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>But it's not based in facts, it's just a collection of false talking points That's not true and unfair. Believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. I want s

>But it's not based in facts, it's just a collection of false talking points That's not true and unfair. Believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. I want somebody to walk me through what a end-goal for our ideal energy mix is, preferably without casually throwing it that we just need to create a new exotic battery technology. The most hopeful proposals always put in something in the fine-print like burning some carbon-emitting fuel, like 'biofuels' (i.e. burning garbage or corn) to work around intermittency issues of solar and wind. That's how I got disillusioned with solar(and wind) being the answer to climate change. Then there's Germany (and California to a lesser extent), huge economic regions that are a great test bed for large-scale deployments. Germany is signing multi-decade deals to build NEW pipelines to ship natural gas and isn't expected to be carbon free until 2060s (i.e. never). Both Germany and California are importing fossil fuel-based electricity from neighbours to plug holes in their grids. Meanwhile, France is basically carbon-free for energy generetion, without much solar and wind. Also, you haven't actually said which part is wrong. Just that it's wrong. Can you make an effort? >No one who brings up rare earth in these discussions cares about that issue. I think there's a level of hopeful and overly positive thinking around what solar panels can be to the point where it is cult-like. Why can't you be skeptical of solar energy? I'm not denying climate change, or the need to minimize carbon emissions. I'm skeptical of solar and wind as a modality for that change. There are major challenges with scaling solar deployments past a certain point due to the fact that solar energy is highly diffuse, intermittent and variable (across seasons and years). I agree, the material requirements are a secondary consideration, but let's be clear, if you're going to scale solar to being something like 50% of global energy mix, those are important considerations. >But people are still denying it's even happening There are people like that, but they aren't the problem because we don't have a real solution anyway. The people that are spreading FUD on nuclear are the real problem. If Western world doubled-down on nuclear power to the same level as France in the 60s and 70s think of the trillions of tons of CO2 that would not have been emitted. So is the anti-nuke movement or conservative climate change denials that is worse for climate change?

