Energy Politics

[Walker]

Testimony Before the U.S. House Science Committee Subcommittee on Energy
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/tes ... nergy-arpa

Quote from the link:
“To be blunt: there is simply no possibility that more federal funding for wind turbines, silicon solar cells or lithium batteries will lead to a “disruptive” 10-fold gain. All those technologies are approaching physics limits, just as aviation engines have. And while one cannot, by definition, predict what kind of entirely new phenomenologies have yet to be discovered, we do know from history that such discoveries do happen. But history also shows that they rarely if ever emerge from directed goal-specific funding.”
- Mark P. Mills

[FlashDangerpants]

Testimony Before the U.S. House Science Committee Subcommittee on Energy
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/tes ... nergy-arpa

Quote from the link:
“To be blunt: there is simply no possibility that more federal funding for wind turbines, silicon solar cells or lithium batteries will lead to a “disruptive” 10-fold gain. All those technologies are approaching physics limits, just as aviation engines have. And while one cannot, by definition, predict what kind of entirely new phenomenologies have yet to be discovered, we do know from history that such discoveries do happen. But history also shows that they rarely if ever emerge from directed goal-specific funding.”
- Mark P. Mills

It would have been sensible for that guy not to have rested so much of his case on Moore's law and the invention the integrated circuit and of the internet. Those came from a couple of basic research discoveries followed up by huge directed state spending, much if via ARPA which is expressly the model of development you are trying to do down.

Beyond that it's hard to see what the value of that article is to you. He isn't saying, as you like to, that coal is the answer. If anything, he is advocating for a more ambitious project whereas others are tipping the market to allow wind turbines to reach new bits of the sea.

He is complaining about the typical way ARPA and similar organisations like spend their money (in lots of small investments into edge case technology that could be funded by private industry but is very risky and thus not easy to finance. But it has been a very successful model. I have been in a project that is partly funded by a similar organisation (but not the defence industry) for the last couple of years. If our technology ever works, it will change your life and countless others, if we lose our technological race, your life still gets improved and so does mine.

My point here is that I have seen at first hand that the ARPA model of funding is extremely socially valuable and a relatively cheap way to push the available technical envelope with excellent results even though some projects go tits up. I am a free markets kind of guy on the whole, but I know when to ameliorate that with some tax payer cash so we can get stuff (public goods) that we want as tax payers that the market can't easily deliver just at the moment.

[Walker]

Fascinating factoid:

“Every 30 seconds the global Internet transports and processes a greater quantity of data than is held by the Library of Congress. Every byte in that tsunami of data requires power. The hardware used to create, transport and store data constitutes the world’s newest — and before long, one of the biggest — energy-consuming infrastructures.”

Part I:
https://www.realclearenergy.org/article ... 10339.html

Obviously, wind and solar can’t hold a candle to this ravenous energy hunger.

Beyond that it's hard to see what the value of that article is to you. He isn't saying, as you like to, that coal is the answer. If anything, he is advocating for a more ambitious project whereas others are tipping the market to allow wind turbines to reach new bits of the sea.

Obnoxious twit.

From the link, self-explanatory, underlining added:

”… These realities are what likely motivated Bill Gates – who has given serious thought and significant capital to energy innovation -- to recently state that ‘there is no [energy] substitute for how the industrial economy runs today.’”

[FlashDangerpants]

Fascinating factoid:

“Every 30 seconds the global Internet transports and processes a greater quantity of data than is held by the Library of Congress. Every byte in that tsunami of data requires power. The hardware used to create, transport and store data constitutes the world’s newest — and before long, one of the biggest — energy-consuming infrastructures.”

Yet a byte of data transferred today takes a fraction of the energy required to transfer a byte of data 10 years ago. In a couple of months i will be decommissioning a data centre in London and spreading all my primary stuff out among the main cloud providers. When I do that, the total electrical consumption of my computing estate will drop massively even though I will be firing up so many new computers I won't be bothering to give them names any more.

