3 ms·

False. There is exactly zero need to devote any land surface at all exclusively to the solar panels that will provide for all our needs. Solar coexists nicely

by ncmncm 4y ago

False. There is exactly zero need to devote any land surface at all exclusively to the solar panels that will provide for all our needs. Solar coexists nicely with numerous other uses. Similarly, for wind turbines. Storage may consume some area, but nowhere near what existing fossil fuel extraction activities do. There will be no fusion.

mmazing 4y ago
> There will be no fusion. Scream it into the ether with veins popping out of your head all you want, it doesn't make you correct. Additionally, there's literally no reason to not pursue both avenues.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Nobody is screaming. Even presuming usable structural materials can be discovered (not worked on in 3 decades) and tritium at PPB concentration can be extracted from thousands of tons of blanket material every day (never worked on at all), a working plant would cost more than an order of magnitude more on every axis than fission. But fission is already not competitive. Fission falls farther behind better methods each day. So, no one will build a fusion power plant, and there will be no fusion power. "Pursuing avenues" with no possibility of desirable results is wasted effort and wasted money. We have valid reasons to avoid waste.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    If no one is building fusion power plant, what money or effort is being wasted? Also, do you think all of these nuclear physicists are able to pivot to working on renewable energy, as if they are Silicon Valley tech startups? From what point of view of action are you even operating from?
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Doing science is fine. It's the thousands of scam artists that will divert resources from actual solutions as soon as their lies are plausible to rubes that are not. If we're busy paying for 100s of victoria county stations that will never open, the coal plants will remain on.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        But that has literally never happened nor is likely to happen, given the political marginalization of nuclear power. The previous poster is ranting against a tiny threat, if even that, to wind and solar while the fossil fuel lobby reigns supreme. Just a completely disproportionate response.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        So to pick one of hundreds of examples, the money that SCE&G's customers are forced to pay for infrastructure that will never be turned on while the contractors make out like bandits was always going to be scammed out of them by the nuclear industry? Props for honesty I guess.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        There is no such "threat". Investors are being defrauded. Money that could be going for important, useful research is being diverted to pockets of fraudsters promising sky castles.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        There's no telling that that money would be going to renewable research anyway. So why all of this concern? There is no imminent decision between the two. Those investors would not be spending the money on endeavors you care about. If it is a fraud, then let that money be wasted to prove the concept a fraud once and all. You should welcome that, as that would further your position in a definitive way before the public.
        4y ago
  - mmazing 4y ago
    I wonder how many people said the same thing about airplanes, or electricity, or any of the countless other amazing things we have accomplished as a species. Maybe the current trajectory of fusion is unlikely to bear fruit, but we'll learn from it. We may learn something that makes it far easier to implement. A discovery here or there and you change trajectory to something that IS worthwhile. If you never try, you never get there, you can't see that?
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      If you do try, you never get there. But you also never get to the other thing that actually has some prospect of working. Look up "opportunity cost", "sunk cost fallacy", and "good money after bad". Victorians believed in fairies, very strongly. Their heirs believe as strongly in fusion energy.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. Then those who believe in fusion are in good company.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        If by "good company" you mean bad company, sure.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        A Moriarty man, I see.
the_third_wave 4y ago
Either you have not seen solar parks taking up arable land or you do not understand how this type of land use makes the land unavailable to agriculture. This may not be an issue when those solar parks are built in a desert but it does when they're displacing good farm land like they're doing in e.g. the Netherlands. There are experiments with less dense solar parks and those with vertically placed bifacial panels which should allow combined land use but this has not gotten beyond the experimental stage yet. Of course it is possible to forego on using arable land for solar parks, only using rooftops and similar constructions for this purpose. Roofs - especially large flat ones like used in industry - are natural locations for PV panels and it is hard to see why one would not install them on new constructions, either on top of traditional roof cladding or in place of it. The same goes for large south-facing walls. Wind turbines can be placed on farm land without unduly reducing land availability to farming, here the problem comes from nearby population complaining about noise pollution (infrasound, [1]) coming from those turbines as well as 'horizon pollution' [2]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8 [2] https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/skyscrapers-turbines-and-the-problem-of-39horizon-pollution39 https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/skyscrapers-turbines...
- ncmncm 4y ago
  I have seen plenty of land foolishly wasted on single-use solar farms. That does not make it smart. In the future those will find themselves undercut by dual-use farms that continue doing what they did before solar was added. Rooftops will not be much that. Deserts are a particularly dumb place for solar farms, but ignorant investors love the idea, so lots of money is wasted on them.
  - lovemenot 4y ago
    You could be right, and I hope you are. But, given the current state of development in agrivoltaics and such, your prediction has too much certainty. All power to those projects, but they are really just experimental at this point. Not inevitable.

