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Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

briangitt.com

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Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#61

Post by Splendor »

macspoofing wrote: post #47
DangitBobby wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What motivation do you think they have to lie?

Hard to say. Hard to say who is even knowingly lying. It started as a hopeful message, that turned into a feedback loop where one group repeats the talking point of another, that is picked up and repeated by another, etc. At this point, it's part of 'common knowledge' that we are transitioning to solar/wind and big oil/big gas and corrupt politicians are preventing that transition.

So the government is both promoting the lie and preventing the transition?

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#62

Post by photochemsyn »

api wrote: post #49
elil17 wrote: post #26

Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. >I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited…

> Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. More people should participate in a debate club. A common assignment is to argue eloquently for a position you don't believe in, allowing you to see how eloquent sophistry can be placed in service of any position. When it comes to technical questions like energy it should be logic, math, and real data or go home.

The source article here uses the rhetorical method of 'once I was a true believer in X, but then I saw the light about Y, let me share the revelation with you' and then tosses out a few highly questionable stats. It's a pretty tedious PR-centric approach.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#63

Post by EricE »

tpm wrote: post #46

> I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. > But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissions during the past 15 years (over 60%) > has come from switching from coal to natural gas. But once you transition to natural gas, you can't go any lower with fossil fuels, while to stop warming we need to get to zero human-caused CO2 emissions, so clearly natural gas is not a viable solution.…

>the proponents always fail to mention the huge delays and cost overruns associated with those projects.

Delays and cost overruns are invariably due to regulation and politics run amok.

It's *not* a technology problem, but a people problem.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#64

Post by andruby »

tsjackson wrote: post #13

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

> Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage

That will work for shifting day & night, but I don't see any feasible energy solutions for summer-winter shifting, or even to bridge weeks with limited sunshine (and/or wind).

There are large populations living relatively far from the equator, which see huge differences in daylight during summer & winter.

We should try to get as much energy from renewables like sun & wind, but I think we'll still need another form of energy generation. Energy storage can help us increase the upper limit of renewables in the total yearly mix though.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#65

Post by EricE »

beej71 wrote: post #23
77pt77 wrote: post #5

> I used to believe nuclear energy was dangerous and nuclear waste was a big problem. In fact, nuclear is the safestand most reliable way to generate low-emission electricity, and it provides the best chance of reducing CO2 emissions. It releases less radioactivity than coal, just to make things clear.

It usually releases less radioactivity than coal. No one wants a nuclear plant near them, currently, despite how safe and clean it is. That's the problem nuclear has to solve.

Nuclear has been vilified by ignorant people for decades - unironically often by people who supposedly care deeply for the environment.

It's beyond maddening.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#66

Post by boringg »

svnt wrote: post #25

This reads more to me as: “I thought I was going to be a hero, turns out I was early in the technology cycle, haven’t yet had the impact that I wanted and now I’ve finally realized I made a ton of assumptions.” Instead of increasing his scope of understanding though, He decided to retreat into the thing that won during the time period that he was trying to win. That strategy rarely works.

That's how I read it too. Also as someone who has been in the industry since early 200s it's been a long rollercoaster ride and it isn't stopping. Easy to get disenchanted and jaded especially if you live in the bay area where you watch people make money for stuff that sometimes has little to no real value.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#67

Post by corndoge »

elil17 wrote: post #26

Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. >I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited…

> Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true.

If you lead with this, I expect a refutation of the points in the article. But in each of the statements you take issue with, I don't see any refutation, just additional data.

> However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited.

Does the article claim that it is a long term solution?

> So green energy has supported economic and social development through electrification without adding new pollution sources.

How does that conflict with what the article said?

> Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity, but that safety comes at a financial cost. Pursuing nuclear is great but solar/wind are much cheaper.

Again, does this conflict with anything in the article?

Do you think anything in the article is untrue, as you implied?

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#68

Post by thesimon »

macspoofing wrote: post #18
tsjackson wrote: post #13

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

>The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. So what? Or put another way, if its so cheap, why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come? What do they (and every other country) know that you don't? The reality is you're not comparing apples to apples. Natural gas can serve as base load and power a modern economy. Solar/wind can…

> if its so cheap, why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come?

Because Gerhard Schröder, the former chancellor who approved NS1 in his last days, liked Russia, which earned him nice board seats on Russian energy companies. And because Angela Merkel had her constituency in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the landfall site of the pipelines.

And LNG was always associated with fracking in the US, so for environmental reasons it was not very popular.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#69

Post by black_puppydog »

macspoofing wrote: post #18
tsjackson wrote: post #13

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

>The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. So what? Or put another way, if its so cheap, why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come? What do they (and every other country) know that you don't? The reality is you're not comparing apples to apples. Natural gas can serve as base load and power a modern economy. Solar/wind can…

> why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come?

German here. Let me tell you that a lot of us have been asking the same question. :)

Your argument seems to be that "they built these pipelines so that must have been a rational decision" but looking at the track record of the conservatives (Merkel's party, "in charge" for 32 out of the last 39 years), their donors, and the just straight-up corruption cases routinely found-and-ignored in this party... I'd say you need to find better arguments.

EDIT: and yes, as siblings point out, their competitor SPD didn't exactly take a rational stance on this either...

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#70

Post by [deleted] »

alex_suzuki wrote: post #19
modeless wrote: post #6

I recently heard (on HN, maybe you did too) about a form of energy that sounds pretty utopian to me. Ultra deep bore geothermal. Geothermal has been around for a long time and has problems like causing earthquakes and needing very specific geological formations that only exist in certain places. But these limitations are mostly due to the fact that we can't bore that deep. Geothermal energy exists under every point o…

Ah… Moria. The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep…

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