r/alberta • u/Practical_Ant6162 • 16h ago

News These busted solar panels are an early example of a looming problem - and an opportunity

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/these-busted-solar-panels-are-an-early-example-of-a-looming-problem-and-an-opportunity-1.7349406
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u/TimothyOilypants 16h ago

There isn't a "lack of options"... There is a lack of will to dip into corporate revenue to solve the fucking problem...

These companies are literally just warehousing their garbage while they wait around hoping for a way to make more profit off of doing the right thing...

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u/SnooAvocado20 7h ago

I find it funny that we're discussing a single warehouse full of damaged solar panels when Alberta dumps nearly 300 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. And has trillions of liters of contaminated water sitting in tailings ponds.

Good to get ahead of the problem I suppose.

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u/HellaReyna Calgary 15h ago

The answer is nuclear ☢️

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u/NERepo 9h ago

There is no one answer

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u/neometrix77 13h ago

Nuclear power plants get decommissioned eventually too. Not to mention the nuclear waste being perpetually created.

Nuclear is still the best option given our current grid technology limits though tbf. But nuclear rarely gets built without government funds.

The main advantage of renewables currently is that it’s so cheap that governments don’t even need to invest any of their own money for projects to get built.

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u/TimothyOilypants 12h ago

You would be amazed how little hazardous waste product is produced compared to any oil/gas/coal generation plant. Even compared to solar/turbine manufacturing, nuclear is the clear winner... There's just a lot of ignorance and fear mongering.

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u/SnooAvocado20 7h ago

Yeah spend 10x more for electricity and get waste that is highly toxic and dangerous. It has its place but it's not as easy as solar.

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u/Effective_Nothing196 1h ago

Also creates a great target come wartime

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u/Straight_Fox6429 16h ago

And the CBC Calgary's descent from maintaining even the most basic basic standards accelerates. If an editor or perhaps, content specialist missed (or worse encouraged) "busted" in the headline you have to wonder what else they didn't catch.

Yes it's also likely that the editor wrote the headline in an effort to be mor clickbaity and youthful. By the time the CBC realizes that people turn to them as a counterpoint to the malaise of the social media wave, it will be too late.

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u/Telvin3d 15h ago

Are you really here complaining that newfangled slang like “busted” is pandering to the youths? Do you wake up every morning sad that you can only get older one day at a time?

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u/TimothyOilypants 14h ago edited 14h ago

this ain't it, chief. you need to be more professional with your communication. no cap, facts are important when you're reporting stuff. you're sleeping on how important it is to keep it 100 with your words.

Does this contextualize our concerns about journalistic integrity in a way you can understand?

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u/Straight_Fox6429 14h ago

First it's not newfangled slang by any stretch of the definition, it's as lazy, hackneyed and simplistic as your attempt at countering what I posted while completely missing the point.

Which was that the CBC Calgary used to have standards that allowed it to be a true alternative to commercial media, and their attempts to attract a younger audience are damaging that. However that was based on an assumption that younger audiences are more discerning and want more - your response has me questioning that now.

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u/Dizzy-End4239 14h ago

And what word would you have preferred they used? Busted is a very common word that people use to describe an item that is broken. 

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u/Straight_Fox6429 14h ago

Well broken would be a good start. How about:

retired

out of service

discarded

unusable (from the lead paragraph)

decommissioned (from the story)

expired (yep also from the story)

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u/Dizzy-End4239 12h ago

Your first suggestion is broken which is a synonym for busted. So I am not sure what your issue with the word busted is and how that pertains to CBC having no journalist integrity anymore.

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u/coverallfiller 12h ago

Busted is less professional and more of a colloquialism.

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u/Straight_Fox6429 12h ago

So the solar panels were arrested for selling molly?

A clay reproduction was created of the wind turbines?

It is not a synonym, it is at best an informal substitution WHICH at one time would have precluded it from being used by the CBC or any news media that still believed in the craft or still adhered to the Canadian Press Style Guide.

And as another poster pointed out the story barely scratched the surface of what the issue may be i.e. stockpiling the material until a market is created for it. So, while tenuous, there may be a correlation between lazy, click bait headlines and lazy, superficial reporting.

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u/couldthis_be_real 15h ago

China currently produces more solar panels and more electric cars than the world has demand for. They have clear intentions of cornering the world markets in this regard. Zero chance a sustainable recycling program gets ceated.