We need a general tweet of the day thread

The world just finished its latest revival meeting for the green gaia religion. As usual, hundreds of private jets flew some of the highest carbon footprint individuals in the world to Dubai of all places and then ignored the elephant in the room - the massive increase in CO2 emission from increased electricity production from coal by the chicoms, India and Indonesia. Even the Euros are building and retaining coal plants. But the current plan of Team Dazzler is to strangle the American middle class with CO2 emission restrictions while ignoring the chicoms except for the planned funneling of hundreds of billions of dollars to them for Chinese solar panels, wind turbines, batteries or the metals and minerals needed for anything the US would build.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/the-golden-age-of-coal.php

THE GOLDEN AGE OF COAL
You wouldn’t know it from reading the newspapers, but that is what we are living in. The recently-concluded COP28 conference touted a coming end to the use of fossil fuels, with coal first in line for extinction. But that isn’t happening. Robert Bryce has the data:

The [International Energy Agency] expects coal use to rise by 1.4% this year and set a new record of 8.5 billion tons.

So more coal is being burned than ever before.

That increase shows, yet again, how difficult it will be to achieve significant cuts in CO2 emissions from hydrocarbon use. Mainly due to coal use, which accounts for about 40% of emissions from energy, global CO2 emissions will set another new record in 2023 of 36.8 billion tons.

So good luck with “net zero” by 2050, or any other date. Environmentalists in the U.S. and Western Europe have succeeded in prematurely shuttering a number of coal plants, but that is virtually irrelevant. It is China and India, along with countries like Indonesia, that are driving the coal explosion. And those countries don’t even pretend to be participating in a “transition” to wind and solar energy:

China, India, and Indonesia didn’t sign the agreement to triple renewables...

When it comes to coal, supposedly slated for extinction by the world’s “greens,” the U.S. and Western Europe are irrelevant.

Some 204,000 megawatts of new coal-fired capacity is now under construction around the world. Of that 204,000 MW, about 67% is in China. To put that massive amount of new capacity in perspective, the U.S. currently operates about 205,000 MW of coal-fired power plants… In addition to the huge amount now being built, another 353,000 MW of coal-fired capacity has been announced, pre-permitted, or permitted. Of that 353,000 MW in the queue, about 72% is in China.

This chart shows coal capacity in existence, and on the drawing board. The U.S. could close all of our coal-fired power plants; it wouldn’t matter:


If people are serious about cutting down on CO2 emissions, the only rational solution is nuclear energy, because wind and solar don’t work most of the time and are ridiculously expensive. At COP28, many nations, including the U.S., pledged to triple their nuclear capacity. That’s great, but the reality is that coal is growing much faster than nuclear, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future...

Not really the president...

That's a man, man!