Thank you, environMENTAL, for your continued information and warnings. I look forward to hearing more from advocates of responsible stewardship, where (many or even most) individuals make real-time choices about energy use. Many of us do already, of course, but those dedicated to diktats make it seem that only government can or should determine the proper temperature for our houses or the proper source of heat for cooking our food. (We the people of course being incapable of deciding when electric or gas or propane might be our best choice for cooking or heating our homes. And we are incapable of making economic choices, like which appliances to use, or how high we should turn our air conditioners.) Keep pressing on.
An excellent summary of the myriad of problems with Green energy policy.
One missing point is that there are alternatives that can work much better for both the economy and the environment. I explain the alternative in one of my recent articles:
Great post, thank you! Perhaps some researcher is going to study emissions versus COP conferences, and conclude the best way to slow emissions is to stop having COP conferences. (That would be a fun thesis to defend, particularly at Harvard or Stanford!)
This post is excellent. A comprehensive overview of the futility of the’green’ agenda, and most likely the true purpose, to centralize power through the elites. Socialism/Marxism rebranded
Completely agree, but it won't happen because (1) those issues aren't political touchstones, and (2) they don't know how! Are you old enough to remember Johnson's "war on poverty?" how about Reagan's "war on drugs" or Bush's "war on terror?" Guess what? We lost all three! And during all three, water, infrastructure, corruption problems, all existed. Declaring "war on fossil fuels" or "war on climate change" (a sure loser!!!!!) merely diverts the voter's attention from a complete failure of domestic and foreign policy screw-ups.
Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus have done some nice work re: cost/benefit and priorities. See "Best Things First", the "Doable Dozen" > https://copenhagenconsensus.com/halftime
Yes, I've been following Lomborg since he published "The Skeptical Environmentalist". Had the opportunity to meet and speak with him after a lecture at Univ. of Alaska in Fairbanks >20 years ago. Maybe it's time to publish "The Pragmatic Environmentalist"?
Overall great piece, but Kuznet's curve is the dumbest thing to come out of the Doom/Mental/Epstein pro-fossil universe and needs to be removed. High per-capita income means high per-capita energy use and high per-capita consumption, which is worse for planetary ecology 100% of the time. Yes, it's a luxury to worry about the environment, but consumption patterns > green lifestyle decisions by extremely wide margins.
We won't remove it, b/c we believe it is highly relevant, not dumb. (Frankly, a better argument we believe is that the EKC disregards the inequities on either side of that curve by focusing on environmental impact and per capita GDP.)
We believe high per-capita energy use need not be worse for planetary ecology on the right side of that curve, though we will grant you that's been the pattern of the last 125 years in advanced nations.
Wasteful high consumption, planned obsolescence, disposable everything has always troubled us. That said, going down the energy density curve to solve the consumption problem is like solving a head cold with a tourniquet around your neck.
Perhaps. I wonder, what forces do you think might change the consumption patterns on the right side of the curve such that they would not resemble the last 125 years in advanced economies?
Not significant. All the energy growth is in Developing Nations now. Your high consumption is getting basic stuff like a transportation system, decent housing, medical care, pensions, education, legal system, refrigeration, 24/7 lighting, secure water supply, emergency services. Otherwise they will rape & pillage nature, burning the trees right out from underneath endangered species like Chimpanzees and Gorillas. Using 10X the land to grow stuff because they have no fertilizers and use inefficient agricultural methods with no irrigation or protection from wildlife or insects. Lots of toxic smoke from burning dung, homemade charcoal & wood.
Fortunately we have an unlimited energy supply in the form of uranium, thorium and deuterium/boron/lithium. The cleanest energy supply on the planet, by a huge margin. Unfortunately our corrupt rulers don't want that, in spite of their endless Climate Change rhetoric.
This excellent article identifies the ideologies behind the climate crisis hoax. My latest "2026" article discusses the main ideology that has overtaken U.S. society in "The Ideology that Captured Our Culture" at https://2026.substack.com/p/the-ideology-that-captured-our-culture.
I’m old enough to remember the John Birch society billboards that said US out of UN. If only we had listened. Between the climate and the human rights division .... why are we still paying for it?
