Subsidizing carbon emissions and calling it carbon neutral

World Economic Forum: "Needless to say, it does not make economic sense to import eight million tons of wood pellets yearly across the Atlantic Ocean. However, the British government has provided over $1 billion in annual subsidies to utilities to pay the cost of pellet production and transport."

Autonomous vehicles mean more sprawl

CityLab : "One school of thought on autonomous vehicles holds that they’ll increase traffic and sprawl: Without expensive fuel and the soul-gnawing investment in time wasted commuting behind the wheel, people will feel the pain of driving less, live even further away from urban centers, and basically use robot-cars for all manner of frivolous pursuits."

Electric car direct subsidy $7,500 per vehicle

Cars promote sprawl and growth. Cars and car infrastructure are subsidized. Growth is the biggest threat to the biosphere. Electric cars are just another excuse to subsidize growth.

dailykos: "Most of us Nissan Leaf drivers got our cars via a Nissan lease deal. It’s a win-win: Nissan gets its Leafs out the door, bags the $7500 Federal rebate, plus some of the car’s value from us (as down/monthly payments), then gets the car back in 2-3 years to sell it again. Meanwhile, because Nissan factors the full $7.5k into the lease deal, we get a much cheaper lease than for comparable ICE cars, and can partake in the EV revolution without the risk of getting stuck with a badly depreciated, outdated tech product."

65% energy lost before wheel turns on electric car

sciencedirect: "The WTW efficiency for EVs running electricity derived from a stationary power plant is shown in Fig. 4. Natural gas from the pipeline is fed into the stationary power plant, which has an electrical generating efficiency that depends on the type of power plant. The electricity is then distributed to the grid, where it is subject to T&D losses resulting in a WTP efficiency of between 28% and 45% depending on the power plant technology. Electricity is transferred to the EV via a charging station, which is on the order of 85–95% efficiency. The battery-to-wheel efficiency of an EV over a drive cycle can range from about 79 to 91% depending on how regenerative breaking is accounted for [41]. This gives an overall WTW efficiency of between 22% and 35%."

#Renewableenergy is a cover for energy-subsidy and growth

Greentech Media : "The Trump administration will need to enact policies that would help de-risk these investments, maintain the United States’ technological competitive advantage, and bring the best, most efficient and advanced technologies to bear to power the American economy. As a starting point, they can draw on the innovative financial models developed by U.S. green banks. These institutions can provide the Trump administration with a model for creating economic growth through visionary, effective financial innovation."

#Renewables mean growth, growth means heat, heat means clathrates will melt. When that happens emissions will far surpass what was saved by renewables.

#carboncapture - so far only capturing money

US News : "Kemper's two gasifiers convert soft lignite coal mined at the site into a synthetic gas using high pressure and heat. The tubes broke March 9 in a cooling unit that reduces the heat of the gas that comes out of one gasifier before piping it into a chemical plant that removes carbon dioxide and other chemicals. The gas is then burned in turbines to generate electricity.

Spokesman Jeff Shepard said the company is working on restarting the second gasifier. The first one continues to run.

Kemper is designed to capture 65 percent of the carbon dioxide from the burning coal, releasing only as much of the climate-warming gas as a typical natural gas plant does."

Professor debunks carbon capture in 7 minutes

Genetically modified plantations for fuel, another bad idea

Forest protection offsets -- another hoax

REDD-Monitor: "Of course, he doesn’t write about the impact massively increased emissions from aviation would have on climate change. Nor does he mention the fact that ten years of REDD has done little or nothing to reduce deforestation. Or the fact that offsets don’t actually reduce emissions. And of course he doesn’t mention the fact that as climate change accelerates, the risk of forests burning is increasing."

Heating with electricity much less efficient

Plans to use renewables generally means using electricity as distribution when talking about large scale application. However just switching from coal to electricity for heat is already a significant loss of energy.

