By Jo Nova
High quality fuel produces high quality lifestyles.
Diffuse, unreliable fuels produce chaos and vulnerability. As humans slip back down the energy density ladder, they lose the power to create order. To build, to fly, to repair, and to eat pineapples from Costa Rica.
Entropy is coming to break your fridge and give you wrinkles.
A great video by NetZeroWatch
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There are no examples of societies or civilisations with expensive energy that also have a high standard of living for ordinary people.
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Meanwhile we let China and India develop and burn energy freely while they laugh at the “developed countries” willfully cutting their own energy throats!
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/climate-bureaucrats-give-china-free-pass/
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Indeed CoIA. Anyone who’s been to China or knows anything about it would realise that a spacefaring power with nuclear weapons, the world’s largest military, nuclear power, high speed trains and major cities that are more advanced than many or most in the West, is not a developing country as the Left claim on their behalf.
They should not be excused from being the world’s largest CO2 emitter by far with more than twice the emissions of the next highest emitter, the USA. Not that CO2 matters of course, but our Civilisation is being destroyed because it is claimed to matter.
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David, I’m not convinced China has the worlds largest military. Have I missed more recent evaluations?
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According to
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Thanks David, I was basing my comment on totals including reservists etc.; which puts countries like India above China. All a matter of which numbers we look at.
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Manned Submarine Fleets
China 78
Russia 70
United States 68
North Korea 35
South Korea 22
These Chinese military will be shaking in their boots with Australia’s order for a few nuclear powered subs due in a decade or so!
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/submarines-by-country
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With the west lagging behind it’s easy to see Australia is unlikely to ever get a newish nuclear sub from the AUKUS deal!
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I dont blame cHINA FOR BEING SMART. i BLAME OUR WESTERN gOVTS FOR BEING STUPID.
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They are not being stupid they are being deliberately evil.
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I am always debating this in my mind, deliberate or just stupid
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You say the truth is still available and easy to find, but the fact is – as demonstrated by media articles, conversations with AI, etc, as reported on various sceptic sites – that the truth is carefully thoroughly and relentlessly concealed. Unless you know the answer, you won’t find it.
I did a little test. Imagine that you are a recently educated person, ie. almost able to write with a pen gripped uncomfortably in a fist but unable to spell most words of two or more syllables, and suppose that someone told you that solar panels didn’t work at night because the sun didn’t shine at night. So I did a web search for “does the sun shine at night?”, which I thought would be within the capabilities of at least the top 5%. The first hit started with:
QUESTION: Why does the sun not shine at night?
ANSWER: The truth is that the sun is always shining and will shine continuously until it dies.
I don’t think that the message that ‘renewables’ are unreliable will be getting through for a while.
!!meant to be a reply to #2!!
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False. Renewable energy use increases with wealth. It’s a U shape relationship. At lower income levels, as income (Gross Domestic Product per capita) increases, the proportion of renewables decreases. Once the income reaches a certain level, the relationship becomes positive.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9938474/
The argument advanced in the video is complete nonsense. Natural processes can increase energy density, and so can humans.
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Lol. I don’t know where to start with that one.
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For those Leftists eagerly participating in the destruction of the energy supply, remember that in today’s world with virtually unlimited access to information, YOUR IGNORANCE IS NOT AN EXCUSE. Even though your beloved social(ist) media is censored (except X), the truth is still available and easy to find, such as on this site.
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X still has censorship going on. It is not absolute free speech.
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Back in the day the miracles of the Industrial Revolution and the liberation of ordinary people from drudgery, ultimately due to access to inexpensive energy, use to be taught in schools
Now they teach (indoctrinate) children about the supposed evils of Western Civilisation and indigenous Europeans. And of course, mixed up and messed up gender nonsense.
This was an outstanding video and briefly encapsulates what used to be taught.
Brief, to the point, true, and should be compulsory viewing for everyone.
Please share widely, along with Jo’s site.
