Very well done analysis of the "renewable" fraud. I'm a fan of the movie: "The Planet of the Humans", which follows along these same lines. Thanks for the truth telling!
Yes, as someone who has worked in the area, including writing massive electric power sales contracts, "renewables" which produce only when the wind blows or the sun shines, and so are highly interruptible, are not dispatchable, and in America they are backed up by spinning reserves, usually gas turbines...This is quite expensive for the consumer, and inefficient...nuclear and coal plants produce 24 hours/day and very reliably...Hydro is fine if you have a lot of it...but in a drought you may have to buy power on the open market..
So it doesn't really matter whether we have global warming, or whether CO2 is causing it (methane is 40x more powerful as a greenhouse gas, and is mainly produced by termites), the availability of fossil fuels is going to decline rapidly in the next few decades...The importance of having a good southern exposure will once again be the most economical solution in cold climates....
Personally, I think solar thermal is the best path, but I notice it rarely gets mentioned anymore. In my opinion, it solves many problems. It can be far longer lasting than pv, and be re-buildable rather than recyclable. It does not require any exotic materials, so the enormous energy consumption of say making semiconductor grade silicon is eliminated. Well-engineered solar steam turbines can approach 30% efficiency, which is about double the conversion efficiency of a PV panel, so less collector area is required for a given output power thus reducing material demands. The two real downsides are that the collectors do need to track the sun, and, since they need to focus, they don't work with diffuse light like when you have high thin clouds. By far the biggest advantage I see is that a micro solar-thermal generator could, in theory, be built out of used automotive components by a reasonably skilled mechanic in their back yard. I'm building one, but instead of a turbine, I'm using a modified automotive air conditioner compressor as my expander.
Good article. Recently I have heard a few of the 100% Renewables guys say solar panels are already being made from renewable energy, "thats not a problem". See Saul Griffith here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFr87rZyr3o. I have found no evidence of this.
They make it sound so easy. Its the chemcial properties of fossil fuels that are so hard to replace. Im sure know they this. Perhaps their hearts are in the right place, hard to know.
I made a wind and solar calculator that figures out the number of turbines and solar panels needed to replace fossil fuels in a country. Quite interesting results: https://wind-and-solar.vercel.app/. Pumped hydro reaches colossal sizes when storing for 28 days.
IMO the best hope, energy wise, is molten salt thorium SMRs. At least we could keep the lights on while trying to completely change society to live without fossil fuels.
I appreciate this grounding realism. I still think "renewables" are worth it. I personally was never under the impression that manufacturing/mining could be decarbonized. And I'm getting too old to stake my ego on the future of life on this planet. I'm rarely certain where my next meal is coming from these days.
But I see no downside to putting the consumer electric grid on wind and solar and battery, nor to providing a better social safety net. I think there's a lot of intelligence and STEM talent in my position all over the world. If I wasn't so fussy about my next meal I'd go back to writing open source software, doing benchtop experiments, and playing music with my friends. I still do the latter, but the former is a little bit energy-intensive. I'm pretty depressed.
I got a good work ethic. I see the Big Problem as primarily social. It's the war culture, a big waste of fuel. II'd work a shift or two a week picking food. I don't own a car, I'm bici-only. I'm willing to (peacefully) renegotiate the social contract. But what we have now isn't working, and if we're gonna go down with the atmosphere boiling it'd be nice to do it a little more humanely on the off chance that some grassroots wizard figures something out to buy even a little more time. There's no reason not to do our best. I see a lot of people doing their worst, and that's pretty disruptive to the smart and sensitive process of science.
Okay, What would a sustainable long term society look like in real every day terms? What is possible? I emailed these folks, bioregional.com, who promote “one planet living” their YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ0erjJFiCE As they are based in the UK I asked them what life would be like in Britain in terms of power, transportation, housing, lifestyle, consumption, agriculture, industry, communication if the UK was in “one planet living” mode. I am a teacher of high school students and wanted the info for my Environmental Science class. They couldn’t answer me, didn’t know. And somehow AI with its massive electricity need won’t be part of that vision IMO.