Concerned for farming friends/communities, from west of Saskatoon over to Red Deer. Several years of creeping drought has gotten bad. The kind we've seen take almost ten years to recover from. Friend in SK said he had lots of rain SW of SK couple nights ago. After freeze up. Hope that helps.
Chit maybe Siberia would be better than dealing with those idiot's central planning delusions of grandeur. jk
Seriously though, I get that the industrial demand for centralized energy distribution and some other processes requiring huge megajewels of power. Won't be sufficient for most of the altenergy technology. But altenergy is very sufficient for community & residential applications. Meaning that smaller onsite systems can easily power most large homes and communities that can be serviced by themselves and/or most electricians and tradespeople.
The biggest problem is that societies are too dependent towards centralized everything. Where all we do besides make a living is pay the bills and someone else maintains, delivers and fixes the supply. We all must be fluent in self responsibility instead of being dependent. It's more consuming but 99% ROI.
Having a per-home or community powerplant of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal or other forms of off-grid energy had not been practical or didn't exist back in "the day" when those systems where designed. Much like Tesla's nemesis, Edison was what I refer to as a capital centralist that believed everything provided/supplied to the masses be capitalized upon. Nothing based upon basic human needs necessary to survival should be "free". Like a stick and carrot society or simply put - trained animals. Where as Tesla knew and thought better.
And the legacy continues in the mindset of everything we do as a society but the folks at the top seem to think everything that has been done must be done the same way, like it's traditional or something similar, to keep shooting themselves in the feet.
Can we just think of this as more of a local solution to population, climate and environmental concerns rather than global solutions to the world's so called problems? That which central planning caused in the first place. And let's not vote for political celebrities getting a trophy for saving the planet because their ideas seemed plausible and not give them all the cash they need to string us along for another century. Otherwise we're pissing in the wind here, trying get this thing going for humanity's sake. Right?
Decentralized energy is a nice dream but wind, solar & geothermal are not going to make it happen. Best you can do is use solar to reduce the fuel consumption of a diesel generator that can supply building heat and hot water as well as electricity to a small community. And for that you really need expensive batteries as well, because load will be highly peaking in the evening. It is doable but it is expensive and it is hardly decentralized since it relies upon regular deliveries of diesel fuel, that may well be in short supply.
It would be much better and cheaper to run off of methanol, but our corrupt governments have allowed Vested Interests to blockade that excellent fuel. But even still you will be dependent on centralized methanol plants and substantial delivery networks.
The only way to truly decentralize is with Nuclear power. Using Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, which are still being blockaded by our corrupt regulators. With them you could power a small community and have a ten year supply of fuel on hand.
In the future, one can hope, the cost of tabletop particle accelerators drops sufficiently that you could use a spallation neutron source to fission a small thorium target, called ADSF Accelerator Driven Subcritical Fission. A thorium target the size of a dime could supply one households annual total energy consumption.
Also some potential fusion reactors being researched, like Focus Fusion, could make a compact reactor suitable for small communities. But that remains unproven tech.
I agree that cities are a failed way to organize our society. Smaller communities networked, with largely internet based supply chains rather than big shopping centers. Or Frank Lloyd Wright's idea of the linear city. So you have city in the country and country in the city. With a central corridor for travel, transport and services.
And for the large industry the obvious thing is the 4X4 or 1wk in 1wk out or even 2wk in 2wk out work schedule, camp jobs, just as have taken over the mining industry and a lot of oil & gas job sites. Factory closes, no problem, workers just change job sites rather than having to move to another location.
Thanks SmithFS, for your insight. Although the future, in your extrapolation, is too futuristic at this point in time. It fails to consider what realistically required and metaphorically called a "bridge".
Which is what the Biden administration failed to recognize in their BBB speeches to justify cutting off fossil fuel supplies and production in the West. Which in my opinion proves the BBB wasn't really planned out to be a real solution, but was another strategy to pass massive spending Bills and line the pockets of buarocrats. Because if there was an actual plan for BBB there should be a design or something to show and tell what it all would look like and provide the detailed function of it.
