The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[sendler]

We obviously need to change the code when these cities are destroyed by a storm and rebuilt with insurance money. It makes no sense to build everything back the same way to be destroyed again in the next storm. Even if it is 10 years from now, Another "500 year storm" will happen. The new normal.
.
They did relocate 1.3 million people in order to flood Three Gorges. They are building 20 more further upstream.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...power_stations
.

[oil pan 4]

Yeah I have a feeling the Chinese government doesn't respond well to "no".

[sendler]

George Monbiot. "Unsustainability of the capitalist system." "The system that we have now, which is about accumulation of capital, accumulation of growth, that system is destined to push us over the cliff."
.
https://youtu.be/siladGzSKJI
.

[Fat Charlie]

Dams are great.

But even the best dam in the world needs a lot of things to go right in order to work.

[sendler]

These hydropower facilities all seem to be producing very well. In the 10-100 TWh/ year range. Awesome.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...power_stations
.

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

To build anything like a 3 gorges dam in the US cities would have to be relocated.

They had to move several huge cities in China, in order to build that dam.

And, climate change is drastically affecting the glaciers that are the source of about 6 massive rivers in Asia.

[freebeard]

We'll always have the Moon.

No one will mourn those cities; but shamefully the village-scale ancient culture that had survived the Cultural Revolution because it was 'far from the flagpole' was lost.

Here's low-cost scalable energy storage to compete with gravity-electric systems:

Firebricks offer low-cost storage for carbon-free energy | MIT News

It stores 'excess' energy as heat in firebrick. Which can be used directly as industrial heat or to drive turbines.

[sendler]

One report stated that molten salt in concentrated solar plants can store energy at 99% efficiency. It didn't say what the time period was. Must be about a minute.
This is an advantage over PV solar plants that have no storage. But they are big and expensive.
Ivanpah is 3500 acres. Cost $2.2 Billion. And is averaging 80MWh for the year. This is half of what Solar Star PV makes. For the same price. But Solar Star has no storage.
To add 12 hours of batteries to Solar Star over three, 8 year battery lives at $400/ kWh, would increase the cost of it's electricity from $0.085 / kWh to $0.35 so considering it's storage, Ivanpah's $0.17 cost is cheap.
Unless you consider that I am paying $0.039 for generation portion of my electricity right now in NY.

[Xist]

What about the guys that move an electric train up a mountain and then bring it back down to regenerate? How expensive and efficient is that?

I imagine those two have a strong correlation.

[JockoT]

Here is an interesting bit on Molten Salt Energy Storage