Someone needs to calculate from a FUNCTIONING low-energy community - permaculture food production; cycle lanes; no BULLSHIT JOBS; little exploitation and lots of community-time; well insulated and designed homes; a small scale industry fx - and see what the minimum energy use of such an advanced and pleasant community would be, without all the wasteful.... waste.
I suspect it would be a great deal lower than what "Westerners" are used to. No sitting in traffic jams to buy a starbucks coffee before driving 200 miles to create online advertising that everyone hates.
We can survive, and thrive even, on a great deal less.
Somehow, I expect Greenlanders living in frigid wastes but with well designed and harmonious communities use considerably less energy per person than your average 'affluent' Californian community living in supposed climate paradise.
Once we have such calculated numbers, we could start - if we were an intelligent species, rather than one just convinced of its intelligence by the ego - to calculate a base-rate of semi-industrial survival, and also how long those increasingly scarcer materials and energy sources will last at such a rate.
As long as such communities are not infested by Xianity, or other "Go out and multiply" monotheistic religions, hopefully human numbers will continue to fall in 'developed' areas.
By far the most likely outcome will be humans choosing some 'strong' leader with no braincells, who will start a cataclysmic war - almost certainly over some tiny perceived slight, because that is simply how monkeys work.
Hmmm... so what I am hearing is that there is a huge, huge, huge, paradigm shift we face within the next 50-100(?) years? 200?
Daunting, to return to a pre-industrial lifestyle. Exciting, for me. To learn how we could do it differently. Worrysome, as well. Lots of people hurt, lost, dead, and left behind in the process.
Like you, I see the solution in community. Small groups that come together to share their resources and their knowledge. Over time, hopefully we solve some of the bigger (small) issues so we don't all die because there's no penicillin, but also relief to not have, as you said it, BS jobs. Probably would help health a lot.
I think we're really looking at more like 15 to 20 years. The decline of fossil fuel production coupled with global warming (let's call it what it is rather than the sanitized and harmless sounding "climate change") is going to hit us like a sledgehammer in every area of our lives. Community will be great AFTER the die off, but not during it. When everyone is starving, community collapses and people will sell out their own families for a potato. It's not a pretty picture, but famine is how nature always corrects populations in extreme overshoot. We should all work on acquiring many different skills!
Agreed on the skill building part. But I do think it's important to build community NOW, rather than going searching for it when you need it. And building community looks different for everyone, it could just mean a group of friends in your city/town, where Joe is the spot for food, Ruth is the IT lady, and Mark could build a skyscraper out of driftwood scraps.
Most people are good people, AND it's important to be judicious in who you trust and to prepare for the future as best we can.
Well, in a way, if you look at how our grandparents lived, it can be said the paradigms are always shifting. My grandparents at least would have been horrified to throw out a perfectly good sofa and chairs after 3 years because the "fashion" changed, kitchens likewise.
We literally have too much of a good thing now.
As for dates, I'd estimate it'll either be this year, but certainly within the next 5 years, the next Western financial crisis will kickstart all these changes in a big way.
It's not going to be pretty. It MIGHT have been, if we'd taken peak oil, climate crisis seriously, and sorted out the various problems, such as a predatory financial and Class system beforehand.
Looks around.
Hmmm. :(
Actually, basic medicines such as penicillin are quite easy to make (As long as we haven't fuxked up so bad they become useless against "Superbugs"), and various other common medicines can also easily be created in very small industrial centres. Removal of stress and artificial products/chemicals will certainly improve general health! (y)
I agree, overconsumption has messed with our brains. Of course, we are all just throwing numbers in the air, but I feel like something akin to the Great Depression-levels of crisis would have to happen before these changes really occur?
Well, the Soviets didn't really expect to collapse, it just happened once their supply/resource chains became snapped. Got a domino effect.
The crisis is coming all on its own - although tbf, Western "elites" are REALLY accelerating it - for their own nefarious, reFeudal ends.
