Jack of all trades"The up-front energy investment in renewable energy infrastructures has not been visible as a hurdle thus far, as we have had surplus energy to invest (and smartly, at that; if only we had started in earnest earlier!). Against a backdrop of energy decline—which I feel will be the only motivator strong enough to make us serious about a replacement path—we may find ourselves paralyzed by the Trap."
Nebulous Menace (Sandy B.)@jackofalltrades Good news! Even in 2011, it took less than 18 months for a solar panel to generate enough energy to make and install another solar panel and all the associated hardware. (I don't know the energy cost these days, but the financial panel cost has dropped by a factor of 4 and money cost is a very rough approximation of energy cost.)
@nebulousmenace Money cost is a very poor approximation of the material / energy cost, as it doesn't take into account environmental damage or the time it takes for nature to replenish used resources.
Our industrial civilization depends on continuous destruction of nature and exploitation of limited resources.
That's why it's very hard to come up with the real cost of renewables. Their production depends on a global industrial machinery that for the most part still runs on fossil fuels.
@jackofalltrades Most of the financial cost [in 2011] was paying for energy, and there are clear physical improvements in solar panels since then. [I went WAY over 1000 chars. Details available on request.] And the 2011 energy payback time was less than a year; you could double solar every year based on energy cost THEN.
Most of the raw material is still sand.
There are a lot of things that could be problems for our society- phosphorus for fertilizer, cropland salination, microplastics, whatever- but I'm not expert on those. In 2011 solar, specifically, was at 70 GW worldwide (per wikipedia), and in 2022 we broke the 1000-GW mark. The world looks different when solar is 4% of electricity, today [3], than it did when solar was 0.3% of electricity, 2011.I'm going to check what Prof. Murphy's beliefs look like today.
RD@nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
>Most of the raw material is still sand.<
"Manufacturing solar panels’ silicon requires a handful of energy-intensive, toxic waste-emitting processes.2 First, pure quartz gravel, pure carbon (i.e., Tar Sands’ petroleum coke) and wood are transported to a smelter kept at 3000° Fahrenheit (1649° Celsius) for years at a time. Since smelters can explode if delivery of electricity to them is interrupted, neither solar nor wind (which provide only intermittent power) can fuel a smelter.3 Typically, smelters and refineries are powered by natural gas, coal and/or nuclear power. To produce 20,000 tons of polysilicon, one smelter (of several refineries) consumes enough power as 300,000 homes.4"
https://katiesinger.substack.com/p/do-i-report-what-ive-learned-about
references:
2. Troszak, Thomas, "Why Do We Burn Coal and Trees for Solar Panels?" (2019) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we_burn_coal_and_trees_to_make_solar_panels
3. Troszak, Thomas, “The hidden costs of solar photovoltaic power,” NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence, No. 16., Nov. 2021. https://www.enseccoe.org/data/public/uploads/2021/11/d1_energy-highlights-no.16.pdf
4. Bruns, Adam, “Wacker Completes Dynamic Trio of Billion-Dollar Projects in Tennessee: ‘Project Bond’ cements the state’s clean energy leadership,” 2009
Do I report what I’ve learned about solar PVs— or live with it, privately?
Years ago, I told an engineer that I want to cause minimal ecological harm. This man knew that I had my own car, refrigerator, washing machine, phone, Internet access and electricity available 24/7. He took a deep breath and explained to me that every manufactured item requires multiple processes from the extractive, energy-guzzling, water-guzzling, toxic waste-emitting global super-factory. He connected my material goods with ecological degradation—the degradation I want reduced.
@nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
"All modern technologies are based on the non-renewable fossil fuels and fossil energy that made them possible. Solar photovoltaic (solar PV) technology is no exception. For example, every step in the production of solar PV power systems requires an input of fossil fuels - as the carbon reductants needed for smelting silicon from ore, to provide manufacturing process heat and power, for the intercontinental transport of materials, and for on-site deployment. The only "renewable" materials consumed in PV production are obtained by deforestation - by burning large areas of tropical rainforest for charcoal (another carbon reductant) and to provide the wood chips that are necessary for all silicon smelters to function. Additional mineral resources and fossil energy are needed for constructing factories, process equipment, and maintaining the PV manufacturing infrastructure itself. Silicon smelters, polysilicon refineries, and crystal growers all require uninterrupted, 24/7 power that comes mostly from coal and uranium. Both media and journal claims that solar PV can somehow "replace" fossil fuels for power have not addressed the “non-renewable reality” of the global manufacturing supply chains necessary for the mining, manufacturing, and distribution of PV power systems. Some previous accounts of solar PV production have omitted the raw materials and silicon smelters from the PV “supply chain” picture, which obscures the profoundly non-sustainable, fossil-powered basis of PV technology. A more complete overview of commercial PV production is presented herein, from the sources of raw materials to the deployed array. >38 references from published articles and industry sources are cited."
"... to produce 20,000 tons of silicon." Gee, that sounds like a lot. Is it? Check my math- I often lose three zeros. Roughly 2 grams of silicon per watt [1], 1 ton is roughly 1000 kg or 1 million grams, so 20 billion grams in 20,000 tons of silicon. So, within 50%, 10 GW of solar per year from one smelter. Seven times more solar-per-gram than 2004, which was part of my point.
If we say that 10 GW of solar equals 2 GW of coal[3], and solar lasts 25 years before recycling, how much coal is that solar replacing? Apparently 18000 tons a day [2], 6.5 million tons a year, 164 million tons over 25 years.
Per your source 3: those 20,000 tons of solar require about 30,000 tons of coal and 50,000 tons of wood chips. Putting everything in "kilotons" we're replacing 164,000 kilotons of coal with 30 kilotons of coal and 50 kilotons of wood chips.
I'm comfortable with a bit over 99.9% reduction; are you?
1. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/01/11/polysilicon-costs-have-slid-by-96-per-watt-over-past-two-decades/
2.https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coal_fired_power_plant
3. V. approximate
@nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
"If we say that 10 GW of solar equals 2 GW of coal"
You lost me here, can you explain?
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades Solar, roughly, is about a 20% capacity factor. So as a simplification 10 GW is "like" 2 GW of power all day every day. There are various pluses and minuses (solar only shows up around 5 hours a day, but they're 5 very valuable hours; actual coal doesn't run all day every day for economic reasons; etc. ) but, as I said, it's a simplification.
@nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
I see, thanks.
I couldn't quite verify all your calculations, close though, but regardless I don't think the simple comparison you made adequately captures everything involved. To quote from the Troszak sources:
"When estimating the CO2 emissions from the silicon smelting process, several previous authors “by joint agreement”[22] excluded the CO2 emissions from all non-fossil carbon sources (charcoal, wood chips), from power generation, and the transportation of raw material. [22] This illustrates an important issue. The validity of any estimate depends on where the study boundaries are drawn. If the range of inputs is too narrow, the overall environmental impact of a real-world industry may not be adequately documented."
Your numbers as they are (material needed just for smelting of the silicon) don't include fossil fuel use for the many other processes that together make solar tech possible and that is no insignificant factor.
I'm skeptical of a 25 year lifespan. If nothing else, if efficiency continues to improve people will be replacing their panels sooner to take advantage. Anyway, it could take what, 25 years maybe? to swap out most of our infrastructure to solar and then the cycle of extraction starts over.
But I think more to the point that some of us are trying to make here: your example disregards a complex web of irreversible material transformations we continue to impose on the world in order to implement solar and other technologies. Especially if we're talking about replacing major percentages of our energy use with solar, there is just so much more to it than calculating how much coal it replaces.
It will never replace the rainforests consumed to fuel its construction (and replanting with monocrops doesn't replace the lost biodiversity); the lands pillaged and corrupted by extraction (it takes a lot more than silicon to make solar systems, grids, storage); indigenous cultures uprooted and destroyed.
It perpetuates colonialist-based inequalities and exploitation.
If we're talking replacing coal with solar panels and wind but continuing on with business as usual otherwise, what good will it be? Business as usual is converting the world into a plastic wasteland. It is consuming more and more minerals that are rarer and rarer in a growing cycle of extraction and pollution.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do solar. Yes, we could benefit from replacing some coal use with solar. But that is not sufficient in itself, our current business as usual is not sustainable and leaning on "renewable" technologies to prop it up only perpetuates its injustices and the destruction it inflicts.