Amazon, MS, Google, Digital Ocean, IBM etc all have access to much more efficient data centre designs than I do, they take sips to clear out heat that would require a gulp for me.

Part I:
https://www.realclearenergy.org/article ... 10339.html

Bitcoin is designed to be massively compute hungry for scarcity purposes and that's one reason why that particular coin has always been an evolutionary dead end. If alt coins are ever to be particularly useful they won't be in the form of that one and burdened with those self-inflicted costs.

Obviously, wind and solar can’t hold a candle to this ravenous energy hunger.

That's not obvious, but the ravenous energy hunger is as already mentioned contingent, and pointlessly so, it will go away.

Beyond that it's hard to see what the value of that article is to you. He isn't saying, as you like to, that coal is the answer. If anything, he is advocating for a more ambitious project whereas others are tipping the market to allow wind turbines to reach new bits of the sea.

Obnoxious twit.

From the link, self-explanatory, underlining added:

”… These realities are what likely motivated Bill Gates – who has given serious thought and significant capital to energy innovation -- to recently state that ‘there is no [energy] substitute for how the industrial economy runs today.’”

Hopeless twunt.

From the link, self-explanatory, underlining added:

I have no doubt that scientists will yet unveil, and engineers will yet commercialize an energy “miracle” – the specific word Bill Gates has used for this goal. But, to repeat and close on my central theme, that will not come from helping private markets make yesterday’s tools better.

[Walker]

Solar power and wind power can never satisfy increasing energy needs.
The numbers don’t add up.

Neither do market forces support solar power and wind power.

So, why are solar and wind power a Leftist mantra?
Why the effort to build this useless infrastructure?

Why bring back the buggy souped up with carbon fiber and titanium?

Two simple reasons.

1. PC virtue signaling.
2. Energy politics, which always leads to money.

[Scott Mayers]

Interesting thread, Walker.

The original incentive prizes granted by governments, corporate interests, or other organizations, aided in the discovery of many technological discoveries along with any science that aided to those ends. The mechanical independent clock, for instance, was one technology incentive needed to improve the means to which navigators at sea could determine their longitude since the older time devises could not operate accurately enough to function. For instance, you couldn't expect to use a gravity dependent type clock, such as an hour glass, as a timing device at sea because it needed a person to be perfectly accountable to monitor and run as well as the fact that you couldn't hold gravity consistent in a ship in rough seas. [among other reasons not important to qualify here]

But we know that governments acting as sponsors to projects that require investment are no different than individuals who 'invest' in things. Worse still is that governments are not easy to manage like individuals with total power to control their own actions. I'm referring to the problem of 'investment' based upon psychology whereby we value MORE what we invest in (a "projection principle") rather than those who invest in us. As such, the more money and time placed into a project, even if deemed futile, is hard to decommission, especially where more and more people are involved.

The disadvantage to the public through governments is that the taxpayers end up paying for the losses whereas the individuals (including 'corporations' or companies of people) who gain are only at worst losing only what they invested in directly. Most don't even lose the disadvantage of the liability of investment losses due to how many operate with intellectual means to turn their own losses into gains using alternate indirection tactics of business and finance.

When governments get involved, the best they can do to help environmental risks is to try to guide society through incentives in some way and/or to penalize those who counter this goal. The difference in politics is about our extension of interests. For those in power of economic or financial interests, to most of them, only immediate benefits matter more to their local interests, like family or loved ones. For the democratic majority without power of economy, their interests would benefit them where they are not burdened more by the debts that get passed on by corporate closures and environmental losses that prevent them from getting ahead. To another class of the wealthy, like Bill Gates, where wealth is no longer a threat to lose, they appeal to a progeny-argument and side with the democratic majority by arguing to save the environment FOR all children's futures.

