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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Modifying the dam isn’t the issue, you need to make sure the upstream area can be flooded. Not all rivers are in a canyon. You need a sizeable lake and consider how catastrophic an overflow would be. Then you also have to consider the effect downstream because you will likely cause a minor drought persistently since not all dams will dump into the ocean. So yes, I understand that “hydro” is both a source and a battery, but they are really 2 entirely different systems based on your other categorizations.

    Same thing with the biomass. One system makes trees, one system burns wood.

    The graphic isn’t particularly wrong, it’s just splitting some items and combining others inconsistently.


  • I think you’re reading into it correctly. It’s an inaccurate depiction. The hydro line is what makes it fuzzy. A dam is a source but has no storage. A reservoir is not a source but has storage. They are separate devices meaning this needs two separate lines for hydro.

    I imagine biomass is exactly the same situation, but I have no idea what OP is trying to use. Maybe I’m just uneducated, but it doesn’t sound like common knowledge. Still my assumption would be that there’s a source system to grow/maintain biomass and a separate system to extract that energy.

    If those two items stayed as-is, then I can strap a battery directly to wind or solar and give them green check marks in both categories.









  • Ultimately, they can be, but there’s lots of differences between them once they reach the bucket you buy. They have different adhesion qualities, but that could be addressed with an appropriate primer. They have different final finish surface requirements, which could be an issue for how the paint works. I remember seeing dragonfly-wing-style paint that was white when viewed perfectly straight buy blue when viewed at any off angle due to a microscopic vertical grid of blue walls. There may also be a required clearcoat component that may not be compatible between the two surfaces. Metal paint is also designed to handle the flex of metal where as concrete paint would barely be concerned about that but possible address crumbling instead.

    Edit: and after reading the article, it’s a radiative-cooling paint rather than a reflecting coating. Concrete has a much lower thermal conductivity so this may not be effective in transferring heat out of the concrete.








  • If I make a gas engine with 100% heat efficiency but only run it in my backyard, do the greenhouse gases not count because it’s so efficient? Of course they do. The high efficiency of a data center is great, but that’s not what the article laments. The problem it’s calling out is the absurdly wasteful nature of why these farms will flourish: to power excessively animated programs to feign intelligence, vainly wasting power for what a simple program was already addressing.

    It’s the same story with lighting. LEDs seemed like a savior for energy consumption because they were so efficient. Sure they save energy overall (for now), but it prompted people to multiply the number of lights and total output by an order of magnitude simply because it’s so cheap. This stems a secondary issue of further increasing light pollution and intrusion.

    Greater efficiency doesn’t make things right if it comes with an increase in use.