human actions, global climate change, global human solutions
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UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 19:38
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Trump’s plan to replace clean energy with fossil fuels has some major problems
The budget bill sabotages one of the biggest growth sectors of the US economy.
July 3, 2025
https://www.vox.com/climate/418563/trump-big-beautiful-bill-clean-ener
gy-fossil-climate
The first solar cell ever made was built in the United States. Tesla, based in the US, was once the largest EV manufacturer in the world. The lithium-ion battery was codeveloped in the US.
But today, China — not the US — is the largest manufacturer of solar cells and batteries. China’s BYD — not Tesla — is the largest EV manufacturer in the world. And China is starting to outrun the US on research and development investment.
The US has a long history of taking the lead in clean energy, and a long history of losing it. And President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which passed the House on Thursday and is heading for his desk, would again leave the US on the margins of a global clean energy revolution that it could have dominated.
For years now, clean power has been the largest source of new electricity in the US. Solar, batteries, and wind are on track to make up more than 90 percent of new electricity capacity on the US power grid this year. Wind and solar now produce more electricity on the US power grid than coal. Almost twice as many Americans work in clean energy compared to fossil fuels, and the sector is still growing.
But thanks to the bill, that may not be the case for much longer.
Some of the more extreme provisions in earlier drafts of the bill have been removed, like an excise tax targeting renewable energy. But the final version of the bill rolls back many of the investments from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the single-largest US investment to address climate change by giving the energy transition a boost. It calls for more rapid phaseouts of tax credits for wind and solar power, only allowing projects that break ground in the next 12 months or those that connect to the grid by 2027 to take advantage of these incentives. It also eliminates a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of a new electric vehicle. The spending bill doesn’t just undo incentives for clean energy — it also creates a new tax credit for coal and encourages more drilling on public lands.
These provisions are in line with Trump’s longstanding antipathy toward renewable energy and disbelief in climate change. But they stand to hobble the US economy more broadly.
The US is facing significant load growth on the power grid for the first time in decades as the tech industry scrounges for electrons to power their electricity-devouring data centers. Energy demand is rising and the cheapest, most readily deployable supplies of energy are being throttled.
The alternatives, however, are not likely to make up the gap in time. Fossil fuels take longer to ramp up. The US is currently the largest oil and gas producer in the world, but it can take years to site, permit, and acquire the materials to build power plants that burn these fuels. Since these are internationally traded commodities, their prices can fluctuate based on factors beyond the US’s control.
Right now, oil prices are at four-year lows and natural gas prices are falling, and when prices are low, it’s much harder to make the business case for more mining, drilling, and power plants, even with incentives. Trump may have some levers to pull — he can, for example, open up more federally managed lands for energy production — but many of those leases sit unused because energy companies don’t want to create a supply glut. Meanwhile, employment in the oil and gas industry remains volatile, while coal jobs are continuing their decades-long decline.
Energy Information Administration
“We’re in this moment of surging demand and you can’t build another gas turbine for at least five years beyond what’s already been booked,” said Robbie Orvis, senior direct
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The push for electric vehicles is a big boondoggle. EVs don't generate new energy, and - ultimately- they're just a real long tailpipe that extends to the power plant smokestack. Not to mention the pollution they, and windmills and solar cells, create in their lifecycle.
The limiting flaw of "green energy" is ... still... energy storage. Carrying the grid through the hours ... days ... weeks ... even seasons, sometimes ... when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow enough (or blows too hard).
Until you solve THAT problem, you will still need fossil fuel generating capacity to meet 100% of need. You can reduce fossil fuel use by quite a bit, and beef up grid regional interchanges, but you will STILL need that fossil fueled capacity in reserve.
*****
I don't know how this would pencil out, but I see an oppty for capturing methane and boosting the power grid at the same time. One possibility is to compress the gas for sale elsewhere. Another possibility is to use some or all of the gas that would normally be flared off to run microturbines (distributed energy production) and either feed that directly into the grid or use it to power compressors, or both.
