The Myth of Clean Energy
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Friday, June 19, 2026 17:34
VIEWED: 1049
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SECOND, that's a stupid argument. You don't need to buy land to put solar panels on roofs or build solar canopies over parking lots.
Solar panels do double duty: They shade the underlying roof/ parking space, and provide electricity. 
Why would the owner of a parking lot or commercial building NOT want the extra income?
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
My whole point is, unless you want to give up control to the government how much electricity we get to use per month and severly curb our usage by force, wind and solar aren't going to help anybody with anything. There are too many people and our energy needs are far too high.
Conservation helps. Why not phase out all those gas- guzzling SUVs and pickups that people buy only for show?
Planning for cool(er) cities helps.
Cutting down on our incessant war- making helps.
Banning private jets and restricting air travel, finding ways to reduce truck transport but reviving the much more efficient rail system...
All kinds of ways to conserve.
The wealthiest, who consume the most, should conserve the most
I agree with all of that.
Not much I can do. I live off of around $7,500 per year and make very little garbage. And I didn't have any kids which means that my carbon footprint doesn't automatically grow exponentially by proxy. I drive around 20 year old cars, keeping them from ending up on the junk pile long past most other people ever would.
There are a lot of things that we could do, but nobody wants to live the way that I do and the only way that they would is if the government forces them to. And even if that ends up happening, you know that the rich and powerful won't abide any of those rules themselves and we will all be living in a serfdom. Just look at people like Gavin Newsom going to outdoor parties at restaruants with nobody masked up while he had your entire state on lockdown. These people have no desire to live like us pheasants do.
Quote:Quote:We don't have coal burning power plants in CA, SIX. But I get your point. Shifting energy requirements from gasoline- burning cars to natural gas- burning cars (via power grid) doesn't reduce our total energy consumption much, and transitioning to 100% "clean energy" is impractical.
Your state is trying to force electric cars by 2030. You already have a power grid that goes down quite often in the summer when everyone is using A/C. How many billions of solar panels and millions of windmills do you need to put up if everyone in California is driving coal burning cars?
Right. I understand and appreciate that YOU understand this, but all the young dumb kids and stupid adults like Second and Ted think that energy that comes out of their plug outlets is Hogwarts magic and 100% clean energy just because they don't see the power plants generating that power from their backyard.
It's no different than when they buy a new iPhone every 2 years or a new car every 4 years.
Quote:Quote:Not that expensive, but unreliable.
They're expensive, they're inefficient, and we still haven't come close to developing battery storage solutions to make them work in the first place.
I could never afford any of it. Most people I know could never afford any of it.
Unreliable on top of it, sure... and we don't have any affordable and cost effective means of storing that power, so you might as well just be using it up as fast as it's coming in because when night falls it's not going to be there for you and you're back to burning natural gas and coal overnight.
Quote:Quote:An unbiased life cycle CO2 analysis would help.
The environmental impact from digging out all the shit we need to do any of this, on top of the CO2 emissions caused from creating things like the wind blades and the fact that we burn, bury or throw them right into the ocean when they're done because not a single ounce of those blades are recyclable makes things even worse.
But don't forget, there are enviromental fracking costs and digging out uranium and concentrating it takes a lot of energy too, and has other environmental costs as well.
Right.
Quote:Quote:
nIt's all a fucking con that got a ton of taxpayer dollars funding companies thNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, that's a stupid argument. You don't need to buy land to put solar panels on roofs or build solar canopies over parking lots.
Solar panels do double duty: They shade the underlying roof/ parking space, and provide electricity.
Why would the owner of a parking lot or commercial building NOT want the extra income?
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
That looks like a great idea...
Until you have some bad weather and get slammed with that golf ball sized hail.
Sure... you've got insurance to cover it and rip it all down and rebuild it for you, but now you've just
increased everyone else's homeowners insurance just a little bit more next year.
