Tesla Owners Starve Themselves as "Protest"

 I think this story sums up the world today: https://electrek.co/2022/08/31/tesla-owners-claim-hunger-strike-elon-musk-attention/

A group of Tesla owners in Norway claims they are going on a hunger strike to get Elon Musk’s attention about a long series of problems they claim to have with their vehicles.

They bought expensive lemon cars to virtue signal, got garbage vehicles and no customer service, then starve themselves to "punish" the company.

It makes sense that a world of weak, feeb, faggy men are lorded over by conmen grifters and cult leaders like Elon Musk.

Better Batteries Would Change the World

 If batteries were 2x better in every regard today, 1/2 the cost, 2x the life, etc... solar would be very cheap. It would replace every other type of electrical power generation and would make EVs actually usable. Diesel and jet fuel and other forms of liquid fuels would probably persist, but the vast bulk of the 13 million barrels of oil per day the US consumes on transportation would be replaced by the sun.

The biggest change would be decentralized generation of power. I think that would lead to decentralized government and everything else too. The obvious parasitism of the government would become glaring at that point. The money system would change too... who needs petrodollars, then?

The EU is Hyperfucked

 Small businesses in the EU can't operate because of high electricity prices. Some businesses like small restaurants and cafes are getting surprise bills of $10,000+ for a month of electricity. Prices have gone up hundreds of percent.

Like I said in prior posts, the main problem is the EU has no energy resources. They imported energy from Russia, because it was cheap, but the EU countries are really vassals of the "western empire" and have to follow it's inane foreign policy.

So EU citizens are going through the shredder for ??? Ukraine? I guess. I hope they fight back, but I doubt they will.

People Want to be Conned

I've been wondering lately, why there's no pragmatism party in the USA or anywhere else. In the US we have the "left" and the "right", democrats and republicans. Ten years ago, the republicans were controlled by the scumbag grifter neocons. They were inept and super corrupt. They stole hundreds of billions of dollars from the people via their failed wars. Americans completely lost faith in that trash. They actually were slowly but surely expelled from power. A handful remain in government, but they no longer are capable of wreaking havoc.

When the neocons lost favor, we got the "left". They're maybe worse. They're every bit as corrupt and inept, but they're also religious zealots pushing "woke" bullshit.

Trump was a sort of pragmatist, or his election showed that's what people really want. I still think he was a fraud and a phony, at least as much as any other politician, but at least he pretended to push the interest of the average American.

Both parties demonstrate to me that people want to be conned. 

Interesting Solar Power Problem

 A solar power system has a weird problem north or south of the equator. In the summer, it will produce a huge surplus of power if it's sized for the winter months. If it's sized for the summer months, it will be very underpowered in winter. Since the panels are getting cheap, the logical strategy is to size it for winter. The chart below shows the daily average power output by month for that system. The average US household consumes about 30 kWh per day. In this case every day is over 30 kWh in the winter months. In the summer it's way over. This system would cost about $40,000. It would be installed on a large barn roof.

For me, to get through the winter with solar power, the system will generally produce a huge surplus of power. In the summer it's approximately 3x what the house needs.

The current "solution" to that problem is: feed it back to the grid... But what happens when everyone has a solar power system? It doesn't make any sense. It makes way more sense to do something useful with it, like make ice, purify water, or something like that.

If everyone has solar power, it really does make sense to have EVs. If the issues with the batteries could be sorted out, it really does make fuel essentially "free".

Cool Website for Solar Info

 There's a really great web site for planning solar projects: https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=11.523088,8.4375,3

It also shows the potential for solar power and the cost per region.

For me in Northeast Ohio, a large system with 20 kW of panels would provide sufficient power through the winter to operate independent of the grid essentially. That system is about $40,000. It produces a large surplus through the summer months. If I can figure out a way to monetize the surplus power that doesn't rely on the government/grid deals I'd do it. The system has a large footprint, though.

The same $40,000 system in Berlin, Germany doesn't produce sufficient power three months of the year.

Solar is inherently cheaper in certain places and cost prohibitive in others, obviously.

Green Projects and Tech

I've been looking at job postings for the past 6 months or so. I've been a "tech" worker for 20+ years now. I started doing software work in the relatively green field days of the dot com bubble time.

