Climate Change? Nahhh ...

None of his answers deserve a response.

 

I suppose that you could install solar cells on top of Walmart, Sams', Costco and the like that would generate enough power to supply them. How many miles of interstate median is of a size and solar exposure that solar could occupy? Multiple thousands of miles, no doubt. Would that break the need for dirty energy? No, but it would generate a significant percentage, and if you find enough of those you can make a very real difference.

Or you can do nothing and shrug, saying that any such changes wouldn't be worth fooling with.

 

We go to Blackwater Falls in West Virginia fairly often with the family, and we drive by two giant wind farms to get there. One of them spans more than 10 miles.

They’re owned by the power companies, who built the turbines and sell whatever power they generate back to the state.

That seems frighteningly uncontroversial.

 

I can imagine Jennifer Lawrence parachuting onto my lawn in short shorts and clutching my Publishers Clearinghouse check in one hand and a plate of ribs in the other and it wouldn’t be any less relevant to the discussion at hand. What are we even doing here?

 

It is uncontroversial. Who wrote it was?

 

There are wind farms all over the United States, too.

You need a lot of land…a lot of land…to build the kind of big wind farms you need to maybe supply the kind of power needed to go without fossil fuels or nuclear.

The reason nuclear is on the table isn’t because the risk is gone. The risk remains. It’s on the table despite the risks because nations (like France) already know you can’t do the clean energy thing with wind and power alone.

 

Your initial post set off quite a tizzy. Just doing my part to calm the storm.

Government land seizures for wind farms is highly, highly unlikely. Unless, of course, we re-elect Trump, the guy who loves eminent domain yet somehow wins votes by pretending to be against “big government.”

 

Y’all have never been to a wind farm if you think the government seizes the property. The landowner gets paid. And the landowner can still farm under them. I’ve killed a deer in the middle of a 200-acre wind farm with the blades spinning above me.

 

The only downside to wind farms is making sure birds don't fly into them. Other than that, why the hell wouldn't you want to harness electricity thanks to a free source of energy? Except, of course, if too many cools like it then ... well even then. But something, something contrarian take; something, something other countries; something, something ... I've stopped caring to keep this going.

 

I agree that's highly, highly unlikely. I suspect the US will turn back to nuclear power before ever seriously considering that.

The point is...to go off fossil fuels, you have to turn to nuclear energy. Unless you don't want to have enough power.

 

Do you know anything about nuclear power plants or the NRC?

Most of the plants operating in the United States are receiving extensions to continue operating. This is a big deal because they were built with a shelf life. Some have been shut down, which is a long process, But probably fewer than you think. However, the fact remains, and you always brush this to the side, there is no place to put the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. That's why there's not more of them. That's why when they build one it's kind of a big deal. To rely solely or mostly on nuclear energy you have to have a place to put the radioactive waste. Nobody wants it.

 

I’m unaware of any serious person who believes any of these alternative energy sources will wean us completely OFF of fossil fuels in our lifetimes.