Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure by Cory Doctorow

[hunter]

3. I'm generally in tune with Cory Doctorow's observations but he's dead wrong here.

This kind of "demand destruction" is going to kill people.

Anybody who claims solar power is going to magically displace fossil fuels is full of shit.

Solar power is EXPENSIVE and dependent on fossil fuels for it's economic viability.

I challenge anyone promoting solar power to move to a sunny place and build a totally off-grid home powered entirely by solar. Throw in an electric car too. Tell me how much it costs. Tell me how reliable it is. ( A backup generator powered by fossil fuels is cheating. Propane heating and cooking is cheating. )

These problems with solar are the same at any scale.

California has already reached the point of diminishing returns with solar power. Adding more solar power and batteries to our power grid will only increase the price of our electricity without a proportionate decrease in it's carbon intensity.

Nuclear powered France has affordable electricity with a very low carbon intensity. Electricity in California's gas-wind-solar-battery powered utopia is six to seven times dirtier than electricity in France, and significantly more expensive.

But here's the most basic problem:

The human species has trapped itself in a corner. Our population would not have grown to more than eight billion people if we hadn't had access to high density energy resources -- historically these are coal, oil, and gas. Possibly the most important application of these high density energy resources is the synthesis of nitrogen fertilizers. Half the fixed nitrogen circulating in earth's biosphere is synthetic, even the nitrogen in your organic garden. This synthetic nitrogen gets turned into food which is turned into people. This synthetic nitrogen is you.

And that's not all of it.

Renewable energy cannot support the existing population. Full stop.

Unfortunately, if we don't quit fossil fuels billions of us are going to suffer and die by global heating.

Like it or not, nuclear power is the only alternative high density energy resource we've got, the only one capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely.

The energy "transition" is a deadly lie, just another bullshit way of denying what's euphemistically called "climate change."

If we don't quit fossil fuels we are toast. All these solar and wind "farms" are not going to save us, they will only prolong our dependence on the fossil fuels that will ultimately destroy our civilization and whatever is left of the earth's natural environment as we have known it.