocean. And what you see generally are three main parts. You've got the tower, the blades, and the nacelle. And that last part, the nacelle. It's the hollow part that houses the generator and the drive train, the guts of the thing. Well, 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 made here in America. The blades, too, although we do have a national security problem with the offshore blades. More on that in a minute. But that is where the good news ends for wind energy, because now we have to focus on the blades. and those have some very dirty green problems. Now, they've got a lifespan of about 10 years when wind farm operators tend to upgrade their turbines

depending on weather and market conditions. But what are we to do with those old retired blades? Because these things are huge. General Electric's Halliad X blade is the size of a football field and length. And you have to have three of those on each tower, plus hundreds or thousands of towers. all coming down every 10 years or so. Well, you have a dirty green problem.

Blades can be made of different things, it's true, but they share the same core issue. You can't really recycle them. Now, there are people trying. Dozens of attempts are underway by the U.S. government, manufacturers, all trying 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 cheap solution.

bury them. In Lake Mills, Iowa, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Casper, Wyoming, the landfills just outside of those cities have been turned into America's dirty green dumping ground. Hundreds and soon to be thousands, tens of thousands of blades will be buried there under 30 feet of earth and left to sit there forever. Those communities will always bear that legacy. Now, to emphasize, the wind energy knows they've got this dirty green problem with blades and they're looking for solutions but according to wind energy giant vestus they're hoping to solve it by the year 2040 so we've got 25 years or so of burying tens of thousands of blades but that's not the only dirty green problem that we've got with those blades there are many more let's consider

those massive offshore blades made by general electric the ones as big as football fields on july 20th I briefed you on this concern, in fact. But to refresh our memories, these blades are so big and so specialized that they require a very particular ship and a very special crew to take the blades and the towers out to sea and install them. Unfortunately, America doesn't have any of those ships. In fact, there are only four that can handle these big boy blades, and none of them are American flagged. so we will have to rely on foreign ships with foreign crews operating on a budget of around $200,000 a day. But you know what, that might not matter because we may not have these blades to install anymore. Last Wednesday, a federal judge in Boston ruled that General Electric can no longer manufacture or sell their big offshore blades

because of a patent infringement issue with a Spanish company. Now, interestingly, the judge in the case is going to let GE run, wrap up two projects with these knock-off blades because, 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. Which is a really great way to pivot this conversation to the environmental costs of wind farms. And it really comes down to three things. They are ugly, they are noisy and they kill animals. So let's talk about the animals first, birds specifically.

So good data is really hard to come by on this, in part because counting birds, the dead ones, turns out to be kind of tricky business. So varmits of all kinds will pick them up on land or the carcasses will sink to the ocean floor. Still, there have been a couple studies that have estimated that anywhere from 140,000 to 570,000 birds are killed in the U.S. each year because of wind turbines. Again, half a million birds.

But as biologists have highlighted, it's not just the numbers. It's the types of birds that matter, too. Losing small numbers of endangered birds, some specific eagles in California, for instance, has made a big impact on the overall population. But it's not just birds that we should talk about. For offshore wind projects, 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. So the coastal shelf drop-off into deep Pacific waters will require developers for these projects to build turbines on floating platforms attached to the seabed by cables, rather than the turbine's towers directly bolted to the ocean floor. So this will cause a host of problems.

For instance, for area fishermen, their nets and their nets and the water. lines will more likely get caught up in the floating platforms cables. But according to the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, both environmental groups, it will also affect sea turtles and sharks and other species that will get caught on the platform's anchoring lines and other cables. Now these groups also want the blades, these offshore blades, to stop spinning for entire months at a time during high-risk periods for migrating birds. So folks, wind turbines have a dirty green problem with animals of all kinds. They are, in fact, killers, as it turns out, and that hurts the heart.

Which takes us to our final dirty green fact this morning. Another hurt, but this time on the eyes and the ears. Wind farms are ugly and they are noisy. Now, how ugly or noisy they might be, well, 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 this. When you look out at the ocean, is there any value in just seeing the ocean? Or if you're in a prairie, is there any value to just seen a prairie? Now, most reasonable people will say, yeah, nature has value, even if it's not doing anything for us,

by just being untouched, unspoiled, it gives us value. And we have some pretty famous cases of environmental, and politicians saying exactly this. When Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts was alive, he and his family were absolutely opposed to the Cape Wind Project because, well, it was ugly. They liked the ocean views from their house on the beach. But it's not just the Kennedys or in Massachusetts. There has been deep opposition just like it for the same aesthetic reasons in desert towns of California's San Bernardino County. the San Diego backcountry, eastern Washington State, the San Francisco Bay Area, Nevada's Mormon Mesa, and in Laramie, Wyoming.

All because the wind farms are ugly and noisy, and people don't want that stuff in their backyard. And actually, one final note on that, and it's a nice way to wrap up the facts of this morning's brief. A 2019 study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy founded, most homeowners, embrace wind farms. They just don't want to live next to them. Although opposition does lessen the more that those homeowners were given cash. And that folks ends the presentation of data and facts this morning and puts us into analysis. So what do we think about all this? Well, here's what I would encourage you to consider. There is no such thing as clean energy. It all has costs, doesn't it? We saw that yesterday with solar, an industry tied to slave labor, communist manufacturers,

and a president who doesn't particularly care about either of those things so long as we get those solar panels. And we're seeing it with wind energy too, wind blades that spin for about 10 years, killing hundreds of thousands of birds, maybe the platforms that they're on, killing some sea turtles too. and then when the blades are done spinning and the energy companies come to take them down, well, we're not really sure what to do with them. Now, it's true that by the year 2040 or so, we should have some recycling programs ironed out, but until then, they get buried. Now, not in your backyard or mine, of course.

