I am going to write some of my thoughts on issues that I feel are important for the Great Lakes.
Climate Change caused by Human activity, really?!
I have been involved in an on going debate over climate change due to my opinion on industrial scale wind and solar energy projects. Often I am "attacked" because my opponents think I do not" believe" in global warming or better described “Global Climate Change” (GCC). They are correct, I do not "believe" in global climate change.
Beliefs are faith based, like religions and have no hard scientific data to support the claims. For example, I do not have hard scientific data to prove that heaven exists yet I have faith and I believe that it does. When trying to solve a problem or discover the truth it is necessary to use data. Good data will often point to the right solution or truth. In the debate over GCC there are some questions about the data and especially the way you look at it. I have temperature data... Monday it was cold in the twenty's all day long, Tuesday it is much warmer. Is it GCC? Obviously it is much too short of a time frame to determine a trend for climate. Climate is a weather pattern over very long time span. What is a good time frame; 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, a 1000 or longer? If you were to ask Al Gore, the inventor of the Internet, he would have you to look at a short time span in global history. Gore would point out that in the last 50 years there has been a significant warming trend (the last ten years it has actually trended cooler, globally). Unfortunately for Al Gore we have found out that there was a lot of manipulation of the temperature data he used to promote “his” agenda (Climate Gate). Funny, when you ask the question, “Is global warming being caused by humans?” It turns out that it is ... the data was manipulated to support the theory. Scientists lost accreditation, and jobs for falsifying records. However, the faith-based theory persists. Today more and more scientists are trying to distance themselves from the global warming "belief". Unfortunately the "faith based science" of global warming makes many fearful of speaking out. There is no correlation between climate and CO2 levels in the atmosphere; there is lots of data to support this claim.
The reality is, we have been in a global warming trend for over 10,000 years and it is certain that humans had nothing to do with the onset. The earth has been in warming and cooling cycles that have been going on for millions of years. The climate trend ironically is not much different than week to week weather trends. It is not unusual, during this warming trend for relapses into very long cold patterns as well as accelerations into warm weather patterns.
Climate is influenced by solar activity cycles, orbital fluctuations, and geologically processes. The solar influence to our climate is seen in the number of sunspots, magnetic solar storms, we can see traversing the solar disc. There are short-term solar cycles of about 11 years to much longer cycles. We are headed towards what is referred to a solar minimum, which is part of a long solar cycle. This minimum in the current solar cycle is predicted to be similar to one observed back in the later half of the 1600's, the Maunder Minimum. The period was known as the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters. A correlation has been found between low sunspot activity and cold winters using data from the from NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, and observations of sunspot activity from earth over the last 400 years. A correlation between the earth’s climate and sun spot activity was first postulated in the 1800’s. Scientists keep track of the solar cycles by assigning them a number currently we are in Solar Cycle 24. The solar maximum in solar Cycle 24 is extremely weak and fading. The Solar Cycle 23 maximum was not as active as the average cycle. Sun spot activity is on a decline and the predictions are that the next active period will likely be delayed and that Cycle 25 may not start until 2022. The next solar maximum could be decades away and this could have huge impacts on the earth’s climate.
I am very suspicious when it comes to the motives of the "Human caused GCC" clan. Their followers, I call the "chicken littles", who are the believers. There is lots of money to be made by trading carbon credits, taxes on emissions, and subsidies for "green energy"... so it is greed that drives the agenda to make sure there are lots of "believers". In the global warming clan panic is good. They do not want any science, data or critical thinking by the "chicken littles" when it comes to climate change; it jeopardizes their mission to make billions and billions of dollars. I do not think that the people pushing this agenda “believe” that the warming trend is caused by human activity, they do not even care if it is. They are driven by greed; on the other hand the "chicken littles" are mostly suckers who can not or will not think for themselves; they will buy or believe anything. They are too lazy or just not smart enough to ask questions or to take nothing at face value. The "chicken littles" keep the belief alive despite the scientific data. Unfortunately, there are a lot of "chicken littles" throughout our society, some are members of environmental groups, or work for state or federal agencies, some even have achieved elected offices at the highest levels of government. We will all pay the price however, because of these believers who dare not to use critical thinking, examine the real data and will not seek the truth. The solar zealots who frequent our meetings are “chicken littles”, believers who do not use critical thinking. They support government subsidies for solar energy on their homes they are leeches looking for handouts. Solar energy is fine at their expense but not mine.
