Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

billvon said:
Hillhater said:
What about some common sense and logical reasoning ?
.. at 13, 15, even 25%, solar is still a totally unrealistic solution for utility power
Yet you think a 14% capacity factor for Lakeview is totally realistic! LOL!
You obviously dont know the difference between. Capacity factors and “utilisation”
 
Great article on the remarkably dirty details of Musk's SolarCity and Tesla.
I really think that SolarCity is a mini-version of what will happen with Tesla EV business.

“HE’S FULL OF SHIT”: HOW ELON MUSK FOOLED INVESTORS, BILKED TAXPAYERS, AND GAMBLED TESLA TO SAVE SOLARCITY
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-elon-musk-gambled-tesla-to-save-solarcity
The controversy over SolarCity, which has dovetailed with questions about Musk’s mountain of debt and profit shortfalls, offers a window into the mindset of America’s most outlandish CEO.

Scott had been laid off from Tesla’s factory in Buffalo two months earlier as part of a global reduction in the company’s workforce. Since then, he had taken to sending Elon Musk emails and point-blank tweets, describing the pain the layoffs were causing.

Ten days after Scott was let go, Musk had tweeted a goofy picture of himself posing with what looked like a machine gun. Scott retweeted the image and called Musk a clown. “If I were CEO and someone told me my company wasn’t working right,” he explains, “I wouldn’t be clowning around. I’ve got people counting on me for their livelihood.”

Now, around 10 p.m., his phone rang. The call was from an unmarked number. Scott answered.
“It’s the clown,” the person at the other end informed him.

Scott, unfazed, figured that Musk must have gotten his number from the company. For the next 20 minutes, he recalls, he and his former employer had a civil conversation. “When are you going to fix your company?” Scott asked.

Musk was pleasant but offered no specifics about the Buffalo plant. Scott continued to ask frank questions. “You took $750 million from New York,” he told Musk, referring to the taxpayer money that the state handed Tesla as part of its Buffalo Billion program to revitalize upstate New York. “You gave us hope that you were going to do something.”

Musk’s responses left Scott unimpressed. “Musk is a nice guy when you talk to him,” he says. “But I think he’s full of shit. He’ll tell you whatever you want to hear.”


vf0119-elon-musk-embed-opener.jpg


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-26/hes-full-shit-new-bethany-mclean-expose-eviscerates-elon-musks-solar-city-bailout
 
I mentioned migration the other day and look what Ugo Bardi writes today:
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"But this trudge along the New Trail of Tears is lined with a gauntlet of perils: the area of the globe shrinks with increasing latitude, and the available area of mountains shrinks with increasing elevation. Competition for livable space will be fierce, and the refugia to which many species will be confined as their range shrinks will become extinction traps for some. Barriers to movement, both inadvertent and intentional, can be death sentences to those migrating. Roads and other human structures have dissected the landscape, either preventing motion or making it treacherous. Rivers and seas impede human migration, and border walls seek to prevent it altogether. But the migrations will continue and even increase against all odds; when life in one location is not viable, there is no other option."
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https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-new-trail-of-tears-how-climate.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FXuxAQb+%28+Cassandra%27s+Legacy%29
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"Of course there are alternative forms of energy that are becoming more efficient and affordable every year, and that’s a good thing. But ironically the alternative energy sector as it now exists relies entirely on fossil fuels. We need to recognize that fossil fuels are essential in the whole supply chain of a windmill or a solar panel, in mining the raw materials, shipping them, manufacturing them, transporting the manufactured products, even the advertising and government subsidies – will this process still be affordable when the Industrial Revolution reaches the bottom of the barrel? The last two hundred years are not representative of the life of our species. They were built on a foundation that is not sustainable, and when it crumbles, our capacity for innovation may need to be replaced by our capacity for renovation. Old technologies that were designed with the limits of economics and planetary sustainability in mind will once again become valuable, and our lives will have to change drastically as a result, All of the sane reforms I and others write about will become, maybe not inevitable, but certainly desirable options once we view the world and ourselves without the distortion of the fossil-fuel lottery pay-out. Some day soon we will have to go back to living on our yearly income. We will still be inventive when that day comes, but our inventions may look more like clever PTO shafts on horse-drawn farm equipment and less like space travel."
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https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-08-26/the-future-of-technological-society-will-they-really-think-of-something/
 
sendler2112 said:
Some day soon we will have to go back to living on our yearly income. We will still be inventive when that day comes, but our inventions may look more like clever PTO shafts on horse-drawn farm equipment and less like space travel.
This is one of the most oft-repeated misconceptions.

