US energy secretary says global warming a side effect of modern economy

28 comments

1. What a fucking dope this guy is. Shows he has no concept of what climate change is or the danger of letting it run wild. Also blatantly lying about the cost benefit of transitioning away from fossil fuels. Solar wind and batteries are cheaper in most cases than coal, gas, and oil.

2. No shit. Its a shame that they can’t see past the 1870s

3. so embarrassed he’s from Colorado. We’ve made huge strides in renewable energy and he is making us all look bad.

4. Funny to see the socialists and the far right say the same thing.

   The difference, of course, being that the socialists would prefer to save humanity while the far right would prefer to ensure capitalism lasts as long as human society.

5. In other news, lung cancer is a side effect of being cool looking smoker.

6. Climate change is now no longer the enemy. In Trump World there is no need to transition away from fossil fuels — quite the reverse:

   > U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Monday that global warming is a side effect of building the modern world, and vowed to end former President Joe Biden’s climate policies to promote growth of fossil fuels.

7. The irony…. after years of denying its existence they acknowledge climate change exists but are now simply working to suggest it is beneficial or benign.

   Wouldn’t want to be a shareholder in US insurance companies right now.

8. I’m all in with this guy. The sooner we can kill off humans and return the planet to nature the better. Drill baby drill /s

9. You know, kinda like death is just a side effect of a gunshot wound to the heart.

10. Did anyone say to him ‘Thanks for that captain obvious.’?

11. True enough.

12. Except the modern economy was starting to right wrongs by moving towards a more environmentally friendly, less climate-changing, model.

    Until you came along.

13. At least he’s acknowledging that climate change exists, and a result of fossil fuels. In other words, it’s not a scam.

14. I’m trying to keep up. Trump world now accepts basic physics – burning fossil fuels is changing the climate. Big if true.

15. I mean…he’s not wrong

16. Wait holy shit based degrowther trump

17. There was a point in history when a major energy source for human activity was burning animal fat. Whale oil. Its not that we wanted to kill whales for funsies, it was that we didn’t know much about material science to use alternatives. Whale oil was never going to be sufficient for the industrial revolution, it was never going to be sufficient for cars, airplanes, and grid power. We needed some new technology to allow for a much greater abundance.

    Then came along fossil fuels. They were far more plentiful than whale oil. And we didn’t have to kill whales. We could use them to make cars go vroom, to make planes go swiiish and boats go bmmmmmmm. Pulling crap out from the ground and burning it with special machines allowed humans far greater access to energy than whales were ever going to. Our economy could grow to what was nearly a science fiction quantity compared to burning animal fat. But there were a few issues, first, it creates bad air quality which causes major problems on both the short and long term. These fossil fuels are consumable. Your machines constantly need more of them. If you do not have them within your country you have to buy them, or engage in some good ole military adventurism to go take them. If your country was small, and didn’t have much fossil fuels, you were at a serious disadvantage when it came to industrialization.

    Fossil fuels also hit another issue. They are only so abundant. The economy of the future will hopefully be far larger than the economy of today, and that economy will require far more energy consumption. Fossil fuels are just not going to be that abundant.

    But we are in luck! Turns out there is a path to an even greater abundance. The sun. The sun blasts Earth with a nearly constant 173,000,000 GW of power. Or 173,000,000,000,000 kW of power. This is 21,000 kW per human, 24/7. Or 189,000,000 kWh per year per person. This is about 10,000 times the total energy consumed by humans. If we can figure out how to get just 1% of it and convert it to useful work we would have an energy system that is 100x as abundant as fossil fuels could ever be! As society that figures out how to do do this would be far wealthier than the society that was consuming fossil fuels for everything.

    This solar has some great properties! Its generally something found everywhere in the world and thus military adventurism is not needed to secure fuel. While you need to buy equipment, you do not have to ever pay for fuel. Some clowns do not see this “getting energy from the sun” as a path to much greater abundance.

18. I mean, he’s not wrong.

    That’s exactly why we need to reform the modern economy.

19. Simply understood, you cannot sell sunshine or wind. They are not consumables, therefore y you he wealthy cannot control supply.

20. More like a side effect of greed.

21. Doesn’t have to be like that. I’d really like to save the planet.

22. Who needs a living planet when you have an economy? /s

23. It was a side effect of the 20th century energy choices, yes, he is correct, but but in the 21t century and going forward into future centuries we now have better options and are transitioning to a sustainable modern economy based on clean energy not dirty energy. It is very doable as one of these energy choices is actually too cheap to meter (PV) being enacted inside the atomic level within a single panel less than an inch thick. Com pared to the gigantic mechanical turbines and generators of 20th century power, this is a major breakthrough.

24. The modern economy needs to get past combustion.

25. You know what’s a side effect of brain tumors? Dying. But it’s ok, it’s just a side effect.

26. If we knew then what we know now, we wouldn’t have burned enough oil to boil the ocean.

27. Technically he is correct. Also technically a side effect of a modern economy is a drop in the world population due to agricultural, environmental, and societal collapse

28. Because the economy is so hot, you see.

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