[ExI] Global cooling: Arctic ice caps grows by 60% against global warming predictions | Mail Online

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 04:48:01PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 11:23:58AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> > > I'm not interested in doom and gloom. I'm interested in solutions. Your
> >
> > I'm very interested in solutions. But they start with people accepting
> > that there is a problem. Even on this list, the ostrichs are in the
> > vast majority. Out there, the situation is a lot worse. Most
> > of the 7 billion have no clue at all.
> >
> 
> I reject this. You can develop a better car without saying "All current
> cars are doomed to fail by 2021" Even if they are (since they aren't
> autonomous).

Do you understand the impact of surplus energy being adaptively
absorbed by increased fertility and resource-using behavior in
context of an ecosystem in deep overshoot?

You can't invent a better car if the workshop is coming crashing
down.
 
> 
> > Solutions are useless if people are not ready to accept
> > them as such. We're not nearly there yet, here.
> >
> 
> On this list, I think everyone is open to new ideas about where to get more

Used to be that way, now this list has gotten only slightly
more open-minded than your average environment.

> energy from. And you don't need to be a doom and gloom person to
> acknowledge that more energy and cheaper energy are OBVIOUSLY good things.

I would like to point out that there won't be more and cheaper
energy on this planet for the coming decades. This is seriously
handicapping our ability to develop short-term solutions to a
fundamental problem, see above.
 
> 
> > > solution matrix seems to rule out most of the most practical energy
> > > sources. I'm for solar, but it only has limited practical applications at
> > > present.
> >
> > I disagree very much. For most people on this list PV is
> > is a very affordable way to shave off the bulk of your
> > electricity bill, or to allow you to live off-grid, which
> > vastly enhances your exit options. Bootstrap is a process
> > that profits from economies of scale. Why is solar so
> > expensive in the sunny US versus the low-flux Germany?
> > Because it takes a decade to build the market.
> > Don't waste another decade. You can't afford the price.
> >
> 
> I had solar on my own roof. It was an utter failure. I was lucky not to

Just because it didn't work out for you it doesn't mean it doesn't
work for anybody else. In fact, 23 GW effective peak send a quite
loud message to anyone willing to hear it.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/07/07/breaking-germany-sets-solar-power-record-again-23-9-gw/

"Germany’s peak electricity demand at midday is about 60 GW, so at 1:45pm or so, 
solar power was providing about 40% of the country’s electricity demand. Impressive. 
Approximately 1.3–1.4 million solar power systems were involved in creating that 
massive electricity output, our German solar expert Thomas tells me. And about 8.5 
million people live in buildings where solar power systems are used to produce 
electricity or heat."

> have killed myself knocking the snow off. When the $3000 batteries failed

Nobody is doing that here, and almost nobody uses batteries.

> after only 4 years of use, the system was rendered useless. There was so

If you're using batteries, make sure you've got the right chargers,
and the right battery type (e.g. FeNi and not Pb).

> much electronics overhead that the cost of the panels was less than 50% of
> the cost of the overall system.

Yes, solar inverter price curve needs to improve. I'm not going to use
inverters, but go low-voltage insular DC.
 
> I had much more luck with my gasoline generators.
> 
> Granted, you are probably talking about using the grid as your battery, and
> that's fine until the grid fails. There are plenty of gloom and doom grid

No, that's doing okay as long as there's enough insolation.
You're only down if the grid is down, *and* the sun is down.

> people out there, you might get along with them Eugen.

I don't know what grid people are, but in most developing
countries the grid is unreliable, and in e.g. US the grid
is becoming too unreliable for many operations. At the
very least I'd like to be able to run the gas burner if
the grid is down, and also power a mission-crtical core
of services.
 
> > I would be looking into geopolymers, and in just low-embedded-energy
> > structures in general. You have to crunch the numbers whether a steel
> > frame house with glass foam/carbon insulation is going to ROI over a
> > cob construction, or some advanced low-tech things I've seen on a
> > certain subreddit.
> >
> 
> I think it's a reasonable area of research to figure out how to use
> atmospheric CO2 to build walls and stuff. I'll leave it at that.

Yes, many people build with wood. I dislike wood for fire safety reasons.
In terms of atmospheric CO2 fixation, I'd look into biochar for sequestering
and synfuels scrubbed from flue gas and atmospheric CO2.

Geopolymers instead of Portland cement for concrete give you a lot
more bang for the buck.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20130913/1ca1f214/attachment.bin>