81–90 of 290 posts
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One should expect monstrous amounts of FUD about anything that replaces fossil fuels.
Solar does not replace fossil fuels.
A cynical take on Amory Lovins' "Soft Energy Path" was that it talked about wind and solar but really delivered gas turbines fueled by methane because ① that was the real "least cost energy" and ② it could easily fill the gaps in intermittent renewables.
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wait, why are CO2 emissions "bad?" it might even literally take 20-25 years to "pay off the CO2" used to make, deliver, and install the solar panels... to me it seems like our CO2 emissions are not bad and the effects on climate are very minor. this is playing out in real time as we make dire predictions that never seem to come to fruition. the world is ending in 12 years, said someone popular in ~2016. Well, halfway…
There’s nothing we could say to change your mind since you’ve already ignored all the science that exists.
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Let's consider the numbers... A decent modern combined cycle gas turbine can achieve 60% efficiency, so let's take 50% to be conservative. Transmission losses are generally better than 15%, so that leaves a combined efficiency of 42.5%. A pessimistic charge/discharge efficiency for lithium ion would be 80% and I'd expect the charger to be 90% efficient, which gives us a total (pessimistic) efficiency of 31%. An inter…
Those are incredibly pessimistic numbers for power plants and optimistic numbers for ICE. On average 5% of the electricity transmitted and distributed in the United States is wasted your other numbers are similarly inaccurate. ICE engines are only ~30% efficient under optimal conditions, idling still consumes fuel and engines idle a lot in normal driving including coasting down a large hill, slowing down, stoplights…
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One should expect monstrous amounts of FUD about anything that replaces fossil fuels.
Honestly, at this point in our hyperpartisan world, I expect monsterous FUD about pretty much anything. There was just a small scale war in my city about a proposal to slightly modify the way our library is funded. If that gets people riled up, then one can only imagine what multi trillion dollar industries can stir up.
Say the first thing that comes to mind when you think “Coca Cola.” Say it out loud, don’t edit.
If you said something about nostalgia or polar bears you would be like most humans around the globe for the past 50+ years. I submit that as my evidence that PR and Advertising are remarkably potent.
If you really said something to the effect of “depraved multinational corporation” you’ve eluded their attempts to seer their brand onto your brain 50 times a day. You have steel wit, perhaps your neurophysiology measures a few SD from norms. You have an important role in the solution.
Advertising & PR ought to be illegal, especially with AI driving it. I came from that space and love the creativity, but fear it’s power. Usually where advertising is illegal it just means the state has a monopoly on marketing. It’s not an enforceable policy, and is a meaningful degradation of liberty.
What I think would work is making it unprofitable. Revoke the tax deduction for it. Then make some licensure and oversight for influence operations (my new umbrella term). Register professional services agreements and require quarterly reports. Target ad exchanges like crypto, with a set of standards and Treasury authority.
Frankly, online ad exchanges have been one of the highest volume means of international money laundering and global exchange, and Google et al skimming huge % cuts of 2-5 parts of the transaction. Not regulating it will allow a loophole for continued fraudulent transactions at scale.
Parcels of human “mindshare” are auctioned off with every advertising transaction. Your 5 seconds on YouTube can be worth $5 to the right advertiser. Often that means the highest profit, most coercive players win your attention the most. On web publisher sites, the auction happens in 100ms often in the client at the expense of performance. Always. You can’t fire off 700 requests and not impact performance. It’s for bids to a dozen ad networks and all of their trackers and the winning ad’s trackers and then then do it again every 30 seconds and on scroll listeners, for 6-12 ads plus a video player or two and an exit pop.
Is it just cool that human attention is auctioned off like chattel slavery? Am I wrong to be scared of what billionaires can and have been doing with free reign?
_Citizens United_ really did a number on democracy. Such an ironic name, isn’t it?
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My thought as well. CO2 gets dispersed in the atmosphere and is produced each time you burn fuel. Panels stay in place, the waste is produced several orders of magnitude less and you can collect it in the same form you produced it. It has to be so much better.
I'm super confused, how is this better for the Earth? Aren't you using a gigantic amount of CO2 to make these panels that work intermittently, with giant batteries to help make them realiable? Why not just use 1 reliable power system, instead of having 1 unreliable backed up by 1 reliable?
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Honestly, at this point in our hyperpartisan world, I expect monsterous FUD about pretty much anything. There was just a small scale war in my city about a proposal to slightly modify the way our library is funded. If that gets people riled up, then one can only imagine what multi trillion dollar industries can stir up.
That's probably just a yellow bike shed, though?
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On HN I find it precisely the opposite - if you point out flaws with solar, electric cars, wind, self driving cars, etc. you take a lot of downvotes
One of the reasons is that a lot of these downsides are overplayed, based on long-obsolete data or false altogether. For some examples: - electric cars are still burning fossil fuels cause powerplants burn fossil fuels (yeah, but electric cars go ~2 times further on 1 liter of fuel even if all our power came from fossil fuels which it doesn't) - rare earth minerals are limited which means we can't have everybody driv…
this one is very questionable though and only very specific countries with the right geography can cheaply attain 100% electricity from renewables. Two of the countries you mention are very fortunate to have almost endless possibilities for hydro and Portugal still at 50% gas/coal ?
the problems as i see it with renewables is climate change. wind patterns can change, places can become arid. We could even see catastrophies blocking out the sun for days, months or even years. So while renewables are cheap to build right now we shouldn't rely on them completely. We also need to solve the storage part that is major issue for solar and wind even though imo they should only be used for creating synthetic fuels
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I'm super confused, how is this better for the Earth? Aren't you using a gigantic amount of CO2 to make these panels that work intermittently, with giant batteries to help make them realiable? Why not just use 1 reliable power system, instead of having 1 unreliable backed up by 1 reliable?
Not following, which 1 reliable power system do you mean?
Solar/Wind, for example, are not reliable.
Nuclear, for example, is reliable.
Instead of having Solar/Wind with batteries and all this nonsense, along with Nuclear for its stability, just skip the nonsense and go straight to Nuclear. Solar/Wind are terrible...
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> - electric cars are still burning fossil fuels cause powerplants burn fossil fuels (yeah, but electric cars go ~2 times further on 1 liter of fuel even if all our power came from fossil fuels which it doesn't) So do hybrids. Burning fuel at power station isn't 2x as efficient as burning it in ICE engine; most of the savings come from not wasting power while braking
I love my Prius, but over my years of driving it my suspicion is that the regen braking contributes VERY little power to the battery, and I try to brake using regen as much as possible. I would guess that most Prius drivers (who drive the car like a normal car, which is even what Toyota says to do) get back a truly trivial amount of energy out of regen braking. It wouldn't surprise me if full EV regen braking is much…
Recycling solar panels is tough because glass fines are created, often inseparable from items that adhere to them. Those fines don't currently have secondary demand and they're a health and possibly environmental hazard. The CAPEX for recycling panels is high because size reduction and separation requires expensive (and expensive to maintain) equipment. I expect companies like American Battery Recycling, et. al., to…