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How about when a single centralized oil refinery gets bombed by an unhappy middle-eastern country and your global productivity drops 5%?

by dymk 7y ago

gridlockd 7y ago
Global oil production is artificially constrained, it could be increased substantially if producers weren't afraid that prices would tank.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Which demonstrates nicely how absurdly broken our dependence on fossil fuels is.
macspoofing 7y ago
How about the fact that we know that fossil fuels and nuclear (and hydro and geothermal if the geography allows it) can actually power a modern economy? Is there a comparable example you can point to where solar or wind successfully replaced traditional power generators? You don't have to convince me fossil fuels are shitty and need to be replaced. I'm with you. Tell me how solar/wind replaces those.
- dymk 7y ago
  Batteries and building _more_ of it. Batteries work. We know how to store energy. And we don't need some perfect, uber efficient storage system yet to at least begin heavily investing. Fossil fuels have an artificial advantage simply due to oil subsidies. Even Germany is 20% wind power already.
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    >Batteries and building _more_ of it. Batteries work. Point me to a battery deployment that can store enough energy to power a modern reasonably-sized city for even hours at a time, much less days or weeks. That Tesla battery deployment in Australia? It provides a few seconds of energy. >We know how to store energy. No. We don't. Not at the scale we need to power an economy. That's the problem. >Even Germany is 20% wind power already. Sure. And the rest? Germany is signing multi-decade, multi-billion dollar deals with autocratic Russia to import their natural gas. Is that because they believe that wind and solar can fully replace fossil fuels? Or is that they know, that solar and wind have a hard ceiling on how much power they can provide and the rest needs to be bridged by burning natural gas, or coal, or biofuels (i.e. garbage, or corn, or whatever) to make it work?
    - geogra4 7y ago
      > Point me to a battery deployment that can store enough energy to power a modern reasonably-sized city for even hours at a time, much less days or weeks. https://electrek.co/2017/12/21/worlds-largest-battery-200mw-800mwh-vanadium-flow-battery-rongke-power/ https://electrek.co/2017/12/21/worlds-largest-battery-200mw-...
      - program_whiz 7y ago
        The battery’s purpose is to provide power during peak hours of demand, to enhance grid stability and deliver juice during black-start conditions in case of emergency. The system is expected to peak-shave about 8% of Dalian’s expected load when it comes online in 2020.
    - dymk 7y ago
      To be clear, fossil fuels are already insufficient to power a modern day economy without trillions of artificial subsidies. We are not in a mode where we can wait to deploy perfect technology. We will also not be going solar 100% anytime soon, but perhaps in the next few decades. The atmosphere and ocean are already unhappy, and maybe if we also invest in carbon sequestration technology we can roll back a century or so worth of damage. You're in this mindset that immediately it's all or nothing, and that's not the case. But we do need to start investing large sums of money now instead of making oil cheaper than it would normally be on a free market.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >To be clear, fossil fuels are already insufficient to power a modern day economy without trillions of artificial subsidies. The subsidies are part of the economy too, so clearly fossil fuels are capable to power a modern day economy. Else the economy would have gone down (due to the subsidies cost). The problem with solar/wind is that even with the same or larger subsidies we haven't yet solved many problems for powering a modern economy with them. Even if we had a huge budget to do so with just the proviso that no fossil/nuclear is used. And that doesn't even include the problem of replacing the fossil fuel based infrastructure itself. We don't even have enough electric battery making capacity for double the insignificant amount of electric cars sold now for example, much less for replacing every gas based car with an electric equivalent... The

How about when a single centralized oil refinery gets bombed by an unhappy middle-eastern country and your global productivity drops 5%?

by dymk 7y ago

How about when a single centralized oil refinery gets bombed by an unhappy middle-eastern country and your global productivity drops 5%?

gridlockd 7y ago

Global oil production is artificially constrained, it could be increased substantially if producers weren't afraid that prices would tank.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Which demonstrates nicely how absurdly broken our dependence on fossil fuels is.

macspoofing 7y ago

How about the fact that we know that fossil fuels and nuclear (and hydro and geothermal if the geography allows it) can actually power a modern economy? Is there a comparable example you can point to where solar or wind successfully replaced traditional power generators? You don't have to convince me fossil fuels are shitty and need to be replaced. I'm with you. Tell me how solar/wind replaces those.

dymk 7y ago
Batteries and building _more_ of it. Batteries work. We know how to store energy. And we don't need some perfect, uber efficient storage system yet to at least begin heavily investing. Fossil fuels have an artificial advantage simply due to oil subsidies. Even Germany is 20% wind power already.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Batteries and building _more_ of it. Batteries work. Point me to a battery deployment that can store enough energy to power a modern reasonably-sized city for even hours at a time, much less days or weeks. That Tesla battery deployment in Australia? It provides a few seconds of energy. >We know how to store energy. No. We don't. Not at the scale we need to power an economy. That's the problem. >Even Germany is 20% wind power already. Sure. And the rest? Germany is signing multi-decade, multi-billion dollar deals with autocratic Russia to import their natural gas. Is that because they believe that wind and solar can fully replace fossil fuels? Or is that they know, that solar and wind have a hard ceiling on how much power they can provide and the rest needs to be bridged by burning natural gas, or coal, or biofuels (i.e. garbage, or corn, or whatever) to make it work?
  - geogra4 7y ago
    > Point me to a battery deployment that can store enough energy to power a modern reasonably-sized city for even hours at a time, much less days or weeks. https://electrek.co/2017/12/21/worlds-largest-battery-200mw-800mwh-vanadium-flow-battery-rongke-power/ https://electrek.co/2017/12/21/worlds-largest-battery-200mw-...
    - program_whiz 7y ago
      The battery’s purpose is to provide power during peak hours of demand, to enhance grid stability and deliver juice during black-start conditions in case of emergency. The system is expected to peak-shave about 8% of Dalian’s expected load when it comes online in 2020.
  - dymk 7y ago
    To be clear, fossil fuels are already insufficient to power a modern day economy without trillions of artificial subsidies. We are not in a mode where we can wait to deploy perfect technology. We will also not be going solar 100% anytime soon, but perhaps in the next few decades. The atmosphere and ocean are already unhappy, and maybe if we also invest in carbon sequestration technology we can roll back a century or so worth of damage. You're in this mindset that immediately it's all or nothing, and that's not the case. But we do need to start investing large sums of money now instead of making oil cheaper than it would normally be on a free market.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >To be clear, fossil fuels are already insufficient to power a modern day economy without trillions of artificial subsidies. The subsidies are part of the economy too, so clearly fossil fuels are capable to power a modern day economy. Else the economy would have gone down (due to the subsidies cost). The problem with solar/wind is that even with the same or larger subsidies we haven't yet solved many problems for powering a modern economy with them. Even if we had a huge budget to do so with just the proviso that no fossil/nuclear is used. And that doesn't even include the problem of replacing the fossil fuel based infrastructure itself. We don't even have enough electric battery making capacity for double the insignificant amount of electric cars sold now for example, much less for replacing every gas based car with an electric equivalent... The