4 ms·

There are at least 5 better alternatives to wind and solar, but we don't teach science any more in public schools. If we did, there wouldn't even BE climate ch

There are at least 5 better alternatives to wind and solar, but we don't teach science any more in public schools. If we did, there wouldn't even BE climate change alarmist hysteria poised to destroy entire economies.

reallydontask 7y ago
could you name them and explain the rationale? genuinely curious
tambre 7y ago
Please explain your points instead of off-the-hip vague statements. I suggest you have a second look at the HN guidelines [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jandrese 7y ago
Are you talking about natural gas? I can think of a couple of other renewable resources: Geothermal and Hydroelectric, but Geothermal is geographically limited and Hydroelectric has proven to have more environmental impact than we would like. I have no idea on what the other three could be. I guess you could include Nuclear in the list, but the price points on that make it hard to declare it better than Solar and Wind.
- sunkenvicar 7y ago
  What are the severe environmental impacts of hydro?
  - prolepunk 7y ago
    Flooding, especially when building hydro in flat areas. Earthquakes -- there is some causality Destruction of fish habitat -- salmon in Columbia river In general, making water go slow when it used to go fast has a lot more negative consequence for the environment than one might expect. I find this episode of 99 percent invisible to be really informative -- https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fish-cannon/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fish-cannon/
  - eppp 7y ago
    Dams also result in large methane releases. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/hundreds-new-dams-could-mean-trouble-our-climate https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/hundreds-new-dams-co...
  - jandrese 7y ago
    I didn't say severe, but there are environmental impacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reservoirs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reserv... The biggest is the destruction of migrating fish habitat, sometimes reversible with specialized structures (salmon ladders), sometimes not. There is also some evidence for increased CO2 emissions from artificial reservoirs.
    - sunkenvicar 7y ago
      Hydro is clean and cheap baseload power. Better than nuclear. The impact of creating water reservoirs must be immense. Because we are dreaming about replacing hydro with vastly inferior power sources.

reallydontask 7y ago

could you name them and explain the rationale? genuinely curious

tambre 7y ago

Please explain your points instead of off-the-hip vague statements. I suggest you have a second look at the HN guidelines [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jandrese 7y ago

Are you talking about natural gas? I can think of a couple of other renewable resources: Geothermal and Hydroelectric, but Geothermal is geographically limited and Hydroelectric has proven to have more environmental impact than we would like. I have no idea on what the other three could be. I guess you could include Nuclear in the list, but the price points on that make it hard to declare it better than Solar and Wind.

sunkenvicar 7y ago
What are the severe environmental impacts of hydro?
- prolepunk 7y ago
  Flooding, especially when building hydro in flat areas. Earthquakes -- there is some causality Destruction of fish habitat -- salmon in Columbia river In general, making water go slow when it used to go fast has a lot more negative consequence for the environment than one might expect. I find this episode of 99 percent invisible to be really informative -- https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fish-cannon/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fish-cannon/
- eppp 7y ago
  Dams also result in large methane releases. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/hundreds-new-dams-could-mean-trouble-our-climate https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/hundreds-new-dams-co...
- jandrese 7y ago
  I didn't say severe, but there are environmental impacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reservoirs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reserv... The biggest is the destruction of migrating fish habitat, sometimes reversible with specialized structures (salmon ladders), sometimes not. There is also some evidence for increased CO2 emissions from artificial reservoirs.
  - sunkenvicar 7y ago
    Hydro is clean and cheap baseload power. Better than nuclear. The impact of creating water reservoirs must be immense. Because we are dreaming about replacing hydro with vastly inferior power sources.