Elon Musk Predicts Electricity Shortage in Two Years (msn.com) 463
"The man behind the race to replace gasoline-fueled cars with electric ones is worried about having enough juice," writes the Wall Street Journal:
In recent days he has reiterated those concerns, predicting U.S. consumption of electricity, driven in part by battery-powered vehicles, will triple by around 2045. That followed his saying earlier this month that he anticipates an electricity shortage in two years that could stunt the energy-hungry development of artificial intelligence. "You really need to bring the time scale of projects in sooner and have a high sense of urgency," Musk told energy executives Tuesday at a conference held by PG&E, one of the nation's largest utilities. "My biggest concern is that there's insufficient urgency."
Musk's participation with PG&E Chief Executive Patti Poppe at the power company's conference marked the third major energy event the billionaire has appeared at in the past 12 months. He has played the part of Cassandra, trying to spark more industry attention on the infrastructure required for his EV and AI futures as he advocates for a fully electric economy. "I can't emphasize enough: we need more electricity," Musk said last month at an energy conference in Austin. "However much electricity you think you need, more than that is needed." The U.S. energy industry in recent years already has struggled at times to keep up with demand, resorting to threats of rolling blackouts amid heat waves and other demand spikes. Those stresses have rattled an industry undergoing an upheaval as old, polluting plants are being replaced by renewable energy. Utilities are spending big to retool their systems to be greener and make them more resilient. Deloitte estimates the largest U.S. electric companies together will spend as much as $1.8 trillion by 2030 on those efforts. Adding to the challenge is an industry historically accustomed to moving slowly, partly because of regulators aiming to protect consumers from price increases.
Musk's participation with PG&E Chief Executive Patti Poppe at the power company's conference marked the third major energy event the billionaire has appeared at in the past 12 months. He has played the part of Cassandra, trying to spark more industry attention on the infrastructure required for his EV and AI futures as he advocates for a fully electric economy. "I can't emphasize enough: we need more electricity," Musk said last month at an energy conference in Austin. "However much electricity you think you need, more than that is needed." The U.S. energy industry in recent years already has struggled at times to keep up with demand, resorting to threats of rolling blackouts amid heat waves and other demand spikes. Those stresses have rattled an industry undergoing an upheaval as old, polluting plants are being replaced by renewable energy. Utilities are spending big to retool their systems to be greener and make them more resilient. Deloitte estimates the largest U.S. electric companies together will spend as much as $1.8 trillion by 2030 on those efforts. Adding to the challenge is an industry historically accustomed to moving slowly, partly because of regulators aiming to protect consumers from price increases.
Elon Musk? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't he the guy who bought Twitter - mostly with other people's money - and then kept sabotaging it until the value fell by 75%? Why should we listen to him? He's just trying to sell a bunch of his batteries.
Re:Elon Musk? (Score:5, Funny)
Elon Musk on Everything: My solution to any problem is for you to buy things from my companies.
Re:Elon Musk? (Score:5, Funny)
Careful. You keep saying good things like that and you'll be bought by Elon Musk and renamed SharpX
Re:Elon Musk? (Score:5, Funny)
This is good news. Musk predictions never come true. He said Tesla cars would be fully self driving by 2017, and he would have people on Mars by 2021.
These electricity shortages must be at least a decade away, if Musk thinks they are imminent.
Re: You're a tool of the establishment (Score:2)
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Remember all the times we got Bill Gates' random opinions on random topics?
I wish your use of the past tense was justified... but unfortunately I imagine we'll continue to have his opinions inflicted on us for some time to come.
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Let's see who made the better decision there:
A. the Twitter board who walked away with >$40B for their shareholders and investors when they had no other viable exit or growth strategy, when "shareholders and investors" in a large part included themselves;
or
B. the blow-hard red-pilled neo-fascist who gave >$40B for a short-form text social network and then proceeded to start making ill-advised changes that caused 90% of their advertising revenue to disappear followed by laying off anyone and everyone t
Re:This is why (Score:5, Funny)
bro he ain't gonna sleep with you
Re:This is why (Score:4, Insightful)
Because he's successfully had about a dozen companies, makes electric cars, reusable rockets, is bringing the internet to everyone, and started OpenAI.
