The energy transition as a symptom

Are the people in charge and in support of the energy transition stupid, evil or both? This is a question that tends to crop up quite often in the discussions of my posts, with no consensus reached so far. What has also cropped up in these discussions is the suggestion, or perception if you like, that the whole hype around the transition is a symptom of something. I’ve decided to call this something a knowledge crisis.

This week, I came across a study that delivered the mental equivalent of walking into a door, which I have done, so I know what it feels like. The press release was headlined New Study Finds One in Two Americans Would Choose More Energy Over More Sex or Sleep and detailed the findings of a food company that amazingly amounted to the majority of people being quite partial to quality nutrition as a means of acquiring more energy.

Leaving aside the start-with-desired-outcome-and-work-back-to-reasons approach typical of such “research”, which was not the thing that made me feel like I’d walked into a door, I focused on the headline and the finding that “while Americans are prioritizing diet and fitness in the new year, what they really want is more energy. In fact, more than half (51%) of respondents said they'd opt for more energy over more sleep or more sex if given the choice.”

Now, it may well be that the survey questions were formulated in such a way as to require idiotic answers. In that case, it’s all the company’s fault. But if respondents — 1,500 of them — genuinely believed there can be a choice between energy, sex, and sleep this means they believed these three are not really related. And this is where the knowledge crisis manifests.

If you want more energy without doing the things that are known to give you more energy, which besides food include both sleep and, to a lesser extent, sex, you haven’t been paying attention in biology classes. Essentially, this sort of choice comes down to wanting a certain outcome but not wanting to put in the work or, amusingly, the rest that is sleep, required to attain this outcome. Now why does this sound so familiar?

Well, it sounds familiar because it very much describes a lot of people cheering for the energy transition but opposing mining, of course. It also describes people who genuinely believe, like the respondents in than survey, that doing one thing that generates energy and ignoring another very important thing that generates energy will be perfectly enough. Because they simply do not know that it won’t be. And that’s dangerous ignorance.

Here’s another recent example of this kind of ignorance although this one may well be put down to deliberate omission just as easily. Vehicle-to-Grid: The solution to our energy problem? is an article in Electrical Review that really didn’t need a question mark in the headline because the whole article says that yes, vehicle-to-grid is the solution to our energy problem.

While the problem remains unidentified although one might infer from the article that it is “the challenges of the energy transition”, the solution essentially comes down to a sort of perpetual motion.

The author(s), from a management consulting firm named Charles Rivers Associates, appear to suggest that EVs can power the grid that can then power EVs that would in turn power the grid and then be powered by it ad infinitum.

My favourite assertion? “More widely, broader society will benefit from lower emissions due to avoidance of having to build new fossil power generation capacity to meet the additional EV charging load.” Because all those EVs will release electricity into the grid and will then suck up that same electricity because as well all know energy does not get lost, right? Right?

The tragic thing is that there are thousands upon thousands of people who will probably believe that assertion because they simply do not know how energy works and that the fact that energy does not get lost does not mean it remains in the same form and in the same place ready to be used on demand because it’s just there, like gravity.

What makes things worse, I think, is not only that there’s a crisis of knowledge but that there is deliberate refusal to acquire that knowledge. A lot of people refuse to acknowledge the laws of physics because these laws counter their beliefs in the very same way that a lot of people refuse to acknowledge the laws of biology because they counter their beliefs.

The tragedy is that the refusal to acknowledge these laws in no way makes them less valid or universal. And this dissonance between natural laws and human beliefs might — just might, I’m simply musing here — have something to do with the increased incidence of mental health problems, especially in younger people.

An even bigger tragedy occurs when deliberately ignorant people rise to positions of power and begin applying this deliberate ignorance to issues that affect the lives and well-being of millions of others. Germany, alas, is a case in point and it’s not even because of its government’s asinine opposition to nuclear.

As Germany’s Economy Falters, Green-Socialist Government Moves To Redefine “Prosperity” is the headline of a blog post by Pierre Gosselin that cites plans of the Germany government to replace GDP as the ultimate indicator of the economy’s health with 34 other indicators, among them the number of newly built wind turbines, the level of nitrates in groundwater, and “the average proximity to public transport”.

Now, the post links to an outlet called Blackout News, which is in German, and that outlet links to a Handelsblatt article but the link didn’t work for me and anyway Handelsblatt is behind a paywall so I could not verify the information and I would be grateful if those of you who live in Germany could help.

To be honest, it sounds like something that the current German government is fully capable of doing. And if proven true, it will be perhaps the most glaring example to date of trying to change reality because reality does not suit you. Or changing the rules of the game when you’re losing because you’re not good enough.

Still, to be fair, let’s wait for verification while I self-flaggelate for giving up on German far too soon. In my defence, case languages scare me.

Back to my point, however, attempts to change reality when it doesn’t suit you invariably fail, which is what makes all this a tragedy. Believing that EVs can feed a grid and then be fed by it with the same electricity does not change the reality that they can’t, just like believing you can get more energy from eating right but not getting enough sleep does not change the fact that if you don’t get enough sleep you won’t have enough energy.

For some reason, during the past decade or so some beliefs have grown to be so strong that those having them appear to genuinely think they are the same as physical facts. “If I believe it, then it’s true, because 10 million other people also believe it” seems to be the thing these days and no amount of actual, factual evidence to the contrary could make a difference, not even when it slaps the believer in the face.

Did you hear about the two siblings that tried to drive a rental Tesla across much of the U.S. and it took them six stops in one day to recharge the battery because it drained too fast because of the cold weather. Where’s the slap in the face, you ask? Here.

“Steavenson said Hertz told him to go to the closest branch to get a new car. "However, they don't have Teslas there or not even the equivalent, so I'm headed back in a Nissan Rogue Sport," he said. "At least it's economical."“

Personally, I blame irresponsible parenting, falling educational standards set by excessively impressionable people, and social media.