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Sorry, David I disagree that it was a good video. The message of use of high density energy is fine but there are many concepts & history in the video which are wrong. 1/ It is engineering experience, experimentation and innovation that has lifted human knowledge and benefits -physics is a late comer basically summarising some engineering knowledge such as electricity, magnetism or thermodynamics. 3/ No mention of the engineering technology of the Romans (roads, metals, water supply, sewerage, chemicals etc) 2/ the video focused on UK without mentioning the industrial progress in Europe (France & Germany in particular) and in USA. 3/ The use of oil and gas for industrial use came in USA (plastics, chemicals, fertilisers, aluminium etc) 4/ a driver for energy security was behind German and Japanese expansion for WW2 and maybe even in WW1 (German connection with Turkey) 5/ High density energy is important to China, India and Russia with the use of coal and nuclear. These countries are not interested in so-called low density renewables energy.
UK, Germany, USA and Australia have lost their way in the understanding of technology. Both China and India understand the need for the supply of high density energy. They will not care if other countries (Australia) act stupidly to reduce their standard of living but will act if there is some threat to their well being.
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The trouble is that most of our clueless pollies don’t understand history or any of the data and very basic physics and very simple sums.
And so many of our called scientists are too stupid or too gutless to take on the MSM and debate loonies like Piltdown Mann and so many other con merchants.
TOXIC UNRELIABLE W & S are expensive disasters and have very low capacity factors and only supply power when the sun shines and the wind blows.
Unless we build new RELIABLE BASE- LOAD energy plants we will be at the mercy of other countries and will have little ability to defend ourselves in the near future.
So why don’t we understand our history since the IND REV and reject all W & S and protect our environments from TOXIC low capacity factor energy and vote out any govt who refuses to listen?
Thanks for the video Jo, but I’m afraid most Aussies will not see it and many wouldn’t understand it anyway. Such is our education system today.
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Even if by a miracle Australia suddenly got a rational government tomorrow, at the glacial pace things happen in Australia, a new coal plant would take probably at least 10 years to build if no green/union opposition and a nuclear plant double that (absolute minimum). Remember, it took 50 years just to decide on a second Sydney Airport, still not open.
What type of misery will Australians be in in ten years time? It’s bad enough now with a rapidly declining standard of living due to expensive “green” energy.
The only answer for a rapid build of a coal, gas or nuclear power plant (just one but we need many more) is to declare a national emergency and contract the Chinese to do it (with their own workers) and provide the building site with 24/7 police and military guard to keep the feral unions and greens and other assorted Leftists away to stop sabotage. The Chinese with their own workers should be able to build us a USC coal plant in 2-3 years at an existing site such as Hazelwood. They would also have to rebuild mine facilities and the mine.
Nevertheless, we would still have another three years of energy poverty-misery and further economic destruction until new power plants came online. Australia could be a failed or at least semi-failed state by then.
And for once I agree with Labor. The Liberals, pretend conservative faction of the Uniparty, are dreaming if they think they can have nuclear in ten years. Australia doesnt even have ten years left as a viable country. The Liberals have a strong anti-nuclear record any way, having cancelled Jervis Bay in 1971 and then the Howard regime banning nuclear power forever by legislation in 1998. Of course, Howard also allowed non-dispatchable “generators” to connect to the grid and the Libs (pretend conservatives) have committed many other atrocities against the energy supply.
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are dreaming if they think they can have nuclear in ten years.
Once the Chinese are happy with their small nuclear reactor design,they will offer to put one on a “ship” and move it into your designated berth within two years. And for a fee design the extension of the local electrical grid from the unused fossil fuel generating plant to the port area.
Thus completing one more step in removing the ability of western countries/companies to build anything useful.
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I believe that the modular versions being developed by companies such as Rolls Royce, Westinghouse and NuScale are better because they can be trucked to site and assembled there.
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Every single conventional commercial-scale reactor project in Chinese history has achieved completion in under a decade (Figure 1)
Meanwhile, Chinese financiers and builders have also shown their ability to complete reactor projects abroad in comparably attractive timeframes. China successfully constructed six nuclear reactors in Pakistan in around 5.5-6 years
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-rate-of-nuclear-construction#:
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AGAIN here’s the critical data we should understand about co2 emissions since 1990.
The OECD countries co2 emissions per year since 1990 are about the same today BUT the NON OECD have increased from 10 billion Ts per year in 1990 to over 24 billion Ts per year today.