He launched and sold a website during the dotcom boom. The site itself was never particularly successful, even by the standards of the day, but wild speculation granted him a boon.
He then founded X.com (his obsession with X was pretty early), but no one wanted him to run it, so he didn't get to run it. Ultimately, it was less successful than Paypal, which someone else launched. When they merged with PayPal, he somehow convinced them to let him be in charge, and he fucked it up both tech wise and business wise. He was ousted from any decision making role within 6 months. However, some continue to credit him with the founding and success of PayPal, even though he almost destroyed it during a very short period of being in control.
He did found SpaceX, though again more relevant, experienced people were critical to actually getting anywhere. He can get a fair amount of credit here.
With Tesla, again, a company founded by others, but Musk did invest fairly early. He then ultimately drove them out and largely encourages a narrative that he "founded" Tesla on his own and designs everything himself, despite not being there from the onset. He again can get fair credit for a lot of Tesla's success, but his obsession with being considered "founder" (not to mention his title of "Technoking") is obnoxious.
His career has been ego-first, disingenuous claims of 'founding' things, and with him deliberately muddying the water with bragging and pushing others out of the spotlight, I'm not sure how much credit he does or does not deserve in his apparent successes.
He has a stable, long-term relationship based on marriage with several kids. Also an ex-wife that he gets along with, several friends of the "can sleep on their couch" level of friendship, and keeps himself busy and interested in what he's doing.
I don't know what you mean by relationship "based" on marriage, he *had* a long term girlfriend and they broke up. Maybe you refer to the subordinate he impregnated? Though there's no claim of a "relationship" publicly with her. I suppose he does still get along with his second ex-wife, though his first ex-wife wrote on how bad he was as a husband, and how he considered her weak for being sad at the death of their baby while he wouldn't even be there, then years later lying about how he held their baby as the baby died and how sad it was. Or perhaps his kid that disowned him, and how he blamed "neo-marxist taking over education" for that.
Dude is a megalomaniac of dubious actual merit in the right place at the right time. He does not have some enviable interpersonal relationships, he has some of the most dysfunctional relationships of anyone, burning bridges left and right.
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Years ago Musk actually had very little hate from either side, even from the right-wing people. That was also because the man was pretty apolitical, he just wanted to talk about his tech and companies.
It's a wildly politically devisive world and he jumped in with both feet and has clearly staked a position with a side. Now, that's his right to hold his beliefs but when you make such divisive statements about the other half of the political spectrum there's gonna be a backlash. That was his choice to make
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Nobody really cares about American politics if they have at least a brain cell to spare. Because it just doesn't matter. It really doesn't. US politics is mostly a sitcom. At least for most Americans.
Of course it is highly important which of the two sides of The Party runs the show. But mostly for the party members and their owners. It's akin to holding shares of a company, you buy parts of some party and you get a share of the say in it. If you hold no shares, you can cheer from the sidelines, but that's p
Re:Elon Musk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody really cares about American politics if they have at least a brain cell to spare. Because it just doesn't matter. It really doesn't. US politics is mostly a sitcom. At least for most Americans.
Of course it is highly important which of the two sides of The Party runs the show. But mostly for the party members and their owners. It's akin to holding shares of a company, you buy parts of some party and you get a share of the say in it. If you hold no shares, you can cheer from the sidelines, but that's pretty much it.
If you still think it doesn't matter, you're clearly not paying any attention whatsoever.
Who cares about AI? (Score:3, Insightful)
That followed his saying earlier this month that he anticipates an electricity shortage in two years that could stunt the energy-hungry development of artificial intelligence.
Will AI improve the welfare of our planet and its inhabitants? No. Will electric vehicles? Maybe. But given the stakes, a maybe is worth pursuing.
Frankly, I haven't seen anything yet that AI has done that has truly been a benefit for human kind. I only see vain capitalistic pursuits.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
AI already improves my life as a developer every day. When I'm looking for a code sample for something obscure that I'm trying to do, ChatGPT kindly searches Stack Overflow for me, digests it, and presents me with code that is tailored to my specific needs.
It also saved me a ton of time figuring out how to get some large mirrors off a wall.
