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536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

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Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#321

Post by pbhjpbhj »

iso1631 wrote: post #302
aksss wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is zero chance of 100% replacement of fossil fuels with renewables. Zero. Without a Thanos solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk&list=WL&index=5&... EDIT: I mean, you guys are downvoting these comments, and I'm sorry to tell you things you don't want to hear, but would prefer that you respond with contrary information rather than downvoting. Happy to alter my views and engage in information shar…

New nuclear (Hinkley C) in the uk costs £92.50/MWh -- 3200MWe, operational from 2025 Proposed new offshore wind farms cost £40/MWh, operational from 2023/2024 Nuclear was the answer 15 years ago. It's not now.

Nuclear is still the answer to "what about baseline demand".

Battery storage is possibly going to fit in there, but it doesn't do it yet.

Tidal, ground source, gravity/momentum/compression/latent-heat storage solutions, some of these might do.

I think we need at least one more cycle of Nuclear power plants.

Perhaps then we'll have workable fission.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#322

Post by kwhitefoot »

pmiller2 wrote: post #43
pureliquidhw wrote: post #17

How susceptible are we to another catastrophic volcano eruption? After COVID-19 shut down supply chains, there were some problematic delays, but seems like we quickly recovered. If the entire planet's crops were wiped out, we're all just SOL if we don't get canned goods in time? If we had 12 months notice, could we as a planet get it together? 6 months? 3 months? Is there forecasting for volcanoes? (looks like yes: h…

In what sense have we “recovered” from supply chain disruptions? I go to the store and still routinely see empty shelves where TP should be; have experienced meat shortages in recent days; and stores are still rationing things like hand sanitizer (when you can find it), canned goods, meat, and rice.

It's hard to find good information on this subject but from the absence of non-US comments in this thread I'm inclined to conclude that supply chain disruption of the scale described is largely (not exclusively) a US problem.

So it presumably has something to do with how US supply chains work compared to, say, Europe rather than being solely caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#323

Post by unethical_ban »

ativzzz wrote: post #97
lgl wrote: post #62

The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull [0] was a small sample of the perturbations that a volcanic event can have on day to day lives. And it was a relatively small eruption. Anything much larger than that will most likely have devastating effects on modern society on pretty much all levels and it's not really a matter of "if" but "when". Besides eruptions, many other scarier events can cause huge shifts on…

> To me this is the main reason that going multiplanetary or space habitat based is basically the only way to escape this inevitable doom I disagree with this. Leaving the Earth doesn't remove random acts of doom from happening, and in fact, they are more lethal in unfamiliar and hostile environments. If we do not figure out how to handle such black swan events on our home planet, we have no chance of handling them i…

Making Earth better through comprehensive, global action: RAID

Putting people on Mars, and then other solar systems: Backups

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#324

Post by trevyn »

vbezhenar wrote: post #284
Nasrudith wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not too certain of the logic of the arguement - namely because fossil fuels are actually pretty damn advanced in terms of "actual technology and societal infastructure to access and exploit them". We already went through this long ago with surface deposits of copper ore as well essentially millenia ago. Effectively the time when it is useful is "when we don't have cheaper alternatives yet". We still should striv…

In case of apocalypsis, debris of our civilization will provide huge supplies of metals. Much cheaper to process than raw ore. Coal is a different thing. That said, I think that it's not necessary to have very cheap coal and oil energy to have technological advances.

Ahhh that’s why we haven’t met the aliens yet, they’re waiting for us to extract all the metals.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#325

Post by TechBro8615 »

caogecym wrote: post #319
harryh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current projections of Earth's population have a peak population of about 11B (only 40% higher than today) towards the end of the century and then declining. It's always hard to know what's going to happen in the future, but currently it's pretty unlikely that we'll ever see a worldwide population all that much higher than what we already have.

Curious - did the projection say what’s the cause of the decline after the peak?

I'm just speculating, but probably declining birth rates as economies develop.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#326

Post by TechBro8615 »

waterhouse wrote: post #98
castis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one of the attributes of an act of god is being unpreventable by humans. in the event of something like this, having the supplies to just weather the fallout would be best. a years worth of supplies on-hand would be a good start.

> one of the attributes of an act of god is being unpreventable by humans. That may be, but the set of things that humans can prevent gets larger over time. For example, 100 years ago, an asteroid hitting the earth would be an act of God we could do nothing about, but today it is at least within the realm of possibility that we could observe a large asteroid on a collision course and send in a spacecraft or missile t…

There was a Sci-Fi TV show about this called Salvation [0] which I thought was a decent show, but YMMV (reviews are quite polarized).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_(TV_series)

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#327

Post by stx »

sizzle wrote: post #232
Nasrudith wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not too certain of the logic of the arguement - namely because fossil fuels are actually pretty damn advanced in terms of "actual technology and societal infastructure to access and exploit them". We already went through this long ago with surface deposits of copper ore as well essentially millenia ago. Effectively the time when it is useful is "when we don't have cheaper alternatives yet". We still should striv…

What are the consequences of fracking?

Localized earthquakes are one. Also companies doing fracking actually have a legal exemption to the typical requirement to disclose the chemicals they pump into the ground. I believe they argue its a trade secret. I assume that if it was not really toxic they might disclose them.

https://www.factcheck.org/2017/04/facts-fracking-chemical-di...

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#328

Post by iso1631 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #321
iso1631 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New nuclear (Hinkley C) in the uk costs £92.50/MWh -- 3200MWe, operational from 2025 Proposed new offshore wind farms cost £40/MWh, operational from 2023/2024 Nuclear was the answer 15 years ago. It's not now.

Nuclear is still the answer to "what about baseline demand". Battery storage is possibly going to fit in there, but it doesn't do it yet. Tidal, ground source, gravity/momentum/compression/latent-heat storage solutions, some of these might do. I think we need at least one more cycle of Nuclear power plants. Perhaps then we'll have workable fission.

Possibly, but it seems exceptionally expensive and slow for what you get.

Sods law will say if you don't invest in nuclear, you'll be using a lot more CCGT because storage or large-geography interconnects won't be there

But if you do invest, you'll end up being stuck with something costing far more than commodity renewables+storage

We have "workable fission" now, it's just very expensive. Workable fusion is always a generation away.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#329

Post by s1artibartfast »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #261
aksss wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kidding me? We're all getting the coke. Just because you're not Scarface doesn't avoid the fact that all of us are awash in plastics, silicone, rare earth metals, concrete, steel, precious metals, alloys, goods from far flung lands, industrial agriculture and many assumptions about available services that rely on the same and ravenous upstream fossil fuel consumption. We (as human consumers) never had it so good,…

generally one makes a distinction between Scarface and people who do an occasional line at a party though.

Americans and citizens of high GDP countries are totally the scarfaces in this scenario

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#330

Post by s1artibartfast »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #217
aksss wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kidding me? We're all getting the coke. Just because you're not Scarface doesn't avoid the fact that all of us are awash in plastics, silicone, rare earth metals, concrete, steel, precious metals, alloys, goods from far flung lands, industrial agriculture and many assumptions about available services that rely on the same and ravenous upstream fossil fuel consumption. We (as human consumers) never had it so good,…

This is a xomolete misinterpretation of today's economic and resource situation. The real tragedy is that all this is a conpletely unneccesary wanton destruction. Thrre is no coke, it serves no purpose. Pick amy product on a supermarket shelf or on Amazon, and you wil find that raw materials account for maybe 20% of its final price tops. They are called commodities for a reason, and its production of those raw materi…

As you point out, cost has very little to do with the bulk consumption of natural materials, and seems tangential to the topic of discussion.
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