Link: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/05/what-energytransition.php
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POSTED ON MAY 7, 2024 BY
JOHN HINDERAKERWHAT ENERGY TRANSITION?
The press, and many politicians, constantly assure us that the world is in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to “green” energy, which means wind turbines, solar panels, and mostly fictitious batteries. But is any such transition actually in progress? No. Robert Bryce has the numbers.
No such transition is taking place in the U.S.; on the contrary, last year natural gas-fired electricity generation increased 9.5 times as much as wind and solar combined:
But that’s nothing! The U.S. is rich enough to waste absurd amounts of money on pitifully inadequate wind and solar developments. Less
developed countries can’t afford to be that stupid. Thus it is coal that contributes the most CO2 to the atmosphere. But when it comes to coal, the U.S. is irrelevant:
Worldwide, governments are spending absurd amounts of money to subsidize wind and solar, and that doesn’t even count the mandates that are the most insidious form of subsidy. Nevertheless, fossil fuel use is increasing 3.4 times as fast as “green” energy. Why? Because fossil fuels are vastly better: cheaper, more reliable, and far more energy-intensive:
Trillions of dollars can’t save expensive, unreliable and downright stupid methods of producing energy.
So, with all the hype about carbon dioxide destroying the planet–actually, it is necessary for virtually all life on Earth, but put that aside for a moment–and after governments spending trillions of dollars, ostensibly to promote a transition to “clean” energy, are carbon dioxide emissions actually declining?
Well, they have declined in the U.S. But that is irrelevant, as China produces most of the world’s CO2 emissions. Our reductions are immaterial:
As China’s population shrinks, most likely in half, and its economy implodes, India will largely take up the slack. But India has no intention of remaining poor by forgoing the world’s best source of energy, and therefore of wealth and societal well-being–fossil fuels. And other less-developed countries, like Indonesia and Vietnam, are building coal-fired power plants as fast as they can. While, at the same time, Africans want to modernize and have no intention of settling for expensive, occasional electricity via wind and solar. In that context, nothing we do makes any difference.
So if all this is true–and it is–where does the idea of a “green” energy transition come from? The answer is, from the American and international press. The transition concept is wholly imaginary, except in America’s news rooms. Check this out:
So the alleged energy transition is a creation of liberal reporters and editors, who deliberately mislead the rest of us, or else, equally possible, are so ignorant that they have fallen for propaganda from the “green” interests who hope to rip off–have already ripped off!–trillions of dollars in government money to enrich themselves, while impoverishing the rest of us.