The Turning of the Tide

The waters of electrification churn when the climate tides meet the river of reality

For those who would rather listen than read, I finally set up for an audio version.

My wife and I have enjoyed canoeing in the coastal rivers. We like to get a tide chart and time our paddling to start upstream when the tide is coming in, which makes for much easier paddling upstream, then stop for a picnic style lunch on a nice sunny bank until the tide ebbs and begins to turn. The return trip downstream is swift because we have both current and tide going with us.

I’ve noticed that where the waters of the river meet the ocean’s incoming tide, there is confusion and swirling and churning in the water, from opposing forces.

Today’s post is about the swirling conflict between those who are scared to death of global warming and those who have the sense to recognize reality.

The tide of believing in magic

This is what I’m seeing in the electrification of everything tide, which is meeting the river of reality. There is confusion. There are opposing forces.

The tide of climate change hysterics is powerful because of the strength of politics and subsidies backing electrification. (climate change, of course, is a euphemism for global warming). But tides come and go.

At the same time, there is an ol’ man river of economic and scientific reality that doesn’t change. When that ol’ river meets tides of nonsensible economics, the river will win in the long run.

There is a tide of borrowed, printed, or taxed money going into research to find some magical source of unlimited energy. There are nuclear fusion experiments, superconductivity experiments, and hopeful drilling for ‘free hydrogen’ that doesn’t have to be pried loose from powerful chemical bonds with other elements.

The magical source of energy is needed to make enough electricity to electrify everything. The reason behind all this is that the whole world of authoritarian governments has gone crazy, thinking that we and the earth and everything is going to die if we don’t stop global warming. And right NOW. No time for a reasonable, gradual approach.

So whatever resources aren’t poured into the search for magical energy are poured into finding ways to eliminate CO2 and Methane (CH4, natural gas) from the air we breathe.

This endeavor too is reaching for magical solutions, like eliminating fossil fuels, or capturing carbon from the air and pumping it into underground caverns and hoping it doesn’t escape, or pie in the sky dreams of launching a sun shield in space to shade the earth, or laying an undersea cable* from wind turbines in Morocco all the way to Britain. *in a substack by Irina Slav, whom I recommend

Then there are some much darker proposals, to cut down on methane emissions by killing all the livestock to the nihilistic idea of reducing CO2 emissions by eliminating humans* (except those in power, of course.)

*Eco-nihilists argue that, until and unless humans can demonstrate an ability to live in harmony with our environment, humankind deserves extinction

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end is the way of death.” Proverbs 14:12

reality

Fortunately, all this tide of insanity is bucking up against the river of realities.

There is the totally practical reality of economics. There isn’t enough money in the world to electrify everything.

Energy from wind and solar is not steady, it’s not free, it’s not even cheaper, it wouldn’t even be close to economical or profitable without subsidies ongoing forever, it will be expensive to maintain and replace every 10-20 years or so, it’s terribly hard to recycle, it’s not clean, it’s actually dirty when you look at all the mining for backup battery materials and the emissions from all the diesel powered heavy equipment doing the mining, it’s supporting slave labor in some of those mines, it’s weakening our power grid due to its unreliability during weather extremes which are bound to come, it’s raising our electric bills and insurance fees and food and the cost of good ol’ internal combustion engines (ICEs) because the car manufacturers are losing so much on EVs that they have to raise their prices on ICEs to stay in business. Whew – I’ll take a breath now… I could keep going…but you get the point.

We can’t live without fossil fuels. Even cave men burnt wood for warmth and cooking. We use about 6000 products that are produced from oil.

As Jim Rickards says about EVs very succinctly, “In the first place, EVs don’t cut carbon emissions. The car itself does not have emissions, but it’s charged with electricity from power plants that do. The batteries are made with poisonous chemicals and metals including lithium, cobalt, copper and nickel that come from mining operations that use enormous amounts of water and electricity to extract the needed materials. It takes thousands of tons of ore to extract enough critical minerals to make one battery.” Facts are stubborn things

One other reality I’ll throw in here – nuclear power plants are real, tried and proven and have passed the test of time. They are the closest thing to a magic source of energy we’ll ever see, and it’s time to get real and start building more of them. I’ll post an article about full size and also SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) soon – stay tuned. Things are looking , as reality starts to set in. The tide is changing. You might want to invest in uranium…

I’ll close with this story and then a poem. The ultimate picture of a river meeting the ocean tides (and winds) is the mouth of the mighty Columbia. My father-in-law and I took a charter boat to go salmon fishing off the coast of Oregon. We departed the dock at 5 AM. When we reached the mouth of the river at the point where the sea was bucking it with all its might, the waves looked enormous. This is called crossing the Columbia bar. I remembered reading about all the historical shipwrecks at this place. We were in a 40’ boat. Before it got really rough, I noticed there were a lot of other boats already coming back to harbor. I tapped the captain on the shoulder and asked him “Why are all those other boats coming back. They couldn’t have caught their limit already, could they?”  He said “I guess the bar is too rough for them”. Then he turned back to concentrating on steering us into the waves. I hung on to the side rail with all my strength. I took a wave at belly level and got completely drenched with 40 degree sea water. Then I saw the big one coming. The engine slowed to a chug, chug, chug as we climbed almost vertically up that wave like climbing a mountain. Then we topped it and crashed down the other side into the trough. Soon we were into calmer waters. We had crossed the bar.

That’s where we are today in the energy field. We’re all in the same boat, and we’re at the violent, chaotic juncture of strong currents meeting strong tides, and we are in danger of capsizing. We need a captain who will guide us back to calmer waters.

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Isaiah 26:3

Crossing the Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1889

Sunset and evening star,
  And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
  When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
  Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
  Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
  And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
  When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
  The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
  When I have cross’d the bar.