There's a "new" category of tech, green energy gizmos, like batteries. Anybody can build a fancy battery system. It's a moderate-skill level maker project really. Now, though, oodles of money are flowing into the business. So an electrical engineer or an embedded software engineer can now jump into that industry and start making significantly more than they do in "tech". The job postings I've seen are $50,000 more than equivalent tech embedded engineer jobs.

Tech is going to get squeezed over the next couple of years--it's old. Jobs will go to Asia.

"Green" is going to be interesting. It's really an old school economy situation in the US. Heavy industry. Construction jobs. Factories.

It will be really difficult to compete in the battery, inverter, green gizmo arena though. There's literally no barrier to entry.

A product that strongly caters to DIY'ers might be a good option. Run the business in the gray market and avoid regulatory overhead it might work as long as some of that funny money can still be had from the feds.

The EU is Getting Laid Off From Its Lifestyle

 The EU energy crisis is long in the making. The EU just doesn't have any energy resources. It's currently getting "laid off" from the western lifestyle. It's hard to believe it's happening but it is. The French President Macron basically told people in France that the party is over for them.

Here's a table of Exports per country/region and Energy imports. The units are consistent, but otherwise pretty meaningless. The energy imports are in tons of oil equivalent. The exports are in USD. The ratio of Exports/Energy imports is sort of related to the "efficiency" of the economy at converting oil to Exports. Obviously it's not a real apples to apples comparison from one country to another, the situations are starkly different, but I think the info is still pretty valuable.

Asian countries work and produce goods to pay for energy imports. Europe doesn't. The US is more energy self-sufficient, so it's not really even an issue.

Country/Region	Exports ($)	Energy Imports	Ratio (Exports/Energy)
EU	1100	985	1.116751269
Japan	923	387	2.38501292
China	2723	733	3.714870396
US	2000	80	25

The American "left" who are in positions of power throughout US institutions are oriented toward Europe. Their policies are all about keeping Europe viable. They don't have anything to do with American national interest.

Anyway, the EU is pretty fucked.

Replacing One Heavy Industry with Another

Many believe the "green" energy industry is inherently cleaner than the fossil fuel industry. There's no reason to believe that's the case. It's another form of heavy industry. It will produce waste and pollution too. There's no reason to believe it's inherently moral. That's delusional.

It would be great if fossil fuels could be 100% replaced with solar and batteries, and the panels and batteries could be easily recycled, and the mining and processing operations needed for that industry were clean. So far, though, there isn't even a uniform approach to recycling solar panels. The industry and governments didn't apparently even think about that problem. There's also no uniform process for recycling or scrapping batteries.

If fossil fuels can't really be replaced, it seems like a fools errand to try to shift the economy. The big problem right now is energy storage. Storing oil is cheap and easy. Storing coal is even easier. Storing electrical energy is expensive and resource intensive.

There's a belief that batteries will eventually improve. All the types of battery chemistry have a theoretical limit, and then many real world limits that sometimes make them unusable. Some, for example, have to operate at very high temperatures, others in a very limited temperature range. Some are inherently dangerous and include toxic materials.

That said, there might be a recipe for cheap, effective batteries that aren't toxic or are easy to recycle. The recipe for white LEDs took about 30 years. The first LED was in the early 1960s. The recipe for the blue LED was found in the 1990s and that enabled the white LEDs.

Canada might build a wind powered ammonia plant to store "hydrogen" in the form of ammonia. Today, an oil spill is a problem, in the future an ammonia spill might be a similar or worse problem.

Anyway, all this stuff seems like an attempt to continue living the high life but pretend it's all moral and good and green.

EU Countries Are Energy Poor

Region/Country    Population    Total Energy Production

Canada                  28M              21.88 quadrillion BTU 

USA                      330M            97.78 quadrillion BTU

EU                        440M            24.43 quadrillion BTU

China                    1.4B              123 quadrillion BTU

Israel                     9.21M           0.37 quadrillion BTU

Russia                   144M            61.53 quadrillion BTU

Similar table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption

Also very interesting:

Export minus Import (I think the unit is millions of tons of oil equivalent)

Mid-East         1245

Russia         701

Africa         319

Australia         280

Canada         228

Indonesia 220

Norway         177

United States -80

Korea         -252

India         -347

Japan         -387

China         -733

Europe         -985

How can the EU retain it's prosperity when it has no energy resources?

