Heh, I've once again not been clear. — Moliere

No, you're not being clear, you're being intellectually dishonest - admitting Descartes was self censoring, but refusing to draw the conclusion that he wrote Meditations; a subjectivist epistemology in diametric opposition to Galileo's objectivist epistemology, as a defence against potential accusations of heresy.

With respect to his science he was self-censoring, but I don't believe he was in his philosophy. — Moliere

You're attempting to rescue subjectivism as a philosophy by suggesting that Descartes withdrawing a work on physics, and giving up on doing science - are entirely separate from his creation of an alternate epistemology to that described by Galileo i.e. empirical scientific method.

And I'd hesitate to call Descartes' philosophy subjectivist, at least. Seems wrong to me given he wanted certain foundations for scientific knowledge in his philosophy. — Moliere

What would you say after you had hesitated? Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy is the foundational work of subjectivism; cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am, establishes the individual's own thought as the foundation of existence and knowledge.

Subjectivism does not offer certain foundations for scientific knowledge. It cuts across the authority of science as objective knowledge; achieved by testing hypotheses with regard to unbiased and replicable observation - by emphasizing the role of the individual in shaping their understanding of the world.

The individual doing science is not doing something with universal implications and application; they're idiosyncratically doing science, and any scientific conclusions they reach may be accepted or rejected as any other idiosyncratic individual sees fit.
Descartes neutered science; and that's why we have nuclear weapons and climate change denial, but we don't have limitless clean energy from high temperature geothermal.

President Donald J. Trump,

First of all congratulations, on, well, everything.

Everything you're doing is just so great.

I'm sure you're absolutely right that climate change is a hoax.

Even so, you could own all those commie scientists for good, and secure your place in history as a titan of industry; a visionary greater than the late great JD Rockefeller and JP Getty combined - if you announced a plan to power the United States of America and the world, with limitless clean energy from high temperature geothermal.

According to Nasa/Sandia Labs in 1982, the energy is there in great abundance, and the technology to produce it was within reach 40 years ago.

It's a deep state scandal we don't have it already.

How could Bill Clinton's Vice President, Al Gore - not have known about Magma Energy?

Save the world, Sir. Save America from the commies using climate change to attack capitalism.

President Trump, creates a whole new era for humankind.

Sincerely, etc.

Science without philosophical implication; science as a tool with no claim to be a rule for the conduct of human affairs? You might call that flourishing; I call it abuse!

Descartes died in 1650, 9 years after publishing Mediations in 1641; after contracting a cold in the Court of Queen Christina of Sweden.
All his scientific works - on Dioptrics, Meteorology, and Geometry, were written prior to Mediations, and he did no notable scientific works after.
He wrote Principles of Philosophy (1644): and Passions of the Soul (1649), and died in 1650. Given that he withdrew 'O Mundo' from publication; (it was published in 1664 after his death) it's fairly clear he was self censoring. And thus, it's fairly clear what the nature of Meditations is - he didn't write Meditations because that's what he really thought. He wrote it in case the Inquisition came knocking.

It cares a great deal if it is their ox that is getting gored. — BC

I cannot argue with that direct contradiction without a great deal of research and data.

In an ideal capitalist economy, there would be independent capitalists and industrialists in competition. we do not have an ideal capitalist economy. — BC

ditto

What we have are a set of interlocked banks, investment companies, and corporations. For instance, Autos, chemicals, and large banks are likely to have shared boards of directors, shared stock holdings, and shared ownership. — BC

If you say so.

The point is, capitalists have both shared and conflicting interests. True, geothermal generation would be cheaper. However, J P Morgan may be reluctant to threaten coal or natural gas interests in which it has a large stake. — BC

It's an hypothesis, and I understand your argument, but I don't buy it - because it's not possible that one part of umbrella group of companies can organise it's business such that it doesn't bankrupt a different part of the same group.
Middle managers are tasked with producing efficiently, lowering costs and increasing profits - and insofar as they succeed or fail, the consequences of that relative to another company within the same group are just not within their control. To extend that idea across an entire national economy - cannot be how things really are.

I mentioned earlier, the 1970 Geothermal Steam Act; and I think the leasing arrangements acted as a disincentive to geothermal energy research and production, but that's the level we're talking about. It has to be government resting its giant thumb on the scale in favour of fossil fuels. The conspiracy cannot be at boardroom level.