Studies in common sense tell us that we don't want that dirty green waste in our community. Just put it in somebody else's backyard. Now, none of this is unique to wind energy, or solar for that matter. Oil and gas have its sins, too. But we don't hear a lot about dirty green, do we? Nobody is showing the hundreds of thousands of dead birds like we would see after an oil tanker runs aground and we have oil-soaked seagulls. Instead, green energy has this Julie Andrews-like reputation, twirling around in green fields like on the sound of music. And that's very curious. Why aren't we being told how dirty green energy is?

Why aren't journalists and the media covering this like an oil spill? Well, that is the point, folks, of this entire series. And it's why here on the PDB I'm going to keep bringing you the dirty green facts. Tomorrow we're actually talking about mining for the batteries, batteries that are so critical for solar and wind energy to be useful. And then, as always, you can decide what to think of it all. You can decide if dirty green energy is worth it. Or maybe we should proceed with a bit more caution and a lot more honesty.

Coming up, ladies and gentlemen, a closer look at what's on my radar. Two quick briefs for you, one on California's minimum wage and inflation, and the other on immigration. We'll be right back. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th,

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Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. Welcome back to the PDB. As always, I'm watching a few other stories this morning. Put these two on your radar. First, we're getting some new numbers on inflation this morning. Economist predicting some good news. Inflation at 8%. which isn't really good, but it's better than 9% earlier this summer. We'll see how the predictions pan out. But in a related story, we've got an update on that California law that plans to raise the minimum wage for fast food workers

to around $22 an hour. Governor Gavin Newsom signed that bill last week, and it's a bill that studies show will up food prices by about 20% at these restaurants. Well, the owners of these restaurants are not happy about this new law, and they've started a petition to repeal it via a referendum. Proposed language was filed with the California Attorney General's office last week, and opponents will now need to submit roughly 623,000 valid voter signatures by December 4th. And if they do, that will go before voters on the November 2024 ballot.

Restaurant owners plan to start collecting signatures later this week, as early as Friday. So if you are in California, you just might see them. regardless, I'll keep you posted. Finally, more Americans want fewer immigrants in this country for the first time since 2014. That is the headline takeaway from a poll by the Gallup organization out a few weeks ago. The poll found that 38% of Americans want less immigration. Another 31% said they want immigration to remain at its current level. The last time that most Americans wanted less immigration, it was actually back in 2014 when 41,

percent held that opinion. Now, there's two interesting things in this poll from when I read it. The Gallup survey did not refer to legal or illegal immigration. So when 38% of us say no more immigration, they mean all of it. Locked down the borders, in other words. Driving these numbers is actually somewhat nonpartisan. Members of all parties, Republicans, independents, and Democrats actually want less immigration than in the recent past.

Although, most of the opposition, is by Republicans. 69% of Republicans want less immigration. And if you've been listening to the news or the PDB, you know what's driving this anti-immigration sentiment. Customs and Border Protection have reported that they've seen record illegal migration encounters this year virtually every month,

over 200,000 encounters in June alone. We will almost certainly set an all-time annual record for illegals at the end of the fiscal year, which starts on October 1st. So all in all, no surprise that Americans are so frustrated. We want fewer of the people that shouldn't be here in the first place. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I've got one more thing before I let you go. We'll be right back.

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Rules and restrictions apply. Welcome back to the PDB, ladies and gentlemen. I've got one more thing before I'll let you go this morning. Joe from Hill Country in Texas wrote in, he was not happy with my continued assertions about China and climate change. So my argument has long been this. As we cut our carbon dioxide emissions, China is increasing theirs by far more. And so the net result is that no matter what we do, any progress that we make is undone by China,

making our sacrifices both fruitless and destructive. Well, Joe in Texas didn't like that. Here's what he had to say. Quote, so just because no one else is reducing emissions, we should do nothing? and that seems like the logic that children use, Brian. Something about if all your friends jump off a cliff, you should too. It seems like you could be more persuasive, Brian, if you chose the side that has logic and facts behind it, end quote.

Well, Joe, thank you for that sassy email. But since you mentioned logic and facts, here are some for all of us to consider. Between 2015 and 2021, China's greenhouse gas emissions increased by about 11%. while America's decreased by 6% for a net global increase between those two parties of 5%. That's according to data from the climate action tracker. But actually, let's push a little bit further.

China has increased its coal-fired power capacity by 185 gigawatts since the signing of the Paris Climate Accord. Now, during that same time, America has decreased its capacity by 80 gigawatts for a net increase of coal use of 105 gigawatts just between those two countries. That's according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the S&P Global Commodity Insides. The point, Joe, is that the atmosphere doesn't care about your, at least we're doing something, argument. It does, however, care about the net 5% increase in greenhouse gas emissions by China and the extra 105 coal gigawatts. So if you believe that climate change is real, then you should focus on something called carbon dioxide capture and sequestration.

I've actually spoken about this before. Basically, it's a technology that sucks carbon dioxide out of the air, converts it into a liquid normally, and then it's injected into deep wells within the earth. In that way, China can do whatever it wants, pollute all it like. But we would still, on a net basis, be sucking out more greenhouse gases. then are going in. But to be very clear here, this technology is very young.

It's not scalable at present. But if you ask serious scientists who work on climate change, it is the only real solution on a net basis. Ah, but this isn't about real solutions. Environmentalists actually hate carbon dioxide capture and sequestration

because they fear it could encourage continued oil and gas use. Instead, they think that we should live in a world, where Julie Andrews twirls around in green fields, with solar panels glowing and wind turbines blowing. But as smart folks are learning this week on the PDB, that's not real. That is just dirty green, dressed up as a mirage. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show, reminding each other of why we are here,

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