Somehow and probably due to the pandemic's phycological effects on society, desperation made a sales pitch from a speech about hyperbole was missed by Congress and they passed into law authority to spend billions based on theatrics & words. I'm sure Biden was high-fiving Congress soon there after.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that the Obama administration did the very same thing when dumping hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to a solar company. That which went bankrupt.💨
Another member of our team commented again yesterday, "we might not have 200,000 subscribers, but the ones we do have sure seem thoughtful, intelligent, knowledgeable".
It's not obvious to us that per-home or community powerplants of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal or other forms of off-grid ("alternative") energy work at cost or scale outside tiny villages or remote areas of vast countries with little infrastructure.
We're not fans of PG&E or AEP or ConEd but we find it hard to conceive of a per-home or community power plant powering the communities in the Bay area or Marin county, or metro NYC suburbs or those of Chicago. For millions of people living modern Western lives, distributed electricity is a more reliable, cost effective solution than micro grids and community utility via "alternative" energy.
That's exactly the point. Cities require the mass amounts of energy, are massively inefficient and toxic. The reverse needs to be considered. People live out in the country; machines, industry, distribution and powerplants should be established in the cities. Thanks for clarifying.
Again you don't cities for industry, you can use remote factories or plants that have basic living quarters to which workers commute on a 4X4 or 1wk in - 1 wk out schedule.
They're already tearing them down. Planned destruction. And blowing them up, i.e. in their Russia proxy war in Ukraine. They will degenerate into Dystopian nightmares like you see in SciFi movies, infrastructure failing, empty buildings, ruled by gangs, drug & rat infested cesspools. That's where our rulers want to send all "enemies of the state" to die. The rest will live in pod 15min cities, eating bugs and monitored 24/7, vaxxed to the max. On UBI, but only if you are an obedient serf. Subject to termination as the Ruling Elites see fit. That's the future if we don't fight back.
I agree completely and share your dystopian view as well, but I'm starting to see glimmers of hope, particularly in the elections of Meloni in Italy, Wilders in the Netherlands, Milei in Argentina, and the rapid rise of the AFD in Germany.
They wish us to live an 18th century lifestyle and eat bugs while they jet around the globe eating steak, and I don't think there are enough Malthusians willing to regress like that to allow it to happen.
I see reasons to hope, but I also know that they won't relinquish power easily, as a cornered animal is the most dangerous of animals.
I would be wary of Simon Michaux, although he does correctly document the implausibility of the fantasy expansion of wind/solar/EVs to replace fossil. He is still a DeGrowther, in the Nate Hagens fan club, that the end of fossil fuels means the end of human technological civilization and the beginning of the Great Simplification. To lock-in that dogma, they have to either ignore Nuclear Energy or lie about it as Michaux does, to an absurd extent.
He is putting Nuclear at an EROI of 15:1 and 5:1 including Uranium mining & enrichment, using the totally debunked schlock Storm van Leeuwen & Smith data. All the modern analysis using centrifuge enrichment put GenII nuclear without fuel reprocessing @ ~75:1. With CANDU's at ~120:1. Analysis of GenIV like MSRs or LSFRs upwards of ~300:1, some analysis putting MSRs @ 2000:1.
Weissbach puts the EROI of a GenII PWR @ 70:1 for a 60yr lifespan. 61% of the input energy is spent on the fuel cycle. Going closed cycle could eliminate almost all of that.
Cal Abel puts pyroprocessing of spent fuel at an EROI of ~9000:1. MSRs with fuel reprocessing at upwards of 1000:1
And then Michaux states:
"...We already discussed the uranium question and found that it was not possible to transition the world to 100% nuclear power without exhausting literally every possible source of uranium by year 2095 with Gen. II reactors, by year 2101 with Gen. III+ reactors, or by year 2194 with unproven and conceptual Gen. IV reactors..."
"...IFR-type reactors extract 99.99% of the energy immanent in mined uranium but today's reactors extract only 0.6%. The price of uranium would contribute the same amount to the delivered electricity price from IFR-type reactors if it were to increase 167 fold. Uranium could be economically extracted from lower quality ores, or from seawater, where there is estimated to be at least a thousand times more than could be extracted from land. Another low-quality ore is coal-fired power plant waste, which contains nineteen times more energy in the form of uranium and thorium than was extracted by burning the coal. Thorium, four times more common than uranium, can be converted to fissile fuel by neutron transmutation in a fast-spectrum reactor...Nuclear fission is an effectively inexhaustible source of energy..."
