It is a closed system. Energy in -> Energy out. No magic.
What this means is that we don't get to claim "and then a miracle occurs" when proposing a solutions. This is exactly what all so-called solutions boil down to. Including what you are talking about.
You are citing the total energy landing on a hemisphere and completely ignoring that we can't harvest even a small fraction of that. Solar energy is very, very far from free. I built a 13 kW array on my property, I can assure you it was not free. I can also assure likely produced far more CO2 than it will ever save us. This is where you need to understand manufacturing and construction. I won't even go into the shit I had to go through with the County of Los Angeles. I have 64,000 POUNDS of concrete anchoring this array to the ground --which LA County forced upon me. How much CO2 do you think it cost to produce, transport and install that? How about the non-trivial structure it is mounted on? I could go on.
This idea that solar energy is free is just plain silly.
You are refusing to read one of the most scientifically honest papers ever done on the question of whether or not solar energy (actually, all renewables combined) can stop atmospheric CO2 build-up and reverse it and you actually want to school me on having a valid argument.
And, speaking of energy vs. power. Lots of sunlight falls above and below latitudes where converting it into other usable forms of energy is just pointless. If you want to be honest about solar energy, well, you have to do the math. It isn't what you think it is. Do you even have solar?
Here's the output of my 13 kW array on an average day:
Do you see what happens? No, it isn't magical juju beans. You can't quote some theoretical number and actually believe this stuff is usable.
Besides, you could convert the entire planet to the most optimal forms of solar and wind power and you would still do nothing to stop atmospheric CO2 accumulation. Not sure why you are even arguing about solar. It's pointless.
> I really get the feeling that you don’t understand how power relates to energy. What are you trying to say about peak power capacity and charging of cars? You do know that not all cars are driven at exactly the same time or are charged at exactly the same time?
That's very funny. I have a nasty habit. I do not open my mouth unless I know what I am talking about. Which means I go way --ridiculously so-- out of my way to research things as far as necessary in order to understand and verify my claims. In the case of cars charging in the US, I actually developed a mathematical model that included behavioral elements and charging cars across our various time zones.
This, for example, is one of the outputs of the analysis:
This includes considering such things as a portion of the fleet fast-charging while others slow charge. I considers the effect of people going to work and coming home at different times across our six time zones, etc. I am not typing stuff I pull out of my ass my friend. You can either make the effort to understand and attempt to do your own math or just ignore it and believe whatever you might wish.
The only thing that would be better than this model would be to write more complex behavioral simulation code and take into account far more variables than I did. I'll do that one day when I have the time. I don't think the end-result will be radically different from the simpler model.
Like I said, unlike most people, I go very far towards actually understanding things before I open my mouth.
Back to my nasty habit. I said I do not open my mouth unless I know what I am talking about and I do enough research to confirm it. This also means I am constantly checking my assumptions.
Back to energy and electric vehicles. I told you that my models predicted a requirement for a massive increase in energy generation capacity to be able to go to full electric vehicles. I then shared an image from one of my simulation model run calculations. This one:
It shows a "new energy" need in the range of roughly 900 to 1,400 GW. Unimaginable. Right? That's over a thousand 1 GW class nuclear power plants.
I am delusional. Right?
Well, I decided to, once again, check my assumptions and math. They make sense to me. And then, looking around some more, I came across this from earlier this year:
Here you have Elon Musk saying (paraphrasing) "If we convert all of our transportation to electric, electricity demand more than doubles". He goes on to explain that it isn't just about generation, it is, as I said, about transportation as well (which really means it is about POWER, not energy).
So, what does "more than doubles" mean?
Well, let's start with what our current energy generation capacity is in the US:
Elon's "more than doubles" means we need more than 1,200 GW in new energy generation capacity. Interestingly enough, my model gave a range of between 900 GW and 1,400 GW. I created these models about five years ago.
We don't get to use all the solar energy landing on the planet. Not even close.
Why?
Because, if you did, you would kill every single forest and all of agriculture. You would kill every single animal. You would likely kill the oceans. You might kill bacteria, insects and seriously disrupt weather. I can't even think about all the variables that would be deeply disturbed if humanity decided we are going to attempt to use a big chunk of what solar energy lands on the planet.
And blocking it from space? Seriously? Again, refer to the prior paragraph, let's go ahead and kill everything on earth.
These ideas might sound good after a beer or two but are nothing less than laughable once someone sits down and really puts pen to paper.
We are proposing to mess with forces we can't possibly understand. I have said this many times, we can't even take care of small-scale ecosystems and we are actually lending credence to nut-cases suggesting such things as deploying devices in space to block the sun. Wonderful.
What this means is that we don't get to claim "and then a miracle occurs" when proposing a solutions. This is exactly what all so-called solutions boil down to. Including what you are talking about.
You are citing the total energy landing on a hemisphere and completely ignoring that we can't harvest even a small fraction of that. Solar energy is very, very far from free. I built a 13 kW array on my property, I can assure you it was not free. I can also assure likely produced far more CO2 than it will ever save us. This is where you need to understand manufacturing and construction. I won't even go into the shit I had to go through with the County of Los Angeles. I have 64,000 POUNDS of concrete anchoring this array to the ground --which LA County forced upon me. How much CO2 do you think it cost to produce, transport and install that? How about the non-trivial structure it is mounted on? I could go on.
This idea that solar energy is free is just plain silly.
You are refusing to read one of the most scientifically honest papers ever done on the question of whether or not solar energy (actually, all renewables combined) can stop atmospheric CO2 build-up and reverse it and you actually want to school me on having a valid argument.
And, speaking of energy vs. power. Lots of sunlight falls above and below latitudes where converting it into other usable forms of energy is just pointless. If you want to be honest about solar energy, well, you have to do the math. It isn't what you think it is. Do you even have solar?
Here's the output of my 13 kW array on an average day:
https://i.imgur.com/LTMNDO1.png
Do you see what happens? No, it isn't magical juju beans. You can't quote some theoretical number and actually believe this stuff is usable.
Besides, you could convert the entire planet to the most optimal forms of solar and wind power and you would still do nothing to stop atmospheric CO2 accumulation. Not sure why you are even arguing about solar. It's pointless.
> I really get the feeling that you don’t understand how power relates to energy. What are you trying to say about peak power capacity and charging of cars? You do know that not all cars are driven at exactly the same time or are charged at exactly the same time?
That's very funny. I have a nasty habit. I do not open my mouth unless I know what I am talking about. Which means I go way --ridiculously so-- out of my way to research things as far as necessary in order to understand and verify my claims. In the case of cars charging in the US, I actually developed a mathematical model that included behavioral elements and charging cars across our various time zones.
This, for example, is one of the outputs of the analysis:
https://i.imgur.com/wTwm82a.png
This includes considering such things as a portion of the fleet fast-charging while others slow charge. I considers the effect of people going to work and coming home at different times across our six time zones, etc. I am not typing stuff I pull out of my ass my friend. You can either make the effort to understand and attempt to do your own math or just ignore it and believe whatever you might wish.
The only thing that would be better than this model would be to write more complex behavioral simulation code and take into account far more variables than I did. I'll do that one day when I have the time. I don't think the end-result will be radically different from the simpler model.
Like I said, unlike most people, I go very far towards actually understanding things before I open my mouth.
Hey. Live long and prosper.