starbeast

>Has nothing to do with communism, wind and solar on the other hand do.

Showing your hand there.

>As a species we are programmed to fear the unknown.

Looking about the place, this seems unlikely.

I only just found out about him. Was only looking him up because you said that anyone who did could see he wasn't a lobbyist. Found out he was a lobbyist. Can you tell me his current client list, since you know so much about him? Then I will go and check it. Twice.

You told me to look him up and that he wasn't a lobbyist. So I put his name and lobbyist into google and almost immediately found that he used to get paid by Venezuela as a lobbyist. I have no real idea who this guy is until you said to look him up. And somehow this is my fault?

Lets not look at the maximum we can hope for ever. Lets look instead at figures for what is commercially available now. So, say 27% maximum conversion.

Average insolation gives us ~6kWh over a square meter over a day, 27% of that gets us to 1.62kWh, divide by 24 to get the wattage, that's a 67.5 watts per square meter average before we get to storage or transmission.

HVDC has losses of ~3% per 1000km. Now lets look at round trip efficiency for storage. Typically you see a quoted figure of around 70% depending on technology type. So lets say a 65% loss (edit - this should read 65% efficiency, or alternatively a 35% loss) from storage and transmission.

We are now at ~44 watts per square meter, which gives us 456,000 square km from the 20 terawatt rating of humans. So ~5 Portugals, which is admittedly higher than my original figure of 2 Portugals, though you would presumably site your panels somewhere that gets better than average insolation, places like the Sahara, for example.

Also, for comparison, the Sahara desert is ~100 Portugals and the area currently used by humans for agriculture is ~550 Portugals.

I looked him up. He used to be a paid lobbyist for Venezuela.

Well, he has started several lobbying companies and been a lobbyist for a number of paying clients, so I think that the meaning of the word 'lobbyist' is still safe.

~20 terawatts = humans

~90,000 terawatts = sunlight hitting surface of earth

The vast majority of registered lobbyists in the USA are paid professionals, usually from the legal field. Several major law companies run large lobbyist for hire departments.

Now Michael Shellenberger may be one of the pro-bono lobbyists (admittedly I haven't yet found out either way), but this would put him in the minority of registered lobbyists in the USA.

I will note that he was at one point a paid lobbyist for Hugo Chavez. Was he presenting his own opinion then?

Immediately thought of Bruce Sterling's article on anticonventional objects. I guess this company goes in the buildable, but neither desirable or profitable section. - https://www.wired.com/2013/10/design-fiction-anticonventiona...

Including all losses, to power everything in the world with solar it comes to around twice the area of Portugal with current tech.

>Nuclear power is dead for economic reasons.

I'd say that BNFL killed itself through dishonesty. They may have had a viable business otherwise.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmtr...

https://www.wired.com/2000/02/uk-nuclear-fuel-scandal-widens...

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sellafield-crisis-...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bnfl-to-be-wound-up-by-en...

Globally, hydro is three times as risky as rooftop solar, there were ~171,000 dead from the Banquio Dam failure alone - http://www.nuceng.ca/refer/risk/risk.htm

Also, I keep seeing figures for rooftop solar and not solar in general, and the risk for rooftop solar is due to the risk of working on a roof. If solar was mandated in new build and major roof repair, wherever it made sense to install it, this risk can be greatly reduced as the largest risk is during putting the scaffolding up and taking it down again.

Small turbines are rubbish. Always have been. Wind turbines are a swept area game. Everyone in the industry knows this.

The seasonal mass psychosis must be spreading.

Given that you cannot cheerfully give it to your worst enemy, nuclear has massive problems as the global solution for power. People are saying on the one hand that nuclear is the solution, but on the other that certain countries aren't allowed near it because it is much too dangerous.

Lobbyists are paid to present a preferred opinion, pretty much by definition. If someone is a registered lobbyist then their opinion should be held with great suspicion when it is anything to do with the subject that they lobby on.

The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling have already labelled any culprits as 'eco-warriors' and that was even before these two were arrested and then released. https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/12/21/comment-why-it-s-too-soo...

Even just being in a crime reconstruction video as an actor is apparently risky. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-342183...

>I wonder if this guy is just a compulsive liar who happened to fake his way into a journalism career

That accurately describes one of the established ways to bookend a stint in politics. In the UK, this caliber of bullshit would either tip them for a future cabinet post should they ever stand for election, or indicate that they are a recently retired MP, fabricating scandal to preserve some remaining public relevance, which they know only how to measure in inches of print.

If you do not actually include an enforcement process in your bureaucratic monitoring system, then most of your data detailing what goes on in some of the most heavily regulated and dangerous professional environments in existence, will be utter fictions written up at the end of the month when the paperwork is due and is in a state far worse than useless. This often kills people and it sometimes kills industries - https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsbnfl-staff-falsify-mox-...

How wide is the set of potential tentacles?

Can someone tell me a mechanism that would fundamentally halt the production of new neurons in adult brains? If you can't define that edge well, then it would seem very likely that new neurons do form in adult brains, given the scale of neuron to brain, even if many fewer of them do in comparison.

A highly effective tactical weapon in our long standing battle against the sea and everything that lives there. That damn sea, one of our oldest enemies and yet it still persists. We'll get the better of it yet though, the big wet bastard. Glitter production will help enormously and I am delighted to say it has almost doubled since our recent glitter marketing through social media and that article in the New York Times.

edit - Some people actually like the sea and dare to speak against our mighty and patriotic glitter industry - https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/glitter-plastics...

He looked like a mushroom, obviously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr...

But an actual mushroom, not a human shaped mushroom like Lenin became. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom

I wonder what the protocol is for 'borrowing' Ivanpah to point it at the moon at night and at what point in the exchange the phrase, 'well, you won't be using it', will finally occur.

edit - And by whom. Should probably get it in early, just in case.

>While I suspect you can't start a fire from moonlight in practice

Ivanpah may be able to, I wonder if we can borrow it at night for an experiment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

>I'm also not sure what kind of second secret life your friend has to hide from the craft.

Some people try to be experts in theoretical conspiracy. I think he is just more into the experimental side of the field.

It worked for him. He just then got kicked out.

A friend of mine's grandad used to comment that in the second world war, as British infantry, the one place you didn't want to be was anywhere near the Americans. They were just as likely to drop bombs on you as the Germans were. And they had more bombs and could hit the wrong target with much greater reliability than the German's could hit the right one.

I am greatly warmed to see that this friendly tradition between us is still in effect and that you have thoughtfully extended the favour onto everything else that moves or looks like it might do.

I do wonder however if there might be a slight commercial conflict of interest going on. Tell me, do the people who make the computers that tell you when to fire the guns and missiles and stuff, also sell you the rather expensive ammunition and missiles that then get fired? As perhaps the computer might be more reliable if they were two separate companies and couldn't hold shares in each other. Not trying to imply that a weapon's manufacturer would be as immoral with their consumables as an inkjet printer manufacturer, but it never hurts to be careful and could even save some of those all important tax dollars in the long run. Or the brass could have even more Hungarian prostitutes and novel infections for the medics to coo at, either way.