In less than 20 years, almost all of the solar cells now in operation will be more electronic waste being dumped on the third world to be "recycled" by poor people about whom we couldn't care less.
In any case, solar produce trivial amounts of energy, as do wind turbines.
The data, prepared by the International Energy Agency is here, and anyone who cares about the planet could read it as opposed to offering fantasies that have no bearing on reality:
IEA 2017 World Energy Outlook, Table 2.2 page 79
Converting these figures to exajoules (from MTOE) one can learn that on this planet, humanity was consuming, as of 2016, 576 exajoules of energy.
After 50 years - half a century - of mindless cheering for so called "renewable energy," so called "renewable energy" in the form of solar and wind combined doesn't produce even 10 of them, 9.42 to be exact as of 2016 combined.
We spent two trillion dollars on this future landfill in the last 10 years alone, with the result that the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste in this planet has risen, as of yesterday morning to 411.14 ppm, having risen from less than 387 ppm ten years ago.
Because of the ridiculous fantasy in favor of so called "renewable energy" the fastest growing source of energy on this planet is coal.
Right now 7 million people die each year from air pollution:
A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60: For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.)
That works out to 19,000 people per day.
19,000 human beings, every damned day!
And yet you are here to tell me about "accidents" and "thefts" and "horrifying misuse!"
Really?
When has the nuclear power industry killed 19,000 people per day?
Nuclear energy saves lives: Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)
All the Trumpian scale misrepresentations and distortions to the contrary are meaningless. The claim is that nuclear energy, and only nuclear energy need be risk free or everything else can kill at a vast scale.
The bourgeois people hyping this future electronic waste - solar cells - in this country and in other parts of the Western world, couldn't give a rat's ass that 10% of the rice crop in regions of China is contaminated with cadmium in part in order to make "green" cadmium telluride and cadmium selenide solar cells.
Assessment of dietary cadmium exposure: A cross-sectional study in rural areas of south China (Zhou et al Food Control Volume 62, April 2016, Pages 284-290)
If one wants to talk about "misuse" of materials it would help to know some science.
As far as I'm concerned, the reason that future generations will have a severely degraded environment, including broadly distributed toxic elements from "distributed energy," few resources with which to clean up the mess that we left them out of grotesque indifference and contempt for them, is that we were entirely and completely unwilling to stop lying to ourselves.
I spent thirty years finding this stuff out, and I'm not going to apologize for doing so, either as a scientist or as a human being.
History will not forgive us, nor should it. We have insisted on remaining criminally ignorant.
Have a wonderful work week.
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