Given the noisy propaganda about the positive impact of renewables, or "clean energy," or "green energy" on global emissions of carbon dioxide, one expects there would be some. Unfortunately, there is none as far as I can tell. In fact, the situation is even more hopeless than I feared in my darkest dreams. Here is the data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), plotted originally by P.F. Henshaw, and replotted a little differently by me. You can click on the plots to see them in high resolution. Above you see a semi-logarithmic plot of the normalized Global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Rate of use of energy in the world (Energy), Rate of global carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), and Dollars of income generated per unit of energy expanded globally per year ($/Btu). All values are relative to those in 1971, and all curves start from 1. All trends are exponential, so they plot as approximately straight lines on the semi-logarith...
In this blog, I continue to write about the environment, ecology, energy, complexity, and humans. Of particular interest to me are human self-delusions and mad stampedes to nowhere.