I am not certain we really have any energy crisis. I am of the opinion that a lot of the concerns are promoted by the various energy producers in an effort to make their products the ‘energy” of choice. They are only protecting their self-interests. I think reducing the use of fossil fuels is good on several fronts, less mining, or drilling. Fewer pollutants such a sulfur dioxide (smog), particulate matter, mercury, volatile organic compounds, ash, carbon monoxide and the least of which is carbon dioxide. It is good that we reduce all of these through conservation (reducing demand) and the evolution to a clean dense energy source. I suspect when I say clean energy wind or solar come to mind, hardly the case because neither replaces the use of fossil fuels. The evolution of energy throughout history has been to cleaner and more energy dense fuels. Someday we will utilize a fuel that is very energy dense and does not pollute and will not need to have fossil fuels as a back up like wind or solar. We can speed the arrival of that day by not wasting resources chasing the wind and solar folly. It hurts me to say this because I own stock in a solar cell company.
Understanding why Industrial Wind Turbines are no good.
First I should say what Industrial Wind Turbines (IWT) are, they are those 450 feet tall wind turbines that make up your average wind farm. Not much of a farm, nothing grows. Here are some terms that need to be understood and if you understand them then you will understand a lot about energy supply issues. We need to understand what we are talking about when we are talking about electricity. We hear about kilowatts (kW) or megawatts (MW) these terms are used to quantify "power" but power is the ability to do work, so there is a time element which is often dropped from the discussion. If you have a MW of electricity for only a second you will not get much work done. The power company charges you by the hour for kilowatts of electricity. So, in order to do work and be useful the kW's and MW's we refer to are kW per hour or MW per hour.
Next term is Name Plate Capacity. If you look up at a typical wind turbine you see the generator (nacelle) up top. It has what is referred to as Name Plate capacity. The turbine under perfect operating conditions can put out so many mega watts (MW) of power per hour. A lot of the turbines used in this country have 2.5MW generators. When the wind developer is "selling" his project to a local municipality he says; our wind farm of thirty, 2.5MW turbines will produce 75MW of power enough to power 2000 homes. Great sell but far from the truth. Remember we are talking energy to do work (cooking, lighting or heating is all work) and there is a time element an hour when referring to the power. If the wind was constant and at the exact velocity to produce peak Name Plate Capacity it could power 2000 homes. We all know the wind never blows at a constant speed day in and day out, hour after hour. Some days are windy, then some are calm and others are a wide range in between. Quite honestly wind is hard to predict, it is variable in intensity, and intermittent. So, I think you got the this term understood; name plate capacity is the power output at perfect continuous conditions.
