Science

I follow the CO₂ levels on this planet, as recorded at Mauna Loa regularly.

I know how much money has been squandered on so called "renewable energy."

The numbers are here up to 2019:

In the 21st century, we spent, invested in the reactionary fantasy I discussed above, more than 3.3319 trillion dollars on solar and wind junk, almost all of which will be landfill in about 25 years. (The number 3.3319 trillion dollars refers to the period between 2004 and 2019 inclusive.)

Source: Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2020 (Figure 42, page 62).

The squandering is continuing.

For this, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of former wilderness rendered into industrial parks for wind and solar crap that will all be garbage in 3 decades, we have a total of 15 EJ of energy on a planet now consuming 632 Exajoules a year. There aren't enough metals to mine on this planet, enough holes to be dug, to make this crap reach 100 EJ, never mind 632. In fact, if one looks - and I do - at the process chemistry to purify the ores and refine this metals, the currency is heat.

The numbers are here: 2023 World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), Table A.1a on Page 264.


Now suppose nuclear plants cost what Vogtle cost as a result of the willful destruction of nuclear manufacturing infrastructure in this country at the behest of "the solar and wind will save us" assholes who put in concern for climate change as an afterthought after achieving their real goal, destroying nuclear manufacturing infrastructure. Suppose they cost 20 billion dollars, 10 billion bucks for each 3,451 MW(th) plant.

For the 3.3319 trillion dollars squandered on wind and solar spent on wind and solar junk, all of which will be massive heaps of waste in 20 to 30 years, we could have built 166 Vogtle plants. If one does the math - and antinukes are very, very, very, very bad at math - one can see that these plants would be producing 32 EJ of thermal energy every damned year at 90% capacity utilization, reliably, not requiring as wind and solar crap does, back up from dangerous natural gas plants, or in the case of that antinuke hellhole Germany, coal, where as of this writing, 12/3/2023, 14h:16 minutes, Berlin time, the carbon intensity of their electricity is 660 g CO2/kWh compared to France's 65 g CO2/kWh.

The last 30 days of "green" Germany's dumping on the planet:



Electricity Map, Germany.

Moreover, those 166 "Vogtles" would all be operating at the dawn of the 22nd century, some 5 or 6 decades after all of that wind and solar junk installed today will have become landfill.

Of course, the penny pinching antinuke assholes here and elsewhere are completely disinterested in spending a dime on the security of future generations; they think we'll just pay cobalt mining slaveholders forever to make Tesla Powerwalls.

I really, really, really, do not need to be lectured on how to think by people who seek to defend the indefensible. The so called "renewable energy" scam - the term itself, "renewable energy," given the mass and land intensity, is an oxymoron - is a grotesque and miserable failure. It is very much a driver, this scam, of climate change, in particular because its advocates have never given a rat's ass about climate change. It's just a recent add on in the last decade or so. The goal was always to willfully destroy nuclear intellectual, manufacturing, and operational infrastructure, and at incalculable loss to all future generations, they nearly succeeded.

The result is that we are using more dangerous fossil fuels than ever before and we have no rational hope of not doing so for as long as we dick around with stupid reactionary fantasies about making our energy supplies dependent on the weather, precisely when such thinking has destabilized the weather irretrievably.

I do not appreciate being insulted by appeals to silly rhetoric about "binary thinking." There is one, and only one, path out of climate change, and it very much involves nuclear fission. We choose it or we kill the planet, period.

Have a pleasant Sunday.