According to Oxfam, the top personal CO2 emitters are:

Mike Cannon- Brookes
Bill Gates
Warren Buffet
Andrew Forrest

The top 125 richest people in the world have investments in industries producing emissions equivalent to those coming from France's 67 million inhabitants.

So what? Carbon dioxide produces wealth and jobs, and there is no proof that it has any but the most minimal effect on weather.

But, we have proof of the hypocrisy of some of the people presuming to tell the rest of us what we must do.

Mike Cannon-Brookes says that exporting renewables will
also make green energy cheaper for Australians and
create jobs along the way.

Andrew Forrest is investing A$3 billion in wind, solar, and
battery farm development in Central Queensland.

Warren Buffet remains invested in both renewable energy and
electric vehicles.

Bill Gates has invested over 2bn in renewable energy.

And the list goes on.

What you assume to be hypocrisy is nothing of the sort! 'Tis the change that counts, not snapshot stats.

It used to be that ethical investment meant avoiding investing in the companies that did the wrong thing. But more recently a different kind of ethical investor has emerged: buying shares in the companies that do the wrong thing, in order to get into the shareholder meetings, and asking awkward questions at those meetings.

And of course when you're a billionaire you can do a lot more than just ask awkward questions!

MCB bought into AGL in order to speed up its decarbonization process. IIRC he tried and failed to gain control of the company, but did manage to block a demerger which would've (in his opinion, which I've no reason to doubt) greatly hindered the decarbonisation process. Although had the demerger gone ahead, it would've made his stats look much better, as all those coal fired power stations would be owned by someone else.

The biggest polluters are the Armed Forces & yet they're forced into it because of idiotic & unruly citizens i.e. the Woke !
The Woke or hypocrites as they'll be known before long are also the biggest contributors to excessive travel, excessive use of electricity & excessive consumers of petroleum packaging !
The Woke are & have always been the proverbial spanners in the works of common sense & decency !
The Woke have manipulated policies forever. They had many varied names from religious leaders to Lawyers to Academics throughout history & in this age they're called the Woke !
Their less educated or rather indoctrinated followers support socialist parties ! Many of them aren't even aware of it but that's what they do !

Well of course these hypocrites are investing in renewables. That's what the climate scam is all about: for them to get even richer.

Indy,
I know the dozy like to blame the woke for everything they plausibly can and more, but I'm puzzled as to how you think they can be blamed for the Armed Forces being "the biggest polluters". Even taking into account the delusions that are rife on this board, I can't link cause and effect in that example.

Can you?

Can you?
Aidan,
Yes, just look at the situation in Eastern Europe right now where the Woke of the West have so stirred up the gullible of Ukraine & quite a number of others around the Globe so much that they're willing to go to War ! Sacrificing so much for what ? Just because the Woke have the backing of some big business who make fortunes from the misery of so many ?
The idealism of the Woke has no limit to indecency & disregard !

Climate Change is a political marketing tool for renewables salesmen.

Iron Ore prices have taken a hit.
Andrew Forrest will have to open more mines.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-09/iron-ore-price-stalls-as-china-economy-slows/101625948

Indy,
hadn't realised the definition of "woke" extended to desiring to prevent Russia annexing other countries.
Let's just consider the implications of this: the woke dominated the Western World for half a century and we didn't even know it!

and we didn't even know it!
Aidan,
No, you didn't ! You thought a lot of things but there are more things you'll never know about because you think you know !

Right now the generated W & S is 16% wind & 23% solar.
I understand our maximum demand is about 50 Gwatt.
So 100% / (16+23) = 2.5 times the currently operating wind and solar
is needed to carry the load.
It is interesting to do this calculation at various times of the day.

This the web address for the fuel share;
https://tinyurl.com/5x6yn4vy
Especially at night the number of times the operating wind needs to
be multiplied can be very large like 20 to 60 times the number of
turbines currently operating.
Theoretically it could reach infinity if there was no wind anywhere.
It does point up how far we are from being able to run on wind alone.

Indy - You wrote:

"the Woke of the West have so stirred up the gullible of Ukraine & quite a number of others around the Globe so much that they're willing to go to War!"