And even when the crisis hits, there's only a TINY chance those same folk are going to become sane and take steps for the betterment of all of us - far more likely they will use the crises to ramp up their own privileges, and try to trample the rest into the dirt. That's what basically fascist societies like ours do in times of crisis - until the Public eventually begin to fight back.
So the crises themselves may not spur such changes, it will almost certainly have to come from an educated and motivated population taking matters into their own hands.
Barring some astonishing new technological energy source from China (The place most likely to continue real scientific investigation now the West has collapsed into farce), it's hard to see any way out of this mess.
People who are grossly obese, or require special medicines (Such as diabetes drugs etc), are probably going to have a VERY hard time soon.
There weren't many fat Russians left by the time Putin reversed the decline of Russia after the USSR collapsed.
:Looks around:
I don't see many Western "Putins" around - maybe Corbyn, or Wagenknecht?
Nationalists who believe in improving their country and population, rather than their own or the Offshored Oligarchy's wealth.
The irony that the wealthiest countries in the World are deliberately impoverishing themselves so a handful can have unimaginable wealth they couldn't possibly ever spend, and this will lead to the region becoming one of the poorest, is not lost.
I want to echo the question by BeardTree, "What would a sustainable long term society look like in real everyday terms? What is possible? What life would be like in [Portland, Maine, my hometown] in terms of power, transportation, housing, lifestyle, consumption, agriculture, industry, and communication, if the US was in 'one planet living' mode."
Before too long, with depleted fossil fuels, and severely limited, extremely constrained, ultimately vanishing 'replaceables' of PV and wind turbines, what does everyday life look like - is it like 1650 CE, or 650 CE, on the Maine coast?
I would think it would resemble something similar to the life styles of the Native Americans before European conquest. Low tech. Simple. Low population density.
I will now explain why EVs - which are not in any way shape or form 'Green' - exist.
And why the Ministry of Truth runs endless hype campaigns promoting planet-saving EVs and why governments subsidize them to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Consider this statement: We are steaming oil out of sand, drilling miles beneath oceans for oil, drilling hundreds of thousands of holes in the ground, dropping in bombs - then sucking up the dregs. And we can’t wait to start mining the Arctic, one of the most inhospitable regions of the planet, for oil.
Surely, given we are completely reliant on fossil fuel energy to power our civilization we should be concerned that these methods of oil extraction appear to be to put it bluntly... desperate.
Surely any objective observer would look at this and think.... hmmm.... if there is so much of the easy stuff remaining ... why we do we steam oil out of sand?
This is where the lunatics (or trolls) chyme in and scream “oil is abiotic - the oil wells refill’ Except that they are not refilling and we continue to steam oil out of sand.
COVID and the ULTIMATE EXTINCTION PLAN UEP - by Fast Eddy image 4
The thing is ... we are desperate.
Conventional Oil Sources peaked in 2008 and the Shale binge has now spoiled US reserves, top investor warns Financial Times.
Preface. Conventional crude oil production may have already peaked in 2008 at 69.5million barrels per day (mb/d) according to Europe’s International Energy Agency (IEA 2018 p45). The U.S. Energy Information Agency shows global peak crude oil production at a later date in 2018 at 82.9mb/d (EIA 2020) because they included tight oil, oil sands, and deep-sea oil. Though it will take several years of lower oil production to be sure the peak occurred. Regardless, world production has been on a plateau since 2005.
What’s saved the world from oil decline was unconventional tight “fracked” oil, which accounted for 63% of total U.S. crude oil production in 2019 and 83% of global oil growth from 2009 to 2019. So it’s a big deal if we’ve reached the peak of fracked oil, because that is also the peak of both conventional and unconventional oil and the decline of all oil in the future.
Some key points from this Financial Times article.
So how do EVs fit into this equation ... and renewable energy... and what about climate change????
These are what I refer to as The Three Pillars of Bullshit.
It goes like this. The Men Who Run the World need their barnyard animals to remain productive... positive... happy. If the animals were to get wind of the desperate situation with respect to energy they would get spooked... in fact they would panic.
