Good Lord, the sun puts out tons more energy than we ever use. Even on earth, a relatively tiny percentage of the land surface would generate all of the electric needs for the entire planet. And they're constantly working out designs that make collecting solar energy ever more efficient, even when you can't even see the sun through overcast.

I don't know that Lovelock is keeping up with engineering in the field of solar collection and energy storage. There are amazing changes coming out every year, even if they haven't made it into production yet.

You know, the islands famed for gloomy fog and rain. The Environmental Defense Fund's estimate of what the UK could get for solar is less than half its current electricity production, and I'm aware of no estimates that change the picture substantially.

Wave and wind power is just solar at a remove. From that same link, flip down to the 'marine challenge'.

But ordinarily, when people refer to solar they implicitly mean things like PV panels, water heaters and concentrated solar. If you push things too far you're in the realm of calling fossil fuels "stored solar" because ultimately all that chemical energy came from sunlight (again, "solar at a remove&quot .

Nevertheless, your expanded point, that renewables could supply much of the UK's electricity, does stand, as does Lovelock's narrower point. Another issue is that electricity is only part of the energy consumption picture - the need will be to replace present energy consumption in all forms, including liquid fuels, with renewables and reductions in consumption. It's not enough to simply change over to new sources of electricity... which is probably a big part of Lovelock's pessimistic assessment.

Today, for instance, wind has sat at about 4% of total generated electricity. There were a couple of times this month when it was down to zero. The vast majority of U.K. power comes from either Coal or Gas.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

We'll see (record flooding notwithstanding) what comes next.

Speaking of which, here's an article about wine from Scotland:

Thanks to climate change, Christopher Trotter will make history later this year by pairing a Scottish white wine with the local spoots.

The razor clams harvested from the nearby shores of the North Sea will go down nicely with the first bottles from Trotter’s vineyard north of Edinburgh. The 2014 vintage will be special for Scotland, where Highlanders have distilled whisky and brewed ale for centuries.

“Scotland has probably been more of a beer-drinking nation than anything else,” said Trotter, a chef and food writer. Wine hasn’t been part of the culture, he said, “until now.”

Trotter might as well pour a splash on the ground in memory of a vanishing world. Climate change, which scientists say is caused by heat-trapping gas accumulating in the atmosphere, is transforming dinner tables and scrambling traditions in the $270 billion global wine industry.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-26/raise-a-glass-of-scottish-wine-to-global-climate-changes.html

The numbers do jibe with what I've seen elsewhere, but that was inexcusably careless of me...

I can do just fine going about my day not knowing what this guy says. Now I know for sure he's not worth listening to.

He's right that solar is not going to cut it, alone, for the UK, unless they're running transmission lines to North Africa

Offshore wind by itself could power the UK many times over.

And just because people are passionate about our environment does not mean we/they are ignoring facts.

and his brain does not work nearly as well as it did even 15 yrs ago.

Who cares what this dumb ass has to say about anything?

human beings are no healthier than their environment.

Environmentalism has many "religious" cults. Nature won't pay attention to any of them.

...and anti-solar/wind stance became too much to stomach...What the hell is the point of trying to save the planet from catastrophic heat increases if we do it using the most dangerous and toxic method of power generation known to man?

Glad I bought it as an e-book on Amazon and didn't waste a couple of trees in the process..

Oh, and that whole 'we don't have enough sun' line....*ahem* what about Germany?

Your religion is showing.

No, this is not a pro nuclear post. I hate all the large scale stuff -- dams, fossil fuels, nuclear power, wind and solar "farms," biofuels, tidal power, automobiles, superhighways.

We ought to be tearing crap down, not building more crap. Building more crap, being "productive," having too many kids, that's how we got into this mess.

...but if we went on Lovelock's direction and built nothing but nukes and one or two went all Fukushima on us, then all the "non-carbon" energy talk would be out the window because we'd all be glowing in the dark..

Since I believe the whole house of cards that is global techno-industrial civ is at increasing risk of collapse, I think nukes are a terrible idea. And of course fossil fuel is what's killing us to begin with.

Decentralized renewable energy production has one unique quality that I haven't seen discussed much: it scales down much better than hydro, coal or nuclear. So if the population of the USA were to drop back below 100 million later in the century, with economic activity more reminiscent of 1820 than 2020, an energy infrastructure based on solar and wind would be much easier to tailor.

Which of course still leaves the transportation problem and the climate change timeline...