Evolution

[Tommy Tainant]

Why cant renewables make the same advances that have been made in other technologies ?

They absolutely can. They aren't there yet, but there are technologies under development that show promise.

However, the great strides in computer and telecommunications technology in the last 40 years didn't come through government subsidies and a forced abandonment of existing technologies. Those advances were the result of innovative companies allowing the market to decide which technologies succeeded and which failed.

At any point in the past 40 years, if the government had decided that one technology was preferable over another, and forced adaptation, we would have been stuck with ISDN, or analog cell phones, or packet switched networks instead of the much more advanced technologies we have today.

You compare technological development to evolution and it's an apt analogy. Evolution is wildly unpredictable. It is brutal and requires the death of anything which isn't suited to the environment. Any attempt to subvert the will of evolution will end up in a vastly inferior result.

Invest in the future, but stop trying to destroy the past before it's ready to be destroyed. When the answer comes along, the old ways will be discarded without any questions and it won't require government subsidies or a government mandate.

Jesus fucking Christ, man, how can you spew such drivel? The government and government supported educational institutions created the web.

Who invented the internet?

The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network. The technology continued to grow in the 1970s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a communications model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks. ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. While it’s often confused with the Internet itself, the web is actually just the most common means of accessing data online in the form of websites and hyperlinks. The web helped popularize the Internet among the public, and served as a crucial step in developing the vast trove of information that most of us now access on a daily basis.

Your stupid ideology would have prevent the trans-continental railroad from being built. It would have prevented the Homestead act that settled the Great Plains and the West. The government has not dictated how we get energy from the wind and sun, just that we do it. Nor have has the government dictated who builds and sells the mill and panels here. Or that you cannot heat your water with black plastic panels. The government, and rightly so, simply is encouraging getting power without polluting the water or air. The coal plants are going out of business because the could not compete with natural gas, and now cannot compete with solar and wind. The market is now deciding that we will use the renewables in the future.

The internet has made knowledge available on a scale never seen before and yet we live in an age of idiocy.

 

[Old Rocks]

Renewables can never replace fossil fuels runs the mantra.

Of course they can. The only problem is that they are still too expensive. As soon as we have the technology to make them as affordable as coal, we will be there.

Older posters will remember that we used to have tv repairmen. Its true. As a child they were like living gods to me because the telly was always breaking down.

Of course they were! When you were a kid your TV was always breaking down because it used vacuum tubes that wore out and instead of auto-steering and adjusting circuits, they had all kinds of little dials and knobs on the front, back and inside that most people didn't know how to adjust.

I can see a future where we can generate our own power and are free of the shackles of the big corporations.

Dude, we are already there. If you have the money you can generate all the electricity you want through solar and other means, use it free, even sell the surplus you don't need back to the power company and they have to buy it!

An analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance combines knowledge of planned energy projects with economic forecasting in order to predict what’s going to happen in the power sector over the coming decades. And the prediction is one of plummeting costs for renewables, with estimates suggesting that by 2040 prices will fall by 66 percent for solar, 47 percent for onshore wind, and 71 percent for offshore wind.

What really matters, of course, is how those prices will challenge incumbent energy technologies. Solar, the more expensive of the two major renewables, already rivals coal in cost terms in Germany, Australia, the U.S., Spain, and Italy, according to BNEF. But more striking is the fact that this is also expected to be the case in China and India by 2021.

Those milestones will surely lead to greater adoption of clean energy. And the report predicts that of the $10.2 trillion expected to be invested into power generation between now and 2040, 72 percent will be channeled into renewables.

Plummeting clean energy prices are about to beat out coal around the world

You can, right now, buy solar panels for less than $0.60 per watt. You can build a 50 kw/hr storage battery for about $5000. And both costs are coming down as we post.

 

[Old Rocks]

Why cant renewables make the same advances that have been made in other technologies ?

They absolutely can. They aren't there yet, but there are technologies under development that show promise.

However, the great strides in computer and telecommunications technology in the last 40 years didn't come through government subsidies and a forced abandonment of existing technologies. Those advances were the result of innovative companies allowing the market to decide which technologies succeeded and which failed.

