It's insane how you do nothing but talk about batteries as if that's the only thing that matters. This is why I don't want to bother with you. Any energy produced has to be spent near it for any renewable source. Transporting energy costs energy. The locality of the energy matters. The challenge is how do we produce energy literally everywhere. This is a way bigger challenge than just storing it when unneeded. Every place is going to have their own set of unique challenges. I mean you bring up the internet to call my takes shitty. It's terribly ironic -- The internet was bred from a national defense project for intelligence gathering. Any national defense budget is going to be limitless in spending. Going back: You do understand subsidies are an ex machina, right? Like, I honestly don't care where the money comes from whether it's tax dollars, bonds, fed reserve hacks, whatever. I don't give a ****. You basically have endless supply of money for any set of industries to do anything you want. Like why stop there? Keep going. What else do you want to do? Lets build carbon-less housing for the homeless. Lets build tire-less cars that float on magnets. Free cars for everyone. Communism? I'd love to be getting paid to call you stubborn. I mean, I'd be the best at it.
TrAnSpOrTaTiOn. Dude why do you keep on acting as if Biden wants this done by a few years rather than 15 years and 30 years? And yes, I want our country to shift paradigms on spending so that "limitless defense spending" isn't a given and "limitless investment in the people" is the new norm. Storing energy on batteries from renewables btw when batteries have the ability for long term storage actually makes transportation a lot easier. You don't need to have elaborate pipelines and oil tankers. You can have localized generated energy from solar farms and wind farms and offload that energy to massive battery packs. We aren't there yet because current battery tech that is available such as li-ion batteries form dendrites over time and degrade. Hence the importance in investing in promising technology such as solid state batteries.
First off, the world's economy has mostly been chained to O&G for a hundred years now. I think it's a necessary evil, but imo, we should've pivoted more heavily since the early 2000s. We really shouldn't rely on the status quo. Re liking O&G - They have been caught in several lies. First was creating an entire industry in climate skepticism when they discovered the effects of global warming in the 70s. Next was the pipeline/infrastructure negligence in public lands from the original Alaskan pipelines to what happened to Deepwater Horizon. Recently, there's reports they set up counter marketing in the early 80s for recycling plastics while knowing that Americans would latch onto the solution despite its unprofitability and unfeasability...It's easier to create newer sturdier products than spend energy, money, and sorting effort to recycle into a less quality product. This is an industry that thrives on profit maximization and deception. I fully respect people in the industry commanding high wages, but I can also despise industry leaders for not being better stewards of the earth and are beholden to the immediate stock price. These cats have taken the government subsidies while simultaneously given dividends and buybacks to shareholders. Instead of using that money to invest even more into R&D and improved infrastructure, they're more focused on disinformation campaigns and lawyering up when they make oopsies. I could see why even their own workers would be frustrated. So while workers are worried for their jobs, company leaders are worried about their bonuses while sitting and fighting to preserve and do the bare minimum for the wealth of resources they own. Re Houston - I don't see it that way. I was born in Houston, moved out in my teens, but came back occasionally for work. Houston is heavily diverse demographically and could be seen as a hub for neighboring states. It's making more strides building up their inner loop and has a good infrastructure to set up business. I think the sprawl will be affected, but that's always been a problem. It's also a plus since now people from other states can buy significantly cheaper homes than whatever they could get on the West Coast or NY. In a remote situation, Houston can be a goldilocks for people who want housing and a bigger town feel, but are priced out of Austin. Pretty much a tossup between Dallas and Houston and the person's own preference on its vibe.
Regarding the problems with renewables on transportation the technology exist to generate power anywhere on the planet. We are so dependent on chemical sources of power but power can be generated from anywhere there is light, motion, heat or biomass. Between solar, wind, tides, geo thermal and even wood we could be generating renewable energy anywhere in the country. We just need to build the plants and infrastructure for that. Besides power generation we can develop greater efficiencies and that is already happening. In my field architecture, buildings are far more efficient than they were years ago. The computer I'm using right now is far more efficient than the one I had just 5 years ago. Technologically we already have the capability to get zero fossil fuel and net zero carbon with little change in our lifestyle but the problem is infrastructure and inertia in our economic systems.
I don’t disagree but that’s not a policy up for vote is it? Lowering taxes for poorer households? I’m all for lowering taxes so if there’s a vote for that tell me where to sign. All I’m saying is the rich pay a HUGE portion of overall tax dollars already. They are not the enemy that some in government would like you to believe. In fact, many of those rich people own businesses and create millions jobs for others. What we need is for the government to be more efficient with the dollars that they do receive. Our government does not have a great track record of spending wisely, regardless of who is in charge.
this racist thot got his man tatted on his back...a sh*tty, low quality tattoo at that Trumpers are so pathetic
Trump is definitely their de facto leader. These racist extremists are the biggest domestic threat today, more dangerous that even islamic terrorists. Don't take my word, Christopher Wray said it recently. Why would anyone with a sane mind vote for a douche bag that encourages these assholes is beyond me.