Green Energy and Climate Policies are About Europe

 I think it's plausible that "green energy" and climate policies are all about:

1. Keeping the EU economies viable with no resources;
2. Preventing the EU from forming an alliance with Russia.

German Green Energy

Germany installed lots of solar power in recent years, but had very high electricity costs, even before the current energy crisis. The cost was about 2x the US average. Much of that cost is taxes, which are used to subsidize renewable energy. Other EU countries follow a similar strategy.

Solar provides about 10% of the electricity demand in Germany. Of course, solar power is only available sometimes, and Germany is far north. Berlin is at the same latitude as Edmonton, Alberta. There's currently no cheap energy storage system.

It's probably feasible to power entire EU countries with "renewables", but it might cost a lot, which also means industry can't compete with lower energy cost countries.

Canada and Germany recently signed a deal for green "hydrogen", really ammonia, from Canadian wind farm ammonia plants. Canada has a large surplus of natural gas, but no LNG facilities.

Some western countries are hobbled by climate policy and green policies. I don't see how it continues.

Huge Escalation in The Russia/Western Empire Conflict

 Somebody tried to assassinate Alexander Dugin, who is one of the big brains in Putin's circle. He's been a propaganda wizard in recent years too. A lot of the concepts that are promoted in the alt-media probably originate with him. The russians are trying to exploit the natural division in the western countries between the people and their super jewey, gay leadership and their bizarre ideology.

Dugin, for example, is one of the people responsible for reviving the Hyperborea myth. That myth has been revived numerous times over recent decades by various people who were tired of the western empire. There's even an "Atlantis versus Hyperborea" meme out there.

Hyperborean Harald Arrives in Atlantis

I think it will be "interesting" to see what happens next in the conflict. An attack on an elite Russian national at home will probably provoke a response. It's been a very long time since the elites were whacking each other. That happened frequently in the middle ages, maybe that will start happening again. That's infinitely preferable to a war obviously.

"Structural Racism" What a Scam

The media and academics put a lot of effort into explaining the plight of poor black people; they somehow suffer because the system is stacked against them. Keep that in mind when watching this video:

What's going to happen in neighborhoods and cities that have chronic crime problems that are caused by black people 99% of the time? They'll get even poorer and worse off. There won't even be stores in those areas, obviously. They will slowly get cut off from basic commercial services.

What's the root cause of that? In bizarro land, shitlibs will say it's white power, racism or some such nonsense. It's bad impulse control. Failure to plan for the future. Lack of concern about consequences and numerous other defects. Is there some magic "systemic" fix for those problems? I doubt it.

Holy Shit! Lake Mead

 

It's probably not a drought so much as chronic overconsumption of the water? I don't know. What happens to Vegas without Lake Mead?

Microgeneration is Expensive

 I've been doing more research on my potential off grid solar power system.

The main issue to contend with here in northeast ohio is the cloudy winter months. Sometimes there is no sun for solar power for days at a time. It's impractical to build a system with enough battery backup to make it through a few days with no sun. The batteries are about $9000 per day of power and only last about 10 years.

A backup generator is required. The options suck, though, and are expensive. We currently have a whole house backup system. It's basically a lawnmower style engine (two cylinder) connected to a generator and some controls. A lawnmower engine doesn't last too long in constant operation, though. Some mowers are worn out after 2,000 hours of use.

The system I sized for my house supposedly will need backup power 200 hours a year. That will consume a $5,000 generator every 7 to 10 years. If it's 10 years, the solar power system is roughly on par or slightly worse than grid power depending on natural gas prices for 200 hours of household power.

In sunny places, the generator would rarely run, so it's still cheaper than grid power.

In theory a "microturbine" system can have a longer operating life, maybe 5x or 10x as long as a piston engine, but those systems are really expensive and inefficient at converting fuel to electricity.

Socialism = End of the Road

 It' pretty clear Europe is going to end up in the socialist electronic gulag is their "energy crisis" persists. The US might get shoved toward that too, but I don't think we'll get it as bad.

Energy shortage will lead to rationing via an electronic system. The "covid" passport was already implemented there.

There will be myriad excuses for it: too many global warmings, monkeypox, energy shortage, whatever, but eventually westerners will get shoved into the electronic gulag if they allow it.

It's possible a political process, e.g. voting, could avert all out conflict over that, but I kind of doubt it will. 

Socialism/the electronic gulag will be an attempt to cement the current social order in place in perpetuity. The "elites" of the day think they're very special, but they're not. Their stupid plans will fail left and right, just like the Iraq War did or the Afghanistan war did, or nuclear power has.

