Negativity bias is real! I was reminding myself just today that for every act of hatred, there are ten thousand acts of love or kindness happening unreported all over the world. In homes, on the streets at the store…
Don’t let the news get you down. Things aren’t as bad as all that.
We are currently undergoing the greatest transformation in energy infrastructure since the start of the industrial revolution. Solar power and batteries are not only growing, but absolutely exploding.
Solar has become so cheap so fast that it’s going to fundamentally change the very way we use power and energy as a civilization. Seriously, look at new power generation by source. It’s almost all solar and wind, with a bit of nuclear and natural gas as a rounding error. And really, new power generation is majority solar.
The key thing is that solar is a technology that can be mass produced in absurd quantities. And the more we produce, the cheaper we can produce it. It appears now that solar is this epochal leviathan, a glacier sweeping across the energy landscape that will grind everything else to powder before it.
We have a very clear path to a grid that is almost entirely solar and wind. There’s nothing wrong with nuclear, but it cannot even begin to compete economically against the tsunami that is the solar revolution. Hell, I expect the grid to be almost entirely solar in the future.
Obviously the Sun doesn’t shine all the time, but panels have gotten so cheap, so fast, that a lot of these problems are just being carried away by the solar tsunami. For swings over the course of a day, batteries are getting so stupid cheap that we’re going to have no problem making enough power during the day to meet our needs at night. But the bigger concern was always seasonal variation. How can we possibly store enough energy to last through a winter? In years prior, this was seen as the Achilles’ heel of a largely solar grid. To store that much energy in batteries would seem completely impossible.
But it seems the seasonal problem is going to solve itself. You see, if solar power gets cheap enough, you can start doing really wild things with it. Even on a snowy day in winter, solar panels still generate some electricity. They may only generate 10-20% of what they do on a clear summer day, but they still generate power. And if solar is cheap enough, you can simply size your system so stupidly large that you can meet even your winter’s need without any seasonal energy storage. If you spam enough solar panels, you can meet your needs in the winter and then have dirt cheap, essentially free power the rest of the year. And it really looks like this is where we’re headed.
I foresee that many of our most energy-intensive industries will adopt a seasonal or semi-seasonal schedule to take advantage of the dirt cheap power in the warmer months of the year. We have a crop growing season, why not an aluminum smelting season or an AI-model training season? Or that free summertime power could be used to desalinate vast quantities of seawater affordably. Or, such a low-cost energy source is exactly what we need to make bulk atmospheric carbon removal a real possibility.
We used to live in tune with the cycle of the seasons. We lived according to the cycle of the Sun. So important was the Sun to our ancestors that we named our greatest deities after it. Amun. Aten. Ra. Huītzilōpōchtli. Ba’al. Aryaman. Mithra. Apollo. Helios. Sol Invictus. These were but a handful of the thousand names we gave to the mighty Sun upon which we so depended. We rose to its light and slept in its absence. We worked when it shone brightest and in the winter, invented elaborate holidays and rituals to encourage its return. We built our entire calendars and organized our entire civilizations around its cycles.
With the Industrial Revolution, we abandoned this close relationship with the Sun. We learned to draw upon bottled remnants of old rotted sunlight, and for a time learned to live apart from the mighty Sun. And those energies in fossil fuels improved our lives so greatly; they raised us up from the mud. We improved our standard of living so much, that we would rather burn the world to ashes than give up the lifestyle we have grown accustomed to. And so, the great challenge of our age is to find a way to keep our lives and comforts going, without destroying the Earth in the process. Millions of people have dedicated their lives to this one central challenge of our age. All our efforts. All our sciences. All of our industry. Our brightest minds and every tool of finance and government at our disposal. All of it searching, seeking, trying to desperately to find a way out of this horrible trap that we have built for ourselves.
