olofscience

And you're on the side of those small, gutsy oil companies determined to EXPOSE this evil conspiracy! And why would you care about Michel Mann's net worth? Could it be that you're:

Solar AND wind. It's telling that metalslug has mixed up lithium batteries with solar in his arbitrary goalpost setting, while neglecting to mention wind at all. Wind has been the traditional complement to solar for the past several decades. Grid-scale storage is a very recent new addition to the mix. Another is HVDC power transmission over long distances, making grid balancing even more efficient.

Engineers who design and manage energy grids don't mandate that ALL energy sources you plug into the grid has to be a self-contained, 24/7/365 generating source of energy. There are a LOT of solar power plants with no associated battery. Heck, several DZs here have a solar farm right next to them. Why set this arbitrary goalpost? There's no good engineering reason for it. Oh, I know...

Oh, I'm pretty clear on their potential role in an energy grid. But they're still different and shouldn't be confused with each other. Solar can be used without any energy storage, grid-scale batteries can be used without any solar. In fact, there are many more solar installations than there are grid-scale batteries right now. So, the topics shouldn't be confused with each other - I'm sure you have mental capacity to keep them separate in your head, right?

Yep, thanks for asking. So, anything on my points at all?

Why are you comparing batteries to reactors and gas turbines? Batteries don't generate electricity, they merely store it. The correct comparison would be to solar panels. And if you assume you spend millions in maintaining the reactors or turbines, you already have an unfair comparison. Tell you what, if you spend the SAME AMOUNT maintaining the gas turbine/reactor as the solar panels, I can tell you the gas turbine/reactor output will go to zero very quickly. (or you have another Chernobyl/Fukushima) You misunderstood billvon's post - he was talking about solar panels, not lithium. For lithium, the price surge in 2021 of lithium carbonate means that it's very economically sound to recycle batteries. With the projected global demand for lithium carbonate in the coming decades, recycling will benefit from economies of scale and the price will go down as recycling increases. Another reason why there's not a lot of recycling at the moment is that batteries are lasting quite a long time in most of their current applications and very few have needed replacement so far. And the same happens with fossil or nuclear, because there are many variables involved, not just whether they're fossil/nuclear or renewable. There's a new nuclear reactor being built near me, and it's going to lock people in my area into decades of higher electricity bills.

Brent can only handle one variable at a time, as he has proved again and again. ...and again

This is why your coffee cup recycling analogy was so bizarre. Lithium in lithium batteries don't get "used up" - a dead battery still contains 100% of the lithium a new battery has, and can be recycled pretty much indefinitely. Same with the infrastructure - they're not burned like fossil fuels. You need to brush up on the basics like the laws of conservation of mass and energy...not to mention the DIFFERENCES in maintaining a turbine that rotates at 200,000rpm at 1500C, and a solar panel with no moving parts at room temperature.

No, I'm asserting that the lifespan is more than 10 years. This is a bizarre and nonsensical analogy. Are you ok?

This is the lie, solar panels are getting a LOT more reliable. Some of the newest ones are rated for 40 to 50 years: https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2017/failures-pv-panels-degradation.html The battery lifespan is also a lie - the 10 years usually quoted is for the number of cycles for batteries to reach 80% of their rated capacity. You're talking as if they suddenly go to zero. The lithium in them is extremely valuable, this is another silly argument. If you replace your car's catalytic converter, do you dump it, platinum and all, in a landfill? Most batteries are easily recycled.

You could also predict that the sun would rise tomorrow and nobody would give a shit. Those "'predictions" you made didn't have much uncertainty to begin with, which is why nobody gives a shit. It doesn't make you clever like you think it does. And I remember, I asked you to make an actual prediction (on an uncertain subject, predict a specific number) and you just ran away "to watch the game".

You predicted 2023 to "not even reach the top five" warmest years. Instead, it smashed all records. Interesting how you're now dissing NASA's predictive capability

You're one to speak, you don't even know the difference between observations and models Now you're pretending to know better than NASA? (cue brent citing a cherry-picked, obscure, old paper with inaccurate predictions, not representative of the general scientific consensus, to "prove" his point) (edit2: also he'll use one of his denier sites to do this, since he can't understand the papers themselves)

...so is your argument that, as soon as solar power generates 3.5x breakeven energy, the sun stops shining?

Didn't you know that Brent was born a white dude in North America not because of luck, but because of his hard work and intelligence? If you stupid lefties would only listen to him, and work as hard as he has, you can ALSO be born in the best place and have the best things*! /s *refer to the other thread "The morbidly rich need to be taxed more" thread for a comprehensive list (cue airdvr chiming in that white dudes also struggle...yes, yes they do but that's a different topic...)