This is epic. Perhaps Eric wasn’t in a lucid frame of mind when he wrote this, or then again, given his political leanings, maybe he was.
His Tweet was in response to Trump’s consideration of a “National Emergency” over illegal immigration and the border wall, and he pivots that to one of the most draconian calls to action I’ve ever seen.
Yes, Eric wants to “force those mf’ers to start building wind turbines and solar panels”.
Apparently he’s out of the loop.
British Petroleum had a whole division called “BP Solar“. In 2010, it closed down the factory at Frederick, Maryland. BP Solar was closed on 21 December 2011 when BP announced its departure from the solar energy business.
Apparently, it wasn’t “sustainable” as we noted on WUWT at the time: Shocker: BP quits solar power industry
Wind turbines? How about Shell’s wind division?
Shell’s onshore wind portfolio includes four joint venture interests spanning six operating wind projects, all of which are 50:50 non-operated ventures (NOVs). Our share of the energy capacity from our US projects is about 425 megawatts. Shell also maintains 50% interest in one offshore wind park, NoordZee Wind, in the Netherlands.
I think what Eric meant was to “force those mf’ers to end oil use and use ONLY wind turbines and solar panels”.
How would that work out?
Well, not so well, as Richard D. Patton pointed out January 1st:
Can wind and solar replace fossil fuels?
In a word, no.
Perhaps Eric should visit Venezuela where seizure of their private energy industry has already been done. Let us know how that worked out Eric. While you are there, have something to eat.
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Nationalize industry, and force the workers in that industry into forced labour.
I have an idea. Let’s call it the Great Leap Forward.
You’re making a very good argument for the better teaching of history. People need to understand what has happened every time people seriously tried to implement a Marxist society.
People also need to understand that a refugee crisis is nothing to be trifled with. link
Depends on who is teaching the history.
We’ll wait a minute… Does this guy consume anything created by fossil fuels. Seize eh? Let’s seize all his personal assets and force him to live according to the world he desires… No fossil fuels, direct or indirect
I still want my reality show where each contestant gets his or her own “Carbon Nazi” assigned, who will take anything from the contestant that is made from, is produced with the use of, or in any other way exists or is available due to fossil fuels. Mr. Holthaus can be the first contestant, along with Mr. McKibben.
First thing their assigned Carbon Nazi would do is strip them naked (everything they are wearing is either from synthetic fibers or other materials made from fossil fuels, or fibers or other materials which are grown, harvested, molded or fashioned into cloth and sewn in factories all through the use of machinery powered by fossil fuels and buildings with heat and electricity produced via fossil fuels), grab their cell phones and other “connected” devices (all of which are made with component parts that involve mining done with fossil fuel powered machines, plastic parts made from fossil fuels, etc., and consume massive amounts of electricity (don’t forget all those cellular towers and computer servers being used) that comes from fossil fuels), snatch anything they are about to eat (since that will be the product of farming which uses equipment powered by fossil fuels, transport by vehicles (trains, trucks) powered by fossil fuels, and is kept fresh through refrigeration provided by fossil fuel powered electricity), bulldoze and evict the contestant from their homes (since those would be built from concrete, wood, steel, aluminum, asphalt shingle, etc. all of which involve mining, transport, manufacturing, and construction which ALL involve the use of fossil fuels), and instruct them in the art of finding a long straight stick and sharpening that stick against a rock, to use in the pursuit of their next meal.
Seems like the right way to show them just how “nuclear stupid” they are.
commieBob – the author of your link appears to be arguing for an open-door policy to immigrants coupled with serious efforts to assimilate them into society without any concern for numbers, on the grounds that is the only way to prevent the would-be immigrants (invaders) overtaking the entire country and its culture. Hardly a viable or appealing solution for either the US or Europe.
If it looks like fascism, sounds like fascism, and quacks like fascism, it’s probably fascism…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/26/shell-announces-major-pivot-to-green-energy/#comment-2568406
CARBON TAXES ARE DESTRUCTIVE AND IMBECILIC, BECAUSE THEY DO NO GOOD AND CAUSE GREAT HARM, BY DRIVING UP THE COST OF EVERYTHING.
FULLY 85% OF GLOBAL PRIMARY ENERGY IS FOSSIL FUELS – ELIMINATE FOSSIL FUELS TOMORROW AND IN A MONTH ALMOST EVERYONE IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD IS DEAD.
Supporting Summary Information:
1) There is no catastrophic global warming crisis – it is a false crisis. Climate is relatively INsensitive to increasing atmospheric CO2.
2) There is no “more extreme weather” happening now than before – also a false crisis. There is no credible evidence to support this allegation.
3) Green energy is not green and produces little useful (dispatchable) energy. This has been proved in Germany and elsewhere.