Sure, I could have found these things myself before AI, but AI makes it easier, and does it with more speed and precision. It's just a matter of time before people everyw
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Yes. Furthermore, if its capabilities expand into proving and engineering, it can massively improve the world through automation and robotics and low energy hyper efficient everything.
Here's a good aspect of AI (Score:2)
Will AI improve the welfare of our planet and its inhabitants? No. [...]
Frankly, I haven't seen anything yet that AI has done that has truly been a benefit for human kind. I only see vain capitalistic pursuits.
AI can probably run self-driving vehicles in various conditions. Not on congested streets, but on highways with electric semis, and with drones delivering mail and small packages. Probably a lot of other applications as well, and there are a ton of follow-on jobs that AI long-haul driving will eliminate, such as the diners and gas stations all across the highways in the US.
That will reduce the workforce needed for transportation by several percent, perhaps 5 million out of a 60 million workforce, which will
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That's because you have a bias, filtering out all the examples that you don't want to see.
AI is in use helping to diagnose patients [pbs.org], and cure [forbes.com] diseases [theguardian.com]. Also, we are using it to keep water clean [fsu.edu].
That was just using a cursory search. If you are actually motivated to find more examples, you can do your own searching. Probably with the help of a search engine (just to make the irony clear: search engines all use rudimentary AI algorithms to do their work (please, no semantic hair-splitting, in the Computer S
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It is certainly a lot better at human doctors at examining imaging scans and finding cancers and other conditions. At the very least, it takes that load off of doctors. And that gap is getting wider and wider.
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And if you think that's gonna be annoying, just wait 'til racists start to use it to mock anti-discrimination movements.
Could liquid air be the solution? (Score:3)
Re:Could liquid air be the solution? (Score:4, Informative)
It seems to me this would have a similar problem as compressed air: compressing air produces heat, which tends to be lost which means roundtrip efficiency will be low.
Looking it up, for liquid air it's the opposite: you spend energy lowering the temperature of the air. Wiki has the rountrip efficiency at 25% raw, up to 50% by adding a cold store [wikipedia.org]).
ÃoeIÃ(TM)m (Score:2)
ÃoeIÃ(TM)m
WTF is that?
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Hold on, I've got you. "ÃoeIÃ(TM)m" is a term mea//(a) "öz#~ed/#(TM)" and is ofte(TM)#%[R] used in situations where &(TM); are involved.
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ÃoeIÃ(TM)m
WTF is that?
I think that's Elon's kid's name.
Good news (Score:2, Funny)
Elon Musk's tiny dick energy will more than cover US national demand.
Here we go again (Score:2)
Time to start moving. (Score:2)
They denied climate change was a problem and now it is their problem.
Cooling commercial buildings is six times more energy-intensive in hot climates than cold [eia.gov]
Time to start moving to more temperate climates.
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The energy intensity for cooling commercial buildings in the United States depends on the climate the building is located in.
So there you have it. Whoever would have thought? That is fucking groundbreaking research right there LOL.
California has a (half ass) fix for that (Score:2)
https://www.decra.com/blog/how... [decra.com] But, it doesn't go far enough. We must require that every new construction pay for the capital investment of solar (based on square footage) even if the construction is too small or doesn't have adequate sunlight footprint. If the solar is not installed on-premise locally, then it must be offsite. Of course you will be entitled to any electricity generated from that for free (and get profit if you under-utilize it such that it can be sold to others.)
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I have a fix, but California won't like it: We need to stop building in areas where people are going to use air conditioning 12 months out of the year.
Most of the people in California live near the coast. You'd be surprised how many houses don't have air conditioning at all.
Shutting down the Twitter farm will free up energy (Score:5, Funny)
Elon is working for the good of everybody in more ways than one here.
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He will probably be required to turn off the new X logo. Neighbours are complaining about the light pollution, and it is extremely bright.
Huh... California PUC... (Score:2)
Odd that the California PUC sabotaged net metering at the bequest of the utilities to destroy the economics of rooftop solar just this year if there is going to be an energy shortage in the near future.
Don't live in California anymore, but my approach is to have 150% of my annual consumption in rooftop PV production, along with enough battery storage to tide me over for 1.5 days of zero PV. I'm not especially sensitive to the economics of this approach, but for broader adoption this should essentially zero
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Don't live in California anymore
It sounds like a lot of people don't live in California any more. It appears that the people in California like voting for politicians that will drive people out of the state. More state for them that way, I guess.
