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> Why not turn the fatalism and anxiety you feel into a paycheck? I don't want to sound mean, but the only anxiety I am beginning to feel lately is that more a

> Why not turn the fatalism and anxiety you feel into a paycheck? I don't want to sound mean, but the only anxiety I am beginning to feel lately is that more and more people are turning to fighting a gas that all of us exhale, some of them fanatically and violently, and they seem to ultimately agree that we must wind down the economy to beat it. I don't want to lose everything that gave us wealth, progress, medical breakthroughs and freedom for the sole reason that some people are afraid of a warmer climate. So, what do I do about it?

diafygi 8y ago
Nothing? If you don't believe in climate change or believe we should be fighting it, then please get out of the way. The energy transition is a bigger economic opportunity that the Internet (Bloomberg estimates it at something like $10+ trillion). So you doing nothing is more money for me. Thanks I guess?
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > The energy transition is a bigger economic opportunity that the Internet (Bloomberg estimates it at something like $10+ trillion). So you doing nothing is more money for me. Thanks I guess? So where exactly do you think this money is coming from? It'll come out of your pocket (and mine) due to laws that force us to invest in new technology.
  - diafygi 8y ago
    Well, for my company, the money is coming from homeowners and business owners buying clean energy products (solar, batteries, EVs, etc.). They are choosing to buy these new technologies because they want to. I noticed you didn't really address my core assumption that you don't believe in climate change. So you don't think it's a problem, right? Can you talk a little more about from where you derive that conclusion? It's so rare nowadays to hear someone straight up deny climate change is a problem when there's so much scientific and economic analysis saying the opposite.
    - lazyjones 8y ago
      > They are choosing to buy these new technologies because they want to. So do I, I have no issues with that. I bought a Tesla Model S 2 years ago because I don't like noise and pollution and it's a cool car. This has nothing to do with buying "to save the planet" or mandated CO2 reductions and EV quotas though, which is what is coming soon and I oppose. > I noticed you didn't really address my core assumption that you don't believe in climate change. Why do you make such assumptions? To discredit and offend someone you are discussing with? > It's so rare nowadays to hear someone straight up deny climate change It can't be so rare if you accuse people of doing this all the time.
      - diafygi 8y ago
        Hmmm, HN is limiting our thread depth, so can you please email me at my email in my profile? I'd like to continue the conversation and learn more about your point of view.
  - easymodex 8y ago
    Well i sure as hell hope so. I would love the money being taken from us actually fund something i care about and that will benefit everyone, instead of wasting it on stupid crap.
  - __s 8y ago
    The internet showed what value is produced by ramping up communications orders of magnitude in bandwidth beyond what was previously possible. At this point our bottleneck for value is energy, not communication Solar energy doesn't have to worry about entropy: energy from the sun is beating down on us whether we tap it or not. The money will come from the fact that energy produces value. Renewables have been progressing over the past decades to compete with existing carbon infrastructure. To suggest renewables are only hoisted up by policy is to disregard that the oil industry is heavily subsidized & the states currently has a president who will claim "clean beautiful coal"
- vixen99 8y ago
  https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-... It is indeed magical thinking. "$200,000 worth of Tesla batteries, which collectively weigh over 20,000 pounds, are needed to store the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil. A barrel of oil, meanwhile, weighs 300 pounds and can be stored in a $20 tank. Those are the realities of today’s lithium batteries. Even a 200% improvement in underlying battery economics and technology won’t close such a gap." Meanwhile the battery industry currently uses 42 percent of global cobalt production, a critical metal for Lithium-ion cells. 70% comes from the Congo where kids do their bit against 'climate change'. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democratic-republic-congo-cbs-news-investigation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democrat...
  - mrob 8y ago
    Cobalt is not a critical metal for all lithium-ion cells, only for maximum energy density lithium-ion cells. If you're willing to sacrifice energy density you can use lithium iron phosphate instead, which is also safer and more durable. BYD Auto, the Chinese company behind the great success of electric buses in China (preventing more CO2 emissions than electric cars) uses lithium iron phosphate.
elliotec 8y ago
We exhale it because it's bad for us, and it's not the only thing in the fight against climate change. The point isn't to wind down the economy to beat it, it's to find alternate ways of keeping the economy going while beating it. Green energy solutions are not winding down the economy, if anything it is supplementing it.
