brutusborn

Interesting, especially the black-start ready inverters, but orthogonal to our comments on the stability of nuclear.

If the addition of renewables leads to an unstable grid, it is irrelevant if the grid is then restarted with the help of renewables.

Looks like they're using French nuclear to help black start the grid [1]. Solar and wind systems could have caused the instability issues that led to the Spanish Nuclear requiring isolation. It will be interesting to see the final investigation, but my bet is that "induced atmospheric vibration" is a PR deflection from a badly designed and operated system [2].

[1] https://transparency.entsoe.eu/transmission-domain/physicalF... [2] I'm not necessarily blaming the engineers, but the politicians who force those engineers to put square pegs in round holes. For example, I can imagine politicians making a short term decision to skimp on energy storage while increasing renewable penetration. Surely renewable systems must be less reliable without storage given the lack of rotational inertia?

It’s not really a problem, you just adjust the size of your assumed storm. We have lots of climate models and data to adjust predicted sizes.

Climate change effects are already being included when calculating wind and wave loading in many codes.

The real issue is that engineering codes use frequentist methods which make it hard to consider uncertainty, which often makes it unclear what the real safety factors are. This issue is being solved by using probabilistic engineering techniques, and in future, more sophisticated causal inference.

I was imagining them flying close-by, so any failure would have a higher chance of causing a cascade. I couldn’t find any info on how close they are, but I imagine it’s too far for this to be an issue.

Does anyone else read “formation flying” and instantly think “Kessler syndrome”

What do you mean? Coping as in pretending they aren't Technoserfs?

Where I live the only kids who program are those who are lucky enough to have a teacher interested in robots. They are taught to program robots as a fun activity rather than a part of the curriculum.

I understand your sentiment about the opportunity costs for those with computing knowledge, but it wouldn’t be too hard to require teachers to do a basic computing unit at university. In the same way the best mathematicians are not usually school teachers, yet “regular” teachers seem to perform sufficiently.

I grew up in an isolated location with a big drinking culture. As a youngster I wasn’t aware that there were places to move to without this problem. You could choose to avoid the drinking culture, but that was basically social suicide in both University and in Industry.

I’ve experienced the same in Australian suburbia. Awful drinking culture and pre-Uber taxi unreliability means a lot of people drink and drive.

It is more common in low socio-economic areas but still existing in all classes. Hell, our state treasurer lost his job after hitting multiple cars on his way home. https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/troy-b...

The only alternative I can think of is to use escrow, which probably isn’t attractive for illegal activities and still requires trust.

I disagree, computers are just a tool. Learning basic programming in primary school helps build a foundation for more sophisticated knowledge in high school. It can also help contextualise mathematics.

The problem is abuse of the tool, as you describe. In my primary school, we were taught how to use Microsoft Office by using a workbook the computer teacher licensed to the school. We had some of the best computer resources amongst local schools at the time, yet learnt almost nothing about computers. It took me until university to write a line of code.

It’s early stage tech, they’re all promising in that _they are trying to develop tech to help_. How can I prove a developing tech will scale? How can you prove it won’t? It started at 0 and is now at millions of tonnes scale. If that isn’t good enough progress then I have nothing for you.

Imagine using the same logic in the 80s “solar panels produce hardly any power and use lots of fossil fuels for production, why are we wasting resources developing them?”

Or the internet in the 90s “it will have less impact than the fax machine.”

It’s just emotional nonsense. We should support the people working on solutions, not complain from the sidelines.

I hate Gorgon too, they tarnished the name of CCS for commercial gain. Their system is throttled for economic reasons though, not technological. Even worse: the government funded it!

If the Australian Government held their feet to the fire they would have sequestered the promised amount. However they didn’t, and Chevron has no incentive to fix it properly.

So your criteria for success is to ‘save the world.’

How about we aim for ‘reduce emissions’ or ‘develop solutions’? Or even better ‘stop opposing people who are trying to help’?

All tech starts at small scales. Yours is an absurd rebuttal.

What’s the maths and physics that make it impossible? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m interested in the limits.

I still think reflexively opposing a potential solution is stupid. Skepticism is healthy, automatic rejection is a waste. I wholeheartedly agree politicians spout a lot of nonsense, and that the solutions are closer than we think, we just need to get the bad policy out of the way.

This is true, but there are no biological simulations in the mainstream models, just various correction factors with their own uncertainty. I wish they had biological data because then we would have more domains in which to measure their accuracy.