At any point in the past 40 years, if the government had decided that one technology was preferable over another, and forced adaptation, we would have been stuck with ISDN, or analog cell phones, or packet switched networks instead of the much more advanced technologies we have today.

You compare technological development to evolution and it's an apt analogy. Evolution is wildly unpredictable. It is brutal and requires the death of anything which isn't suited to the environment. Any attempt to subvert the will of evolution will end up in a vastly inferior result.

Invest in the future, but stop trying to destroy the past before it's ready to be destroyed. When the answer comes along, the old ways will be discarded without any questions and it won't require government subsidies or a government mandate.

Jesus fucking Christ, man, how can you spew such drivel? The government and government supported educational institutions created the web.

Who invented the internet?

The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network. The technology continued to grow in the 1970s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a communications model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks. ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. While it’s often confused with the Internet itself, the web is actually just the most common means of accessing data online in the form of websites and hyperlinks. The web helped popularize the Internet among the public, and served as a crucial step in developing the vast trove of information that most of us now access on a daily basis.

Your stupid ideology would have prevent the trans-continental railroad from being built. It would have prevented the Homestead act that settled the Great Plains and the West. The government has not dictated how we get energy from the wind and sun, just that we do it. Nor have has the government dictated who builds and sells the mill and panels here. Or that you cannot heat your water with black plastic panels. The government, and rightly so, simply is encouraging getting power without polluting the water or air. The coal plants are going out of business because the could not compete with natural gas, and now cannot compete with solar and wind. The market is now deciding that we will use the renewables in the future.

The internet has made knowledge available on a scale never seen before and yet we live in an age of idiocy.

Tommy, access does not mean it does not take effort and work to understand what is available. And to most 'Conservatives' in the US, work is truly a four letter word. They worship ignorance because it is effortless.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Solar Tech is OLDER than the mobile phone. OLDER than the internet. It's MATURE technology. Don't EXPECT leaps and bounds. It's close to the theoretical limits. YOU need to make the sun shine at night. Or during snowy weeks and rainy days. Same with wind conversion. It's basically a turbine generator. Been around for fucking forever. Started with water pumps in the land of Wooden Shoes ages ago.

You are NEVER gonna run a survival 21st society on these 2 methods. They are NOT reliable. Can not be contracted for because delivery is not guaranteed. And STORING electricity is an Enviro nightmare.

Use them as the "SUPPLEMENTS" as they are. They are NOT --- alternatives.

Never say "never".

How long before we have "renewable" jet travel?

5 years max.

How's it going to work?

Add the lithium glass Goodnough battery, and you have a winner, and a taste of the future.

Where will the flight attendants (and passengers) sit?

 

[Tommy Tainant]

Why cant renewables make the same advances that have been made in other technologies ?

They absolutely can. They aren't there yet, but there are technologies under development that show promise.

However, the great strides in computer and telecommunications technology in the last 40 years didn't come through government subsidies and a forced abandonment of existing technologies. Those advances were the result of innovative companies allowing the market to decide which technologies succeeded and which failed.

At any point in the past 40 years, if the government had decided that one technology was preferable over another, and forced adaptation, we would have been stuck with ISDN, or analog cell phones, or packet switched networks instead of the much more advanced technologies we have today.

You compare technological development to evolution and it's an apt analogy. Evolution is wildly unpredictable. It is brutal and requires the death of anything which isn't suited to the environment. Any attempt to subvert the will of evolution will end up in a vastly inferior result.

Invest in the future, but stop trying to destroy the past before it's ready to be destroyed. When the answer comes along, the old ways will be discarded without any questions and it won't require government subsidies or a government mandate.

Jesus fucking Christ, man, how can you spew such drivel? The government and government supported educational institutions created the web.

Who invented the internet?

The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network. The technology continued to grow in the 1970s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a communications model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks. ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. While it’s often confused with the Internet itself, the web is actually just the most common means of accessing data online in the form of websites and hyperlinks. The web helped popularize the Internet among the public, and served as a crucial step in developing the vast trove of information that most of us now access on a daily basis.

