The X Emperor Plugs The Myth Of 'Sustainable' Solar Energy Dominance

He’s using the posts of Jesse Pelton, a factually compromised and scientifically challenged solar energy propagandist, in order to do so:

Which is not a good look for the Rocket Man in my opinion. Here’s why:

Yes, of course a huge, bloody great ball of fusion-powered flaming gas, 333,000 times the mass of the earth and 110 times its diameter, virtually on our doorstep in astronomical terms (93 million miles away) is the overwhelmingly dominant source of energy flux on our planet! How could it not be? We generate a tiny amount (from various sources) by comparison ourselves and there’s some stored energy in earth’s molten core - which makes its way to the surface in the form of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and plate tectonic movements etc. But our star, the Sun, is basically the engine which drives all life and movement on the planet. I would have thought that was obvious. Peltan employs this indisputable and self-explanatory fact to dishonestly plug solar panels though, and Elon Musk is obligingly amplifying that message on his X platform.

What Peltan conveniently does not tell you about Solar energy availability:

1. In terms of energy density (MWh per sq km) solar is orders of magnitude less than nuclear or fossil fuels, meaning that in order to harvest it, you have to build thousands and thousands of acres of solar panels on farmland or treeless wild spaces - not very environmentally friendly.

2. It’s not available at night (duh, didn’t see that one coming).

3. It varies by season in high latitudes (during winter, north of 50 degrees, it’s virtually useless, i.e. not available).

4. It varies according to the weather (check out the voltage from your solar panels when the sky is leaden grey and it’s raining, or worse, see how much electricity is coming from your solar panels when they are covered in snow).

What Peltan does not tell you about fossil fuels:

Coal, oil and gas are hydrocarbons, which are the fossilised remnants of decayed organic matter. Oil and gas mostly derive from marine phytoplankton, coal derives from long dead prehistoric plants. The one thing they have in common is solar energy - plankton and plants convert solar energy into living biomass via photosynthesis. So fossil fuels are basically highly condensed prehistoric solar energy packaged into a neat, convenient, usable and readily available form beneath our feet! Which in my opinion you have to be certifiably insane (or possibly exceptionally malign) not to use on the basis of the pseudoscientific, unverified and unverifiable claim that they will wreck the weather and cause the ice-caps to melt! But if you want to be a zero carbon purist, then go for nuclear fission (even more energy dense than fossil fuels) before humanity finally cracks the holy grail of fusion. If you want to be an idiot, or you want to wreck the environment, the economy and civilisation as we know it, then go for solar panels and windmills.

So what Peltan is saying is that our ‘sustainable future’ consists of exploiting transiently available, low energy dense sunlight via land-hungry and environmentally unfriendly Chinese-made solar panels (complete with complimentary kill switches). This, according to Peltan, is ‘restoring the biosphere and creating a Type 1 civilisation’.

I’m calling bullshit on that one. The X Emperor should stick to building super-heavy rockets and grabbing boosters, not giving a platform to solar energy spivs (and Communist China apologists) like Peltan.