EAllusion wrote:subgenius wrote:The quick answer is "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"... but also consider that these sources you want to transition towards aren't yet affordable, accessible, or even practical.
That's no longer true as far as electricity generation is concerned. You're stuck in a decade ago. If you removed the various ways in which fossil fuels are subsidized by the government, renewables are getting very close to parity. (Some sources will argue that has already happened, but I'm more inclined towards the skeptical analyses that say close, but not quite yet.) The tricky part is dismantling their entrenched interests so market forces can reflect this fact better.
The charging station issue for electric cars you bring up strikes me as a non-problem as the economy can turn that over as demand ramps up in a matter of years.
You're arguing that renewable energy sources are on parity with fossil fuels in terms of efficiency, cost, etc?
If so, that's not true at all. Not. At. All. I posted about this in one of the other climate threads. I think not a single person responded to those points. Economically, renewables are a disaster. That's the bottom line truth. They cannot support the economy as it exists. If you want to debate this I'm happy to throw data galore at you. This is objective. It's straight math. I'll show you the output for the wind farms in Texas and how it impacts the overall grid.
And if you take wind turbines as a case study. Not only are they bad in terms of being an effective energy source, but they are harming the environment. They're killing birds and other flying lifeforms. They are also disturbing wind patterns, which are essential for the natural weather and climate processes, and which then has the additional effect of reducing turbine efficiency even more. Plus they're ugly and loud and consume vast amounts of space. It's pretty funny overall. Science has not been able to answer the question of how CO2 affects the environment. But science has been able to answer the question of how wind turbines affect it. Between the two, it is only the wind turbines which have been conclusively shown to be harmful.
If CO2 is our ruin, there is only one answer - nuclear. No debate to be had on this. That is an actually settled debate. Anybody peddling wind and solar is nothing more than an alarmism profiteer.
If you want to have the "better safe than sorry" argument, I can get onboard with that to an extent. I don't believe in CAGW mostly because the science is very unsettled, and overall pretty junky in terms of uncertainty levels. But I can get behind the argument that it's better to play it safe until we know. Not understanding the impacts is a good argument for caution if there is reason to think harm could be done. Okay then, nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. I will fully support taking down all CO2 generation sources in exchange for nuclear. And I have no issue with things like electric cars. Obviously the combustion engine makes a lot more sense in certain workhorse situations, heavy machinery and whatnot. But, if you take standard non-commercial human transportation and converted them to electric, and converted most fossil fuel power generation to nuclear, our CO2 output would be a teeny fraction of what it is now.
Carbon taxes? No. I won't get behind that. Solar? Nope. You wanna throw research money at it? Fine. Research away. I'm down with that. As a practical solution today, it's a nonstarter. Wind? Wind is so bad it's irresponsible to consider it. Other than random specialty situations where it makes sense because all other options fail, it should not be considered.
You nerds should STFU in respect of the Trumpsuckers or you'll end up in the school dumpster.