@ Prinz Eugn
Give me a real rebuttal to MY research, since I am the one who also did the video.

No opinions, just give me real world numbers for what exists right now, and is in use right now.

Green energy advocates refuse to see that attempting to rely just on green energy solutions will never work, due to how little power they produce in real world applications.

And while were on the subject, you'd need more wind farms than I originally extimated, since a lot of the land mass of the US is not as windy as the California wind farm I picked out to do the original calculations.

Yes, solar and wind power, in the large scale at least, are part of a system. The point of building wind and solar systems is to act as buffer-assists in a grid system. While conditions are favourable and wind or solar are generating power, then that power is used to allow buffer capable systems to recharge. The most obvious buffer capable source is hydroelectric. During the day and/or high wind times you scale back production from the hydro system to aid in reservoir management, and this allows them to delay their energy production and remove the need to rely on battery storage methods. When wind and solar slack you then open up the flow more and convert that stored energy into usable electricity.

And before anyone goes crying that you couldn't possibly produce enough power to meet US needs from hydro, just consider that the discharge volume of the Mississippi, raised by a single metre and passed through inefficient generators provides nearly 10% of current usage levels.

Hydro also doesn't have to be produced by massive dams with huge reservoirs either. The main reason that most projects are on such large scale is more related to control and maintenance than any real need, but with modern control systems we can easily build ten or fifteen smaller dams that have less of an overall impacts on their environment (While also offering far better control over flooding conditions) that can even produce more power than the single massive project.

Actually, using many smaller systems across most of North America kind of makes more sense than even bothering to invest in solar or wind power. They can be build to have next to no impact on their environment after construction is finished, control flooding and lower erosion, and in some cases even increase freshwater marine habitats.

automatic laser distractor that fires rays at anything moving in the sky will do.

Pilots will love that idea. On the other hand, it will make the police's work a lot easier. They then don't need to arrest 16 year olds blinding pilots any more, since it's done automatically country-wide anyway.

And less airplanes are good for the environment too (except for the crash sites)

Hydro also doesn't have to be produced by massive dams with huge reservoirs either [...] we can easily build ten or fifteen smaller dams that have less of an overall impacts on their environment (While also offering far better control over flooding conditions) that can even produce more power than the single massive project.

Low head dams are a great way to produce clean energy - unfortunately I see a lot of environmental groups who oppose this

I think we should just sacrifice the state of Arizona for the greater good, and cover it with solar panels.

By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, that will cover the electricity needs of the remaining states...

I think we should just sacrifice the state of Arizona for the greater good, and cover it with solar panels.

By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, that will cover the electricity needs of the remaining states...

8 watts per square foot for the standard solar cell in direct sunlight ( no one will miss Arizona ) .

@ Prinz Eugn
Give me a real rebuttal to MY research, since I am the one who also did the video.

No opinions, just give me real world numbers for what exists right now, and is in use right now.

Green energy advocates refuse to see that attempting to rely just on green energy solutions will never work, due to how little power they produce in real world applications.

And while were on the subject, you'd need more wind farms than I originally extimated, since a lot of the land mass of the US is not as windy as the California wind farm I picked out to do the original calculations.

Then the straw man wikipedia article is even more important for you to read. Essentially, you are basically framing some fictional extra-stupid argument to rail against using numbers you know will sound good for your position ahead of time. Has anybody seriously advocated total conversion to wind energy? Or Solar?

Do more research before trying to crunch your own numbers, especially since energy policy has been constantly studied by people with more expertise and bigger budgets for the last 50 years. There is an entire government agency for this kind of thing called the EIA. It would probably be a good idea to look at their website.

As for your specific numbers, like I said, that extrapolation is useless because wind farms are highly dependent on siting, and you can't assume every site is the same in terms of raw wind, much less turbine type, turbine density, etc. Additionally, new turbines tend to by more efficient than older models (and I'm pretty sure your California example is one of the oldest wind farms on the planet).

According the to National Renewable Energy Laboratory:

The new study, conducted by NREL and AWS TruePower, finds that the contiguous 48 states have the potential to generate up to 37 million gigawatt-hours annually. In comparison, the total U.S. electricity generation from all sources was roughly 4 million gigawatt-hours in 2009.

So according to science, etc. there's roughly 9 times the amount of potential wind power in the continental US than all the electricity generated in 2009, you definitely won't need 25% of the land. By the way, generation has stayed around 4,000 TWh (the awkward "4 million gigawatt-hours") since then (http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states#tab2). Or maybe you question their data or process?

But again, no one important or relevant is actually saying we should use any one renewable energy source to the exclusion of everything else, so your core argument is irrelevant even if it had decent methodology backing it up.

Hydro also doesn't have to be produced by massive dams with huge reservoirs either [...] we can easily build ten or fifteen smaller dams that have less of an overall impacts on their environment (While also offering far better control over flooding conditions) that can even produce more power than the single massive project.

Low head dams are a great way to produce clean energy - unfortunately I see a lot of environmental groups who oppose this

There are also a lot of groups who oppose vaccines.

Yes, badly designed low head dams are a bad thing. They're dangerous, they disrupt wildlife, and in general a badly designed one is a bad thing.

However, a well designed low head/micro-hydro system has no negative impact on wildlife (the use of fish ladders and partial by-pass designs means wildlife barely have to notice the dam's existence), they can include flood control systems to better manage spring high water surges by controlling how much is allowed down stream and at what times, and include safety flow designs that limit boating and swimming hazards.

Hydro power is huge and horribly unexploited in North America because of the general population's assumption that it all has to be from Hover Dam style structures. Most people aren't even aware that Niagara Falls not only has a hydro electric plant, but that it helps maintain the falls from eroding away as quickly as they normally would.

Fish ladders? They have no hands or legs!

EDIT: You can buy fish fingers though so I could be wrong about that.

Removed.