We're 50 years into the mindless cheering for "going solar" and about 50 years into being dependent on Saudi Oil, the pumping of which has created lots of jobs in the weapons and war industry, if not the pumping industry itself.

Let's calculate how much energy the Saudi oil fields produce, and compare that to the production of solar energy as electricity for the entire planet

The figures are very easy to find.

Here for instance are the figures for solar energy, from the Energy Information Agency:

Energy Production, with solar lumped with tidal and wave, two other insignificant forms of energy.

In 2008, by direct calculation from the data, merely converting billion kilowatt-hours to exajoules, that the entire solar industry on the entire planet produced 0.0409 exajoules of energy, out the roughly 500 exajoules of energy consumed by humanity, with approximately half of the population of the planet living in dire poverty and having very little access to energy.

A barrel of Saudi Oil contains about contains about 6.10 billion joules of energy:

Some energy equivalence conversion factors.

According to the EIA Saudi Arabia produced in 2010, about 10,521,000 barrels of oil per day, making it the world's largest oil producer, slightly ahead of Russia. The figures for 2009, 2008, the two preceding years are found here, again from the EIA website:

Saudi Arabian Oil Production.

The Saudia Arabian Oil fields therefore produced roughly over the last three years, about 22 and change exajoules of energy per year. World energy consumption figures as of 2008 was 493 quads, which translates at 1,055 exajoules per quad to 520 exajoules.

World Total Primary Energy Production.

Thus Saudi Oil produced about 4.3% of the worlds total energy supply, combining oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, tidal, biomass...blah...blah...blah...

The above means - again by direct calculation - that in 2008, which comes precisely 54 years after Bell Laboratories invented the photovoltaic cell, the entire that the entire solar industry on the entire planet produced as much energy as 6,110,000 barrels of oil.

Thus the entire planet produced as much solar energy as Saudi Arabian oil wells produce in about 17 hours and 53 minutes.

Woopee...

I'm impressed.

Of course the Saudis want everyone to drink the "solar will save us" koolaid.

They're exporting more dangerous natural gas than ever, and they rely on the wishful thinking and stupidity on the part of their Western customers to prop up their dangerous regime.

From the looks of it, we're glad to advertise for Saudi oil every chance we get.

It's not like the Saudi Oil Minister represents an official appointed by a democratically elected government, and it follows as well that he is propped up by force. That force, in turn requires, money and how, precisely, do the heriditary Saudi princes, including the oil minister, make money?

And of course, our dependence on oil makes us very unlikely to even whimper loudly when Saudi Arabia announces that it has flogged and imprisoned a woman for the "crime" of being raped.

Lovely...

Did I mention that in 17 hours and 53 minutes, the next and last, roughly 3,700 people will die from air pollution?

If you are familiar with my writings, you are familiar with this statistic, which is designed to produce something that our very stupid culture can't seem to manage to find, perspective.

By the way, the diarist who shared with us all the wonderful wisdom of the Saudi Oil Minister about "going solar" famously had fits of hysteria about (gasp) radioactivity released from Fukushima, which among other things, contaminated some spinach with some 15,000 bequerels of radioactive iodine-131 per kg.

It is, by the way, that eating the most contaminated spinach there was in Japan back then - practically all of the I-131 released by Fukushima has now decayed to non-radioactive and inert xenon-131 - would be anywhere near as dangerous as eating, um, German lettuce and cucumbers, which killed 16 people and sickened more than 1,000 from causes that had absolutely nothing to do with radioactive and thus has slipped down the memory hole, like the deaths of people killed on exploding oil platforms.

From my link above on the spinach:

Turning to contaminated spinach from Ibaraki prefecture, Edano said that it contained up to 15,020 becquerels of iodine-131 per kilogram, about seven times the safe limit for spinach – plus 524 becquerels of caesium-137, which just exceeds the 500-becquerel limit. Again, to put this into perspective, he said that eating this spinach daily for a year would inflict a fifth of the radiation from a CT scan.

Nothing however, needs to be put "into perspective." We need to avoid perspective, because, to quote the diarist in this space speaking on the wonderful announcement by the wonderful Saudi Oil Mininster:

Saudi Arabia is a conservative country with a conservative government. The speech given by the Saudi oil minister is consistent with maintaining the conservative Saudi monarchy. Yet, compared to speeches given by U.S. Republicans, it appears to be honest and progressive. That's a symptom of the reality that the Republican party is now run by far-right extremists and funded by modern day John Birchers, e.g. the Koch Brothers. Surprisingly, the statements and proposed policies of the Saudi oil minister are compatible with the statements and proposed policies of the U.S. Democratic party.

The bold is mine.

You see that my fellow Democrats? We're comparable in our party to the "honest and progressive" Saudis, even though we may differ slightly on that flogging rape victims thing.

You can't make this stuff up.

And listen, I don't like Republicans, never have, never will, but I don't think that even Newt Gingrich applauds flogging rape victims, although you never know...

Let me say something else. I love our elected President, and have no reservations at all about voting for his reelection, which I will support as enthusiastically as I did for the 2008 campaign.

But his so called "renewable energy" policy is a weak policy, and a wasteful policy in hard times.

It is completely and totally feasible to phase out oil, before we phase out any other dangerous fossil fuel. As I noted in my last diary, the very noble Nobel Laureate George Olah, nearing the end of his life but still concerned for the future of humanity has loudly proclaimed the way to do this.

Oil is not about security, and it is not about need, and perceptions to the contrary are the combined product of conservatism and dogma - dogma mixed in with a dollop of wishful thinking.

The world will not "go solar." The experiment has been underway for more than 50 years, and huge amounts of money have been thrown at it, for little result. Solar energy after all this cheering cannot produce as much energy as the oil fields in just one country can produce between sunrise and sunset on a summer's day.

If the oil and gas people are talking about the wonders of "going solar," you have a real, real, real good reason for asking yourself some very hard questions.

Think progress.

Have a wonderful evening. It's been a pleasure chatting with you all.