Global overpopulation

[brewster]

Using kinetic energy for storage? Doesn't seem like a great idea to me, unless I am misunderstanding what is proposed here. Kinetic energy requires equilibrium with a massive crash when that equilibrium is broken (i.e. I can transfer mechanical energy to a piano dangling from a rope, but if the equilibrium of that rope holding a piano breaks.. the piano is going to make quite a crash).

Are you referring to the pumped storage? This is well established, many decades old tech.

[Speaker to Animals]

Using kinetic energy for storage? Doesn't seem like a great idea to me, unless I am misunderstanding what is proposed here. Kinetic energy requires equilibrium with a massive crash when that equilibrium is broken (i.e. I can transfer mechanical energy to a piano dangling from a rope, but if the equilibrium of that rope holding a piano breaks.. the piano is going to make quite a crash).

Are you referring to the pumped storage? This is well established, many decades old tech.

Any system whereby you "store" energy using kinetic energy is a pretty fucking bad idea once you scale it up.

Even dams, once you get to the level of Hoover Dam, are enormous liabilities.

The first thing that would happen is that 10 trillion gallons of water would move as quickly as it could out of the lake and down the river in a huge tsunami of water. The Hoover dam is located in a desert area that is not hugely inhabited below the dam, but there are still some sizeable populations. Lake Havasu City, population 40,000, is about the biggest town in the United States along the river. Bullhead city, population 30,000 is also close to the dam. Needles, California; Blythe, California; and Laughlin, Nevada all have populations of around 10,000 people as well.

Where the water would do immense damage is in the lakes below Hoover dam. It turns out that below Hoover dam is another large lake called Lake Mohave, which is held in place by Davis dam, and below that is Lake Havasu, held in place by Parker dam. These are smaller lakes and smaller dams. For example, Lake Havasu only holds about 200 billion gallons of water.

As the water released by the Hoover Dam moved through these two lakes, it would likely destroy them and their dams as well. That's where the real impact would be felt, because these lakes affect a huge number of people. The water in them produces hydroelectric power, irrigates farmland and supplies drinking water to cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/engin ... -broke.htm

Fuck that.

[Zlaxer]

Using kinetic energy for storage? Doesn't seem like a great idea to me, unless I am misunderstanding what is proposed here. Kinetic energy requires equilibrium with a massive crash when that equilibrium is broken (i.e. I can transfer mechanical energy to a piano dangling from a rope, but if the equilibrium of that rope holding a piano breaks.. the piano is going to make quite a crash).

Premise is that we can generate tons of solar and wind during day - but storage is problem - we’re really talking about gravity batteries which may be practical when generation is cheap.

[brewster]

Any system whereby you "store" energy using kinetic energy is a pretty fucking bad idea once you scale it up.

Even dams, once you get to the level of Hoover Dam, are enormous liabilities.

The first thing that would happen is that 10 trillion gallons of water would move as quickly as it could out of the lake and down the river in a huge tsunami of water. The Hoover dam is located in a desert area that is not hugely inhabited below the dam, but there are still some sizeable populations. Lake Havasu City, population 40,000, is about the biggest town in the United States along the river. Bullhead city, population 30,000 is also close to the dam. Needles, California; Blythe, California; and Laughlin, Nevada all have populations of around 10,000 people as well.

Where the water would do immense damage is in the lakes below Hoover dam. It turns out that below Hoover dam is another large lake called Lake Mohave, which is held in place by Davis dam, and below that is Lake Havasu, held in place by Parker dam. These are smaller lakes and smaller dams. For example, Lake Havasu only holds about 200 billion gallons of water.

Fuck that.

Seriously? Well, fuck airplanes, they can fail. And fuck cars, they can fail. Buildings can collapse. Bridges can fall. Fuck nukes most of all! Fuck gas, those lines can explode! Plus almost all chemical batteries can fail catastrophically. You are being absurdly negative just to confirm your doomsday scenario.

