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.
From my reading his Twitter page and posts on Grist.org, Holthaus openly acknowledges that he is a eco-socialist. He has posted pieces where he is openly hostile to capitalism and insists it has to go.
The dictionary definition of socialism, as I understand it, consists of govt control and operation of all means of producing goods and services. That is also what I was told in the economics course I took in college. I am still not certain how socialism is supposed to be more compatible with environmentalism and the climate alarmist narrative than capitalism is, but I imagine Eric could explain it to anyone who asks him.
The problem for Eric here is that it is seriously doubtful that socialism can’t make wind and solar energy scale up against fossil fuels and nuclear power any better than capitalism has. It is a matter of physics, engineering and economics rather than political and ecological ideology. Eric’s hostility to capitalism probably precludes him from being able to understand that, and it likely makes him look pretty foolish in the eyes of those who do.
To whatever degree people think that the federal govt is dysfunctional now, imagine what things would be like if the feds controlled and ran the entire economy under socialists or Eric’s eco-socialists. Venezuela, here we come!
It is rather sad to see someone like Holthaus become so disconnected from reality and oblivious to logic and reasoning as a result of his emotional and religious devotion to what he believes. Human history is full of people like that. The scary part is when they actually come to power.
It’s easy for him to develop such “views,” because he’s isolated from the guaranteed results of implementing his own madness by virtue of him being fortunate enough to live in a (somewhat) capitalist society. Somebody should sentence him to Venezuela to see his own vision realized.
Bite the Hand enough times and eventually it stops feeding you. And they always act so surprised whenever it happens.
Are you sure it was Eric Holthaus? Sounds more like Erich Honecker to me.
Capitalism’s demand for endless economic growth on a finite planet guarantees human extinction. It’s how cancer works.
In a linear arithmetic world, Danny. Zero sum games dont apply in the real world, only in the designer-brain education the last couple of generations have received. You and most of your generation should be angry as helk at what has been done to you.
Danny, go solve Venezuela’s problems, come back and report your myriad successes, and then we’ll talk about how capable you are of understanding the human condition.
Or keep mentally pleasuring yourself as you’ve done here.
@Danny Dyche: Understand Danny that you are under no obligation to continue living in a capitalist society and system that you do not believe in. Feel free to drop out of it anytime and pursue what you believe is a sustainable green Utopia — perhaps on some deserted and secluded South Pacific island somewhere where there is nothing from a capitalist system to irritate you.
Also understand Danny that your mindset is really nothing new. It dates back some fifty years to 1968 when Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University came out with a book entitled “The Population Bomb.” In the book, he predicted that humanity would start running out of food, fuel and natural resources that would lead to chaotic conditions and massive human suffering before the turn of the 21st century. Millions — if not billions — were supposed to die. Do I need I tell you how wrong he was?
Do yourself a favor and start thinking about something called human ingenuity. I would like to suggest to you that we humans are better at it than you seem to give us credit for.
Capitalism has allowed countries to stabilize their population growth. Most of the population growth is from third world countries that have not experienced the economic stabilization that political freedom, and free markets create.
Capitalism demands efficient production of products that the public is WILLING to pay for. A good example is the production of microchips out of silicon and intelligence. The planet’s supply of silicon is not limited in any meaningful way. And the free market is the best method for discouraging the use of scarce resources, and allowing the most people to use resources that are produced at large levels of supply.
It is the optimum way to provide the most efficient allocation of resources, that we know of. If you can come up with something better, you will be remembered as the greatest human to live during this period. Good luck with that. Many have tried, all have failed.
The only limit on economic growth is the limit of human ingenuity, which neo-Malthusian devotees always underestimate. As for “finite planet”, that’s a TBI. True But Irrelevant.
The whole socialist scheme is the real cancer. It requires a healthy capitalist economy to leech from to even pretend to work, it’s bureaucratic bloat grows fat on the inflow of Other People’s Money, and it gradually strangles the productivity of a society’s middle class. The ultimate result: a completely predictable breaking point and a rapid descent into neo-feudalism.
Sigh!
I believe they tried this in Germany quite a bit by getting some nice bloke with a moustache to go to Russia, Romania & the Middle east to try to take over the oil by force.
That didn’t work too great,-
so as part of the USSR , the DDR involved some nice people called STASI & KGB, making a pact with the Russians so they could drive Trabants and Skodas FOC.
It bankrupted the USSR to send Eastern Europe free oil, but it was after all fully seized by the state (much as it is now in Putin’s Russia).
Then they sent Schroder to Russia instead, which Merkel was not too keen on either…
“In 2016, Schröder switched to become manager of Nord Stream 2, an expansion of the original pipeline in which Gazprom is sole shareholder. … German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized her predecessor, saying “I do not think what Mr Schröder is doing is okay.”