And now, after all this yearning. After all this wondering. After all this wandering. The solution was in front of us this entire time. A ray of Sunlight has been cast down into the cave that we are so lost in. And it is leading us back to the light. We will cast off these shackles and leave the fossil fuels in the dust where we found them. We will once organize our entire civilization around the infinite bounty that the Sun freely gives in such abundance. And we will continue to enjoy the fruits that science has given us, but in a way that not only does not damage the Earth, but allows it to heal. That is the future ahead of us. That is the light in the darkness. As our ancestors did from time immemorial, we will once again live in the endless generosity of the star that birthed us. And we will rejoice. And we will sing.
Sol Invictus. We are coming home.
Whilst it’s true solar is growing, it is not likely to be the silver bullet you make out.
Another way to look at the source you linked is that despite the ongoing climate catastrophe the US is still planning to add 4% more fossil fuel sources to their grid next year.
It also leaves out the fact that 84% of the current US power is generated by fossil fuels and that figure is not being reduced.
The source is also very US-centric. If we take the IEA’s projections, only 25% of the world’s new energy will be from renewable sources in 2024.
Then there’s the weird choice of counting battery storage as energy generation. At the end of 2022 half of the battery storage was being powered by fossil fuels so should probably be left out of any statistics.
We need people to understand the true scale of the problem rather than generating more hopium. The energy companies have teams of people for that.
Check out how much solar china’s put up this year.
Solar is absolutely the future
As of 2023, solar energy accounted for about 4.5% of China’s total energy consumption.
In 2024 solar energy could account for around 5-6% of China’s total energy consumption.
If they add another 170GW in 2025, the percentage could rise to approximately 6-7%.
They hope by 2026 solar will make up 8-9% of the total energy consumption.
If solar is the future then we are screwed because that isn’t fast enough growth… and that is without factoring in the rest of the world who will hit nowhere near those numbers.
And they are adding, fast. Far faster than we are. That goal of nearly ten percent solar in less than two years?
That’s not only fucking amazing, that’s achievable, and they’re on target for it.
As cheap as panels and controllers and batteries have gotten? It’s only getting better.
Free electricity. From the fucking sky. Magic is real. You can play xbox with it
Yes they are the leaders in solar which is they are a good example… If the rest of the world was going at thier pace (it’s not) it still wouldn’t be fast enough.
Then we’ve got the degradation to worry about so the panels will all need regularly replacing whilst silver, gold and rare earth metals run out.
Rolling out that infrastructure is not likely to be smooth whilst most countries will be busy footing bills for the ongoing extreme weather. Not to mention the other potential blockers like wars, pandemics and lack of political will.
That last line sounds boundlessly optimistic and condescending in equal measures. Magic is real lol please. Of course I know sunlight comes from the sky and electricity can be used to play games consoles.
I’ve actually been shocked by how little production drops during winter. For example, we Feb & March, our coldest months this year, we produced 1.75 MWh/month, which actually beats every summer month before it, and is only beaten by this August, which was our highest producing month ever at 2.04MWh. Most summer months before that were closer to 1.5. Only thing I need to do is clear the panels after it snows.
What is likely the cause of this is one thing that people miss about solar panels. Their efficiency is a function of temperature. In the summer, you get more sunlight, but the panels themselves are hotter and thus lose efficiency. In the winter there is less light, but the panels make the most of every photon.
Kids are so much nicer than when I was in school. Not perfect, obviously, but really just so much nicer to each other.
I’ve noticed this with my kids’ schools. Many kids are open about who they are - LGBT+, neurodivergent, mental illnesses, etc. - and people are generally accepting of that. When I was a kid, people were bullied relentlessly for showing any form of difference from “normal”. It makes me happy to hear them talk about things like that like its no big deal…because it shouldn’t be.
Phantasy Star Online 2 (the original) was successfully archived by Team Clementine and they are waiting to release their own private server. They also have their Phantasy Star Universe servers running smoothly. I love Phantasy Star.
Decentralized networks seem to be getting stronger. The number of options you have is crazy. I’m hoping for the day that decentralized networks overcome centralized ones. It’ll probably still be a while (years at least, probably), but given time, I bet it’ll happen.
