German energy policy moves from expensive stuff that doesn't work well to stuff that doesn't exist.

[NNadir]

6. I am very pleased to offer a DU heart for this post.

This is obviously not because I agree with any of the nonsense in it, but rather because it reinforces my definition of what a cult is.

My definition of a cult is an organization comprised of people whose beliefs cannot be changed by any amount of information.

I track the information released as pure numerical data at the Mauna Loa CO₂ Observatory, each spring reporting here on the setting of new records, which, of course, have been occurring every spring of every year in this century, and, indeed before it.

I generally, since the records appear regularly in spring, to save time, repeat some of the language, adding updates as necessary.

For example, from this sample from the series, from April 20th of last year: New Weekly CO2 Concentration Record Set at the Mauna Loa Observatory, 430.19 ppm

The relevant excerpt:

...Most of the time I produce posts in this series, I refer to increases of the 1 year week to week comparators, generally when one of the readings among the 2,568 week to week comparators recorded at the observatory appears in the top fifty. For this week, week 15 of 2025, the increase over week 15 of 2024, the increase is 3.96 ppm higher, which places it as the 38th highest out 2,568 data points of annual week to week comparators going back to the mid 1970's.

This is the first reading to exceed 430 ppm in the history of the Observatory. The first reading to exceed 400 ppm took place not so long ago, the week beginning May 26, 2013, week 22 of that year, when the reading was 400.03 ppm.

We're doing swell, aren't we?

Four of these readings exceed increases of 5.00 ppm, three of which were in 2024. Of the top 50 week to week/year to year comparators 24 have taken place in the last 5 years of which 13 occurred in 2024, 3 in 2025, 40 in the last 10 years, and 45 in this century.

Of the five readings from the 20th century, four occurred in 1998, when huge stretches of the Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests caught fire when slash and burn fires went out of control. These fires were set deliberately, designed to add palm oil plantations to satisfy the demand for "renewable" biodiesel for German cars and trucks as part of their "renewable energy portfolio." The only other reading from the 20th century to appear in the top 50 occurred in the week beginning August 21, 1988, which was 3.91 ppm higher than the same week of the previous year. For about ten years, until July of 1998, it was the highest reading ever recorded. It is now the 44th highest...

The obvious conclusion is that in the 21st century things with respect to the accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste are getting worse faster.

In this thread I posted information on how much money has been spent in this century on so called "renewable energy in this century."

Often when appealing to these figures, I point out that the trillions squandered on this pixilated scheme is greater than the gross national product of India, a nation with more than 1 billion human beings living in it.

As a person who cares about human poverty, I think this a disgrace.

It is obvious that "investment" in so called "renewable energy" has only made things worse, not better. It shouldn't take too many brains to conclude that so called "renewable energy" has nothing to do with addressing the use of fossil fuels nor their effect on the climate. So what is the real purpose of this cult thinking?

I've been here for more than 23 years. In those 23 years, there are very few posters in this forum, in which I've participated on and off, who come in handing out nonsensical dogma, easily dismissed with real numbers, that so called "renewable energy" has something to do with the collapse of the world climate, who don't start out bad mouthing nuclear energy. In fact, they almost never give up this line of toxic and deadly shit. They have certain slogans they chant, for example "nuclear energy is too expensive" as if the collapse of the planetary climate isn't "too expensive;" "nuclear energy is too dangerous" despite its extraordinary low death toll compared to deaths from fossil fuels on which so called "renewable energy" depends, prattling on about so called "nuclear waste," which is what they insipidly call valuable used nuclear fuel, which has a spectacular record of not killing anyone while fossil fuel waste, air pollution and climate collapse kill millions of people each year. Another real whopper is that nuclear energy is dependent of subsidies, an incredible bit of hypocrisy given that as of 2025, subsidies for the useless "renewable energy" industry are an order of magnitude higher than those paid for nuclear energy,

I often post here the numbers in units of energy, the Exajoule, as opposed to units of power, Watts, misleadingly applied to support the useless "renewable energy" industry, since peak Watts are meaningless if reliability is random and capacity utilization is well below 35%, with solar and wind rarely if ever, obtaining extended periods of matching that figure, the data from the IEA, generally from the World Energy Outlook, an annual publication it releases every November, which I have been tracking and downloading since the late 20th century.

Here, from the most recent edition, is the figures, in Exajoules, for the primary energy produced from each energy source in the most recent edition World Energy Outlook 2025:



Page 420.

For convenience, I've also put together a spreadsheet covering data from selected years:

(Some of the earlier editions used the unit MTOE - million tons oil equivalent - but have been converted to the SI unit EJ in the table.)

A spreadsheet of reflecting a decade of the IEA's World Energy Outlook data for consumption and sources of energy.

A tell from the members of the antinuke "renewable energy will save us" cults, is reference to the WEO with an illiterate interpretation of what it says and means. Often this takes the form of declaring soothsaying more valuable than data. I have no use for soothsaying although as a scientist I am trained to respect data. There is a difference, and poor thinkers in my experience are more fond of soothsaying than data.

Now we here that "investment" is the same as "success" and "rewards."

Lot's of people "invested" in Bernie Madoff's investment firm. They lost almost everything.

There are wise investments and there are stupid investments.

As a planet, we have, to be sure, "invested" in so called "renewable energy," again on a trillion dollar scale, and robbed the future generations of wilderness, mined the shit out of the planet's best ores, leaving little for the future other than piles of tailings and other waste, and, oh yeah, a destroyed planetary atmosphere. This was not a wise investment, since the result was a huge loss, a loss humanity cannot even begin to afford, the destruction of the planetary atmosphere.

Let me say that again:

We lost the planet's atmosphere.

One would need to be in a cult to not understand that.

Have a nice work week. Again, I'm pleased to award you a DU Star for giving a chance to display how cult thinking works.