Transition Math Only Works for Global Warming Grifters
Robert Bradley
Founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research
Principal, MasterResource: A Free-Market Energy Blog….
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[Editor’s Note: Transition math, the “new math” used by global warming grifters only works fathom it seems and makes little or no sense in the very real world in which we live.]
There is growing recognition among the climate-crisis crowd that the solutions are way, way inadequate to the alleged problem. But many still see their area as the most promising and in need of more attention (i.e., government, NGO favor).
A specialist in “energy transition engineering,” Susan Krumdieck, recently wrote to the Climate Change Professionals Group:
Your government finally makes the move to declare a “Net Zero” target. So what they do is declare wind and solar the saviours! Somebody does a few calculations and quietly hands a paper to the minister showing that this won’t work as a substitution while consumption keeps growing. The minister asks; why not?
And then we get the announcements that storage is the saviour. Then somebody does a calculation and quietly hands a paper to the minister showing how big the battery would be and explaining why it won’t work.
And then we get announcements that Hydrogen is the saviour. Then somebody does a calculation, quietly hands a paper to the minister showing the size of the hydrogen storage tank and that it won’t work.
And then we get an announcement: salt caverns are the saviour.
And then, even though the wind and solar excitement is really working, fields are getting covered with panels and wind turbines are popping up everywhere, somebody does a calculation, quietly hands a paper to the minister showing the emissions trajectory because none of this saviour tech is reducing fossil fuel production.
And then we get announcements; EV’s CCS, DACS and CCUS are the saviours….
It’s all getting a bit boring, eh?
Bravo! Energy/technological realism from within the climate community…. But wait–Susan is a technologist who thinks engineering breakthroughs (miracles?) can make Net Zero more than a greenwashing term. Engineering is technology, and only a small subset of the technologically possible are economic, defined as creating more value than the sum of the resource inputs.
So I answered:
“Transition engineers” to the rescue? I do not think so either. Energy density drives reality and the political debate.
Regarding the false narratives about ‘solutions’, Big Money behind each of the pseudo-solutions: wind, solar, batteries, carbon capture, hydrogen… Why would their lobbies want to say ‘we are not part of the solution’ and lose government subsidies and green(wash) halos?
It’s way past time to do the climate math, get realistic, and stop throwing good money after bad in the CO2 mitigation crusade. The futility of it all ensures that government intervention will become more and more intrusive as new measures are pilled upon old ones. The real ‘greenwashers’ in the climate debate are those peddling false solutions parading as clean, green, and scalable.
Here is a better solution to the energy problem: If we harvest all the global warming gas produced as individual internal digestive methane in and by the 20 million New Yorkers, we would have all the energy individually morally justifiable. One should be allowed to use only so much methane as one produces (equity). The less methane one produces from one’s alimentary canal the less heat, hot water, vehicle transportation, and cooking that person would be allowed. The cities would also harvest the human elimination matter produced from 330,000,000 flushes of No. 2 individual human elimination matter produced daily, nationwide. And of course this would be a great boon to farmers as they have farm animals from which they could increase their animal methane harvest, not to mention the manure pile methane harvesting (diversity). Farmers would become rich in methane and could sell it to the urban population for a handsome profit. We could even eliminate public toilets by requiring that every human wear Butt Bags and miniature methane compressors to harvest the human elimination product. This will return personal responsibility and self-reliance to the individual while helping one’s neighbors. Technology is certainly available to manufacture and attach the Butt Bags and the miniature methane compressors on each citizen’s posterior. We all have to sacrifice for the good of the collective whole (inclusion). “Better Living through Butt Bags”
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