Certhas 7y ago
> That's not true and unfair. I believe you are genuine, but also the information you present is miles from the reality in Germany and Europe, and the state of research in the field in general. > Believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. I want somebody to walk me through what a end-goal for our ideal energy mix is, preferably without casually throwing it that we just need to create a new exotic battery technology. Until 80% the carbon optimal mix is Gas + Renewables. For the last 20% you need to start producing the Gas from excess energy during times when renewables outstrip demand. Also, gas is incredibly much better for carbon footprint than coal, so in the short term replacing coal with gas makes a lot of sense. And again, there are no unproven technologies in this scenario. Everything exists and exists today. It just makes no sense to start generating gas from renewables until you have many periods where renewables outstrip demand. Finally, again, for economic reasons it starts making sense to do the same (turn excess production into gas) for nuclear as well [2]. It also is obvious that Germany fucked up with getting out of nuclear when they did. The intermittency issues you claim also don't really exist as such in todays grid. What's your source for that? In Germany the amount of balancing energy used to combat intermittency has been _declining_ for years [1]. They have congestion issues, but that is again a political rather than a technical issue (if you can't get people to accept power lines in their backyards, good luck with building nuclear power plants). European grid stability has generally been improving with the build out of renewables (and blackouts are ten times more common in the US than in Germany). This is often said to be related to the improved coordination in the European system. A number of authors have mapped out different aspects of the transition towards 100% systems [3]. But again, we already have 100% systems on islands today. So your claim that no one knows how to build them is manifestly wrong. There are plenty of problems with transitioning or scaling, but there is no fundamental mystery about any of this. For the 100% scenario the work of Greiner for example explicitly is built around tackling the question of transmission vs storage, taking all sorts of variability into account [4]. You can always quibble with the assumptions, with the level of modeling, etc. But none of this is entirely new. We have had reports maping out the 100% scenarios for years, with a number of different options. (Last relatively excentric one I saw advocated building electrolysis platforms powerd by windfarms offshore and directly transporting gas into the gas system, I would class that as a technological challenge, even if there isn't anything fundamentally unproven about the technology). And again, look at what happened with solar. Our knowledge of running and building these systems will increase dramatically as we build them. There is no indication to me that we are not capable of doing so _if there was sufficient political will_. And that last part is what's truly hard. Of course then we still have to face the hard problems: Industry and agriculture.... [1] https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/wp-content/uploads/ausschreibungen-regelenergie-q2-2019.png https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/wp-content/uploads/ausschreib... [2] https://nworbmot.org/blog/burden-of-proof.html https://nworbmot.org/blog/burden-of-proof.html [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032118307913 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640... [4] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf
ZeroGravitas 7y ago
If you're genuinely interested in escaping your info bubble then I've been recommending this video as a quick intro for people who don't feel at home with left wing solutions to climate change. Part of its about climate change denial, but it covers the attacks made (often by the same people) on the viability of renewables too and your pont about the solution not existing yet: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D99qI42KGB0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D99qI42KGB0 And yes, climate change deniers are the real problem, not people who are irrationally scared of nuclear. Nuclear is just one solution, and as of today it's not a cost effective one. We could have been building nukes for a while but what was the point in investing so much money in what was just a big hoax anyway? We could have had a carbon tax that made Nuclear competitive but again, what's the point when it's just a hoax?
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >If you're genuinely interested in escaping your info bubble What info bubble? There is hardly any critical analysis in the press about the constraints of solar and wind. I watched the video you posted from the marker you linked to. The author identified a 'conservative' objection to solar and wind as lacking an effective storage solution (why is that a conservative objection?). The author's retort is that we merely lack a 'can-do-attitude'. No seriously - those are his words and the crux of his response. He argues "If mass storage systems don't exist, then invent them, use Li-io, or compressed air storage, or gravity storage". Except none of those are actually viable technologies to supplant a natural gas peaker plant that is REQUIRED to backup large solar and wind deployments. Take the Tesla battery deployment in Australia which the author claims is an example of what can be achieved if we just put our minds to it. That battery deployment is not meant to provide power when solar output is negligble or non-existent, it is there to even out grid load, and supplies energy on the order of seconds. A battery back up of solar and wind deployments on the scale of a nation's economy, would need to provide enough storage for WEEKS of energy - there is NO battery technology today or upcoming that can do that. You can see that by looking what nations like Germany that want to go renewable, are actually doing. I get the 'can-do-attitude' line of thinking, but let's be clear, this line of argument means that 1) we cannot replace fossil fuel sources TODAY and with CURRENT technology, with renewables, and 2) sometimes no amount of 'can-do-attitude' can beat thermodynamics. We used fossil fuels (fundamentally a 19th century technology) becuase there aren't a lot of other options. Energy density of fossil fuels is not trivial to beat. And yes, this is typical. I want to understand what an economy based totally (or mostly) on renewables would look like and all I get is a a pot-pourri of things that don't exist that we need to invent. >And yes, climate change deniers are the real problem You spend an inordinate amount of time on climate change deniers. I've never claimed human-driven climate change is a hoax or that our best science is wrong on the effects of it. Why bring it up? And why implicitly try to link me with those guys? I suspect this is because it is a low-hanging fruit that allows you to criticize an easy to criticize group without focusing on the fact that renewables are not getting us to where we need to go. It's like focusing on creationists when your school system gradautes functionally illiterate students. Yeah creationists are a problem, but not THE problem for solving illiteracy.

