Why the Green Economy is a pernicious myth:
1. Hydrocarbons supply over 80 percent of world energy: If all that were in the form of oil, the barrels would line up from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, and that entire line would grow by the height of the Washington Monument every week.
2. The small two-percentage-point decline in the hydrocarbon share of world energy use entailed over $2 trillion in cumulative global spending on alternatives over that period; solar and wind today supply less than two percent of the global energy.
3. When the world’s four billion poor people increase energy use to just one-third of Europe’s per capita level, global demand rises by an amount equal to twice America’s total consumption.
4. A 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to 400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace five percent of global oil demand.
5. Renewable energy would have to expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades. It took a half-century for global petroleum production to expand “only” ten-fold.
6. Replacing U.S. hydrocarbon-based electric generation over the next 30 years would require a construction program building out the grid at a rate 14-fold greater than any time in history.
7. Eliminating hydrocarbons to make U.S. electricity (impossible soon, infeasible for decades) would leave untouched 70 percent of U.S. hydrocarbons use—America uses 16 percent of world energy.
Go here to read the rest. Most who support the concept of a Green Economy are deeply stupid, some, especially among the politicians, are deeply malevolent. I will not speculate as to the size of the “both” category, other than to note that evil and stupidity often stroll hand in hand.
The goal of climate change is to remove man as the steward of God’s creation. Nay,The goal of climate change is to remove God, “their Creator” from man.
Also, If God wanted a person to become a priest, that person would be born a man because our God of creation and Divine Providence still runs the world.
One starts to wonder about Pope Francis getting to Heaven to find a perturbed Jesus standing there saying, “Why did you insist on starving my sheep?”
It doesn’t seem to occur to these geniuses to expunge the sectoral cross-subsidies and let the chips fall where they may. Eliminate the whole population of income tax deductions, exemptions, and credits other than per person exemptions and credits meant to take impecunious people off the rolls. Do the same in re corporation taxes, value-added taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, inheritance taxes, and (as much as possible) tariffs. Replace the bulk of the emissions regulations with tradeable permits and Pigou levies. Set up dedicated funds to finance road construction and maintenance in each municipality, county, state, and territory and fill them with the proceeds of road tolls, vehicle registration fees, and excises on motor fuels, making little use of general revenues. Make city bus schedules comprehensible or scrap the city buses and have county governments issue EBT cards on a sliding scale fee so the impecunious can hire Ubers. Build small neighborhood parking garages to replace street parking and provide for more dedicated bike lanes. Add Pigou levies to utility bills and quit subsidizing consumption and quit vending power at concessionary prices. There are ways to address these issues without causing economic wreckage. As solar, wind, and nuclear technology improve and as oil and gas get more expensive to mine, people will switch technologies unbidden.
Green Power, Black Death: Eco-Imperialism.
http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Driessen01.pdf
Americans understand neither the Law of the Conservation of Energy nor the complexity of US energy supply:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
And once again, what’s the SAFEST source of energy?
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html
And how about the most economic?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY
But given ALL of that, fossil fuel will still be by far the biggest contributer to electricity and transportation. And on an end note: solar doesn’t work at night, and wind turbines don’t work when there’s no wind. Useless, worthless liberal progressive Democrat idiocy. As for me, I am grateful for my gasoline fueled vehicle and the four 1000+ MWe nuclear power plants surrounding the the metroplitan area in whose suburbs I live.
Everything that guy just said is BS.
At least, he is consistent.
Unreliable. Inefficient. Very Expensive.
One other thing Lucius,
That mythic sunbeam stuff’s peak production is six hours away from peak demand, when production dramatically drops. SO, they need to store it is HUGE [size of a football field?] batteries with energy loss and then transmit it with more energy loss.
Unicorn farts and zephyrs are even worse.
All the engineering stuff is deleted from their worldwide propaganda.
Mr. McClarey,
This is off-topic but I don’t know where else to post it. I always get notices of new stories on The American Catholic in my email. Today I didn’t get any email from The American Catholic, even through there were several new posts. Has something changed?
Not to my knowledge George, but internet gremlins do pop up every now and then to my annoyance!
The problem is that politicians, the general public and, indeed, many “scientists,” don’t know what science is all about. They have are devotees of “scientism,” and, knowing nothing of the history of science–the mutability of theories and indeed observations–believe in it as a new religion. Science is a methodology, not a collection of facts. I’ve written so many blog posts on this, and keep wondering if they have any effect.
PS… you don’t have to be facile with math in order to understand what science is all about
To add to T. Shaw’s point:
Does Pope Francis care about the children exploited for mining lithium and cobolt for car batteries?
https://www.ft.com/content/c6909812-9ce4-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb
Does the Pope care about the environmental devastation caused by lithium mining?
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/
Does the Pope care about the enviromental devastation caused by solar and wind?
http://www.sdewes.org/jsdewes/pid9.0387
That heretical Marxist Peronist Caudillo knows nothing about science, engineering and technology, and he knows nothing about the Catholic faith either. So he should be deposed, anathematized and exiled to an isolated monestary at Mount Athos to consider in solitary confinement for the remainder of his useless and worthless life the great harm he has wreaked on both Church and world.
