Pseudo Science is Destroying our Civilization

The Key to Where Society Started Down the Wrong Road

“…God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false” 2 Thessalonians 2:11, New American Standard Bible

The Message bible phrases the same thought in more modern and rather blunt English: “And since they’re so obsessed with evil, God rubs their noses in it—gives them what they want. Since they refuse to trust truth, they’re banished to their chosen world of lies and illusions.” 2 Thessalonians 2:11, The Message

SCIENCE and pseudo-science…

Once an idea or a lie becomes entrenched in the culture, it’s hard to change it, especially if money is involved. Grants, subsidies, jobs and careers are at stake. Investments have been made. Reputations are on the line. Powerful governmental, corporate, and individual billionaire interests are committed.

Electric vehicles, wind turbine farms, and solar farms are all being hyped, vigorously promoted, funded by corporations and billionaires, and vastly subsidized by governments all over the world. What is the one underlying reason, the key, for pushing these things so hard? It’s the notion that global warming is an existential threat for humanity. Global warming is now called by a more expansive name – climate change. That’s because every type of climate event, whether forest fires, hurricanes, tornados, floods, a hot day, or whatever, is supposedly caused by global warming, and global warming is supposedly caused by human activities that emit CO2. And since we all exhale CO2, some even think the way to reduce CO2 emissions is to reduce the population. And since carbon molecules readily combine with oxygen to form CO2, any gas with carbon in it, like methane from the natural digestive process, is seriously frowned upon, so there’s even a movement to cull the herds of cows and other livestock to cut down on methane emissions. Maybe we should stop eating beans, too.

The theory is that CO2 emissions cause the atmosphere to become warmer by absorbing more heat from the sun. I say ‘theory’, because that’s all it is. More on that later…but here’s an indication the theory is false:

I don’t see a warming trend, do you?

The supposed solution to the supposed problem of ‘climate change’ is to use electricity for energy needs instead of fossil fuels that emit CO2 when burned. And supposedly no expense to switch to electric energy is too high because after all, we’re saving the world.

Electricity is hyped as a ‘clean’ source of energy, because it doesn’t emit CO2. However, electricity has to be generated from other energy sources, like coal, oil, gas, or ‘renewables’ like wind and solar. Wind turbines have to be located in windy locations, and even then, they are proving to only produce about 40% of their maximum rated power, because sometimes the wind isn’t blowing, or it’s not enough to achieve the minimum needed to turn those massive blades, or if it’s blowing too hard, like over 55 mph, the blades have to shut down for safety.

Solar farms have to be located in sunny locations, and they’re taking up a lot of formerly good farmland. Rooftop solar for individual homes and factories is also dependent on having a good location where the sun is not blocked by the shade of trees or other buildings. Electricity generated by photovoltaic cells in solar panels has to be converted from DC to AC, during which some energy is lost, and then it has to be transmitted to the power grid, and there are losses in that process, too.

Electricity generated by coal, gas, hydro dams, or nuclear power plants is much more efficient and reliable, even on a dark and windless night. If all of our electricity were to be produced by wind and solar, we would either have to build twice as much as our apparent needs, to make up for the large amount of time that there’s no sun and no wind, or build huge battery backup systems to store enough electricity to get through those times when there’s no wind or sun. Logically, we could expect either method to cost somewhere around twice as much as our fossil fuel systems; perhaps much more.

But if the foundational reason for all this mad scramble for renewable energy is a hoax, then all the billions of dollars, time, human energy, engineering skills, and doubling of electric bills is all wasted. If global warming is not really an existential threat, we’re crippling our economy for nothing. We’re hurting poor people the most – rising electric bills are a retroactive tax. With electric vehicles, we’re doing vast amounts of damage to the environment with lithium mining for batteries and rare earth minerals for chips, and we’re reducing our mobility and freedom because of the limited range and the time waiting for battery recharging.

So before digging the hole deeper, it’s time to take a long hard look at the whole theory of global warming. Because if it’s wrong, then the whole political and corporate superstructure of EVs, wind farms, and solar farms is sooner or later going to fall like a house of cards. Real science doesn’t let itself be influenced by grants or subsidies or popular opinion. Real science is an unbiased, open-minded search for truth, wherever it leads. Real science is open to testing and re-testing. It doesn’t ignore, suppress, block, or ‘cancel’ those who have questions or contrary opinions, and it certainly doesn’t hide contrary data or facts. Real science is honest; it doesn’t fudge data to make a theory look better.

Media attention has presented the theory of global warming as if it were real, proven science. Next Thursday’s post is on Thanksgiving Day, so we’ll wait ‘till Nov. 30 for Part 2 to see if that’s true or not. Hint: It’s not.

FINANCE

GM recalls 950 robotic vehicles; back to the drawing board…

Energy stocks having a bad year

Here’s how Energy Transition Absurdities views the situation - “the authoritarian globalist agenda designed to help force a transition that defies thermodynamics and physics with trillions of dollars in subsidy spending funded by debt.” emphasis mine

Resale value

From David Blackmon’s Energy Transition Absurdities, 11/9/23

“A new study of over 1 million vehicles sold from November 2022 to October 2023 conducted by iSeeCars.com finds EVs losing 49.1% of their value over the first five years of life, compared to just 38.8% for all vehicles combined.”

Update on Bitcoin

Since I wrote https://alchristie.substack.com/p/re-evaluating-bitcoin on Sept.14, bitcoin (BTC) has risen. I had become more risk averse after reading “Easy Money” by Ben McKenzie, and cut back a little on my BTC position, after realizing that there have been even more frauds in crypto than I was aware of. Now I’m a little more bullish, at least on BTC itself, because “Six Bravo from Special situation Investing” likes the high probability that Grayscale’s GBTC fund will soon be approved as an ETF, which is bullish, and also reminds us that 2024 is a year when the BTC miners compensation will be cut in half. This ‘halving’ happens every 4 years as programmed right into BTC structure, and the price of BTC historically has risen steeply in those years. I’m still wary of other crypto currencies than BTC and ETH (Ethereum).

FAITH

““As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Genesis 8:22

next week, Nov. 23 - things to be thankful for. Nov 30 - Part 2 for debunking global warming - maybe some news update extras in between our regular Thursday posts