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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
A lot of information covering a wide swathe about climate change and energy.
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I'm not going to spend a lot of time discussing this video point by point other than to say to viewers, please be cautious and aware of some of the common misconceptions about solar and wind energy that are being repeated.
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Germany, California, South Australia, ect have seen the price of electricty on their bills go up over the last ten years to become the most expensive in their respective regions.
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Many of the same common ways of distorting the discussion of rebuildables are at play here. Such as stating that a region intends to get xx% of their "energy" from wind and solar, when they should say xx% of "electricity". Which is only 20% of energy in Germany.
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Lack of context of scale is another common issue. Raving about the largest solar farm East of the Mississippi being in Michigan: It is 60 MW name plate.
Which brings up another actively abused concept that is intentionally used in the press to mislead. Capacity factor is never mentioned. The farm in Michigan will average about 16% of it's nameplate with many days and possibly weeks near zero in the winter. It takes 100 of these farms to average the same energy as 1 nuclear plant. And solar farms output 0 for 14 hours a day.
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Rebuildables, that are mined, manufactured, and installed with fossil fuels, are fossil fuel extenders. Not replacements. Pollyanna views of future energy production serve to distract us from the social changes that must be addressed.
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I couldn't find a chart of primary energy production by source for California but Germany's is well documented. I saw one the newest ones from 2017 which was essentially the same mix but here is 2015 showing that they still get twice as much energy from burning wood as from wind and solar put together:
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