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.
Great article, completely lays bare the fallacy in the “green economy” claims.
And how much of that economy is government betting on losers with taxpayers’ funds?
and…Broken windows and all that…
In traditional economics, the idea was to have all workers employed in jobs that used cheap and reliable energy to create goods and services at a competitive price. With green economics the concept is to have all workers paid by governemnt subsidies to produce green energy that is too expensive or uneliable to produce goods and services in any case.
It has gone beyond surreal.
Fortunately I’m a chick magnet at bars now, when a woman starts going on about ‘sustainable energy’ and how they know someone who knows someone whose house sells power back to the power company… I ask nonchalantly, “Is it one of those ~$50k systems with batteries that partitions the storage and also serves as emergency backup, or that ~$20k scam junk that spins your meter slower but leaves you without electricity along with your neighbors?” they answer honestly with appreciative fascination and buy me a drink.
When I start talking about municipal water and wastewater treatment and heating and cooling of public buildings such as schools, the electricity-intensive aluminum smelting process, and how these are never part of the Utopians’ “Let’s all go wind and solar!” energy budgets… I now have several women hanging around swooning on every remark and taking notes, giving me slips of paper with their phone numbers. Someone buys me a free dinner and a round of drinks for the table.
Towards the end of the evening when everyone is nodding off at the table, I have saved the best for last: and go on to describe the Haber–Bosch process that collectively consumes close to a third of the world’s generated electricity, and yet has made perpetual in situ agriculture possible through the manufacture and transport of anhydrous ammonia.
The Haber–Bosch process is the clincher. With glances around the table they take a silent vote and a chosen one graciously offers me her arm, and we all leave.
About 1–2% of the world energy consumption and 5% of the natural gas consumption is currently used for the Haber process. Of course, the source, is suspect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
That is correct, thanks kindly for the corrections. I was in an electric stupor when I posted, what I meant to say was that this single process ‘feeds’ roughly one third (~2.7 billion) of the world population alive today by making mass agriculture ‘sustainable’ …
The Wikipedia article is careful to present this great news with a disclaimer,
Due to its dramatic impact on the human ability to grow food, the Haber process served as the “detonator of the population explosion”,
We’ll have to forgive the authors for that, since they’re obviously talking about the scourge of other peoples’ children.
Very odd how experienced geologists, engineers, even scientists are fooled by Milton Friedman of the Chicago school.
The ugly truth about this fake economist, is easily shown in the poster boy Pinochet’s Chile economy after he dismantled it with Chicago Boys as ministers.
Now see Venezeula’s fake Guaido, trained by a rabid Friedmanite north of the border, holds out hands to Bolivias new nazi usurper which wants to “liberalize” .
Anywhere Friedman’s mesmerism is applied , always with violent regime change, is a text book case of economic insanity. No surprise he got a Nobel which Chile was being strangled.
Nuclear power is from the US Government-run Manhattan crash program – no Friedmanite could even dream of such a development. NASA is a Grovernment Program, no “free-market” billionaire ever landed on the Moon.
Now for The Ugly Truth about Milton Friedman :
But it’s not just the Chile example which gives away the fascist content of Friedman’s economics. Friedman himself openly identified with the policies that were implemented by Hitlers economics minister Hjalmar Schacht—just as did his “leftist” Keynesian opponents like Abba Lerner. “The object of such controls [on wages, prices, and credit] is the restriction of spending on the part of individuals,” Friedman wrote in his Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money.
“Such a policy, if rigorously enforced, should restrain a rise in the price level. This policy appeared to have
been successful in Nazi Germany.”
Such open discussion led the supply-side economist Arthur Laffer to respond to the question of whether Friedman as follows: “You want to prove that Milton Friedman is a fascist? It’s easy. Quote him.”
Milton Friedman loved to popularize his economic theories as “freedom to choose.” But in his academic work, and among his colleagues, there was widespread recognition that he was a fascist.