Railroad Unions and Amazon Unions

Railroad unions formed in 1893, the year the rail bubble burst.

It makes sense that Unions would form in an overbuilt, diminishing returns period of an industry.

In the building phase, speculative investment provides funds for wages and everyone can be at least a little optimistic about their personal and professional plans.

Once diminishing returns sets in the management will turn vicious to put as much cash in their own pockets as possible as corporate funds dry up.

It's interesting that unions are forming at "tech" companies like Amazon. They'll gradually form across the industry, plus companies will start systematically shipping formerly high paying jobs like software and hardware developer jobs overseas in earnest. They tried to do it back in the early 2000s, but the overseas workforce wasn't really ready to tackle the projects at the time.

The next "big thing" is green energy, but that's really resource intensive. The tech bro model won't work at all for that endeavor. Inflation is going to be a huge problem. Governments are going to go full central planning mode, especially in Europe, which will exacerbate all the problems and cause political disintegration. 

Retards of China

I had "covid" a little while ago. It was a cold.

China is still panic lockdowning people because of "contact tracing". WTF? It is hard to explain.

The government is either retarded, or pursuing some nefarious agenda. It's impossible to tell which is happening. 

Solar Plus Backup

 In Northeast Ohio, which is one of the cloudiest places in the USA, a residential solar power system is on par with the cost of grid power (if you DIY the system). In maybe 10 years, it will be obviously cheaper if the components keep improving, especially the batteries.

The problem here is there's not enough power in the winter months because it's cloudy, snowy, and the sun is low on the horizon. A natural gas fired generator on site can provide backup power for maybe less than the cost, or roughly the same cost as grid power.

One problem with all this stuff is it's sort of a PITA. If you run a generator frequently, it's loud, plus it requires regular maintenance--at minimum oil, oil filter and air filter changes every 200 or so hours of operation. In the winter months that 200 hour number might happen every month. Eventually the generator will wear out too.

Combined hot water plus backup power makes a lot of sense, because the generator creates so much waste heat. Honda developed a system for that in Japan, but it's really wimpy for some reason. The generator only provides a couple of kWatts at most. A typical US house needs at least 10 kWatts.

It's really pretty weird that it's such a messy pain in the ass job to change oil and an oil filter on most machines, including cars. It would not be so hard to make that process painless and relatively tidy. If it could be done in a way that allows for continuous operation of the engine, that'd be great for a generator system.

Former Prime Minister of UK Calling for Energy Nationalization

 Gordon Brown called for nationalization of the UK energy industry until the "crisis is over".

The French government nationalized the utility company EDF after it bankrupted the company. (The company is suing the government now)

The government can't resolve the problems that lead to high energy prices. It can't do anything but prioritize energy to its favored projects.

People need to restructure the governments and economy for their own purposes rather than get herded into a slave system that suits the government and corporate masters.

Tech Diminishing Returns Era

The railroads in the US went through a growth phase, a consolidation phase, and then they kind of merged with the government in their decline. They're still private industries, but pensions, for example are maintained through the federal government.

The tech industry did roughly the same thing. There was a rapid growth phase during the dot com bubble. When that popped, there was a period of consolidation so now Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc... dominate the industry. Those companies merged with the government to a degree, either as contractors or by implementing policy, e.g. censorship and pushing government propaganda.

The tech industry probably passed the point of diminishing returns a while ago. Does anyone really want or need "5G" networks, except for specific applications? Then would anyone need a 6G network? In some places, it's possible to get fiber to the home and replace a cable modem that "only" provides 200 mbps downloads, but does anyone really use 200 megabits anyway?

Self driving cars are pretty stupid. Drone package delivery is dumber. Some tech schemes are outright dumb scams that make no sense at all, like the "Hyperloop". Things like 3D printed houses attract media attention, and get breathless PR coverage from corrupt shills, but really have limited application.

The government and financial system seem intent on providing credit to the tech industry ad infinitum. That's essentially what the "4th Industrial Revolution" plan is--the Scam of Scams to try to avoid the diminishing/negative return on investment issue the railroads faced.

Railroads and Tech

Peak railroad miles in the USA happened around 1916, but peak railroad probably happened before that. The "rail" bubble expanded during the mid 1800s and burst in 1894 and 25% of railroad miles went into receivership. It's hard to tell exactly when the railroads hit the point of diminishing returns, but it was pretty clear in the 1900s that it was in negative returns territory. The interurban system, for example, in northeast Ohio wasn't profitable. That started in 1900, and several of the companies were bankrupt by the time of WWI.

