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It is not necessary to slow down deployment of solar power in, say, Texas, to also answer the question of "What should we do in Minnesota". Nobody implied we sh

It is not necessary to slow down deployment of solar power in, say, Texas, to also answer the question of "What should we do in Minnesota". Nobody implied we shouldn't use renewable power elsewhere until we figure that out. We should not adopt a fixed, falsely dichotomous mindset about this. There are lots of engineers and scientists, and it'd be well past the point of diminishing returns to focus them all on one regional problem at a time. We can do both. Yes, if we are forced to make that choice, your logic is sound. But we are not, and nobody ever implied we were.

micromacrofoot 1y ago
the original comment I was replying to suggested using nuclear in minnesota because renewables won't work well enough there, which is almost completely irrelevant at this point in time with the low rate of renewable adoption... minnesota is nowhere close to full sunny-day utilization and won't be at its current rate for decades
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  You're stuck on the same logic loop of "You can't use nuclear because there isn't enough solar", when nobody said we should only use nuclear. OP wanted to know if solar would be sufficient for MN winters, and if not, what else would be required. He wanted a "Convincing analysis". The sun doesn't rise above 30deg over the horizon, for weeks. (MN > 45deg latitude, and earth tilts away by up to 23.5 deg). It gets below freezing for months, sometimes below zero for weeks. Sometimes below -10F for days (although that's becoming less common). These are legitimate questions. We're not going to find common ground, that's OK. Let's just stop circling around each other and/or worrying about it. Cheers.
  - micromacrofoot 1y ago
    What happens when the sun burns out is also a legitimate question, but similar in that we also probably won't be required to answer it within our lifetimes.

micromacrofoot 1y ago

the original comment I was replying to suggested using nuclear in minnesota because renewables won't work well enough there, which is almost completely irrelevant at this point in time with the low rate of renewable adoption... minnesota is nowhere close to full sunny-day utilization and won't be at its current rate for decades

jvanderbot 1y ago
You're stuck on the same logic loop of "You can't use nuclear because there isn't enough solar", when nobody said we should only use nuclear. OP wanted to know if solar would be sufficient for MN winters, and if not, what else would be required. He wanted a "Convincing analysis". The sun doesn't rise above 30deg over the horizon, for weeks. (MN > 45deg latitude, and earth tilts away by up to 23.5 deg). It gets below freezing for months, sometimes below zero for weeks. Sometimes below -10F for days (although that's becoming less common). These are legitimate questions. We're not going to find common ground, that's OK. Let's just stop circling around each other and/or worrying about it. Cheers.
- micromacrofoot 1y ago
  What happens when the sun burns out is also a legitimate question, but similar in that we also probably won't be required to answer it within our lifetimes.