Back to the green economy – it is not capable of reproducing itself, and has to implode if only by attrition. Totally missing in Friedman’s monetarism and the green economy is any concept whatsoever of scientific progress, development intention, mission oriented crash programs. These are the original American System key drivers, rabidly opposed by monetarists such as Friedman and exactly now by the GFI, Green Finance Initiative, Green New Deal.
In other words falling into the Friedman trap, you jump right into bed with the GND.
Horrible thought, really.
Not interested in crackhead conspiracy theories.
This is a Lyndon LaRouche publication… https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2006/eirv33n49-20061208/eirv33n49-20061208_055-the_ugly_truth_about_milton_frie.pdf
Not interested in crackhead conspiracy theories.
David, that’s pretty much all bonbon ever posts. As soon as I see his name I already know that the post will inevitably be about one or more of the following: UK conspiracy to rule the world, National Bankers conspiracy to rule the world, Milton Freedman’s conspiracy to screw up the world, How Bretton Woods was utopia until Nixon nixed it, Petrodollar conspiracies, etc.
From the name, I’m guessing he’s French, which would explain just about everything.
Ribbit!
I’m reminded of a remark by Mark Twain: “It is human to want to be liked. One sometimes even observes the trait among the French.”
My personal theory has been that when he was a child Lyndon LaRouche’s parents tormented him with a King George V doll. Maybe also a Secret Intelligence Service Squeaking Squid that resurfaced in his later works as The MI6 Octopus.
Though he was an erudite and persuasive writer on many topics when not stuck in some tentacle porn rabbit hole. His modern day movement at larouchpac.com, especially the young, are interesting. Almost cult like at times.
Friedman was the one who urged Nixon to impose a money crunch in 1969, which threw the economy into recession, and ultimately set the conditions for taking the dollar off gold in 1971. The “free market” advocate Friedman certainly bemoan the destruction of the Bretton Woods system.
In other words the PetroDollar and the deal with Saudia began with Friedman’s advice to Nixon.
Watermelons.
Green on the outside. Red on the inside.
A dangerous & bloody totalitarian regime by another colour, remains a dangerous & bloody totalitarian regime.
Green economics are post normal economics. Post-normal science is a concept coined by Jerome Ravetz and Silvio Funtowicz to describe fields in which high-cost decisions must be made, but there is a good deal of uncertainty with relation to the relevant scientific facts. The corollary would be if the facts are uncertain, then how does one know whether any decision needs to be made, especially if it’s high-cost.
Millennial Angst or Failure to Launch Syndrome is the the growing phenomenon of young adults not making the transition to adulthood.
“…The “green economy”, to the extent it can be defined, imposes a market on the real economy”
A better way to phrase that would have been, ” imposes a TAX on the real economy”
Even better way to phrase it: “imposes a BURDEN on the real economy” that burden can take many forms. TAX is certainly a common one. as is unnecessary regulations.
My favorite way to watch a tree huggers head explode is to remind the that fossil fuels saved the whales. Without Kerosene, whales wouldn’t be here here today.
The real story follows:
The green jobs push publicly and in Congress is a typical lobbyist ploy directed at a combination of low information audiences or politicos in need of talking points. The ploy itself is from high cost, tax credit dependent, small business rooftop solar associations touting their importance for extending the tax credits in tax law. The side usage is for mindless spin with the public.
In reality, solar PV manufacturers are constantly looking for labor saving equipment and plant design. At this point in the industry evolution all leading PV producers are going with robotic plants in China and the U.S. (First Solar) while other players are dropping out. Utility scale solar is working on reducing balance of system costs (BOS) via racking system designs, auto loaders of panels, and robotic panel cleaners. That leaves high cost rooftop solar installer companies and various allied advocacy groups to push the labor intensive claims to people who are too busy to fact check or to misinformation professionals who need more spin material.
The W&S industry claims employment at about 250 000 jobs. The relative productivity per employee is
7.5 kW for solar; 32 kW for wind; 1300 kW for fossil fuels, and 2000 kW for nuclear.
