If you can prove that solar's trajectory is a dead-end at scale, shouldn't you submit that to Nature or something?

It would mean -- among many other things -- you've established upper bounds on solar efficiency across an incredible number of variables (future materials, plant configuration, etc.), and would likely put you in contention for Nobel prizes in fields ranging from Chemistry to Economics, no?

And let's be fair, I think Musk is an impressive guy, but if we did sentiment analysis across the entire corpus of 2+2 posts, the #1 conclusion would be that 'ToothSayer' HATES HATES HATES 'Elon Musk'.

(Which is just...odd considering you've made a fortune trading TSLA, while Elon's entire contribution to my life is serving as the subject for an entertaining bio and 2+2 thread. )

No, the worthlessness of solar and wind in solving both our energy and environmental problems is fairly well known. It's a straightforward argument that has been made by quite a few physicists and experts. Example:


Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers
Windmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs

Anyone with a functioning brain can see it. Although the arguments are quite complex and not "cool", so you rarely see them in mainstream print.

In that article they're not even talking about the things I am - they're not modeling the massive efficiency loss from baseload thermal cycling given that solar and wind are unreliable short spiking technologies, etc. And that's without even getting into the global manufacturing competition for lowest cost (i.e. most polluting) energy, in an unregulated world, which is the reason why emissions are SOARING beyond the highest projections despite economic growth not being that high. We're paying a fortune to put in solar panels in and driving up costs, while China is building two dirty coal fired stations a week, being far less energy efficient and hence undercutting us on price, and repeat ad naseum. It's an utter joke.

I'm actually neutral on Musk. He's no worse than many other entrepreneurs/con artists. Call my negativity a counterweight to the hoardes of deeply deluded fanboys from his PR efforts.

Let me put it this way to make it clearer. If we could just snap our fingers and put solar panels wherever we wanted, all hooked up and running, as much capacity as our current installed base and for ZERO cost, it still would not reduce emissions enough to solve the GW problem.

Are you beginning to see the problem?

But seriously now you need a reliable math calculation to defend this wild argument that solar is a net CO2 emitter over its life cycle. Not just a claim that some PhDs said so.

I would be open to the argument that money used for solar and resulting market competition is better used elsewhere creating different competitions and using it in solar will make the problem worse (wasting time) vs the alternative because of the rate of expansion that is not affected as much by solar expansion vs alternatives.

But i am honestly interested in why using 50m^2 in the roof of every new home built is a net emitter? I need to see the math somewhere because i am not buying it. It is simply too much energy over the lifetime of the thing. Is there an economics calculation that is missed in the pure physics energy calculation? Why would that be the case? Show it.

Start simply by how much energy is needed to build the infrastructure and then maintain it and then recycle it. Then use how many years you get power from it and do the calculation. Why is it so hard to prove this with a calculation? If its an economic argument just present it.

You've linked this before, but if you look at the actual IEEE article written by the Google engineers, the "false hope" conclusion only applies to technologies they investigated during a brief Google moonshot run from 2007-2011.

I agree it's obvious that wind and solar alone are not adequate to cut CO2 emissions to zero. But both will be important. Have you read MIT's report on The Future of Solar Energy? It explains clearly why solar is not viable as a total solution. Nonetheless, co-author Joel Jean expects that:

A few terawatts here, a few terawatts there, and you solve the energy problem!

Heh, ok.

Can't be true. If you got all this for free, you could build a world wide electrical grid (sun always shines somewhere) and build storage systems where needed. I agree that especially the Pacific but also the Atlantic would pose a problem, but getting it all for free, we could have some floating panels there too!

What about solar stations in space?

What about them? It costs probably $ 20000 per kgr or per 500W in earth neighborhood of solar power. That is kind of a big problem to put these things up there in large scale yet. Its not going to go sub 1000$ per kgr or per 500W for the near future either.

Putting everything in Sahara and other deserts and cleaning them as needed every week will cost far less.

Of course in the future if you could have some systems in orbit at a distance of 50 mil km from the sun and have a way to transmit back the energy it would be >50 times more productive that the power per m^2 on ground level on earth eliminating also issues like day/night and weather.

Such things will happen eventually as soon as what builds them becomes a self sustainable exponential process. You need to get material probably manufactured in space, say the asteroids used as raw material, where the energy needed to reach the proper final orbits is not significant if the time to do it is not an issue in a permanent processing line queue that grows in traffic exponentially over time.

The mass needed to be able to produce at the orbit of 50 mil km from the sun power as much as a bit over what world uses today (say 3*10^13 W ) is probably around 2*10^10 kgr so a small asteroid is enough to dismantle and reprocess into solar cells/mirrors provided it has the right material for solar power stations equipment or can be manufactured with what is available anyway because their technology becomes more flexible than it is today (ie can get power from many different systems). But we will have fusion until then anyway. Fusion is really around the corner one way or another. Its very close now possibly a reality in less than 10 years.

