The child driving comparison is even better if you imagine a daughter sitting in her fathers lap with her hands on the wheel. The father can take his hands off the wheel for a bit and let the daughter “drive”, but backup is necessary, and the resulting driving system requires more of the father’s energy than driving normally would. Safety concerns due to frequent switching to backup are similar too. Fun interview- good to see some of my favorite people getting together 😊
I never hear you talk about batteries... I understand they are very limited and expensive, but still it would be interesting to discuss them for wind/solar. Is it possible to develop batteries (e.g. based on iron) that are economic enough to make some percentage of wind/solar work?
Wind and solar can only add cost to some other full demand sized energy source like natural gas. Try to replace the natural gas with batteries and the costs go through the roof, right off the charts.
Yeah, I have the same understanding of the cost of grid scale battery backups but I’d like to hear Alex get into the numbers sometime. The big thing to consider with unreliables + battery backup is there will always be some chance of blackouts if wind and sun are low for long enough, so you can increase uptime from 99.9% to 99.99% but 100% is theoretically impossible. Considering how vital on demand electricity is to modern civilization, I’d imagine we’d expect 99.999% or better. With fossil fuels/nuclear, infrastructure has to break or supply chains need to breakdown for a blackout. That being said I’d love to see the numbers. Has Alex done work on this already?
The latest technology is CO2 batteries which are 1/4th the cost of lithium-ion batteries and can be constructed anywhere in the world. In a few years, these batteries will price peaker plants into extinction. South Korea has developed a solar cell that is 30% efficient. Normal solar cells are about 20% efficient which means a 50% increase in output per dollar. Solar and wind are 30% cheaper than natural gas, That cost reduction puts solar at about half the cost of natural gas.
Love this ❤️. Watching the huge push for EVs in the US is headbashingly idiotic…eat vegan…save the planet…cows tuin the planet, gas ruins the planet etc etc…🙄🤦♀️
Hello. I agree that currently we have a plastic steering wheel. My question is this: technology evolves and declining cost curves. Tony Seba is a very smart researcher. Talks about a future where battery tech and solar/wind declines and where energy will be free / plentiful. Do you know his research on this “super energy” scenerio? Do you have comments on it?
@@stephenkovaka266 You are correct at this time. CO2 batteries are 1/4th the cost of lithium-ion batteries and can be constructed almost anywhere. All you needis a bunch of CO2.
We will eventually figure out cold fusion and this will all be moot, but it might take another 50-100 years. Fossil fuel isn't actually good it's just abundant.
I'd love a discussion between yourself and Tony Heller. Jeez man, not even eight minutes in and we have the Hitler comparisons. I get that you're part of the tribe, but Mao killed nearly 100 million people and invoking his name is much less trite than the Hitler route.
I can appreciate a lot of what you are saying but you clearly know nothing about living off the grid. I think you should visit some well run off grid places before you speak in certainties. The list of all the things you guys got completely wrong about decentralized power and the lifestyle that goes along with it, are too many to list here.
Absolutely. Decentralized money: bitcoin. Decentralized energy: solar + batteries. They rightfully point out all the hypocrisy and failures of current efforts to go green, but that shouldn't add up to arguments against the need to go green.
They started in their arguments places where you find solar/wind operating in isolation can't scale. Off grid living would be one of them I suppose. And if you think that that's wrong why is it wrong and how would you scale it so that it never has to be backed by fossil fuels, and how would you store energy.
Residential off-grid living is a tiny fraction of the overall energy needed for a modern industrial society. A teeny, tiny, microscopic fraction. Btw, I live off-grid myself and know/accept the limitations of this lifestyle.
@@chapter4travels I am aware of the overall energy needs of world. That doesn’t have any relevance to my comment. I’m not sure what limitations you have living off grid but I would say those limitations are a result of your design. There are no inherent limitations in being off grid. You are building your own grid. If you build one that is inadequate, that does not make all off grid systems inadequate.
