There are a lot of places where solar panels can increase yield for specific plants by providing a shade. They also can generate electricity to run electrical pumps for targeted irrigation saving a lot of water.
Ya, but that isnt as widespread as fields being rededicated from crops generally to solar exclusively. And mixed use doesnt mesh well in a world of crop rotation and crop-specific harvesting equipment. I have yet to see a combine that can drive over solar panels without touching them.
I do not see a point of smart appliances besides electrical car. 10 KWt-hour battery will cover all the needs to smooth the demand from all home appliances and costs below 1K usd. It will allow also to significantly reduce maximum power that has to be supplied to a house while allow to increase peak consumption while heavy cooking/AC/heating.
At least in the US most of this is still on the research phase but if you can get a standard adopted for all new equipment you can easily adjust these high draw appliances to act as a virtual power plant. It would be a trivial implementation compared to getting batteries in homes.
There was an article that described that in UK one needs 1 megawhat-hour battery over the winter to be grid independent. Judging by current trends in few years that will be below 40K USD. While this is indeed very expensive in most of US due to much more sun available the required battery would cost below 20k. One can also have a backup generator that can run constantly at maximum efficiency to replenish the battery. Then the whole system can already be below 20K. While expensive, it provides true independence and I suspect grid cost and centralized power is more expensive for society.
This is for a single home off-grid, meaning solar over-production is already implied. You need enough solar available to charge that 1MW battery in time for it to be useful during those seasonal differences which is going to be multiples of your peak summer generation.
With Debian 13 on ThinkPad X1 the hibernation is very reliable. Resuming from it while not instant still takes like 40 seconds. So I configured my laptop on lid close to sleep for 15 minutes and then hibernate. This way if I just to another room the wake-up is instant while longer pauses shuts the laptop down removing any security keys from the memory.
But how would RocksDB work with S3? It needs support for append that generic S3 buckets do not provide and for checkpoints and backup it assumes the support for hardlinks that S3 does not have at all.
We have a washing machine that also has a drier function. It dries much slower than a standalone drier as it consumes water during the drying circle to cool and condense the hot air from the clothes. But the big plus is that it works in mostly closed cycle reusing the air. And there is no need to clean the filter, just unclog the sink pipes once in few months.
Heat pump dryer. Basically, an HVAC system but instead of pumping the heat from your house outside, it pumps it into your clothes. Slower than an old-style dryer but way more efficient.
Also China has invested a lot into liquid fuel production from coal. With latest process improvements the relevant cost is like 80-90 USD per barrel. So in few years they will be mostly independent from oil and natural gas imports.
This is a fair criticism of per capita US emissions.
> a lot of CO2 there comes from US outsourcing energy-intensive production
This is not a reasonable indictment of US per capita emissions. China chooses to manufacture for the US and the world. Consumption, by the US, but importantly, also the rest of the world would be less if China didn't do cheap manufacturing at scale.
~15% of PRC emissions are attributed to exports. On the other hand 0% of US oil and lng exports are attributed to US emissions. Entire shale revolution is literal energy intensive production, it's just attributed to importers not exporters in accounting. In another world, emission accounting would be territorial - renewables would be credited to producer, carbon would be taxed to extractor.
Reasonable framing is PRC is emitting a lot simply because it has 4x people, exports are not substantial contributor, with caveat their population is declining. US is emitting more than what accounting shows, while also adding more increasing pop with higher per capita emissions. Probably not reasonable to criticize countries for population growth, but pretty fair to point out US (and other fossil exporters) should have exports count towards emissions, conversely, PRC renewable exports should be credited.
Instead they're being punished for producing the panel that saves other people emissions. For comparison US exported ~5 billion BOE / barrels of oil equivalent per year, PRC exported 0.5 BOE in solar, which translates to displacing 15 billion BOE assuming 30 year life span. In real world, PRC renewable exports is displacing 3x more emission than US fossil exports generate. That 15b BOE is larger than PRC emissions via exports, i.e. for all intents and purpose PRC export is now (substantial) net carbon sink, it's a global decarbonization utility. Meanwhile US chooses to be export fossil to the world.
I'm trying, but really struggling, to understand your logic of anchoring on land area.
Can you explain why you think that's a better metric than per capita? Is it because there are climate-changing emissions that are NOT driven by humans (e.g. seasonal wildfires, volcanic eruptions, etc.)? Or is it something else?
The amount of emissions that the planet can take (a that is the real crux of the problem) is what its ecosystems can offset.
It’s very hard to calculate exactly how much the ecosystem inside a country borders can offset, but a good enough metric is its landmass.
Sure, countries like Morrocos will win with this metric and countries like Brasil will lose. But in the end, it’s much better than rewarding what is actually a problem (for climate) like if it was some virtue: high birth rates.
> It’s very hard to calculate exactly how much the ecosystem inside a country borders can offset, but a good enough metric is its landmass.
I think this is a flawed basis, because weather patterns, sea rise, etc. don't honor country borders. Only highly localized pollution is somewhat "constrained", but country borders are even porous to that.
So I still don't know that it is an effective incentive to find a better balance. Per capita also has its problems, like penalizing less-developed countries from developing their societies, industries.
