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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

#271

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #100
unprepare wrote: post #94

Earlier 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

Consider: earth may well be the only habitable planet in our galaxy. In that case its nearer the truth to consider it a gift just for us.

This whole thread is quite a bit tangential to the fact that Earth is the only habitat planet we can actually get to, and will remain so baring a significant change in technology. Rockets won't get us elsewhere.

So we might as well look after this planet.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#272

Post by Semiapies »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #176

Would never work in the US because hydropower is not considered renewable. "But in general, hydropower is not even considered a renewable energy in most states or, for the most part, by the federal government. " http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructur...

You might RTFA, which points out that it "would never work" because it's already working—the US has already tapped most of its available hydroelectric power.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#273

Post by solipsism »

forthefuture wrote: post #211
metaphorm wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, that's not what you said. you said "Advancement over Happiness". I think most people would agree with "to be happy, don't struggle for it, just be". Your original post, the one that seemed satirical to me, sounded like it was endorsing some notion of material accumulation at the expense of human fulfillment.

Oh, yeah I didn't mean it to sound that way. In that context I'd say that I believe that moving humanity forward provides more fulfillment than just being happy.

Fulfillment is part of the definition of being happy! Stop this circular logic!

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#274

Post by _ea1k »

ctdonath wrote: post #169
goodcanadian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would caution that deserts are some of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world. Covering up large areas of a desert with solar panels may be more harmful than you realize. That said, I am a strong solar advocate; I simply believe we should start with the roofs of warehouses. These are huge areas of relatively flat space where the ecological damage has already been done.

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…

Why do you assume 10% efficiency? That seems awfully low?

I agree with regards to rooftop being an important part, though. It makes sense to use land that is already occupied to a large degree.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#275

Post by awqrre »

amorphid wrote: post #120
taneq wrote: post #39

Objection: Geothermal technically isn't renewable.

Geothermal also produces radioactive waste! Water gets pumped into the ground, becomes steam, the steam rises, and is used to generate power. The steam brings with it toxic sludge, which needs to be disposed of. Not sure why, but they don't wanna pump the sludge back into the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power#Environmental...

Maybe they are afraid of earthquakes, like how they are realizing that fracking wastewater wells are causing many [1]

1. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-07/oklahoma-w...

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#276

Post by quadrangle »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #259
dkural wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gross Domestic Happiness is enhanced by caring about things beyond human flourishing for many people. Many people care about the environment. GDH was in fact invented precisely to capture dimensions beyond that of human material improvement (more dams, more houses, etc.)

A clean environment is a luxury good most people didn't even know they wanted until economies advanced enough to make them an option. To see a present-day version of this difference, one need only look at China. That's how Americans viewed the environment before WWII. If you watch the evolution of, say, the Sierra Club, its focus has shifted to reflect the changes in values over time It's very interesting. One of the…

You're confusing "didn't even know they wanted" with "took for granted". In the pre-industrial era with much lower populations, human-sourced massive environmental pollution wasn't common. Many people didn't even realize it was possible. Everyone wanted and most people had clean environments and only learned to make it an issue when the clean environments started to disappear in places.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#277

Post by in_the_sticks »

astrodust wrote: post #253
nixos wrote: post #235

Earlier 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.

"A single human" isn't a phrase meaning "literally one individual human".

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#278

Post by quadrangle »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #262
grb423 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 k…

Misanthropy is easy to come by when evidence supporting it is widespread. The best thing to send to anyone worried about population is: https://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-end-poverty/

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#279

Post by quadrangle »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #263
unprepare wrote: post #94

Earlier 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

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.

In my life, I've fluctuated between moderately misanthropic and moderately speciesist. I don't see the evidence for your slippery slope argument.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#280

Post by ArkyBeagle »

quadrangle wrote: post #276
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A clean environment is a luxury good most people didn't even know they wanted until economies advanced enough to make them an option. To see a present-day version of this difference, one need only look at China. That's how Americans viewed the environment before WWII. If you watch the evolution of, say, the Sierra Club, its focus has shifted to reflect the changes in values over time It's very interesting. One of the…

You're confusing "didn't even know they wanted" with "took for granted". In the pre-industrial era with much lower populations, human-sourced massive environmental pollution wasn't common. Many people didn't even realize it was possible. Everyone wanted and most people had clean environments and only learned to make it an issue when the clean environments started to disappear in places.

No. "Didn't know they wanted." There has been a protracted and concerted propaganda effort to change consciousness about this subject. What makes a Theodore Roosevelt exceptional is that he listened to John Muir decades before that kind of thinking was commonplace.

I think there was a long span of time where you could set rivers on fire, cut the air in cities with a knife and become sickened or killed by drinking water from a pubic well. The Thames was a severe, dangerous public nuisance in the time of Samuel Pepys ( who happened to write about it ).

This became a "thing" only since WWII.

People used open-belt farm machinery. 90% of electrical linemen died on the job. You could buy machine guns at paint stores, or by mail. "Safety" as a discipline is quite recent. Environmentalism is even more recent. My Dad worked for a Bell company and was decades ahead of the general flow of safety, and we picked up our trash as we left campsites, when most didn't.

Of course the Boy Scouts had this as a practice, but it was otherwise not mainstream.

"The past is a different country; they did things differently there." - L.P. Hartley.

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