- phonypc 8y ago
  >We exhale it because it's bad for us Off-topic in the context of climate change, but that's an oversimplification at best. Not enough CO2 in the body will kill you just as readily as too much.
paganel 8y ago
> I don't want to lose everything that gave us wealth, progress, medical breakthroughs and freedom for the sole reason that some people are afraid of a warmer climate There were some/articles studies that were putting part of the “blame” for the recent Syrian Civil War on climate change (as far as I remember increased aridity caused by climate change had forced many rural Syrians onto the cities where they couldn’t all find jobs, hence the conflict) and as such I’m pretty sure that future climate change-induced wars will take care of our “wealth, progress and medical breakthroughs” unless we manage to somehow slow the rate of change.
imtringued 8y ago
Germany's worst week in 2018 in terms of wind and sunshine had 27.6% of it's electricity produced without emitting greenhouse gases. Compare that to 45% of the total energy in the entire year being generated with zero carbon sources. 27.6% is 60% of the annualized renewable share. In other words even in the 5 worst weeks a year our economy only has to shrink down by 40% if seasonal storage beyond a week is impossible.
- mrob 8y ago
  You are assuming that the economy can smoothly scale down with energy restriction. In reality, everything is highly optimized, with "just in time" supply chains with little safety margin. Once energy demand greatly exceeds supply, the whole system collapses. And most transport and heating does not use electricity, so the problem is actually worse than 27.6% of normal supply.
- twoodfin 8y ago
  “Only” 40%? That’s basically peak to trough Greece!
mrob 8y ago
I think this comment is being unfairly downvoted. I believe a lot of so-called environmentalists are actually opposed to civilization, and would prefer if humanity reverted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This is more "natural", and humans are generally happier living like that, so it's not a totally ridiculous idea. The main drawback is that it would require the deaths of billions, but by their revealed preferences, it seems a lot of environmentalists are actually okay with this. Why else would they oppose the only proven solution that could bring CO2 emissions to zero in time to limit the damage to something survivable?: nuclear power. I think climate change is the biggest current threat to humanity, and almost nobody is taking it as seriously as they should. Even the ongoing protests in London are a massive under-reaction. But how many of those environmentalists actually support a solution that isn't "wind down the economy?" Germany began a complete shutdown their nuclear power plants in response to a reactor containment failure in Japan that killed nobody directly, and even with the worst case assumptions, statistically caused few hundred excess cancer deaths at most. This is 0% of the deaths that will be caused when one of the alternative "wind down the economy" or "uncontrolled temperature rise" plans triggers World War 3.
- diafygi 8y ago
  It's wrong to assume that those of us fighting climate change are anti-nuclear. The only reason I didn't include nuclear in my parent comment is because it isn't currently competitive with either clean or dirty energy sources. Solar and wind plus storage is way cheaper than nuclear (and that gap is widening over time, not shrinking), so there's not much reason to include it in a pitch for getting a job fighting climate change unless the audience is primarily PhD physicists and researchers.
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > I think climate change is the biggest current threat to humanity, and almost nobody is taking it as seriously as they should. Here I disagree. We're trying to colonise Mars, but at the same time believe a somewhat warmer climate is an existential threat to humanity. How is that logical? Climate change will not destroy humanity, civilisation, or even the planet. We will adapt easily. Look to the 20th century for examples of actual threats to humanity... > This is 0% of the deaths that will be caused when one of the alternative "wind down the economy" or "uncontrolled temperature rise" plans triggers World War 3 Exactly, only that these aren't the only possible triggers for a WW3.
boudin 8y ago
What is the relationship between burning fossil fuels and medical breakthrough, wealth and progress? So you don't care about it because you don't care about the people as well as species that are already impacted by climate change? Just because you're afraid of having to change your lifestyle? What you should do about it is maybe stop freaking out first about your lifestyle, progress doesn't require screwing climate....
kaybe 8y ago
Do you want to do something about it? Then a good way to proceed would probably to study why we are all freaking out. The basics for why too much CO2 is a problem are actually quite simple and might be accessible to you experimentally if you so choose. (What the exact consequences are is more complicated and we have uncertainties on the results, so that might be harder.) edit: (While some of the models are actually open-source and you can download them, running and understanding them in a useful manner is a full-time job.)