Peak railroad happened during a time of peak "elite overproduction" which is a concept developed by the historian Peter Turchin. (more detail on his website.) Elite overproduction is a metric that characterizes the excess number of people vying for "elite" slots in society, e.g. 1,000 PhDs in LGBTQ studies vying for 3 jobs per year, or 25,000 new lawyers per year all trying to make millions of dollars a year on 38,000 fatal car crashes. He sees the metric as an indicator of conditions in society that lead to discord.

Lots of economic indicators look good during the periods of "elite overproduction" depicted in the chart, for example, the GDP grew significantly in the Gilded Age (1870-1900) and new technology improved people's capability substantially, e.g. the railroads allowed people to travel more easily, and enabled farmers to expand their markets. However, the new prosperity also created a really top-heavy society compared to prior eras in the form of millionaires, more management and bureaucracy, and more institutional control. I think that's what "elite overproduction" really indicates.

The underlying engine of wealth generation has inherent limits, like the railroads did. They had intrinsic limits, but during the time of growth, nobody knows what those limits are. For example, a speculator might fund the construction of a rail line to nowhere, and a town grows there and the railroad could be profitable, but that might be a rare event.

It makes sense that the peak of railroad corporate activity would happen well into the phase of diminishing and negative returns. That's probably one of the drivers of discord during a time of prosperity. There's an institutional competition for wealth and resources. People as a mass are carrying out projects that have less and less chance of success, and then the corporations start trying to squeeze more wealth from their customers, through consolidation, monopoly, and scams.

It seems like we're in a really similar era. Some metrics look great, but life sucks for a lot of people, and institutions are getting ridiculously top heavy. There are a lot of makework jobs in corporate America that just expand bureaucracy. There are essentially political comissars that work in corporations, now, promoting lefty cultural and political ideas, for example. Corporations are trying to squeeze customers, for example, BMW and Toyota are going to charge customers monthly fees for various vehicle features. There's a scam a minute: cryptocurrencies, various completely fake tech companies and EV companies, etc...

The concepts of the "4th Industrial Revolution" and associated ideas, like "stakeholder capitalism" or ESG are an attempt to grow the tech era elites in perpetuity. In the Gilded Age the US dollar was gold backed. Today, it's debt based. Various federal reserve officials have said there's no limit on the amount of credit/debt they can issue. In their mind the only limit on economic activity is the ability to "plan". Computers seem to provide an avenue for planning ad infinitum. An Internet of Things will provide endless data to feed the computers, etc...

The 4th Industrial Revolution seems like an attempt to avert the diminishing returns problem for the tech industry.

People in Europe Protesting for Energy Price Controls

In Britain, supposedly, people are going to "protest" high energy prices by not paying their bills. In France that resulted in the utility company EDF going bankrupt and being nationalized. Price controls will result in the same scenario through the EU.

People will get free socialist energy good and hard. That is it will be "free" but there won't be any, except for the "elite".

Self Sufficient Future

I went for a long bike ride yesterday through the neighborhood where I grew up. It's in a rural/suburban township that was lightly populated when I was a kid in the 1980s. Back then only a few cul de sac neighborhoods had been developed in the township and the rest of it was old farm fields and scrubby woods, or older growth woods. There were quite a few miles of dirt roads plus chip and tar roads. The main roads were paved and well maintained.

Back in the 1980s, even though the township was even more rural than today, there was hardly any farming activity. I never heard a rooster crow when I was growing up. There were a couple hobby farms, and one horse farm fairly close to my house, but that's about it. Today, though, lots of people have farm animals and gardens. In some neighborhoods every other house has chickens, and a handful of homes have pigs or even cows.

I think in the 1980s, boomer homeowners had a negative view of farming; it was a country bumpkin activity that maybe some of them were trying to leave behind. Today, people are moving toward self sufficiency, because they know the system is failing.

Lefties are terrified about a move toward self sufficient people. The big leftist theme is everyone will live in a city that's lorded over by a parasite political class and controlled by computers. The drone denizens will eat bug paste and own nothing. All the power will go into the hands of political hacks with opinions. There's many YouTube channels that showcase those opinions. People confuse those opinions with "science".

The government currently supports solar power, but that's really a threat to their centralizing plans. It's a pretty straight line from solar powered household to self sufficient homestead, and that's likeliest to succeed in ruralish, exurban places with lots of land. The leftist parasite government is essentially incentivising homesteading.

