4 ms·

Huge waves in Portugal, when I visited. I'm guessing it's the wind coming off the Atlantic Ocean is strong and steady. And somewhat not common. Where I live, f

Huge waves in Portugal, when I visited. I'm guessing it's the wind coming off the Atlantic Ocean is strong and steady. And somewhat not common. Where I live, for most of the Winter the sky is overcast with clouds. So that somewhat limits solar panels. But I'm sure California is great place for them.

pmoleri 3y ago
Tidal, waves, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass. Many options to choose from, it just takes political will.
- simonhorlick 3y ago
  Did you know that tidal energy is actually not renewable? Harvesting tidal energy slightly slows the rotation of the planet over time. Here's a quote from the relevant paper by Liu: > Based on the average pace of world energy consumption over the last 50 years, if we were to extract the rotational energy just to supply 1% of the world's energy consumption, the rotation of the Earth would lock to the Moon in about 1000 years.
  - pmoleri 3y ago
    I did not. And find mind boggling that we have the ability to virtually stop earth rotation in such a small timeframe with that little effort. I'll definitely read more about it.
  - Cyphase 3y ago
    Source: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide1.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide1.pdf
  - EmmaEngineer 3y ago
    Solution: in summer we pump the tides higher with PV, and in winter we draw them down.
  - Marsymars 3y ago
    There’s discussion about that piece here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37383283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37383283
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    That paper assumes that the worlds energy will keep increasing at the average rate from the last 50 years for 1000 years. That’s a terrible assumption. First because the rate has been slowing (even before Covid), and second because the end result of that extrapolation is more energy than we could every hope to produce without building Dyson spheres around stars. If you do similar calculations we’d cause severe problems harvesting that much energy from wind or geothermal as well.
    - nottorp 3y ago
      Hmm have you asked intel and nvidia about that?
Jedd 3y ago
Any story like this always summons up people eager to cry 'But where I am is an exception'. They rarely say where they actually are. The thing that most countries - a convenient non-geo construct only because most countries have a national grid - who claim to be exceptional have in common, is a firm commitment to the idea that they are exceptional. I am reminded of that onion headline that ends 'says only nation where this regularly happens'. I concede that it's possible you happen to live somewhere that is out of reach of a grid that in turn has potential feeds from hydro (pumped or otherwise), solar pvc, solar thermal, geothermal, tidal, wind, and so on. But I doubt that's likely to be the case. (That you mention California makes me assume you're somewhere in the USA.)
- dukeofdoom 3y ago
  I don't want to call it delusional, because green technology is feasible in some places. But in a lot of places and applications it's not just that it doesn't work, it's not feasible to ever work. Inflation is bad enough now. To blindly push it like a communist ideology...don't be surprised when the lower classes revolt because they can't heat their homes or afford food, due to cost of energy trickling into the price of everything. This guy explains it better than I can. https://www.tiktok.com/@freightfamous/video/7294648129654246661?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@freightfamous/video/7294648129654246...
  - lokar 3y ago
    Pricing externalities correctly is the height of capitalist economic thinking.
  - Jedd 3y ago
    Yup, this is what I mean about 'we're exceptional' claims. 'It can't work here, and can never work here, because ...' and then followed by some basic math mistakes wrapped up into some wild extrapolations, augmented with some demonstrably pessimistic assumptions that every piece of the stack can't ever get better, or be swapped out for something better. That suspiciously well-prepared rando on tiktok you used as a citation - the comments attached to that thread quite rightly point out his math mistakes, around hydro generation, dam sizes, and so on. He's also assuming that rail will never augment / replace large tracts of (currently) road transport - which is a despairingly safe claim in the USA, where rail infrastructure is just awful, but it doesn't need to be forever. He then assumes the only way you can 'green' truck transport is to use current-tech (Lithium) batteries - this is obviously not the case, and Lithium / solid state batteries are probably NOT the answer there anyway. He says the logging truck uses 2.5 MW (not MWh) of power per day - and then talks about '3 megawatt battery pack' - not MWh. Essentially he's ignoring the fact that the height of technology that is transport infrastructure today is the result of a century of roads, mining/drilling, refineries, fuel distribution, engine/truck design. He's effectively repeating that standard trope - 'green tech' at year #10 isn't as integrated as fossil tech at year #100, so it can be dismissed. Clearly some practice has gone into reciting this rant, but it's not a compelling argument for the 'we can't get there from here' camp.

