Green Luddites: Fighting Delusions with Delusions

On one side, green Luddites treasure delusions of carbon catastrophe and energy resource depletion doom. On the other side, they intend to utilise "green energy" such as big wind and big solar, to combat the prior twin delusions of doom. Unfortunately, green energy -- big wind and big solar -- is one of the biggest delusions of them all, certainly nowhere near ready for prime time.

If you define grid parity as "delivering electricity whenever you want, in whatever volumes you want," says David Victor, the director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego, then today's new renewables aren't even close.

...we are probably not just a few breakthroughs away from deploying cheaper, cleaner energy sources on a massive scale. Though few question the value of developing new energy technologies, scaling them up will be so difficult and expensive that many policy experts say such advances alone, without the help of continuing government subsidies and other incentives, will make little impact on our energy mix. Regardless of technological advances, these experts are skeptical that renewables are close to achieving grid parity, or that batteries are close to allowing an electric vehicle to compete with gas-powered cars on price and range.

...Although some alternative energy technologies might eventually achieve grid parity, few, if any, can survive without subsidies now, as they improve their cost and efficiency. Even with subsidies, including tax incentives and cash grants, most are struggling to narrow the cost gap with fossil fuels....Deploying energy alternatives will be far more expensive and, in some ways, far more difficult than inventing new ones. Given today's political climate and the lack of a coherent energy policy around the world, it might truly take a miracle. _TechnologyReview

It is not very difficult to believe in miracles, if you are delusional enough. And we know that lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgy greens are plenty delusional in a multi-faceted way.

So even though the obsession with green energy by government, media, academia, foundations, philanthropists, and the faux environmental movement is costing you a lot of money and wasting a lot of today's resources which will be sorely missed tomorrow, you may as well sit back and enjoy it for the entertainment value. If Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Jackie Chan, and other slapstick comedians can entertain us -- why not relax and allow the loony delusions of the green establishment do the same?

For more information on the follies of wind energy, see John Droz, or Ted Rockwell. You will never again look at big wind energy in the same way.