Yep, espicially the ones that use directed mirrors to heat a solar tower.
China Wuhan Virus Pandemic
- Thread starter Arch Dornan
- Start date
gral
Well-known member
This is something that never/almost never gets said outside of the specialized literature/press, but it's really important. Solar and wind power not only fluctuates, they can(and do) go from zero to full power and vice-versa in less than 5 minutes. Power grids hate this sort of thing - grid frequency fluctuates wildly, other parts(power plants, substations) of the grid start shutting down to protect their equipments, and you have a large blackout from the cascade effect. I recall an incident in... 2013, I think, where one power plant suddenly got taken out from the Brazilian National Integrated System grid - the sudden removal of 1,500 MW from the grid(at a time when power load was around 75,000 MW) led to a cascade effect that removed 9,000 MW from the grid and a 5-State blackout.
With solar and wind power, when a geographical region stops having conditions for power generation(the Sun goes down, wind stops), you can get the same effect as the above-mentioned incident. Also, since wind and solar farms are made of many small generators, instead of few big ones(like the ones in hydro and thermal power plants), they are more easily taken out by grid disturbances(being more vulnerable to the cascade effect).
There are two ways to build grid resistance to such events: 1) A number of large generators supplying power, that won't be easily taken out of the grid - and at least some of those will be burning dead dinosaurs/trees, even in places like Brazil and Canada, which have large hydro power plants; 2) Battery farms tied to the grid, injecting power as quickly as it gets taken out, in order to keep grid frequency stable - Battery technology to make this sort of thing viable is only becoming available right now; Australia has recently gone for this option, but I don't know if it has entered service or not(I think it has). Other countries are doing studies and building large battery storage farms, but by-and-large, it's not in large-scale service yet(things will change in 5 to 10 years, though).
Quite possible, especially with thermosolar power plants(mirrors focusing sunlight on a point, where water passing through gets turned into steam used to turn a steam turbine). It also happens with some conventional power plants(especially open-cycle gas turbine ones); I used to see every once in a while, in a plant I had some responsibility for, a cooked(or would that be roasted) bat or bird lying down on the ground - that's what happens when you fly through 600°C-hot exhaust.
Floridaman
Well-known member
Automation is here, do I think it will lead to mass unemployment, no. Just like happened every other time there was a technological revolution new careers will emerge to absorb the work.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
In short people adapt, @Spktr Alpha
You write Commander fics, I think people may go and use those 3D Printers to be mini-Commanders
Yeah, pretty dumb and I know the whole not everybody can afford stuff thing, but still new knowledge and it being available on the internet helps even when not everybody can build something
I wish we replaced schools and colleges with the internet
May even be a necessity if it’s not safe to go outside and it would be cheaper
Though, Trade Schools would be a necessity, need hands on experience to be a doctor or geologist or biologist
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
All it took was a virus to get people to reconsider instead of someone saying it on live tv.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I think they may have already been considering it before
Depending on how strong paranoia lasts, they may not want to allow illegal migrants in for a few more years, by then people’s views may change even more
Unfortunately, I think an ACTUAL Far Right could rise from the Far Left
Indeed. We in the US had long since been getting our borders under control...finally. Europe was coming around and starting to do the same. This just rapidly accelerated it.
Another side effect is that this will help speed along the rapid re industrialization of the United States. As Trump made it clear we will no longer depend on China for pharmaceuticals. I mean, them threatening us like that was just a really, really stupid thing to do.
Floridaman
Well-known member
I think to a degree they made the mistake of buying their own statements about their rise being inevitable, they got cocky.
That would not surprise me. Especially with the Left here in the States actively sucking them off. And that's about the kindest thing I can say on the subject.
America's left has a bad habit of mis interpreting desperate bluster as actual strength.
The chinese economy's fundamentals suck, their geography is hostle its navy lacks blue water capability and their economic boom is directly dependent on americans protecting their trade and opening their markets to chinese goods. All we have to do to crush the Chinese system is nothing and nothing is a pretty easy thing to do.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Senate GOP releases coronavirus relief plan with up to $1,200 in cash payments to individuals
The Senate has been under immense pressure to get a deal done with the House and administration as quickly as possible, as cash dries up for some American companies.
Your current neet bucks Americans who need it.
Yang bucks updated to Trump bucks.
California issues a say-at-home lockdown of the state.
nypost.com
California under ‘stay-at-home’ order amid coronavirus outbreak
The state of California is essentially under lockdown. Gov. Gavin Newson on Thursday issued a “stay-at-home” order for the Golden State’s 39.5 million residents in an effort to cu…
nypost.com
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It's actually more that they are operating under a different framework than those in the US are operating under.