Your stupid ideology would have prevent the trans-continental railroad from being built. It would have prevented the Homestead act that settled the Great Plains and the West. The government has not dictated how we get energy from the wind and sun, just that we do it. Nor have has the government dictated who builds and sells the mill and panels here. Or that you cannot heat your water with black plastic panels. The government, and rightly so, simply is encouraging getting power without polluting the water or air. The coal plants are going out of business because the could not compete with natural gas, and now cannot compete with solar and wind. The market is now deciding that we will use the renewables in the future.

The internet has made knowledge available on a scale never seen before and yet we live in an age of idiocy.

Tommy, access does not mean it does not take effort and work to understand what is available. And to most 'Conservatives' in the US, work is truly a four letter word. They worship ignorance because it is effortless.

You know I believe that to be true. But one thing I have noticed is that your idiots are far more literate than ours. Their gibberish is generally spelt correctly.

 

[westwall]

Climate change deniers run a parallel line in disparaging alternate energy sources.

Renewables can never replace fossil fuels runs the mantra.

I dont get this standpoint.

I understand that we arent there yet in this respect but you can see it coming like a train down the track.

Consider this.

What does your current mobile phone do compared to the first one you owned ? And they get better every year.

What about your computer ? First one I bought was about 20 years ago and it was crap and cost a fortune. But I had a lot of fun with it.

In fact everything in your home is a 100 times better than it was a decade back. Older posters will remember that we used to have tv repairmen. Its true. As a child they were like living gods to me because the telly was always breaking down.

So my question is this.

Why cant renewables make the same advances that have been made in other technologies ?

I can see a future where we can generate our own power and are free of the shackles of the big corporations. Can you see it too ?

Anything is possible, but they have had 40 years of solar panel research and the theoretical maximum efficiency is still the same. Stuck at 24%, and no module EVER has even got to that point.

Geo thermal CAN be made to work, the only problem is you have to build your plants where the geysers are. That being said with fracking I have seen a lot of tech that could be transferred into geo thermal electricity generation through well drilling.

Hydrothermal is the best source of renewable electricity there is bar none. And it will remain that way for a looooong time.

Bio fuels use MORE fossil fuels than they create, so anyone advocating for them is stupid, and ignorant.

It will be big corporations that BUILD your renewables so clearly you didn't think that aspect through. No surprise there.

And, you support policies that ensure that the small corporations are put out of business so that the large corporations have no competition. That is the nature of globalism. So you are clearly both ignorant, and stupid!

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Why cant renewables make the same advances that have been made in other technologies ?

They absolutely can. They aren't there yet, but there are technologies under development that show promise.

However, the great strides in computer and telecommunications technology in the last 40 years didn't come through government subsidies and a forced abandonment of existing technologies. Those advances were the result of innovative companies allowing the market to decide which technologies succeeded and which failed.

At any point in the past 40 years, if the government had decided that one technology was preferable over another, and forced adaptation, we would have been stuck with ISDN, or analog cell phones, or packet switched networks instead of the much more advanced technologies we have today.

You compare technological development to evolution and it's an apt analogy. Evolution is wildly unpredictable. It is brutal and requires the death of anything which isn't suited to the environment. Any attempt to subvert the will of evolution will end up in a vastly inferior result.

Invest in the future, but stop trying to destroy the past before it's ready to be destroyed. When the answer comes along, the old ways will be discarded without any questions and it won't require government subsidies or a government mandate.

"However, the great strides in computer and telecommunications technology in the last 40 years didn't come through government subsidies and a forced abandonment of existing technologies. Those advances were the result of innovative companies allowing the market to decide which technologies succeeded and which failed."


Coupled with government subsidies to help bring them to market on a mass scale, and with much knowledge also resulting, historically, from a lot of military-funded research. It's a partnership. It's not just "one or the other".

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Why cant renewables make the same advances that have been made in other technologies ?

They absolutely can. They aren't there yet, but there are technologies under development that show promise.

