Auf Deutch and in English: Germany Is Becoming An Electricity "High Price Island."

[NNadir]

6. If I relied on speculation rather than data or trends, I would take this specious "percent talk..."

...bullshit seriously.

But I do rely on data and trends, not wishful thinking and speculation, so it's exactly equivalent to the same crap that's been going on for decades while we got here.

Here:

Week beginning on June 19, 2022: 420.87 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.62 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.92 ppm
Last updated: June 30, 2022

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

This isn't 10 year "percent talk:" This is the real number 24.95 ppm increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide while we listened this decade, as in previous decades to "percent" bullshit.

The trend is clear enough. In this century trillions of dollars were spent on solar and wind just to get to 10.4 exajoules.

Crowing about 500% can be dismissed without too much effort.

The "percent talk" in this case "500% in ten years" is basically obscene, and assumes stupidity on the part of the reader expected to buy into this dishonesty, because in 2010, solar and wind were producing 2 exajoules.

I've been using this analogy for decades in response to this exercise in bad thinking. Suppose I have $2.00. If after 10 years, I have $10 and 40 cents, no one will be impressed. If on the other hand, I have $2,000,000,000 and ten years later I have $10,000,000,000, that might be impressive.

The "percent talk" is only possible because solar and wind were trivial in 2010, and they remain slightly less trivial now.

As for this nonsense about "fuel," the "fuel" is unimportant. It is the land requirements and mass of the device that is important. I note that while the wind and solar industry struggled to get to 10.4 exajoules, the issue of mining and land use suddenly came to the forefront. The scientific literature is filled with commentary on the material demands of so called "renewable energy." Mining trucks, smelters, bulldozers to trash wilderness for wind plants don't run on wind and solar, anymore than Germany runs of wind and solar. I noted recently elsewhere that the German copper smelter Aurubis doesn't have any fucking idea how they're going to run their copper plant, which presumably provides copper to build this rickety crap and string it all together.

Ott added the group was also in talks about credit lines from state-lender KfW (KFW.UL), which has drawn up a support scheme for companies hit by a surge in gas prices.

Aurubis (NAFG.DE), Europe's top copper smelter, said it is also looking for substitutes, but that adapting power plants is expensive and time-consuming...

As Russia cuts gas, German industry grapples with painful choices.

Thus the prediction that solar and wind will magically get to 50 exajoules on a planet consuming 600 exajoules in 10 years strains credulity, as does the bullshit excuse that it's two years since the data in the last WEO was recorded.

And let's be clear on something OK? This money, these trillions of dollars to get wind and solar to 10.4 exajoules was squandered not to do away with fossil fuels, which kill people when they operate normally, but to displace nuclear energy.

Germany didn't announce except with vague "by such and such a year" they would phase out coal. They never actually intended to do so. They're killing their own citizens, citizens of neighboring countries, and, in fact, the future of humanity because of stupid rhetoric attached to the dubious and largely unproved LNT hypothesis which has never been more than assumption. Even if were proved - it may never be - it's not clear that the risk is as great as the risk of not using nuclear energy.

The fact is that not only would this stupid fantasy have to increase by 40 exajoules to grow "500%" in the next ten years, but it will also need to replace all of the infrastructure approaching a 20 year life time, finding a place to dump the millions upon millions of tons of waste. (The total quantity of used nuclear fuel in this country, after well over half a century of use is less than 90,000 tons.)

Now, let's speak about "fuel." Anti-nukes talking about nuclear fuel is rather like Clarence Thomas talking about carrying a baby and going through childbirth. A kg of plutonium contains about 80 trillion joules, fully fissioned. By contrast, a gallon of gasoline contains about 1.2 million joules. The ratio - one cannot expect anti-nukes to be able to do mathematics - is thus the energy density of plutonium is about 6.6 million times higher than gasoline. Thus the cost of plutonium, were it to cost $1000/kg - there's no reason it should; it does right now but there is no reason it should - is the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline 0.015 cents a gallon, not dollars, cents.

It's not the cost of fuel; it's the cost of the device. The early proponents of nuclear energy were so excited, the cost of fuel is trivial. The devices for "free" solar and "free" wind are incredibly expensive, given that they require redundancy. This explains why Germany's electricity prices are obscene. (Predictably the poor, not the rich, will pay.)

There is no evidence, none, zilch, zero that the proponents of solar and wind have ever taken fossil fuels and the people they kill seriously; at best it's an after thought, at worst a lie.

That is why we are here.

Once again, Here:

Week beginning on June 19, 2022: 420.87 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.62 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.92 ppm
Last updated: June 30, 2022

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Anyone who thinks there is anything positive about energy policy over the last ten years is either delusional or just doesn't give a fuck or both. I'll go with "both."

To repeat my standard reference on the amount of money squandered on a dangerous and idiotic fantasy:

Recently I updated the expenditure on so called "renewable energy" as we happily run along trashing huge stretches of wilderness, rendering them into industrial parks to serve the clearly failed rhetoric of anti-nukes.

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

I manually entered 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, more than President Biden has wisely recommended for the improvement of all infrastructure in the entire United States.

"Free," my ass.

Have a pleasant evening.