[brewster]

Premise is that we can generate tons of solar and wind during day - but storage is problem - we’re really talking about gravity batteries which may be practical when generation is cheap.

Exactly put. Once the losses of the system are sustainable due to cheap input, it's economical.

[Speaker to Animals]

Using kinetic energy for storage? Doesn't seem like a great idea to me, unless I am misunderstanding what is proposed here. Kinetic energy requires equilibrium with a massive crash when that equilibrium is broken (i.e. I can transfer mechanical energy to a piano dangling from a rope, but if the equilibrium of that rope holding a piano breaks.. the piano is going to make quite a crash).

Premise is that we can generate tons of solar and wind during day - but storage is problem - we’re really talking about gravity batteries which may be practical when generation is cheap.

It's about risk, dude. All such strategies are using kinetic energy as a sink. It's all variations on the hanging piano. All those towns and cities affected are like a little kid playing with his crayons under the dangling piano.

That shit doesn't scale up safely. Fucking dumb.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's also fucking dumb because it puts all your eggs in one basket in terms of risk. From that article, this is the outcome of a breach of Hoover Dam:

The destruction of irrigation water supplies would also have a huge effect on farming in the region. Farmers in the Imperial Valley get most of their water from the Colorado River, and these irrigation systems would collapse. Prior to irrigation, the Imperial Valley was a barren desert. Today it is the home of more than half a million acres of farmland and produces more than a billion dollars in fruits and vegetables every year.

There would be large effects as well from the loss of drinking water. For example, Las Vegas gets 85 percent of its drinking water from Lake Mead -- the lake behind Hoover dam. With the loss of water and the loss of power, Las Vegas would become uninhabitable, and that would displace 1.5 million residents and empty more than 120,000 hotels rooms and the casinos, bringing the multi-billion-dollar gambling industry in this city to a halt.

Isn't it amazing how much commerce, and how many people, depend on that one dam?

It's not amazing; it's fucking stupid to carry that much risk.

[brewster]

Even dams, once you get to the level of Hoover Dam, are enormous liabilities.

Here, pucker up your bunghole:

There are nearly 8100 major dams in the United States in 2006. The National Inventory of Dams defines a major dam as being 50 feet (15 m) tall with a storage capacity of at least 5,000 acre feet (6,200,000 m3), or of any height with a storage capacity of 25,000 acre feet (31,000,000 m3).

When was the last time you heard of a major failure? Even that one in CA during the floods didn't actually fail.

Millions of people die each year from coal, vs your speculative risk of dams I'll take the latter.

[Speaker to Animals]

Even dams, once you get to the level of Hoover Dam, are enormous liabilities.

Here, pucker up your bunghole:

There are nearly 8100 major dams in the United States in 2006. The National Inventory of Dams defines a major dam as being 50 feet (15 m) tall with a storage capacity of at least 5,000 acre feet (6,200,000 m3), or of any height with a storage capacity of 25,000 acre feet (31,000,000 m3).

When was the last time you heard of a major failure? Even that one in CA during the floods didn't actually fail.

Millions of people die each year from coal, vs your speculative risk of dams I'll take the latter.

Ranking risk by your mistaken notion of probabilities is a fatal error. Rank them by impact. Do not create fragile systems that are prone to total collapse from only a few failure points.

[brewster]

It's also fucking dumb because it puts all your eggs in one basket in terms of risk. It's not amazing; it's fucking stupid to carry that much risk.

The track record proves you wrong, the dam is like 85 years old! You literally sound like someone afraid to fly "because of the risk".

Taleb is brilliant, except when he's dead wrong. His whole thing is build on it. There's no guarantee he'll ever be right. A lot of smart people think he's an idiot. There's rarely events someone didn't foresee, but the ones "no one saw coming" are usually the ones where the powers that be had more to lose by caution than risk. From the Challenger to the 2007 meltdown, these "surprises" were predicted. Even the fucking Johnstown Flood in the 19th century was predicted by the engineers who were ignored by the robber barons who owned the dam and lake.