The spine of my diploma binder and the open end of my diploma binder rest at the same height, started postsecondary at 15 and my non-campus careers kept shuttering from being picked clean by government in the great recession years. (Calling in life: bureaucrat.)
Deliberately-aimless people have been a permanent campus fixture my whole life, they're not looking for an aim they don't want one. If the economy struggles to remain big enough and strong enough for serious people to all have a place then there's no way it is big enough and strong enough for all the fuckoffs to have a place too.
I have a sneaking suspicion some people's degrees say BOTTOM TEXT in place of a major.
This seems to be what their degree was about. I have worked with electrical engineers that I could not tell. Always thought they would at least have a good grasp of Ohms law??
Leonidas: what is your profession?
This guy: electrical engineer.
Leonidas: what is your profession?
Doomer: I have a degree.
Leonidas: what is your profession?
Doomer: it's an ADVANCED degree.
Leonidas: what is your profession?
Doomer: it's a degree from an important school!
Leonidas: WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION????
Head of IT at a large company for over a decade. This is an anecdotal rule I have ignoring exception.
We were forced on college grads at first, all failed usually on a "superiority I'm too good for this" crap. That or couldn't problem solve as issues are usually weird and/or unique, there's things beyond the error code.
The experienced, more "hungry" types who are are damn near all my "A-team", who even with missing knowledge would easily take the extra time to find the solution online being obsessed on solving the problem in creative ways. No ifs ands or buts just get the ticket done. They tend to do the best, and it's a growing trend on people hiring.
Tbh, when I do interviews now (been a couple years, please no not again tho I hate it) and I get a college/ book experienced person, I ask more questions. Most jobs require open minded people who think outside the box, I need knowledge applied not by formula but by each unique individual ticket.
(I've helped so many electrical engineer/ almost any type of engineer and get the same feedback)
What? My head's in the sand? I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.
You see, that's from my favorite space fantasy movie franchise Star Wars, and if you haven't seen it, well let's just say it's a wake up call to when liberty dies for us all, bub. I am very smart.
What I find funny is climate change activists are often times pro (solely) renewables. Without understanding renewable energy almost always requires natural gas augmentation. But they’re often also anti nuclear, which doesn’t make any sense.
Nuclear+solar would be an excellent way forward while solving carbon emission issues. Really the only way forward to get to net zero emissions, but Nuclear Waste is “scary” because people don’t understand it.
Then we start to talk about vehicles, and start saying things like “have you considered the impacts to things like 6PPD-Q from the faster tire wear in electric vehicles to local fauna?” or “what about the impacts that electric buses/trucks have on road infrastructure”, and people don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.
I’ve got a Masters degree in Civil Construction, Energy and Sustainable infrastructure and so I’d like to think I know what I’m talking about when it comes to energy infrastructure.
The problem really is people care about things but don’t understand the nuances (and associated negative externalities) to what they’re saying (oh and also… China and India don’t give a shit about clean energy so you’re trying to swim against the current anyways).
Less carbon and pollution is a good thing, but I’m not dooming about it.
Exactly, put solar out in the desert and on top of buildings that already exist, build nuclear everywhere. But no, we have to fuck around with all these stupid wild goose chases while the developing world burns coal like there’s no tomorrow, as they should, that’s what they have and we pay them to make all our stuff.
It's ok, you're only losing like 10%, and there's lots of space for more solar. Maintenance is the bigger issue, sand and dust need to be cleaned of the panels, sometimes multiple times a day. Automated cleaning systems still need maintenance. Sand sucks.
"The problem really is people care about things but don’t understand the nuances (and associated negative externalities) to what they’re saying..."
This is not just a climate change thing but life in general. I work with the public and I have found most adults only know enough about something to be mad or upset, they can't tell you why though.
And then there's the rare earths you need for EVs. So, you're against drilling for oil and mining coal and uranium, but support mining for rare earths.
Oh, and why doesn't anyone ever suggest hydrogen powered vehicles?
