5 ms·

I can't help you if you don't even understand the scale of renewability of resources such as oil and gas, the ratio of energy extracted to energy put into the v

by cmehdy 6y ago

I can't help you if you don't even understand the scale of renewability of resources such as oil and gas, the ratio of energy extracted to energy put into the various kinds of machines that produce what we need to keep our energy consumption up, the limits to energy extraction for solar power, the lack of predictability and controllability of energy sources other than gas-oil-coal-nuclear, and the CO2-related effects on the atmosphere for the first three out of those four, the depletion of current controllable energy sources, and the energy available in the various kinds of uranium-plutonium-thorium isotopes which lead to the different kinds of nuclear power plants. Amongst other things which take hours of actually trying to wrap your head around the problem instead of putting your fingers in your ears and screaming bloody murder. Because apparently you seem to believe that "there is absolutely no 'physics'" in all of this. edit: as a side-note, take a look at all the countries that have increased their renewables energy consumption and show me that it corresponds to a decrease in production and investments of {oil or gas or coal or nuclear}, i.e. controllable energy sources. You will soon see that the sources that cannot be predicted in a way that ensures your fridge continuously works and you can take a hot shower at all hours of the day are only secondary sources that people are happy to have (and renewables are a great thing to invest in) but that in itself is not enough - unless, again, one accepts that their patterns of behaviour and consumption would change drastically, which is only one of the many possible discussions around the evolution of our societies that you seem to be so anxious to sweep under the rug.

epistasis 6y ago
You can't "help" me understand your claim because it is baldly false! There's an entire field that models different grids and transitioning to carbon free energy. Using fine-grained weather patterns, they optimize for various factors such as cost, by timing out deployments of renewable resources, nuclear, transmission, storage, etc. using projected costs over the next few decades. There are huge fights in the field, particularly over nuclear, but nobody, literally nobody has said it's impossible. The debate is how much cheaper nuclear energy will make the energy transition. So if there's some sort of "physics" that precludes the possibility of what people have already made detailed plans for, you should probably publish that result. But it seems unlikely that you have found something they haven't. Response to your edit: you are shifting the point, without bothering to back up your initial claim. Nonetheless, you are shifting to a new false claim, that "renewables don't decrease carbon output. This is also clearly false: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/overview-of-the-electricity-production-2/assessment-4 https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/overview-... The term that is used in the industry isn't "controllable," but rather "dispatchable" energy source. Europe is showing that we can get awfully close to 50% renewable, non-dispatchable energy, without really any storage and reduce carbon output. Storage, demand response, and increased transmission will likely close the rest of the gap.
- cmehdy 6y ago
  I'm not even sure what fight you're trying to pick here, because I'm all for renewables and energy. It's painfully obvious that no, renewables alone do not have the ability to cover at a low-CO2 footprint and continuous usage the energy needs that we currently have and that are, even with reduction of consumption in richer countries, bound to grow on the whole as population follows the models that indicate about 9 billion people being alive before things potentially slope downwards. It's also not a bad idea at all to be investing seriously into renewables because despite the CO2 footprint related to the creation and maintenance of those sources, from a climate perspective it's the right bet in the long run. But the energy density that you can extract from sources that are inherently at the mercy of a climate that changes are consequently limited and unpredictable (reminder that we are not fully able to predict it - unless you have the magical key to tell us with certainty whether we're really seeing a RCP2.6, a RCP4.5, a RCP8.5, or really any better model), the same sources that by the way aren't scale-able to many places on earth. You don't really bet on wind in the same places and ways you bet on solar for example, since population centers will limit the scale of your operations and weather patterns will limit the scope of what you can extract and CLIMATE CHANGE will change those patterns. You might want to re-assess why is it that you are seemingly so emotionally invested in saying no to the only technique that has an extremely low death count per TWh, can be adapted to most places on Earth, and has an incredibly high and long-lasting ability to power countries.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    My "fight" is that you have now made two plainly false claims: 1) physics precudes renewables from providing our energy needs. This is just a silly claim. There are no such "physics" and if you think that "energy density" stops this from happening, you clearly haven't run any numbers. 2) Renewables aren't reducing carbon output. This is also incredibly bizarre. > You might want to re-assess why is it that you are seemingly so emotionally invested in saying no to the only technique that has an extremely low death count per TWh I'm not saying no to nuclear. I'm saying "no" to ascientific claims about "physics" and "energy density."
