Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
...I don't believe that the massive mining for this scam is acceptable, and the massive cost on a scale of trillions of dollars - has done nothing at all to slow the rate of collapse of the planetary atmosphere.
In many hundreds of posts here I have pointed out that the changes in concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere is rising faster than ever.
Here is an example from my DU series monitoring these concentrations, series that appear each spring:
New Weekly CO2 Concentration Record Set at the Mauna Loa Observatory, 430.86 ppm
Here is a graphic from the DU search for part the last two years of such posts:
Arguably, I'm paying attention.
From another in this series, I have reported on the costs and expenditures of so called "renewable energy," this one:
New Weekly CO2 Concentration Record Set at the Mauna Loa Observatory, 430.19 ppm
The text:
The reactionary impulse to make our energy supplies dependent on the weather, this precisely at the time we have destabilized the weather by lying to ourselves about our continuous and rising use of dangerous fossil fuels, was always an ignorant attack on nuclear energy. It was never about preventing the extreme global heating we now observe, never about the environment (you don't tear the shit out of wilderness to make industrial parks and declare yourself "green" ) and never about costs, since the required redundancy - while kept off the books dishonestly - is expensive, and, as it is almost always fossil fuel based, dirty.
We still have people here at DU, this late into the disaster prattling on about how so called "renewable energy" is beating out nuclear energy, even though the combined solar and wind industry combined has never, in an atmosphere of sybaritic bourgeois saturnalian enthusiasm, not once, produced as energy as nuclear energy produces routinely in an atmosphere of malign (and ignorant) criticism.
It is interesting and notable that the same people who still carry on with stupid reference to "costs" - they couldn't give a fuck about the cost of the extreme global heating we are now experiencing - and attack nuclear energy on this basis are completely and totally disinterested in attacking the unimaginable external costs of dangerous fossil fuels, costs recorded in millions of deaths each year, the destruction of vast ecosystems by fire and alternately inundation or just plain heat.
Irrespective of their inane anti-science rhetoric about batteries and hydrogen, as it disregards the laws of thermodynamics, an apologetic orgy of wishful thinking designed to make the failed solar and wind industries appear to be reliable, which they will never be, all the money spent on solar and wind is clearly wasted and ineffective. The impulse is reactionary, to make our energy supplies depend on the weather, precisely at the time we have destabilized the weather because the reactionary fantasy is not working.
How much money is it?
The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.9 trillion dollars, compared to 524 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy (including a vague term the IEA calls "other clean energy" ), much of the latter to prevent the willful and deadly destruction of existing nuclear infrastructure. Presumably "other clean energy" includes fusion, which has provided zero useable energy for any purpose
IEA overview, Energy Investments.
The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy," ignoring the fact that the expenditure on so called "renewable energy" is basically a front for maintaining the growing use of fossil fuels. One may also download a *.csv file with the data.
We still have people here at DU, this late into the disaster prattling on about how so called "renewable energy" is beating out nuclear energy, even though the combined solar and wind industry combined has never, in an atmosphere of sybaritic bourgeois saturnalian enthusiasm, not once, produced as energy as nuclear energy produces routinely in an atmosphere of malign (and ignorant) criticism.
It is interesting and notable that the same people who still carry on with stupid reference to "costs" - they couldn't give a fuck about the cost of the extreme global heating we are now experiencing - and attack nuclear energy on this basis are completely and totally disinterested in attacking the unimaginable external costs of dangerous fossil fuels, costs recorded in millions of deaths each year, the destruction of vast ecosystems by fire and alternately inundation or just plain heat.
Irrespective of their inane anti-science rhetoric about batteries and hydrogen, as it disregards the laws of thermodynamics, an apologetic orgy of wishful thinking designed to make the failed solar and wind industries appear to be reliable, which they will never be, all the money spent on solar and wind is clearly wasted and ineffective. The impulse is reactionary, to make our energy supplies depend on the weather, precisely at the time we have destabilized the weather because the reactionary fantasy is not working.
How much money is it?
The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.9 trillion dollars, compared to 524 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy (including a vague term the IEA calls "other clean energy" ), much of the latter to prevent the willful and deadly destruction of existing nuclear infrastructure. Presumably "other clean energy" includes fusion, which has provided zero useable energy for any purpose
IEA overview, Energy Investments.
The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy," ignoring the fact that the expenditure on so called "renewable energy" is basically a front for maintaining the growing use of fossil fuels. One may also download a *.csv file with the data.
For comparison 4.9 trillion dollars - it's certainly more than that now has been squandered on solar and wind junk - is greater than the GDP of India, a nation with more than a billion human beings living in it.
For what?
The purpose, the sole purpose, of so called "renewable energy" has never been about addressing fossil fuels - except as an afterthought - but solely about attacking nuclear energy.
