CrimeDad @ CrimeDad @lemmy.crimedad.work

Father; husband; mechanical engineer. Posting from my self-hosted Lemmy ins

---

Read more

Posts

185

Comments

1,216

Joined

2 yr. ago

Yes, I was also very happily surprised to hear that. There's just so much more coverage about all the cynical pardons. I'm hoping there were more truly deserving pardons than just these two. I know Biden did something for non-violent drug offenders, but I think I heard that a bunch of those people were already out.

Have any other good pardons come through?

… to make you realize how difficult it would be to run everything purely on solar and wind …

Who said anything about running everything purely on solar and wind?

Yours is the third reply to me that makes a Factorio reference over the past month. I didn't realize it was a game until yesterday. I guess I should give it a try.

You're correct that intermittent power from wind and photovoltaic solar needs to be managed somehow. There are certain energy intensive, productive processes that can be conveniently ramped up or slowed down to meet this requirement. I just think such a system would be more responsible and less exploitative than building these massive battery facilities for speculating on the electricity supply.

Your half-joking idea of converting excess electricity to steam makes sense because steam is itself a useful product that's needed for heating buildings as well as various industrial processes. Converting it back into electricity isn't ideal, but that's all you can do with a chemical battery in comparison.

I would prefer to use energy rather than store it, but yes, pressure vessels are preferable to chemical batteries.

Start with policies requiring technology companies to use computational work as a sink for excess electricity, compelling grid operators to prioritize sharing of intermittent renewable power, and mandating rooftop solar. That will hold us over while we start shutting down fossil fuel power plants and ramp up production of emissions free thermal alternatives and productive power sinks like electrolysis and desalination plants. Small back up power systems can be installed as needed at sensitive sites (similar to what we already do) and the roof top solar requirement will facilitate that. We would never expect PV solar plants to run at night. We'd just reduce computations or hydrogen and fresh water production as the PV solar output falls off.

I've never played the games you mentioned. Are there mods for automatic productive power sinks?

They're people from (illegal) settlements. I think settler is an objectively correct word for them. I'm sure there are also other accurate terms.

The solution is to make sure the electricity supply always exceeds demand even during spikes.

It's complicated, but in terms of direct kills, hydro power takes the cake. If you're also considering indirect kills, fossil fuel power is far and away the worst offender and I think that's before you even account for climate change deaths:

Hydroelectric dams have also claimed more human lives than any other type of power plant.

I wonder if there is a way to actually empower individuals when it comes to environmental issues, like if each of us had some kind of right to the various resources we lived near. For example, experts might determine that there's only so much water that could be sustainably extracted from a given source in a year. Well, just divide that amount among the people who depend on that source and ration representative credits to them. To get water from that source, one would have to be paid for with a corresponding amount of credits. People can sell the credits they don't need to anyone who wants extra. Water intensive operations like hydraulic fracturing or pistachio farming would cease to get their water for free. They'd have to directly compensate the people for using this resource by buying water credits. The idea would probably crash the economy, since capitalism depends on cheap access to natural resources.

They really look different. The geography and atmospheric conditions that affect how the sun and sky looks, including pollution, differ from East to West of wherever you are and also from morning to evening.

A little bit of authoritarianism is what we need now to mitigate climate change and avoid the much worse kind of authoritarianism we will be in for as climate change gets worse. There's no hippy la-la conscious capitalism way out of this situation.

Sometimes you have to intentionally burn some stuff to create a firebreak and save a lot more other stuff.

I do not understand how climate change is analogous to a leaky faucet with respect to anything.

What do you mean by "convert it back"? Convert it back to electricity for the grid? No. We need the hydrogen for important things, like making steel and fertilizer.

As I've already explained, we need hydrogen. We need it not for energy storage, but as a useful, important product. Electrolysis of water is pretty much the only way to get it without emitting greenhouse gases. Therefore, the efficiency of it doesn't really matter, especially if the energy to do it would otherwise go to some dangerous, battery based buy low/sell high scheme.

Back to energy storage: if you’ve got some brilliant solution - get to it. We’re waiting.

No to storing joules in environmentally questionable batteries. Use the energy immediately to produce useful, necessary stuff like fresh water and hydrogen.

I'm not sure what you mean. Natural fresh water supplies are stressed in many regions. We need hydrogen to fuel vehicles and for the production GHG-free steel and fertilizer. Oxygen of course is necessary for medical and industrial applications. Safely handling hydrogen and oxygen is a solved problem and these gases are not polluting if you have to vent to atmosphere. It only makes sense from a wasteful, financially extractive perspective to store extra electricity by environmentally questionable means instead of actually using that energy right away.

I don't think they should be operating at all.