Actually, the 'gullible' of Ukraine were stirred up by the invading Russian tanks and soldiers and Russian mortars and bombs. Do you really think they didn't notice these, or that their cities and towns were on fire and people were dying? Or they weren't aware of the fact that they were sheltering in cellars while the bombs rained down? That they didn't know anything about this until they read about it on the websites of the 'Woke of the West'? Do you think the Ukrainians should have just put up with it instead of fighting for their country?

If you really believe this, you will be a sitting duck if Australia is ever invaded. As the bombs fall and the invaders arrive, you'll be saying 'Nah, it's all just a woke delusion! I'm not gullible! those are just New Year fireworks!' (PS Advice to potential invaders - invade on NYE, so Indy won't notice.)

Ironically, this was the header on an ad that popped up just as I was reading your posts: THNIKING SLWO.

Maybe that should be: NTO THNIKING TA LALA LAND.

Cossomby,
I regret to inform you that you're toally missing the point !

Indy:
You mean I can't take your words at face value? Please explain

"Do you think the Ukrainians should have just put up with it instead of fighting for their country?"

Well this is the price 'democratic' countries might pay if they allow themselves to become vassal states of the west and allow a US puppet ruler to be installed after a US sponsored coup.

And if they did hide out in their basements instead, then they may have forced their stupid government to make a negotiated settlement in April, if they werent conscripted at gunpoint in

Thousands of people might still be alive.
And Russia would've taken less territory.

They're going to have to deal with blackouts, water and gas shortages and freezing through winter.
There have been calls to start evacuating Kiev, but it's likely the leaders are just as interested in getting money and stuff out of the EU, just as Erdogan has done previously.

Right now under martial law many men and women of military age in Ukrainians aren't allowed to leave.
They've been conscripted to die for the useless cause.

Half of Ukraine are Russians, the country should've been partitioned.
Meanwhile 300,000 more mobilized Russians will likely make a move in December when the ground hardens.

Support a War against China?
No, I'm not going to support sending Aussie kids into a Chinese meatgrinder, to fight an unwinnable war that should instead be avoided at all costs.
A war with China is not in our best interests, (we don't gain anything but lots of dead Aussies assured) but certain US players may think it's in their own interests to drag us into one.

I'm not going to support sending people to die so Ratheon stock goes up.

Armchair,
Do you realise how ludicrous the Russian propaganda you're regurgitating is?

There's no such thing as "vassal states of the west". Some countries could perhaps be described as vassal states to the USA, but Ukraine is unequivocally NOT one of those. It had the choice between becoming part of the EU or becoming a vassal state of Russia (or rejecting both options). Its justified suspicion of Russia meant that in most of Ukraine there was overwhelming support of joining the EU.

Ukraine's "coup" was rather like Malcolm Turnbull's "coup" against Tony Abbott (except that their old leader didn't stick around afterwards. There was no puppet installed, and the democratic process went on as normal. Indeed they've had plenty of free and fair elections since then, yet somehow because there was a change of government a few years ago you can't accept the government they have now is legitimate.

And MAYBE in April they could have negotiated a surrender that would leave them better off than they are now. But for how long? Partitioning countries usually results in more wars, and Putin has already shown himself to be untrustworthy.

Are there really people out there who think that Russia would have invaded Ukraine if Ukrainians
hadn't let themselves be led into this by the Woke ? Or, look at Hong Hong & Taiwan ! Why do these same people think America isn't invading Hawaii ? Or why the rest of Australia isn't invading Tasmania etc.
It's all about weakening Nations !

The Woke aren't awake, they're dreaming ! They can't differentiate between their idealism & everyday life !
They're incapable to fathom that direct effects are only a tiny part of effects. Indirect effects are what so adversely affects everything that happens ! Just take a look at the misconstruing of facts by media & those who exploit media to mis/disinform everyday folks.
These warped-mentality manipulators portray whatever gives them traction as fact or truth simply to grease their path to people control & financial gain. The large majority of them aren't even participating in the symbioses of life, they just maggot their way through life !
At the end of each vogue chapter they then blame the providers for damage caused by the Woke's demands & policies which the providers fulfil to procure economic benefits !

Hi AC,

When do you think the Russian forces will take Bahkmut? Prigozhin is looking more like a meat grinder operator than a Russian saviour.