Politics of energy are no different than to other areas of politics. But this particular area is THE main 'source' of control to which anyone empowered to manage them as a gateway, hold all other industries of the world to their minimal expectations. As such, we can't ignore nor trivialize this issue. The "conservative" interest is to dismiss environmental concerns and posit 'positive' projection regarding what power they already hold in the energy industries they already command. Money itself is also a form of energy as it represents a means to force someone to pay debt in the form of energy either through labor or real assets that evolve physically FROM natural energy sources.

I disagree that we should trust governments to continue investments in private interest powers to the degree we do today because it always gets abused against the collective interests regardless. Clean energy incentives are only about trying to entice change from those who have power of the present energy systems who only argue against clean energy for the negative laws that penalize their present control, not because they don't really know the hazards those older energy sources cause. While the 'clean' forms may not be any more viable in an increasingly demanding world for more energy, the alternative is to limit the world's population in some way. (People are made up of atoms that represent energy too!) The means by which conservatives favor is 'war' mechanisms that kill people off but do not limit the power of people giving birth. That is, ideally, the conservative WANTS more demand for the energy they alone can presently supply. So more people favor this concept. But because population growth that keeps the power to the population democratically, the means to keep the power of those present energy manipulators lies in how much power they can take away from the government. The best way for them is to entice governments to give to private industries but leave their hands off means of guidance that attempts to diminish their power like penalties.

So the 'incentive'-only strategy is one where the conservatives want government to be restricted to. They don't want laws that penalize them and threaten their own means to benefit without limits.

[Walker]

While the 'clean' forms may not be any more viable in an increasingly demanding world for more energy, the alternative is to limit the world's population in some way.

The thrust of OP link’s view is that instead of rationing energy, or decreasing energy demand via imposing arbitrary, totalitarian controls on human reproduction, the alternative is to develop a new source of energy. Currently, what passes for “new sources of energy” is nothing more than putting lipstick on old technologies, such as windmills, or using government support to start solar-energy companies in other countries that go kaput when the juice is sucked out.

What’s needed is another Edison/Tesla, Niagara Falls competition, sponsored by a private utility or corporation, looking to corner the market on a yet undiscovered technology/energy source. Instead of solar panels on every roof, how about a little atomic power-plant in every basement that would power anything plugged into the house, including the car. Wind and solar are low-yield when compared to carbon, gravity (hydroelectric), or nuclear. The equation has to balance for low-yield with volume and space, which means uglifying the landscape in the name of Green, and there just might not be enough landscape or copper on the planet for such inefficiency.

If someone could develop a battery as big as a barge that could handle a lightning strike and charge instantly, bingo. Perhaps a liquid battery of some unknown composition, a chemical lake, that will retain the charge.

How fast to charge a Tesla car battery bank? 15 minutes?

Keep the government out of it.
Too many other agendas, deals, and back-scratching going on with the government.
Follow the money.

[FlashDangerpants]

While the 'clean' forms may not be any more viable in an increasingly demanding world for more energy, the alternative is to limit the world's population in some way.

The thrust of OP link’s view is that instead of rationing energy, or decreasing energy demand via imposing arbitrary, totalitarian controls on human reproduction, the alternative is to develop a new source of energy. Currently, what passes for “new sources of energy” is nothing more than putting lipstick on old technologies, such as windmills, or using government support to start solar-energy companies in other countries that go kaput when the juice is sucked out.

What’s needed is another Edison/Tesla, Niagara Falls competition, sponsored by a private utility or corporation, looking to corner the market on a yet undiscovered technology/energy source. Instead of solar panels on every roof, how about a little atomic power-plant in every basement that would power anything plugged into the house, including the car. Wind and solar are low-yield when compared to carbon, gravity (hydroelectric), or nuclear. The equation has to balance for low-yield with volume and space, which means uglifying the landscape in the name of Green, and there just might not be enough landscape or copper on the planet for such inefficiency.

If someone could develop a battery as big as a barge that could handle a lightning strike and charge instantly, bingo. Perhaps a liquid battery of some unknown composition, a chemical lake, that will retain the charge.

How fast to charge a Tesla car battery bank? 15 minutes?

