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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

#81

Post by throwaway5752 »

This article immediately raised a lot of red flags. Lots of rhetorical techniques to create false familiarity and empathy ("Feeling like you’re doing the right thing doesn’t mean you are. I just couldn’t admit it. My sense of identity was tied to my false beliefs about energy" ... implicity, just like you!). The repeated use of "false" and "untrue". The tie to basic propaganda levers like "security" and "liberty and self-determination"

You then find: https://briangitt.com/how-to-win-the-energy-war-tell-better-... where he basically admits it, "When it comes to ideological warfare, whoever tells the best story wins. Energy companies need to stop fighting a defensive battle and go on the offensive. Recapture the narrative high ground and craft compelling counter-narratives to highlight the essential contribution of fossil fuels to human well-being"

For another taste of this, https://briangitt.com/solars-dirty-secrets-how-solar-power-h... "In fact, solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant" Which is just a bald-faced use of misinformation there. I think a comparison to ongoing use of natural gas would look better, instead of "minerals". Intentional apples-to-orange comparisons are another part of misinformation techniques.

Fortunately, he has a sloppy social media history - https://mobile.twitter.com/BrianGitt/status/1516098825449971...

"Thanks to @AlexEpstein I had an amazing weekend discussing the future of energy with @peterthiel , @ShellenbergerMD , & other energy leaders.

I'm excited to watch Alex's book Fossil Future open people's eyes to the critical role energy plays in making the world a better place"

It's clear if you go back in archive.org and look at his podcast history, it seems that he is very interested in communication and media. I would not be surprised, based on his site and social media presence, if he was being compensated in some form for improving the image of the fossil fuel industry.

I don't disagree with him on every point, either. He's not wrong about nuclear and he's not wrong that renewables are a cure-all. That's the point of good misinformation, mixing truth in carefully to create certain outcomes.

This is frightening though, it is crafted misinformation for a HN audience.

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

#82

Post by FreqSep »

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.

> When it comes to technical questions like energy it should be logic, math, and real data or go home.

If those questions have real implications for human beings, you need to consider more than just the technicals.

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

#83

Post by infamouscow »

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.

There can be more than one logically sound way to approach a problem.

In general people want to solve problems. We just disagree on the implementation because everyone thinks their approach is the only solution.

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

#84

Post by svnt »

andruby wrote: post #64
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 renewabl…

If we could reduce our energy dependence on burning things to use cases where it actually makes sense to burn things (such as heating in extreme regions), we could basically consider the problem solved.

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

#85

Post by tpm »

EricE wrote: post #63
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.

Ah yes, I've heard that one. Which is why I mentioned China.

But also, it's not the technology that is building and running those projects, it's people, and in the foreseeable future, it will continue to be ran by people, so even if it is somehow a people problem that only happens for nuclear energy and not (or much less) for renewable energy, it is something that needs to be taken into account when planning for new energy sources.

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

#86

Post by pfdietz »

glitchc wrote: post #45
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…

Solar and wind will always suffer from a storage problem. The key to modern power is not potential but throughput and consistency. Modern infrastructure needs x Watts delivered 24/7, shifting to y Watts during on-peak hours and z Watts during off-peak hours. Because of inconsistency, solar and wind will remain non-viable as a primary source of power.

Making solar and wind consistent with various kinds of storage is likely going to be more economical than producing said energy with nuclear power plants.

As for comparison to natural gas and such, CO2 taxes will be increased until those are phased out. Still economical? Taxes will be raised until they aren't. We have to leave most of the carbon in the ground.

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

#87

Post by photochemsyn »

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…

The 20th century power grid structure - baseload, load-following, and peaker - is decrepit, and this should be more generally understood. It was designed around a few centralized power plants feeding into a large regional grid from which cities and industry would draw power.

Modern electrical grids are powered by a much larger range of primary energy sources, and increasingly have distributed storage and generation as key components. This requires some sophisiticated load-balancing technology, but we're not reliant on engineers throwing switches on a mainboard like it was 1950 and slide rules were in everyone's pockets, are we? For example see:

https://www.nrel.gov/grid/advanced-distribution-management.h...

For example, if solar input to a grid at noon greatly exceeds demand, or there's strong afternoon offshore winds, an advanced grid could instruct all battery storage linked to the grid (in the form of everything from electric cars to home battery systems) to switch to absorbing that output in real-time, while keeping the overall grid energized. The notion that you'd even want a steady state baseload system dumping power into the grid in that situation makes little sense. If the sun goes down and wind dies down, then switch all the battery storage to feed into the grid, on a real-time second-by-second basis. That's how future grids will operate in the absence of either nuclear or fossil fuel inputs.

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

#88

Post by colincooke »

corndoge wrote: post #67
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 su…

Unless you are being extremelly pedantic than I would agree with the parent. The thesis of the article is essentially "Solar and Wind aren't the way forward, Nuclear is the way". While it is reasonable to acknowledge the solar and wind still face many challenges, the parent is pointing out that they are already doing a good job in accelerating decarbonization and Nuclear, while appealing, isn't the clear cut winner the article is saying it is.

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

#89

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

So many comments here are acting like this guy is just some random Substacker pundit type opining on topics he knows little about. If you read his background it sure sounds like he has a lot of experience in energy policy and economics. I’m far more inclined to believe his analysis over a gaggle of random HN commenters.

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

#90

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

EricE wrote: post #50
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…

>natural gas reserves are limited People have been claiming peak oil since the 1930's. Yawn. > So green energy has supported economic and social development through electrification without adding new pollution sources. Except for the manufacture and disposal of these "green" sources. > Pursuing nuclear is great but solar/wind are much cheaper. Solar and wind are cheaper? Ha! We already have problems recycling blades…

>People have been claiming peak oil since the 1930's. Yawn.

Are you claiming fossil fuels aren't limited? Also, oil peak is widely believed to have been reached already https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-world-has-already-passe...

If the cost of extraction rises due to oil and gas being more and more difficult to access (because it's limited, obviously), you could claim demand has peaked but it would still be due to production cost (i.e production peaking). "The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil" (Ahmed Zaki Yamani, former SA Minister of Oil)

> We already have problems recycling blades from wind turbines and most are still not at the end of their lifespan.

Of course we have a problem recycling things when there are to few of these things to justify setting up an industry. It isn't because we can't recycle them: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/11/30/fact...

>what do you do with all this crap a the end of it's 20 year lifespan?

They now last 25+ years: https://news.energysage.com/how-long-do-solar-panels-last/ and that's based on data from 2012.

> And never mind solar and wind still suck for base load management since we still lack cost effective energy storage that can scale at the grid level.

Then why does RTE (French national transmission system operator) have plans to switch to 100% renewables by 2050? https://www.rte-france.com/analyses-tendances-et-prospective...

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