I take the Maxwell Smart view and think of where Russia might have been in terms of development and prosperity had it adopted the democratic institutions of western countries. Personally, I think that Russian prosperity could have rivaled that of Norwegians. Instead, Russia is a poverty stricken gangster run terrorist state. Thankfully the boasts about the Russian military were as false as all the other boasts of Russian propaganda.

What Russia does have is heaps of inaccurate weaponry which it uses indiscriminately. Ukraine has an increasing supply of very accurate weaponry which is being used with increasing effect against the Russian military. The tragedy is the loss of life: As the Russian army is now running out of tanks and apcs they are using the lives of their infantry to slow the Ukrainian advance. I suspect that the Ukrainian forces will continue to target the heavy Russian weaponry as this will make holding a large front line impossible.

What has amazed me most is the effectiveness of Russian propaganda: The perpetrators of these lies are the biggest war criminals of the conflict.

Seriously - the OP is like those who object to Renewable and Nuclear energy because they too have a carbon footprint! EVERYTHING in the current industrial ecosystem has a carbon footprint. A burger has a carbon footprint. Every calorie in a Big Mac uses 10 times the calories in fossil fuel energy to grow that food, let alone transport and cook it. Everything we do, from mining to refining all our mineral ingredients and even some of our biomass ingredients requires energy.

But it's a sliding scale. Every percent we increase renewables is a decrease in carbon. When we get to 100% renewables, the next generation of renewable build outs will have ZERO carbon in it. We'll be mining and refining with renewable energy, and building and maintaining renewable energy. We're eventually heading towards a renewable energy economy that uses renewable materials. Bit by bit we'll get there.

Max Green,
To create renewables from renewables would of course be the ultimate outcome. What will be used once the renewables have been exhausted ? Renewables will have nothing left to be renewed after a couple of cycles. Now, if we somehow could stop useless humans from renewing that'd have the ultimate positive impact on our environment.
Imagine if we could stop Lefties/poor mentality humans from renewing. Carbon footprints caused by the consumer mentality Left's demands would lower dramatically because education standards would sky-rocket with common sense ruling unopposed. Now that'd be great !
Nations should stop greasing the bearings on the conveyor belts called Universities that dump irresponsible masses of indoctrinated gits onto our streets !
The limits of good technology are still a long time away but ridding society of useless humans can be achieved within a couple of generations. No wars, no genocide no nothing, just common sense education will do it !

Is this the same Max Green who has contributed very green articles to the main section of OLO, had few responses, and is now joining the common posters because some of them can't resist an argument, and it is easier for him to spread his climate hysteria. If so, he is a professional activist. Beware!

Indyvidual: "Renewables will have nothing left to be renewed after a couple of cycles."
Yeah, cause after we've built solar panels for 100 years it's going to use up the sun!
(Facepalm)
Yeah, caause a gullible less educated population have never voted for anything destructive! (Trump, Brexxit, double-face palm).
Indyvidual - you spelt your name wrong. Please - go get some of this education you so despise.

TTBN - I don't think I've ever written an article here? Also, I've never received a cent for expressing respect for peer-reviewed science on forums where people like you armchair deniers feel a need to echo-chamber your own ignorance. I just do it for the 'fun' of it. I must be a bit morbid, hey? But there's something genuinely horrifying about how deniers actually seem to think they know better than the peer-reviewed climate science. It puts you in the company of Antivaxxers, 9/11 TROOFERS and Moon-Landing-Was-Faked tinfoil hatters.

Max Green,

Never one to deny making a mistake, I have, it appears, confused you with one Jim Green, anti-nuclear campaigner and general ratbag.

But, given the garbage you are spouting (still calling people 'deniers', for heavens sake!), you have much in common with Jimbo.

"Peer-reviewed science"! You must be joking.

Anti-vaxers. Tin foil hats. Your rhetoric is 'old hat'.

People like you turn up from time to time, all piss and vinegar, out to shut everyone down. We've heard it all before. You won't last long.

"Every calorie in a Big Mac uses 10 times the calories in fossil fuel energy to grow that food, let alone transport and cook it."

Well I was just thinking about McDonalds...
They've got a November special on for a $3 Quarter Pounder

'calories in fossil fuel energy' - Hmm... This is interesting.
I might stop at the servo on the way home and buy 5000 calories worth of diesel.
- Maybe I can use some with my breakfast cereal.

