[ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

[spike at rainier66.com]

>… On Behalf Of Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat

Subject: Re: [ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

 

The reason I posted that tweet from the LA mayor: why would anyone need to unplug unused appliances?  If they are unused, what difference would it make if they were plugged in?

 

spike

 

>…Spike, Sorry to hear about the family member!

 

We are hoping for the best there.

 

>…The reason they're asking you to unplug unused appliances is that many modern appliances still drain some current even if turned off.   They're not truly off in the sense of an open circuit.  It adds up over an entire population…

 

Ja, I think that’s it, but it would only apply to stereos, TVs and stuff with clocks in it.  I have an alternate explanation kinda.  The power leakage thru hundreds, perhaps thousands of devices while turned off, hasta be low compared to even one air conditioner.  I might need to look it up, but the big power users in my house are the AC and laundry (I have gas water heating and drying.)  I set up a rack in an unused bedroom to reduce the use of that dryer.  I freely grant that plenty of people have no spare bedroom.  We didn’t get blacked out last night! (yay! (never thought I would be yaying for not having my power turned off.))

 

My theory is that the mayor fully intends to propose stuff that has the maximum psychological impact on the populace, kinda like ordering restaurants in California restaruants to not serve customers a glass of water unless they ask for it during the water crisis.  This would encourage them to turn off their irrigation systems and let their grass perish.  Restaurants cheerfully complied: they saved money and effort, sold more beer and soda.

 

If they ask for something to save power that is a pain in the ass (to plug stuff back in every time you go to use that appliance) it has a psychological impact which warms up the public to vote to approve a new powerplant.

 

We hit the snooze button in 2000 by adding a few small natural gas plants and tax incentivizing the public phase over to LED lighting (I did about that time.)  But those were only postponing what was coming eventually: we need more and better prime-movers.  Small natural gas burners are too expensive to carry the load.  Big ones would help.

 

This was coming sooner or later: Mr. Musk has been stamping out those pricey little hotwatts as fast as he can hurl them out the door.  We will need more power plants, more storage, more transmission lines, more everything having to do with power, and even then, we can be sure that coal plants and existing gas plants will not be leaving us anytime soon.  We need nukes, oh how we need nukes.

 

spike

  

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200907/ad87ed7d/attachment.htm>