the electricity would be better put into a battery;
With any technology humaity has for the forseeable future, no amount of battery storage will enable commodity transatlantic air travel.
I’m also talking about installing enough solar to eclipse beyond what all of our batteries can hold.
Sorry, I think casual air travel is one of those things that’s only possible with cheap energy provided by oil.
We’re saying the same thing on this point with both our posts. You’re saying “use rail instead of flying because batteries can’t fly a plane”. I’m saying "if we remove petroleum, the cost of jet travel will be substantially higher and consumers will seek a cheaper alternative (which may end up being rail). "
SAF is only economically approachable because nobody wants it because oil is cheaper. If we were in a situation without oil, SAF, biodiesel, etc., would immediately get smacked with a demmand curve making it unaffordable.
Sure, but you’re going whole hog to the “conserve” approach, which I agree is a component, but may not be the full or best answer. My suggestion would drastically increase solar power far far beyond our current electricity needs to create liquid SAF fuels directly from electricity and basic CO2/water inputs (aka Power-to-liquids). Theres a plant in Washington state doing exactly this.
It’s like how you can run your car on fry grease scavenged from fast food dumpsters, but everyone can’t.
I see that as too short sighted. Take the longer view. Fry grease is a very easily available and low transformation source of energy. There are other sources of energy that are a level more harder to get, and a level of more transformation needed to be usable in our chosen application.
With scarcity (artificial or natural) and scale we would see switches to these other forms of non-petroleum energy. I’m not saying its an overnight thing, but I don’t think you are either with your proposals.
What we need to replace is the 80% of our energy use that is currently ONLY serviceable with oil. For instance, batteries are too fucking heavy to run an airplane.
We have the solution already. Its called SAF (sustainable aviation fuel). It is possible to fly 100% with zero petroleum jet fuel. Its been done a few times as demonstrations in passenger airliners. There are two problems, but both have solutions:
Gaskets - Petroleum jet fuel has certain naturally occurring compounds which compliment currently used rubber seals. SAF doesn’t have these compounds, but not all rubber seals need them, just the most commonly used. Future planes are being built that don’t use the old seals but there’s a huge fleet of planes that still use the old seals in use. So this problem has a solution, and time will largely solve it as old airframes age out and are replaced by new ones.
Expense - SAF is a good chunk more expensive that petroleum jet fuel. Thats it though. Its expensive. It will mean higher cost for operating an aircraft and that has economic consequences.
So one year of increase
You’re moving the goalposts of this discussion. We’re talking about 2025-2026 activities. From the OP article:
"According to the Energy Institute’s latest Statistical Review of World Energy, US coal consumption increased by 10% in 2025, compared to a 0.7% rise globally. "
vs 9 years of decrease is still an overall decrease.
…so that point is irrelevant to the current discussion.
Also there’s a difference between China choosing to do something with their planned economy, vs. random wacky shit happening here in Freemarketstan
In this context, no there isn’t a difference. A net increase in coal usage is the only measure. Under that measure both the USA and China have increased domestic coal consumption for energy production.
Even if you want to try to play the “planned economy” card, I doubt in the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), which was formally approved at the National People’s Congress in March 2026, did the concept of $100+Brent crude prices exist as a recorded target. China has been buying up cheap Urals oil from Russia’s sanctioned shadow fleet of tankers for a couple years now increasing their strategic reserves (far higher than even the USA). Even those Urals shipments have largely curtained as its now open season for Ukrainian drones knocking out shadow fleet tankers by literally the dozen.
China is not sinning by increasing coal use any greater than the USA by just reacting to geopolitical market conditions and the need to continue to power its nation.
US increased coal use. China did not.
China increased coal usage too.
China’s coal power on the rise again in 2026, reversing first-in-a-decade decline
Your search with any search engine will produce CO2.
AI-powered searches consume roughly ten times more energy than standard Google searches.
When you’re Googling something add “-ai” (without the quotes to the end of your search string. It will skip processing the search with and AI and answer and presumably drop your Google search CO2 footprint by 90%.
Appliance based DVRs are turn-key solutions. I hope we both agree setting up a Linux box, obtaining a compatible OTA tuner, downloading and configuring Jellyfin all on hardware that is easily integrated into a general home entertainment setting is not a trivial task that most non-technically inclined folks can accomplish.
I personally ran PC based software DVRs for many years predating Jellyfin, but even in those years we had a Tivo for the wife.
