{"id":65208,"date":"2023-04-01T06:57:33","date_gmt":"2023-04-01T11:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65208"},"modified":"2023-04-01T06:57:33","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T11:57:33","slug":"the-energy-transition-is-a-delusion-indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65208","title":{"rendered":"The Energy Transition Is a Delusion Indeed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Energy Transition Is a Delusion Indeed<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The \u201cenergy transition\u201d continues to receive\u00a0thunderous applause<\/a>\u00a0from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The \u201cenergy transition\u201d is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy inexpensive (Table 1b<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>),\u00a0reliable<\/a>, and\u00a0very clean<\/a>\u00a0given the proper policy environment, toward such unconventional energy technologies as wind and solar power. They are\u00a0expensive<\/a>,\u00a0unreliable<\/a>, and\u00a0deeply problematic environmentally<\/a>\u00a0in terms of toxic metal pollution, wildlife destruction, land use massive and unsightly, emissions of conventional pollutants, and in a larger context large and inexorable reductions in aggregate wealth and thus the social willingness to invest in environmental protection.<\/p>\n

But the Beltway being what it is, the fantasists are impervious to reality, until the massive costs and dislocations and absurdities become impossible to ignore. (Witness<\/a>,\u00a0for example<\/a>,\u00a0California<\/a>.) Even as they backtrack on their confident assertions that a modern economy can be powered with the energy equivalent of pixie dust, they argue that the emerging problems are little more than growing pains attendant upon short run rigidities, and all will be well given some more time, more subsidies, and more magical thinking.<\/p>\n

Uh, no. The obstacles confronting the \u201cenergy transition\u201d are fundamental \u2014 they are caused by the very nature of unconventional energy \u2014 driven by massive costs, technical and engineering realities, severe constraints in terms of needed physical inputs, and at a political level growing\u00a0local opposition<\/a>\u00a0to the unconventional energy facilities central to the \u201ctransition.\u201d<\/p>\n

These realities \u2014 there\u2019s that word again \u2014 are discussed in detail in a major recent\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0by Mark P. Mills of the Manhattan Institute. This brief discussion cannot do it justice, but let us first quote Mills directly:<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Energy Transition Is a Delusion Indeed The \u201cenergy transition\u201d continues to receive\u00a0thunderous applause\u00a0from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The \u201cenergy transition\u201d is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy inexpensive (Table […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[33794,33796,265,5930,33795,674,865],"class_list":["post-65208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-benjamin-zycher","tag-conventional-energy","tag-energy-crisis","tag-energy-transition","tag-realclearwire","tag-renewable-energy","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65209,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65208\/revisions\/65209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}