Comment by NovaVeles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NovaVeles | Hacker News Reader

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I am in the camp of we are in overshoot, have been for a very long time. In the same way that a someone can spend way above their income by using the credit card. Looks great now but that looming cloud of debt is coming. Societal wise we have done this via the monkey pore wish for "unlimited energy" in the form of fossil fuels. We got energy unlike anything else in history but at the cost of environmental blow back and setting the paradigm for our living standards.

Maybe we will rise to the challenge and go green on these, I'm not convinced yet but I am definitely not ruling it out.

When it comes to optimism, it boils down to two distinct modes. Necessity is the mother of invention. Less energy, stuff and stimulation will be good for most people in wealthy countries.

Fossil fuels will decline, we will make some cool new stuff that makes that decline easier, we will demand less stuff and use of energy. This doesn't sound so bad. Hopefully we will move into something akin to Solarpunk + cottage core. A declined future that is more fair. But the pessimist in me feels like that is but fantasy.

Why would energy usage need to decline when there's a giant ball of fusion in our sky we barely make use of, and when we've just begun exploring space in the past century?

Solar energy isn't free, it takes a lot of metals just to turn solar energy into electrical energy (including batteries for storage) and they don't last forever.

Here's a link to a talk from an associate professor doing an estimation of how much metals are needed to switch to renewable energy: https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406

Solar energy is the cheapest form of energy we have. Storage is a bit more expensive, but judging from the amount of metals the video proposes they want to go all-in on battery storage, whereas most experts I heard from propose to use hydrogen (or methane) as a storage medium, precisely because the amount of resources it needs are much smaller.

Hydrogen would also help with re-using all the ICE cars we have (and will continue to have) on the roads.

Definitely not a panacaea, and super-inefficient, but that's OK if we're just using it for storage/transportation.

super-inefficient?

as in it's only worth doing if you have nothing else to do with the energy (like when you have too much wind/sun etc)

That's just the concept of energy storage. And even if we lose a significant fraction it's often not an issue given how cheap solar is.

Sure, but it would be better if we had more efficient methods of doing it.

>whereas most experts I heard from propose to use hydrogen (or methane) as a storage medium

What experts? Power to gas has been really energy inefficient with little sign of improving from what I know. It can't really compete with pumped hydro even where pumped hydro makes less to no sense it seems.

Efficiency (almost) doesn't matter. Cost and scalability matters. Pumped hydro and batteries are wonderfully efficient, but they're a lot more difficult to scale than infrastructure for storing, transporting, and burning a gas.

Wow, that was a bucket of water in my face the likes of which I’ve never felt before! We are 100% completely screwed! We simply cannot maintain our standard of living into the future. The picture this professor paints is so incredibly bleak that it puts the war in Ukraine and a potential war in Taiwan into perspective.

Imagine if all the passengers on the Titanic had nuclear weapons. That’s the situation we’re in. And there are no lifeboats.

Except that all these problems are soluble.

We can adapt to climate change. We can create new (clean!) energy sources.

Solar is getting more efficient every year. There are new storage solutions appearing every year.

As TFA says, despair is not the answer. We can (and will) overcome all these problems.

Can you expand more on those new storage solutions?

here let me google that for you... https://www.forbes.com/sites/mitsubishiheavyindustries/2022/...

> We simply cannot maintain our standard of living into the future.

Don't make the mistake of confusing energy use with quality of life.

People like to make such alarmist statement around standard of living but we should instead ask ourselves what makes for quality of life.

A good example is planned obsolescence in technology: it greatly increases energy usage and pollution without making consumers happier (on the contrary they hate it)

Don't make the mistake of conflating carbon emissions with transportation. So much of our society is built on carbon and personal automobiles are only a part of it. Cement production, globalized shipping, fertilizers for growing food, natural gas for making steel and other heavy industry. No matter how you slice it, wind and solar can't replace any of that stuff.

Wind and solar might not, but that isn't to say that there arent replacements

This isn't the first time someone has predicted an end to economic growth soon because of peak raw resources having been attained. We can go all the way back to the numerous failed predictions of Elrich's Population Bomb book. The idea that we're close to the pinnacle of what technology and science can achieve is ridiculous given the immense cosmic time scales and resources available. We're nowhere near the limit of what's possible.

Or we just stop pretending that nuclear is bad and build the plants to keep an industrial base going past 2050.

Hell at this point whoever does will just conquer whoever doesn't. Just like the industrial revolution let whoever burn coal take over the rest. I'm hoping to be in a country that isn't conquered, but the west seems to have entered a death spiral of self delusion.

Well in theory, yes. In practice, the Russians have captured a large nuclear reactor and may use it as a dirty bomb if things don't go their way. Can't turn a solar panel or windmill into a weapon like that. You could turn a hydroelectric dam in a weapon though, I believe that's the plot of a few films. And solar heat collectors are impractical death rays.

> In practice, the Russians have captured a large nuclear reactor and may use it as a dirty bomb if things don't go their way

This is still theory unless they actually use it for that.

Also, Russia's own Kursk 2 isn't very far from the captured one. They could turn that into a dirty bomb too. Recency bias on a threat shouldn't overwhelm normal analysis.

No, it shouldn't overwhelm it, but it should inform it. There is no proliferation risk associated with wind, solar, geothermal, etc.

Where I live is at risk of declining political stability in the near future. I don't worry about living next to a nuclear power plant because I'm worried about maintenance or operational safety or whatever, I worry about what happens when a thousand men with machetes and an apocalyptic ideology show up. And perhaps you look at the news in your country and wonder if you also may be heading towards declining political stability.

> No, it shouldn't overwhelm it, but it should inform it. There is no proliferation risk associated with wind, solar, geothermal, etc.

Note my example was also nuclear. I don't know what you're countering with this.

Yes, thank god Russia doesn't have the worlds largest nuclear stock pile of weapons to threaten the world with and has to steal others countries nuclear power plants to threaten them with a dirty bomb. On their border. Less than 100km away from the nearest Russian city.

It does make sense because they will claim that the Ukrainians did it, which they’ve already started to lay the groundwork for.

Also, nuclear plants can be a target for plenty of states or groups that don’t have nuclear weapons like terrorists.

There comes a point where you should turn off the television and turn on your brain.

I don’t even know what this means. Are you saying that we should expect propaganda to not work despite it working since the beginning of recorded history? If so, that is really dumb.

I'm saying you should consume less pro-Ukranian propaganda and think a bit more.

Thanks for making my point for me.

On your first point: And this would be believed by whom? Just as everyone credible firmly takes seriously Russia's claims that it attacked Ukraine to rid the smaller country of a Nazi threat to Russian sovereignty? Give me a break.

As for your second claim: So can hydro plants, causing enormous destruction. So? Secure the vulnerable asset, create defensive and preventative strategies. You don't go through life not building genuinely useful things because somewhere, somehow, somebody might aim to do them harm. The logic is absurd if taken to any other level. For example, I should never buy or build a house because some group of landless lunatics might coalesce and try to take it from me one day. Better to not have my own useful home in the first place then? Absurd.

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