How should we generate electricity?
Last post, we discussed various alternatives to fossil fuels. In this post, we will take the perspective of the grid. How do each of these power sources impact the functioning of the grid?
This is a companion post to the Generating Electricity without Fossil Fuels series. For many people, safety is the primary concern for nuclear power. I should address nuclear safety before analyzing it as one of the main possible strategies for moving away from fossil fuels.
How should we generate electricity?
Currently, the majority of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, especially coal and natural gas. Burning fossil fuels has given us access to tremendous amounts of energy and has made modern civilization possible. Without them, we would have had trouble feeding ourselves, let alone obtaining our current standard of living.
Unfortunately, burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases that warm the global climate. And they will run out eventually. What other sources are available?
Apologies for going silent for the last couple of months. I am getting back to posting regularly and should have some great material coming up in the next few weeks. For now, here are some links I’ve found interesting.
Puritan vs. Prussian vs. Parochial. Prussian wins. Also, high schools weren’t really a thing before 1900.
The criteria people typically use to distinguish the more reliable ‘hard sciences’ from the less reliable ‘soft sciences’ do not match our understanding of which is which. Instead, I think that the difference lies in the history of the fields. For hard sciences, the science precedes the community. For soft sciences, the community precedes the science. Hard sciences have norms of empiricism. Soft sciences try to import rules of empiricism. If you want to harden a science, it is more important to grow the norms than to establish the rules. One way to accomplish this is to require early career scientists replicate at least one major result in their field as part of their education.
Is measuring time an affront to God?
In Seeing Like A State, James C. Scott contrasts formalized systems of knowledge with what he calls mētis. Mētis is “a wide array of practical skills and acquired intelligence in responding to a constantly changing natural and human environment”. Mētis is usually associated with traditional forms of knowledge and formalized systems of knowledge with modernity. Scott resists this comparison because many “traditional” forms of knowledge only look ancient and can quickly adapt in response to new conditions. I agree and wanted to find an example where the reverse is true: where formal knowledge is traditional and mētis is new. I believe that I have found such an example in computer science.
This is the sequel to The History of the Barometer (1965) and prequel to the more ambitious Invention of the Meteorological Instruments (1969). Middleton has a very particular area of expertise and knows it very well. He seems to have examined every thermometer that was produced before the year 1800 which still exists and to have read almost every text that references them, in the original language. Why was I interested in such a particular book? Middleton tells the reason in his Preface: unlike barometers, where almost all the progress since the 1600s has been technical, the history of thermometers is as much about what we think ‘temperature’ is as it is about the device itself. My interest is in how these philosophical questions about temperature were asked and answered.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a large, centralized institution. Since large, centralized institutions tend to be biased towards legibility, it is worth asking if this exists in Mormonism. I try to avoid value judgements here and allow you to decide if less legible institutions are better or worse for the Church.
