If you believe that we are even remotely close to being able to power the US electrical grid with renewable energy, much less the world, you need one of those free Biden crack pipes. There is no chance that we can power the US electrical grid with mostly renewable energy sources any time soon. That notion is a political fantasy and a manipulative lie intended to control human behavior. Surprisingly, many far leftists do not seem to understand that all the electric vehicles they are constantly jabbering about have to be charged on an electrical grid overwhelmingly powered by fossil fuels. Here is the current breakdown of sources for the US energy supply.
- Petroleum contributes 36% of all US energy needs.
- Natural gas contributes 32% of all US energy needs.
- Renewable Energy contributes 12% of all US energy needs. Which is broken down as follows:
a. Wind 27%
b. Biofuels 19%
c. Hydroelectric 19%
d. Wood 17%
e. Solar 12%
f. Biomass waste 4%
g. Geothermal 2%
- Coal contributes 11% of all US energy needs.
- Nuclear electric power contributes 8% of all US energy needs.
Liberals need to stare at and master these numbers so they stop talking nonsense. For all the talk about solar and wind power, solar and wind sources provide less than 5% of total US power. Again, less than 5% comes from solar and wind sources. Those are the facts. The US has ZERO chance of powering its vibrant economy, and keeping its citizens out of poverty using only renewable energy. Renewable energy will not be able to power the US economy in 10 years, in 30 years, or perhaps ever. Significant contributions from fossil fuels will be necessary as far as the eye can see – unless you are blind.
Second, this reality is not going to change very fast. Think of how long you have been hearing from politicians about renewable energy and a new greener world. Al Gore’s sensationalized and politically biased movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” came out in 2006. US politicians, scientists, and citizens have been talking about global warming incessantly at least since then. Of course, Gore’s hysterical predictions generally failed to come true. For example, Gore worked up sympathy by declaring that the polar bear population is in danger because of shrinking sea ice. In fact, polar bear populations are on the increase, recently surging to about 30,000. Regardless, the point is that decades of talk about global warming, and decades of corrupt expenditures to climate change investors, have not materially increased our ability to rely on renewable energy in the US.
It is worse internationally: China, India, and Russia are massive carbon emitters. Yet, none of them plans any serious efforts to control their emissions. China produces almost double US carbon emissions but is building coal fired electricity plants as fast as it can, while idiots like Joe Biden and John Kerry run around the world embarrassing themselves and our country with their untethered hysteria. With smug irony, China manufactures the solar panels we stupidly purchase in the US, in factories powered by coal. Perversely, China creates massive pollution through coal power so the delusional woke in CA can pretend they are being green. There is zero chance that a traitorous bonehead like Kerry is going to convince the hardboiled CCP leadership that an 8 inch rise in ocean levels since 1880 is an existential threat worth abandoning their coal power plants. The CCP is not that stupid or gullible. No, believing that claptrap takes really stupid, misinformed people, such as our leftist politicians. Remember when AOC predicted the world would end in 12 years? I guess we have about 8 years left now. This was complete bunk; she was misreading an IPCC 2018 report and has literally no idea what she is talking about.
China is not going to change its behavior because the ocean water level rose 8 inches or because surface temperatures have gone up 1.2 C since the industrial revolution. China is too busy stealing our technology and murdering our children through deliberate fentanyl poisoning at the rate of more than 100,000 a year. China is the real existential threat, which liberals would see if people like Biden would stop taking payoffs from the CCP, 31 million and counting, and stop fantasying about some unattainable blue avatar like green society. Before fossil fuels, what most people did in the world was die young from cold, disease or underdevelopment. The world was nasty, brutish, and short and did not resemble anything like the fantasy world Avatar. It looked more like a plague ward as many children died of disease, never making it to adulthood. It was fossil fuels that warmed the children in the winter, allowing them to survive.
The third, and final big lie I address about renewable green energy is that it is clean. Renewable energy is emphatically NOT clean. To build all those contemplated electric vehicles, lithium batteries, solar panels, and wind mills will require vast mining operations – on the scale of the petroleum industry – to gather enough copper and rare earth minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, and neodymium. These mining operations will be just as dirty, and destructive as the petroleum industry (probably even more). These rare Earth metals are poisonous, can leach into ground water, cannot be disposed of safely, and raise serious environmental concerns.
Just yesterday there was a story in the news about how CA is struggling to dispose of all the cracked and broken, and discarded windmill parts, electric vehicle batteries, and solar panels. These materials are all hazardous and will leach into the soil and water tables just like nuclear waste and other toxic biproducts of industry. Moreover many of the supposed sources of renewable energy produce CO2 when burned, just like fossil fuels. For example when you burn wood or biodiesel you produce carbon and other undesirable emissions. It would take a stupid liberal professor to believe that burning natural gas produces carbon but burning wood or soybean oil based fuels does not produce carbon. Again, that is simply wrong.
In sum it turns out that most forms of renewable energy are not only expensive and impractical, but may even be dirtier than fossil fuels. These facts are available for liberals to examine themselves, but I suppose the facts do not matter when the real objectives of liberals is to terrify the citizens they are supposed to be serving with false stories of drowning polar bears and modest temperature increases. Very few people are ever going to die from climate change – in the sense the term is misused by liberals. There will be technical solutions to most climate problems if we keep working on them and stop using climate issues as a political manipulation. On the other hand, millions of people will die if the US ever becomes communist and throws aside its Constitution and free market economy. Afterall, over 100 million people died from the same stupid ideas in the 20th century. Communist governments are the true existential threat, whether in China or at home. Climate change issues will be solved by Western scientists in plenty of time if our looney leftists will stop misleading the public with garbage facts and allow our scientists to work on issues of climate change objectively and without political bias and manipulation.
Copyright 2022 in Paul H.Beattie. All rights reserved.
Notes from the Secular Right 