4 ms·

There was an article a while ago asking why stock prices have not priced in climate change, and I think this is why. As much as we hate to admit it, the solutio

There was an article a while ago asking why stock prices have not priced in climate change, and I think this is why. As much as we hate to admit it, the solution to climate change will be as industrial as the industries that caused it. I'm planting trees whenever I can, but on a planetary scale I think this is going to be fixed only by manufacturing zero emission transport, and negative emission machines, all of which will increase stock prices of industrial companies with factories. Fusion will be the ultimate solution to all problems if it happens – we'll have enough effectively free energy to scrub the atmosphere to our exact specifications with this or any other halfway efficient method, and enough cheap energy to flood all land including deserts with desalinated water. We engineered our way into this problem, I don't think we can kumbayah our way out of it.

dan-robertson 6y ago
You don’t necessarily need fusion or nuclear power to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At least theoretically, you get more energy from burning hydrocarbons than is necessary to capture the released CO2 from the atmosphere. So you can (in theory) burn hydrocarbons while capturing the emissions and still producing energy.
- peanutz454 6y ago
  Aren't we running out of hydrocarbons?
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    No. At the most trivial level they grow on trees or anything else that grows using photosynthesis. On a more pragmatic level usable reserves is not a fixed description of the world, it depends on technology. Fracking gets oil out of the ground at economic prices from what would have been unusable trash twenty years ago. You see the same thing in many different kinds of mining. There are places where they’re making a profit extracting iron from old tailings now, i.e. the waste from mining iron a hundred years ago is now itself profitable to mine for iron.
    - sudhirj 6y ago
      As a thought experiment (don't try this at home) it's actually feasible to cut all the trees on earth down, burn them without releasing that CO2 into the air and use that energy to scrub the atmosphere. This is a horrible idea, of course, but the illustrates the point above. All organic life either creates (via photosynthesis) or consumes hydrocarbons, so we have a lot of it to burn – the trick is not to let the gases into the air, which is what we never should have done in the first place.
- sudhirj 6y ago
  Yeah, that sort of makes sense. Hydrocarbons are carbon + water + energy package, and burning them gives out the energy which you can use for scrubbing the atmosphere, provided you don't exhaust carbon byproduct into the atmosphere, which is really what got us into this mess in the first place.
- posix_me_less 6y ago
  > So you can (in theory) burn hydrocarbons while capturing the emissions and still producing energy. I like this theory, any example of trying it in practice?
  - ZeroGravitas 6y ago
    Theres working examples, however they use the captured CO2 to get more oil out of nearly exhausted oil wells, so its a bit of a non-solution. We will probably need to capture carbon but it'll be cheaper to use renewables or nuclear to provide the energy than burn oil. Even if you use fossil fuels as an input (say because youre capturing methane that would otherwise escape i to the atmosphere), you can do stuff like break them down into grapgite and hydrogen so you getha clean burning fuel and useful material.
- credit_guy 6y ago
  I just did the math and you are right: burning enough natural gas to release 1kg of CO2 releases about 20 MJ of energy (but we can't capture all of it because second principle of thermodynamics). Capturing 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere with this method requires 1.3 MJ, so it's feasible. But then, what do you do with the captured CO2? We put about 35 gigatons of CO2 in the air every year. Let's say we want to remove 15 of them, to get to the emissions level of 1980. 15 GT is staggering. For comparison, the world dumps about 2 GT of waste per year [1]. [1] https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/state-of-the-planet/world-waste-facts https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/state...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
monadic2 6y ago
I just assumed traders were irrational out of lack of education.
econcon 6y ago
India is building freight corridors which will be using electricity except for a couple of remote links on hilly areas. This will bring economics of scale right. When all emision will be in couple of power stations, it can be scrubbed and treated better and cheaper than going after individual diesel engines of trucks and locomotives. Freight corridors and land ports are going to lower the greenhouse and fog generation drastically.
specialist 6y ago
Agreed. We'll need carbon capture, even after the economy attains carbon zero, sufficient to counteract the natural processes (thawing tundra, burning forests, ocean acidification). I'm with Saul Griffith, David Roberts, and others, who advocate a mixed strategy, backed by a New Deal & WWII & Moon Shot style urgency and commitment. (So I'm for all kinds of solar, wind, geothermal, greatly improved building standards, algae farms, reforestation, prop up existing fission, next generation of fission, and maybe some day fusion. I support doing all of it.) Here's a fairly recent interview with Griffith. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/12/16/21024323/ezra-klein-show-saul-griffith-solve-climate-change https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/12/16/21024323/ezra-klein-... Griffith explains that solely market-based solutions won't be fast enough. We also need policy and investment.
nisten 6y ago
Stock markets haven't priced it in simply because people don't want to pay. Most nations that produce a lot of carbon waste would rather pay 0 for it and the lobbying is very strong to maintain the price of 0. If you start treating emissions the same way that you treat, say... dumping garbage, by assigning it a starting price, any price, 0.1 cents per ton, then and only then you enable the free market to process waste automatically. We already have a great system for this, it's very logical and market friendly, there's just no political will to actually implement it. It's called cap and trade. The problem is psychological, not technological. If all businesses have to trade pollution then obviously they will figure out how to measure it much more and more accurately. And engineers that work on emission-free solutions will work a lot faster if the market's paying them for each ton of waste they save. As for which solution will work best it is very hard to predict what the market will come up with, could be algae, chemical capture, genetically modified trees planted en masse, printed solar, miniature reactors or something else entirely. It doesn't even matter frankly, just give it a price and the hivemind of the market will automatically figure out the most competitive way to solve the problem.
- sudhirj 6y ago
  The political will for prevention is missing, but the will (and money) for the cure will come quickly. Wall Street will pay once the wet elevators stop working, Presidents, Prime Ministers and politicians will find the will once they spend a summer with heat exhaustion at their vacation homes. We're seeing a lot more acceptance now that the sky is gray with ash. Fixing the problem is not up for debate, but that will be so only after the problem clearly presents itself, not a minute before. This is same principle as a concrete manufacturer's stock going up after a tsunami – we will need to fix the problem, even if we're too lazy or short-sighted to prevent it.

