Simon Michaux's Work Poses a Threat to the "Renewable Energy" Industry
Even "renewable energy" has its limitations. It requires monumental amounts of metals like cobalt, nickel, copper and lithium. Do we have enough?
Addressing climate change is big business, with big profits to be made. The industries that stand to profit from “renewable energy” can be expected to push back against any journalism or science that could hurt their sales.
That’s what (I believe) is happening to the work of Simon Michaux, PhD, an Australian mining engineer who is now a professor in Finland.
Michaux is arguably one of the most important voices in the proposed transition to “renewable energy,” arguably more important than Bill Mckibben, Al Gore and Naomi Klein, because he asserts that we don’t have the necessary minerals.
You can explore Simon Michaux’s work here.
https://www.simonmichaux.com/
.And here is my interview with Simon.
Simon’s work has led him to conclude that we don’t have nearly enough materials to convert everything to “renewable energy.” Michaux sees critical shortages the elements needed for solar, wind, EVs, etc. Nickel, copper, lithium and cobalt are just a few of the many minerals required for the proposed buildout of “renewable energy.”
So, Simon is saying that we are funding a project that is not feasible and cannot be finished.
Naturally, the industry is going to push back on this.
Enter David Borlace, host of a YouTube channel called “Just Have a Think.” In this video
Borlace pushes back against Michaux using an analysis that is over my head, and I’ve been doing this for a while.
But Borlace is not asking the right questions in the first place. If you ask stupid questions, you will get stupid answers. You have to ask good questions to get good answers.
We should be asking (some or all of) these questions:
What is the vision or the end game?
What is the plan?
Who is implementing the plan? Can we trust them?
How do we measure success?
What could go wrong?
Are these not good questions? Are these not essential questions for us to be asking?
And yet, hardly anyone is asking these questions.
The Mainstream Climate Conversation (MCC) is so obsessed with carbon emissions that they (we) have failed to ask the right questions.
Some of us assert that Water Cycles and Ecosystems have tremendous power to cool the climate. This message is not part of the MCC.
ECONOMIC GROWTH ==> ENERGY ==> FOSSIL FUELS
Did you know, that if we continue to grow the economy at the typical 2-3% per year, we will multiply our energy usage by a factor of ten (10x) every century?
Here’s how that works. Energy is closely tied to economic growth. Economic growth triggers a proportionate increase in energy usage, and also a proportionate increase in fossil fuels. Any plans to “decouple” energy from the economy--or energy from fossil fuels--are speculative at best.
Hypothetically (and realistically) if the economy grows at 2.33% per year, then it grows by 10x every century, 100x every 200 years, 1000x every 300 years, one million times (1,000,000x) every 600 years, and one billion times (1,000,000,000x) every 900 years.
Every 1000 years, we will multiply our energy usage by a factor of 10 billion times.
What could go wrong?
So, to recap, every 100 years, humanity has 10 times as much energy as it had before.
That’s ten times as much energy to do everything we do that is destructive, like mining, road building, transportation of materials, processing and manufacturing of materials, etc. Every century we have ten times as much energy for everything we do, including too much “defense,” too much surveillance and prisons for inmates that have never been charged with a violent crime.
These are issues the Mainstream Climate Conversation is not addressing. And until they do, we might question whether they really want to solve the problem of climate change. Arguably not, unless they are talking about the full range of solutions available to us, and not limiting ourselves to those inquiries that pose no threat to the ruling class, the decision makers, the ones with the real power.
If you’re interested in this content please check out this interview with Dr. Thomas Murphy.