I was just about to make precisely the same comment. The fear, uncertainty, and doubt about renewables here is ridiculous, and I expected better. I suppose everyone watched too much Landman.

China is rocketing ahead in every domain possible, from resource and financial independence, to infrastructure in terms of high-speed rail, bridges, roads, advanced fission reactors and bleeding-edge fusion research. Heavy industry like mining and processing, chemicals, ship-building.

Let's not even get into semiconductors. I fully expect them to achieve parity with TSMC before 2030 and surpass them shortly after.

Meanwhile, Western countries will say 'clean coal' or have a million different stakeholders squabble about where and how to build nuke power plants.

>It is incredible to see just how many big-oil talking points there are in this thread. From renewable energies resource costs, to their land use impact. I didn't realise just how effective their propaganda was in the tech space till reading this thread.

What makes this more valid than something like "it's incredible how many YIMBY talking points there are" in a thread about housing, aside from you agreeing with the YIMBYs? Is "talking points" just a roundabout way to summarily dismiss the opposition's arguments and imply they're dumb/misguided?

It's incredibly how common it is these days to see valid criticism dismissed as "X talking points" or "Y dog whistle". I guess that's easier than providing an argument.

It's kind of bizarre to see the far right and far left circle to the same misguided big oil conclusions, although for different reasons. The right doesn't want their traditional oil/coal industries threatened. The left is kind of... just against the continued growth of technology/industry/humanity.

Fossil fuel could be heading for a big cliff where most countries that currently import a lot of oil/gas will be year on year reducing their imports. China is ahead of the curve here and is already importing less oil year on year. That's likely going to spread. If you extrapolate growth curves trending up for EVs a few years you can draw similar curves for oil demand trending down.

We can speculate about how quick/slow all this will progress. But it's worth pointing out that e.g. IEA, EIA and similar institutes have been repeatedly wrong and overly pessimistic with their predictions for things like adoption and cost of renewables. People are still basing policy and important decisions on their reports. So this matters. The "What if they are wrong, again?" question might have some uncomfortable answers if you are betting on them not being wrong.

A lot of developing markets are skipping oil/gas/coal completely and are going straight to renewables. They are not first building a grid using coal/gas plants but working around what little they have in terms of unreliable grid by going straight for solar/batteries and microgrids. That's a pattern you see all over parts of Africa with historically very little/flaky power infrastructure and countries like Pakistan. These are growth economies showing much quicker economical growth than the world average. That's going to spread.

Lots of countries are going to be decimating their oil/gas imports over the next 20 years. That includes transport and power generation. They'll be installing wind/solar/batteries and buying lots of EVs. Fossil fuel usage won't go all the way to zero. But it won't stay at current levels or anywhere close to that. Some countries will be faster some will be slower. Being slower isn't necessarily good for economies.

Good advice here is to take an economic point of view and be aware of things like growth trends, cost curves, learning effects, technological changes, etc. You don't have to be an early adopter or believer. But there's a lot of data out there that supports an optimistic view. And a lot of pessimistic wishful thinkers that are not really looking at data or just cherry picking reports that support their believes. The fossil fuel industry sponsors a lot of reports research. And they are about as trust worthy as the Tobacco industry is when it comes to the pros/cons of smoking. That's why the IEA and EIA keeps getting it wrong. It helps to understand who pays for their reports (hint: fossil fuel companies and countries that depend on those).

A healthy personal perspective is maybe considering what happens if your pension fund bets on fossil fuel and that cliff I mentioned turns out to be very real in about 10-20 years. Because if you bet wrong, that affects the value of that. Before you knee jerk to an answer, take a close look at what institutional investors have actually been doing for a while. Hint: coal plants were written off as good investments ages ago and gas plants aren't looking much better at this point. I think you'll see them move on oil funds next.

Criticism is healthy. False equivalence isn't.

Really? I don't think I have a dog in this hunt but my judgement of comments is that it's maybe 70/30 (with the 30 being critical in one way or the other) and anyone critical is getting down voted to oblivion.

That said "you're just repeating what you're told" is a comforting argument but doesn't go all that far.

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Oh, what a weak argument: "you've just fallen for the propaganda".

You might notice comments simply arguing for less energy usage are buried at the bottom too. Have you considered whether you may have fallen for the "green" propaganda? It's so predictable after all.

Two wrongs don't make a right. We look back and curse our ancestors for their unbridled use of fossil fuels. Who is to say future generations won't look back and curse us for destroying all wilderness?