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Very good article. A few comments.

You say:

"Solar panels rely on the waste silicon wafers from chip manufacturing (so tack in all the chip manufacturing waste-costs)."

That was true at one time, and silicon was expensive when it was only used for chips, and had zero impact on the product cost. Today, PV is the largest user of silicon, and prices for silicon have dropped to almost zero.

You say:

"Sunlight is free, and unlimited, as is wind."

True. AND, wind is just a mere second-order by-product of the sun … but on the other-other hand, it is concentrated in certain areas making wind power viable in certain areas. The ultimate solution is of course solar.

I also wrote a solar summary article:

https://timellison.substack.com/p/solar-energy-in-a-nutshell

Best wishes.

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Thank you for the level-headed response.

"Today, PV is the largest user of silicon, and prices for silicon have dropped to almost zero."

I believe I have created confusion here. I used the term "waste-cost", to mean costs (non-financial) in terms of waste. As in pollution.

People forget the material doesn't just appear out of thin air, but has to use energy-intensive (read: waste generating) approaches to produce. Of course, I am ignoring battery storage with lithium leech fields and other nasties.

"but on the other-other hand, it is concentrated in certain areas making wind power viable in certain areas"

The same can be said of solar. The Northern regions of Scotland get so little sunlight that wind power is the dominant renewable power source, followed in a very distant second place, by hydroelectricity.

My point was the profit margins for selling unlimited free renewable energy (of any type: wind or solar or hydro) are so massive compared to all the costs to drill and refine oil, that oil companies would be insane to *not* be driving this global warming agenda.

Notice the push to decentralise has been practically non-existent? Could have panels or a turbine at every house, but no, still trying to centralise so they can sell free energy back to you for vast profits. UK government parrots gibberish about insulation - which still means paying money to power companies. Using less doesn't save money because they just jack up the price to compensate.

A giant scam.

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Yes, some places are sunnier than others ! But not so much -- in the U.S., the annual solar insolation varies by less than a factor of two from the worst to the best (of course that changes the economics by a factor of two). See e.g.: https://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/inline-images/solar_ghi_2018_usa_scale_01.jpg

Wind resources vary much more, by more than a factor of 3, and, since the power available scales as the wind speed to the 3rd power, the wind power resources vary by a factor of 27, which REALLY changes the economics! See e.g.: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/50631261e4b0e9530e2c53a7/1497443554521-QMSMB8CI5HBDEXG888L9/Mean-Average-Wind-Speed-Across-the-United-States-Map?format=1000w&content-type=image%2Fjpeg

Regarding decentralization: Yes, the Utilities (most monopolies) are and always have been the enemy.

And, think of this: shipping oil across the oceans compared to , one day, instead shipping electricity across the oceans on cables ... well, every once in awhile you do have to worry about electron spills! /s ;) -- (/s ;) me trying to be funny).

The ultimate solution will be Solar -- silicon is the most abundant element in the Earth's crust (after oxygen).

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One could say that industrial pollution is also a scam, based on how we've dealt with the problem.

The battle is already lost and, frankly, tiresome to discuss. The schematic is simple: we rely on fossil fuels of which we have limited supply but nonetheless drain in ever faster/larger amounts.

Everything else is senseless distraction.

That said, we *are* fucking with the weather. The fact that the weather is fucking with us even more doesn't change that fact. Our fucking with the weather may actually be forestalling the nearly inevitable ice age return, and in the process deceiving us as to the main direction we should take in response to an obviously wacko contemporary climate. Today, it looks like Siberia is poised to become the new grain belt. But in 30 years it could be one giant rapidly growing glacier.

Climate matters. How to deal with climate really matters. The fact that reigning power-brokers use this to breed evil scams is a separate issue: our power-brokers do this with EVERYTHING from the food we eat to the air we breathe to, increasingly, the thoughts that we think. They'd tax nocturnal emissions if they could.

Want to make something nonsensical and impossible to remedy? Treat it as a political issue. The climate, for all that our politicians claim, is not a political issue. It's a physical issue, and a currently very daunting physical problem. Daunting problems want wisdom and true loyalty, yea, even friendship, that mytho-legendary concept. They don't want political perspective. That's like asking one's girlfriend to put on a Your Mother skin suit to make one horny.

P.S. The S.Korean poop energy generator is itself a smart move, never mind the mandatorily nonsensical sociopolitical overlays.

P.P.S. As for Al Gore beachfront: a rich old man has to enjoy the world his wealth is devastating while he can, jah?

