The Foldless Brain
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2021
Vlad, I know you've got your gulag list drawn up but you'd do the world a favor by adding the terminally online interns who run this account to it.
Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022): Thread 1 - Ukrainian Liars vs Russian Liars with Air and Artillery Superiority
- Thread starter HumanHive
- Start date
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- Joined
- Jun 24, 2020
He's an NYT columnist.
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2019
This is somehow the gayest thing a country has ever done. Fucking San Francisco could become a nation and still be less gay than this.
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2019
God I hate this kind of fairy tale faggotry.
If energy companies could turn a bigger profit out of renewables, they'd be doing it. Their entire business is generating energy at the lowest possible cost and selling it at the highest sustainable price to maximize profit. Don't just dismiss this as "corporate greed" -- think about why they can't eke out better profits from renewables than from fossils. Hint: it's because it's not actually any cheaper and is often more expensive.
There is literally no reason whatsoever a for-profit energy company would refuse to use a technology that can generate higher profit margins if it's available. None. Lower production cost means more profit. More profit is good. Turning down obvious avenues for higher profits means less profit. Less profit is bad.
It's not a matter of being mustache-twirling evil robber barons who personally spoon nuclear waste into each can of gruel they send to orphanages. It's a matter of looking at all the available technologies and realizing "this shit's expensive too" and going with the cheapest option. If renewables were cheaper, they'd be using them. They aren't, so they aren't using them.
Solar isn't nearly good enough yet to sustain America's electrical demands. Individual panels aren't very efficient yet, so you need a metric fuckton of them. They're not cheap either -- partly because they consume rare earth elements to produce. It can cost over $10k to install a system that can power a modestly-sized house. One house. Now scale that up to power a metro area of 1.5 million people.
It also requires absurd amounts of land. And massive infrastructure to monitor each individual panel and gather up all the electricity trickling from each panel into a central station to step up to high voltage to send to the grid. That's miles of electrical lines in a big mesh across multiple acres of land. It's a power station with tens of thousands of little generators. That has to be carefully coordinated and closely monitored. The cost of monitoring and maintenance on that alone would be astronomical.
That doesn't even get into the cost of maintaining potentially tens of thousands of solar panels constantly exposed to the elements. Y'know what wide open spaces have lots of? Wind and debris. Wind likes to pick up and carry debris and throw it around. That scratches the glass (or plastic) panels that protect the delicate solar collector wafers. Scratches reduce how much light can get through to the wafers, which quickly starts to reduce their power output by a noticeable amounts. No matter how good the materials are, that's going to happen, so you either have to have inspectors constantly driving around the entire field visually inspecting each panel or a sophisticated monitoring system to identify poorly-performing panels so you can dispatch workers to repair or replace the scratched surfaces. Then there's just straight up damage -- there's no guarantee a strong enough gust of wind won't just chuck a rock into a panel and smash it (or an airplane won't lose an engine that falls and crushes it).
The alternative -- solar towers with a field of mirrors reflecting sunlight at them to generate heat to produce electricity with conventional turbines -- have more potential since they take up a lot less space, are much cheaper than a 100-acre field of solar panels, and operate on well-established and efficient(ish) principles (we're pretty good now at the [whatever heat source]->steam->turbine->generator process), but aren't without their flaws either. They don't produce tons of power individually so you'll still need a parcel large enough for a facility to house the dozens you'd need to meet the region's energy needs. They share the same environmental vulnerabilities with solar panels -- those mirrors are fragile and lose efficiency as they're scratched, cracked or otherwise damaged. Plus they have to be constantly adjusted to keep the reflection angles right. And they melt birds.
Both solar options also share another major downside -- they only work during the day, and only work at their peak output in clear weather. Cloudy days drastically reduce solar panel output and completely stop solar towers (you need direct sunlight for that to work and clouds block it). Storms reduce solar panel output even further. Not to mention the potential damage storms can cause to expensive, delicate components that must stay outdoors and exposed for them to even work at all.
Using batteries to bank power overnight is unworkable at the required scale. The tech just sucks overall right now (expensive, not enough capacity, complex equipment for managing charge/discharge/conditioning cycles, material availability, fire/explosion risks, etc.), and we need some kind of major advancement in battery chemistry somehow to make it feasible.