And then he claims: "...unproven and conceptual Gen. IV reactors...", they are already running. He doesn't know what he is talking about. Blatant & overt dishonesty. He obviously, unquestionably has a personal agenda to promote.
Russia has been running their BN-800 sodium fast reactor since 2016 and their BN-600 since 1981 and is planning on building 3 BN-1200's and China is currently building 2 CFR-600 Sodium Fast reactors. Russia is planning on closing the fuel cycle with BN-1200's on their PWR's and expect the BN-1200's to be lower cost than their LWR's. India is just about finished their first Sodium Fast reactor and is also planning on closing their fuel cycle with their 500MWe fast reactors and PHWR-700 reactors eventually running on natural thorium.
I would add to what Van Snyder said. When nuclear fission fuel amount per unit energy is reduced by 167X, then it would be economical to just add an additional circuit running off the heavy flotation concentrate from any metals mine, that is already concentrated in uranium & thorium, to extract those metals. Likely that would be more uranium & thorium in that to power our entire civilization. Also potash mine tails are high in uranium. No mining needed. Right now the annual thorium waste from one Rare Earth mine is sufficient to supply the total primary energy supply of our entire civilization for a full year.
Each time we've referenced Simon's work, we've qualified it with something to the effect of "assume Michaux is off by an order of magnitude". We've studied his analyses (incl his calc's for including nuclear in the attempt to replace hydrocarbons). In the context of the metals necessary relative to wind/solar we find his figures compelling if imperfect.
We actually listen to Nate Hagens routinely (as well as Columbia Energy Exchange and a whole bunch of other similar things. It's part of our job. "We do this so you don't have to" kinda thing). We get Nate's, Simon's, and Dr. Chris Martenson's de-growth/simplification views. We find Martenson's argument of terminal decline in energy return on energy invested in both conventional and unconventional oil/gas interesting and worrying, long term (though we are not "peak oilers").
We disagree with Hagens', Michaux's, Martenson's Malthusian-tinted view. Color us in the Simon/Cornucopian camp. Which means we agree with you wholeheartedly on nuclear, even as we worry the EcoStatist and Neo-Malthusians will try and kill it.
Final comment: we believe that Nate, Simon and Chris are all well intended. Very different from the malevolent misanthropes that need to be cast from the environmental movement in order to return it to a place of balance and tradeoff.
I'll just say, the only meaningful metric for measuring anything is the amount of human energy it saves or consumes in its implementation. The only meaningful measure we personally use is the amount of happiness we get in return from ... life that is, in the end.
Do you -
a) not think there will be any human health and financial impacts from climate change
b) think it but don’t care
c) think it but think the impacts are insignificant compared to what you’ve outlined in this piece, or
d) think there will be significant impacts but think we can’t stop it so there’s no point trying
Have you done any work on comparing the increase of cost of living associated with the green transition vs increasing temperature?
Thank you, environMENTAL, for your continued information and warnings. I look forward to hearing more from advocates of responsible stewardship, where (many or even most) individuals make real-time choices about energy use. Many of us do already, of course, but those dedicated to diktats make it seem that only government can or should determine the proper temperature for our houses or the proper source of heat for cooking our food. (We the people of course being incapable of deciding when electric or gas or propane might be our best choice for cooking or heating our homes. And we are incapable of making economic choices, like which appliances to use, or how high we should turn our air conditioners.) Keep pressing on.
You're welcome. Thanks for the comment and for being here.
An excellent summary of the myriad of problems with Green energy policy.
One missing point is that there are alternatives that can work much better for both the economy and the environment. I explain the alternative in one of my recent articles:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/there-is-a-better-alternative-to
Just read. Nice piece! The focus on lifting the developing world is key for us, too. Good work!
Great post, thank you! Perhaps some researcher is going to study emissions versus COP conferences, and conclude the best way to slow emissions is to stop having COP conferences. (That would be a fun thesis to defend, particularly at Harvard or Stanford!)