    - 6y ago
imtringued 6y ago
"Intermittency angst" is a classic pro nuclear, anti renewable propaganda strategy which is overused to the point it becomes boring. At some point the only reasonable answer is to just roll your eyes. Ok, so lets say renewables was the worst bet all along because storage is impossible. Renewables will only generate 80% of all electricity then. We'll have to use some gas to cover the rest. Would you consider this to be a failure, even if it's cheaper than nuclear? Your fridge isn't going to stop working continuously. It's a strawman. It was never on the negotiation table in the first place.
- cmehdy 6y ago
  I would consider it a failure to use a crapton of non-renewables to get to the point where we have unreliable, un-controllable renewables, which continue creating CO2 emissions due to how badly we store energy and in the best of cases still create more risks to lives and the ecosystem through hydro, than nuclear (I'll get to that further down). All that, when you have a perfectly fine self-stopping mechanism that produces orders of magnitude more energy at a controllable rate that could be built in one place rather than "arranged" to be moved (CO2 emissions again) whenever the weather patterns change. Again this is absolutely bonkers that people would start thinking that being pragmatically for nuclear is being against renewables, because I AM NOT. I am entirely for the investment into research and development around renewables, I am entirely for the replacement of as much of the coal used by renewables, I entirely for a world where we would benefit greatly from renewables. But stop mistaking nuclear for oil on your self-inflicted side of things, because nuclear CAN carry this transition without continuing to wreck the environment, and oil-gas-coal could do that while entirely messing it up, but renewables alone absolutely cannot. And by the way I have no problem with intermittency of access to power, I am actually open to the idea. But why try to sell that idea to everyone when they don't actually have to compromise on their consumption if nuclear carries the production? Instead of calling it a day by saying that it's an "intermittency angst", have empathy for those who would indeed be worried about it and find SOLID arguments to explain why you seem to know that it's either not a problem or that it is a problem worth living with (or in the case of energy availability, without). For what it's worth, here's the combined 17-countries European output of wind power at a resolution of about a day on the scale of about a year in 2017[0]. Tell me how that fits nicely with the high constant consumption of any given country, and how you'll install enough of these in places where you get a relative 10-100x more power (i.e. offshore) without having to fight people, and tell me how you'd do that without tremendous energy and material consumption in the making. And then tell me how sea currents aren't likely to change due to climate change and make your efforts moot at an unpredictable rate[1][2] for not just wind but solar too. AGAIN, as in EVERY response I made, I am pro-renewables. I'm also pragmatic about their role in addressing the immediate issues with CO2 emissions and what physics will pragmatically allow us to reliably extract from them at the level of the world. Local initiatives to develop something around an area that steadily produces renewable energy and is robust against unpredictable weather pattern changes AND doesn't cost an arm and a leg (without the emotional investments of VCs lowering the $$$ needed) AND does not create substantial CO2 emissions during the lifetime of the product, I'm 1000% for that. For the maintainable, long-term, high-output power, it's called nuclear and it has led to an order of magnitude less deaths of ecosystems and people in the world, even when including the headlines-making Fukushima and Chernobyl, than just about one or two dams failing in Europe the same century. For a power output that is significant enough that it can offset the gigantic energy density that oil and gas offered the world for its development during the last ~200 years, without creating more CO2 after its construction and without having to move every time the wind changes yet again. [0] https://i.imgur.com/HsJJ1NE.jpg https://i.imgur.com/HsJJ1NE.jpg [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2950/arctic-ice-melt-is-changing-ocean-currents/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2950/arctic-ice-melt-is-changi... [2] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07052018/atlantic-ocean-circulation-slowing-climate-change-heat-temperature-rainfall-fish-why-you-should-care https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07052018/atlantic-ocean-c...