Certhas 7y ago

> That's not true and unfair. I believe you are genuine, but also the information you present is miles from the reality in Germany and Europe, and the state of research in the field in general. > Believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. I want somebody to walk me through what a end-goal for our ideal energy mix is, preferably without casually throwing it that we just need to create a new exotic battery technology. Until 80% the carbon optimal mix is Gas + Renewables. For the last 20% you need to start producing the Gas from excess energy during times when renewables outstrip demand. Also, gas is incredibly much better for carbon footprint than coal, so in the short term replacing coal with gas makes a lot of sense. And again, there are no unproven technologies in this scenario. Everything exists and exists today. It just makes no sense to start generating gas from renewables until you have many periods where renewables outstrip demand. Finally, again, for economic reasons it starts making sense to do the same (turn excess production into gas) for nuclear as well [2]. It also is obvious that Germany fucked up with getting out of nuclear when they did. The intermittency issues you claim also don't really exist as such in todays grid. What's your source for that? In Germany the amount of balancing energy used to combat intermittency has been _declining_ for years [1]. They have congestion issues, but that is again a political rather than a technical issue (if you can't get people to accept power lines in their backyards, good luck with building nuclear power plants). European grid stability has generally been improving with the build out of renewables (and blackouts are ten times more common in the US than in Germany). This is often said to be related to the improved coordination in the European system. A number of authors have mapped out different aspects of the transition towards 100% systems [3]. But again, we already have 100% systems on islands today. So your claim that no one knows how to build them is manifestly wrong. There are plenty of problems with transitioning or scaling, but there is no fundamental mystery about any of this. For the 100% scenario the work of Greiner for example explicitly is built around tackling the question of transmission vs storage, taking all sorts of variability into account [4]. You can always quibble with the assumptions, with the level of modeling, etc. But none of this is entirely new. We have had reports maping out the 100% scenarios for years, with a number of different options. (Last relatively excentric one I saw advocated building electrolysis platforms powerd by windfarms offshore and directly transporting gas into the gas system, I would class that as a technological challenge, even if there isn't anything fundamentally unproven about the technology). And again, look at what happened with solar. Our knowledge of running and building these systems will increase dramatically as we build them. There is no indication to me that we are not capable of doing so _if there was sufficient political will_. And that last part is what's truly hard. Of course then we still have to face the hard problems: Industry and agriculture.... [1] https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/wp-content/uploads/ausschreibungen-regelenergie-q2-2019.png https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/wp-content/uploads/ausschreib... [2] https://nworbmot.org/blog/burden-of-proof.html https://nworbmot.org/blog/burden-of-proof.html [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032118307913 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640... [4] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf

ZeroGravitas 7y ago

If you're genuinely interested in escaping your info bubble then I've been recommending this video as a quick intro for people who don't feel at home with left wing solutions to climate change. Part of its about climate change denial, but it covers the attacks made (often by the same people) on the viability of renewables too and your pont about the solution not existing yet: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D99qI42KGB0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D99qI42KGB0 And yes, climate change deniers are the real problem, not people who are irrationally scared of nuclear. Nuclear is just one solution, and as of today it's not a cost effective one. We could have been building nukes for a while but what was the point in investing so much money in what was just a big hoax anyway? We could have had a carbon tax that made Nuclear competitive but again, what's the point when it's just a hoax?

macspoofing 7y ago
>If you're genuinely interested in escaping your info bubble What info bubble? There is hardly any critical analysis in the press about the constraints of solar and wind. I watched the video you posted from the marker you linked to. The author identified a 'conservative' objection to solar and wind as lacking an effective storage solution (why is that a conservative objection?). The author's retort is that we merely lack a 'can-do-attitude'. No seriously - those are his words and the crux of his response. He argues "If mass storage systems don't exist, then invent them, use Li-io, or compressed air storage, or gravity storage". Except none of those are actually viable technologies to supplant a natural gas peaker plant that is REQUIRED to backup large solar and wind deployments. Take the Tesla battery deployment in Australia which the author claims is an example of what can be achieved if we just put our minds to it. That battery deployment is not meant to provide power when solar output is negligble or non-existent, it is there to even out grid load, and supplies energy on the order of seconds. A battery back up of solar and wind deployments on the scale of a nation's economy, would need to provide enough storage for WEEKS of energy - there is NO battery technology today or upcoming that can do that. You can see that by looking what nations like Germany that want to go renewable, are actually doing. I get the 'can-do-attitude' line of thinking, but let's be clear, this line of argument means that 1) we cannot replace fossil fuel sources TODAY and with CURRENT technology, with renewables, and 2) sometimes no amount of 'can-do-attitude' can beat thermodynamics. We used fossil fuels (fundamentally a 19th century technology) becuase there aren't a lot of other options. Energy density of fossil fuels is not trivial to beat. And yes, this is typical. I want to understand what an economy based totally (or mostly) on renewables would look like and all I get is a a pot-pourri of things that don't exist that we need to invent. >And yes, climate change deniers are the real problem You spend an inordinate amount of time on climate change deniers. I've never claimed human-driven climate change is a hoax or that our best science is wrong on the effects of it. Why bring it up? And why implicitly try to link me with those guys? I suspect this is because it is a low-hanging fruit that allows you to criticize an easy to criticize group without focusing on the fact that renewables are not getting us to where we need to go. It's like focusing on creationists when your school system gradautes functionally illiterate students. Yeah creationists are a problem, but not THE problem for solving illiteracy.