[HN Gopher] When coal first arrived, Americans said 'no thanks'
___________________________________________________________________
When coal first arrived, Americans said 'no thanks'
Author : WithinReason
Score : 71 points
Date : 2022-07-16 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| mgraczyk wrote:
| > Steven Preister's house in Washington, D.C. is a piece of
| American history, a gorgeous 110-year-old colonial with wooden
| columns and a front porch, perfect for relaxing in the summer.
|
| Unrelated to the article, but I thought this was an odd
| characterization. The building I live in in SF is at least 10
| years older than that. Most of the buildings around me were built
| before 1910. I think my building is ugly and sucks because of
| noise and draft and stuff falling apart. I wonder if they built
| better in DC because of the snow and comparably more rain?
| dwater wrote:
| This article appears to have a picture of the house in
| question:
|
| https://ggwash.org/view/74166/dc-preservation-hprb-denies-fr...
|
| As someone who has lived nearby, I can say that this house is
| not rare nor remarkable in that area. It's technically a piece
| of American history but there are thousands of equally historic
| homes within walking distance. The author was using a bit of
| poetic license to add some flourish to the article.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Wow. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that was one of
| the plans out of the 1910 Sears catalog.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Ok, that's absurd. I live in a turn of the century
| neighborhood and am surrounded by miles of very similar
| houses. I bet I could find more than a dozen doppelgangers in
| a 10 minute bike ride.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If you think that's bad, every structure in Berkeley over 40
| years old is automatically considered a historic resource,
| requiring the approval of the landmarks preservation commission
| to change or demolish.
| narag wrote:
| That's bad, but having three milennia artifacts everywhere
| you dig is somehow worse:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Your building may have been maintained differently and your
| fast in aesthetics may be different
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There was a devastating earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906
| that burned down nearly the entire city. Since the entire
| population of the city was displaced, they rebuilt as quickly
| as possible to get out of the refugee cottages/camps.
|
| It doesn't really matter how you build a home though, it's
| eventually going to become creaky and drafty over time. The
| only real way to mitigate it is regular maintenance and repair.
| That's true of all infrastructure.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > It doesn't really matter how you build a home though, it's
| eventually going to become creaky and drafty over time.
|
| Why is that?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The effects on the building materials of the weather, sun,
| insects, fungus, bacteria, vegetation, mechanical wear and
| so on.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| I'm not really getting how brick or stone would creak or
| become leaky like that.
| exar0815 wrote:
| This somehow just again sets into perspective what "old" means
| in different countries. I live in a house older than the US at
| the moment, and it's not even something special, compared to
| churches which are closer to Caesar than the founding of the
| US.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's a cultural thing that most Americans simply don't
| identify with or think about history prior to
| British/American colonization. There are still people living
| in medieval-era houses in the US and ruins that make Rome
| look young, but they don't occupy anyone's mindspace when it
| comes to how they think of age.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Hopefully this is a joke? There are no structures in the US
| built prior to 1000ad, and the oldest structures built by
| indigenous people were abandoned long before European
| contact, because of deforestation.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| You have places like Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. It's
| construction date is disputes, but is at least 1000ad,
| and it wasn't abandoned before European contact.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| There are definitely structures in the US that were built
| prior to 1000AD. For example the first 4 stories of
| Pueblo Bonito were built around 850.
|
| Some of the pueblos that were built around 1000 years ago
| are still used (e.g. Taos Pueblo, although most of the
| buildings have been retrofitted with modern conveniences
| like doors)
| mgraczyk wrote:
| I would Pueblo Bonito a "ruin", not a "structure" that
| somebody could live in.
|
| The Taos Pueblo structures were built ~1400. Can you give
| an example of a "medieval-era structure" that somebody is
| living in today?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| So for context, I've literally seen/worked on structures
| older than that. I'll format this as a list to avoid a
| giant wall of text.
|
| * Plenty of structures were built prior to 1100CE. You
| can't build a freeway in Tucson without digging up an
| late archaic (~2300-1500 BCE) pithouse, as an example.
|
| * Plenty of indigenous structures have centuries of
| continuous inhabitation. Taos is a good example, having a
| single structure that's been inhabited since the 13th
| century. Other communities are older (e.g. Oraibi dates
| from ~1150), but don't have extant usable structures from
| those early days.
|
| * Indigenous structures were not abandoned prior to
| European contact, let alone because of deforestation. Did
| you autocorrect from "disease" (which would also be
| mistaken, but less so)? Very simplified statement here
| because this is a topic that could fill a library. Happy
| to talk more on it.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Can you give me an example of a "structure" in the
| present day US that was built prior to 1000 AD? I'm not
| talking about a pit underground, which is not a
| "structure".