No. Descartes withdrew the work on physics first, and wrote Meditations afterward. While Galileo was on trial. I don't think Descartes believed subjectivism was a valid epistemology. He was scared of doing science, and covering himself against the threat of being declared a heretic.

Now it seems to me that despite his protestations against Cartesianism, karl stone is buying in to many of the assumptions that Descartes made. He wants to find firm foundations and build a system from those foundations, a very Cartesian method. Sure, instead of the cogito he wants to use perception as that foundation, but it isn't going all that well. — Banno

It's fine from my end. I don't think I've bought into Cartesian assumptions; indeed, wasn't Descartes purpose to establish certainty, to avoid assumptions? I don't think he was particularly successful. Indeed, I don't believe he believed what he claimed to believe. I think he saw what happened to Galileo, and wrote an alternate epistemology more consistent with doctrine to cover his own backside.
Here we are addressing a question that's not central to my philosophy. How do we know what is real? - is a subjectivist question.
As a Galilean objectivist it's not a question I would ask; and requires drawing from various areas to answer. I do not base Galilean objectivism in the pain/pleasure principle of evolving life; I might resort to empiricism - which is to say, reconciling observations in terms of an hypothesis, and having independent confirmation of my observations.
I'm not wondering if what I observed even exists, or if I hallucinated the existence of an objective reality. That's a subjectivist concern.

Capital isn't directed into geothermal energy because it would compete with the sunk investments in petroleum (the whole vast infrastructure). — BC

That makes no sense. Capitalism isn't a single entity; it is any number of rationally self interested actors in competition, and it surely has to be cheaper to produce electricity from geothermal heat than it is from oil, gas or coal in many places further west.

It takes a large capital investment to drill and capture geothermal heat. Then more capital is needed to build a generating plant. — BC

Or, you already have a generating plant and are spending half your profits buying coal to keep it running; when you could drill a geothermal well and save yourself the cost of the coal. Why hasn't that happened?

To some degree it has, of course. The US is the largest geothermal energy producer in the world. But geothermal energy still only accounts for less than 1% of US energy production, when according to Nasa/Sandia Labs there's several thousand percent available. Hundreds of times world energy demand.

I get there are allied industries and entrenched technologies; the petrochemical industry, and the internal combustion engine being only the most obvious. But things change - and sometimes quite rapidly. There's a famous image comparing 5th Avenue in New York in 1900 and 1913; imagine all the allied industries that kept all those horses in shoes, tack and hay - gone in little more than a decade. Capitalism is progressive and destructive. It doesn't care about those who lose out because a cheaper source, method or product came along.

Or it shouldn't, if indeed it is a free market.

I'm not asking you to prove that skeptical claims are false; I'm explaining that you haven't proved that skeptical claims are false. — Michael

Skeptical claims? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? I don't think I'm trying to prove anything about skeptical claims per se. I'm addressing the question: 'How do we know what is real?' And also saying that scepticism is a no standards method of demanding impossible standards of objectivism, empiricism and science - when answering the question: How do we know what is real?

In short, sophistry, humbug and balderdash. It's like on the news, when they get a climate scientist with a stack of papers as high as an elephant's eye, to debate a climate denier employed by the fossil fuel lobby, and treat those two as equally valid opinions. Subjectivists have a lot to answer for!

If you say so. I don't see what choice there is but to assume the existence of an objective reality when on fire, because otherwise, as I've shown - you can't assume anything beyond the solipsistic fact of your own existence.
Evidence for an objective reality can be given prior to any doubtable influences of cognition, via the irrefutable experience of pain.
I don't think I'm begging the question at all. I think this is a 'net down for your serves' argument - where you get to engage in the most ridiculous, unfounded, unproven, unjustifiable sceptical arguments while demanding of me shy high standards of absolute proof.
Sophistry and humbug!

I tried to get to grips with Wittgenstein and failed. I seem to remember semiotics and algebraic propositional logic. He's a bit much!
I'd have learned more reading about Wittgenstein, but I didn't do that either. It makes it quite difficult to respond to the bulk of your post; the failing being on my part, not yours, nor Wittgenstein's - as far as I know.

I'm not an idealist either. Certainly not of the Plato's cave variety: ideal forms of which the real world is but a shadow. Weird! But maybe that's not what you mean by idealist.

I think of myself as a Galilean objectivist; a follower of an untold philosophical tradition - misrepresented by Rand. Galilean objectivism that ought to have resulted from the Church welcoming Galileo's proof of heliocentrism - and his epistemic method as the means to establish valid knowledge of Creation. Scientific truth should have been afforded moral worth, developed and integrated into society, politics and economics over the past 400 years. But wasn't!

