The Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics

[NickB79]

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-04-10/the-rising-chorus-of-renewable-energy-skeptics/

For largely ideological reasons many greens and “transitionists” have presented the transition to renewables as a smooth road with no potholes.

In so doing they have ignored much basic geology, energy physics and even geopolitics. As a consequence many imagine the construction of millions of batteries, wind mills, solar panels, transmission lines and associated technologies, but they downplay the required intensification of mining for copper, nickel, cobalt and rare minerals you’ve probably never heard of such as dysprosium and neodymium.

One of the great lies of modern technological society is that of endless mineral abundance. Urban consumers, who have little knowledge of energy realities underpinning their existence, have swallowed the idea that digital gadgets and automation will somehow detach society from the physical world and allow us to do more with less, leading to a dematerialization of society.

But that’s a wholesale fiction long debunked by the likes of the energy ecologist Vaclav Smil and the late geologist Walter Youngquist. The average North American citizen not only consumes 1.3 million kilograms of minerals, metals and fuels in their lifetime but has no idea where they come from or at what cost.

Continuing to burn fossil fuels is suicidal.

But, trying to support our current global civilization and capitalist society, and keep it growing economically year after year, is also suicidal.

Trapped between a rock and a hard place.

[Blues Heron]

1. I think as long as we can build these things we should

This is an all hands on deck moment, we need all the help we can get. The nuclear cavalry is not coming to save us.

[hunter]

4. What will save us?

Certainly not Elon Musk...

...or wind turbines.

Personally, I don't think wringing our hands and watching billions of people die is an ethical position.

The stupidity of affluent people is that they always imagine others doing the dying, which probably won't be the case because the most fragile economic systems are those that affluent people depend upon for their survival. Often their grim fantasies of death and destruction are strongly tainted by racism. It will be those other people who will die, not us, those people we don't happen to like.

When things get ugly you can't eat a Tesla, or easily turn it into a tractor...

There are better things than offshore wind turbines or vast acreages of desert solar panels to pin our hopes on.

We can turn our cities into attractive places where car ownership is unnecessary. We can quit industrial scale meat and dairy production, which isn't good for the environment, the workers, and most certainly the animals. Cheap milk and hamburger is not a human necessity. We can quit pretending biofuels are "sustainable" or "carbon neutral."

Most of all we need to recognize that this thing we now call "economic productivity" isn't any kind of productivity at all, but a direct measure of the damage we are doing to our planets natural environment and our own human spirit.

[Blues Heron]

5. I think anti solar and anti wind people are a big part of the problem

[hunter]

7. There are many sorts of anti-solar and anti-wind people...

... there are those that see solar and wind as a threat to their fossil fueled life of luxury, and there are those, like me, who see enthusiasm for massive solar and wind projects as another flavor of climate change denial, and another assault upon the earth's natural environment.

We have real world data on gigawatt scale solar, wind, and power storage projects. It's absolutely clear that these systems cannot displace fossil fuels to the extent required to "save the world" or even support a world population of 8 billion people. People who can't afford bicycles are not going to spend a hundred thousand dollars on electric cars, solar panels and power walls. Yet these people exist today, billions of them.

Sure, hybrid gas-wind-solar systems are better than gas alone, and gas is better than coal, but ultimately these energy systems all lead to civilization-killing amounts of greenhouse gasses accumulating in our atmosphere.

We need to simply ban fossil fuels entirely. You don't hear many wind and solar enthusiasts saying that. Their follies are not sustainable without natural gas and accounting tricks such as "net metering."

As for Elon Musk, he is a grifter. He got to Stanford, picked up a Wired Magazine, saw all those gullible techno-optimists, and figured out how to milk them. I don't think he really cares about any of the stuff he promotes, not Mars, not electric cars, not any of it. He's simply a narcissistic sociopath like Trump or Elizabeth Holmes.

[Blues Heron]

9. we have to live in the real world. Banning fossil fuels is not going to happen.

The watt hours that wind and solar kick out help.