Horses do not take less energy. They take a lot MORE energy than, say, a tractor. And their fuel is grass, which is around 5% efficient in converting sunlight to fuel - and the horse is about 10% efficient in converting that fuel to energy. (Hindgut fermenters are notoriously wasteful.) With solar plus an electric tractor you get 15% efficiency - several orders of magnitude better/denser than a horse.
 
To be clear, should an energy crisis ever become a probability, it will only be self inflicted by human decisions.
Current known fossil resources are sufficient for hundreds of years if we chose to use them , with the unexplored/ undiscovered reserves are likely equal to or greater than that again.
And of course there is Nuclear for those who chose to use it.
The CO2 hoax may work for a while in comfortable “soft” developed economies, but ultimately large developing nations (China, Russia, India, SAmerica etc,), will not let that type of virtue signaling prevent their economic rise and industrial progress,
However, it is becoming more apparent that the probability of new Nuclear technologies will change the future energy scene significantly.
 
Just like how a lot of people are apprehensive about other humans having nuclear weapons, I am also wondering if I am apprehensive about humans having access to cheap energy via a "nuclear energy breakthrough miracle" or at least a great nuclear energy technology advancement.

Why? Because the evidence of the world shows we keep polluting with the harnessing of energy just as much than doing good with it. So I am wondering in a general sense, "are humans too dumb to have access to abundant energy", especially if Africa is having a population super explosion.

Just look at garbage being dumped into rivers, in dumber countries this is literally considered a clever way to dispose of garbage, this is the ultimate result of dumb people having access to resources and energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVnMBGXVVUI
[youtube]wVnMBGXVVUI[/youtube]

I think Bill Gates insistence of developing fully automated nuclear power-station is mainly because he has a dream of powering Africa with such technology as Bill Gates philanthropy projects mainly focus on Africa.
But what about all the garbage that is going to result from it all?

The problem is African people instinctively have as many children as possible and continue to have kids into starvation as this has typically been their method of survival.

This chart below is possibly a conservative estimation what will really happen in population growth in Africa over the coming decades, the real number could be much higher. In Australia, we reached our population target of 25million many decades earlier than was predicted, and the mainstream media just says "well that's weird, that wasn't supposed to happen for another 30 years".

The country South Africa is one of the very few places "google street view" actually works for the whole of Africa which otherwise is just satellite-view only, and if you street-view around some of the areas it's easy to find at least 6 children in the front yards of these mini-plot homes that have been set up as mini-versions of the typical American suburbs but for the poor of Africa.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/africas-population-explosion-will-change-humanity-2015-8?r=US&IR=T
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PhD Dr. Edward Dutton, published in many books in anthropologist and studies ethnology claims that like some animals like turtles hatching on the beach https://youtu.be/T8eGw1oyYoQ?t=76 that deliberately have lots of offspring because of the low probability many will survive, he claims Africans basically have a much higher probability/tendency to have a lot of kids even when conditions are incredibly bad to do so or when conditions are good.
He says while these types of people exist in all races is far more common in Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropologist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

Here is some videos where he talks about the subject off excessive off-spring behaviour.
https://youtu.be/zzJRf1b_F_c?t=1096 time-linked at 18minutes 15seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSDnQ1RwF0Y
I remember watching these on YouTube but it looks like they have been removed because they are too edgy or considered forbidden knowledge etc.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/bS0HhSL4WV8/
https://www.bitchute.com/video/blT1dzyFCS0/
And here is Dr Edward Dutton's own YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMRs0Ml8RF0cWVAOeQeBxTw/videos

When I look at the claims that the world will quasi "run out of copper" or nickel in the next 30 years it seems clear there isn't enough resources in the world for everyone to live on roughly the same level of quality of living.

