> This is a criticism of mining in general. Solar is actually the most mining-intensive way to make a kWh.

Anything to back that up that isn't an LCA of a decade old system of a completely different chemistry with 1/4 of the efficiency on a heavy 2 axis tracking rig?

> I'm not opposed to solar, though I'd prefer see it on rooftops rather than encroaching on nature. I understand some portion of the world's energy will come from solar but it bothers me when people extrapolate it to 100% with no concern about reliability or land and materials use.

Solar is the least materials heavy and least land consuming energy source other than gas. 20-50t of silver and 40-80t of lead per net GW are the only mining intensive materials, and both are dropping rapidly.

https://www.vdma.org/international-technology-roadmap-photovoltaic

> Nuclear needs to be included and even the IEA says:

Needing a few GW of nuclear in a handful of countries wouldn't support any of your arguments even if the IEA hadn't been consistently wrong about the role of renewables for the last 15 years to the point where at times they've "projected" 2050 costs and deployment rates to be lower than the rates when their projections were published.