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Comment by corndoge | Hacker News Reader

> Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true.

If you lead with this, I expect a refutation of the points in the article. But in each of the statements you take issue with, I don't see any refutation, just additional data.

> However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited.

Does the article claim that it is a long term solution?

> So green energy has supported economic and social development through electrification without adding new pollution sources.

How does that conflict with what the article said?

> Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity, but that safety comes at a financial cost. Pursuing nuclear is great but solar/wind are much cheaper.

Again, does this conflict with anything in the article?

Do you think anything in the article is untrue, as you implied?

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Unless you are being extremelly pedantic than I would agree with the parent. The thesis of the article is essentially "Solar and Wind aren't the way forward, Nuclear is the way". While it is reasonable to acknowledge the solar and wind still face many challenges, the parent is pointing out that they are already doing a good job in accelerating decarbonization and Nuclear, while appealing, isn't the clear cut winner the article is saying it is.

I agree with your criticisms and support of the parent, but the thesis also included a chunk of "here is why I switched from a purely clean energy perspective to one that tolerates a bunch more nuclear."

I have in the past year undergone a similar shift, so perhaps I felt more tolerant of some of the article's slickness. A few centuries of "financially expensive" nuclear energy feels like it could provide a longer runway for science to figure out some alternatives.

It's really strange for me to hear people saying that. I was pro-nuclear a decade ago and thought solar/wind were pipe dreams. The cost situation is now so much in favor of solar/wind now that I no longer really see the point in nuclear. We should be subsidizing scaling up of storage technologies, not nuclear plants.

If the cost of storage gets cut in half in the next 10 years, we won't need subsidies, nuclear plants will simply be boondoggles. I really don't think we should invest in nuclear until we're sure the cleaner alternatives can't scale.

I am not convinced of the spending priority today, but I am convinced that figuring out clean energy is the most important goal to achieve.

I am mostly worried that a fossil-fueled extinction beats science to the storage solution of your dreams. Why risk that when nuclear is available?

Here's a question for the group: Regardless of whether you advocate for green energy or not, do you think that it's a wise strategy to create an artificial scarcity of fossil fuels to force a transition to green energy? After decades of green energy adoption, the world is still (conservatively) 84% reliant on fossil fuels. Without them, many people would freeze and/or starve, and whole economies would collapse.

I think we should be focusing on creating abundance of clean fuels. I do think it's worthwhile to tax fossil fuels to make people less likely to use them. Probably with dramatic taxes. But really there's no such thing as "natural scarcity" or "natural abundance" these things are all based on our choices. 30 years ago we could have created an abundance of nuclear power and we would be better off. Today it seems like creating abundance of other things is a superior option. We knew that persisting in leaving fossil fuels as the abundant option was a mistake but we did it anyway and continue to do it.

Focusing on clean fuels is just fine. My question had to do with a highly destructive national policy that is doing tremendous damage to the US/world economies (except for Russia and China).

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-lower-gas-prices-boos...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4UWc5JP-2E

I'm not sure we're the pure antinuclear stand would even come from

He clearly can't build a nuclear power plant so what he can do is build solar and wind.

And sure nuclear has plenty of problems like amount of uran, cooling water in the summer etc.

Independent of this, we have not even seen yet how a real solar society would look like because while we installed plenty, we have not really started to install what would be possible.

It should be a total no brainer for everyone to want to leverage their roof real estate by investing in solar.

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