My point is that people tend to turn emissions into a pissing contest about which country is emitting more, and it always becomes a debate of total emission vs. per capita, because it's ultimately a political issue.
What I'm saying is that total emissions are what matter for climate change.
Total emissions matter on a global scale. To know approximately how much each nation ought to adjust their emissions we need to look at per capita adjusted for imports/exports for products and services consumed locally but created remotely.
Climate doesn't care about climate change, humans do. Only worthwhile metric is what geopolitics agree on, right now that's per capita emissions even though it's lenient vs historic emitters.
The traditional HN solution for Climate Change: If they only had more babies in the USA, their CO2 per capita emissions would fall and we would save the planet!
These 5th column arguments, are just appaling. USA (and EU, if we finally wake up and smell the coffee) don't have to pay for Asian high birthrates.
If a country has the same area as another, I expect that country to stick to the same total emissions.
China doesn't have to pay for it's high birthrates in the past? Well, then the West doesn't have to pay for their inovation and productivity in the past as well.
while even people born in Asian countries like me would like to go back 3-4 generations and forcefully reduce birthrates, it is not a problem as simple as it seems.
By that logic Canada, Australia, NZ, and arguably even US are settled places and should not be counted.
I do agree that every goalpost can be moved by drawing the boundary as you wish, but surely the fact that developed countries enjoyed a good standard of living for 100+ years and contributed more for a long time counts for something
EVs are still heavier than ICE vehicles and will for the next 10-20 years unless one is OK with a tiny battery. And heavy weight means more pollution from wheels that produce particles that ends up in lungs. Note brakes also pollutes with asbestos but EVs typically have regenerative braking so I think brakes pollutes roughly the same in a heavier EV as in ICE car.
I compared the weights of EVs versus ICE, and they were surprisingly close. Most of time, the differences were in the 15% range, and then you find exceptions like the Hummer, which is 30% heavier. I'm sure it comes as no surprise That the heavier the vehicle, the bigger the difference in ICE versus EV weight.
While I think lighter weight vehicles of all types would be a big win, I fear that ship has sailed. I think we have an opportunity to reset vehicle size both from a desire for cheaper and simpler vehicles. Look at cost and weight of the BYD EVs and the new pickup trucks from Slate and Telos.
Overall, I find the slightly increased weight for an EV to be an acceptable trade-off. Brakes last longer, tires, depending on make, are about 10% shorter life at most and overall maintenance is much less. Since I keep my cars until the body goes toes up, I have a much lower carbon footprint. than the 3yr lease route
If you give the difference in weight as a percentage, it is sort of surprising that the percentage is higher for heavier vehicles, right? Or at least I don’t get it. I’d expect the EV to be a constant factor heavier, a total weight of combustion_vehicle*1.1 or something.
I wonder if it's sorta like the rocket equation. A heavier vehicle requires larger batteries to move the extra weight with a comparable range as a smaller vehicle, but the batteries are heavy too, so you need even more battery to move the heavier batteries.
It's exactly that. Battery = heavy, heavy vehicle = short range. I wonder if ICE vehicle weight is calculated with a full fuel tank? Gas / Diesel is also pretty heavy and large vehicles have large empty spaces to be filled with fuel.
I had a 2010s Civic and moved to a Model 3. The curb weight difference was only ~3-400 lbs (about 10%), but the larger battery capacity, large SUV offerings are significantly heavier than ICE options (the F150 Lightning is about 2,000 pounds heavier than an ICE F150, for example, 5,000 -> 7,000 lbs.).
The 8th Gen Civic in heaviest config was about 2900lb. The lightest model 3 is about 3500lb. 600lb best case. The lighter config Civic was 2500lb (not usdm iirc) vs the heaviest model 3 being 4000lb.
The tire pollution is true, but the brakes hardly get used on an EV. They are almost for emergency use only. Mine has a special mode to disable regeneration for a while so you can use the brake pads to clean the rotors.
The difference in tyre wear is so marginal it's probably unmeasurable - less than the difference between running at the correct pressure and forgetting to check your tyre pressure.
ICE vehicles also have exhaust pipes which pollute some too...
I love the idea of these tiny EVs. Apparently the EU's making some legislation for them so that they can go without much of the expensive 'safety' equipment such as driver tracking.
Parking cars in cities not designed for them is a nightmare, but getting around with a car is so much faster than public transport, even if your city's is fairly decent.
Hybrids are even better, super tiny batteries with an ICE on standby.
If you scale size as well (like a motorcycle but e.g. as a tricycle for safety), you can realize some major efficiency improvements (doubling or tripling energy efficiency).
Which is why, bicycles should be the focus of transportation improvement.
tangential: people also underestimate the convenience of public transport being a one-way trip, meaning you can go from A>B>C>D>A and never have to go back to a previous spot to pick up a part of your luggage that you left behind.
Personally, when not being a tourist, almost all my trips are home to some place and back again.
Public transport is great, but if you're going to a less good part of the city, or even just a place that's unfamiliar, and less frequented, it might be a bit more difficult to get around.
And public transport travel distances can be patchy based on where the stops are, especially if you're going to the outskirts of your city.
Also when having to be present in the office, that extra 15-25 mins (x2) it takes to get to and from the office adds up quickly.
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