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I worked in oil/gas for a long time. In addition to "windmills are killing all the birds", here are a few of the top green energy lies I've heard: 1. Solar pan

I worked in oil/gas for a long time. In addition to "windmills are killing all the birds", here are a few of the top green energy lies I've heard: 1. Solar panels are toxic, require more energy to produce than they generate, and can't be recycled. 2. EV's are worse for the environment than ICE vehicles. 3. Lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling. 4. Solar/wind prices are skyrocketing and everyone is abandoning solar/wind. 5. Solar/wind can't work because they're too intermittent. 6. Climate change isn't real OR climate change is real but natural and unstoppable OR climate change is helpful to the planet (these opposing beliefs are often repeated back to back)

jairuhme 3y ago
Do you have sources as to why they are lies? I'm not doubting you, but simply saying they're lies is just as disingenuous as the people making the statements in the first place
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  This is an HN comment thread, not a peer-reviewed paper on "lies convenient to the fossil fuel industries". However, for your convenience, I used google to search for "are solar panels net energy positive" and found this as the 2nd link: https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manufacture-actually-produce/ https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manu... This contains a link to at least one peer-reviewed paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824 I can almost guarantee that a similar process will elicit similar answers for every other point in the GP's list.
  - afsag 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - fsflover 3y ago
    This is an HN comment thread, hence we expect a higher quality of comments than elsewhere on the Internet. Thanks for the links.
    - jf22 3y ago
      I think there is more of an expectation here to Google simple things for yourself rather than condescendingly ask for a source that is a few keystrokes away.
      - fsflover 3y ago
        Everyone can search things on the Internet. However when I state something on HN, I usually try to add some good links, which are not top Google results. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725734.
    - tdb7893 3y ago
      The opinion that HN has particularly high quality comments is always surprising to me. Outside of the times where the person commenting is the actual creator of whatever the post is about I've found comments here to be a dumpster fire to the point where I often have fun looking at them specifically because they are often so wild and I love a good mess. I assume people here will disagree but it's that exact stark difference in perspective that's so interesting to me
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - fsflover 3y ago
        I definitely noticed that the quality of the comments here is often better than simply stating some opinion. The latter is typical for social media echo chambers but not here.
      - PawgerZ 3y ago
        I agree with everything you said, yet I still believe HN comments are regularly the most high quality on the internet. Do you know anywhere that has better comments than HN?
    - naremu 3y ago
      Well quite frankly, saying "the claim that these are lies are just as disingenuous as the claims themselves" is a pretty low quality, classic stick-in-the-spokes "debate" tactic that essentially hand waves the ball back in the other person's court with minimal effort or contribution or real debate and puts maximum onus on someone else in public in the "flow" of discourse. This is "great" for televised debates but this is kind of passive aggressive for the tone people prefer here. We're talking to people here. More directly than a formal debate. Someone participating earnestly knows they are capable of either politely expressing interest and asking for sources, or as another mentioned: typing and clicking all by themselves.
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    If solar panels were a net energy negative, they couldn't be made and operated for a profit[1]. It's such an obvious lie, it's just painful. Very early solar cells, the type used to power calculators and the like, may have been so inefficient that their lifetime power generation didn't offset the energy cost of their production. That doesn't matter because the scale is tiny, and the portability and the elimination of batteries is the point, not net energy return. Someone probably got it in their mind that "solar can't work" back in the 1960s or 70s based on this, and refused to budge half a century later when solar is the cheapest form of grid-scale energy. [1] This is actually a great way to estimate the total energy that went into a product. It must be less than the wholesale price (or cost-of-manufacture), otherwise at least one profit-motived organisation must be selling the product, its raw materials, or the energy inputs below cost and losing money on purpose. Only in rare cases like gov subsidies, state-owned corporations, etc... is this rule violated.
    - valval 3y ago
      The cases you describe in your last paragraph are not rare by any means — they’re everywhere, since all of the western world has seen a move towards bigger governments and socialism in the last decades.
- standeven 3y ago
  I can provide many sources for each point, let me know if there's a specific one that you find questionable.
goodSteveramos 3y ago
Calling every dumb argument against the mainstream climate movement a "lie" without further explanation is the kind of "pick a side" logic that entrenches climate change deniers. 1. Yes, solar panel production is not particularly good for the environment but not any more so than many other common industrial processes and the panels themselves are perfectly safe. Yes that used to be true decades ago, but not anymore. For many years now solar panels generate more energy than they took to make after just a few years operation. Yes, but the fact that they are not particularly recyclable doesn't matter at all because we are never going to run out of sand. 2. Yes, EV's can have larger carbon footprints that ICE vehicles in the few areas where almost all electricity is from coal. But outside of that specific case EVs are always at least slightly better, typically by 20-30%. 3. Yes, it can be argued that lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling but it's not clear cut and would only be worse for the local environment if at all. The effect on climate of oil and gas drilling is always going to be far far worse. 4. No, Solar/wind prices are clearly falling and more solar/wind gets installed every year. 5. Yes, solar/wind are intermittent, so they can't be used alone, but work great when paired with investment in longer transmission lines, grid storage and non-intermittent carbon free sources. For point 6 I can only say that people are will be less likely to make blanket denials if you tell them the truth in a non-judgemental way, respect their intelligence, and are forthcoming with the problems and challenges of addressing climate change.
- hnmullany 3y ago
  I believe that it's only thin film solar panels that have high heavy metal content but mono-crystalline panels - which are now the super-dominant technology having drastically decreased in cost - are fairly non-toxic.
ajmurmann 3y ago
I thought 1 was potentially legit depending on how they are manufactured and where they'll need deployed. I understand that 80% of solar cells are produced in China which still gets most of its energy from coal so there is a huge carbon footprint. If you now deploy those in a place that doesn't get much sun, like Germany, the equation isn't great. I'm no expert on this though and am mostly parroting Peter Zeihan on this.
- Snafuh 3y ago
  Even Chinese panels in Canada have a energy payback of less than 2 years PDF link to a study comparing different installation countries: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing!
apapapa 3y ago
A lot of what you just said is false

jairuhme 3y ago

Do you have sources as to why they are lies? I'm not doubting you, but simply saying they're lies is just as disingenuous as the people making the statements in the first place