Keep the government out of it.
Too many other agendas, deals, and back-scratching going on with the government.
Follow the money.

So, Darpa-E grants $15 Million to projects that use Artificial Intelligence algorithms to make the electricity grid more efficient... You complain that this is shit because it is an incremental upgrade not a quantum leap. But your idea of what would be the quantum leap is a battery which is a technology that's been around for quite some time.

To really make that sound like new technology, rather than lipstick on an old one (and a reference to an 80s comedy movie to boot), perhaps you should throw in some modern sciency words like High Energy and Power Density, Nanotube-Enhanced Ultracapacitors.This is the page on ARPA-E's website for one such effort they are funding by the way. If the sciency word you wanted was Graphene - they have one of those as well.

You want a liquid battery ... ARPA-E got your back ... Small Organic Molecule Based Flow Battery for Grid Storage

You want innovative new nuclear reactor designs (I'm going to ignore the Jetsons stupidity about having them in your home) ARPA-E has your back 10 times over ... https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=news-item/ ... wer-plants
We got molten salt reactors there; another one that fits in a shipping container, lots of goodies for you from the nanny state. No absurd sci-fi required.

Why did you do this thread Walker? You have absolutely no idea what ARPA-E is or what it does, let alone how or why.

[Scott Mayers]

While the 'clean' forms may not be any more viable in an increasingly demanding world for more energy, the alternative is to limit the world's population in some way.

The thrust of OP link’s view is that instead of rationing energy, or decreasing energy demand via imposing arbitrary, totalitarian controls on human reproduction, the alternative is to develop a new source of energy. Currently, what passes for “new sources of energy” is nothing more than putting lipstick on old technologies, such as windmills, or using government support to start solar-energy companies in other countries that go kaput when the juice is sucked out.

What’s needed is another Edison/Tesla, Niagara Falls competition, sponsored by a private utility or corporation, looking to corner the market on a yet undiscovered technology/energy source. Instead of solar panels on every roof, how about a little atomic power-plant in every basement that would power anything plugged into the house, including the car. Wind and solar are low-yield when compared to carbon, gravity (hydroelectric), or nuclear. The equation has to balance for low-yield with volume and space, which means uglifying the landscape in the name of Green, and there just might not be enough landscape or copper on the planet for such inefficiency.

If someone could develop a battery as big as a barge that could handle a lightning strike and charge instantly, bingo. Perhaps a liquid battery of some unknown composition, a chemical lake, that will retain the charge.

How fast to charge a Tesla car battery bank? 15 minutes?

Keep the government out of it.
Too many other agendas, deals, and back-scratching going on with the government.
Follow the money.

Okay, I think I understand.

You are supporting the view that government should stay out of energy funding interests because this gets abused at the expense of taxpayers. The money being used is not being used for its stated goals and more often only aiding present technology improvements for trivial purposes or for favoring private interests through friends of the politicians that have no need for actual government supports other than to profit.

I agree that there is likely this problem and even should government's intentions be fair, the abuse is bound to occur by the nature of any government bureaucratic offices and the self-serving interests of companies to benefit by exploiting money redirected to them.

I prefer a population controls for this because there is still a maximum to actual technology. Moore's law cannot hold indefinitely and so the abuses for research funding and novel technology cannot be prevented through government and corporate management cooperation. Was "totalitarian" your own description for population controls or something spoken of in the meeting?

[Walker]

Okay, I think I understand ...

Nice concise feedback to communicate the reception.
Quite considerate. Most rarely bother.

A government that dictates life via baby quotas, infanticide, or euthanasia is exercising totalitarian power over an individual whether God says it, whether someone else says it, or whether I say it.

The reasons for the totalitarian control, for instance to ration energy, i.e., energy politics, only come into play if you buy into the premise that this totalitarian control is necessary. I doubt if V.D. Hanson, the link's author, buys into that premise.

