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Oh, my favorite YouTuber who sits in the front of my socks with a great video again! (About 50% through and need to make a break for Formula E in a minute.)

Thanks for all you do, this is great!

ah, solar. The amazing technology to save the planet, turned into a grift by business bros.

EDIT: OMG THIS VIDEO IS SO MUCH MORE THAN WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE!

This is one of the most important youtube videos I have ever seen. I'm sharing this with everyone I can!

Thank you so much for this video! Thank you!

EDIT 2: Lots of people are liking this reply so let me urge you to make donations and or subscribe to Technology Connections on youtube. This is easily one of the best channels on that platform and he deserves every single dollar he gets. Seriously, just pick a video on something you were never interested in and he'll make you interested.

this is so good, so well argued, so laser-targeted both rhetorically and culturally at the victims of the fascist disinformation machine that the petrochemical industry has constructed, that about halfway through I stopped feeling like "yeah! right on!" and started feeling more like "Gosh I hope Exxon doesn't try to assassinate him."

This is *amazing* work, stay safe out there.

what a powerful statement in the post credit part!

As we have finally the technology to mitigate the climate disaster, fascism is back again, threatening everything. And this not just in the USA.

That was a very nice summary about all the economics of renewable energy, and a very personal comment on the end. Thanks for making and sharing it.

Please *be* explicitly political, the deafening silence about these issues with many of your fellow content creators is really irritating.

I (from Germany) share your sentiments, and here in Europe we're probably not far behind the US in the degradation of the political system.

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In regards of your closing statement, you are still too nice about it. Whatever ICE has become resembles the Sturmabteilung which became quite powerful in German in the mid 1920s. It's paramilitary terrorising journalists, opposition and people deemed unworthy.

I'm not certain, if peaceful resistance is going to suffice.

And please get yourself solar cells on your roof. That is an opportunity for multiple videos and rants against dongled inverters and similar bullshit.
Thanks:)

omg someone using math and basic common sense to discuss renewable energy - immediate follow!

If anyone wants to dive deeper into the land use/biofuels discussion, Oxford just recently published a good analysis

TLDR - if we put solar on the land currently used for biofuels, we would have enough electricity for ALL vehicles to be electric

Biofuels for transport is straight nonsense

ourworldindata.org/biofuel-lan…

Putting solar panels on land used for biofuels would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks to go electric

The world dedicates a Poland-sized area of land to liquid biofuels. Is there a more efficient way to generate energy?

^{Hannah Ritchie (Our World in Data)}

one of my key takeaways from the video, aside from what already is stated in the video itself,, is how easily i am personally affected by propaganda and how important keeping my own voice alive is.

for a while now, i felt it was rather useless to put my own views out, and i would stay content thinking/knowing that i am right. and that's one thing a well crafted propaganda intends to achieve, to put enough noise out that people start thinking that they can't change anything.

your videos inspire me to see things more clearly, to not ignore things because i am used to them, and as a consequence to make more informed decisions. and today i was able to see how easy it was to steer me away from some obvious truth.

great video, as usual.

Amazing video. Absolute aces all around. Some meandering thoughts:

1- The starting discussion around Midwestern values around frugality and investing wisely kept echoing as a corollary of the Vimes Boots Theory of Socieoeconomic Unfairness that I expected it to get mentioned. I'm assuming you know what that is, but that leads right into my next thought...

2- Building off your statement "I kind of already assumed everyone knew what we were trying to do", plainly stating assumptions is one of the most useful tools for solving problems I have found in the past ten years. My day job is supporting some niche technology infrastructure, and when I get pulled into a problem it's because things are seriously, seriously weird. I've had multiple occasions where I've "walked the stack" out loud, and someone else chimed in to correct some component of pile which led to figuring out what was wrong and how to solve it.

I think there's a more advanced theory of mind issue around understanding and addressing the inherent assumptions other people make. I have no idea how that realization will help make better videos, but I'm excited to see it happen.

