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Threatened Forests: a new look at "green energy"

Threatened forests’ explores some hidden realities behind “green energy” in the EU. Filmmaker Benoit Grimont made this documentary as a response to the development of a large scale biomass electricity installation in Gardanne, southern France. His film discovers that renewable energy – heavily supported by EU countries – may not be anything like as ‘green’ as we are led to believe.


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Filed under: documentaries, EU, Europe, France, latest
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Mark Catlin
Mark Catlin
Aug 10, 2016 11:38 PM

Reblogged this on Mark Catlin's Blog.

Kalmar Emeric
Kalmar Emeric
Aug 6, 2016 9:12 AM

Threatened Forests and Wildfires
The drought and the resulting wildfires which are threatening the forests are caused by the climate change and the global warming they say. And it is something else too. Yet nobody talks about it. Because it is labeled as green and presented as one of the greatest achievements of green and carbon free energy.
That is the influence of the offshore wind farms to the normal circuit of the water in nature. Imagine a hot summer day. You are on the beach in the sun. The breeze from the sea cools you down. And unexpectedly somebody stops the wind. What would you do?
We shouldn’t stop the wind. It cools down the Earth. The Monsoon in India is a well known example. The climatic processes are the same everywhere only on a smaller scale. The offshore wind farms hinder those natural processes which bring moisture and cool air from the ocean. The result is less rain, less vegetation and an increased desertification everywhere on a scale which was unseen before.
“As of December 31, 2015, California has 6,108 megawatts (MW) of wind powered electricity generating capacity.[1] California’s wind power capacity has grown by nearly 350% since 2001, when it was less than 1,700 MW.” – Wikipedia
The connection between the development of the wind farms it and the increased drought it is obvious. If somebody would make a statistical study to show the connection between the reduced rainfalls and the increased wind farm developments in any region would get the same graphs. A going up wind-farm development graph line and going down precipitation graph line.
When the energy of the wind it is used to produce electricity, the remaining wind energy is insufficient to bring enough humid air from the ocean inland. That means that will be lesser and lesser moisture in the air and consequently lesser rain.
If you think that don’t have such a great influence, just consider the cumulative processes which occur simultaneously. Because this is a very complex synergistic process which ads up the effects of many components to the equation and the end results are visible to everyone.
We must take into account the latent heat of the water (moisture in the air, clouds, etc.) too. The laws of the thermodynamics are alive and well, yet it seams that all the scientists have forgot them.
The self-sustainable desertification process it is the same to what happened in Africa 10.000 years ago. Then was a change in the direction of the winds which normally brought the moisture from the ocean to Africa. When those winds stopped the result was the Sahara desert. Nowadays, the wind patterns didn’t changed so much lately, but we did a very “good” job in slowing them down drastically.
When the ocean breeze encounters the windmills is slowed down, is pushed up by the landmass, the windmills. That uplift is increased even more by the uplift—thermal gradient—created by the sun-heated barren land.
All the humid air will go up in the atmosphere and will not cool the land as usually does. Even at night, when the land is cool, the normal condensation process of the humidity from the air will not happen as it should because the air in the proximity of the land don’t have enough moisture in it. So will be no morning dew. No water droplets on the leaves. Imagine.
That dry hot air masses create those heat domes which are so common nowadays and have no air movement inside. This happens because the dry and hot air it is heavier then the colder yet and humid air and stays near ground level. Because of the heat the land and the all the vegetation becomes dry and will ignite easily. The result are the wildfires.
That process will go on and on, until we will not stop the root cause which are the wind-farms blocking the sea breeze and the moisture from the sea. The only acceptable location for wind-farms would be inland on the continent, where—maybe—couldn’t interfere so much with the natural circuit of the water in nature.
Recapitulation:
• A great part of the energy of the winds it is used to produce electricity instead of bringing the humidity from the ocean to the land as it should happen naturally;
• If it is less moisture in the air will be fewer clouds and lesser rain;
• No morning dew;
• No rain and no dew begets drought;
• Drought will destroy all the vegetation (trees, shrubs, grass etc.);
• No vegetation means no water transpiration from plants. Plants transpire vast quantities of water because only one percent of all water a plant absorbs is used in photosynthesis, the rest is given up through transpiration.
• Because the bare ground heats up fast and easy, that will result in increased the temperature gradient and the air uplift will be so powerful that the little humidity will go up in the upper atmosphere so you’ll get hail which will destroy the vegetation—crops too—yet very little rain;
• Effective rainfall which is the amount of water which stays in the ground and could be used by vegetation effectively is minimal. Because the bare ground cannot retain the little rainfall which it gets the water will evaporate instantly or seep into the ground—usually both—very fast without any use for the few existing plants. The effectiveness of the rainfall will be minimal.
• Transpiration, along with evaporation of moisture on land, provides almost two-thirds of the atmospheric moisture that falls as precipitation on land surfaces. The remaining one-third comes from the evaporation of the oceans. (For more information about the meaning of effective rainfall you should check the Savory Institute or maybe ask a poor farmer which fights with drought on daily basis)
Less rain will bring water shortages and lesser water in the water reservoirs too. The Hoover dam could dry up completely as it happened with the Aral sea because of water over-consumption which resulted in vegetation loss and desertification.
The Californians could shake hands with the Texans because they are in the same boat. The same wind-farms and the same drought. Do you see pattern here?
The same thing is happening in Africa right now. But there it is even worst than in the USA. Why? Because at least the Americans are paying the price for their “Green Energy” themselves.
But the EU countries will be the main beneficiary of the “Green Energy” from the wind-farms from Africa and the poor Africans will get in return only the drought and the resulting famine. The Germans built the big wind-farms in Tunisia and the Italians are planning a big undersea electric cable (1000 MW) to link the Tunisian and the Italian electric grid together.
Guess where all that “Green” electric energy will go?
Please don’t be surprised dear EU countries if in a not so far future, the poor farmers from Africa together with their families will come to your shores forced by the drought in their countries, the drought which you have created foolishly.
Don’t be surprised because you have left them with no other choice then to leave their homeland, while you are benefiting from the cheap and ECO “Green Energy” obtained on behalf of their subsistence. This is yet an other sneaky way the richest are stealing from the poorest.
The same thing happens in South Africa too. There are very powerful winds there. And for a reason. To bring the moisture from the ocean. Ironically, they put big wind-farms their way to stop them. Yet again. Ironically everywhere where are strong winds which would bring moisture from the oceans and seas they built wind-farms.
The same pharisaic attitude about energy is in the way the EU countries behave towards Russia. They are applying bitter sanctions to them and yet they are benefiting greatly from the cheap and clean Russian natural gas to heat their homes and grew their economy.
And while Germany shot down almost all of its nuclear plants to be ECO friendly is buying cheap electric energy produced in nuclear plants
from other countries for example France. No problemo. N’est-ce pas? It’s a very good business when the mess—AKA the toxic nuclear waste—is not in your country but someone else’s. It’s easy-peasy to be green when others pay the price.
Making fuel from food stuff it is an other great stupidity. When people are starving, using good farmland to make fuel is not only stupid, it is a sacrilege.
A mortal sin shouting to heaven.

