491–500 of 607 posts
"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.
I recently bought a heat pump dryer and it's pretty cool. No exhaust vent, just water drain. It also doesn't need the heavy duty power plug since it pulls so much less electricity than a typical heated air dryer.
Renewable energy is great, but we're not replacing fossil fuels with it, we're just adding more energy usage. And our energy usage is destroying the environment. Don't let these advancements in solar make you think things are getting better. We need to reduce fossil fuel usage, not just increase solar usage. https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/b3b696c0-226d-0137-f265-1d2...
I grew up in a rural house that is off grid. My parents used to run a gasoline generator whenever they wanted electricity. As kids, to watch movies, this was all the time. As they got older, got phones, satellite internet etc their gasoline use went up a lot. They had solar since the 90s but it was broken panels (which still work, they basically never die). Finally last year I had the time and money to put in a big n…
(Though you don't have to do it all at once. So you could run it briefly every month, and occasionally put in one gallon, which is a lot easier to lift.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man, Paul Krugman (here's a trigger for people who know they know better than him to respond that he's a hack!) was writing about the US giving up lead of solar tech to China back during the G. W. Bush admin... (which makes me feel old as hell)
In 1979 Jimmy Carter installed solar (thermal) panels on the White House roof as part of his fairly progressive environmental and fuel efficiency policies. Now I feel old :/ And also angry that it's been 40 years and electricity generation is still >50% fossil fuels, never mind world energy use overall.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a small strip of magnesium explodes when dropped in water No it doesn't. Magnesium metal burns because the boiling point of magnesium is just 1091 C, so extremely reactive vapor is readily produced. But it would be very hard to heat it that high in water unless it was ignited first. It will then continue to burn under water.
Maybe I should have clarified burning, as in “Why does burning magnesium explode when sprinkled with water?” https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/33167/why-does-b...
If a hypothetical ship full of magnesium sinks without catching the magnesium on fire first, the magnesium will probably not catch fire from exposure to water. Perhaps if it's sufficiently finely divided, which seems like a bad idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ships carrying energy are a pretty easy explosive target as well. Local ressilence is needed in any case and mass produced batteries can provide that safety.
We have quite a bit of experience transporting hydrocarbons . . . .
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills
But the problem mentioned above was about war.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hum... The profits from oil aren't as fat as they used to be. In fact, if you subtract the giant amount of subsides, there may be almost to nothing there. That's to say that no, countries and governments do not behave like companies.
I think you might be in agreement with me in the main, just quibbling on the timing? The US's addiction to "fat oil profits" goes back over a hundred years, and that's what the NYTimes author argues is driving the current administration's push to keep those profits going. Whether there actually are such profits is a different question. This is exactly the behavior of the big companies in "The Innovators Dilemma": con…
Those companies optimize for corporation profit. If the US was optimizing for societal wealth or government revenue they would be pushing the country into renewables.
On reality many big corporations get corrupt management that destroy corporate profit and optimize for the managers personal wealth. Those ones act like the US is acting. But that's not the behavior that book is about.
Renewable energy is great, but we're not replacing fossil fuels with it, we're just adding more energy usage. And our energy usage is destroying the environment. Don't let these advancements in solar make you think things are getting better. We need to reduce fossil fuel usage, not just increase solar usage. https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/b3b696c0-226d-0137-f265-1d2...
Things are getting better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's more banal than that. Oil you have to pay for. Which for most countries you need to constantly come up with foreign currency. If you have a financial crisis like hot money flees you end up at the mercy of the world banking systems mafia enforcers the IMF. With solar and electrified transport and industry? Can't pay the loans for the solar panels? Sucks for the saps that loaned you the money. Come and take them.
Come on, be serious. The IMF doesn't break anyone's legs. The worst they can do is refuse to loan you any more money. Any sovereign state is free to balance their own budget and tell the IMF to GTFO.
And of course financial considerations are often a first-order consideration in military conflict even today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diesel, iron or aluminum, from your parent post, are difficult to explode… (personally, no clue about magnesium); and the point of the latter two is that you can “store” energy by upstreaming its consumption when power is available, you don’t necessarily need to produce an actual reversible energy store.
> and the point of the latter two is that you can “store” energy by upstreaming its consumption when power is available Are you sure the parent isn't referring to something like a rust (iron-air) battery? Aluminum, Iron, and Magnesium are all viable battery chemistries. Side note - I'm pretty certain you don't actually need to make contents of a ship explode to easily sink it with explosives. I'm actually somewhat co…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article notes several examples of reduced use of fossil fuels: > California is so far using forty per cent less natural gas to generate electricity than it did in 2023 > total carbon emissions in China had actually decreased > kept the country’s coal use flat and also cut the amount of natural gas used during the same period in 2024 by a quarter
Meanwhile Germany shut down its nuclear plants while keeping coal and natural gas around to supplement renewables. One of the biggest unforced errors I've heard of recently.
Poland is keeping their coal plants open by refusing to invest in quick and cheap renewables. Instead they plan to build nuclear plants for the next 20 years.