This is something else, as both of them certainly did not lack knowledge - both were quite educated in the topic of RE. The problem was an intellectual stance where they just dismiss any existing engineering or logistic challenge RE faces, based on unrealistic or prospective developments in future. The catch phrase is "we just need..." - no storage? We just need to invent it. Still none? We just need to build transcontinental grid. Etc etc...
@Wetrix TBH I just can't make sense of flat earthers, it's beyond my comprehension as of 2020 😂
The RE case is different: on the first look RE is very intuitive and obvious, and it's *largely* true in small scale. It's only when you start to dig into the engineering details of industrial scale deployments, it comes out that RE certainly makes sense just not everywhere and not alone.