Scientific Truth vs. Political Foolery

Comment

Comment by Willem Post 4 hours ago

Hochul is a dangerous idiot regarding energy.

Germany, the UK, Spain, Ireland, etc., all said the same thing decades ago, and now they have near-zero, real-growth economies, because they used wind, solar, batteries, EVs, heat pumps, etc.

Natural gas and nuclear are the only viable ways forward.

Germany’s politics-inspired ENERGIEWENDE to reduce CO2 led to: 1) closure of perfectly good, fully-paid-for nuclear plants, that provided about 23% of Germany’s annual electricity production, which is produced regardless of the weather, unlike wind and solar, 2) refusal to start domestic shale gas production, which led to imports of extremely expensive LNG from unstable countries 3) closure of perfectly good, fully-paid-for coal plants using domestic coal.

Rectifying the German nuclear situation would require at least $250 to $300 billion and at least two decades to put into service, say, (25) 1200 MW power plants, a total of 30,000 MW, at about 8.5 to 10 million per installed MW, just for Germany.

As predicted by energy systems analysts as early as 2000, this unwise wind, solar, etc., investment and other actions has led to the impoverishment the UK, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Denmark, etc., during the past 30 years.

Europe’s elites were planning leverage its wind, solar investments to inflict this same energy travesty onto the US, starting during the disastrous Biden era, to saddle the US economy with much higher energy prices for many decades.

Europe’s elites wanted to level the playing field, i.e., remain competitive, protect its decades of trade surpluses.

These European surpluses started in late 1960s, after Kennedy lowered tariffs for Europe, without getting anything in return. That led to the Rust Belt and leveraged buyouts.

Europeans were buying US corporations with the money they had earned by “out-trading” the US. Wall Street arranging the deals made oodles of $billions

No wonder Europe elites loved Kennedy, a poster child of trade naiveté, who was bamboozled by world trade experts with a trading history of at least 500 years of experience.

Luckily, Trump comes along and blows this whole scenario out of the water.

Often not mentioned, but much of the European hundreds of $billions for wind, solar, etc., is owed to financial entities, such as banks, funds, etc., which must repaid, no matter what, plus many thousands of workers hired, and not yet hired, in anticipation of tens of $billions of US offshore and onshore wind orders for decades, suddenly find themselves looking for other things to do, which is difficult in the near-zero-, real-growth European economy.

No wonder they hate Trump, especially because he wants NATO countries to finally pay up to 5% of GDP for their own defense, instead of letting the US defend Europe.

All of this is on top of: 1) Europe paying about $50 billion/y for arms, etc., to maintain Ukraine as a viable military proxy to weaken Russia “for as long as it takes” (the US stopped paying), 2) having very high energy and materials prices which suffocate the near-zero-, real-growth European economy, and 3) subsidizing about 20 million, mostly uneducated, inexperienced, culturally incompatible, walk-ins/fly-ins/float-ins, primarily from the lower social orders of many Islamic Third World countries.

Europe’s elites:, as part of weakening Russia: 1) unwisely stopped buying plentiful, low-cost Russian energy and materials, 2) unwisely blew up 3 of the 4 gas lines in the Baltic Sea, which have a design capacity of 110 billion cubic meter per year, 3) unwisely allowed Ukraine to stop gas and oil flow to Hungary and Slovakia, and bomb gas pumping facilities of Black Sea pipelines to Turkey and Southern Europe.

Europe’s elites, who cannot further tax EU taxpayers, have become desperate to illegally steal Russia’s sovereign assets, illegally blocked in Brussels, etc.

Comment by Willem Post yesterday

That “scientific finding” has been debunked some years ago.