Renewable energy 'simply won't work': Top Google engineers

Re: reducing energy consumption

What the article is saying but does not actually spell out is that no solar-pv, wind-power or geothermal unit ever pays off its initial costs. They *all*, without exception, cost more than the "free" energy is worth.

Coal and oil are cheap because the cost of getting the energy out of them even at point-of-use many megametres from their source is far less than the usefulness of said energy. Oil is an extremely energy dense substance, far better than any battery technology we have and many times more so than hydrogen or any of the other alternatives for mobile power plants like vehicles. Dreaming of running cars from second-hand solar power, like wind energy, is the rankest of idiocies.

The solution to our power needs is obvious and always has been. It just is one the greenies hate, loath and detest and will, for their own religiously bigoted reasons, never admit is really viable or desirable. We need nukes. More nukes, better nukes and eventually *fusion* nukes.

With sufficiently good nukes we would not have the issue of "radioactive waste" for all the radioactive stuff would be consumed as fuel. If it glows it can power something. That is obvious even to a chimp. Only tree-huggers could possibly miss that most blatant fact and they only do so because their religious dogma will never allow them to admit that nukes can be made far safer, cleaner, cheaper and better than anything solar or windy. Also greener.

Domes can be painted.

With sufficient nuclear input, petrol, gasoline, can be *made*. We can still use petrol-driven cars, only better, safer and cheaper ones that do not pollute and do not create carbon emissions. Any carbon the cars exhaust into the air will be consumed by the fuel *making* industry. No drilling for oil ever again. Safe, clean power.

Yes that is a stupid idea and it is a stop-gap and it is so very typically human but it would allow us to keep the things we have and love and still drive our micro-buses to protest rallies where we could plug in our amplifiers and electric guitars so we could sing about how evil and satanic electricity is while smoking weed grown using artificially created fertilisers. Nuclear-created petrol would give us the time we needed to develop real high technologies to replace the internal combustion engine. It would give us breathing room.

But the greenies would have fits were it proposed. Their religious hysteria driven delusion that nuclear is evil won't let them consider the idea that plutonium orbiting Jupiter can't harm baby seals so they are never going to be able to cope with the idea that a technology that utterly consumes radioactives and removes them from existence forever is a good idea. While the green lobby are stuck in their delusionary world of magical unicorns and electric guitars that never need batteries, and the parasitic politicians use these hordes of half-wits as a support base, the human species, for all of its innovative macguyvering will be doomed.

We need more nukes. Nukes are the safest and gentlest and greenest form of power generation possible.

They are even better than solar-powered, photo-voltaic, microwave beaming satellite power stations and the greens would have litters of porcupines, breech, if anyone ever suggested those.

We also need to spread the human species, and those other species that we feel worthy of coming, to the stars, but that idea would cause tree-hugger heads to detonate.

An economy based on ever-expanding off-world activities would never collapse and could grow at an astonishing rate for many millions of years. By the time resources became an issue the Sons of Earth would have evolved into things smart enough not to *need* economies so off-world is basically a ticket to immortality.

Best of all, no human walking the worlds of another star could club baby seals in Canada. (They could club mutated baby-seal descendants on their own worlds but *we* won't tell the greenies this and they are far too lacking in vision and imagination to notice it by themselves.)

Greenpeace and their coterie of hysterical lack-wits should be pushing manned space-flight and ardently, religiously supporting nuclear power. But they are far too dim-witted to see their own best interests. Like most religious cults.

If you can do simple arithmetic you can see that nuclear is the only safe, green power source. Sadly, greenies can't.

Re: reducing energy consumption

"(if the govt want them subsidised, do it, don't make US subsidise through our bills)"

Uh, where do you think the money comes from if the government decided to "do it"? Hint: the taxes lopped off your pay. There's no free lunch.

Re: reducing energy consumption

The energy density of nuclear power is staggering... I recall reading how one of the founders of Greenpeace is now a nuclear proponent. He gave a speech at a large hall in NY indicating that this energy density, combined with zero emissions, was what would save humanity. (I personally believe natural gas is the bridge to the nuclear future.If we're going to burn something in the meantime,. let it be natural gas.)

