<story><title>Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect</title><url>https://xkcd.com/2889/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bko</author><text>Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if solar is cheaper, why isn&amp;#x27;t it the dominant energy source today?&lt;p&gt;Seems like a win win, people get cheaper energy all without force. Generally the market chooses the best product, which is why we replaced horses crapping all over our cities with cars. It wasn&amp;#x27;t legislation or some global consortium of governments that phased out the horse, it was a better product. What am I missing here?</text></item><item><author>konschubert</author><text>You are right that degrowth is not a politically viable path to saving the climate.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, it is not effective unless you want to return to pre-industrial society.&lt;p&gt;What works is: Changing the source of the energy we consume. Solar is the cheapest source of energy now. Wind is good in some areas. Nuclear can be useful too.&lt;p&gt;The amazing thing is that solar is so cheap now, there is basically no way stopping it. We may still want to burn gas and oil in the off-hours, but it will be expensive and consumption will be much lower than today.</text></item><item><author>dougmwne</author><text>I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip after a few years of zero Covid.&lt;p&gt;We will just have to deal with the consequences while we try to innovative our way out of this mess. It’s made me a AI accelerationist. Of the two civilizational dooms, I’ll take my chances with the computers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rout39574</author><text>Momentum, installed base, established interests, changing uses.&lt;p&gt;Foolishly reductionistic model:  at the instant that solar becomes defacto cheaper, if everyone immediately changed, you&amp;#x27;d need at least [total world power consumption &amp;#x2F; solar panel production rate] years to change over.&lt;p&gt;2022 world electricity consumption was about 25000 TWH.  That envelope-backs to about 2800 GW if the sun is always directly overhead everywhere and there are no transmission losses.&lt;p&gt;In 2022, we installed about 228GW of solar panels.  Assuming constant production (HAH!) that says it should take more than a decade to replace the existing demand.  Which will of course stand still for us.&lt;p&gt;Apply whatever multiplication factors you like about what percentage of the year a given real solar cell will generate power;  about how quickly folks are convinced to change;  about the construction of projects which were planned before this price threshold was passed;  about the impact of using grid power to do transportation work which was previously done by pumping dead dinosaurs...&lt;p&gt;The confounding factors abound.   But that&amp;#x27;s an ignorant sideline answer to why. :)</text></comment>
<story><title>Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect</title><url>https://xkcd.com/2889/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bko</author><text>Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if solar is cheaper, why isn&amp;#x27;t it the dominant energy source today?&lt;p&gt;Seems like a win win, people get cheaper energy all without force. Generally the market chooses the best product, which is why we replaced horses crapping all over our cities with cars. It wasn&amp;#x27;t legislation or some global consortium of governments that phased out the horse, it was a better product. What am I missing here?</text></item><item><author>konschubert</author><text>You are right that degrowth is not a politically viable path to saving the climate.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, it is not effective unless you want to return to pre-industrial society.&lt;p&gt;What works is: Changing the source of the energy we consume. Solar is the cheapest source of energy now. Wind is good in some areas. Nuclear can be useful too.&lt;p&gt;The amazing thing is that solar is so cheap now, there is basically no way stopping it. We may still want to burn gas and oil in the off-hours, but it will be expensive and consumption will be much lower than today.</text></item><item><author>dougmwne</author><text>I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip after a few years of zero Covid.&lt;p&gt;We will just have to deal with the consequences while we try to innovative our way out of this mess. It’s made me a AI accelerationist. Of the two civilizational dooms, I’ll take my chances with the computers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Symmetry</author><text>Here in the northeastern US, the permitting process for adding new power plants to the grid is long and cumbersome in a way that is usually the long pole in adding new generation to the grid when the new generation is as quick to put up as solar.  We have more solar power in the process of getting approval than we currently have installed.</text></comment>