Saying CCS isn’t currently successful is like saying utility grade solar wasn’t successful in the 70s. We’re on the start of an exponential curve and the tech will only get better.

I don’t understand why people think this is “used” to sell carbon neutral plans: why wouldn’t you count carbon sequestered using CCS? It’s no different to assuming batteries will get a lot cheaper: it’s not a certainty but it’s heading in the right direction.

Let’s put it this way: if we could use CCS to produce carbon neutral power from natural gas, would you reflexively oppose it? Or would you be thankful that we now have another carbon neutral power source?

If I must spoon feed you… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_carbon_capture_and_s...

I’m not conflating them, I’m trying to elicit someone to _compare_ them so we can discuss reflexively rejecting certain solutions.

If you don’t have some measure of cost / benefits / risks, how can you reject a potential solution outright?

The answer is you can’t, so if you are doing so your reflex is based on emotion rather than reason.

Your intuition of scientists updating views is wrong, see Kuhns scientific revolutions for more examples. Scientists generally stick to preconceived notions long after there is data to refute them.

E.g. heliocentrism, germ theory, cigarettes being unhealthy, lobotomies being optimal

You summarised my point nicely.

What we call ‘truth’ is just the beliefs we think are most accurate. ‘Just follow the science’ is silly because it essentially means following beliefs on faith without questioning whether they are the best theory. In many cases the better theory goes against the consensus.

E.g. mothers who ‘just followed the science’ and took Thalidomide caused their children untold suffering. They could have been skeptical but instead they had faith in science, which was unfortunately done badly.

I think if you’ve looked at numerical models then you have enough knowledge to at least judge the underlying assumptions: boundary conditions, numerical stability, discretisation methods, validation methods and results.

In the same way that I can verify a SAT solution, I don’t need to know how to code a sat solver.

Unfortunately there are fundamental disagreements about most of the critical parts of climate science, so going by the opinion of the field isn’t foolproof (who to choose? How to choose?). Many fields have had false consensus beliefs before, and most of their problems weren’t 1000th the difficulty of climate modelling.

Again, If you don’t know how bad it will get, how can you balance the negatives of remediation?

We already created misery via starvation due to biomass subsidies, what makes you think our future policies will be harmless?

Of course my example was absurd, but it illustrates the trade offs involved.

The same logic applies to shutting down oil and gas production: if we are not certain, then why risk the downsides?

I’m not saying this is a good way to think, just that it shows the fault in your logic.

My evidence is the lack of a basis for 2C and lack of a cogent plan to limit warming to 2C. I tried to find the basis and instead just found lots of IPCC discussions with no scientific basis.

That’s why I asked: you can find articles saying that a degree of difference is very important, but not the basis for why 2C is used.

If you are arguing that fossil fuels must be shut down immediately, you must have an understanding of why 2C is used, and the difference in harm between 2C and whatever we end up with if we keep emitting. If you are not aware of this science in these cases then you are basing your beliefs on politics.

I work with a few climate scientists so my opinions aren’t my own. I referenced 2 researchers above, what is wrong with their opinions?

[4] isn’t climate denial, it was an attempt to get some criticism of an interesting heterodox theory, and I found it! [5] CCS is being used at large scale on many projects. Maybe we have different definitions of “at scale” and “successful”

I don’t need to prove it can be done: we already produce these with emissions and we already have CCS to avoid these emissions, there is nothing technological stopping this except economics.

The consensus is that climate change is real and I agree wholeheartedly. What I disagree with is exaggerations of the negative outcomes and rejections of technological solutions based on politics rather than science. In this aspect you will find many conflicting opinions.

Also please answer my question about 2C. Asking this is what led me to realising how much of climate policy is based on convenient politics and not science.

Why not? If we burn gas using CCS and develop a lot of nuclear, we wouldn’t even need renewable energy. I’m not saying it’s bad, just that it’s not essential (and may actually be a distraction in e.g. Germany where it has displaced nuclear development and resulted in coal plants being reopened).

Existential threat means things can’t get worse (you just stop existing).

Ignoring the potential of geoengineering implies you are sure that we have a better solution which will work. I hope we don’t have to use geoengineering but I am certain the status quo of hoping renewables and batteries in the 1st world will save us is not going to work.

GDP is just a measure, and it doesn’t include externalities. Any state or person is free to make up their own metric that includes it. Call it GDP_E and put it in every government report!

Saying it should include externalities is like saying that the scales at the butchers should include nutrition information with weight: that would be cool but that’s not what scales/weight measures are for.