144
votes
Accepted
Do "solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant"?
Basically correct; however...
If by "solar panels" he means the classic photovoltaics which turn sunlight into electricity, the number is about 5 to 20 times more material depending on what ...
- 17.7k
84
votes
Accepted
Can the US be powered by a 100 miles x 100 miles solar grid?
Can the US be powered by a 100 x 100 miles solar grid?
Desertec is basically the same idea, solar plants located in North Africa supplying power to Europe. The article includes a map showing the area ...
- 19k
80
votes
Accepted
Is it true that there is not enough electricity to power all vehicles in the United States if they were electric?
tl;dr: The claim is false. The claim is that there would need to be six times as much electric generation, but if all cars in 2019 had been electric, only 1.43 times (43%) more generation would have ...
- 9,911
55
votes
Did the USA increase oil imports from Russia after the Ukraine invasion?
[...]is it true that USA is increasing it's crude oil imports from Russia year-over-year
No.
Before we get to the technical answer, first let's point out the lies by omission.
The US imports very ...
- 17.7k
49
votes
Accepted
At the current rate are we going run out of fossil fuels by 2060?
No
First, this figure is for petroleum. For coal, the figure is much larger. Some of the figures I found for coal were 133 years, "anywhere from 68 years to a hundreds of years", and 357 ...
- 2,873
42
votes
Will SpaceX's fleet of rockets triple the entire United States demand for methane/natural gas?
Source Confusion from TechCrunch+
The article by the Energy Consulting Group cites an article by Darrell Etherington at TechCrunch which is not an interview with Musk but instead a badly summarized ...
- 29.5k
38
votes
Accepted
Did wind power supply less than half a percent of global energy in 2014?
Yes.
They refer to International Energy Agency's 2016 Key Renewable Trends report, which contains these 2 graphs:
Combining these two graphs shows that Wind energy is 3.3% of the 13.8% of the ...
- 3,846
38
votes
Accepted
Do windmills in freezing climates require power so they don't seize up?
Yes, but it's a small fraction of what they produce.
Wind turbines need measures to deal with cold and ice. Heating is one of them.
Canada address the problem in Wind Energy in Cold Climates.
Based ...
- 17.7k
36
votes
Accepted
Did the town of Woodland, North Carolina, USA reject a solar plant because of cancer and photosynthesis concerns?
I decided to communicate directly with the town itself. The response to my email is reproduced below:
Please read the interview with Mayor Manuel on (witn.com). Also, there will be a message from ...
- 45k
36
votes
Accepted
Are there 14,000 abandoned wind turbines in the USA?
The origin of this claim is Andrew Walden's 2010 article Wind Energy's Ghosts.
He is specifically referring to the wind turbines installed in California between 1981 and 1986 in three locations: ...
- 105k
30
votes
Is it true that there is not enough electricity to power all vehicles in the United States if they were electric?
No, about 40 to 60%
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles currently use 146 billion gallons of gasoline used each year annually. A gallon of gasoline represents about 33 kWh of energy. So all the ...
- 17.7k
29
votes
Did wind power supply less than half a percent of global energy in 2014?
NO, (or YES dependent on the definition of primary energy) as answer to the claim: "Wind power does not account for less than half a percent of total global energy usage in 2014."
The wording of the ...
- 431
26
votes
Accepted
Does nuclear power cause fewer deaths than other forms of electricity production, accidents included?
The New Scientist calculated the number of deaths per kilowatt-hour question based on the data from International Atomic Energy Agency in 2011.
According to the New Scientist:
The agency examined ...
- 10.8k
24
votes
Accepted
Does one SUV tank of ethanol "take as much grain as could feed a person for a whole year?"
Mathematically accurate
From Cornell University News:
An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol.
That's 3,225 kg and 1241 liters.
Let's ...
- 10.2k
23
votes
Can the US be powered by a 100 miles x 100 miles solar grid?
It seems possible, at least in theory. Of course, whether it possible and whether it's remotely economically feasible are completely different questions.