pmoleri 3y ago

Tidal, waves, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass. Many options to choose from, it just takes political will.

simonhorlick 3y ago
Did you know that tidal energy is actually not renewable? Harvesting tidal energy slightly slows the rotation of the planet over time. Here's a quote from the relevant paper by Liu: > Based on the average pace of world energy consumption over the last 50 years, if we were to extract the rotational energy just to supply 1% of the world's energy consumption, the rotation of the Earth would lock to the Moon in about 1000 years.
- pmoleri 3y ago
  I did not. And find mind boggling that we have the ability to virtually stop earth rotation in such a small timeframe with that little effort. I'll definitely read more about it.
- Cyphase 3y ago
  Source: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide1.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/tide1.pdf
- EmmaEngineer 3y ago
  Solution: in summer we pump the tides higher with PV, and in winter we draw them down.
- Marsymars 3y ago
  There’s discussion about that piece here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37383283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37383283
- sarchertech 3y ago
  That paper assumes that the worlds energy will keep increasing at the average rate from the last 50 years for 1000 years. That’s a terrible assumption. First because the rate has been slowing (even before Covid), and second because the end result of that extrapolation is more energy than we could every hope to produce without building Dyson spheres around stars. If you do similar calculations we’d cause severe problems harvesting that much energy from wind or geothermal as well.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    Hmm have you asked intel and nvidia about that?

Jedd 3y ago

Any story like this always summons up people eager to cry 'But where I am is an exception'. They rarely say where they actually are. The thing that most countries - a convenient non-geo construct only because most countries have a national grid - who claim to be exceptional have in common, is a firm commitment to the idea that they are exceptional. I am reminded of that onion headline that ends 'says only nation where this regularly happens'. I concede that it's possible you happen to live somewhere that is out of reach of a grid that in turn has potential feeds from hydro (pumped or otherwise), solar pvc, solar thermal, geothermal, tidal, wind, and so on. But I doubt that's likely to be the case. (That you mention California makes me assume you're somewhere in the USA.)

dukeofdoom 3y ago
I don't want to call it delusional, because green technology is feasible in some places. But in a lot of places and applications it's not just that it doesn't work, it's not feasible to ever work. Inflation is bad enough now. To blindly push it like a communist ideology...don't be surprised when the lower classes revolt because they can't heat their homes or afford food, due to cost of energy trickling into the price of everything. This guy explains it better than I can. https://www.tiktok.com/@freightfamous/video/7294648129654246661?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@freightfamous/video/7294648129654246...
- lokar 3y ago
  Pricing externalities correctly is the height of capitalist economic thinking.
- Jedd 3y ago
  Yup, this is what I mean about 'we're exceptional' claims. 'It can't work here, and can never work here, because ...' and then followed by some basic math mistakes wrapped up into some wild extrapolations, augmented with some demonstrably pessimistic assumptions that every piece of the stack can't ever get better, or be swapped out for something better. That suspiciously well-prepared rando on tiktok you used as a citation - the comments attached to that thread quite rightly point out his math mistakes, around hydro generation, dam sizes, and so on. He's also assuming that rail will never augment / replace large tracts of (currently) road transport - which is a despairingly safe claim in the USA, where rail infrastructure is just awful, but it doesn't need to be forever. He then assumes the only way you can 'green' truck transport is to use current-tech (Lithium) batteries - this is obviously not the case, and Lithium / solid state batteries are probably NOT the answer there anyway. He says the logging truck uses 2.5 MW (not MWh) of power per day - and then talks about '3 megawatt battery pack' - not MWh. Essentially he's ignoring the fact that the height of technology that is transport infrastructure today is the result of a century of roads, mining/drilling, refineries, fuel distribution, engine/truck design. He's effectively repeating that standard trope - 'green tech' at year #10 isn't as integrated as fossil tech at year #100, so it can be dismissed. Clearly some practice has gone into reciting this rant, but it's not a compelling argument for the 'we can't get there from here' camp.