China isn't doing this because it believes it or because it thinks anyone else will or because it doesn't like the US; China is doing it for domestic consumption.
COVID-19 has started a global recession (which will very likely become a depression in short order). Totally ignoring the six plus weeks that China has been shutdown for, demand for Chinese goods is essentially non existent and will continue to be non-existent for months (as the US and Europe are on lockdown). China without external markets to buy its goods is China with mass urban unemployment.
China and Europe (Italy especially) are very likely to see their economic problems come home to roost as a consequence of COVID; and the US (even if it was inclined to help) is going to be distracted by its own domestic situation and the Presidential election.
That was all going to happen regardless of who China blamed or what they said. So what China is doing is blaming the US and trying to twist the domestic narrative to make the upcoming crash in China the fault of the US and not the CCP. If the CCP admits that they bungled the initial virus response then the CCP will be the ones blamed for mass unemployment, starvation, and economic collapse in China.
If, on the other hand, they can convince the people that the US caused the virus then it was an attack by an external enemy and less the CCP's fault. If China can also engage the US enough to take some economic swipes at China then all the better because the Party can spin them, for domestic consumption, as being what caused the collapse of the Chinese economy.
All of this is China doing frantic, last minute, disaster prep work for what it expects to face in three to six months.
Floridaman
Well-known member
The problem is the US can also break their economy permanently, scapegoats are supposed to be weak, it would have been smarter to blame someone who can’t hurt them, someone like the uyghurs or Falun Gong, a weak group they already persecute.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I’m pretty sure the PRC view the USA as weak, but that maybe because when they think of the USA they’re thinking of the Democrats and SJW types who bow down to them
Floridaman
Well-known member
Thinking the country that is the heart of the world financial system, and has the only true blue water navy is weak is something worthy of a Darwin Award.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
You're not alone is that assumption, but it is an assumption; one I don't share. We are looking at levels of automation previously considered impossible being implemented within out lifetimes, and it is a massive leap in logic to assume that there will be enough new jobs created to compensate for those lost. This isn't without precedent, mind you; this has happened before, just not to humans:
CGP Grey said:
I mean seriously, there are programs that can program themselves being designed, that are meant to program other programs that can program themselves; how exactly is that going to created new jobs for humans, and enough to replace the programmers who will be out of work?
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
Commie numbers duke, cant trust them. Even if everyone else came out without a scratch, and everyone panicked for nothing, I dont believe for one second China doesn't have it worst.
The CCP is concerned about the survival of the state. Economic damage, short term or permanent, is a price that they will pay without hesitation if it gives them even a slightly better chance of stabilizing China and keeping it together (with them in charge).
Even before the pandemic, China was already sitting on some truly horrific financial and economic bubbles. They were looking at economic collapse, mass unemployment, and famine come the next recession and they knew/know it. Best case for China, they would have been able to stave things off for another two to three years (the majority retirement of the US Boomers will cause a global capital collapse and that would have tanked China even if it had survived until then by some miracle).
The CCP has essentially decided that there is no way that China emerges from the other side of COVID-19 without an economic collapse. Trump's reelection hinges almost entirely on his response to the virus and he will be blaming China for it constantly. If Biden agrees with Trump and blames China, then Trump gets seen by the population at large to have done the right thing and be the right man for the job. If, on the other hand, Biden disagrees with Trump then he gets tarred as a Chinese puppet more concerned with his son's finances than the pandemic that China has inflicted on the world. Either way, Trump has zero incentive to even try and play nice with China or moderate things. Now throw in the opportunity it provides Trump to push reshoring of industry to the US. Basically, China isn't going to get any economic help from the US.
Europe? They were already economically worse off than the US and now are sitting on Italy's economic issues. You have Germany and France putting up internal borders. You have the entire continent essentially economically shut down. Now throw in a hostile US, Brexit, the upcoming elections in Europe, and the oncoming demographic train. They were barely holding things together before the virus. Now? This will make the Great Recession look like a minor cough in comparison. And where's the money for bailouts and funding going to come from? It doesn't matter if they do EU backed bonds or even if *Germany* tries to borrow; those with the money simply don't trust Europe (any of it) with trillions of dollars in new loans. Print money? The Euro isn't the dollar and the EU isn't the US.
Once you accept, from China's point of view, that they face catastrophic economic collapse and consequent societal instability regardless of how much the US dislikes them at the moment; their actions make sense. Imagine that you are already in debt to the mob a million dollars, would borrowing another hundred thousand make your situation worse in any material way?
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Biden agrees with Trump? Guy's Right-Wing, a Nazi, NOT a Leftist anymore