Guest “who gives a schist?” by David Middleton
What’s green, employs ten times as many people as the “fossil fuel industry” and fake? The “green economy“.
Hat tip to Kevin McNeill…
US green economy has 10 times as many jobs as the fossil fuel industry
ENVIRONMENT 15 October 2019
By Adam VaughanThe green economy has grown so much in the US that it employs around 10 times as many people as the fossil fuel industry – despite the past decade’s oil and gas boom.
The fossil fuel sector, from coal mines to gas power plants, employed around 900,000 people in the US in 2015-16, government figures show. But Lucien Georgeson and Mark Maslin at University College London found that over the same period this was vastly outweighed by the green economy, which provided nearly 9.5 million jobs, or 4 per cent of the working age population. The pair defined the green economy broadly, covering everything from renewable energy to environmental consultancy.
[…]
The US stopped recording green job statistics several years ago, but these suggested 3.4 million people worked in the sector in 2011. Maslin and Georgeson used a much broader set of 26 sub-sectors including wind and solar power, marine pollution controls, carbon capture, biodiversity and air pollution. Maslin says the figures have been underestimated in the past, partly because the green economy is so diffuse.
New Fake Scientist
“The stupid, it burns”
Crowing about an “economy” being larger than an “industry” is as stupid as crowing about a century being longer than a day. Most economies will employ more people than most industries. Economies tend to be composed of multiple industries that provide goods and services to consumers.
Who gives a schist about an “economy” of any color employing more people than a particular “industry”? Furthermore, there is no such thing as *a* fossil fuel industry. Oil & gas are found, produced, processed and sold by the oil & gas industry. Coal is produced and sold by the coal industry. Apart from a handful of companies, like BHP, there is very little overlap of these two industries. The utilities industry converts some of the produced coal, natural gas and oil into electricity. The steel industry uses coal to produce steel. The petrochemical industry uses oil & natural gas to make “plastics, rubbers, resins, synthetic fibers, adhesives, dyes, detergents, pesticides, and petroleum-derived paints and coatings,” as well as the synthetic fertilizer that feeds half of the human population.
Fossil fuels enable 100% of the employment in most industries. The fossil fuels industries have literally been lifting people out of poverty for more than 150 years.
The “green economy”, to the extent it can be defined, imposes a market on the real economy for the purpose of providing goods and services government bureaucrats decided we should be forced to accept.
The green economy “gives people . . . what a particular group thinks they ought to want.”
“A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it … gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
Milton Friedman
The pair defined the green economy broadly, covering everything from renewable energy to environmental consultancy.
New Fake Scientist
While there would be at least a limited market for “renewable energy” without government diktats, the demand for “environmental consultancy” is entirely driven by government diktats. This doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but it doesn’t produce anything. In the oil & gas industry, we have to comply with myriad government regulations. The larger a company gets, the larger its HSE (health, safety & environment) and regulatory compliance departments get. These are important things… But they are 100% cost centers.
Scale
If the “green economy” employs 10 times as many people as the “fossil fuel industry,” real economy employs 15 times as many people as the fake economy.
- US non-farm employees = 151.9 million
- US “green economy” employees = 9.4 million
- 151.9 – 9.4 = 142.5
- 142.5 / 9.4 = 15.2
The purpose of businesses and industries
Industries are composed of businesses that generate goods and services for the purpose of generating profits for the owners of the businesses.
“There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud”
Milton Friedman
Nothing here exists to provide jobs. Businesses employ the number of people they need to execute their business model.
“Public discourse tends to be carried out in terms of jobs, as if a great objective was to create jobs. Now that’s not our objective at all. There’s no problem about creating jobs. We can create any number of jobs in having people dig holes and fill them up again. Do we want jobs like that? No. Jobs are a price and we have to work to live. Whereas if you listen to the terminology you would think that we live to work. Now some of us do. There are workaholics just like there are alcoholics and some of us do live to work. But in the main, what we want is not jobs, but productive jobs. We want jobs that will be able to produce the goods and services that we consume at a minimum expenditure of effort. In a way, the appropriate national objective is to have the fewest possible jobs. That is to say, the least amount of work for the greatest amount of products.”