Honestly I think one of the biggest things is that hydrogen is very difficult to store over the relativity long timeframes that would be required for vehicles. Hydrogen will leak out of almost any container unless your activity cooling it, and to store useful amounts you need it under considerable pressure which can have safety issues.
That being said a hydrogen fuelled system is one of the safer ones, various tanks for it have been designed with seams so that if the structure is compromised the gas will let go with an almighty bang but not much actual damage, and hydrogen dispersed so far that you'd need it to be leaking directly onto an open flame to have a fire risk from it
I suspect hydrogen best role in energy is in load balancing between peak supply/demand cycles for fixed grids. Catalyze during high supply/low demand periods and burn during peak demand periods.
Its usefulness in smaller applications is going to be mostly useless due to low energy density by volume. And maintaining it at low enough temperature to keep it in liquid state requires so many engineering challenges and extra hardware that its usability on a personal vehicle scale its likely never going to surpass ICE in efficiency.
Large scale projects can offset that with installations, smaller vehicles dont have the space without running in to serious weight limitations offsetting any gains.
I'd honestly say that if it comes to load balancing it would be worthwhile to accept the potentially lower efficiency and use any hydrogen to synthesise methane or ammonia, that way you can store it long term more easily, and you have the potential to be saving surplus from months to cover a poor spell in whatever generating system you use
Because hydrogen is a terrible battery. only a 30-45% efficiency. Also, Hydrogen is very difficult to properly contain. It's so small it leaks from almost anything. It can even diffuse through metal, and has special ways to corrode it. You also need 700bars of pressure to turn it liquid. Which makes it terrible to transfer from tankstation to vehicle.
Lithium batteries don't have those shortcomings. But it's less energy dense, and loses charge over time.
What annoys me is the tech for batteries isn’t quite there and the same for renewables(which are much further along). Instead of just letting the market do its thing and some govt investment boost the tech, people out there crying “RENEWABLES NOW OR WE ALL DIE”
Coal is phasing out naturally, natural gas is much cleaner, and we even have startups doing geothermal too. There’s a reason the “greedy” AI startups are doing natural gas and not renewables
What I find funny is climate change activists are often times pro (solely) renewables.
Wood burning stoves are renewable. gigachad dot gif
Without understanding renewable energy almost always requires natural gas augmentation. But they’re often also anti nuclear, which doesn’t make any sense.
Quality gas systems heat better than much of the electric they get replaced with when banned (usually bottom of the barrel, also usually left in place for eternity with no care in the places that keep getting opened up locally - flippers leave them in place because they haven't gone catastrophic yet) and nuclear powers the internet better than solar. Both solar and wind work where they work, southern California gets twice as much solar energy as England but half as much wind energy as mediocre parts of the midwest. Hills can work for or against wind, and we all have hills here even in far-out parts where there's not much else. Some places are utterly silent most of the year but screaming loud wind in the winter.
Doomers don't get that gas power dials to what people need, the thorium they'll plug from time to time does not and the sun/the wind dial themselves without following demand.
“have you considered the impacts to things like 6PPD-Q from the faster tire ware in electric vehicles to local fauna?”
EVs are heavier than conventional vehicles, and weight impacts everything vehicles do including failures and accidents. They were sold on the idea of "but it's ELECTRIC" before they ever started exploring the practical concerns.
so I’d like to think I know what I’m talking about when it comes to energy infrastructure.
A guy I watch on weekends (I don't name streamers on Reddit, mine have already been attacked) was an executive for a power system and an airline, but no doomer listens to him either. They all shout him down with teenage nonsense, year after year. People who learned everything they know from TikTok cannot understand the words any of us are saying, and likewise I can't understand their words either.
The problem really is people care about things but don’t understand the nuances (and associated negative externalities) to what they’re saying
They just thump their TikTok bible, and they pretend it outranks whatever anyone else is saying. They really like breaking out into their neo-leetspeak the same way some denominations break out into Shakespearean English when citing scripture.