I've been at DU for 23 years. When I arrived here, I was actually an apologist for so called "renewable energy" but I also supported nuclear energy. When pushed about the latter - for some reason on our end of the political spectrum we've bought into the dangerous selective attention of antinukes - I realized that enthusiasm for "renewable energy" had nothing to do with environmental reality, so I shifted some of my scientific attention from my professional life in pharmaceutical chemistry and my private interest in nuclear technology, to the claims about so called "renewable energy." What I discovered is that the term "renewable energy" is fraudulent. It isn't renewable, since it is reliant on ripping the shit out of the Earth's surface for mining purposes, and it is wholly and totally dependent on fossil fuels.
There is a moral cost as well:
"Lithium" batteries, supposed to address the unreliability of so called "renewable energy" depend heavily on cobalt slavery, and in any case, there is not enough cobalt in the world to make "renewable energy" reliable, as I reported here, when dealing with one of the "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes who march around here muttering:
The Number of Tesla Powerwalls Required That Would Address the Current German Dunkleflaute Event.
We have people here who still worship the fascist Elon Musk and his slave holding company Tesla, who are always carrying on happily about the industrial installation of Tesla Powerwalls®.
Here are the specifications of Tesla Powerwalls®: Specifications of Powerwalls®.
It is claimed they have a useable capacity of 13.5 kWh after being charged with 14 kWh of electricity, presumably at 25°C, with a putative thermodynamic efficiency - should you choose to believe it - of 96%. The maximum continuous power output is said to be 5 kW. The power requirements to match the combined coal and gas average continuous power of combined German coal and gas over the last 30 days, 44.4 GW would require 8,880,000 million Powerwalls®, to cover each day of Dunkelflaute; for 30 days, given that the wind wasn't blowing that much over that period, 266,400,000 Powerwalls®.
The specifications say that each Powerwall® weighs 114 kg, meaning that 30,369,600,000 kg of Powerwalls® would be required just for Germany.
According to Forbes, 15% of the weight of a Tesla Powerwall is cobalt, mined by Elon's happy Congolese slaves, meaning that the happy Congolese cobalt slaves would be required to mine and isolate 4,555,400 metric tons of cobalt to make Powerwalls® to cover this instance of Dunkleflaute with batteries.
This is 31.63 times as large as the world production of cobalt in 2021 according to the US Geological Survey
I'm sorry!!! I forgot to use "percent talk!" The demand for cobalt to cover month long Dunkleflaute in Germany observed in Nov-Dec 2022 would be 3163% the demand for all the world cobalt supply in 2021.
Here are the specifications of Tesla Powerwalls®: Specifications of Powerwalls®.
It is claimed they have a useable capacity of 13.5 kWh after being charged with 14 kWh of electricity, presumably at 25°C, with a putative thermodynamic efficiency - should you choose to believe it - of 96%. The maximum continuous power output is said to be 5 kW. The power requirements to match the combined coal and gas average continuous power of combined German coal and gas over the last 30 days, 44.4 GW would require 8,880,000 million Powerwalls®, to cover each day of Dunkelflaute; for 30 days, given that the wind wasn't blowing that much over that period, 266,400,000 Powerwalls®.
The specifications say that each Powerwall® weighs 114 kg, meaning that 30,369,600,000 kg of Powerwalls® would be required just for Germany.
According to Forbes, 15% of the weight of a Tesla Powerwall is cobalt, mined by Elon's happy Congolese slaves, meaning that the happy Congolese cobalt slaves would be required to mine and isolate 4,555,400 metric tons of cobalt to make Powerwalls® to cover this instance of Dunkleflaute with batteries.
This is 31.63 times as large as the world production of cobalt in 2021 according to the US Geological Survey
I'm sorry!!! I forgot to use "percent talk!" The demand for cobalt to cover month long Dunkleflaute in Germany observed in Nov-Dec 2022 would be 3163% the demand for all the world cobalt supply in 2021.
I note, in the moral/ethical sphere German antinukes funded the war in Ukraine by buying coal, oil and gas from Putin with their purported "renewable energy" nirvana. They didn't phase out coal, gas, or oil. They embraced all three. They phased out nuclear energy. The carbon intensity of their electricity is generally ten times or more than that of France.
It's an outrage.
Here's the basic way I see it:
If you scratch the surface of any apologist for this reactionary scam, so called "renewable energy," you will find every damned one of them attacking nuclear energy on picayune criteria they do not apply to anything else, including fossil fuels, about which they just don't give a rat's ass.
So called "renewable energy" is lipstick on the fossil fuel pig, and in fact, depends wholly and totally on access to fossil fuels. This is unacceptable to me. I want fossil fuels phased out in their entirety and there is one, and only one, way to do that, nuclear energy.
This may sound arrogant, but I don't care: I argue that I understand nuclear energy better than anyone I've encountered on this website, and I know what I know and will not apologize for it.
More information on my positions and reasons I hold them can be made by going through my rather extensive journal on this website.
Do I make myself clear?
Have a Happy New Year.
Edit history
Please sign in to view edit histories.
Recommendations
0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):
6 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read