Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the world’s richest man. His mother was still in high school when she became pregnant and his biological father left early on.
Amazon has jumped on the global warming / renewable energy / sustainability bandwagon. They are spending millions on television ads to tell everyone how virtuous they are. Amazon’s 2019 annual report isloaded with climate change, carbon footprints and renewable energy virtue signalling. Amazon is building wind and solar farms. They have signed a “climate pledge.” Amazon is late to the green party. Apple and Chevron have been celebrating the Religion of Green for a long time. Perhaps Amazon jumped on the green train to deflect from the criticism it is getting for being close to a monopoly?
James Hansen, a very prominent climate alarmist scientist, calls renewable energy “grotesque.” Climate Scientists for Nuclear tell us that wind and solar will never be effective for reducing CO2 emissions. They are very expensive energy sources, requiring an 80% subsidy.
Nuclear power electricity does not emit CO2. although is more expensive than fossil fuels, mostly due to the anti-nuclear movement launched by environmental groups that are climate change howlers. They entangled nuclear power in so much regulation, and so many lawsuits, that it is nearly impossible to build a new nuclear plant in the U.S.
Since the Religion of Green is a secular religion, it can be impossible to refute with scientific or engineering facts and data. For wind and solar power, the facts are clear. Their operation is unpredictable, so wind and solar can’t replace existing fossil fuel plants. The existing fossil fuel plants have to stay, to take over when the wind stops, or the sun is obscured by clouds ... or nighttime.
Wind or solar electricity costs about $80 per megawatt hour excluding subsidies. The cost is mostly the capital cost of the plant and typically long transmission lines amortized over the life of the plant. The alternative is to burn natural gas in the existing plants at a fuel cost of $15 per megawatt hour. Renewable energy displaces $15 electricity with $80 electricity.
Amazon is airing a television commercial for a “climate pledge” that highlights the company’s commitment to using wind power. The commercial unintentionally reveals how wind power would decimate America’s environment, open spaces, and wildlife. Text says Amazon is committed to being “net zero carbon by 2040”, and Amazon has ordered 100,000 electric vehicles.
The commercial then shows hills lined with gigantic wind turbines, with text saying Amazon has “created a $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund” ... which requires "polluting" more lands, that are currently pristine, with wind turbines! Not mentioned is that wind turbines would devastate the songbirds (near wind turbines) whose singing is featured in the Amazon commercial !
Harvard University scientists, who are climate alarmists, published a 2018 study claiming that replacing conventional electricity entirely with wind turbines would require covering one-third of America’s lands with wind turbines. The scientists also claimed large-scale placement of wind turbines would increase U.S. temperatures, as the warming impact of turbines impeding air circulation would outweigh any cooling effect of lower carbon dioxide emissions.
Wind turbines have already created "no-fly-zones", killing millions of our nation’s birds and bats every year, including protected and endangered species. Ramping up wind power from its current 9 percent of electric power generation, to 100 percent electric power generation, would create an 11-fold increase in the death toll (100 percent divided by 9 percent). The songbirds joyfully singing throughout the Amazon commercial would suffer an aviary holocaust where wind turbines are spinning.
Meanwhile, in 2016 NASA documented that more atmospheric carbon dioxide is generating huge benefits for forests, grasslands, and other plant life. According to a NASA article titled “Carbon Dioxide Greening Earth, ”more atmospheric carbon dioxide is spurring an increase in plant growth that represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental U.S.” That study so disappointed climate alarmists that it was never updated.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports that global crop production is setting new records virtually every year. More atmospheric carbon dioxide, longer growing seasons, and fewer frost events all help.
The U.S. is responsible for just 14 percent of global CO2 emissions, and America’s emissions have fallen faster than every signatory to the Paris Climate Accord. Most important: There has been no real-world harm caused by modest, gradual, intermittent global warming in the past 325 years.