No seriously, I'm curious about this... please explain

after we've built solar panels for 100 years it's going to use up the sun!
Max Green,
Is that as in maximum green behind the ears ? Certainly gives that impression.
After a hundred years of unsuccessfully deposing of out-dated & unusable Green technology, we will run out of land to bury the remnants of this fabulous technology !
Alan B has got it right with his Thorium thingo, it'd be like the Sun's offsider right here, nuclear n'all that ! No millions of tonnes of glass, plastic & aluminium polluting the planet !

TTBN - you're right about one thing. I do tend to have a track record of posting here for about a month and then moving on for a year or so. You won't have to put up with me long. As I said, sheer morbid curiosity makes me come back here to see if you Deniers are still the same. I hear your rhetoric and false claims and Mhaze ranting about climate science as the new 'cult' - and realise you're all still the same - and move on! So yes, apologies that this won't be a long conversation. You guys are all the same = simply not interesting enough! There's a whole world of interesting things happening in the REAL WORLD of peer-reviewed science. Why would I waste my time listening to your ilk for too long as you assert rubbish and then pat yourself on the back for doing so?

Hi Indyvidual,
I'm with Alan B! I love nuclear. I've watched weeks worth of Kirk Sorenson and Ed Pheil - and had a number of Facebook chats with Ed about his MCSFR. It's my favourite reactor. I'm not sure if the industry is as bullish as he is on their having solved the corrosion issues - but yeah. It's an amazing technology, especially for colonising Mars where 6 month global dust storms would kill everyone on the base if they were relying on solar!

BUT... it remains illegal and unpopular in Australia. For the longest time I tried to promote nuclear with friends and family and only managed to sway a few people with videos about Molten Salt Reactors. Anti-nuclear is just in the cultural air we Aussies breathe. Meanwhile, Australia is adopting wind and solar 3 times faster than the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is adopting wind and solar 3 times faster than ALL other forms of new power stations combined!

By the time the nuclear movement has a coherent proposal before parliament, we'll be 90% finished with renewbles anyway. That last 10% is going to be interesting as will they shoot for longer transmission lines or more pumped-hydro to help firm the wind and solar?

I'm also with you on how renewables require more physical material and space than nukes. A lot more concrete and steel - as they're catching scattered energy sources and concentrating them into our cities. Fortunately there's so much solar that 1 hour of sunshine on earth would power our civilisation for a year - so there's plenty of rooftop space and desert to run today's world many thousands of times over.
And the waste? Again I hear you. 1.5 MILLION tons of solar panels by 2050.

https://theconversation.com/theres-a-looming-waste-crisis-from-australias-solar-energy-boom-117421

But they're working on recycling it, a whole new industry.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/16/australian-research-finds-cost-effective-way-to-recycle-solar-panels

https://youtu.be/3JqzSsStwF4

I find the whole notion of colonising Mars 'romantic but stupid'.

Why would anyone want to take a one way trip to a planet that can't support human life?
Good luck with your mental health, once you arrive and the reality sets in that you can never come back.
At this point, earth may as well not even exist because you will never again live to see it.

What real purpose does colonising it even serve?

"1.5 MILLION tons of solar panels by 2050."

Yes this is stupid.
I'd like a system where old solar panels are placed into retirement where they can keep generating electricity until they have exhausted the majority of their power generation capacity.

I also read your comment the other day about closed-loop hydro.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=22228&page=0#387874

For some time, ever since I saw this youtube video (I'll add it below) showing how to pump water at no cost I've been interested in the idea of whether or not dams could just be refilled and the water recirculated which would make all dams just an giant battery, that will never run out of power production.

I'm tempted to build a test just out of pure curiosity.
i.e buy 2 cheap outdoor pools, a 2m x 3m rectangular outdoor pool, (simulate dam)
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/372730158920
And a second smaller shallower pool (simulate a lower holding pond)
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/374225899188
Then flow the water out and generate power like a dam does, and try and see if a device like this in the video below can pump the water from the shallow pool back up into the larger pool.

Deep Well - How to make free Energy water tank from Deep Well About 7 meters Deep
http://youtu.be/dV9B_yWgYEs

Then if it works, add more of these 'siphon pumps' to increase the flow and see what sort of power can be produced from a closed loop system.