We can no longer remain silent in the face of the greatest loss of souls in modern history. We can no longer remain unaffected by the idolatry of those in leadership positions which brings the wrath of God. We can no longer remain silent in the face of the demonic takeover of governments, schools, etc.
I highly recommend Alex Epstein’s book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”.
I stumbled across Dave Rubin’s Rubin Report interview with Epstein on YouTube, and was so impressed with the man’s logical, fact-driven stance that I bought the book. Highly recommend!
And for those who feel they don’t have the time for his book, there’s Rubin’s interview on YouTube, and also an excellent conversation between Epstein and Chris Williamson on Williamson’s Modern Wisdom, also on YouTube.
I only wish that world policy makers engaged with Epstein’s arguments, instead of hopping on board the popular but science-denying fossil-fuels-are-irredeemably-bad train.
The reaction of most people to “green energy” is literally out of sight out of mind.
They will gladly use an electric car to save the planet, even if the electricity for that car is supplied by new gas powerplants. Just like they don’t care about the rare earth materials needed to make the batteries for those cars.
In addition to what Clinton recommended above, I would also encourage the reader to review the late Profession Bernard Cohen’s writings on nuclear energy. See link below:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/
I include my concurrence with Clinton’s recommendation on the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels at https://www.moralcaseforfossilfuels.com/main because I figure everyone should have the full story on both fossil fuels and nuclear energy, not just my biased opinion for nuclear energy. You all got brains and are smarter than I, so use them.
PS, Dr. Cohen’s writings are about 20 years old and not as polished as perhaps Alex Epstein’s are, but they are still essentially applicable. He discusses the following (with some apparent duplication) (sidenote: some of the HTML files don’t always display nicely in our modern software):
Test of the linear-no threshold theory
Update of test of the linear-no threshold theory
Cancer Risk from Low-Level Radiation
Catalog of risks
Risk Analysis of Buried Wastes from Electricity Generation
Discounting in Assessment of Future Radiation Risks
Treatment of Confounding Factors in a Test of the Linear-No Threshold Theory, or
Test of Linear-No Threshold Theory: Rationale for Procedures
Test of the Linear-no Threshold Theory-Recent Semi-popular
The Cancer Risk from Low Level Radiation
Probabilistic risk analysis of a high level radioactive waste repository
Perspectives on the risks from buried high level waste
Book-The Nuclear Energy Option
Instruction for accessing data file
Response to the potential for bias in Cohen’s ecological analysis of lung cancer and residential radon
Response to suggestion by Puskin of an alternative explanation of my data
Response to Mossman Letter to Editor, Health Physics News, July 2003
Understanding the Toxicity of Buried Radioactive Waste and Its Impacts
LQC, thanks for the link to Bernard Cohen’s work— I hadn’t heard of the man before. He sounds like someone who deserves a wider audience.
For T. Shaw who pointed out the idiocy of large scale lithium ion storage batterires for grid backup when solar and wind produce no electricity – imagine a large grid backup battery spontaneously igniting as the lithium ion battery did in this electric bus:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/07/25/green-disaster-battery-fire-turns-connecticut-electric-bus-into-towering-inferno/
Even coal power is more safe!
Welcome to Clinton.
Papal involvement in “climate change” is going to make The Galileo Affair seem lame.
Galileo, as far as I know, was at least a Christian. I wish I could express the same opinion concerning the other man. (Please note the word “opinion “ is used.)
I am convinced Greta Thunberg has a certain level of autism or Aspergers. She seems highly intelligent however is clearly a useful pawn in this Climate Change narrative. It’s pretty cunning to use a girl like her to try and convince the world that humans can have any effect at all (good or bad) on the climate. I hope we look back and laugh at our foolishness and gullibility.
Thurnburg allows herself to be used as a prop, he asinine parents allow her to be used. The people who book her are using her. The people who pay attention to her are fools.
What the last eight years have demonstrated is (1) there are astonishing numbers of awful people all around us and (2) astonishing numbers of people who give awful people succor. The projects of awful people include (1) manufacturing and enforcing a caste system and (2) propagating criminal violence (in part as a function of item number 1), (3) the corruption of the courts and the police, so they function as partisan enforcers, (4) widespread vote fraud, (5) systematic abuse of dissenters, (6) promoting sexual deviance (in part as a function of item number one), (7) the abuse of medical and surgical knowledge to manufacture sideshow freaks like Ellen Page, (8) the destruction of retirement savings through inflation; (9) the abuse of business enterprises and philanthropies, insisting that in their operations they be promoters of regime ideology; and (10) the falsification of history in quite obvious ways, and the systemic promotion of that by higher education and the sorosphere.
One way out of this is by making use of the residue of impartial institutions (honest judges), the residue of electoral process, and the hope of abrupt and unpredictable cultural shifts in the younger generation (such as distinguished the collegiate population of 1970 from the collegiate population of 1985).
I’m not hopeful.
Comment of the week Art! Take ‘er away Sam!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXeIxtI–uc&t=8s
I guess you could say she allows herself to be used because it gets her attention and accolades. But I think there is a certain level of negligence by those that surround her. And yes, I agree: “The people who pay attention to her are fools.”
Congrats on the Comment of the week Art!