The Origin of our Energy.

Some guys (retired) have had a look at the cost of wind, solar and storage costs for New York.

The official 'scoping plan' say about $310 Billion, One retired guy says $4 Trillion and another retired guy say $30 Trillion

So which is it?

More Focus On The Impossible Costs Of A Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Energy System – Watts Up With That?

More guff. My suggestion is to read and quote contributions by people who know what they are talking about.

William Nordhaus estimates that it would cost 1.5% of global income to limit emissions so that a temperature increase is limited to 2°C. Assuming full participation of all countries. Big assumption - with only 50% participation he estimates that it is impossible to keep it below 3°, no matter how much those 50% spend. (Firgue 26, The Climate Casino, Yale U.P., 2013)

Why would we wish to follow a false doctrine such as climate change? The climate changes naturally by the second somewhere in the world and long may it do so. Have you ever wondered why these fanatics changed their brand from 'Global Warming' to 'Climate Change? Well the former can be validly challenged, but the latter cannot because it is true.

Follow the money.

Why would we wish to follow a false doctrine such as climate change? The climate changes naturally by the second somewhere in the world and long may it do so. Have you ever wondered why these fanatics changed their brand from 'Global Warming' to 'Climate Change? Well the former can be validly challenged, but the latter cannot because it is true.

Follow the money.

I guess the question is whether we would wish to "follow" whjohnson who calls it "false", or 270 of the world's top climate scientists, along with a majority of nations of the world, including those who make a lot of national income from selling fossil fuels, who say it is a reality, and have been saying so for some thirty years now, most recently last year.

I agree it may be worth following the money. Most denialist claims are linked to support from the fossil-fuel extraction industries and nations. Merchants of Doubt, by Oreskes and Conway, has some details. It is also a decade old. 

Why would we want to follow a false doctrine such as climate change denial, promoted by those in the fossil fuel industry, who would like to keep things just the way they are?

Evidence of climate change keeps piling up.  But it suits many people to deny that it exists.

Who's denying the climate is changing, I'm not. I just contest thats mam made co2 is not the control knob.

It's the alarmist bs that gets my goat. And there is plenty of it.

Eg David Attenborough alarmist properganda on Netflix and the BBC  about Walrus falling off cliffs as an exampe of climate change.

It suits even more people to allow the real science to be no-platformed and conveniently buried. A whole global industry has grown up around this, much in the same way that Health & Safety has. The Green lobbies are making billions off the backs of bad science and ignorant Governments who have been sold the woke ideal of something for nothing.

Great so long as the lights stay on during a windless sunless day.

Lots of feel-good virtue-signalling won't keep you warm and fed.

I agree, the climate changes by the second - it's as inevitable as the seasons and their changing weather patterns following each other. Climate change is a perfectly natural phenomena.

Oh it gets worse, the latest missives are complaining about domestic animal faeces and urine contributing to global warming and the death of diverse ecosystems. I kid you not! Some mad scientists in Ghent have come up with this one.

They seem to forget that wild mammals and birds also defecate and urinate too!

Just to follow the money, as suggested, here are the energy companies by market capitalisation in 2021 from https://www.statista.com/statistics/263264/top-companies-in-the-world-by-market-capitalization/ (Statista is the German government statistics agency). Here are those in the top 100 by market capitalisation.

3. Saudi Aramco 1.9tn

36. ExxonMobil 239bn

59. BHP 186bn

now comes the first "renewable/sustainable" energy company:

73. NextEra Energy 159bn

78. Royal Dutch Shell 152bn

now another company which engages in "renewable energy" engineering, although most of their work is in other things:

89. Siemens 140bn

92. Rio Tinto 135bn

So the totals are

* fossil-fuel extractive industries: 2.6tn

* renewable/sustainable energy companies: around 200bn (here, I am assuming 40bn for Siemens renewable-energy efforts, which may be too large. I can check). 

The fossil-fuel extractive industries are thus a factor of 13 above renewable-energy in market capitalisation in 2021. 

Follow the money indeed.

We need much more coal, gas and oil extraction to keep up with demand. A temporary windmill in the North Sea just won't ever be able to suffice, and nor will a solar panel unless you live in the Sahara desert. We are currently sitting upon thousands of tons of coal in the UK. Funding needs to redirected to coal extraction and processing. To placate the green extremists we could invite them to come up with some 'Green coal' initiatives. If the money is there for fanciful windmills which don't produce on a windless day, then it is also available to develop clean coal technology, which was sadly and recklessly abandoned back in the mid 1990s just when it was on the cusp of getting somewhere.

Similarly, why should we put ourselves in thrall to Mr Putin's gas taps (in the same way Germany has - Mr Schroeder has made a few bob at Gazprom hasn't he - follow the money!) when we have our own gas resources in the North Sea to extract?

whjohnson said:

We need much more coal, gas and oil extraction to keep up with demand.

Can you produce an argument, with calculations, to justify this assertion? Let us call it whj Point Number 2.

I followed the money, as you suggested, and it didn't lead where you hinted. It leads, in fact, to the overwhelming financial power of fossil-fuel extraction industries as compared with their sustainable-energy competitors.  So that is whj Point Number 1: following the money leads you to  fossil-fuel extraction industries with a market value 13 times that of sustainable-energy industries in the Top 100. 

Please, let us scrap the vague rhetoric. Let us get down to discussing concrete facts. If this discussion continues, I'll also be asking you basic questions in the science of climate change and the reasoning behind your answers.

Much of the rest of your comments are purely political: "Green extremists"; "Mr. Putin"; Mr. Schoeder" .... I understand why one migrates into politics, but I am not going to follow that line. I am going to stick with the science and the economics. 

It may have escaped your notie but since about 1970 we have burnt most of the gas in under the north sea, leaving only the slow and expensive to extract stuff. And of course 'tight gas' under shale, that we can only get to by fracturing the rock to connect very small pockets together. Oil tells a similar story where now, instead of it squirting up under its own pressure, we have to force in tons of seawater per second to drive the oil upwards. Slowly  production wells are changed to injectors, and fewer wells  remain producers. At some point soon we will push water down and get water out of all the holes coming up. At that point it is time to pack up and go the North Sea was good while it lasted, and it has paid for the prosperity we have had in the last 50 years, but now the party is coming to  an end.

Note the rally in production when it became cost-effective to start injection in a big way.

Mike. (graphs on some websites like to show revenues from oil but they are misleading as oil costs more now than it did in the last centurey, so this masks the roll-off.)