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The “World’s Dumbest Energy Policy” Just Got Dumber… The Frightening Race To Reset By World War

By P Gosselin – No Tricks Zone – 22. February 2022

Just when we thought leaders couldn’t possibly screw things up more… now Europe faces a massively crippling energy shock and the German Chancellor closes a pipeline… NATO’s frightening race to war with Russia.

The inflation rate in Germany stood at +4.9% in January, 2022. In December 2021, it had been +5.3% when it reached its highest level in almost 30 years.

Soaring energy costs

The main inflation driver for Germany is energy, which in January saw an increase of 20.5% year on year.

According the the the Federal Statistical Office, motor fuel prices jumped 24.8% and household energy prices 18.3%, year on year. The price of home heating oil rose a whopping 51.9%, natural gas up 32.2% and electricity +11.1%.

The steep price rise for energy products was affected by several factors: 1) the CO2 charge that increased from 25 euros to 30 euros per metric ton of CO2 at the beginning of the year and 2) higher electricity prices.

Escalating to war

Now worries are growing that the situation Europe is about to get a lot worse.

Earlier today Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany was suspending the approval process for the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline – which means it cannot go online. The pipeline was built to be a major supply line to meet Germany’s energy needs as the country takes nuclear and coal power plants offline.

“55% of Germany’s natural gas demand is met by Russia’s Gazprom. Gas storage facilities in the country are currently only 31% full,” reports Disclose.tv.

2000 euros for 1000 cubic meters of gas

Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, reacted with a forceful tweet to the German move:

Nuclear superpowers’ mad race to world war

All signs point to an escalating Ukraine conflict that threatens to fly out of control, possibly unleashing a World War between nuclear super-powers Russia and NATO.

It’s reported: “NATO has put more than 100 fighter jets on high alert, and 120 allied ships are underway in what Stoltenberg called ‘the most dangerous moment for European security in a generation.’”

Stock up everyone. it’s not looking good. We’re being run by dangerous, reckless madmen.

February 22, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Before you save the planet, save the people who live on it

By Vijay Jayaraj – bizpacreview – February 12, 2022  

Climate change frequently dominates media coverage and political discourse. Why wouldn’t it when those advancing the apocalyptic agenda speak in terms of saving the planet? The state of the climate is nothing if not an “existential threat,” or so it is said.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that the motives of climate alarmists are as pure as the environment they envision. That they really do see their roles as saviors. Even so, there is a very large elephant in the room, which is that they seek to save the planet by killing its inhabitants — unwittingly or not.

Not only do climate enthusiasts refuse to acknowledge the issue of ongoing energy poverty for billions of people across the world, but they promote policies that exacerbate lack of access to affordable, reliable electricity. The socio-economic conditions of energy poverty, which can only be worsened by the forced replacement of fossil fuels with wind and solar, contribute to higher rates of both morbidity and mortality.

Lack of gas for cooking and heating is the major cause of death from indoor air pollution in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) states, “Around 2.6 billion people cook using polluting open fires or simple stoves fueled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste).” Around 4 million people among them die annually and many more millions suffer long-lasting illnesses.

Community-level energy poverty affects larger populations. Some regions that are home to hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Asia have no access to electricity. Among those who do have electricity, the supply is highly unreliable. From inadequate supplies of drinking water to intermittent power in health care centers, energy poverty poses an imminent threat to the lives of these people.

Death due to blackouts in hospitals has become a common event. A 2020 scientific study suggests that there is a possibility of between 3 to 105 additional deaths per 1,000 patients in grids with frequent blackouts. Problems “can range from postponing surgery, postponing accurate diagnoses for a needed surgery, permanent disabilities, and even to fatalities during surgery, due to failure of various medical equipment,” according to the study.

Climate alarmists are seemingly unaware of the billions of people who wouldn’t live to see the future if their basic energy necessities of today were not met by affordable and available fossil fuels. For people in extreme energy poverty, dreams of climbing the socio-economic ladder are impossible to achieve without coal, oil and natural gas. Rhetoric about “green” energy meeting these needs ignores the hard, physical reality that wind and solar can produce but a tiny fraction of the output of traditional generating sources..

Even if third-world governments — backed with foreign aid — install expensive micro-scale, off-grid renewable technologies, such systems are of a temporary nature incapable of meeting high baseload energy demand for either domestic or commercial use. They are of little or no use when there is no sun or wind.

The choice of energy source in the poorest areas is a matter of life and death in many cases. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of climate change and the supposed ability of government policy to avoid global warming, it is necessary that all agree on the immediate need for affordable and reliable energy for those who don’t have it.

Saving the planet must not mean rejecting fossil fuels to meet such needs. Otherwise, the clarion call of environmental activists is the death knell for the billions they would condemn to energy poverty.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Contributing Writer to the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.

February 20, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

US warns of ‘global fallout’

The world economy will pay a heavy price if the West imposes new sanctions on Moscow, the US Treasury warns

By Alexey Viryasov | RT | February 17, 2022

If Russia launches an invasion of Ukraine, the global economy will suffer an inevitable fallout as a result of newly unleashed Western sanctions on Moscow, the US Treasury secretary warned on Wednesday.

Speaking to French news agency AFP, Janet Yellen explained that the US and its European allies are preparing a “very substantial package of sanctions that will have severe consequences for the Russian economy.”

However, despite Washington wanting the highest cost to fall on Moscow, she admitted that there would be “some global fallout” from the measures.

The primary concern of Washington and Brussels is the potential impact of economic sanctions on the global energy market. As a major exporter of energy, Moscow supplies around 40% of the gas used by EU countries. The bloc’s energy security could be in danger if Moscow were to cut off its gas pipelines in retaliation for economic sanctions, some have claimed. And even if Russia doesn’t limit its supply, energy prices could still rise even further in the event of a large-scale conflict in Europe.

Earlier on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden warned that Americans would also have to pay a heavy price for the escalation around Ukraine.

“If Russia decides to invade, that would also have consequences here at home. But the American people understand that defending democracy and liberty is never without cost,” he said. “I will not pretend this will be painless.”

The recent spat over Ukraine between Moscow and NATO allies started when Russia allegedly began amassing troops on its Western border. Fears of war then led to some nations, including the US, opting to evacuate diplomatic personnel from Kiev. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that it is planning a military incursion, claiming that troop movements near the frontier are due to planned training exercises.