Descartes is the father of philosophy, Galileo is nobody, and science is a mere tool put to subjectively conceived ends. And that's why we're doomed!

I think knowledge obtained via the senses can be justified as providing an accurate picture of reality because we evolved, and could not have survived were we misled by our senses.
— karl stone

On the face of it, there is something wrong here. We are frequently misled by our senses, and yet we have survived - or at least enough of us have survived. — Ludwig V

Perhaps it is the brevity of my remarks on a very complex topic!

I'm not saying that the proposed scenario is true, or even justified. I am simply explaining that your attempt at a refutation begs the question. — Michael

I appreciate you don't claim the proposed scenario is true, but you are saying it's justified to some degree - if you claim that the occurrence of pain, and instinctive removal of the hand from the fire can all be dismissed as possibly the work of an evil demon, without offering a scrap of proof for the existence of such a thing.

I say that the instinctive removal of the hand from the fire implies an objective reality, not subject to intellectual doubt because it's prior to cognition.

This is why I asked the questions about will - and whether this supposed demon is forcing you to put your hand in the fire? Because, if now, even your thoughts are the work of an evil demon, you cannot claim I think therefore, I am.

Not even Descartes went that far; he considered the fact he was thinking a fundamentum inconcussum; an unshakable truth, even though his body, the evidence of his senses and the world might be doubted, the very fact that he was thinking was the basis to assert with certainty, his subjective existence. I think therefore I am. But this results in solipsism. He cannot assert anything else, having doubted it all away.

Subjectivism offers no proof of the real. And you might say, objectivism is based in ultimately unjustifiable assertions that the world we experience, actually exists, but I say we cannot doubt our hand is on fire, because it hurts!

I’m saying that there is no fire and no hand. We are brains in a vat and a mad scientist is using diodes to stimulate the appropriate areas of our brain to cause us to see/hallucinate a fire, see/hallucinate our hand in the fire, and feel/hallucinate a burning hand. And when he detects that we intend to remove our hand from the fire he stimulates the appropriate areas of our brain to cause us to see/hallucinate our hand being removed from the fire and causes the painful sensation of a burning hand to lessen/stop. — Michael

Wow, it must suck being an evil brain jar demon! Question is, what evidence is there for the existence of such a being? None at all. And it's perverse to multiply entities beyond necessity, according to ye olde Bill of Occam. The method of sceptical doubt taken to such extremes that it undermines the very concept; reality - supposedly being investigated, is the rankest sophistry.

If you insist on engaging in such arguments, at least accept their true logical implications, which is solipsism; and inability to know anything beyond the mere fact of your own existence. I think therefore I am, and that's your lot.

Adaptive ability is not an argument for the veracity of judgement. — Wayfarer

No, it's an argument for the basic veracity of sensory perception, to reality. Apperception is something else again, and knowledge is more than mere apperception. Now you're adding the concept of judgement. I can't keep up!

Why? Perhaps pains are an hallucination. Or, rather, perhaps they are not caused by a real fire in an external physical world but by a mad scientist prodding my envatted brain or by an evil demon? — Michael

So are you saying this evil demon brain jar keeper can induce you to put your hand in the fire? If so, can he induce you keep it there? Or is it by your own will that you would put your hand in the fire to test reality? Is it by your own will you engage in radical skepticism such that the very concept of reality is undermined? Or do you have no choice but to do so because the evil brain jar demon is prodding the synapses?

Okay, but again, it's messy. If the question is 'what's real'? what is the radical skeptic's real reason for dismissing the evidence of the senses?

My answer to the radical skeptic is pain, because it implies an objective reality in terms prior to cogito, that cannot be doubted. i.e. Descartes should have put his hand in the fire - and he couldn't possibly doubt away all that could be doubted while his fingers melt, instead of a ball of wax.

And one can consider sensory perception as derived by evolution from the pain/pleasure instinct.

Depends really, I suppose - what you term knowledge. But I generally consider humans distinct from all other animals - as possessing a qualitatively distinct form of apperception that results in knowledge as I would define it.
Sure, a cockroach will flee when a light comes on suddenly; so clearly it has a degree of apperception, but is this knowledge? I don't think so.