Milton Friedman
Productivity
What is ‘Productivity’
Productivity is an economic measure of output per unit of input. Inputs include labor and capital, while output is typically measured in revenues and other gross domestic product (GDP) components such as business inventories. Productivity measures may be examined collectively (across the whole economy) or viewed industry by industry to examine trends in labor growth, wage levels and technological improvement.BREAKING DOWN ‘Productivity’
Investopedia
Productivity gains are vital to the economy, as they mean that more is being accomplished with less. Capital and labor are both scarce resources, so maximizing their impact is a core concern of modern business. Productivity enhancements come from technology advances, such as computers and the internet, supply chain and logistics improvements, and increased skill levels within the workforce.
The New Fake Scientist article asserts that the “fossil fuel industry” only employs about 900,000 people. According to the 2019 U.S. Energy and Employment Report, it employs over 1.1 million people just in these United States. Regarding productivity, there is no comparison between “renewables” and real energy:
In a previous post, one of the comments suggested that it was unfair to compare primary energy, because only about 25% of the fossil fuel primary energy is delivered as electricity. In the case of oil, it’s even less. Most natural gas production is used for purposes other than electricity generation and natural gas is still generally the leading fuel for electricity generation in the U.S.
2018 U.S. Natural Gas Consumption by Sector (billion cubic feet, Bcf), US EIA
| Sector | Bcf | % |
| Electric Power | 10,626 | 36% |
| Industrial Sector | 9,966 | 33% |
| Residential | 4,974 | 17% |
| Commercial | 3,476 | 12% |
| Transportation | 839 | 3% |
| Total Consumption | 29,880 |
In 2018, total marketed U.S. natural gas production was 32,823 Bcf. Net exports amounted to 691 Bcf. Just 32% of natural gas production was consumed for electricity generation.
Despite the fact that >99% of crude oil and 68% of natural gas production are not used for electricity generation, oil & gas generate 2.5 times as much electricity per job as wind and 6.75 times as much as solar.
| TWh | Jobs | TWh/Job | |
| Oil & Gas | 1,494,000 | 924,399 | 1.62 |
| Coal | 1,146,000 | 197,418 | 5.80 |
| Fossil Fuels | 4,171,000 | 1,121,817 | 3.72 |
| Nuclear | 807,000 | 72,146 | 11.19 |
| Wind | 74,529 | 111,000 | 0.67 |
| Solar | 64,000 | 269,564 | 0.24 |
The “Green Economy” is dependent on fossil fuels
I just love irony. Texas leads the nation (and probably most nations) in wind power production (Yiiihah!). I drive between Houston and Dallas quit often on I-45. I don’t see these as often now as I did back in the mid-2000’s, but I still occasionally see them:
Any guesses at to what fuels that tractor trailer? What about the ships that delivered the turbine blades to their ports of entry?
How much steel and concrete are required for a typical wind farm?
Jul 1, 2012, 10:53 am
Is The Answer, My Friend, Blowing In The Wind?James Conca
[…]
As an example, a MW of installed capacity for wind requires 460 metric tons of steel and 870 m3 of concrete compared to the 98 metric tons of steel and 160 m3 of concrete for coal, and the even lower 40 metric tons of steel and 90 m3 of concrete for nuclear. Natural gas is the lowest of all, requiring a little over 3 metric tons of steel and 27 m3 of concrete per MW, the reason gas plants are the cheapest and easiest to build.
Forbes
How much coal is required for each MW of wind turbine capacity?
Steel is an essential material for modern life. The manufacture of steels delivers the goods and services that our societies need – healthcare, telecommunications, improved agricultural practices, better transport networks, clean water and access to reliable and affordable energy. Global steel production is dependent on coal. 70% of the steel produced today uses coal. Metallurgical coal – or coking coal – is a vital ingredient in the steel making process. World crude steel production was 1.4 billion tonnes in 2010. Around 721 million tonnes of coking coal was used in the production of steel.