Yes, sometimes energy is rationed now, based on guidelines and implemented via totalitarian control of the power grid, however the necessity to control the energy flow to limit life* is not yet an element of the guidelines (which I infer).

Controlling the population with power starvation, or the right to have children, is the equivalent of some third-world dictator controlling the population with food, food being a source of energy controlled by politics.

* Example: Your papers please. So, obviously these stamps are forged and you birthed without permission. So, you don’t wish to speak? We have persuasive ways. No power for you, says the totalitarian government.

[Walker]

While the 'clean' forms may not be any more viable in an increasingly demanding world for more energy, the alternative is to limit the world's population in some way.

The thrust of OP link’s view is that instead of rationing energy, or decreasing energy demand via imposing arbitrary, totalitarian controls on human reproduction, the alternative is to develop a new source of energy. Currently, what passes for “new sources of energy” is nothing more than putting lipstick on old technologies, such as windmills, or using government support to start solar-energy companies in other countries that go kaput when the juice is sucked out.

What’s needed is another Edison/Tesla, Niagara Falls competition, sponsored by a private utility or corporation, looking to corner the market on a yet undiscovered technology/energy source. Instead of solar panels on every roof, how about a little atomic power-plant in every basement that would power anything plugged into the house, including the car. Wind and solar are low-yield when compared to carbon, gravity (hydroelectric), or nuclear. The equation has to balance for low-yield with volume and space, which means uglifying the landscape in the name of Green, and there just might not be enough landscape or copper on the planet for such inefficiency.

If someone could develop a battery as big as a barge that could handle a lightning strike and charge instantly, bingo. Perhaps a liquid battery of some unknown composition, a chemical lake, that will retain the charge.

How fast to charge a Tesla car battery bank? 15 minutes?

Keep the government out of it.
Too many other agendas, deals, and back-scratching going on with the government.
Follow the money.

So, Darpa-E grants $15 Million to projects that use Artificial Intelligence algorithms to make the electricity grid more efficient... You complain that this is shit because it is an incremental upgrade not a quantum leap. But your idea of what would be the quantum leap is a battery which is a technology that's been around for quite some time.

To really make that sound like new technology, rather than lipstick on an old one (and a reference to an 80s comedy movie to boot), perhaps you should throw in some modern sciency words like High Energy and Power Density, Nanotube-Enhanced Ultracapacitors.This is the page on ARPA-E's website for one such effort they are funding by the way. If the sciency word you wanted was Graphene - they have one of those as well.

You want a liquid battery ... ARPA-E got your back ... Small Organic Molecule Based Flow Battery for Grid Storage

You want innovative new nuclear reactor designs (I'm going to ignore the Jetsons stupidity about having them in your home) ARPA-E has your back 10 times over ... https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=news-item/ ... wer-plants
We got molten salt reactors there; another one that fits in a shipping container, lots of goodies for you from the nanny state. No absurd sci-fi required.

Why did you do this thread Walker? You have absolutely no idea what ARPA-E is or what it does, let alone how or why.

Whatcha got that will do a Tesla and power Buffalo, followed by NYC? (not a bison).

Flash says, I can power Las Vegas with windmills, and if I can’t, we don’t need no stinking Las Vegas!

btw: You're really quite emotional, aren't you.

[Scott Mayers]

Okay, I think I understand ...

Nice concise feedback to communicate the reception.
Quite considerate. Most rarely bother.

A government that dictates life via baby quotas, infanticide, or euthanasia is exercising totalitarian power over an individual whether God says it, whether someone else says it, or whether I say it.

The reasons for the totalitarian control, for instance to ration energy, i.e., energy politics, only come into play if you buy into the premise that this totalitarian control is necessary. I doubt if V.D. Hanson, the link's author, buys into that premise.

Yes, sometimes energy is rationed now, based on guidelines and implemented via totalitarian control of the power grid, however the necessity to control the energy flow to limit life* is not yet an element of the guidelines (which I infer).

Controlling the population with power starvation, or the right to have children, is the equivalent of some third-world dictator controlling the population with food, food being a source of energy controlled by politics.