4) The world is colder than optimum for humanity and the environment – cold weather kills 20 times more people than warm weather.
5) Atmospheric CO2 concentration is not alarmingly high, it is alarmingly low for the continued survival of carbon-based life on Earth.
6) Carbon taxes are destructive and imbecilic, because they do no good and cause great harm, by driving up the cost of EVERYTHING.
7) Most politicians are so incompetent that they should not even opine about energy matters, let alone set policy.
8) Cheap abundant energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple!
9) Environmental harm from green energy schemes includes accelerated draining of the vital Ogalalla Aquifer for corn ethanol production in the USA and clear-cutting of the rainforests in South America and Southeast Asia to grow biofuels. These actions continue to cause huge environmental damage.
10) Green energy schemes have been sharply increased energy costs, vital electrical grids have been destabilized, and Excess Winter Deaths have increased – and green energy schemes typically do not even reduce CO2 emissions.
11) Based on the evidence, including the Mann hockey stick and the Climategate emails, global warming and green energy are the greatest scams, in dollar terms, in the history of humanity. Many trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered on global warming/wilder weather/green energy falsehoods.
12) A fraction of these wasted trillions could have put safe water and sanitation systems into every village on Earth, and run them forever. About two million kids below the age of five die from contaminated water every year – over sixty million dead kids from bad water alone since the advent of global warming alarmism. The remaining squandered funds, properly deployed, could have gone a long way to ending malaria and world hunger.
Told you so, years ago.
Regards to all for the Holidays, Allan
Ya, they can work on that grand new idea, the farm collective.
Hey, worked great for Pol Pot.
For Cambodians, not so much.
Well! It sounds like he can power some wind turbines all by himself! 🙂
maybe not, but I am sure all that hot air could float a balloon.
🙂 🙂
Did anyone hear about the us emissions spiking? Any reason for that?
Economic recovery, mostly. I have not parsed the numbers, so that is a guess. Lots of factors built in. Gas has probably peaked at replacing coal. Nuclear plants have closed. Cold winters and hot summers. Lots more transport, with cheap fuel.
Yeah that was what the bbc article I read about it said. Is it something we should worry about? I mean the US was doing well with its emission reductions til then.
Wasn’t the “Spike” a 0.5% increase in CO2 output?
Don’t worry about it. We are in the middle of an Ice Age and this warm spell will end soon, so enjoy it while it lasts. Nothing we have done so far will have any lasting effect on the weather or climate; the ice sheets will return, it’s just a matter of time.
Jill, nice back door entry to alarmism. We should be concerned about a drop in CO2, not an increase.
Not at all my intention. I am worried about climate change since at this point it’s damned if we do damned if we don’t, but I would never resort to alarmism. Trust me that stuff messed me up something fierce.
Worry about the coming end to the current interglacial in our current ice age. If 1992 is your birth year you will be long gone before the glacial period returns, so enjoy, don’t worry.
Read Willis’s excellent article!
Pay close attention to the graphed temperatures back to the end of the last ice age. Especially the temperature combined with CO₂ graph.
No, temperatures did not track with CO₂.
CO₂ is minimally active to a very small segment of infrared radiation.
While water is very active across a large swath of the infrared radiation spectrum.
Plus water is active in all three physical phases, vapor, liquid and solid while being very prevalent in the atmosphere.
CO₂, however, is measured in parts per million in the atmosphere.
All this is before getting into the terrible physical quality of temperature equipment, a horrendous distribution of temperature stations worldwide and very poor installation.
The final data product is massaged and adjusted before calculated into a temperature anomaly that people, animals, plants and wildlife are very unlikely to notice. Especially when every day has a minimum 8° to 15° swing in temperatures and most of the world experiences far greater seasonal temperature swings.
Lastly, the UNFCCC and the IPCC have both admitted the whole global warming climate thing is a wealth redistribution scheme.
Jireland1992, there’s nothing to worry about. Climate changes, always has always will and there’s not a damn thing humans can do about it. Save your worry about things that humans actually can affect.
ATheoK January 8, 2019 at 5:53 pm
”While water is very active across a large swath of the infrared radiation spectrum.
Plus water is active in all three physical phases, vapor, liquid and solid while being very prevalent in the atmosphere.”
4 phases solid [ visible] liquid [ visible] gas [invisible] and vapour [visible].
you are basically listing gas twice: vapour (or vapor) is “a substance in the gaseous state as distinguished from the liquid or solid state”. whether the gas is visible or not is irrelevant to the fact that it’s still a gas.