Ram River Coal Corp.
Coal is used as an energy source in cement production. Large amounts of energy are required to produce cement. It takes about 200 kg of coal to produce one tonne of cement and about 300-400 kg of cement is needed to produce one cubic metre of concrete.
World Coal Association
That works out to about 267 tonnes of coal per MW of installed wind capacity.
Even funnier…
Nov 12, 2019, 07:21pm
‘Deep Electrification’ Means More Natural GasJude Clemente
For environmental reasons, there’s an ongoing push to “electrify everything,” from cars to port operations to heating.
The idea is that a “deep electrification” will help lower greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.
The reality, however, is that more electrification will surge the need for electricity, an obvious fact that seems to be getting forgotten.
The majority of this increase occurs in the transportation sector: electric cars can increase home power usage by 50% or more.
The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) says that “electrification has the potential to significantly increase overall demand for electricity.”
NREL reports that a “high” electrification scenario would up our power demand by around 40% through 2050.
A high electrification scenario would grow our annual power consumption by 80 terawatt hours per year.
[…]
Ultimately, much higher electricity demand favors all sources of electricity, a “rising tide lifts all boats” sort of thing.
But in particular, it favors gas because gas supplies almost 40% of U.S. electricity generation, up from 20% a decade ago.
[…]
Indeed, EPRI models that U.S. gas usage increases under “all” electrification scenarios even if gas prices more than double to $6.00 per MMBtu.
Some are forgetting that the clear growth sectors for the U.S. gas industry are a triad, in order: LNG exports, electricity, manufacturing.
[…]
Forbes
Irony can be so… ironic. The “green economy” is 100% dependent on the “Climate Wrecking Industry” . . .
Who’s up for some Milton Friedman?
Note on comments
I am a geologist. I know my schist. Pedantic comments like this will be mercilessly ridiculed:
You just misused a perfectly good word……….using it for something it is not. “Schist” is not, cutely, hatched -up slang word. Geologically and petrographically speaking, a schist is a type of metamorphic rock.
Check out your snark before you use it……schist-head.
Pedantic comment
Also . . . An ellipsis consists of three dots (. . .) . . . More dots isn’t cleverer. Spelling and grammar are important. I detest text-messaging gibberish, except for WTF? and variations of LMAO!.
If you are tired of my use geological euphemisms for cuss words . . . I don’t care.
I am also not interested in your predictions about the future, unless there’s a pop culture reference.
Wow, an “economy” that employs 10-times as many people as the fossil fuel energy, but only produces less than 15% as much energy?
That’s hardly anything to brag about.
I bet it will employ 50 times as many oxen once those oxgen systems are up and running.
mmmmm… oxen are also good eating with a BBQ sauce slow cooked over mesquite fire.
10 times more people moving with cars to their work…
A little back of the envelope calculation on solar jobs. Solar jobs are now more than twice those of fossil fuels about 374,000. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/01/25/u-s-solar-energy-employs-more-people-than-oil-coal-and-gas-combined-infographic/#1886b5342800
and that with it producing 1.47% of the electrical power in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_States
Just think if we used solar for 1/2 of everything what it would do for the economy. 374,000 jobs times (50/1.47) = 12,721,088
jobs. In comparison, the worlds largest employer is the US Dept. of Defense with 3.2 million. So solar could employ 4 times as many people and that is only in the US. Or how do you measure an industry’s efficiency?
10 times as many people you say… You know, if we built some really large hamster wheels and connected them to generators…
Yep, that’s the answer. If we are going to count jobs and not results, we could go with hamster wheels. After all, there’s hamster care and breeding, wheel building, housing of the wheels (hamsters freeze solid very easily), committees to deal with PETA and animal rights people (hey, we whack birds with turbines to save the planet, so using hamsters must be moral, right?), lobbyists for the hamster and hamster wheel industries. We can increase job numbers by several magnitudes with this method.