You will often hear or read the term Capacity Factor in reference to an industrial wind farm. Capacity factor is the ratio of the actual output of a power plant over a period of time and its potential output if it had operated at full name plate capacity the entire time. To calculate capacity factor take the actual power produced for a period of time and divide it by the amount of energy if it had run at full capacity. Now to evaluate a power plant regardless of the energy source we measure its capacity factor over a full year. A coal plant for example operates fairly steady but its parts do shutdown for maintenance, just as a wind farm has lulls due to lack of or too much wind and or maintenance. A power plant supplying power to a city must be able to supply a constant amount of power, also it must handle the peaks when industry starts up or people all of sudden turn on their air conditioners. It also has to have some excess capacity to allow for maintenance and not deprive the city of power. Usually one plant can not do all that so there is some sharing of the load by several power plants on a power grid. This is a pretty easy to figure out when you have coal fired power plants, or natural gas, nuclear, or hydro for the power source, but how do we manage a system that is dependent upon wind energy? The only thing we can do is to back it up with sources of power that can meet demand anytime it is called for. Those sources coal, natural gas, nuclear, or hydro we will call conventional sources of power. Up until now they were the energy sources we always used because they were always ready to meet our power requirements, and that is whenever we needed it (power). These conventional sources of power have very high capacity factors compared to wind energy. Coal is over 85%, Natural gas is over 90% Nuclear is almost 100% as is hydro power, all very reliable and ready to meet society's demand for power. Wind has a capacity factor of about 20% some inside the industry try to claim 30% or higher but the more experience we have with wind energy we are seeing a capacity factor more around 20%.
A power plant's ability and availability to supply power on demand has value The capacity to produce power for society is very important. How would you rate the capacity value of a coal fired power plant? It is available 24/7/365, it is there ready at your demand all the time or 100% of the time. Coal has a capacity value of 100%. How dependable is an industrial wind turbine? By nature wind is intermittent, variable in intensity and unpredictable, it must be backed up by conventional sources of power. We can not as a society rely on the wind at a moments notice to produce the power needed by the engines of our society. A wind energy complex of 100MW needs a 100MW of back up power because you never know when it (the wind) is available or when it will stop and at best the wind provides power only 20% of the time. Wind has NO Capacity Value. With no capacity value there is little sense for building industrial wind turbines. If our society is to grow and advance we need cheap dependable power.
INDUSTRIAL WIND TURBINES we do not need them. There are plans to put thousands of wind turbines out in the Great Lakes. The lakes are national treasures why desecrate them? Wind turbines are a waste of money. Here is the question why is our federal and state governments pushing for the development of wind energy? I'll give you the answer, to stop global climate change, by reducing the generation of CO2. Not really somebody want to make billions of dollars easy money when the federal government is paying the bills. Well, the sad truth is industrial wind turbines will not reduce CO2 generation. Wind is not very dependable as an energy source and has to be backed up with conventional power sources like coal or gas fired power plants. Both generated CO2 in their emissions however, of the two gas is much cleaner. In the countries where a greater portion of the power comes from wind they have greater CO2 emissions per kilowatt of power produced. It is a fact that Denmark leads Europe in CO2 emissions. Wind energy is not cheap countries that try to depend more on wind have higher electric rates. Germany and Denmark have the highest electric rates in Europe.
The "Wind Zealots", those who think wind energy will save the world will lie to you and tell you that wind energy will reduce our dependence upon foreign oil, well we get less than 1% of our power generation from oil fired power plants. The Wind Zealots would like you to think that Denmark, Germany and England are way ahead of the United States when it comes to utilizing wind for energy. Well, the US has had more installed wind generating capacity than Denmark, Germany, and England combined, in fact all of Europe until 2011, when China surpassed our installed generating capacity. What is the sad truth despite leading the world until 2011 we had almost no manufacturing of wind turbine generators or blades in this country. GE is a major manufacturer of wind turbines but it is plants they own outside of the US that do the manufacturing.
Here is a beauty, Vestas one of the worlds big wind turbine manufacturers has announced (Jan. 2012) worldwide lay-offs and shutting down factories because of low demand for wind turbines. The reason for the low demand in Europe many countries can no longer afford subsidies for wind energy have cut them back. There is growing opposition by citizens in Europe because there are unresolved human health concerns from wind turbines. The Lay-offs depend on whether Vestas can get Production Tax Credits (PTC) and Section 1603 Grants from the US Federal Government. What they want is our tax dollars to keep there Danish factories running and jobs secure. Your tax dollars bailing out a foreign company. That should really make you mad because your congress people you elected is so stupid they are going to do it. Our country is $16 trillion in debt and we are bailing out a Danish company... with not manufacturing plants here in the US... I would tell them to go to HELL! I would also call my congressman and tell him or her to stop PTC and Sec. 1603 Grants for wind. If they don't fire him or her. I can tell you I have done just that in fact I tell them every few weeks I know they have limited mental faculties so they have to be constantly reminded.