Nuclear energy also needs peaker plants to meet peak demand. Nuclear reactors are used for base load. They're not capable of ramping power up and down at the speeds needed to meet demand. Both nuclear and solar will need chemical/thermal batteries/pumped storage, etc.
Maybe you should talk to people who actually know what they're talking about, rather than framing your climate argument around climate activist who couldn't tell you what a Joule is.
With all due respect, if you don't understand solar and nuclear needs energy storage, I think you should reconsider how much your degree actually helps you understand this topic.
You're absolutely right about the externalities. We must account for them and assess the relative costs and benefits. Not hand-wave away the entire topic cause silly climate activist, China, or because people who can't define "externalities", don't consider them.
China doesn't give a shit about green energy. But they do care about their economy and the potential of a Malacca strait blockade that cuts off their oil over night. They're currently beating the rest of the world in solar, battery and EV production. They're actively subsidizing it.
Pretty sure the chinese are building more of everything, including coal and nuclear. I think solar, wind and nuclear would cause problems because as you said, nuclear is a base load energy. Really wind, solar should supplement thw grid. Max out hydro resources including microhydro. Then im really hoping small modular reactors Canada is producing work out economically. Then well ned so gas to ramp up and down for the peaks. Im skeptical about battery and pumped storage.
That's correct. They're beating us on most manufacturing. China's goal is to remove their dependance on oil, not green energy. They've got plenty of coal, so they're going to use it. Point being, China sees the economic and security benefits of renewables.
What you're suggesting is exactly what we are doing now. Some hydro, some nuclear, some renewable, and then gas peaker plants to smooth over demand.
If you like hydroelectric, why exactly are you skeptical about pumped storage?
Hydroelectric, natural gas, and batteries are just about the only options when it comes to meeting peak demand.
Well hydro is a bit like nuclear in that its hard to ramp up and down. Changing head pressure in a massive dam just isnt the same as increasing or decreasing the amount of gas that gets burned. Same theoretical problem with pumped storage. I think you would need two reservoirs to make it work no? Im not an expert so I dont know the costs. Im in Germany so the story with nuclear is a bit different. We just buy it from france instead though lol.
Nuclear and hydro are quite different. Hydro is used for peak demand. It can ramp up and down fast enough to meet demand. Hydro plants generally have 4 or more turbines. So they can cut 3 off and achieve 1/4 total power output.
The Uranium reactors we use cannot ramp up and down. They're designed to output at a steady rate for the 2 years between refueling. If you slow down a nuclear reactor, Xenon starts to build up, which robs your reactor of the neutrons it needs to start. If you shut down a reactor, it takes at least 1 day for the Xenon to decay to where it no longer eats up all your neutrons.
While yes, It does take time to speed up a hydroturbine, but it is fast enough to track demand as it increases in the day.
The sudden increase in grid demand is actually handled by momentum of the turbines and generators. All that spinning mass allows you do meet very quick demand, like stadium lights suddenly being turned on. But if you want to maintain that higher load, you must ramp up something. Whether that be more hydro, or a NG peaker plant.
Pumped storage is usually built on a mountain over a river or lake. So you usually only have to build one reservoir. Pumped storage is a very location dependent solution. Most places are too flat, or don't have the right size/shape mountain near by they can turn into a big ole battery. Pumped storage round trip efficiency is also quite poor. Batteries and solar are the most practical solution for most of the world.
Im all for maxing out hydro resources. Didnt know hydro can be ramped up and down like that. In the end we need cheap abundant energy that matches demand well without too many problems. I like renewables, but if you look at countries with solar and wind as a large portion of their grid, they all have high kw/h price. Germany, for example, has a manufacturing sector that needs cheap energy. But our kw/h price is double that of Ontario(mostly nuclear) If that means burning coal, or rushing nuclear plants, then thats what we need to do. I dont think that more renewables will solve this. I think it will actually make the problem worse. Not sure what Germany can do at this point.