Is that more efficient than the big power generating plants? No. But it's more efficient than just flaring it off.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Real Men Burn Stuff
The manosphere and the war on renewable energy
By Paul Krugman / Jul 7, 2025 at 5:09 AM
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/real-men-burn-stuff
“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” That famous 2011 quip from the venture capitalist Peter Thiel still resonates, even though Thiel himself has become a deeply malignant force in American politics. I’ll write soon about the madness of the Trumpist tech bros, but for today let me focus on Thiel’s original insight — that everyone, venture capitalists included, had come to focus far too much on digital technology, neglecting the possibilities of breakthroughs in technologies that deal with the physical world.
Yet here’s the irony: In the years since Thiel’s lament we have, in fact, seen revolutionary progress in one fundamental physical-world technology, energy production. Yet the people Thiel and his buddies helped put in power are doing all they can to reverse that progress and send America back into the energy Dark Ages.
Most critiques of the One Big Beautiful Bill have focused on the way it explodes the budget deficit while imposing immense hardship on lower-income Americans. Yet energy policy is also an important component of the OBBB, which basically tries to roll back the rise of solar and wind power — sources that have accounted for more than half the worldwide increase in electricity generation since 2015.
To understand how self-destructive that effort is, you need to know three things about the economics of renewable energy.
First, there are powerful environmental reasons to favor renewables over fossil fuels where possible. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the most important, because climate change is an existential threat. But even aside from climate concerns, the air pollution created by burning fossil fuels takes a major toll on health and productivity, which solar and wind don’t.
Second, a transition to renewables, which might have seemed like pie-in-the-sky, hippy-dippy stuff a generation ago, is now not just feasible but the only sensible energy strategy. Here’s a chart showing estimates of the levelized cost of electricity generation (LCOE), adjusted for inflation, for a variety of renewable energy technologies, compared with the costs of power from fossil fuels. I’m aware that LCOE is an imperfect measure, but the results are still astonishing:
Source: IRENA
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2024/Sep/
IRENA_Renewable_power_generation_costs_in_2023.pdf#page=21
We’re talking in particular about a 90 percent decline in the real cost of power from solar panels and a 70 percent decline in the cost of wind power. This isn’t just progress, it’s a revolution.
And — my third point — the revolution isn’t over. Some technological leaps involve one big idea, which takes time to implement but is basically a once-and-done deal — which seems to be the case, to take an example I’ve studied, for freight containerization. Progress in renewable energy, however, has involved a continual process of “learning by doing,” in which efficiency keeps rising and costs falling as the industry expands. This is exactly the kind of situation in which government subsidies — like the clean-energy tax credits instituted by the Biden administration — can accelerate progress and boost overall economic growth.
But the OBBB killed those tax credits. And the Trump administration has been taking executive action to stall renewable development, for example, by halting federal approvals for wind farms. In general, MAGA clearly wants to move us back to burning gas, oil and above all coal. Why?
Campaign contributions no doubt play a role. Fossil fuel industries donate almost exclusively to Republicans. But renewables are also big business these
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Is anyone who does not know that the Republican Party denies that there is climate change?
Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.
U.S. rocked by four 1-in-1,000-year storms in less than a week
By Denise Chow | July 10, 2025, 4:09 PM CDT
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/flood-storms-climate-ch
ange-1-in-1000-year-rainfall-rcna217863
First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois.
In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.
These events come and go in the news, and before you know it, we’re on to the next one.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Scientists discover what wiped out global ocean life 200 million years ago
By Mac Oliveau | Jul 19, 2025 9:07 AM PDT
https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/scientists-discover-what-wiped-o
ut-global-ocean-life-200-million-years-ago/
What makes the Triassic–Jurassic extinction so important is the clear link between volcanic CO2 release, ocean acidification, and mass extinction. It’s a case where scientists can trace each step of the crisis in the geologic record — from carbon release to acidification to biodiversity collapse. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61344-6
What’s even more alarming is how today’s carbon emissions compare. The size of the pH drop 201 million years ago matches the worst-case expectations for future oceans. But the difference lies in the pace. Back then, it took tens of thousands of years. Today, human activities are pumping carbon into the atmosphere much faster—on a scale of just a few hundred years. This compressed timeline leaves ocean life with far less time to adapt.
