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No, they are telling the truth. Solar panels do not need to poop.
You don’t need to drive electrons around constantly - just drive the panels there once and you have power there for 20 years.
it probably wouldn’t ever need to be done.
As the parent commenter said, the energy itself wouldn’t need to be delivered. You just deliver the panels once.
separating the component elements is functionally impossible
No, it’s actually easy to pull apart the different components of a panel and can be done by hand. The main expense is the labour.
The labor cost is the problem - it costs $10 to $20 (AU) to recycle a panel, but the value of the parts vary based on the cost of copper, silver and aluminium and so capitalism struggles to make a consistent profit on it. Hopefully as the oil crisis worsens, transport costs will probably go up and the profitablity of recycling should increase.
For comparison, in Australia, gas and induction are at price parity (a budget 4-hotplate setup costs about $200-300 either way). You can buy a single-plate induction cooker for $50 that plugs into the wall and has a temperature configurable from 60-200 C.
Edit: Stopped markdown converting Centigrate to Copyright symbol
PS: Also, electricity is cheaper than gas in Australia, because we have so much rooftop solar, electricity is soon going to be free during the midday peak.
Induction is better for both the global and indoor environment. In some countries landlords aren’t allowed to install gas appliances anymore because of the long term effects on the tenants’ lungs.
Also some newer ones have temp sensors so you can keep a thing at the exact temp you need.
I swear by induction cooking (for both soapmaking and food) for this reason - precise temperature control, even low temperatures that aren’t even possible to get on a gas stove.
- Setting the heater to exactly 40C means you can melt chocolate reliably, without the hassle of a bain marie
- At 60C you can combine cetostearyl alcohol and vegetable oil for moisturizer without boiling off your glycerine
- At 80C you can cook soap to trace without overcooking it and making it lumpy
- At 100C you can evaporate moisture and reduce a sauce with minimal effect on other ingredients
- At 100-160C you can cook a sugar syrup to a precisely desired level of concentration (as the boiling point goes up as the concentration increases) for making different types of candy
Aluminium for instance doesn’t work.
A lot of cheap pans I’ve seen at (AU) Kmart, Big W, Ikea etc are aluminum with a teflon-esque coating, but with a carbon-steel circle attached to the bottom that makes it induction compatible.
Would a cast iron skillet work on one of those?
Definitely, you just need pans with a ferromagnetic bottom, so cast iron works very well.
The outer material doesn’t matter - only the base. Many cheap induction-compatible pans are made mostly of aluminum with a non-stick coating, but containing a layer of ferromagnetic material in the base that will heat up on an induction stove.
If you’re not from Australia - there is a lot of opposition from farming and rural communities in general to renewable energy infrastructure. We’ve had lots of issues with rural groups organising misinformation-fuelled intimidation of people building renewables. There is a need to counter that with more information about how climate change is going to be a lot worse for farming and the rural landscape.
Some background in this article from our ABC: Dangerous anti-renewables rhetoric, bullying and intimidation creates growing chasm in rural communities
There is more background to the comparison in Australia. There is a lot of opposition from farming and rural communities in general to renewable energy infrastructure. We’ve had lots of issues with rural groups organising misinformation-fuelled intimidation of people building renewables.
Another article from our ABC: Dangerous anti-renewables rhetoric, bullying and intimidation creates growing chasm in rural communities:
Hostility towards farmers hosting renewable energy projects is increasing, fracturing rural communities.
A Senate inquiry received submissions detailing threats of intimidation and violence amid worsening rhetoric.
“Worlds largest coal port” should be specific enough, surely.
It’s not the direct effect of delaying a few ships for a day, it’s the media coverage. Rising Tide has become a well known protest in Australia and it gets international news every year.
Also - possibly most important - it helps get on board the people who complain about climate protests disrupting “ordinary people” instead of the fossil fuel corporations directly. It’s much better PR to be seen to inconvenience the conglomerates.
In the 2025 summer, Climate change-driven summer heat caused 16,500 additional deaths across Europe, study estimates
The rapid analysis found that climate change was responsible for around 68% of the 24,400 estimated heat-related deaths this summer. Warmer conditions, amplified by human-driven climate change, increased daily temperatures by an average of 2.2°C, with peaks of up to 3.6°C.
The report highlights how even small increases in temperature can result in thousands of avoidable deaths – with older adults particularly vulnerable. People aged 65 and over made up 85% of the estimated deaths.
The formal report: Summer heat deaths in 854 European cities more than tripled due to climate change
AFAIK (I’m not a botanist) it’s true of many larger trees that they use more oxygen than they produce and emit more CO2 than they consume. It’s the biosphere that the large trees support that does a lot of the carbon sinking - mosses, ferns, vines, etc.
As a rule of thumb, the greater the ratio of woody mass to leafy mass the more the ratio tilts away from being a carbon sink, as the whole lifeform has to undergo aerobic respiration but only the leaves participate in photosynthesis.
The word “farmers” is widely used to refer to Kulaks (people who own farm land, but employ others to do most of the hands-on work of farming it) as well as the farm workers themselves.
Also, recycling steel/aluminium/glass are easier to switch to electric furnaces than production from raw materials, so as production shifts towards reuse it will provide a double benefit.