“Oil industry lobbyists are not worthwhile humans. It’s not a real job, it is corruption and beneath contempt. Taking bribe money to spread propaganda that results in genocide is sub human.” Tom Trounce (below)

I recently had an ‘interesting’ discussion on social media with a strong advocate for (dilute, intermittent) ‘renewable’ energies. My critic, an angry foe of fossil fuels, didn’t present solid arguments but only ad hominems, followed by trash talk. Such is the unfortunate part of debating climate/energy issues on LinkedIn, where certain (brainwashed?) alarmists work to discredit and marginalize their opponents.

Tom Trounce was the bad guy. His profile at LinkedIn advertises:

Improving lives through community, compassion and expeditions | Non-profits | Company culture | Leadership integrity | Technology | Customer Experience | Purpose

What? Improving lives, compassion, integrity.…

Ed. Note: The current government-led drive for battery electric vehicles (EVs) can be informed by history. In the 1890s through about 1920, electric vehicles went from market dominance to market rejection, outcompeted by the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. This post, and others at MasterResource (here and here), revisit the early history of the electric vehicle.

Electricity was the early front runner for horseless carriages, and the great man of electric utilities, Samuel Insull, got out in front. In 1898, Chicago Edison opened battery-charging stations and offered promotional rates to jumpstart this market. “Load-leveling” rates meant cheap off-peak charging at wholesale to serve this embryonic market.

In 1899, Insull became president of the $25 million Illinois Electrical Vehicle Transportation Company, the western branch of the Columbia Automobile Company of New York, to market electric cabs and carriages in Chicago.…

“The planned energy transition towards ‘net zero’ using ‘renewable’ energy, will inevitably lead to massive environmental destruction, with a six-times increase in environmental damage by 2050. This is concluded by scientists in a recent study [in Nature].” (below)

Highlighting a Nature scientific report, “Spatial Energy Density of Large-scale Electricity Generation from Power Sources Worldwide” [1], Hans Wolkers, science journalist, photographer, and writer, recently reported on social media:

Renewables lead to more destruction of ecosystems

The planned energy transition towards ‘net zero’ using ‘renewable’ energy, will inevitably lead to massive environmental destruction, with a six-times increase in environmental damage by 2050. This is concluded by scientists in a recent study (https://lnkd.in/emQwZBi2).
 
The EU has adopted a net-zero strategy that comes with the installation of even more wind turbines and solar panels.…

“No-one is claiming that degrowth would be easy or non disruptive or linear.” (Jennifer Wilkins, below)

“Questions for the Degrowth proponent: Who decides what is necessary or not–and for whom and when? Isn’t this the very definition of authoritarianism?” (Bradley, below)

The “Degrowth” movement needs some critical attention. I asked some hard queries after reading this on social media from Jennifer Wilkins, who defined degrowth as follows:

Ever wondered how degrowth differs from conventional sustainability?

The goal of degrowth is universal wellbeing, to be delivered through global and local provisioning systems that are distributive and regenerative. This demands a reprioritisation of social values and behaviours toward sufficiency and sharing; it is driving development of innovative post-growth business models that focus on meeting needs and respect local biosphere boundaries, both scientific and cultural; it is guiding macroeconomic research on a coherent set of policy interventions that would balance green policies with protection of livelihoods; and it is agitating for reform of governance institutions and an increase in community agency through participative democracy.