- See this - why can't we just employ the same concept to refill the dam from a lower holding pond?
It really does make me curious as to whether or not it can work

Or use a seaside swimming pool for example and see if it can fill and drain just off the tides?
Just for research purposes... and my curiosity

Hey Aiden,
"There's no such thing as "vassal states of the west". Some countries could perhaps be described as vassal states to the USA, but Ukraine is unequivocally NOT one of those."

If you keep telling yourself this it won't make it true.

"It had the choice between becoming part of the EU or becoming a vassal state of Russia (or rejecting both options)."
That's when the US staged the coup...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25162563

"Its justified suspicion of Russia meant that in most of Ukraine there was overwhelming support of joining the EU."

So the Russian speaking people of eastern Ukraine supported the outlawing of their own language did they, pull the other one.

"Ukraine's 'coup' was rather like Malcolm Turnbull's 'coup' against Tony Abbott"

Malcolm Turnbull didn't admit to spending 5 billion dollars to get the job done, like Victoria Nuland did, and he didn't start shooting peaceful protesters, or burn 200 people alive in the Odessa Trade Building.

"There was no puppet installed"
Do you want me to dig up the old videos?
Victoria Nuland's released phone call is evidence they did in fact make decisions on who the incoming leader would be.

Take a look at Europe, they're all vassal states.
The cheap gas they got from Russia fundamental to their prosperity was blown up to pay 4 to 10 times the price of LNG from US and they didn't even say a thing.

European Union itself is totalitarian in its dealings with member states.

This whole thing, going all the way back to the late 2000's has been a plan by the West to oust Putin.
The US planned to overthrow Putin, chop Russia up into pieces and exploit all it's resources to fix it's own flailing economy.
This was just the first step, and the greater goal was to contain China's progress

The US just can't stomach the idea of sharing the world with anyone else.
Now we've got China openly preparing their entire nation for war.
The whole country is on board.

[Cont.]
Here's a couple of videos to refresh your memory
Nov 2013 (pre-Maidan!): Ukraine Deputy has proof of USA staging civil war in Ukraine
http://youtu.be/y9hOl8TuBUM
The transcript is in the description

F the EU: Alleged audio of US diplomat Victoria Nuland swearing
http://youtu.be/L2XNN0Yt6D8

Victoria Nuland US has invested $5 billion in Ukraine
http://youtu.be/rPVs5VuI8XI

TechCamp Kyiv 2012
http://youtu.be/bpIoBUDuL3U

Hillary was supposed to oust Putin, fyi that's the real reason why it all went to hell when Trump won the Presidency.

Hi Fester,

"When do you think the Russian forces will take Bahkmut?"

Its almost like Wagner groups private war within a war over there.
It's a slow grind, and pretty nasty from what I hear but Russians are slowly advancing, I'd expect to see a larger Russian offensive maybe in early December.
There's a lot more troops slowly coming to the front.

"I take the Maxwell Smart view and think of where Russia might have been in terms of development and prosperity had it adopted the democratic institutions of western countries."

The West are always going to try and dominate any perceived rivals, overthrow those countries and rob them of their resource wealth, and Russia has plenty of wealth that the US is eyeing off.
The West already pillaged them pretty good after the fall of the USSR, so they have form.
Democracy is the tool the West uses to overthrow other countries so moving in that direction is complicated at best for any nation wanting to preserve it's soverignty.

They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

"Personally, I think that Russian prosperity could have rivaled that of Norwegians. Instead, Russia is a poverty stricken gangster run terrorist state."

I do hold your sentiments in part though.
I've seen videos of small villages in Russia and the elderly people live in poverty and poor circumstances and it leaves much to be desired.
I wish they would take care of their citizens a little better.

In my opinion Russia's actually sitting in the hot seat.
It has immense amount of natural resource wealth.
'Climate Change' only makes all these Russian resources more accessible, while countries further south have food, water and energy shortages.
Droughts and rivers drying up, overpopulation

You all know I don't support the overthrows and I don't support the sanctions.
It's a shame the people of the world can't learn to get along better.

When the US economy is tied to military sales and it wont accept a multipolar world and sees fit to dictate to others, then here we are, it was always inevitable.

Hi guys,
as I just said in another thread - WWS.
Wind, Water Solar.
$100 billion and we're done.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/for-100-billion-australia-could-have-a-low-cost-and-reliable-zero-emissions-grid/

BTW - how do I format in these forums? My hyperlinks are not coming up linked - people would have to manually copy my links and paste them into their URL bar. Also, any bold? Italics? Headings? Any other formatting?