Most people today don’t understand these very simple sums and many couldn’t care less. I guess they think we’re still saving the planet and who cares about the data. Of course that’s only if you blame increased co2 for their so called Climate Emergency.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=Non-OECD+%28GCP%29~OECD+%28GCP%29
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One of the obvious things in the reporting of CO2 use per capita in the “developed” world and so called “developing” world is the omission of CO2 assessment for regions which do not have regular electricity available but which nevertheless create much CO2 plus other pollutants not seen in even the worst coal fired power plants.
Many areas in Asia, India, Africa and perhaps South America are reliant on local grass, leaves, scrub and the few remaining trees for survival: cooking and warmth eg PNG but these are places no UN functionary would visit: no five star accommodation.
In places this gets so grim that cow dung and camel dung are allowed to dry and then fed to the local hearth.
Why can’t the UNIPCCC acknowledge this?
It’s not about “pollution”.
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On the other hand, “Coal and biomass burning in developing countries”, is specifically mentioned in multiple locations in IPCC reports.
Use the bit in quotes plus IPCC for your next (first actually) check on whether you are factually correct.
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My doctor said that people shouldn’t read UNIPCCC reports but ask others to detail their content.
So; just how much of the third worlds survival is attributed and what’s their total co2 production.
I would be very surprised if so called biomass pellets were used anywhere that was in the worlds rural areas.
Too expensive.
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Where does your doctor suggest that you find these non-people?
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Online here, Gosh Yes.
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Since the first COP conference in Berlin in 1995 global CO2 emissions have increased by 50%.
All that aviation fuel used by so many private jets to attend the annual COP for nothing!
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Only one candle?
Within any well-adjusted society we may see many candles that represent the basics.
There might be a candle to represent leadership, another for willingness to work for a living and others for truth, honesty, law and order, justice, and a sense that any contribution to society would be used to build a better place to live in.
Looking further afield I look at the two candles representing Once Great Britain and the United States of America : they are fluttering and nearly gone.
Sadly, Australia isn’t far behind and let’s not mention the seething mess in Europe.
The world needs more candles, and justice to be meted out to those who are snuffing them out faster than we can light them.
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And of course a candle for moral values including family values. The Judeo-Christian moral and family values upon which the West was largely based have been under attack by the Left for decades now. So much so that traditional prohibitions such as theft are almost legal now in some DemocRAT-run places in the US. Even prohibitions such as murder is either not investigated properly, if at all, and even if a culprit is found, tried and found guilty, they may receive a light sentence, if any.
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Germany really started this exercise in dumbing down their energy supply. Leftoids came into government (Angela Merkel) after reunification with their socialist upbringing who decided that Germany should plant flowers and skip around the maypole rather than use FF to power the biggest economy in Europe. The leftoids to boost their political power grabbed on to fringe looney pollies (Greens) to maintain their position although it could be said the left and the greens are natural allies due to the unrealistic/ignorant view of how a successful economy functions.
Germany has now destroyed their energy supplies by injecting huge amounts of W+S into their grid while decommissioning the bulk of their coal and nuclear. This effectively creates a parasitic local grid dependent on the rest of Europe for keeping the lights on. Manufacturing in Germany has declined to a point where the country now imports goods that were formerly and proudly manufactured in Germany which now come from China, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Our copycat pollies in Australia have made a variation where they allowed manufacturing to die first and are now in the process of creating a useless energy system. In comparison to Germany there are no international grids for Australia to maintain stability in the network. What could go wrong?
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“In comparison to Germany there are no international grids for Australia to maintain stability in the network. What could go wrong?”
The list is endless. !
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As someone pointed out recently, they disagree with the expression “keeping the lights on”. I agree.
Toxic wind and solar will provide a minimal amount of power in homes to keep one or two lights on and a small Internet-connected appliance to receive government propaganda and monitoring of you (Telescreen, Orwell) as long as there is local battery backup. This might only require 50W per household.
Toxic wind and solar will NOT EVER provide a decent standard of living with heating and cooling, cooking, entertainment and travel, industrial production or a plentiful food supply or any of the other marvels of Western Industrial Civilisation. Of course, that is indeed the plan.
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We’re told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We’re told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it’s hard to reach the drive-through window at McDonald’s from a speeding train. And we’re told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine?
P. J. O’Rourke
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Dr Pielke jr tells us about more of their BS and fraud and Vaclav Smil also points out that we actually use 55% MORE FOSSIL FUELS today than we did in 1997. Big surprise NOT.