We’re also going to need some fancy new units representing cost per hamster-wheel hour or some such. And a chart allowing for quick conversion to Hiroshima’s per Sydney Opera House would also come in handy.
theres all those unemployed Rats in NY city and elsewhere I gather, use them not hamsters?
oh and for a giggle
PETA in Sth Aus managed to get the sale of rat traps that are a supersticky paper you nail onto the rat runways to trap them..
as Cruel torture animal abuse and got the shops selling them to remove from sale
(they also work well for catching snakes in garages)
and Vic has banned fine mesh for fruit trees(also used to trap snakes) and limited us to larger mesh white only netting.
why the bans?
oh because we are supposed to enjoy growing fruit n veg only to have the parrots and possums eat n drop or eat all n crap over everything they didnt eat
however people in a closeby state can of course post them over to their friends;-)) either product
ie traps to SA and nets t o Vic
Market the filthy fruit as “Net Free” and let the urbanites wash all the “natural coating” off it.
Actually I was implying using all those “10 times as many” people.
That method was used in the Middle Ages to help lift building materials into place at the Gothic cathedrals of Europe (some of which, of course, are still in existence). They used horses, oxen, cows, and people instead of hamsters, of course. But the principle is still the same: the winch, pulley, lever, and hook.
You do not need any new hamster wheels. Just hook up all the treadmills in gyms so each time someone uses one there is power going back into the system. With the number of gym memberships that should be enough to power the planet.
There was a TV show where they had a large team of people (50+?) peddling away to supply the electrical needs of a family of four. Exhausting – and they failed around dinner time. Electric over, microwave, washer, dryer. The rest of the day was a challenge, but when everyone came home for the evening, the system broke down. When the power failed, the family was introduced to the team that had been powering them all day.
So, a family of four needs 50+ healthy slaves and a battery array to store power when the family is sleeping. Well, more than 50+. Even slaves have to sleep sometime.
Use human-powered hamster wheels and cut unemployment at the same time – everyone’s a winner.
On that criteria shouldn’t they include everyone who uses fossil fuels and plastic in their job in the fossil fuel economy. In orher words everyone?
We would be better off to skip wind and solar altogether and just hire an army of pump engineers to address the under inflated tire crisis.
What is a green company? Al Gore got rich by selling folks stocks in companies that didn’t emit CO2. That meant he was dealing in service companies like Microsoft. So, does that mean Microsoft is a green company? link
If you define green companies the ‘right’ way, it’s easy to see how the green economy employs a huge proportion of the American population. You’ve heard of Hollywood accounting, right?
“The pair defined the green economy broadly, covering everything from renewable energy to environmental consultancy.”
..then let’s define the “fossil fuel industry” the same
People that make fertilizer, plastics, run a gas station, pesticides, deodorants, clothes, car parts, tires, asphalt…farmers…..and all the people that advise them on how to do it
Middleton displays his bias when he writes “In the oil & gas industry, we have to comply with…”
…
Note “we.”
Setting aside the moronic logical fallacy… I am a petroleum geolgist… I am part of the “we”. It’s a fact.
Middleton has a bias? – HuH – Is employed in the O&G industry? – WoW
He makes a living as a Petroleum Geologist and a Dog Manager.
Karl is employed? = HuH? – in WHAT industry?
How do you make a living, Karl?
No one manages dogs… They manage us… 😎
If there is bias can you please show where it is rather than just attack the person please. It would be much more productive.
A freely admit to a bias favoring logic over mental greentardation.
@Karl Horrex
And I suppose you have no biases? Bet you dollars to donuts that you would flinch and avoid if you saw someone with leprosy, someone sneezed in your face, smelled bad food. Those are all evolutionarily driven biases developed to keep the species propagating.
But it also seems you have a bias to people working in the O&G industry in addition to above unconscious biases.
