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0 pointspfdietz5y ago0 comments

Let's go through go through those links and see if they support your claim that "it is painfully obvious that unless you're making calculations about spherical cows there's nowhere near enough resources, surface, and specifically predictability to have renewables be more than marginal for a long time".

[1] No, that doesn't support your claim (and it's from 2007, an aeon ago in the renewable field). In fact, that abstract says "The negative effects on health of electricity generation from renewable sources have not been assessed as fully as those from conventional sources, but for solar, wind, and wave power, such effects seem to be small"

[2] That states "As a corollary, nuclear energy also occupies significantly less space / land than renewables (several hundred times less in fact)." But that doesn't mean the land area required by renewables makes renewables infeasible. And it also ignores the distribution network needed for nuclear; if that is included, the ratio of land areas needed is much smaller.

He also says "the debate is not about building new nuclear power plants but to retain the remaining ones for as long as possible." So that link doesn't supply justification for building new nuclear plants. I can accept that CO2 taxes (for example) would enable existing nuclear plants to keep operating, at least for a while.

[3,4] Ah, Shellenberger. He was the guy who was claiming PV was dirty because it used rare earth elements from China (spoiler: that's a lie). He fails to make any quantitative argument that land area or other inputs for renewables render it infeasible. And he repeats the tired nonsense about Germany having high energy costs because of renewables (as if that somehow justifies the doublethink that installing much more expensive sources would have led to lower costs.)

[5] And yet more irrelevancy.

Look, if you actually had a cogent argument to support your claim, you could have pointed to a real detailed argument supporting it. But it was bullshit all along, and you know that, so you spewed out a Gish Gallop of irrelevancy. And indeed, how could it have been otherwise? Your claim requires that all possible configurations of renewables, all possible configurations and types of storage, and all possible configurations of energy using activities cannot work. And how could you POSSIBLY establish that? You could have claimed there's a lot of work to be done, and that it's not CERTAIN that renewables could do the job, and for that reason nuclear should be kept alive as an option. But that's not what you were arguing.

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cmehdy5y ago· 2 in thread

[1] Aeons ago means litteraly nothing. You can contemplate gradual improvements to the EROI, but they don't change by an order of magnitude despite the metric truckton of money we've been throwing at the problem. The order of magnitude does not change, the output doesn't really significantly shift either.

[2] Land area occupied by renewables doesn't make it INFEASIBLE, can you stop putting it words into my mouth I did not say? Did you not read the literal dozens of times I've mentioned renewables are worth developing and using? Do you understand that when I compare one with the other, this is not a XOR but an OR and I am talking about orders of magnitude and controllability therefore what actually matters for the bigger immediate changes? Or do you want to wilfully continue to ignore that I've said that about ten times now and dance the same dance again and again?

It's not infeasible, it's merely on average impractical. That is, you need to identify the narrow areas where the installation offsets the CO2 output of the construction + materials + maintenance bill. Yes it does improve, and yes that ROI improves significantly too. Did you read my sentence right now? I don't want you to say again the same damn things, I'm just checking you even read the messages.

But no, the solar output is not what will allow you to keep your fridge running and your shower hot at all times. If you want to sell me the idea of not having power at all time I'm genuinely OPEN to it, but then actually have the sincerity of shifting the debate to something meaningful rather than the same points over and over again.

[3,4] Ad hominem, and you also happen to miss that yes a majority of PV as it stands does not use the awesome research that avoids using involving a decent amount of mining (and that research didn't come for free btw, and that could have paid for next-generation nuclear research for which the current generation already beats by far photovoltaic). So sure, handwave away.

[5 and not 6] So you ignore the IPCC reports? TL;DR am I right? I have nothing more to say to you.

pfdietzOP5y ago

EROI of renewables is just fine, and getting even better. Attempts to argue it's not have been thoroughly debunked.

About land area: you said this "I'm making the claim because it is painfully obvious that unless you're making calculations about spherical cows there's nowhere near enough resources, surface, and specifically predictability to have renewables be more than marginal for a long time." If land area (which I assume is what you meant by "surface" there) isn't a showstopper, why did you list it? But thanks for admitting now that it isn't a showstopper. I consider the point conceded and that part of your claim retracted.

> Ad hominem

Argument from authority can be met by impeaching the credibility of the authority.

> So you ignore the IPCC reports?