Cheers.

Hi Max Green,
To make your links work, simply take the 's' out of 'https'.
The 's' just stands for 'secure' and the link will display properly as a without the 's'.
FYI, This forum does not support or recognise those 'https' secure links.

My first comment on this thread today here was a response to your comments.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=9978&page=0#340573

Thanks AC,

I always enjoy reading your opinions as they show me that differing opinions can be motivated by a similar sense of humanity.

After reading this article on the Wagner group's sense of justice,

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20411735/russian-conscript-beaten-death-sledgehammer-wagner-army/

I wonder what form the sense of freedom is for Russians? Do they want to be like Vikings, or at least Vikings without boats? It makes me wonder whether the lives of ancients were freer than the lives of people today? Life in a harsh environment might entail more constraints than a controlling government.

Vlad's army should move quickly. At the rate he is losing his troops and equipment the enhancement of his forces will be short lived. In contrast, I am impressed with the Ukrainian army's efforts to preserve the lives of its soldiers.

Armchair Critic:
The following article at Scientific American might help.
"According to Pollan, for every calorie of food that is produced in the United States, 10 calories of fossil fuel energy are put into the system to grow that food...

...We grow food - corn, wheat, sugar - and, while some of it grows wild and free with no inputs beyond sun, water and the nutrients that the soil provides, the majority of the food that we produce requires significant energy inputs from us."

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/10-calories-in-1-calorie-out-the-energy-we-spend-on-food

This is the *story* of the science as I understand it. (I am not a scientist.)

We use so much energy because of the Haber Bosch process. 10 calories for every calorie in that burger? It's how we make the fertiliser.
In the Middle Ages they used to let the land lie fallow. This allowed time for lightning storms to zap through the clouds above the fields and attach nitrogen from the air to the rain. We're impatient these days and have more mouths to feed. So we mimick this with Haber Bosh using our own energy.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/green-chemistry/Industrial-ammonia-production-emits-CO2/97/i2

Hi Max Green,

I think it's kind of stupid.
Energy isn't measured in calories.

How does he calculate the 10 calories worth of input to 1 calorie of output?

If it took 10 ears of corn to grow 1 ear of corn you wouldn't yield enough to even produce a following crop.
You wouldn't waste 10 ears of corn to only get one in return.
If you had to spend $10 to get $1 in return, you wouldn't do it.
- You'd be throwing away $9.

Seems like weasel words to manipulate gullible idiots to me sorry.
- Narrative to promote climate scaremongering.
- Baffle your brain with BS kind of thing...

The fact is humans need to acquire food to eat, or we starve and die.
No need to think about it in any other terms.

Whatever energy it takes to grow or acquire said food (whether that be a little of a lot) is necessary for the most part, or we die.
Nuances over waste... such as the ability to feed a small country with what is thrown away for example, well waste is different to production anyhow.

I went into woolies a few days back.
There's was this $16 packet of deli ham wrapped in the butchers paper that someone had dumped in one of the shelves in the aisle.
I took it back to the deli, there was enough ham there to feed 10 kids sandwiches and you know woolies is just going to throw it out.
- Some people and businesses (and business models) waste more than others.

"I would like to discuss the idea of putting more energy into our food than we are getting out of it."

If a person had expel 1000 calories worth of physical energy, in order to get 100 calories worth of sustenance, they would die.

[Cont.]
Not to criticise your article, but the methodology seems flawed.
Only gullible minds who are looking for arguments to give a basis to their pre-existing beliefs and bias are likely to run with it.

If you wanted to manipulate gullible idiots into the merits of eating insects and mealworms,
- Well it could be good marketing to brainwashing them into doing so.

Not sure King Charles is likely to switch to eating house crickets though, the elites won't be eating what they're selling.

FYI, I was actually more interested in the discussion of more efficient dams.

Armchair Critic - it seems you know best! I'm not going to argue with someone that just snorts at one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century. It is responsible for much of the growth in the human population. The energy cost is well established. Just because YOU don't 'get it' and why it can be expressed a certain way, does not mean it stops being a reality. Imagine if something vanished every time a child said "I don't get it!" It's not science's fault - it's yours.