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Pandemic-related school closings likely to have far-reaching effects on child well-being

By Sandra M. Chafouleas – The Conversation – February 9, 2022

A global analysis has found that kids whose schools closed to stop the spread of various waves of the coronavirus lost educational progress and are at increased risk of dropping out of school.

As a result, the study says, they will earn less money from work over their lifetimes than they would have if schools had remained open.

Educational researchers like me know these students will feel the effects of pandemic-related school closures for many years to come. Here are four other ways the closings have affected students’ well-being for the long term:

1. Academic progress

At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, most students were about four to five months behind where they should have been in math and reading, according to a July 2021 report by McKinsey and Co., a global management consulting firm.

When the researchers looked at the data from fall 2021, though, they found students attending majority-white schools are catching up. But students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds — including those attending majority-Black or low-income schools — are falling further behind.

As a result, students attending majority-Black schools are now estimated to be a full year behind those attending majority-white schools.

Differences also can vary by grade level. High schools have been closed more total days than elementary schools. According to a recent news report, 2021 graduation rates dipped across the country, and some education leaders fear future graduating classes may be hit even harder.

Schools have scrambled to provide options such as credit recovery to boost graduation rates, leaving concerns about the quality of learning.

College and university leaders have been preparing for first-year students with less knowledge, weaker study habits and more difficulty concentrating than new college arrivals in past years.

2. Social-emotional development

Even early in the pandemic, school closings were harming students’ social and emotional well-being, according to a review of 36 studies across 11 countries including the U.S. By summer 2021, teachers and administrators in the U.S. said students felt more emotional distress, disengagement, depression, anxiety and loneliness than in previous years.

When schools resumed in fall 2021, large numbers of children in the U.S. had lost a primary caregiver over the previous year to COVID-19. A colleague and I raised concerns about the anxiety and grief those students would likely feel.

In addition, 28% of all parents of children in grades K-12 are “very concerned” or “extremely concerned” about their child’s mental health and social and emotional well-being. That’s down from a high of 35% in spring 2021, but is still 7% higher than before the pandemic.

Parents of Black and Hispanic students are 5% more likely to be worried than parents of white students.

Schools and organizations have focused resources on supporting students’ social, emotional and mental health. The U.S. Department of Education, for example, recommends, based on research, that teachers integrate lessons around compassion and courage into classroom activities, and that schools establish wellness teams to help students.

States have said they plan to address these needs with federal funds meant to help schools respond to the pandemic. In Connecticut, for example, school districts will hire additional mental health support staff, offer social-emotional programs and partner with local agencies to increase access to supports.

3. Behavioral habits

The return to in-person learning has been accompanied by school leaders’ reports of increasing student misbehavior and threats of violence. These increases were more likely to be reported in larger districts and where most students had engaged in remote or hybrid learning — rather than in-person instruction — during the prior school year.

Viral social media “challenges” — like memes on TikTok suggesting students “smack a staff member” or skip school on a particular day — certainly aren’t helping educators provide safe and supportive environments.

Parents’ distress is also affecting their children. Students whose parents are depressed, anxious, lonely and exhausted are more likely to misbehave in school — and that connection grew stronger during lockdown periods when schools were closed.

Meanwhile, news reports show students are missing more school than they were before the pandemic, with more kids out for more than 15 days of a school year.

Given links between chronic absenteeism and increased high school dropout rates, researchers warn this increase in missed school could lead between 1.7 million and 3.3 million students in eighth through 12th grade to not graduate on time.

4. Physical health

Adults have suffered hair loss, sore eyes, irritable bowels and skin flare-ups as a result of the pandemic. One study found that Chinese preschool children whose schools closed during the pandemic were shorter than preschoolers in previous years, though the researchers did not observe noteworthy differences in weight change.

Schools can be a primary place for children to access physical activity and healthy food. Amid school closures, researchers are exploring the effects of losing out on these benefits. During lockdowns in Italy, children with obesity engaged in less physical activity, slept and used screens more and increased their consumption of potato chips and sugary drinks.

In the U.S., 1 in 4 families with school-age children don’t have reliable access to food. Abrupt school closures cut off more than 30 million children from free and reduced-price lunches and breakfasts delivered at school.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school food programs, provided waivers to let schools provide meals in ways that fit their students’ needs. In Connecticut, for example, researchers found that letting families know about wider availability and pickup sites for to-go school meals boosted the number of students who received food during the pandemic.

Time will tell if the costs of school closings will be worth the benefits. These early indicators show that decisions are not as simple as reducing the physical health risks of COVID-19. A full assessment would consider the effects across all aspects of child well-being, including how diverse populations are affected.

Connection, collaboration and positive interaction are fundamental to healthy childhood growth and development. Working together, schools, families and communities can assess and address every child’s needs to reduce the lasting effects of school closings.

Disclosure statement

Sandra M. Chafouleas receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Education, Connecticut State Department of Education, the Neag Foundation, and the Principal Foundation.

February 12, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Why the Freedom Convoy is provoking unprecedented hysteria

By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 10, 2022

In the two weeks since the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters began rallying in Ottawa to demand an end to all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions nationwide, it has become clear that this movement isn’t like other protest movements. And that’s a scary proposition for those in charge who thought that they’d manage and exploit this crisis on their own sweet time and schedule regardless of the actual science and reality on the ground.

There has long been an agenda to corral as many humans as possible unwittingly into a global dragnet through technological adoption. That’s what the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden were about back in 2013. A technological panopticon provides those in charge with the ability to monitor and ultimately control or sanction dissidents or outliers as the state pursues the self-serving agenda of a select few. Algorithms that exploit this massive online presence enable the state to accurately craft propaganda to be deployed to vilify them in the eyes of the general population, while portraying the state as the great protector — all while selling citizens out to the interests of a select few elites. Essentially, people are manipulated into arguing against their own good.

For those citizens who aren’t seduced by the mere convenience of technology or the narcissistic allure of social media, the fear of terrorism or of Covid-19 more actively encouraged onboarding to these dragnets. And that was before it was flat-out mandated with government-issued QR code health and vaccine passes that linked directly to your identity.

But then a bunch of truckers noticed that the threat of authoritarianism in Canada and elsewhere was closer than it may appear in their mirrors. And these essential workers decided to park their essential tools until officials stopped treating essential freedoms like they were negotiable.

Because Canadian mainstream media is so severely lacking in truly contradictory debate and diversity of thought, the protests risked sparking an unprecedented new awareness for those who had been force-fed government talking points while they may have already been starting to wonder why their entourage was triple-jabbed and still catching the virus. They were probably beginning to question the real value of the sacrifices that they were forced by government into making over the past two years under the illusion of safety.