And panicked barnyard animals are NOT productive animals. If they conclude that the cheap and easy energy are on the downslope ... they fall into despair. They begin to believe there is no future. Why breed - why study - why invest? Alcoholism and drug abuse would explode. And the global economy (and civilization) would prematurely collapse.
Barnyard animals MUST believe the future is awesome --- they must believe their progeny will have the same opportunities to pillage and fill their garages lots and lots of stuff from Walmart. More is non-negotiable… a god-given right!
The Men Who Run the World - and their minions (the Deep State)... are very much aware of this.
They need to cover up the desperate situation with some fancy PR.
One bright young thing in the Ministry of Truth -- which was tasked with the coverup ... suggested inventing this thing call Global Warming (they changed it to Climate Change cuz some places were cooling .. no problemo, the barnyard animals will believe whatever cnnbbc tells them).
Al Gore was initially reluctant to be the front man but when he was told that he could make big money with side grifting renewable energy, he signed up, hopped on his private jet and began a decades long world tour.
Notice how fossil fuels are now The Enemy? We Must wean off them? No mention of the fact that they are in deep depletion... that's a no-no. Instead they are evil -- we must ditch them... we don’t need them!
Enter renewable energy --- even though transitioning to renewables is IMPOSSIBLE
Doesn't matter.
The Ministry of Truth overcomes this by pounding the barnyard animals with messaging (and catch phrases)... convincing them that we are on the path to a green wonderful future -- where everyone gets to buy loads of stuff - HURRAH!!! HURRAH!!! High fives all around.
Let's insert EVs here... ICE vehicles are EVIL. We must transition to EV's ... Zero Emissions. Even though they are charged and manufactured with fossil fuels ... But..BUT ... eventually we will phase out fossil fuels and go totally green.
Like I said, transitioning to renewable energy (which is not actually renewable because solar panels don’t grow on trees) is IMPOSSIBLE.
Governments know this ... the bosses of governments (The Men Who Run the World) know this ... of course they do -- they are not stupid.
But they also know that they MUST ensure that the barnyard animals remain hopeful ... positive... productive... otherwise civilization collapses. And the Men Who Run the World don’t get to enjoy fine wine, private jet travel, and nubile 15 yr olds.
They cannot be allowed to understand that we are f789ed.
Because they cannot handle the truth… unless it involves a Hollywood ending.
Notice how the Ministry of Truth is now u-turning on EVs? The thing is… that lie can only be taken so far because the power grids around the world (fuelled primarily by coal, gas and uranium) cannot be scaled up to provide the electricity required to charge the EVs. Therefore the brakes are being applied.
Help me out a bit with the underlying reaction for PV silicon production, this is not my area of expertise at all. However, I thought it generally included two steps as follows
First to get metallurgical silicon, of which only something like 1% is used as raw product for electronic grade silicon
SiO2 + 2 C → Si + 2 CO
Then the Siemens process to get polysilicon.
Si + 3 HCl → H2 + HSiCl3
Where is the CO2 you cite in these processes? What am I missing?
No one in our society seems to think about cutting back on the use of precious resources... Our country has too many people who give no thought to saving the environment. There is so much waste of food and unnecessary products, which wind up in landfills . Commercialism will destroy our country and the planet. Americans needs to think about all aspects of conservation. Ways to use less of the resources. Ways to regenerate the soil. Ways to stop producing products, which wind up in mountains of trash.
Some tough love here. The sooner we curtail overconsumption, we can begin adapting to less, and sustain the planet longer.
Very well done analysis of the "renewable" fraud. I'm a fan of the movie: "The Planet of the Humans", which follows along these same lines. Thanks for the truth telling!
Yes, as someone who has worked in the area, including writing massive electric power sales contracts, "renewables" which produce only when the wind blows or the sun shines, and so are highly interruptible, are not dispatchable, and in America they are backed up by spinning reserves, usually gas turbines...This is quite expensive for the consumer, and inefficient...nuclear and coal plants produce 24 hours/day and very reliably...Hydro is fine if you have a lot of it...but in a drought you may have to buy power on the open market..
