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Wind and solar the two darlings of climate catastrophists is less than 3% of the worlds energy consumption and they will not be able to help getting the 3 billi

Wind and solar the two darlings of climate catastrophists is less than 3% of the worlds energy consumption and they will not be able to help getting the 3 billion people who uses less energy than a US fridge per year into the modern era. Fossile fuels is not going anywhere as it's used for the 4 pillars of modern society, steel, fertilizers, concrete and plastic for which there is no realistic alternative. Wind and solar isn't advances, they are regressive technologies that themselves require fossile fuel to even become a reality and still keeps us with our intermittency issues. Keep in mind that only 20% of a countrys energy consumption is electricity. The only big breakthroughs that matter with energy and can work at scale would be things like fusion and molten salt generators. Making our energy grid more and more fragile by pushing wind and solar is what isn't helpful.

jackmott42 3y ago
If there is no alternative for concrete, plastic, fertilizers, and steel, then don't you think we ought to quit burning them for cars and electricty Thom? You have gone so typically and boring boomer contrarian you aren't even making sense, as is normal.
- ThomPete 3y ago
  Whether you can make sense of what I am writing is out of my control. However there is nothing in what I said that isn't factually correct. If that makes me boomer contrarian the so be it.
jterrys 3y ago
Considering that: The U.S by itself consumes and pollutes an excessive amount even proportionally compared to China, there's definite optimizations in consumption patterns that can be made to reduce total overall carbon footprint. Plastics are still everywhere and recycling is considered a scam here. It's done so by design by oil companies. Yes, every single Styrofoam takeout container accumulates waste, especially for a country so prone on eating out. I get bottles of Mexican coke that show clear signs of wear and multiple usage in Mexico...only to finally end up on American store shelves were they'll be dumped in the trash like everything else here because nobody bothers with glass recycling bottles. Recycling plants are zoned out because the only people even bothering to return plastic bottles for 5 cents in a handful of states are the homeless, and even for them it's barely worth the fucking effort. The amount of car traffic in America is ludicrous and an endemic problem of poor, lobbied city design. This country had better public transit that was muscled out by automobile lobbyists, some of which actually privatized the transit and let the infrastructure die. Asphalt retains heat, and every new damn road built is a contributor to making the world just a little bit more warmer than it used to be. China is a leading adopter of rail commuting and freight transport. We're twiddling our thumbs and letting our rail networks deteriorate and become unusable, because its cheaper to move less material over trucks. These are just two simple examples. There's no zero sum result of completely eliminating plastics, but we can definitely consume much less. But we don't. Because we are lazy. Instead we exploit pollution loopholes where we classify SUVs as light work trucks so they don't have to conform to strict emission standards. This is why Ford cut down most of its car production lines in the U.S and almost exclusively focuses on trucks for their consumer market, and why increasingly more cars on road today are arguably less safer SUVs
- ThomPete 3y ago
  You have to come up with a better alternative that doesn't take things away. Your examples are good examples of things that are not better alternatives, they are worse. I don't think most people realize just how unique a material plastic for instance is.
yellowapple 3y ago
> The only big breakthroughs that matter with energy and can work at scale would be things like fusion and molten salt generators. You don't need to go that far. Fission and geothermal can work at scale today and largely solve the impending climate trainwreck today. We haven't adopted them in droves not because of some technological limitation, but rather because they're more expensive on balance sheets (which don't account for negative externalities) and because the fossil fuel industry has successfully manipulated the public into equating "renewable energy" with "things fundamentally incapable of providing base load".
- ThomPete 3y ago
  They don't scale and they don't provide enough energy density to do provide energy for new types of solutions.

jackmott42 3y ago

If there is no alternative for concrete, plastic, fertilizers, and steel, then don't you think we ought to quit burning them for cars and electricty Thom? You have gone so typically and boring boomer contrarian you aren't even making sense, as is normal.

ThomPete 3y ago
Whether you can make sense of what I am writing is out of my control. However there is nothing in what I said that isn't factually correct. If that makes me boomer contrarian the so be it.

jterrys 3y ago

Considering that: The U.S by itself consumes and pollutes an excessive amount even proportionally compared to China, there's definite optimizations in consumption patterns that can be made to reduce total overall carbon footprint. Plastics are still everywhere and recycling is considered a scam here. It's done so by design by oil companies. Yes, every single Styrofoam takeout container accumulates waste, especially for a country so prone on eating out. I get bottles of Mexican coke that show clear signs of wear and multiple usage in Mexico...only to finally end up on American store shelves were they'll be dumped in the trash like everything else here because nobody bothers with glass recycling bottles. Recycling plants are zoned out because the only people even bothering to return plastic bottles for 5 cents in a handful of states are the homeless, and even for them it's barely worth the fucking effort. The amount of car traffic in America is ludicrous and an endemic problem of poor, lobbied city design. This country had better public transit that was muscled out by automobile lobbyists, some of which actually privatized the transit and let the infrastructure die. Asphalt retains heat, and every new damn road built is a contributor to making the world just a little bit more warmer than it used to be. China is a leading adopter of rail commuting and freight transport. We're twiddling our thumbs and letting our rail networks deteriorate and become unusable, because its cheaper to move less material over trucks. These are just two simple examples. There's no zero sum result of completely eliminating plastics, but we can definitely consume much less. But we don't. Because we are lazy. Instead we exploit pollution loopholes where we classify SUVs as light work trucks so they don't have to conform to strict emission standards. This is why Ford cut down most of its car production lines in the U.S and almost exclusively focuses on trucks for their consumer market, and why increasingly more cars on road today are arguably less safer SUVs

ThomPete 3y ago
You have to come up with a better alternative that doesn't take things away. Your examples are good examples of things that are not better alternatives, they are worse. I don't think most people realize just how unique a material plastic for instance is.

yellowapple 3y ago

> The only big breakthroughs that matter with energy and can work at scale would be things like fusion and molten salt generators. You don't need to go that far. Fission and geothermal can work at scale today and largely solve the impending climate trainwreck today. We haven't adopted them in droves not because of some technological limitation, but rather because they're more expensive on balance sheets (which don't account for negative externalities) and because the fossil fuel industry has successfully manipulated the public into equating "renewable energy" with "things fundamentally incapable of providing base load".

ThomPete 3y ago
They don't scale and they don't provide enough energy density to do provide energy for new types of solutions.