Show me in the IPCC report where it supports your claim "it is painfully obvious that unless you're making calculations about spherical cows there's nowhere near enough resources, surface, and specifically predictability to have renewables be more than marginal for a long time." I'll wait.

cmehdy5y ago

There is enough surface to put PV panels in many places, and the reason why I don't just say land is because enthusiasts will also consider rooftops (which aren't optimal in terms of tech and output as you surely know - the significant farms do require requisitioning actual land and it isn't insignificant in itself[0]). But there isn't enough surface for PV to preclude the usage of nuclear, which is what I've been saying all along. Reminder for the n-th time that it's not a XOR when it comes to using all the sources alternatives to fossil fuels, it's an OR in many places and an AND in some. I've been saying repeatedly that the OR wins in favour of nuclear for energy throughput, not that the OR precludes from having them and there isn't and AND in other places.

You haven't impeached anything by saying he lied about rare minerals, since earlier generations of PV did require those. You just brushed off the person because it's harder to brush off the argument.

The IPCC reports (btw if you had read the page you'd see the 2020 one is inbound so you've got to use the previous ones) have over decades highlighted the unpredictability of changes regarding habitability of places (i.e. typically related to RCP scenarios) and changes in weather patterns. The very same things that I've been mentioning multiple times as being factors that influence the ability to have steady renewables.

Let's take a look at that one[1] ("aeons ago" to you, as if the world magically changed since).

P5 Changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhousegases (GHGs) and aerosols, land cover and solar radiation al-ter the energy balance of the climate system.

P13 phenomenon and directions of trends, just take the most likely ones and explain to me how your PV panels will handle those better than a nuclear power plant where the power production gives no qualms about rain, cloud cover and temperature (since they're literally built to handle terrorist attacks)

P13 again "Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impactsthat are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rateand magnitude of the climate change.", please do enlighten me about how well you can predict that your PVs are going to give you any steady power output at any given location over the duration of their existence

The rest of the IPCC reports tend to indicate shifts in patterns that we can barely predict, yet somehow again you feel entirely comfortable without a proof that PV can stand the changes in {cloud cover, fires (how's it holding up for the PV in California these days huh?), weather patterns, changes in irradiation, maintenance cost[note to not install them in deserts[5]]}.

It also hasn't escaped your mind that in a decent part of the world on the RCP scenarios we're headed towards we will encounter increasing amounts of deadly days - making those lands practically not habitable (and surprise surprise, those places happen to be exactly where sunlight would be most intense)[2]. Side note: climate refugees will go to places where infrastructures are, and those power needs will therefore increase. This is a time where the combination of nuclear and renewables can be a fantastic thing, but once again you're daydreaming if you think that solar (and wind) can carry that without nuclear.

Again, you ought to know that I have not once said that PV shouldn't be developed, but that I have said multiple times that nuclear is what enables steady controllability and necessary power output at metrics comparable to current days energy needs. You've been keen on trying to find a fault in every single sentence I've said without ever trying to refute that, why is it you think? Perhaps because you also acknowledge that very same thing? There's no point in you trying to advocate for solar using that same report because I AM ON BOARD.

However you bring forward literally nothing that shows that PV is controllable (as it is not and that is basically its biggest problem[2] - and yes that's physics and not spherical cows), that PV+storage isn't a smoke screen (quite literally - it reduces the fossil-fuel related emissions by 6 but is about 20 times more than nuclear due to the storage). I'll also stop waiting on a real refutal of [4](yes, again) because apparently anything that upsets you isn't worth proving wrong.

So yes, physics about spherical cows (i.e. imagining you get the solar output you design your farm for at any fraction in steady way without being forced to move, with a magically predictable climate and weather, and without involving more CO2 emissions for both moving the infrastructure - new land usage - as well as the significant waste due to the panels change that comes in within a couple decades), that physics about spherical cows does not hold up.

Solar (and wind) will be formidable sources to support a world that goes without fossil fuels, and in some localized spots it can even be the key element. For the world, it won't be nearly enough.

And if you are happy handwaving it all away, just do your own parallel benefit-to-cost analysis[6] then.

[0] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-solar...

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4_syr_full...

[2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/billions-face-deadly-threshold-h...

[3] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/look-wind-and-solar-part-2-th...

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/08...

[5] https://sinovoltaics.com/technology/solar-panels-deserts-par...

[6] https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi...

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