But we already have problems with political SJW's rallying for more mass immigration from poor nations, but what happens if Africa has 6 billion people? The most logical thing they will want to do is to try and migrate to the western world under any circumstance.

Major corporations are wired to want to bring in more people to the richer parts of the world for every reason imaginable, even McDonalds or KFC want more people because it means more sales, the stock-market is all about having higher revenues than the year before at any cost, at everyone else's cost of living. So they make sure mainstream media promotes mass immigration as good.

This model of growth PURELY for the sake of GROWTH ideology of the cancer cell, it's not going to stop until every square inch of the earth looks like this. It's the only way the major stock-market indexes can only go higher on an annual basis, but it's directly at the cost of your living standards. But people just don't seem to understand it.
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One thing that continues to astound me is that a lot of people who are angry about the cost of living are so dumb they don't even understand that it comes from "supply and demand law", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeRnxSuLFI

Whether it's bananas/housing/schools or jobs, in an ever more automating world the more people that come to a specific area the less energy/resources are going to be available to you as an individual because there is always a limit on everything.

I saw this article which I thought really nails it for peoples confusion on the cost of housing.
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billvon said:
Horses do not take less energy. They take a lot MORE energy than, say, a tractor. And their fuel is grass, which is around 5% efficient in converting sunlight to fuel - and the horse is about 10% efficient in converting that fuel to energy. (Hindgut fermenters are notoriously wasteful.) With solar plus an electric tractor you get 15% efficiency - several orders of magnitude better/denser than a horse.
Horses and oxen take much less technology to produce work. And horses and grass are renewable. Tractors and solar farms are rebuildable. If you have the materials, the high tech, and the energy. Look ahead 100 years. Entropy of raw materials and the end of 17TW, 86% from fossil carbon. The gleaming StarTrek future for 11 billion people in 2100 isn't going to happen. We are near peak now.
 
Beastie, immigration isn't the source of the problem - it's a symptom of a greater malaise.

It's our consumer economy which is driving the trashing of our planet. A system which only works when people buy stuff they don't need with money they haven't got, and keep living like this planet was a dime a dozen. Immigration is simply another fuel source for this stupid economy we created, and those steering it (government and business) are too afraid to change it.

And I don't know of any "SJWs" who hold the views you're trying to project. If we were compassionate, we would be helping create a world where people didn't want to flee their homes and migrate, instead working to better their lot. Nobody I know advocates for open borders. Its just not that simple.
 
I see. So you're back to quoting low grade waste heat from thermal power plants, combustion engines and poorly insulated buildings as essential energy RE must provide?

This is the problem with regugitated mantras - they're rarely subject to updates in the face of facts...
 
Punx0r said:
I see. So you're back to quoting low grade waste heat from thermal power plants, combustion engines and poorly insulated buildings as essential energy RE must provide?

This is the problem with regugitated mantras - they're rarely subject to updates in the face of facts...

I am the one who is simply stating facts. The world averaged over 17TW last year. The average will be slightly over 17.5 TW when the totals are in for this year. I'm sorry that it upsets you to learn about this. Wishful thinking about what theoretical utopian future you envision doesn't change the facts that we are experiencing today. We will be at 17.5 TW for the year. And more next year. Until the world runs out of sovereign credit that is needed to keep pulling these resources forward in time, and suffer a much larger correction than in 2008 with no easy money printing solution.
 
sendler2112 said:
Horses and oxen take much less technology to produce work.
Correct. They are easier. They are MUCH less energy dense.
And horses and grass are renewable. Tractors and solar farms are rebuildable. If you have the materials, the high tech, and the energy.
Also correct. Everything, from animal power to solar tractors, requires technology, raw materials and energy.
Look ahead 100 years. Entropy of raw materials and the end of 17TW, 86% from fossil carbon.
RIght. You will be getting 40TW of less reliable energy from renewables. We will have to adapt. And fertilizer will be a far larger problem than tractors, which means we will need new, less intensive farming methods. Fortunately we have them.
 
billvon said:
which means we will need new, less intensive farming methods. Fortunately we have them.

But unfortunately the less intensive farming methods will not produce total world calories at this scale. The Green Revolution and Big AG (and antibiotics) has allowed us to triple the human population since 1955.
 
sendler2112 said:
But unfortunately the less intensive farming methods will not produce total world calories at this scale. The Green Revolution and Big AG (and antibiotics) has allowed us to triple the human population since 1955.

There's actually some good debate on this. There are methods of raising livestock and crops that with proper management can produce yields better than we currently get from these intensive mega farms (calories/acre). Management, integration, rotation etc., it takes planning and you can't focus on a single product, you need a broader approach. It's really a matter of incentive. If we stopped subsidizing farmers and stopped believing hamburgers only cost 99 cents things would shift to these more natural and sustainable farming practices.

eta: and I don't mean "organic". I don't think there's a way to produce enough "organically" that can meet world needs.
 
furcifer said:
There's actually some good debate on this. There are methods of raising livestock and crops that with proper management can produce yields better than we currently get from these intensive mega farms (calories/acre).
I would have to see a study on that stated this. I of course see memes and stories showing a noble African woman with a stick growing her own food, But it is my understanding that the Green Revolution using liquid fueled machines, hydrocarbon and liquid fuel produced fertilizers and pesticides, and selective breeding/ GMO, increased yields 300-700%/ acre.
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It is destructive, but in the short term, very productive in calories/ acre and calories/ human labor input. Fossil slaves are providing most of the work.
 
sendler2112 said:
But unfortunately the less intensive farming methods will not produce total world calories at this scale. The Green Revolution and Big AG (and antibiotics) has allowed us to triple the human population since 1955.
Right. You will need more land, and more people dedicated to farming, to produce the same results without natural gas centric fertilizers. And that will be a big change to our economy. (And diets)
 
sendler2112 said:
I would have to see a study on that stated this. I of course see memes and stories showing a noble African woman with a stick growing her own food, But it is my understanding that the Green Revolution using liquid fueled machines, hydrocarbon and liquid fuel produced fertilizers and pesticides, and selective breeding/ GMO, increased yields 300-700%/ acre.
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It is destructive, but in the short term, very productive in calories/ acre and calories/ human labor input. Fossil slaves are providing most of the work.

True. I'll have to look it up. It was from some farming University in Iowa or some such. But it seemed legit. You can utilize grasslands with livestock that can't be farmed and use the by products to fertilize crops, and feed livestock and round and round it goes. At the very basic level it's based on using natural solar panels ie. plants, in a more integrated approach.
 
billvon said:
Right. You will need more land, and more people dedicated to farming, to produce the same results without natural gas centric fertilizers. And that will be a big change to our economy. (And diets)
Most people will go back to working for their living and far, far fewer people will have "jobs".
 
sendler2112 said:
Most people will go back to working for their living and far, far fewer people will have "jobs".
I disagree there. A reduction in energy density will cause a lot of changes. It will not reset society to the point in time where we had that energy density. More has happened since then than energy density improvements, and we will retain most of them.
 
Just about every new SSP prediction scenario that just came out that are used by climate scientists to model climate change shows more coal and natural gas than rebuildable energy in 2100. And higher total energy consumption.
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https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-08-26/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp8-5-global-warming-scenario/
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69469344_2383592791719819_8843721203043532800_n.jpg

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The SSPs (Shared Socio-economic pathways) are based on five narratives describing broad socioeconomic trends that could shape future society. These are intended to span the range of plausible futures.

They include: a world of sustainability-focused growth and equality (SSP1); a “middle of the road” world where trends broadly follow their historical patterns (SSP2); a fragmented world of “resurgent nationalism” (SSP3); a world of ever-increasing inequality (SSP4); and a world of rapid and unconstrained growth in economic output and energy use (SSP5).
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https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-shared-socioeconomic-pathways-explore-future-climate-change
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