Or to put it another way, if you are going to split gas into two categories, why not split solid into 2:
ice: Hard solid
snow: Soft solid
Do not drink the Kool-Aid. The Earth is not a “little blue marble”. This planet is large enough to have not only have it’s own geo-magnetic field but, also, it’s own natural satellite called the moon. Pull yourself out of fantasy land and realize that this is not a “Small World After All”. The miniscule rise in humanities emissions is not going to have the effect that the “Doom And Gloom” crowd would have you believe and make you have nightmares about. Tell your political people to tear down the wind turbines and be happy to do it. It’s ok.
I think the comment “his tweet” is appropriate, a tweet is the sound a bird makes and most of these people are bird brains.
Eric Holthaus is the nutcase who tweeted AGW was so serious he was not going to have children—until he did.
Yeah, typical collectivist hypocrite.
Nit many people called Eric can do that though.
That, Mr Courtney, is very offensive … (to somebody, somewhere). You should be embarrassed; maybe even censored.
We have commented on this guy before after “breakdowns”, he needs support and professional help.
I do recall him mixing up his blathering talk of global-warming with his “long suffering wife”. It seems she later took the advice I hinted she ought to.
What is it with those … M’Fkcuers ?
It is a peek at what lies simmering just out of sight. Agw has fanned a fire among a portion of those who believe in the agw concept. Just as the false accusations made against Trump have fanned a fire in a segment of our society which has brought the nation close to the edge of madness, imo.
Building the new Green Guard; True Believers, ready to spark the next Cultural Revolution.
Mao would be so pleased.
Maybe thetrump wall is quickly approved if fitted with solar panels at the top?
And Wind Turbines at every Watch Tower spaced 1/2 mile apart
Yeah, just watch the lefties spin and spin if Trump tried to build a “green” wall that doubled as a solar and wind farm.
Why would anyone pay attention to idiots like this? Even the other alarmists should notice that this guy has a screw loose.
Again its just another indication that “Saving the World” is not on the Greens agenda.
Its World Government after the Wests economy collapses. For the history buffs, look up the 1920 tees and 1930 tees which lead to the rise of extreme political parties. The left wing Nazi party. yes it was left wing, was against the right wing Communist party in Germany.
This left and right wing business is the classic “Which side of the fence one is standing”stiff.
Hitler quest for power was against the Communists and the German army backed him. He “Saved “Germany from Communism, but then it went to his head, and the rest as they say is history.
So what do you want, freedom or the Greens version.
MJE
Just curious, I’ve heard the communists called a lot of things, but “right-wing” has never been one of them. Then again, I’m not familiar with the German communist party.
“Magical Thinking” is quite popular with Mental Defectives like Eric and Fidela Ocasio – Cortez these days . . .
I would like to see Eric live his life without fossil fuels first before even listening to his rants.
Like most progressives he is all hat and no cattle.
Holthaus is just advocating a slightly faster version of the Green New Deal. Either would lead to a situation like Venezuela.
The biggest truth against such idiocy is:
Wind and Solar cannot even replace themselves. Solar panels and wind turbines eventually need replacement.
Wind and solar systems working at maximum output over their entire lifetimes cannot generate enough electricity to manufacture their replacements for when they wear out.
And they wear out faster than their supporters wish to believe.
Nor can they generate enough electricity to transport their replacements to the site or erect them, or for that matter maintain and repair them.
After decades of improvements and innovations, hype-building and eco chest-beating, these are still energy systems that are ultimately a net energy loss to build and use on a large scale.
Solar energy has some legitimate small-scale applications and will stick around on a niche market. Wind energy will stick around only as graveyards of concrete, steel, and fiberglass.
An excellent and revealing illustration of the intellectual illiteracy, frustrations and latent hatred exploited by populist green activists.
All sounds & feels like a copy/paste of the reasons Nazism was given the opportunity to display what it had in back-order.
(I’m paraphrasing here. I don’t remember the exact quote but this is close.)
AOC, The Nut from New York:
“It isn’t important if one is factually correct as long one is morally correct.”
PS If anyone has her actual quote, it would be most welcome.
(The context of it was her complaining about “Fact Checkers” checking stuff she had said.)
Here’s what she said:
“If people want to really blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue that they’re missing the forest for the trees. I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”
LOL, she even lies about her lying, and then claims that it’s ok to lie, as long as you are “morally right”. IOW, the ends justify the means.
Thanks!
Think of that in the context of her “New Green Deal”…….And “The Cause”.
Kind of like, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
Or making claims about cost that were too small by an order of magnitude.
Or, to paraphrase, the ends justify the memes. And she has justified so many hilarious memes.
I think half of what Holthaus tweets is to get likes and retweets, and the other half is to try to get laid.
Would you want any women that would respond??
Perhaps with 5 drinks and 2 paper bags
Even that might not be enough depending on what equipment they end up having.
as for any “woman” that responded, Eric might want to check under the hood, so to speak, before the getting laid.
