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

All poverty is energy poverty

omnibudsman.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 466 posts

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#301

Post by danhor »

weberer wrote: post #134
danhor wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the case? The big issue in europe is that electricity is expensive, not unreliable. With more renewables the current price spikes in fossil energy wouldn't hurt so much (or, admittedly, more local production capability of fossil energy).

I don't think solar would be very useful in Europe during the winter. Maybe in the countries furthest to the south, but there's really no point in the Nordics.

Much less than in summer. Luckily wind turbines generate more during winter.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#302

Post by wittycardio »

osigurdson wrote: post #267
zanny wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is more efficient than all the cars is electrified rail. That is an order of magnitude more energy efficient, more if you can manage to get near capacity high frequency trains. A lot of our energy expenditure is lifestyle satisfying. Asia and the better cities in Europe demonstrate you can build dense cities with excellent transit as an alternative to car dependency, but the US fairly universally rejects it from…

>> We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything You are absolutely right, zero emission private aircraft would be much better. Let's build a world where everyone can have that if they want instead of placing nihilistic limits on things.

Some of us prefer to live in reality

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#303

Post by telotortium »

yboris wrote: post #67
burlesona wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I’ve learned over time is that it’s just really, really difficult for most people (including me!) to reason about things that they haven’t directly experienced. Even harder to have empathy. So it’s very hard to engage with an argument or discussion that’s about the world as a whole, because all of us have such difficulty properly weighting and evaluating the things we have no experience with (which by defin…

While difficult, it's I think within the reach of just about every individual in the developed world to empathize with and extend a helping hand to those who were merely unlucky to be born into poverty. Giving What We Can is a community of thousands of people giving at least 10% of their pre-tax income to the most cost-effective charities they can find (consider GiveWell.org for research). I'm a proud member and hope…

Does Giving What We Can have a pledge to continue spending money on humans in extreme poverty? No animal welfare, no AI risk, etc.? Unfortunately the effective altruism branding has become toxic for me in the past few years due to the fact that they are deciding not to focus just on poverty.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#304

Post by CraigJPerry »

WalterBright wrote: post #289
CraigJPerry wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70% What? There’s 70% loss in the process of generating electricity? Where does that occur?

Thermodynamic efficiency. Google says coal electric power generation is 33% efficient.

BEV’s run on coal power?

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#305

Post by rglullis »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #279
bluetomcat wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better alternative would be to have localised production and localised consumption of food and most basic goods. Stuff like not having foreign-cuisine restaurants and not buying salmon from thousands of kilometers away. Cloth production should follow the same idea. People should feel more attached to their birthplace and the goal should be to develop their skills locally with one company preferably. Strong bonds wi…

> not having foreign-cuisine restaurants and not buying salmon from thousands of kilometers away. Cloth production should follow the same idea These isolated communities exist. Their quality of life is lower. But anyone can join them. From hippie communes to Amish communities, Luddism has a long tradition in modern society. (I’m ignoring the ethno-racial undertone in implying there can be an objective arbiter of what…

The point is not in absolute isolation, but trading away some optimization in global economic output for increased self-resiliency. Yes, overall we would be poorer on average, but we would a lot less likely to see catastrophic events and a bit more equity among members of the same community.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#306

Post by josephcsible »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #304
WalterBright wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thermodynamic efficiency. Google says coal electric power generation is 33% efficient.

BEV’s run on coal power?

There's no magical barrier in the electrical grid that prevents charging BEVs from coal-fired power plants.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#307

Post by hef19898 »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #190
space_fountain wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No grid is 100% reliable, but in the present situation where renewables are cheaper than nuclear it's not hard to see why they're being preferred. You'd need a story where that price difference is artificial or temporary (both possible)

Renewables are cheaper than nuclear mostly because of large state grants and tax reductions. Ultimately, if you want to handle all of your load with only renewables, you're going to need to build about 3x what's needed, just to account for wind turbines not running, sun not shining, etc, and you're going to need to replace most of it in 15 years, with rare earth materials that will start costing a lot of money. Needl…

>> Renewables are cheaper than nuclear mostly because of large state grants and tax reductions.

That is simply not true, already in 2017(?) PV and wind was cheaper in utility scale kWh prices, un fixed project auctions and without subsidies, than the then most modern nuckear plant in Europe, Hinkley C in the UK. Those utility scale PV and wind parks are faster to build as well.

Until we figured electricity storagebout on a scale big enough to sustain our needs nuclear beats coal by lightyears so.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#308

Post by avgcorrection »

nine_k wrote: post #283
avgcorrection wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were smarter we would just exploit each other/“the Earth” harder because we use our intelligence for selfish and short-term gain. So yes we lack kindness to put it mildly.

The whole problem is exactly selfish short-term gain that eclipses longer-term common gain. Lack of understanding it, and lack of the ability to create a social system that works better towards it, to my mind, is directly related to our (limited) intelligence as a species. Lack of kindness does play a serious role, can't disagree.

Selfishness is about intent. Not about doing self-serving things because you lack the intelligence to do more altruistic things. That’s just my perspective.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#309

Post by lazide »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153
ciconia wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable?) Hear hear. The point is, for those of us living in developed countries, is that all wealth is energy wealth. The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy. When energy runs out, or becomes significantly more expensive, it's game…

> becomes significantly more expensive, it's game over for developed countries This is wholly unsustained. Yes, marginal luxuries will become less accessible, though not inaccessible. Flying, food variety, et cetera . But the sustainable cost of clean energy, and industrial processes running at those levels, is within traditional fuels’ long-term error bars [1]. The discrepancy in access to that energy will persist b…

Nitrogen Fertilizer production is a base for the modern world that billions would die without, and with no identified economic replacement. It relies on fossil fuel to be produced. It is produced in the 100s of millions of metric tons a year.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nitrogen_fertilizer_con...]

The closest non-fossil fuel alternatives are various types of hydrolysis, which at current natural gas prices on the US are 3-10x more expensive per kg of hydrogen produced.

If you want world population to drop precipitously, make it expensive to produce THAT.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#310

Post by MrsPeaches »

bottlepalm wrote: post #185
MrsPeaches wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to electricity is a major driver of educational attainment. 1. Access to lighting at night means students can actually do their homework. 2. Access to internet also boosts students attainment. 3. Having access to electricity means you are able to retain the best teachers as they won’t stay for long without all the mod cons. We’re trying solve both problems at the same by teaching kids electronics by building a…

Number 3 is your strongest point, but the bottleneck there is really teachers not energy. On a scale needed to pull a society out of poverty you need not just a massive amount of imported teachers, but collegiate level teachers as well, and for decades.

I found this policy note that provides a decent overview of the research linking energy and educational. Results are mixed. I am still biased towards the link being there (study finding no link studies 200 students over 3 months, whereas the study finding a link was over 3 years with 10,000 students).

https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/40418-poli...

Post reply on HN