People trying to tear down wind and solar are gaslighting. Maybe they are funded by the gas and oil industry, maybe they have a vested interest in the nuke industry, or maybe they dont like how they look.

[hunter]

13. A large part of me is still a crazy homeless guy living in a garden shed or my broken car...

... dumpster diving for food.

I did that for a few years in my late teens and early 'twenties. My personal environmental footprint was never smaller than it was then, except maybe when I was an infant.

I've got no "vested interest" in fossil fuels, nuclear power, solar, or wind. Maybe no vested interest in this civilization itself except as an altruist.

More often than not, in our approximately 35 years of marriage, my wife and I have had stacks of medical bills we can't pay, random shit falling out of the sky. Taught me money isn't everything. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. When you've got it give what you can away.

The last car I bought was a little Toyota, for less than a thousand bucks. It cost about five hundred bucks more to refurbish it. I'm a pretty good mechanic. I loved that car. I'd buy gasoline for it every month or two or three whether it needed it or not. Alas some distracted driver drove up across the sidewalk and destroyed it while it was parked in our driveway...



I'm okay with how I look. Crazy as all fuck, but at least I can do the math.

[Finishline42]

19. Admiration for your minimalist lifestyle

But 300 million don't and won't live in that manner (although they may be forced too).

and there are those, like me, who see enthusiasm for massive solar and wind projects as another flavor of climate change denial, and another assault upon the earth's natural environment.

Picking on wind and solar developments is ignoring what we do when cities expand. Population growth is the problem.

Wind and solar do one thing that nothing else can (that I can think of) - make the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity more expensive. The growth of renewables decreases the time a natgas plant is used which means the fixed costs are spread over decreasing output. And at the same time the more wind and solar that is bought drives down their cost. The game changer is energy storage.

Energy storage allows for the shifting of when the electricity generated without the purchase of fuels is feed into the grid. All too frequently when wind and solar produce at their peaks, it's at a time of low prices (cheap energy is what has gotten into this mess). Energy storage allows for the selling of that energy when it's most needed.

[NNadir]

20. I fully recognize that antinukes would love to blame poor people for existing.

Nevertheless, these same bourgeois types rely heavily on fantasies about mining cobalt slaves to mine cobalt for their worship of the racist fuck Elon Musk's batteries.

In their cold, indifferent, cruel fantasies batteries will be the new redundancy to cover their junk solar and wind fantasy's intrinsic unreliability, as if they give a shit about fossil fuels.

However as I showed recently, there isn't enough cobalt on Earth to cover even a month long episode of dunkelflaute in Germany:

The Number of Tesla Powerwalls Required That Would Address the Current German Dunkleflaute Event.

Meanwhile, this rickety shit is backed up by dangerous fossil fuels, in Germany, by coal.

Antinukes do not now, never have, and never will give a shit about fossil fuels. To the extent they're concerned about them, they offer a bizarre calculus by which they announce that making energy expensive will make fossil fuels magically go away.

Antinukes obviously hate poor people. They couldn't give a rat's ass about people working three jobs to pay an electric bill.

Decency would, in contrast, be to work to make energy as affordable and clean, something the filthy solar and wind industries, which antinukes hope to make worse with filthy batteries, cannot do.

By contrast, in the United States, before the overwhelming victory of the preternaturally stupid, once built more than 100 nuclear reactors while providing the lowest electricity prices in the world.

And now? The call from antinukes is for expensive electricity, because in their twisted imaginations, Germany and Denmark having the highest electricity prices in the OECD is a wonderful thing.

As they live and breathe waste, promote it, giggling about poverty as they do, since it doesn't hurt their fat asses when energy prices rise in service to their blank stupidity, antinukes have no fucking problem hyping energy storage in their new soothsaying about redundancies, because there's not a single one among them who has ever had the decency nor the intellect to take a course in thermodynamics.

Now, after whining about the cost of the Vogtle nuclear reactors which will be operating sixty years after every solar cell on this planet is electronic waste rotting in landfills along with wind turbine blades, they suddenly proudly announce high prices are good, because, again, they don't give a fuck about poverty because it provides discardable people that can just die off after reaching adulthood after spending a childhood as cobalt slaves.