I expect the popularity of net metering to fade. Under net metering as residential PV use grows this is adding more power to the grid that the utilities cannot control. Too much of this and the utilities have to take on the costs of shedding supply elsewhere, and while still paying a premium p
Funny that (Score:2)
Y'all need to panic, and then buy my battery systems.
Or, get more solar on residential homes for distributed generation and better resilience. Oh wait, there isn't an ongoing profit motive in that one. Scratch that idea. Or at least put it far down the list, so we don't get accused of trying to kill it off in favor of the Utility owned solar farm.
Problem solved (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I bought a gas generator to charge my electric vehicle
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That's why I bought a gas generator to charge my electric vehicle
That's no doubt meant to be funny but that does appear where things are headed.
I watched an interview lately on YouTube with some energy expert. He mentioned that Generac is making good money lately. Generac is a company that produces generators for homes and businesses. Government policies that are driving adoption of wind and solar power is also driving a trend for power outages. People with the money to afford a backup generator are buying them. Those that don't have the money will just have to live
go figure (Score:5, Funny)
The guy who owns the battery company thinks everyone should buy more batteries.
Or you could (Score:2)
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you could use the chips less often. then you don't need to build anything new or replace anything. imagine how much electricity would be saved if every slashdotter agreed to dip into their porn stash one fewer day per week.
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Them's fighting words.
well (Score:3)
given musk's long history of coughing up overly-optimistic timelines for various tesla models, i'd say we're probably good for at least 15 years then
Stunting the energy-hungry development of AI (Score:3)
That followed his saying earlier this month that he anticipates an electricity shortage in two years that could stunt the energy-hungry development of artificial intelligence.
Yeah, that all sounds well and good, but I bet there's some hidden downsides as well.
How is he going to get to Mars? (Score:4)
Elon Musk has to know that his dream of people living on Mars will not happen without nuclear power. NASA is working on nuclear powered rockets for interplanetary travel. NASA is also working on small nuclear reactors for supplying heat and electricity for people at their destination planet. Yet Elon Musk never mentions nuclear power for use on Earth? Seems a bit odd to me.
Any successful colonization of Mars will require nuclear power. Elon Musk must know this. Yet it seems he can't mention this, likely because he knows that would be bad for business. Battery electric vehicles will not be successful without nuclear power, because the inherent intermittent nature of wind and solar power will create huge issues in charging up BEVs. Imagine the load on the grid if the US Postal Service completes their plan to have all delivery vehicles run on batteries. That means at the end of the day all these BEVs will be parked, charging up through the night, when then sun isn't shining.
What is the solution on this? Charge up the batteries in vehicles from batteries that were charged up during the day? Have postal workers make their deliveries during the night? I'm sure someone will suggest solar panels on the vehicles, do the math on that once and tell me how that works out. Perhaps the batteries in the vehicles can be swapped out, and that won't create any logistical problems?
We will need nuclear power for our electricity. Further we need to work out synthesized fuels for our vehicles, because batteries won't be enough. Rockets to Mars certainly won't run on batteries. Battery powered airplanes aren't going to fly very far, if at all. Sure, we have a few examples of experimental aircraft that are battery powered. But then I guess if people are drinking enough kool-aid to think we can charge up fleets of trucks at night then charging up battery powered airplanes is nothing. Do the math on that and let me know how this works.
Oddly enough I saw an interview with Elon Musk were he runs through some of the math on getting a battery powered airplane to fly. He convinced himself it would work, and I agree. What he glosses over is that it would take an airplane the size of a Boeing 747 to move maybe a dozen passengers.
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If the US has a say 100 TWh hydrogen or synthetic fuel reserve, the intermittency of renewable sources becomes a cost issue (maybe a doubling, but same order of magnitude) rather than a fundamental problem.
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Solar power in every form already costs more than nuclear power. Offshore wind costs more than nuclear power. Onshore wind is lower cost than nuclear power but with intermittency being an issue there's only so much wind that can be on the grid before storage as a mitigation strategy drive up costs. Hydro is low cost, low CO2, has inherent energy storage properties, and generally a favorable energy source but there's only so many rivers worth a dam.