Solar is Actually Cheaper

I finally did a deep dive analysis of solar power for my house. I did the same thing maybe 10 years ago and concluded it wasn't economical back then. Now it's actually economical, that is, it's cheaper than grid power with some caveats.

The system I "designed" is a whole house, not connected to the electrical grid system. It's pretty expensive ($30k+) but is probably significantly cheaper over 20 years (the system life) than 20 years of grid power. (We pay about $2,500 per year for electricity.) It's $30,000-ish versus $50,000+ for grid power. One of the big unknowns for me right now is how long do the very expensive batteries last. I would use a number of lithium iron phosphate batteries. A 4.8 kWh battery (a typical american home consumes 30 kWh per day) is about $2000 right now! For 30 kWh it's about $14,000 in batteries (7). If the batteries really only last 5 years that's adds a lot to the system cost and it's not economical. If they really last 10 as the manufacturers claim, it's probably economical.

What does the system look like? It's pretty big. It's a 15 kWatt (more or less) system that uses 320 Watt panels. I'd build 3 arrays of panels that are 11 feet by 17 feet! The overall footprint of the panel arrays would be about 40 feet wide by 10 feet deep. I have plenty of land, but I'd actually have to prepare the area for the array, but I have the tools for that already. I'd build a small shed for the batteries and the controller/inverter. The shed has to be heated, insulated and equipped with a fan by the way. I could put all the batteries and controller in the house, but I'd rather keep it separate.

It's significant that it's cost effective where I live, because I'm in one of the worst areas for solar in the lower 48 states. It's very cloudy here (as cloudy as the Pacific Northwest). Everywhere else in the lower 48 is better for solar, so the system would cost less. In short everyone in the US with some property could produce electricity for significantly less money than a utility company can.

Grid Level Solar is Like Grid Level Refrigeration

There are a lot of grid level solar projects. I think those projects are really stupid. In theory it "makes sense" because they can produce power, possibly, for less than other forms of electricity generation plus there are scam government subsidies, etc... that distort the real costs of everything.

However, if it's really true that solar is cheaper than natural gas power, for example, it's even cheaper for residents to build their own system. The centralized production of electricity with solar is based on the current-day scenario that few people have solar power systems of their own. It's like refrigeration back in say 1920 or something. When the first electric power fridges came out, there were probably people providing centralized fridge or ice making services. That still happens in Amish country. Today, though, there's hardly any centralized fridges, because it makes zero sense.

The grid level solar projects are doomed. Wind power is probably double doomed because solar will keep getting cheaper.

Grid Level Solar Seems Stupid

 Solar panels are cheap and are really easy to install. I think a 12 year old with basic handyman skills could successfully setup a solar power system. In many places in the country, whole house solar power is a no-brainer decision. If you own a home in Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California, Florida, etc... it makes sense to install solar today. The power from the system will be at least 50% cheaper than grid power.

I doubt it makes sense to tie residential solar panels to the grid. If every household has solar panels in Phoenix, AZ, for example, who needs the surplus power? It's an extremely expensive way to provide surplus power to the handful of people who don't have their own system in that case. The scenario is the same, there, regardless of scale. For an industrial user, they'd have a bigger system and it will probably still be cheaper for energy than the grid.

The solar farms seem kind of dumb. There's transmission losses, etc... It makes more sense to generate the power on site. For many people, it would make sense to get rid of their inverter in their house and run DC to their electronic gizmos, too.

Where It's All Headed

 The government of Spain is (supposedly) setting limits for public building thermostats. 80F for the A/C and 66F for heating season. The "future" for many people will be electronic control and rationing of everything, so it's "free" in the socialist sense of that word.

There's two paths people can take: more self sufficiency and decentralization or techno-slavery so everything will be "free" (and unavailable), except you.

Solar (panels) is Cheap

One of the common arguments about the "inevitable" green energy future is solar panels are cheap.

They are, but they only provide power when the sun is shining.

Batteries are expensive. Backup for one small house for one day retails at $12,000 now and it lasts 20 years, like the panels. In Arizona, then, solar panels can produce power for one house for 20 years pretty reliably for around $23,000 (DIY) today, it might be cheaper or more expensive in the future. Batteries might get cheaper, or might get significantly more expensive. It's pretty hard to know at the moment. But anyway, $23k/20 = $1150/year. That is quite cheap. In the southwest, Texas, Florida and other sunny states, Solar is a no-brainer. Even if you have to set aside $12,000 for potential emergency repairs over that 20 years, it's still just $1750 a year if you do have to replace a failed battery, or lose the panels in a storm.