Again when are we going to WAKE UP and yet we have clueless BO Bowen, stupid Albo and the moronic Greens running our so called green energy agenda.
Here’s another great article from Roger and many links to explore. No doubt about it we need to rethink our so called climate policy ASAP and start to build more RELIABLE BASE-LOAD power.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/climate-policy-rethink
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I would posit that the decline in scientific literacy has coincided with the rise of the internet and search engines . You can “google” anything and get an answer almost instantly and almost nobody does anything after that to confirm the truth . Most of “us” are skeptics of its offerings and have some common sense . There are a lot of people out there that are not aware of the facts and don’t want to , as they have become “magical” thinkers and believe everything their feed provides. A.B.C. is my mantra : accept nothing, believe no one, and check everything. You can probably add “F” for follow the money….
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I Googled “anything”
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Yes. Most people think the results of the big search engines, e.g. Goolag, Bing, represent honest search results, not the propaganda of those who engineer public opinions.
Also contributing is the failure to teach critical thinking in schools.
In addition, the general acceptance of junk “climate models” which are non-validated and a failure to understand the traditional concept of GIGO, garbage in garbage out is also extremely harmful.
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OG, it was one thing when goolag et al favoured some information over others. For example they quoted wikipedia and other suspect sources.
It is entirely another now that they generate conversational style answers which contain outright falsehoods. If the falsehood is challenged they IMMEDIATELY concede that the falsity of their answers.
The problem is that there is no obvious way to know whether the falsehoods are simply a reflection of a lack of time to produce an answer or a reflection of a knowing falsehood.
Put another way are the chat systems incompetent or lying?
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Lying.
Their built-in bias is quite deliberate.
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In the developed world we take for granted the pentiful abundance of goods
This is a very recent phenomenon
I have been reading “The Birth of Plenty” by William J Bernstein
The availablity of afforable and reliable energy is one of the foundation stones for this abundance.
Lest We Forget
https://www.amazon.com.au/Birth-Plenty-Prosperity-Modern-Created/dp/0071747044
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I just ordered a copy. Thanks CO2.
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Chapter One starts with this quote from Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
Something our current Communists in Labor and The Greens are eager to undo.
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The closing comment of John Constable’s video:
should be our call to action to get rid of the far left Albanese government whose energy policy for Australia is both reckless and short sighted. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is clearly acting like a pathological egotist relentlessly pushing his exclusive wind and solar dogma to the extent that it is now plainly evident that most Australians are caught in a downward spiral of exorbident energy costs leading to a modern kind of serfdom. Chris Bowen’s blithe remark that implementing nuclear energy will cost too much is irrational. Bowen’s foolishly exclusive NetZero wind and solar implementation whilst reliable baseload coal power is being deliberately run down has already cost us far too dearly. Australians must get rid of the far left Albanese socialist government by overwhelming plebiscite at the next election before our economy is put in jeorpardy and damaged beyond repair.
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But what about evolution? Order, information and complexity from chaos and chance? Given that this is the mainstream scientific theory of origins, is it any wonder that the rest of science is vanishing towards political expedience and general disrepute? That people are no longer thinking logically?
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Excellent video Jo. Very good summation of all we are in severe danger of losing.
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UK is stuffed. Heading down the road to ruin with blinkers firmly fixed. Not quite a basket case yet but the current account is firmly in negative territory and little prospect of that reversing.
UK is the third most indebted nation after USA and Spain. There is only so much of the UK that the global energy and manufacturing magnates really want to own. That is all the UK now has to offer in payment for energy and manufactured goods.
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The UK is not getting poorer as GDP is increasing. Burning fossil fuels is a highly inefficient process where much of the energy is wasted. Energy efficiency is improving which is why demand is declining. The elephant in the room, which the narrator neglects to even mention, is the environmental degradation and climate effect of all of this burning.
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All this burning, the burning that’s invisible?
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/03/the-candle-is-going-out/#comment-2743875
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Simon, your disconnect from reality is profound.
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I would take issue with your claim ” Burning fossil fuels is a highly inefficient process where much of the energy is wasted.”
In counterpoint, burning Hydrogen is 3 times more wasteful.
Generating Hydrogen using Wind/Solar electricity has an overall electrical efficiency of 25% of the input energy. (Wind at 30% CF and Solar at around 20%, equal shares)
Then there is the efficiency of hydrogen electrolyzers, with a max efficiency of 58%, theoretical.