One complaint of nuclear power plants is that costs go up
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PV is and will remain for decades more the electricity source with the greatest potential for cost reduction, what is is not necessarily what will be.
All I'm saying is that net zero is possible with renewables. Would we have more resources to spare for consumption with nuclear? Maybe, but it's not like we will have to eat the bugs without it. We're productive enough to make it work with renewables with good living standards.
Industry is the big problem (Score:2)
My country is probably ahead of the US in this respect, but the largest problems here are caused by industry electrification which is already curtailing new industrial grid connections right now. Tesla is fishing in the same pond for supercharger sites, so it's a problem for them but EV's an sich are only a small part of the problem on the whole.
Will be an even bigger problem for Apple, which will want to bring up a charger network from scratch.
pee pee pee pee (Score:2)
I think I see what it takes to get ahead in the Power Production world.
Megalomaniac Speaks, World Stops for Him (Score:5, Insightful)
So why does this jerk Musk suddenly get headlines for saying "Me too".
Re:Megalomaniac Speaks, World Stops for Him (Score:4, Funny)
So why does this jerk Musk suddenly get headlines for saying "Me too".
I don't know why I have to explain this, but Musk can't sell electric cars if people start having problems with charging them. He has platform and reach, so it is not surprising that he would use it to point out significant systemic issues that pose existential risk to his wealth.
Havnt people been saying this for years? (Score:2)
We have all been saying this for years. Along with the need to bulk up baseload generation using Nuclear etc.
Funny how as those saying such things are then labeled "climate deniers", but as soon as Musk thinks he has thought up the issue...
If you want to solve this issue everyone will need to bulk up on baseload generation. Wind and solar are too intermittent, which is what is causing this concern. Battery storage is going to be difficult as EV's will compete for access to the batteries, which are not made
Every silver lining has a cloud (Score:3)
Though funnily enough Tesla batteries can help address this problem... ;)
Mouth never stops moving (Score:3)
Being rich doesnt make you smart.
Ran the numbers, don't think they changed a lot (Score:3)
> In recent days he has reiterated those concerns, predicting U.S. consumption of
> electricity, driven in part by battery-powered vehicles, will triple by around 2045.
EVs would represent a very small bump in power use. I ran the numbers a while ago and I don't think they've changed that much:
https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/future-grid-energy-in-the-not-so-distance/
I believe total miles per year has gone back up, but not a lot. In contrast, wind and PV have gotten significantly better in those nine years.
Huskster (Score:3)
Why do we care about what this con-man says?
Re:Simple answer, but will never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear, yes. But there's no such thing as "clean coal." That's a bullshit marketing term. Eliminating coal plants must be our #1 priority to reduce carbon emissions.
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there's no such thing as clean nuclear either.
Especially after an invading army shells it, captures it and plants demolition charges, cuts it off from the grid so that it both shuts down and doesn't have power for its cooling and waste storage management, digs up its waste dump to entrench troops and ammo dumps, etc.
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Especially after an invading army...digs up its waste dump to entrench troops and ammo dumps.
To be fair that is the best part.
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Admiral Yamamoto was said to have said during WW2, "I would never invade the United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." He was right, and there are far more guns now than there were then.
There is no evidence that Yamamoto ever said or wrote this. Further, Japan never intended to invade or occupy the United States. (The brief Aleutian Islands campaign was a feint to draw US resources away from the South and West Pacific.) They wanted to lock in resources they needed and then sue for peace.
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Of course their is. Even nuclear waste eventually becomes inert having zero impact on the world at large.
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there's no such thing as clean nuclear either.
No but nuclear at least doesn't emmit as much carbon as coal. It's actually one of the lowest carbon emitting electric source.
Not the issue. (Score:2)
If you the problem is that it takes more energy to cool commercial buildings due to climate change.
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The drag on the frame of the car squares with the speed.
After something like 25mph, every further consumption in energy is based on the air drag.
So: a car going 100mph is using roughly 16 times the energy of one only going 25mph.
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And the speed limit changes depending on whether one drives a plaid or a Model 3, got it.
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The Plad's 1,020-hp battery pack is going to need a lot of power to charge it.
