Wind Energy
The wind industry promotes itself as better for the environment than traditional energy sources such as coal and natural gas. But there are many issues associated with Wind. 1. Modern wind turbines depend on rare earth minerals mined primarily from China. Mining one ton of rare earth minerals produces about one ton of radioactive waste, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. Thus, the US wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. 2. The government plays a large role in energy markets, through subsidies and regulation. Wind projects are unsustainable without government subsidies. On a kilowatt hour (kwh) basis, offshore wind power is estimated to cost 22.15 cents per kwh, while onshore wind is 8.66 cents per kwh, and natural gas combined cycle is only 6.56 per kwh. 3. Energy officials are worried about the potential of power grid collapse due to the use of renewable energy, says the Los Angeles Times, because renewable energy is more unpredictable than traditional forms of energy. 4. Five Million trees have been cut down since 2007 in order to build wind turbines to help Scotland meet its energy goals, says the Daily Caller. 5. Even the thump, thump, thump of wind turbines in Cape Cod are making people sick.
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Solar and Wind Power vs. Fossil Fuels

3/16/15
from NCPA,
3/16/15:

The Department of Energy's (DOE) estimates forecast that solar and wind will remain relatively insignificant sources of energy far into the future, despite what environmentalists argue.

Here is what Mark Perry, American Enterprise Institute scholar and professor of economics at the University of Michigan, says: - In 2013, about 87 percent of the energy the world consumed came from fossil fuels, a figure that — remarkably — was unchanged from 10 years before. - The two fundamental problems renewables face are they take up too much space and produce too little energy. And both wind and solar are entirely reliant on subsidies for such economic viability as they have. - The frackers are currently experiencing their own version of Moore's law: a rapid fall in the cost and time it takes to drill a well, along with a rapid rise in the volume of hydrocarbons they are able to extract. And the shale revolution has yet to go global. - In the case of the United States, there has been a roughly 9,000 percent increase in the value of goods and services available to the average American since 1800, almost all of which are made with, made of, powered by or propelled by fossil fuels. Subsidizing wealthy crony capitalists to build low-density, low-output, capital-intensive, land-hungry renewable energy schemes, while telling the poor to give up the dream of getting richer through fossil fuels will not work.

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