* Example: Your papers please. So, obviously these stamps are forged and you birthed without permission. So, you don’t wish to speak? We have persuasive ways. No power for you, says the totalitarian government.

My thinking is that we require population control technology that can turn on or off our biological capacity to give birth until one is mature, educated, and permitted by the natural environment's limitations. When people are directly able to have 'free' capacity to give birth, this is itself a kind of "theft" and weapon against others in a totalitarian way. Thus this requires government (management by and for the people) in some form or another to operate to limit the powers of individuals to use birth as a means to increase their own power.

It is not realistic to expect that we can continue to find new technology that can magically give an unlimited quantity of energy while each 'free' birth acts to TAKE energy in an accelerating and uncontrollable way. We'd need an acceleration upon acceleration of energy to support uncontrolled births.

Without formal controls (government), there is still controls that exist identically in force but hidden by the means of those economically empowered. They ARE a 'government', but hidden in the guise of free people being opportunistic when the actual access doesn't exist for the disempowered and poorer populations. The population controls would be equally disguised as 'war' or 'death penalties' upon peoples who are indirectly forced to violate and appear as a justification to retaliate against. This is how it is being done similarly today. There are other means is to various tactics, like removing laws that feed people freely or laws that prevent the poor from health care, etc.

Don't be fooled that the 'totalitarianism' is about the powers of democratic governments. They occur only where power is limited and transferred to private industries and wealthy people most specifically. "Totalitarian" occurs when large populations of people have no power to collectively control laws but passed onto the specific subsets of people who have TOTAL power over the whole through their belief about some right to own the world.

[Walker]

links

It must be a comfort to have faith in the Green, in the PC beliefs, the acronyms, the pandering politicians, the big fat government teat to fund the whacky whims, the requisite Leftist sophomoric chip on the shoulder, the Google search engine … all to overshadow the fact that you don’t have the physics.

“To be blunt: there is simply no possibility that more federal funding for wind turbines, silicon solar cells or lithium batteries will lead to a “disruptive” 10-fold gain. All those technologies are approaching physics limits, just as aviation engines have.

[Walker]

Don't be fooled that the 'totalitarianism' is about the powers of democratic governments. They occur only where power is limited and transferred to private industries and wealthy people most specifically. "Totalitarian" occurs when large populations of people have no power to collectively control laws but passed onto the specific subsets of people who have TOTAL power over the whole through their belief about some right to own the world.

Come to think of it, in the sense that I use the word totalitarian, I used to be one.

I had authority over many (mostly adult men with families, and a few women) and had to make the decisions, maintaining end objectives in sight so as to not lose the bottom-line purpose of being there (which required an over-view that many lost due their job of focusing only on certain particulars), and to not lose too much patience over the carelessness of those I had to answer for, like the one guy who broke his leg right in front of my eyes, when I was the busiest.

Perhaps this is why those who encourage the sharing of personal information via unsupported projections, or who rely too much on one-word identities to virtue signal or condemn, confuse apolitical views based on rationalism, with Republican politics.

[FlashDangerpants]

links

It must be a comfort to have faith in the Green, in the PC beliefs, the acronyms, the pandering politicians, the big fat government teat to fund the whacky whims, the requisite Leftist sophomoric chip on the shoulder, the Google search engine … all to overshadow the fact that you don’t have the physics.

It must be helpful to have such ingrained dishonesty that the fact I gave you links to ARPA-E funding exactly the sort of thing you asked for does nothing to alter your view that they don't fund the right stuff. Your cognitive dissonance is at near super-power status.

“To be blunt: there is simply no possibility that more federal funding for wind turbines, silicon solar cells or lithium batteries will lead to a “disruptive” 10-fold gain. All those technologies are approaching physics limits, just as aviation engines have.

Which Aviation engines? The turbojet that is near it's limits, or the scramjet that can gain 10 times its speed and is under development thanks to DARPA?