That’s 4%, that’s not a significant amount for functional purposes and it’s a whole number to whole number conversion. Most of the time, if I’m converting, it’s from metric to imperial so 1 km is 0.62 miles. If you tell me the speed limit is 70 km/h it’s way easier for me to calculate 70 ÷ 5 x 3 = 42 mph than to calculate either 0.62 x 70 or 70 ÷ 1.6 = 43.49.

We do, but centimeters are in a weird spot. In general they are just a bit too small to be used in place of inches and too big to be used when you need millimeters. Also, inches easily go into feet which then go into yards. Probably the closest function to that would either be decimeters or fractions/decimals of a meter but that doesn’t really feel great either. There’s also something to be said about functional accuracy; for measurements that don’t have to be exact imperial units feel pretty good. For example, I might say that a cardboard box is about 1cubic foot if it looks about 1 ft in length on each side. If I instead used meters, 1 ft is about 30 cm (30.48 cm) or 0.3 m which would translate to 27,000 cubic cm or 0.027 cubic m. You might round that 0.027 to 0.025 or 0.03 cubic m depending on if it’s more or less than but it’s still feels like a weird unit for our rough approximation.

Another quick example, my foot size is approximately a foot in length and I paced off a room at 10ft x 20ft so the area is about 200 sq ft. The equivalent would be that my foot is approximately 0.3 m so 10 steps x 0.3 m x 20 steps x 0.3 m = 18 sq m.

Imperial units work well when you want to use relatively small whole numbers and high accuracy isn’t super necessary, but ultimately it just comes down to preference.

… Is anyone going to tell him we use millimeters too if the need is that small?

Kilometers to miles is probably the easiest common conversion. 5 km is 3 miles, easy peasy.

Fahrenheit makes more sense as a unit in use. 100 equals hot, but doesn’t equal death, 0 equals cold. In a lot of the world freezing is only kind of cold, not actually cold. Metric makes sense for science while imperial is more of a common persons unit; that’s also why Americans in science use metric.

I’m so confused, you didn’t have the room to write “calculator”, but you had the room to write “(calc is short for calculator btw)”

…

stop using chat gpt to argue

I’ve never used ChatGPT in my life, you can shove your accusations where the sun doesn’t shine.

30 million acres of land is used to grow ethanol that is mixed into petrol

The majority of ethanol based crop production comes from growing corn in the Midwest, specifically Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana. Ranked by population density that’s:

• Nebraska #43
• Kansas #41
• Iowa #36
• Missouri #28
• Indiana #17
• Illinois # 12

By percentage of the US population that’s

• Nebraska @ 0.5%
• Kansas @ 0.8%
• Iowa @ 0.9%
• Missouri @ 1.8%
• Indiana @ 2%
• Illinois @ 3.7%

There are practical reasons why we typically try to generate power close to where it will be used. Yes, theoretically you can realistically supply power up to 3000 miles away, but most power plants only provide power to around 500 miles away. Yes we could cover the Corn Belt with solar panels and then wire it to the coasts, but doing so has it’s own risks and drawbacks. Ethanol agriculture makes sense where it is because the population density is so low and both corn and ethanol can be shipped with relatively low loss.

As for batteries, they are recyclable (as the video goes into). They do add to the cost of renewables but not so much that they cancel out having to constantly mine coal and set it on fire to never be used again

I’m not arguing that they aren’t recyclable but rather they aren’t accessible at the volume needed. A quick google search said that current utility scale battery storage exceeds 26 GW (10^9), but only represents 2% of total generating capacity. To provide power for approximately half the day, based on our previous math, we would need need ~7x10^11 W.

Just so my math is clear from the beginning, 17x10^12 W / 2 (half the day) / 12 (hours per half day) = 7x10^11 W of battery which is 27 times more than we currently have.

Renewables aren’t the “cheapest form of power generation”, they are the “cheapest form of new power generation”. It is cheaper to keep running existing gas-fired and nuclear power stations until they reach EOL than it is to tear them down prematurely and replace them with solar. A large number of power stations are rapidly reaching EOL and it’s very important that we don’t build any more coal-fired power plants right now

I think this is a fair and nuanced point. In my opinion the solution is not one singular option, such as 100% solar, but a mix of options which might include some percentage of non-renewable energy. I think reduction of non-renewable should be the goal, but switching 100% to renewable does not seem feasible to me.

Yeah, the video is 1.5 hours long. I don’t care how good you found it to be, I’m just not going to watch that long of a video, you need to convey what is important in the video through written dialogue or else you may as well not use it. While I did make a mistake in my math my fundamental point is still true, the video’s point was entirely based on scaling renewable power usage for cars to all power usage and the math just doesn’t provide a sound basis for it.

The extra electricity needed for EVs is zero or maybe even negative

That’s unlikely to be the case, the US already does use batteries in power production and the amount more we would need to switch all US power to solar would be astonishingly high.

Power plants can’t react to the amount of power needed at any time and they get inefficient trying

They can’t react in the minute by minute basis, but they do react to usage. Most coal fired plants only operate at about 50% capacity most of the time and bring on reactors to match the predicted power usage curve. When building a power curve profile the power company typically takes into account constant power as a baseline (solar and hydro being always on during the hours it is active and the power output of a given number of reactors is relatively set). Power is then supplemented with smaller generation sites which might use natural gas or even petroleum products. The smaller sites are far less efficient and make less power, but the name of the game when making power is making sure you always have enough for demand.

Let’s say it’s peak day, 25 solar farms are making 675 MW right now, each coal plant reactor can make 500 MW and the demand right now is 1250 MW. You start up your natural gas turbine plant to make up the difference during peak day, but as the sun goes down you start up reactor 2 and 3. As reactor 2 and 3 get going the power usage goes up to 1600 as people come home and the solar farms stop generating power so you continue using your turbine plant but also start drawing from your batteries. Once reactor 2 and 3 are up and running you might stop using your turbine and keep drawing from your batteries, but when people go to sleep the power usage drops to 700 MW. Now power usage has dropped but you keep the reactors going for a while or begin to shut them down (they will still make some power as they shutdown) to recharge the batteries.

All these numbers are hypothetical, but it’s a description of how the process works.

I worked the problem a different way, first of all I evaluated both ends of both spectrum (2.2-5.2 trillion for adding cars to get the number of solar farms needed and 5-10 acres per MW rating, this is how I built my range). I believe I have an error in the number of solar farms needed (2-2.5 million farms in my original post), but I have not been able to replicate my math that got me the error. I made this post in sections and at some point realized that 27 MW doesn’t make 648 MWh, but I might have missed switching it out somewhere to get the math I got.

Rerunning the math I took the amount produced and needed (~17 trillion Wh) and divided it by the production for one 27 MW site (150 MWh) to get the number of plants and then multiplied that by 27x10.

17x10^12 / 150x10^6 x 27 x 10 = 30,600,000 or 30.6 million acres.

All that aside we are still talking about 75x more land usage before we talk about time zones, day night cycles, distribution of the panels, etc. The big counterpoint that people seem to have is batteries, but we already use batteries and the amount more we would need to provide 24 hour coverage with just solar would be astonishing.

Market forces push business decisions, the only way solar power would be cheaper for the consumer is if it was also cheaper for the business. If solar was realistically cheaper then power production facilities then corporations would be switching to it and probably not drop our end costs because that would just be extra profit. Whether it’s a lack of battery capability, unattainable capital costs, lack of reliability, or something else at play, solar power would not be cheaper for the end user or else corporations would be switching to it.

EDIT: Good work on your math.

You literally just reshared the same video the guy I’m responding to shared in the post I am responding to. Obviously you didn’t read anything.

Okay, so I’ve double-checked all the most important numbers you’ve used. One thing I’ve noticed is that Alec compared the land-use of ethanol and solar power, but our fuel is only 10% ethanol. Even then though that doesn’t explain the whole number you got to.