Into this mix comes a group of people who aren’t paid activists or troublemakers, but rather everyday people with real jobs — and ‘essential’ ones at that, as previously hailed by the governments themselves. This makes the truckers a different breed of dissenters from Black Lives Matters, Antifa, or French Yellow Vest protesters. And that explains why the rhetorical big guns are now being deployed against them. The truckers, by demanding that life go back to exactly the way it was before governments started instrumentalizing the pandemic, could undermine any agenda to exploit the crisis for globalist advancement. This would especially be the case if the Freedom Convoy movement spread around the world, as it’s beginning to do. Here in France, for example, convoys departing from various cities are reportedly scheduled to arrive in Paris beginning on February 11.

Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, a dual citizen of Ottawa and Globalistan, wrote in a recent Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece: “[B)y now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed and addressed.”

Unlike previous environmental protests that have raged in Canada to the detriment of the country’s future energy independence, and been backed by US-based think-tanks funded by American business interests close to Washington elites — all of which have apparently escaped Carney’s attention or interest — truckers don’t actually require ‘foreign funding’. They have actual jobs that pay quite well.

You’d think he’d know that, given his illustrious background as an expert in money. But good luck trying to exploit the ‘foreign bogeyman’ trope and attempting to find the scapegoat that you’re looking for. Carney is concerned about the ‘occupation’ by protesters, who are merely fighting against the government blockade of citizens’ lives for the past two years. And a bonus L-O-L for his effort to portray protests to regain basic freedoms as some kind of attempt to overthrow the government of Canada. Perhaps someone could provide him with a paper bag before he passes out?

Here’s your ground truth in Ottawa: “More than 100 Highway Traffic Act and other ‘Provincial Offence Notices’ were issued for offenses including excessive honking, driving the wrong way, defective muffler, no seat belt, alcohol readily available and having the improper class of driving license,” according to a Fox News report.

Well, you know what they say. Every hardcore coup d’état starts with a seat belt offense, right?

Meanwhile, US Homeland Security, already apparently attempting to ward off any potential future pushback against its own unpopular agenda, issued an advisory on February 7 conflating terrorism with “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Would that include dissent against any government-approved narrative around the pandemic and related liberticidal measures?

Restrictions, mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’ in two Canadian provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — are now ending, premiers of both jurisdictions announced on February 7.

The rest of the world now runs the risk of these trucker movements gaining momentum, before the restrictions and mandates can allow for the full implementation of a lasting solution of tracking and surveillance capable of monitoring populist blowback to government insanity.

The rally race between truckers and globalists is on! And with nothing less than democracy and freedom at stake.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

More Focus On The Impossible Costs Of A Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Energy System

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | February 1, 2022

It should be glaringly obvious that, if we are shortly going to try to convert to a “net zero” carbon emissions energy system based entirely on wind, sun and batteries, then there needs to be serious focus on the feasibility and costs of such a system. The particular part of such a prospective system that needs the most focus is the method of energy storage, its cost and, indeed, feasibility. That part needs focus because, as wind and solar increase their share of generation over 50% of the total, storage becomes far and away the dominant driver of the total costs. Moreover, there is no clear way to identify some fixed amount of storage that will be sufficient to make such a system reliable enough to power a modern economy without full backup from dispatchable sources. This also should be glaringly obvious to anyone who thinks about the problem for any amount of time.

And yet, as recently as a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like the entire Western world was racing forward to “net zero” based on wind and sun without anyone anywhere giving real thought to the problem of the amount of storage needed, let alone its cost, and let alone whether any fixed amount of storage could ever fully assure complete reliability. A retired, independent guy named Roger Andrews had done some calculations back in 2018 for test cases of California and Germany, which had showed that at least 30 days’ of storage would be needed to back up a fully wind/solar system. Andrews’s work showed that storage costs just to be sufficient to match actual wind/solar intermittency patterns for 2017 would likely cause a multiplication of the cost of electricity by something in the range of a factor of 14 to 22. But Andrews did not even get to the point of considering how much storage might be needed in worst case scenarios of lengthy winter wind or sun droughts.

And then Andrews died suddenly in early 2019, and nobody immediately took up where he left off.

But then a few weeks ago I discovered at Watts Up With That some new work from someone named Ken Gregory (again, a retired, independent guy — funny, isn’t it?), who produced a spreadsheet for the entire United States again showing that about 30 days’ storage would be needed to back up a fully wind/solar system. (Cost for the storage, assuming all energy use gets electrified: about $400 trillion.)

And now, some others are getting into the act. And none too soon. A guy named Roger Caiazza has a blog called Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. Caiazza, as you might by now have guessed, is another independent retired guy. In the past few months, he has turned his attention principally to the energy transition supposedly getting underway here in New York State, as a result of something called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (the Climate Act). The Climate Act created a gaggle of bureaucracies, and the end of 2021 saw those bureaucracies utter something they call the “Scoping Plan,” laying out how New York is going to go from its current energy system to the nirvana of electrification of everything together with “net zero” emissions by no later than 2050.

The Scoping Plan is a massive document (some 330 pages plus another 500+ pages of appendices) of breathtaking incompetence. The basic approach, summarized by me in this post of December 29, 2021, is that designated “expert” bureaucrats working for the State, themselves having no actual idea how to achieve “net zero” from an engineering perspective, will get around that problem by simply ordering the people to achieve the “net zero” goal by a date certain. Then, presumably some engineers will magically emerge to work out the details. The thousands of people who put this thing together apparently do not regard proof of cost or feasibility as any part of their job. As to the key problem of energy storage to achieve “net zero” goals, the Scoping Plan, in nearly 1000 pages of heft, never even gets to the point of recognizing that the MWH (as opposed to MW) is the key unit that must be considered to assess issues of cost and feasibility.

For the past many weeks, Caiazza has been putting out one post after another ripping the Climate Act and the “Scoping Plan” apart, piece by piece. But for today, I want to focus on one post from January 24 titled “Scoping Plan Reliability Feasibility – Renewable Variability.” This post considers the implications of dependence only on wind and solar power, particularly as to how much storage would be needed with such a system, and without remaining fossil fuel backup, to achieve necessary system reliability.

Rather than creating a spreadsheet for annual wind and solar generation, in the manner of Andrews or Gregory, Caiazza takes a different approach, which is simply to consider a worst-case scenario. (For this purpose Caiazza draws on a January 20 piece from a guy named David Wojick at PA Pundits International.). The beauty of considering the worst-case scenario is that the math becomes so simple you can do it in your head.

