Lesson: Fashionable ideas frequently fall into the category of “too good to be true”.
Compare Amy Harder’s Axios piece from yesterday, “The key to unlocking wind and solar: Making it last”, and Michael Shellenberger’s Forbes article from 2018, “We Don’t Need Solar And Wind To Save The Climate — And It’s A Good Thing, Too”. The former is a puff piece about another alleged “breakthrough” for solar and wind energy. The latter is a healthy splash of cold water on the whole ploy. In today’s media, almost anything chic among the beautiful people, popular with the rulers in deep blue states, championed in thousands of public service ads, and exalted in high school science fairs, should be taken with a ton of salt.
Here’s a few takeaways from the analysis:
* Solar and wind, especially solar, have always been on the cusp of the next will-o’-the-wisp big breakthrough since the 19th century. Shellenberger recounts the history; Harder unwittingly provides another example.
* Solar and wind are expensive. They sound like a great idea since the sun shines and the wind blows without our help. Check out the electricity rates of countries who have bought into solar and wind.
* The environmental damage of wind and solar is immense. They use up and mar vast tracts of the landscape, disrupt and threaten the natural flora and fauna, and the production of their devices begets toxic wastes and land scarring.
* Nuclear is an obvious alternative but gets no mention in the rush to the solar-and-wind utopia. It’s better, more efficient, more cost effective, produces no CO2, and recycles much of its waste. What’s there not to like … if we can look away from the scowls of the beautiful people?
The real world can’t be boiled down to Sierra Club talking points. I wish that our media would stop repeating them and our kids weren’t taught the baloney.
RogerG