So it doesn't really matter whether we have global warming, or whether CO2 is causing it (methane is 40x more powerful as a greenhouse gas, and is mainly produced by termites), the availability of fossil fuels is going to decline rapidly in the next few decades...The importance of having a good southern exposure will once again be the most economical solution in cold climates....
What about solar thermal?
Personally, I think solar thermal is the best path, but I notice it rarely gets mentioned anymore. In my opinion, it solves many problems. It can be far longer lasting than pv, and be re-buildable rather than recyclable. It does not require any exotic materials, so the enormous energy consumption of say making semiconductor grade silicon is eliminated. Well-engineered solar steam turbines can approach 30% efficiency, which is about double the conversion efficiency of a PV panel, so less collector area is required for a given output power thus reducing material demands. The two real downsides are that the collectors do need to track the sun, and, since they need to focus, they don't work with diffuse light like when you have high thin clouds. By far the biggest advantage I see is that a micro solar-thermal generator could, in theory, be built out of used automotive components by a reasonably skilled mechanic in their back yard. I'm building one, but instead of a turbine, I'm using a modified automotive air conditioner compressor as my expander.
Good article. Recently I have heard a few of the 100% Renewables guys say solar panels are already being made from renewable energy, "thats not a problem". See Saul Griffith here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFr87rZyr3o. I have found no evidence of this.
They make it sound so easy. Its the chemcial properties of fossil fuels that are so hard to replace. Im sure know they this. Perhaps their hearts are in the right place, hard to know.
I made a wind and solar calculator that figures out the number of turbines and solar panels needed to replace fossil fuels in a country. Quite interesting results: https://wind-and-solar.vercel.app/. Pumped hydro reaches colossal sizes when storing for 28 days.
IMO the best hope, energy wise, is molten salt thorium SMRs. At least we could keep the lights on while trying to completely change society to live without fossil fuels.
I appreciate this grounding realism. I still think "renewables" are worth it. I personally was never under the impression that manufacturing/mining could be decarbonized. And I'm getting too old to stake my ego on the future of life on this planet. I'm rarely certain where my next meal is coming from these days.
But I see no downside to putting the consumer electric grid on wind and solar and battery, nor to providing a better social safety net. I think there's a lot of intelligence and STEM talent in my position all over the world. If I wasn't so fussy about my next meal I'd go back to writing open source software, doing benchtop experiments, and playing music with my friends. I still do the latter, but the former is a little bit energy-intensive. I'm pretty depressed.
I got a good work ethic. I see the Big Problem as primarily social. It's the war culture, a big waste of fuel. II'd work a shift or two a week picking food. I don't own a car, I'm bici-only. I'm willing to (peacefully) renegotiate the social contract. But what we have now isn't working, and if we're gonna go down with the atmosphere boiling it'd be nice to do it a little more humanely on the off chance that some grassroots wizard figures something out to buy even a little more time. There's no reason not to do our best. I see a lot of people doing their worst, and that's pretty disruptive to the smart and sensitive process of science.
Okay, What would a sustainable long term society look like in real every day terms? What is possible? I emailed these folks, bioregional.com, who promote “one planet living” their YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ0erjJFiCE As they are based in the UK I asked them what life would be like in Britain in terms of power, transportation, housing, lifestyle, consumption, agriculture, industry, communication if the UK was in “one planet living” mode. I am a teacher of high school students and wanted the info for my Environmental Science class. They couldn’t answer me, didn’t know. And somehow AI with its massive electricity need won’t be part of that vision IMO.
Someone needs to calculate from a FUNCTIONING low-energy community - permaculture food production; cycle lanes; no BULLSHIT JOBS; little exploitation and lots of community-time; well insulated and designed homes; a small scale industry fx - and see what the minimum energy use of such an advanced and pleasant community would be, without all the wasteful.... waste.
