201–210 of 607 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose that in principle that is indeed possible; in practice, trees exist and self-seed, so the limit is our own ignorance.
You could make the same argument about AGI. Just because nature does it doesn't mean it's easy for us to replicate in an industrial setting.
> Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. The sun and the wind are available everywhere I’m all for solar - but does it really solve the geographical / geopolitical issues of oil, as it’s currently rolling out? China produces pretty much all…
> China produces pretty much all the solar panels Why didn't other countries build up solar industries? Were busy with fossils? Were too greedy to subsidise?
There's a reason Shanghai is known for really bad air quality. There's a reason the rate of GHG emissions are accelerating
> Solar power is now growing faster than any power source in history, and it is closely followed by wind power—which is really another form of energy from the sun, since it is differential heating of the earth that produces the wind that turns the turbines. It's interesting to realize that the vast majority of the energy used by humans comes from the sun (with the exception of nuclear and geothermal energy). Even hyd…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> China produces pretty much all the solar panels Why didn't other countries build up solar industries? Were busy with fossils? Were too greedy to subsidise?
China builds solar panels using electricity produced by burning coal. China is by far the world largest producer of green house gases.
> ...people are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, the rough equivalent of the power generated by one coal-fired plant, every fifteen hours. This is amazing! Whether you believe photovoltaics are the most efficient form of green energy production or not, you cannot argue the impressive economics behind them. Successful engineering has to meet the market at the end of the day.
This was a great positive start to the day. Thanks whoever posted that. One point curious in its omission is whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget. Presumably that’s the critical metric in all of this. [Edit: I ran this question through ChatGPT and the initial (unvalidated) response wasn’t so exciting. This obviously put a dampener on my mood. And I wondered why people like McKi…
>whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget I'm not sure I understand. There's no carbon budget, any carbon that we emit is carbon we'll have to re-capture somehow and the longer it stays in the atmosphere the longer it will have a heating effect. I think renewable have accelerated to the point of matching the electricity growth worldwide: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electrici…
(1) https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-has-more-than-...
"Last year, for the third year straight, heat pumps outsold furnaces in the U.S." Now that's a major development not mentioned much. Heat pumps have both improved quite a bit, and become cheaper due to sheer volume.