So, not happy with that, they try again by closing all the NPPs and switching to “renewables” en masse & solar panels.
The country has become flooded with high flailing towers which probably aren’t doing a lot since most of Europe is under a winter anticylone, and there’s no sun either in Dec-Jan.
The result is simply German electricity becomes some of the most expensive in the world, forcing businesses to leave for some place where it’s cheaper, and making poor people a lot poorer.
Why can’t they just follow Germany’s examples it’s always been the most advanced nation in the world jawohl!
He is more of a Holtkopf than a Holthaus.
He’s certainly a something kopf, probably begins with S, followed by cheiss.
Climate change has been going on for eons and will continue to happen whether mankind is here as not. Climate change is currently so small that it takes networks of sophisticated sensors decades to even detect it. We must not mix up weather cycles which are part of the current climate with true climate change. There is no national emergency.
Considering the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, one can conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So even if there were a climate change emergency, mankind does not have the power to change it.
If people feel that the use of fossil fuels is bad then they should stop making use of all goods and services that make us of fossil fuels because it is their money that is keeping the fossil fuel companies in business. But people are not doing that. In my neighbor if companies stopped providing goods and services that involve the use of fossil fuels, most of us would perish. If the government wants us to stop making use of goods and services that involve the use of fossil fuels then they need to provide a more economical alternative but that is not happening. For example, we had a nuclear power plant not far away but it has been shut down and no effect has been made to replace it. Building more nuclear plants is the only credible way of significantly reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.
William Haas , thank you for this .I agree whole heartedly with your sentiments .I was born during the second world War and can remember the hard slog before electricity was routed through our farm and we were connected to the grid in 1948 .
My parents then purchased a refrigerator and a washing machine and an eletric stove next to the wood stove ,eIectric lights and a radio.
Send the moderns back to the era before electricity and they would suddenly wake up when most things they take for granted with the flick of a switch suddenly become hour long chores .
Such as cutting fire wood to cook a meal ,trying to keep perishable food cool enough to eat the next day in the summer ,trimming and fueling lanterns for lighting ,and the endless hours at the wood shed cutting kindling and fire wood to keep out the winter cold.
I have to agree wit you that nuclear has to be the way to power the world in the future and that research should be top priority to research molten salt and other technologies and produce plans that are fool proof , safe and at a reasonable cost to build and run.
If half of the money that has been expended on climate change research had been put into nuclear research toproduce cheap safe reliable nuclear power plants we would be a lot better off today .
We’ve gone from “Modernization” to “Maduronization”.
For Holthaus it’s more like “moronization.”
Two million years ago there were beavers and trees on Ellesmere Island. Their fossils have been carbon dated. Now Ellesmere Island is way up north, opposite the northern end of Greenland. So two million years ago the Arctic was a lot warmer than it is now. And the planet and all it’s life is still here… at least I think we are!
Even Antarctica once had tropical forests. Remnants of which are still encased deep in the continental ice sheet.
The ad accompanying this item is interesting. It says:
Invest in Renewable Energy
Fully Secured
Asset Backed Energy Bond
Capital at Risk
Govt Subsidy
Have I missed something?
“Have I missed something?”
Algorithm, a cookie-cutter solution to the problem of targeted messaging -see how well it works?
It’s a ‘model’ output, don’tchaknow?
Time to stop giving this cretin and his likes the time of day, stop quoting the lying braggarts.
The fact that the media would even quote a nobody like Eric, talking about something about which he has no knowledge, tells you what the MSM is all about.
I’ve remarked that there is more than a little neurosis (I don’trule out psychosis, either) in all activist crowds. Activism issues are those in which some segment of society is perceived as, or interpreted as, or simply ‘appointed’ as victimizers of the “helpless” on a large scale.
This strikes a strong chord with those of weaker constitutions who had unhappy relationships with (commonly) fathers or others and the desire to believe ill of whatever group is ‘identified’ is strong – a fact not lost on political opportunists who can harness this angst for their own agendas. Manmade global warming is the perfect recipe.
My concern is it is like the idea of an institution that’s “too big to fail”. Failure of the satisfying, fulfilling hatefest, brings these unhappy folk down with a crash and and the potential for going over the edge is very real. Recall the epidemic of the so-called climate Blues wrought by the “Dreaded Pause” in temperatures for about 2 decades that ended the careers of a number of climate scientists who became doubtful of the validity of their work. The potential for self harm or harm to others as the rickety framework of climate disaster science continues to falter is very real. Take note of the damage that is becoming apparent with the
brainwashing of school children on the terrors of climate change (recent report on WUWT).
That tweet demonstrates just how indoctrinated some people have become by the global climate change hoax.