Sustaining the Wind, Part I...

[NNadir]

14. I didn't catch this comment for a while...

I'm not a big fan of the "EROI" metric in general, but to the extent it's useful, it's very clear that so called "renewables," have a problem. I have long argued that the renewable industry - in particular the solar industry - can't even power all the servers on this planet dedicated to saying how great it is.

Renewables inherently require back up. In fact, if people had to live on renewables, and renewables only - as they did in the 18th century and every century before that, they would spend a lot of time in the dark while living short and relatively - except for the wealthiest of the wealthiest of course (and even they wouldn't live too well). Let's face, the so called "renewable energy" business wouldn't last a New York second without access to dangerous natural gas, a fuel that has easily killed more people in the last 5 years than the Fukushima and Chernobyl events combined, not that anyone cares.

The real problem of the so called "renewable energy" business is its mass intensity, particularly given that so many components of it are toxic.

The second part of the series, "Sustaining the Wind...," Dr. Brook told me by email, will be posted shortly on "Brave New Climate." It's subtitled "Indium and Beyond..." and it looks at the availability of indium and other rare and "endangered elements" on which large segments of the so called "renewable energy" industry depends.