I suspect it would be a great deal lower than what "Westerners" are used to. No sitting in traffic jams to buy a starbucks coffee before driving 200 miles to create online advertising that everyone hates.
We can survive, and thrive even, on a great deal less.
Somehow, I expect Greenlanders living in frigid wastes but with well designed and harmonious communities use considerably less energy per person than your average 'affluent' Californian community living in supposed climate paradise.
Once we have such calculated numbers, we could start - if we were an intelligent species, rather than one just convinced of its intelligence by the ego - to calculate a base-rate of semi-industrial survival, and also how long those increasingly scarcer materials and energy sources will last at such a rate.
As long as such communities are not infested by Xianity, or other "Go out and multiply" monotheistic religions, hopefully human numbers will continue to fall in 'developed' areas.
By far the most likely outcome will be humans choosing some 'strong' leader with no braincells, who will start a cataclysmic war - almost certainly over some tiny perceived slight, because that is simply how monkeys work.
Rationalising, not rational.
Hmmm... so what I am hearing is that there is a huge, huge, huge, paradigm shift we face within the next 50-100(?) years? 200?
Daunting, to return to a pre-industrial lifestyle. Exciting, for me. To learn how we could do it differently. Worrysome, as well. Lots of people hurt, lost, dead, and left behind in the process.
Like you, I see the solution in community. Small groups that come together to share their resources and their knowledge. Over time, hopefully we solve some of the bigger (small) issues so we don't all die because there's no penicillin, but also relief to not have, as you said it, BS jobs. Probably would help health a lot.
I think we're really looking at more like 15 to 20 years. The decline of fossil fuel production coupled with global warming (let's call it what it is rather than the sanitized and harmless sounding "climate change") is going to hit us like a sledgehammer in every area of our lives. Community will be great AFTER the die off, but not during it. When everyone is starving, community collapses and people will sell out their own families for a potato. It's not a pretty picture, but famine is how nature always corrects populations in extreme overshoot. We should all work on acquiring many different skills!
Agreed on the skill building part. But I do think it's important to build community NOW, rather than going searching for it when you need it. And building community looks different for everyone, it could just mean a group of friends in your city/town, where Joe is the spot for food, Ruth is the IT lady, and Mark could build a skyscraper out of driftwood scraps.
Most people are good people, AND it's important to be judicious in who you trust and to prepare for the future as best we can.
Or even sooner if weather gets whackier.
Well, in a way, if you look at how our grandparents lived, it can be said the paradigms are always shifting. My grandparents at least would have been horrified to throw out a perfectly good sofa and chairs after 3 years because the "fashion" changed, kitchens likewise.
We literally have too much of a good thing now.
As for dates, I'd estimate it'll either be this year, but certainly within the next 5 years, the next Western financial crisis will kickstart all these changes in a big way.
It's not going to be pretty. It MIGHT have been, if we'd taken peak oil, climate crisis seriously, and sorted out the various problems, such as a predatory financial and Class system beforehand.
Looks around.
Hmmm. :(
Actually, basic medicines such as penicillin are quite easy to make (As long as we haven't fuxked up so bad they become useless against "Superbugs"), and various other common medicines can also easily be created in very small industrial centres. Removal of stress and artificial products/chemicals will certainly improve general health! (y)
I agree, overconsumption has messed with our brains. Of course, we are all just throwing numbers in the air, but I feel like something akin to the Great Depression-levels of crisis would have to happen before these changes really occur?
Well, the Soviets didn't really expect to collapse, it just happened once their supply/resource chains became snapped. Got a domino effect.
The crisis is coming all on its own - although tbf, Western "elites" are REALLY accelerating it - for their own nefarious, reFeudal ends.
And even when the crisis hits, there's only a TINY chance those same folk are going to become sane and take steps for the betterment of all of us - far more likely they will use the crises to ramp up their own privileges, and try to trample the rest into the dirt. That's what basically fascist societies like ours do in times of crisis - until the Public eventually begin to fight back.
So the crises themselves may not spur such changes, it will almost certainly have to come from an educated and motivated population taking matters into their own hands.
