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NNadir

(34,757 posts)
24. Once again, I cited a scientific source from a well respected SCIENTIST.
Sat Oct 12, 2024, 12:56 PM
Oct 12

I am well aware of the dangerous and pernicious popular belief that electricity is "green."

I regard these as uninformed opinions, rather the equivalent to the belief that ivermectin cures Covid.

Ivermectin doesn't cure Covid and electricity isn't "green."

Chanting these opinions to the contrary repeatedly will not have any effect on the observed results of science.

Amory Lovins, the antinuke asshole who wrote this awful piece of bullshit, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?, often fires off numbers in his writing without explicitly stating whence they came. The text of "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" contains the word "Study" nine times, without a single fucking reference to the study itself that one could find. That's right, the "genius" antinukes most famous line of shit contains zero references, zero, and, in my opinion, zero sense.

Regrettably, the "road" he proposed was taken, with the result of extreme global heating, extreme global forest fires, extreme glacier melts, extreme weather, and extreme destruction of precious ecosystems.

I will have been here at DU for 22 years next month, hearing continuously these reactionary opinions about electric cars and so called "renewable energy", almost all of them involved with soothsaying as opposed to observation of real data. When I joined DU in 2022, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO2 was 376.18 ppm. Here's what's reported this morning:

Week beginning on October 06, 2024: 422.17 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.47 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.73 ppm
Last updated: October 12, 2024

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

When I joined DU, the 52 week running average of weekly data in comparison to that ten years previously showed a rate of increase was 16.65 ppm/10 years. As of last week it was 25.45 ppm/10 years. Still the chants remain.

I've been listening, in increasing horror as these numbers worsen, to Lovinsian rhetoric being chanted the whole time I've been her, almost 22 years.

The data just posted from the Mauna Loa Observatory suggests so much for the value of all the chanting.

The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa: Yet Another Update.

Of course, over the years, I watched Eloon Musk going from electric car hero to something quite different in the general sensibility of this website, although there is still traces of Tesla and Powerwall® worship here, quite clearly. The bullshit electric car fantasy, in all of its ugly manifestations, including but not limited to cobalt slavery, has done nothing, zero, zilch to address climate change.

Let me repeat something I've repeated previously in this thread:

Cleaning up while Changing Gears: The Role of Battery Design, Fossil Fuel Power Plants, and Vehicle Policy for Reducing Emissions in the Transition to Electric Vehicles Matthew Bruchon, Zihao Lance Chen, and Jeremy Michalek Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (8), 3787-3799

The corresponding author, Dr. Jeremey Michalek, has over 145 scientific publications, and his top ten papers have been cited well over 3000 times, his full output having been cited 7,523 times overall.

Jeremy J. Michalek

If someone wishes to write Dr. Michalek, whose h index is 42, to tell him that the scientific paper I cited reminds them of a 2008 article by a journalist in Slate his email is available. I wouldn't expect Dr. Michalek to take such a correspondence seriously.

Email: jmichalek@andrew.cmu.edu


The link is a "reference," and is coupled with a description of the credibility of the author, whose paper is filled with data and references, 54 of them, almost all to the primary scientific literature, in which Dr. Michalek himself is referenced over 7,500 times.

I have prided myself in my tenure here, when writing about the causes and effects of extreme global heating now observed in spite of all the chanting, battery worship, hydrogen worship, wind turbine worship, solar cell worship - all of which I argue has left the planet in flames - on citing the primary scientific literature and referencing it, as often as I can, explicitly. It should be clear where my ideas originate, although I have also learned to think critically about the places I go to form them.

I would contrast my approach with that of the "genius" of Amory Lovins, who in a Trumpian fashion likes to carry on about his big brain, unreferenced balderdash vaguely presented. Inside Amory Lovins Brain.



Fuck all the marketing! What I think of Lovins' brain is that it's fairly empty, and what is otherwise in it is ossified propaganda.

One of the advantages, I claim, of my approach of reading and citing direct sources in contrast to that of Lovins and his electric car/hydrogen car worshipping minions and fellow travelers is that in my approach to reality, in a long life in which I found my generation to be as disappointing as hell, is that I have been able to change my mind and do so by finding things out and reflecting upon them. If that's iconoclastic, so be it.

Once I was uneducated enough to have actually believed that people like Lovins and Musk were geniuses; among the last pleasures of life which is running out, is that I built a pretty good bullshit detector, of which I am proud. I have learned to detest Lovins and Musk and many similar people famous for alleged "genius." I may not be a genius, but I'm happy to claim I'm able to detect what isn't genius.

Have a nice weekend.

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

We have a Prius and a Leaf Lulu KC Oct 6 #1
That's good to know. iemanja Oct 7 #4
Something to consider is that one hybrid uses a fraction of the materials RockRaven Oct 7 #2
Thanks! Good info. iemanja Oct 7 #6
Recently bought a used 2022 Rav 4 Hybrid. 1WorldHope Oct 7 #3
How long have you had it? iemanja Oct 7 #5
Only a few weeks. We did drive it on the interstate for a day trip 3 hours each way and it was a joy to drive. 1WorldHope Oct 7 #10
We have a 2013 Prius and love it PuppyBismark Oct 7 #7
20/80 Rule Caribbeans Oct 7 #8
Great info! iemanja Oct 7 #9
we have an electric hybrid WhiteTara Oct 7 #11
From a purely environmental perspective, ethical considerations about batteries aside, where you live matters. NNadir Oct 7 #12
It sounds like you don't put in a lot of miles iemanja Oct 7 #13
My round trip to the lab is just about 50 miles; I typically go 3-4 days/week. I also drive on business trips to... NNadir Oct 7 #14
That's a lot then iemanja Oct 7 #15
Not using your car is the best choice environmentally NNadir Oct 7 #16
A couple of points Finishline42 Oct 8 #17
Maybe you can write to the authors of the paper to tell them that Elon Musk's marketing department... NNadir Oct 8 #18
Their study reminds me of this nonsense from 2008... Finishline42 Oct 8 #19
I have cited a scientific paper in a well respected and widely read scientific journal, not tripe from some... NNadir Oct 8 #20
Finally had some time to browse your referenced scientific article... Finishline42 Oct 11 #21
I'm not generally amused when people tell me that their personal experience defines the whole world. The paper,... NNadir Oct 11 #22
Doesn't matter where the electricity is being made Finishline42 Oct 12 #23
Once again, I cited a scientific source from a well respected SCIENTIST. NNadir Oct 12 #24
Brilliant timing... Finishline42 Oct 13 #25
I have a Lexus hybris, so essentially a toyota. Scrivener7 Oct 13 #26
We had a plug-in hybrid and traded it in for an all electric. Love the all electric so much more. Native Oct 13 #27
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