So here is the scenario considered by Caiazza. Your mission as the State is to deliver 1000 MW of power continuously with complete reliability, but with only the wind and sun to provide the generation. How much generation capacity do you need, and how much storage do you need? And how much will it cost? (New York’s average current usage is about 18,000 MW, and by the time everything is electrified that will be at least 60,000 MW, so we can multiply everything by 60 at the end to see what the cost implications are for the State of New York.)

First what is the hypothesized worst case? To make the math simple, Caiazza hypothesizes a solar/storage only system, and a five day winter period of overcast, followed by two sunny days to recharge before the next such worst-case 5-day sun drought.

The required battery capacity is simple. Five days at 24 hours a day is 120 hours. To supply a steady 1,000 MW that is a whopping 120,000 MWh of storage. We already have the overnight storage capacity for 16 hours so we now need an additional 104 hours, which means 104,000 MWh of additional storage.

But the 120,000 MWH of storage assumes that you charge the batteries up to 100% and discharge them down to 0%. Real world batteries are supposed to only range between about 20% and 80% charge for best performance.

The standard practice is to operate between 80% and 20%. In that case the available storage is just 60% of the nameplate capacity. This turns the dark days 120,000 MWh into a requirement for 200,000 MWh.

I might throw in that solar panels don’t produce at full capacity for anything close to 8 hours on even the sunniest winter day, but who’s quibbling?

Now suppose that in this worst-case scenario we only had two days to charge up since the last 5 day drought:

Two days gives us 16 hours of charging time for the needed 120,000 MWh, which requires a large 7,500 MW of generating capacity. We already have 3,000 MW of generating capacity but that is in use providing round the clock sunny day power. It is not available to help recharge the dark days batteries. Turns out we need a whopping 10,500 MW of solar generating capacity.

That’s right, it’s not just that you need 200,000 MWH of storage, but you also need more than ten times the “capacity” of solar panels as the mere 1000 MW that you are trying to deliver on a firm basis, just to deal with this worst case scenario to deliver 1000 MW firm through one bad month in the winter.

For cost of storage, Caiazza takes what he calls a standard EIA figure of $250/MWH for the batteries. At this price, 200,000 MWH would cost $50 billion. Then there is the cost of the solar panels. Here, Caiazza has a standard EIA figure of $1.3 million per MW. For the 10,500 MW capacity case, that would mean $13.7 billion. Add the $50 billion plus the $13.7 billion and you get $63.7 billion.

And that’s for the 1000 MW firm power case. Remember, fully-electrified New York State is going to need 60,000 MW firm. So multiply the $63.7 billion by 60, and you get $3.822 trillion. For comparison, the annual GDP of New York State is approximately $1.75 trillion.

Caiazza points out that the state’s Scoping Plan gives necessary storage costs for the new wind/solar/battery system in the range of $288.6 to $310.5 billion. These figures are about 10 times lower than we just calculated. But Caiazza attempts to find in the Scoping Plan the assumptions on which these numbers were calculated, and he can’t find it. Neither can I. Maybe some reader can take a crack.

The reader may find that Caiazza’s $3.8 trillion figure for New York State seems remarkably small relative to the number calculated by Gregory. Gregory got about $400 trillion for the U.S. as a whole. New York representing about 7% of the U.S. economy, that would mean that the cost of the storage piece for New York would be closer to $30 trillion than $4 trillion. The difference is that Caiazza is calculating the cost of just getting through one “worst case” week in the winter, while Gregory considers the cost of trying to get through a whole year where energy needs to be stored up from the summer to get through the whole winter.

One final point. Suppose that, based on even a few decades of meteorological data, you determine that this five day winter sun drought is the true worst case scenario, and you put together a system on that basis. OK, what now happens when one year you get a six day drought? By hypothesis your fossil fuel backup has been dismantled and is no longer available. Does all power then just go out on that sixth day? Remember, this is the dead of winter. People are going to freeze to death. So are you going to keep the fossil fuel backup around just for this one day that might occur only once every few decades? If so, how much of the fossil fuel backup capacity do you need to keep? Think about that for a second. The answer is, all of it. In the 60,000 MW firm power requirement scenario for New York State, you will need 60,000 MW of available fossil fuel capacity to cover that one day when the batteries run out. Dozens of major power plants, fully maintained, and with fuel at the ready, capable of being turned on for this one emergency day perhaps once every twenty years.

Or you can try to avoid that by building yet more solar panels and more batteries so that you can get through a six day sun drought. But what happens when you get a drought of seven days?

It’s almost impossible to contemplate the lack of critical thinking that is going into this so-called green energy transition.

February 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Rocketing Energy Prices Were Part Of The Plan All The Time

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 29, 2022

image

https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/sixth-carbon-budget/

The above excerpt comes from the CCC’s Sixth Carbon Budget. It shows conclusively that high energy prices have always been the official policy, in order that expensive renewables are made viable.

EU carbon prices have already risen from 32 to 80 euro/tonne in the last year, and the new UK ETS system tracks EU prices, with prices now at £75/tonne.

As it turns out global price rises for natural gas have brought the CCC’s dream to fruition a decade early.

January 30, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Guardian: ANTI-VAXXERS ARE JOINING RACIST MILITIAS

OffGuardian | January 23, 2022

This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1. “ANTI-VAXXERS ARE JOINING RACIST MILITIAS”

We’ve covered the increasing demonisation of the “anti-vaxxers” regularly for over a year now. Ever since Joe Biden announced his new “domestic terrorism bill”, it was obvious that “Anti-vaxxers” were going to be re-branded as some kind of violent threat to democracy (and they were).

Now it’s happening in the UK too, with a story being published warning that “anti-vaxxers” are becoming more militant and there are fears they will “evolve towards US-style militias”, according to the Guardian.

The article references nameless “counter terrorism” officials and anonymous “Whitehall sources”, who warn that…

Latest intelligence assessments describe the anti-vaxxer movement as ostensibly a conveyor belt, delivering fresh recruits to extremist groups, including racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist organisations.

So there you have it, being anti-Covid “vaccines” is a gateway protest. Before you know it you’ll be shaving your head and sieg hieling all over the place.

Absolutely pathetic propaganda, and hopefully not an early warning sign of legislation to come.

2. “WHAT IF DEMOCRACY AND CLIMATE MITIGATION ARE INCOMPATIBLE?”