In places along the Great Lakes or in the Pacific Northwest it might be $100,000 for equivalent reliability, or about $5k a year. That's expensive. If it's not reliable, is it really worth the fuss?

Storms might destroy panels every so often, maybe once every 50 years in certain areas, or maybe once every 20 years in other places. Also the panels will require infrequent maintenance in sunny areas--dusting or cleaning at minimum every once in a while. It's probably less maintenance than cleaning gutters once a year.

Anyway, in sunny areas, solar makes a lot of sense. Does it make sense to replace natural gas capacity with solar in sunny areas? That's a different question. I don't really know.

Nuclear Power Failures Demonstrate Futility of Megaprojects

The last two attempts to build nuclear reactors in the USA led to the bankruptcy of Westinghouse, because both projects failed.

On paper it's feasible to build a nuclear power plant. In reality it's just not possible. It was just barely possible when the USA was at the peak of its wealth and when the average IQ was over 100. That's why, by the way, nuclear power is so stupid and dangerous. Those plants will need to be managed in perpetuity--by whom? The average IQ in the US and around the world keeps going down. There aren't enough workers now to fully staff Arby's around the country, but many people want to build more nuclear power plants, especially people on "the right". It's a weird disconnect.

Green energy plans are even more complex than a single nuclear power plant. In a nutshell the plan is to build distributed production facilities, even down to the per-home level, connect the big ones with 100,000s of miles of HV cables to a meshed grid, and control the home thing with "AIs" and computers and IOTs gizmos and wireless networks. On paper, it looks extremely expensive but feasible. Back of the envelope plans seem like they'll work, but real life will chew up those schemes and destroy them one by one.

The capacity of countries to tackle mega projects is declining year by year. One of the problems is people are too stupid to do them. The other is resources will need to be prioritized to maintain existing infrastructure and capability.

Here's what I think happens: attempt to go "green" will turn out like nuclear power--too expensive on a national scale. A few mega projects will be completed, a lot will be dismantled or left to rot.

Choices versus "Creating Reality"

The people at the top of the pyramid of western countries make statements like, "we are creating reality" from time to time. What they mean by that is their "plans" create the game-like circumstances of life for all the lowly peons.

They're extremely privileged people who have been insulated from the consequences of failure their whole lives and believe they are really wise and knowledgeable but they're dilettantes at best. The men who planned the Iraq war and occupation exemplify this type. They didn't have a clue what they were doing. They mass murdered civilians and spent trillions of dollars of the US taxpayer's funds and they failed. They did not suffer any negative consequences, not even a loss of reputation. Many of them moved onto fancy high paying jobs afterward. The public health officials who lorded over the western world during 2019-2020 are similar. They failed. They suck, but some still listen to them.

A poor person often has to make what amount to life or death choices. For example, someone with no savings might have to choose between paying to fix their car, or paying their rent every once in a while. For that person, making a strategically better choice will incrementally make their life better. If they're intelligent and make the wrong choice from time to time, they will gain wisdom. That person is in touch with reality and consequence.

The hubristic "elites" do not think they are in the same situation as the poor person, but they really are. We all are, all the time. A person with lots of wealth, that is, resources, thinks he or she has countless choices and can afford to lose. That's an illusion. Every choice really does have consequences.

For example, sinking trillions of dollars into "green energy" and a super complicated electrical grid and EVs might be a total disaster. Those resources are needed elsewhere, for one. There's towns in the US with failed and poisoned water supplies for example but weirdly there's no money to fix that problem. Is the country going to be "stronger" as a result of an all electric transportation fleet that nobody can afford?

Anyway, failure of those large scale plans didn't matter in the 1970s, but it will be a real kick in the balls now.

High Voltage Lines Need to Double for Renewables

 One study (summarized here) claimed high voltage lines will need to double for renewable energy.

The US currently has 200,000 miles of HVT lines, so we'd need 400,000 for renewable energy. Huge installations of solar and wind power production need to be hooked up to the grid. In some places, windmills were built, but they're basically stranded because utility companies did not want to invest billions for transmission lines.

It's really interesting that the world is investing all kinds of resources into something that might not be workable and is probably worse overall than our current system.