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>and I think it has a bright future. That's highly debatable. While you might sell software/solar panels/magicwidgets to a small subset of people, for the most

>and I think it has a bright future. That's highly debatable. While you might sell software/solar panels/magicwidgets to a small subset of people, for the most part no technology is going to have a meaningful impact on current greenhouse gas emissions. As I said to Wren (I really tear into them in this post, I feel I was fair though)[1] after they post their introduction thread here: > We're going to make changes by convincing people they really don't need to take their 4th international vacation in as many years, nor do they need their 3rd iPhone in 5 years, that their year and a half old MacBook is perfectly fine. They don't need the newest model just because it now has ultra holographic flurm instead of super holographic flurm because all they do is watch YouTube and write emails with the damn thing. Sure you might sell a regional power provider on using some software that does something a little better to improve efficiency 1/2 % which will absolutely make a difference but while you're doing that, a few new coal plants went online in India/China/a developing country. Also the power company that you sold it to is losing obscene amounts of electricity, generated by fossil fuels, via transmission loss So you develop something for ICE cars that cuts out cylinders when lower demand is required, turns off the engine at stops, uses a solar panel to recharge a battery specifically for defrosting the windows instead of relying on the ICE charged lead-acid battery, etc but while you are designing that for a specific line of cars over the course of 2 years China alone added tens of millions of new drivers to the road driving ICE vehicles that aren't burning fuel optimally. While you are writing software, or developing a widget, to shave a few grams of CO2 emissions off of each customer a day websites/apps like YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram are generating tens to hundreds of grams of CO2 per gigabyte of data transferred. While you're trying to reduce the footprint of people with 6-figure salaries that can afford to spend money on reducing their footprint, you have hundreds of millions to billions of up and lower middle-class consumers consuming more and more as their greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at staggering rates. While you're developing software to plan the best optimized routes for a UPS driver or commercial flight, you have people watching vidieos on YT trying to figure out where they want to take their 4th exotic vacation to (by plane, at a couple of tons of CO2 roundtrip per passenger) where they'll eat out the entirety of the time probably generating a bunch of petrochemical derived single-use packaging. You even have Y Combinator doing contradictory stuff in this field, as I said in an open letter to them [2] >Another example of something that wholly puzzles me is, YC has recently asked for solutions to global warming, chiefly carbon sequestration solutions. We're going to produce close to 40 gigatons of carbon this year that will enter the system, that's insanity. If you filled the 10 most massive bodies of freshwater in the world with Azolla (see the Azolla event) you'd only pull roughly 10% of that amount out of the atmosphere annually, and you would only sequester a fraction of that. Yet YC, for the interviews for companies that get an invite, they want the founders to fly to the Bay Area for a 10-minute interview. FOLKS! One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. People can make immediate and real impacts on their greenhouse gas emissions by cutting 1 day of meat consumption out a week. Then 2 days. Then get meat down to being a special occasion, or never, consumption. People can make immediate and real impacts by opting to watch a documentary instead of flying to Antarctica to take pictures with penguins. People can make immediate and real impacts by reading a book from a library instead of having Netflix streaming in the background why they play Candy Crush or Angry Birds on their phone with the air conditioning blasting 70F air at them while they're wrapped up in a blanket with a hoodie on when it's 75F out. Even if someone cracks cold fusion TODAY, replacing the tens of thousands of power plants around the world... the concrete alone required would release a mind boggling amount of CO2 to produce and replacing them would take decades. Developing software or a widget to optimize one's impact is just selling people hopium. Getting people to radically change their habits (stop travelling, stop ordering from Amazon five times a week for one item each time, stop ordering Uber eats and cook something, reduce meat consumption, shop with a minimal waste mindset, don't buy food if you're going to throw half of it out, make tv a treat not a daily necessity etc). Sure, there is investor money to be pilfered in this field but ehhhh. [1] https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2019/7/18/wren-medieval-indulgence-and-your-carbon-footprint https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2019/7/18/wren-medi... [2] https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2018/10/30/an-open-letter-to-yc https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2018/10/30/an-open-...

