They have very limited power these days. They advise the House of Commons, as more or less a hereditary think tank. They can delay the passage of bills, though this has been limited to a maximum delay of one year since 1949 (less for some types of bills) and there are some checks on this ability. They have a few other things they can do that are (IMO) too boring to warrant much thought unless you're a member of parliament.
The idea of a House of Lords does strike me as a bit odd, but it's not really the big deal it used to be.
They do, technically, allow JIT. You need a very hard-to-obtain entitlement that lets you turn writable pages into executable read-only pages, and good luck getting that entitlement if (for some reason) your name isn’t “mobilesafari”, but the capability exists.
When you say it's "hard" to obtain--is it possible to obtain if you aren't Apple? Does Apple ever provide it to third party developers, or is there even a path to requesting it?
It may comfort you to hear that the Starlink satellites are tiny in comparison to the vastness of their orbit – the visualization makes them appear larger than they are, so you can see them clearly – and that they’re low enough that they’ll naturally de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere after about 15 years even without using their maneuvering thrusters.
They’re providing worldwide rural broadband, and according to the FAA they’re doing so in a way that’s careful and responsible about space debris and collision avoidance. Is disgust truly warranted in this case?
I’m also introverted, and I also found this article overwhelming – if I tried to do it all at once, which seems so laughably unrealistic for me that I just wouldn’t try. Instead, probably the best way to read this is as something to approach gradually. Try just one thing on the list, or two if you’re feeling ambitious. Go for a delta that you can manage. And see if it’s working for you, because often the advice that works wonders for one person completely falls flat for another.
(On a slightly funny personal note, the thing that helped me most with social skills was watching the first few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in my first year of college. The actors emoted so clearly that even I could understand what feelings they were trying to convey, and that’s how I learned to do body language and appropriate vocal tones. This took me from unapproachable to merely awkward, a huge step up in the world.)
The rationalist movement has been talking about this since the beginning, and has consistently come to the conclusion that of course the thing to do is admit to our own fallibility and try to do the best we can with our profound limitations.
(You didn’t explicitly say otherwise, so if my exasperation is misdirected then you have my apology in advance.)
No need to apologize, I am unashamedly an opponent of rationalism and I hold the entire movement and every one like it in history in withering contempt.
You stated one of their core doctrines, something they’ve been loudly preaching for as long as they’ve existed, as though it was something they disagree with and had never even considered. Can you blame them for a bit of exasperation? For wanting to simply downvote-and-disengage from someone who makes up falsehoods about them and then gloats about how it annoyed them? Life is too short to tilt at windmills.
I remember, from the earliest days, the rationalist movement talking about how cults prey on people and how to recognize it and walk the other way. The Ziz cult checks so many of the boxes that they were warning against back then, years ago—
—And years later, once the Ziz cult started preying on vulnerable people, the response from the mainstream rationalist movement was… to post warnings about avoiding this messed-up cult, to explain exactly how it was manipulating its victims, and how the best thing to do (in the absence of legal remedy) was to stay the hell away from that diseased social scene.
I’m not sure how they could have done better. Any sufficiently large movement attracts crazy people. No matter how well or poorly they may deal with that fact, anybody can do guilt-by-association forever after.
You’re right, of course, but there was a minor miscommunication: the exponential space is exponentially proportional to the size of the regular expression, and the linear time is linearly proportional to the length of the string being searched through.
This depends on the implementation of the regex engine; most are potentially superlinear in time, since that’s the easiest way of doing it, and quite fast until suddenly it isn’t. I always check the algorithm being used before I use regular expressions in production. I was surprised how many use a recursive descent strategy!
(Also, BTW, you can deal with the exponential space issue by using an NFA instead of a DFA – it’s slower that way, but the memory space required is reliably linearly proportional to the size of the regex.)
Do you have actual knowledge of their motives? Or is this speculation, confidently stated as fact?
Another possible motive, mentioned in the the paragraph you quote, is that the oil companies see an energy transition coming and are trying to get aboard the hydrogen train to diversify their future revenue sources. And that sounds like a reasonable motive; the sort of thing that people who don't see themselves as evil villains – i.e. the supermajority of people – could embrace.