Clearly that’s insufficient as those suffering from
psychosis can see and hear and feel things that aren’t really there. — Michael

It's weirder than that. Stroke victims can have serious perceptual disorders; if rendered unable to process sensory information properly it results in the most extraordinary subjective hallucinations. However, this is related to physiological abnormalities in the brain. These are discussed in the book: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales - by neurologist Oliver Sacks.

How do we know we're not hallucinating reality? We are, to some degree. The internal representation of reality is not reality itself - and that's why things can get weird when the brain is damaged. Yet all this is missing the point that human beings survived, and evolved in relation to a physical reality - of which, we must be able to establish valid knowledge, or would have become extinct.

Similar in the UK; 50 miles of cold hard rock - so no Magma Energy here either.
A place in Cornwall called the Eden Project, drilled down 5.3km, and only reached temperatures of 140'C. It's enough to heat their tropical greenhouses carbon free, but it's not going to provide base load power to cities.
The Western US; indeed, the entire western side of the American continent from Peru to Alaska is sat on the Pacific Ring of Fire. It really is a puzzle as to why this practically limitless clean energy source has not been developed.
I'm telling people about it, thinking it's great news for those capable of understanding it, and yet they seem incredibly determined to ignore it. I don't know why. They can't all be in the pockets of big oil, can they?

You'll get a pushback against "you know it is real because you can see it" from the idealists and solipsists, who will claim that it might be an hallucination or other phantasm. — Banno

Sure, but 'seeing' is the ideal minimum sensory experience, employed for the sake of philosophical simplicity. If still in doubt, touch it, lick it, throw something at it - the screen can be shown to be real by the evidence of the senses.

Subjectivists drive me nuts, because it's not the screen they don't believe is real, but the very concept of 'real' they're throwing into question for no adequately justified reason; in a way that Sam disputes in his post with regard to the normative value of experience.

We don’t know reality in the same way we know facts; instead, we act with a certain conviction that things are real. This acting isn’t based on reasoning or evidence; it’s the foundation upon which reasoning and evidence even make sense. — Sam26

Absolutely. This is why Descartes adoption of a method of radical doubt, to establish subjective certainty is so methodologically incoherent, why it results in solipsism, and requires rescuing from the corner into which he paints himself by resort to faith. 'God cannot be a deceiver."

Descartes was just saving his skin. Galileo was right; and scientific objectivism should have informed the past 400 years of Western philosophy. Be a very different world.

I agree, Descartes is superfluous, and somewhat blameworthy for developing subjectivism to protect himself from the ire of the Church visited on his contemporary, Galileo.

You see screen in front of you - you know it is real because you can see it, and you trust the evidence of your senses because you're are an evolved organism; that has survived evolution in relation to painful realities you wouldn't survive if your senses were not accurate to reality. You can be more sure of the conclusions you draw from the evidence of your senses if your observations are confirmed by an independent party, and that's empirical method.

Makes sense to me, painful feet notwithstanding!

I think it important to remember that Descartes' method of radical doubt in Meditations was not carried over into his conclusions. His subjectivism is rescued from solipsism by faith, that 'God cannot be a deceiver' - and so radical doubt was jettisoned, and the world - experienced subjectively, is restored to him.
As a Galilean, I find it deeply unsatisfactory.
I think knowledge obtained via the senses can be justified as providing an accurate picture of reality because we evolved, and could not have survived were we misled by our senses.
Pain is prior to intellect both in terms of phylogeny and ontogeny - (roughly, the evolved organism and the developmental individual.)
Furthermore, the universe is entropic - everywhere good is uphill! We must spend effort and energy just to stand still; more if we wish to progress. It hurts! And that's how we know it's real.

Sam's answer - if we really doubted we'd keep banging into the furniture, has a certain normative value, and is not at all inconsistent with my approach.

But the question I'm addressing is 'How do we know what is real?' And, I'm not trying to make subjectivism work. I'm an objectivist - to deal in crude dichotomies. I'm also an evolutionary biologist locating knowledge of reality in the pain/pleasure instinct common to living organisms.

Pain signals potential harm or injury, prompting animals to avoid dangerous situations or seek protection. Pleasure reinforces behaviors that are beneficial for survival, such as eating, mating, and maintaining homeostasis.

Doleo ergo sum? I hurt, therefore I am!

What it excludes, is the trap of solipsism - resulting from doubting away the existence of the physical.

Pain, being prior to thought, cannot be doubted.

Aspirin makes the world disappear. — frank

No. But consider Descartes sat before the fire with his ball of wax; fourth meditation, expounding upon how intellect, rather than the senses or imagination, is the primary way in which we understand physical objects. Had he stuck his hand in the fire, he would have discovered something prior to cogito. Pain!