The molten salt thermal plant you mention is pretty slick (storing heat for energy production during low solar output periods), and they've gotten it working in the field on a moderate scale, but for a facility big enough to power an entire region you'll need a very large-scale system and it'll have one hell of a whopper of a single point of failure -- big-ass tanks of molten salt. Leaks won't be too bad environmentally, but human flesh and bones melt quickly at those temperatures (so there's no direct intervention possible) and it's not exactly easy to replace lost molten salt. It's not just a matter of cleaning out the local supermarkets' stash of Morton's. You'd have to build any such facility into separate units so one thermal system eating shit won't drag the whole plant down with it. Of course, doing that means more expense and a modest reduction in overall efficiency.
Wind power works at all hours, but only if there's wind. The turbines are also godawful eye sores, expensive as hell to purchase, install and maintain, and have spectacularly destructive "failure modes." They're also not all that efficient yet, so again you need massive fields of the things to produce a meaningful amount of electricity with them. You're back to the solar panels scaling problem -- miles of electrical lines and signaling cables for monitoring and a constant need for expensive staff on-hand to conduct checks and make repairs as needed. They also fuck with birds, and attract tinfoil types who insist they hear magic sounds from the turbines that cause everything from impotence to cancer. They're full of shit, but they're litigious and annoying. That adds to the cost of operations.
Hydro's well established and very efficient, but are geographically restricted -- they can only be built where there's a water source with adequate flow to sustain the turbines, plus by their nature they have potentially major implications both upstream and downstream (you're creating a lake and creating a major flood risk downstream if something ever goes wrong). Geothermal is similarly limited in that there's only so many reliable geothermal vents out there to use in the first place. Tidal power is still years away from being practical for commercial energy production.
When you roll up all the up-front costs and maintenance costs involved in all these renewable energy sources, they end up being far more expensive than just digging up coal or natural gas to burn or nuclear material to put into reactors. If it weren't for litigious environmentalists around the world intentionally gumming up the works, nuclear power would be -- overwhelmingly -- the cheapest and most efficient way we have right now to generate electricity. But NIMBY and environmentalist types have made it absurdly costly and time-consuming to get rolling, so we've reverted back mostly to coal & natural gas. Good job, jackasses.
It also requires absurd amounts of land. And massive infrastructure to monitor each individual panel and gather up all the electricity trickling from each panel into a central station to step up to high voltage to send to the grid. That's miles of electrical lines in a big mesh across multiple acres of land. It's a power station with tens of thousands of little generators. That has to be carefully coordinated and closely monitored. The cost of monitoring and maintenance on that alone would be astronomical.
That doesn't even get into the cost of maintaining potentially tens of thousands of solar panels constantly exposed to the elements. Y'know what wide open spaces have lots of? Wind and debris. Wind likes to pick up and carry debris and throw it around. That scratches the glass (or plastic) panels that protect the delicate solar collector wafers. Scratches reduce how much light can get through to the wafers, which quickly starts to reduce their power output by a noticeable amounts. No matter how good the materials are, that's going to happen, so you either have to have inspectors constantly driving around the entire field visually inspecting each panel or a sophisticated monitoring system to identify poorly-performing panels so you can dispatch workers to repair or replace the scratched surfaces. Then there's just straight up damage -- there's no guarantee a strong enough gust of wind won't just chuck a rock into a panel and smash it (or an airplane won't lose an engine that falls and crushes it).
The alternative -- solar towers with a field of mirrors reflecting sunlight at them to generate heat to produce electricity with conventional turbines -- have more potential since they take up a lot less space, are much cheaper than a 100-acre field of solar panels, and operate on well-established and efficient(ish) principles (we're pretty good now at the [whatever heat source]->steam->turbine->generator process), but aren't without their flaws either. They don't produce tons of power individually so you'll still need a parcel large enough for a facility to house the dozens you'd need to meet the region's energy needs. They share the same environmental vulnerabilities with solar panels -- those mirrors are fragile and lose efficiency as they're scratched, cracked or otherwise damaged. Plus they have to be constantly adjusted to keep the reflection angles right. And they melt birds.
Both solar options also share another major downside -- they only work during the day, and only work at their peak output in clear weather. Cloudy days drastically reduce solar panel output and completely stop solar towers (you need direct sunlight for that to work and clouds block it). Storms reduce solar panel output even further. Not to mention the potential damage storms can cause to expensive, delicate components that must stay outdoors and exposed for them to even work at all.
Using batteries to bank power overnight is unworkable at the required scale. The tech just sucks overall right now (expensive, not enough capacity, complex equipment for managing charge/discharge/conditioning cycles, material availability, fire/explosion risks, etc.), and we need some kind of major advancement in battery chemistry somehow to make it feasible.