P.P.S.S. Meanwhile, we rush like Disney lemmings (*real* lemmings are not suicidal cliff-march zombies) to submit to bogus toxic vaccinations and economic hari-kari. Compassion is a bitch, and I weep for all life on Terra the Fair, but logically, I see absolutely no empirical reason for humanity not to off itself in large numbers per its preferred m.o.: cuz pharaoh said so.

Those who survive will be sadder but wiser, i.e., far more sane than their recently exterminated fellow specie members.

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"As for Al Gore beachfront: a rich old man has to enjoy the world his wealth is devastating while he can, jah?"

Not really. He didn't buy it for himself. Hence properties (plural s). He used his scaremongering BS about global warming to drop the price, then bought a large quantity on the cheap, then upsold them. According to his own logic - which hasn't happened - they're supposed to be underwater by now, an unsound investment. He continues to jetset, and private jets to the COP conference tells everybody all they need to know. If they bought their own scaremongering they'd be too terrified to burn any fuel.

"we rely on fossil fuels of which we have limited supply but nonetheless drain in ever faster/larger amounts"

No-one knows the true quantity. 20 years ago I read how we'd be running out of fuel by now in a school textbook. No-one seems to have told Saudi Arabia, the UAE, North Sea Oil in the UK, Shell in Nigeria, Texas, China, or Russia that. Per the Dorkly video: "the problem is SUPPLY CHAINS"

Europe is getting an abject lesson of what happens when you mess with supply chains with sanctions.

"I see absolutely no empirical reason for humanity not to off itself in large numbers per its preferred m.o.: cuz pharaoh said so."

Funnily enough I covered overpopulation.

https://thedailybeagle.substack.com/p/refuting-the-overpopulation-crisis

I think people fail to grasp how pyramid schemes work, but usually if you destroy the underneath of a pyramid the rest of it collapses and falls over. Who do the globalists think will pump their oil for them for their jets, fly their planes, operate the traffic towers, run the power plants, heat and repair their swimming pools? Magicians?

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"As for Al Gore beachfront: a rich old man has to enjoy the world his wealth is devastating while he can, jah?"

"enjoy" does not necessarily mean he intends to masturbate naked in the moonlight along it twinkling sands. Everything you wrote about Al Gore fits in with what I wrote about Al Gore except your opening two words: "not really".

"we rely on fossil fuels of which we have limited supply but nonetheless drain in ever faster/larger amounts"

I repeat what I said. I've read on the topic too. I recommend you read more, and with an eye less focused through the lens of It's All A Royal Scam. Rothschild banking did not invent Terran fossil fuel deposits nor does it control the amount of available fossil fuel deposits. fossil fuel.

As for those aforesaid Royal Scmasters, I fully agree with this: "Who do the globalists think will pump their oil for them for their jets, fly their planes, operate the traffic towers, run the power plants, heat and repair their swimming pools? Magicians?"

I fully disagree that the population overshoot problem is refutable much less remediable. It's real and it is inevitable unless ET or Yahweh or Jimi Hendrix return to save us.

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It is very much refutable, hence the article on refuting the overpopulation crisis. If you avoid reading it lest it ruins your worldview, I'll bring it to you.

The Malthusians who have been insisting we'd die from an overpopulation crisis have been insisting for **200 years** with an **increasing population**. It's hard to take such bullshit seriously, especially given they thought '1 billion' was the death of the Earth. We're at 7.5 billion 200 years later. So, not only were they wrong, but they were wrong for two centuries. Love to know your thoughts on the conversion of the Sahara desert but I know globalists are too inept at that sort of thing. So naturally they revert to the only thing they're capable of doing as the evil people they are: mass murder. Can't fix a problem? Throw a stroppy fit and kill everything.

https://thedailybeagle.substack.com/p/refuting-the-overpopulation-crisis

Running out of supply means... actually running out. Not forming giant oil cartels who have to *flare off excess gas*. If oil truly was on the verge of running out, OPEC would be switching over to an alternative fuel source. Remember - oil companies built the commercial solar panels.

I don't see OPEC switching, and I know for sure you haven't used anything from Iran (embargoes), and have stopped Venezuela imports a while back now. It is rather convenient for Israel if oil prices were to crash though, seeing as all their major enemies are oil manufacturers. Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria (Egypt isn't but they process it) - all of their opponents in the 6 day war.

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Your quaint faith in infinite human progress is amusing if depressing. A form of cargo cultism. I know all the above arguments and then some. I've been studying the energy question since 1975. They don't impress me nor am I interested in changing your opinions. We can all talk about the weather but it changes itself without our opinion.

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You appear to be conflating climate with weather again. Climate is the average trend over a whole year. Weather is what changes from day to day.

