What would be the simplest way to explain that wind energy is not reliable nor cheap? Professor Ross McKitrick does it with the example of railway construction. Let's say you get a bid from two companies to build a railway. One of the bids is considerably cheaper than the other, but the company that made it says that every ten miles there is a three-mile gap in the railway that is being built. So if you agree to that, you can get it very cheap. “Now obviously the fact that it's cheaper now doesn't help, because it is now useless as a railroad. And electricity systems that are running on wind are useless for the same purpose. You cannot have an electricity system that when the wind dies down, there is no electricity,” he says. In order to get continuous electricity output in this case you need another more reliable source – e.g. gas powered plants. “You have to add that cost in and then it is silly to build 2 generating systems to run at the same time,” he adds.
Renewable energy is of course only one of the topics dicussed in this podcast interview as professor McKitrick takes on a wide range of truths and myths of climate change, based on his own research and that of his colleagues.
Ross McKitrick is a Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) where he specializes in environment, energy and climate policy. He has published widely on the economics of pollution, climate change and public policy. His background in applied statistics has also led him to collaborative work across a wide range of topics in the physical sciences including paleoclimate reconstruction, malaria transmission, surface temperature measurement and climate model evaluation. Professor McKitrick has been invited to give presentations of his academic work all around the world, and has testified before the US Congress and committees of the Canadian House of Commons and Senate. You can learn more about his work at his web page.
FREEDOM RESEARCH PODCAST #10. Professor Ross McKitrick. Cheap Renewable Energy and Other Ridiculous Climate Change Myths.