Is Ugo Bardi right about the possibility and feasibility of the "Green Energy Revolution"? My comments to the debate between Simon Michaux and Nafeez Ahmed.
(This is a continuation of my blogpost "Ugo Bardi about the future of Europe. And some comments about his optimistic views on renewable energy." on my former blog "Forest Man", 17.10.2022)
It gives me a bitter aftertaste, like after watching a Scifi horror movie, to read chemist professor and peakoiler Ugo Bardi's ecomodernist and technoutopian faith in the "Green energy revolution". See the two first links below this article. Ugo Bardi believes we have five billion years of energy supply, possibly even a trillion years (se the first linked article below).
Ugo refers to a debate (see the three later links below) between professor of geometallurgy Simon Michaux and journalist/Peak Oil expert Nafeez Ahmed about the possibility of a "Green Energy Revolution", "The Green Transition", where Nafeez is the technoutopian and Simon the pessimist. Ugo takes Nafeez' party in the debate.
I have problems understanding how Nafeez and Ugo can be so blind to reality, so obsessed with the false promises of technology about endless abundance. It's a blindness that comes from the bottomless pit, from hell itself. From being an advocate of an endless and eternal Babylon, and endless and eternal hell on earth. Because this is what abundant energy for civilization creates, this is what civilization itself creates: hell on earth for countless humans and animals, especially in the Third World. This Nafeez and Ugo seemingly want to be continued for billions of years. Horrible. Or do they think that some miracle happens so that the civilized man stops destroying?
There are many details in this debate, these people go really deep into the science of natural resources. I'm not very well versed in much of that, I only know Peak Oil science more deeply. I do not want to delve too much into the details, and learn to know the dark, hellish, technoutopian arguments of Nafeez and Ugo. I simply trust in the expertise of Michaux, it's enough for me. Or in whom is it easier to trust regarding the issue of the resources for the Green Transition, a professor of mineral science, a very educated scientist in the very field that is discussed, or a journalist and a chemist? The question is much about the mineral resources we have or not have in order to make a Green Transition possible. I feel that it is Michaux who has done the real math here, not Ugo and Nafeez, who therefore are prone to wishful thinking. This is usually the case with all collapsology and futurist science, that it is the really educated experts who are more prone to pessimism, i.e. those who really have "done the math". Take for example Peak Oil. Who is more educated here than Richard Heinberg? And he is a realistic pessimist, not a cornucopian (one who believes in virtually endless resources, who is very optimistic regarding the resources we have).
Usually the cornucopians have dark agendas, agendas like the transhumanist and globalist agenda, and the agenda of protecting their western luxurious and comfortable lifestyle. The pessimists are much less agenda-driven, they just surrender to the data, more or less reluctantly, after many years of primary research.
But let's take a great step back and see the situation from a higher perspective, not so obsessed with details and quantities and math. Usually it helps to get a spiritual view of things, and here it's especially helpful, although we discuss resource science.
What is this "civilization", this strange thing, that Nafeez and Ugo so desperately want to be prolonged and continued?
Let me try to find a parable to describe this "thing", and what it does.
Isn't civilization like a gigantic Monster Machine that walks around like a robot from hell itself, cutting down forests everywhere, devouring whatever trees it meets, at the same time emitting poisons from its fossil energy combustion, and at the same time devouring a lot of animals and humans, whatever living things it meets, yes, the robot is apparently omnicidal, it just wants to consume and destroy, forever and ever. Everything it meets.
So. Would the situation become better if the makers of the Monster Machine exchanged its original diesel combustion engine for an electric engine, powered by renewable energy? (Let us assume that this is possible to do entirely, which I do not believe).
The truth is that the Monster Machine would go on destroying everything in its way, consume and destroy the whole planet, the difference now being only that it does not emit as much poisons as before. Apparently. The poisons it now creates, is this time just more hidden, because the countless dirty mines that the green energy systems need, are hidden in the Third World. The Monster Machine looks "clean", but it fools us to think that the destruction is much less. It's not much less.