Anyway, for the mathematically inclined, according to e.g. http://www.ocean.washington.edu/courses/envir215/energynumbers.pdf, the energy density in Joules for a pound of oil is 2.4 x 10^7, whereas for a pound of Uranium-235 3.7 x 10^13. 13-7=6, so ~1 million times the energy density.

Thorium is even more abundant than uranium, and cannot be used to make a bomb at all. It needs to be lit by a uranium "match". The tin-foil crowd says that thorium was abandoned because its unsuitability for bomb-making made it unattractive to e.g. the US military, who wanted to be able to dip into the uranium of the civil nuclear industry to get feedstock for nuclear bomb making. Who knows? It is being worked on extensively in India.

There is no energy crisis. There's just a brain crisis - as in, we refuse to use them.

Re: reducing energy consumption

Vladimir Plouzhnikov: "reduction of population is impossible in anything approaching long term."

I rather think it's trivial in the long term: human population will naturally reduce to zero. Possibly it doesn't even take all that long a term.

Even in short term, say a couple of centuries, chances of a catastrophe that'll wipe out 99%+ of the species are not impossibly small.

Re: reducing energy consumption

problem is, many people make the mistaken assumption that most other people are not ALREADY conserving out of fiscal necessity.

All blanket legislation, is always a "one size fits all" which while bringing down the visible excessive consumers, actively *harms* what I believe is actually a majority who are already working down to the minimums.

take the following for example. Subsidies used to fund deep discounts in power bills for people who reduce their power x% per month. When you're leaving lights on and running the heat up, you can make that award level by turning down the thermostat a little. later on, by switching to LED bulbs, and again by turning off ones you don't use. So people who start at the high waste level are golden.

Now take those of us who see efficiency in our lives like a game-we're looking to score points, so as a hobby (and as a gadget enthusiast) we've swapped our bulbs with whatever new "energy saving" tech comes along, so by now we;ve already surpassed CELs and are on second generation LEDs. We already turned off bulbs we weren't using because our parents raised us that way. Thermostat is set to absolute minimum since it controls the whole apartment, and heat is provided through either single room electric heaters (closed door, rest of the house at around 60 degrees or less) and a nice new thermal blanket. Kill A Watt devices on our fridge and freezer, and even the TV swapped from plasma to LCD, I even personally underwent the medical procedure to assure that my personal biological carbon footprint ends with me.

So this program comes along, and I can't do d*ck to drop consumption. I live in an apartment and can't get the landlord to replace the fridge (energy star rated from 15 years ago) to something newer and more efficient, or the decades old electric range with something more effective.

What I do receive are nag letters monthly how my power consumption is "15 percent higher than other similar homes". Because I have a wife who works from home using the computer, and I have the network controller/file storage box with the RAID array to keep her stuff safe, and an old tape drive that gets run once a month. the "average" apartment in my area, has mostly kids on smartphones streaming internet over cell tower data plans.

Government level programs for "conservation" have not in the past, nor I suspect will they in the future, take this into account. Like all those cheering high gas prices because such prices keep them from wasting gas on useless trips, they fail (or choose) to recognize that a large number of people have already chosen or been forced to the minimum amount of fuel usage already.

Especially here in the Land of Tesla. People have been building their own EVs for so many decades, a short commute sees dozens of Leafs ever day, and 100mpg mopeds, e-bikes and almost every marque and age of bicycle are on the trails on weekends when people want to go somewhere for fun and not necessity.

Giving politicians control over energy usage will reward the wasteful and harm those with the forethough and attitude to be frugal already. While managing to pass that cost onto their best allies.

Re: reducing energy consumption

... is wasteful, shameful, and expensive. -- Fixed it.

Re: reducing energy consumption

Conservation and living without extravagance are anathema to business and government. Most governments are hugely in debt and spending beyond their income, and see increasing GDP as the way out of their dilemma. Increasing GDP depends, in part, upon the public buying more and more "stuff" that they don't really need, but which advertising prompts them to buy. The more stuff people buy, the more manufacturing activity, and the more the workers and businesses earn, and the more the governments can take in taxes (and the more energy and resources are consumed, and the more pollution is produced). In other words, artificially created demand is a key element in the strategy of governments to cover financial problems. Wasteful as artificially-created demand is, it is now seen as essential in the fight to stave off economic recession.

