
It’s Not Climate Change – It’s Everything Change - ph0rque
https://medium.com/matter/it-s-not-climate-change-it-s-everything-change-8fd9aa671804
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norea-armozel
It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if we'll ever get over the hump of
the looming energy crisis. I'm not for an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach, but
I honestly don't think there's going to be a solution to the energy crisis
that doesn't include some form of nuclear energy production (fission or
fusion). For fulfilling high load near instant demand on power only nuclear
(and hydroelectric where can you build a dam) seems to compare to oil and coal
in that regard. Solar doesn't cut it at least with our battery technology and
our climate (some parts of the US only get around 150 sunny days a year like
Minnesota). Wind looks to be good for helping with voltage regulation but like
solar I bet that in areas like Minnesota it won't work (Kansas? Sure, we get
plenty of wind from the north or south depending on the season). And biofuels
don't look good to me since it becomes a choice between eating or powering
your TV set (eating always wins).

So, nuclear will have to be the backbone of a new energy economy if we're to
advance the standard of living for developing nations and to maintain the
standard of living for the developed nations as is. Anything less than that
will probably wind up forcing everyone back down to 19th or 18th century
levels of productivity and standards of living.

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ph0rque
This is another one of those articles that ignores many of the positive
developments in progress, unfortunately.

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jbeales
Did you read the whole thing? It took a while, but the last couple paragraphs
were spent discussing ways things are getting better.

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ph0rque
I did. That's my criticism of the article: only a small percentage of the
article is spent discussing how we can, and are, improving things. Even then,
there's an implied mistrust of those improvements: at one point, renewable
energy is put in quotes as though it's not really renewable.

~~~
jbeales
I guess that's legitimate.

Let's turn this into a positive. I would love to hear more about how things
are improving. Do you have more examples?

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ph0rque
Sure! Here are a couple things:

* Solar is winning. By 2030, solar electricity might cost as lost as $0.02 - $0.04 per kilowatt hour: several times less expensive than other kinds of electricity. Of course, there will be other costs, but it will still be the cheapest source of electricity for a lot of regions. Source: [http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-...](http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-cheap/)

* Well, the what happens when the sun goes down and the wind dies down? You need storage. Good news on that front, too: electric vehicle batteries are getting cheaper much faster than expected: [http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/electric-vehicle-batt...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/electric-vehicle-batteries-are-getting-cheaper-much-faster-than-we-expected/)

* The author mentioned about the big animal die-off because wilderness is shrinking. In the US, wilderness is in fact increasing; we don't need as much land for farming as we used to. Source: [http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/issue-5/the-ret...](http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/issue-5/the-return-of-nature)

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jbeales
So I took a look at those. I can't argue with the Ars article on batteries,
although I wonder if it's really worth using Li-Ion batteries for homes when
lead-acid is super simple, and I think cheap, (I'm not sure if the acid's
recyclable, though).

The first linked article talks about storage, not generation - is it the
correct link? If we can get solar into the $0.02 - $0.04 range we'll have
largely won the battle.

On shrinking wilderness, I'm not sure about some of the methodology in that
paper. For land use in agriculture it seems to have tailored the timescale
studied to support the theory that we're using less land for agriculture, but
even the selective charts show we're almost at peak corn acreage and headed
up-and-to-the-right. The argument about saying cubic yards of wood production
per hectare of forest is going up was missing a timescale, and charting wood
used per dollar of GDP doesn't really tell us anything about how much wood is
actually being used, it just makes a chart that looks like its heading in the
right direction. I think the US may be seeing less land under agriculture, but
I think a lot more food is being imported from Central & South America, and
Asia, areas that were not discussed in relation to area under agriculture. I
didn't look up the reputation of thebreakthrough.org, but the paper read
somewhat like a "we're doing fine - stop worrying" study influenced by parties
that don't want rapid change.

There have been some major wins on the wilderness vs. non-wilderness front,
though. Many waterways in North America is probably cleaner than it was 30
years ago, (think of the Great Lakes, and around NYC. I'm not sure about the
Mississippi, Columbia, or Colorado river systems). Acid rain on the east coast
& central Canada has largely been dealt with, and some species are even coming
back to places they've been gone from for years, (I caught a salmon on
vacation in BC last year for the first time in 20 years).

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ph0rque
Yeah, the first linked article mentions the 2 - 4 cent range in one of the
last paragraphs.

As far as the batteries go, there's a startup developing saltwater batteries:
safe, cheap, and reliable. They're aiming to compete with lead-acid batteries,
and are aiming precisely for residential applications (as well as larger-scale
ones): [http://www.aquionenergy.com/](http://www.aquionenergy.com/)

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jbeales
Found it. Apparently I'm blind. That sounds great, hopefully those predictions
actually happen.

I've heard of Saltwater batteries before, hopefully they live up to the
promise. My grandmother lived off-grid for several years with a
wind/solar/battery/diesel-for-emergencies/wood-for-heating/propane-for-cooking
system. It's amazing how easy it is to generate your own electricity, the up-
front cost is just a little expensive.