Mike Parr
Mike Parr
Jul 28, 2016 8:47 AM

Good documentary. Biomass has a role in the production of “green” energy but not in the way it is being done in France (and other locations). Anaerobic digestion for, for example sewage or manure, locally, is sustainable (working on the basis that people are not going to stop going to the bog any time soon). Local PV and wind schemes likewise have a role in providing electricity and are particualrly effective when deployed as community energy schemes (as is done at scale in Germany). The problem is that there are almost zero community energy schemes in France – although the political structure (communes) lends itself to delivering such schemes. In France, the energy scene is dominated by EdF (prop: french state) and to a lesser extent companies such as EON or GDF-Suez (now Engie) & there is little prospect of any change – hence the EON scheme profiled (which is completely bonkers given the sunny (& windy) location).

rtj1211
rtj1211
Jul 7, 2016 8:09 AM

There’s nothing wrong in principle with ‘green energy’ serving rural needs. If you can use an anaerobic digester to turn animal waste into energy serving a small village, fine.
I don’t think such things are close to commercial viability in serving big cities, however.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Jul 6, 2016 1:24 PM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
Drax in Yorkshire, who were buying lignite coal from the US for their biomass energy, have now scaled back or stopped it’s production. Probably because the Tories took away their financial incentive to look for “green” alternatives. The company did not respond to a request for further elucidation. It is quite obvious why, since the replanting of primary forest from which the chippings were acquired in no way, can replace what has been removed.

Nerevar
Nerevar
Jul 6, 2016 2:22 AM

A bit disturbing documentary. Prioritising so-called bio-fuels is just a crime against humanity

MigrantWorker
MigrantWorker
Jul 6, 2016 10:44 AM
Reply to  Nerevar

Not quite. We just put completely unrealistic expectations on the biofuels, and biosphere in general. It spent the last few billion years sustaining itself with great success, but never once during this time was it mechanised. It simply is not suited to supporting mechanisation, and it is not suddenly going to become able to support it just because we wish so.

Nerevar
Nerevar
Jul 6, 2016 6:07 PM
Reply to  MigrantWorker

Indeed, burning trees (or food) will never be effective enough. Using nuclear energy sources is mostly disgraced (and dangerous, too). But “being green” is always profitable business. Not for ordinary people.