What's more current than the weather?

[Griff]

That's the place I was thinking of. The Spanish thing seems very unlikely but a Susquehannock fortified town seems reasonable especially with the Iroquois nearby.

[slang]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Bradford County...

I didn't know there was more than one.

Now THERE's a blast from the past.

[slang]

Originally Posted by Griff

That's the place I was thinking of. The Spanish thing seems very unlikely but a Susquehannock fortified town seems reasonable especially with the Iroquois nearby.

I remember seeing steel helmets allegedly excavated from there. That was in the 70s but was pretty cool. Swords and trinket-ey stuff too.

Somewhere in that Link or somewhere in that search exercise it was suggested that the Spanish took over that position after it was long abandoned. Surely by the Indians. That it may have been abandoned by hundreds of years before the Spanish.

I don't get too interested in that place. It has a great history and some very cool things HAVE been excavated from there.

My curiosity was never worth getting blasted though.

A man's got to know his limitations.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Rate of technology development is not intrinsically tied to reduction in pollution.

It isn't. But



We should be eating 14k KWh per household by now -- but we're only using 12k. Compact fluorescents and LED lighting, says NYT.

NYT story (paywall warning)

20% of the world's electricity is used for lighting. Eventually it will be 4%, because LED.

How huge is this? Massive! During the day, energy for lighting is needed exactly as solar becomes unavailable. (thanks again to glatt for linking that CA daily energy supply/demand website)

The electricity saved from this will now be able to power more electric cars, without additional coal plants. Then oil use goes down. And due to globalization, all these innovations take effect in a decade, and are shared worldwide as quickly as possible.

Why not be optimistic?

(cue music) ♪ This is how we do it ♫

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

During the day, energy for lighting is needed exactly as solar becomes unavailable.

Say what?
Hmm... At the end of the day... At night... During the dark part of the day... During the night part of the day?
Nevermind, just awkward.

[Undertoad]

during the cycle of the day. or something

[Gravdigr]

Fucking dusk

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

20% of the world's electricity is used for lighting. Eventually it will be 4%, because LED.

That transition caused a lot of complaints and bellyaching, and Trump is moving backwards on it.

Why not be optimistic?

Because a lot of the reasons for optimism are things pushed for, advocated for, incentivized, and subsidized by policies intended to combat climate change.


Like the carbon recapture plants you mentioned earlier. One of their sources of funding (I have no idea what percentage) is from the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC), which is technically privately funded, but:

Funding for CCEMC is collected from industry. Since 2007, Alberta companies that annually produce more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over a baseline are legally required to reduce their greenhouse gas intensity by 12 per cent. Companies have three options to meet their reduction target: improve the efficiency of their operations, buy carbon credits in the Alberta-based offset system or pay $15 into the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund for every tonne over the reduction limit. The CCEMC invests the money collected in clean technology.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Because planning for the worst helps make the best more likely.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

20% of the world's electricity is used for lighting. Eventually it will be 4%, because LED.

One would think so using some assumption - that were used for over a century. IEEE Spectrum (long ago) debunked that assumption. What happens when lights and electricity get cheaper? The number of lights increase drastically. Ironically, as the cost of lightning went down (all through history), then mankind spend same or more on lighting.

The LED is not expected to reduce energy consumption. It is expected to increase the amount of lights we use, need, and leave on.

[Gravdigr]

[Undertoad]

If you don't like that company, here's a Swiss company successfully doing carbon capture

I imagine it's not a technologically difficult problem, since co2 is a simple molecule -- even the plants have worked out to grab it -- the problem will be economics and scale

[xoxoxoBruce]

As costs went down the number of lights went up. Now we're over lit, much more than we need, so as those incandescent and florescent lights are replaced with LEDs, electric consumption for lighting should go down.

[Gravdigr]

Did you even look at TW's post?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yes I did, that's why I refuted it. Did you read mine?

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Now we're over lit, much more than we need, so as those incandescent and florescent lights are replaced with LEDs, electric consumption for lighting should go down.

Same reasoning existed when gas lamps lit NYC streets. People even hated fluorescent lamps because they were too white.

Simply view all those street lights in the 1950s. Why do number of street lights keep increasing? Because the streets are not yet as bright as the sun.

IEEE Spectrum demonstrated this with numbers. In over 100 years, it never got too bright. No fact says we have enough lights. That is simply speculation unsupported by any research.

Chevy Chase's "Christmas Vacation" is ironically funny because that need for more lights is more common every Christmas. Trend cited over 10 years ago in IEEE Spectrum has continued as predicted. So much so that 'light pollution' is a new and 'getting worse' problem.

Don't tell the North Koreans. They might get angry or deny it. Or maybe light up our skies to prove their nuclear lights are better than our LEDs and quantum dots.