Reply to post: Re: Policy driven

Wind, solar power outstrip fossil fuel generation for EU

Jellied Eel Silver badge

Re: Policy driven

Biomass, offsetting, carbon capture etc.. all just a way to make numbers look better on paper.

They also make important numbers better on paper. Like profits. We've basically rigged the market to bribe companys to build useless technology. Announce you're going to pay massive subsidies to build windmills, and people build windmills. Our costs go up to pay for those bribes. Offsetting are just the modern answer to the old Catholic practice of selling indulgences. Sin away, and just pay someone to plant a few trees and you'll still be granted your place to park your private jet(s) in Davos.. I mean low-carbon Heaven. Politcians and lobbyists realised you actually can tax thin air, and there's pressure for the EU and others to introduce 'Individual Carbon Accounts', where our cards may be declined if we haven't bought enough carbon credits.

Biomass is also great. We bribed farmers to plant fuel crops instead of food. Food prices rose. Who knew? On the plus side, ethanol can be drunk. Sadly, it's also heavily taxed as both alcohol and fuel, so there's still no benefit to consumers. Usually the opposite given adulterated fuels reduce mileage and efficiency. Or we do it large-scale and watch as Drax burns forests after converting from coal burning to tree burning. We promote that on a small scale as well, with people having fitted wood burners. And now we've discovered those can have negative consequences. Just as we did decades ago when Clean Air Acts were introduced.

And we've slowly discovered other consequences of policy. Renewables created a linked dependency on gas due to cost and 'renewables' fundamental intermittency. We need something that can generate power when the wind isn't blowing. That dependency has become obvious when our leaders decided to sanction gas, and inflate it's price. The market rigging sets the wholesale electricity price at the highest generation cost, previously to subsidise and support 'renewables'. Political decisions inverted reality, so now 'renewables' get paid massive profits because of high gas prices, even though they don't use it. Yet when politicians (and their useful idiots) talk about 'windfall taxes', they rarely mention the 'renewables' lobby, who've benefitted the most.

But this is the inevitable result of decades of propaganda and conditioning. We've gone from global warming to climate change to climate crisis to keep people terrified and not questioning the wisdom of wasting trillions on energy policies that just don't work, and aren't necessary. Useful idiots will use fossil fuel products to bond themselves to other fossil fuel products because they're saving the planet. Meanwhile, in a few months time, our national statistics bodies will crunch excess mortality numbers. More people will have died a cold and miserable death because people like Al Gore, John Kerry etc think they deserve it. It's just one of those inevitabilities. Cold weather kills more people than hot weather does, and our leaders have created a genuine, and serious global warming crisis for anyone that's been forced into energy policy due to their insane policies.

As the WEF put it, you'll die owning nothing, and be happy. Or the WEF will just realise how embarrassing and unpopular that bit of PR was, and try to hide it.

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