I stopped paying for homeowners insurance years ago. When I first moved here it was only $400 per
year. Last time I called for a quote (before Joe Biden* took office), it was up to $1,200 per
year. My old man says that his has jumped $400 per yer two years in a row now and he's paying
almost $2,000 for homeowners insurance.
I laughed and told him "that free brand new roof you got a couple of years ago because of
the ambulance chasers out there doesn't feel so free anymore now, does it?"
And $2,000 per year probably sounds like a real bargain to you, I'm sure. I've heard that it's
gotten so expensive in California that people are losing their houses not because they can't
afford the mortgage, but they either can't afford the insurance, or even worse nobody even wants
to insure them anymore. What happens to California residents when all the insurance companies
pack up and decide that it is no longer in their best interests to even offer homeowners
insurance to the people in California at any price?
That's a serious question that's going to need answering. The Bank isn't going to take on all
that risk. You're not going to be able to buy or sell a house in California unless you're
dealing with cash only transactions if there is no homeowners insurance offered in the state
(or insurance that anyone except the ultra-wealthy who could buy those homes with cash can
afford). And what about the people who already live there and lose their homeowners insurance
because the provider cuts them off and there is no other company out there to insure
them? Can the banks just take everyone's house who hasn't paid them off yet if they're
no longer insured??? Who knows? Read the fine print. I'm sure it's in there somewhere.
Or just wait for a while... We'll probably find out soon.
All solar panels are is more expensive parts that are just waiting to break.
They're just more eWaste biding its time until it ends up in a landfill.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Fortunately we don't have hail.
Just earthquakes.
One of the things about the panels that we bought: they're physically sturdy and wired in parallel, so if a crack develops or if a leaf lands on it, we don't lose the whole panel.
Should be a requirement for ALL panels.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:Sure, Walmart has solar panels, but those are not built on million-dollar-per-acre land. But there are 2 billion acres of cheap land where solar panels would improve the looks. To power the entire USA with solar energy, estimates range from approximately 10 million to 22 million acres, depending on factors like panel efficiency and the land's characteristics. The Interstate Highway System required the acquisition of approximately 1.5 million acres of land, so that is a fine place to cover with solar panels.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, that's a stupid argument. You don't need to buy land to put solar panels on roofs or build solar canopies over parking lots.
Solar panels do double duty: They shade the underlying roof/ parking space, and provide electricity.
Why would the owner of a parking lot or commercial building NOT want the extra income?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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maybe Nuclear doesnt really work for a while
I see a dark age coming but also
someone will start to figure stuff out, maybe not Cold-Fusion or new 3-D Printing Recycling Nano tech stuff and Biotech or Solar or SpacePower but there will be a break through somewhere.
What nation survives a global collapse? Who can hold off the end for a while....those with science an army and those with resources, those with some free science ideas and united maybe the USA, China, maybe Austria, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, a few can hold out...but the rest of the world can go into a chaos rioting horde and eat itself fighting over the last few resources. Its difficult to predict Brazil looked ok and Sweden seemed like it knew what it was doing until it went socialism and opened its borders to islamics, maybe power shifts to some East Europe parts instead of Nordics but East Europe worries about the Ruskie....some nations will hold out maybe even move forward.
...but the rest of the World, its going to eat itself
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Quote:But I'm not talking about powering the ENTIRE USA with solar panels. That's ridiculous. You could power a significant percentage of many southern cities with solar DURING THE DAYTIME.
Originally posted by second:Quote:Sure, Walmart has solar panels, but those are not built on million-dollar-per-acre land. But there are 2 billion acres of cheap land where solar panels would improve the looks. To power the entire USA with solar energy, estimates range from approximately 10 million to 22 million acres, depending on factors like panel efficiency and the land's characteristics. The Interstate Highway System required the acquisition of approximately 1.5 million acres of land, so that is a fine place to cover with solar panels.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, that's a stupid argument. You don't need to buy land to put solar panels on roofs or build solar canopies over parking lots.
Solar panels do double duty: They shade the underlying roof/ parking space, and provide electricity.
Why would the owner of a parking lot or commercial building NOT want the extra income?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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WHO IS GOING TO PAY TO PUT THEM THERE?
