Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Also if we're planning for the long term; wind and solar sound like bad options for going into major global catastrophes like large asteroid hits or a nuclear war. It'd be better as a matter of principle to be using systems that can cope with massive climate disruptions. I like to bring up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer - an event like that will happen sooner or later and it'd be pretty rough if we've all gone too heavy with solar.

One of those hopefully-you-don't-need-it concerns but it is starting to become a more pressing with the uptick in wars and unrest that seems to be going on.



More[1] reading material. The volcanic winter of 536 made it one of the worst years for humanity.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter


Sorry, how is having a few, very delicate, power sources more resilient than an abundance of mechanically simple and widely distributed power sources?


They work if light is massively cut down for 12 months. And can be fortified to the nth degree.


This has to be the most hilariously desperate anti-renewable argument yet.


In what way is it anti-renewable?


"Renewables (or, at least, PV) are bad because they won't work after a K/Pg-level asteroid impact."


Why would that make them bad? They're still good. It just isn't clever to rely only on one source of power. It is like chicken being a good thing to have in the fridge. That doesn't make a sack of potatoes in the cupboard bad.

On a 1:500 year time horizon we know there are threats that dim the sun (possibly quite a bit shorter now that nuclear weapons are on the table and we seem to be incapable of dealing with that threat productively - the number of actors with nukes is growing). Planning for that isn't anti-renewable, it is just cautious.

And nobody was talking about K-Pg events. You'll notice the years quoted were all after the Roman Empire was founded.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: