You don't say?

How the f**k can you be this f**king stupid? Like, it's beyond me how you can show that little intelligence in one meme.

Solar panels have a lifespan, and what cannot be recycled leaches lead into the ground and groundwater. Lead is toxic to all forms of life, by the way.

Solar panels need changing every 5 years.

Car batteries lose range in 5 yrs, no good in 8-10 yrs. Wind generators wear out also - bearings or bushings lock up, copper brushes wear down, etc.

Just think about the pollution and impact on the environment by mining lithium and producing batteries.

The change to renewables should be a personal decision not a political one. Every one will purchase what ever little renewables they can afford

Yep

A d our dependence on Asian rare earth metals

Amazing how blind Environmentalists can be to things that contradict their politics...

Unlike with climate change, the left is OK with saying new solutions to solve the problems will be developed.

Upvote.
The only green that environmentalists and eco-companies cared most is money, not earth

I suppose the disposal of every member of Congress would be considered a "green job"... they'd make decent mulch.

Source?

https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/

"“If we don’t mandate recycling, many of the modules will go to landfill,” said Arizona State University solar researcher Meng Tao"

"In another recent review paper, a team led by National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientists calls for the development of new recycling processes in which all metals and minerals are recovered at high purity, with the goal of making recycling as economically viable and as environmentally beneficial as possible. As lead study author Garvin Heath explains, such processes might include using heat or chemical treatments to separate the glass from the silicon cells, followed by the application of other chemical or electrical techniques to separate and purify the silicon and various trace metals."

"For the solar recycling industry to grow sustainably, it will ultimately need supportive policies and regulations. The EU model of having producers finance the take-back and recycling of solar panels might be a good one for the U.S. to emulate. But before that’s going to happen, US lawmakers need to recognize that the problem exists and is only getting bigger, which is why Vanderhoof spends a great deal of time educating them."

Hahahahah, you're absurdly naive.

The process of recycling a solar panel takes more energy than it does to produce a new one. Nobody is willing to spend that kind of energy. Additionally, if they use the cheapest energy to do it, they're burning fossil fuels - otherwise it costs many times more energy to recycle solar panels.

"But but but, it can't cost that much energy" is your next snivel - and yes it can, because the bulk of a solar panel is glass and silicon (which are the cheapest materials to replace), and can only be recycled by melting them....which takes a lot of energy. The toxic materials represent less than 1% of the total volume of a panel, so recycling doesn't gain the manufacturers much. Again, it costs less to buy more lead and other metals than it does to recycle the whole panel only to recover the 1% of material that has any value.

https://youtu.be/EhAemz1v7dQ

There's an alternate solution to work with Solar and Wind: Nuclear.

Unless you're not arguing for Coal and Oil, I will not accept your bullshit.

I'm all for nuclear, but the tree-huggers aren't. Coal plants are very clean thanks to new filtration technologies - and the vegetation that grows around them is unbelievable. Oil is reliable, and modern technologies make it very environmentally friendly.

Heck, I have solar on my house. I have a backup generator also. When I have time to engineer a wind turbine that I can construct myself, I'll put one of those up on my property too.

The cost of recovering that stuff will make power affordable only for the rich.

Guess it's more complex than that or it wouldn't be an issue.

Someone saw it in the mainstream media, so it must be true...

If the prior generations of these products were made in ways that weren't green, that is ironic, but it isn't a reason to abandon the technologies unless it can be demonstrated that they are worse than the alternative, or more accurately, that they can't be fixed to be better than the alternative.

So, is it worse than the alternative?
What is the comparison between having a huge wind turbine in a landfill vs burning that much coal or oil? I know there are filters in place to catch the pollutants which make those greener now, but that filtered/captured waste also has to go somewhere.

According to the EPA, nearly 130 million tons of coal ash was generated in 2014.
Compare that to the 67,000 wind turbines in the US. Even if I assume the heavier blades are the ones used on all of them (27,000 lbs // 13.5 tons) that comes out to less than 1 million tons of blades in the US. That comparison isn't even close.

I'm not just being contrary here. I'd be interested to know what the comparison is more holistically for all of the energy sources. How often do the filters on the coal plants need to be replaced? Then there is natural gas and oil.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/04/28/how-green-is-wind-power-really-a-new-report-tallies-up-the-carbon-cost-of-renewables/

http://thescienceexplorer.com/technology/how-green-are-solar-and-wind-power-really
"a wind turbine designed to produce electricity for at least 20 years will pay back its production and installation energy costs in as little as five to eight months — after which it keeps generating clean energy for the duration of its life."