As I said in my post, this guy is talking about fuel for cars, not the entire power usage

With 270 million acres, and 1mW for every 10 acres, that’s 27 million mW (648 trillion Wh a day). Far more than what you say is needed for all cars to be electric

I basically skipped over your 3rd and 4th paragraph

That is literally what I said in paragraph 3 “The US currently has ~12.5k utility scale electric power plants, to replace those with solar and switch all cars to electric you would need ~2-2.5 million solar farms the size represented in the video.”

America consumes 25,000tWh of energy per year (about 7Twh per day)

My research said the US produces 11 trillion Wh per day and said that if all US vehicles were electric it would require 2.2-5.5 trillion Wh more per day. Looking at consumption is important, but looking at production is more accurate. Some electricity is sold or wasted, but that’s to ensure demand is met when the grid sees a spike in usage.

27 million mW (648 trillion Wh a day)

You must have skipped paragraph 2 as well. A 27 MW solar plant is rated as such because that is the maximum instantaneous power outout, but most places only have ~16 hours of sunlight and won’t be running at 27 MW for all 16 hours. As such a 27 MW solar farm will only make ~130-150 MWh/day.

I’m not gonna watch the full hour and a half, but I skimmed through to make sure his message was at least mostly consistent. This guy is talking about renewable energy for cars and vaguely extrapolates that to all energy requirements.

Doing a quick Google search came up with 2.2-5.2 trillion watt-hours as the amount of energy needed if all US vehicles were electric. Currently the US generates ~11 trillion watt-hours per day so this would increase that amount ~20-50%. In this video the guy mentioned a 27 megawatt solar farm (~130-150 MWh/day), but a large coal plant generates 15-24k MWh/day (500-1000 MW instantaneous).

The US currently has ~12.5k utility scale electric power plants, to replace those with solar and switch all cars to electric you would need ~2-2.5 million solar farms the size represented in the video.

The industry standard is that each megawatt a solar farm is rated takes 5-10 acres. For nuclear that value is ~0.8 acres/megawatt and for coal it’s ~0.64 acres/megawatt. While large power plants generate ~500-1000 MW they vary in size dramatically so the actual average is closer to 50 MW per plant. By that math, the current total land for existing plants should be ~400,000 acres but the equivalent if we switched to 100% solar power would be 270-675 million acres of land.

I’m not saying that renewables are bad or that we shouldn’t pursue them, I’m also not arguing that we should all hold on to gas burning cars, but there is not compelling enough evidence that switching to 100% renewable energy would be cheaper.

EDIT: The estimates here don’t include things like the coal mines included in them but it also doesn’t take into account the production of panels, batteries, or the component materials in either of them such as lithium mines. I think solar probably wins out when comparing just that side, but their land usage alone likely tips things.

I’ll stop playing before that happens

I’m a relative basic bitch, I don’t want to spend forever in terminal. Mint has been a god send and I’m so happy I left windows for it. A special shout out to steam for being the goat and making what little gaming I do easy.

My understanding is that honey bees are dying in farmed environments in the USA. Basically farmers will pay these large bee hive companies to bring bees in tractor trailers to their farm and let them out for a period of time to help pollutant their fields. These bees are the ones having record die offs, but from what I understand the die offs are less than the number of new bees being made.

Basically the efficiency of the corporate farming operation is decreasing, but the captive bee population is fine.

If someone out there knows better and has source information I would love to be corrected.

I was thinking that this was a relatively bullshit example, but the movie “The One” featuring Jet Li makes this an awesome example. On it’s face the impacts of one person likely aren’t even enough for one person to notice, but if you had someone with the knowledge and means to take advantage of this they could be incredibly powerful.

BTC loses a chunk of value it’s just Tuesday BTC.

Yeah, where I am from it’s primarily used by businesses these days. Most people don’t answer phone calls from numbers they don’t know so if it’s important business then they leave you a voicemail. The thing is that if you don’t then check your voicemails you miss important business. It has a lot of other odd impacts as well, I was in a car accident not to long ago and the guy that hit me broke his phone and tried to use mine to call his emergency contacts. As you might have guessed no one answered because they didn’t recognize the number and he wasn’t able to call anyone for help.