I work for an oil and gas company. It has been specifically stated by my company that they are seeking support for hydrogen as a fuel because it adds value to their gas reserves - natural gas is roughly 75% hydrogen on a molar basis.
The idea is to stimulate demand for "green-ish" hydrogen (that is by grid-connected electrolysis); once demand for the hydrogen is there, it can be supplied by blue hydrogen. The O&G companies aren't super keen on green hydrogen made by dedicated renewables off grid, and they LOVE the approach of "we'll start off with grey hydrogen then we'll move to blue and green in the future".
This is very specifically a strategy to increase the amount of natural gas that can move from resources to possible reserves to probable reserve to proven reserves. That's how you increase the value of your company, which is how you get a fat bonus as a CEO.
You don't get a fat bonus by telling the truth or being right.
Can you define your hydrogen colors for us? It sounds like you have something interesting to say, but I can’t parse what it is out of your company’s jargon.
There's also "white" which is naturally occurring pure hydrogen.
Mostly it's seen as being economically infeasible to extract, though there is one working well in the world, and some other potential sources that may be feasible to extract discovered recently.
But the big problem with hydrogen is that right now, the majority of the supply is grey/brown/black, which all emit CO2 to produce. Green is far more expensive, and the carbon capture needed for blue is also expensive and the methods of storage are dodgy.
The thing about green hydrogen is that it's more efficient to transmit and store electricity than convert it to hydrogen and distribute and store that, so it's basically just a worse way of utilizing green energy sources. The only reason hydrogen is at all economical is that grey/brown/black are cheap, and it's hard to see any path for green or blue to become competitive (and truly zero emissions for blue).
It's possible that we'll find reserves of white hydrogen and efficient ways to extract it, but that's purely speculative right now, while building renewable energy sources, electric distribution, and batteries can be done right now.
10% of power is lost to distribution anyway. Batteries can also lose 10%.
The issue with hydrogen isn't producing it, it's that it's an absolute nightmare to transport and store. Hydrogen can soak into metals, causing them to become brittle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement and it leaks if there's absolutely any chance of it possibly leaking (thanks to the small molecules, and its tendancy to cause everything it touches to go brittle), and can cause a very big bang if it does leak.
It might work well for planes (where power to weight is at an absolute premium) but for cars and buses the weight of a bigger but tamer battery just makes more sense. It's absolutely a good rocket fuel.
The issue isn't that it can't be green. The issue is that it's rocket fuel - high performance but dangerous and high maintenance. Putting rocket fuel in a bus is just dumb.
But then you have even more losses when you convert the hydrogen back to energy.
The formula is that 55kW of electricity used to generate hydrogen from water and then converted back to electricity in a gas turbine or fuel cell results in 15kW of energy.
That's a lot more than 20%.
Compare that to just storing the 55kW in batteries and using them to spin an electric engine. "Hydrogen economy" only makes sense if you have infinite free electricity or massive overproduction.
> "Hydrogen economy" only makes sense if you have infinite free electricity or massive overproduction.
Or when batteries are really expensive and global production and/or geopolitics prevents a global power grid.
Both were the case 15 years ago (and geopolitics still prevents a global power grid today, but metal production has increased and is now sufficient).
Hydrogen wasn't entirely stupid back then; even though PV was more expensive than today, the trends were already clear.
Now? I think hydrogen is suboptimal for most users. But I wouldn't bet against the idea of someone, somewhere, likely in the arctic or antarctic circles, deciding that they really do need multiple months of energy storage, and for those specific weird edge cases I think it's at least possible they might decide a cryogenic liquid hydrogen tank the size of the space shuttle external tank, refuelled every summer by a comically large PV array that works 24 hours in some days, is less silly than 3 gigawatt-hours of batteries.
That's calculated in the total losses. You either need to compress it or freeze it. Usually for vehicles it's compressed, for long term storage or transfer it could be either.