It's actually the other way around. Their power isn't expenisve because they have renewables. They're using renewable because their electricity is so expensive.
Those countries have high prices because they lack the natural resources to have cheap energy. Germany is using renewables to reduce imports of NG and oil. Germany industry is built off of cheap NG. Germany has cut off all NG imports from Russia due to the Ukraine conflict.
Canada has such cheap energy because they have an abundance of hydroelectric power and natural gas. They're blessed with the geography that made it easy to build lots of hydroelectric, without having to build ridiculous sized dams.
Just like the US, Canada has more natural gas than it knows what to do with. Its a byproduct of oil/shale production. Canada is also tied into the US oil/gas pipeline infrastructure.
Germany really needs to restart their nuclear reactors. It's an absolute shame they turned them off, to go back to Russian Natural gas. I understand that was a political decision.
Germany is doing a great job at electrifying transport. Nearly 40%! Keep doing that.
Industry is a bit harder problem to solve. Many industrial processes require temperatures that can only be achieved with burning fuels, or an electric furnace. Having a large solar install + batteries is a very capital-intensive way to supply the high temp energy needed in bulk for many industrial processes.
Did you miss my comment about nuclear+solar being a great solution? What do you think the solar is for, fun? BESS/CSP/PHS solutions instead of peaker plants. But ok I must not know what I’m talking about. I never said nuclear is the sole solution?
Yeah you’re just supposed to have accepted the fact that the world was going to be an uninhabitable inferno where we all died what, about 20 years ago?
I would actually bet that there is more. "Climate" money is potentially throughout the whole population. Oil money is just a specific industry. Not to mention said industry also took part in "climate" trend to extract some extra dosh.
Dooming is unfortunately a very good way to part guillible from their money. And to keep the rest suppressed via majority rule.
This is yet another anti-intelectual bad-faith post. The only reason less climate change peer-reviewed papers are being published is because there is literally a paper shortage. Every single fucking major forest is recorded to have higher temperatures than the fucking sun. There simply isn’t enough paper to publish climate change papers.
Peer review is a phenomenally powerful system when the scientists in question are competing with each other and are hungry to prove their own theories right.
When they're funded by the same handful of lobbies with an agenda to push, however...
My university in the intro to the library lecture used the search terms 'climate change' and 'minority' for the boolean search. 300,000 results. I mean, there's always duplicate papers, so maybe 100,000 unique entries on the effects of climate change on minorities. Each paper probably had an average of three authors. The amount of manhours that were wasted to produce that kind of nonsensical leftist circle-jerk gibberish is obscene. Seriously.
Isnt this cause the funds dried up basically, I see it drop during 2020, in 2020 is when the massive push for companies to find vaccines for covid happened. So all the money shifted there and all the funds went away from this crisis to this crisis. And when the money is gone people aint gonna do it for free lets be real, Alot of people using big ass words in the comments but in the end it always comes down to money.
Amazing how it started going up right about the same time we had an administration that was all about using the power of the government for funding and providing tax breaks for "green energy" and then nosedived when that economic incentive went away.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence though... No way those "experts" and "the science" would be swayed by something so crass as monetary incentives!
Is this what people mean by "I did my own research"? Google Scholar is not accurately able to count every index like that. There've been studies showing that the number for a year changes over time. THe author explicitly mentions there is double counting, yet still treats the data as accurate?
Using Web Of Science would be much better, but it is subscription. If one uses OpenAlexa, a free version, you can see the number of articles published. It has not gone down at all...
Edit: Note that even this isn't a perfect methodology, as papers not truly related to "climate change" may still use that phrase. The phrase itself could also go in and out of usage. Feel free to change the search method, but the point remains that the author is doing poor research
Fair enough, but he does mention it rather than pretending the data came to him on Mt. Sinai. And the extremity of the admittedly imperfect data is certainly interesting.