Overcoming our addiction to consumerism would require painful adjustments. Cheap and readily-available credit has enabled excessive consumption to flourish for the last 30 years or so, but the public and governments are at or beyond the debt levels that they can service. If interest rates are not kept artificially low, defaults are inevitable. At the same time, we have enjoyed low energy costs as we consumed the most readily available cream of the fossil energy supply. As energy costs rise, more adjustment is forced on us.

Re: reducing energy consumption

"it's not "the rich" that are increasing the population at 2-4x their replacement levels."

Just shutting down anything linked to planned parenthood, birth control, education. Got to keep their poor/stupid/low pay workforce growing.

Re: reducing energy consumption

There is a recognized negative correlation between birth rate and wealth and that correlation has been present since the days of Classical Greece at least. Poor people have strong reasons for many children, not least that child mortality increases as wealth decreases. To have any surviving children and thus a family to care for you in your old age, you need more children in proportion to the incidence of child and infant mortality, and that is the case at present in industrial societies. Drop back a few centuries when the majority were agrarian and not only are you worried about your old age but simply getting the harvest in. More children is more working hands and thus lighter work. Overseas Chinese families often operate this way even at present. Even farther back, hunter-gatherers need large families because individual heads where the culture resided - that's what a "traditional society" is, one that operates in head space alone.

The "replacement levels" for the poor are not the same as for the rich. The point here is that the aggregation of large amounts of wealth in a very few hands may indeed cause overpopulation. Not deliberately but just the same.

Re: reducing energy consumption

"it's not "the rich" that are increasing the population at 2-4x their replacement levels."

The funny thing is, that once the "poor" become "rich", they decrease reproduction rates of their own accord.

last time I was in Myanmar (Burma), I was a little surprised to hear people talking about having children for the specific purpose of ensuring someone would be there to look after them in their old age - but when you think about it, that's been one of the prime drivers for reproduction all along.

Re: reducing energy consumption

No, it's the very poorest. You know, those without electricity or running water or healthcare or sufficient food.

Re: reducing energy consumption

@Lis Or

Kind of personifies what is wrong in contemporary society, "I'm all right Jack".

Re: Consommation???

What, pray, is "consommation?"

Don't ask - just be thankful he didn't say "consummation"...

Vic.

Re: Consommation???

@Marshalltown

"Besides, I doubt that consomme is a genuine environmental problem."

You've clearly never seem my wife attempting to cook.

Re: Consommation???

For environmental reasons - I think Gazpachomation would be better - because Gazpacho soup is eaten cold. No energy wastage there.

For similar reasons - I also recommend eating Ginsters pasties cold. Though these are quite difficult to eat with a soup spoon or direct from a mug.

Re: reducing energy consumption

"Just because you don't like their conclusions doesn't mean they're wrong."

/facepalm. smiley face + pint glass = joke, trite comment.

It doesn't mean they're right, either. Or indeed that I don't think they are.

We have two people here saying it won't work, and that's good enough a sample for Lewis to churn an article out.

"Like the article said, anyone with a decent understanding of physics knows that "renewable energy" isn't the answer."

That's not true at all. Quite the reverse: I'm fully aware of just how much energy pours down on our heads. Given the size of that number it's more likely people who DON'T understand physics who see it as insufficient. Anything like a decent conversion rate and we should be harnessing that free stuff. We can't because we're not good enough and need something else, but in theory that's an insane amount of energy.

"Those of us with degrees in engineering figured it out right away."

Never been down a hot, sweaty mine, either then?

Playing the 'I've got an engineering degree and you'd have to know nothing about physics to see that renewables don't work" is essentially your argument, and one based on smugly demeaning others, rather than facts. Your engineering degree does not make renewable enrgy your field of expertise, which you know more about than anyone else, so don't pretend that it does.

"And the people that claim that "we need to make new discoveries" are people that don't understand basic physics."

We need better engineering solutions. Those are new discoveries.

"If you want to have fun with someone who keeps making claims about renewable energy and climate changes"

wow: Seriously: For all your intellect you're still in the tiny minority of educated minds who don't swallow the climate change thing, despite the...y'know...tons of evidence?