Shredding stupidity on renewable energy


ROBERT Bryce came to town and in 45 minutes of clinical, highly entertaining, fact-filled presentation, completely shredded the fantasies of so-called renewable energy. 
 
In summary, we use carbon-based energy — oil, gas and mostly coal — because it works. Renewable, whether wind or solar, does not. It’s ultimately as simple and undeniable as that.

More to the point, the overwhelming majority of the earth’s population, which either has no access to electricity or very poor and limited access, is going to keep using more and more energy. That’s, more and more carbon-based energy, mostly coal.

The entire developed world, the US, Japan, all of Europe and little ’ol Australia, could reduce its use of carbon-based energy to zero — obviously, it won’t; indeed, it would be lucky to knock off even 10 per cent anytime soon — and that would be swamped by the increase in the use of carbon-based energy by developing countries which aspire to our prosperity.

That is to say, there is zero prospect of any global reduction in the use of coal and carbon-based energy in total; and so of the associated carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, both coal use and CO2 emissions will continue to rise relentlessly.

Which countries have recorded the fastest growth in the use of coal-fired power generation and so CO2 emissions?

We’ve all heard about China of course — now the world’s single biggest source of CO2 emissions by far, approaching one-third of the global total; with India following behind.

This reality produced of course a most extraordinary variation of the cognitive dissonance which is the most pervasive social disease of our time among the Labor governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

While Rudd described climate change — and reducing CO2 emissions — as the “biggest moral challenge of our time”, both were galloping enthusiasts for selling more and more coal and iron ore to China and other places to our north.

It was a cognitive dissonance wrapped up in a thick layer of hypocrisy. Like the pianist in the brothel, what did Gillard think the coal and iron ore were ‘doing upstairs’ in China, so to speak?

Presumably she concluded that if she just figuratively closed her eyes, she could avoid ‘seeing’ that the mammoth expansion in CO2 emissions facilitated by our coal and iron ore, would swamp, would utterly overwhelm, the 5 per cent cut mandated by their tackling (sic) that great moral challenge.

But as Bryce pointed out the biggest increases in coal use and CO2 emissions had been recorded by Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. In Indonesia alone, this has given over 100 million people access to electricity — and critically, they were really only getting started on their power usage.

It is exactly this reality that Bryce who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank in the US set out in clinical detail in a speech to Institute of Public Affairs Tuesday night.

It was to a certain extent a more focused exposition of his latest book: Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper. Bryce discussed the energy reality under five headings: scale, the centrality of energy for wealth and freedom, coal as the pivot, the big fibs of renewables, and iteration equalled innovation.

The world used 256 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) of energy every day. About one-third of that is actual oil, 87 per cent in total comes from oil, coal and gas.

Barely 2 per cent came from wind, solar and biomass — the renewable that kills people rather than just birds as wind does. The rest is of course nuclear and hydro.

Over the last decade global CO2 emissions have risen 29 per cent — and, my comment, the six billion people not in the developed world, are just getting started on their energy consumption.

The additional energy will be produced mostly by increased use of coal. As Bryce detailed, over the last 20 years some 800 million people have been given access to electricity by the use of coal; only 65 million have got it from wind and solar.

Coal usage has been growing by 2 mboe per day every year. That is more than three time the entire total of existing solar energy in the world.

The big fib — I‘d describe it as the ultimate mother of all lies — is that renewable energy could be the answer to the world’s appetite for energy.

Just to meet the growth in energy demand — not to make any inroad into that 87 per cent of total carbon-based supply — would require installing wind farms covering the area of the UK every year, he explained. That’s one Manhattan — the island, not the institute — every day.

In his book Bryce characterises environmentalists — I would extend it to all those preaching the renewable energy nonsense — as driven by fear; and knowingly or (perhaps, mostly) reject modernity and economic growth.

He concludes his book with a stirring call for an outlook that embraced “humanism, optimism and technology”.

Technology and economic growth had brought — and were bringing — tens of millions of people “(literally) out of the dark and into the electric-lit world of ideas, education, and fuller healthier, freer, more fulfilling lives”. Indeed.

Terry McCrann 
  Herald Sun 
September 11, 2014 12:00AM

Oh MY !

Robert Bryce

leaves QUITE a nasty

"paper trail"

of

"cash for comment"

Pity you can hardly even breathe in Chinese cities thanks to carbon based fuels.

This article is absolute nonsense. There is no need to switch directly 100% renewables worldwide, it should be done progressively where it works and fits first. Australia just happen to a be a place where it fits.

Renewable energy resources will be the future of our race.  It is inevitable.  Each year, energy requirements for individuals from both developed and developing world increase.  And by virtual of non renewable energy, there will be a finite limit.  One can only continue to produce more coal based electricity station before the environment is degraded to such an extent that its incompatible with human. 

Even at our stage of scientific development, we already knew that there are vast amount of other energy avaible in our universe.  And that getting energy by burning of biological remains are the least available form and the least efficent form. 

The article author also used this excuse:

Quote:


I expect this sort of argument from a primary school student.  Even as a high school student, I know that there are other forms of renewable energy.    The energy that arrive from the Sun for 1 minute on Earth, holds enough energy to power our entire modern world for one year.  If we as a race want to reach out to the stars, to be a meaningful part of the universe, then we will eventually have to move out of non renewable energy.