Telling the Truth About Our Future (Art Berman)

5 comments

1. I think it’s a good thing that Art Berman is not in charge of anything.

2. 1. Not too much … too many facts presented and discussed in misleading/skewed manner ending with truthiness rather than illumination and truth.
   2. Think about one of his lines: “Wind and solar accounted for less than 5% of global energy use in 2022.” Yet, how is that changing? A decade(-ish) below that figure was barely 1%. Don’t you recall the arguments that “solar In the power sector, with growing electrification and increasing demands, renewables are the vast majority of new additions with that share growing. And, of total energy consumption, [wind and solar are becoming an increasingly large share of the growth in energy demand](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-added-more-to-global-energy-than-any-other-source-in-2023/): In 2023, “Wind and solar together were the largest source of new energy in 2023, adding 4.9EJ or 40% of the increase overall.”

   That [2] is just a (slightly) updated version of an old canard. The opening paragraph of something that I [wrote a decade ago](https://getenergysmartnow.com/2014/11/27/tackling-the-renewable-canard-of-only-x-percent/),

   >There are a series of arguments used by fossil-fuel defenders / pollution promoters to dismiss the utility of renewable energy electricity options. One standard is to dismiss wind and solar by saying that it *only* delivers X percent of the electricity. The intent of playing to that number, with the emphasis on “only”, is to prove the lack of utility of these renewables for 21st century energy requirements. What these commentators fail to do, of course, is to make clear that yesterday’s number is (much) smaller than today’s … and that today’s is smaller than tomorrow.

   To give an indication of change, from that piece:

   >Global PV in 2004: 3.7 gigawatt capacity. In 2013: 137 gigawatts (40 times as much in a decade)

   2023 [global installed solar PV capacity](https://iea-pvps.org/snapshot-reports/snapshot-2024/): 1.6TW or more than 10x a decade earlier.

   The [challenge with knowledgeable disinformation is that chasing down truth, in debunking the truthiness, can take far more effort and reach far smaller audiences](https://getenergysmartnow.com/2010/08/16/energy-bookshelf-a-power-hungry-gushing-of-lies/).

3. If someone brings up EROEI as a reason for anything, you can immediately dismiss them as a crank.

   It’s a meaningless metric that has no consequences on anything.

4. Any perspective that falls short of full-throated celebration of progress will be dimly viewed on this sub.

5. I don’t agree with his conclusion. Renewables are worth doing and going 100% in on even if they won’t save industrial civilization. Could be the best way to soften the landing now that we are basically in a nosedive.