The best thing we should be doing for clean energy is to push for modern nuclear energy systems. Molten salt reactors have a passive shutdown mode, making the Chernobyl, Fukushima type problems not a possibility. Use of thorium, which is much more available than uranium, would ensure nuclear power for hundreds of years. Thorium reactors could also dispose of existing nuclear waste.

Michael Shellenberger, and environmentalist, says it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZXUR...

I have read extensively on the concept of wind power and the real costs and it is a complete joke that is not the slightest bit funny. When you do the total cost estimates of everything involved from mining the materials, transporting the materials, manufacturing the materials, preparing the land provided it is government owned, Transporting the manufactured turbine and installing it plus purchasing all the lines and wires from the turbine to the power grid and all those costs the wind turbine would have to run at 250% of its total generating capacity and for well beyond its full life expectancy. In other words, there is a snowball's chance in hell you will ever get return of the initial investment back out of any of them. This of course makes not a single mention of the effects these monstrosities have on birds or any of the other environmental issues and effects associated with them. Whenever you drive past a large wind farm with many dozens of giant turbines take note of how many of them are not spinning and therefore not producing a pennies worth of electricity or return on the dollar.

True story.

I was sitting on a plane one day and got into a discussion with the gentleman next to me. At the time I was living in Montana, which has a great environment (theoretically) for wind power. The man happened to be a wind turbine technician who flew out to Montana regularly but was based in Missouri. So we got into a discussion about his job.

He gave me the numbers on a typical wind turbine. They cost about $250,000 and are predominantly manufactured in France and then shipped over to the US and trucked to their new station. With these costs in mind and the amount of power a typical turbine can generate, the payback time for a generator running 100% of the time is nearly 25 years. In reality, the wind is only sufficient to turn the turbine about 50-70% of the time (in a windy area). Oops. That pushes the payback time out significantly.

But the real problem, he said, was that they aren't engineered for the extreme temperatures involved in Montana (metallurgy, etc.). According to the very technician who worked on these turbines, the ones in Montana were only functional about 30% of the time they could have been operating. What that does is basically say that a wind turbine never pays for itself. Without government subsidies, they are a project which is DOA.

Wind turbines directly change the climate. They parasitise the convective air currents to the extent of 10's of thousands of cubic miles of surface air flow each day. This impacts the vertical mixing layers all the way up to cloud formation strata. Even the wind turbine company engineers acknowledge that the back rows of turbines in a large wind farm are negatively impacted by the reduced air flow per the forward turbines. And yet, you hear not a peep from the Union of Concerned Communists or the Friends of Global Progress. This is because Wind Turbines have been elevated to be Good and are part of The Solution. Any reference to the true economic costs or impact from Wind Turbines is not part of the liturgy and is to be dismissed without further thought.

I've actually done a little engineering in the wind industry. Not a lot, but some. I have seen a couple sites where it makes sense. In a vast majority of areas it doesn't. But, I'm an engineer..."When I see something, I see it..."

I agree with DrZarkov about Molten Salt Reactors which the liberals and Dems have no knowledge of or ignoring the subject or again they are afraid of it. They don't understand that Lithium batteries are a dead end. FWG/Working Ink in Great Britain is making good progress on Carbon/Graphene batteries. Libs and Dems don't seem to have any knowledge of that either.