Proof By Cherry-Picking

I thought that Cathleen O’Grady’s Ars Technica post on the health benefits of relying increasingly on wind and solar power generation was an interesting tack:

A paper in Nature Energy this week dives into the weeds by trying to estimate the economic benefits of wind and solar power across the whole of the US. Berkeley environmental engineer Dev Millstein and his colleagues estimate that between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion. The benefits from wind work out to be more than 7¢ per kilowatt-hour, which is more than unsubsidized wind energy generally costs.

I can’t read the actual journal article but I hope that it takes a less, well, selective approach to realizing its findings than appears to be the case.

At least 90% of all solar panels are made in China and the percentage of solar panels utilizing materials produced in China approaches 100%. That means that you cannot evaluate the health implications of using solar energy without taking the health implications of their production in China into account. Further the authors need to extend their investigations to a total lifecycle study. What are the health implications of the rising mountain of faulty or end-of-life solar panels? The health implications of solar energy begin before the panels are installed and continue after they’re taken out of service.

Additionally, very few people believe that we’ll be able to convert to 100% wind and solar in the foreseeable future. What are the health implications of fractional implementation? They’re unlikely to be linear.

I’m not hostile to the possibility that wind and solar energy may be healthier. I just think that we’ll never know unless we approach the question more critically.

4 comments… add one
  • Ben Wolf Link

    Frankly, if the Chinese want to poison themselves to give us clean energy then we should let them.

  • Guarneri Link

    No globalist ye, eh Ben?

  • Ben Wolf Link

    Let’s just say I put Americans first and like having foreigners working to give us nice stuff.

  • Pollution in China doesn’t stay in China. It just becomes implacable.

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