alt.energy.renewable

@ wrote:
> Renewable does not mean green (says Inderscience's International
> Journal of Nuclear Governance). That is the claim of Jesse Ausubel of
> the Rockefeller University in New York.
>
> /news/
>
> Writing in Inderscience's International Journal of Nuclear Governance,
> Economy and Ecology, Ausubel explains that building enough wind farms,
> damming enough rivers, and growing enough biomass to meet global
> energy demands will wreck the environment.

I notice he says nothing about coal, probably because it would destroy
his argument -- when you factor in mining, coal uses as much or more
land per MWe than wind or solar. If 50% of our electricity can come from
coal without "wreck[ing] the environment" (his use of "will" implies he
believes it isn't already wrecked by coal), then why can't it come from
wind or PV instead? He also neglects that the land used for wind farms
is not destroyed, and there's no reason that the land cannot be used for
a wind farm and something else (agriculture is common) simultaneously.
With that taken into account, the amount of land actually dedicated to
wind per MWe can be less than for nuclear.

In the end, it's just a FUD piece that attempts to promote nuclear power
by attacking alternatives instead of actually promoting nukes. For that
matter, it is not even a particularly strong attack....