@@yeslife3998 "That doesn’t have any relevance to my comment." Sure it does, I can choose to live off-grid but that's meaningless to the big picture of how to power a modern industrial society. Wind and solar simply can not do that, not even close. "There are no inherent limitations in being off-grid." Sure there are, tons of inherent limitations. Location is the biggest but the list is very long. Money is probably second if you want to be off-grid with AC and heating (home heating, water heating, and cooking) you need an enormously expensive solar/battery system. I live in a tiny house and still need diesel for home heating and propane for cooking. I couldn't possibly do it with solar and batteries alone.
Poor argumentation. Nowhere refuting that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. Just complaining that it's too hard and too inconvenient. So lame. Very embarrassed for my fellow Maxis.
Poor "argumentation"? Do you perhaps mean poor "argument"? He wouldn't be discussing these things if he didn't believe they were an issue. He's simply expressing that they are manageable and that the solutions being put forward are unworkable and will cause greater problems.
The steering wheel analogy almost made me spit out my coffee. Hilarious stuff. Thank you.
Voting for politicians is another example - voters have the equivalent of a kiddie car steering wheel. It only LOOKS like control of politicians.
The best analogy lol
@@stephenkovaka266 boom 🤯
Time stamp?
The words of these thinkers resonates with my being and refreshes me for the day!😄
The child driving comparison is even better if you imagine a daughter sitting in her fathers lap with her hands on the wheel. The father can take his hands off the wheel for a bit and let the daughter “drive”, but backup is necessary, and the resulting driving system requires more of the father’s energy than driving normally would. Safety concerns due to frequent switching to backup are similar too. Fun interview- good to see some of my favorite people getting together 😊
Alex you the man
Awesome discussion.
Thanks be to God that we still have people making these sensible, powerful arguments in public. This is an oasis of sanity in a world of confusion.
Awesome interview!
The audio quality is quite poor. Fix this Saf
I never hear you talk about batteries... I understand they are very limited and expensive, but still it would be interesting to discuss them for wind/solar. Is it possible to develop batteries (e.g. based on iron) that are economic enough to make some percentage of wind/solar work?
Wind and solar can only add cost to some other full demand sized energy source like natural gas. Try to replace the natural gas with batteries and the costs go through the roof, right off the charts.
Yeah, I have the same understanding of the cost of grid scale battery backups but I’d like to hear Alex get into the numbers sometime. The big thing to consider with unreliables + battery backup is there will always be some chance of blackouts if wind and sun are low for long enough, so you can increase uptime from 99.9% to 99.99% but 100% is theoretically impossible. Considering how vital on demand electricity is to modern civilization, I’d imagine we’d expect 99.999% or better. With fossil fuels/nuclear, infrastructure has to break or supply chains need to breakdown for a blackout. That being said I’d love to see the numbers. Has Alex done work on this already?
The latest technology is CO2 batteries which are 1/4th the cost of lithium-ion batteries and can be constructed anywhere in the world. In a few years, these batteries will price peaker plants into extinction. South Korea has developed a solar cell that is 30% efficient. Normal solar cells are about 20% efficient which means a 50% increase in output per dollar. Solar and wind are 30% cheaper than natural gas, That cost reduction puts solar at about half the cost of natural gas.
Thank you.
What about Tesla-based energy devices?
Batteries don't make energy, they just poorly store electricity from another source.
Just imagined solar powered telephones..,😂
Love this ❤️. Watching the huge push for EVs in the US is headbashingly idiotic…eat vegan…save the planet…cows tuin the planet, gas ruins the planet etc etc…🙄🤦♀️
Brilliant ideas!
There is no reason why they can't have most of their conferences on Zoom.
Hello. I agree that currently we have a plastic steering wheel. My question is this: technology evolves and declining cost curves. Tony Seba is a very smart researcher. Talks about a future where battery tech and solar/wind declines and where energy will be free / plentiful. Do you know his research on this “super energy” scenerio? Do you have comments on it?
Everybody who tries to sell you solar power is trying to sell you perpetual motion machinery.
Saifedean I appreciate your perspectives but sometimes you rant a little much instead of letting your guests talk :)
He talks about wind and solar as "alternatives" then speaks of fossil fuels as "backups." Which is it?
