In 2011 I bought Robert Bryce, Power Hungry. I didn't finish it. A couple nights ago I noticed news about a power shortage in America's sunniest state. So I watched... what I'll call "Gibbs Moore", in the spirit of Blood And Gore. I figured Sunday a good day to see how Bryce has held up.
Bryce's book is a series of rants capped by a sustained argument on behalf of energy-density, which (in inverse) is also called alpha. Bryce hates biomass fuel, and believes that wind is a boondoggle. We are all agreed that coal is a menace [UPDATE 10/26/21: maybe less so in future]. The Third World should be using more natural gas and oil. Ultimately we as humans all should be looking to nuclear fission. Paving the way here, as of 2010 in Bryce's eyes, were Iran and France, who have that gas-to-nuclear (technical) pipeline.
After spending the last year looking at, exactly, solar and wind and nuclear as pertinent to our sister planet, Venus: I have some thoughts.
Wind is, indeed, a boondoggle, on Earth. It always will be, on Earth. And "biomass" means burning forests which, as Gibbs Moore point out, is the antithesis of Green. Biomass is Green-consumptive energy. (BTW to Hell with Van Jones, who started out a 9/11 troofer and hasn't got any better since.) And Bryce holds up on greenhouse gas emissions.
Solar, likewise, cannot work at Earth surface altitudes - here is where Gibbs Moore steps in. The reason for that: solar works in a cloudless sky. That's probably desert, and deserts get sandy. The wind blows the sand right over your panel. Deserts also feature temperature extremes which - given rigid silicon - crack those panels, besides. Bryce was too optimistic about solar in 2010; he approved exactly the CA boondoggle which Gibbs Moore mocks, and which is now failing to help CA today.
Bryce also fell down on batteries - here, too cynical. Bryce was (and still is) in his rights to scoff at the electric-car promises of the past. But these are the days we have batteries pushing aeroplanes in flight. Bryce was in his rights to complain about battery material cost: lithium, here. But we might not even need lithium in the near future (Venus might but Earth won't). We might be on sodium or aluminium.
As Bryce looks approvingly at fission power, he casts a glance at the "thorium" reactor. He doesn't glance very hard at it. This, in truth, is a Uranium 233 reactor. U-233 can still be used to set us up the bomb. But that perhaps is a nitpick. UPDATE 7/26/21: Here's China's way out of having to breed and ship Uranium: the molten salt process.
A decade later I can still recommend Bryce's book, in parts. Likewise I recommend Planet of the Humans, in parts. I suggest: watch the movie first. Then read Parts I, III, and IV of Bryce, skipping most of II. To paraphrase the caliph 'Umar (ra): what in Part II agrees with PotH is redundant; what in Part II disagrees with PotH (and with me) is wrong. Electric capacity beyond petrol is coming.
In the meantime, if some "Green!" outfit is recommending biomass (or wind, or even solar) in any shape, reject it. If it is recommending fuel efficiency or (especially) nuclear, accept it. Coal or oil or natural-gas... just make sure they're limiting what true pollutants they are putting out there.
COMMENT 8/18: Coal drop. Started at about the same time Bryce published that book.
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