A decent back-of-the-envelope series of ...
- 1,405
23
votes
Do "solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant"?
Yes, mostly true
(although the relevance of this particular metric could be discussed)
Last year, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe published a report titled Life Cycle Assessment of ...
- 2,047
18
votes
Do "solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant"?
Yes, but not taking into account the full picture
As Schwern already pointed out, making a direct apples-to-apples comparison is near impossible.
However I recently encountered the following graph, ...
- 288
15
votes
At the current rate are we going run out of fossil fuels by 2060?
For oil, using proven reserves and current oil production, the date is more like 2067. World proven reserves are approximately 1.7 trillion barrels, or 1.7 million-million barrels (EIA figures]). ...
- 2,443
15
votes
Accepted
Did the USA increase oil imports from Russia after the Ukraine invasion?
While it's true that US oil imports from Russia increased in recent weeks they are lower than they were before the invasion, and by the end of April a complete prohibition will go into effect. The ...
- 11.4k
14
votes
Neutrino “Solar Panels”: This can't be for real, is it?
I would agree that on its face this seems sketchy, but there's a fairly simple way of debunking this. (Strictly back-of-the-envelope calculations.)
The neutrino flux experienced on any given part of ...
- 2,949
12
votes
Accepted
Does Leonardo DiCaprio fly on private jets?
Yes, he has flown on a private jet on at least a few occasions.
From the WikiPedia on Leonardo DiCaprio:
... his use of private jets and superyachts has attracted criticism by some sections of the ...
- 1,074
12
votes
Is widespread adoption of the electric car unlikely due to lithium scarcity?
No, lithium scarcity is not a barrier to the take-up of electric vehicles.
From Bloomberg:
The world’s largest untapped lithium reserve -- containing enough of the lightest metal to make batteries ...
- 4,701
12
votes
Will SpaceX's fleet of rockets triple the entire United States demand for methane/natural gas?
Will a Starship launch require 1000 tonnes of LNG?
Yes, this is a reasonable estimate. Wikipedia lists 800 tonnes just for the booster, citing an August 2021 interview with Musk. An additional 200 ...
- 9,911
11
votes
Accepted
Are electric cars beneficial to the environment compared to low consumption modern cars?
This question can be answered using a Life Cycle Analysis, which looks at emissions over the total life cycle of a product - including manufacture, use, and disposal. Many such studies have been ...
- 7,787
11
votes
Accepted
Can one generate enough electricity from a plant to power a cellphone?
Not impossible, but highly unlikely
The technology described does exist. Scientifically this is called Plant Microbial Fuel Cell. However Bioo's claims of 40 W/m² seem greatly exaggerated.
People ...
- 26.6k
9
votes
Accepted
Does streaming an album 27 times consume as much energy as manufacturing a CD?
The original research that produced this was done in a collaboration between the University of Glasgow and the University of Oslo, and UoG details it here. While the Glasgow part is available here, ...
- 1,068
9
votes
Accepted
Does streaming a video to smartphone consume 1000W of electricity?
Summary:
The data (model + coefficients together with source citations) of the Lean ICT study are available (see below).
HD Video streaming consuming between 250 W and 1 kW power equivalent is ...
8
votes
Has Brilliant Light Power developed a new source of energy from water molecules?
No, the claims are completely untrue. The science of why is a little complicated.
The opinions of the users of Physics.SE are that it is:
improbable to the point of being gibberish.
The opinions ...
- 197
8
votes
Accepted
Is Russia's fiscal break-even price for oil around half of Saudi Arabia's?
There are multiple different break-even prices that people usually quote.
The fiscal break-even is the oil price at which the fiscal balance is zero.
The external break-even is the oil price at ...
- 2,147
8
votes
Accepted
Is Amazon powered by 85% renewable energy?
Is Amazon powered by 85% renewable energy? Is the wrong question
If the question is "Within the definitions, limitations and constraints that Amazon has set, is the claim that it has achieved 85% ...
- 1,309
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible