The Earth is Dying

[LittleRaven]

Base load is a bitch and the goose neck from solar only makes it worse.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/worl ... imate.html
"Today, nearly a quarter of all electricity produced in Germany still comes from burning lignite, often called brown coal, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels, making Germany the world’s leader in the mining and burning of lignite, according to the International Energy Agency."

I love how you're making an argument against renewable energy, and post an article about that is almost entirely about political pressure against renewable energy because it will cost coal mining jobs.

There are certainly problems with renewable energy. Our current electrical grids don't play well with highly variable energy sources, we don't have good ways to store excess capacity, and it simply isn't suited for things that require both mobility and large amounts of energy.

But no energy source is suited to all things, which is why all modern economies work on a mix of energy sources. That isn't going to change. What WILL change is the ratio. Renewables are on the way up, coal is on the way down. Oil and nuclear are more difficult to predict...the tech could go either way in the next decade or so.

Considering the Electric Car was invented at roughly the same time as the internal combustion car, history doesn't seem to suggest a victory for electric.

Is this...is this a serious comment?

Technology is not static, and its rate of change is not linear. Gunpower enabled both cannons and rockets at the same time, and people promptly set about building both, but cannons ruled the battlefield for hundreds of years, because we lacked the technology to really capitalize on the potential strengths of rockets. Then we got the micro controller, and the cannon almost instantly fell from favor, because now you could guide a rocket over long distances.

And predicting that kind of change is very hard to do. Electrical cars are...kinda ok now, but they have some distinct problems that really limit their ability to compete with gas on a wide scale. But if some clever bloke ever invents a working fuel cell that could change VERY quickly. The prospect of truly autonomous vehicles would also potentially turn that model on its head.

[LittleRaven]

Give me a few nuclear power stations rather than turning vast swathes of places into essentially industrial estates by covering them in wind turbines and solar panels please.

Uh....why?

I'm not sure where you live, but here in the US, we have MASSIVE amounts of land that is uninhabited, non-productive scrub land. We must have 100,000 square miles of nothing in Texas alone. Why on Earth shouldn't we cover this with solar panels and windmills? It's not like anyone lives there, or visits, or does anything other than drive through it at the maximum speed local limits will allow.

[Riedquat]

Give me a few nuclear power stations rather than turning vast swathes of places into essentially industrial estates by covering them in wind turbines and solar panels please.

Uh....why?

I'm not sure where you live, but here in the US, we have MASSIVE amounts of land that is uninhabited, non-productive scrub land. We must have 100,000 square miles of nothing in Texas alone. Why on Earth shouldn't we cover this with solar panels and windmills? It's not like anyone lives there, or visits, or does anything other than drive through it at the maximum speed local limits will allow.

I live in the UK where where we don't have miles of non-productive scrubland, and I'm rather envious that you do, it seems a pity that you want to turn it in to a giant industrial installation.

[LittleRaven]

I live in the UK where where we don't have miles of non-productive scrubland, and I'm rather envious that you do, it seems a pity that you want to turn it in to a giant industrial installation.

Oh. Well, that certainly makes more sense. Britain is a small island. We could fit almost 3 Britains in Texas alone, and we have 49 other states on top of that.

And seriously, if you haven't ever visited West Texas, well, it's hundreds and hundreds of miles of...nothing. This is about as romantic as you can possibly make it look, and it just goes on FOREVER.


Imagine driving from Brighton to Inverness and seeing nothing but scrubland. That's what driving from Las Cruces to Austin is like. You can't really use this land for much besides light grazing - there used to be oil, but we extracted the easy stuff and now you have to frack, which has other costs. But it does get tons of sunlight and the wind blows all day long. And best of all, as far as we can tell, the environmental effects of putting up panels and windmills in this area is quite minimal, at least so far.

Seems like a slam dunk to me. But no solution is universal. What works for Texas might not work for the UK.

[Robovski]

I'm not exactly a fan of the ''pave the Earth'' plan myself; just because humans don't live there doesn't mean nothing lives there - that's an ecosystem. This is a sci-fi board, why don't we explore some ''new'' concepts like Jimmy Carter's plan for space solar power generation or something?

[LittleRaven]

I'm not exactly a fan of the ''pave the Earth'' plan myself; just because humans don't live there doesn't mean nothing lives there - that's an ecosystem. This is a sci-fi board, why don't we explore some ''new'' concepts like Jimmy Carter's plan for space solar power generation or something?

We are exploring them. But right now, those are very 'exploratory.' Nobody has successfully built a microwave plant, nobody has even made a prototype, and there are a lot of problems that are still at the 'underpants gnome' stage.