Have any of these “experts” thought about the fact that every wind turbine and solar panel must be backed up by a fossil fuel plant or a nuclear plant for those days that the wind/sun is not up to their predictions. Unless having the grid up only occasionally is ok.
OR
Assuming a 1Mw turbine/solar plant, has anyone estimated the cost of using batteries to store 48 MwHr of energy. The cost of the batteries should include more solar panels/turbines to charge the batteries while the first set powers the grid.
Is anyone aware of turbine/solar that is economical without government subsidies.
Maybe if the U.S. energy industry is seized, it could be run by an Army General. With any luck, he could use the wind turbines for target practice.
sarc – no harm advocated
I think the US should have a pilot project on preventing climate change. The purpose of the pilot project would be to demonstrate to Americans how easy it is to live green.
The pilot project would involve the most ardent proponents of climate change action. So all Democrats in Congress and the Senate would be forbidden from using internal combustion engine cars and all airplanes for the next two years. Starting in January 2020 these same people would move into accommodation where the all heat, light, and air conditioning was solely provided by solar panels and or windmills.
Only then could the American people see how easy climate change prevention truly is. 🙂
“The pilot project would involve” California & it starts now.
In truth Germany is way ahead of us. A demonstrable failure.
But it MUST also include separation from the Grid sourced Electric Generation.
Indeed, to be truly a demonstration of what living green means, it has to be completely separated from any non-green power generation – that means no connection to the current grid which has coal, gas, etc in the mix. None of this fraud about only using “green energy” from the grid – the grid is “color blind”, it cannot distinguish between “green” elections and “non-green” elections. so if there is “dirty” non-green generated energy (like from coal for example) anywhere in the grid, you have to consider the whole grid “tainted” with that non-green energy and thus using it would not be an example of living completely green.
In addition, it must include separation from subsidies paid for by taxpayers outside the borders of CA. If CA has such a huge economy as they brag, why shouldn’t they pay for it? Arn’t the coastals sucking the wealth out of fly-over states?
As is South Australia!
Oh, but you also have to prohibit “connected” devices – no cell phones, tablets, computers, etc. – no way to keep those from using fossil fuel powered electricity indirectly. Make ’em hunt for or grow their own food too, and without any modern tools (all of which were made with the use of fossil fuels).
Holthaus is nuttier than a squirrel’s poop after a 3-day bender through the Planters peanut packaging plant.
That’s just nuts.
Oh my God, what economic illiteracy !!
Yes, that’s a good idea, lets separate the generation, so all of the companies who want to generate Green electricity can do sop, then they can put in all of the towers for their distant windmills, and finally they can offer their product to the potential customers.
They will of course be in a position to tell the customers what the cost per unit of power is going to cost, then they can arrange to connect the said customer to the Green electricity. . No subsidies are needed as they tell us that such generation is cheaper than coal.
Yes I know that the whole thing is totally unworkable, but then one can dream, which is what the Greens are good at. Sarc.
NJE
To refresh my memory on young Eric’s backstory I did a quick search online.
That helpfully provided me with the content of a different twit he apparently sent 2 hours before his ‘state of emergency’ twit.
His words?
“This is exactly what would happen if I ever got elected governor of California.”
Not 100% sure of the context, but the old ‘Everything would be better if only *I* was in charge’ mindset of your typical Left is pretty clearly on display.
The Left – all about being in charge of everyone.
The Right – all about being in charge of themselves.
Running your own life well is difficult enough. It takes a remarkable combination of both short-sightedness and self-righteousness to think you could run the lives of everybody else well, too.
All politicians and related ignorant nutters, should have to live on the AVERAGE income for the US and Canada, and then watch how they would quickly smarten up to the real costs of their stupidity. The way it is, they can do all of their stupid things and not feel the actual costs, the way regular folk do, as they are paid too highly.
As long as it is the Median income, not the arithmetic mean. without those few extremely high incomes most pople would be surprised at ho much lower the “average” income is than published values.
Looking at 2017 numbers:
the US median household income was $60,336
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2018/comm/acs-income-map.html
for comparisons sake:
The nominal median income per capita was $31,786.
The mean income per capita was $48,150.
Real median family income was $75,938.
The real mean family income was $100,400
It pays to be in a “real mean” family. I had three older brothers so I fit into that category.
I’ve become an avid twitter follower, and I’m astounded by the support that guys like Holthaus gets. Mostly from millennial types but some from confirmed advocates like Gleick and AOC. Responsible warmists generally stay away from him.
“I’ve become an avid twitter follower”
WHY?????
Why wait for the industries to be seized? Just shut down all the power plants, gas stations, natural gas plants, etc and tell Eric “You’re welcome”.