diafygi 8y ago

Nothing? If you don't believe in climate change or believe we should be fighting it, then please get out of the way. The energy transition is a bigger economic opportunity that the Internet (Bloomberg estimates it at something like $10+ trillion). So you doing nothing is more money for me. Thanks I guess?

lazyjones 8y ago
> The energy transition is a bigger economic opportunity that the Internet (Bloomberg estimates it at something like $10+ trillion). So you doing nothing is more money for me. Thanks I guess? So where exactly do you think this money is coming from? It'll come out of your pocket (and mine) due to laws that force us to invest in new technology.
- diafygi 8y ago
  Well, for my company, the money is coming from homeowners and business owners buying clean energy products (solar, batteries, EVs, etc.). They are choosing to buy these new technologies because they want to. I noticed you didn't really address my core assumption that you don't believe in climate change. So you don't think it's a problem, right? Can you talk a little more about from where you derive that conclusion? It's so rare nowadays to hear someone straight up deny climate change is a problem when there's so much scientific and economic analysis saying the opposite.
  - lazyjones 8y ago
    > They are choosing to buy these new technologies because they want to. So do I, I have no issues with that. I bought a Tesla Model S 2 years ago because I don't like noise and pollution and it's a cool car. This has nothing to do with buying "to save the planet" or mandated CO2 reductions and EV quotas though, which is what is coming soon and I oppose. > I noticed you didn't really address my core assumption that you don't believe in climate change. Why do you make such assumptions? To discredit and offend someone you are discussing with? > It's so rare nowadays to hear someone straight up deny climate change It can't be so rare if you accuse people of doing this all the time.
    - diafygi 8y ago
      Hmmm, HN is limiting our thread depth, so can you please email me at my email in my profile? I'd like to continue the conversation and learn more about your point of view.
- easymodex 8y ago
  Well i sure as hell hope so. I would love the money being taken from us actually fund something i care about and that will benefit everyone, instead of wasting it on stupid crap.
- __s 8y ago
  The internet showed what value is produced by ramping up communications orders of magnitude in bandwidth beyond what was previously possible. At this point our bottleneck for value is energy, not communication Solar energy doesn't have to worry about entropy: energy from the sun is beating down on us whether we tap it or not. The money will come from the fact that energy produces value. Renewables have been progressing over the past decades to compete with existing carbon infrastructure. To suggest renewables are only hoisted up by policy is to disregard that the oil industry is heavily subsidized & the states currently has a president who will claim "clean beautiful coal"
vixen99 8y ago
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-... It is indeed magical thinking. "$200,000 worth of Tesla batteries, which collectively weigh over 20,000 pounds, are needed to store the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil. A barrel of oil, meanwhile, weighs 300 pounds and can be stored in a $20 tank. Those are the realities of today’s lithium batteries. Even a 200% improvement in underlying battery economics and technology won’t close such a gap." Meanwhile the battery industry currently uses 42 percent of global cobalt production, a critical metal for Lithium-ion cells. 70% comes from the Congo where kids do their bit against 'climate change'. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democratic-republic-congo-cbs-news-investigation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democrat...
- mrob 8y ago
  Cobalt is not a critical metal for all lithium-ion cells, only for maximum energy density lithium-ion cells. If you're willing to sacrifice energy density you can use lithium iron phosphate instead, which is also safer and more durable. BYD Auto, the Chinese company behind the great success of electric buses in China (preventing more CO2 emissions than electric cars) uses lithium iron phosphate.

elliotec 8y ago

We exhale it because it's bad for us, and it's not the only thing in the fight against climate change. The point isn't to wind down the economy to beat it, it's to find alternate ways of keeping the economy going while beating it. Green energy solutions are not winding down the economy, if anything it is supplementing it.

phonypc 8y ago
>We exhale it because it's bad for us Off-topic in the context of climate change, but that's an oversimplification at best. Not enough CO2 in the body will kill you just as readily as too much.