Do the math – the presently available total workforce will be insufficient to manufacture, erect, operate, maintain, tear down, and dispose of all those millions of W&S plants that would be needed anew five times a century. All of us would work for the W&S industry, its operators, suppliers, contractors, maintenance, line crews, wreckers, etc.
And we should recognize that jobs are a labor cost that raises the electricity cost to customers ($/kWh). Employing robots instead, as has been suggested, implies more energy needed which requires more W&S plants to generate it, which requires more …… (you got it). Jobs are a cost and not benefit if economics matter. Employees and contractors can do other things besides manufacturing, erecting, manning, dismantling and disposing of W&S plants.
Just quote Milton Friedman, guys.
He admired Nazi Germany as an example of his policies, which he got the Nobel for.
Not strangely, his Tweedle Dee, Lord Maynard Keynes published his much quoted tome in nazi Germany, also clearly stating his economics needs a total-state.
So there ye have it, Friedman, the libertarian, and Keynes the “socialist” both adoring in print, publicly and repeatedly, Hitlers economics.
How can it be that serious engineers are played like cats on a hot tin roof by Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee?
Cozying up to fascist economics only leads to one thing. The GND and GFI will not be stopped by nutcase Chicago Boys economics, nor Keynes’.
Following Milton Friedman means ye have not the slightest interest in defeating the GND, even with geologic arguments, basically shadow boxing. Amusing but not effective.
“Serious engineers” don’t rely on Lyndon LaRouche/Alex Jones/Lew Rockwell style crackhead conspiracy theory websites to understand Milton Friedman… They read his books.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/us/politics/arthur-laffer-medal-of-freedom.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevehanke/2019/07/08/art-laffer-on-the-fed-what-would-milton-friedman-say/#985204225e9a
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/24/medal-of-freedom-recipient-arthur-laffer-the-harm-/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/arthur-laffer-has-a-neverending-supply-of-supply-side-plans-for-gop/2015/04/09/04c61440-dec1-11e4-a1b8-2ed88bc190d2_story.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-presentation-medal-freedom-dr-arthur-laffer/
Bolton and Bannon turned up too in Trump’s administration.
Let’s see what President Trump does about Glass-Steagall as the financial system goes south. One look at the Repo market might explain FED Powell’s little confab this week. This will make Lehmann look like a tea-party.
Milton Friedman, true libertarian, would not tolerate direct government intervention as FDR did in 1934, nor the post war Bretton Woods. That intervention, with the original proven New Deal, so soiled by AOC and Sanders, saved the US economy just in time to defeat fascism, and fascist economics so praised by both Keynes and Friedman. It was Friedman who pushed Nixon off gold.
Now we have the true faces of both Mark Carney, Bank of England governor, and Ursula van der Leyen,EU commissioner (elect), pushing a global NGO strictly green credit line, and since it originates in London, as the Mont Pelerin Friedman and Hayek mantra’s do, the mask is off.
If these powers succeed in such a monetary policy, Friedman austerity, with Keynes greens, the economic destruction will be catastrophic.
This is not MAGA guys, it is the ultimate enemy. It makes even Obama’s greenism look amateur.
Do not be blindsided by Friedman, nor Greta – this stuff is going ahead full steam.
I’m not saying it’s the Bildebergers, but it’s the Bildebergers.
That’s going to leave a mark…
Nothing here posted about Milton Friedman is inaccurate.
He never made a secret of it all at the Chicago school.
He saw his theory as a success in Nazi Germany.
Where’s the problem?
His economics is on full display in Chile, and now Bolivia and Guaido both want Friedman economics.
Are ye climate warriors now claiming economics is settled?
Now where have I seen that before, I wonder?
I realize economics is not your forte, David, yet “climate” does in fact boil down to economics. There is a lot of territory to cover, and CO2 is a mere distraction, as are the antics of XR, F4F, Mann et al. So I will grant you one point – this article is about economics, even if just a toe in the water.
You’ve cited nothing but a crackhead conspiracy theory rag to support your defamatory lies about Milton Friedman.
