Comments by "yessum15" (@yessum15) on "RealLifeLore" channel.

In the Egyptian minds it's not really relevant how responsible Ethiopia's timing was. The issue is that the decision was made unilaterally, which establishes a dangerous precedent.
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@freeshavaacadooo1095 Stop pretending to be smart. That absolutely is how energy production works. You can have a machine powering the very thing that makes it function. What do you think laptop and car engine fans are doing? You are incorrectly applying CLOSED system analysis to an OPEN system. A solar panel in the Sahara would generate significantly more electricity than would be consumed by a fan designed to limit dust buildup. And that's assuming the fan is run continuously. If it's run intermittently, the cost is a vanishingly small fraction of the energy produced. This does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics because energy is being injected into the system from an inexhaustible external source (the sun). The sun is providing 300 - 400 watts of useable electricity. A good fan would require something like 40 - 80 watts and would only run intermittently for a few seconds. So you tell me how the numbers don't work?
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This is completely false. They did not approve that operation & were quite upset that it happened because they knew they were not ready for the inevitable response it would generate.
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@johnroach1101 Actually you do. Like all the time. Don't play music too loud, don't create excessive smoke, don't have pets, don't stomp around loudly, etc. These laws are quite common all over the world. You are not free to do anything in your house if it harms others.
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@Biniam. You do if the water source is shared. You're trying to get around the need for mutual coordination when engaging in actions that will hurt your neighbors. This is not a new issue. And the laws both internationally and domestically are already understood. You don't build coal power plants at the edge of your border so that the smoke blows into your neighbor's country. You don't engage in large scale excavation near your neighbor's rare temples. And you don't build dams that can choke the water from your neighbors without mutual agreement. This is not new stuff, and it's basic common sense.
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@jlehm You need to stop spreading terrible fossil fuel propaganda. You have not researched the issue at all and keep referencing a thoroughly debunked Michael Moore video. Moore has never been a credible source and the scientific community has already addressed the myriad of misrepresentations and fallacies in this particular project.
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@thenonexistinghero I'm literally in "that area" right now and have lived along multiple parts of the Sahara border for a long time. There are significant communities all along the border of the Sahara and major World Bank development projects already underway. The reason for this is because the current borders of the Sahara have already overtaken a number of pre-existing population centers with electricity, water, food, and roads. I can literally name multiple overpopulated cities that are close enough to provide a giant workforce. And this doesn't even include all the towns and villages. The educational bar for solar power farm maintenance is about on par with that of many other industrial processes and certainly lower than for fossil fuel and nuclear based power - all of which have already been successfully done in similar locales. The entire surface area of New Mexico is about 3.5% of the Sahara. We're not talking about a giant solar power farm here. We're talking about a strip of small farms circling the circumference of the desert. They do not have to do deep into the desert to cover that surface area and are easily accessible from multiple population centers. And again, they would be implemented in an area already in environmental flux due to human caused desertification. We're not intervening in a pristine environment here, we're reversing pollution in an already damaged place. Finally, it's important to understand that this project would essentially displace all the brainpower and effort currently being wasted on the production of every other form of electricity in the planet. This is already a tremendous load. So while it would have a cost to run, it is certainly significantly less than the cost we are currently paying. This is eminently doable. Tbh, the political and beurocratic hurdles are more likely slowing the process than the technical challenges.
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@0623kaboom This is nonsense on so many levels it's ridiculous.
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@jlehm Think, Mark! Think! The laptop battery and the car engine convert chemical energy into electrical energy. They generate so much electricity that a small fraction of it can be used to power fans that dissipate the heat released by this process as well as the heat produced by other inefficient processes occurring in the same system. Even still, there is enough electricity left over to power numerous processes in the same system, that allow for continued conversion of chemical to electrical energy as well as a series of other tasks that humans find helpful (data processing and locomotion) Once the chemical energy source is exhausted, the system requires a new injection of chemical energy from an external source. This is either new petrol/gasoline for the car engine, or a new/recharged battery for the laptop. Solar cells operate the same way. They are not producing electricity. They are converting energy from an external chemical/nuclear source (the sun) into electricity. There is enough electricity generated to power numerous tasks humans find useful, as well as the fans/cleaning mechanism necessary to allow energy conversion to continue. The only difference here, is that once the external chemical energy source is exhausted (the sun) we don't have to replace it since we will likely have been dead or gone for billions of years.
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@mqbitsko25 "In the dim liberal mind" So I see you've decided to give away that your analysis is based on political prejudice rather than science. Every ridiculous point you've made has already been refuted earlier in the thread. There's no point in repeating. Suffice it to say this perpetual motion machine argument is nonsense. A fan would require 40w to 80w and only run intermittently. The cell generates around 400w. It is not perpetual motion because it is not a closed system. Energy is being injected into the system from the chemical/nuclear reaction taking place in the sun. Perpetual motion arguments only pertain to closed system analysis. Aside from this there are a number of other sand and abrasion resistance systems already being used effectively in desert based solar power systems elsewhere in the world.
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@V-for-Vendetta01 Morsi won because he was the only candidate with a powerful campaign apparatus that has already been in place for years opposing Mubarak. As a result, he was able to mobilize the fringe and get them to the polls. He likely would not have won if the country has enough time to develop a mature party system with functional campaign apparatus. Add to that the fact that he misrepresented himself as having moderated significantly and being willing to put democratic ideals and the wellbeing of the entire country ahead of his partisan interests and begins to be clear why people were dissatisfied with administration.
