The morning after Thorium Energy Alliance #6 (TEAC6) ended, John Kutsch engaged in a hotel-room interview. John is concerned about global warming and ocean acidification, yet does not see solar or wind as an effective means of lowering our carbon emissions.
“Incompetence often looks like conspiracy so I try to fall on the side of incompetence. But whether it is incompetence or conspiracy it is working exactly to what our adversaries want. We are deindustrializing the western world.”
The boundaries we use to measure Return On Energy Investment pertaining to solar are often quite limited… it doesn’t take long for a solar panel to replace the energy needed to create the solar panel itself, but the entire infrastructure required to make intermittent energy practical is significant.
Previous life cycle and energy payback time analyses used models (not years of data from real physical systems) that left out dozens of energy inputs, leading to overestimates of energy such as payback time of 1-2 years (Fthenakis), EROI 8.3 (Bankier), and EROI of 5.9 to 11.8 (Raugei et al).
Prieto and Hall conclude that the EROI of solar photovoltaic is only 2.45.
Debunking Helen Caldicott
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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