|
| Can you give me an example of a "medieval-era houses in
| the US" that somebody lives in today? The ones you
| mentioned were built after the middle ages, your dates
| are not right and describe the time the settlement was
| created, not the time the structures were built.
|
| Which Taos structure has been inhabited since the 13th
| century? The Taos pueblo structures standing today were
| built around 1400, not the middle ages, not the 13th
| century.
|
| The Oraibi _settlement_ has been inhabited for centuries.
| The structures were built in the 17th century, not the
| middle ages, not 1150.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Generally the "medieval period" extends from sometime in
| the first few centuries CE to as late as the end of the
| 16th century. Obviously this is being used in the same
| informal sense that I'd have talking with friends, rather
| than a specific technical sense that would be more
| regionally appropriate.
|
| The 13th century when the earliest kivas and walls at
| Taos Pueblo are well-agreed to be dated. Oral histories
| date it rather earlier, but I'm being conservative. I
| have pretty terrible internet access right now, so I
| can't _link_ anything on those dates, but I 'm fairly
| sure that's how the UN filings date it at least, though I
| couldn't tell you whether those apply to the north or
| south houses specifically.
|
| Re: oraibi, I tried to make it clear that I was talking
| about the town itself rather than specific structures
| within it. The earliest structures are below the cliff,
| not above where the modern town is. That move happened in
| the 17th and 18th centuries to make it more defensible.
| As far as I'm aware, most of the extant buildings are
| 20th century at the earliest.
|
| As for "structure", a pithouse _is_ a structure and a
| primarily aboveground one at that. The name refers to the
| fact that they 're dug into the ground for thermal and
| flooring reasons. The late archaic ones in the Tucson
| area along the Santa Cruz river were often built
| alongside small irrigation canals and house groups often
| had low walls around them. Again, can't link, but there
| are experimental reconstructions of Pueblo I era
| pithouses that you can look at pictures of. They're
| "similar enough" to be worth looking at, even though
| there are meaningful reasons they're part of different
| archeological periods.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Seems pretty tenuous, and I don't see any radiocarbon
| dating or high quality archeology. It's not surprised
| this doesn't "occupy anyone's mindspace".
|
| I think the claim "There are still people living in
| medieval-era houses in the US " is misleading and
| possibly wrong. A more accurate claim would be "It is
| possible but unconfirmed that there are a handful of
| occupied houses in one location in the US with walls that
| were originally built in the late medieval era. These are
| extremely far from population centers, so it's
| unsurprising most people don't think about them the way
| Europeans think about older structures".
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Well, there were some issues with genocide between then
| and now that cut down on the number of example I can give
| you and inherently limit them to places far from major
| population centers. There are a lot of places all over
| the country with fairly continuous habitation records
| that abruptly terminate in the colonial period. The
| Southwest broadly managed to retain a higher degree of
| independence than most other parts of the continent until
| the 20th century partly as a result of that remoteness
| and more organized military responses.
| raisin_churn wrote:
| A significant percentage of single-family and rowhouses in DC
| are older Preister's, the actually historic ones by about a
| century. My own house is a couple years newer than his, 1919 I
| think. I just put up solar panels without any NIMBY nonsense
| like this. My only regret is that the south-facing roof is in
| the rear, so it was not economical to plaster the north-facing
| front roof with panels and thus trigger any passing
| reactionaries.
| young_hopper wrote:
| My grandfather (born Philadelphia 1932) always told a story about
| how kids in his town would go to the train tracks in the winter
| and throw rocks at the engines. This would prompt the conductor
| to throw back pieces of coal from the engine to shoo them away.
| They would then pick up the coal and run away to use it to heat
| their homes. The conductors always knew what was going on, but it
| was the railway's coal, so they just always played along.
|
| Anyway, always found that interesting.
| awillen wrote:
| Is this why Mac and Charlie throw rocks at trains at
| Christmas?!
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I still find big chunks (like bigger than softball) of
| anthracite coal around where the Morris Canal used to be in NJ.
| Always assumed some just fell off as they were transporting it
| from PA to NY for industrial use. I don't think trains normally
| used chunks this large, when I was a kid we used the more
| thumb-sized pieces of coal to heat the house when we weren't
| using wood.
|
| In coldest part of winter I think we'd go through roughly a 5
| gallon pail per day of it. (stove would need charging every 12
| hours)
| nimbius wrote:
| I apprenticed repairing coal cars and mining equipment and I
| can confirm the industry is pretty wasteful. we used to get
| cars that still had nearly a hundred pounds of coal in them.
| we used to quietly shovel it out in the winter and use it to
| run little shop stoves we called dumpers for heat.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's called gleaning and dates back to biblical times or
| before.
