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Really? You fire out a whole screed with pretensions of expertise and now it's up to me to provide figures? Ok. World energy consumption is about 15 Terawatts.

by phaemon 13y ago

Really? You fire out a whole screed with pretensions of expertise and now it's up to me to provide figures? Ok. World energy consumption is about 15 Terawatts. Solar energy incoming is about 174,000 Terawatts. Therefore, the percentage increase in energy output if we took all....actually, I'm sure you can work the rest out for yourself.

ctdonath 13y ago
Oh, I'm no expert. That's what concerns me about so much of the babbling about renewable energy: if I can find such major underdiscussed flaws, either I'm confused or the experts aren't as expert as they claim. If you're going to pounce on one sentence (and imply that somehow it should have been thorough when it was just one sentence), then yes I'd like you to back up your broad-brush insults with some figures (nothing difficult, just sensible ballpark framing). OK, for all your attack verbiage we get one salient point: human energy use amounts to 0.01% of all Earth's incoming solar energy. So back to my concern: where is the tipping point at which shifting all our energy use to "renewables" starts adversely affecting the environment? "Manmade-CO2 based global warming" was laughable, now it's practically a religious doctrine. "Solar strip-mining" kills everything living under those panels, taking most of the light & heat. Hydropower wrecks wetlands by turning shallow warm muddy water (which life therein has enjoyed for darn near ever) into deep cold clear basins. Wind farms have their issues, but lack of sheer scale obscures them, and methinks we are ignorant of what effects vast fields of turbines would have (just as we dismissed the effects of other energy sources listed). Blowing it all off as "worrying about an LED's effect on a rocket launch" is historically naive. Manmade CO2 is really just a minuscule percentage of total CO2, yet there's a vast movement to severely curtail human activity in fear of its accumulation forcing a "tipping point" toward global disaster. I'm not convinced that solar panels & wind turbines don't, on a comparably large scale, risk similar consequences.
- phaemon 13y ago
  > Oh, I'm no expert. That's what concerns me about so much of the babbling about renewable energy: if I can find such major underdiscussed flaws, either I'm confused Yes, you can stop there. You are confused. > "Manmade-CO2 based global warming" was laughable, No, it wasn't. No-one thought you could increase CO2 levels by 70% and not cause an effect. How would the extra energy be removed? Magic? And you're now trying to talk multiple points at once so that you can confuse the issue rather than clarify it. That's why I picked on one point. I wanted to see if you would admit it was wrong.

by phaemon 13y ago

ctdonath 13y ago

Oh, I'm no expert. That's what concerns me about so much of the babbling about renewable energy: if I can find such major underdiscussed flaws, either I'm confused or the experts aren't as expert as they claim. If you're going to pounce on one sentence (and imply that somehow it should have been thorough when it was just one sentence), then yes I'd like you to back up your broad-brush insults with some figures (nothing difficult, just sensible ballpark framing). OK, for all your attack verbiage we get one salient point: human energy use amounts to 0.01% of all Earth's incoming solar energy. So back to my concern: where is the tipping point at which shifting all our energy use to "renewables" starts adversely affecting the environment? "Manmade-CO2 based global warming" was laughable, now it's practically a religious doctrine. "Solar strip-mining" kills everything living under those panels, taking most of the light & heat. Hydropower wrecks wetlands by turning shallow warm muddy water (which life therein has enjoyed for darn near ever) into deep cold clear basins. Wind farms have their issues, but lack of sheer scale obscures them, and methinks we are ignorant of what effects vast fields of turbines would have (just as we dismissed the effects of other energy sources listed). Blowing it all off as "worrying about an LED's effect on a rocket launch" is historically naive. Manmade CO2 is really just a minuscule percentage of total CO2, yet there's a vast movement to severely curtail human activity in fear of its accumulation forcing a "tipping point" toward global disaster. I'm not convinced that solar panels & wind turbines don't, on a comparably large scale, risk similar consequences.

phaemon 13y ago
> Oh, I'm no expert. That's what concerns me about so much of the babbling about renewable energy: if I can find such major underdiscussed flaws, either I'm confused Yes, you can stop there. You are confused. > "Manmade-CO2 based global warming" was laughable, No, it wasn't. No-one thought you could increase CO2 levels by 70% and not cause an effect. How would the extra energy be removed? Magic? And you're now trying to talk multiple points at once so that you can confuse the issue rather than clarify it. That's why I picked on one point. I wanted to see if you would admit it was wrong.