View attachment 462760
I don’t have US numbers but worldwide we’ve spent $2.6 Trillion on wind and solar as of 2021 and in 2021 it was claimed that 10% of electricity worldwide was generated by wind and solar. Wind and solar grew 23% in 2021 while worldwide coal use for electricity grew by 9%. lol
The international organization tracking the Paris Climate Accords says we need to spend $131 trillion over the next 18 years – that’s just to get the power generation in place across the globe. I think their numbers are atrociously low. jmo.
In my numbers I posted last night, not only do we need to build new power generation here in the USA but presumably we need to build replacement generation for the almost 60% of our electricity generation now provided by fossil fuels here in the U.S.
If solar was installed on every rooftop in the USA it is estimated that could supply almost 40% of our current generation of electricity but it doesn’t factor in new generation required to power an EV fleet. The other part about that is there are 83m single family homes in the USA. The typical home installation is 5kw so say you get 5 hrs of power generation per day 300 days per year. Under ideal conditions those 83m homes might be able to get close to 600B kwh per year. That would be 15% of the theoretical 40%. I don’t think that works in real life, not for solar, nor for wind, nor hydro. We’ve already built the dams. We’re not building that many more. The good places for wind are gone. Now we’re going offshore at a cost of 4X the onshore rate per megawatt. Same with solar, not every location is ideal for solar and most of the good spots are already taken. For our 83m homeowners, well at current prices they’ll need to spend maybe about $1.5 trillion to get into compliance.
I don’t mean to disrespect people who work on renewable energy plans but I would take whatever they say with a grain of salt as to cost. Mostly they’re academics or politicians. I don’t think they really know what they’re talking about. What they’re talking about is business and if they were any good at it they’d probably be in the private sector building things.
It’s a catch-22 situation right now. We’re having to rape the planet to get the materials to build renewable energy. That’s nothing new. What’s new is the ever increasing scale at which we’re doing it, mostly from impoverished countries where we can buy their politicians. On the backend, according to Harvard Business Review, is the coming catastrophe of Solar trash.
I’m also not saying we shouldn’t do anything. I’m actually more concerned by O2 depletion from the atmosphere (and oceans) than I am for CO2 but they’re one and the same. Carbon fuels are taking O2 out of the atmosphere at a significant rate. OSHA requires workers to wear supplied air breathing apparatuses if they are going to enter an oxygen deficient atmosphere,
defined as 19.5%. I calculate that the planet will be there in less than 419 years at our current rate of depletion. Most estimates say 3600 years before we run out of oxygen but we can’t survive on low oxygen so we’re not going to be alive when we run out. smh. I don’t understand why they make it seem less of a problem. We’re already seeing dead zones in the oceans due to low oxygen. I think it’s likely that a lot of other weird things will start happening in the decades to come as lower oxygen has effects on living things (species) that we may not now be aware of. jmo.
I’m not opposed to what people want to do to correct for the ill effects of the industrial revolution. I just don’t think we have the right people developing the plan or executing the plan. Right now the politicians and pointy head scientists are flexing their muscle, pretty much the same as they did with Covid. If it’s a government run project you can almost bet it will not work as planned and it will cost more than 3 times what they initially sold it to you for. jmo.
It’s easy to criticize people in the arena so I think it’s important that all of us inform ourselves and try to come up with a sensible plan of how we would tackle the problem.
For me, I would repurpose the military industrial complex to quit making weapons for the planet and turn their energies to building the materials we need for the war on climate change. I would deploy our military personnel (post training) to install solar across the country where warranted. Look the military industrial complex is already getting hundreds of billions of dollars from us every year already. It won’t cost us anything more. Plus we’re already paying our military and providing housing, healthcare, and food, etc. See, no real added cost. Even then I don’t think you solve the problem but it’s the effort that counts.
The real solution I prefer is to smartly plant 2 trillion trees. Right now we have about 3 trillion trees on the planet. At one time we had twice that. Trees harvest and store carbon and produce oxygen. Some say we only need to plant 1T trees but I’m a visionary and I want to allow for future growth. The big winner in my tree planting solution is we get new oxygen. No technology solution offers this benefit.
Tree planting has to be done right and you have to grow baby trees for 1-2 years before you can transplant them into the “wild”. We’re way behind on this. There are professional seed collectors who are as territorial as the mob was back in the good ole days but we need a lot more seed collectors and nannies for our baby trees to get this enterprise going. We also need to make sure our baby trees have a good chance of survival once they’re in their new home.
Tree planting is a noble profession but it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s really hard work but if we can scale the infrastructure and find a few good people, it will work, and at a cost of around $1.00 per tree, far less expensive and much more beneficial that all the discussed alternatives. I think this is the way to go and let everyone else get on with their lives in the best way they can. jmo.
For those interested this is an 18 min instructional video on tree planting. I recommend it. jmo.
I wondered who would bring the actual numbers. Outraged some are not outraged and are making light of what is a very serious problem for a lot of people regardless if they are responsible for debts.
about lower class struggles...your type never does despite all the lip service you give it.
