The Myth of Clean Energy
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Friday, June 19, 2026 17:34
VIEWED: 1049
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/general/the-myth-of-clean-energy/ar
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In More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy, Fressoz sets out to show that there is no such thing as an “energy transition,” and there never has been. To put it bluntly: “After two centuries of ‘energy transitions,’ humanity has never burned so much oil and gas, so much coal and so much wood. Today around 2 billion cubic metres of wood are felled each year to be burned, three times more than a century ago.” Instead, Fressoz’s coruscating history looks to explain “why all primary energies have grown together and why they have accumulated without replacing each other.” Far from being an established empirical fact about the past, the “energy transition” began as “a heterodox and mercantile futurology—a mere industrial slogan—which, from the 1970s onwards, became the future of experts, governments and companies, including those that had no interest whatsoever in seeing it happen.”
Nuclear is the ONLY answer.
Unless, yanno, somebody wants to have that long-overdue conversation about population control.
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its all bad, there is no clean
some is more dirty than others
but its all dirty
unless they solve that scifi 'Cold-Fusion' thing
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Quote:6ix, nuclear and population control makes you an Atomic Malthusian, to quote the article: "Across an increasing range of social and economic indicators, the “atomic Malthusians” (to use Fressoz’s delightful phrase) envisioned a future of finitude, one rife with population catastrophes, food and energy shortages, and economic decline that could only be prevented by a transition to nuclear energy."
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nuclear is the ONLY answer.
Unless, yanno, somebody wants to have that long-overdue conversation about population control.
Chapter 10 of the book is titled Atomic Malthusians.
The final paragraph from that chapter:
Quote:Download Fressoz’s book More and More and More - An All-Consuming History of Energy from https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Fressoz+More
Atomic scientists had discovered a problem infinitely more vast than the solution they were proposing. Even today, nuclear power plays only a marginal role in the world’s energy supply, half that of firewood, and after serious incidents and financial problems, fast-breeder reactor programmes have been abandoned in most countries. France and Japan, the most nuclear-powered countries on the planet, have not seen their CO2 emissions fall drastically, if imported emissions are taken into account. Three-quarters of a century after Putnam, the world is up against the wall: climatologists and then common experience have confirmed the climate risks identified by the Chicago atomic scientists as early as the 1950s. The problem is that energy debates are replaying their futurology based on the idea of ‘transition’, with a lot of coal still under our feet and fading nuclear dreams.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Well if Nuclear isn't going to work, time to downsize the world population to only 1 Billion.
It's the only thing I agree with the WEF Supervillains on.
I know nobody wants to talk about it, but we either do or they're going to take care of it for us. They know more than anybody that wind and solar are bullshit and what we've got going on right now is beyond unsustainable.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Who told you wind and solar are bullshit? I know who put that idea in your head:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
wind and solar are bullshit
Trump’s Global War on Decarbonization
The Trump administration is doing everything it can to ensure that fossil fuels remain dominant in the energy mix of the twenty-first century.
By Mark Blyth and Daniel Driscoll | Aug 21, 2025
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-global-war-on-decar
bonization-green-technologies-by-mark-blyth-and-daniel-driscoll-2025-08
There are multiple competing theories about what drives the anti-green policies embraced by US President Donald Trump. Perhaps they reflect the influence of carbon-heavy industries in Republican-controlled states. Or perhaps they channel ideological hostility to the notion that the state should play any kind of planning role in the economy.
Whatever the case, it is increasingly apparent that the Trump administration wants to halt decarbonization not only in the United States but globally. Viewed from this perspective, much of the recent US policy incoherence starts to make more sense – albeit in a dangerously regressive way.
The US sits atop vast reserves of fossil fuels, which have underpinned its national prosperity for decades. They have lit cities, powered factories, stimulated postwar job growth, and forged broad regional political coalitions among labor, agriculture, and corporations. They are also highly profitable commodities, with exports creating global dependence on US supplies (which is especially true for liquefied natural gas following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine). Fossil fuels are a core component of the country’s political economy – and a key factor in US domestic and foreign policymaking.
The Trump administration recognizes this. It includes ideological realists who understand that energy transitions make hegemons – that energy is power. Just as coal drove the industrial revolution in England, oil and gas fueled America’s postwar dominance. Whoever controls energy controls the future.
Unfortunately for the US, if the next energy transition is a green one, the future surely belongs to China, whose green-tech dominance is so firmly established that it does not really matter which metric you look at. In terms of the critical minerals used for such technologies, China supplies the majority of the world’s refined lithium (70%), cobalt (78%), graphite (95%), rare earths (91%), and manganese (91%). In terms of green-tech manufacturing, China accounts for 80% of solar panel production, 50-70% of the wind turbine market, and over half of electric vehicles. And in terms of deployment, it is undertaking three-quarters of the world’s renewable-energy projects.
This is all good news for those who care about decarbonization; but it is bad news for those hoping to extend US hegemony. If the US wants to preserve its global primacy, then realist logic dictates that it needs China to fail. And the US can engineer that outcome by continuing to do exactly what it is doing.
Since Trump returned to office, his administration has been reshaping American consumption by imposing massive import tariffs and abandoning the previous administration’s program of domestic decarbonization incentives and investments. The Inflation Reduction Act was an explicit attempt to compete with China in green tech. But now Americans are being weaned off the renewables that they were just beginning to enjoy.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill spells disaster for the future of US green-tech investment, and his administration is further deregulating fossil fuels and adding more hurdles for clean-energy projects. While the Environmental Protection Agency works to extinguish its own ability to regulate carbon emissions, NASA satellites that track US emissions are being targeted for self-destruction. All these moves, coupled with 30% tariffs on imports from China, signal to green-tech producers that the world’s top consumer no longer wants their wares.
