Global warming hysteria has driven a lot of stupid investment in purportedly “green” energy production that turns out to create new problems. Wind farms that kill millions of birds because migratory birds follow the same winds that are ideal for wind power, for instance. Bald eagles, normally illegal to kill in the United States, are allowed to be slaughtered by wind farms.

Then there are the massive lithium batteries needed for electric cars, full of toxic heavy metals, that pose a huge problem of disposal when they wear out after about ten years. And the solar energy farms that eat up vast acreage and incinerate passing birds with their “death rays.”

But now the BBC focuses on yet another blowback from green energy policies: the allegedly super-duper, extra-special global warming gas sulfur hexaflouride, abbreviated as SF6, that is leaking into the atmosphere from electrical equipment, where it is used as an insulator, to prevent fires and explosions.

As more windmills, solar installations, and other decentralized energy production facilities supplement large coal- and other hydrocarbon-based electrical generating installations when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, the amount of SF6-containing equipment is rising. Indeed, one of the interest group support bases for green energy projects consists of the electrical equipment manufacturing industry that realizes they can sell much more equipment because the green sources can’t be used all the tie and need to be supplemented by base load generators that are reliable because they depend on hydrocarbon fuels.

The BBC article that hypes the alleged global warming danger of S6 is classic of hysteria mongering. At the top, it shows a picture of icky orange-ish polluted air, even though SF6 and CO2 both are colorless and odorless. It never explains why SF6 is “23,500 times more warming than carbon dioxide (CO2)” but features plenty of graphics like these:

And projections like this:

…the global installed base of SF6 is expected to grow by 75% by 2030.

Even worse, there is no available substitute for high voltage equipment:

For high-voltage applications, experts say there are very few solutions that have been rigorously tested. "There is no real alternative that is proven," said Prof Manu Haddad from the school of engineering at Cardiff University. "There are some that are being proposed now but to prove their operation over a long period of time is a risk that many companies don't want to take."

Warmists need an equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath: First do no harm. But of course, there is so much self-interested rent-seeking a work in the movement that such a pledge will never be taken.

Hat tip: John McMahon