That's nice and makes a dent. 18,248,000 MWh/year so 49,994MWh per day. The batteries at this site are 3,287MWh, so they can store about 6.5% of the average daily Californian use. 875 megawatts peak power for maybe 5h per day is 437MWh almost 10% of CA daily consumption. And it's highest in summer, when the ACs are running, so that's nice. Please check my math! EIA

That movie came out in 1986. How could he possibly have known about Elon Muska and Twitter, and the violent takeover and ensuing disintegration of the platform?

It's quite the relevation. It's all right there.

:) This one is the monk and the robot book:)

I read that a long time ago, and it seems still quite spot on. That was amazing work.

I read somewhere that it is normal of humans to overestimate progress in the short term, and underestimate it in the long term.

That gives me hope, assuming we have a long enough term for all this progress to manifest.

Years ago I learned that tribes people often create large herds (a sign of wealth) that then lead to desertification, famine and poverty. Seems like we do the same thing, but at a higher level.

What is that? Like, carbon emissions stop because of general supply chain collapse? Or we all get together and figure out a way to make massive diamond blocks from the CO2 in a hurry?

Is this moral stance somehow correlated to skills and capabilities of the people? Will there be more spills because only the incompetent are left or is there no such link?

Charm Industrial likes Switchgrass I think. To make oil to pump back under.

While it's too much, it's surprisingly small - 66kg. It's like 8 Gallons of Gasoline. Not sure how I would send the phone from China to anywhere for that much fuel - I suppose transport is extra.

Right, I should read the article. Sorry.

Two obvious things: China has 2-3 x the people. Maybe adjust to a per person basis? Or a per GDP ratio if you are so inclined. Also, most of the stuff for sale comes from China - so we just moved our emissions there. This is super hard to adjust for, but should be considered a bit.

I don't think anyone questions that humans will survive. It's just unlikely that the complex global supply chain that gives us complex tools like microchips etc will survive. And may be massive famine etc after just a few harvest failure, or after the grain can't go down the rivers to the sea any more. Naturally not for the very rich, you can probably buy a bag of rice at a price. It's not survival that's at stake, its civilization and all that.

The rest of the world always follows. It's been weird. Catalytic converters, efficiency standards and all that.

Maybe for a long tail - but I think there were a few reports from other places that phaseout can happen faster than expected :) I am just worried that fossil prices drop because nobody buys them, making it super cheap again.

I suppose that's pretty much guaranteed. I am worried that the supply chains stop working before we get serious about climate repair. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the fossil fuel companies when the "proven resources" in the ground become worthless because there are barely any buyers anymore and borrowing against it is no longer possible. I don't know how much they do that - but it would have implications for the finance people.

So you propose a sort of metric of "energy utility"?

Or, combined with the other idea to move the harvester; grain pirates! The small airship swoops down at night and picks up a some strip worth of grain, and is gone in the morning.

It is conceivable that unlike boats, autonomous airships may not need to be super big - they scale linearly. So a continuous swarm of small, lighter than air evacuated diamond foam devices could come, pick up stuff, and depart for local targets or far away targets via the jet stream. That also removes the need for the tower - they could pick stuff up right from the harvester.

I love it, this is really nice. Thank you!