In some places in Costa Rica the electricity can be sporadic, when it goes out people use petrol powered generators.
Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
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Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Yes, many people reject this idea. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express this idea.
Alex Epstien, who is widely despised, has written, in The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels that to withhold cheap abundant energy, and the technology it enables, from the world's emerging populations is immoral and fundamentally anti-human. Supported by people who think this Earth would be a much better place if Man never set his filthy foot upon it.
I have second-order Facebook contacts who are overt environmentalists. Some of them are self-consistent enough to actually admit that they think human population level is the root of all these problems. That is in itself probably true, but I can't quite be hypocritical enough to attack a phenomenon that supports my very existence.
To that:
"There are too many people." "You first."
But they don't have good operating knowledge of population dynamics and current birth rates. It's rather that they bought prior exponential analyses of exponential human population growth and never fully discarded it. They also appear to know that fossil fuels are a part of this phenomenon.
So there are Druids who walk amongst us.
Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Yes, many people reject this idea. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express this idea.
theres also religious folks who believe the earth was created specifically for humans, and so everything here is for us and us alone. I find it a rather disgustingly self centered ideology. To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism
I think "species-ism" is both honorable and necessary. I think the opposite is misanthropy and that it's hard to be moderately misanthropic, so one extreme or the other will win out.
Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
theres also religious folks who believe the earth was created specifically for humans, and so everything here is for us and us alone. I find it a rather disgustingly self centered ideology. To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism
Which moral worldview do you find superior? I presume you have one, because you're making a moral judgement.
All moral worldviews have defects. life isn't a ... geometry problem.
Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or I can come back to you when technology allows timeshifting usage to match availability. Even if you want to run a factory 24×7, you don't have to run the most power-hungry parts at an invariant pace, see?
? Except you're talking about _seasonal_ differences in sunlight availability. I'm really glad I'll be able to run my power-hungry electronics like a refrigerator during peak production times, like during the spring! We'll just have to make sure that people go to the hospital during probably-non-uninterruptible power windows. Sorry, but you're dealing with human beings and actual society, not a car factory. Leave me…
Industrial consumes 1/3 of US electricity. This is about the same amount as residential use. This isn't about your fridge.
Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we could do that without hurting a single other human? Absolutely. Actually, we did that a few years back with Smallpox. True, there's a debate if viruses are alive, but I have no doubt we'd do the same if it was a bacteria (and possible to obliterate).
Wiping out a species to save a single life is monstrous and absurd. I hope you're not serious.
Many would call my answer ("not sure") to the original question monstrous. It's all very subjective. That was my initial point. We all draw the line differently. And no one can claim to be right.
Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
There aren't just two ways to go in this possibility space, I'm quite happy ruling out both of these ideologies.
Atheism is the lack of a religious ideology. It’s strange to assign an ideology to a group of people simply because they reject all religious ideologies.
It takes some doing to be comfortable with null things, whether it's pointers in 'C' or ideologies.
Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Yes, many people reject this idea. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express this idea.
Especially "_human_ flourishing and happiness". Why only human? Why not the well-being of all conscious creatures?
We only guess that were conscious. Since we don't know what consciousness is... well, we know it when we see it.
Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, for the most part, that's the accepted interpretation. We just don't value non-human well-being as much as human well-being (which I think given the current species involved is acceptable). The problem is the difference in how we value non-human well-being between different subsets of the population causes strife between those subsets. I believe very few think it's alright to torture an animal for no reason, bu…
And when it comes to non-fuzzy animals, the gloves come off. We have massive industries to exterminate insects, fungi, bacteria and so on. Even fish are hardly protected. If we could perform genocide on some of them, we would.
Good job, too - the insects, bacteria and fungi own the planet and we just live here.
It's still them or us, now and again, really.
Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Covering up large areas of a desert with solar panels may be more harmful than you realize. I've heard & use the term solar strip-mining . Solar power maxes out at no better than 1kW/m^2 (sun at zenith, clear day, practically 100% efficient conversion), we're talking an absolute minimum of 1 sq km to match a baseline 1GW power plant ... and likely 100 times larger for real-world scenarios (10% efficiency, night/cloud…
> 1 sq km to match a baseline 1GW power plant Does that sound like a lot to you? A single airport runway is much larger than 1 sq km.
As I noted: real-world conditions demand 100x as much space.