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“Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

resilience.org

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Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#61

Post by fallingfrog »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #8
api wrote: post #3

Solar power and batteries have come a long way, but there's still little political will to change things. Nuclear power could progress a lot further too, but again no political will. There's no economic forcing function either since coal and gas remain on average the cheapest and easiest to deploy and manage sources of energy, and that won't change unless there's enough investment in alternatives to get them over the…

Why in the world is this comment being downvotes? There is nothing in this comment that I see is incorrect, and if you’re going to vigorously down vote because “I don’t like things that make me feel bad!” you at least ought to comment as to what could be wrong here.

He said that political will could fix problems where there is no economic forcing function to do so. For people who subscribe to an extreme Ayn Rand view of the world, that’s a heretical statement. Markets are believed to be a magic bullet that solves every conceivable problem and coordinated effort not done in search of profit is always bad.

Every utopian dream contains a totalitarian nightmare in it, unfettered capitalism is no exception. The truth is that different problems require different solutions, markets are good for some things but not others.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#62

Post by api »

Retric wrote: post #22
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why in the world is this comment being downvotes? There is nothing in this comment that I see is incorrect, and if you’re going to vigorously down vote because “I don’t like things that make me feel bad!” you at least ought to comment as to what could be wrong here.

It’s not a question of political will solar is now cheaper than coal in the vast majority of the world. It’s one of the reasons why coal went from 39% in 2014 of US generation down to 19.3% in 2020 with a lot more scheduled for decommissioning over the next 5 years. Even when Trump was making many pro coal speeches, industry viewed coal as a dead end. China is often mentioned as adding new coal power plants, but even…

Solar is only cheaper if you don't count storage. I think storage will eventually catch up, but it's not there yet.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#63

Post by dredmorbius »

ThomPete wrote: post #58
dredmorbius wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problems are solved by realists, not optimists. Unbridled optimists sell woo.

Realists just accept things as they are. Optimist believe they can change the future in ways realists can't. Optimism is the mental beacon for any progress not realism.

No. Realists accept reality as it is.

You're confusing realism with presentism, or perfectionism (in the sense that the present is "perfect" and fully developed).

Realism is neither.

Optimism is the rejection of unwanted, unpleasent, or inconvenient truths.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#64

Post by Retric »

api wrote: post #62
Retric wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a question of political will solar is now cheaper than coal in the vast majority of the world. It’s one of the reasons why coal went from 39% in 2014 of US generation down to 19.3% in 2020 with a lot more scheduled for decommissioning over the next 5 years. Even when Trump was making many pro coal speeches, industry viewed coal as a dead end. China is often mentioned as adding new coal power plants, but even…

Solar is only cheaper if you don't count storage. I think storage will eventually catch up, but it's not there yet.

You can hit ~60% of total electricity generation using solar with 0 storage. Wind is still cheap even if mostly used at night, add in existing hydroelectric dams and natural gas generators and you’re there.

You only need storage if you want to hit 100% green grid which is a great goal but separate issue from simply saving money.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#65

Post by actinium226 »

aeternum wrote: post #47
1970-01-01 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 50s, nuclear was being treated as the magic that would solve all energy problems. There were ideas for making fission cars, trains, planes, etc. But since then, civilization has only benefited from nuclear reactors via power plants, naval ships, RTGs, and depending on how you see it, bombs. The magic of nuclear fission never provided the complete revolution it was setup to do. Just as we weren't responsib…

The problem with nuclear is the slow iteration speed and extreme cost of failure. Those are not good properties if you want to push technology forward quickly. The great thing about solar and wind is that we can iterate very quickly and catastrophic failure costs are nearly non-existent. Nuclear still has great potential but the costs are just too high (and maybe they should be).

Why do you need high iteration speed? Nuclear is pretty safe as it is. Chernobyl was using reactors that were obsolete in 1986. Fukushima was pretty fucked up in having the generators below sea level, but the result of that was 6 people got cancer.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#66

Post by ThomPete »

dredmorbius wrote: post #63
ThomPete wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realists just accept things as they are. Optimist believe they can change the future in ways realists can't. Optimism is the mental beacon for any progress not realism.

No. Realists accept reality as it is. You're confusing realism with presentism, or perfectionism (in the sense that the present is "perfect" and fully developed). Realism is neither. Optimism is the rejection of unwanted, unpleasent, or inconvenient truths.

“As it is” is always temporary. Optimists change “what is”. Not all are going to succeed but some are and thats what moves us forward :)

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#67

Post by jfengel »

actinium226 wrote: post #24

Well hello Mr. Malthus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Back to seriousness - the author claims there are limits to nuclear, wind, and solar, but does not state what those limits are. The limit on nuclear is not clear to me - France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear. It seems the main limit on nuclear has been public sentiment, which must be weighed with public sentiment on climat…

That's "Rev. Malthus". He was an ordained curate of the Church of England.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#68

Post by dredmorbius »

ThomPete wrote: post #66
dredmorbius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Realists accept reality as it is. You're confusing realism with presentism, or perfectionism (in the sense that the present is "perfect" and fully developed). Realism is neither. Optimism is the rejection of unwanted, unpleasent, or inconvenient truths.

“As it is” is always temporary. Optimists change “what is”. Not all are going to succeed but some are and thats what moves us forward :)

"As it is" in this case is not static to time. It includes dynamics, values, relationships, and heuristics of evolution.

What I find hard to understand is that you pit realism as the antonym of optimsim. The correct antonym is pessimism.

Both optimism and pessimism are biases. Realism is the absense of bias.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#69

Post by jfengel »

labster wrote: post #50
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen enough sci fi movies and watched human behavior long enough that the aerosol idea terrifies me. I can see that going so wrong and plunging us into an ice age that we didn’t predict or many other scenarios because we didn’t understand everything as well as we thought we did. Let’s hope that is the absolute last resort. And I’m not anti science. I’m a former scientist and almost all my experiments usually end…

Atmospheric scientist here, currently non-practicing. You’re making the same mistake that climate denialists make, but in reverse. We actually know a great deal about climate feedback mechanisms now. We know the residence time of SO2 in the upper atmosphere. We know how to calculate the change in solar flux as a result. We can model what will happen — we know this because our past climate models did well with the unc…

I'll admit, I'm also skeptical about our ability to manage climate by pumping even more into the atmosphere. The CO2 models have been very accurate, but doubling the number of variables more-than-doubles the complexity. SO2, for example, is even more acidic than CO2, so we'd risk helping the temperature while making the oceans worse.

SO2's instability is somewhat reassuring, and I'm willing to consider a plan, especially if atmospheric scientists can come to a similar overwhelming consensus as they have on CO2. But until such a plan exists, I believe we need to focus heavily on decarbonization because that's a plan we are absolutely certain to be effective. To the extent that geoengineering reduces the urgency of that, it risks making things worse.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#70

Post by aeternum »

actinium226 wrote: post #65
aeternum wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with nuclear is the slow iteration speed and extreme cost of failure. Those are not good properties if you want to push technology forward quickly. The great thing about solar and wind is that we can iterate very quickly and catastrophic failure costs are nearly non-existent. Nuclear still has great potential but the costs are just too high (and maybe they should be).

Why do you need high iteration speed? Nuclear is pretty safe as it is. Chernobyl was using reactors that were obsolete in 1986. Fukushima was pretty fucked up in having the generators below sea level, but the result of that was 6 people got cancer.

Fukushima may not have caused much loss of life, but you also need to consider the economic damage.

Natural disasters, terrorism, and unanticipated design flaws (generators below sea level) are important considerations. Those add costs that aren't always accounted for.

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