The big problem is that we just suck at getting stuff into orbit right now. I mean, we can do it, but it costs a fortune. There's simply no way to get enough stuff into orbit to build the orbital infrastructure necessary at anything remotely resembling a practical price point. And even if we did...there are a LOT of scary questions. How does exposure to space radiation affect the lifespan of our constructed materials? How do we safely transmit this energy, and what kind of power loss do we experience along the way? Little inefficiencies can make a huge difference when it comes to profitability. Solar panels were a joke at 20% efficiency and a game changer at 30.

We're working on some really cool concepts when it comes to power. I'm partial to the Wendelstein myself. But we also need to keep the lights on while we work on the cool stuff. That means using a proven, practical technology. Things like oil, coal, renewables, nuclear. All of them have benefits and costs, and all are going to have their place in the energy frameworks of the future. (yes, even coal) But personally, I'm hoping we can see a lot more of the renewable stuff, and a lot less of the fossil fuels.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Give me a few nuclear power stations rather than turning vast swathes of places into essentially industrial estates by covering them in wind turbines and solar panels please. Oh, and ditch the scaremongering about killing the planet. Make a mess of with quite big consequences, perhaps, but it's a million miles short of killing.

If people really want to help things for a decent future they need to stop having as many children.

Okay, we're not killing the planet, we're just making it increasingly hostile to all human life.

It's not scaremongering. It's the increasingly frustrated voices of the vast majority of scientists that people with most of the money and most of the power kept shouting down and ignoring.

Wind turbines and solar panels are lovely, and can coexist with human and animal habitation. They're coming up with a damn GLASS that's transparent but still manages to absorb solar energy in non-visible spectrums.

You ever feel the pain of a hot car on a sunny day? Ever think what it would be like, instead of all that solar energy going to waste, and then having to waste MORE energy on AC, you could use the light pounding down on your car to heat it?

There are vast expanses of literal desert that are POUNDED with unharvested solar energy.

Don't act like somethign which creates radioactive waste which will last longer than most civilizations, radioactive waste which is generally gonna be dumped in some poor black neighborhood or native american sacred space, is somehow better than taking advantage of the vast amounts of untapped power which pound the planet daily.

[Riedquat]

Something that involves turning large areas of open land into industrial installations, that stick out hugely? Wind turbines and solar panels aren't lovely, they're ghastly. I see no more beauty in them than in any other industrial installation (and they tend to get placed in locations where those would never be allowed, particularly at that size). As a necessary evil, as a stopgap (at least they can be removed without leaving much trace), maybe, but I find the sight of them all hugely depressing, if that's what we've come to. A nuclear power station is hardly a thing of beauty either but at least it's reliable and relatively small. The waste issue is massively overblown.

[Riedquat]

Imagine driving from Brighton to Inverness and seeing nothing but scrubland. That's what driving from Las Cruces to Austin is like. You can't really use this land for much besides light grazing - there used to be oil, but we extracted the easy stuff and now you have to frack, which has other costs. But it does get tons of sunlight and the wind blows all day long. And best of all, as far as we can tell, the environmental effects of putting up panels and windmills in this area is quite minimal, at least so far.

Seems like a slam dunk to me. But no solution is universal. What works for Texas might not work for the UK.

When you live somewhere like this the idea of all that space, with what human impact there is dwarfed by it rather than dominating it, sounds wonderful (although I'm completely in love with the British landscape, or at least those parts that haven't been too developed, which includes the intensively farmed areas). I generally find the less touched by humans places (which isn't always the same as wilderness, and some variety is good - don't want no cities by any means either) the most wonderful thing about this planet.

That all said, yes, you probably could get away with quite a lot in Texas without it being something that would bother me all that much, but I find some of the developments here (which are largely supported by most) utterly heartbreaking to witness.

[Riedquat]

We're working on some really cool concepts when it comes to power. I'm partial to the Wendelstein myself. But we also need to keep the lights on while we work on the cool stuff. That means using a proven, practical technology. Things like oil, coal, renewables, nuclear. All of them have benefits and costs, and all are going to have their place in the energy frameworks of the future. (yes, even coal) But personally, I'm hoping we can see a lot more of the renewable stuff, and a lot less of the fossil fuels.

Sometimes think I should've put more effort in at university (I've got a physics degree, but only just, so doesn't count for much) and gone in to nuclear fusion. The joke of course with fusion is that it's fifty years away, and was fifty years away fifty years ago, and will still be fifty years away in fifty years. Some caveman probably looked up at the sun and said "I'll have that working in fifty years' time."

If the plan is for wind farms etc. to be ultimately temporary installations to cover the gap until something like that is up and running - yes, I could accept that, even if it means a bigger electricity bill.