One more time Industrial wind generation has no environmental or economic benefits. It is an unsustainable industry without huge government support. STOP THE PRODUCTION TAX CREDITS AND SECTION 1603 GRANTS FOR WIND ENERGY NOW!
ASIAN CARP... This has been a sore subject with me for years we could have stopped the carp but we failed now they are in Lake Michigan. We could have created barriers to stop them by damming the canals, or just by turning off the aeration pumps. This would be free, you see the water in the canal needs to be aerated so fish can live. It is simple don't aerate the water, then you have a barrier to stop asian carp or any fish from swimming the canal.
Read the article below to get a little history on the issue, but in this installment I am going to bring you up to the minute. I just returned from meetings in Michigan where I had a chance to go on public record as to how I feel about Obama's plan to address asian carp. Unfortunately it is too little, too late with no urgency and no plan to address the carp that have already reached Lake Michigan.
In January, 2010 it was learned that the asian carp had reached Lake Michigan. Doctors Lodge and Chadderton, from Notre Dame have been using eDNA tests to detect the presence of asian carp in the canals around Chicago and in Calumet Harbor in Lake Michigan. (eDNA is environmental DNA that is DNA from fish in the environment. Fish lose cells from their skin, gills or even their gut when they urinate or in their feces, these cells if collected can be used to determin what species of fish are present.)
The presence of asian carp in Lake Michigan changes everything. The old plans to protect the Great Lakes have to be scrapped. We need to figure out how to rid the lake of asian carp before there are enough to start successfully spawning, if they aren't already. This is very serious we have a very small window of opportunity to turn this disaster back. We need aggressive actions to erradicate the carp that have reached the lake. The carp in the canals have to be eliminated above the barrier. All the locks must be closed immedeately to stop anymore carp from reaching Lake Michigan. Quickly, we need to start to hydrologically separate the Mississippi watershed from the Great Lakes. This does two things it makes the barrier between the two system impenetrable, stopping invasive species from migrating into Lake Michigan and the reverse; preventing species from Lake Michigan from reaching the Mississippi. Finally all ballast water carried in lake freighters from Lake Michigan can not be dumped into any other of the Great Lakes. Young carp fry could be moved from one lake to another in ballast water accelerating the spread of the fish.
The Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, US Fish and Wildlife and the Illinois DNR are in denial about the carp reaching Lake Michigan they would rather prefer to believe that the test results by Dr Lodge and Chadderton are just "false positives" and that the asian carp are still miles below the electric barrier. We can not sit back and let them continue to act as if everything is under control because it is not. We may have already lost but we have to try to do as I suggested. If we don't we certainly will lose our Great Lakes to Asian Carp.
Please call your congressman, tell him we need to close all the locks on The Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal and the Cal-Sag Channel, to take aggressive actions to rid Lake Michigan of asian carp and eliminate them in the canals north of the electric barrier in Lemont, Illinois. Tell your congressman to enact emergency regulations stopping ballast water discharges from ships coming out of Lake Michigan and that we need hydrological separation between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi watershed. We need to start today!