You should educate yourself on how much an electric car depends on the O&G industry. Do you use pharmaceuticals or cosmetics? Then you have a bias and hypocrisy. Did you use a piece of electronic equipment to post that comment?
In the “minds” of leftists, people who depend on government largess for their income are incapable of bias.
Yiihah! David, please make sure Karl does not utilize any more carbon-based products, either intentionally or accidently, and he will be a happier person. Or not. I suspect not.
P.S. That’s a great video showing the size of one wind turbine blade, on its way to chop up some of our flying friends.
If they could be designed to only chop up grackles . . . 👍👍
Note Karl has nothing of substance to say about the points David raises. all he can do is attack the messenger leaving the message unscathed. pathetic.
Note Karl’s inability to actually deal with the arguments presented.
Instead he’s reduced to attacking the messenger.
Once again Karl demonstrates that even he knows he can’t support the schist he’s trying to sell.
OMG, KARL. David said WE!!!! PS — Everyone here already knew that.
And I have to admit, I was a PE working at a major-utility COAL PLANT!
Karl displays his bias. Blatantly.
Unable to challenge the facts and science, karl attacks the messenger.
A few years ago (7 or so) a city (Portland ?) added a battery to the city buses. Then the job of bus driver was classified as a “green job.”
I knew more at the time, but haven’t kept up.
Can I assume the pedantic comment was a first time reader of a David Middleton post?
I enjoy scientific jokes, periodically.
And particularly annoyingly pedantic… As annoying as the mole in “Whack-a-Mole”… 😎
I’d love to pass your articles over to my orthodox climate hysteric friends, but the puerile tone means i) they wouldn’t take them seriously, and ii) they’d no longer take me seriously. Serious people don’t constantly use completely irrelevant “schist” puns when they’re trying to communicate serious issues.
Content should always be taken more seriously than form, but, sadly, amongst the orthodox professionals I move amongst, that’s often not the case.
I suppose if you weren’t so angry and obstinate you wouldn’t be so compelled to call out the terrible “science” that alarmists are using to stampede the sheep in the first place. It’s just a shame you can’t swallow your pride, step back, see that you’re limiting the spread and effect of your good work, and moderate your tone.
I don’t give a rat’s @ur momisugly$$ about the opinions of concern trolls . . . or anyone else, for that matter.
… thus re-affirming orthodoxy’s belief that anyone questioning “climate catastrophe” is an adolescent blogger or an adult with personal issues.
You’re entitled to self-sabotage, of course. But you’re harming our cause, too.
David: I bet Jim C is NOT a Trump fan either…
The Donald is a twat. But I’d have voted for him over Hilary, or any of the assortment of loons the Dems are now putting up for consideration.
In the context of this website (ie, combating climate hysteria) Trump’s not a great spokesman for lukewarmists or sceptics (“it’s a Chinese conspiray!”) but at least he pulled the US out in the Paris agreement.
There’s a Periodic Table joke here, somewhere… :,-)
Peggy Phlegm is green, ice skates and had a period. I suppose she danced on a table once or twice.
The Periodic Table is used all the time — not just monthly.
I cannot laugh at this until my Periodic Law Lawyer approves.
We are supposed to be a developed country.
If someone can publish this statement, knowing the relevant energy contributions of each:
Yeah… But it was fun, easy and as rewarding as hitting homeruns off of a batting practice pitcher who has no breaking ball.
Underhanded soft-ball.
Now if we make these things 10% less reliable every 3 years or so, then the ‘green and fake’ could employ everyone on the planet just maintaining these ‘green and fake’.
Now that’s a goal that socialist-democrats the world over could aim for — employment levels at 110%.
Couple that with the deindustrialization of food production, ridding the world of ICE vehicles, and making electricity the only source of available energy, and very soon employment could be at 500% or even higher! And with it freedom to produce what you want when you want it.
Utopia! where slavery is freedom by fighting for a peaceful revolution of sustainability.
Magically make every vehicle electric, and all electricity produced by renewables. Now ban all drilling and oil production.
