I guess I could have stated the form of energy I was talking about a little more clearly. That's actually mostly in agreement to what I was referring to though, as we move from fossil fuel powered transport to EVs, we'll see that demand shift and drive electrical consumption up dramatically (even if the total joules of energy required decreases from a physics perspective). Yes, internal combustion is inherently very, very inefficient but it just takes HEAPS of energy to move 3,000+ pounds (1,350+ kg) of anything and all of that will be coming from the mains rather than an oil rig. That's why we (not just Sweden, all of us humans) need to increase our electrical generation capacity and modernize our distribution networks.
DrAnthony
joined 1 year ago
You can bank on energy consumption rising year over year for the next lifetime or so. We have completely run out of low hanging fruit in terms of cutting back like moving from incandescent to LED lighting, installing heat pumps to replace resistive heaters...ect. Solar, wind and other green sources ARE very much the future (assuming we want to have a future at all), but their variable output doesn't mesh super well with how electrical grids are handled today. Batteries and other storage options are no where near ready and may never be for grid scale. This is where nuclear shines, that steady trickle over many, many decades as a bridge to a future with a redesigned distribution network and other technologies we can't even conceive of yet. The thing is it's a long term play, there's a massive upfront cost and the people involved the project today may not even be alive or seeking any sort of political office in 20 years when it's completely validated. Even if these plants can't get online fast enough to meet the peak demands in the near-term, there's nothing stopping them from scaling out solar and/or wind farms to pick up the slack.
Maybe I should revise my statement to "consumer routers an informed user would consider buying".
It's awesome to see these projects are still alive and kicking but they feel like a relic of a past era nowadays. Much like how stock ROMs on Android have improved to the point that rooting isn't really beneficial in most cases anymore, the stock firmware on the majority of routers is perfectly serviceable. I'm sure there are still some corner cases where they are as transformative as ever though.
I feel your pain there. I made the switch during the pandemic thanks to my lectures all being recorded. Hearing myself start every single class with "Okay guys let's get started" was just so cringey that I had to do something.
I feel like there's still an acceptable way to do this as long as you keep it respectful and follow the mantra of "say more with less". For example, let's say we were at a cookout and I came by and said "Hey dude, have you seen Josh Allen's girlfriend? She's absolutely stunning". You pull your phone out Google her we both nod and then move on to something else. If it lingers more than that or wades into the more murky waters of specifics then I agree it's totally over the line.
So Thunderbird is super dead this time huh?