Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet

https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/

With the release of AOC's new Green Deal the internet is all a buzz about what it means, how it will be accomplished.

But, this environmentalist that has study this for years says no. The Green New Deal is potentially more harmful than helpful.

Thoughts.

 

The planet is doing just fine.

It's been through far worse than anything humans could ever do to it.

 

My position is that we will need all energy sources for quite some time. All the old ones and all the news ones too. Over a long period of time the old ones will continue to be replaced with new advances, which is the normal progress of our civilization, and a necessary one.

I agree that the newer nuclear power technologies are the outstanding option to retire carbon generating electrical plants. The emotional-political burden is the insanity standing in the way. If I had my way we'd be building new nuclear plants all around the country.

On wind turbines I'd need to see the proof that newer designs are any threat to large birds or any size bird. The taller the tower and larger the blade, the slower it can be made to turn. Thus more visible to all birds and easier to avoid. At least that is the claim being reported.

Photovoltaics are changing, becoming cheaper, more efficient and less burdensome in the production processes.

However, those panels may yet go the way of the dinosaur. There is a technology that may replace the narrow band solar cell with a wide band nano-antenna array that directly rectifies radiant energies into DC current. Experiments have been going on for about ten years. The "nantenna" technology is moving to a production design stage-development stage. They have a terahertz rectifier of good efficiency now. What all this means is converting waste heat radiant energy into electrical current. That is a technology that works for hours after the sun sets.

Battery advances have been made and are essential to our future needs as a civilization. Possibly the base technology has yet to be discovered. Or, it has been but we have not found quite the right variation on what we already know. Time will tell.

Billions are being invested to find these solutions, so I've no long term worries on it. As far as demands to get there on all of this quickly, it is unrealistic and I do not support legislating such pie in the sky goals.

 

The Earth, of course, will be fine. Life on Earth (specifically us) is a different story. We already possess the means to essentially wipe ourselves out, and it's almost happened at least three times.

I find it amusing that there are people who think we can pour gigatons of crap into the air and oceans forever with no ill effect. It's lazy thinking, but it's not exactly surprising. We are an extremely short-sighted species. Climate change is often invoked as one of the "great filters" to explain the Fermi Paradox: all technological species must go through an industrial phase and not a lot of them are able to handle the extreme climate change that results.

 

The climate's going to change regardless of what we do.

We are coming out of an ice age so yeah, the ice will all be gone and the earth will heat up.

Might as well start preparing for it now because it's unpreventable.

 

Not the point. Human additions to natural cycles has disrupted some cycles and much accentuated others. Where we are headed is unprecedented and not at all conducive to our species, among many others.

Not that I believe we are doomed, for that too is lazy thinking. Humanity has a very long run ahead of it. Even if the current civilization falls (which I doubt), human civilization has risen again and again and made further advances each time. Over the very long term, lessons are learned.

There are only two real long term survival worries I see.

First are crazy people having nuclear or biowarfare weapons. Pakistanis, Iranians, Indians,any jihadi outfit at all or any mix of them deciding to fight each other in the worst possible way..

Also, Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands..

 

AOC's Green New Deal is not about "Climate Change" it is about Control.

Control by central government of what you drive, what you eat, how you work or don't work, what you are paid, what healthcare you may or may not get. Pure and simple it is Socialism. All it needs is a dictator.

 

An actual member that knows the truth about energy here... excellent post.

Modern Nuclear needs to be embraced for now. That does not mean the old style plants. Smaller, more modular, and more efficient. Solar should be on new builds, but not "Solar Farms"... that is expensive, bad for the environment, and not base-load energy. Wind is a joke.

 

i have a top secret clearance and will go on record saying we have the technology to transition to solar and wind.

we cannot do this because the manufacturing jobs that left to foreign countries were replaced by energy jobs in oil and gas.

these people do not find dignity in socialism and will not accept generous welfare in place of work.

 

nuclear energy is unnecessary busy work, it is not pragmatic for job creation nor energy.

just sounds fanciful

 

I think funding needs to be applied more to R&D then just producing / purchasing at this point. Re: gov. funding.

 

I am all for research into new nuclear technology. After all, energy density of nuclear fuel is the highest by orders of magnitude of all fuels available. So, physically, they make sense.

However, nuclear reactors have to be safe, with passive cooling. I am afraid that such safety requirements will make them non cost competitive.

Let's just look at the Fukushima disaster. When all is said and done, the cost for the disaster will be north of $500 billion. That's about as much as the cumulative subsidies for fossil fuels in the US, and almost 100-times the cumulative subsidies for renewables. Of course, the cleanup costs are socialized, so they get loaded off to the tax payer, after the company took its profit. It is easy to be cost competitive when the REAL cost of business and the risk are shifted to the tax payer.

 

New types of molten salt reactors could eliminate the radioactive waste problem and use it in these systems.
https://gizmodo.com/the-future-of-nuclear-power-runs-on-the-waste-of-our-nu-5990383

 

For starters the OP is the OPINION of a blogger as opposed to a Current Event so this is in the wrong forum IMO.

Furthermore the blogger failed to provide any substance in terms of actual studies to support his opinions.

For example there is this utterly asinine comment;

Did the blogger forget to MULTIPLY for the CURRENT and FUTURE population of the nation? 320 MILLION coke cans is a MASSIVE pile of NUCLEAR WASTE that will continue to be TOXIC for longer than multiples of recorded history.