Thanks!
This post is excellent. A comprehensive overview of the futility of the’green’ agenda, and most likely the true purpose, to centralize power through the elites. Socialism/Marxism rebranded
Thank you!
Let's solve solvable problems like clean drinking water, preparing infrastructure for shoreline transgression, improving basic education, and eliminating corruption.
Completely agree, but it won't happen because (1) those issues aren't political touchstones, and (2) they don't know how! Are you old enough to remember Johnson's "war on poverty?" how about Reagan's "war on drugs" or Bush's "war on terror?" Guess what? We lost all three! And during all three, water, infrastructure, corruption problems, all existed. Declaring "war on fossil fuels" or "war on climate change" (a sure loser!!!!!) merely diverts the voter's attention from a complete failure of domestic and foreign policy screw-ups.
Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus have done some nice work re: cost/benefit and priorities. See "Best Things First", the "Doable Dozen" > https://copenhagenconsensus.com/halftime
Yes, I've been following Lomborg since he published "The Skeptical Environmentalist". Had the opportunity to meet and speak with him after a lecture at Univ. of Alaska in Fairbanks >20 years ago. Maybe it's time to publish "The Pragmatic Environmentalist"?
We think his work at Copenhagen Consensus is effectively that.
Right. Maybe wrap it up in a book written for the layman.
Overall great piece, but Kuznet's curve is the dumbest thing to come out of the Doom/Mental/Epstein pro-fossil universe and needs to be removed. High per-capita income means high per-capita energy use and high per-capita consumption, which is worse for planetary ecology 100% of the time. Yes, it's a luxury to worry about the environment, but consumption patterns > green lifestyle decisions by extremely wide margins.
Thanks for the comment.
We won't remove it, b/c we believe it is highly relevant, not dumb. (Frankly, a better argument we believe is that the EKC disregards the inequities on either side of that curve by focusing on environmental impact and per capita GDP.)
We believe high per-capita energy use need not be worse for planetary ecology on the right side of that curve, though we will grant you that's been the pattern of the last 125 years in advanced nations.
Wasteful high consumption, planned obsolescence, disposable everything has always troubled us. That said, going down the energy density curve to solve the consumption problem is like solving a head cold with a tourniquet around your neck.
We advise against that.
Perhaps. I wonder, what forces do you think might change the consumption patterns on the right side of the curve such that they would not resemble the last 125 years in advanced economies?
Not significant. All the energy growth is in Developing Nations now. Your high consumption is getting basic stuff like a transportation system, decent housing, medical care, pensions, education, legal system, refrigeration, 24/7 lighting, secure water supply, emergency services. Otherwise they will rape & pillage nature, burning the trees right out from underneath endangered species like Chimpanzees and Gorillas. Using 10X the land to grow stuff because they have no fertilizers and use inefficient agricultural methods with no irrigation or protection from wildlife or insects. Lots of toxic smoke from burning dung, homemade charcoal & wood.
Fortunately we have an unlimited energy supply in the form of uranium, thorium and deuterium/boron/lithium. The cleanest energy supply on the planet, by a huge margin. Unfortunately our corrupt rulers don't want that, in spite of their endless Climate Change rhetoric.
Yep.
I believe the Malthusians think they would survive the depopulation, probably because they are white rich and entitled.
Maybe they believe that.
We suspect that if they were to ever get their wish, they'd be among the first to go.
This excellent article identifies the ideologies behind the climate crisis hoax. My latest "2026" article discusses the main ideology that has overtaken U.S. society in "The Ideology that Captured Our Culture" at https://2026.substack.com/p/the-ideology-that-captured-our-culture.
Thanks!
I’m old enough to remember the John Birch society billboards that said US out of UN. If only we had listened. Between the climate and the human rights division .... why are we still paying for it?
B/c the returns on our investment are obviously so high, Lee.
;)
The United Nations peaked in 1959 with its inclusion in a scene from Hitchcock’s brilliant North by Northwest. All downhill ever since.
Ha!
Glad you have spent time there, northern AB and SK are truly special and yes, we have all we need, if only we had better leadership in both countries.