|
| If you look at in based on percentages, you see whilst the
| amount may be large on a human scale, the time to 'get'
| that last bit isn't worthwhile.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Nowadays we have waste oil burners to heat shops around
| here. We used to give all our used engine oil to a mechanic
| neighbor with a big shop.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| For 100 pounds of coal, the bulk buyers paid less than $5,
| typically $2-3. That's hardly worth the hassle for them.
| refurb wrote:
| Long ago I worked at a massive plant that had its own power
| station (electricity and steam), fired by coal.
|
| It had its own rail line to bring in coal. When you drove in
| you'd drive by a pile of coal about 50 ft high.
|
| We got a tour of the power plant and it had recently been
| upgraded in terms of efficiency and emissions.
|
| Pretty sure it's been shutdown now.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| The coal to wind/solar analogy would be more appropriate if coal
| only burned about half of the time.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > But as cities grew rapidly and demanded ever more fuel,
| choppers quickly deforested surrounding areas. Firewood became
| scarce and expensive. By 1744, Benjamin Franklin was bemoaning
| the plight of his fellow Philadelphians: "Wood, our common Fewel,
| which within these 100 Years might be had at every Man's Door,
| must now be fetch'd near 100 Miles to some towns, and makes a
| very considerable Article in the Expence of Families," he wrote.
| Johann David Schoepf, a German physician and botanist who
| traveled through America during and after the Revolutionary War,
| fretted that all this wood-burning would not "leave for
| [American] grandchildren a bit of wood over which to hang the
| tea-kettle."
|
| It's interesting to note that coal was the solution to a prior
| generation's ecological problem, and now it's the source of our
| generation's problems.
| carapace wrote:
| Woodland management was a solved problem for centuries, we just
| didn't practice it. E.g.: coppicing and pollarding
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollarding
| renox wrote:
| You're the one saying that they didn't manage properly the
| forests, I don't know if they did or not but what I know is
| that when the population increase at some point forests
| cannot provide enough wood for everybody..
|
| Especially since, as stated in the article, the fireplace of
| the time were inefficient..
| carapace wrote:
| > You're the one saying that they didn't manage properly
| the forests, I don't know if they did or not...
|
| It's literally a quote from Ben Franklin? They cut down all
| the firewood for "near 100 Miles to some towns".
|
| > when the population increase at some point forests cannot
| provide enough wood for everybody
|
| Yes, of course, but not by 1744.
| mattnewton wrote:
| > "I applaud your greenness," Chris Landis, an architect and
| board member, told Preister at a meeting in October 2019, "but I
| just have this vision of a row of houses with solar panels on the
| front of them and it just--it upsets me."
|
| My blood boils, of all the things to be a busybody about what
| someone builds on the roof of their own property, you want to
| have them throw away free energy and keep burning fossil fuels
| because you are used to the current aesthetics of the roof..
| catgary wrote:
| I honestly wonder whether or not they should have named Landis
| in this article, because he could easily end up the target of a
| lot of abuse due to this article (and how it demonstrates that
| he is a complete knuckle dragging moron).
| pishpash wrote:
| This is the incorrect response to this. A better response is
| how can you make architecture with solar panels more
| aesthetically pleasing. The half covered roof is objectively
| ugly. Leaf-like, self-standing panels look much better.
|
| I bet early stoves were ugly too but kitchen appliances do have
| styles and they've gotten better with updates.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I don't buy this. Tasteses are informed by what is common and
| what is common is so because of technical reasons, most of
| the time. Getting stuck in what is the current taste is
| myopic, we should focus on function.
| laumars wrote:
| A better response would be: "let's use the tech we have now
| _while_ we design a more aesthetically pleasing solution"
|
| Aesthetics can be important but pragmatically they're far
| less important than the health of our planet.
| iasay wrote:
| Yep. The decline of humanity will be at the hands of greater
| spotted fucking moron, of which Chris Landis is clearly a prime
| example of the species.
|
| You can have both. But really the entire planet works on making
| negative side effects of solving a problem someone else's
| problem and this spans from globalisation of supply chains to
| energy supply. This attitude just enables it.
|
| People needs to start looking at local self-sufficiency of
| energy and materials to some degree.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > People needs to start looking at local self-sufficiency of
| energy and materials to some degree.
|
| This is a complete, unrealistic pipe dream. Yes, we've
| obviously seen a "deglobalization" occurring, and many
| countries are feeling the pain of being completely dependent
| on critical fuel and materials from one or a few other
| countries with shaky political systems.
|
| But the idea that "local self sufficiency" is possible on a
| wide scale, without sending us all back to the stone age, is
| quite frankly nonsense. I remember reading an article a while
| back about how something as ubiquitous as a cheeseburger is
| only possible with wide, nation-crossing supply chains.
|
| Saying "we should look at local self sufficiency" makes
| people think of planting a garden in their back yard, when in
| reality it would mean virtually all of the advances in human
| comfort, health and convenience over the past couple hundred
| years or so would have to be given up.
