22 hours ago, dave2013 said:

keep repeating myself and expect that some folks will listen and perhaps *moderate* their views on solar and wind power - not change their views, but moderate them.  Alas, some folks believe what they want to believe and no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise.

Then look at the sources you linked … a ‘commentary’ as evidence and ‘energy skeptics’ as evidence?  

You originally indicated Wind Power generation is “not efficient”, so I debunked that claim with evidence and facts with references and sources.  

Since that shattered your belief, you then switch to the “cost” of wind and solar which again from opinion articles with little or no actual data to support.  So now I need to link all the historical oil spills and their costs for cleanup and environmental damage (several 100 and the list is not complete):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills

Historical data with references.  

US Oil is heavily subsidized to the tune of $7 Trillion.

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs

Plenty of qualified transparent sources you are more than welcome to review.

I get the concept of looking at Pros and Cons, but you aren’t.  You’re looking a fringe unqualified sources with zero data for anyone to evaluate or verify.  Most every energy source has Pros and Cons but you don’t evaluate that, you just look for a “con” for the energy source you “don’t like” and don’t look at the “cons” of the energy source you do “like”.  And that’s your bias, that’s not fact nor evidence.

18 hours ago, Fielder said:

Personally, I don't have the faith required to be a true believer in the relative benefits of wind and solar power.

 

 

You won't if you pay attention to websites with right-wing biased opinion pieces. 

 

10 hours ago, SayAgain said:

MIT is bias?  Ask yourself, why are you looking for “justification” instead of looking at the data or trying to understand how the data was arrived at or what the calculations involved represent?

Unfortunately, sources are not as black and white as you may think. Scientists are humans and you find a lot of bias in science. I once worked under the supervision of a guy who wrote a landmark paper on Bose-Einstein condensation. He was not well known at the time and when he submitted it, it got rejected by the journal. He then put (with permission) a famous researcher as second author and submitted the same results to the same journal, and it got accepted right away.

Now, the really good thing about science is that it has very high standards. You need to make your data and methods public, so anyone can try to reproduce your results. And there is a peer review system that makes sure that some of your competitors can have their say before a paper gets published. It is precisely that combination of transparency and competition that makes sure science works as a whole, and it works quite well. But it doesn't work perfectly. I remember a grad student who quit his project because it was funded by a company and he was not allowed to publish results that were threatening that company's bottom line. And I remember a professor who stole a project from the hard drive of one senior member of his group. I could go on, but I must stress that these cases are the exception, not the norm. 

The bottom line is: yes, scientific sources have a higher credibility than a random youtuber, but they should not be beyond contestation. In fact, if they were, it wouldn't be science anymore. I am respecting Dave's point of view, and I can even see scepticism contributing to better solutions.

Some day the environmentalist are going to get on this. 

About Watt-Logic - Watt-Logic

1 hour ago, qqwertz said:

but they should not be beyond contestation. In fact, if they were, it wouldn't be science anymore

Agree 100% and it’s exactly why scientific results go thru a long stream of humans using a specific logical methodology to validate or invalidate, it’s never just “one or a few” that define a result.

POV holds no substance if the process is not evaluated, the data cross-checked independently, and the results reviewed independently.  I’m all for “Pros” and “Cons” and every energy technology has them.  But what I don’t see from Dave is any review of the data/calculations and providing any details of why the data is wrong or the calculations are not accurate.  Instead I see Dave using “conspiracy”, “trust”, “propaganda”, “telling me what to do” … nothing of any substance to debate with. 

I’ve had a solar home for a decade + and I have used the scientific methodology on ‘cost only’ basis (I’ll ignore the environmental benefits because that is apparently a banned topic) to evaluate if I actually benefited from it in terms of saving money.  Install was 2006, cost was $26,000 (includes batteries for energy storage when panels aren’t producing).  Factor in the average cost of energy for my location at the time with regular yearly increases incurred by the power company and that was from 2006 to 2019 would have been $54,600.  We saved $28,600.  Maintenance of the solar panels required one washing in 2015 that we performed ourselves (water hose with pressure).  Zero C02 produce from the energy it supplied and zero waste product.  

I do have a hard time respecting someone’s opinion when they have zero actual experience in the topic and dismiss my “real world” results of solar panels.  The “don’t believe reality” but “believe me” approach … yeah, no!

