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You have just asserted your view that Solar/ Wind are only useful sources for peaking but the linked article contains an argument that they could plausibly be u

• schainks 12y ago
  This is my opinion, not fact - I personally don't think, even with over-provisioning, we can build enough wind/solar to make it our base load at a reasonable price unless we can make solar + wind much more efficient at generating (at least 2x more efficient than it is today). But even then there are technical challenges to a wind/solar grid that randomly changes at all times that not likely not cheap or easy to overcome. I do agree with you - we must act in a sustainable way especially for the world of tomorrow. But, the mass market in the first world will likely not sacrifice stability for sustainability. Maybe they'll budge on price, but likely not on convenience. I also agree we shouldn't be purely profit motivated, but that's a complicated situation - companies like GE have incentive to suppress more "efficient" technology adoption because it affects their bottom line unless it's their IP. When I say efficient, I mean technologies that could be used to enhance the efficiency of current machines in our infrastructure. So, yes, they will advance tech when they can own it, but not when they cannot acquire it. They'll only play defensively, which isn't always going to be in line with "moral responsibility" To me, that is a more sane and likely cheaper starting point today, so that we can more safely take risks like this paper proposes tomorrow.
• msandford 12y ago
  > Profit surly shouldn't be the only consideration. If you've figured out a way to motivate a large number of people to do something other than pure profit (where to the layman profit = employment = paying his bills) then I'm all ears. Shit, EVERYONE is all ears. But thus far in the history of the world profit has been the best source of motivation we've discovered. When I say "profit" you can't say "ahh rapacious capitalism that's evil blah!" but rather you have to look at it as "the ability to stay alive and perhaps get ahead" Very few people willingly take a pay-cut. Most of the time the way a person figures out that they need to accept less money for their work is that they get fired from a job and they start looking for a new one. They can't get hired at $x per year anymore so eventually they accept some percentage of $x in order to again have SOME income rather than NO income. $x dollars per year is HIGHLY correlated with standard of living, so we can reasonably assume that people are not willing to accept a lower standard of living willingly either. They tend to accept a lower one only because they have to. This isn't a hard rule, but it's useful. As a result it is easy to see that people probably won't willingly take their standard of living down because it's the right thing to do for the environment. I agree that it would be better to do things for reasons which aren't purely profit-motivated. But I can't blame the world for not working that way because I haven't come up with a better system.
  • JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Hole in that logic: at some point more money is just ego. As I age and my cash flow lessens (mortgage paid off; kids thru school) I would certainly consider a job with < pay. In fact I have; I've joined a startup.
    • msandford 12y ago
      >> Very few people willingly take a pay-cut. So I already addressed your point. I didn't say "no people" or "zero people" I said "very few". You're an outlier. That's great! But it's not reasonable to expect to organize the majority of people around things that motivate a minority of people. To you the idea that more money is just ego is true; I have no problems accepting that you could believe such a thing. To other people more money isn't necessarily ego. It can be of course, but it isn't necessarily. I mean, who really needs $200mm? Seemingly Elon Musk did and he's using it to make the world a better place re: Tesla and SpaceX. Who needs $500k in the bank? Anyone who wants to do a startup and fund themselves rather than run the angel/VC treadmill. Who needs to make $300k a year rather than $200k a year? Someone who wants to live in a nice place in Manhattan rather than commuting an hour from Brooklyn. Who needs to make $75k a year instead of $50k? Someone with kids! Someone who doesn't have their house paid off yet. Someone who doesn't own a house yet. Basically everyone. It's really great that you're in a position to be able to take a pay cut to work at a startup. But I don't think you took that pay cut altruistically; I imagine that you did in order to get something else that you want like more responsibility, more interesting work, to see your work used by millions of people, etc. I could be wrong of course but it seems unlikely to me. Not all people want more money to spend on themselves. A great plenty do, but there are also outliers who use more money to make the world better. I suppose you could argue that even for those folks it's just ego. If that's the case then I am all for more ego if it drags the future -- kicking and screaming -- into the present.
  • glomph 12y ago
    Subsidies, taxes and regulation. Public awareness campaigns education and so on. All of these can change the way people approach a problem like this. The beginning of course is articles like this one.