OK, this is from two weeks ago, but it’s too important to skip. The title says it all, Foreign Policy is genuinely wondering if climate change is too much of a threat to let democracy stand in the way of fighting it.

It’s a long read, soaked to the bone in double-talk and built on some very shaky assumptions, but there’s some good material on there…

Democracy works by compromise, but climate change is precisely the type of problem that seems not to allow for it. As the clock on those climate timelines continues to tick, this structural mismatch is becoming increasingly exposed. And as a result, those concerned by climate change—some already with political power, others grasping for it—are now searching for, and finding, new ways of closing the gap between politics and science, by any means necessary.

It warns in the opening section, before concluding…

… democracy, in its current form, is not necessarily the path to a solution. It might, instead, be part of the problem.

It’s not hard to see where this is going. We warned, several times, that we would be moving on from Covid to climate, and that “climate lockdowns” were a very real possibility. This kind of talk is setting the groundwork for that movement.

3. ‘MORE PEOPLE IS THE LAST THING THIS PLANET NEEDS’

Another from the Guardian, this time interviewing all the hip and happening young men who are “getting vasectomies to save the world”

It’s about the climate. Again.

Apparently, there are already too many people (that’s not true, but whatever), and so young men are getting the snip. Bravely preventing placing the burden of climate catastrophe onto the next generation… by making sure there isn’t one.

One of the (anonymous, and therefore potentially made-up) interviewees went right out cut his balls off the week Donald Trump was elected. That’ll show ’em.

But wait… It’s not just about climate, it’s also about feminism.

Specifically, it’s about correcting the “gender imbalance” traditionally associated with birth control:

Vasectomies address the gender imbalance that still accompanies the choice and practice of birth control. They come with less risk than more invasive and less reliable methods of female contraception, including sterilisation and the coil.

They are genuinely arguing that making yourself sterile forever is less risky and less invasive than having a completely 100% reversible IUD inserted.

Then they start bemoaning that vasectomies can be “hard to come by, especially for younger, childless men“. NHS GPs are apparently reticent to simply sterilise perfectly healthy young men for no good reason:

While there are no laws on the age at which men in the UK can get a vasectomy, the NHS advises that they may be more likely to be accepted if they are older than 30 and have children. “Your GP can refuse to carry out the procedure … if they don’t believe it’s in your best interests,”

Not only that, but the NHS has cut funding to for vasectomies, and perhaps as a result of this, vasectomy numbers are down nationwide. The Guardian want us to think this is a bad thing, but considering the UK’s birth rate has been falling for decades, it might not be.

Nevertheless, there is hope that “world vasectomy day”, and its links to the fight against climate change, will help “burnish” the vasectomy’s progressive image.

The story ends with inspiring words from one of the voluntarily snipped…

“A lot of people are happy to point and say: ‘That’s wrong,’ or film it on their phone… I look at the world and say: ‘That’s not right; I’m going to try to do something about it.’”

A wonderful attitude. I hope he can pass that wisdom on to his children and his children’s children.

… oh, wait.

BONUS: (NEW) HELLHOLE OF THE WEEK

Not Australia this time, well done guys.

This time it’s New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has just put in place strict new rules to “combat” the spread of Omicron.

Starting today, the whole of the country will move into the red on New Zealand’s “traffic light” system, meaning mandatory masks, lockdowns for the unvaccinated and an increased self-isolation period of 24 days.

How many cases prompted this decision? Nine.

Nine Covid cases in Motueka are confirmed to have the Omicron variant, prompting the decision, Ardern said.

Australia has been pretty aggressive in the game of “anything you can do, I can do worse” they have going with both New Zealand and Canada, so expect a move from them sometime this week.

IT’S NOT ALL BAD…

Yesterday marked 2022’s first “Worldwide Freedom Rally”, with marches taking place all over the world, from London to Bern, to Vancouver to Warsaw to Liverpool to Genoa.

Bilbao, Graz, Brisbane. The list goes on and on and on.

Huge crowds turned out in Toronto… Stockholm… and Sydney.

In London NHS staff threw down their uniforms in front of Downing Street.

These are the people who they want to classify as domestic terrorists and militias.

Also, someone also sent us this sign, which is our new favourite:

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention that the world’s ten richest men have doubled their fortunes during the pandemic or the Fed’s report on a digital dollar.

January 23, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Environmentalism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Scientists want global ban on ‘sun-dimming’

Researchers rally against solar geoengineering as a method of fighting ‘climate change’

RT | January 20, 2022

An international group of scientists and experts wants all nations to sign a pact banning public funding and deployment of solar geoengineering, as well as outdoor experiments revolving around ways to ‘dim the sun.’

“Solar geoengineering at planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international political system,” the researchers wrote in an open letter published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change journal this week.

The concept of solar geoengineering aims to lower temperatures on Earth by using modern technology to reduce the incoming sunlight. The proposals include the spraying of aerosols into the stratosphere to stop the spread of solar energy. Some see this as a potential response to global warming.

But the authors of the letter warned about “uncertainties” surrounding the effects of such technologies on weather, agriculture, and the supply of food and water.

The letter argued that the world’s poorest nations will be left highly vulnerable unless powerful countries place the technology of such planetary scale under international control.

“The current world order seems unfit to reach such far-reaching agreements on fair and effective political control over solar geoengineering deployment.”

Proposals to study solar geoengineering were most recently floated by the media amid COP26, a major UN climate change summit in Scotland in November of last year.

In March, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a report recommending an investment of $100-$200 million in solar geoengineering research over five years as part of crafting “a robust portfolio of climate mitigation and adaptation policies.” NASEM argued that outdoor experiments that involve releasing substances into the atmosphere must be limited and subjected to strict regulation.

NASEM emphasized that solar geoengineering should not be a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

January 22, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Net Zero Watch pours scorn on Tony Blair Institute claims about ‘cheap’ onshore wind

Net Zero Watch – January 21, 2022

London — Net Zero Watch has ridiculed claims by the “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change” that the recent sharp rise in energy prices could have been avoided if the UK had only erected more onshore wind turbines over the last decade.

Given that Tony Blair introduced lavish subsidies for land owners and wind investors 20 years ago, it is unsurprising that his institute is trying to downplay their contribution to rising energy bills. However, its claim that more onshore wind turbines would have avoided rising energy bills is simply untrue.

The “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change” has claimed that the falling cost of onshore wind means that the UK has lost out by not building more of this technology, first introduced in bulk by the Blair government after 2002. Similar statements have been made by Carbon Brief.

Neither claim stands up to scrutiny.

