To me the most bizarre conspiracy theory aspect is, that they consider governments capable of large scale conspiracies. But if you’re in the mood for some more, check chemtrails theories. You won’t be disappointed.

Awesome, I win! But seriously, I do hope we pull something off ASAP, being hydrogen or some sort of battery or whatever.

Let’s continue the conversation after a couple of years?

I guess we are stating the same, just from different perspectives. About Germany, you are correct that it isn’t just their push towards renewables, it was a combination of ditching nuclear power and going full renewables. The real world outcome was huge pollution. That was indeed reduced by renewables (each year more) but still, it was enormous and it’s still pretty huge and will be for a foreseeable future unless they come with enough surplus of renewables and huge energy storage. I don’t see the later coming soon, though. The France does it right, they rely on nuclear.

You say (correct me if I’m wrong) that renewables (even without storage) are reducing emissions because they reduce fossil fuels usage, and you are definitely right. I’m saying that that’s not enough, we have to ditch fossil fuels entirely and if/when that occurs, renewables without storage are not that useful since we will have to rely on stable non-co2-emission power source - which is only nuclear today.

Sorry to go so hard on this

Hey, it’s a healthy debate.

Edit: formatting

You think? I’m saying that we can have a strategy, but that doesn’t guarantee the outcome. Again, show me a city scale energy storage today. So, until we have one, it’s vaporware. Basically this strategy is based on what exactly? Hope?

Strategy doesn’t mean it will be actually implemented or it’s the best. For example, Ursula instructed the transportation guy to try to implement Hyperloop. Shall I say more? :) There is also strategy to ditch fossil fuel cars soon…

I don’t have enough hardware knowledge to dispute that, but I have a feeling that’s not that easy to gain massive performance boost. If I recall correctly, the biggest Apple’s ARM CPU advantage has to do with fixed instruction length whereas x86 is variable. Fixed one gives you an prediction advantage because you exactly know how many instructions are in cache and where are they located - something along this. But let’s hope for the better.

Germany enters the chat…

Sure, I agree that it helps, but only as long as you are emitting co2 as an alternative. Not sure whether comparison to USA is a good one since they ditched new nuclear plants after Three Mile Island accident. Try comparing against France though - they are the greenest and most reliable energy producer out there (maybe Scandinavian countries are better, but they have excellent predispositions). And then we have Germany, which went diehard renewable with the side effect of becoming one of the biggest European polluter.

Could be, however hydrogen is really tough to handle plus green generation is around 50% efficiency (something like that). Also imagine having huge hydrogen volume and there is a spark…

I guess it’s time to get rid of legacy stuff in modern chips. If nothing else, to make them cheaper to produce. Older instruction sets can still be emulated, just like Apple did it. Said that, I doubt that there will be massive performance gains just from this because it’s still the same architecture, but let’s hope if this actually sees the light.

I can guarantee you that there are conditions when sun and wind aren’t producing a thing or very low output, like during night you are at mercy of wind (hydro is another story, is more stable but even there we experience droughts). So, what do you do when all three (night, no wind and drought) hit you like for a week?

Edit: typo

Are they, though? Can you list some bigger storage facilities based on either H or batteries? Like ones that would power a city for few days, for example.

Fossil fuels end up doing the work of balancing the grid during times when wind and solar are low. That’s not ideal, but a world where fossil fuels are used to balance renewable provision is much better than a world where they’re the primary energy source.

That’s true, but only as long as your primary source/balancing source are fossil fuels. I can imagine a lot of them being burned during short and cloudy winter days + all nights in this scenario. If we want to avoid CO2 emissions, nuclear pps seems like the best choice today. But then we don’t need nearly as much renewables. Tricky situation, even worse for countries without much wind.

I work in the UK energy sector, and that’s definitely not true! About 1/3 of our energy comes from wind which is somewhat but mostly not stored.

Yep, because you are still relaying on fossil fuels and can adjust their output quite dynamically. But the more renewables power you have, the more fossil fuels you’ll burn when renewables aren’t producing.

Makes sense?

Yes, exactly, today we don’t have a viable solution for large scale energy storage, perhaps we’ll find something useful and economically viable (though price shouldn’t be the factor since we are talking about devastating future if we continue the way we are) in future.

Yes, but where you will be storing the excess energy?

Yes, pumped hydro is really a niche option. As you said, it requires specific terrain - good luck when you have a flat country or no water nearby. It also tends to destroy the nature to some extent.

I think the ramifications of what Israel did will go far far beyond fear in non west countries. We entered the stage when you can’t trust your device anymore to not explode when some state (or non-state) actor would deem you disposable. Everybody should be concerned when they receive a phone call. If nothing else, it should change the way we fly - now security will annoy you with prohibiting bringing even water on airplane. What now? We should travel without any electronic device? Heck, even China didn’t go that far (west is banning their devices mostly for economic purposes even though they mimic them as ‘security’).

Yep, #metoo, though I started with terminal. I still use GUI but mostly only for visualizing history.

But where do we store the energy is the question. Without storage renewables aren’t that useful.