Climate change today isn’t just a future problem — it’s unfolding now. And the fossil record is telling us that we’ve been here before. The difference? This time, we know it’s coming. And we have the tools to act.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I know SIX will deny this, just like he denied Covid deaths .... but this is domething we really need to do something about. And I don't mean get-rich-quick schemes like EVs for everyone, or technologically impossible ideas like flue gas carbon capture, but real, practical plans that we can implement today:
Solar for everyone south of 60°N; building nat gas power plants to replace coal fired ones; carbon tax; forest, farm, and ranch management to capture carbon; banning private jets; reducing our military budget by at least 50% and ending our endless carbon-wasting wars; upgrading grids whose efficiency is less than 97%; not only requiring better fleet averages but also capping mpg on all vehicles to eliminate gas guzzlers; urban forests; "cool cities"; methane capture at the wellhead powering microturbines; improving home efficiency thru repair and upgrade...
A kind of "all of the above where practical and effective" approach.
A lot of this would be an impossible sell to politicians and the MIC and the wealthy, but it would actually improve people's lives (Carbon tax can be returned to people. The point of a carbon tax isn't to raise revenues for the government.) and create jobs requiring skilled labor.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
"Constant monitoring of behavior, emotion, and identity breeds conformity, judgment, and fear."
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Quote:Trump's insane war on renewable energy
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
A kind of "all of the above where practical and effective" approach.
America needs energy abundance, not polarization and culture war
By Matthew Yglesias | Jul 23, 2025
https://www.slowboring.com/p/trumps-insane-war-on-renewable-energy
I’ve often had occasion to write that environmentalists are overrating the prospects of 100 percent renewable energy as a strategy for addressing climate change.
Essentially, they are relying on a badly flawed “levelized cost of energy” metric, which says the marginal cost of adding one megawatt of wind or solar to a fossil-dominated grid is cheap, to conclude that an all-renewable grid would be cheap. This is wrong. Developing an all-renewable grid that could reliably power a temperate country through the winter would be much more expensive than a simple LCOE metric suggests. This is one of the reasons why new technology — affordable nuclear, advanced geothermal, or scalable carbon capture — is so important.
But Donald Trump is running the show now, and he’s making the opposite error.
He’s not trying to create a zero-emission grid or reduce fossil fuel use in any way. But he’s not only rolling back tax credits for wind and solar production, he’s doing everything he can think of to raise new regulatory barriers to renewable deployment. He also keeps asserting that China doesn’t use renewable technologies, suggesting that the mere existence of wind and solar power is harmful.
TRUMP: And we are putting up wind. It does not work, aside from ruining our fields and valleys and killing all the birds. Being very weak and expensive, all made in China. I have never seen a wind farm in China. Why is that?
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1941251628386148485
This is totally false. Not only does China have many wind farms, they generate more wind electricity than the United States does despite a much less favorable geography. And they generate a lot more solar electricity than the United States.
The reason China generates so much renewable electricity is that while constructing an all-renewables grid is a lot more expensive than environmentalists want to concede, it’s absolutely true that incrementally adding renewable energy to the grid is cheap. That’s why China has dramatically increased the amount of renewables it deployed in the context of a dramatic increase in the overall amount of electricity the country generates.
This is what a pure “energy dominance” policy looks like: massive buildout of wind and solar and batteries, because wind turbines and solar panels and batteries are all getting cheaper, with the shortcomings of an all-renewables grid addressed by simply not building an all-renewables grid.
It looks like China’s carbon dioxide emissions are finally leveling off. But while China was building out these renewables, they were also burning more fossil fuels. This is obviously not a strategy for achieving the environmental movement’s goals. But if you’re Donald Trump and you don’t want to achieve rapid decarbonization, there is still genuinely no problem with opening the floodgates to renewable deployment.