Onshore wind farms cost consumers in the UK just under £1.5 billion in subsidy in 2020, or about £50 per household in total, one third hitting consumers through electricity bills and the rest finding its way to them through the cost of goods and services as shops and businesses pass on their own share of the subsidy. Because of this subsidy, onshore wind electricity was supplied at an average cost of about £90/MWh, roughly double the cost of conventional energy.

Analysis of the audited accounts of onshore wind farms between 2008 and 2019 conducted by Professor Hughes of the University of Edinburgh, showed no significant reduction in capital or operational costs over this time. Windfarms built in 2008 broke even at about £92/MWh, and those built in 2018/19 at about £91/MWh.

Both the “Tony Blair Institute” and Carbon Brief rely on an estimated break-even cost for new wind farms over the last decade of about £50/MWh. This is wishful thinking for which there is no empirical evidence in the audited accounts.

Furthermore, as is well-known, but not apparently to the “Tony Blair Institute” or Carbon Brief, onshore wind was restricted in England by the willingness of communities to accept it and not at all in Scotland, which has 60% of all the onshore wind in the UK. Mr Cameron’s “ban” was half-hearted and had no real effect. Insofar as onshore wind development was limited, it was discouraged by reductions in subsidy driven through by the Treasury.

The only realistic option for developing more renewable capacity at the time would have been to increase the amount of offshore wind. This would have involved a commitment to pay between £140 and £180 per MWh – the current prices for offshore projects developed in the 2010s. Those prices are 3.5 to 4.5 times the average market price in real terms for 2015-19 and would have imposed a huge burden on electricity customers, not just temporarily but for another 12-15 years.

It should also be remembered that the wind does not blow on demand. The current gas crisis has been exacerbated by low wind conditions that would have becalmed any additional onshore capacity that Mr Cameron might have built.

Advocates of more reliance on wind generation should tell us how we are to ensure that the electricity system continues to function in such conditions without relying on gas – and what the cost will be. Gas generation is the cheapest form of backup to intermittent wind generation.

By opposing the extraction of Britain’s massive shale gas reserves, Tony Blair’s Institute together with other green NGOs, MPs and ministers have directly contributed to the UK’s gas supply and energy cost crisis.

What is more, they also sabotaged any prospect of building new – and much more efficient – gas plants which would have met the current needs at lower cost and with lower carbon emissions.

The authors of those policies should reflect on their part in making the current situation worse than it might have been.

Professor Hughes said:

The ‘Tony Blair Institute’ and Carbon Brief authors appear to live in an alternative universe of speculative numbers. We have plenty of actual evidence about the cost of onshore wind in exactly the period under discussion. It was (and still is) extremely expensive. To have built more of it would have made the current situation even more painful for consumers.”

January 22, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

The True Cost of Rockefeller Agriculture and the New Food Agenda

By Ryan Matters | New Brave World | January 16, 2022

Shortly after World World Two, The Rockefeller Foundation set forth on a quest to bring about a transformation of world agriculture. They did this, in part, by “socially engineering” the scientific culture to not only accept but promote the use of GMO foods and dangerous biotechnologies. And now, they are at it again.

This new attempted policy change is outlined in a document titled “The True Cost of Food: Measuring What Matters to Transform the U.S. Food System”. In the report, mention is made of both the Covid-19 crisis and the climate crisis, claiming that now is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for to effect “transformative change” in food production.

The report is the result of a collaboration between the Rockefeller Foundation, various academics from leading universities, the World Wildlife Fund and the True Price Foundation. Leading the analysis were members of “True Price”, a Dutch company that describes itself as a “social enterprise with the mission to realize sustainable products that are affordable to all by enabling consumers to see and voluntarily pay the true price of products they buy”.

Leading the True Price team is Michel Scholte, an alumnus of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Network, Adrian de Groot Ruiz, also a former WEF “Global Shaper” and Herman Mulder, former Director-General at ABN AMRO, one of the world’s leading agribusiness banks!

The intended goal of the report is to uncover the “true cost” of food in the US, which is claimed to be at least $3.2 trillion per year, three times more than than $1.1 trillion that Americans spend annually on food.

Included in this “cost analysis” are things like diet-related diseases, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and reduced biodiversity – all reasonable concerns. However, to understand the true agenda at play, one must read past the flowery language and popular buzzwords. As noted by author and researcher, William Engdahl:

“The message is that the current American food production is to blame and that radical and costly changes are urgently needed. The difficulty in reading the report is that the language is deliberately vague and deceptive. For example one of the most damaging components of American agriculture since the 1990s has been the wholesale introduction of GMO crops—especially soybeans, corn and cotton and the highly carcinogenic Monsanto-Bayer Roundup with glyphosate. The Rockefeller report omits their direct role in fostering that devastation by their creating and promoting Monsanto and GMO for decades, knowing it was destructive.”

As Engdahl makes clear, such a report detracts attention away from the fact that most of the “costs” associated with the food industry can be traced directly to the Rockefellers themselves and their role in creating the current industrialized food chain that has not only wrought destruction on global agriculture but contributed to the explosion of chronic disease. The adverse health effects caused by the introduction of GMO crops into modern farming and the subsequent lack of safety testing cannot be overstated. This will be detailed in part 2.

Following the classic problem-reaction-solution model, the report makes mention of the impact of Covid-19 on the current food supply chain, stating that the food system needs to become more resilient.

“Food insecurity has skyrocketed during the pandemic, with more than 54 million Americans (one in six Americans), of which over 18 million are children, facing uncertainty around their next meal.”

This is ironic considering that these issues are a direct result of political decisions to institute draconian lockdowns and other nonscientific policies, NOT a virus or a disease called “Covid-19”. And lest we forget the 2012 Rockefeller publication, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development” (p.18, “Lockstep”) describes many aspects of the Covid-19 drama in haunting detail.

According to the Rockefeller report, the way to construct a more resilient food supply chain is by increasing corporate involvement through a focus on industrialization and technological innovation. However, these are the very same measures that caused many of the issues being outlined.

For example, the report makes mention of “soil health” as a primary concern. However, it is precisely the widespread implementation of modern farming techniques (which involve the use of artificial fertilizers and the spraying of pesticides) – advocated for by the Rockefellers – that has depleted the soil of its nutrients in the first place.

Unsurprisingly the report makes no mention of agroecology or other regenerative methods of natural farming that seek to harness, maintain and enhance biological and ecological processes in agricultural production.