The “Wind and Solar Will Save Us” Delusion | Our Finite World: "The underlying problem is that burning coal in a power plant produces a better, but more expensive, product. If this electricity is used for a process that coal cannot perform directly, such as allowing a new automobile production plant, then this higher cost is easily  absorbed by the economy. But if this higher-cost product simply provides a previously available service (heating) in a more expensive manner, it becomes a difficult cost for the economy to “digest.” It becomes a very expensive fix for China’s smog problem. It should be noted that this change works in the wrong direction from a CO2 perspective, because ultimately, more coal must be burned for heating because of the inefficiency of converting coal to electricity, and then using that electricity for heating."

Renewable society would spend 3 times as much for energy

Questioning “Our Renewable Future” – Resilience: "It would obviously be impossible to pay out anything like 29% of GDP for energy. Hall and Klitgaard (2014) find that when energy expenditure remains above about 5.5% of US GDP for some time recession occurs. In other words far lower assumptions than have been made in this exercise would have to be true before the costs arrived at could be affordable. And all this is for Australia, which has possibly the most favourable renewable energy conditions in the inhabited world. "

There are a lot of problems with renewables.

• Jevons (whole human race must be in on it)
• They depend on fossil fuel
• They use up declining resources
• Some pollute
• They promote growth 
• They cost more
• They distract from the need for degrowth

The “Wind and Solar Will Save Us” Delusion

Our Finite World: "Unfortunately, a transition to such a short list of fuels can’t really work. These are a few of the problems we encounter:"

PM Pollution from electric cars no better than internal combustion cars

PM Pollution from electric cars no better than internal combustion cars: "Therefore, it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels. Nonexhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic"

More bad news about electric cars

Free Transit Library: "Therefore, it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels. Nonexhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic"

"Decoupling" means growing GDP while decreasing carbon emissions - another hoax

Growth, carbon, and Trump: States are “decoupling” economic growth from emissions growth | Brookings Institution: " largely due to favorable changes in these states’ fuel mixes, such as coal-to-gas power switching and increased reliance on nuclear energy. The shift toward cleaner-burning natural gas has enabled significant decoupling of growth from emissions"

"Decoupling" the latest distraction from degrowth from the growth advocates. Achieved by switching to gas and nuclear from coal. The externalities of coal are well documented. Gas and nuclear are newer and there is more confusion about their true costs. This is the only change.

Pollution caused by #renewables

Fair Observer: "For example, wind/solar require the mining of rare earths. All mining is environmentally devastating, but rare earths mining is especially so. Rare earths mining and refining has devastated, for example, the area around Baotou, China. As The Guardian wrote, “From the air it looks like a huge lake, fed by many tributaries, but on the ground it turns out to be a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world, collectively known as rare earths.” The soil in the region has also been toxified."

What are the negative side-effects of renewables?

The Myth of Renewable Energy and Climate Change - Fair Observer: "For example, wind/solar require the mining of rare earths. All mining is environmentally devastating, but rare earths mining is especially so. Rare earths mining and refining has devastated, for example, the area around Baotou, China. As The Guardian wrote, “From the air it looks like a huge lake, fed by many tributaries, but on the ground it turns out to be a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world, collectively known as rare earths.” The soil in the region has also been toxified."

Destroying earth to save capitalism

The Myth of Renewable Energy and Climate Change - Fair Observer: "Here’s an example. An article in the LA Times headlined “Sacrificing the Desert to Save the Earth,” described how state and federal governments, a big corporation, and big “environmental” organizations/corporations are murdering great swaths of the Mojave Desert to put in industrial solar energy generation facilities. The desert is being sacrificed not, as the article states, to save the earth, but to generate electricity—primarily for industry. The earth doesn’t need this electricity: industry does. But then again, from this narcissistic perspective, industry is the earth. There is and can be nothing except for industry."

Why #freetransit is a better fight than #livingwage

industryweek : "McDonald’s already replaced order takers with automated kiosks in expensive European markets, and the “$15 per hour” and living wage movements in the U.S. means that kiosks have started to replace workers in the U.S. too. "

The end of cheap oil means high unemployment and low wages. But that doesn't mean a frontal attack is the best option. There are dozens of ways to take back a wage increase. Automation is just one of them. And what is the point of trying to get more out of a system that is based on waste and subsidy. First we should stop wasting energy on cars and sprawl.