Your depression will not change my deposition, and in truth you're only depressed because you subscribe to a weird mass murder fetish that justifies itself based on an arbitrary, poorly defined number. They were wrong when it was 1 billion. They're still wrong now.

Humans existed long before oil was used.

Humans will continue to exist long after.

Tell me how you expect to consume the entire sun at 330,000 times the size of Earth?

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I want you to believe what makes you happy. Go forth and conquer, brave warrior.

https://ontvtoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/us1b619.jpg

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Solar is unlimited? No, it may be in the time dimension but it has a finite density (power density). Averaged over the year and day it is c. 340 W/msq, so not "infinite". This means you need a LOT of land to concentrate solar power infrastructure to achieve comparable power delivery to fossil fuel infrastructure - see Vaclav Smil who has written a lot about this. It;s a fundamental difference between fossil fuels and renewables that only the former can be used at a pace of our choosing, the latter we get at the pace that natural processes dictate. A stock flow, versus a fund flow, as the ecological economists put it.

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Firstly, I said sunlight, not solar.

Secondly, if you want to be a pedant, yes you could argue that the sun might run out in billions of years time and isn't 'infinite'. But I don't imagine any other fuel source is going to last even a fraction of that.

And yes, I do mean in the time dimension, not density.

"This means you need a LOT of land to concentrate solar power infrastructure"

We have a lot of unusable land on Earth that can't really sustain anything. Deserts for one. Also in urban environments, rooftops come to mind. I don't know why anyone would want to stick panels on viable farmland, that seems nonsensical to me.

Also the reason I don't try to project energy conversions for solar is I'm anticipating efficiency improvements over time.

You have to remember, oil has been around for roughly 200 years in terms of economic use/development. Solar was only really commercially available (yes, it was invented before then, but not commercially viable) since the 1980s. Those panels only had a 5%-10% efficiency and were painfully expensive.

Panels now are 20% efficient and far more affordable. I don't expect a 100% efficiency, nor do I expect the price to drop to zero, but I do anticipate future developments such as Perovskite cells (~30% efficiency, however durability is on the order of months) to both increase efficiency and reduce size.

"the latter we get at the pace that natural processes dictate"

Currently, yes. But for me it's a bit like early ore mining, where we could only access ore deposits available on the surface. Developments in energy storage will come.

We already have earthern heat batteries (brick or volcanic rock) for up to 1500C range which is already being deployed in smelting plants to improve efficiency. Eventually someone will be smart enough to pair that with solar heating (rather than this dangerous molten salt 600C stuff that keeps leaking and seizing up in the current concentrators).

In truth, we only really need buffer storage for solar. 24 hours. Long enough to cycle over to the next day.

For the record the main energy grid already uses storage as well, pumped hydro storage, for baseload power operations. So even baseload is beholden to the elements. Can't just switch off a nuclear plant, that power has to go somewhere at night.

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I appreciate the work you have done on COVID vaccines, but sorry but this is nonsense. Global warming was predicted more than a century ago by scientist Svente Arrhenius, who thought it was a good thing because it would counteract the next ice age. Oil companies have been actively funding efforts to assert that global warming is not happening as well doccumented by Naomi Oreskes (Merchants of Doubt). How could increasing atmospheric Co2 content from 280ppmv to over 400 in a geological instant NOT result in warming? Because Co2 (et al) is not an insulating gas?! how then can temperatures of different planets be accounted for, which are not a linear function of distance from the sun?

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"but this is nonsense"

Your opinion is duly noted.

"How could increasing atmospheric Co2 content from 280ppmv to over 400 in a geological instant NOT result in warming?"

For the same reason that a 75% CO2 Earth wasn't a boiling mess of hot lava that allowed cyanobacteria to breed. As mentioned in the article. They do teach you guys about cyanobacteria, when they existed, and what role they played, right?

"Oil companies have been actively funding efforts to assert that global warming is not happening"

Then why is Maurice Strong, a major oil tycoon, the primary driver behind the 'global warming' ideology? If 'big oil' financing an idea makes it invalid, then global warming already is (it's a pretty weak fallacy, to be honest, and you shouldn't be stooping to guilt-by-association).

I feel like you've parroted some stuff you read before, without actually reading my article, and have presumed things. Why would I listen to people who fly in private jets and buy up beachfront properties for advice on environmental damage?

Do you have any answers for the blatant inconsistencies in policy implementation?

Perhaps you can tell me what the falsifiability condition for your theory is? At what point is it 'false'? And don't foolishly say 'when the climate remains the same' like a first year student because climate wasn't static even before humans existed.

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