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>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 sola

>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.

keanzu 7y ago
> 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. With a sufficiently broad definition of battery to include pumped hydro, grid scale batteries do exist and are cost effective. This does require rather specific geography.
ZeroGravitas 7y ago
It's not my fault that the entire conservative and libertarian movement decided to adopt the most idiotic possible stance and stick with it long after it was obvious to everyone that it was a low quality lie. Am I now supposed to pretend that didn't happen and naively assume that those same people are genuinely curious about the impact of mining rare earths, or wether gas backup of renewables is better economically and environmentally than burning coal, or about bird deaths from wind turbines? No thanks, unlike the people who believe this nonsense I'm not a complete chump. Maybe you're only pretending to be ill informed about renewable energy, but either way repeating talking points you learned from climate change deniers isn't in the least bit convincing. Yes the guy in the video sounds like he's talking to very slow children. That's how you talk to people with opinions unmoored from reality. He's right though. Tesla didn't look at whether EVs were possible and say "this doesn't exist therefore it never can" they looked at the physics of it and will be creating large amounts of electricity storage that is cheaper and more environmentally sound than what came before. Just repeating "this isn't possible" when lots of domain experts think it will be isn't convincing. Just like denying climate change wasn't convincing, just politically convenient.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  You keep focusing on climate change denialists. I am with you on that. It is irrational to dismiss the findings of a multitude of good well-meaning scientists across a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines. Having said that, climate change denialists are not the problem. In fact, they are great for proponents of solar and wind because it shifts the conversation to how dumb and evil the denialists are instead of seeing how bad wind and solar are for the environment and climate change action. Look at our conversation. You keep going back to denialists and not actually any answer any question I have on renewables. And annoyingly you keep linking me with climate-change denialists. Can you stop? Being skeptical about renewables is not the same as denying climage-change or for action to comabt climate-change. >Yes the guy in the video sounds like he's talking to very slow children. That wasn't my concern. My objection was that he skirted answering a question in the same place that everyone from the cult of renewables does. It always ends up with an argument that we just need to tap human ingenunity to invent new technology just as we did when we went to the moon. Maybe we can, maybe we can't. Going to the moon turns out to be easier than a lot of other things that feel like they should be easy. >Just repeating "this isn't possible" when lots of domain experts think it will be isn't convincing. I listed reasons why it isn't possible. You sent me a link that argued the same except the youtuber argued we just need a 'can-do-attitude'. Let me send you a link. Here's a 'Real Engineering' Youtube video on reasonable issues with (California's) renewables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5cm7HOAqZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5cm7HOAqZY and even that video ends in the same place ... we just need to invent new battery technologies.

keanzu 7y ago

> 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. With a sufficiently broad definition of battery to include pumped hydro, grid scale batteries do exist and are cost effective. This does require rather specific geography.

ZeroGravitas 7y ago

It's not my fault that the entire conservative and libertarian movement decided to adopt the most idiotic possible stance and stick with it long after it was obvious to everyone that it was a low quality lie. Am I now supposed to pretend that didn't happen and naively assume that those same people are genuinely curious about the impact of mining rare earths, or wether gas backup of renewables is better economically and environmentally than burning coal, or about bird deaths from wind turbines? No thanks, unlike the people who believe this nonsense I'm not a complete chump. Maybe you're only pretending to be ill informed about renewable energy, but either way repeating talking points you learned from climate change deniers isn't in the least bit convincing. Yes the guy in the video sounds like he's talking to very slow children. That's how you talk to people with opinions unmoored from reality. He's right though. Tesla didn't look at whether EVs were possible and say "this doesn't exist therefore it never can" they looked at the physics of it and will be creating large amounts of electricity storage that is cheaper and more environmentally sound than what came before. Just repeating "this isn't possible" when lots of domain experts think it will be isn't convincing. Just like denying climate change wasn't convincing, just politically convenient.

macspoofing 7y ago
You keep focusing on climate change denialists. I am with you on that. It is irrational to dismiss the findings of a multitude of good well-meaning scientists across a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines. Having said that, climate change denialists are not the problem. In fact, they are great for proponents of solar and wind because it shifts the conversation to how dumb and evil the denialists are instead of seeing how bad wind and solar are for the environment and climate change action. Look at our conversation. You keep going back to denialists and not actually any answer any question I have on renewables. And annoyingly you keep linking me with climate-change denialists. Can you stop? Being skeptical about renewables is not the same as denying climage-change or for action to comabt climate-change. >Yes the guy in the video sounds like he's talking to very slow children. That wasn't my concern. My objection was that he skirted answering a question in the same place that everyone from the cult of renewables does. It always ends up with an argument that we just need to tap human ingenunity to invent new technology just as we did when we went to the moon. Maybe we can, maybe we can't. Going to the moon turns out to be easier than a lot of other things that feel like they should be easy. >Just repeating "this isn't possible" when lots of domain experts think it will be isn't convincing. I listed reasons why it isn't possible. You sent me a link that argued the same except the youtuber argued we just need a 'can-do-attitude'. Let me send you a link. Here's a 'Real Engineering' Youtube video on reasonable issues with (California's) renewables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5cm7HOAqZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5cm7HOAqZY and even that video ends in the same place ... we just need to invent new battery technologies.