Indeed. The latest Tesla charger is specified to supply 1MW (1000V * 1000A) to one vehicle. To give that some perspective; the most recently commissioned nuclear reactor in the US, Vogtle Unit 3 AP1000, produces 1200MW electric. That means only 1200 of Telsa's latest charger running simultaneously will consume the entire power output of a large, burning nuclear reactor core for 15-30 minutes, not counting transmission loses.
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Re:It doesn't take a genius (Score:5, Informative)
In California, this may be true. By contrast, Texas is increasing capacity. In 2022, the state has added about 9 GW of power generation. Texas is by far the leader in wind energy, with 3x more than any other state. And this year Texas will add more solar power than any other state. This summer's heat wave has not led to any blackouts because of all the added wind and solar power. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/28... [cnn.com]
Lots of people hate Texas, or see it as nothing more than an oil state. But the reality is that it's also the clear leader in green energy.
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Note that most of the progress on renewables is in spite of the Texas state government, not because of it.
https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29... [npr.org]
Re:It doesn't take a genius (Score:5, Interesting)
And a fair number of Texans are kind of pissed about that:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/n... [texasmonthly.com]
https://www.kut.org/energy-env... [kut.org]
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/14... [npr.org]
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The world is trying to transition to renewable sources. Up until recently we've been fueling growth by withdrawing the energy stored in fossil fuels. Fortunately it's gotten us by long enough to start getting good with renewables.
So much is being transitioned from fossil fuels. Not just cars, but also a lot of the electric grid. Coal and natural gas still provide so much of our home, business, and industry power. Electricity has a lot of advantages though, like how easy it is to move around and balance
Re:It doesn't take a genius (Score:5, Informative)
We're shutting down capacity faster than we're replacing it.
False. We have been consistently been generating around 4 Terawatt hours for the past decade.
Table 3.1.A. Net Generation by Energy Source: Total (All Sectors), 2011 - 2021 [eia.gov]
2011... 4,100,141
2012... 4,047,765
2013... 4,065,964
2014... 4,093,564
2015... 4,078,714
2016... 4,077,574
2017... 4,035,443
2018... 4,180,988
2019... 4,130,574
2020... 4,009,767
2021... 4,108,303
Coal is being shut down due to emissions.
False. Coal is being replaced by natural gas [eia.gov] because it's the more economical option.
Even combined-cycle gas turbines running on natural gas are being shut down
False. There is literally nothing to support this.
Solar capacity is going up, along with wind, but not nearly enough to replace what's going away.
False. See the table at the top of this post.
Demand is going up.
Correct. When climate change makes it hotter, people use more energy to keep cool. This was foreseen the rate of global temperatures increasing has surprised everyone.
Capacity is not going up and in many cases it is shrinking.
FALSE. See the table at the top of this post.
Is it just me or does this seem...stupid?
When your reasoning is based on incorrect information, you can justify any response. The truth is that your viewpoint is a delusion used to validate your own prejudices.
Re: It doesn't take a genius (Score:2)
How much generated electricity goes to ground (or is converted to the humming sound you hear from powerlines filled with more electricity than demand requires)? 30%?
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There is some energy loss due to AC in air, but if you really want to worry, look at AC being carried in underwater cables. Many long distance trunks have switched to DC for many reasons. One of the bigger reasons is that you can carry more power at the same current because you can go closer to the maximum voltage all the time, and not just at peaks.
10000 volts RMS AC at 100 Amps has the same power as 10000 Volts DC at 100 Amps. However the 10000 Volts RMS has a peak voltage of 14100 Volts, and you need
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No. Electricity does not simply vanish ...
But with people as uneducated as you seem to be: no wonder the planet is going downhill
Home generated electricity missing from data (Score:2)
It appears to only offer utility generated electricity. The prevalence of solar panels in homes and offices is thus ignored. Whilst not massive, it is surely significant.
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Not if American's keep voting as they have. The existing establishment has one governing imperative: BANANA [slashdot.org]. Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. They have what they want in their gloriously awesome lives and so they indulge their anxieties, which mostly amount to worrying about compromising the view from their picture windows, limo glass and yachts. If that means everyone else needs to be squeezed into efficiency apartments and made to eat the bugs then so be it.
