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Ask Slashdot: Can FOSS Help In the Fight Against Climate Change?
dryriver writes: Before I ask my question, there already is free and open-source software (FOSS) for wind turbine design and simulation called QBlade. It lets you calculate turbine blade performance using nothing more than a computer and appears compatible with Xfoil as well. But consider this: the ultimate, most efficient and most real-world usable and widely deployable wind turbine rotor may not have traditional "blades" or "foils" at all, but may be a non-propeller-like, complex and possibly rather strange looking three-dimensional rotor of the sort that only a 3D printer could prototype easily. It may be on a vertical or horizontal axis. It may have air flowing through canals in its non-traditional structure, rather than just around it. Nobody really knows what this "ultimate wind turbine rotor" may look like.
The easiest way to find such a rotor might be through machine-learning. You get an algorithm to create complex non-traditional 3D rotor shapes, simulate their behavior in wind, and then mutate the design, simulate again, and get a machine learning algorithm to learn what sort of mutations lead to a better performing 3D rotor. In theory, enough iterations -- perhaps millions or more -- should eventually lead to the "ultimate rotor" or something closer to it than what is used in wind turbines today. Is this something FOSS developers could tackle, or is this task too complex for non-commercial software? The real world impact of such a FOSS project could be that far better wind turbines can be designed, manufactured and deployed than currently exist, and the fight against climate change becomes more effective; the better your wind turbines perform, and the more usable they are, the more of a fighting chance humanity has to do something against climate change. Could FOSS achieve this?
The easiest way to find such a rotor might be through machine-learning. You get an algorithm to create complex non-traditional 3D rotor shapes, simulate their behavior in wind, and then mutate the design, simulate again, and get a machine learning algorithm to learn what sort of mutations lead to a better performing 3D rotor. In theory, enough iterations -- perhaps millions or more -- should eventually lead to the "ultimate rotor" or something closer to it than what is used in wind turbines today. Is this something FOSS developers could tackle, or is this task too complex for non-commercial software? The real world impact of such a FOSS project could be that far better wind turbines can be designed, manufactured and deployed than currently exist, and the fight against climate change becomes more effective; the better your wind turbines perform, and the more usable they are, the more of a fighting chance humanity has to do something against climate change. Could FOSS achieve this?
And they’re wasting tons of energy for funbux.
A massive carbon tax would do a much more effective job at accelerating our transition off fossil fuels and slowing global warming.
A massive carbon tax so that, to start with, Americans pay the same for gas as Europeans, who do just fine with that, and then keep increasing it.
That's the best thing that would work, because except for tilting the playing field the way we have to move, it lets the free market take care of how to achieve the change.
But unfortunately, an effectively large carbon tax would take politicians with brains, a conscience, and guts. So I'm not that optimistic given the garbage we currently have.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Slashdot was once a tech site for CS and EE news, operating systems, Linux, BSD, etc. It veered of course a couple times with the Jon Katz episodes, but was able to quickly restabilze.
These "glboal warming" stories have pretty much hijacked the content on Slashdot. It is political and completely off topic for tech news. It reeks of George Soros and other globalist one-worlders and fellow traverllers.
Please boycott the advertisers until Slashdot rights itself, if that is even possible. Slashdot is only a name, just another entry in some godless corporate log book of an anonymous holding company.
The real core who originally made Slashdot what it is have been gone for ages. Now we have pretenders using the name but the the spirit of what had made Slashdot popular and famous.
It reeks of George Soros and other globalist one-worlders and fellow traverllers.
Sounds like someone has been sucking too much Koch.
Perhaps GP was talking of 80% of that theoretical maximum of 59.3%. Your statements don't seem to be mutually exclusive to me.