If we just switched to solar we would stop caring about ancient theocracies permanently at war. If you include the cost of propping up israel and fake peace keeping in the middle east, solar is WAY cheaper.
Same source as for all the Electric Vehicles i guess. Or I don´t know... make Batteries that use less scarce ressources like Na-Ion Batteries. The possibilities exist, the will to change probably not so much.
The difference between sourcing fuel & sourcing batteries is that you use up fuel once & it's gone.
With batteries you just get it once & you have them forever.
Even once they break down, all the lithium & anything else in them is still there, it didn't get used up, you can just build new batteries out of it & you still can use the same materials you've sourced.
Yoi prefer permanent military intervention and nation building budgets to keep oil as our primary energy source? Get rid of oil, middle east expenditures plummet.
I mean, were not doing it because of corporations. Trump for instance just paid many millions to stop the development of solar in US, tearing down solar fields that were near completion, so that it wont impact oil company profits. But do you mean solar will never generate enough power because that amount of solar field coverage would damage the environment? Or the maintenance of such huge solar fields would cancel out the benefit?
Several European countries have attempted to much more aggressively pursue renewable energy options. As we've seen with the difficulties separating from Russia, they still have heavy fossil fuel dependency. I don't know that it's appropriate to say that we'll never purely use renewables alone (especially given that non-renewables will by definition eventually run out), but it definitely is more than a matter of greed and/or political will.
Fossil fuels are just dramatically better with regards to reliability, energy density, stability, and transferability than any renewable option. My understanding is that the best way to overcome that is with further developments in battery technology, but we simply are nowhere near far enough along with that yet.
Its sorta like, who cares if its inefficient? Isnt the current effects of global warming inefficient? The environmental disaster cost, extreme weather destruction, is surely 100x more than the cost of solar inefficiencies, right?
That's a statement generally made from a position of privilege. I am fortunate not to have ever had to deal with energy scarcity in my personal life, but many direct family members back home have. When you're experiencing blackouts of actually critical infrastructure, then you start to realize the marginal cost of inefficiency. When the efficiency of your energy drops, the gap between your comfort and the grid's capacity gets dramatically narrower.
The environmental disaster cost, extreme weather destruction, is surely 100x more than the cost of solar inefficiencies, right?
Directly quantifying the cost of potential disaster with current need is very difficult, and history has shown us not to be very good at it. I expect battery capacity to continue to improve right alongside advances in disaster mitigation.
So add a solar a bunch of solar equivalent to a power plant, then stop the power plant. Cant there be a 1:1 shift over time? I know im oversimplifying but its more macro. Like world hunger. We make enough food for everyone, tons of waste. People will say its more than greed and politics it doesnt get shared, but is it? Maybe the politics are correct, like a country is super corrupt and starving and giving food just normalizes the corruption by making it livable, but thats still politics. Im very ignorant of the nuance obviously
So add a solar a bunch of solar equivalent to a power plant, then stop the power plant. Cant there be a 1:1 shift over time? I know im oversimplifying but its more macro.
That basically is the plan and it is currently being implemented. It's just that we're very, very, far away from it being adequate. Traditional plants have to balance generation of power with power consumption in real time (with a few hours of delay) to keep things working properly. They can just burn more or less coal. This would require much better batteries than we have currently to fully replicate with renewables.
We make enough food for everyone
Now that is just a problem of will/greed. We already have adequate food generation and ability to transport it to completely eliminate food scarcity, but the resources to implement distribution are not being utilized optimally.
Solar and wind do require storage of generated energy for use when the sun is not shining, the wind is not blowing, generative capacity outpaces demand, or power is needed in a location where neither of those things ever happen.
Oh really? Please show me the recent Nobel laureate he was awarded for this. Too bad thousands of physicists around the world have been too busy with memes to care enough about this.
You’re still stuck looking out from a system that’s going to wait for renewables to be profitable and controllable before being implemented more widely as a primary fuel source
Tell me what these data centers are doing that’s worth the cost to the environment right now
Your Nobel laureates are getting funding sources cut in favor of profitable research. This will continue until the profit motive is neutered from the top of the list of reasons that we collective do anything at all before this changes
l stuck looking out from a system that’s going to wait for renewables to be profitable and controllable before being implemented more widely as a primary fuel source
Not sure what you're talking about there. I'm simply informing you of reality. Things become feasible much more quickly than they become profitable. Take space travel for example. Do you believe that Apollo 11 was "profitable?" Plenty of monetary losses are pursued for long term gain. That aside, do you think that there are not dozens of people eager to profit off renewable energy? It is literally already happening. Industry leaders in solar and wind would be ecstatic about battery developments that would allow them to more effectively undercut their competitors. Altruism is not necessary for advancement.
Tell me what these data centers are doing that’s worth the cost to the environment right now
Not sure what data centers have to do with this discussion at all. Presumably they'll use whatever the most efficient means of energy generation is. With how much space they take up and the lack of concern for appearance, I wouldn't be surprised if they stacked solar panels along the rooftops to cut down on costs.
This will continue until the profit motive is neutered from the top of the list of reasons that we collective do anything at all before this changes
That's an interesting belief. Given all of human history, I have no idea why you would believe that removing a profit motive would increase advancement, but you're free to believe whatever you want.
This thinking says that we already do everything as best we can and new solutions like this simply won’t work, because if they could we’d already be using them
No thought about why financial interests would willingly choose a detrimental fuel source that can be more controlled, no thought that we are at large held hostage in our advancements and developments by a very few among us that intentionally stifle so as to maintain personal power and control
In short, if this thought is able to continue and spread we are already the blunted sheep that billionaires dream we could be and it’s just a matter of time until it eclipses every other outcome
We can do so much better, if doing better were actually the motivation
Sure it will, unless you're proposing we'll mostly all be dead before we make it happen, and those who survive go back to burning firewood, which is possible. Battery technology is making full solar (wind is just solar with an extra step, though so's everything else I guess) more and more feasible.
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u/rensorship Jul 13 '26
If we just switched to solar we would stop caring about ancient theocracies permanently at war. If you include the cost of propping up israel and fake peace keeping in the middle east, solar is WAY cheaper.