Concerned for farming friends/communities, from west of Saskatoon over to Red Deer. Several years of creeping drought has gotten bad. The kind we've seen take almost ten years to recover from. Friend in SK said he had lots of rain SW of SK couple nights ago. After freeze up. Hope that helps.
Chit maybe Siberia would be better than dealing with those idiot's central planning delusions of grandeur. jk
Seriously though, I get that the industrial demand for centralized energy distribution and some other processes requiring huge megajewels of power. Won't be sufficient for most of the altenergy technology. But altenergy is very sufficient for community & residential applications. Meaning that smaller onsite systems can easily power most large homes and communities that can be serviced by themselves and/or most electricians and tradespeople.
The biggest problem is that societies are too dependent towards centralized everything. Where all we do besides make a living is pay the bills and someone else maintains, delivers and fixes the supply. We all must be fluent in self responsibility instead of being dependent. It's more consuming but 99% ROI.
Having a per-home or community powerplant of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal or other forms of off-grid energy had not been practical or didn't exist back in "the day" when those systems where designed. Much like Tesla's nemesis, Edison was what I refer to as a capital centralist that believed everything provided/supplied to the masses be capitalized upon. Nothing based upon basic human needs necessary to survival should be "free". Like a stick and carrot society or simply put - trained animals. Where as Tesla knew and thought better.
And the legacy continues in the mindset of everything we do as a society but the folks at the top seem to think everything that has been done must be done the same way, like it's traditional or something similar, to keep shooting themselves in the feet.
Can we just think of this as more of a local solution to population, climate and environmental concerns rather than global solutions to the world's so called problems? That which central planning caused in the first place. And let's not vote for political celebrities getting a trophy for saving the planet because their ideas seemed plausible and not give them all the cash they need to string us along for another century. Otherwise we're pissing in the wind here, trying get this thing going for humanity's sake. Right?
Decentralized energy is a nice dream but wind, solar & geothermal are not going to make it happen. Best you can do is use solar to reduce the fuel consumption of a diesel generator that can supply building heat and hot water as well as electricity to a small community. And for that you really need expensive batteries as well, because load will be highly peaking in the evening. It is doable but it is expensive and it is hardly decentralized since it relies upon regular deliveries of diesel fuel, that may well be in short supply.
It would be much better and cheaper to run off of methanol, but our corrupt governments have allowed Vested Interests to blockade that excellent fuel. But even still you will be dependent on centralized methanol plants and substantial delivery networks.
The only way to truly decentralize is with Nuclear power. Using Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, which are still being blockaded by our corrupt regulators. With them you could power a small community and have a ten year supply of fuel on hand.
In the future, one can hope, the cost of tabletop particle accelerators drops sufficiently that you could use a spallation neutron source to fission a small thorium target, called ADSF Accelerator Driven Subcritical Fission. A thorium target the size of a dime could supply one households annual total energy consumption.
Also some potential fusion reactors being researched, like Focus Fusion, could make a compact reactor suitable for small communities. But that remains unproven tech.
I agree that cities are a failed way to organize our society. Smaller communities networked, with largely internet based supply chains rather than big shopping centers. Or Frank Lloyd Wright's idea of the linear city. So you have city in the country and country in the city. With a central corridor for travel, transport and services.
And for the large industry the obvious thing is the 4X4 or 1wk in 1wk out or even 2wk in 2wk out work schedule, camp jobs, just as have taken over the mining industry and a lot of oil & gas job sites. Factory closes, no problem, workers just change job sites rather than having to move to another location.
Thanks SmithFS, for your insight. Although the future, in your extrapolation, is too futuristic at this point in time. It fails to consider what realistically required and metaphorically called a "bridge".
Which is what the Biden administration failed to recognize in their BBB speeches to justify cutting off fossil fuel supplies and production in the West. Which in my opinion proves the BBB wasn't really planned out to be a real solution, but was another strategy to pass massive spending Bills and line the pockets of buarocrats. Because if there was an actual plan for BBB there should be a design or something to show and tell what it all would look like and provide the detailed function of it.