The projects I have seen here use shallow installations to dissipate heat in summer and acquire heat in the winter. For instance, a Lutheran church within 2 miles of me uses shallow wells located in the church parking lot to cool and heat. — BC

It's a really quite interesting physical principle; the heat difference engine. The temperature underground remains constant as the atmospheric temperature rises and falls below that value - such that in summer it gives you cool air, and in winter hot air! It's not going to power an AI data center, but you do have to admire the thermodynamics of Creation!

Not much in the way of high temperature geothermal resources in Minnesota, I'm afraid. But further West, toward the Pacific Ring of Fire, the geothermal heat map has a lot of deep red on it.

It's a wonder, a country driven by the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has managed to overlook such a massive free resource for so long. Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons suggests capitalists acting in their rational self interest would naturally exploit this common resource to the maximum degree.

I'm not sure if the leasing provisions in the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970, also known as Public Law 91-581, served as a disincentive to Magma Energy production, or if it was more of a superstitious inhibition against powering the world with Hell fire!

8 - 45!

How do we know what is real? It hurts!

Remember this post? You started talking to me remember? I replied and asked why you're focusing on the least likely candidate to be widely available and is also the least mature technologically speaking. I just get dumb shit after that. So fuck you. — Benkei

This is off topic. Please address the question in the OP. Thanks.

I believe geothermal is promising, I believe EGS is much more promising that SCGT. I've laid out why. — Benkei

Do you work for Nasa/Sandia Labs as a scientist? No!
Have you conducted a seven year long research program into the feasibility of Magma Energy? No!
Hmmm...then, whose opinions on the feasibility of Magma Energy should I trust?
The guys who put men on the moon, or those of a lunatic?

I don't give two speckled hens eggs for your opinions on geothermal; what I'd like to discuss, is why those ostensibly concerned with the climate - like Al Gore for instance, have never mentioned the prospect of limitless clean energy from high temperature geothermal?

Why instead have the environmental left terrorised generations with the existential dread and nihilistic despair of Limits to Growth? We have children throwing themselves into traffic to protest climate change. But not as many children as we might have had - because what's the point of having children?

I remember, in 1986, Dr Patrick Moore - co-founder of Greenpeace was drummed out of the organisation for daring to suggest we need nuclear energy. That isn't just something I've read about since. I was there. I couldn't contextualise it at the time, but his comments resonate now, when he said he left Greenpeace because it "took a sharp turn to the political left" and "evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas."

That's what I'm asking about; not your opinions on one form of geothermal energy relative to another.

I'm not negative. I simply don't have time for someone's myopic bullshit when I even spoonfeed him information to get a grip on reality. — Benkei

You didn't need to spoon-feed me anything. This is my topic. The question being, why, what, according to Nasa/Sandia Labs, is a promising approach to the climate and ecological crisis, has gone ignored for the past 40 years?

What you did was ignore my question, invent your own questions about the viability of Magma Energy to attack Magma Energy, and me. I'd say that's negative behaviour.

If you were pushed for time, why bother?

I'm not complaining, because as an interlocutor you have helped me explain what Magma Energy is, how I think it could be developed and how it would address the climate and ecological threat. I'm just trying to get some insight on the question this thread is about.

Why isn't this good news?

So you haven't done the calculations and have no clue what you're talking about. Excellent. Nice wasting time on you. Bye. — Benkei

Yes, sure. But before you go - can I just ask, why the negativity?

I mean, I'm describing what I think is a promising potential solution to the climate crisis; and one that allows for a prosperous and sustainable future. I'd like to know why you're opposed to that?

I've been promoting an energy abundance approach on climate change for some time, to people who are ostensibly concerned about climate change, yet to little or no avail. I have met with a lot of negativity that I simply don't understand.

Could you reflect on your motives?

Great.Show me the calculations. — Benkei

Provide funding, and I'll get right on it!

Draining energy directly out of the Earth, though? Gee, what could go wrong? — Tzeentch

The quantity of energy humans require to meet all our needs is negligible relative to the total heat energy of the Earth.

Nasa/Sandia estimated a minimum of 50,000 quads of Magma Energy just from the US alone.
Current world energy demand is 600 quads.

The Earth itself is a big ball of molten rock, that's been radiating heat energy into space for 4.5bn years. The heat it contains is 50% primordial - left over from the formation of the Earth, and 50% radiogenic, from the decay of radioactive elements. It is 6000 miles deep and 26,000 miles around; with an average temperature of 2500'C. It will never run out - no matter how much we use.

