3 ms·

(edit: oops was wrong here, updating my comment) This is addressed in the article: "Or would the geothermally-generated electricity go to better use powering e

by tito 4y ago

(edit: oops was wrong here, updating my comment) This is addressed in the article: "Or would the geothermally-generated electricity go to better use powering electric cars?" There's no such thing as waste heat really. In the short term you can argue that limited units of energy are better used towards carbon neutrality, things like powering electric cars. Ultimately, we need removal tech, and we need to make it energy efficient, fast. Putting money and energy into carbon removal systems needs to be looked at as an investment for it to make sense. Powering an electric car gets you to go a mile, powering a DAC system lets you remove a little carbon and is an investment in developing more efficient systems too.

datadata 4y ago
By waste heat I meant that geothermal energy would eventually be released into the environment regardless of if humans extract useful work from it on the way. My assumption was that the article was talking about the waste of energy in this sense. My own opinion is that the waste heat from energy usage is negligible relative to thermal contribution of carbon emissions. I wrote a comment a few months ago here with some questions about this kind of metric, as someone apparently working in this space I would be most curious about your opinion on these things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30989744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30989744
- tito 4y ago
  I hear what you're saying. The example of the albedo effect of solar panels makes the most sense, the trade off of absorbing heat vs catching photons. I didn't follow the heat pollution example, perhaps because the heat and greenhouse gas effect seem additive. If you have anyone in mind to reach out to, climate scientists I know love to answer curious questions like this. AirMiners has IPCC co-author Bill Collins speaking a few weeks, you could see about posing the question to him: https://lu.ma/airminers https://lu.ma/airminers

by tito 4y ago

datadata 4y ago

By waste heat I meant that geothermal energy would eventually be released into the environment regardless of if humans extract useful work from it on the way. My assumption was that the article was talking about the waste of energy in this sense. My own opinion is that the waste heat from energy usage is negligible relative to thermal contribution of carbon emissions. I wrote a comment a few months ago here with some questions about this kind of metric, as someone apparently working in this space I would be most curious about your opinion on these things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30989744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30989744

tito 4y ago
I hear what you're saying. The example of the albedo effect of solar panels makes the most sense, the trade off of absorbing heat vs catching photons. I didn't follow the heat pollution example, perhaps because the heat and greenhouse gas effect seem additive. If you have anyone in mind to reach out to, climate scientists I know love to answer curious questions like this. AirMiners has IPCC co-author Bill Collins speaking a few weeks, you could see about posing the question to him: https://lu.ma/airminers https://lu.ma/airminers