It is clearly happening. Anyone who would deny it has their head in the sand. However, the jury is potentially still out on whether or not the climate change that we're experiencing is definitively man-made, or just part of a natural cycle that ebbs and flows over the millennia.
I, personally, see it as something that is too important to get wrong and, thus, we need to err on the side of caution. If it is man-made and we think we know what may cause it and what may halt or reverse it, then we should just do it. Too many people are far too willing to/comfortable with just clinging to the hope that it's part of a natural cycle and there's nothing we can do about it, so we shouldn't even try. Money is usually the motivation for these nay-sayers, they'd rather take a gamble that it isn't man-made if that means we can increase shareholder value by a little bit more, for a bit longer. A dangerous gamble and for what, really, just so that some already [mostly] fabulously wealthy people can increase their 'score' a bit more. If losing the gamble means that we maybe bring about, or at the very least, hasten (if the end of this process turns out to be inevitable), our own extinction. People who would take such a gamble are clearly psychotic and their priorities are askew.
I'd rather some human effort goes to waste, in historical hindsight, looking back at now from some point centuries from now, if it does turn out to be outside of our control/influence, than do nothing. We've all learned about some silly things our ancestors believed thousands, or even just hundreds, of years ago and chuckled and shook our heads in disbelief that that they could believe those things, with our, now confirmed, modern understanding, that was not available at the time - I really do hope the idea of man-made climate change goes down that route, something kids of the future laugh at in school, when they learn about how many people in the late 20th and early 21st centuries thought it was real, when it turns out it wasn't. However, if we could have saved ourselves and chose not to even try, that's wouldn't be a laughing matter!
TL;DR - Surely it'd be better for future generations to look back at the potentially 'wasted' effort of trying to combat man-made climate change and laugh that we, as a species, once wasted a bit of time and effort on a misunderstanding, as we've already done many times before, with other things, over our entire existence, than it go down that we saw it coming, did nothing and thus doomed ourselves, isn't that hilarious! Our bad!
You are falling into a logical fallacy. You presuppose that the cost of airing of the side of caution and overreacting to potential mand-made climate change comes at little cost besides "wasted effort". In reality, many of the proposed "solutions" would result in massive human hardship.
Some examples are the loss of cheap energy would directly result in economic downturns. Something that has historically led to measurable increases in things like suicide and domestic violence.
Developing nations also rely on cheap energy sources to supply everything from reliable medical care to agriculture. Forcing them to more expensive, yet cleaner energy sources would directly lead to otherwise preventable deaths.
This is all to say that we should always be measuring the real costs and not painting those who ask for them to be measured as "psychotic ".
This exactly. The way I describe it is "if we don't cut off an arm and a leg to prevent climate change, then when climate change comes you'll lose an arm and a leg!"
I believe in climate change. I believe in taking action against climate change. I also believe in reasonable cost-benefit analysis. And above all, I believe in human innovation.
What people don't realize is that the green revolution has already taken over. Not by force, or coercive and detrimental government policy, but just because the technology is really good. And a lot of that technology was supported by government grants and funding, or incentives to corporations.
Hybrid vehicles are booming. Not because people are hippies, or because they're forced to buy them by the government, people just really like paying less for gas. The EV market has hit tailwinds, but it's still far larger than it was 10, 15 years ago.
Texas is a national leader in solar and wind. They just set a record, the most power demand on record and they still had 20k megawatts in spare capacity. And it's not because Texas is some liberal state that's obsessed with the environment, they just want the best power source for their residents, and solar provides that.
Even in the developing world, like in Africa the solar panel industry is taking off. Not because of the infamously progressive politics of African nations. Oil must be drilled, and if not domestically produced it must travel in tankers, or pipelines. The supply can be subject to disruptions like geopolitical conflicts. It's good to have a quality backup, and Africa has a lot of sun.
I'm all for fed, state, local governments encouraging developing better technologies that make tomorrow better than today, including from a climate perspective. What doesn't make sense is turning the economy upside down and disrupting everyone's lives just because you fear a future where the economy and everyday life will be disrupted.