However, the great strides in computer and telecommunications technology in the last 40 years didn't come through government subsidies and a forced abandonment of existing technologies. Those advances were the result of innovative companies allowing the market to decide which technologies succeeded and which failed.

At any point in the past 40 years, if the government had decided that one technology was preferable over another, and forced adaptation, we would have been stuck with ISDN, or analog cell phones, or packet switched networks instead of the much more advanced technologies we have today.

You compare technological development to evolution and it's an apt analogy. Evolution is wildly unpredictable. It is brutal and requires the death of anything which isn't suited to the environment. Any attempt to subvert the will of evolution will end up in a vastly inferior result.

Invest in the future, but stop trying to destroy the past before it's ready to be destroyed. When the answer comes along, the old ways will be discarded without any questions and it won't require government subsidies or a government mandate.

Jesus fucking Christ, man, how can you spew such drivel? The government and government supported educational institutions created the web.

Who invented the internet?

The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network. The technology continued to grow in the 1970s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a communications model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks. ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. While it’s often confused with the Internet itself, the web is actually just the most common means of accessing data online in the form of websites and hyperlinks. The web helped popularize the Internet among the public, and served as a crucial step in developing the vast trove of information that most of us now access on a daily basis.

Your stupid ideology would have prevent the trans-continental railroad from being built. It would have prevented the Homestead act that settled the Great Plains and the West. The government has not dictated how we get energy from the wind and sun, just that we do it. Nor have has the government dictated who builds and sells the mill and panels here. Or that you cannot heat your water with black plastic panels. The government, and rightly so, simply is encouraging getting power without polluting the water or air. The coal plants are going out of business because the could not compete with natural gas, and now cannot compete with solar and wind. The market is now deciding that we will use the renewables in the future.

The internet has made knowledge available on a scale never seen before and yet we live in an age of idiocy.

"The internet has made knowledge available on a scale never seen before and yet we live in an age of idiocy.

Because, 30 years ago, when you said something freakishly stupid, you were ridiculed and shunned. now, you can always get on the internet, say something freakishly stupid, and instantly find 1000 nodding morons to tell you how smart you are. And then, the borderline stupid person who is not quite 100% sure tghey want to commit to this freakishly stupid idea is soothed into getting off the fence by these 1000 fools. It's a feedback loop of stupid.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Why cant renewables make the same advances that have been made in other technologies ?

They absolutely can. They aren't there yet, but there are technologies under development that show promise.

However, the great strides in computer and telecommunications technology in the last 40 years didn't come through government subsidies and a forced abandonment of existing technologies. Those advances were the result of innovative companies allowing the market to decide which technologies succeeded and which failed.

At any point in the past 40 years, if the government had decided that one technology was preferable over another, and forced adaptation, we would have been stuck with ISDN, or analog cell phones, or packet switched networks instead of the much more advanced technologies we have today.

You compare technological development to evolution and it's an apt analogy. Evolution is wildly unpredictable. It is brutal and requires the death of anything which isn't suited to the environment. Any attempt to subvert the will of evolution will end up in a vastly inferior result.

Invest in the future, but stop trying to destroy the past before it's ready to be destroyed. When the answer comes along, the old ways will be discarded without any questions and it won't require government subsidies or a government mandate.

Jesus fucking Christ, man, how can you spew such drivel? The government and government supported educational institutions created the web.

Who invented the internet?

The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network. The technology continued to grow in the 1970s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a communications model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks. ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. While it’s often confused with the Internet itself, the web is actually just the most common means of accessing data online in the form of websites and hyperlinks. The web helped popularize the Internet among the public, and served as a crucial step in developing the vast trove of information that most of us now access on a daily basis.

Your stupid ideology would have prevent the trans-continental railroad from being built. It would have prevented the Homestead act that settled the Great Plains and the West. The government has not dictated how we get energy from the wind and sun, just that we do it. Nor have has the government dictated who builds and sells the mill and panels here. Or that you cannot heat your water with black plastic panels. The government, and rightly so, simply is encouraging getting power without polluting the water or air. The coal plants are going out of business because the could not compete with natural gas, and now cannot compete with solar and wind. The market is now deciding that we will use the renewables in the future.