Moreover, the US is try
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Who told you wind and solar are bullshit?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
wind and solar are bullshit
Everybody who doesn't have a (D) attached to their name.
Everybody.
Wind and Solar are a scam.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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I'm going to chime in with the usual: there's nothing wrong with wind and solar (altho those windmills are butt ugly) if they're sited in the right places and if they don't take up prime farmland or otherwise disturb the environment.*
BUT. They. Are. Not. Reliable.
You will STILL need some other source of energy for your baseload for those hours/ days/ weeks/ months/ and (on occasion) seasons when the weather doesn't behave as expected.
* Except for the fact that electricity companies like to do the install, there's absolutely no reason for acres and acres of solar panels in the natural environment, or on prime farmland, when there are acres and acres of city rooftops and parking lots. My fair city has finally gotten around to shading its city- owned parking lots with solar panels. Personally, I prefer trees, but solar panels have the benefit of producing electricity for the schools and public buildings next door. If combined with battery backup (still an expensive proposition) that's a robust, earthquake- proof source of energy. There's still plenty of room for trees along city streets and sidewalks.
AFA windmills killing birds: cats kill about 100X more.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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My whole point is, unless you want to give up control to the government how much electricity we get to use per month and severly curb our usage by force, wind and solar aren't going to help anybody with anything. There are too many people and our energy needs are far too high.
Your state is trying to force electric cars by 2030. You already have a power grid that goes down quite often in the summer when everyone is using A/C. How many billions of solar panels and millions of windmills do you need to put up if everyone in California is driving coal burning cars?
They're expensive, they're inefficient, and we still haven't come close to developing battery storage solutions to make them work in the first place.
The environmental impact from digging out all the shit we need to do any of this, on top of the CO2 emissions caused from creating things like the wind blades and the fact that we burn, bury or throw them right into the ocean when they're done because not a single ounce of those blades are recyclable makes things even worse.
It's all a fucking con that got a ton of taxpayer dollars funding companies that shouldn't even exist. And the grift only went on this long because of stupid people with tiny brains and big fucking mouths like Second.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
My whole point is, unless you want to give up control to the government how much electricity we get to use per month and severly curb our usage by force, wind and solar aren't going to help anybody with anything. There are too many people and our energy needs are far too high.
Conservation helps. Why not phase out all those gas- guzzling SUVs and pickups that people buy only for show?
Planning for cool(er) cities helps.
Cutting down on our incessant war- making helps.
Banning private jets and restricting air travel, finding ways to reduce truck transport but reviving the much more efficient rail system...
All kinds of ways to conserve.
The wealthiest, who consume the most, should conserve the most
Quote:We don't have coal burning power plants in CA, SIX. But I get your point. Shifting energy requirements from gasoline- burning cars to natural gas- burning cars (via power grid) doesn't reduce our total energy consumption much, and transitioning to 100% "clean energy" is impractical.
Your state is trying to force electric cars by 2030. You already have a power grid that goes down quite often in the summer when everyone is using A/C. How many billions of solar panels and millions of windmills do you need to put up if everyone in California is driving coal burning cars?
Quote:Not that expensive, but unreliable.
They're expensive, they're inefficient, and we still haven't come close to developing battery storage solutions to make them work in the first place.
Quote:An unbiased life cycle CO2 analysis would help.
The environmental impact from digging out all the shit we need to do any of this, on top of the CO2 emissions caused from creating things like the wind blades and the fact that we burn, bury or throw them right into the ocean when they're done because not a single ounce of those blades are recyclable makes things even worse.
But don't forget, there are enviromental fracking costs and digging out uranium and concentrating it takes a lot of energy too, and has other environmental costs as well.
Quote:
nIt's all a fucking con that got a ton of taxpayer dollars funding companies that shouldn't even exist. And the grift only went on this long because of stupid people with tiny brains and big fucking mouths like Second.
Not "all", SIX. I already explained the calcs I made for "payback period" and found that FOR US solar made 100% economic and environmental sense, and it would make 100% economic sense for much of CA, plus AZ, NM, TX, FL, UT, etc.
You really do have an "all or nothing" approach, SIX. But reality doesn't conform to our logic and words. Even "human life" is on a continuum. Reality is quite often shades of gray and trade- offs. That doesn't appeal to your incisive mind, which wants 100% solutions, but that's the way it is.
AFA reducing population... yes, if everyone wants to live a comfortable lifestyle, we will have to reduce our population. AND we'll have to find ways to conserve. One thing that I think would help is flattening our wealth inequality. If everyone had guaranteed health care (which doesn't take that much more energy) and a safe place to live and decent food to eat, we might not mind not being able to hop in our gas guzzlers or jet off to wherever.
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Quote:An acre costs $1,228 in the Texas Panhandle, while an acre of land in downtown Houston would likely cost over $1 million, potentially ranging into several million dollars. The owner of an acre in the Panhandle wants the money from solar panels, while the owner of an acre in downtown does not. That is why solar panels are placed far beyond the cities.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
there's absolutely no reason for acres and acres of solar panels in the natural environment, or on prime farmland, when there are acres and acres of city rooftops and parking lots.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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