4 ms·

Shellenberger RE land use claims debunked, assuming good faith just once. After that, the experts get tired and cite Brandolini's Law. https://twitter.com/simo

Shellenberger RE land use claims debunked, assuming good faith just once. After that, the experts get tired and cite Brandolini's Law. https://twitter.com/simonahac/status/1446605374119759873 https://twitter.com/simonahac/status/1446605374119759873

robomartin 5y ago
Sorry to put it this way, I just have to. The argument that guy is making on Twitter is pure horseshit. This is the problem, people don't want to do the math and choose to rely on personalities to tell them what to believe. It's also a dishonest Twitter hit-and-run. Read my longer post where I try to make sense of the claim about solar requiring hundreds more land than nuclear. That's a good approximation of the kind of honest scientific work you have to do to evaluate these claims, not the bullshit floating around on social media. In other words, as they say in math class: Show me the work. There's so much people ignore about solar it makes my head hurt. And, on top of that, most people speak without having any experience or "skin in the game". I built a 13 kW ground-mount solar array on my property. From scratch. To be clear, that means, I designed every element of it, put it through the permit process, and built the entire thing with my own two hands (well, my kids helped!). Here's a data point: My microscopic 13 kW array required 64 THOUSAND pounds of concrete. Yup. That is what Los Angeles County had me install as a footing for this thing. I fought them as hard as I could. I lost. Eight columns, 8000 lbs of concrete and hundreds of pounds of rebar holding them down. An architect friend of mine told me you could put up a four level building on that footing. On commercial installations, they add massive amounts of steel to this to build the structure. I have no way to evaluate this at all, but I would not be surprised if a large scale photovoltaic facility required more concrete and steel than the equivalent power nuclear power plant. Again, just a guess. It would be interesting to dig-up records for something like Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant and make the comparison.

robomartin 5y ago

Sorry to put it this way, I just have to. The argument that guy is making on Twitter is pure horseshit. This is the problem, people don't want to do the math and choose to rely on personalities to tell them what to believe. It's also a dishonest Twitter hit-and-run. Read my longer post where I try to make sense of the claim about solar requiring hundreds more land than nuclear. That's a good approximation of the kind of honest scientific work you have to do to evaluate these claims, not the bullshit floating around on social media. In other words, as they say in math class: Show me the work. There's so much people ignore about solar it makes my head hurt. And, on top of that, most people speak without having any experience or "skin in the game". I built a 13 kW ground-mount solar array on my property. From scratch. To be clear, that means, I designed every element of it, put it through the permit process, and built the entire thing with my own two hands (well, my kids helped!). Here's a data point: My microscopic 13 kW array required 64 THOUSAND pounds of concrete. Yup. That is what Los Angeles County had me install as a footing for this thing. I fought them as hard as I could. I lost. Eight columns, 8000 lbs of concrete and hundreds of pounds of rebar holding them down. An architect friend of mine told me you could put up a four level building on that footing. On commercial installations, they add massive amounts of steel to this to build the structure. I have no way to evaluate this at all, but I would not be surprised if a large scale photovoltaic facility required more concrete and steel than the equivalent power nuclear power plant. Again, just a guess. It would be interesting to dig-up records for something like Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant and make the comparison.