paganel 8y ago

> I don't want to lose everything that gave us wealth, progress, medical breakthroughs and freedom for the sole reason that some people are afraid of a warmer climate There were some/articles studies that were putting part of the “blame” for the recent Syrian Civil War on climate change (as far as I remember increased aridity caused by climate change had forced many rural Syrians onto the cities where they couldn’t all find jobs, hence the conflict) and as such I’m pretty sure that future climate change-induced wars will take care of our “wealth, progress and medical breakthroughs” unless we manage to somehow slow the rate of change.

imtringued 8y ago

Germany's worst week in 2018 in terms of wind and sunshine had 27.6% of it's electricity produced without emitting greenhouse gases. Compare that to 45% of the total energy in the entire year being generated with zero carbon sources. 27.6% is 60% of the annualized renewable share. In other words even in the 5 worst weeks a year our economy only has to shrink down by 40% if seasonal storage beyond a week is impossible.

mrob 8y ago
You are assuming that the economy can smoothly scale down with energy restriction. In reality, everything is highly optimized, with "just in time" supply chains with little safety margin. Once energy demand greatly exceeds supply, the whole system collapses. And most transport and heating does not use electricity, so the problem is actually worse than 27.6% of normal supply.
twoodfin 8y ago
“Only” 40%? That’s basically peak to trough Greece!

mrob 8y ago

I think this comment is being unfairly downvoted. I believe a lot of so-called environmentalists are actually opposed to civilization, and would prefer if humanity reverted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This is more "natural", and humans are generally happier living like that, so it's not a totally ridiculous idea. The main drawback is that it would require the deaths of billions, but by their revealed preferences, it seems a lot of environmentalists are actually okay with this. Why else would they oppose the only proven solution that could bring CO2 emissions to zero in time to limit the damage to something survivable?: nuclear power. I think climate change is the biggest current threat to humanity, and almost nobody is taking it as seriously as they should. Even the ongoing protests in London are a massive under-reaction. But how many of those environmentalists actually support a solution that isn't "wind down the economy?" Germany began a complete shutdown their nuclear power plants in response to a reactor containment failure in Japan that killed nobody directly, and even with the worst case assumptions, statistically caused few hundred excess cancer deaths at most. This is 0% of the deaths that will be caused when one of the alternative "wind down the economy" or "uncontrolled temperature rise" plans triggers World War 3.

diafygi 8y ago
It's wrong to assume that those of us fighting climate change are anti-nuclear. The only reason I didn't include nuclear in my parent comment is because it isn't currently competitive with either clean or dirty energy sources. Solar and wind plus storage is way cheaper than nuclear (and that gap is widening over time, not shrinking), so there's not much reason to include it in a pitch for getting a job fighting climate change unless the audience is primarily PhD physicists and researchers.
lazyjones 8y ago
> I think climate change is the biggest current threat to humanity, and almost nobody is taking it as seriously as they should. Here I disagree. We're trying to colonise Mars, but at the same time believe a somewhat warmer climate is an existential threat to humanity. How is that logical? Climate change will not destroy humanity, civilisation, or even the planet. We will adapt easily. Look to the 20th century for examples of actual threats to humanity... > This is 0% of the deaths that will be caused when one of the alternative "wind down the economy" or "uncontrolled temperature rise" plans triggers World War 3 Exactly, only that these aren't the only possible triggers for a WW3.

boudin 8y ago

What is the relationship between burning fossil fuels and medical breakthrough, wealth and progress? So you don't care about it because you don't care about the people as well as species that are already impacted by climate change? Just because you're afraid of having to change your lifestyle? What you should do about it is maybe stop freaking out first about your lifestyle, progress doesn't require screwing climate....

kaybe 8y ago

Do you want to do something about it? Then a good way to proceed would probably to study why we are all freaking out. The basics for why too much CO2 is a problem are actually quite simple and might be accessible to you experimentally if you so choose. (What the exact consequences are is more complicated and we have uncertainties on the results, so that might be harder.) edit: (While some of the models are actually open-source and you can download them, running and understanding them in a useful manner is a full-time job.)