The molten salt thermal plant you mention is pretty slick (storing heat for energy production during low solar output periods), and they've gotten it working in the field on a moderate scale, but for a facility big enough to power an entire region you'll need a very large-scale system and it'll have one hell of a whopper of a single point of failure -- big-ass tanks of molten salt. Leaks won't be too bad environmentally, but human flesh and bones melt quickly at those temperatures (so there's no direct intervention possible) and it's not exactly easy to replace lost molten salt. It's not just a matter of cleaning out the local supermarkets' stash of Morton's. You'd have to build any such facility into separate units so one thermal system eating shit won't drag the whole plant down with it. Of course, doing that means more expense and a modest reduction in overall efficiency.
Wind power works at all hours, but only if there's wind. The turbines are also godawful eye sores, expensive as hell to purchase, install and maintain, and have spectacularly destructive "failure modes." They're also not all that efficient yet, so again you need massive fields of the things to produce a meaningful amount of electricity with them. You're back to the solar panels scaling problem -- miles of electrical lines and signaling cables for monitoring and a constant need for expensive staff on-hand to conduct checks and make repairs as needed. They also fuck with birds, and attract tinfoil types who insist they hear magic sounds from the turbines that cause everything from impotence to cancer. They're full of shit, but they're litigious and annoying. That adds to the cost of operations.
Hydro's well established and very efficient, but are geographically restricted -- they can only be built where there's a water source with adequate flow to sustain the turbines, plus by their nature they have potentially major implications both upstream and downstream (you're creating a lake and creating a major flood risk downstream if something ever goes wrong). Geothermal is similarly limited in that there's only so many reliable geothermal vents out there to use in the first place. Tidal power is still years away from being practical for commercial energy production.
When you roll up all the up-front costs and maintenance costs involved in all these renewable energy sources, they end up being far more expensive than just digging up coal or natural gas to burn or nuclear material to put into reactors. If it weren't for litigious environmentalists around the world intentionally gumming up the works, nuclear power would be -- overwhelmingly -- the cheapest and most efficient way we have right now to generate electricity. But NIMBY and environmentalist types have made it absurdly costly and time-consuming to get rolling, so we've reverted back mostly to coal & natural gas. Good job, jackasses.
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2013
I know you have autism and thus context is hard for you, but I was responding to people who said Trump would've prevented this. That's why I brought Trump up. What is it with you Republican boomers and not understanding context?
No president would've prevented this. This post sums it up:
Honka Honka Burning Love
In Clown World, the only god is the one who Honks.
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
Which He?
Biden? yeah he is absolutely demented enough to press the button.
Putin? If his Goal is a "Russian Empire" Nuking America is probably a bad idea if only because Even the Largest Empires need someone to trade with unless your goal is COMPLETE GLOBAL SATURATION (of Vodka-Niggers) and nuking large places like New York is bad because it will make those places inhabitable and you want the good parts of a country.
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2019
Still high on his own supply tho
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2021
Fun fact, unless Russia updated it, their system is designed to fire if nobody pushes the red button. It was call the dead man's hand or something. If contact with military high command was cut for too long, they launch their whole arsenal at the US and allies. The cold war was fucking terrifying.
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2019
This happened to my post which didn't say a word about HHH. The tranny jannies are drunk at the wheel.
Weppers
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2018
That seems worth the cost 100% right now.
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2021
Null moment
Narcotics
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2022
As much as i like to shit on the current administration, there ain't much biden's wranglers could do about this, this is a regional issue that russia and ukraine will have to sort out, with nato just aiding with supplies and whatever else.
I'm not an american and know about the fourth option: Stop NATO's sabre rattling. This shit could have to be postpone/never happen if Biden have continued Trump police with NATO.
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2015
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2020
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2018
Russia OP. Devs please nerf.
St.Davis
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2021
Well, he did prevent it though, didn't he? You may note that Russia did not invade The Ukraine during Orange Man's term, but did invade during Slow Joe's term. Pretending it was entirely unavoidable and that Joe dindu nuffin is pure cope.
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2019
Here's how Ukraine can still win this bros:
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2022
Like I wrote here weeks ago, these people are not your timid, brainwashed Alsace Germans who apologize to the French nation if they're caught eating Bratwurst instead of escargot.
- Joined
- May 6, 2019
At the very least it would have delayed this, providing opportunities for other solutions. Putin had to wait to gain something resembling a casus belli. One was handed to him on a silver platter.
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