Wind and solar are not stand alone systems and have an abysmal life-cycle return on energy. In a future "electrified" industrial environment self-replication is virtually impossible. Energy density is far more important than narrative reinforcement.
I'm part way through Epstein's book and have mixed feelings about it, not because I disagree with what he says, but because it's written for a casual audience. This isn't a bad thing; it's just that I was looking forward to a more technical analysis. I was also looking forward to reading some of the "rock the vote" comments, so I picked #3 (a random choice) and followed the link. I was very disappointed.
This is one of those papers where the authors do a literature search and then summarise their findings; they do no original research and contribute nothing new. My interest began to waver early on with their enthusiastic use of "pathways", but I persevered. I all but gave up when I reached "energy justice". In my opinion, this is a waste of 20,000 words (yes, twenty thousand!). I shudder to think of the overall cost associated with reviewing the paper's 474 references and then writing the paper itself, and of all the better ways that this money could have been spent. I challenge anyone reading this comment to read the paper from end to end and then to decide how much value it adds to the debate. If Epstein's book is essentially "popular climate change", this paper is just academic arm-waving.
Wind and solar are not stand alone systems and have an abysmal life-cycle return on energy. In a future "electrified" industrial environment self-replication is virtually impossible. Energy density is far more important than narrative reinforcement.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but when analyzing climate model accuracy, the “walk forward” predictions are the most important. Example http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2021/10/have-past-ipcc-temperature.html
I'm part way through Epstein's book and have mixed feelings about it, not because I disagree with what he says, but because it's written for a casual audience. This isn't a bad thing; it's just that I was looking forward to a more technical analysis. I was also looking forward to reading some of the "rock the vote" comments, so I picked #3 (a random choice) and followed the link. I was very disappointed.
This is one of those papers where the authors do a literature search and then summarise their findings; they do no original research and contribute nothing new. My interest began to waver early on with their enthusiastic use of "pathways", but I persevered. I all but gave up when I reached "energy justice". In my opinion, this is a waste of 20,000 words (yes, twenty thousand!). I shudder to think of the overall cost associated with reviewing the paper's 474 references and then writing the paper itself, and of all the better ways that this money could have been spent. I challenge anyone reading this comment to read the paper from end to end and then to decide how much value it adds to the debate. If Epstein's book is essentially "popular climate change", this paper is just academic arm-waving.
Those two look like a good choice.
This will be extremely interesting!
any updates to this audit?
Thanks Bryan! Look forward to it. IMHO, don't forget land use issues re: solar and wind
https://www.mattball.org/2023/01/land-vs-renewable-fantasies.html