Solar is only a good idea if you have settlements there and you want to be there doing something. This is because it is easier to develop it in parallel with whatever else you are doing there. Its makes sense to do it. The compact power available with fusion eventually is impossible to match with solar. Plus you can take it anywhere.

In the end its all about real estate and energy. If you have reliable energy sources from many abundant isotopes/elements one way or another through a combination of nuclear reactions and plenty of material resources as well as technology that can process anything, you can develop in the future even the interior of earth or the oceans in a completely sustainable friendly to outside nature manner. You can colonize the entire atmosphere of Venus and process its surface also and create real estate hundreds of times what is now available on earth.

You cannot do all this with solar but you can have it as back up to sustain it once built.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/nsso.htm

I'm gonna past this in every energy thread for now on..

The carrying capacity of the earth is limited. There are now about seven billion humans on earth. The population limit is related to the total energy use of the planet's inhabitants. Standard of living is highly correlated with energy use. Bringing the 3 or 4 billion under-developed people to the living standards of the developed countries will multiply the energy used by the human population, with associated effect on global resources. The carrying capacity of the world where everyone lives at the standard of living of the average American is perhaps a few hundred million. This is a present problem that cannot be avoided, and few humane leaders would suggest repressing people living in poverty. Thomas Malthus and Paul Erlich were correct.

Result: Global changes in weather and climate. Higher temperatures, rising sea levels, more frequent and stronger storms, changes in agricultural patterns. We have probably passed the point at which the effects of rising temperature can be reversed. in the early 1990s... The island nations of the South Pacific were already experiencing degradation of their environment due to changes in the sea at that time. The fresh water under their lands was becoming saltier, sea level was rising, coral was dying. The problem has been recognized for decades, but solution requires serious disruptions to the status quo of those with the most power and influence -- which I doubt will ever be achieved.

The apocalyptic environmentalist, can't fight it: might just well hide under the covers.

I'd like to see even a hint of optimism in all this.

Let the nanotecnology fix it. Or something else. Hell, take to Anthroposophy.

sry, I always bet on markets falling into equilibrium...

as for optimism...given my above post today and next 20-30 years is probably the best time to live in the timeline of planet Earth...
after that...

All I can say is Fukushima.All these scientist have ignored this issue that is ongoing.

They are a lot safer now...

Every accident will be utilized...

Ignored what issue? And what's this "all these scientist", what does that even mean? Scientists don't site and build Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) though there are scientists involved in the whole process.

Just for some basics the siting of a NPP is a very extensive process that involves numerous agencies, regulations and licensing for the various parties involved. This may differ by country but requirements are lengthy.


And for a quick example the following is a link to a presentation from a workshop – this is a gathering of people that do actual planning and building of NPP to gain better knowledge of the process etc. It is wide ranging but simple and shows the outline of just part of the process.

https://www.iaea.org/NuclearPower/Do...hitoKoyama.pdf

This following link is just one example of a paper in which siting of a NPP is discussed. Point being that thousands of studies and experts work on this on a daily basis.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...87850713000071

My main point being that thousands of considerations are analyzed for the expensive and large undertakings of siting and building a NPP. It involves a whole host of private and public agencies ,companies, and experts from construction, engineering, planning, management, and administration. And I haven’t even accounted for the entanglement of politics into all of the above. Your simplistic statement of “all these scientists” is just plan hooey and shows a complete lack of understanding of Nuclear Power generation and the siting and construction of these power plants.

That misjudgments are made, as seen in hindsight or otherwise, occurs in any human endeavor. Whether it is building a bridge, skyscraper, NPP, a wooden sailing ship, or in the oversight of a complex mining operation. Attaching blame on some single generalized named group is beyond silly.

Wjhy would capitalism be a more short-sighted system that one where the decisions are made by people who get elected every 2, 4 or 6 years?

if you said this is 1990, you be closer to the mark...

i do find it amusing that posters like toothache insist good money shouldnt be thrown at solar because we dont know its potential yet, so instead lets throw it at this other energy technology (fusion) thats been in the test phase for 40 years and has barely made any progress at all. ...wreaks of agenda, not practicality.

anyhow, nuclear is the ultimate disaster... literally and logistically... there isnt enough uranium in the world to meet but 60% of global demand already... its not gonna be magically discovered in vast amounts to expand the industry... worse, these plants cost a ton to maintain, and when they have to be decommissioned, it takes a slow, methodical decade to do so safely.

these plants are ticking time bombs, especially to someone convinced the necessary capital required to safely shut them down aint gonna be there

iirc 15% of generated electricity on this planet comes from nuclear power plants. something like a quarter of 1% comes from solar.

at this current point in history, one is viable, the other is not. i'll let you decide which is which.

I don't think that's a good idea.

The difference being uranium is finite and doesn't meet current demand, while sunlight is not going away any time soon.

K... as soon as you cite your claim better than "iirc."