Barring some astonishing new technological energy source from China (The place most likely to continue real scientific investigation now the West has collapsed into farce), it's hard to see any way out of this mess.
People who are grossly obese, or require special medicines (Such as diabetes drugs etc), are probably going to have a VERY hard time soon.
There weren't many fat Russians left by the time Putin reversed the decline of Russia after the USSR collapsed.
:Looks around:
I don't see many Western "Putins" around - maybe Corbyn, or Wagenknecht?
Nationalists who believe in improving their country and population, rather than their own or the Offshored Oligarchy's wealth.
The irony that the wealthiest countries in the World are deliberately impoverishing themselves so a handful can have unimaginable wealth they couldn't possibly ever spend, and this will lead to the region becoming one of the poorest, is not lost.
I want to echo the question by BeardTree, "What would a sustainable long term society look like in real everyday terms? What is possible? What life would be like in [Portland, Maine, my hometown] in terms of power, transportation, housing, lifestyle, consumption, agriculture, industry, and communication, if the US was in 'one planet living' mode."
Before too long, with depleted fossil fuels, and severely limited, extremely constrained, ultimately vanishing 'replaceables' of PV and wind turbines, what does everyday life look like - is it like 1650 CE, or 650 CE, on the Maine coast?
I would think it would resemble something similar to the life styles of the Native Americans before European conquest. Low tech. Simple. Low population density.
I will now explain why EVs - which are not in any way shape or form 'Green' - exist.
And why the Ministry of Truth runs endless hype campaigns promoting planet-saving EVs and why governments subsidize them to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Consider this statement: We are steaming oil out of sand, drilling miles beneath oceans for oil, drilling hundreds of thousands of holes in the ground, dropping in bombs - then sucking up the dregs. And we can’t wait to start mining the Arctic, one of the most inhospitable regions of the planet, for oil.
Surely, given we are completely reliant on fossil fuel energy to power our civilization we should be concerned that these methods of oil extraction appear to be to put it bluntly... desperate.
Surely any objective observer would look at this and think.... hmmm.... if there is so much of the easy stuff remaining ... why we do we steam oil out of sand?
This is where the lunatics (or trolls) chyme in and scream “oil is abiotic - the oil wells refill’ Except that they are not refilling and we continue to steam oil out of sand.
COVID and the ULTIMATE EXTINCTION PLAN UEP - by Fast Eddy image 4
The thing is ... we are desperate.
Conventional Oil Sources peaked in 2008 and the Shale binge has now spoiled US reserves, top investor warns Financial Times.
Preface. Conventional crude oil production may have already peaked in 2008 at 69.5million barrels per day (mb/d) according to Europe’s International Energy Agency (IEA 2018 p45). The U.S. Energy Information Agency shows global peak crude oil production at a later date in 2018 at 82.9mb/d (EIA 2020) because they included tight oil, oil sands, and deep-sea oil. Though it will take several years of lower oil production to be sure the peak occurred. Regardless, world production has been on a plateau since 2005.
What’s saved the world from oil decline was unconventional tight “fracked” oil, which accounted for 63% of total U.S. crude oil production in 2019 and 83% of global oil growth from 2009 to 2019. So it’s a big deal if we’ve reached the peak of fracked oil, because that is also the peak of both conventional and unconventional oil and the decline of all oil in the future.
Some key points from this Financial Times article.
So how do EVs fit into this equation ... and renewable energy... and what about climate change????
These are what I refer to as The Three Pillars of Bullshit.
It goes like this. The Men Who Run the World need their barnyard animals to remain productive... positive... happy. If the animals were to get wind of the desperate situation with respect to energy they would get spooked... in fact they would panic.
And panicked barnyard animals are NOT productive animals. If they conclude that the cheap and easy energy are on the downslope ... they fall into despair. They begin to believe there is no future. Why breed - why study - why invest? Alcoholism and drug abuse would explode. And the global economy (and civilization) would prematurely collapse.