The fucking solar and wind industry, at a cost of trillions of dollars this century, squandered more than three trillion dollars between 2004 and 2017 to produce just 12 exajoules of energy, requiring 12 exajoules of dangerous fossil fuel back up to cover its unreliability, this on a planet consuming 624 exajoules (2021 figures). This happened on a planet where close to one billion people lack access to clean water. Who pays for this appalling outcome? Rich bourgeois brats crowing about Apartheid hero Elon Musk's batteries?

Later this week, in a separate post, I'll do a quick back of the envelop calculation to show how much money it would have taken to build, at Vogtle prices - prices driven by the willful destruction of nuclear manufacturing infrastructure - to build as many nuclear reactors as would be required produce 12 exajoules of energy per year for 80 years.

(Consider by contrast that every bit of the solar and wind junk built in 2004 is nearing the end of life.)

A Commentary on Failure, Delusion and Faith: Danish Data on Big Wind Turbines and Their Lifetimes.

One thing I never hear from assholes blaming all the crises in the world on "too much" population - by this they clearly mean poor people - is any intention to commit suicide, although it's pretty clear that probably every "energy storage" hyping idiot probably consumes every day the equivalent of what 100 cobalt slaves do.

It is well known, observed in countries all around the world, that when a population is safe, secure, and provided with a decent living standard - no extreme bourgeois Tesla humping wealth is required - the population stabilizes and ages. (In some places, notably Japan, and more recently China, this is suddenly considered a problem because of an aging population of retirees and too few young people to support them.)

The answer, in any case, to a sustainable world population would thus not hyping consumer wind and solar junk that needs replacement every 20 years and a continuous supply of landfills for the resulting debris of batteries, discarded solar cells, rotting wind farms and mine tailings.

What's required is decency.

Unfortunately one of the most appalling things about antinukes is a real shortage of that, decency. It is not the poor who consume. It's not the poor who lie around on their asses chanting pabulum about a solar and wind nirvana that never comes, year after year, decade after decade, no matter how much coal and gas is used to power computers to spread soothsaying on the subject.

The result of this appalling propaganda is junk that soaks up trillions of dollars for no result.

You know what? Africans are frankly tired of this imperialist consumerist bullshit, this "dig cobalt for my lazy assed fantasy" demand.

There are many Africans who rising up and embracing what the shit heads who exploit them are too stupid and lazy to learn: Nuclear engineering. Unlike cobalt slavers, they give a shit about the world.

They work.

US programme supports Ghana nuclear progress

USA, Japan partner with Ghana on SMR deployment

Nigeria moving ahead on nuclear power plant plan

Construction begins for El Dabaa unit 2

You know what?

It would be a good bet to take that a freshman undergraduate in nuclear engineering at Ahmadu Bello University, in Zaria, Nigeria training to bring sustainable energy to his or her or their country, knows the fucking 2nd law of thermodynamics, even if there are old fart antinuke bourgeois consumer imperialist types in this country who can't get this simple law through their thick skulls into their withered battery worshipping brains no matter how many times it's pointed out. At the same time, this useless barely literate set of bourgeois consumers nonetheless resent poor people for existing.

No. Sense. Of. Decency. None.

Have a nice weekend.

[Finishline42]

21. Now do Megapacks

As you do with regularity in your convoluted arguments - you pick on a big number then say, in this case Powerwalls, can't be built to equal the big number. But Powerwalls are for homes not utility scale storage - Megapacks are.

But utility scale storage isn't limited to batteries, pumped hydro and gravity systems are also used. The main advantage is to use cheap electricity to charge the storage device and when prices go up during peak demand cycles, use to put a cap on those prices. The 15% loss due to 2LOT is minor when you look at the cost of electricity during peak demand (it's not a percentage of the cost - it's many times the cost).

