I think it re-enforces the confusion that wind/solar is the best strategy to reduce CO2 emissions. It may be in some places, but not everywhere, it may even be counter-productive. For instance, France has low CO2 emission as most of its electricity is from nuclear plants. If global warming is the most immediate treat, it would make little sense to dismantle them now. There are much better investments to make than buying solar panels. That's an issue I'm having with the green party in France who doesn't seem to recognize this.
I agree that it doesn't make sense to dismantle safe nuclear plants within their normal operating lifetime, but I'm not convinced it makes sense to build any more - and the lead time is about a decade!
I'm not an expert but in France where electricity production is nuclear, I'd say renovating housing (heating systems/insulation), promoting public transportation and discouraging the use of polluting vehicles, improving industry efficiency...
Agree - though with the amount that we currently subsidise nuclear in the UK, I'd rather we did both (invest in non-engery producing green tech AND invest in renewables)
You gave the answer in your own question. The fact that it is not a constant 37% is the problem here. What do you do when you get 10x less wind than the average? People still expect the same services (train, heaters..) to run
So all that matters is having a suitable mix, including wind, to produce low or no emission power. It will also include hydro and pumped storage, of which Ireland has several. There's probably not many suitable sites they aren't already using. Solar and possibly wave or tidal too.
That they're not going fast enough (no one is) still doesn't make it greenwashing.
Then and only then they use other power sources. Even if those sources are coal, so what? It’s not like the coal plants have to run 24/7 even when the wind is blowing.
It means you have to dimension your coal power plants so that they can cover the case where there is no wind and accept to not use them when there is plenty of wind.
And that does not sound economically good [1]:
"Fixed costs combined with lower running hours are devastating for coal power economics."
To be clear I am not advocating for using coal instead of renewables. However advertising a total amount of "clean" intermittent energy produced without talking about what happens the rest of the time is greenwashing.
I don’t think that “wind power makes coal more expensive” is a good argument against wind, especially as the majority appear to agree that coal is bad and we should have less of it. Also, didn’t the coal plants already exist before the wind turbines were built? So they’re already at the size for fallback supply?
I am not making an argument against wind.
I am making an argument against claims that amount of kWh generated by intermittent sources has the same economical value as the same amount generated by sources we can pilot to match the demand.
"the majority appear to agree that coal is bad and we should have less of it". The majority also agrees that they don't want their electricity bill to rise.
Coal plants need to be maintained and upgraded to match regulations. That's a cost after construction that you have to pay for even if you're not running the plant
> I am making an argument against claims that amount of kWh generated by intermittent sources has the same economical value as the same amount generated by sources we can pilot to match the demand.
In that case, I think we agree. I’m still anticipating alternative balancing solutions, but we agree on this.
As the capacity factor of wind is something like 30-40%, it's not "then and only then" those fossil plants will be running, it's most of the time. To reach 2C targets that's not nearly good enough.
Wind produced 37% of the country’s energy so far this year. That’s 37% not produced by coal. That it isn’t a complete solution should not be classified as a dealbreaker especially given it’s still growing and power supplies are multi-sourced anyway.
That's what interconnects partly are for. Ireland is an island, but its grid is no longer separated from the rest of Europe. We're getting closer to a point where, when we have a surplus, it can get sent elsewhere, and when we have a deficit, it can be pulled from elsewhere.
Sure. If you assume that electricity from renewables are randomly distributed in time across your grid then all countries can do that. Unfortunately it's not the case (it's night time in Ireland and France at roughly the same hours) and so this model relies on the fact that other countries have non intermittent power sources that can kick in when it's night time and there is no wind. You've just moved the problem
Let's get one thing straight here: neither I nor anybody else is arguing that renewables (which are currently mostly intermittant) can replace non-renewable sources. They are, however, complementary: the more power you generate from the renewables, the longer you can stretch out the supply of the non-renewables. And that is an unqualified good.
Of course the problem just moved. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the way that it moves can itself be beneficial.
> If you assume that electricity from renewables are randomly distributed in time across your grid then all countries can do that.
That's not an argument I'm making. The closest I come to that is that the distribution of power sources across different interconnected grids can compensate for each other.
Distribution isn't random: geography figures into this hugely. Ireland has vast areas off its Atlantic coasts to put off-shore windfarms in addition to the current mostly land-based ones.
Most wind power generated, especially off-shore, is generated around the time of peak hours. That means a potential surplus around the same time, which can be sent elsewhere, where they're also hitting their peak hours. At the risk of vastly oversimplifying things, power can flow back and forward over the interconnects, covering the difference, and we're good enough at forecasting usage and availability at this point that the surpluses and deficits can be accounted.