| mmmpop wrote:
| > I remember reading an article a while back about how
| something as ubiquitous as a cheeseburger is only possible
| with wide, nation-crossing supply chains.
|
| I'm the article was informative but I know where a few cows
| are and I know how to at least field dress a carcass, so I
| bet I can wrangle me some hamburger.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| I'm sure you can, but it doesn't scale. The only way we
| eat is industrialised agriculture.
|
| You will be fighting your neighbours for that cow and
| wasting most of it.
|
| Similarly with "backyard plots" and that other great
| modern stupidity, the vertical indoor garden. Like
| anybody will be lazily reaching over to pick a tomato
| from their indoor vertical garden instead of the
| monstrous greenhouses that most tomatoes come from these
| days.
| Retric wrote:
| In WWII home gardens roughly doubled fresh vegetable
| production.
|
| The degree to which they're a good idea personally varies
| quite a bit, but backyards represent a lot of viable
| farmland on a national scale.
| lovich wrote:
| I agree with you that we rely on industrial agriculture
| and the amount of space someone needs to fully feed
| themselves is larger than most peoples available space,
| but I and others totally reach for the shit we grow
| before resorting to buying in a store, I don't know why
| you think that can't subsidize some need for shipping
| food
| iasay wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that we send ourselves back to the stone
| age. I'm suggesting that we stop shipping resources half
| way around the planet and then send the trash back because
| it's cheaper. The last 50-80 years at least has been a race
| to the lowest cost with no consideration for any
| consequences such as the environment, security and
| stability.
|
| UK is a fine example. We had a great steel industry here.
| But it's cheaper to buy it from China and India and it
| helps us hit our pollution targets not processing it here.
| But we just pushed the problem to where the side effects
| aren't immediately visible. The real issue is our
| consumption and use of materials.
|
| This is the reality:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy63PEgmm8w
| [deleted]
| vasco wrote:
| That dude's quote is definitely moronic but you making the
| leap that globalization is somehow the root of all of
| society's problems is pretty close.
| js2 wrote:
| We should have Federal solar access laws. It's especially
| pathetic this is in D.C. It sounds like they bowed to pressure
| though:
|
| https://positivechangepc.com/uncategorized/dc-will-now-allow...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>We should have Federal solar access laws
|
| Why Federal? Under which Constitutional Authority would such
| a Federal law be placed?
|
| Frankly a HUGE part of the problem we have today, including
| the ever increasing division is the federal government
| expansion in areas (like property use) never envisioned or
| authorized by the US Constitution
|
| So no we do not need a federal solar access law.
| james4k wrote:
| stepping in to protect on issues of liberty and property
| are of course under constitutional authority
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think the point of making this comparison is to say "See,
| Americans have resisted changes in their energy sources before,
| just like they're resisting it today."
|
| If so, I have a few issues with it:
|
| 1. Everyone who resisted the transition to coal in the
| 1800s-1860s has been dead for over a hundred years. A different
| set of people are resisting it now. They don't know each other,
| or coordinate. They don't draw inspiration from each other. Much
| has happened in the interim. So, this feels like a meaningless
| historical anecdote, and not an enlightening framing device.
|
| 2. The vast majority of Americans support solar and wind energy
| as power sources. Around 80% support for increasing both solar
| and wind energy[1].
|
| 3. Coal isn't sustainable and it's a huge source of air
| pollution. That's how we phrase it today, whereas in the 19th
| century they complained about not being able to grow coal
| themselves, and about it being a "secret poisoner". But the
| complaints amount to the same thing. On what basis do we imply
| their concerns were ignorant and short-sighted when it seems like
| they turned out to be essentially correct?
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/08/most-
| americ...
| lemmsjid wrote:
| To your first point, what is interesting, and often
| frustrating, is exactly what you're saying: people resisting
| change now did not learn from people then. Quite the opposite.
| The point is that people often defend their status quo ignorant
| of the fact that it itself is the result of many historical
| transformations. The institution of marriage is a good example.
| Another is behavior that is considered gender normative.
|
| It's quite interesting how even the wording echoes over time.
| Hawthorne's belief that firelight is essential to discourse
| reminds me of the critiques of mass newspaper reading (that
| modern society would be ruined because everyone would have
| their face in a newspaper), or how novel reading would bring
| ruin to women.
|
| The point being that the status quo today, or the status quo in
| the 1950's, is itself the result of many changes that people at
| the time thought were ruinous, from mass reading, to bibles
| written in colloquial speech, to voluntary marriage.
|
| This does not mean resistance to change is bad: it certainly
| seems like a useful reflex to keep chaos at bay. Your third
| point is quite apropos. A good example of that as well was the
| popular resistance to the automobile. People at the time saw
| the mounting fatalities, the congestion and pollution, all of
| which is so normalized today.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| People definitely knew that coal soot was a health issue - the
| town I grew in exists because those who could fled NYC in the
| summer.