WHO IS GOING TO PAY TO DO THE MAINTENANCE?
They can't even fix the fucking expressway without ripping it up every other year to keep Democrat voting union employees working.
Nuh-uh.
You want that shit, YOU FUCKING PAY FOR IT, rich guy. Maybe call up Bill Gates and ask him why he's not spending his money putting solar panels up everywhere if its' so fucking important for the cause.
We're fucking done with you, Second. Shut the fuck up and spend a few days to yourself without any news and see for yourself if it's even possible for you to come up with one single good idea to dig the Democratic Party out of the grave that it's lying in.
Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:What argument would have convinced the Confederates not to rebel? Eventually, General Sherman and Grant devised a workable method to persuade the Confederates, but until then, Lincoln thrashed around ineffectively with a cautious, non-provocative stance: In his first inaugural address, he pleaded with the South, stating, "We must not be enemies" and holding that secession was illegal. Most everything Trumptards do is either illegal, stupid, or immoral, but they aren't gonna stop willingly, and there is not enough money to bribe Trumptards to behave decently. What does that leave, other than the General Sherman/Grant method of persuasion?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
We're fucking done with you, Second. Shut the fuck up and spend a few days to yourself without any news and see for yourself if it's even possible for you to come up with one single good idea to dig the Democratic Party out of the grave that it's lying in.
Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Is there some reason why I should care that you approve of ideas embraced by the Democratic Party? You seem opposed to sensible ideas in other countries. One in particular: Russia deserves defeat.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But I'm not talking about powering the ENTIRE USA with solar panels. That's ridiculous. You could power a significant percentage of many southern cities with solar DURING THE DAYTIME.
The Crazy Comes for Clean Energy
Nothing is safe from the madness of King Donald
By Paul Krugman | Aug 27, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-crazy-comes-for-clean-energy
In a way the most remarkable thing about the number of people insisting that large-scale reliance on renewables is impossible is that such reliance is already happening in many places around the world, including large parts of the United States. Britain gets 30 percent of its electricity from wind and another 5 percent from solar; Denmark gets 70 percent from renewables, mostly wind. Here in America, Iowa gets 65 percent of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind; California, whose economy is larger than that of most countries, gets 38 percent, mainly from solar.
The renewables revolution is, in short, well under way, and it’s one of the great technological success stories of modern times.
And the Trump administration is trying to kill it.
We knew, coming into the second Trump administration, that Republicans in general and Trump in particular like fossil fuels and dislike renewables. Some of this is about money: In the last election cycle the oil and gas industry gave 88 percent of its contributions to Republicans. And as I wrote last month, energy policy has been caught up in the culture wars. Solar and wind power have, in the MAGA mind, become identified with wokeness, while burning fossil fuels is considered masculine. Hence the hostility to green energy.
We also know that Trump has a special animus against wind power, dating back to Scotland’s refusal to cancel a wind project he thought ruined the view from his golf course.
While it was predictable, however, that Trump and his party would try to eliminate Biden-era subsidies for renewable energy, and even throw up obstacles to new green energy projects, even I didn’t think Trump would try to destroy already existing renewable generation capacity. Yet here we are:
Trump: "Windmills — we're just not gonna allow them. They are ruining are country."
If you think Trump is posturing, look at what just happened to Revolution Wind, a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island. Revolution Wind is a largely completed project, already connected to the grid, which was scheduled to start delivering power next year. But the Trump administration has just ordered work on the project to stop.
https://prospect.org/environment/2025-08-26-donald-trumps-madcap-crusa
de-against-wind/
Think about it. We’re talking about gratuitously trashing billions of dollars’ worth of investment. We’re also talking about significantly reducing the supply of electricity — not in the long run, but next year — at a moment when electricity prices are soaring thanks to the demand from data centers. And there’s every reason to believe that Revolution Wind is only the beginning of a real attempt to roll back wind and, possibly to a lesser extent, solar, even though both are now crucial parts of America’s energy system.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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