The internet has made knowledge available on a scale never seen before and yet we live in an age of idiocy.

"The internet has made knowledge available on a scale never seen before and yet we live in an age of idiocy.

Because, 30 years ago, when you said something freakishly stupid, you were ridiculed and shunned. now, you can always get on the internet, say something freakishly stupid, and instantly find 1000 nodding <morons to tell you how smart you are. And then, the borderline stupid person who is not quite 100% sure tghey want to commit to this freakishly stupid idea is soothed into getting off the fence by these 1000 fools. It's a feedback loop of stupid.

From the notable Mark Twain quote "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on it's shoes." Ignorance supports itself and puts up barriers to knowledge for this purpose.

 

[toobfreak]

Solar, the more expensive of the two major renewables, already rivals coal in cost terms in Germany, Australia, the U.S., Spain, and Italy, according to BNEF. But more striking is the fact that this is also expected to be the case in China and India by 2021.

While it is true that Europe has inflated the cost of fossil fuel energy in an effort, as usual, to force consumers to adopt electricity and China is even thinking of banning the gasoline car to force electric, coal costs still remain low in the USA thanks to President Trump. I see many promising years ahead for gasoline and have no plans to abandon it, the environmental effects greatly blown out of proportion while the true consequences of alternate energies and especially electric cars being minimized.

However, the day they make electric cars practical as a competitive technology at an affordable price to the average person, I will be all over it; by its very nature, there are far less loses with an electric motor over internal combustion and the electric motor inherently converts nearly all of its energy to motion with little heat generated, while the gasoline engine loses up to 70% of its energy to useless heat.

EDIT: Point being that even with those vastly different efficiency curves, you can still make more power for less money with gas than you currently can with electric, and the failing is both in how we GENERATE electricity and how we STORE it within the car. Two big problems to solve.

 

[skookerasbil]

Renewables can never replace fossil fuels runs the mantra.

Of course they can. The only problem is that they are still too expensive. As soon as we have the technology to make them as affordable as coal, we will be there.

Older posters will remember that we used to have tv repairmen. Its true. As a child they were like living gods to me because the telly was always breaking down.

Of course they were! When you were a kid your TV was always breaking down because it used vacuum tubes that wore out and instead of auto-steering and adjusting circuits, they had all kinds of little dials and knobs on the front, back and inside that most people didn't know how to adjust.

I can see a future where we can generate our own power and are free of the shackles of the big corporations.

Dude, we are already there. If you have the money you can generate all the electricity you want through solar and other means, use it free, even sell the surplus you don't need back to the power company and they have to buy it!

An analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance combines knowledge of planned energy projects with economic forecasting in order to predict what’s going to happen in the power sector over the coming decades. And the prediction is one of plummeting costs for renewables, with estimates suggesting that by 2040 prices will fall by 66 percent for solar, 47 percent for onshore wind, and 71 percent for offshore wind.

What really matters, of course, is how those prices will challenge incumbent energy technologies. Solar, the more expensive of the two major renewables, already rivals coal in cost terms in Germany, Australia, the U.S., Spain, and Italy, according to BNEF. But more striking is the fact that this is also expected to be the case in China and India by 2021.

Those milestones will surely lead to greater adoption of clean energy. And the report predicts that of the $10.2 trillion expected to be invested into power generation between now and 2040, 72 percent will be channeled into renewables.

Plummeting clean energy prices are about to beat out coal around the world

You can, right now, buy solar panels for less than $0.60 per watt. You can build a 50 kw/hr storage battery for about $5000. And both costs are coming down as we post.

MIT Technology Review...............

C'mon now..........

When you see a lot of %'s and terms like "rise"......."less".........."expected"........."more"......"predicts"...........well you know you have the Disney version of expectations. Very few reports mirror the MIT report.

http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/14154/eia-releases-2017-energy-outlook-with-projections-to-2050

Oh.....the EIA report does not reference China which will increase coal production 50% by 2040!!