|
| But a lot of the reaction was like today economic. If you owned
| mills or real estate around steams, the notion of some upstart
| putting you out of business with a steam powered facility was
| not well received. Lots of people rag on electric cars, because
| they are one of the millions of people making a living based on
| ICE cars who will find themselves redundant.
| acqbu wrote:
| dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32051914
| smegsicle wrote:
| there's nothing there
| ratsmack wrote:
| I don't have a problem with wind and solar, but I do have a
| problem with the enormous amounts of toxic waste produced making
| solar panels and wind mills. Then there is the problem of what to
| do with the huge amount of waste material once the wind mills and
| solar panels need to be replaced. It seems that no one is
| addressing these issues.
|
| On a side note, eWaste is becoming a biger issue every day as we
| produce ever increasing "things" to make our life easier.
| hourago wrote:
| Ummmm... the machines to mine coal produce even more waste. The
| same for drilling equipment for oil.
|
| So, what's your argument?
| ratsmack wrote:
| The argument being that when you just replace one type of
| pollution with another, I'm not sure you're benefiting as
| much as many people believe. I worry that some of the toxins
| produced with modern technologies may be worse than what we
| already have.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The millions of people who have suffered and died as a
| result of inhaling stuff like uranium from coal soot would
| probably disagree.
|
| Electronics manufacturing has its risks and concerns, but
| is an easier problem to address as manufacturing is a
| centralized activity, easy to regulate.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > easy to regulate.
|
| Theoretically.
| lemmsjid wrote:
| Even if alternate energy sources were in equal footing with
| fossil fuels it would still be worth it to pursue them
| because of diversification. Fossil fuel extraction has been
| a driving force behind geopolitics for the last century.
| While the elements behind solar and batteries are similarly
| becoming strategic resources, at least the list of
| exploitable resources is growing rather than shrinking.
| kortex wrote:
| > I worry that some of the toxins produced with modern
| technologies may be worse than what we already have.
|
| Well worry not, as coal is known to be the greatest
| contributor of radioactive elements and mercury in our
| environment at the moment.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I don't see them making the argument _for_ coal, just
| pointing out some concerns over solar and wind. And that 's
| fine.
| fny wrote:
| I'm going to posit the closest modern analogue to coal is not
| wind and solar but rather nuclear. People hear nuclear and
| immediately think "no thanks" despite it solving energy scarcity
| and cleanliness in one shot.
| edent wrote:
| Where do you get the uranium from? It doesn't magically fall
| out of the sky. It comes from heavy extractive of industry.
|
| What's the reasonable worst case scenario with a nuclear plant
| failing? Is that particularly clean?
|
| What happens to the waste? Does it have to be stored and
| protected long term?
|
| Nuclear can be great at eliminating scarcity. And it can be
| clean in use (if you ignore extracting and refining the fuel.
| And ignore contamination. And ignore waste storage. And ignore
| decommissioning).
| orangecat wrote:
| _Where do you get the uranium from? It doesn 't magically
| fall out of the sky. It comes from heavy extractive of
| industry._
|
| As opposed to the Windmill Fairy?
|
| _What 's the reasonable worst case scenario with a nuclear
| plant failing?_
|
| Using Fukushima as an example, the worst case is that fewer
| people died as a result of the meltdown than died from the
| hasty reaction of shutting down all of Japan's other nuclear
| plants (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/10/31/sh
| utting-...).
|
| _What happens to the waste?_
|
| It's contained, which is a large improvement over spewing it
| into the atmosphere.
|
| These clever questions you're asking have been studied
| extensively, and nuclear comes out far ahead of fossil fuels
| on every conceivable metric. You can try to make the argument
| that we don't need to build any more nuclear plants because
| wind and solar will provide everything we need in 10 years,
| although you'll need to explain why this is true now when
| people have been incorrectly claiming it for 40+ years. But
| if you're shutting down nuclear plants and burning more coal
| as a result (hello Germany), you've taken a very wrong turn.
| grey-area wrote:
| At this point the cost of Fukushima in yen and in lives
| blighted by evacuations will be far far above any positive
| contribution from the plant.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Literally zero people died in the immediate aftermath,
| and in the years since one person who worked at the plant
| has died.
|
| The data is clear, in terms of deaths per TWh of
| generated power, nuclear is the safest, cleanest form of
| power we have. [1]
|
| Coal power kills between 24 and 100 people per TWh
| generated (100 for brown coal). Nuclear is 0.03 - between
| industrial solar and wind, and significantly lower than
| rooftop solar. It also has a lower carbon impact than
| both wind and solar.