by cmehdy 6y ago

epistasis 6y ago

You can't "help" me understand your claim because it is baldly false! There's an entire field that models different grids and transitioning to carbon free energy. Using fine-grained weather patterns, they optimize for various factors such as cost, by timing out deployments of renewable resources, nuclear, transmission, storage, etc. using projected costs over the next few decades. There are huge fights in the field, particularly over nuclear, but nobody, literally nobody has said it's impossible. The debate is how much cheaper nuclear energy will make the energy transition. So if there's some sort of "physics" that precludes the possibility of what people have already made detailed plans for, you should probably publish that result. But it seems unlikely that you have found something they haven't. Response to your edit: you are shifting the point, without bothering to back up your initial claim. Nonetheless, you are shifting to a new false claim, that "renewables don't decrease carbon output. This is also clearly false: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/overview-of-the-electricity-production-2/assessment-4 https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/overview-... The term that is used in the industry isn't "controllable," but rather "dispatchable" energy source. Europe is showing that we can get awfully close to 50% renewable, non-dispatchable energy, without really any storage and reduce carbon output. Storage, demand response, and increased transmission will likely close the rest of the gap.

cmehdy 6y ago
I'm not even sure what fight you're trying to pick here, because I'm all for renewables and energy. It's painfully obvious that no, renewables alone do not have the ability to cover at a low-CO2 footprint and continuous usage the energy needs that we currently have and that are, even with reduction of consumption in richer countries, bound to grow on the whole as population follows the models that indicate about 9 billion people being alive before things potentially slope downwards. It's also not a bad idea at all to be investing seriously into renewables because despite the CO2 footprint related to the creation and maintenance of those sources, from a climate perspective it's the right bet in the long run. But the energy density that you can extract from sources that are inherently at the mercy of a climate that changes are consequently limited and unpredictable (reminder that we are not fully able to predict it - unless you have the magical key to tell us with certainty whether we're really seeing a RCP2.6, a RCP4.5, a RCP8.5, or really any better model), the same sources that by the way aren't scale-able to many places on earth. You don't really bet on wind in the same places and ways you bet on solar for example, since population centers will limit the scale of your operations and weather patterns will limit the scope of what you can extract and CLIMATE CHANGE will change those patterns. You might want to re-assess why is it that you are seemingly so emotionally invested in saying no to the only technique that has an extremely low death count per TWh, can be adapted to most places on Earth, and has an incredibly high and long-lasting ability to power countries.
- epistasis 6y ago
  My "fight" is that you have now made two plainly false claims: 1) physics precudes renewables from providing our energy needs. This is just a silly claim. There are no such "physics" and if you think that "energy density" stops this from happening, you clearly haven't run any numbers. 2) Renewables aren't reducing carbon output. This is also incredibly bizarre. > You might want to re-assess why is it that you are seemingly so emotionally invested in saying no to the only technique that has an extremely low death count per TWh I'm not saying no to nuclear. I'm saying "no" to ascientific claims about "physics" and "energy density."
  - 6y ago

imtringued 6y ago

"Intermittency angst" is a classic pro nuclear, anti renewable propaganda strategy which is overused to the point it becomes boring. At some point the only reasonable answer is to just roll your eyes. Ok, so lets say renewables was the worst bet all along because storage is impossible. Renewables will only generate 80% of all electricity then. We'll have to use some gas to cover the rest. Would you consider this to be a failure, even if it's cheaper than nuclear? Your fridge isn't going to stop working continuously. It's a strawman. It was never on the negotiation table in the first place.

cmehdy 6y ago
I would consider it a failure to use a crapton of non-renewables to get to the point where we have unreliable, un-controllable renewables, which continue creating CO2 emissions due to how badly we store energy and in the best of cases still create more risks to lives and the ecosystem through hydro, than nuclear (I'll get to that further down). All that, when you have a perfectly fine self-stopping mechanism that produces orders of magnitude more energy at a controllable rate that could be built in one place rather than "arranged" to be moved (CO2 emissions again) whenever the weather patterns change. Again this is absolutely bonkers that people would start thinking that being pragmatically for nuclear is being against renewables, because I AM NOT. I am entirely for the investment into research and development around renewables, I am entirely for the replacement of as much of the coal used by renewables, I entirely for a world where we would benefit greatly from renewables. But stop mistaking nuclear for oil on your self-inflicted side of things, because nuclear CAN carry this transition without continuing to wreck the environment, and oil-gas-coal could do that while entirely messing it up, but renewables alone absolutely cannot. And by the way I have no problem with intermittency of access to power, I am actually open to the idea. But why try to sell that idea to everyone when they don't actually have to compromise on their consumption if nuclear carries the production? Instead of calling it a day by saying that it's an "intermittency angst", have empathy for those who would indeed be worried about it and find SOLID arguments to explain why you seem to know that it's either not a problem or that it is a problem worth living with (or in the case of energy availability, without). For what it's worth, here's the combined 17-countries European output of wind power at a resolution of about a day on the scale of about a year in 2017[0]. Tell me how that fits nicely with the high constant consumption of any given country, and how you'll install enough of these in places where you get a relative 10-100x more power (i.e. offshore) without having to fight people, and tell me how you'd do that without tremendous energy and material consumption in the making. And then tell me how sea currents aren't likely to change due to climate change and make your efforts moot at an unpredictable rate[1][2] for not just wind but solar too. AGAIN, as in EVERY response I made, I am pro-renewables. I'm also pragmatic about their role in addressing the immediate issues with CO2 emissions and what physics will pragmatically allow us to reliably extract from them at the level of the world. Local initiatives to develop something around an area that steadily produces renewable energy and is robust against unpredictable weather pattern changes AND doesn't cost an arm and a leg (without the emotional investments of VCs lowering the $$$ needed) AND does not create substantial CO2 emissions during the lifetime of the product, I'm 1000% for that. For the maintainable, long-term, high-output power, it's called nuclear and it has led to an order of magnitude less deaths of ecosystems and people in the world, even when including the headlines-making Fukushima and Chernobyl, than just about one or two dams failing in Europe the same century. For a power output that is significant enough that it can offset the gigantic energy density that oil and gas offered the world for its development during the last ~200 years, without creating more CO2 after its construction and without having to move every time the wind changes yet again. [0] https://i.imgur.com/HsJJ1NE.jpg https://i.imgur.com/HsJJ1NE.jpg [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2950/arctic-ice-melt-is-changing-ocean-currents/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2950/arctic-ice-melt-is-changi... [2] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07052018/atlantic-ocean-circulation-slowing-climate-change-heat-temperature-rainfall-fish-why-you-should-care https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07052018/atlantic-ocean-c...