[Cont.]
"In the Middle Ages they used to let the land lie fallow. This allowed time for lightning storms to zap through the clouds above the fields and attach nitrogen from the air to the rain. We're impatient these days and have more mouths to feed. So we mimick this with Haber Bosh using our own energy."

This final part makes me think the argument stated has nothing to do with calories at all, but essentially the entire argument is based around a calculation where the basis is emissions, and not calories produced, or energy consumed.
- Or calories produced per unit of energy consumed.

If it took more energy to create the food than the energy we got from the food, we wouldn't bother producing it that way, it would be unfeasible or non-viable.

Go read about Haber Bosch.
The natural systems of letting the land lie fallow are too slow - and would make BILLIONS of us starve. Go away.

One could also argue that using fertilizer saves energy and increases calories produced,
- Because 'not using fertiliser' means you'd have to produce 5 times as many crops with 5 times as much energy expended to get the same yield.

And that's why we use it fertilizer.
Because it's more efficient than not using it.

And that's why the argument is flawed, because its base unit is measurement of emissions, not calories produced, or energy used.

"The natural systems of letting the land lie fallow are too slow - and would make BILLIONS of us starve."

Yes, exactly.
So using fertilizer is actually far more efficient than not using it, right?
Meaning it uses less energy for greater output.

Less energy used (input) for more calories produced (output)

Arguing against fertilizer use is an argument to use more energy for less output.

You say I'm stupid because I don't understand these complex ideas.
Maybe science is stupid if it can't easily make an argument to explain itself.

Armchair,
Energy can be measured in calories. They're an obsolete metric unit (replaced by Joules) but are still widely used to display the energy content of food.

The notion that it generally takes ten times as much energy input (by humans) to grow food as is in the food itself is wrong. However it often takes ten ears of corn to produce the equivalent amount of beef as one ear of corn.

Syphon pumps are not a source of free energy. There a way of getting water flowing, but it ALWAYS flows more down than up. You canna change the laws of physics!

Dams can be used like batteries if you have the means to collect the water and pump it back up. But it's often cheaper to let rivers refill them.

The US did not stage a coup in Ukraine. Their old president fled to Russia during mass demonstrations against him, and the Ukrainians installed a replacement.
Allegations from a pro Russian stooge in Ukraine that America's going to start a civil war there do not constitute proof that it actually was. But it is likely Russia was trying to do just that; when separatists did try to break away, Russia not only armed them but clandestinely sent its army to fight for them.

The Russian language was not outlawed in Ukraine. There were some restrictions on its use, and partly as a reaction against this, the Ukrainians elected a pro Russian language PM named Volodymyr Zelensky.

AC - Let's try a wiki for kids - and I'll add a comprehension question to keep it lively. My question is - how many people does this energy intensive process feed?

"The Haber process or the Haber-Bosch process is a chemical reaction that uses nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas to create the chemical compound ammonia. The Haber process uses temperatures ranging from 400°C to 450°C under a pressure of 200 atm. The Haber process uses a catalyst mostly made up of iron.

Fritz Haber, 1918
The Haber process is named after the German scientist Fritz Haber. Haber was the first person to successfully complete the process. In 1909, Haber's process could produce about one cup of ammonia every two hours. Carl Bosch helped to develop the Haber process for industry. In 1913, the German company BASF started using the Haber process to make ammonia. During World War I, the Haber process was used to make explosives. The Germans kept this a secret until after the war. In 1918, Haber won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and in 1931, Bosch also shared a Nobel Prize.

The Haber process is still important today because it produces ammonia, which is needed for fertilizer and for many other purposes. The Haber process produces about 500 million tons (453 billion kilograms) of fertilizer every year. This fertilizer helps to feed about 40% of the world's population."
https://kids.kiddle.co/Haber_process

Hey Aiden,
"However it often takes ten ears of corn to produce the equivalent amount of beef as one ear of corn."

That's something I can make sense of.
If someone wants to say that producing corn produces x amount of emissions per tonne, whist producing beef produces y amount of emissions per tonne, I can follow this.

Saying all food requires 10 times the input for a single unit of output;
Or that the input only produces 1/10th of the output.
Hard to make sense of.

It's like some strange calculation of 'energy used' for 'food produced' displayed as calories with some added emission calculation component, I assume.