|
| Yes people were evacuated. But they'd have been evacuated
| anyways whatever kind of plant was there.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
| arcticbull wrote:
| There's four billion tons dissolved in the ocean. But even if
| you weren't interested, switching to breeder reactors would
| make the terrestrial supply last 100x longer. And of course
| there's thorium cycle which dramatically expands the supply
| too. Supply is not an issue.
| nix0n wrote:
| It's not perfect, but it's a lot more clean than fossil
| fuels.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I suppose these hypothetical, rhetorical questions are
| convincing to some, but the data on Nuclear power is pretty
| good.
|
| How do you define "Clean"?
|
| Deaths per watt? https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-
| of-energy
|
| Maybe there's no where to store waste? https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
|
| Radiation from the waste though? "The current analysis
| indicates that the repository will cause less than 1
| mrem/year public dose for 1,000,000 years"
|
| Or maybe we're worried about a meltdown? Perhaps we could
| read up on Fukushima?
|
| Well there, one person died from radiation, and 2000 from the
| evacuation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_n
| uclear_disa...
|
| The most at-risk individuals experienced a lifetime 1%
| increase chance of cancer. The rest were less that 0.5%.
| COVID had a bigger fatality rate initially.
|
| let's compare that to the 20,000 people the wave killed. (The
| one that caused the meltdown).
|
| These are good questions to ask, but there are, what, three
| total nuclear disasters to consider in modern history? And of
| those, only the one in Russia caused deaths (plural) and true
| disaster. And of the horrific conditions, incompetent design,
| and complete mismanagement and deliberate lying, 30 people
| died total.
|
| Fossil fuel pollution is responsible for (by some figures) 1
| in 5 deaths worldwide. Enough.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Oh I forgot. Let's talk about transport danger.
|
| Uranium is 16,000 as energy dense as Coal (and coal is the
| densest) . That means you'd need ONE tanker sized craft to
| transport way, way more fuel than all the tankers of the
| world.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/468405/global-oil-
| tanker...
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| And just imagine how many miles nuclear powered Aircraft
| Carriers have traversed without significant incident
| since the 1960's.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Navy nuclear safety is the result of planning and
| engineering and obscene amounts of money. There is no way
| commercial energy plants could profit if they spent the
| resources the navy does.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| ok. how about France? They get 70% of their power from
| Nuclear, starting in 1962.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The mining and waste are much smaller scale due to the
| incredible energy density of nuclear.
|
| Look at how ugly coal gets, for the same amount of energy.
| Kids down in the mines, miner's strikes when it ended, people
| dying of smog. All sorts of terrible things derived from coal
| need to be included in this comparison.
|
| The only thing nuclear really has against it is that when it
| goes wrong it can go really wrong. And people have thought
| about those modes of failure quite a bit, so why don't we see
| if they've come up with something?
|
| We should try nuclear and see where it goes.
| salty_biscuits wrote:
| There is also the nuclear weapons proliferation bit. I'm
| honestly more concerned about that than accidents.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| It doesn't have to be that way. I'm no great fan of
| Nuclear power (although mostly because we know it will be
| privatised and the private company running it will
| suddenly be bankrupt when it comes to the clean up) but
| the US and Russia hid a lot of their weapons development
| behind "too cheap to meter" nuclear power stations.
|
| I wouldn't guarantee they would not do that again, but
| the incentives are very different this time around, so
| the design of the power stations shouldn't produce
| material suitable for modern nuclear weapons as a side
| effect.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| A bit odd to compare the blight of solar panels to the
| introduction of coal.
|
| There's no reason to not densely pack solar panels atop
| commercial buildings or any other large pieces of land, then
| "transport" the energy to the homes. The constraints are
| completely different.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Indeed, the main concern with solar is just cost and
| availability. Getting electricity for free from the sun is a
| great value proposition for most people. Spending tens of
| thousands on your roof, not so much. The upfront investment is
| a bit of a hurdle. And you get some push-back from Nimby's
| complaining about what things look like. Of course nothing
| compared to if you were to cause a lot of smog by burning coal.
|
| With coal the concern is the sooth, dust, pollution, and smell.
| It's just nasty, toxic stuff. Smog from coal is unpleasant.
| It's not like a wood fire which at least smells nice. Coal is
| what you used to burn if you could not afford wood or gas.
| Throwing a lump of coal on the fire is nobody's idea of a
| romantic thing to do. Making a nice wood fire, completely
| different thing.
|
| Here in Berlin, people were burning coal in some parts of the
| city until gentrification caused most of the remaining DDR
| construction to get renovated. As recent as ten years ago, you
| could smell coal in the winter in e.g. Prenzlauer Berg, which
| is now a properly gentrified area full of hipsters, coffee
| shops, etc. One of my colleagues at the time rented an attic
| with only a coal furnace. He had to carry the stuff upstairs if
| he wanted heating. But he payed very little in rent so he was
| OK with that. It's the most run down, poor areas that got rid
| of coal last.