And the discussion is always about "less". A little less of this and that. Not about stopping the Monster Machine completely. "Less emissions", not stopping the destruction. Is a rape not a rape just because the rapist is less destructive and violent? Today we are able to sell things better if we announce in our marketing that it's less environmentally destructive. Often it's only a little less, the difference is not big. So it is for example with burning natural gas instead of coal, or with burning biodiesel instead of ordinary diesel. This is called "Greenwashing".
The idea that civilization will destroy the planet, whatever we power it with, reminds a little of the meme "Civilization as a heat engine" (see this youtubevideo, and also this blogpost) an idea that professor Guy McPherson talks about again and again in his doomer sermons. This means that whatever we power civilization with, it nevertheless emits heat, as a heat engine, an engine whose very nature it is to emit heat. That's the nature of a civilization. The idea was originally proposed by atmospheric scientist Tim Garrett (see this article). This meme is often missed in the discussion of the Green Transition, and that's maybe the reason McPherson touts it again and again.
But the most important fact that is often absent from the discussions about "the Green Transition", is that as energy becomes more expensive after Peak Oil and Peak Everything, it will make the prices of the resources that are needed for the Green Transition, rise, more and more, exponentially. The minerals we need are mined with fossil energy. It will make the EROEI:s (Energy Return on Energy Invested) of renewables rise exponentially. This will make the real price (not counting subventions), of solar panels and wind turbines, rise exponentially in the future.
Add to this the future collapse of civilization, from many, many causes, not just energy, like in a "perfect storm", and it is easy to see that we cannot afford the Green Transition. Just think about the cost of climate change. It's a often neglected part of EROEI.
"The Green Transition" is funny for those operating the Monster Machine (people like the members of international globalist organizations like the Club of Rome (1), an Antichristian organization that Ugo Bardi is a member of), those profiting from it, but it is not funny for nature and the poor people and the animals of the world.
It's not funny for me, because I'm poor, and I'm invested in the nature that the rich ones destroy. For me "the Green Transition" is a horror story, scifi horror. It's like wanting the Matrix (in the movie The Matrix) to happen in reality. To wish for the takeover of the robots and AI, wishing for transhumanism to achieve its goals. It's to wish for eternal hell. Satan profits from eternal hell, because he rules hell, his victims in hell does not profit from it. The victims hope for an end to Satan's hell, and I'm one if his victims.
No, I do not wish for an endless and eternal civilization, I instead greet the collapse of civilization like a tiger in a little cage greets his liberator who liberates him out of the cage. I will, like that tiger, lick the hands of my liberator, and rejoice. Civilization was a very cramped cage, and I have had enough of it.
And it's strange: the more I meditate over the collapse of civilization, the more reconciled to it I am. I lower my expectations on future prosperity, and am at peace with it all. I also encourage you to make peace with poverty.
Finally, to read a very educated defense of the pessimist position of me and Michaux, see the last link below, the article by Andrew Nikiforuk. It's a good summary of where I stand.
The Sunflower Paradigm: The Growth of Photovoltaic Energy Continues!, by Ugo Bardi on his blog "The Sunflower paradigm", January 7, 2023.
Is the Energy Transition Feasible? The Future as a Garden of Forking Paths, by Ugo Bardi on his blog "The Seneca Effect", 8 May 2023.
Energy transformation won’t be derailed by lack of raw materials, by Nafeez Ahmed on the blog "Age of Transformation", 4 May 2023.
I Warned Against the Green Energy ‘Boom.’ It Sparked Debate, by Andrew Nikiforuk on the site "The Tyee" 10.5.2023.
(1) an organization that reminds a little about globalist "one world" groups and organizations like "the Bilderberger Group", "World Economic Forum", G8, IMF, UN, the World Bank and the like.
P.S. Oil geologist Art Berman also comments the debate between Nafeez and Simon in the end of this recent blogpost.
