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No, the same could not have been said. Solar and wind have been working for ages in many ways and forms. Tidal has been a pipe dream since the beginning of the previous century. It won't work. Windmills are in use the world over, the power of the sun is what causes the wind in the first place and besides has been used directly using lenses since forever.

Getting usable power out of tidal energy is stupendously hard and won't scale.

And yes, we're on HN. And yes, having built a windmill (not a toy, one that can power a house) and having worked with innovative solar plants (specifically: concentrators) and finally, having consulted on tidal energy projects I actually think I know what I'm talking about. Tidal energy = uBeam = Theranos.




Solar and wind were widely said to be too expensive (and too limited in other ways) to compete, and I'm pretty sure that was in the last 20 years.

Fusion hasn't worked out either; I'm not expecting much; I'm glad the research continues. Is fusion also a boondoggle and pipe dream?


The propaganda from the nuclear lobby was never to be believed. Solar has been in widespread use for more than 30 years, wind for millennia.

Fusion will work long before we will have tidal energy plants worth writing about.


> Solar has been in widespread use for more than 30 years, wind for millennia.

C'mon, you know that's not what I mean. Heck, solar has been in use for millennia too: Matzoh is in the Bible! Thanks to photosynthesis and our atmosphere, solar has provided almost all energy on earth for billions of years!

And hyperbole isn't an argument, it's the lack of arguments.


You make factually incorrect claims about solar and wind and next lecture me on 'lack of arguments'?

Solarpower in one form or another has been used for many decades, optimizations and cost reduction are what has given us economical solar panels, the tech has been there for much, much longer than 20 years. That's just the time that you have been paying attention to it.

Windpower has been in widespread use where I live for 5 years, and the Greeks has usable windmills much longer ago than that.

Which is nothing at all like your bullshit arguments.




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