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We can't slow down burning stuff for energy, this is politically untenable. ...so the answer is to accelerate the burning, but not for the sake of burning more
by baq 4mo ago
We can't slow down burning stuff for energy, this is politically untenable.
...so the answer is to accelerate the burning, but not for the sake of burning more, but to focus on getting to true clean energy sources which will allow us to economically unwind the mess before the whole house of cards collapses, i.e. fusion + global scale solar (maybe even space solar and microwave beam down) + boatloads of batteries.
- no_wizard 4mo agoSteady state nuclear power plus wind and solar would. In today’s world, make the grid more reliable and greener than ever. Nuclear should not be off the table. It’s safe, it’s well understood, it’s reliable and is a very cheap way to create base load capacity that renewables like solos and wind can build out on top of
- amanaplanacanal 4mo agoI'm not sure where nuclear is very cheap, but it sure isn't in the US. Of course, given the seeming inability of the US to do any kind of large projects any more, small and decentralized is probably the only thing that will work.
- lostlogin 4mo ago> I'm not sure where nuclear is very cheap It’s always cheap and easy when mentioned here. I live in New Zealand where we have lots of wind, rain and sun and people occasionally suggest it for here too.
- Moldoteck 4mo agoFrance and Sweden proved Renewables+Nuclear can decarbonize your electric grid almost fully and pretty damn fast - under 20y with old tech without any automatic welding and such... With proper policies the whole planet could do something similar in much less time... The challenge still remains decarbonizing the rest/electrification
- no_wizard 4mo ago> The challenge still remains decarbonizing the rest/electrification A challenge that can be more easily addressed if it can scale first to handle induced demand only rather than base load. It’s a smaller problem that way.
- mindslight 4mo agoPlease explain how "accelerating the burning" is supposed to cause fusion and global scale solar to pop into existence.
- baq 4mo agoNo idea, ask fusion scientists, they might have answers on what they need built a lot of and quickly and whatever it is it’ll take energy to do it. I wouldn’t mind shortening e.g. the Iran war by a couple of days and redirecting the funding from that to fusion research and battery buildout.
- mindslight 4mo agoSo you agree that fusion power generation is not at the state where it can be straightforwardly built today, and you also have no idea what it might actually take to even research it to possibly get it there, but yet you're still asserting that "accelerating the burning" will surely cause whatever needs to happen to happen? Have I got that right?
- baq 4mo agoYes, pretty much, except getting to working fusion is not guaranteed - but the climate disaster is, so we have to make a bet. Solar and batteries are the obvious fallback plan. Nuclear should also be, but it’s a hard sell.
- mindslight 4mo agoWe seem to agree that there is a major resource allocation problem here ("shortening ... the Iran war by a couple of days"), but you still haven't explained how oil becoming scarce will cause breakthroughs in nuclear fusion to occur. I might accept the argument if it were just about solar (which mostly needs straightforward deployment). But nuclear fusion research requires spending large amounts of resources without any kind of guaranteed payout, so I would think it would only be hindered by energy becoming more expensive.