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We need to burn the sewage for power.

Seriously, guys. Solar & wind power are great energy sources other than the fact that they're intermittent. Current battery tech is inadequate to smooth out the production distribution, so we need a clean power supply that we can turn on & off rapidly to suit our needs. Shit is an abundant, fully renewable, and environmentally sustainable biofuel that's so cheap that most of us PAY to get rid of the stuff. What the hell are we doing?
Elessar · 26-30, M
You'd still put carbon in the atmosphere, however.

Nuclear, tidal, geothermal.. there are many options out there, aside from solar and wind farms.
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Elessar · 26-30, M
@BlueVeins I guess, but by decomposing, it doesn't 100% go into the atmosphere, it gets reused by other forms of life, as part of a cycle; by burning it I suppose this cycle gets broken, no?

All renewables have that issue, but if we build solar farms where the sun is reliable, wind farms where we know the wind is constant and sufficient, tidal farms where we know it would be efficient, and geothermal wherever you can build one, the problem that some places might be suboptimal for all five would become secondary (and the surplus redirected to there, anyway).
BlueVeins · 22-25
@Elessar Right, but those other forms of life will also respirate and decompose on a pretty fast timescale. There's no shortage of carbon in the environment for life on Earth to exploit. It's good to have more trees and stuff, but carbon in the soil isn't a limiting factor there.

The sun is reliable in a lot of places, but it's still intermittent in that you only get significant amounts during the day. Tidal power has a similar problem, since power production peaks when the tides are going in or out. Wind power is cool, but keep in mind that (to my understanding), that's still dependent on weather systems which come and go, and those systems can span the size of a continent at peak. So unless we're gonna build all these power cables between continents, we're still gonna get huge variations. Offshore wind power can help remedy this, but idk by how much, & obviously that's gonna bring its own expenses. Geothermal is very based though.

You can definitely get benefits from diversification, sure, and you can definitely transfer power over hundreds or thousands of miles to further benefit from diversification. But diversification can do relatively little for large, geographical trends like day/night cycles, tides, and inclement weather because of high covariances within the same power sources. Transporting power over longer distances means more waste in transit, more risk of power lines being damaged, and more political risk (as you cross national borders).

Aside from that, the ability to store power capacity is a lot more economical than having to burn off excess supply. Using the kind of system you're talking about, you'd basically have to brute force your energy production so such that peak consumption never dips below minimum production -- which is random -- and that kinda means having way more energy than you need most of the time.

sorry for wall of text
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome has a town run by Tina Turner and powered by pig shit.
BlueVeins · 22-25
@Burnley123 The annoying thing is, manure is used to generate power all the time irl, we're just too big of pussies to talk about doing it with human shit.
MarkPaul · 26-30, M
But what about the stench?
MarkPaul · 26-30, M
@BlueVeins Oh, so now you're going to take credit for creating jobs. Hmmmm. You just might be on to something. Okay, I'll invest in this.
BlueVeins · 22-25
@MarkPaul No, I openly want to destroy as many jobs as possible. But alas, they are a necessary evil in this case.
MarkPaul · 26-30, M
@BlueVeins Wow. You really are an evil genius. Okay, count me in. But, I don't want to go anywhere near those power plants. I have a weak stomach.

 
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