Relating to the post on solar panels I posted earlier, here is a feature-length look at the promise of solar and how embedded the environment movement can become with those very corporations that are causing the problems we are facing.
I’d be interested in any and all comments on this difficult topic.
Over and above the recycling problem highlighted here, there’s the larger problem that neither solar nor wind powered electricity generation can carry the load of mythic faith which green-inclined people have put in them. It seems unlikely, simply from the realities of grid-supplied electricity, that either will ever be able to make more than a marginal contribution to that. This has to do with the prohibitively costly arrangements which have to be made to integrate their ragged feed-ins into the supply/demand balancing of the whole system - too costly both in monetary and exotic materials and energy costs to be viably useful.
They remain arguably useful in off-grid applications, but - alas! - it seems they’re always going to be a niche technology. The extreme difficulty in storing harvested electrical energy is the big problem. That and the fact that the whole panoply of - modern - ‘renewable’ systems is impossible to build and maintain without constant energy subsidies from some other source - currently fossil hydrocarbons. The more I watch, the firmer these melancholy conclusions become. The enthusiasts are in for a pretty cold awakening about this, I fear.
And this is without even considering the corruption of green ideals by allying with gangster-capitalist corporations, as Michael Moore underlines. Gail Tverberg over at ‘Our Finite World’ is authoritative about the fatal technical stumbling blocks, explaining in a sequence of fully-numerate articles why it’s so:
excellent points, RG, and many of them are cogently argued in the Planet of the Humans film linked to above.
very much agree. This site would be richer with linked content from her site (hint hint 
)
I get the hint. Gail is so erudite about matters actuarial - her profession - that it can be heavy weather working through her densely-reasoned posts. I’ll keep visiting her site, though, and offer precis’s of crucial posts of hers.
This current piece by Gail gives a taste of her - heavily fact-based - style of analysis. It also bears somewhat on the question of whether ‘renewables’ will ever be more than niche energy suppliers. Her website is worth searching for other posts on this matter:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/09/01/todays-energy-predicament-a-look-at-some-charts/#more-45488
Thanks mate! Gail is a class act.