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Indeed. Compared to other the garbage that people put in landfills right now, this is nothing. Of course this article is a clever bit of FUD in disguise. By ta

Indeed. Compared to other the garbage that people put in landfills right now, this is nothing. Of course this article is a clever bit of FUD in disguise. By taking the problem seriously and then presenting a solution to the problem that never was real to begin with: ‘We’re gonna have (tens of millions) of metric tons of waste from PV. We’re all gonna die,’” Actual quote from the article to convince us that there apparently are people that believe that. Classic FUD move. It's really, really, bad but the scientists are on it. So you can stop worrying now. But you had good reason to be worried and you should continue to be worried. That's the message. Except of course, there never was a problem to worry about. The purpose of this article is perpetuating the myth that there was. It's a nice business challenge how to recover some valuable metals from solar panels. And several companies are on that; as you would expect. But if they fail, we basically dump some inert material in a landfill. Not a big deal. People dump far worse things into landfills already.

3D30497420 4y ago
I think this is taking an overly critical view of the article. I did a very quick search and this HBR article, which makes it sound like solar panel waste is expected to be a significant problem, was the top result: https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power So clearly some people, including presumably some prominent ones, are saying this will be a problem. So I'd say it is good that there is data to address this criticism.
- solardev 4y ago
  Why would you consider HBR an authority on waste stream issues?
  - nl 4y ago
    HBR is a pretty reasonable consensus view of what business leaders in the US are thinking.
    - solardev 4y ago
      Are business leaders the people best equipped to evaluate environmental issues, especially ones that may have a conflict of interest with their existing investments?
      - nl 4y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is. @3D30497420 made the point that the HBR article claiming that solar panel waste is expected to be a significant problem was the first result. It's good to have prominent articles aimed at the same people who read HBR that give a corrected view. > Are business leaders the people best equipped to evaluate environmental issues It doesn't matter if they are the best equipped. The point is that they are making these decisions based on sources of information they trust like HBR. That information needs to be corrected.
harry8 4y ago
Let's just say you were running FUD in this direction and this piece of FUD has reached its EOL, credibility cannot be sustained. If it goes down too obviously as ridiculous it may well take some still active FUD with it. If you were running FUD you'd have to play a little D even if it was your first month on the job. So this kind of thing being consistent with that FUD rearguard action as it fails doesn't make it true (or false). How plausible is it? Getting those who published their deep "thought leadership" while being taken in by the FUD will happily happily go along with it (was serious, not so much anymore) rather than say "yup, I got taken in here, garbage on roller-skates" [1] [1] I absolutely got taken by the WMD lies. Totally suckered. Believed them all. Occams razor ruled out the big conspiracy for me. The total lack of accountability for the lies I believed after it became completely clear, adjusted my prior to be rather more skeptical and the probability of actual, targeted lies being pushed as being much more plausible. I can overcome both with good evidence but "the NYT/WaPo/WSJ/CNN/CBS/Fox/Harvard/Stanford/etc says X and they wouldn't be in on a conspiracy nor be suckered readily, all of them so..." counts for not much anymore as evidence.

3D30497420 4y ago

I think this is taking an overly critical view of the article. I did a very quick search and this HBR article, which makes it sound like solar panel waste is expected to be a significant problem, was the top result: https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power So clearly some people, including presumably some prominent ones, are saying this will be a problem. So I'd say it is good that there is data to address this criticism.

solardev 4y ago
Why would you consider HBR an authority on waste stream issues?
- nl 4y ago
  HBR is a pretty reasonable consensus view of what business leaders in the US are thinking.
  - solardev 4y ago
    Are business leaders the people best equipped to evaluate environmental issues, especially ones that may have a conflict of interest with their existing investments?
    - nl 4y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is. @3D30497420 made the point that the HBR article claiming that solar panel waste is expected to be a significant problem was the first result. It's good to have prominent articles aimed at the same people who read HBR that give a corrected view. > Are business leaders the people best equipped to evaluate environmental issues It doesn't matter if they are the best equipped. The point is that they are making these decisions based on sources of information they trust like HBR. That information needs to be corrected.

harry8 4y ago

Let's just say you were running FUD in this direction and this piece of FUD has reached its EOL, credibility cannot be sustained. If it goes down too obviously as ridiculous it may well take some still active FUD with it. If you were running FUD you'd have to play a little D even if it was your first month on the job. So this kind of thing being consistent with that FUD rearguard action as it fails doesn't make it true (or false). How plausible is it? Getting those who published their deep "thought leadership" while being taken in by the FUD will happily happily go along with it (was serious, not so much anymore) rather than say "yup, I got taken in here, garbage on roller-skates" [1] [1] I absolutely got taken by the WMD lies. Totally suckered. Believed them all. Occams razor ruled out the big conspiracy for me. The total lack of accountability for the lies I believed after it became completely clear, adjusted my prior to be rather more skeptical and the probability of actual, targeted lies being pushed as being much more plausible. I can overcome both with good evidence but "the NYT/WaPo/WSJ/CNN/CBS/Fox/Harvard/Stanford/etc says X and they wouldn't be in on a conspiracy nor be suckered readily, all of them so..." counts for not much anymore as evidence.