Al,
I should know better than to argue global warming to this group! But, having started ...
Agree entirely about consumption. Not using energy in the first place takes less resources and causes less damage. And I'm fine with the concept of fossil fuels being technically "renewable," though it's not on a time scale relevant to human history.
It is also true that the "machinery" of renewable energy systems takes energy to make. But there is positive payback. For photovoltaics, it takes 1-4 years for the panels to produce as much energy as it took to manufacture them:
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf After that time, the energy they produce is "free" in the sense that their energy debt has been paid for whatever carbon may have been emitted to produce them. For a typical house, the energy required to produce the materials represents about 10% of the energy that the house uses over its lifetime. So adding insulation and passive solar features to save energy are good investments. Wind turbines pay back in 3-6 months. They have an energy return on investment (EROI) of 25 on average, which means they produce 25 times more energy over their lifetimes than it took to make them:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014810900055X
OK...... I'll just reply this once, ONLY because it's obvious from your answer that you're getting your information from The Innertube VS spending hard-earned cash to TRY THIS STUFF.
(((Wilbur's chastised me enough and I have no idea where the "lines" are currently drawn
)))
As you know, my mantra is TRY THIS STUFF FOLKS!!! DON'T BELIEVE ME OR ANYBODY!!!
So, I do try stuff..... I've personally spent over $10,000.00 on solar panels and hang out with people who've through various means procured/installed and use over $3,000,000.00 (That's 3 Million dollars) in solar panels. I could fly you over my area and show you acres of panels. These people do it/have done it because they're "Wealthy Rednecks", that is, successful small business owners who are well-meaning and nice people.......trying to "do their part". Or, in the case of 3 of them they actually DO have the capability to live off the grid. Heck, my baby sister has been living off-grid on a farm in northern Idaho for going on her third winter......while raising 4 kids.....solar is REAL to them, not information from the net. Unlike most they're truly off-grid. The closest power line is miles away.
And the sorry FACT is that while solar panels may well "pay for themselves" over a number of years, THEY HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING YET!......except "pay for themselves!" And once't they're "paid for" the pittance they produce is laughable. My aunt and uncle retired off-grid in AZ and last time I saw him he was buggin' about "having to replace $12,000.00 worth of badd'ries" and "me having to take my bath on Wednesday so's Momma has water for her bath on Sat so's we k'in get to church Sunday Morning"......and he retired with "money in the bank"...
I could go on, but the simple fact is that solar is only sufficient for subsistence level survival and then only if you get it free, cast-off or from a govt program......OR, like some of my friends you simply have $250,000.00-$750,000.00 to spare...... and you dump it into solar while the subsidies are good. Don't believe me?? Spend the money.....and THEN tell me how you're reapin'....
And the stuff the sellers DON'T tell you??? #1, solar installations KILL the earth below them. Kill, by robbing the earth of it's life-giving sustenance. And when I say KILL, I mean blight the earth. If you were a history buff you'd know what the phrase "salt the earth" means....it's most often used in the same sentence as "cursing unto the 3rd and 4th generation.... And putting solar panels over the ground is akin to salting the earth. The ground is KILLED, like the bugs die. The WORMS die....
And if you put them on your house they wreck the home...
And your phrase "wind turbines pay back in XXX months" is further proof that you've never DONE it.... My brother in law on a windy hilltop in The Yoop, My friend Richard, my uncle Jim, 15 other friends and acquaintances with personal generators....I'm pouring bases for a latest gen vertical turbine for a guy up the road next week....REAL people, REAL dollars... millions of real dollars.....
Use that sense of reason, IF (insert item here) PAYS BACK over time, it becomes a market.....it becomes REAL. I know people with hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in all sorts of businesses, in many cases they don't even KNOW the businesses, but they're REAL. They "pay back"
If a thing, ANY thing, "pays back" then it becomes "business"
Windmills ain't business
All the trumped up returns in all the gin-joints in all the world can't replace the FACTS of the billions of dollars worth of stopped turbines and idling windfarms the world over.....they keep re-selling the idea'r to stupid people and making more at a criminal rate but they don't pay. Your link, your cite is a blinding example of marketing to the stupid people..... there's always one little key phrase that make everything "believable" and from this the entire edifice is built....the key phrase will be "the survey says" or "studies suggest" or "proposed returns are" and once this is in place the figures can be what ever you want them to be.
But in the end, REAL people with REAL money and REAL experience produce REAL facts
And like my buddy Jesse sez...."ya' jus' kain't ARGUE with facts!"
JUS' sayin'.....
(((and BTW, most of us here on this site know what an EROI is.....from real life......we don't need 'splained to....and that "article" (it's actually an opinion piece) is as believable as AlGore Hissownself...just sayin')))