Indeed. his lies (or rather the lies he’s forwarding from Larouch) are numerous. Just take Chile for example, he tries to make it out that he was buddy-buddy with Pinochet, implying Pinochet came to power to implement Friedman’s economics policies. what utter nonsense.
The fact is that Friedman never worked for, and never accepted a penny from, the Chilean regime. He even turned down two honorary degrees from Chilean universities that received government funding, because he did not want to be seen as endorsing a dictatorship he considered “terrible” and “despicable.” He did spend six days in Chile in March 1975 to give public lectures, at the invitation of a private foundation. During that visit he met with Pinochet for all of about 45 minutes and then wrote him a letter afterward, arguing for a plan to end hyperinflation and liberalize the economy. That was *two years after* Pinochet’s violent coup. (and incidentally he gave the same kind of advice to communist dictatorships as well, including the Soviet Union, China, and Yugoslavia. Giving unsolicited advice is hardly the same thing as “cozying up to fascist economics”).
The reality was that Chile’s military officials were initially in charge of the economy. They were corporatist and paternalist, and they opposed “the Chicago Boys” ideas. The air force controlled social policy, for example, and it blocked market reforms until 1979 (that would be 4 years after Friedman’s short visit or 6 years after the coup – that’s hardly following Friedman now is it?). It wasn’t until this approach led to runaway inflation that Pinochet belatedly threw his weight behind liberalization and gave civilians ministerial positions. Their success in fighting inflation impressed Pinochet, so they were given a larger role.
In short the conspiracy nonsense bonbon spews bears no resemblance to the historical facts.
I hope you realize playing stringer for Milton Friedman is doing severe damage to the campaign against CO2, GND, GFI, and assorted flanks?
Well now we know your true allegiance, don’t we? It is one reason the anti-climate campaign is going nowhere, and devolving into silly cartoons.
Interesting this pans out now. It looks like end-game.
The idiotic notion that Milton Friedman was a climate alarmist or would have supported a carbon tax is pure fiction.
https://www.masterresource.org/friedman-milton/milton-friedman-climate-realist/
Milton Friedman’s actual words…
“This encyclopedic and even-handed survey of the evidence of global warming is a welcome corrective to the raging hysteria about the alleged dangers of global warming. Moore demonstrates conclusively that global warming is more likely to benefit than to harm the general public.”
Friedman was referring to this book: https://web.stanford.edu/~moore/Climate_of_Fear.pdf
I hope you realize playing stringer for Milton Friedman …
I hope you realize you’ve wrapped the tin-foil a little too tightly around your head. (yeah, I know, I’m hoping in vain there).
Taking their statistics at face value, let’s consider their point:
Fossil fuel industry provides 10 times actual energy as “green” industry, but “green” industry employees 10 times as many people.
Which is more efficient?
To dig out the foundation for a new buildings construction, you can employ a small handful of workers, and a few fossil fuel powered construction equipment or you can employ a thousand works each equipped with a wooden spoon. The later “employs more workers” (just don’t expect the workers to thank you for the grueling work you are giving them). The former costs less and gets the job done much more quickly and efficiently.
David Middleton
I don’t miss all the slow traffic caused by those blades being dragged down 45 or IH10, going to San Antonio. If the traffic was too bad, a stop at Buc ee’s (buck teeth are sexy) would be in order.
I do make the haul, not as much as you. My daughter lives in Dallas, near Love Field, and has chosen to purchase Wind electricity….sigh!
I’ll drink a cup of coffee in your honor; noting your effort to inform.
I prefer Woody’s… 😉
David Middleton
This is seriously off topic. Some months ago, I think it was you who recommended Press & Siever 3rd edition ‘Earth’ to someone who wanted to learn some geology. Well, I bought an ex Edinburg library copy for peanuts, and have been both edified and entertained. Some of my long-time questions were answered in the first few chapters.
Much Thanks
I’ve been a professional geologist/geophysicist since 1981… And I still have my copy from my first semester in college, fall 1976… It’s actually in my office on my desk.