Retric 7y ago
Renewables have already made a significant difference in CO2 emissions. It’s rather shocking how much wind + solar are dominating new generation simple due to cost savings.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  Renewables are also extremely limited in practical use. - The sun only shines so many hours a day and only certain latitudes are good candidates. - Wind is quite noisy (sorry but it is, we've got a lot of wind here in Indiana that I've driven by going from Indy to Chicago. Absolutely not something I'd want near me. Much smaller scale vertical wind turbines are also quite loud and just plain annoying at higher speeds) and is ineffective at slow and high wind speeds, the wind also only blows at certain times. - Hydroelectric generally requires dams, constructing dams often floods large areas of land which completely destroys ecosystems in that flooded land and often poses a considerable risk to downstream human settlements in the event of a catastrophic failure. They also rely heavily on obscene amounts of concrete which will build in a large amount of CO2 production into the construction. - Hydroelectric relying on waves has varying level of impact on coastal ecosystems. With sun and wind you can only implement it so far before you hit a wall, the wall being the need for huge amounts of grid storage to serve dark/not windy times. Without drastic developments in battery technology, and PV efficiency, renewable aren't going to be a singular solution. They're going to remain a small percentage of the solution. Renewables are also something that aren't really an option at a consumer level. You often have one power company that serves your home/apartment, if you do have a home and you live in an area where PV makes sense from a light availability then it is often more expensive than most people can afford and can take decades to be break even. Tesla announced something like $21.85 per square foot for their solar roof which comes to $43,700 for a 2,000 square foot home while in large parts of the country you can get a decent 2,000 square foot home for $100-200k and the median household income in the United States is only $63,688. However adjusting your thermostat 1F warmer in the summer and 1F cooler in the winter, going to a local museum instead of taking that roadtrip or flight, eating hamburger once every other week instead of a few times a week etc are all far more practical changes people can implement in their lives than say installing PV and battery systems at their home or instead of buying an EV that costs thousands (if not tens of thousands) more than the ICE vehicle they'd otherwise purchase. It's awesome, legitimately awesome, to pursue technology to help us solve the problem but thinking technology will be our savior is foolish at best. We have to radically change our lives if we want to even significantly slow those annual CO2 emissions. Food, clothing, recreation, convenience all needs to change. It's not even that difficult. In the past year or so I've: - Gone 90-95% whole food plant based with my eating - Stopped going to the movies every other week and now only go for big films like the most recent Star Wars - Stopped buying printed books if a digital copy is available for purchase - Buy in bulk, with as little packaging as possible, when I can. - Stopped driving 25-40 miles roundtrip every weekend to go sit in the living rooms of friends when we're just going to have the same conversations we do via text messages and instead only go see them once every couple of months each to eat together and actually have quality conversation - Stopped driving to the fancy grocery 10 miles away and use the one a block from my apartment complex entrance, doing my groceries on the way home from work when I'm passing it anyway - I pretty much only drive to work and church now instead of getting in my car on the weekend and driving around looking for something to do - Video content I stream, I stream at lower quality now. Every gigabyte of data transfer saved is potentially several hundred of grams less CO2 generated. Podcasts, where available, I stream via their lower bitrate feed (unfortunately of the podcasts I listen to, only Mysterious Universe has a lower/higher quality feed). If even 10% of the population adapted similar practices, you'd create much more of an impact than selling a few solar roofs to the wealthy or designing a piece of software for a regional power plant to use to make some process a fraction of a percent more efficient.

Retric 7y ago

Renewables have already made a significant difference in CO2 emissions. It’s rather shocking how much wind + solar are dominating new generation simple due to cost savings.

ryanmercer 7y ago
Renewables are also extremely limited in practical use. - The sun only shines so many hours a day and only certain latitudes are good candidates. - Wind is quite noisy (sorry but it is, we've got a lot of wind here in Indiana that I've driven by going from Indy to Chicago. Absolutely not something I'd want near me. Much smaller scale vertical wind turbines are also quite loud and just plain annoying at higher speeds) and is ineffective at slow and high wind speeds, the wind also only blows at certain times. - Hydroelectric generally requires dams, constructing dams often floods large areas of land which completely destroys ecosystems in that flooded land and often poses a considerable risk to downstream human settlements in the event of a catastrophic failure. They also rely heavily on obscene amounts of concrete which will build in a large amount of CO2 production into the construction. - Hydroelectric relying on waves has varying level of impact on coastal ecosystems. With sun and wind you can only implement it so far before you hit a wall, the wall being the need for huge amounts of grid storage to serve dark/not windy times. Without drastic developments in battery technology, and PV efficiency, renewable aren't going to be a singular solution. They're going to remain a small percentage of the solution. Renewables are also something that aren't really an option at a consumer level. You often have one power company that serves your home/apartment, if you do have a home and you live in an area where PV makes sense from a light availability then it is often more expensive than most people can afford and can take decades to be break even. Tesla announced something like $21.85 per square foot for their solar roof which comes to $43,700 for a 2,000 square foot home while in large parts of the country you can get a decent 2,000 square foot home for $100-200k and the median household income in the United States is only $63,688. However adjusting your thermostat 1F warmer in the summer and 1F cooler in the winter, going to a local museum instead of taking that roadtrip or flight, eating hamburger once every other week instead of a few times a week etc are all far more practical changes people can implement in their lives than say installing PV and battery systems at their home or instead of buying an EV that costs thousands (if not tens of thousands) more than the ICE vehicle they'd otherwise purchase. It's awesome, legitimately awesome, to pursue technology to help us solve the problem but thinking technology will be our savior is foolish at best. We have to radically change our lives if we want to even significantly slow those annual CO2 emissions. Food, clothing, recreation, convenience all needs to change. It's not even that difficult. In the past year or so I've: - Gone 90-95% whole food plant based with my eating - Stopped going to the movies every other week and now only go for big films like the most recent Star Wars - Stopped buying printed books if a digital copy is available for purchase - Buy in bulk, with as little packaging as possible, when I can. - Stopped driving 25-40 miles roundtrip every weekend to go sit in the living rooms of friends when we're just going to have the same conversations we do via text messages and instead only go see them once every couple of months each to eat together and actually have quality conversation - Stopped driving to the fancy grocery 10 miles away and use the one a block from my apartment complex entrance, doing my groceries on the way home from work when I'm passing it anyway - I pretty much only drive to work and church now instead of getting in my car on the weekend and driving around looking for something to do - Video content I stream, I stream at lower quality now. Every gigabyte of data transfer saved is potentially several hundred of grams less CO2 generated. Podcasts, where available, I stream via their lower bitrate feed (unfortunately of the podcasts I listen to, only Mysterious Universe has a lower/higher quality feed). If even 10% of the population adapted similar practices, you'd create much more of an impact than selling a few solar roofs to the wealthy or designing a piece of software for a regional power plant to use to make some process a fraction of a percent more efficient.