Renewable Energy's Fake Alchemy

FTA: "This isn't to dismiss climate action, reducing emissions matters." Good article up until this point. So Alex, how do you explain the Little Ice Age that started circa 1300 and ending around 1850? All because of emissions?

The Left, always ignoring the Truth and the Science. Padding their pockets with stolen money along the way. SoCiAlisM is COmmuNism LIGHT

The name "Green New Scam"....captures the essence of this fraud.

Re #1. Reducing emissions matters UP TO A POINT. The sad thing is that this point was reached in the middle 1990s, and all since have been economic carnage with no actual benefits for mankind or the ecosystems. "Good enough" is an important concept in pollution control. But the government bureaucrats cannot solve a problem and then just go away. They MUST continue on until infinity to tighten the screws on 'emissions' to justify their phony baloney jobs.

Once again, these people miss the forest while staring at one tree. What do they imagine components of wind turbines and solar panels are made from? How do they suppose wind turbines and solar panels are built? How do they suppose all these things get from point A to point B where they're installed? For that matter, how are they installed? ALL of these questions have the same answer to one degree or another: by petroleum products. They are blithering idiots, including the author!

The "renewables" are very expensive, whether a single-family system or a state-wide one. We went solar on the homestead because California's PG&E was forced by a court ruling to abandon sending electricity over private lines back around 2020. A judge found PG&E responsible for the devasting Santa Rosa fire, even though the spark started with private lines with the private owners on the hook for maintenance. It is amazing the thousands of miles in California's rural areas that are private, because PG&E would not build lines in the far-flung regions. The judge should have found the private line owners responsible, but a group of rural homeowners did not have the deep pockets of PG&E. Because of that court ruling PG&E stopped sending electricity over private lines. It makes sense. Why be responsible for fire outcomes when you're not responsible for the upkeep? They gave us about a year's notice, so TK and I refinanced the homestead to pay the $77,000 full solar installation in 2020. We already had an array of twelve solar panels, cost $18,000, and were on the PG&E "share" program; we sent them power in the day, and they sent us power at night. We had a flat rate every month of only $16. We added four more panels, trenched from the panels to the new solar battery shed and bought four lithium batteries, and added an automatic Kohler generator backup hooked directly to our propane tank. Our system has been very reliable. I hope it stays so. But the expense is not something everyone can handle. We're six years down the road and our system is reliable and works but paying down a much larger 20-year mortgage that won't be paid in our lifetimes. Our original mortgage would have been paid off by now. Oh well, all part of the joy of living in the "golden" state.

The problem with the so called green energy is its not always there so you still need the oil/gas/nuke power to take over when its cloudy and the wind isn't blowing. This doubles the costs because it doubles in investments needed to keep power flowing.

Bland recommendations like "invest in R&D for better batteries" is an absolute pipe dream. Battery R&D has absorbed literally trillions of dollars, if you correct the century old giant R&D projects to current dollars, and is ongoing. In 1890s there were many battery breakthroughs. In the last half century....very little. We have seen lithium batteries made lighter by using polymer electrodes rather than metal, but there are only so many actual materials in the periodic table, and so many ways to combine them. They have been exhaustively tried in labs, in computer simulations for over a century. That vein is pretty well played out. This particular 'wish upon a star' seems particularly common. We have become so accustomed to "new development found" reports, that we aren't really aware that a something like 150 years have been spent by large numbers of very smart and educated researchers looking for the best batteries. And we have some pretty good ones. But the prospects for significant improvements, by which I mean 20% or greater improvement in some performance metric...cheaper, lighter, longer lasting, etc.....not likely. More likely is 1 or 2% improvements. Batteries are VERY mature technology.