I’ll not start in on EVs as that is apparently another forbidden topic which Dave has once again shown zero experience with and yet tells those of us using EVs (since 2014 for me) that we don’t know what we’re talking about … again “don’t believe reality” but “believe me” approach.

Not only can I backup the scientific data, I can back it up with real world data from actual experience.

I’m not going to get into the politics of commercialization and profit/money associated with it.  Science doesn’t require “Faith” and doesn’t require “Believers”, it’s ambivalent … what we do with the discoveries that can either benefit or harm is the human aspect.

Let me try and swing in a Flight Simulator analogy:

Pilot doesn’t believe in the power of the wind.

Pilot is attempting to land on RWY 27, 40kts wind is coming from 180.

Pilot wonders why his plane is drifting right.

Pilot crashes into trees.

Pilot says the sim has a bug.

Pilot doesn’t believe in wind power = crash.

Pilot does believe in wind power = land.

Edited September 8, 2025Sep 8 by SayAgain

Me:  Personally, I don't have the faith required to be a true believer in the relative benefits of wind and solar power.

Martin: You won't if you pay attention to websites with right-wing biased opinion pieces. 

Me again: Preach it, Brother Martin. Those you convert will come forward down the aisle with arms raised, praising the sun!

 

1 hour ago, Fielder said:

Preach it, Brother Martin. Those you convert will come forward down the aisle with arms raised, praising the sun!

 

I don't wish to convert anyone. I never instigate this stuff. This was supposed to be about mining the Moon. Why the mods haven't dealt with this topic that went off-topic after the third reply, I've no idea. They must be on vacation.

What I will do though is counter what is obviously WORD NOT ALLOWED! 😏

6 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

I don't wish to convert anyone. I never instigate this stuff. This was supposed to be about mining the Moon. Why the mods haven't dealt with this topic that went off-topic after the third reply, I've no idea. They must be on vacation.

What I will do though is counter what is obviously WORD NOT ALLOWED! 😏

I'm sure that seems obvious to you. 

From Tranquility to the Mare!

Never strip Luna bare!

17 minutes ago, Fielder said:

I'm sure that seems obvious to you. 

 

It does. Source after source after reliable source confirm something and I assign a high probability of it being correct. Random rightwing pro fossil fuel, anti renewable energy websites, not so probable. 

The point is that Dave, and I suspect you, will never accept such a thing because its counter to what you want to be true, your political beliefs. But the only reason I respond to such myths is so that those reading that are on the fence see both sides of the argument and won't be swayed by less than reliable claims. 

Both you and Dave, and others, regardless of the benefits of renewable energy desperately want things to remain as they are, what you are accustomed to. Change can be scary. You want to carry on digging up stuff, burning it, and pumping the fumes into the atmosphere. No change is what you desire, so you will latch on to anything negative you can and amplify it.

I get it, change scares me too. I can't even move house without being homesick for months. 

 

 

Edited September 8, 2025Sep 8 by martin-w

I try to be evidence based.

18 times Climate Change believers were wrong:

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years [by 1985 or 2000] unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

2. “We are in an environmental crisis that threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years [by 1980].”

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China, and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

Note: The prediction of famine in South America is partly true, but only in Venezuela and only because of socialism, not for environmental reasons.

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980 when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.6 years).

14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000 if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say,`I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”

Note: Global oil production last year at about 95M barrels per day (bpd) was double the global oil output of 48M bpd around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970.

15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.

16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so [by 2005], it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”

18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an Ice Age.”

Of for gods sake. Now were moving on to climate change, another banned topic.

And the majority of that less than impressive list are biologists, environmentalists, etc. Not climatologists. Youve even included a newspaper editor. 😁You've copy and pasted that from a random website. Come on now. 🙄 Do I have to Google each name and lay it out for you?

Climatologists for climate. Car mechanic for car stuff. Doctors for your bad knee. Chefs for cooking. Electricians for the wiring in your house. I'm sure you get it.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2025Sep 8 by martin-w

20 minutes ago, Fielder said:

18 times Climate Change believers were wrong: ...

I stand with Martin on this. Plus, many of your quotes are from the 1970s when the evidence for climate change was still not conclusive and the effects not completely understood. Also, I could easily find many examples when climate change deniers made outlandish claims. 

The list is also individuals that have made predictions, rather than the concensus of many.

Personally I dont take too much notice of random newspaper editors and random individuals making predictions outside of their field

Edited September 8, 2025Sep 8 by martin-w