The problem with cheap electricity is just like cheap gasoline. When it's cheap you make decisions you can't afford when prices go up. When gas is $1.50/gal you might buy a big pickup truck you don't really need but it only takes $50 for a fill up. But when gas goes to $4/gal and you're spending $150 you wonder what you were thinking...

Same with electricity. When it's cheap and you're thinking about building a house - how much money and time will you spend on energy efficiency? How many extra rooms will it have that you never use? But when it's expensive you make different decisions.

[NNadir]

22. Um...thanks for a QED.

The thesis was antinukes, a set of bourgeois consumer types lacking in both education and in decency, give as much of a shit about human poverty as they do about climate change: Zero.

QED.

Um...um...cobalt slaves are not lying around on their fat asses thinking about building a suburban house in a tract house in a gated community with lots of cul-de-sacs from which they can drive to Nordstroms in their swell Tesla cars provided by Apartheid loving right wing billionaires.

This is what their lives involve:



From Stone to Phone MODERN DAY COBALT SLAVERY IN CONGO. (It's possible to call up thousands of these pictures in an instant, if, and only if, one gives a shit.)

It also establishes what I love to repeat: Antinukes refuse to acknowledge the laws of thermodynamics, possibly because it would involve being educated.

Other obviated corollaries:

Repeating of Amory Lovins' bullshit indifference to anyone who isn't white and living in a suburb in some wealthy neighborhood should disgust anyone having a sense of decency is still popular.

If one lacks a sense of decency, of course, one can glibly be an Amory Lovins wannabe, chanting his nearly 50 year old oblivious bullshit that left us here:

April 14: 422.97 ppm
April 13: 422.62 ppm
April 12: 423.23 ppm
April 11: 423.06 ppm
April 10: 422.29 ppm
Last Updated: April 15, 2023

Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2

Where exactly are those solar heated molten salt tanks he advocated being in suburban backyards in his 1976 exercise in displaying extreme stupidity and inability to appreciate engineering?

I note that the same antinukes who successfully worked to destroy American nuclear manufacturing infrastructure so they could enjoy complaining about the cost of the Vogtle reactors, don't really give a shit about costs. What bothers them is that the Vogtle reactors would take away money that they might use to buy a bigger flat screen TV, is that the people who benefit the most from the building of this valuable infrastructure belong to the future generations about whom they couldn't give a shit.

It's pure selfishness and indifference.

No. Sense. Of. Decency. None.

Have a wonderful Saturday afternoon.

[Finishline42]

23. Yep, cobalt is mainly used for EV batteries

But also in high tech alloys used in gas turbines.

Google says

Until recently, most of the popular EVs contained a battery with cobalt and nickel because it enables them to have a long range in a compact size. Tesla and Ford are now transitioning towards a chemistry without cobalt for their lower range EVs, called lithium-iron phosphate (LFP)

A lot of your rants are about things as they are, but none of us really know what the future holds. The base fact about ICE used in cars and trucks is that the industry has contracted over the last 50 years with multiple buyouts and mergers. It's so expensive to stay competitive in the engine and transmission area. Going to EV's has the opposite effect - it's bring new players into the market - mainly because the electric powertrain is so simple and at the same time reliable. Batteries will continue to evolve at a rapid pace.

But if you are worried about how the poor are being impacted by our car culture, lets take a look at who lives around our oil refineries...

[NNadir]

24. There is now, and then there are people working to make things worse.

Anyone who shoes up to talk up batteries to address putting a bandaid on so called "renewable energy's" disastrous dependence on dangerous fossil fuels is here to make things worse.

They come here regularly with excuses, selective attention, and deliberate misrepresentation.

[Finishline42]

25. DQIIIIIIII said...

They come here regularly with excuses, selective attention, and deliberate misrepresentation.

[NNadir]

8. My son is a member of the "nuclear calvary."

He really doesn't give a rat's ass about what reactionary mystics think, nor should he.

He's already a highly trained engineering scientist and he's working to expand on an already prodigious intellectual base.

One of the many similarities between antinukes and antivaxxers is that in their remarkable self satisfaction with their overwhelming ignorance of the topic they deign to criticize, they are unashamed to loudly proclaim it.