At the end of WWII, the United States Gross Domestic Product was more than every other country in the world.... COMBINED. In the mid-'60's, the environmental movement became popular -some areas did have serious pollution problems, but I think that also the Leftists saw a way to greatly increase government control over industry, and over people's activities. Various environmental laws were passed, and the Environmental Protection Agency was created in the late 1960's and early 1970's. As the environmental regulations became stricter and stricter, the cost of manufacturing while complying with those regulations became greater and greater, and manufacturers closed factories in the USA and moved -sometimes physically crating up the machinery and hauling it away- overseas where the environmental laws (and safety laws and labor laws) did not exist or were more lax. As an outgrowth of the pollution laws, the great Climate Scam got started. First, during the 1970's, as the temperatures seemed to be going down slightly, the great scare was Global Cooling, then after 1979 the temperatures bottomed out and were reported to be going up slightly, and the great Global Warming scare took hold. Leftists in the Lamestream Media and in the government bureaucracy -not just in the USA, but also the UN, saw an opportunity for greatly increase control over the citizens, and funded a plethora of 'Climate Science' studies. Remember Al Gore and all his predictions? "The Ice Caps were melting!" "Sea Levels were rising!" "New York City -and most of Florida- would be underwater in a couple of decades!" The Bureaucrats put out the word that there was Money to be Made by publishing Studies that supported Global Warming..... and a crowd of 'scientists' -of questionable honesty- in Academia -with the cooperation of similar-minded people in the academic publishing firms- flooded the zone with Predictions of Doom. Serious, honest scientists' papers were mysteriously delayed in 'academic peer review' for years, and were never published, while the Gloom and Doom papers received 'pal reviews' and hit the magazines in rapid order. The infamous 'Hockey Stick' temperature graph was picked up by the Lamestreams and pounded into everyone's skull, over, and over, and over. That the person who conjured it up refused to release his data or methods (which is required in real science) was ignored. That the Hockey Stick ignored hundreds of years of temperature data was ignored. Also that no-one else could replicate his Hockey Stick (another requirement of real science) was also ignored. "We're were ALL gonna FRY!" The Critical Temperature Increase of 2 decrees Centigrade was proclaimed. Oddly, no-one ever determined what the 'correct' earth's temperature was. But that 2 decrees C was the Tipping Point! Greenhouse Gases were the Villian! Freon was the Villian! Methane was the Villian! Carbon Dioxide (CO-2) was the Villian! Burning Coal was the Villian! Burning ANY 'Fossil Fuel' was going to Kill Us ALL! NO Coal Burning Allowed! No CO-2 Allowed! But oddly, China and India, the two most populated countries on the earth, and the two biggest CO-2 producers, were exempt. China has been putting two large Coal-burning power plants into service EVERY WEEK for years. China now burns more Coal than the rest of the world combined, and India is right behind them..... and the Envio-wackos say not a Peep. Here in the US and in Europe, Coal-burning power plants were closed. Industries were closed. Electricity became several times more expensive. The sale of Gas-powered lawn mowers were made illegal in some states, and the sale of gas-powered cars are set to be outlawed in some states at some future date. But John Kerry, Mr. 'Net Zero' himself, travelled the world via Private Jet, 'because HE was an Important Person'.... while the Leftists want the rest of us to ride bicycles. or drive electric cars, with the materials Made in China. There are severe penalties for killing a Bald Eagle, but the huge, unsightly Windmills chop them up -along with lots of other birds- and no-one says a Peep. Constructing a windmill creates waaay more CO-2 than the windmill will ever 'save' in electrical production. The huge windmill blades have a limited fatigue life, and must be replaced, but the nightmare of disposing of the old blades -there's thousands of 'em- is never mentioned by the Lamestreams. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had 'meetings' -parties, really- with as many as 70 THOUSAND 'delegates', these meetings, held in exotic locations, producing -including the delegates' travel- more CO-2 than the annual production of the 100 least-producing countries on earth- COMBINED. They cried 'Global Warming', with a Disaster Date some time in the future. Then when that was not scary enough, the came up with Global Climate Change', and still most people really did not care. Their present cry is 'Anthropogenic Climate Disruption'. Ooh, that sounds Scary.... but most people ignored their cries. Atomic power was shunned, just the word 'Nooklear' brought out the crazy leftists in droves. New reactor designs had been around, sitting on the shelf for years, but no approvals to build one was allowed. Then suddenly, everything changed. First, President Trump was elected, and stated the Truth that 'The Whole Global Warming scheme is a GIANT SCAM. Trump proceeded to pursue a policy of American Energy Production and American Industrial Production.-including new Atomic Energy facilities. Also, the Powers-that-Be discovered something new, a new way to control the Citizens. Artificial Intelligence. But AI needs Data Centers, which in turn need a LOT of electricity.... so all the Global Warming dogma had to GO. Then, very recently, President Trump told the Data Center people "Go ahead and build your Data Centers, but you have to provide your own electricity- you're not going to suck up all the electricity and run people's electricity bills through the roof." .... and suddenly, I see articles about new, modern, small, standardized atomic power plants being built. I have not seen the details. So that's where we are today, the way I see it. Am I on to something, or am I off in Laa-Laa land? Anyone who has more and better information, please comment! President Trump is telling