The fact you haven't conceded it just shows how little you've actually looked into it. — Benkei

Let's define 'it' here. 'It' - is the cost of developing Magma Energy versus Enhanced Geothermal Systems. You say Magma Energy is more expensive than EGS. That's your claim. Please show your workings. I say it's impossible to say that because I have researched it. Not because I haven't.

Magma Energy is generally deeper - but not always. It's certainly hotter - and this introduces risks/costs, but at the same time has a greater EROI. These are variables that will have different values at each and every location. A blanket generalisation - like the one you made, is simply not possible.

New Zealand is investing $60m in supercritical geothermal research. I would not suggest the UK do the same; at least not in the UK because the crust is much too thick. The Ascension Island, Tristan da Cunha, the Pitcairn Islands, Montserrat - are UK overseas territories with potential to develop Magma Energy.

LH2 can be produced either by thermolysis or electrolysis, and shipped in tankers like the Suzio Frontier; to run power stations, and as fuel for transport. Alternatively, heat batteries can store heat energy directly, and be shipped to UK ports, unloaded and plugged into the national grid from the harbour.

And you demand I estimate the cost of all this? All I can tell you is, if we don't solve climate change, the global economy will collapse - long before the planet becomes uninhabitable, and all will be lost. Repeated and increasing climate impacts will make insurance unaffordable, with knock on effects for real estate, that in turn will take down global banking.

It doesn't take much; Freddie and Fannie nearly collapsed the global economy. A ship got stuck in a canal, and again we were teetering on the brink. How much climate change disruption do you imagine the global economy can handle? And you talk about the most expensive solution?

Is EGS a solution? No!
But Magma Energy is!

It is the case in parts of the US that any large expansion of electric production (thinking here of wind and solar) requires substantial improvements in regional and national grids which are difficult. — BC

Quite right. Wind and solar are far worse than geothermal, because they're diffuse forms of energy - that need to be gathered from a large area, and concentrated. And because wind and solar are intermittent; the energy needs to be stored until needed, requiring even more energy infrastructure.

A 3.5 MW wind turbine contains about 4.5 tons of copper.
Solar requires at least 2.5 tons of copper per MW.

A study by the University of Michigan says we will need to mine more copper between 2018 and 2050 than has been produced in the whole of human history, just for the supposed green energy transition. Not including EV's and grid upgrades.

Magma Energy - electricity - hydrogen; not nearly so much copper. A hole in the ground does not sprawl across the countryside, and it produces more high grade energy than x number of windmills. It's constant energy so can provide base load power. And all this needs to be factored in to questions of cost.

I haven't conceded that Magma Energy is a more expensive approach than EGS. That's your claim. Please, show your workings.

You'd have to make a lot of assumptions - like how deep the supposed Magma Energy deposit is, how much energy it would produce, for how long, and what the market price is for that energy. What would be the point? Pick a number!
Expense is not the point at this stage; it's what would be achieved if the engineering challenge can be overcome. What you may not be aware of is that at 374'C water goes supercritical. It was a big thing in steam train design back in the day. It's like a spring hidden in the physics; an exponential increase in power for a marginal increase in temperature and/or the cost of reaching such temperatures.

The transformer thing is not a problem; the current four year wait is a consequence of the covid pandemic shutdown, against an increase in demand due to AI data centers. It's a temporary issue. Swing and a miss! But do keep trying!

Having very large power plants introduces requirements on the grid that don't currently exist — Benkei

If only we'd started 40 years ago!

and require a disproportionate investment, — Benkei

compared to what?

where the power plant itself is already much more expensive. — Benkei

more expensive than what?

Just the lead time for transformers is currently 4+ years. — Benkei

Yeah, it's tripled since 2021, according to Bloomberg.

It's therefore economically and logistically unsound to meet our immediate needs. — Benkei

Solving the climate and ecological crisis is not an immediate need. It requires a little forethought, because only a functioning global economy can do this. If we think only in terms of the immediate, waiting until solving the climate crisis becomes an immediate need, it will be too late.

It's much better to integrate such power plants into the existing grid, which is what makes ESG attractive. — Benkei

So EGS doesn't require transformers?

...assessing the engineering feasibility...
— karl stone

So, do you have any information on the results of that assessment? — Wayfarer

Yes, sure.

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6588943