Solar and wind power simply aren't practical.

[TheWraith]

I was just reading the thread on nuclear power, and I saw someone again pushing the idea of solar and wind power as the answer to future energy needs. I thought it would be a good idea to point out why this is an inaccurate assessment.

The bottom line reality is that while solar and wind may be a nice supplement, they could never produce enough energy to eliminate other forms of production. To get enough power from solar to meet our needs, we would need to pave over pretty much the entire southwest US, and all the desert contained therein. I seriously doubt that anyone here would be okay with destroying all that area. And then, you still have the classic problem that if there's no sun, then you get no power. Wind has a similar issue in that you would have to build a massive number of turbines, in the millions, to make a significant dent in national energy needs. Even then, if there's no wind over a notable portion of the grid, then you're screwed.

Which is not to mention the fact that building either of these solutions would require production on a level never before seen, massive strip mining for materials, and the destruction of vast areas of wilderness, tens or hundreds of thousands of square miles, in order to build them. Imagine destroying all the undeveloped land in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah for solar, or in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas for wind. That's more or less what would be required to build the facilities.

As I said before, solar and wind are never going to be practical replacements for current energy supplies. To believe otherwise is to buy into an idea without doing the math. The only non-greenhouse solutions that are practical for replacing existing power supplies in the near term are nuclear or fusion reactors.