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
This is an HN comment thread, not a peer-reviewed paper on "lies convenient to the fossil fuel industries". However, for your convenience, I used google to search for "are solar panels net energy positive" and found this as the 2nd link: https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manufacture-actually-produce/ https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manu... This contains a link to at least one peer-reviewed paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824 I can almost guarantee that a similar process will elicit similar answers for every other point in the GP's list.
- afsag 3y ago
  [flagged]
- fsflover 3y ago
  This is an HN comment thread, hence we expect a higher quality of comments than elsewhere on the Internet. Thanks for the links.
  - jf22 3y ago
    I think there is more of an expectation here to Google simple things for yourself rather than condescendingly ask for a source that is a few keystrokes away.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      Everyone can search things on the Internet. However when I state something on HN, I usually try to add some good links, which are not top Google results. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725734.
  - tdb7893 3y ago
    The opinion that HN has particularly high quality comments is always surprising to me. Outside of the times where the person commenting is the actual creator of whatever the post is about I've found comments here to be a dumpster fire to the point where I often have fun looking at them specifically because they are often so wild and I love a good mess. I assume people here will disagree but it's that exact stark difference in perspective that's so interesting to me
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - fsflover 3y ago
      I definitely noticed that the quality of the comments here is often better than simply stating some opinion. The latter is typical for social media echo chambers but not here.
    - PawgerZ 3y ago
      I agree with everything you said, yet I still believe HN comments are regularly the most high quality on the internet. Do you know anywhere that has better comments than HN?
  - naremu 3y ago
    Well quite frankly, saying "the claim that these are lies are just as disingenuous as the claims themselves" is a pretty low quality, classic stick-in-the-spokes "debate" tactic that essentially hand waves the ball back in the other person's court with minimal effort or contribution or real debate and puts maximum onus on someone else in public in the "flow" of discourse. This is "great" for televised debates but this is kind of passive aggressive for the tone people prefer here. We're talking to people here. More directly than a formal debate. Someone participating earnestly knows they are capable of either politely expressing interest and asking for sources, or as another mentioned: typing and clicking all by themselves.
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  If solar panels were a net energy negative, they couldn't be made and operated for a profit[1]. It's such an obvious lie, it's just painful. Very early solar cells, the type used to power calculators and the like, may have been so inefficient that their lifetime power generation didn't offset the energy cost of their production. That doesn't matter because the scale is tiny, and the portability and the elimination of batteries is the point, not net energy return. Someone probably got it in their mind that "solar can't work" back in the 1960s or 70s based on this, and refused to budge half a century later when solar is the cheapest form of grid-scale energy. [1] This is actually a great way to estimate the total energy that went into a product. It must be less than the wholesale price (or cost-of-manufacture), otherwise at least one profit-motived organisation must be selling the product, its raw materials, or the energy inputs below cost and losing money on purpose. Only in rare cases like gov subsidies, state-owned corporations, etc... is this rule violated.
  - valval 3y ago
    The cases you describe in your last paragraph are not rare by any means — they’re everywhere, since all of the western world has seen a move towards bigger governments and socialism in the last decades.
standeven 3y ago
I can provide many sources for each point, let me know if there's a specific one that you find questionable.

goodSteveramos 3y ago

Calling every dumb argument against the mainstream climate movement a "lie" without further explanation is the kind of "pick a side" logic that entrenches climate change deniers. 1. Yes, solar panel production is not particularly good for the environment but not any more so than many other common industrial processes and the panels themselves are perfectly safe. Yes that used to be true decades ago, but not anymore. For many years now solar panels generate more energy than they took to make after just a few years operation. Yes, but the fact that they are not particularly recyclable doesn't matter at all because we are never going to run out of sand. 2. Yes, EV's can have larger carbon footprints that ICE vehicles in the few areas where almost all electricity is from coal. But outside of that specific case EVs are always at least slightly better, typically by 20-30%. 3. Yes, it can be argued that lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling but it's not clear cut and would only be worse for the local environment if at all. The effect on climate of oil and gas drilling is always going to be far far worse. 4. No, Solar/wind prices are clearly falling and more solar/wind gets installed every year. 5. Yes, solar/wind are intermittent, so they can't be used alone, but work great when paired with investment in longer transmission lines, grid storage and non-intermittent carbon free sources. For point 6 I can only say that people are will be less likely to make blanket denials if you tell them the truth in a non-judgemental way, respect their intelligence, and are forthcoming with the problems and challenges of addressing climate change.

hnmullany 3y ago
I believe that it's only thin film solar panels that have high heavy metal content but mono-crystalline panels - which are now the super-dominant technology having drastically decreased in cost - are fairly non-toxic.

ajmurmann 3y ago

I thought 1 was potentially legit depending on how they are manufactured and where they'll need deployed. I understand that 80% of solar cells are produced in China which still gets most of its energy from coal so there is a huge carbon footprint. If you now deploy those in a place that doesn't get much sun, like Germany, the equation isn't great. I'm no expert on this though and am mostly parroting Peter Zeihan on this.

Snafuh 3y ago
Even Chinese panels in Canada have a energy payback of less than 2 years PDF link to a study comparing different installation countries: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing!

apapapa 3y ago

A lot of what you just said is false