I'll be paving my postage-stamped sized portion of the planet with someone else's trash so they can rush forward and do some more planet paving? See Jevon's paradox <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox>. Let the next phase of data centers be under 400W-class PV Panel roofs which double as night-time solar radiators with a geo-coupled tap-roots deep enough to recharge the 50-60F deep earth temp with waste energy from their cubic miles of "computronium" (surely someone has trademarked that term?)
In a decade or so when someone has to deal with my "good ideas gone bad" they will likely have to pay much more than $17/panel to properly "recycle" them. The hardened "gorilla glass" and aluminum frames alone if properly repurposed (greenhouse/sunroom) glazing should be worth that to someone? Three sided homeless pup-tents with minimal PV power to recharge a phone or even power the discarded EV bicycle wheels used to make it into a portable shelter?
Meanwhile my (now vintage?) PHEV and water well and personal demands for electricity from the grid could trickle in through order $400 worth of entirely waterproof-shade-making panels? With Chinese Tarriffs, Inverters are getting pricier but a Pi or Arduino with a handful of MOSFETs and capacitors and diodes and resistors and *viola* a DIY inverter. Or just swap out or augment the 240V downhole well pump with a 12/24V DC version that has the built-in circuitry to handle the variable power from PV? Or so says GPT... I used to be "just smart enough to get in trouble"... now I have LLMs encouraging me. Fortunately it is easier to spin the power-turbines with my idle speculations than it is to go out and do these projects. GPT "keeps me off the streets and on the drawing boards".
Or maybe just hand-dig a well and hang a bucket over the side? Good complement to splitting my own firewood? Put some real-life into the "chop wood, carry water" mantra? Under the shade of deprecated PV panels? full circle, like a hermit crab in a tin can. Ever see one sans-shell? Ugly little buggers!
Apocalypto!Following glen's reference to post apocalyptic biospheric recovery in urban environments, I am a fan (when I can find it) of the Cyber/Steam/Diesel Punk movement known as SolarPunk <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk>.... very old-hippy vibe/bohemian of course.
I'm not an earthship kinda guy, our local timber and adobe-soil and pumice resources don't need other's industrial waste stream (tires and glass bottles) sequestered into them for houses... unless of course they are YOUR tire and glass bottle castoffs... that I can get behind.
On 7/11/25 8:53 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Installation, tear down, recycling, and re-fabrication all need to be automated. -----Original Message----- From: Friam<[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, July 11, 2025 7:38 AM To:[email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Elon Musk and Fossil Fuels A tech bro wet dream, that is. Maybe there's something wrong with me. But what I see when looking at those pictures is something like one of those post-apocalyptic movie scenes where a city is being retaken by the biosphere ... or maybe a hermit crab using a can as its shell. It's easy to abstract away and think about the humans who manufacture and repair those panel manifolds like so many molecules maintaining a cell or so many glands growing a new shell or exoskeleton. But that analogy's pretty fraught. And it's not merely the life cycles of the panels (and wind mills) that pokes at me. I also wonder about the bioengineering of the various ecosystems, including deserts, and how that will turn out. None of that's an argument for not paving the earth with panels or continuing to drain the fossil fuel battery. But it's just what I think when I look at those pictures. It just feels so centrally planned ... so ... inorganic. I can't help think about what it will look like within a lifetime of the kids around me: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004225005930 On 7/11/25 6:31 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:Every so often I need to post an Atlantic article, and that time has arrived again. https://www.theatlantic.com/photography/archive/2025/07/photos-china-solar-power-energy/683488/?gift=IwTom6kf_sPDx8WzuZ66aeDqXjixawasB22Cb-q9aVA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share -----Original Message----- From: Friam<[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, July 11, 2025 6:19 AM To:[email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Elon Musk and Fossil Fuels I don't use Grok. But this reads like it's straight out of an LLM. And since Grok is the ultimate Elno fanboi, that would be my first guess. On 7/11/25 12:09 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:Alright, let’s not beat around the bush — fossil fuels kinda suck. Like, seriously. When it comes to moving the world toward clean energy, there are two big pieces of the puzzle: how we power everything (electricity), and how we move around (vehicles). Both are super important. There are other parts too, but for today, let’s just chat about cars. Now, let’s be honest — this whole clean energy thing? It's messy. It’s complicated. There’s no neat, sparkly-clean way to swap out millions of gas-guzzling cars without some bumps and bruises along the way. And yeah, some parts of the process can look... well, not great. I actually want people to point out the flaws. Go for it. It’s good to talk about the not-so-pretty stuff too. As much as I'd love to only focus on the shiny positives (it’s my natural instinct!), I get that the whole picture matters. Still, if we sat down with a pros and cons list and gave it a fair shot, I think we'd see that Elon Musk has done the planet a pretty big favor in pushing us away from combustion engines and toward electric ones. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you can come up with a solid list of “negatives” — and honestly, I welcome it. I might even be completely wrong about all this. And you know what? That’s okay. Lucky for me (and the rest of the planet), if I am wrong, it’s just my opinion. No harm done. .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
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