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades
1) The solar industry standard warranty is 80% performance after 25 years, and it looks like actual performance is going to be closer to 90%.
2) I solved the problem I was given. "This is a problem, because look at how much coal and wood is being used!" *looks at how much coal and wood is being used* "Not like that."
3) "To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." You're replacing one well defined problem with at least five badly defined problems.
I'm one guy, working on one corner of one problem: Decarbonizing the electricity grid. Seemed like a place I could make things better [I'm personally like zero for three, but other people seem to be picking up the slack.]
What is the problem you're working on, and what's your corner?
I do realize that it was a little unfair of me to run with your example of "sand" (which btw isn't actually valid, as I understand it simple sand cannot be used but instead high purity quartz is needed, deposits of which are "somewhat scarce") and then extend it to other aspects of the technology. Nevertheless, that is the reality: there is much more to PV infrastructure than "sand" and I started with the point that even the simple sand carried a burden of fossil fuel use.
Anyway, I applaud you for trying to improve things.
As for the problem I'm working on, if you read my pinned introduction toot it will explain a lot about me. The problem I'm most interested in is that of human liberation (which necessarily includes protecting the biosphere and our resources). Working on this problem has helped me understand some essential things about how we got to the predicament we're in and why we persist in our destructive activities.
So we're coming at the issue from different directions. I'm not saying your angle is wrong, but it is limited and detached from broader context. You may think I'm guilty of being tainted with ideology, but I see it more as observation of trends and tendencies, and through this perspective I see that technology under #capitalism is always problematic. I do not see the problem as "how do we meet our energy needs?", I see the problem as "why are we using such insane amounts of energy to do so many insane and self-destructive things?"
In other words, my position is this: if we discovered a miraculous new source of *free*, clean and safe energy today and implemented it immediately but nothing else changed, we would still be on a course of self-destruction and destruction of the biosphere due to all those other problems like the ones you mentioned you are not an expert in. Extraction would still be a problem ecologically, politically and socially, and with unlimited energy to use it would be accelerated along with the process of converting everything in our world to shit.
Conversion to solar power clearly has benefits, but only in the way that treating symptoms can be beneficial. It doesn't address the disease that is the root cause.
I invite you to explore this thread I compiled with high quality academic sources from anthropology, archeology, economics, history, sociology and political philosophy for that broader context on how we got where we are, if you're curious:
RD (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image HOW DID WE GET HERE? (a thread of threads, quotes, and links) This is a collection of writings and research concerned with how we got where we are today, which is in fact the story of what has been done *to* us, and what has been *taken from us*. By "us" we're talking about "the 99%", "workers", "wage slaves", all non-owners of private property, "the poor", unhoused people, indigenous people, even plenty of people who swear by capitalism and identify as "capitalist" yet have no capital of their own and no serious hope of ever having any worth speaking of. In other words almost everyone except for the very few who have had the power to exploit us and shape our lives to serve their agenda. We're going to examine institutions and concepts that have deeply altered our world at all levels, both our external and internal realities. By "here" we are talking about climate crisis and myriad other environmental catastrophes resulting from hyper-excessive extraction, consumption and waste; a world of rampant inequality, exploitation and oppression, hunger and starvation, genocide and war; a world of fences, walls, gatekeepers, prisons, police, bullshit jobs and criminalized poverty; a world overrun with cars and preventable disease; a world of vanishing biodiversity and blooming fascism; a world where "democracy" results in being led by some of the worst of humanity; a world ruled by an imaginary but all-powerful and single-minded god: Capital. Our inspiration and structural framework for this survey is this quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property", an important work from political philosopher Karl Widerquist and anthropologist Grant S. McCall: "After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries for enclosure, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization to cut off the vast majority of people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned." https://widerquist.com/books-3/#2b Also recommended: "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy" https://widerquist.com/books-3/#4b #capitalism #colonialism #enclosure #PrivateProperty #state #police #inequality #anthropology #environment #ClimateCrisis #economics 1/30
I just saw this article someone posted, looking at this situation from the copper angle.