Frequently the green energy used to split water is "surplus" energy. For example the bulk of offshore wind energy happens between 10pm and 2am when energy demand is at its lowest. That energy goes to waste if not stored in hydrogen. Hence, efficiency is irrelevant.
Sure, but as long as we are burning natural gas, hydrogen is a bonus. Either use it or let it be wasted.
Using it to power public transportation is a great idea, if only we can get some better hydrogen fueling infrastructure. It should have a fair shake against electrics as electric vehicle power generation is using a lot of natural gas stations to charge up those cars !
Red hydrogen: produce hydrogen from a thermochemical reaction between water, iodine, and sulfur at a high temperature, around 900°C, using the thermal energy from a nuclear reactor.
"Blue hydrogen" is commonly used for hydrogen produced from natural gas. If it is produced by steam reforming (most common), then the associated CO2 emissions are worse than if you just burn the natural gas directly.
"Green hydrogen" is usually hydrogen produced from water by electrolysis, using electricity from non-CO2 source, e.g. wind or electricity.
Right, if you "oops" don't have working capture because it's never been practical you're making "Blue" hydrogen in which your customers can tell everybody they're environmentally friendly but due to a technical hitch you are emitting lots of CO2. Maybe you can agree a token $1B fine, of course offset against the taxes you were already going to pay, and everybody carries on as before. Hooray for your profitable corporation and oops, too bad for the stupid humans who live on the gradually less inhabitable planet you're destroying.
This would only be really dumb if the corporation was owned by humans. Huh.
Green hydrogen is produced from electrolysis of water where the energy is comming from a renevable source. (Imagine solar panels which are directly connected to an electrolysis plant.)
“Green-ish” hydrogen is produced from electrolysis of water where the energy is comming from the grid. (And thus as green as your grid is.)
> natural gas is roughly 75% hydrogen on a molar basis
I thought it was methane. Wouldn't that be 80% hydrogen on a molar basis? (Or... 67%, if we're counting moles of molecular hydrogen?) Is the discrepancy coming from impurities, or different types of fuel, or what?
Natural gas is a mixture of methane and heavier hydrocarbons, the composition varies by region, depending largely on how the LPGs (propane and butane) are used. Ethane usually ends up in natural gas, unless there is a petrochemical complex nearby.
So, 80% is a theoretical maximum, which is never achieved in practice. 75% hydrogen looks pretty right.
I'm still curious about the measurement "on a molar basis". If you have 20 moles of methane, and you process that to separate out the carbon, you'll end up with 20 moles of some form of carbon and 40 moles of hydrogen gas, right?
I think that "on a molar basis" is there to clarify that it's counting by number of atoms rather than grams. On a gram-for-gram basis, methane is ~75% carbon.
"Molar" refers to a number of elementary entities, which could be atoms or molecules or w/e. So yes, if you are counting moles of H2 gas, but not if you are counting atoms...
But hydrogen gas is the only thing you can get from that reaction. There is a theoretical construct of monatomic hydrogen, also a gas, but you're guaranteed to get molecular hydrogen instead. And there will only be 40 moles of it. There isn't a way for you to end up with 80 moles of hydrogen product.
I'm the original commenter, and quite simply you're right and I slipped up. It's not really using the terminology correctly for me to say "natural gas is ~75% hydrogen on a molar basis".
Whenever talking about hydrogen's physical properties etc on a molar basis, we'd be talking about H2. So if you had a mole of methane (CH4) we'd say you could make two moles of hydrogen (H2) out of it.
My point was really just that the gas companies' reserves of natural gas mean that they'll do anything to try to stimulate demand for blue/grey hydrogen, because their reserves of natural gas are reserves of hydrogen.
Let's go back to your opening comment which was something like "I thought methane was 80% hydrogen on a molar basis". Methane does not contain H2 molecules, it contains 4 atoms of hydrogen. Plus one atom of carbon, which would indeed make it 80% hydrogen on a molar basis.
If that does not convince you: note also that atomic carbon is also a very unstable, and will auto polymerize into one of its allotropes (eg. C60 - buckyballs). And yet we count carbon by the atom.