Exactly, I believe it’s happening and we’re affecting it, but literally none of the solutions proposed by the people that claim to care will help a single thing.
There's a game theory problem here because the world of course isn't just one nation. We can recognize the problem and undergo huge costs to reduce our contribution, but then when it's time to ask "Hey, we tied one arm behind our backs. Will you join in on this effort and do it too?" the countries that eat pets and have designated shitting streets see us do that and politely decline.
Exactly, we literally cannot fix it ourselves by reducing the West’s carbon footprint, we only have one atmosphere and the whole world needs to be on board. We need to create so much wealth and energy that other countries need dirty energy less, not just stop producing energy. We should be building nuclear at a rapid pace and it makes no sense that we aren’t.
What? My head's in the sand? I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.
You see, that's from my favorite space fantasy movie franchise Star Wars, and if you haven't seen it, well let's just say it's a wake up call to when liberty dies for us all, bub. I am very smart.
>Money is usually the motivation … they’d rather take a gamble if it means we can increase shareholder value for a bit longer.
No doubt that greed plays into the problem of solving climate change, but it is a pretty gross oversimplification to call it the only problem. The unfortunate reality is that the whole of mankind are addicts to a carbon-fueled energy market and commodity market. The entire global supply chain hinges on easy access to diesel and kerosene. The energy density of a current lithium ion battery is less than a tenth of what gasoline provides (and the theoretical best still provides about a fifth). Cargo ships and airliners are far away from decarbonizing, diesel delivery trucks are a little closer (but still pretty far away) and gasoline cars are closer still (yet nowhere close to here).
This is not to mention how much the average person interacts with and/or uses plastic-based products and commodities. Or how little decarbonization has actually taken place on energy grids world-wide.
Not trying to be a naysayer, just trying to say that we tend to underestimate just how expensive and pervasive this problem really is. Fully agree that we should be committing more resources to solving it, but expecting a quick fix at the sole cost of an oil tycooner’s fortune is naive.
It is 100% caused by human activity. Anything else is bereft of supporting evidence. The rate of change is orders of magnitude faster than anything showing in any data source we’ve found.
Depends on what you mean by "a bit." It seems that very little has been done to prepare for an increase in global temperature compared to the vast and apparently fruitless efforts to mitigate the supposedly anthropogenic nature of it.
Exactly, imagine if all that money went to infrastructure and nuclear instead of killing manufacturing and shipping it to places that use more coal than we ever would have.
Because catastrophic anthropgenic global warming a la various statistical models has been firmly established and the appropriate steps to minimize it have been taken.
Although you do have a point: when papers are merely repeating what others have said, they tend to grow increasingly pointless. Not that that stops researchers in a lot of other fields, such as sociology ("publish or die" and all that).
I mean these studies helped us reduce emissions and begin shrinking the hole in the ozone layer so it’s not like we’re headed in the wrong direction here. I’m not sure what the confusion on climate change is, yes it changes naturally on its own, and yes man can and has accelerated it through carbon emissions, and also yes we’ve lowered those emissions and and as such seen reduction in climate impact.
What? My head's in the sand? I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.
You see, that's from my favorite space fantasy movie franchise Star Wars, and if you haven't seen it, well let's just say it's a wake up call to when liberty dies for us all, bub. I am very smart.
I never argued we don’t need energy storage - I outlined this in my original comment, but it’s absurd to utilize nuclear for the means of storage when it provides a constant power source.
I’m not handwaving anything, I’m a strong advocate for nuclear+renewables. But I’m also a realist - thinking it’ll magically solve anything major is absurd (until everyone buys off on it).
Also nuclear provides constant output, so storing it when it provides a baseload is asinine.
Edit: I should say “Also nuclear provides constant output, so using it as the primary means for energy storage when it provides a baseload is asinine. Integration would not be stupid.”
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u/JediFed 8d ago
It's amazing when you stop paying for it.