Live the chicken analogy…
Where has the moustache gone? 😂
what about batteries? did i miss it when you talked about them? we can store the energy we produce with solar and wind in batteries right?
We can store (a tiny amount of) the energy we produce in batteries.
@@stephenkovaka266 You are correct at this time. CO2 batteries are 1/4th the cost of lithium-ion batteries and can be constructed almost anywhere. All you needis a bunch of CO2.
Well... now the tunnel in Vegas is working... any comments??
We will eventually figure out cold fusion and this will all be moot, but it might take another 50-100 years. Fossil fuel isn't actually good it's just abundant.
We have already figured out thermal fission which can accomplish everything of promise of fusion.
Yeah man, in 50 years it will be another 50 years. We will also live on mars …
@@maxtroy You're thinking of fusion, I'm talking about fission, we already do a lot of that and the designs are getting much better.
If the people who are against nuclear fission power now have their way you can bet that they would violently oppose effective nuclear fusion.
@@wheel-man5319 I agree, those folks only support imaginary energy.
I'd love a discussion between yourself and Tony Heller.
Jeez man, not even eight minutes in and we have the Hitler comparisons. I get that you're part of the tribe, but Mao killed nearly 100 million people and invoking his name is much less trite than the Hitler route.
That's your issue? That Hitler didn't kill enough people to warrant a mention?
@@each1teach1 That's right. Hitler comparisons were hackneyed and lazy 20 years ago. It hasn't improved with age. Especially coming from a -stein.
Jesus. This dude interviewing himself
One of the more interesting lies from these con artists is that it hasn't warmed since 1998.
And of course the suckers just such it up.
Alex corrected Saif immediately. Did you miss that sir or just chose to ignore it?
@@notabot3325 it was ignored....
You clearly haven't been paying attention. The last 8 years have been the 8 warmest years on record.
I can appreciate a lot of what you are saying but you clearly know nothing about living off the grid. I think you should visit some well run off grid places before you speak in certainties. The list of all the things you guys got completely wrong about decentralized power and the lifestyle that goes along with it, are too many to list here.
Absolutely. Decentralized money: bitcoin. Decentralized energy: solar + batteries. They rightfully point out all the hypocrisy and failures of current efforts to go green, but that shouldn't add up to arguments against the need to go green.
They started in their arguments places where you find solar/wind operating in isolation can't scale. Off grid living would be one of them I suppose. And if you think that that's wrong why is it wrong and how would you scale it so that it never has to be backed by fossil fuels, and how would you store energy.
Residential off-grid living is a tiny fraction of the overall energy needed for a modern industrial society. A teeny, tiny, microscopic fraction. Btw, I live off-grid myself and know/accept the limitations of this lifestyle.
@@chapter4travels I am aware of the overall energy needs of world. That doesn’t have any relevance to my comment. I’m not sure what limitations you have living off grid but I would say those limitations are a result of your design. There are no inherent limitations in being off grid. You are building your own grid. If you build one that is inadequate, that does not make all off grid systems inadequate.
@@yeslife3998 "That doesn’t have any relevance to my comment." Sure it does, I can choose to live off-grid but that's meaningless to the big picture of how to power a modern industrial society. Wind and solar simply can not do that, not even close.
"There are no inherent limitations in being off-grid." Sure there are, tons of inherent limitations. Location is the biggest but the list is very long. Money is probably second if you want to be off-grid with AC and heating (home heating, water heating, and cooking) you need an enormously expensive solar/battery system. I live in a tiny house and still need diesel for home heating and propane for cooking. I couldn't possibly do it with solar and batteries alone.
Nikola Tesla
Poor argumentation. Nowhere refuting that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. Just complaining that it's too hard and too inconvenient. So lame. Very embarrassed for my fellow Maxis.
You can always reduce the problem by one if you care so much about climate change.
Poor "argumentation"? Do you perhaps mean poor "argument"? He wouldn't be discussing these things if he didn't believe they were an issue. He's simply expressing that they are manageable and that the solutions being put forward are unworkable and will cause greater problems.
@@anthonymorris5084 Mass murder is more than a problem. That is what Michael Mann, et al will accomplish if they have their way.