How is agricultural land defined if it isn’t used to grow biomass?
I can see how i wasn't specific enough with my wording. This is what i am talking about. Basically growing plants for the purpose of energy production, rather than e.g. food or material useage.
That was my initial thought aswell, but after thinking about it I changed my opinion to preferring the simple majority.
Imo one of the deciding factors is how you think about it. Do you see it as a choice between two conscious actions (acceptance or active rejection), or is only the "yes" vote an active choice and "no" something of a "natural" state?
Also if you set hurdles for change to high, then you are potentially hindering progress and systematically favoring conservatism. Which isn't always bad, but the status quo and how things were done in the past aren't always sustainable and worth the advantage.
On the contrary, I’m afraid. Land is in very short supply. The issue is that even if the land is not currently developed it is doing vital stuff already. If it’s used for food production, if it’s a bit of forest storing massive amounts of CO2, if it’s home the insects pollinating our food supply, if it’s…
I won't claim to be an expert, but I'm gonna push back on this point. Local conditions will ofc always vary, but take Germany for example, which is probably one of the more densely populated countries.
Based on the numbers i can find anywhere from 14%-16% of our agriculturally used land is used to produce biomass. This is significantly less efficient than if even a fraction of this area were used for photvoltaics. And those rapeseed or corn monocultures probably have close to zero value for biodiversity, on the contrary i'd imagine that pesticide use will negatively impact nature overall. With solar panels on the other hand you can still use the underlying land to plant stuff like wild flowers and so on, if you wanted. There are also the already mentioned hybrid uses in agriculture where you plant crops below the panels or just use the land for grazing.
On a side note since you mention forests. Just recently there was a number of articles on how due to their poor condition german forests have actually gone from being carbon sinks to carbon sources, releasing more CO2 than they bind.
One more limiting factor that i forgot to mention above is lack of qualified contractors to actually build solar farms or put panels on roofs. Particularly with residential homes that seems to be another common complaint.
I wish it would become standard to report these things not as a single number, but as yearly increases paired with the contract duration. That would make it much easier to put them into context, and compare them to other deals or inflation.
Just the number alone without context can also be straight up misleading. I remember that when train personel went on strike here in Germany, I saw some articles comparing the demand and offer by just mentioning that single number, and they seemed fairly close. Well, one was over 2 and the other over 3 years, making them massively different in practice.
As always with these fancy ideas it is a solution for something that is not a problem: We aren't even close to running out of suitable space to put solar panels. The problems for solar are usually just willingness, bureaucracy, or the electrical grid not being able to handle the additional load.
We've also had proposals for solar bricks for paving roads/parking lots, putting the panels as dividers between highway roads. It just doesn't make sense to overcomplicate things.
Come back once every single parking lot, large roof, unused radom patch of land, or even agricultural land (there are some interesting setups where the shade provided by solar panels is actually beneficial for the plants) is fully utilized. But chances are that at that point we already have more than enough capacity.
The concept you are describing is called Innovator's Dilemma and imo the most recent example for it happening is with legacy car manufacturers missing the ev transition, because it would eat into their margins from ICE. But i am not sure if this is a good example for it.
However imo it seems like a great example for what Steve Jobs describes in this video about the failure of Xerox. Namely that in a monopoly position marketing people drive product people out of the decision making forums. Which seems exactly the case here where the concerns of an engineer were overruled by the higher ups, because it didn't fit within their product segmentation.
I am not sure how up to date and accurate this Wikipedia article, but that seems like another substantial step. Looking at the list I am quite surprised by the speed the size of these wind turbines seems to progress.
Can someone more knowledgeable answer me a few questions:
How likely is it that China takes over this industry world wide similar to solar? Specifically what role does (if at all) play logistics in this. Those turbines are massive compared to easily shippable solar panels. So I imagine they'd be much harder to transport and local production could have some advantages, but how much does that matter?
It does seem like all the new largest turbines in prototype phase are from China, but when you scroll to commercially deployed the western manufacturers show up more. Is this just due to different timings in their development cycles or have they dropped out of/can't keep up with development for larger turbines?
Most will probably use USB-C and it's just a good law in general. But I think one reason to adopt it instead of just assuming that it will happen anyways is that if they don't, they might end up being the dumping ground for whenever someone has a product that uses an older connector like micro USB simply because they are that tiny bit cheaper or just excess inventory.
I think it was slightly ahead of it's time and had terrible marketing. At least here in Germany it was marketed as "Dredd 3D" at a time where the hype had died down, and probably turned into the opposite due to all movies getting unnecessary and poorly made 3D conversions.
Pure speculation on my part: The average Chinese citizen now has a higher standard of living, so the need for mobility increases. You'll have both more car owners and the need for railways, which does help reduce the need for cars, but they also don't fully overlap in use cases. You aren't just going from people swapping their car for taking a train, but also giving many people that had no car to start with the option to choose between getting one or using trains for their travels. Which is good, but in absolute numbers you still see more cars.
Similar to how China is adding both a massive amount of renewable energy and at the same time still building coal power plants, simply because the overall need for energy is still growing.
my interest in Android phones
In android specifically or did you just add that since we are in an Android community? Because for me that's just phones in general. I couldn't really think of a major innovation Apple has had in their recent iPhones either. It's all incremental improvements in performance, battery life, display and camera, paired with some minor software features. And in apples case being forced to adapt USB C.
What features would you be waiting for? For me it would be some proper implementation of a Desktop mode (in the lines of Samsung Dex). Since I feel phones have plenty of performance by now, enough where paired with a good dock they could replace desktop PCs for many people.
You could be right that that this may lead to more biomass demand due to regulations, but honestly i hope it doesn't. It's great when done with actual waste, but when done purposely it just seems much less efficient than the solar/wind alternative.
"Growing plants -> carrying them to a biomass facility -> converting it to gas/biofuels -> using those in cars, for heating with gas or conversion to electricity in gas power plants" seems so much less efficient than just "put solar panels/wind turbine on a field -> use the electricity for EVs or heat pumps". The former has just so many extra conversion steps where energy is lost.
Another point that i have somewhat mixed feelings about, but it probably depends on the context.
If we are talking use for energy production e.g. heating with wood chips/biomass, then as mentioned above it is imo only useful when done with waste (the production of which you'd ideally reduce in search for efficiency). If done by purposely growing trees to cut down and completly burn for their stored energy then logically you are at best carbon neutral (you release the CO2 that was stored), but realistically slightly worse because of transport costs and so on. Plus depending on your setup it may lead to air polution, particularly an issue if done in urban settings.
It is however great as carbon storage and to reduce emissions when used as building material to replace something like concrete.