There’s no such thing as clean energy
medium.com
medium.com
I'll leave the hopefully scientifically literate crowd here to see how reputable they are. I skimmed the paper, it seems to be making a "there's no free lunch"/"renewables aren't magic free energy" so let's just keep using fossil fuels argument. None of the authors are economists, physicists, or climate scientists, yet they make assertions that are very much the domain of those experts. I expect better from the HN crowd.
- Comparing the current and early 20th century warm periods in China
- Northern hemisphere snow-cover trends (1967–2018): a comparison between climate models and observations
- Re-calibration of Arctic sea ice extent datasets using Arctic surface air temperature records
- How Much Human-Caused Global Warming Should We Expect with Business-As-Usual (BAU) Climate Policies? A Semi-Empirical Assessment
And much more, see: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8JOBXYEAAAAJ
Here's an interesting discussion of the problem of "cognitive fluency". In brief, if it takes effort to evaluate the evidence properly, there is a tendency to dismiss it. It's easier to reassure ourselves that we already know than to investigate the question properly. A pitfall for the unwary.
https://firstdraftnews.org/latest/the-psychology-of-misinfor...
Have you read the welcome page?
"The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial." ...
"What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling."
There's quite a few arguments in here which run the gamut from 'interesting point that people who work on clean energy think about a lot' to 'very close to, if not a straw man argument'
There are some really interesting micro-biome studies that show there are local effects that are caused by wind turbines and solar arrays, I don't think I've ever seen a study which has said that the amount of carbon produced by these local changes in biomes is anywhere near the carbon saved by the move to renewables.
The REE exploration problem is also a good point on current EVs, but there's a good chance that new batteries will have no Cobalt in them at all (as an aside, the reason that companies are looking to migrate from it has little to do with the scarcity, but more to do with the fact that it's largely mined in very, very poor ways, I'm looking at you, Glencore).
The point about intermittency and "Wind and solar promoters need to start admitting that they are not capable of providing this type of continuous and on-demand electricity supply on a national scale that modern societies are used to" is not an overly well made one, there are a bunch of ways around this and it's one of the biggest challenges being faced today in the industry. HDR, battery technology have come a long way in the last little bit.
Anyways, take the article with a grain of salt as you should do with everything.
Right, but I think you have seen a lot of propaganda about wind & solar being "clean energy" when in reality it's an inflated expectation.
In reality, we're still measuring the negative impact of these offshore wind farms on the climate.
> there are a bunch of ways around this and it's one of the biggest challenges being faced today in the industry
I'm non native sorry, but confused as of how this could be "one of the biggest challenges" if "there are a bunch of ways around this".
> Anyways, take the article with a grain of salt as you should do with everything.
The article bases on what's happening now and not on what might happen when the battery technology will pass a major milestone at industrial level or whatnot.
I think the essence of the article is that renewables are not the silver bullet many hoped it would be.
We seem falling from the top of the "peak of inflated expectations" (from the Hype Cycle).
Apologies for the lack of clarity in that sentence, there is a recognition that intermittence is one of the biggest challenges that is currently faced by the power grid in it's current form. But we actually have ways to get around this currently, it's just very rare for them to be put in place (there's also some large omissions from the current state of the South Australian power grid that is mentioned).
We still have to explore for coal as an industry, too. So should we presume that the moment our current coal reserves run out that this is the end of all coal power?
No.
Anyways, no-one has really made a case for renewables being a silver-bullet who works in energy policy, I would not be inclined to use this article as a touchstone for the problems the industry faces.
We recommend you read the full paper to consider our discussion of such issues.
I recommend you read the paper for a review of research evidence that this might be true for large-scale wind energy installations.
4.2.4. Increase in Biological CO2 Emissions Caused by Wind Farms
"Typically, the annual emissions from soil respiration are roughly balanced by the absorption of CO2 via photosynthesis ... However, the total emissions from soil respiration are known to increase with temperature. Estimates of the exact rates of increase vary between studies, and there are many complexities in extrapolating from the results of e.g., a mid-latitude forest or a tropical region to global estimates ... Nonetheless, most studies suggest that the warming of soils generally leads to an increase in biological CO2 emissions from soil respiration. Therefore, given that the global CO2 emissions from soil respiration are an order of magnitude greater than anthropogenic emissions, we suggest that the increase in biological CO2 emissions caused by wind farms warming the night-time soil temperatures could potentially be similar in magnitude to the reduction in anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the wind farms."
See Table 2.
I'm not saying that taking money from oil&coal companies (and hiding it) necessarily implies that the research is biased, I'm just saying to take it with a big grain of salt.
But even with all of that, if you look at the charts they still clearly show the total impact (direct + indirect) of solar and wind is an order of magnitude lower than coal and oil.
They don't need to be upfront about their funding because they know it's the first thing that ecologists will search on google to build an ad personam as we can see in the comments here /s
At least, someone's paying research that does not go in the mainstream direction, so we can be thankful for that which protects us from an unilateral debate: given that politics fund the mainstream research with the IPCC.
> The total impact (direct + indirect) of solar and wind is an order of magnitude lower than coal and oil.
Same goes for ROI: solar and wind is an order of magnitude lower than coal and oil.
I'll tell you what to take with a pinch of salt: allegations that the authors are taking money from vested interests. We are not.
Rather than searching for spurious grounds to discredit the authors, I recommend you read the paper for yourself. With the help of my co-authors, I searched the literature meticulously to investigate every aspect of the review, and we have cited our sources in the usual way - 255 previous papers, mostly peer-reviewed. By all means, read critically. Take all the research in this field with a heaped spoon of salt, because there may be bias in every direction. But there's no escaping the need to read the research literature if you want to assess the evidence for yourself. I hope you find it as intriguing as I did.