5 ms·

Very unlikely that is the case. You are assuming that clean technologies will produce only economic cost not a net economic benefit. But that's not how techno

Very unlikely that is the case. You are assuming that clean technologies will produce only economic cost not a net economic benefit. But that's not how technology works generally

vkou 9y ago
Great, what is the national road-map for our transition to these net-beneficial clean technologies? If they are net-beneficial, why haven't we transitioned to them yet? What factors blocking this transition will be removed in the years to come, and how exactly are we going to remove them? What decade we going to hit net zero carbon? It's like a startup saying: "Well, sure, we are losing money hand over fist, and our per-unit economics don't make sense, but you're assuming that we won't discover... Something... that will make us profitable."
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  The national roadmap is absolutely massive amount of R&D going into self driving cars for example or solar batteries
  - vkou 9y ago
    What exactly do self-driving cars have to do with reducing our carbon footprint? Hell, self-driving cars are the absolutely wrong solution to this problem. Personal automobiles - a 4,000lb steel and rubber box that drives a single 160lb human around, are incredibly wasteful, energy-inefficient luxuries. Trains, buses, bicycles, and better urban planning are the real solution to low-carbon personal transportation. There's no roadmap in America for any of those things.
    - dane-pgp 9y ago
      Self-driving cars might make using taxis cheaper than owning a car, which will mean car users don't have to worry about how long it takes to recharge an electric car's batteries any more, or what their range is. Electric cars (when their batteries are plugged into the grid) could also potentially make a good distributed battery, making renewable energy sources seem more reliable. There is a good recent article about the battery system Tesla set up in Australia: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26/teslas-enormous-battery-in-australia-just-weeks-old-is-already-responding-to-outages-in-record-time/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26...
lozenge 9y ago
Getting to net zero emissions means turning off many perfectly functioning power plants before their intended life. It means any emissions that are practically impossible to remove (eg aviation due to the high energy density fuel required) need to be balanced out by negative emissions, which remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere. This inherently (thermodynamically) has a huge cost and little economic benefit (unless you include externalities like environmental effects). I suggest reading/watching any recent talk by Kevin Anderson at the Tyndall Institute, and this paper for an overview: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081648 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Very unlikely that is the case. You are assuming that clean technologies will produce only economic cost not a net economic benefit. But that's not how technology works generally

vkou 9y ago

Great, what is the national road-map for our transition to these net-beneficial clean technologies? If they are net-beneficial, why haven't we transitioned to them yet? What factors blocking this transition will be removed in the years to come, and how exactly are we going to remove them? What decade we going to hit net zero carbon? It's like a startup saying: "Well, sure, we are losing money hand over fist, and our per-unit economics don't make sense, but you're assuming that we won't discover... Something... that will make us profitable."

vasilipupkin 9y ago
The national roadmap is absolutely massive amount of R&D going into self driving cars for example or solar batteries
- vkou 9y ago
  What exactly do self-driving cars have to do with reducing our carbon footprint? Hell, self-driving cars are the absolutely wrong solution to this problem. Personal automobiles - a 4,000lb steel and rubber box that drives a single 160lb human around, are incredibly wasteful, energy-inefficient luxuries. Trains, buses, bicycles, and better urban planning are the real solution to low-carbon personal transportation. There's no roadmap in America for any of those things.
  - dane-pgp 9y ago
    Self-driving cars might make using taxis cheaper than owning a car, which will mean car users don't have to worry about how long it takes to recharge an electric car's batteries any more, or what their range is. Electric cars (when their batteries are plugged into the grid) could also potentially make a good distributed battery, making renewable energy sources seem more reliable. There is a good recent article about the battery system Tesla set up in Australia: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26/teslas-enormous-battery-in-australia-just-weeks-old-is-already-responding-to-outages-in-record-time/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26...

lozenge 9y ago

Getting to net zero emissions means turning off many perfectly functioning power plants before their intended life. It means any emissions that are practically impossible to remove (eg aviation due to the high energy density fuel required) need to be balanced out by negative emissions, which remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere. This inherently (thermodynamically) has a huge cost and little economic benefit (unless you include externalities like environmental effects). I suggest reading/watching any recent talk by Kevin Anderson at the Tyndall Institute, and this paper for an overview: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081648 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....