I respect your ability to evaluate information and do math, and I'd be interested in your take on this, but only if you have the time or care to look at it:
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/the-copper-conundrum-3b98704602c8
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
Realtime review:
1) Any article that starts out talking about how brave and bold the author is for taking on The Man has one strike against it.
2) Aluminum has a few problems, mostly as I understand it at the actual connection points, but the "increased resistance" is generally solved by just making the wires bigger. There are some places you can't do that, I agree.
3) Not to be elitist, but people who say things like "cramp" for "cram" often have other educational problems. I have just guaranteed myself a typo in this post.
4) "reserves"- something I found out about oil is that they don't look for reserves until a few years before they need them. If you have a 6% discount rate and you find the oil 12 years before you need it, you've wasted half the money.
5) Also reserves- there was a recent 20-year bet that prices of commodities would go up and "down" won. We don't tend to run out of things. [1/n]
Realtime review:
1) Any article that starts out talking about how brave and bold the author is for taking on The Man has one strike against it.
2) Aluminum has a few problems, mostly as I understand it at the actual connection points, but the "increased resistance" is generally solved by just making the wires bigger. There are some places you can't do that, I agree.
3) Not to be elitist, but people who say things like "cramp" for "cram" often have other educational problems. I have just guaranteed myself a typo in this post.
4) "reserves"- something I found out about oil is that they don't look for reserves until a few years before they need them. If you have a 6% discount rate and you find the oil 12 years before you need it, you've wasted half the money.
5) Also reserves- there was a recent 20-year bet that prices of commodities would go up and "down" won. We don't tend to run out of things. [1/n]
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
6) Supply & demand is an mediocre control scheme- boom&bust is hard on people- but it does tend to produce the stuff we need, eventually.
7) I've been hearing about peak oil since 1979. TL:DR it makes the rest of the argument less convincing.
8) "Ooh, they provide a low percentage of their nameplate capacity" Oh fuck off, this is well known and 10% is ABSOLUTE bullshit. NOT A PROBLEM.
9) I'm also pretty sure sulfur is earth-abundant. I'm a terrible chemist but we're never going to run out of hydrochloric or nitric acid even if it IS a problem. Maybe those don't work at all. I don't know.
In conclusion: There may be some legit points here but this really hits me like a Gish gallop: throw 50 bad arguments out there and hope the opposition gets tired. [2/3]
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
Gonna try and find a few sources for the things I said in a hurry:
This may have been the commodities bet I was thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
Sulfur's a less Earth-abundant than I thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust
(although frikkin' carbon is below it, so there might be other places to get sulfur easily...)
Peak oil, I can't find a good source on that in a hurry. one part "tech improvements" and one part "when it gets more expensive, you can do weirder stuff to get it out of the ground."
This isn't the source I was looking for on aluminum wiring in houses, but it covers some of the problems: https://mikefullerelectric.com/problems-with-aluminum-wiring/
It's got about 2/3 the bulk electrical conductivity of copper so making a wire slightly thicker (20% larger diameter) should solve the heating problems. (Maybe a little thicker in case the skin oxidation is a problem, although it's more like copper than iron- it won't rust through.) [3/3]
Ok, so you admit "[t]here may be some legit points here" and I think some of your responses are more knee-jerk than substance. But rather than quibble over this essay, I want to ask if by chance you had a look at the original report it linked to:
Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels
https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf
I've just started looking into it and it is very interesting, over one thousand pages of interesting in fact, commissioned by GTK (Geological Survey of Finland).
The report works through multiple scenarios, including nuclear power and "hybrid" solutions, for replacing fossil fuels and finds they will all come up short. From the abstract:
"In conclusion, this report suggests that replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas, and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the World’s most influential nations. What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds. This implies a very different social contract and a radically different system of governance to what is in place today. Inevitably, this leads to the conclusion that the existing renewable energy sectors and the EV technology systems are merely steppingstones to something else, rather than the final solution. It is recommended that some thought be given to this and what that something else might be."
And the bottom line from the conclusions:
"A fundamental restructuring of how we see energy, how we harness it and how we use it is required."
I hope you'll check it out, it seems to me a very substantial collection of data and analysis.
@jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
#RenewableEnergy #ClimateCrisis #FossilFuels #capitalism #energy
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses I was doing a quick readthrough. Yes.
I read something a while back on That Other Site that I couldn't put my finger on, immediately, and I tracked it down.
https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/mining-low-carbon-vs-fossil Again I haven't delved into the sources, but 14,000 megatons per year of oil, coal, and gas vs. IEA, 2040, 28 megatons.
I'll take a look at the Finnish report, even if it's just abstract-intro-conclusion-WTF_parts, but I'm not gonna do 1000 pages of homework even if I am currently in a lull.
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses I got to page 4 before the author hit one of my "Oh fuck you" buttons:
>A conservative estimate selected for this report was a 4-week power capacity buffer for solar and wind only
[followed by]
> If this power buffer was delivered with the use of lithium ion battery banks, the mass of lithium ion
batteries would be 2.5 billion tonnes
4 weeks of Li-ion batteries is like looking at how strong an ant is and trying to hook up [calculating...] 10 million ants to pull a tractor-trailer. It's entirely the wrong tool for the job. And "4 weeks" is hysterical bullshit.
There were a couple things earlier in the abstract that I found unimpressive- the idea of snuggling a nuclear reactor up to an industrial park or residential subdivision so you could do district heating, what could go wrong with THAT, but the "four weeks of lithium-ion" is clear evidence that this is not a serious person. [1/2]
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
... Oh, and the ERoEI argument is also a red flag, but I decided to look at what they were saying. They've got a 2010 paper for wind ERoEI, and from 2010 to 2020 wind [financially] got 3 times cheaper. Sometime around 2010 I dug into a different EROI paper which had a 2004 source, and that 2004 source got its numbers from a paper from the late 1990s.
Earlier in this discussion I mentioned that 2004 to 2021-ish, the amount of silicon per watt in a solar cell went down by a factor of 7? Yeah. ERoEI guys live on the edge of "I'm not lying, I'm just using old sources."
One last thing: Most of the world's population lives in very, very good places for solar power. The entire continent of Africa, for instance, is closer to the equator than Sicily is. Look at a globe. 40% of the population doesn't HAVE winter.
Rant over ... for now. [2/2]
If I'm reading correctly, you're complaining about something the author is not doing. Yes, they used info from 2010, but then it goes on to say:
"A power storage facility of some kind is required to act as a buffer in the same way as solar. This is not included in most ERoEI calculations.
As such, it becomes very difficult to compare wind power generation systems to fossil fuel systems in an appropriate ERoEI context. For the purposes of this report, wind is not compared to fossil fuels in this
context."
But thanks for pointing out possible issues with this perspective, I will consider this as I review it further.
@nebulousmenace I am watching https://youtu.be/5stPFdegJpg right now and in the first part of the conversation the author of the report you discussed above (Simon Michaux) gives a short rundown of it and explains the reason for 28 days of storage requirement. In short it has to do with seasonal variability of renewable (especially solar) power generation: in the winter there is much less of it. The presentation is about half an hour with Q&A.
Electric Vehicles: Arthur Berman, Pedro Prieto, & Simon Michaux | Reality Roundtable #1
Just looking at this link you shared from Sustainability by the numbers and it struck me that the author complains about "dodgy framings" but I have to say that I find their own quote to be very dodgy indeed:
"In fact, mining any mineral or fuel does not have the same impact everywhere: mining from rainforests, indigenous lands, or protected land is not the same as uninhabited deserts."
"uninhabited deserts" aren't a thing and this reveals a shallow colonialist/capitalist exploitive mindset.
“When people look across the desert, they just see scrubby little plants that look dead half the time,” says Robin Kobaly, a botanist who worked at the BLM for over 20 years as a wildlife biologist before founding the Summertree Institute, an environmental education non-profit. “But they are missing 90% of the story – which is underground.”
Her book, The Desert Underground, features illustrated cross-sections that reveal the hidden universe of roots extended up to 150ft below the surface, supported by branching networks of fungal mycelium. “This is how we need to look at the desert,” she says, turning a diagram from her book upside-down. “It’s an underground forest – just as majestic and important as a giant redwood forest, but we can’t see it.”