“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.”
We’re getting close to what used to be an utopia: Comparatively few people have to work in order to grow enough food for everybody, make enough clothes and build enough houses. We have enough doctors and nurses, teachers and all the other necessary jobs and there’s still people left over. We can afford to have thousands “work” in hypertrophic bureaucracies and there’s still people left unemployed. The service and entertainment industry have grown but can’t employ them all, either. What to do with a growing number of people who can’t do any work we’d pay them for? What do to with people at the lower end of the IQ scale who could thresh wheat with a club but who can’t drive a combine harvester?
Sending young people to school/college longer to keep them off the job market is mitigating the problem, but not solving it.
The Green Industrial Complex needs tons of subsidies (direct and indirect) in order to survive. Proof: cut the subsidies and they die instantly. This means that it takes ich people to pay those subsidies. Rich people are made by fossil fuels. This means that the green extremists feed on wealth that was generated by fossils. Contemplate that for a moment. But it goes further. As green technologies are wealth destroyers and they also want to bring down fossil industries, the basis for their own survival must necessarily go away. And we start to see that as people put their heads in the sand but they cannot escape the pain of poverty anymore.
But what does it really add to the economy or the country. I understand that Spain tried this “”Make work”” scheme and its made a big mess of their economy.
Green groups have always told government s that their “”Renewables”” “” will create Jobs, and governments faced with the Age of Automation, which means less real jobs, accept such lies.
Problem with the Renewables is that while they y do make some jobs, the higher cost of electricity then kills off other businesses which had previously employed people.
MJE VK5ERLL
Low density energy production. Quite literally the Green Blight.
OMG! Is it like some kinda socialist thing? Like, ya know the Green New Deal! Because, like, the world is gonna end in 12, uhmmm er, 11 years ya know?!
And then it’s like, The End!
The End The Doors
https://youtu.be/VScSEXRwUqQ
What this article really says is that each and every fossil fuel worker is worth at least 50 “green economy” workers.
You actually have to work at being that inefficient. Either that, or fossil fuel workers are actually supermen/women.
You actually have to work at being that inefficient
or rather not work much at all. Reminds me of all the jokes about unions. How many union workers does it take to change a lightbulb? while it is commonly believed that union members will screw anything, in the case of the light bulb being changed it will require: one to change it, a supervisor to supervise it, one to take it out of the box, another to carry the box, under supervision, a shop stewart to complain to management about the weight of the bulb, a business agent to negotiate a high contract for changing light bulbs, and finally an inspector to insure it was done
This article is complete tripe. It equates to “what we’re doing is fine, no reason to look for anything better”. Generally the idea is that fossil/ oil and gas are not the best way to do something and although we are here and history had made it so we need them currently in our society doesn’t mean we shouldn’t move away from them. Most of the comments I suppose are from people that work in these industries and see this as a personal threat without any eye toward what actually might be better for everyone including future generations. I upgrade power plants, so yes my job mostly exists because of fossil fuels, but understand that there might be better ways to generate, store, and distribute energy. Some cave-man thinking right here.
Generally the idea is that fossil/ oil and gas are not the best way to do something
Whether or not they’re the “best way”, they’re currently better than the alternatives. You don’t replace cheap reliable energy sources with expensive and unreliable ones. Not if you want a steady, reliable source of energy when you need it.
Wake me up when someone comes up with a better way.
Ring-a-ling. Now most of society had agreed to subsidize the switch to better ways (wind, solar, etc.) Specifically to dig out entrenched oil and gas companies (they’ve spent mountains of money to battle these new scourges) . The argument that it’s cheaper and should therefore stay is crap. Solar prices have plummeted because as a society we’ve agreed to finance their development. The final remaining hurdle is storage. Many people are working on that.
Generally the idea is that fossil/ oil and gas are not the best way to do something
Whether or not they’re the “best way”, they’re currently better than the alternatives. You don’t replace cheap reliable energy sources with expensive and unreliable ones. Not if you want a steady, reliable source of energy when you need it.