The blogger LOST ALL CREDIBILITY with the final sentence denying FACTUAL REALITY? Has the blogger never heard of Chernobyl and Fukishima? There have been 99 nuclear "accidents" in the USA alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents

Having dispensed with the blogger that means it is my turn to give my "thoughts".

Fossil fuels are why we have our current situation and no amount of denialism is going to alter that reality. 7+ billion people burning fossil fuels is screwing up the planet.

Yes, we do need to transition from fossil fuels into renewables ASAP and yes, it will take time to do it. Failure to do so is NOT an option.

Just like ALL new technologies it takes time to optimize them. We are not still driving the same vehicles we had back in the 1950's and we are not still using the same clunky computers we had back in the 1990's.

So let's stop whining and get on with dealing with the problem because otherwise there won't be a future worth having IMO.

 

Chernobyl and Fukishima were very old technology built decades ago. Fukishima didn't even fail on its own, it was hit by a massive tsunami.

Nobody I know of is promoting antique designs in nuclear power any more than they'd want to bring back a black smoke and soot belching locomotive from the 19th Century..

 

There is no "safe" level for nuclear pollution and there is no way to ever make a "safe" nuclear plant or a "safe" waste disposal site.

Furthermore nuclear power is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED by taxpayers because they cannot be built and run at economical levels.

Utilities are pouring money into renewables because they KNOW that they are a far better investment and that they will free them up from being held hostage by the fossil fuel industry.

 

The reason renewable sources of energy cannot save the planet is because they do not address the underlying problem with the planet. That underlying problem with the planet is ultimately humanity itself.

 

Yeah, and it did so without human beings at all. The planet will survive us. But we don't have to be present.

 

Top Secret big deal so do 5,000 others not including all the Chinese hackers. Morons in CA can't even figure out how to capture rain water yet demand unrealistic renewable energy standards.

Nuke is clean and reliable if properly monitored and maintained. The problem is that since nothing new has been built in over 30 years, old analog controls are obsolete. The only good nuke techs around are ex Navy and they only have experience with digital controls.

All this crap about solar and wind is pure baloney! It's not going to happen and the world is not going to explode in 10 years either. Quit with the socialist climate change propaganda. Cleaner energy is possible in the future but not by socialism in this country, EVER.

 

He's right. The horrible truth here is that any greening of energy reliant on solar and wind is a study in how to effectively make energy scarce to those who are most in need of having reliable useful availability to cheap energy. Adoption of this kind of policy is possibly one of the most RACIST and HATEFUL things democrats and their thinly guised communist authoritarianism have ever attempted.

 

Normal climate change would be a very slow, barely noticed process with ample time for change and adjustment. The present global warming may be partially "normal", but it is much faster due to human activity. If global warming proceeds as projected, our grandchildren are totally screwed. I am willing to invest as much as needed to protect my kids. We may need to use both nuclear and renewables to control carbon emissions. The longer we wait and the slower we act, the more we will get behind in game. Then it will probably take even more extreme measures to preserve our planet and our society. We can either make a big investment now or a huge investment in the future.

I love my children and my grandchildren. I want them to live well and be safe. I will invest whatever it takes to preserve their world. I don't want them to look back at my generation and say, "You cheap, thoughtless, self-centered bastards really screwed us over!'.

 

IKR, they didn't capture a single raindrop of the deluge they had this year. Clueless Californians will be bitching about a lack of water next year. So functionally retarded that it never crosses their minds that perhaps they could sequester some of that rainfall. Jesus Christ, the insipidness of their state government is unforgivable.

 

Over a trillion gallons being dumped straight into the ocean as I write. They will bitch instead of diverting any run off water 50 mile upstream of the concrete canals they built. They should be pumping right now into earthen reservoirs that can leech into aquifers. Instead, their commie governor dicks around with a multi billion dollar boondoggle train that goes no where.

 

It's obvious solar panels cannot power a steel factory or any high-power demand scenario 24/7 so burning coal will continue but this does not mean we can't scrub most of the coal-fired emissions? Maybe coal mining/power generation should be nationalized to remove the profit motive and scrub most emissions?

Nuclear remains a good option but I would prefer to see small nuclear reactors like we have on military ships which can power 3-4 city blocks of homes and/or business.

As battery technology improves storage capacity, why not have a container-sized unit in every 3-4 blocks of homes/businesses, filled with batteries and charged from solar, wind or conventional power?

Have we exploited all of the geothermal energy in the US?

In many drought areas of the US, like where I live in northern CA, why not construct 100's or 1000's more reservoirs all with hydro-electrical generation? In year-round rivers why don't we have 1000's of underwater turbines generating electricity? Why aren't we harnessing ocean waves to generate power?

We know burning coal is bad but we also know we can scrub most of the emissions. Nuclear is necessary but perhaps the stigma can be relaxed and costs reduced if miniature nuclear power units are incorporated instead of the current behemoths? Geothermal and hydroelectric already exist and need expanding. Solar and thermal heat and wind can easily produce 30% or more of our needs. Alternative energy will not solve 100% of our power needs but it can solve a huge percentage of our power needs.

We can do better if we wish...

 

Great. You can donate as much as you want to the government. Just don't expect it to be spent on anything you intended it for.