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@thenonexistinghero All forms of electricity generation require constant maintenance and sand damage is hardly a deal breaker. There are a number of pretty simple and swappable sand protection methods that could be employed, and the maintenance cost would almost certainly be covered by the immense profit created by a scheme like this. If each cell produces 150,000 watts a month, it cost significantly less to replace/clean/recondition sand protection systems every month or so. The project would also be a major boon to local economies. Finally, the environmental impact of a new Mexico sized solar array would probably be negligible as pointed out in the video, since this is a tiny fraction of the Sahara's total surface area and the Sahara is expanding constantly due to destructive desertification. If the solar array were placed along the borders where desertification is already occurring, they would likely reduce the environmental impact of pre-existing human behavior.
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@qwertyuiopzxcfgh "Transporting the generated energy to places you would use it costs energy as well" You would not transport the energy to it's final destination, you would use it to offset energy so that you could redirect electricity generated from traditional production methods. For example, currently Egypt powers desert bordering neighborhoods through power generated from a hydroelectric dam and traditional fossil fuels located many miles away. The solar based energy would power the Sahara adjacent towns first, creating a surplus at the hydroelectric dam. The hydroelectric dam would then redirect the surplus energy to closer bordering states, which would then be able to redirect their surplus energy to the next bordering community.
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@angeloromano9346 I've already answered the transport question. I'm just gonna copy paste what I wrote before: "You would not transport the energy to it's final destination, you would use it to offset energy so that you could redirect electricity generated from traditional production methods. For example, currently Egypt powers desert bordering neighborhoods through power generated from a hydroelectric dam and traditional fossil fuels located many miles away. The solar based energy would power the Sahara adjacent towns first, creating a surplus at the hydroelectric dam. The hydroelectric dam would then redirect the surplus energy to closer bordering states, which would then be able to redirect their surplus energy to the next bordering community."
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@angeloromano9346 The problem here is that you're basing your estimates on current manufacturing distribution and productive capacity. But this is not an overnight process. The solar plant itself takes decades to build. The introduction of new electricity to the international grid would happen very gradually. As new electricity is introduced, industry shifts around the new comparative advantage. High energy industry develops around the region, or in some cases relocates. The produced value is then transported more efficiently than actual electricity. For example, mineral and ore refinement in Africa is energy intensive. This creates an upper bound on the amount of raw materials and commodities that can be supplied to the international community, raising prices significantly. If free electricity lowers the price of production, more is produced, allowing Western countries to drastically speed up production of complex manufactured goods. Crypto currency miners and data centers generally relocate to areas where free clean electricity is an option, drastically raising world computing power and creating major innovations and spillover effects. Sure, it would be nice if tons of incredibly cheap and clean energy were produced in an even distribution across the globe. But the truth is that no matter where it is produced, the value is so high that humans will naturally adapt their production patterns around it to distribute the benefits globally. Before Egypt built it's hydroelectric dam people argued that the country did not have a high enough electrical demand to justify the construction. But the cheap electricity it built caused the country to develop to the degree that it is now insufficient to meet the country's electrical needs. And consider the alternative that we're already employing. We're literally mining barrels of oil and mountains of coal and moving them across the entire Atlantic Ocean to burn in other countries to make their own electricity. This is hardly an efficient alternative.
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@Person01234 Your mistake is that you're forgetting that the border countries are already powered. The idea is that they would then have a surplus of energy, which would be transmitted to the second order countries. Which would then have a surplus and transmit to the next. And yes, transmitting A to B to C to D is more efficient than transferring A to D because the energy is never traveling very far from its point of origin and thus not susceptible to attenuation. Obviously there would also be less traditional power plants needed at the end of the line (at point D) which would allow us to realize even more resource conservation. At the same time that electricity is flowing in one direction, energy intensive industry would be moving in the opposite, with companies that value cheap energy relocating or developing closer to the actual solar farm. The cost for services powered by these industries would plummet drastically worldwide spurring innovation and economic growth worldwide.
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@alexnorth2452 Alex, you're panicking. A solar farm releases very small amounts of heat. Particularly as compared to the traditional energy sources it replaces. Regional heat levels would drop as less efficient fossil fuels and wood, would plummet in use. These border communities are already in the process of being rendered uninhabitable by desertification and temperatures are already rising due to inefficient human harvesting of wood and other unsustainable resources. Replacing this pattern with a solar farm would stop the temperature rise and save these communities. And yes, the layout of the farm has a significant effect on the environmental impact. A thin strip of solar panels running the circumference of the Sahara desert placed 30 - 50 miles inland from the nearest communities would dissipate heat without ever being concentrated enough to impact the larger environment as severely as a solid block of panels might. The heat would simply be added to the global heat index, which itself would be going down due to the reduction of fossil fuel usage. This scheme balances the need for a nearby workforce with the preference of locating the panels in vacant areas.
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@sarahzell9623 There are already sand resistant solar cells that have been in use for a long time in desert environments. There are a bunch of sand protection technologies that are relatively cheap and easy to maintain. Sand in the desert is not nearly as abrasive as that being ejected from a sandblaster.
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