The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) describes agroecology as an approach to farming that:

“Favours the use of natural processes, limits the use of external inputs, promotes closed cycles with minimal negative externalities and stresses the importance of local knowledge and participatory processes that develop knowledge and practice through experience, as well as scientific methods, and the need to address social inequalities”.

According to Indian environmental activist, Dr. Vandana Shiva (emphasis added):

“Agroecology, which encompasses common ecological principles – organic farming, permaculture, biodynamic farming, natural farming regenerative agriculture, among many others – has been recognized as the most effective sustainable and equitable method of farming which also addresses the challenges of feeding the world in an era of climate crises.”

Back to the Rockefeller report… Which claims that one of the fundamental shifts required across the current food system is an acceleration in the development of new tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As stated in the report, “this includes new financial markets related to natural capital including carbon, water, soil nitrogen and biodiversity”.

It is not stated how these new financial markets will be constructed, but this seems like a reference to the recent Rockefeller/Wallstreet-backed creation of a new asset class called a Natural Asset Company. NACs are specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water”.

Journalist and researcher Whitney Webb explains the true motives behind the creation of NACs in no uncertain terms:

“The ultimate goal of NACs is not sustainability or conservation – it is the financialization of nature, i.e. turning nature into a commodity that can be used to keep the current, corrupt Wall Street economy booming under the guise of protecting the environment and preventing its further degradation.”

Another method of reducing GHG emissions, according to the Rockefeller/Gates/WEF initiative, is by introducing plant-based, meat-free alternatives. Once again, the threat of “Covid-19” is subtly exploited to highlight the importance of this transition.

“[meat] processing plants that continued to operate became transmission sites for the disease. Reports show approximately 300,000 excess cases of Covid-19 due to proximity to a livestock plant and approximately 5,000 deaths happened among workers in meat processing facilities.”

Here it’s worth noting that the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, is the former Director of Agricultural Development at the Gates Foundation and that Bill Gates is personally invested in Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats and Beyond Meats – companies that produce synthetic meat and dairy products from plants, using laboratory techniques including gene editing.

In Gates’ 2021 book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” he advocates for the replacement of beef with fake meat. In a recent interview with MIT technology review, he said that people’s behaviors should change for them to learn to like fake meat, and if that doesn’t work, appropriate regulations should be put in place.

This agricultural transformation advocated for by Gates, the Rockefellers and the WEF, one that seeks to increase industrialization, patentable crops and the consumption of lab-grown “meat”, stems in part, from the mechanical mind and its reductionist theory of food.

The “reductionist” view of food tells us that food is digested in the body where it’s broken down into its constituent parts, sent to different areas of the body and, ultimately, used as “fuel” for the body to burn. Much emphasis is put on the caloric content of food, rather than its nutritional value or its other medicinal properties/benefits. This view stems from our scientific establishment which views the body as nothing more than a complex “machine”.

Furthermore, as is evident, the transhumanists seek to alter our perception of food from something that is grown naturally in the earth beneath our feet to something that is synthetically engineered in laboratories. Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger have raised millions of dollars, promoting their concoctions on the basis of claims that “Lab-grown meat will replicate the taste and consistency of traditional meat”.

If taste alone doesn’t hook people in, they play the “climate change” card, touting the consumption of fake meat as “necessary” for us to avoid an environmental disaster. Ironically, research indicates that the production of lab-cultured meat could require more energy than the preparation of regular meat. Adding to this irony is the fact that Gates, who lives in a 66,000-square-foot mansion and travels in a private jet, is himself a carbon super-emitter.

In 2019, the USDA and FDA announced a regulatory framework for lab-grown meat, a move that elated the fake-meat industry. Why would synthetic meat producers be happy about this? Kelsey Piper, in an article for Vox, gives us the answer:

“… consumer confidence is absolutely critical. If people don’t believe that cell-based meat products are safe, regulated, and healthy, then they’ll stick with slaughtered meat”.

In other words, no matter how fraudulent, an “FDA Approved” badge constitutes an irreplaceable marketing tool. For example, data indicate that Covid-19 vaccination rates increased after the vaccines were given full FDA approval.

With a regulatory framework in place, startups are working to build out the technological infrastructure that will allow for the production of lab-grown meat at scale. The next step in this “transhumanist tiptoe” will be “food” created using nanotechnology. As stated by author and researcher Aaron Franz,

“Nanotech could take the atoms from an otherwise useless source and turn it into something useful. You could turn dirt directly into food with nanotech.”[1]

Related to this is the developing science of “molecular manufacturing”, which may be defined as “the hypothetical future use of reprogrammable nanoscale ‘assemblers’ to build products atom by atom”.

Franz explains the transhumanist mindset behind the development of such a technology:

“Molecular manufacturing is hailed by transhumanists as a way to conquer scarcity. In a scarcity-free world people would be able to concentrate on things other than survival.”[1]

However, a quick search through the scientific literature indicates that the use of molecular manufacturing in food production goes far beyond alleviating “scarcity” and may have more to do with altering the structure and function of the body itself. For example, a 2015 review paper states that (emphasis added):

“The potential benefits of utilizing nanomaterials in food are improved bioavailability, antimicrobial effects, enhanced sensory acceptance and targeted delivery of bioactive compounds.”

Another review published in the American Journal of Food Technology makes mention of “nanotechnology-based biosensors” for the detection of food-borne pathogens. Shades of the DARPA/NIH brainchild, Profusa, and their research into developing an injectable biosensor that can “detect future pandemics”.

Once again, “public acceptance” is cited as a major hurdle to the introduction of food created using nanotechnology, and therefore one can reasonably predict to see further regulatory frameworks created specifically for such products.

FOOD AS INFORMATION

Despite the reductionist, body-as-a-machine doctrine expounded by the transhumanists, new research argues that food is a form of information and that this information interacts directly with our genetic infrastructure, effecting epigenetic changes by turning on and off various genes – “You are what you eat”, as the old adage goes.

“Epigenetics” refers to the science of how cells control gene activity without changing the DNA sequence. Our food and our environment are two important factors that drive epigenetic changes. One of the primary epigenetic mechanisms is DNA methylation – a process that regulates gene expression by altering protein activity and/or inhibiting the binding of transcription factors.

Abnormal DNA methylation is observed in cancer patients and as researchers note, “Dietary nutrient intake and bioactive food components are essential environmental factors that may influence DNA methylation”. The discovery of epigenetics revealed the profound importance of food intake on disease risk and phenotypic expression.