| throwaway28934 wrote:
| My family burned coal when I was a child, and eventually
| switched to wood. Cost aside, coal still seemed a lot more
| practical for seriously heating a house because it stays lit
| much longer, wood constantly demands attention and
| refuelling. But it's harder to light and the ash is useless.
| Nostalgic though :)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Not familiar with installation as I don't own a home, but do
| most roofs have the load capacity to handle all the solar
| panels?
|
| One of the deadliest building disasters happened because of not
| respecting weight limits of the roof.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampoong_Department_Store_co...
| edent wrote:
| The large panels I recently had installed weighed less than
| 20Kg each. Much less than the weight of the slate tiles they
| replaced.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Solar shingles are a relatively new consumer option I've seen
| deployed very effectively. Looks slick if done right and
| helps reduce/solve the problem you're mentioning.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| >if done right
|
| My gut reaction is that it probably costs a ton more to
| install and wire solar shingles and is less efficient?
| Unless we're talking new commercial installs and not
| residential?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Generally speaking, yes. But as with all things, it depends.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| It's winter here New Zealand. Something like 30% of people in my
| region still burn coal in the winter to keep their houses warm.
| Most of the rest burn firewood.
| kvetching wrote:
| "Green Energy" (The production of solar panels and windmills are
| FAR from green) propaganda.
| inb4_cancelled wrote:
| Please provide numbers.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| At present the turbines are not recyclable.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-
| turb...
|
| EVs are probably really worse than hybrids.
| https://youtu.be/S1E8SQde5rk
|
| Solar panels are pretty toxic. Present recycling produces all
| sorts of toxic waste that might be poorly handled.
| https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/15/the-solar-panel-toxic-
| waste...
|
| Batteries are often sourced from slave labor.
| https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/green-
| battery-r...
|
| Lithium miners often continue exploration of indigenous
| peoples. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/bat
| teries/t...
|
| Lithium mining often poisons the environment.
| https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-
| env...
|
| The list goes on.
| Shorel wrote:
| To me, this is the epitome, the Magnum opus of propaganda.
|
| Corporations convinced the public to vote against green energy,
| and the public does!
|
| Democracy would be much better if our brains were equipped
| against such practices.
| roamerz wrote:
| Corporations? That hardly the case. People make up their own
| minds about green energy and make decisions about about voting
| themselves. People are seeing the affects right now of what
| happens when they vote for politicians that are doing their
| best to shut down oil - $6 a gallon gas.
| labster wrote:
| I have seen it in action, though. PG&E bought enough propaganda
| to convince Yolo County not to switch to a public utility. They
| convinced everyone to take a worse deal that would cost more
| money, by repeating the lie so many times that the other side
| cost more. Most human brains are not equipped to make rational
| decisions, but simply make social decisions based on perception
| of group opinion.
| woodruffw wrote:
| See also: the invention of "jaywalking" to criminalize
| pedestrians and elevate car traffic over foot traffic[1], and
| the successful effort to dismantle the US's streetcar
| systems[2].
|
| [1]: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
|
| [2]:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Jaywalking is an example of this power being used for good.
| Traffic flow is more important than being able to cross
| anywhere you want when we have crosswalks.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Nobody thinks that traffic flow isn't important. What's
| striking is the _prioritization_ of one form of traffic
| over another, largely at the expensive of neighborhoods and
| the people who live in them.
| ahipple wrote:
| One could just as easily say that "[foot] traffic flow is
| more important than being able to [drive] anywhere you
| want", and in some locales that attitude may serve to
| benefit more people than the inverse. It's not a given that
| cars must be the default mode of transportation, but the
| idea that this _is_ a given is ingrained in the public
| conversation about infrastructure due to precisely the sort
| of propaganda the original commenter in this thread was
| talking about.
| carapace wrote:
| FWIW, check out "A Trip Down Market Street", filmed in 1906
| in SF just before the earthquake.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oubsaFBUcTc
|
| Upscaled and colorized:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_1AdYRGW8
|
| You can see pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, and early
| automobiles all "flowing" together.
| thebradbain wrote:
| In what context?
|
| In New York and many other pedestrian-oriented cities
| around the world, more people get around via walking than
| driving for intra-city trips -- the cars are the ones
| blocking traffic flow there.
|
| Nevertheless, I'm of the persuasion that people who live in
| a neighborhood/city/region should be prioritized more for
| quality of life purposes than those merely passing through
| on a commute. Thus I would argue a pedestrian-hostile six
| lane road has no purpose going through a residential area,
| and in the same way I think there's as many places where
| pedestrians should be prioritized highly above cars, such
| as neighborhoods, school zones, and dense commercial
| corridors.