All Trump will accomplish by throttling renewables is making costs higher and the air dirtier than if he just let Americans use technologies that really are quite cheap at the current margin. He’s letting culture war prejudice, special interest politics, and polarization get in the way of his stated goals of lower costs and energy dominance.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Transitioning the entire U.S. power grid to 100% renewable energy sources is estimated to cost approximately $4.5 trillion, according to a 2019 analysis by Wood Mackenzie and reported by Greentech Media and Yale E360.
This estimate is for a transition over a decade and assumes the replacement of all fossil fuels and nuclear power with renewables like hydroelectricity, biomass, geothermal, wind, and solar.
Key Cost Components and Considerations:
Massive Buildout of Wind and Solar: The analysis estimated a significant investment of $1.5 trillion for the construction of new wind and solar capacity.
Energy Storage: A crucial element is the addition of substantial battery storage capacity, estimated to add $4 trillion to the total cost.
Transmission Infrastructure: Doubling the existing transmission lines, from 200,000 miles to 400,000 miles, is projected to cost an additional $700 billion to accommodate the new distributed power system.
Impact of Nuclear Power: If nuclear power were allowed to remain in the energy mix, the estimated cost would drop to $4 trillion.
Recent Data and Context: While the $4.5 trillion figure is a key benchmark, more recent data suggests that grid upgrade costs for a clean energy transition could be even higher, with one source from 2023 estimating $21 trillion over 30 years for a grid overhaul. Other studies focusing on a clean electricity grid by 2035 suggest potentially lower additional costs for power systems (up to $740 billion) but also highlight significant societal benefits from avoided mortality and climate change damages.
Subsidies and Inflation: Decarbonization Channel analysis notes that subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act make onshore wind and solar very cost-effective, though recent inflation has impacted costs compared to earlier years.
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+cost+for+all-renewables+gr
id+in+US
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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French nuclear energy splits Germany's ruling coalition
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/07/22/french-nucl
ear-energy-splits-germany-s-ruling-coalition_6743591_4.html
also the German electric grid had no link to Fukushima but the 'Greens' shut down Germany's power
not the perfect solution Nuclear does have dangers but it seems to be a lot less toxic and dangerous than coal a very dirty industry
New Mexico’s forgotten 1979 uranium catastrophe that poisoned 80 miles of the Puerco River with radioactive sludge
https://southarkansassun.com/us-news/115017/new-mexicos-forgotten-1979
-uranium-catastrophe-that-poisoned-80-miles-of-the-puerco-river-with-radioactive-sludge/
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Quote:
Japan Bets On Super Thin, Film-Like Panels to Reclaim Solar Leadership At Expo 2025
Friday, Jul 25, 2025 - 03:50 PM
At Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan is using an unexpected location—a bus terminal—to highlight its latest innovation: ultrathin “perovskite” solar panels, according to Nikkei.
More than 250 of these flexible, lightweight panels line the curved roof of the Yumeshima Transportation Terminal 1. Japan hopes this film-like solar tech will not only boost domestic renewable energy and reduce reliance on China, but also help it lead the next generation of solar innovation.
"It's like killing three birds with one stone," said Takayuki Taenaka of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
Perovskite solar cells, discovered in 2009, are made from layers of chemicals just millimeters thick. Though still in early development, they rival traditional silicon-based panels in efficiency while being 20 times thinner and 10 times lighter, allowing installation on walls, rooftops, and even windows—places unsuitable for heavy panels.
"We believe this technology has the potential to beat the conventional silicon-based solar panels in terms of power generation efficiency," said Futoshi Kamiwaki, president of Sekisui Solarfilm, which developed the panels showcased at the Expo.
Japan, with limited flat land, leads major nations in solar capacity per km² but is running out of space. Installing perovskite cells on buildings could turn cities into vertical solar farms, helping Tokyo meet its 2040 goal: 29% of power from solar, up from under 10% today.
MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/japan-bets-film-panels-reclaim-solar
-leadership-expo-2025
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
"Constant monitoring of behavior, emotion, and identity breeds conformity, judgment, and fear."
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