But DNA methylation is not the only mechanism by which food interacts with our DNA. All food, whether of plant or animal origin, contains non-coding RNA that can survive digestion to affect profound changes in the expression of our genes. These RNAs are shuttled in virus-sized (!) “microvesicles” (also called “exosomes”). A groundbreaking study published in 2011 found that exogenous plant micro RNAs could regulate gene expression changes in humans.

These findings may extend the role of exosomes to that of interspecies communication, thereby highlighting the significance of food as a source of information transfer, affecting the body on a nutritional, energetic and genetic level.

Another source of information comes from the microbes that accompany most plant foods. The “microbiome” as it’s termed refers to the collective microbial (fungal, bacterial, etc) content of our body, much of which is found in the gut. Recent discoveries have illuminated the importance of the microbiome and its role in nearly every chronic disease from depression to cardiovascular disease.

Beneficial microbes help to regulate bowel pH, produce vitamins, maintain mucosal integrity, regulate immune function, reduce inflammation, and ferment complex carbohydrates that are normally inaccessible to human digestion.

Microbes represent a profound “store” of information, relayed to us through the food we eat. Fermented foods (such as kimchi) are thus irreplaceable sources of beneficial bacteria that help to promote optimal bowel conditions, reduce disease risk and restore balance to a microbiome decimated by overly processed foods, glyphosates and other toxins common to modern-day life.

Understanding food as more than merely a source of energy allows us to comprehend the magnitude of the agenda that seeks to promote the consumption of genetically modified, synthetically produced, test-tube mulch cooked-up in corporate laboratories. With this firmly in mind, we are now prepared to dive into the history of GMOs and modern “agribusiness”, with an emphasis on highlighting the role of the Rockefellers and other wealthy elite actors.

To be continued…

REFERENCES

[1] Franz, A. Revolve: Man’s Scientific Rise to Godhood. Franz Productions. 2011.

Ryan Matters is a writer and free thinker from South Africa. After a life-changing period of illness, he began to question mainstream medicine, science and the true meaning of what it is to be alive. Some of his writings can be found at newbraveworld.org, you can also follow him on Gab.

January 22, 2022 Posted by | Environmentalism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

On The Impossibility Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar And Batteries

Two More Contributions

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | January 17, 2022

My post on Friday highlighted the work of Ken Gregory, who has attempted to quantify the costs of fully electrifying the U.S. energy system using as sources only wind, solar, and batteries. My post got circulated among my excellent colleagues in the CO2 Coalition, two of whom then provided me with links to their own work on closely-related subjects.

The two pieces are: (1) “How Many km2 of Solar Panels in Spain and how much battery backup would it take to power Germany,” by Lars Schernikau and William Smith, posted January 30, 2021 (revised April 23, 2021) at SSRN; and (2) “On the Ability of Wind and Solar Electric Generation to Power Modern Civilization,” by Wallace Manheimer, published October 7, 2021 in the Journal of Energy Research and Reviews.

Both pieces consider various cost and engineering issues involved in trying to develop a fully solar/battery or wind/solar/battery system to power a modern economy; and both quickly conclude for many reasons that such a project is completely infeasible and will surely fail. And yet the U.S. and Europe are both marching forward to implement such plans, without any detailed feasibility studies or cost estimates, let alone even a small scale demonstration project to show that this can work.

Schernikau and Smith consider a case of trying to power just Germany using solar power generated in Spain (Spain having the best conditions in Europe for generating power from the sun). The conclusion:

It appears that solar’s low energy density, high raw material input and low energy-Return-On-energy-Invested (eROeI) as well as large storage requirements make today’s solar technology an environmentally and economically unviable choice to replace conventional power at large scale.

S&S mainly focus on the incredible material requirements that would need to be met for this solar/battery project. First, as to the solar panels:

To match Germany’s electricity demand (or over 15% of EU’s electricity demand) solely from solar photovoltaic panels located in Spain, about 7% of Spain would have to be covered with solar panels (~35.000 km2). . . . To keep the Solar Park functioning just for Germany, PV panels would need to be replaced every 15 years, translating to an annual silicon requirement for the panels reaching close to 10% of current global production capacity (~135% for one-time setup). The silver requirement for modern PV panels powering Germany would translate to 30% of the annual global silver production (~450% for one-time setup). For the EU, essentially the entire annual global silicon production and 3x the annual global silver production would be required for replacement only.

And then there is the question of the battery storage requirement. S&S do not do an hour-by-hour spreadsheet like Gregory to come up with the storage requirement, but rather assume a need for 14 days’ worth of storage based on the possibility of 14 consecutive cloudy days in Spain. (The hour-by-hour analysis done by Gregory and by Roger Andrews would suggest that due to seasonality of solar generation, 30 days of storage would be more realistic.). But even with the 14 day assumption, S&S get these startling results:

To produce sufficient storage capacity from batteries using today’s leading technology would require the full output of 900 Tesla Gigafactories working at full capacity for one year, not counting the replacement of batteries every 20 years. . . . A 14-day battery storage solution for Germany would exceed the 2020 global battery production by a factor of 4 to 5x. To produce the required batteries for Germany alone (or over 15% of EU’s electricity demand) would require mining, transportation and processing of 0,4-0,8 billion tons of raw materials every year (7 to 13 billion tons for one-time setup), and 6x more for Europe. . . . The 2020 global production of lithium, graphite anodes, cobalt or nickel would not nearly suffice by a multiple factor to produce the batteries for Germany alone.

Manheimer’s piece is more general in its discussion of the problems of intermittency and storage, but then focuses particularly on the problem of disposing of the vast wind and solar facilities at the ends of their useful lives:

Let us first consider solar panels. These panels last about 25 years, so the 250,000 tons we have to recycle this year is just a trickle compared to the deluge coming at us in 2050, when we will have had a total of 78 million tons to dispose of. These are not appropriate for landfills, as they contain hazardous and poison materials such as lead and cadmium, which can leech into the soil. However, recycling is expensive. The cost of the recycled materials is considerably more than the cost of the raw materials.

For wind turbines, the blades and the towers pose separate problems:

Since the blades are fiber glass and last only about 10 years, we have had considerable experience here. These blades are gigantic, and are very costly to ship and dispose of. . . . The difficulty of disposing of the blades pales in comparison with disposing of the towers, which last ~25 years. . . . [T]he Washington Times estimates that a [realistic] cost estimate is $500,000 [per turbine].

Go ahead and look through the plans being put forth today by the likes of California, New York, Germany or the UK, and see how they address any of these issues. The answer is, they don’t.

January 19, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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