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Reblogged:"Renewables" Show Environmentalist Indifference

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I am pretty sure I've mentioned the following excellent point by Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute, but it bears repeating:

solar_wasteland.jpg
Image by Andreas Gücklhorn, via Unsplash, license.
It is only on the premise that the environmentalist movement is truly driven by a concern for human well-being that its vehement attacks on carbon-based fuels (without which human life as we know it in the developed world would be impossible), its cavalier lack of any alternative plan, and its active opposition to proposed alternatives (whether real ones like nuclear or hydro, or fantasized ones like solar), make no sense.
With our negligent media touting renewables from here to Timbuktu, one could understandably wonder about the description of solar as fantasized. A recent post at the conservative PowerLine blog provides ample evidence from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow that this description is quite accurate. For example:
Using batteries to back up sufficient power to supply U.S. electricity needs for just seven straight windless days would require more than 1 billion half-ton Tesla-style batteries. That means still more raw materials, hazardous chemicals and toxic metals.
John Hinderaker notes further that this would cost "around $6.6 trillion for 24 hours [of] storage for the U.S. That is much more than the entire budget of the U.S. government." There is similar information for wind, as well as a plethora of excuses for the environmentalists demanding we implement these technologies today to turn around and oppose them tomorrow:
[W]ind turbines don't last long -- 20 years -- those massive disposal problems are now coming to the fore. Every wind turbine contains 45 tons (90,000 pounds) of non-recyclable plastic that must be disposed of in landfills. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to decommission each wind turbine.
The blog post reads a little like it is trying to argue against an environmentalist proposal on environmentalist grounds. That would be a mistake for a variety of reasons. But the information provided is useful for the purpose of illustrating the point that Lockitch makes: Environmentalists don't give a tinker's dam about human well-being.

-- CAV

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