The reason this root network is so valuable, she argues, because it operates as an enormous “carbon sink” where plants breathe in carbon dioxide at the surface and out underground, forming layers of sedimentary rock known as caliche. “If left undisturbed, the carbon can remain stored for thousands of years,’” she says.
Desert plants are some of the oldest carbon-capturers around: Mojave yuccas can be up to 2,500 years old, while the humble creosote bush can live for over 10,000 years. These plants also sequester carbon in the form of glomalin, a protein secreted around the fungal threads connected to the plants’ roots, thought to store a third of the world’s soil carbon. “By digging these plants up,” says Kobaly, “we are removing the most efficient carbon sequestration units on the planet – and releasing millennia of stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the solar panels we are replacing them with have a lifespan of around 25 years.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/21/solar-farms-energy-power-california-mojave-desert
a fading echo@nebulousmenace @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
I like people not to make an argument which can be extended to an assertion that
"The finite volume (of the Earth) contains an infinite volume of X"
Peak Oil wasn't when oil ran out. It was when the increasing demand and use outstripped the easy availability.
And that isn't our main problem with oil.
@midgephoto @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses I mostly agree with you, and I can see where my argument looked like "We have an infinite amount of everything." It was written in realtime and edited for the 1000 character limit, which isn't much of a defense but it's all I got.
@nebulousmenace @midgephoto @RD4Anarchy @breadandcircuses Yeah, you get it. If "we don't tend to run out of things" why worry about #climateChange at all? We won't run out of food, water, materials or fossil fuels, so why not just build higher walls on coasts and more AC units?
#Overshoot is the source of the problem, and climate change is just one of many symptoms. Building more solar won't help with depleting fish stock, topsoil erosion, biodiversity loss, etc. and may actually make it worse.
@nebulousmenace @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
There is much to be done, and soon, and many people to do it, and we should do many things. If fusion or orbiting self-replicating solar power stations solve our problem then great, but I shan't feel silly for driving my EV, charging it from the sun, and applauding wind turbines meanwhile.
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades Sand IS quartz. SiO2 . There are certain places that have better sand than others (less impurities) but it's a few tons per megawatt. Last year we [humanity] installed 200 GW, so if my math was correct upthread, that's around 400,000 tons of Si or around 1,000,000 tons (1 megaton) of quartz. Sounds like a lot, but last year we mined 8,000 megatons of coal and 2,500 megatons of iron ore. And the sand is sitting on the surface in drifts; you don't have to flatten mountains or dig mines to harvest it.
I agree that we're coming from different directions and tending to answer different questions; I think we mostly agree on the excesses of capitalism; I suspect we'd have a lot to disagree about when it comes to the desired final state.
zenkat@nebulousmenace @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy seems relevant to this thread.
"By creating a false dichotomy that presents one option which is obviously advantageous—while at the same time being completely implausible—a person using the nirvana fallacy can attack any opposing idea because it is imperfect. Under this fallacy, the choice is not between real world solutions; it is, rather, a choice between one realistic achievable possibility and another unrealistic solution that could in some way be 'better'."
I'm no fan of the excesses of capitalism, either. But one side of this thread has a plausible (but still difficult!) path to become a reality. While on the other side ... let's just say that details are lacking.
@zenkat @nebulousmenace @RD4Anarchy I don't think that's a fair assessment. You are the one making a value judgment about what is "plausible" and what is "lacking".
The point of this whole discussion is whether deployment of renewables in the current industrial growing economy is a realistic method of reducing our emissions.
So far the amazing growth of renewables did _not_ contribute to reduction in emissions, so it is still up in the air whether that is a plausible way forward.
@jackofalltrades @zenkat @RD4Anarchy We're talking in 1000-character chunks, there will always be SOME details lacking. To be fair.
@jackofalltrades @nebulousmenace @RD4Anarchy But what is the alternative to making the shift to renewables? Are you arguing that we should abandon those efforts?
@zenkat @nebulousmenace @RD4Anarchy Transition to renewables must be coupled with intentional #degrowth of the economy, otherwise we will not prevent catastrophic effects of #climateChange. Our civilization is on a very strict timer and "green" transition in a global economy that is expected to grow 3% each year (= double in size every 23 years) will fail, as the growth in energy demand will undercut decarbonization efforts.