Antinukes, I note, have won the day; vast nuclear infrastructure was destroyed by fear and ignorance.

As for who lost, that would be humanity and the planetary ecosystems.

Much that has been lost in this literal pyrrhic victory for the intimately entwined coal/gas/oil/solar/wind industry is permanently gone. Nevertheless if that which is left to save is saved, and that which can be restored is restored, it will because of the young generation of rising nuclear engineers who gave enough of a shit to work hard as opposed to laying around picking lint out of their navels while chanting about so called "renewable energy," the very term for which is an oxymoron.

[Blues Heron]

10. Would you tear them down if you could? Cover up the solar panels and tear down the windmills?

If you could snap you fingers and make them go away right now would you do it?

[NNadir]

11. I would let them rot in place, something they do rather quickly...

...which another reason, besides mass intensity and land intensity and most of all, their lack of reliability, that they are unsustainable, rather filthy, and environmentally obnoxious.

In the longer term, future generations will need to clean up the mess, which according to well established scientific laws, in particular those involving entropy, will require clean and sustainable energy, of which there is one, and only one form, nuclear energy.

The generations who will be charged with this task will do so in a destabilized climate disrupting the world economic, social, agricultural and systems infrastructure, while dealing with reduced or vanished resources squandered by profligate consumerism, all because reactionaries chose, with a vastly expanded population, to return energy systems to dependence on the weather, a practice abandoned in the 19th century for a reason.

As it happened the choice made to accomplish this task, dangerous fossil fuels, for independence from the whims of weather, proved in the long run to be disastrous, but the generation that made the decision to do this did so in a climate of limited scientific insight, before the emergence of sophisticated scientific theories and tools.

The greatest minds of the 20th century discovered nuclear energy which has been applied for both nefarious and for essential purposes, as is the case of all technology - the GPS is another example of a military technology exploited for good - but in terms of what commercial industrial nuclear energy has to offer, in the 21st century, it's our last best hope.

There are no other workable options.

It does not need to be perfect or without risk to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is, criticism from mindless badly educated, paranoid reactionaries notwithstanding.

[Blues Heron]

12. Thanks for answering

[hunter]

16. Not the barb you think it is.

Once upon a time I was a hard core anti nuclear activist. I'm not going to dox myself or anyone else here.

On one of my worst days my girlfriend and her girlfriend were sleeping peacefully in a motel in southern California when the cops broke in and I awoke to screams of bloody murder, thankfully no murder, but my girlfriend's girlfriend (who she later married) was screaming topless dancing on the bed, something scorched into my memory. horrible, horrible men in the room.

The cops didn't find anything incriminating in our motel room, it was just their message to leave. And we did.

We'd spent a lot of time on the road between Humboldt Bay and San Onofre.

Yeah, I'm a traitor to the anti-nuclear cult and I've told stories here of how it happened.

[Blues Heron]

17. It wasn't meant as a barb

[hunter]

18. You're not on my "ignore" list.

Obviously.

Some E&E posters are.

Back in the day I opposed nuclear power because it might work.

And I was hoping peak oil and gas was real.

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. In this case, the cure isn't worse than the disease

But it’s pretty close.

There’s got to be a plan C for the not-too-distant future that doesn’t involve mining for rare minerals

[hunter]

14. A very fine society might be built from common materials like concrete, steel, aluminum, plastic...

... and already mined and extracted fissionable materials now considered waste.

No fossil fuel inputs required.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. So true.

Those who piously tout electric cars as being vastly better than gas cars, forget that the batteries are produced with a lot of non-renewable resources. And the charging of them involves more of the same.

There may not be a good outcome here.

It's my personal take that there are far, far too many humans on this planet. We are already far above a reasonably sustainable number, which is probably no more than one billion. Maybe eve less than that. Honestly, if we don't have a serious population crash by the end of this century, all of us here will simply die miserable deaths from all of the consequences of too many people.

[NNadir]

6. Count me in. The reactionary fantasy is making things worse, not better.