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r/UnchartedScience

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France should have stayed only nuclear and not get on the wind turbine bandwagon

The 55 nuclear power plants that France built between 1973 and 1980 cost about 100 billion euros in today's money and they steadily deliver 75% of the country's electricity.

Then they decided to go green and build wind power. They've paid over 150 billion euros to produce a measly 8% of the electricity – and it only comes when the wind blows, not when we actually need it.

In other words: twice as expensive for a tenth of the output, plus it's totally unreliable.

Wind power isn't just expensive. It's a catastrophically bad deal.

u/ChipHaseCoolGuy — 7 days ago
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“The Big Freeze” from 1944 - 1976

The world witnessed 33 years of global cooling from 1944 to 1976 - hailed around the world as 'The Big Freeze'.

The media announced it with eye catching headlines. But the mysterious Ice Age simply vanished. The cooling had taken place just as industrial output surged after WWII, sending CO₂ concentrations shooting up. If CO₂ really was the ruler of temperature, this cooling phase should have been impossible. Instead, the data exposed a complex tug-of-war.

The industrial boom had released sulfate aerosols (smog) into the atmosphere that reflected sunlight away from Earth. This is what caused the lingering cool spell. It goes to show that solar cycles, volcanic activity and atmospheric particulates can—and usually do—override all expectations for decades at a time. But the ice balloon finally popped and so did the elusive Ice Age.

It shows how variable the climate can be if we ignore all the variables; the aerosols, the power of ocean currents or the supreme power of the Sun. If we fixate on only one solitary trace gas - then we forfeit our sense of planetary climate.

The 'Big Freeze' Time magazine cover was published on December 3, 1973.

@PeterDClack - X

u/ChipHaseCoolGuy — 9 days ago
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If renewables really were the 'cheapest form of energy' in town, as the narrative argues black and blue, the market would have pivoted years ago without a single subsidy

If wind and solar were truly economically and engineeringly superior to fossil fuels, we wouldn’t be talking about a transition.

We would be witnessing a wholesale acceptance.

Think back to the great energy shifts of the past. We didn’t need global treaties to move from wood to coal, or from whale oil to kerosene. We didn’t need to demonise the forest to convince people to use a coal stove. The market moved because the new energy source offered higher energy density, lower cost and greater reliability.

If renewables really were the 'cheapest form of energy' in town, as the narrative argues black and blue, the market would have pivoted years ago without a single subsidy. Capital investment always flows toward efficiency.

Instead, we see persistent intermittency. We see huge, costly wind and solar arrays lying dormant when the winds are still, on cloudy days and at night. Only an ongoing dependence on coal, oil, and gas keeps the lights on. That is not a business plan.

Without a massive, currently non-existent method for long-duration storage, wind and solar remain an adjunct to the grid - not the solution. We are essentially building two parallel grids: one for wind and sun, and a ghostly 'shadow grid' of coal and gas. This is the definition of engineering failure.

The campaign to demonise CO2 served one function: when a product cannot compete on its own merits, you change the rules of the game. If you can’t make the new technology cheaper, you make existing technology illegal.

True progress doesn't require a code red crisis to crush debate. It proves itself by providing energy and grid stability from Day 1. If renewables worked as advertised, the transition would be over in a week.

Instead, we're being told to sacrifice national sovereignty, energy security, and our industrial base - trading away jobs for a flawed system that cannot survive for a day without a backup plan.

@Peter0Clack - X

u/ChipHaseCoolGuy — 12 days ago