Have you considered that CO2 emissions in the USA is now at their 20 -year low because of all the natural gas generated by Fracking which is forcing coal plants to shut down?
Burning “fossil farts” still produces CO2. Plus supplies are limited.
Thorium cycle nuclear and renewables are the correct answer for the long term. It’s really fucking retardedly stupid not to utilize the 100W per square foot of energy that’s basically given us for free. Yeah, conversion losses, daylight hours, and cloud cover. But even 10W per sf on a 1500 sf roof isn’t trivial.[/quote]
I see that I did not get my point of making best the enemy of good across.
The problem with your post above is that you trivialized so many things that I wonder who really fvcking retardedly stupid is …
(a) You conveniently ignored that no one has made thorium cycle nuclear reactor or no one is likely to make one in coming decade. No one with any credibility has proven that it will be economical. Why didn’t you just say fusion reactor instead. And by the way after buliding nuclear plant for 60 years we still do not know how to reliably dispose off hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste that keeps on piling all over this country and the world.
(b) You forgot to mention cost of solar energy, account for energy needed to make solar panels which barely last for 20 years, the fact that efficieny of those barely approaches 15-20%, the fact that we need to spend hundreds of billions to upgrade the grid and build storage if everyone decides to put a panel on their rooftop, the fact that there are areas in most of the world where energy density is too low etc.
My point is – After 50 to 100 years we will have the “best” option of renewables and fusion reactor. But there is no realistic way that is happening before then on a large scale. However we still need to cut our CO2 emissions urgently before we reached that promised land of renewables without reverting back to stone age. Natural Gas derived from fracking ( coupled with energy efficiency improvements) can be that bridge to the promised land.
If you really care for climate change, you would embrace fracking and regulate/fix it for real issues with it – which are excessive water use, potential groundwater contamination, methane release and potential earthquake concerns. Those are real and serious issues but they can be fixed.
If you only want to feel good for being virtuous without really making any difference in the world then you will oppose fracking on the grounds that it produces fossil fuels and all we should do is renewables. In that world, we will keep burning coal and it will take 50 years for renewables to come online anyway.