How many jobs would be impacted? Virtually all, and in such a way as to render them impossible. Office workers with no technology; doctors with no medicines or equipment; retailers with little to sell; auto manufacturers not able to build cars, construction workers not able to build houses. We have an oil-based civilization. No oil, no civilization.
But the blacksmith would be busy. And to ply their trade they use either charcoal or coal.
Hmm…axe = green (ie no fossil fuel used when using it)
Chainsaw = not green
Which one produces more ‘cut wood?’
The, Me – carrying wood after cutting with axe = green
Truck carrying HUGE amount of wood.- not green
Me – dead from exhaustion (or frozen because I couldn’t cut enough wood) – green
Truck – gets oil change, carries on working – not green
Me – dead and in my grave, adding fertilizer for plants = green
Truck – doesn’t give a *&^% – but still working – not green
Now…where do I vote?
In the pre-fossil fuel era, when productivity was the sweat of the brow and pull of a horse or ox, a husband and wife had 10 children. 6-7 could be expected to live to teenage years to be productive with the family chores, 4-5 would live to adulthood to productive members who could help as adult with adult things on the farm, the business, the store, the ranch, sending money home from far away jobs.
Those teenagers would swing that axe and carry that wood for you.
We’ll all need many more kids and grandkids in the kind of society the Greens want us to return to. The society is the one today in Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, where the large families, high fertility rates, and high mortalities exist. That is the 3rd World existence the Greens want us to return to. One where we cut down forests for fuel. Plowed more acres of marginal soil for food without fertilizers, and everyone went hungry during droughts.
To live in a society Greens want would require slavery again. Only a fool would expect the so called elites to create and clean their own clothes and raise and cook their own food and god forbid dump their own chamber pot.
In including “marine pollution,” nowadays everybody working on a ship (even with sails) down to a pirogue could be counted. The paper is open access, includes “Other industries are included because of their significance in responding to climate change, such as Carbon Finance from Finance and Insurance and Environmental Consulting from Professional Services.” I did the latter some, never realized the climate change significance, weather and its products producing possible conflicting causes important. It was especially so when claims were erroneously made. Recall one that was hypothetical, it had happened before so was probably the cause.
This was particularly interesting–“Fig. 1. The data acquisition process for the transactional triangulation methodology.” And this “Limitations–The transactional triangulation methodology is different to national statistics, but methods have been developed over time to enable it to be more comparable to traditional data sources…..The methodology used means that LCEGSS is not an exact fit with any existing classification systems, nor particular national measurement frameworks.”
Yep, despite their claims of extensive validation I suspect that I would have been counted, despite never putting the word climate in a report. Same for biodiversity, which must catch a lot now. But it must be true because they quote the Lancet article produced by a mob, too many authors to easily count. Palgrave Communications, Humanities, Social Science, no economics?
Loved your “piroque”
The liberal idea of MAGA:
a) Pay 50 poor workers, using taxpayers $$, to dig holes in the middle of nowhere.
b) Pay 50 different poor workers, using taxpayers $$, to fill in the same holes in the middle of nowhere.
c) Repeat steps a and b to keep the poor enslaved to Big Gov !
Schemes like that of course run on OPM since, in economic language, they are not a productive use of labor and capital. “Productive” is the operative word. Productive means utility to the furtherance of more economic production.
As such, those digging holes-filling holes schemes “work” until the OPM runs out.
This would also increase reported GDP and show reduced unemployment! A win win for socialist bureaucrats everywhere!
It’s Green, green, and deceptively green.
David
“If you are tired of my use of? geological euphemisms for cuss words . . . I don’t care.”
Personally, I love your “euphemisms” … ROTFLMAO… !
I always take it for granite that using geological euphemisms for cuss words enables a gneiss turn of phrase.
You rock!
Propaganda and nothing more. The infuriating part is those who question the orthodoxy aren’t given equal or any time.
markl
What I find interesting is how logically contorted the articles supporting environmentally correct programs are. I have yet to figure out if it is done purposely, assuming most people won’t see through the charade, or if the writers are so stupid that they don’t realize they are writing gibberish.