Depends on the use case. If you’re someone that wants to watch shows that air on broadcast television, OTA (over the air) DVRs are a great way to get TV content without a cable or streaming service subscription. With the increased number of OTA stations now that represents a lot of ad-skippable content. We get close to 40 OTA stations at our house with just an antenna in the attic.
about how he would fix a nonexistent problem
Nazi-Musk aside, Its not exactly a non-existent problem. Its just a very very small niche problem that doesn’t justify the tremendous resources poured into creating it. Its also an old problem that doesn’t exist much anymore.
There was a time when solar panels were pretty ugly and expensive. Those two things would deter a certain number of people from installing panels. So the idea of cheap solar panels that matched the traditional look some buyers wanted did exist. Heavy emphasis on some buyers because it was a pretty small pool to begin with. What really made solar shingles largely irrelevant was the dramatic drop in cost of regular panels, the drastic increase in performance of regular panels, and the noticeably improved aesthetics of all-black regular panels. So the prior tiny market for solar shingles shrank even more, and the costs of Tesla solar shingles continued to rise without any performance improvements. It was a tiny market before and its a nearly non-existent market now. Solar shingles are bad business.
Lastly, social attitudes changed and having solar panels on a roof switched largely from being seen as an eyesore to a point of pride for many. This last point isn’t totally solved yet. My own housing community doesn’t allow panels on the side of the house that faces the road…except in some circumstances (making the rule even more stupid).
I’m looking forward to the day when I can slap some panels on the other side of the house for even greater solar generation! I’m still have no interest in solar shingles though.
Years ago (maybe still) you can buy them in-person at the Bureau of Engraving and printing in DC. I have a sheet of $2 bills.
I ask for their wifi password. I’m not going to pay for my data to help them do their job.
They’d love nothing more than you using their wifi. The data they can collect about you, your spending habits, and how they can change you behavior to buy more.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s network giant Cisco Systems pitch to store owners how their gear can track you and how the store benefits from it.
"With guest Wi-Fi access available right at their fingertips, they can easily look up reviews about each product. This data gathered from Wi-Fi analytics not only allows retailers to track customers’ interests and identify emerging trends, but also provides shoppers with validated decision-making processes, as they weigh options across multiple providers. "
"Gaining insight into your customer’s identity: By utilizing Wi-Fi analytics, businesses can gain valuable insights into who their customers are. This data can be used to better understand who is using their Wi-Fi network, when they are using it the most and what actions they take while connected. It provides business owners an unprecedented glimpse into their customers’ true identity, as well as more concrete evidence of their buying behavior in order to segment them more effectively. "
If they’re using bluetooth and wifi, we better find and remove those components too.
Removing the Bluetooth/wifi module maybe more difficult. For cost cutting reasons, these controllers are built into the logic boards now, but disconnecting the bluetooth/wifi antennas inside the TV is trivially easy. They are simple push-on mechanical connectors. No wire cutting needed. Gently grab the gold/silver metal part pull straight up from the board.
I just googled “lcd TV logic board” and this was one of the first images I found. I put a red square around the antenna connectors.
I originally went shopping for a Bravia II 7, but found an open box Bravia 5 (which is the one I got) for less than half the cost of the Bravia II 7.
I haven’t. I have not once hooked it up to a network, and my preference is that I never do so.
I recently bought a new TV and did some research to find the “least worst” TV with regard to internet connectivity and reliance on its “smart OS” navigation to just use an external HDMI port. I can report pretty good news for the Sony Bravia line of Android TVs.
Bonus feature we like:
I wish there was no AndroidTV OS on it at all, but the only time I’ve ever seen it was the one time when we went through the initial setup. We haven’t seen or interacted with it since.
I think its likely possible to build a data center that a community would be okay with. It would mean making certain design choices:
All of these things are possible and if a DC builder did these things on an existing site, then used that as a showcase for what a new DC would be, I think it would be much better received. They can do all of these things. They don’t because its cheaper not to.
I like and use Libreoffice, but its a local application. This makes it fine for working by yourself and on your own hardware. Google Docs (Gstuite) is an online application with the best collaboration integration I’ve seen and works on nearly any device you can open a modern browser on. Yes, both products have a word processor and a spreadsheet, but they don’t serve all the same use cases.
If this new Euro-office can replicate the Gsuite offerings (that Libreoffice lacks), then Euro-office could be a great addition to the open source community.
You need to make sure you always use the “+consent” flag. Never move forward without it.
Do you think humanity, as a whole, is going to abandon flying? I certainly don’t. So the best solution is to make changes to limit the behaviors and modify the behaviors to cause less harm. Again, this is just one component of a larger solution, but its a good one to address what air travel still needs to occur.
We’re already beyond that. We’re not getting that back.