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The article makes some big assumptions. Like for example the idea that switching to the renewable energy sources referenced in the article would solve the pheno

The article makes some big assumptions. Like for example the idea that switching to the renewable energy sources referenced in the article would solve the phenomenon of global warming. The article references human inertia as the only obstacle left but one of the fundamental assumptions made is that simply switching to the alternative sources referred to would allow the environment to recover before it collapses. That's another kind of "inertia" (karma). I have never seen any any solid proof presented by mainstream scientists about the actual cause of global warming. Is there a concrete chain of cause and effect that relates by quantity the amount of emissions with the exact changes in Earth surface temperature? Besides all this, lots of the renewable energy sources turn out to require more energy to produce and set up than they are able to recover over the span of decades (like wind farming, which is very costly to mine the materials, ship them out, set up, and get going). The article mentions the fiscal cost of setting up these alternative sources but apparently that's not the only thing standing in the way either. My point is that this article paints a highly idealistic portrait. We don't have enough time left for that!

evgen 16y ago
There is not a single renewable energy source that is a net negative over its lifetime. We have gotten very efficient over the past 40 years since that factoid may have once been true. That is not to say that this study did not engage in a lot of hand-waving assumptions (the claim that a small fraction of total power that was hydro could cover solar/wind fluctuations for base load is delusional to be point of being outright deceptive) and is light on a practical path from here to there, but if you were to add a nuclear component that was 30-40% of the total I would not find the paper's claims to be completely unreasonable.
- pshapiro 16y ago
  Thorium is promising, but I've heard on a TED talk (can't find the link now, it was a talk with lots of data and projection being presented) that even if we were to build one nuclear power plant each day, it would not be enough to keep up with the increase in energy usage, much less to switch over completely. Do you have any figures or an experimental apparatus to back up what you said?
  - johngalt 16y ago
    A large nuke will produce around 3GW, a large solar plant will produce 0.1GW. So if building a nuke every day won't do it, sounds like building 30 solar plants every day won't either. So I guess we start building two nukes every day?
Detrus 16y ago
Most renewable power equipment comes with stats about how long it takes to recover energy used to create it, or recoup cost. Usual solar panels say 1-5 years to generate the energy used to create them and last 20. The consensus among scientists is that global warming is manmade, if you haven't seen it presented that's a separate issue. Of course making predictions on such large complex systems as our climate is unprecedented, so who knows. There is a variety of models/simulations, some more optimistic than others, then real world data is used to pick the most accurate one. So far the most optimistic models aren't winning.
- pshapiro 16y ago
  I'm not saying that global warming is not manmade, and I have also seen quite a bit of the content of the arguments claiming it comes from emissions, but none of them are able to present anything concrete. As you pointed out, the optimistic models not winning, and in fact the outlook from mainstream scientists' models get worse every year. The problem is compounding -- that's how the world works in fact. I'm so concerned because nobody considers what I'm talking about seriously, and almost everyone easily discards what I say as the ravings of some pseudoscientific, ignorant apocalypse nut. But unfortunately for their social standing, and fortunately for people who are interested in facts, I know what I talk about. Let's think about this carefully. If the models predicting the changes through emissions are so accurate, why does the outlook get so drastically worse every year? It's because the system that you refer to as our climate in reality also includes gravitational and magnetic factors. This introduces huge oscillating systems. If physics today has no confirmed understanding about the role of the gravity on the climate, and how a gravitational field is maintained, how could they rule out factors that would influence gravity? In fact, there isn't a real understanding of gravity in mainstream physics in the first place. But they discard questions about its influence like they know. It's extremely concerning to me that so-called scientists are more concerned about being accepted by their peers than about getting the information we need to save our own lives. Go ahead and downvote, but karma on hacker news is the smallest price to pay if I can find even one person who wants to confirm what I'm talking about.
  - Detrus 16y ago

evgen 16y ago

There is not a single renewable energy source that is a net negative over its lifetime. We have gotten very efficient over the past 40 years since that factoid may have once been true. That is not to say that this study did not engage in a lot of hand-waving assumptions (the claim that a small fraction of total power that was hydro could cover solar/wind fluctuations for base load is delusional to be point of being outright deceptive) and is light on a practical path from here to there, but if you were to add a nuclear component that was 30-40% of the total I would not find the paper's claims to be completely unreasonable.

pshapiro 16y ago
Thorium is promising, but I've heard on a TED talk (can't find the link now, it was a talk with lots of data and projection being presented) that even if we were to build one nuclear power plant each day, it would not be enough to keep up with the increase in energy usage, much less to switch over completely. Do you have any figures or an experimental apparatus to back up what you said?
- johngalt 16y ago
  A large nuke will produce around 3GW, a large solar plant will produce 0.1GW. So if building a nuke every day won't do it, sounds like building 30 solar plants every day won't either. So I guess we start building two nukes every day?

Detrus 16y ago

Most renewable power equipment comes with stats about how long it takes to recover energy used to create it, or recoup cost. Usual solar panels say 1-5 years to generate the energy used to create them and last 20. The consensus among scientists is that global warming is manmade, if you haven't seen it presented that's a separate issue. Of course making predictions on such large complex systems as our climate is unprecedented, so who knows. There is a variety of models/simulations, some more optimistic than others, then real world data is used to pick the most accurate one. So far the most optimistic models aren't winning.

pshapiro 16y ago
I'm not saying that global warming is not manmade, and I have also seen quite a bit of the content of the arguments claiming it comes from emissions, but none of them are able to present anything concrete. As you pointed out, the optimistic models not winning, and in fact the outlook from mainstream scientists' models get worse every year. The problem is compounding -- that's how the world works in fact. I'm so concerned because nobody considers what I'm talking about seriously, and almost everyone easily discards what I say as the ravings of some pseudoscientific, ignorant apocalypse nut. But unfortunately for their social standing, and fortunately for people who are interested in facts, I know what I talk about. Let's think about this carefully. If the models predicting the changes through emissions are so accurate, why does the outlook get so drastically worse every year? It's because the system that you refer to as our climate in reality also includes gravitational and magnetic factors. This introduces huge oscillating systems. If physics today has no confirmed understanding about the role of the gravity on the climate, and how a gravitational field is maintained, how could they rule out factors that would influence gravity? In fact, there isn't a real understanding of gravity in mainstream physics in the first place. But they discard questions about its influence like they know. It's extremely concerning to me that so-called scientists are more concerned about being accepted by their peers than about getting the information we need to save our own lives. Go ahead and downvote, but karma on hacker news is the smallest price to pay if I can find even one person who wants to confirm what I'm talking about.
- Detrus 16y ago