Somehow and probably due to the pandemic's phycological effects on society, desperation made a sales pitch from a speech about hyperbole was missed by Congress and they passed into law authority to spend billions based on theatrics & words. I'm sure Biden was high-fiving Congress soon there after.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that the Obama administration did the very same thing when dumping hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to a solar company. That which went bankrupt.💨
Always impressed with your comments. What a great level of knowledge and I know you are right because I agree completely 😁
We'll second that.
Another member of our team commented again yesterday, "we might not have 200,000 subscribers, but the ones we do have sure seem thoughtful, intelligent, knowledgeable".
Thanks for being part of that you two......
Well.... you should have 200,000 subscribers!
I find your articles interesting and useful. Thank you.
Thanks....and your friend Robert Bryce should as well!
Thanks. Likewise.
It's not obvious to us that per-home or community powerplants of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal or other forms of off-grid ("alternative") energy work at cost or scale outside tiny villages or remote areas of vast countries with little infrastructure.
We're not fans of PG&E or AEP or ConEd but we find it hard to conceive of a per-home or community power plant powering the communities in the Bay area or Marin county, or metro NYC suburbs or those of Chicago. For millions of people living modern Western lives, distributed electricity is a more reliable, cost effective solution than micro grids and community utility via "alternative" energy.
That's exactly the point. Cities require the mass amounts of energy, are massively inefficient and toxic. The reverse needs to be considered. People live out in the country; machines, industry, distribution and powerplants should be established in the cities. Thanks for clarifying.
Again you don't cities for industry, you can use remote factories or plants that have basic living quarters to which workers commute on a 4X4 or 1wk in - 1 wk out schedule.
Interesting, so what will cities be used for since they're already cities? Just tear them down?
They're already tearing them down. Planned destruction. And blowing them up, i.e. in their Russia proxy war in Ukraine. They will degenerate into Dystopian nightmares like you see in SciFi movies, infrastructure failing, empty buildings, ruled by gangs, drug & rat infested cesspools. That's where our rulers want to send all "enemies of the state" to die. The rest will live in pod 15min cities, eating bugs and monitored 24/7, vaxxed to the max. On UBI, but only if you are an obedient serf. Subject to termination as the Ruling Elites see fit. That's the future if we don't fight back.
Good point but I'm thinking local where I was born and raised. Thanks for clarifying your position.
Snake Pliskin - Escape from Portland!
100%
EXCELLENT commentary, far surpassing your always great commentary!!!!
If only they would listen to us, but they're far too hubris-infested to seek any counsel.
The "counsel" of reality will find them. It's only a question of how much suffering, destruction and how widespread that has to be first.
We're trying to help them avoid it. But, we're going to need to rely on motivating the people who elect them it appears.
I agree completely and share your dystopian view as well, but I'm starting to see glimmers of hope, particularly in the elections of Meloni in Italy, Wilders in the Netherlands, Milei in Argentina, and the rapid rise of the AFD in Germany.
They wish us to live an 18th century lifestyle and eat bugs while they jet around the globe eating steak, and I don't think there are enough Malthusians willing to regress like that to allow it to happen.
I see reasons to hope, but I also know that they won't relinquish power easily, as a cornered animal is the most dangerous of animals.
Mental, that open letter was better than sex (maybe I’m doing it wrong). If I smoked, I’d be lighting one up now.
Keep up the brilliant work and never pull your punches.
Thank you!
You're definitely doing it wrong.
(But it might be fair to say that about most Doomberg pieces, in our opinion....)
I would be wary of Simon Michaux, although he does correctly document the implausibility of the fantasy expansion of wind/solar/EVs to replace fossil. He is still a DeGrowther, in the Nate Hagens fan club, that the end of fossil fuels means the end of human technological civilization and the beginning of the Great Simplification. To lock-in that dogma, they have to either ignore Nuclear Energy or lie about it as Michaux does, to an absurd extent.
He is putting Nuclear at an EROI of 15:1 and 5:1 including Uranium mining & enrichment, using the totally debunked schlock Storm van Leeuwen & Smith data. All the modern analysis using centrifuge enrichment put GenII nuclear without fuel reprocessing @ ~75:1. With CANDU's at ~120:1. Analysis of GenIV like MSRs or LSFRs upwards of ~300:1, some analysis putting MSRs @ 2000:1.
