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Comment by sam345 | Hacker News Reader

Right. 5 hours. Renewables alone won't do it and never will. Despite wishful thinking, we will still also need fossil fuels and nuclear.

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"Never will" is of course an untrue hyperbole. There are stronger and stronger incentives to make this happen, and while it's probable that non-renewables will never go to 0.0%, they will definitely reach for it.

173TW is the amount of solar energy that reaches Earth. More than 10,000x what we currently use. Sure, we'll probably never (there's that word again!) use all of it, but it gives a sense of scale. And who knows, perhaps we'll use more since there's always the other side of the sun. Apparently, a full dyson sphere around the sun would theoretically give us 400 septillion (10^24) watts.

If we used all 173TW instead of letting it reflect back - what would that do for the temperature of the planet?

That's probably a bit absurd, and would probably cause a lot of changes since it would also mean that all the oceans are practically covered with panels.

Here's a reference to a study about large-scale panel installations:

https://www.science.org/content/article/solar-panel-shade-wo....

They suggest that there would be an impact, but far less than the impact of greenhouse gases they could replace.

In this case you are basically just changing the path of the light already hitting the planet. It will eventually become photons again and can leave back towards space, plus there is no release of greenhouse gases.

I guess it would still do something for the temperature of the planet, but to a far lesser extent.

Electrolysers exist and are rapidly approaching parity with gas.

Fossil fuels already require massive subsidy and military spending, and there never has been and never will be a thermal fission reactor that can run without subsidy.

With developed countries ranging from 25% to over 60% in government spending as percentage of GDP, your argument doesn't carry the same weight. Every industry is running with subsidies.

Do renewable energy sources somehow negate the need for a military to maintain security and keep shipping lanes open? If the US isn't invading Iraq for oil, it could spend the money on invading some other country instead for the resources that building renewables needs.

> With developed countries ranging from 25% to over 60% in government spending as percentage of GDP, your argument doesn't carry the same weight. Every industry is running with subsidies.

I'm happy for subsidies, let's subsidise the things that are efficient uses of resources though.

> If the US isn't invading Iraq for oil, it could spend the money on invading some other country instead for the resources that building renewables needs.

Yeah, 200mg of recyclable silver and 5g of recyclable copper is definitely equivalent to 2 barrels of oil.

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