According to the most recent IEA data, it's nuclear 10.6% and renewables 5.7%.

We must do both solar and nuclear and do it right.

After Uranium you have Thorium and in principle we have not even started yet with all the possible to transmute isotopes out there.

With aneutronic fusion eg through Boron that may be less than a decade away we can have practically thousands of years of energy and not even need to develop all those fission ideas further until they are economically reasonable choices too, enabled by a realized fusion economy. At some point fusion will become a reality one way or another and eventually any way theoretically possible now will be realized. But we do not need fusion to happen any time soon for the fission properly designed and executed to still be a solution to world energy needs for thousands of years if it was needed and there was no cheaper/easier way to do it.

There is plenty of nuclear fuel for thousands and then millions of years for this planet if you simply let science decide everything instead of idiots and their stupid naive capitalist systems in place that are hardly efficient (unless it makes someone money fast and easy, even if it would make all of them money if they joined forces to do it right which their self interest doesnt allow them originally, exactly like the barrier penetration problem that prevents you from realizing fusion easily, how ironic). If you have to spend every year 1.5 tril in weapons/defense worldwide and not even 5% of that to nuclear power research how will we get there? What morons worldwide indeed! All wars eventually are a matter of energy and resources...Why not direct the efforts to the source of the problem instead and create abundance for all parties!!! Even 10% of the effort would do it.

You also realize of course that in current nuclear fuels system only some 3-5% of the Uranium is used before its game over and needs reprocessing . But we can go to 100% eventually with hybrid reactors that can even include fusion as part of the process (even if not self sustainable yet it provides the fast neutrons that take it there indirectly through previously unrealized fission reactions). We can use in that sense U238 as fuel instead of just U235 that is >100 times more naturally abundant.

U238 is not self sustainably fissionable itself (needs fast neutrons to fission and it releases much less energetic neutrons that are unable to produce new fission reactions of U238 itself, but the original fast neutron can trigger multiple fission reactions before its done and during that time the energy missing to make the original fusion viable - which produced that neutron- has been reached now to economically produce a new fast neutron and maintain the cycle). So even U238 gets there with fast neutrons supplied by eg fusion reactions and also by transmutation reactions in breeder reactors. Effectively that way U238 that was useless for nuclear power has become a fuel now. You have increased your available Uranium fuel by 100x that way. But you have also found a way to use the spent fuel and the waste products and extract previously unrealized energy from them as well.

Thorium is also a lot more abundant than Uranium like 3.5 times or so. You can do these things with Thorium effectively turning it to U233 and then fission that fuel.

In the end with breeder and hybrid reactors we can do a lot more than what has been done already and eventually enter a situation where we do no have nuclear waste, containing and reducing current waste problems that plague the public perception of the industry.

If Nuclear power was implemented properly and more responsibly (to make it impossible to have large scale accidents or have mechanisms in place to immediately suppress them) it would be a lot better for the world and we would not have the climate change nightmare ahead of us.

What is it more important, to lose our climate or spend to do things right (and recover everything in time) instead of spending on defense worldwide and other priorities related to endless infighting that deliver absolutely no value (all those weapon systems wasted and are endlessly recycled to keep fit or if used they destroy and require more resources to rebuild eventually etc)?

You can read more in the usual links;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclea...fission_hybrid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

Many of these ideas are seen as unrealistic financially under current or previous systems but they are entirely viable if we had a better way to build these systems with proper economy of scale and design that strikes at the core of the financial problems. Of course many of these ideas require enormous costs initially (so only the country itself and not individuals/companies can do it) but they recover everything and much more eventually when your technology has reached these levels of performance that the theory justifies today. A civilization with plenty of energy can do a lot more research and realize faster progress, experience fewer conflicts and all these things combined reduce the cost of these initial expensive processes further. Higher technology and innovation makes what was harder earlier easier now and realizable. In the end if Physics tells you something is a good idea energetically and technology can take you there realistically if it is a priority to do it properly, then why are we letting idiocy stop us from getting there? The first country that does it right will realize all the benefits.


But recognize also that solar introduced in every building created in the future (and many current ones) and becoming essential condition of any large structure building permit process, has a way to solve the problem and make the planet able to produce over 50% of its needs from the sun within 30 years. I will have a future post explaining how this becomes possible using standard buildings people use daily anyway that are aesthetically not appealing as they are right now and present for that reason a remarkable wasted opportunity to be net energy producers for the world, reducing the demand for fossil fuels and opening the door to electric or at least hybrid (that is not a net CO2 emissions process) transportation.

Solar and nuclear can help each other improve actually. We can use nuclear as a dependable source until we have deployed solar enough to be a solid 50%+ of the problem. We may even eventually do crazy things like use excess solar energy to enable nuclear fuel cycles that were not viable economically before (or very marginal). I mean there are many ways to store excess energy that comes from solar so that you get it back at night or in bad weather etc. Having a lot of excess energy is not necessarily a problem if you are imaginative enough.