131–140 of 269 posts
How do you make cement and steel?
Cement needs heat, but it doesn't need heat from fossil fuels. And cement will need CO2 capture in any case -- even today, half the CO2 emission from cement is the CO2 released by decomposing limestone, not from combustion.
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I'm aware of how Soros is the Boogeyman for some people but I'm curious as to what exactly you are insinuating? What's the narrative?
The idea is that Soros only gives away money with strings attached. He expects you/your group to further his political goals in order to continue to receive funding.
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That's a very poor critique, as the URL, the title and the first sentence would suggest. Bad even by the low standards of these things generally. edit: Turns out the author runs a climate change denial think tank: https://www.desmog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation/ and has been talking nonsense on this topic for over a decade: > During a question and answer period following the debate, a question from the audien…
OK. But what about the idea that renewable energy costs have no floor?
In that vein, expanding solar to supply the entire world will (on the historical experience curve) reduce module prices by another factor of ~4. Costs will continue to decline after that as modules are replaced, but that's an ever decelerating process that approaches, but never reaches, zero.
Critiqued at https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-9-16-cost-of-t... . '[H]ere are what I believe to be the main problems with the work: The principal driver of the whole thing is a forecast of rapid and continuous declines in the cost of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. The assumption is that costs of these things will continue to decline exponentially without limit indefinitely into the future. Fr…
storage (and grid stability in general) is always the crucial achilles heel to renewables and it's always handwaved away with fantastical arguments positioned squarely against nuclear (here, springing up a whole global hydrogen economy out of nowhere). it's frustrating to see so much needless internecine fighting when nuclear plus renewables is the most viable answer we have right now to a fossil fuel free future. we…
Garbage comment from an uninformed SW engineer: How, in the current economic and geopolitical environment, can they project that production costs will continue to decline? Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce. It also has been benefiting from globalization which is now going in reverse. I would add at least 5 years to any timeline given because of the recalibrating global energy and material…
> Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce. Is that exclusive to green tech, or is it common to both green tech and non-green tech? If both need dirty energy, what matters is not green tech needing dirty energy, but only how much dirty energy it needs compared to non-green tech, both to produce and over its lifetime.
One thing I've not seen a decent discussion of is what industries benefit from enormous amounts of almost free electricity? Other than the manufacturers of wind, solar, etc systems, how does this effect the economy? Obviously that effect is going to be significant, but what exactly does it look like?
I think it will be important as we transition to EVs to have more energy available. In Ontario, the typical family home uses something like 750 kWh/month on average. If you estimate 5km/kWh (roughly right?), and presume a car is driving something like 1000 km/month, that's an extra 200 kWh/month needed, about a 25% increase. But in the less developed parts of the world, a car might just be a much larger component of…
Thus, as long as people don't charge during the absolute peak (about 2hrs a day) there's no capacity issue at all.
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Right. Reserves are really just a measure of "things people bothered to look for at the current price." High prices can and do induce more searching. Part of the whole hullabaloo about "peak oil" is that people stopped looking for oil reserves in an environment with low oil prices. Once prices started rising you saw fracking come into play that regenerated areas previously thought dead for oil production.
That's not the argument of peak oil. It's not about price or quantity of oil available in the planet. It's an argument about thermodynamics. The argument is that in order to extract oil, you need to spend energy, and, logically, the most easier oil to extract is extracted first. That means that oil extraction is every year more expensive (energetically not financially). Because technology can make extraction more eff…
Consider that makers of solar panels, and of the materials that go into them, get no break on their power bills. Each and every kWh that goes into making the panel is paid for, and necessarily has its cost folded into the price of the panel. Otherwise they would be paying power out of their own pocket, to give it to you for free.
Furthermore, the fraction of the energy used in making the panel that comes from renewables goes up every year, as their share of the total generated increases.
The same argument applies to wind turbines, tidal turbines, wave engines, dams, and (in their way) storage media.
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Right. Reserves are really just a measure of "things people bothered to look for at the current price." High prices can and do induce more searching. Part of the whole hullabaloo about "peak oil" is that people stopped looking for oil reserves in an environment with low oil prices. Once prices started rising you saw fracking come into play that regenerated areas previously thought dead for oil production.
That's not the argument of peak oil. It's not about price or quantity of oil available in the planet. It's an argument about thermodynamics. The argument is that in order to extract oil, you need to spend energy, and, logically, the most easier oil to extract is extracted first. That means that oil extraction is every year more expensive (energetically not financially). Because technology can make extraction more eff…
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Locally, there are several mines that have been trying to open for years (copper and nickel, mostly) but the environmental crowd has been extremely determined in using the courts and bureaucracy to block them from opening. The net result is the green wave will be driven largely by relying on dirty minerals from other countries.
Mining tech is essentially the same since ever, we just have transferred some physical efforts to machines, how a local mine is "green" and some in exotic places is different? Consider a thing: all industry do not pollute because they are evil but because the tech produce pollution. Something was done, something can be done, to reduce it of course, but that's not always possible, not possible more than a certain exte…
You could say that about literally anything
Garbage comment from an uninformed SW engineer: How, in the current economic and geopolitical environment, can they project that production costs will continue to decline? Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce. It also has been benefiting from globalization which is now going in reverse. I would add at least 5 years to any timeline given because of the recalibrating global energy and material…
You are absolutely correct. Supply Chains are primarily fossil based and can NOT be substituted with low density sources like Green Energy or even electricity at all. For example, you can't efficiently make steel or most other metals with electricity alone. Even primarily electrically refined metals like copper or aluminum REQUIRE inputs that can not be made or refined or extracted with electricity. Often this is abo…
And your car doesn't? What kind of argument is this?
My panels have 25 year warranty, whats the warranty on a diesel generator?
> questions of how petrochemicals are to be produced if the Green goal of eliminating oil is accomplished.
Petromechicals have no relevance to Climate change and CO2 emissions. You can keep using single-use bags and straws and throwing them into landfill untill you use up all the oil on earth.
They have relevance to our health, i.e. microplastics, but thats a separate problem.