Jason Hickel described it succinctly here: https://mastodon.world/@MatthiasSchmelzer/109993443853083855
Matthias Schmelzer (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 video Here is Prof. Jason Hickel debunking green growth in front of the Dutch Parliament. "Decarbonization with growth is like trying to run down an escalator that is accelerating upwards."
"Decarbonization with growth is like trying to run down an escalator that is accelerating upwards."
Someone replied to that saying:
"Some people hear that and their response is "OK, so we need better sneakers. Which are the most exciting sneaker start ups we can invest in?""
And all I can think of is the toot I saw recently (wish I could find it) showing, as an example of capitalist waste and "efficiency", a huge bin full of brand new sneakers, each intentionally destroyed with a slice, on their way to a landfill to enforce artificial scarcity and keep profits higher.
@jackofalltrades @nebulousmenace @RD4Anarchy I am sympathetic to degrowth arguments. I agree that the mandate for eternal growth built into capitalism makes long-term sustainability difficult.
But it is also the "nirvana" part of the fallacy. I have yet to see any realistic proposal for how we could transition to such a system, given the physical, economic, and political realities of the world today (short of complete system collapse, with all of the massive death and suffering that would entail).
Arguing against a transition to renewables without providing a realistic alternative means retaining the status quo -- ie, belching massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere while growth continues unchecked. It doesn't help.
I don't think either Jack or myself are arguing against a transition to renewables.
I wish I had a plan to overcome capitalism, I am sorry that I've come up short on that. It's something we're all going to have to work out together anyway.
For my part, I think it will be necessary for people to better understand the situation and how we got here. The more people grasp these things the more chance we have of changing it somehow. I hope I can find ways to go further than this eventually but right now it's what I'm doing.
Likewise I think it's important for people to see technology in this broader context and understand that on it's own it cannot save us and that under capitalism it can't be trusted much at all. That is not to say that it can't still be employed to help us, but we need to be very realistic about the costs and ramifications, which is what this discussion is all about.
Lacking a realistic path out of capitalism is a problem whether we embrace renewables or not. This is not the same as saying we shouldn't embrace renewables at all unless we first eliminate capitalism. All these things are linked together, that's why we're talking about them at the same time, not because one excludes the other.
@RD4Anarchy @zenkat @nebulousmenace To add to that:
It is possible there is no solution to our predicament. That wouldn't make the description of the problem invalid or fallacious, would it?
Framing the problem as one of "long-term" sustainability may be invalid in itself. Many problems of overshoot, including #climateChange will unravel within our lifetime. Our problems are immediate and dire.
@RD4Anarchy @zenkat @nebulousmenace I would prefer for the system to undergo controlled contraction rather than a collapse. For this to happen people need to be aware that we're in overshoot and the system can't go on growing like it does, green or otherwise. So far whenever I challenge #greenGrowth technofixes I am met with opposition and unfaltering optimism. We have enough of everything, steady lads! I feel this is misguided. The longer this goes on the more likely collapse becomes.
In a similar way, but maybe off on a tangent here, it seems like a lot of people already recognize the "excesses" of #capitalism, many of its superficial problems are popularly criticized.
But less common is a good understanding of the core injustices and downright "evils" that are baked into it from the start and even before. Without this understanding it is easier for people to say "yeah it's bad, but it's what we've got to work with" or "what's your alternative system?"
Slavery was completely unacceptable on basic principles let alone material results. Would we accept it if it was all we had to work with? Would we ask what the alternative is first? The alternative is *no slavery*.
I see #capitalism the same way, an evil that must be eliminated at all costs. Like your house is on fire, you have to put it out *now*, not wait to draw blueprints of the restoration first.
And in fact capitalism is basically an extension of slavery.
@RD4Anarchy I am not sure if that recognition isn't surface level.
If you think about people that lived before industrialization they didn't have any expectation of "progress". They were content having a good life that looked pretty much like the life their parents had.
Fast forward to today and you can't move people to save the freaking planet unless you promise them "a better tomorrow", solarpunk, green, harmonious, futuristic technoutopia of convenience and leisure.
