Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What is energy, actually? (2011)

jancovici.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–286 of 286 posts

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#281

Post by bullen »

I'm mostly commenting here to be able to find this guy again later.

But now that I have listened to him he is 100% spot on about most things.

The only problems this guys has are:

1) He's biased for nuclear because it feeds him. Nuclear cannot be built without hydrocarbons and toxic nuclear waste is not something you can dig down into the ground without hydrocarbons, even if the radiation is only hazardous for 1000 years, we're not going to have enough energy to handle the waste.

2) He does not understand money enough yet. Fiat money cannot have value without hydrocarbons. GDP is 99% debt because today money is 99% debt and therefore neither has value. Money is something humans have arbitrarily invented without being inspired by nature, it does not exist!

3) He does not understand that some things run and use energy whether you use them or not. For example the routers on the internet because processors are synchronous. The solution is async. processors, but our economic system doesn't encourage energy saving research, at least before it's too late, which is now.

That said, if the energy density of uranium is 1000000x that of oil, which in it's turn is 1000x more than batteries; this guy for president?

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#282

Post by ALBERT300 »

My better half was having an unsanctioned romance reason he needed a kid, I have constantly speculated him however there was no confirmation until it arrived at a point where I needed to contact Theredhackergroup@gmail.com for help, I had to know without a doubt and I got what I needed, I saw that every one of my feelings of trepidation are in reality obvious, he was undermining me and I need to leave him

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#283

Post by dorgo »

BjoernKW wrote: post #125
abyssin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need their electricity and washing machine, but do they need exotic vacations and long commutes in powerful cars? Do they need clothes that are made to be worn for a very short time? Do they need technology that's cheap to the point of it being wasted without an afterthought?

> [...] long commutes in powerful cars? People in developed countries don't need that either. Commuting being a hard requirement for modern life in an industrialised country is both a fallacy and perpetuated cargo cult. Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". Doing away wit…

The place I work allows to work one day a week from home. In my team of six only one person takes advantage of this policy (not I). The others don't - or only occasionlly. So, I don't really expect anything to change even if the policy was expanded to allow home office 5 days a week.

That said, out of 100+ employees almost nobody drives by car to the office. It's public transport or bicycle.

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#284

Post by BjoernKW »

dorgo wrote: post #283
BjoernKW wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] long commutes in powerful cars? People in developed countries don't need that either. Commuting being a hard requirement for modern life in an industrialised country is both a fallacy and perpetuated cargo cult. Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". Doing away wit…

The place I work allows to work one day a week from home. In my team of six only one person takes advantage of this policy (not I). The others don't - or only occasionlly. So, I don't really expect anything to change even if the policy was expanded to allow home office 5 days a week. That said, out of 100+ employees almost nobody drives by car to the office. It's public transport or bicycle.

> The place I work allows to work one day a week from home. In my team of six only one person takes advantage of this policy (not I).

For me, the question in that case always is: Why is that?

Often, presenteeism (or put less favourably: butts-in-seats) is used to paper over organisational inefficiencies.

For instance, a common argument against remote work is that meetings, particularly informal ones, so-called water cooler talk, help with solving problems or interfacing between people, teams and departments.

However, I'd argue that - more often than not - the situation that brought about the need to have these meetings in the first place really is to blame: If you need to have a lot of meetings in order to make progress chances are you don't have the appropriate processes and systems in place that help you with making decisions and have to fall back on lengthy in-person discussions for almost every issue that comes up.

> That said, out of 100+ employees almost nobody drives by car to the office. It's public transport or bicycle.

Let me guess: You're located in Amsterdam ;-)

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#285

Post by XorNot »

nabla9 wrote: post #21

The argument is based on looking a the world as a whole. In developed world energy intensity of GDP is decreasing even when you take into account imports. Post-industrial economies can grow while decreasing energy use. What the author is suggesting is that the developing world should stop growing. I can't agree with that. They need their electricity and washing machines. GDP per unit of energy use (constant 2011 PPP…

"Energy use" is an extremely poor metric. We need to emit less CO2. How we do that has a of options, none of which actually require reducing energy use (improvements in efficiency on the other hand are a massive contributor to GDP growth).

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#286

Post by alexnewman »

abyssin wrote: post #39
nabla9 wrote: post #21

The argument is based on looking a the world as a whole. In developed world energy intensity of GDP is decreasing even when you take into account imports. Post-industrial economies can grow while decreasing energy use. What the author is suggesting is that the developing world should stop growing. I can't agree with that. They need their electricity and washing machines. GDP per unit of energy use (constant 2011 PPP…

They need their electricity and washing machine, but do they need exotic vacations and long commutes in powerful cars? Do they need clothes that are made to be worn for a very short time? Do they need technology that's cheap to the point of it being wasted without an afterthought?

yes
Post reply on HN