I also had an idea for a wifi network where a router talks to other routers in range to setup networks independent of the internet. The idea being that, if widely enough adopted, you could potentially cut out ISPs except in situations where the signal needs to travel long distances (like rural areas). The router would have an antenna for long-range communication, and then a second antenna to actually talk to devices in a smaller range. Kinda like meshtastic, but significantly faster (with the trade-off being distance and penetration).
I also had an idea for a wifi network where a router talks to other routers in range to setup networks independent of the internet. The idea being that, if widely enough adopted, you could potentially cut out ISPs except in situations where the signal needs to travel long distances (like rural areas). The router would have an antenna for long-range communication, and then a second antenna to actually talk to devices in a smaller range. Kinda like meshtastic, but significantly faster (with the trade-off being distance and penetration).
There are open source projects in the works for just such a thing, I forget the details at the moment but I heard about them from the Meshtastic Discord funny enough.
Look up the IEEE 802.11ah standard (or Wi-Fi HaLow) for example, it’s a standard that can achieve pretty good WiFi data rates for quite a distance (enough that a neighborhood mesh would work well), whilst running on low power, sub-GHz hardware (like the Meshtastic hardware).
https://www.quectel.com/blog/what-is-wi-fi-halow-iot/
There are mesh internet projects using this, I just don’t remember their names right now haha.
Sadly while it uses more or less the same frequency band as LoRa in the USA (around 900MHz), I’m not sure how useable it is here in Europe given the band licensing restrictions. I’d like to think they’ve thought of that! But I dunno? I’ve seen HaLow hardware that only used the US band, but maybe other companies price EU equivalent hardware.
COVID research made generic sequencing for viruses and bacteria incredibly cheap. You can run a PCR test for most things now for $10 (USD) or less. This opens a whole world of highly specific diagnostics and cheap, hyper-personalized treatments.
Also, MRNA vaccines are being tested for several other diseases and it seems very promising.
Violence has been going down for centuries. We’re hearing about it more, but it’s declining. It peaked around 1993, and it’s been trending downward ever since.
If you zoom out and look at super long term trends, it’s been declining for centuries.
Back when I was using reddit, I found Uplifting News to be a helpful source of positive information. Some of it can be reminders of our boring dystopia, like students helping another by starting a laundry program at the school, but it’s something. Here is the lemmy version.
I’m a masochist, do you have a c/downliftingnews?
Yes, it’s [email protected]
This is the most depressing thread I’ve read for some time.
It’s horrific to read some of the posts twisting bad news and making out as though it’s good news. It’s like the posters are watching children in a sandpit playing, ignoring the monster flood thats about to wash them away but taking joy in their play. Wtf?
Professor Boyd is right https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/07/un-expert-human-rights-climate-crisis-economy
Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’
And after reading this thread, i am even more sure Rees is
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/06/14/opinion/science-civilization-collapse-environment-limits
Rees bluntly states, “the human enterprise is effectively subsuming the ecosphere” and “wide-spread societal collapse cannot be averted — collapse is not a problem to be solved, but rather the final stage of a cycle to be endured.”
You seem to have misunderstood the assignment
deleted by creator
Elaborate on some examples of the YIMBYs?
millions of people in the third world are growing out of poverty thanks to the advance of technology.
Can you be a bit more specific? Which technologies defeat poverty where?
everything. There isn’t one particular technology driving this. My hometown of İstanbul has been transformed. Modern buildings are replacing horrible slums, there are new subway lines opening every year and almost everything is improving over time.
Turkey is fact actually building infrastructure like china.
People in the US hard time understanding thatnthe world moving forward while we are wasting our lives at the airports and hihhway traffic without proper national infrastructure plan to fix any of this shit.
And before any of you bootlickers start yupping about biden state aid for parasites… Let’s be real it is too late, too small, mainly focuses on corrupt highway construction, not enough maintenance, airlines bailouts and only then few bucks for rail to pacify “educated” crowd.
There is no plan, another generation of public investment looted. Hope y’all love that traffic and being treated like cattle at the airport.
Cheers!
