It's disingenuous to call "solar and wind" an alternative on the same level as nuclear and coal. For one thing, it's an incomplete alternative; it needs to be

It's disingenuous to call "solar and wind" an alternative on the same level as nuclear and coal. For one thing, it's an incomplete alternative; it needs to be paired with some form of country scale battery for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. This is covered in the excellent book Without Hot Air[1] which breaks down power usage and generation potential (using UK figures), primarily to discuss weaning the country off of fossil fuels. Reading through estimates of what will be required ignoring cost, the sheer scale of what it would really take to power a country off of renewable energy quickly becomes apparent. And it's written by a physicist who strongly argues for the need to move off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. He just doesn't have his head in the sand about how difficult that will be. I tend to agree with that viewpoint but I'm skeptical we'll get there without pairing it with a significant boost in energy efficiency, ala Reinventing Fire[2]. 1: http://withouthotair.com/ http://withouthotair.com/ 2: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/ReinventingFire http://www.rmi.org/rmi/ReinventingFire