Then there is the volumetric fact that H2 carries 1/3 of the energy of Methane.
So, using H2 in any form of combustion is at most 0.25 x 0.58 = 14.5% efficient from source energy and conversion.
On a volumetric basis it is less than 5% efficient.
There is NO factual evidence that burning coal/gas degrades the environment given current standards, save those of empty claims and faulty models that produce more propaganda than fact. There is evidence that mining Lithium and manufacturing wind turbine blades and solar panels create vast planetary environmental damage and that there is no long term reservoir of materials to sustain the wind/solar/battery farce.
Very difficult to understand your claims and position when simple analysis disproves your position.
So, tell me, Simon, exactly how do wind and solar inverters synchronize with anything other than a thermal grid? How do they supply reactive power? How are they dispatchable? How does one energize a black start grid using random generation? Simon, you are not competent to comment upon grid power as you lack the requisite knowledge to have a relevant opinion. Prove me wrong. Rid yourself of all petrochemicals, fertilizers, foods, transportation, electronics, plastics, energy, medicines, etc, and live solely off the grid, then I might listen to your position, otherwise, not so much.
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“Burning fossil fuels is a highly inefficient process”
It was the switch from timber to coal that saved what was left of the forests in Great Britain.
At the start of the industrial revolution England was importing timber from Sweden such as the shortage in Britain.
Likewise it was the production of crude oil and its derivatives that save the whale.
The whales are now again under threat from the baseless demonisation of carbon based fuels by a religious cult.
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I disagree. I believe that coal power plants are over 60% efficient, whereas wind in Oz around 30% and large-scale solar surprisingly even less at 16%. It’s obvious that wind and solar, as explained in this very good video, are poor users of energy. In fact, one reference said that their eROI is so low as to be equivalent to production in Roman times, meaning that we will definitely go backward if we rely on wind and solar. And I believe this video was saying much the same thing.
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GDP per head is what matters. Increasing a country’s GDP by immigration is doing nothing for the British people.
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“What a great question”
https://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d02c8d3adba24200d-800wi
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2024/03/what-a-great-question.html
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[…] movie originally came to my notice at a Post at the JoNova site at this link, and Joanne’s Post has a large number of comments which are always worth […]
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The candle is going out for other reasons as well, like rotting wind turbine blades for example:
https://principia-scientific.com/88362-2/
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Damn. I’ve already got wrinkles. It looks as though I’ll have to buy a new fridge, then.
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As soon as you mention the Laws of Thermodynamics you are going to lose 90% of your audience. Physics and these Laws are mentioned in the same sentence. I doubt many folk know what is meant by Physics. Before Hawking published his book ”A Brief History of Time” his publisher told him that for every equation he included sales would halve. In the end there was only E = mc exp2.
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Hot => Cold (Entropy)
Unpaired electrons => Paired electrons (Parity spin, QM)
Paired electrons => Unpaired electrons (Ortho spin, QM)
QM defies the second Law of Thermodynamics.
As the universe was created from nothing entropy is not yet understood.
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It is so sad that so few understand the key implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics – one of which is that you can’t transform high entropy (diffuse and unusable) energy into low entropy (concentrated and valuable) energy without expending most of that energy (or more) in the process.
This is why we observe that the capture of diffuse “renewable” energy and its transformation into usable continuous power consumes so much in terms of resources, capital and land use.
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The modern face of servitude.
We pay for the construction of the ‘Renewable’ energy scam.
We will pay to fix it.
What will the final cost of ‘Pandemic’ be?
We throw billions at Pharma to save us from the scary virus.
We will pay every penny of tax for government ‘mandate’ liability, and every penny of the increase in prices for private corp ‘mandate’ liability.
What’s the next plan to tap out the tax base?
Probably aliens.
Here’s a US Congressman talking about his belief that the MIC is using UAPs for the next fleecing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep0mJc-rdfE
And what new authoritarians will manifest?
Patriot Act?
Child’s play.
Wait for the ‘Save Us from Aliens Act’.
The Feudal lords look up from Below with envy.
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The people of smaller, more vulnerable nations suffer from sanctions. Top
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New documents prove that Russia preferred peace and stability over war. Yet the West declined.
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