|
| It's all contextual.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| There's a crosswalk at every intersection in New York. It
| would be unecessary and inefficient for the streets to be
| constantly crowded by pedestrians. The pedestrian's trip
| would be marginally faster while traffic would be backed
| up considerably.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is the sort of language we're talking about:
| pedestrians aren't (and rightfully wouldn't be)
| "crowding" anyone. Pedestrians have been crowded onto
| sidewalks, to the advantage of a relatively small (and
| substantially less dense) class of drivers.
|
| Driving in NYC should be a matter of necessity, not pure
| expedience. If and when our policies match that fact,
| those drivers that _need_ to drive will find that they're
| stuck in less traffic as a result.
| eropple wrote:
| "Traffic" has no inherent right to not be backed up.
|
| If you are able to walk and you aren't carrying cargo,
| you should be walking. The overwhelming majority of a
| city's residents fit into this category and the
| ridiculous amount of square footage allocated to car-
| asphalt is in defiance of this. And every able-bodied
| person who drives into the city for an office job should
| be dissuaded by geometrically increasing parking costs
| for increasing that unnecessary traffic load.
|
| I live in on the edge of the suburbs and my car's gotten
| sixteen thousand miles on it in the last five years.
| Almost all of which is going to Home Depot and back or
| visiting people significantly outside of the city.
| eropple wrote:
| Nah. Cars can slow down and cars can wait. And, preferably,
| be removed from populous areas during human-active hours
| (modulo assistive vehicles).
|
| Massachusetts has a thunderous $1 fine for your first,
| second, and third jaywalking offense ($2 for those
| subsequent), and the world has not ended.
| fooker wrote:
| > Cars can slow down and cars can wait.
|
| How about emergency response vehicles of any kind?
| jimmaswell wrote:
| In Tokyo it's uncommon to jaywalk and it's still
| considered the #4 most pedestrian friendly city. It's
| more efficient and safe for everyone this way.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Jaywalking has been exported to the rest of the world,
| but Tokyo is not a great example: they've successfully
| applied just about every urban design technique that
| allows cars and other traffic to coexist, _to the uniform
| detriment of cars._ [1]
|
| In other words: the restrictions that Tokyo places on
| urban car traffic would make the average American driver
| scream bloody murder.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/10/1/lessons-
| from-t...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| You call a system a democracy where corporations can spend tens
| of billions on propaganda. And conclude that our brains are the
| problem.
| warning26 wrote:
| Sure, so how do you stop that?
|
| As long as it's possible for individuals to decide things via
| voting, there will be an incentive to convince those
| individuals to vote in particular ways.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I don't get why this is hard to understand^W communicate.
|
| Corporations have tens of billions to spend on marketing.
| To put things in perspective: what do _regular people_ have
| in terms of a propaganda budget in order to target
| corporations?
|
| The very fact that corporations have these kinds of budgets
| to just point at regular people--and regular people have no
| recourse other than "don't be stupid"--betrays the fact
| that ours are democracies in name only.
|
| If a nation had a population of millions and a handful of
| billionaires who just bought off the politicians then the
| real fundamental problem would be the massive wealth
| disparity, _not_ the fact that the billionaires could _de
| jure_ buy off politicians (they could have done that _de
| facto_ if there was no such explicit law).
| refurb wrote:
| Bloomberg spent $1B of his own money to become US
| President and never even had a good showing in the
| primary.
|
| I think you over estimate the power of money on people's
| thoughts and opinions.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Am I supposed to respond to the collective opinion drift
| caused by a new person responding to me in this thread at
| every sub-level?
|
| The original claim was that our brains are broken because
| we respond to propaganda. I don't have the inclination to
| address the opposite claim as well.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Through governance and civilization? There will always be
| an incentive to bribe public officials, too. Or for that
| matter, to rob, rape, and kill.
| patrickthebold wrote:
| Of course people's brains are the problem. Who do you think
| is deciding things?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Going by the amount of money spent: the corporations,
| obviously.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Corporations don't just run themselves.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Corporations are run as command economies by a small
| handful of people. Corporations indirectly run society.
| Hence a small number of people run society. Which means
| that democracies are not run by the people. Hence
| democracy in name only.
| hourago wrote:
| > Besides contributing to climate change, pollution from coal
| kills half a million people globally each year.
|
| That is an externality. My company gets there profit, other
| people die, but I do not need to pay for it. How is this legal?
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Because people make money. How many of us own Apple products?
| We know they have near slave labor and high suicide rates in
| Foxconn. The US doesn't even attach tariffs to them.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > high suicide rates in Foxconn
|
| Didn't that turn out to be considerably lower than the
| average suicide rate in China?
| fooker wrote:
| Yes, after they put nets on the walls to catch would-be-
| suiciders and threatened families employees who would
| consider that option.
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