It is not the questioning the orthodoxy that should allow “equal time.”
There are lots of quacks out there on almost any subject who should be given “equal time.”
It is having hard data counter to the consensus that is not given “equal time.” The post normal science of Climate science though rejects counter-explanations to the CAGW-CO2 hypothesis that are also supported by data, observations, paleo-reconstructions, and recorded history.
(Note to MODS: this reply comment was posted at 9:21 pm PST. No “new” comments have appeared since markl’s here at 8:20pm. I have a “lost” comment from about 8:30pm PST. Appears WordPress may be bit-bucketing comments again.)
“If the Greens aren’t lying, they aren’t trying.”
– me
Everything about the viability, sustainability, economics, and benefits to climate and society of a green economy, green jobs, green new deals, green energy are based on lies, lies nested in lies, nested in more lies.
There are so many lies and, half-truths, and fabrications to support “green” claims, it is hard to know where to begin on their debunking and refutation. Green is a small truth, wrapped in half-truths, rolled around in fat covering of lies, covered with gobs of tax-payer money to get investors to buy it, and force feed it to the public without consent, and pick their pockets with exorbitant meal costs as they gag on it.
“Green” is such a ball of twine lies. They overlap repeatedly, they get lost amongst all the other lies until it is hard to impossible to figure out where one set of lies ends and others begin.
1. Not one MW of “green” renewable solar or wind energy would be on any grid, anywhere without massive tax payer subsidies. They are built to harvest subsidies, not free energy. Yet those subsidies and the distortions of capital investment and compounded inefficiencies are rarely if ever counted as costs.
2. Renewable wind and solar are not sustainable or even possible without massive fossil fuel use at every step of raw material extraction, refining, manufacturing, assembly, transport, to site preparation, installation to maintenance, to ultimate tear-down and disposal.
3. Grid integration of widely dispersed, non-spinning, zero kinetic mass electricity from “green” is much more costly in the connection and stabilizing infrastructure than a few concentrated large spinning mass generators providing grid inertia, kinetic reserve, and frequency stability.
4. “green” renewable solar and wind replaces not one single kW of power from fossil fuel, nuclear, or hydro that the grid operators have to be ready to bring on-line. Grid operators must have these backups online within minutes of sunset, clouds rolling in on large weather front, or widespread wind subsidence, all of which are common. The added complexity, the added infrastructure all cost much more to build maintain and operate, which all means more fossil fuels are continually needed than if solar or wind were not there in the first place.
5. The “green” costs of wind and solar installations marring the landscapes of many areas now, with prospects of them reaching from horizon to horizon is a horrifying thought.
And then one day, when this Climate-Green sickness has passed from scoeity as the reality of the need for affordable reliable power returns, we will be stuck with these landscape marring dead, life-less monuments to this Era of Green Stupidity… thanks to the GreenSlime billionaires and their Green socialist enablers.
Joel,
Tax payer subsidies, when wind and solar are now as cheap as fossil fuel generation? Show me the math.
I agree they would not have reached this stage without subsidy in the past (something they have in common with, for example, nuclear), but we can’t undo the past.
Not even close. Wind and solar still require spinning backup and/or storage, which doubles the LCOE.
Coal with CCS is comparable to nuclear power. LCOE doesn’t include the cost of backup or storage. Add in the cost of storage and the LCOE of wind and solar is roughly doubled.
… and subtract the added operational costs required of conventional power generation to ramp up and down for the inadequacies of wind and solar.
It is somewhat ludicrous to think an energy source is cheaper when it requires 3 to 10 times the number of employees for the same production- some of the time.
David
“Geologically and petrographically speaking, a schist is a type of metamorphic rock.” The schistosity of the complaint aligns with the pressure applied to your euphemisms. Well, I suppose you could use a sedimentary term — coprolite. However, I suspect it would slide right past most pedants. It would be too hard for them to grasp. The question of the day is, “What kind of a rock would a coprolite form if it were subject to metamorphism?” Any petrographers here?
