On our last road trip through Kansas. Every time we drive by the giant windmill farm I get the creeps. And I'm all for wind power. Funny, but I posted the Picasso drawing not long ago, too.

Beautifully done. Can you please source this?

www.xkcd.org

Going there tomorrow.

and corporations that own them does not keep up maintenance and update them. Then yes, they are a menace.

We need to push for corps. to update the technology and get the government to do more inspections so they have to do the upkeep on a regular bases, and no shortcuts.

When you mess around with forces like city gas systems and steam turbine power plants, somebody otta be keepin' an eye on you.

Be afraid.

Think of the children!

run!

The only way to stop using fossil fuels is to stop using fossil fuels.

When a coal power plant is replaced by natural gas/supplanted-by-wind power, for example, it simply increases the pressure to export coal. The problem is all humanity shares the same air and oceans.

If we want to stop using fossil fuels we simply have to outlaw fossil fuel use and leave them in the ground.

Once we do that wind power may or may not be a viable replacement.

I calculate it's not. Radical and expensive methods of energy storage would be required that would make this electricity too expensive for ordinary people to use for anything more than lighting and portable electronic device charging. Industries that use great amounts of electricity would no longer be viable.

Honestly, the only thing that will sustain this civilization as we know it is nuclear power, but we've probably already missed that window of opportunity. Instead we'll keep burning fossil fuels, the climate will change, and Mother Nature will smack this civilization down just as it has smacked down all the other innovative exponentially growing life forms throughout the history of life.

"Electricity too cheap to meter", I remember that one quite well.

More like electricity too expensive to consume. If the nuclear power industry didn't have a blanket waiver of liability granted by the government they could never stay in business, the cost of liability insurance alone would make it economically unfeasible.

... the very premises of their questions are stupid.

Meanwhile they're enjoying their coke orgy and gaming and not thinking about the year 2100 because they'll be dead.

Fukushima was a rather small thing compared to the tsunami itself, a "wind blade on the daycare center." A lot of non-radioactive toxins got spilled into the water too, we pay little attention to those. The greatest killers were drowning and debris, but oh well, we can't do anything about that, right?

A question that's not stupid might be, "should we continue to build and maintain cites where the oceans can take them?" Probably not, but modern civilization has a very difficult time giving anything it has claimed back to nature.

Good graphic, thank you. Think of the children. And the Dames who need upgrading and inspecting regularly.