Tag Archives: Net Zero

Net Zero Will Lead to the End of Modern Civilisation, Says Top Scientist, by Chris Morrison

Wind and solar can’t power today’s world. Their ardent proponents know that. From Chris Morrison at dailyskeptic.org:

 

A damning indictment of the Net Zero political project has been made by one of the world’s leading nuclear physicists. In a recently published science paper, Dr. Wallace Manheimer said it would be the end of modern civilisation. Writing about wind and solar power he argued it would be especially tragic “when not only will this new infrastructure fail, but will cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment, and be entirely unnecessary”. The stakes, he added, “are enormous”.

Dr. Manheimer holds a physics PhD from MIT and has had a 50-year career in nuclear research, including work at the Plasma Physics Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He has published over 150 science papers. In his view, there is “certainly no scientific basis” for expecting a climate crisis from too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the next century or so. He argues that there is no reason why civilisation cannot advance using both fossil fuel power and nuclear power, gradually shifting to more nuclear power.

There is of course a growing body of opinion that points out that the Emperor has no clothes when it comes to all the fashionable green technologies. Electric cars, wind and solar power, hydrogen, battery storage, heat pumps – all have massive disadvantages, and are incapable of replacing existing systems without devastating consequences.

Manheimer points out that before fossil fuel became widely used, energy was provided by people and animals. Because so little energy was produced, “civilisation was a thin veneer atop a vast mountain of human squalor and misery, a veneer maintained by such institutions as slavery, colonialism and tyranny”.

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Net Zero Bombshell: The World Does Not Have Enough Lithium and Cobalt to Replace All Batteries Every 10 Years – Finnish Government Report, by Chris Morrison

There are some things that wishing just doesn’t make true, and net zero is one of them. From Chris Morrison at dailyskeptic.org:

To cite just one example of how un-costed Net Zero is, Michaux notes that “in theory” there are enough global reserves of nickel and lithium if they are exclusively used to produce batteries for electric vehicles. But there is not enough cobalt, and more will need to be discovered. It gets much worse. All the new batteries have a useful working life of only 8-10 years, so replacements will need to be regularly produced. “This is unlikely to be practical, which suggests the whole EV battery solution may need to be re-thought and a new solution is developed that is not so mineral intensive,” he says.

All of these problems occur in finding a mass of lithium for ion batteries weighting 286.6 million tonnes. But a “power buffer” of another 2.5 billion tonnes of batteries is also required to provide a four-week back-up for intermittent wind and solar electricity power. Of course, this is simply not available from global mineral reserves, but, states Michaux, it is not clear how the buffer could be delivered with an alternative system.

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Net Zero: doubling down on stupid, by Pete North

Climate change, like Covid, has never been about human well-being, but rather about power and control. From Pete North at turbulenttimes.co.uk:

Most of my thinking lately dwells on the impossibility of Net Zero. Green energy lobbyists have ramped up the propaganda in recent months, doing all they can to obscure the reality of Net Zero. There are now endless debates as to the true cost of wind energy. Carbon Brief is pushing the line that wind energy is “nine times cheaper”.

Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch has a crack at this dodgy number. Montford’s analysis is often quite good. Personally I think the argument needs to be reframed. Costing energy is an imprecise science because it’s fraught with complexity. The slam dunk argument against wind energy is when we frame it as intermittent versus dispatchable energy.

I argue that the cost of building and operating windmills is not a standalone figure. We must also consider the cost of grid balancing and the various energy storage technologies. Energy storage is in its infancy. It is not cheap. It is not going to get cheaper any time soon. In all probability it’s going to remain a pricey affair for decades to come. There will be shortages of lithium and battery grade nickel in the next five to ten years, leading to production and supply chain problems.

In the interim gas power stations are doing the heavy lifting of grid balancing and wind backup. It wasn’t cheap before the war in Ukraine and it’s not cheap now. Moreover, as we’ve dismantled our conventional power generation, we’ve lost a great deal of spinning reserve for short term grid balancing so we’re now having to build standalone flywheels – simulating the spinning metal mass of a power station turbine. The demonstrator is set to cost £25m. The more intermittent energy we add the more it destabilises the grid so we could end up needing dozens of these contraptions.

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The “Net Zero” Agenda Has Devastating Consequences… Here’s What You Need To Know, by Chris MacIntosh

“Net Zero” will be not even a zero for humanity, but rather a large step backward. From Chris MacIntosh at internationalman.com:

Net Zero Agenda

Human beings — regardless of race, religion or culture — like to embrace any belief that is absolute. This is because absolute beliefs are simple, easy to comprehend, and false positives that offer us a false sense of security.

If we come to believe that a particular idea, place, or group of people are either all good or all bad, then we humans fool ourselves into thinking that we have got a piece of a particular equation all figured out.

Such a binary viewpoint is psychologically comforting, allowing us to feel assured and in control. The more control we feel the more assured we feel so there is a feedback loop here which takes hold.

Now, think of propaganda, which is, of course, a group reassuring another group of a particular narrative. Consider that if you have decided that a group of people are all bad, then all you have to do is stay away from them or keep them away from you. Life just got easier. If you decide that a group of people are your enemy, all you have to do is make war against them and once they are all gone, life would surely be better, right?

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Net Zero by 2050? Here’s What It Takes To Get It, by Chris MacIntosh

Net zero by 2050 isn’t going to happen. From Christ MacIntosh at internationalman.com:

Net Zero by 2050

Here is what a reasonably objective study from the Geological Survey of Finland concludes on just how much more electricity generation will be required to retire natural gas and coal…

The answer: a stink load!

But you need batteries to provide power when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Here is an indication of just how much materials would be required to produce all these batteries:

We won’t hold these estimates against the author as there are a number of variables involved. But you get the basic point: there aren’t enough materials on the planet to achieve this dream. It’s a grand absurd delusion!

We wouldn’t worry about natural gas and coal being phased out just yet.

The Net Zero is Just Plain Virtue Signaling.

What is virtue signaling? A form of moral grandstanding in which a viewpoint or answer is calculated to “look good,” thereby making the object or speaker appear virtuous to others, rather than being chosen because it is strictly honest.

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