The assumption of the climate effect of carbon dioxide is not based on a scientific result, it can rather be considered a religion, when the climate believer has convinced himself that he is right about the climate, and whoever disagrees with him is a climate denier, who may even be hanged.
There is tremendous pressure on the Hungarian government to allow the further installation of wind farms.
In 2016, the government passed a law to protect the domestic natural landscape, nature in general, including birds, so that wind turbines can only be installed at a distance of 12 kilometers from residential areas. This practically - quite rightly - prevented further wind power plants from being built in our country. However, the Hungarian Greens came out in Brussels to set as one of the conditions for the payment of EU energy resources a change in the regulations (reducing the distance from the settlements) that would allow the construction of additional wind farms.
The installation of wind power plants is based on two beliefs - espoused by Brussels and the dark green forces behind it: one is that climate change is caused by carbon dioxide emissions from human activity, and the other is that the energy needs of today's industrial age can be met by solar and with wind farms.
But where do they get all this? There are two sources of belief in the climate impact of carbon dioxide. One is that in 1992, at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, they accepted with a show of hands that climate change is caused by humans, this was the so-called Framework Convention on Climate Change, which had nothing to do with science, simply a political statement, like, say, the Communist Manifesto . The other has already been given a more scientific guise, and it appears in the summaries of the publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prepared for decision-makers. In its six publications so far, the IPCC has dealt with climate change in a total of about 30,000 pages, giving thousands of scientists space to express their thoughts. But in these thirty thousand pages, we would look in vain for any evidence that climate change is caused by humans.
Just one example from the latest 2023 publication, Working Group I.
"It is clear that the warming of the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial times was caused by human influence. Combining evidence from the climate system as a whole increases the confidence that the observed climate change is attributable to human influence... It is likely that human influence, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, is the main driver of the intensification of extreme precipitation observed in global land regions in recent decades. There is high confidence in the ability of the models to capture the large-scale spatial distribution of extreme rainfall over land.” (pages 425-426)
Why is it clear? As you can see, here the reference is not to facts, but to probabilities and model calculations, and since he says that in many sub-fields the role of man is likely, when he sums up, he takes this for sure, even though - and this is mathematics - the sum of the partial probabilities does not increase the probability of the whole . As for models, everyone who has already created computer models knows that they produce the results that the modeler wants. The relevant English saying: garbage in, garbage out is no accident.
But if we think about the extent to which the meteorological institute's weather reports are accurate, when they can even use cloud maps, we can imagine to what extent climate change, for which we have assumptions based on geological research rather than concrete knowledge, can be attributed to some factor . It is no coincidence that an earlier document of the IPCC states the following at the expert level:
“In short, strategy must acknowledge what is possible and what is not. In climate research and modeling, we have to recognize that it is a so-called coupled nonlinear chaotic system, so long-term predictions of future climate conditions are not possible." (IPCC TAR, Chapter 14, Section 14.2.2.2)
In other words, the materials written by IPCC experts do not establish a concrete connection between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the climate, it is only included in the summaries, courtesy of climate activists and politicians.
The assumption of the climate effect of carbon dioxide is therefore not based on a scientific result, rather it can be considered a religion, when the climate believer has convinced himself that he is right about the climate, and whoever disagrees with him is a climate denier, who may even be hanged, like the one in Graz A university professor suggested it and explained it ( here ). Just as in the Middle Ages, religious masses and rulers built sky-high churches, climate believers also have their own churches: wind power plants that reach 100-200 meters high.
But as long as we can shrug our shoulders in the case of religion, that faith is faith, whatever one believes in (I believe, because it is impossible), whether wind or solar power plants can solve the energy supply of a country, especially a continent, is already a calculation question, and these calculations show that no! The basic reason for this is that renewables require so much space and storage due to their performance fluctuations that it cannot be met. In addition, the energy spent on their creation, operation, and decommissioning at the end of their life cycle is hardly recouped, so they are inherently uneconomical.
Let's take a simple example. Hungary's total annual energy consumption (electricity, heating, industrial use, etc.) is about 800 PJ, which corresponds to 222,240 GWh. To give you an idea of the magnitude, this amounts to 14 Paks power plants. If we wanted to satisfy this energy demand with 2 MW wind turbines each, we would have to set up 63,425 such wind turbines, which would require an area of 12,685 square kilometers, that is, one seventh of the country's territory, two or three counties, would have to be completely covered with wind turbines. But this is not the biggest problem, but the need for storage due to uneven production. Based on the time-varying production data of American wind farms, a safe energy supply would require the storage of approximately one month's worth of energy, i.e. 18,520 GWh.
Elon Musk's state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery, the Tesla Powerwall 2, has a storage capacity of 13.5 KWh, a price of $10,000 and a lifespan of 10 years.
It is estimated that 1.4 billion such batteries would be needed for the necessary energy storage, at a cost of 14 trillion dollars, which would have to be replaced in 10 years. By comparison, Hungary's annual GDP is about 170 billion dollars. These calculations can be twisted and twisted, for example assuming less space requirements, performing the calculations for solar power plants, geothermal energy could be included, but the end result will clearly be that it is impossible to solve the energy needs of industrial societies with renewable energy, for that we would have to go back to the technologies of the 16th century and population.
In addition, the energy return of each energy production method, i.e. the ratio of the energy produced during one life cycle to the energy invested in construction, operation and decommissioning, is very different. A solar power plant produces twice as much energy, a wind power plant four times, a coal power plant thirty times, and a nuclear power plant seventy-five times more energy than the energy invested.
If this indicator is below seven, as in the case of solar and wind energy, then it is not worth using on a social level.
The detailed execution of the above calculations, with references to relevant factual data, does not amount to more than ten typed pages, but this calculation is not found in the 30,000 pages of the IPCC published so far, not by chance, as it would clearly prove that what the IPCC and Brussels also proposes, and even imposes it under the burden of sanctions, which is unrealistic and unfeasible. Imposing it can only result in economic decline and bankruptcy, with its expected social consequences. Therefore, the Hungarian government did very well when it passed a law that essentially prevented the further construction of wind farms, and it is doing very badly by allowing the multiplication of solar plant capacities, as stated in the national energy and climate plan.
The author is an economist and a consultant to the National Forum
