5 ms·

So we should be doing calculations of "what percentage of its lifetime power production is required to sequester the carbon it took to create and use it?"

by goda90 5y ago

kristopolous 5y ago
That's almost a peak oil approach, which was both insufficient and the most accurate possible. We can only state things in terms of stuff which currently exists. The future will yield different results because new techniques and technologies will come along. But we can't rely on or predict them. There's a lot of "pons and fleischmanning" when talking about future energy use - mass scale geo-engineering or sucking carbon out of the atmosphere technology, it has to be avoided. The technologies don't exist yet. We have to use real-world stuff. Using current reality for future projections is inherently defective because of the innovation factor and routinely leads to bad predictions (such as peak oil[1]), but it's the only reality we have and is sadly as good as we're going to get. Anything else (such as say next-gen nuclear) has to be regarded as a fiction in the calculations until it actually exists. It's messy, sloppy, and requires a large trashcan but the alternative is to get to results that rely on things that literally do not actually exist. Kinda like how the people planning Operation Downfall (the land invasion of japan during ww2) weren't told about all the other things in the works (backroom deal to get Russia to declare war on Japan and the Manhattan project), they had to assume those things would continue to not happen. [1] - The Hubbert peak was essentially that the amount of energy to extract and refine oil would surpass the energy from the oil and thus make it unsustainable so the operations for oil extraction would cease. New techniques have been developed (such as fracking) which have changed this math, but in 1956, using 1956 knowledge, this was the best prediction possible. It's somewhat Malthusian - who was also as "correct as possible" with the best science that 1798 had to offer. He couldn't factor in, say, the Haber–Bosch process from 112 years in the future in his food growth computations.
- scarby2 5y ago
  > Using current reality for future projections is inherently defective because of the innovation factor and routinely leads to bad predictions (such as peak oil[1]), but it's the only reality we have and is sadly as good as we're going to get. Anything else (such as say next-gen nuclear) has to be regarded as a fiction in the calculations until it actually exists. but are certain that at least one of these fictitious scenarios will come into being. We just have no certainty as to which.
jandrese 5y ago
The first step in this is inventing a scalable way of sequestering the carbon from atmospheric CO2. We have been talking about carbon markets for over three decades now and still have not solved the supply side of the equation. It's frankly embarrassing.
- rapind 5y ago
  Is it embarrassing? Maybe it’s a shortage of market incentives or maybe it’s just a really difficult problem? We shouldn’t assume we’ll have innovative solutions for everything. I think a healthier futuristic perspective would be one that considers only some percentage of problems will be solved through innovation, at least in the near term. That way we accept we still could be screwed and need to work harder!
  - jandrese 5y ago
    It's embarrassing that we are still using fossil fuels without any plan to deal with the pollution it causes. It isn't like people weren't aware of the problem either, I remember talks in the 80s about the Greenhouse Effect and how we needed to act quickly before the problem got out of hand. We're already well past the point where if we just stopped emitting we will be ok. We now need carbon capture as part of the solution and thus far nothing has panned out. Nor is there much political will to actually push for solutions. They're just seen as pure cost that will make your country less competitive so nobody wants to be the only country who goes for "truth" in this prisoner's dilemma.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      The big problems in the 80s were acid rain and recycling. We kind of nailed those. Global warming wasn't as important as a nuclear winter. Embarrassing to use fossil fuels? In front of who? some future self who judges you? Wait till you see next decades' problems.
      - beebeepka 5y ago
        Recycling has been nailed? I might have missed a few major breakthroughs because the plastixa problem seems anything but fixed to me

So we should be doing calculations of "what percentage of its lifetime power production is required to sequester the carbon it took to create and use it?"

by goda90 5y ago

So we should be doing calculations of "what percentage of its lifetime power production is required to sequester the carbon it took to create and use it?"

kristopolous 5y ago

That's almost a peak oil approach, which was both insufficient and the most accurate possible. We can only state things in terms of stuff which currently exists. The future will yield different results because new techniques and technologies will come along. But we can't rely on or predict them. There's a lot of "pons and fleischmanning" when talking about future energy use - mass scale geo-engineering or sucking carbon out of the atmosphere technology, it has to be avoided. The technologies don't exist yet. We have to use real-world stuff. Using current reality for future projections is inherently defective because of the innovation factor and routinely leads to bad predictions (such as peak oil[1]), but it's the only reality we have and is sadly as good as we're going to get. Anything else (such as say next-gen nuclear) has to be regarded as a fiction in the calculations until it actually exists. It's messy, sloppy, and requires a large trashcan but the alternative is to get to results that rely on things that literally do not actually exist. Kinda like how the people planning Operation Downfall (the land invasion of japan during ww2) weren't told about all the other things in the works (backroom deal to get Russia to declare war on Japan and the Manhattan project), they had to assume those things would continue to not happen. [1] - The Hubbert peak was essentially that the amount of energy to extract and refine oil would surpass the energy from the oil and thus make it unsustainable so the operations for oil extraction would cease. New techniques have been developed (such as fracking) which have changed this math, but in 1956, using 1956 knowledge, this was the best prediction possible. It's somewhat Malthusian - who was also as "correct as possible" with the best science that 1798 had to offer. He couldn't factor in, say, the Haber–Bosch process from 112 years in the future in his food growth computations.

scarby2 5y ago
> Using current reality for future projections is inherently defective because of the innovation factor and routinely leads to bad predictions (such as peak oil[1]), but it's the only reality we have and is sadly as good as we're going to get. Anything else (such as say next-gen nuclear) has to be regarded as a fiction in the calculations until it actually exists. but are certain that at least one of these fictitious scenarios will come into being. We just have no certainty as to which.

jandrese 5y ago

The first step in this is inventing a scalable way of sequestering the carbon from atmospheric CO2. We have been talking about carbon markets for over three decades now and still have not solved the supply side of the equation. It's frankly embarrassing.

rapind 5y ago
Is it embarrassing? Maybe it’s a shortage of market incentives or maybe it’s just a really difficult problem? We shouldn’t assume we’ll have innovative solutions for everything. I think a healthier futuristic perspective would be one that considers only some percentage of problems will be solved through innovation, at least in the near term. That way we accept we still could be screwed and need to work harder!
- jandrese 5y ago
  It's embarrassing that we are still using fossil fuels without any plan to deal with the pollution it causes. It isn't like people weren't aware of the problem either, I remember talks in the 80s about the Greenhouse Effect and how we needed to act quickly before the problem got out of hand. We're already well past the point where if we just stopped emitting we will be ok. We now need carbon capture as part of the solution and thus far nothing has panned out. Nor is there much political will to actually push for solutions. They're just seen as pure cost that will make your country less competitive so nobody wants to be the only country who goes for "truth" in this prisoner's dilemma.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    The big problems in the 80s were acid rain and recycling. We kind of nailed those. Global warming wasn't as important as a nuclear winter. Embarrassing to use fossil fuels? In front of who? some future self who judges you? Wait till you see next decades' problems.
    - beebeepka 5y ago
      Recycling has been nailed? I might have missed a few major breakthroughs because the plastixa problem seems anything but fixed to me