I normally like your content but showing a destructed solar panel array due to apparently extreme weather seems a bit like a stab below the belt.
Sure, structures build to withstand even the most destructive forces won't suffer from that, but you can hardly use that as an argument against solar energy - you've brought up much better arguments against it than this.
This is a fair comment. Out of context, my meme is snarky. But in context, it makes more sense. In Latin languages, the word time/weather is the same. In English, weather has come to be a verb. Together these describe entropy. Exposed infrastructure like wind and solar weather and degrade more quickly than planned. Add in extreme events and the whole policy is just silly.
"Stab below the belt"?!? Are you kidding me? That is a significant cost and risk to wind & solar, their vulnerability to natural events and much more. And because of the diffuse nature of wind & solar it is just too expensive to build them hardened against bad weather events. They are already too expensive excluding hardening them. They sure don't mind using much lamer arguments against NPPs, which unlike wind & solar are hardened against extreme weather events.
As a regional planner in the Shenandoah Valley since 1973, after nearly back-to-back 100-year floods - 1985 and 1987, it struck me that: "all life is risk management."
None of the early Towns we're built near the River floodplain. Creeks in Towns we're given a wide berth. Later recreational developments put homes at the water's edge, only to be washed away. Eventually, regulations were developed, but great wastes of resources took place there and in mountain subdivisions.
Entropy is constantly returning what we organize to usefulness. It does so with incidents great and small. We muster negative energy to do so. Our planning horizons are too short. Obsolescence is a feature. The horizon for civilization should be 300 years.
Thanks. Spellcheck got me. It changed my word "uselessness" to "usefulness" in the first sentence of the last paragraph. Here's a revision: "Entropy is constantly returning what we organize to be useful, to be less and less sol, then useless. At this point, waste to be discarded."
Going on:
Techno-logic waste doesn't compost like bio-logic material. Toxicity can exist in both. Waste from the built-environment, in total, the technosphere, was not part of the 2016 30 trillion metric tonne estimate of its mass. That's over 4k per 50 kg per person of the then 7.5 billion people. The technosphere provides all of us with different levels of assisted-living. It's not just grandma that lives in such an environment.
To manage a planet's technosphere in relation to its hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, etc, we would look for benchmarks and methods of doing so from peer civilizations on similar planets to understand what works and what does not. This I have called Technospherics, @technspherics. That's a work in progress that needs people like you operating from "community motive."
That is part of my primary Twitter account @tomchristoffel
Indeed they are. In fact the NRC demands they be immune to a fully loaded & fueled large aircraft collision. And of course they don't ask the airlines or the CIA which caused the problem to pay for their own failures. Nuclear has to pay for them.
Wind, tornado, hurricane, hail storm, forest fire, lightning storm, earthquake, bad dust storm, volcanic eruption (corrosive dust), ice storm, flood, land slide, avalanche, tsunamis, terrorism, military ordinance, solar flare or EMP all can & do destroy a solar or wind installation. And add some mad workers who weren't paid properly for their labor:
Solar Modules at 100 Mw solar plant in Maharashtra destroyed due to non payment of wages:
Nuclear reactors or any energy source, including refineries & pipelines. The issue is with wind & solar being extremely diffuse energy sources, and prevention basically being a $/unit-area cost, those costs are just too high in most cases for wind & solar, which are already impractical in an EROI basis.
Solar is to energy what trailer parks are to housing. They work fine sometimes, but is isn’t where you want to be when the tornado comes.
I normally like your content but showing a destructed solar panel array due to apparently extreme weather seems a bit like a stab below the belt.
Sure, structures build to withstand even the most destructive forces won't suffer from that, but you can hardly use that as an argument against solar energy - you've brought up much better arguments against it than this.
This is a fair comment. Out of context, my meme is snarky. But in context, it makes more sense. In Latin languages, the word time/weather is the same. In English, weather has come to be a verb. Together these describe entropy. Exposed infrastructure like wind and solar weather and degrade more quickly than planned. Add in extreme events and the whole policy is just silly.
"Stab below the belt"?!? Are you kidding me? That is a significant cost and risk to wind & solar, their vulnerability to natural events and much more. And because of the diffuse nature of wind & solar it is just too expensive to build them hardened against bad weather events. They are already too expensive excluding hardening them. They sure don't mind using much lamer arguments against NPPs, which unlike wind & solar are hardened against extreme weather events.
As a regional planner in the Shenandoah Valley since 1973, after nearly back-to-back 100-year floods - 1985 and 1987, it struck me that: "all life is risk management."
None of the early Towns we're built near the River floodplain. Creeks in Towns we're given a wide berth. Later recreational developments put homes at the water's edge, only to be washed away. Eventually, regulations were developed, but great wastes of resources took place there and in mountain subdivisions.
Entropy is constantly returning what we organize to usefulness. It does so with incidents great and small. We muster negative energy to do so. Our planning horizons are too short. Obsolescence is a feature. The horizon for civilization should be 300 years.
Insightful comment. Thank you, kindly. If you are on Twitter please let me know your handle so I can follow you n
Thanks. Spellcheck got me. It changed my word "uselessness" to "usefulness" in the first sentence of the last paragraph. Here's a revision: "Entropy is constantly returning what we organize to be useful, to be less and less sol, then useless. At this point, waste to be discarded."
Going on:
Techno-logic waste doesn't compost like bio-logic material. Toxicity can exist in both. Waste from the built-environment, in total, the technosphere, was not part of the 2016 30 trillion metric tonne estimate of its mass. That's over 4k per 50 kg per person of the then 7.5 billion people. The technosphere provides all of us with different levels of assisted-living. It's not just grandma that lives in such an environment.
To manage a planet's technosphere in relation to its hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, etc, we would look for benchmarks and methods of doing so from peer civilizations on similar planets to understand what works and what does not. This I have called Technospherics, @technspherics. That's a work in progress that needs people like you operating from "community motive."
That is part of my primary Twitter account @tomchristoffel
More thoughts, but this is enough for now.
Tornado. Did you know that nuclear power plants are immune to tornadoes?
Indeed they are. In fact the NRC demands they be immune to a fully loaded & fueled large aircraft collision. And of course they don't ask the airlines or the CIA which caused the problem to pay for their own failures. Nuclear has to pay for them.
Good thing solar panels aren't just placed in vulnerable areas then.
I'm guessing , a lot of wind ?
Wind, tornado, hurricane, hail storm, forest fire, lightning storm, earthquake, bad dust storm, volcanic eruption (corrosive dust), ice storm, flood, land slide, avalanche, tsunamis, terrorism, military ordinance, solar flare or EMP all can & do destroy a solar or wind installation. And add some mad workers who weren't paid properly for their labor:
Solar Modules at 100 Mw solar plant in Maharashtra destroyed due to non payment of wages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bnx21eTh2E
That's a lot of threats, and there's probably more. But to be fair, a subset could also apply to nuclear reactors.
Nuclear reactors or any energy source, including refineries & pipelines. The issue is with wind & solar being extremely diffuse energy sources, and prevention basically being a $/unit-area cost, those costs are just too high in most cases for wind & solar, which are already impractical in an EROI basis.