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<unlmtd>
sphalerite: of course, youre muscles are not sun rays. the question is totally ridiculous. you seem to assume that technology is manufactured out of thin air. those PV cells have to be manufactured, at the cost of more loss of biosphere and clean water, which we cant afford. we should never make another PV cell again, until there is a superabundance of biomass on the earth; this will never happen in our lifetime; it will
<unlmtd>
take millenias
<unlmtd>
nuclear fission, including thorium, is a constant biomass destroying energy extraction process
<unlmtd>
and like I said, the precious sunlight which shines close to your residence is best used to grow food. wind generators are much more interesting than PV
<unlmtd>
ask any honest electrical engineer; if you want to really move electrons in a wire, you need a dynamo. solar is nothing more than intellectually interesting
<unlmtd>
the best solar power plant is a food forest
<unlmtd>
read 'Silent Spring'
<unlmtd>
probably the real reason JFK was killed was his pushing to get that book published
<unlmtd>
him or his brother, cant remember now
<unlmtd>
and all those motorised transports need flat roads. to build roads you need slaves, or tar which comes from petroleum, which we are rapidly using all up
<unlmtd>
without slaves or tar, the roads will degrade, and soon it will be impractical to go faster than 5-10mph, at which point cars/trucks are very uninteresting
<unlmtd>
there are some many interlinked variables, which are now all starting to act in synergy to create the ultimate energy/food crisis, the greatest ever seen in our history
<unlmtd>
so sell your car, buy a bicycle, collect rain water, plant a garden (or hire someone else do it for you, division of labor) and get a wind generator
<unlmtd>
actually, the garden is overated. if you can take action early, plant food trees and edible perenials
<unlmtd>
stuff that requires very little maintenance to keep feeding you
<unlmtd>
like we talked about earlier: permaculture
<unlmtd>
but nobody here is looking at the problem which dwarfes the energy problem; the water problem.
<unlmtd>
and every time you manufacture a solar panel, or a wind generator, you use up more clean water
<unlmtd>
"musle power is just solar energy" ... wow!
<sphalerite>
but it is!
<sphalerite>
and no, I'm not assuming it's manufactured out of thin air. I'm also not saying PV is necessarily the way forwards. But muscle power is ridiculously inefficient as far as converting the energy arriving on the planet into useful energy is concerned.
<sphalerite>
I also don't really get what you mean by there not being an overabundance of biomass. Why do we need more biomass?
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<MichaelRaskin>
Just biomass is cheap per se. And water problem has an upper bound on the energy cost, called distillation.
<unlmtd>
id argue, but we have both made our minds. given your attitude towards the topic, I'll bet you wont even survive long enough to see who was right
<gchristensen>
this is the weirdest channel
<unlmtd>
sorry, that was harsh.
<unlmtd>
but muscle energy is by far the most efficient source of energy, so that really got me boiling a bit, so again im sorry
<unlmtd>
I think the mistake sphalerite is making is to ommit the manufacturing and proper disposal cost of these energy-capturing technologies in his calculation
<unlmtd>
on the biomass: life is our most important capital. we are a complex animal that depends on a thriving, deep, varied and resilient biomass
<unlmtd>
which we are destroying. its also our best defense against radiadion
<unlmtd>
radiation*
<gchristensen>
ohhh let's equip solar farms with 3d muscle printing robots
<gchristensen>
I've just been knee-deep in documentation tools this weekend and came across it
<unlmtd>
thinking of overhauling nix
<unlmtd>
nix documentation?
<gchristensen>
not really, just curious if anyone knows about it
<gchristensen>
I'm largley of the opinion that the nix* docs need incremental improvement before overhauuls make sense
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<sphalerite>
unlmtd: well where doe smuscle energy come from? Respiration. Respiration uses sugars which are produced through photosynthesis, which is hugely inefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
<sphalerite>
I'm not saying you're wrong about everything else as well but I'm thoroughly unconvinced on the "muscles are the most efficient"
<sphalerite>
Not going to argue about the efficiency of producing PV cells because I don't know anything about it.