Barnyard animals MUST believe the future is awesome --- they must believe their progeny will have the same opportunities to pillage and fill their garages lots and lots of stuff from Walmart. More is non-negotiable… a god-given right!
The Men Who Run the World - and their minions (the Deep State)... are very much aware of this.
They need to cover up the desperate situation with some fancy PR.
One bright young thing in the Ministry of Truth -- which was tasked with the coverup ... suggested inventing this thing call Global Warming (they changed it to Climate Change cuz some places were cooling .. no problemo, the barnyard animals will believe whatever cnnbbc tells them).
Al Gore was initially reluctant to be the front man but when he was told that he could make big money with side grifting renewable energy, he signed up, hopped on his private jet and began a decades long world tour.
Notice how fossil fuels are now The Enemy? We Must wean off them? No mention of the fact that they are in deep depletion... that's a no-no. Instead they are evil -- we must ditch them... we don’t need them!
Enter renewable energy --- even though transitioning to renewables is IMPOSSIBLE
Doesn't matter.
The Ministry of Truth overcomes this by pounding the barnyard animals with messaging (and catch phrases)... convincing them that we are on the path to a green wonderful future -- where everyone gets to buy loads of stuff - HURRAH!!! HURRAH!!! High fives all around.
Let's insert EVs here... ICE vehicles are EVIL. We must transition to EV's ... Zero Emissions. Even though they are charged and manufactured with fossil fuels ... But..BUT ... eventually we will phase out fossil fuels and go totally green.
Like I said, transitioning to renewable energy (which is not actually renewable because solar panels don’t grow on trees) is IMPOSSIBLE.
Governments know this ... the bosses of governments (The Men Who Run the World) know this ... of course they do -- they are not stupid.
But they also know that they MUST ensure that the barnyard animals remain hopeful ... positive... productive... otherwise civilization collapses. And the Men Who Run the World don’t get to enjoy fine wine, private jet travel, and nubile 15 yr olds.
They cannot be allowed to understand that we are f789ed.
Because they cannot handle the truth… unless it involves a Hollywood ending.
Notice how the Ministry of Truth is now u-turning on EVs? The thing is… that lie can only be taken so far because the power grids around the world (fuelled primarily by coal, gas and uranium) cannot be scaled up to provide the electricity required to charge the EVs. Therefore the brakes are being applied.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-three-pillars-of-bullshit
B - do you think you are a genius? That these are revelations that you are publishing?
Do you think the people who run the world are not aware of all of this? Do you think they are stupid/delusional... SUICIDAL?
Of course they are not any of the above. So why do they foist renewables on us blowing hundreds of billions of dollars on them?
Perhaps they have worked out that renewables might help extend fossil fuels a little...
But the bigger reason for the push -- is to provide hopium to the masses.
Notice how they REFUSE to say we need to wean off of fossil fuels because that would spook the herd.
They need a proxy... ah ha!!! Global Warming... tweaked by Madision Avenue to Climate Change (all encompassing).
And what is the answer to energy depletion -- ah I mean Global Warming .. um... Climate Change ... oh right EVs and solar panels and wind mills...
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-three-pillars-of-bullshit
Trump is using a simple motto: "drill baby drill". But the modern audience expects more.
B,
Help me out a bit with the underlying reaction for PV silicon production, this is not my area of expertise at all. However, I thought it generally included two steps as follows
First to get metallurgical silicon, of which only something like 1% is used as raw product for electronic grade silicon
SiO2 + 2 C → Si + 2 CO
Then the Siemens process to get polysilicon.
Si + 3 HCl → H2 + HSiCl3
Where is the CO2 you cite in these processes? What am I missing?
No one in our society seems to think about cutting back on the use of precious resources... Our country has too many people who give no thought to saving the environment. There is so much waste of food and unnecessary products, which wind up in landfills . Commercialism will destroy our country and the planet. Americans needs to think about all aspects of conservation. Ways to use less of the resources. Ways to regenerate the soil. Ways to stop producing products, which wind up in mountains of trash.