Science

If one really doesn't care about what I say, the "ignore" button at DU works quite well. I can be ignored.

If however, one doesn't "GAF" what I say about energy and the real world data I present, I am free to interpret this as not "GAF" about anything.

Nevertheless not "GAF", it's not clear that what I said is actually being ignored, since it generated a response, the same tiresome platitude that has been flying around here about how solar energy is becoming "cheap."

This line of bull has been flying around here for the last 21 years too.

Cheap for whom? For the future generations that will have to clean up the electronic waste in an environment with a destroyed atmosphere because the solar fantasy did nothing, zero, nada to address climate change?

I note that advocates for solar and wind want to talk about money all the time, and then they pretend that the problem with their rickety crap is "capitalism."

Then, the citing of numbers, in this case, the number of Exajoules produced by energy sources is sometimes called "ignorance."

Really?

As for the mindless bullshit about how long it takes to nuclear plants, I note that the United States once built - with 1960's and 1970's technology more than 100 nuclear reactors while providing the cheapest electricity in the whole world. Many of those reactors still operate.

And now we hear that what has already happened is impossible.

The allegedly "quick to build" solar crap on the entire planet produced. this after half a century of mindless cheering, just 7 Exajoules of energy in 2022. It has never come close to generating the roughly 30 Exajoules of energy that nuclear energy has been producing for about 30 years in an atmosphere of criticism and vituperation by people who show a clear inability to engage in the simple critical thinking that compares two numbers, in this case 30 and 7.

Since it took 50 years of cheering to get the useless solar industry to 7 Exajoules, one can suppose that it will take 200 years of cheering for it to get to 30 Exajoules, although 2021 to 2022 set an all time record for increases in the use of solar junk, 2 Exajoules worth on a planet consuming 632 Exajoules per year and rising.

To repeat, people lie, to each other and to themselves, but numbers don't lie.

Or are we here to deny that 30 is bigger than 7?

As for whether I want nuclear plants all over the world, of course I do. I give a shit about humanity based on something called "reality."

I am thrilled, as I've noted at DU to see Africa looking to get into the game, for example. The sooner the better. No one sensible or decent should want the Africans to climb out of poverty as the Indians and Chinese have done, with coal.

There already are nuclear plants all over the world, and they have demonstrated a remarkable ability to save human lives, as noted in a much cited scientific paper by the famous climate scientist Jim Hansen working with a colleague:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

My son is working on projects involving printing nuclear reactor cores.

When the stupid pills being sold by antinukes and widely swallowed by people who can't think too well to start wear off, my son and his colleagues will work to save what is left to save, and hopefully create enough infrastructure to clean up the awful mess left by the "solar will save us" types in their tiresome and frankly toxic indifference to numbers entail, building reactors quickly and efficiently to address the emergency generated by an inability to do the numbers.

As for solar, the multitrillion dollar solar energy industry is useless, has been useless, and always will be useless if the goal is to address climate change.

Source: Source: UNEP/Bloomberg: Global Trends in Renewable Energy.

If one manually enters the figures in the bar graph in figure 8 to see how much money we've thrown at this destructive affectation since 2004 (up to 2019): It works out to 3.2633 trillion dollars.

This money has been squandered for no result in changes in the use of dangerous fossil fuels and correspondingly, no result in stopping the acceleration of the rate of climate change.

But it's "cheap?" For whom exactly?

As for any remarks about my personality, I really, really, really don't care what people think about me. I'll be dead soon enough.
Nonetheless, in my last years, I do enjoy the opportunities to expose bad thinking for what it is.

If anyone wants to know, bad and dangerous thinking, particularly around the unnecessary driving of climate change and the willful destruction of the planetary atmosphere, makes me angry.

I note that if anyone here doesn't like me - and many people don't - DU has a wonderful ignore feature. It can be activated by calling up my profile page and clicking on "ignore." By using it, one can avoid hearing any truths from me that one doesn't want to hear.

If, on the other hand, anyone wants to be sure, by posting a response to what I say, that I know that they don't like me, I reserve the right respond, depending on my mood.

Have a wonderful Friday tomorrow.