Humans will generally find the most efficient way to mass-produce anything, more a matter of profitability rather than environmental or emission concerns.

"Syphon pumps are not a source of free energy. There a way of getting water flowing, but it ALWAYS flows more down than up. You cannot change the laws of physics!"

A normal syphon won't flow up, I know this, but this gadget seems to somehow achieve it.
The best I can figure out is that the weight of the water in the horizontal outflow section weighs more than the water in the raise section, so it will flow out from the tank and also create enough pressure from the vacuum within the tank to raise water from the well?

I'm not an engineer, and don't know if I'm being had by fake videos chasing viewer revenue.
I wish there was a engineering faculty that did a mythbusting video on it.
As for Ukraine, we can agree to disagree, it's ok.

Hey Max Green,
I'm running out of comments for today on this thread.
I appreciate you sharing the info about the ammonia process, but I just don't understand how it conflates to requiring 10 times the input for a single unit of output. (food)
Surely using fertilizer is more efficient than not, meaning you only need grow 1 acre of crops instead of however many you would otherwise need to produce the same amount without it.

Dude, I've told you what to google. It's not my fault you don't know one of the fundamental facts about the world. I'm not a scientist - and barely understand how it works. I barely know how Microwaves work - but I use them every day and know they're a thing. You're only alive because of Haber Bosch and are now pretending it's not really a thing and you just 'don't get' how it works.

Try and count the energy here! Basically, we spray nitrogen on the ground - hope plants grow - and then the sun and rain do the rest. But how much energy did it take to make that nitrogen?

"Due to the consumption of natural gas as an energy source and as feedstock in ammonia production, the price of N fertilizer is typically related to supply and price of natural gas. A modern ammonia production plant requires net energy consumption of approximately 29.7 million BTUs per ton of N (Kongshaug and Jenssen). Upgrading ammonia to other N fertilizers requires even more energy: 35.9 million and 31.4 million million BTUs per ton for urea and urea/ ammonium nitrate manufacture, respectively."

https://store.extension.iastate.edu/Product/Energy-Conservation-in-Corn-Nitrogen-Fertilization-Farm-Energy-PDF

I guess they've basically counted how much energy makes how many tons of fertiliser - and then how many tons of fertiliser grows how many tons of grain.

Also, I didn't say ALL food took that much energy to grow - just foods that need nitrogen fertiliser. So our most important grains, and any poultry or beef that also eats those grains!

It's the kind of thing that ONLY works because fossil fuels have been so incredibly cheap. Fortunately for us, solar and storage will soon be cheaper than fossil fuels. Get your money out of coal superannuation - as coal is about to go the way of Kodak film.

Aidan it is ingenious to talk about the American cattle production system in the Australian context. I have finally managed to get 18 if my neighbors cattle out of my place. They have been here since the last flood damaged the boundary fence.

They are the biggest fattest cattle I have ever seen, & not a single grain of corn, or barley/oats/wheat, or any other grain has ever entered their mouths. They have eaten the natural grass, so prolific this year & the last couple because of La Nina driven rain through our winters has produced masses of grass in this usual lean time of year.

Running a herd of cattle on a few hundred acres of forest grazing country is an immensely efficient way of producing food, much more cost, energy & labour effective than any other way of producing the food needed on that sort of country.

I am considering planting Lemon Myrtles for oil production, & Silky Oaks for cabinet timber production. But you have to be so careful today, a mate of mine planted 40 acres to cabinet timber production almost 40 years ago. He is now having trouble harvesting them as the council, listening to some greeny ratbags is claiming they are pristine native forest & must be preserved.

Hasbeen,
I'm really glad to hear of your grass-fed beef. It requires longer to mature - and you get less of the final product if it's done properly. But the flavour is so much better than the fatty grain-fed American stuff!

But grass fed can also be much more expensive as a result.

It will be disrupted by vastly 'greener' fermented beef alternatives within 5 years. Given this stuff is meant to be cheaper than Soy protein by 2025 - I'm predicting beef burger patties will mainly be made from this vat-grown stuff in 5 years. There's already Remilk in Israel that's received huge investment to start pumping out alternative milk.

Some say beer started civilisation - in that it allowed us to get more calories out of indigestible parts of the grain. Now we're domesticating the micro-world - and it will be 10 to 100 times more efficient than today's food processes. (Depending on sector of course.)