Intermittant and non-intermittant sources are complementary. The problem is moved, but
You only need a third of that to get the same amount of electricity out of them as by burning 10 kW of fossil fuels. Spread over 20 to 30 years that's suddenly not so much anymore. How much does the US spend on energy each year now? How much to secure the imports?
You forgot that this is primary energy consumption you two are writing about. 10 kW of primary energy consumption if replaced with solar requires only about a third of that to yield the same results since about two thirds are heat losses when converting fossil fuels to useable energy.
These comments are boring and increasingly common on HN. On almost every discussion of Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook you'll find comments like these expressing faux incredulity at the prospect that some users find these services valuable. You may not be the target market, but it really isn't difficult to understand why they're popular with minimum effort. At best, these comments convey laziness and an unwillingness to understand other perspectives. At worst, they're often used to assert moral superiority over others that use such "useless" products and services.
True it was a lazy comment. But we can easily imagine a world without these services, and it would be almost entirely better. That takes no effort at all to understand that point of view either.
I couldn't disagree more. Given how popular these services are they're obviously providing some form of utility otherwise they wouldn't be used. Regardless of what kind of utility these users derive, I'm betting the vast majority of them would disagree with your claim. You may think the world would be "better" (whatever that means), but I'm guessing you don't use these services so what difference does it make to you?
There seems to be a cognitive gap here: on one hand acknowledging these widespread comments from folks with no use for these services, and then insistence that everybody uses them. At the risk of repeating myself, its trivially easy to see the point of view that they're not useful to a large portion of humanity. The irony is thick.
What difference does it make to me? Nothing, except pointing out contradiction. A hobby of mine.
You can't equate a service not being useful to a large portion of humanity as meaning that it's a net negative on the world. That was your claim, but it's not qualified in any way whatsoever or immediately obvious what your viewpoint is when ambiguous descriptors like "better" are used.
I think that just shows how narrow your group of acquaintances is and how out of touch you are with a large part of the world.
250 million people use Pinterest every month. That's (approximately, though lower than) the same ballpark as Snapchat and Twitter.
I assume you are capable of Googling their monthly user numbers, just like I did. So I assume your post is just virtue signalling and not actually asking in the spirit of trying to understand others, since it is obvious that yes, people do use Pinterest.
Define 'use'. If 'use' is getting clickbaited through Google images, then the metric is useless. I can't find demographic data but I'd be super interested in that.
I'm Hispanic and have only met a single Hispanic girl who uses Pinterest, and they're pretty young. The 83% number seems wild to me.
250 million people may be using Pinterest currently, but I don't think Pinterest can maintain this position with just one product. It's outdated and most of the content is just copied from elsewhere. More and more people are shifting to Instagram/Reddit.
I personally know people who were using Pinterest back in 2015-2016 but have since then shifted to Instagram.
Boards/collections are just glorified marketing terms used to convey that Pinterest has something new to offer. Alternatively, I can create a group chat on Insta or I can create a private subreddit and share the interesting links with the people I want to share. I can create multiple Insta chats and subreddits each for different topics.
Of all the social networks, Pinterest has had the most positive influence on my life. My wife has found recipes, various birthday craft ideas, home improvement, and all sorts of other useful and interesting things through it. It has no drama, at least the way she uses it, and has just generally been helpful.
(I don't use it directly; I don't use anything that would be called a "social network" unless you count HN and "reddit, but solely a custom set of non-default subreddits" social networks.)
people on HN probably not that much, not sure. Out in consumer-land it's used quite a bit depending on your target demographic (>83% of US women 25-54 for example). Lots of growth outside of the US as well. I sometimes work with designers (interior, architects and the like) and they seem to use it A LOT. Decent amount of traffic from Pinterest on some sites as well, especially on long-tail stuff. Advertising options weren't available in my country previously, so can't say anything about the ROI.
I don't know. I think this is what they WANT you to think, honestly. This may have been the case 5 years ago, but from my anecdotal evidence of just asking around friends, family, co-workers, etc. this isn't really the reality anymore. Most of who I have talked about this with find it old, dated, and full of re-posts/spam. I would be curious to see their actual numbers on ACTIVE users, minus their terrible dark patterns to "get" users.
>I would be curious to see their actual numbers on ACTIVE users, minus their terrible dark patterns to "get" users.
Pinterest's S-1 filing[0] on March 22 2019 says their MAU (monthly active users) is ~265 million. It also says the WAU (weekly active users) is 57% of MAU so ~151 million Pinterest accounts log in at least once a week.
Of course, the Pinterest executives could falsify that information on the S-1 to mislead and hype up the IPO but that carries the risk of the SEC slamming them with fraud and the DOJ pursuing criminal charges.
I find it extremely helpful for collecting inspiration for my art / gamedev projects. I also often hire artists and animators and being able to put together a references board for them is extremely helpful and efficient for communicating my vision. [0]