As coprolite is mostly a dehydrated-carbohydrate (dried dog shit for example), the sustained heat and pressure would eventually convert it to reduced hydrocarbons – olefins, alkanes, and methane. One doesn’t have to be a “petrographer” to understand basic organic chemistry and carbon’s reactive transformations.
Joel,
Real coprolites, unlike dehydrated dung (paleofeces), as from recently extinct ground sloths, have undergone permineralization, which means that the volatiles have been lost and most of the remaining material has been replaced with carbonates and/or silicates. Think fossilized wood. One needs to understand more than just organic chemistry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil
“Tuff schist”?
My buddy Horst Graben told me to write that.
Mental greentards will have a difficult time cummingtonite trying to figure out all these puns.
Kamikazedave
Good choice of words — a member of what my petrology professor called the “mineralogic waste basket.”
“… The fossil fuels industries have literally been lifting people out of poverty for more than 150 years …”.
=======================================
Quite so, fossil fuels are concentrated forms of energy, the past 150 years have seen that energy delivered increasingly more efficiently.
In the First World it is taken for granted by latter generations.
Conversely it is an inescapable fact that wind and solar are diffuse forms of energy and the widespread mandated use will have inevitably the opposite effect:
http://rameznaam.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EROI-of-Solar-Wind-Nuclear-Coal-Natural-Gas-Hydro.png
In India 30 million people are employed in the cow dung fuel industry.
The powerful images of Slumdog Millionaire are lost on the West’s “Baizuo.”
That’s because sacrifices for their Green Schemes are always supposed to be someone else’s sacrifices.
Today’s Baizuo only think they hold the moral high ground with their climate claims, when in fact they are the lowest forms of moral human filth. They are a moral filth because their energy poverty plans and policies will bring about a genocide and ecological destruction. A destruction that will make the 20th Century genocides and wars look like a warm-up round.
Geez Joel, tell us how you really feel about Gang Green.
I fully agree with your summary and believe only banishment of these fools and bandits will prevent civil collapse.
Most renewable energy jobs (wind/solar) involve installation and are therefore construction industry jobs, not renewable energy jobs. Once facilities are built those jobs go away, just like with fossil fuel plants, unless there are more to be built. The only reason there may be more now is because of the larger build out phase currently happening.
Joel,
Tax payer subsidies, when wind and solar are now as cheap as fossil fuel generation? Show me the math.
I agree they would not have reached this stage without subsidy in the past (something they have in common with, for example, nuclear), but we can’t undo the past.
Go away you ignorant, imbecilic troll.
It really amazes me how some people are so desperate to believe the lies they are told to repeat.
Wind and solar are only “cheap” because of the subsidies, and that’s while ignoring the cost needed to provide energy when the wind and solar aren’t.
PS: The alleged subsidies of other power sources never were.
” Quick, quick come, come my lord, come and see, I have perfected it, I have made gold”
After a few moments of inspection Blackadder corrects Percy.
“Percy, the name of what you have made, if indeed it has a name, is green, you have made, green”
” Oh my lord, can it be true? I hold in my hand a nugget of purest green!”
“Well more of a splat actually”….
Blackadder’s summary of Percy and his green achievement was, ” You are an utter berk”
This clip, should become the defining image of the “green” movement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkZFuKHXa7w
If only Blackadder had been “woke” and four hundred years into the future, he would have seen Percy had indeed made, “gold”, the colour of the modern delusion. If it’s green, it’s gold.
I would happily write an up to date Blackadder series, with Blackadder as a politician relaying the pointless and futile, usually hypocritical activities in modern world politics.
Milton Friedman recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
No Schist, Sherlock!
Tangerine Dream – Through Metamorphic Rocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HhzElCPny4
~Apri 2016 letter to Candidate Trump. Either he listened, or it’s just common sense. I’m happy either way.l