@jackofalltrades @RD4Anarchy @zenkat @nebulousmenace
As long as this goes on the more we continue to collapse, as we are already there.
As long as this goes on the more we continue to collapse, as we are already there.
Hitsu Yonai@RD4Anarchy @nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
No offence, but their seems to be a confusion of units here:
"To produce 20,000 tons of polysilicon, one smelter (of several refineries) consumes enough power as 300,000 homes.4"
No offence, but their seems to be a confusion of units here:
"To produce 20,000 tons of polysilicon, one smelter (of several refineries) consumes enough power as 300,000 homes.4"
@hitsuyonai @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades Yup. Energy-to-power, the oldest fuckup in the book and one I've made myself. They probably mean 20,000 tons a year, but I didn't use that number at all in my calculations. I don't think I did, anyway.
Not really, its just saying it takes x amount of power to smelt 20k tons of polysilicon, and that same amount of power would be enough to power 300k homes.
edit to add: Nebulous Menace is right to point out that it is probably per year (but applied to the houses, not the smelter IMO), but that's an omission of an important (but maybe assumed) detail, not a confusion of units.
@RD4Anarchy @hitsuyonai @jackofalltrades Power is energy per time.
Power is "how fast can you climb a flight of stairs", energy is "how many flights of stairs did you climb". Your electric bill is in kilowatt-hours, a unit of energy: one kWh is one kilowatt running for one hour (for instance, a large space heater.)
"300k homes", a unit I hate, is probably around 200 megawatts. But is it 200 megawatts for a second? An hour? A year?
@nebulousmenace @hitsuyonai @jackofalltrades
Unfortunately I couldn't find the actual source of that reference so I couldn't check it for any clarifying info.
Would it have been more accurate if it said "to produce 20k tons of polysilicon the smelter uses enough energy to power 300k homes for a year"? That's how I understood it, but it's a fair point that it was not worded as well as it should have been and my assumption could be wrong.
@RD4Anarchy @nebulousmenace @hitsuyonai Here's the source: https://siteselection.com/theEnergyReport/2009/apr/Wacker-Chemie/index.htm
"""
Bradley says reliability can be just as important as price to such a high-tech, 24/7 operation.
"Reliability is key, and I would say reliability in this case is more important than price, because the financial implications are much higher. Think about the loads — 100 to 130 megawatts in phase one. A nuclear plant is 1200 megawatts. Fully built out, they could be a third of a nuclear plant.
"""
@RD4Anarchy @hitsuyonai @jackofalltrades The units are correct, yes, but we are all making our best guess here. The analogy I should have come up with LAST post, and didn't, was "He lives 60 MPH away from me." 60 MPH for an hour? Nobody knows.
@nebulousmenace Yes, the world was different ten years ago. In 2011 world emitted 34.5b tons of CO2. In 2021 we emitted 37.1b. Progress?
I guess we don't solar hard enough.
@jackofalltrades 1400% growth in 10 years. How much faster would you like it to go?
@nebulousmenace Don't you see the irony in that?
At which point this super growth of renewables will result in an actual reduction of emissions, on a global scale?
@jackofalltrades Are you under the impression that's a rhetorical question?
Because the answer is probably three to five years.
Because the answer is probably three to five years.
@nebulousmenace Not at all. We will know soon enough. IEA forecasts emissions to peak even sooner, in 2025: https://mas.to/@jackofalltrades/110056501790279657
Jack of all trades (@[email protected])
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-iea-global-energy-emissions-peaking.html IEA forecasts emissions to peak in 2025, but that's contingent on investment into renewables and nuclear rising by more than 50 percent from today's levels to $2 trillion per year by 2030. Coal use is expected to drop in the next few years. Natural gas hits a plateau at the end of the decade. Peak oil is reached in the mid-2030s and then gradually declines towards mid-century. Time will tell how realistic those green growth scenarios really are. #climateChange
@jackofalltrades Good news if true. I try to be VERY cautious with my predictions, based on the general tendency of predictions, esp. of solar (see this classic: https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/11/14/all-is-lost-renewable-energy-growth-will-hit-a-brick-wall-no-not-really-its-just-the-iea/ )