Earlier quoted context omitted.
With what panels? The vast majority are made in China.
So are MAGA hats.
The irony of proudly wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat made overseas to support a renowned grifter… I have no words.
Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
471–480 of 481 posts
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s such an amount of implied or perceived shame attached to using these government safety nets in America. I’d be surprised if anyone who was benefiting from them worked in coal.
And that is by design. There is a reason why people get food stamps and not just 1000 dollars on their bank account.
> not just 1000 dollars on their bank account.
Conditional cash transfer programs have been extremely successful in other countries. Brazil’s Bolsa Família is one I am more familiar with and it’s studied as a success reference.
The conditional part relies in part on universal healthcare, which might complicate things a bit in the US.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming we consume ~20 TW on average, a metre-squared panel kicks out ~40 W on average, and we halve that to account for batteries and other infra... I reckon we're talking about 1 million square kilometres (people will be along in a sec to check my working, but it's just a Fermi estimate). Call it 10% of the Sahara. Bear in mind that if we go all-electric, raw energy consumption falls significantly, many panels wil…
I'm not saying that that magnitude of solar generation isn't a good thing. I'm saying that the solar farms of 2050 don't necessarily need to be arrays of panels on top of clear-cut land. Grazing land is often essentially an ecological desert when compared to previous uses. Farms in general, honestly. Actually, this is a good forward example as agricultural expansion goes hand-in-hand with the Anthropocene die-off, bu…
Thanks, I completely misunderstood you.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read somewhere how the English people industrialized because they had problems that could not be fixed by human or animal power. Mines became too deep, pumping too hard. The ancient greek knew about steam engines, but had no use for them. The English did, in their mines. Necessity as mother of invention. Then machines freed us from hard labour and gave us free time.
Greeks had toys that couldn't produce meaningful amounts of power. And they had no real ways to improve that.
This perfectly demonstrates the point: Before James Watt came along, neither had the English. Steam was unreliable, broke down a lot, killed people, and was only tolerated because it was the only game in town. This bothered society, so money became available so smart people could sit down and give it a solid theoretical basis.
The greek had plenty of smart people, but nobody bothered to assign them the unreliable steam problem. There are secondary problems like metallurgy, but smart people can work on them or find away around them, too.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
Greeks had toys that couldn't produce meaningful amounts of power. And they had no real ways to improve that.
This perfectly demonstrates the point: Before James Watt came along, neither had the English. Steam was unreliable, broke down a lot, killed people, and was only tolerated because it was the only game in town. This bothered society, so money became available so smart people could sit down and give it a solid theoretical basis. The greek had plenty of smart people, but nobody bothered to assign them the unreliable ste…
That's... not what happened.
England started experimenting with steam because it _could_. Newcomen's atmospheric engine required metalworking that was flat-out impossible before the advent of modern(ish) iron-making processes.
Greeks would have needed to perfect large-scale iron-making. And in England's case, it was itself driven by the need to manufacture things like cannons, anchors, chains, etc.
If you somehow got transported into Greece with a perfect knowledge of steam engines, you first would need to spend several lifetimes researching the iron metallurgy. You would be able to build a toy steam engine out of bronze, maybe, but good quality bulk bronze was expensive enough to be used as currency.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#476The trump administration by refusing to admit the superior metrics of solar, they're just burying their heads in sand. As admitting that solar is now a superior and cost effective means of energy means admitting that the US is no longer top dog. As empires are built on mastering a source of energy. the Portuguese | Dutch - mastered wind to power their ships. the British mastered coal to power Industrial Revolution. A…
Chinese also have battery manufacturing, whose rapidly falling cost-curve is what is missing to enable 24/7 solar. American empire ruled with the petrodollar. Chinese will rule with the solaryuan if we don't get our shit together.
OH wow. American Petrodollar and Chinese SolarYuan are great terms.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capital was actually a big part of it. The plantation owner didn't just need to capitalize the cost of the land, but the labor as well. When someone purchased a slave, they were paying up front for the remaining labor that could come from that body. This was often pretty expensive when the body was young. Before the Civil War, New Orleans was one of the biggest banking centers of the US because of all of the borrowin…
Reading this post made me wonder if there were "temp agency" type businesses for slaves. Having to own the labor would make your it very difficult to expand and contract your workforce. Morality aside, it really doesn't seem like a great system.
This was incredibly common here in Washington DC. Think about construction. Building the Capitol required a ton of temporary labor, for example, so Congress contracted for both free and enslaved labor for its construction.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) More or less. Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years…
Capital was actually a big part of it. The plantation owner didn't just need to capitalize the cost of the land, but the labor as well. When someone purchased a slave, they were paying up front for the remaining labor that could come from that body. This was often pretty expensive when the body was young. Before the Civil War, New Orleans was one of the biggest banking centers of the US because of all of the borrowin…
I highly recommend the book Accounting For Slavery to anyone even remotely interested in this topic.
You talked about the costs of buying a human being, which is already horrible. But once an enslaved person was owned outright, they were used as collateral in loans to expand operations.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s true today, it wasn’t true when Germany was heavily subsidizing solar to get economies of scale going. Solar is historically a great example where public / private collaboration actually had a place. Even if today it’s time to let market forces work.
Solar is just one technology. Decarbonizing successfully requires still further huge investments in batteries, modular nuclear reactors, CO2 removal, zero-carbon steel production, aviation e-fuels, non-fossil plastics, etc. But yes, hopefully we've unlocked enough economic advantage with just that one technology to get us 90% of the way there just on the basis of economics. (If the current administration doesn't find…
The administration is certainly trying its best at that...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/02/stre...
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#480I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively un…
What will come with the approaching boom of guilt-free energy is public support for doing more things with more energy, and instead of stagnated per-capita energy use a return to more-than-linear energy usage growth. With that you get flying cars, space tourism, AI, cities in deserts with free water through desalination, better indoor climates with freer ventilation with the outside, cities skies free of ICE smog and…
Best I can do is a sexbot powered by GROK-69