> If you read what he wrote, your question is answered already.
You are right; I missed "that we know". That is entirely my mistake. But then it seems to make gridspy's comment rather content-less.
If someone says "I always find it slightly amusing how there's remarkably few forms of power generation that don't eventually boil down to "use water/air/steam to make a turbine spin".", then what does saying "it's just because that is the most efficient way we know" contribute? The 'because' suggests some justification, but it appears just to be re-stating what it's justifying. A re-statement can be valuable, but combining it with 'just' seems to be dismissing an observation that I, at least, found interesting enough not to dismiss, even if it is 'just' a description of existing facts.
I find some merit in your argument. I feel like the GP said "We use lots of turbines, isn't that interesting" and I said "It's nice to see the common factor here is a translation of pressure -> electricity" or "temperature -> energy."
So what I thought I was contributing here was an explanation of why we like steam and turbines so much.
I'm pretty sure that steam, turbines, etc have a big efficiency loss. Like you guessed, I meant "the best way we know of to do it at industrial scale now."
Thank you for your constructive engagement with my question! As ncmncm pointed out, you clearly said that you were referring to the best way currently known, and it was my fault for simply misreading.
You are right; I missed "that we know". That is entirely my mistake. But then it seems to make gridspy's comment rather content-less.
If someone says "I always find it slightly amusing how there's remarkably few forms of power generation that don't eventually boil down to "use water/air/steam to make a turbine spin".", then what does saying "it's just because that is the most efficient way we know" contribute? The 'because' suggests some justification, but it appears just to be re-stating what it's justifying. A re-statement can be valuable, but combining it with 'just' seems to be dismissing an observation that I, at least, found interesting enough not to dismiss, even if it is 'just' a description of existing facts.