Weissbach puts the EROI of a GenII PWR @ 70:1 for a 60yr lifespan. 61% of the input energy is spent on the fuel cycle. Going closed cycle could eliminate almost all of that.
Cal Abel puts pyroprocessing of spent fuel at an EROI of ~9000:1. MSRs with fuel reprocessing at upwards of 1000:1
And then Michaux states:
"...We already discussed the uranium question and found that it was not possible to transition the world to 100% nuclear power without exhausting literally every possible source of uranium by year 2095 with Gen. II reactors, by year 2101 with Gen. III+ reactors, or by year 2194 with unproven and conceptual Gen. IV reactors..."
That is fabricated utter nonsense, see:
https://vsnyder.substack.com/p/five-myths-about-nuclear-power
"...IFR-type reactors extract 99.99% of the energy immanent in mined uranium but today's reactors extract only 0.6%. The price of uranium would contribute the same amount to the delivered electricity price from IFR-type reactors if it were to increase 167 fold. Uranium could be economically extracted from lower quality ores, or from seawater, where there is estimated to be at least a thousand times more than could be extracted from land. Another low-quality ore is coal-fired power plant waste, which contains nineteen times more energy in the form of uranium and thorium than was extracted by burning the coal. Thorium, four times more common than uranium, can be converted to fissile fuel by neutron transmutation in a fast-spectrum reactor...Nuclear fission is an effectively inexhaustible source of energy..."
And then he claims: "...unproven and conceptual Gen. IV reactors...", they are already running. He doesn't know what he is talking about. Blatant & overt dishonesty. He obviously, unquestionably has a personal agenda to promote.
Russia has been running their BN-800 sodium fast reactor since 2016 and their BN-600 since 1981 and is planning on building 3 BN-1200's and China is currently building 2 CFR-600 Sodium Fast reactors. Russia is planning on closing the fuel cycle with BN-1200's on their PWR's and expect the BN-1200's to be lower cost than their LWR's. India is just about finished their first Sodium Fast reactor and is also planning on closing their fuel cycle with their 500MWe fast reactors and PHWR-700 reactors eventually running on natural thorium.
I would add to what Van Snyder said. When nuclear fission fuel amount per unit energy is reduced by 167X, then it would be economical to just add an additional circuit running off the heavy flotation concentrate from any metals mine, that is already concentrated in uranium & thorium, to extract those metals. Likely that would be more uranium & thorium in that to power our entire civilization. Also potash mine tails are high in uranium. No mining needed. Right now the annual thorium waste from one Rare Earth mine is sufficient to supply the total primary energy supply of our entire civilization for a full year.
Thank you for the detailed comment.
Each time we've referenced Simon's work, we've qualified it with something to the effect of "assume Michaux is off by an order of magnitude". We've studied his analyses (incl his calc's for including nuclear in the attempt to replace hydrocarbons). In the context of the metals necessary relative to wind/solar we find his figures compelling if imperfect.
We actually listen to Nate Hagens routinely (as well as Columbia Energy Exchange and a whole bunch of other similar things. It's part of our job. "We do this so you don't have to" kinda thing). We get Nate's, Simon's, and Dr. Chris Martenson's de-growth/simplification views. We find Martenson's argument of terminal decline in energy return on energy invested in both conventional and unconventional oil/gas interesting and worrying, long term (though we are not "peak oilers").
We disagree with Hagens', Michaux's, Martenson's Malthusian-tinted view. Color us in the Simon/Cornucopian camp. Which means we agree with you wholeheartedly on nuclear, even as we worry the EcoStatist and Neo-Malthusians will try and kill it.
Final comment: we believe that Nate, Simon and Chris are all well intended. Very different from the malevolent misanthropes that need to be cast from the environmental movement in order to return it to a place of balance and tradeoff.
I'll just say, the only meaningful metric for measuring anything is the amount of human energy it saves or consumes in its implementation. The only meaningful measure we personally use is the amount of happiness we get in return from ... life that is, in the end.