421–430 of 523 posts
It would also help if certain countries would not use CFCs that were banned due to the way they destroy the ozone.
So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…
Ah, techno utopianism. It ignores reality in many ways, here are two. First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? If not, then fossil fuel will just become cheaper as demand drops, making burning fossil fuels attractive again. Countries currently plan to reduce their emissions, but none are planning to reduce their fossil fuel exports. They just hope it w…
This is untrue. If cost to extract >> market price, then existing operations may well just be shut down. To quote Hemmingway it would likely happen "gradually then suddenly".
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If you factor in cost of storage required to provide continuous power, then you get way more expensive and less reliable. Now this problem is solved by, surprise, fossil fuels. [0] Ofcourse solar is cheaper when it is sunny, provider might even need to pay consumer to get them to consume. [1] [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/15... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-power-german…
Continuous aka base-load power is considered a defect as it's not load following. You can load follow with nuclear but then it becomes ridiculously expensive. France gets around this largely by buying and selling to other countries, but that does not scale. Really, going 100% nuclear takes either massive over supply or large scale energy storage just like solar. Wind however can supplement solar while still costing l…
Option 2 have the problem of oversupply and undersupply. This forces either storage or fossil fuels in the picture.
Option 1, however, only deals with oversupply, which does not require expensive mitigations.
Not obvious why option 2 is preferable here
On a personal note, don't have children. I'm not being facetious. It seems like we've had opportunities to do the right thing and consistently haven't so until the outlook looks better and we start taking action it's not a great idea to create offspring that will have to deal with the consequences.
But people without children have even less motivation to care about the future. Even moreso for people who aren't married....why shouldn't they let their SUV idle in the driveway?
I don't think we're doing a good job handling the issue on a policy level so creating a child who will potentially have to deal with the worst of these problems directly seems unnecessary, avoidable and selfish.
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Continuous aka base-load power is considered a defect as it's not load following. You can load follow with nuclear but then it becomes ridiculously expensive. France gets around this largely by buying and selling to other countries, but that does not scale. Really, going 100% nuclear takes either massive over supply or large scale energy storage just like solar. Wind however can supplement solar while still costing l…
We are comparing two energy sources: one where output depends on the weather, and can go to near 0 another where output is strictly predictable but takes time to change. Option 2 have the problem of oversupply and undersupply. This forces either storage or fossil fuels in the picture. Option 1, however, only deals with oversupply, which does not require expensive mitigations. Not obvious why option 2 is preferable he…
In terms of the grid, Wind and solar really can't go to 0 over large areas. The minimum vs maximum output shows high variance, but maximum output is largely irrelevant. Really what you care about is minimum vs average output and that's more narrow band than you might think. Even better by locating Wind / Solar you can more closely match your daily demand curve.
Option 1, costs far more per kWh even if you can use every kWh, it's just get's worse from there. As it still needs over supply as power plants need occasional maintenance and the grid maximum and minimum demand over a year are wildly separated. You can setup maintenance around peak annual demands, but even then you will have occasional unexpected shutdowns.
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I have to take issue with your use of the foldable solar panel. Studies have estimated that commercial solar panels take 1-4 years to produce enough electricity to offset that used in their production [0]. This is for fixed panels, pointing south, at optimal tilt, during all available daylight hours. How many hours per day does that portable panel get used? It seems extremely unlikely to me that the average portable…
Earlier, I charged my phone using the grid. I used grid while reading and writing. Now, I have five solar products and I don't use the grid. I also plant 10 trees yearly, I use my bicycle. Doing something is better than being a cynic. The point isn't recuperating amount of energy spent in manufacturing solar pabel, batteries. It is to stop from further consumption of polluting items. Sure, it wouldn't amount to much.…
You make a good point about the important thing being the comparison of emissions you would have caused had you used the grid versus what was used to create the panel and batteries. Still, it depends how much charging you actually wind up doing with the panel over its lifetime whether less CO2 is emitted or not. Though, I imagine in India pollutants other than CO2 are more pressing.
Thanks for sharing your experience. On the issue of climate change its somewhat depressing being in the US, policy has been stuck for a very long time. Its inspiring to hear from someone so committed from outside my usual sphere.
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This is especially true if you are in a developed country. I did a college paper for an Environmental Law class. American children consume about 200 times the resources of children in developing countries. I originally wanted three children. I stopped at two for various reasons. I think I did the right thing.
>> American children consume about 200 times the resources of children in developing countries So one less immigrant is 99.5% as effective at reducing co2 as one less child?
We would probably be better off, environmentally speaking, to aggressively try to convince American citizens to have fewer children while having more liberal immigration policies than to aggressively try to keep immigrants out while claiming that condemning children who already exist to a life of hardship is the moral equivalent of Americans choosing to have fewer children for environmental reasons. They aren't morally equivalent anymore than "Eat the rich" is some kind of moral high ground.
It's a natural process and we just have to mine as many rocks as we dig up oil. We just need to catch up for the last few hundred years where we only dug up oil and no rocks. Just US $200 billion per year to offset all of humanity's carbon emissions. If I was a billionaire I'd already have started developing robots to mine and grind up rocks for accelerated weathering.