Hacker News Reader

Comment by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think they have a clear concept of a viable solution.

Do you have a clear concept of a viable solution? (Hint: Killing the ecosystem that sustains humans is not it.)

> Do you have a clear concept of a viable solution?

Nuclear. Solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear to produce the same amount of energy (source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/08...)

Sorry, but that's just a dumb comparison. For one, solar farms don't use land the same way nuclear power plants do, in terms of effects on the environment/ecosystem (you potentially can even do agriculture on the same land ...). Then, you can't install nuclear power plants on rooftops, but you can put solar panels there, thus using no land at all. And finally, you avoid a lot of losses and don't need as much distribution infrastructure when you have solar panels within the city where the energy is being used.

Also, I don't see how you could build sufficient nuclear capacity in time to sufficiently reduce carbon emissions without compromising safety (after all, nuclear energy is inherently extremely dangerous--the fact that we so far have been able to operate it very safely does not mean that that is an inherent property of the technology that we could maintain if we tried building hundreds of gigawatts in a decade). Nuclear (fission) energy might have been a sensible route in the past, but it doesn't seem so right now.

I think nuclear is the best current solution, but it is too late to build nuclear plant now because it requires 40 years to be cost effective. I hope that solar will become better than nuclear in less than 10 years.

Solar less space efficient even at maximum capacity.

I'm not the one claiming there is an easy solution. I think Bill Gates also said the people claiming there is an easy solution is the biggest problem with fighting climate change, so maybe read his essays on the topic.

But you claimed that protesters demanding a solution were a problem, or that they were unjustified because they couldn't offer a solution. Why would people have to present a solution in order to demand for their future to not be destroyed?

After all, "solving climate change" is technologically a solved problem. Humanity has all the technological knowledge to switch to carbon-free energy production. The problem are the costs of that switch based on current technology. But if we can't reduce the costs further, that still does not invalidate the demand of protesters who don't want to be stuck with paying the massive price of having to deal with a broken ecosystem later. It's still a perfectly justified demand that current generations pay in order to avoid costs for future generations.

No I said the protestors claiming there is an easy solution is the problem. They believe everything could just be switched over to renewables at no cost, in fact, they think it would be cheaper to do so.

You do the same. You claim it is "technically a solved problem". It really isn't. You are just naive about "renewable energy".

> No I said the protestors claiming there is an easy solution is the problem.

Source?

> They believe everything could just be switched over to renewables at no cost,

Source?

> in fact, they think it would be cheaper to do so.

So, how do you know that is not the case? (And no, pretending that climate change won't cause any costs is not how this works. If your stance is that climate change won't have any costs, that's on you to demonstrate.)

> You do the same. You claim it is "technically a solved problem". It really isn't.

So, which part of it is not technically solved?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com