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> With a lot of these problems more funding leads to faster solutions Evidence, please. Would more funding for nuclear fusion lead to faster commercial-scale e

> With a lot of these problems more funding leads to faster solutions Evidence, please. Would more funding for nuclear fusion lead to faster commercial-scale electric plants? Explain how the fundamental physics problems can get solved faster. > China seems really patient about Taiwan. I'd call that "wishful thinking." Given that they just demonstrated how they can effectively blockade the island without an invasion.

HWR_14 4y ago
> explain how the fundamental physics problems can get solved faster. That's not what I said. For engineering projects, even novel ones, funding leads to faster results. I mean, look at what you can do in WWII when you literally decided that physicists should get so many resources because the A-Bomb was that important. And if your concern is storing and transmitting energy, there are engineering ways to do that at scale. It's expensive, but doable. > Given that they just demonstrated how they can effectively blockade the island without an invasion. A multi-year blockade is pretty patient. I'm not saying China will never act. Clearly, they are slowly moving. I'm saying they'll go slow enough that it will never come to nukes.
- UIUC_06 4y ago
  You said "With a lot of these problems." Maybe you should clarify which problems you mean. And which ones (e.g. toxic chemicals in solar array manufacturing) really are fundamental physics and not engineering.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Toxic chemicals are only required for photovoltaic solar generation. Focused heat solar generation (which is only possible at a large scale) both produces no toxic chemicals and is more efficient. But the answer to "which problems" is "the ones keeping us from green energy". I though that was pretty obvious.
    - UIUC_06 4y ago
      OK. Then the question is "would adding more money speed it up, or are all available resources already being used as effectively as they can be?" I don't know the answer to that, but I'm always suspicious when the answer is always "more!" no matter how much is already being spent. It suggests that simply saying "more" is a substitute for any detailed analysis.
      - ElevenLathe 4y ago
        I understand this position normally, but we unquestionably need many orders of magnitude more investment in non-carbon-producing forms of energy and energy storage if we have any hope at all of decarbonizing at some large fraction of current living standards. The situation right now is really dire and almost any cost is worth paying. IMO we definitely will not do this investment, so the remaining likely scenarios are grim. Either we successfully decarbonize but at much lower standards of living OR we just keep burning stuff we found in the ground and the biosphere collapses.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        > "would adding more money speed it up, or are all available resources already being used as effectively as they can be?" That question doesn't make sense. More money adds more resources. So even if they only have 50% efficiency, increasing the money will increase the resources. And clearly not all resources are going to avert climate change. For instance, we can fix the "transmission" problem by just choosing area close to desert cities and building plants there as opposed to further away where they are expensive. We could have giant artificial gravity storage. Those things are very expensive, but they are also very doable. We could be carrying bowling balls up the Empire State Building to build local energy storage. But we don't need to go that far. The US is just beginning to suggest that using groundwater at 100-1000x the rate of it recovering to drain the aquifers that took many millennia to fill to grow alfalfa in the desert might be a bad idea. And don't forget, a key argument being made was that salaries aren't high enough to get the best people (especially those choosing majors in college) into the greening industry as opposed to SV or Wall St.

HWR_14 4y ago

> explain how the fundamental physics problems can get solved faster. That's not what I said. For engineering projects, even novel ones, funding leads to faster results. I mean, look at what you can do in WWII when you literally decided that physicists should get so many resources because the A-Bomb was that important. And if your concern is storing and transmitting energy, there are engineering ways to do that at scale. It's expensive, but doable. > Given that they just demonstrated how they can effectively blockade the island without an invasion. A multi-year blockade is pretty patient. I'm not saying China will never act. Clearly, they are slowly moving. I'm saying they'll go slow enough that it will never come to nukes.

UIUC_06 4y ago
You said "With a lot of these problems." Maybe you should clarify which problems you mean. And which ones (e.g. toxic chemicals in solar array manufacturing) really are fundamental physics and not engineering.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Toxic chemicals are only required for photovoltaic solar generation. Focused heat solar generation (which is only possible at a large scale) both produces no toxic chemicals and is more efficient. But the answer to "which problems" is "the ones keeping us from green energy". I though that was pretty obvious.
  - UIUC_06 4y ago
    OK. Then the question is "would adding more money speed it up, or are all available resources already being used as effectively as they can be?" I don't know the answer to that, but I'm always suspicious when the answer is always "more!" no matter how much is already being spent. It suggests that simply saying "more" is a substitute for any detailed analysis.
    - ElevenLathe 4y ago
      I understand this position normally, but we unquestionably need many orders of magnitude more investment in non-carbon-producing forms of energy and energy storage if we have any hope at all of decarbonizing at some large fraction of current living standards. The situation right now is really dire and almost any cost is worth paying. IMO we definitely will not do this investment, so the remaining likely scenarios are grim. Either we successfully decarbonize but at much lower standards of living OR we just keep burning stuff we found in the ground and the biosphere collapses.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      > "would adding more money speed it up, or are all available resources already being used as effectively as they can be?" That question doesn't make sense. More money adds more resources. So even if they only have 50% efficiency, increasing the money will increase the resources. And clearly not all resources are going to avert climate change. For instance, we can fix the "transmission" problem by just choosing area close to desert cities and building plants there as opposed to further away where they are expensive. We could have giant artificial gravity storage. Those things are very expensive, but they are also very doable. We could be carrying bowling balls up the Empire State Building to build local energy storage. But we don't need to go that far. The US is just beginning to suggest that using groundwater at 100-1000x the rate of it recovering to drain the aquifers that took many millennia to fill to grow alfalfa in the desert might be a bad idea. And don't forget, a key argument being made was that salaries aren't high enough to get the best people (especially those choosing majors in college) into the greening industry as opposed to SV or Wall St.