Bill Gates on 60 Minutes just now.

[NNadir]

30. No, I couldn't care less what Bill Gates thinks.

He of course, couldn't care less what I think, but again, I'm not into "appeal to authority arguments."

I claim I'm looking at something called "data." Do you need me to repeat the references I always repeat because I'm such a stupid ass? Would it matter if I did?

You are free, of course, to declare that solar and wind are economic wonders while not explaining why consumer electricity prices in Germany and Denmark are the highest in the OECD. Everyone knows that solar and wind are cheap when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, so cheap that electricity prices in places go negative so that no one gets any return on investment except for subsidized people getting feed in tariffs. It's always to have two systems to do what one can do, since it gives accountants plenty of time to write about stranded fixed costs.

Nor are you willing to explain why wonderful renewable energy was abandoned in the 19th century on a planet with only one billion people on it.

I fully understand that you, Bill Gates, and everyone in the E&E forum is thrilled with the vast success of reactionary return to renewables and how it's eliminated climate change. Why, for the last 18 years here, I've been hearing all about it. In the week beginning February 10, 2002, the year I signed up for DU, the concentration of CO2 was 372.89, and now, because of all the hard work people have expended on convincing me that I have no right to object to anything Bill Gates says, as of last week, it was 416.91.

I'm sure though, we're making progress. Aren't we?

Yeah, that 3 trillion dollars stopped it in it's tracks, and it's so...so...so...so...inexpensive, whenever the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, all 12 exajoules per year out of 600. Very inexpensive, even when the coasts of major continents burn up and we have to string all new wires to make them light up again.

I, um, seem to be hung up on the very stupid and obviously mindless observation that "by 2000," (which was the year of the renewable nirvana was predicted when I was a kid) according to the spreadsheet I keep with all of the weekly data reported at Mauna Loa, that the ten year week to week comparisons were averaging in 1999, 15.26 ppm (1.52 ppm /year) over 1989, before we spent 3 trillion dollars on solar and wind, and, um, in 2020, the year just passed, it was 24.13 over 2010, 2.41 ppm/year.

The week beginning February 7, 2021, the figure was 25.27 ppm over the same week of 2011, the third highest 10 year increase ever recorded at Mauna Loa, but, but, but, I'm just being a nudge, lacking in enthusiasm for this great exercise in mining, the so called "renewable energy" industry that is taking the world by storm, not that all these storms are necessarily all that wonderful, but don't worry, be happy. Here we mean "storm" in a good way. All of the top 25 highest 10 year week to week records took place in the last 3 years, 14 of them in 2020 and all of this winning is making me so happy.

I think if we all agree that solar and wind are great, and that we should throw another 10, 15, 20 trillion at it while not giving a rat's ass about the 2 billion people who lack access to improved sanitation, well, who cares about them? They can't afford Teslas.

I mean those kids who dig cobalt for our batteries, they really don't need a place to shit, do they?

I mean even the infamous anti-nuke Benjamin Sovacool, has tiny little moral qualms about that, not that I consider him the brightest bulb on the planet; clearly I don't so consider him. I loved though, his Ph.D. thesis with all those anonymous "authorities" he interviewed on his way to become the kind of "expert" who could say to us that we should mine the ocean floor to get enough material for the renewable nirvana that is always just around the corner and has been since at least 1976 when Amory Lovins said we could all have solar molten salt tanks in our backyards to generate hydrogen for our hydrogen HYPErcars.

Like most anti-nukes, Sovacool turned into Ayn Rand telling us how "expensive" nuclear energy is in response to Hansen's paper on how much carbon dioxide nuclear power prevented, although historically, after being amortized, because of their long life times, most of the 100 US nuclear plants turned into cash cows after being paid off, and provided very cheap, reliable energy, to the generations after the generations who built and paid for them began dying off. But I'm being a dick. Who cares what we leave for the babies born yesterday on February 15, 2021? It is their duty to go 100% renewable even though we didn't, "by 2050" or "by 2075" with a destroyed atmosphere, expanded deserts, dried up river basins, copper wires strewn all over burned out landscapes and depleted ores for all the major elements, because, because, because...well...I saw it on the Greenpeace website. I'm sure they'll happily "recycle" all of our garbage, millions upon billions of tons of it and be "100% renewable" in a jiffy.

Of course, some people claim - we never would here - that people who have to dig through other people's landfills are, um, poor people, not that poor people shouldn't be thrilled to pay their electricity bills in Germany and Denmark to be all "green" just like "we" are.

Addressing poverty is no where as important to us these days as having solar cells on our roofs and batteries in our 3 electric car garages. We're very modern liberals, unlike those historical old fashioned liberal, the whiny Eleanor Roosevelt types, who thought that poverty, and not being "green" mattered.

Bill Gates pays 7 million dollars a year to be carbon neutral. He's a hero and I'm unworthy of his wisdom. Why can't the rest of us be so wonderful?

History will not forgive us, nor should it.