Re:Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reasonable answer to this problem is to tell environmentalists, which are in vogue these days, to stuff it while we ignore them and the nimbys and build what needs to be built without extensive environmental justification. We COULD be running mostly off of solar power in 30 years but ironically environmentalists demanding extensive site surveys and reporting to save the striped tree frog or whatever are the main obstacle. We COULD have nuclear power plants providing enough power to shut down all the coal plants in 30 years, but nimbys and environmentalists who hear the word "nuclear" and start clutching their pearls don't want it. They are getting in the way of progress and then bitching because progress hasn't been made.
Re: Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
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Mmhmmm.... a nice idea, let's see how this worked out.
I know you're not old enough to remember, and history is that boring thing where you have to deal with stuff that has happened a long time ago, but we were there already. Right at the beginning of electricity. And it went down just like anything in the US where money is involved and two competing systems are at each other's throat. Welcome to Edison vs. Westinghouse [wikipedia.org], and if you think Muhammad Ali vs. George Forman was a fight, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Re: Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
This "Watermelon" bullshit is for intellectual children. I first heard this from Rush Limbaugh back in the 1990s. It's oversimplified, ideological idiocy that assumes free markets are a perfect fit for the real world.
I just can't believe adults still talk like this.
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"IMO, you really can trace it all back to the right wings talk show hosts of the early 90s and increasing authoritarianism in college campuses. "Hate speech" and political speech codes were the birth of the new illiberal left IMO."
To be clear, what "it" is that you refer to is the propagandizing of the population to believe that the left and the right are equally bad, something that you've fully bought into. Yes, it got its start in the early 90's when Gingrich converted the Republican Party into fascist,
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You're right, they're just the same - I remember when Joe Biden gave a speech to whip his supporters up into a frenzy to foment a violent insurrection and overthrow the results of a fair election. And of course, that time when Joe rang up senators trying to strongarm them into finding some extra votes for him, or the time he put state secrets in his bathroom. (roll eyes)
I'm not an American, and as a European following
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"tell me if someone on the right has another solution, because they seem to be keeping it a secret!"
You are confused about the problem and the solution. The right believes that automation to take away jobs is the solution, you think it is the problem.
UBI is not needed to address job loss due to automation. UBI can stand, or fall, on its own merits; it is A mechanism for wealth redistribution but not the only one.
Personally, I like UBI but not for the reasons offered in public. I believe UBI, properly imp
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Talk about brain dead. The premise is NO JOBS due to AI, and yet your solution is to "get a job." Brilliant, Sherlock.
What makes UBI brain dead?
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Still better than having diapers in charge. White on the outside, but inside they're full of shit.
See? Objectifying people is easy when you don't give a fuck about them.
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Re: Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
"Governments giving subsidies and preferential treatment for "green" energy is messing with the free market."
Great, messing with the free market can be a good thing. The goal is societal benefit, not ideological benefit. Unregulated capitalism is BAD, a role of government is to promote a good economy, perhaps by messing with the free market.
"What we find is that these regulations are not applied equally, wind farms are given a free pass on the deaths of rare bird species that no other industry would be allowed to violate."
You can't cover up this stupid by pretending to be informed elsewhere.
"There's regulations on nuclear power on air and water pollution that no other industry is being held to. This messes with the market and is impacting prices."
I like how you think regulations can be made "equal" across different technologies or that this is a "free market" issue (which you are equating to capitalism).
"I agree that we need free enterprise."
You agree? Who are you agreeing with? And can it be assumed that "free enterprise" therefore isn't a derogatory term made up by socialists? Or that derogatory terms are now OK since you need to use, and explain, the term "watermelon"?
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There doesn't need to be a population collapse.
In some parts of Africa, only the rich have reliable power generators/power storage.
Ted Cruz is the perfect example of this. When shit goes sideways, Ted Cruz will fly to Cancun, or turn on the generator in his garage.
And a few of the poor people in Texas died, sure, but it wasn't a population collapse.
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It's all about reducing the standard of living for commoners so the wealthy and connected can make sure they have no shortage of what they want and need for themselves.
spies on both sides, some of them good people (Score:2)
Speaking of foreign agents. Thomas Barrack, who chaired former President Donald Trump's inauguration committee, has been arrested on federal charges that he acted as an agent of the United Arab Emirates.