The article that follows is one I recently wrote for the New York Outdoor News. Since I wrote it Michigan has sued Illinois to close the canal, and the Asian Carp have been detected in Lake Michigan. It may be too late to save the Great Lakes from this invader. However if there is a slim chance we have to fight for our lakes. Let me know what you think by emailing me ... Capt. Tom Marks
The Electric Barrier and the Asian Carp
By Thomas Marks, NY Director
Great Lakes Sport Fishing Council
Around the time the Chicago District Army Corps of Engineers was beginning the plan to build the electric barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (CSSC) I became interested in the threat posed by the Asian carp which were threatening the Great Lakes. I attended Dispersal Barrier Panel meetings in Chicago spoke to scientists, and engineers I even went to the electric barrier site and toured the CSSC to learn all I could about electric barrier project. What I learned was shocking and too lengthy for this space. However, the reporters writing the recent news stories regarding the Asian carp and electric barrier do not have a full understanding about the problem nor the original plan adopted by the Dispersal Barrier Panel. While the threat of the Asian Carp is serious he problem is not Asian carp; it is the unfinished construction of the electric barrier which is years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget. Promises of completion for next year are doubtful given the Army Corps of Engineers’ history on the project. The second point is that the electric barrier, which is to prevent the carp from reaching the Great Lakes, was known from the start not to be 100% effective. With only an electric barrier we will only slow the invasion eventually Asian carp will invade our Great Lakes. There are fears that the Asian carp may have already breached the electric barrier.
The original plan has three parts, first the electric barrier, second an ecological barrier, and third a hydrological barrier. The Dispersal Panel members, advisors and consultants on the project understood the inefficiency of the electric barrier, however backed by an ecological barrier stopping the Asian carp could be possible. They also knew that to generate the political will and public support for a hydrological barrier would be difficult and take many years. The combined electric and ecological barriers have the best chance of protecting the Great Lakes. However, as long as there is a connection between the two watersheds there will always be the possibility for the Asian Carp or other invaders to reach the Great Lakes.
The Dispersal Barrier Panel, its advisors, and consultants as well as fishery experts from around the region and country understand that not only is the barrier project to protect the Great Lakes it is to protect the Mississippi watershed from invasive species expanding their range out of the Great Lakes. Electric barriers and ecological barriers maybe good at stopping fish but they are ineffective for water containing drifting plants or harmful fish pathogens. The Great Lakes water harbor a deadly fish virus called viral hemmorhagic septicemia (VHS) as well as other pathogens. Only a hydrological barrier can stop the spread to the Mississippi Basin. The connection between the Great Lakes and Mississippi basin is not natural. The canal was constructed as an open sewer to direct sewage away from Chicago’s drinking water source, Lake Michigan. With current technology Chicago’s treated sewage is ok to discharge into the lake. If not, it is not suitable to discharge into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal either. The CSSC is obsolete; the connection should be broken between the two watersheds.
The Army Corps of Engineers, Dispersal Barrier Panel, consultants and other agencies involved in the Barrier Project never really believed in the plan as they outlined it. This is obvious by the lake of urgency in completing the electric barrier by the Army Corps of Engineers. The execution of the barrier plan has been pathetic at best. The Dispersal Barrier Panel members were not committed to the plan either, it is obvious because they held no one accountable for its timely execution. It is obvious they had no confidence in the plan when they considered less effective barriers such as the “acoustic bubble array” to back-up the electric barrier. It obvious no one believed in the plan because Barrier Panel used the Army Corps inability to solve problems on the barrier construction as a diversion to the state of Illinois, Congress, and the press as they had deviated from the original plan. It is obvious that the Dispersal Panel members had no confidence in the original plan because they became focussed on just building the electric barrier not stopping the carp from reaching Lake Michigan. It is obvious they had no confidence because they have deviated so far from their original plan and had no intentions of executing phase two or three, because they knew failure could be imminent.
There is a serious threat to the Great Lakes it is the Asian Carp. There is also a serious problem, it is with the Dispersal Barrier Panel, the Army Corps of Engineers, consultants and other agencies involved in the barrier project who have strayed from the original plan to protect Lake Michigan. Everyone needs to get back on track, move onto phase two to implement the ecological barrier and work hard towards implementing the hydrological barrier; neither the Great Lakes nor the Mississippi basins have the luxury of time.