dan-robertson 6y ago

You don’t necessarily need fusion or nuclear power to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At least theoretically, you get more energy from burning hydrocarbons than is necessary to capture the released CO2 from the atmosphere. So you can (in theory) burn hydrocarbons while capturing the emissions and still producing energy.

peanutz454 6y ago
Aren't we running out of hydrocarbons?
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  No. At the most trivial level they grow on trees or anything else that grows using photosynthesis. On a more pragmatic level usable reserves is not a fixed description of the world, it depends on technology. Fracking gets oil out of the ground at economic prices from what would have been unusable trash twenty years ago. You see the same thing in many different kinds of mining. There are places where they’re making a profit extracting iron from old tailings now, i.e. the waste from mining iron a hundred years ago is now itself profitable to mine for iron.
  - sudhirj 6y ago
    As a thought experiment (don't try this at home) it's actually feasible to cut all the trees on earth down, burn them without releasing that CO2 into the air and use that energy to scrub the atmosphere. This is a horrible idea, of course, but the illustrates the point above. All organic life either creates (via photosynthesis) or consumes hydrocarbons, so we have a lot of it to burn – the trick is not to let the gases into the air, which is what we never should have done in the first place.
sudhirj 6y ago
Yeah, that sort of makes sense. Hydrocarbons are carbon + water + energy package, and burning them gives out the energy which you can use for scrubbing the atmosphere, provided you don't exhaust carbon byproduct into the atmosphere, which is really what got us into this mess in the first place.
posix_me_less 6y ago
> So you can (in theory) burn hydrocarbons while capturing the emissions and still producing energy. I like this theory, any example of trying it in practice?
- ZeroGravitas 6y ago
  Theres working examples, however they use the captured CO2 to get more oil out of nearly exhausted oil wells, so its a bit of a non-solution. We will probably need to capture carbon but it'll be cheaper to use renewables or nuclear to provide the energy than burn oil. Even if you use fossil fuels as an input (say because youre capturing methane that would otherwise escape i to the atmosphere), you can do stuff like break them down into grapgite and hydrogen so you getha clean burning fuel and useful material.
credit_guy 6y ago
I just did the math and you are right: burning enough natural gas to release 1kg of CO2 releases about 20 MJ of energy (but we can't capture all of it because second principle of thermodynamics). Capturing 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere with this method requires 1.3 MJ, so it's feasible. But then, what do you do with the captured CO2? We put about 35 gigatons of CO2 in the air every year. Let's say we want to remove 15 of them, to get to the emissions level of 1980. 15 GT is staggering. For comparison, the world dumps about 2 GT of waste per year [1]. [1] https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/state-of-the-planet/world-waste-facts https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/state...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

monadic2 6y ago

I just assumed traders were irrational out of lack of education.

econcon 6y ago

India is building freight corridors which will be using electricity except for a couple of remote links on hilly areas. This will bring economics of scale right. When all emision will be in couple of power stations, it can be scrubbed and treated better and cheaper than going after individual diesel engines of trucks and locomotives. Freight corridors and land ports are going to lower the greenhouse and fog generation drastically.

specialist 6y ago

Agreed. We'll need carbon capture, even after the economy attains carbon zero, sufficient to counteract the natural processes (thawing tundra, burning forests, ocean acidification). I'm with Saul Griffith, David Roberts, and others, who advocate a mixed strategy, backed by a New Deal & WWII & Moon Shot style urgency and commitment. (So I'm for all kinds of solar, wind, geothermal, greatly improved building standards, algae farms, reforestation, prop up existing fission, next generation of fission, and maybe some day fusion. I support doing all of it.) Here's a fairly recent interview with Griffith. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/12/16/21024323/ezra-klein-show-saul-griffith-solve-climate-change https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/12/16/21024323/ezra-klein-... Griffith explains that solely market-based solutions won't be fast enough. We also need policy and investment.

nisten 6y ago

Stock markets haven't priced it in simply because people don't want to pay. Most nations that produce a lot of carbon waste would rather pay 0 for it and the lobbying is very strong to maintain the price of 0. If you start treating emissions the same way that you treat, say... dumping garbage, by assigning it a starting price, any price, 0.1 cents per ton, then and only then you enable the free market to process waste automatically. We already have a great system for this, it's very logical and market friendly, there's just no political will to actually implement it. It's called cap and trade. The problem is psychological, not technological. If all businesses have to trade pollution then obviously they will figure out how to measure it much more and more accurately. And engineers that work on emission-free solutions will work a lot faster if the market's paying them for each ton of waste they save. As for which solution will work best it is very hard to predict what the market will come up with, could be algae, chemical capture, genetically modified trees planted en masse, printed solar, miniature reactors or something else entirely. It doesn't even matter frankly, just give it a price and the hivemind of the market will automatically figure out the most competitive way to solve the problem.

sudhirj 6y ago
The political will for prevention is missing, but the will (and money) for the cure will come quickly. Wall Street will pay once the wet elevators stop working, Presidents, Prime Ministers and politicians will find the will once they spend a summer with heat exhaustion at their vacation homes. We're seeing a lot more acceptance now that the sky is gray with ash. Fixing the problem is not up for debate, but that will be so only after the problem clearly presents itself, not a minute before. This is same principle as a concrete manufacturer's stock going up after a tsunami – we will need to fix the problem, even if we're too lazy or short-sighted to prevent it.