[rad_gruchalski]

Sure. Because windmills and photovoltaics grow naturally from seeds. You need quite a bit of an equipment to put up one windmill. They are usually built in some distance from an existing road. So you need special service roads. Those need to be wide and take heavy load because the equipment like cranes need space and are themselves heavy. Then you need special transport because main components like propellers are oversize load. Then you need to transport them hundreds for kilometres…, and then you need the rest of the infrastructure to distribute generated electricity. Yes, let’s compare apples to apples.

[cogman10]

Yes and what's the service life for that windmill or solar panel? What's the service life of the distribution system?

And what was the cost to build out and constantly repair the refinery?

The problem you have with your talking points is that solar and wind both have decades of service in them whereas fossil fuels are single use product. Further, once the infrastructure is created large portions of it can be reused when solar and wind hit their end of life. You only need new lines and roads for new installations.

All energy collection will have some environmental impact. It just so happens that fossil fuels have an outsized impact for the energy they create.

[rad_gruchalski]

Oh yes, the refinery. Fortunately some of that oil and gasoline can be used in various stages for renewables.

[cogman10]

For sure, it's a matter of degree.

I'm not an absolutist about crude oil. It'll likely have a place in society for a long time.

With that said, it's a matter of degree and where it should be deployed.

If, for example, burning 1 gallon of gas sets up a power generation which produces the equivalent of 20 gallons of gas without emissions, that's a worthy trade off.

As it turns out, that's roughly the energy trade-off for new solar/wind installations assuming a pure fossil fuel grid.

What you are saying isn't a gotcha. The entire cycle of CO2 released for fossil fuel use is not comparable to the CO2 released installing renewables. That some is released is meaningless.