by ncmncm 4y ago

mmazing 4y ago

> There will be no fusion. Scream it into the ether with veins popping out of your head all you want, it doesn't make you correct. Additionally, there's literally no reason to not pursue both avenues.

ncmncm 4y ago
Nobody is screaming. Even presuming usable structural materials can be discovered (not worked on in 3 decades) and tritium at PPB concentration can be extracted from thousands of tons of blanket material every day (never worked on at all), a working plant would cost more than an order of magnitude more on every axis than fission. But fission is already not competitive. Fission falls farther behind better methods each day. So, no one will build a fusion power plant, and there will be no fusion power. "Pursuing avenues" with no possibility of desirable results is wasted effort and wasted money. We have valid reasons to avoid waste.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  If no one is building fusion power plant, what money or effort is being wasted? Also, do you think all of these nuclear physicists are able to pivot to working on renewable energy, as if they are Silicon Valley tech startups? From what point of view of action are you even operating from?
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Doing science is fine. It's the thousands of scam artists that will divert resources from actual solutions as soon as their lies are plausible to rubes that are not. If we're busy paying for 100s of victoria county stations that will never open, the coal plants will remain on.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      But that has literally never happened nor is likely to happen, given the political marginalization of nuclear power. The previous poster is ranting against a tiny threat, if even that, to wind and solar while the fossil fuel lobby reigns supreme. Just a completely disproportionate response.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        So to pick one of hundreds of examples, the money that SCE&G's customers are forced to pay for infrastructure that will never be turned on while the contractors make out like bandits was always going to be scammed out of them by the nuclear industry? Props for honesty I guess.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        There is no such "threat". Investors are being defrauded. Money that could be going for important, useful research is being diverted to pockets of fraudsters promising sky castles.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        There's no telling that that money would be going to renewable research anyway. So why all of this concern? There is no imminent decision between the two. Those investors would not be spending the money on endeavors you care about. If it is a fraud, then let that money be wasted to prove the concept a fraud once and all. You should welcome that, as that would further your position in a definitive way before the public.
        4y ago
- mmazing 4y ago
  I wonder how many people said the same thing about airplanes, or electricity, or any of the countless other amazing things we have accomplished as a species. Maybe the current trajectory of fusion is unlikely to bear fruit, but we'll learn from it. We may learn something that makes it far easier to implement. A discovery here or there and you change trajectory to something that IS worthwhile. If you never try, you never get there, you can't see that?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    If you do try, you never get there. But you also never get to the other thing that actually has some prospect of working. Look up "opportunity cost", "sunk cost fallacy", and "good money after bad". Victorians believed in fairies, very strongly. Their heirs believe as strongly in fusion energy.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. Then those who believe in fusion are in good company.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        If by "good company" you mean bad company, sure.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        A Moriarty man, I see.

the_third_wave 4y ago

Either you have not seen solar parks taking up arable land or you do not understand how this type of land use makes the land unavailable to agriculture. This may not be an issue when those solar parks are built in a desert but it does when they're displacing good farm land like they're doing in e.g. the Netherlands. There are experiments with less dense solar parks and those with vertically placed bifacial panels which should allow combined land use but this has not gotten beyond the experimental stage yet. Of course it is possible to forego on using arable land for solar parks, only using rooftops and similar constructions for this purpose. Roofs - especially large flat ones like used in industry - are natural locations for PV panels and it is hard to see why one would not install them on new constructions, either on top of traditional roof cladding or in place of it. The same goes for large south-facing walls. Wind turbines can be placed on farm land without unduly reducing land availability to farming, here the problem comes from nearby population complaining about noise pollution (infrasound, [1]) coming from those turbines as well as 'horizon pollution' [2]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8 [2] https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/skyscrapers-turbines-and-the-problem-of-39horizon-pollution39 https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/skyscrapers-turbines...

ncmncm 4y ago
I have seen plenty of land foolishly wasted on single-use solar farms. That does not make it smart. In the future those will find themselves undercut by dual-use farms that continue doing what they did before solar was added. Rooftops will not be much that. Deserts are a particularly dumb place for solar farms, but ignorant investors love the idea, so lots of money is wasted on them.
- lovemenot 4y ago
  You could be right, and I hope you are. But, given the current state of development in agrivoltaics and such, your prediction has too much certainty. All power to those projects, but they are really just experimental at this point. Not inevitable.