Because they neglected demographics for the last twenty years and doubled down the white vote after the Bush disaster. Bush actually recieved a healthy Latino vote but they obviously pivoted backwards with Palinism and built up resentment by small towns getting out hustled (invasion) by harder working immigrants. Now they're outnumbered across all groups and have to resort to every despicable trick in the the book to stay in power. These silent Republicans know this and it's why dipshit Don maintains 80% approval rating among registered Republicans despite losing the moral high ground. Voter suppression, legal suppression, and the teardown of public utilities to facilitate voting are examples that should disturb any freedom loving, soldier touting American, but it's now tacitly A-OK to support a system inherently discriminatory and classist. To many Republicans, they're fighting for their survival of numbers. For Alt-Righters, they also think in those terms, such as white genocide. It's a vile and incestuous marriage of convenience, and one that will last until party leaders grow a backbone to denounce racists. In forming deep bonds with white identity movements, Republicans have become heavily against democracy as they're unwilling to cede numbers Democrats would recieve in an open, non-gerrymandered, and fair election. They will need a huge overhaul if the Republic wants to maintain it's tradition of freedom and Democracy. There are many voters who vote Democrat because they're more against the hateful aspects of Republicans, rather than whatever Democrats are for. If there aren't changes, the white nationalist movement will eventually find someone who isn't focused on greed and theft, rather the darker more suppressive aspects liberals and the media fears. When it does, no amount of dark money from billionaires will steer that ship away.
Interesting piece. I'm not in the industry so I can't comment on the plan's feasibility. https://theweek.com/articles/945019...y-should-bidens-easy-answer-fracking-question The reason that oil and gas fracking is all but doomed is that wind and solar are now beating all other technologies for new generation capacity on price in most places across the country — nuclear, coal, oil, and even natural gas — and they will only get cheaper. With even modest climate policy, superior zero-carbon technology will soon out-compete most carbon-based electricity and transportation. With aggressive policy, that process will happen much faster. Furthermore, the coronavirus pandemic has walloped the fracking industry, as oil demand has cratered with the collapse of travel. Indeed, the government will probably have to spend billions of dollars over the coming years capping wells that bankrupt fracking outfits have (as usual) abandoned because they didn't have enough insurance. The good news is that, as David Roberts writes in an extensive article for Vox, geothermal power technology is finally reaching the liftoff stage. This is one of those technologies that is theoretically very promising but an engineering nightmare. Essentially, the molten core of the earth is very hot thanks to the decay of radioactive isotopes inside it, and you can use that (virtually inexhaustible) heat to generate electricity. In certain volcanically active places you can access the heat easily, but to really get at the potential, you've got to build geothermal stations all over the place. That means drilling down hundreds or thousands of feet to get to the hot zone, and transporting that heat back up somehow to run a turbine. Geothermal would be an excellent complement for wind and solar, because it can be switched on and off at will — providing either baseload or quick-deployment power to compensate for changing wind and sun conditions, but until now it hasn't been feasible at a large scale. For years the drilling technology to do this kind of thing did not exist. Ironically, the fracking revolution has created exactly the innovations needed. One method is to find a natural reservoir of hot water trapped relatively close to the surface, pump it out through a well, and then pump it back down again once it has run the turbine. Or you can create a new reservoir by pumping down some water to crack apart the rock layers, and then pumping it back out again. Further along the engineering frontier, you can drill down very far to get water hot enough that it becomes "supercritical" and hence able to hold dramatically more energy, or heat the water through an entirely closed loop with deep horizontal pipes. The second option is akin to oil and gas fracking, and it's bound to raise some environmentalist hackles because of all the water contamination and seismic instability that have come with that process. However, as Roberts points out, there are key differences that make geothermal substantially less risky. For instance, the point is to get enough water down that it can be sucked back up, not shake loose fossil fuels by blasting the rock layers apart. That means safer fluid (typically water or brine, as opposed to the toxic chemicals used in gas fracking) injected at lower pressure, and a steady process of injection and removal once the operation is going. Most induced earthquakes from gas fracking come after the waste water is re-injected into the well all at once, which would not happen here. It's not zero-risk, but it's likely tolerable with safety mechanisms given the benefits. After all, even wind turbines and solar panels come with some environmental trade-off. The technology also isn't quite there with supercritical or closed-loop geothermal, which would be extra efficient and much cleaner respectively. That is where the government can step in to jump-start these technologies with grants, loans, or just doing the work itself. If geothermal were to be radically scaled up, it would surely provide enough jobs to take up the entire oil and gas workforce, and a lot more besides. We're talking thousands of power plants all over the country. It's a perfect candidate for a "green transition" to avoid big chunks of the labor force being thrown away — indeed, those drilling and geology skills will come in handy. Better still, these jobs could be spread out around the country instead of concentrated in a few carbon-rich states, and remain relatively stable and permanent. Instead of the boom-bust cycle seen in oil and gas as the entire industry gyrates wildly based on commodity price movements, we could have steady, consistent jobs building, operating, and maintaining power facilities for decades.
Wow I missed this rant. So now the goalpost have moved to 2050 carbon neutral? What happened to asking how we would still have shipping?
I understand it's expensive but with everything else those prices will come down do to innovation. My point was that the tech exist and Dumbo was claiming we would have to lose out on shipping. I am not a proponent of nuclear energy but everything has to be on the table.