The current US administrations moves against renewables should make you realize how powerful the oil gas lobby is. They got some pushback from local politicians so were slowed down but the way they started they were looking to end all wind and solar for a false promise of nuclear tomorrow.
The last decades' worth of German administrations (and EU countries in general) removed nuclear on the promise of a cheap grid made from green hydrogen and renewables. What they delivered was a EU grid dependent on imported natural gas and a record high ~€400 billions energy subsidies.
It is hard to see whose promise of a bright future seems most realistic.
Sweden was also on the same german track, shutdown some of the nuclear fleet, but is now going back and forth on the issue. They are also investing in new natural gas fueled thermal plants, with similar "future" plans of using green hydrogen.
The national debate in Sweden is also similar. The right is arguing that the future is nuclear, and the left is arguing that green hydrogen is the future and natural gas is the stepping stone to get there. It is a miniature copy of the general energy discussion in EU.
except that there are more than two possibilities, but the debate is reduced to artificial Left and Right -- a miniature copy of the American political duopoly
That is correct, and I would add that the debate is also addressing the wrong questions. We should ask what role government should have in providing reliable and steady energy grid, what the values such grid provide to society, and how the costs should be distributed between market forces and taxes.
It is the failure to define what people actually want from the grid that results in people creating a religion behind power production, believing in a promise of a future that we have never seen.
Germany is not unique either. Both France and Belgium are struggling with their inventory of nuclear power plants: many are operating near or past their designed lifespans, so maintenance is getting more expensive but they can't be decommissioned because there are no replacement plants (and due to electric transportation, demand is only going up). Germany definitely made the wrong choice, but at least they were aware enough to make an explicit choice. Other European countries have basically been burying their head in the sand on the same issue.
As of today, France is looking to start construction on six new plants but that still means the plants likely won't be in operation until 2040. And Belgium hasn't even started the planning phase. That's 15 more years of operating nuclear power plants designed in the mid 1900s.
Powerful is correct. It's strange to me the number of people on this site who think we should just throw away trillions of dollars. We should use natural gas to make renewable dirt cheap, just that would offset any externalities you can make up.
We are already on the path to have the grid converted to majority green energy over the next decade. Solar is by far the largest of New deployments and growing annually.
Grid batteries are just starting to scale up.
These are cheaper than any other option by far, with the shortest payback period.
That could have been an argument for a suspicious individual but China has showed otherwise. China came late to the green transition and now they are ahead of anybody else. And they are big and not relatively rich.
You're being downvoted because you're wrong, but sadly about 20-30% of the population shares your views and this needs to be addressed.
The people telling you that green energy "can't happen" are precisely the same group of people that will lose the capital they've invested in non-green energy technologies.
That's it. That's the reason you believe this.
You've been told over and over, by very loud and very well funded people to not even bother trying to replace legacy non-renewable energy sources with renewable energy sources. One hundred percent of the funding for this messaging comes from non-renewable energy companies, their shareholders, employees, and others with vested interests.
None of these people have your personal interests at heart.
Interest such as "having a livable planet" or having... you know... energy that won't run out in like a hundred years because... drumroll... they're literally advocating for energy sources that are NOT renewable. Finite. Expiring. Running dry.
"Oil baron with crushing loan repayments says the remaining drops of crude must be pumped out, no other option for the world. News at 11."
Hydrogen is also a byproduct of some source of energy, it doesn’t just materialize.
The difference is batteries are vastly more efficient at storage and doing useful work with that stored energy. There’s use cases where that’s fine like rocketry, but efficiency or energy density is usually a dealbreaker.
Vastly more efficient at storing electricity. Vastly more expensive to construct, using rare materials. Have a Vastly shorter lifespan than a hydrogen tank and much lower energy density. Everything is a compromise
Many batteries actually last significantly longer than common hydrogen storage tanks, hydrogen embrittlement is a major issue. Type III and IV tanks have a life cycle of 10 years. https://www.awoe.net/Hydrogen-Storage-LCA.html
Hydrogen has also terrible volumetric energy density. It’s also really heavy until you scale to huge tanks.
