Vacuum brains versus facts — regarding dependence on fossil fuels

06 July 2021

Let's take up the climate-screamer phenomenon

Meaning lots of hysteria and no workable solutions.

Below is a typically fact-avoiding call to Green Energy action

The blurb is representatively devoid of any engineering thinking at all:

Today, the United States and the world . . . need . . . a declaration of independence from fossil fuels.

Rising global temperatures have major effects on numerous fronts, ranging from air quality and rising sea levels to the frequency of environmental events such as forest fires, hurricanes, heat waves, floods, droughts, and so on.

The climate crisis also impacts on human rights and becomes a driver of migration. And last but not least, there are economic costs associated with the climate crisis as rising temperatures affect a wide range of industries, from agriculture to tourism.

What needs to be done is to move the world economy to net-zero emissions and 100 [percent] clean energy.

In a world in which chemistry, physics and facts do not matter . . .

. . . Polychroniou's no-solutions-proposed call to action (like Greta Thunberg's) might be helpful.

However, in our real world, we need to take into account how densely energy-packed fossil fuels are. And how conveniently extractable their 'go-juice' is — before we wander off into physically absurd delusions that imply (as a matter of government policy) that wind, hydroelectric and solar (etc-etc) are going to easily and massively replace them overnight.

The basic problem is that no conceivable mix of currently harvestable and storable green energy can come anywhere close to meeting the world population's current energy demands.

See, for instance, engineer John Cadogan's quantitative metaphor for how much oil humans produce and burn every day:

Auto Expert John Cadogan, Tesla fan boys destroyed: Part 4 - why internal combustion will dominate, YouTube (31 December 2021) (pertinent segment begins at 07:30 minutes)

People like the above-quoted author, C. J. Polychroniou — who describes himself as a political economist and political scientist — evidently do not have the education (or experiential) backgrounds to realistically evaluate the (orders of magnitude) implications of the green-for-fossil substitution challenge.

Calling for something is not the same as providing an even remotely realistic plan for getting there.

Okay, so if we cannot have what is convenient and easy . . .

. . . how about grossly reducing our total energy-use, so that proportionately 'feeble' and hard-to-store green energy might be able to substitute in its place?

That looks likely to fail, also.

Reason magazine recently dismembered a pie-in-the-sky research paper that was based on a draconian model of energy-use reduction around the world:

In order to save the planet from catastrophic climate change, Americans will have to cut their energy use by more than 90 percent and families of four should live in housing no larger than 640 square feet. That's . . . according to a team of European researchers led by University of Leeds sustainability researcher Jefim Vogel.

They then checked to see if any country in the world had met their definition of decent living standards using that amount of energy per capita.

"No country in the world accomplishes that—not even close," admitted Vogel in an accompanying press release.

The sustainability research pie-in-the-skiers had to implicitly admit that the mass of humanity is unlikely to voluntarily abandon what comforts it does have, so as to willingly 'eat dirt' instead.

This is part of the reason that I get so tired of fluff-brained 'liberals'

They love un-engineerable visions that flee, untethered from Reality's facts.

Deludedness, for example, underlies California's (and Canada's) ban on the sale of gasoline cars after 2035.

Such a rapidly massive form of transportation conversion is not going to be workable.

Doesn't matter whether we're talking expanding the electrical grid, enhancing electric vehicle-to-consumer affordability, or boosting electric vehicle battery supply, as well as the arguably scarce and sometimes harmful materials that those are manufactured with.

In short

On the one hand, we are faced with the fact that people are understandably energy-addicted, when they have the choice. Fossil fuels physically meet the perceived need.

When we throw in the fact that many societies are opposed to using (even more massively energy-dense) nuclear energy, what other massive sources of 'go' power are we left with?

Nothing.

Yet the sustainability crew continues railing about trying to implement impossible-to-reach limits and goals.

My suspicion is that — if humanity is going to sit, immobile in dark heat or cold — it is likely to prefer to be forced to do so by Climate Catastrophe, rather than delusion-based fiat.

The moral? — If we want to go somewhere, we had better start thinking realistically

In energy's case, environmental realism combines:

(a) the limits (and opportunities) imposed by physics and chemistry

with

(b) what deprivations are achievable, according to the limits of human psychology.

We could use more engineers and proportionately fewer airheaded climate-screamers.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to select against intellectual talent, so as to elevate a Cult of Dumbness.

PeteFree.com

Vacuum brains versus facts — regarding dependence on fossil fuels