[ranDOMscripts]

Good riddance to the Navajo plant. While it may have been providing some decent wage jobs on the reservation, it was otherwise despoiling the environment around a remarkable corner of the world.[0]

[0]https://www.pagearizona.com/

[fargle]

So great and all that, but what about the jobs? And "despoiling", I've been there, it was fine. Beautiful.

So was it really worth killing even more of our careers?

Bet the earth "as a whole" is better now that Chinese coal and hydro plants are supplying the power to build our shiny new cheap solar panels.

[adrianN]

Are you seriously saying that burning coal to build solar panels is not better than continuing to burn coal forever?

[fargle]

I'm seriously saying that burning coal isn't that much worse and not that much difference. People who think that solar is better are just fooling themselves. There is no free lunch and those solar panels are going to wear out, so it's not "forever" at all. And big ugly solar farms in the desert are just a different kind of "blight".

It takes conservatively 4 years for a panel to generate as much energy as it took to manufacture. It takes even more for that container ship to move them here. They're supposed to last 20 years, but really can be as poor as 15 and they loose efficiency each year. So 1/3 to 1/2 of their lifetime is just plain wasted already which means the stated efficiency and economics are grossly overestimated.

So yeah, I wouldn't build more coal plants either. Natural gas is like 1/3 the price of either solar or coal. But to applaud destroying existing infrastructure? And to shore that up with propaganda like "blight the landscape". That is naive and won't do anything to fix the basic problem.

If we choose to be wasteful materialistic energy hogs, then we have to pay for it. So give up your house AC and your car and everything else that uses so much electricity first - then play that moral high road card. The problem isn't the supply source or even the choice of raw material. It's wanton greed and wastefulness of the consumers.

[a3n]

Compilers are eventually self-compiling. Computers are used to design more powerful computers. Solar panels will eventually be made with panel-generated electricity.

[fargle]

Good argument, but counter:

No they won't because china doesn't give a crap about the environment. If coal or hydro or whatever is cheaper they will use it first.

[adrianN]

China builds a lot of renewables and nuclear. More than most other nations.

[fargle]

Still doesn't make 'em cheaper.