<sphalerite>
But plants and PV cells aren't our only ways to make solar energy useful.
<sphalerite>
I'm not an expert but I strongly suspect a solar steam engine for example would be a lot more efficient for example.
<sphalerite>
take one of thoses "for example"s out :p
<unlmtd>
dont forget that energy must be directed - your muscles are by far the most precise machinery for directing your will towards a goal. the amount of engineering required to direct electricity towards a meaningful goal is immense in comparison to simply 'willing' your foot in front of the other
<unlmtd>
sphalerite: plants dont require constant maintenance to keep growing. bill mollison would spend a few months on a piece of land, organizing a system of plants, then come back 20 (unattended) years later to a bunch of food growing everywhere. what would have happened to solar panels abandonned for 20 years?
<sphalerite>
that's fair enough
<unlmtd>
there must be a channel that focuses on those topics somewhere,
<unlmtd>
complexity has a cost
<unlmtd>
that cost must be accounted for when we think of efficiency
<unlmtd>
the electricity produced by a solar panel or a wind generator required such an immense amount of ressources/skill/time/maintenance, that using it to propulse ourselves forward in space instead of simply pedaling a bicycle is extremely wasteful. Not to mention that some people then become very unhealthy for lack of exercise, then proceed to destroy the planet even more to drive their war machines to the gym, then destroy
<unlmtd>
the planet again to power a fucking threadmill.
<unlmtd>
having riden my bycicle for as long as I can remember now, I have to concede that I fully understand why people want to move around in their car; the other cars are so dangerous that riding a bike is almost suicidal
<unlmtd>
so we are looking at what is sometimes called 'game theory'
<sphalerite>
yeah I live in the city where I can walk almost everywhere I need to get, and I'd hate to give that up
<unlmtd>
the vast majority of man's energy use is directed at completly wasteful and unnecessary endeavors.
<sphalerite>
I had a bike for a while too, but cycling isn't that great in Glasgow, and the bike got stolen 6 weeks after I got it
<clever>
i live in the middle of nowhere, and havent lost a single bike, and there are 2 or 3 of them just laying beside the garage
<unlmtd>
so arguing over how we should produce more energy is misguided imo. we should rather look at ways of better using our ressources. the car is the main culprit here, we have paved all of our gardening space, and have destroyed the community, because people are simply addicted to 'driving a car'
<unlmtd>
bicycle parking is a big problem, which can be easily solved given man's ingenuity
<sphalerite>
a much smaller problem than car parking :p
<clever>
this down is so dead that i can just lock my bike to the nearest telephone pole, lol
<clever>
s/down/town/
<unlmtd>
and why are cars parked anyway? they estimate most cars in america are parked over 95% of the time
<clever>
ah, good point, replace them with shared self-drivers
<sphalerite>
clever: the Joni Mitchell version is better :p
<unlmtd>
look at movis of some cities pre wwII and you see taxi-tricycles. city driving is so dense that they get anywhere just ast fast , without destroying so much
<unlmtd>
im extremely bullish on bi/tricycles
<unlmtd>
Im thinking of buying a big load of good bikes soon, steel is being produced at a loss in china, those prices are so insanely low
<unlmtd>
I bought a boskey from beiling, cost about 1000usd and I am very impressed with this bike. I would compare it to the surley brand from the US, and those bikes retail for 2-3K each
<unlmtd>
no wonder they want to tariff chinese steel protucts
<unlmtd>
everything is now setup exactly like the late 70s, when oil shot up 15 times in 3 years
<unlmtd>
I drove myself almost bankrupt going long oil a few years ago, I just didnt see the obvious: there is always a big glut before the shortages. hence the greatest shortages should be preceded by the greatest glut - this is what just happened. Two years ago we saw the cheapest oil in our history