2a- While I agree that there's a massive capitalist interest in misleading people, my gut says the bigger challenge is people just... not reexamining assumptions that are years or decades out-of-date. Either because it's cognitively expensive (taking time and mental focus off of day-to-day work, which is also an opportunity capitalist interests are happy to exploit), or because they straight up lack the tools to approach the subject. Maybe that's wrong, and fraud/deception are really the impetus behind wasting time and money on disposable energy.

But I really think the Overestimate Short Term & Underestimate Long Term problem does a lot more heavy lifting in that regard. Humans in survival mode (as so many of us have been for the past 10-40 years) need to focus on the short term, and thinking about the long term is an unaffordable luxury.

3- Tangentially related to cognitive expense/load, I process information better with my eyes than my ears. Showing more of the math when you were running the numbers would have made that easier for me to grasp and process.

Yes, Excel is one of my most-used applications of all time. How did you know?

4- There was a dark, gallows laugh when you talked about the First Amendment rights and the press being declared enemies of the people as Donald Trump is racistly arresting four black journalists. (I'm not laughing because it's funny, I'm laughing because it's an easier emotional outlet than crying)

5- We've lost so much from caring too much about what billionaires and cult leaders say, and caring too little for our own neighbors. I don't know how we solve the big problem. I'll do my part with my skills, like the repair café I'm volunteering at next weekend. We need to build more, better fucking community, damnit.

(sorry for spammy edit/reposting. markdown is being an asshole with list formating)

Great video. You changed my mind on many of the concerns with solar panels I've had before. I have some nitpicks about the details, and some of the arguments don't apply to my country which is quite a bit smaller than US, but overall I'm pretty optimistic about solar now.
Thank you!

As for the second part of the video:
Yikes, it does look terrifying.
I hope y'all can turn this around. Good luck!

hello, your video is a masterpiece. Thanks for making it.

YES your video made a lot sense to me, it made me realize how SO MUCH BETTER solar energy is. I would say I knew it, but you presentation made it become so clear that it made a click in my mind. I'll take more actions in this direction.

Straight-up came here to share this after watching it just now.

I was moved to tears. Thank you.

Sir, your videos are a constant source of enlightenment and entertainment.

This went somewhere I was not expecting but found inspiring and I hope your fellow countrymen heed your words.

I just watched it.

Good work.

It makes me sad that you (and my friends in the US) have to endure this. Yes: liberty and justice for all!

speaking truth to power!

Or do I mean energy?

Outstanding. I nearly cried at a few points during the last 15 or so minutes.

Thank you.

TL;DW

how does the solar panel and battery deterioration affect the calculations? The panels might las 25 years but definitely they don't stay as efficient.

It's really refreshing to see a US youtuber addressing what's going on outside their windows with a call to action to his fellow citizens.

The solar part was cool too.

You’re using (coining) the term “disposable energy” — I also like “rental energy”

The age of rental energy is over. We are becoming energy landlords.

I still think it's absolutely crazy how cheap solar panels are

I got my 500w panels, new and unused, for 50-60 a piece, without buying in bulk.

That's cheaper than standard plywood. It's literally CHEAPER to build a house out of SOLAR PANELS than it is to build out of low grade PLYWOOD.

They've gone up a little bit in price since but not much, you can still get 500w panels for around 70 euros a piece, example here: solar-outlet.nl/zonnepanelen/

Just happened onto this on YT, had no idea you're here.

Making great points throughout the entire video there and it's nice to see people active in ostensibly far-removed fields to find such clear words.

The first 3/4 or whatever was mostly stuff I kind of knew - not the specific figures and examples you give - exactly how much more energy would be available just from converting fields growing corn for ethanol fuel into solar fields, for example.

And then the second part. Fantastic. Blistering. Thank you and from Canada I wish you and all Americans of good conscience success and safety.