jackdeansmith

8 ms·

31.
by jackdeansmith 6y ago
For me, the only thing keeping me from going to 100% electric for my household is that nobody seems to offer an EV with 200 miles of range with AWD and clearance for a rough forest road with potholes. Until then, we're sticking to a sh
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
Even an EV powered 100% by coal is creating less emissions than a gas powered vehicle, the reason for this is that electric drivetrains are very efficient.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
I've seen a decent amount of extension cord -> street parking rigs in the Seattle area. Seems fine for trickle charging but I sure as hell wouldn't use a no-name generic extension cord from amazon.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
I dig the idea of self reliance and preparedness, but like you pointed out, fossil fuels and small generators solve the problem really well. In most places in the US, the grid is pretty reliable so optimizing the system for those handful of
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
100% agree about grid modernization and resilience being high priorities, but as I pointed out in another comment, the economies of scale for renewables are really really massive (utility scale solar is about half the unit cost of residenti
36.
by jackdeansmith 6y ago
In the US at least, transmission loss seems to be on order of 5% of total energy distributed. Source: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3#:~:text=Th... . The economies of scale seem to be much lar
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
Why de-centralized power generation? I was under the impression that the electrical distribution system is very efficient in the US and economies of scale make large scale renewables much cheaper.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
The term you're looking for is "enhanced weathering"
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
Plastic recycling is mostly B.S., it's difficult and so energy intensive that it's usually better for the environment to landfill the old plastic and make new stuff. Metal and paper recycling is very environmentally sound though.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
> Perhaps the lockdown, no-travel policies should be rescinded, given the news regarding the vaccines. Exactly the opposite, with a good vaccine only a few months away, putting everything on pause makes even more sense.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
> "And have neglected to acknowledge that many of our seniors — the most vulnerable among us — don’t even want that kind of ‘safety’ because it costs precious moments with their families." > "They already achieved quant
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
If sin were a globally distributed problem where: 1. the aggregate amount of sin in the world caused suffering 2. indulgences actually reduced the aggregate amount of sin in the world then the indulgence system would make perfect sense. I a
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
If Tesla makes a hot hatch I will buy it immediately, don't want to get my hopes up about this ever coming to the US through
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
WFH has positive externalities due to less transportation demand, if your goal is to provide assistance to low income people this is a much worse way to do it than a simple progressive tax/redistribution scheme.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
Doesn't seem like there's a lot of research, but the one study I could find seems to agree that specifically the climate impact of natural fur is quite a bit higher than faux fur: https://www.cedelft.eu/en/pub
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
He runs this website which claims that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming: https://globalwarmingsolved.com/faq/#physics . Calling him anything more than a crank is extremely generous
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
This is the organization pushing this "research": https://www.ceres-science.com/index.html I'll leave the hopefully scientifically literate crowd here to see how reputable they are. I skimmed the paper, it se
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
Not affiliated with stripe here, but I'm guessing because tree planting can't scale up to the level of removal that's necessary and renewable energy is already pretty far down the cost learning curve. Stripe has limited capit
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
Even one we reach net-zero emissions (which I agree, is proving to be an incredibly hard task politically) we still have the problem of a century of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Getting our climate back to pre-industrial is going to
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
Somewhere in the middle I'd guess, I'd say more like photovoltaics about ten years ago. There's still a lot of room for improving efficiency and manufacturing cheap hardware.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
As far as nature based solutions go, this study on the potential for afforestation is a good place to start: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14887/ . Simply put, there isn't enoug
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
If sin were a global problem where the total amount of sin in the world caused suffering, and indulgences actually reduced the total amount of sin in the world, the system of indulgences would make perfect sense.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
> They paid $775/ton. Coal is $30/ton. That's the whole problem, the cost of coal needs to come up and that's something that's in policy makers hands. Stripe is trying to reduce that $775 by investing early in th
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
> the earth can heal itself if we stop polluting it Nope, we're currently moving gigatons of carbon from the geosphere to the atmosphere and a significant amount of that carbon will remain for tens of thousands of years. If we mirac
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
Trees eventually rot or burn, carbon stored in the biosphere can be a useful "capacitor" for reducing atmospheric carbon, but in the long run we really need to put it back in the geosphere where we got it from.
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
It depends on what you mean by offset. If you're okay with carbon stored in the biosphere by trees then there are plenty of programs. If you want to put carbon back in the geosphere (since trees eventually rot or burn) sending money to
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
> the grid is still awash with coal power! Not really, coal is quickly vanishing from the US electricity sector due to cheap natural gas and renewables. I see no reason that trend won't continue. Source: https://www.eia.g
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
> The ONLY solution is to take carbon spending to ~0 and only then focus on removing it from the air. I object to the "only then". Cutting emissions is absolutely the top priority, but we're going to need to scale up carbo
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
This article makes a major mistake when addressing the benefits of a traditional 401k. When you contribute, you avoid paying taxes at your marginal rate and when you withdraw (for most people at least, who will fund their retirement prima
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by jackdeansmith 6y ago
> Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free Payments are also about establishing trust, which goes wrong a lot. You can in practice make payments very cheap with some cryptocurrency schemes, but don't get fraud

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