Hydrogen's volumetric energy density is about as good as lithium-ion. The cost of replacing a hydrogen tank vs a lithium battery is absolutely massive. You also aren't considering the energy density lost in cold weather for batteries.
Almost the same in the short term requires you to liquify hydrogen and then use it immediately. Because the energy density rapidly goes to zero for any application with a moderately sized tank. On top of which you need a cryogenic tank, costing you even more volume.
Liquifying hydrogen also costs you another ~10-13 kWh /kg where Hydrogen only contains 33kWh if you want heat, but more like 10-15kWh/kg if you want to do useful work. So you’re roughly paying double the energy for the same amount of energy stored.
How expensive, big, and heavy would a hydrogen tank (farm) be if it had to supply a whole winter for, say, 1million people.
I ask because one of the bigger transition issues I see in Europe is load shifting from summer surplus to winter deficits, specifically for heating.
Why would you want to store enough energy to supply for a whole winter? Wind energy delivers most power during the winter and even solar contributes a bit. The actual amounts to store would be a fraction of that. Of course, that might be the one single good use of hydrogen as a means of storage, but way less storage is needed than most would think.
What the hell are you talking about, a. batteries weren't mentioned and b. hydrogen is on the periodic table and exists as an element, and can actually be found in its pure form.
Pure hydrogen is not found in meaningful quantities on earth.
There’s a huge demand for hydrogen in industry and it’s almost exclusively met with steam methane reforming there’s some methane pyrolysis and a little green hydrogen but not much. If people could just drill for it, they would happier do so as being so light it’s easy to separate out from other gasses.
> Pure hydrogen is not found in meaningful quantities on earth.
This is not necessarily true. A recent discovery in France could contain as much as 250 million metric tons of hydrogen (but that's a generous upper bound).
Given how hard and how long the fossil fuel industry has been fighting tooth and nail to suppress science, kill public and private projects, and fund bogus studies, all to avoid ever losing even a fraction of their ironclad control of the energy market, I think it's fair to deny them the benefit of the doubt at this point.
If they're saying or doing something that would stand in the way of or compete with the existing rise of renewable energy, even without any specific evidence, I believe it is fully justified to say they are doing it for selfish reasons that will harm literally every other human being on the planet.
It’s why we don’t have rail in the US like you see in Europe. At one point in time we had a ton of rail and streetcar networks but these groups destroyed it all because it was a threat to their business. For oil companies, so is hydrogen.
Pretty much all of them. At least in the west, less sure about the east.
France had 70000km of rail around ww1, now it has about 30000. The main (though not only) casualty was the rural narrow gauge lines ("local interest network") which got obliterated by car and low productivity (about 20000km progressively closed from about 1930 to 1960, a handful survive as tourist attractions).
One can extract hydrogen from fossil fuels. So if a hydrogen break through is coming, they already have a cheap source for the material.
Not really green though...
I remember natural gas vehicles (busses and cars, like the honda civic). You could actually fill up at home if you had natural gas, but the electricity just to compress the natural gas for the car cost as much or more than the compressed fuel in the car.
For hydrogen, it is even harder. take a look at cars running compressed hydrogen. I remember $17 for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. I think it is even more expensive now.
Easier to burn CH4 than use energy to split out the H2, then compres it, then store it.
Dollar costs of physical things (pre tax) quite accurately measure how much effort it takes to produce/acquire that thing.
Hydrogen being more expensive than X quite stronly suggests that it is much more effort to get than X.
All well and good until you have producers burning (or otherwise using) the cheap, taxed fuel to produce the expensive, subsidized one while creating more net pollution in the process. It's hard to get this stuff right at the best of times.
"trying to get aboard the hydrogen train to diversify their future revenue sources" sounds very close to what op claims. For them, the goal is to get aboard, not to get to a destination.
The idea of a House of Lords does strike me as a bit odd, but it's not really the big deal it used to be.
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