Technological progress will solve any policy problem. If you make it so that wind, solar, and next generation nuclear power is cheaper than other alternatives and more desirable, the market will progressively switch. Most technological improvements did not wait for a policy to change to induce revolutions in their respective fields. Now everyone is investing in Energy, and there's hardly any need for policy when the market is already full steam in investment mode.

> If you make it so that wind, solar, and next generation nuclear power is cheaper than other alternatives and more desirable, the market will progressively switch.

Not necessarily. Lots of people have jobs in coal, oil and gas production, and those constituencies will often vote for politicians who promise to keep those jobs around. They can do this through heavily subsidizing the cost of fossil fuels (which they currently do) in order to reduce the extent to which the economic benefits of clean energy can influence the market.

In the long term, they probably can't keep this up, but we don't really have a "long term" anymore.

If you divide the total subsidies aluminum smelters in Germany receive by the number of jobs then you get 440,000€ of subsidies per job per year, the workers themselves only see a fraction of that. Unsustainability has never stopped politicians from doing stupid things.

I’d rather employ people to sit around (or not) and study/do whatever productive thing they want than enforce otherwise not needed work.

Not needed work is kind of already dis-incentivezed -- if its not needed, generally there is less market demand for it, but it behoves me to ignore all the exceptions propped up by cultural events and/or clever and insidious marketing like MLM.

Funny you mention study, because that's what people do in university and college, but in America they get a fat student loan when they graduate...

But how does that relate to a 440,000€/job/year subsidy? On paper it seems wasteful but I'm no expert in the economics of propping up the aluminium industry in Germany. Maybe it's a strategic move for national defence.

We don't really subsidize fossil fuels. I thought that your comment was interesting, so I looked it up. These "subsidies" are just completely normal stuff that ordinary American businesses get.

Mostly it is tax deductions. Everybody is getting tax deductions. Everybody from your local hair salon to Microsoft is taking tax deductions. For the fuel companies this includes income tax, fees for shipping, and royalties for extracting the resources. The only really offensive one is a deduction for BP's punishment, which sort of undoes the punishment... though that is fair if the tobacco companies got to do likewise for their punishment.

The rest is just the unpaid share of the cost of running various government agencies. First of all this isn't generally something the companies feel they benefit from; ditching OSHA/EPA/etc. would probably please them. Second of all, again it is something we do for all American businesses.

As with any other American businesses, wind and solar providers get the subsidies. They also get special environmental subsidies, which are huge.

I think this dispute started because the abnormal subsidies being provided to wind/solar providers have become a political issue. The wind/solar providers respond by pushing the narrative that fossil fuels get subsidies, but that just isn't a reasonable conclusion. The supposed subsidies are just normal things provided to American businesses, unlike what wind and solar are getting.

> We don't really subsidize fossil fuels.

If we allowed a restaurant to dump its trash for free in a public playground, we would be subsidizing that restaurant with taxpayer dollars.

When we allow fossil fuels to be burned and dump pollution for free into the public atmosphere, we are subsidizing the usage of fossil fuel.

In the trash scenario, we'd make the restaurant pay for cleanup, pay medical costs for the kids who got ill, and pay for its future trash disposal. Burning fossil fuels causes asthma, climate change, flooding, etc, and remediation costs should be borne by those who cause the damage.

If you consider the billions of dollars we all spend dealing with fossil fuel companies' waste, it's quite a subsidy. The least we can do is make them compete on a level playing field.

Perhaps this could be dismissed as semantics, but saying that we don't subsidize fossil fuels seems to not jibe with the reality that the only countries that have lower gasoline prices in world are countries whose economies are predominantly fossil-fuel based. See https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/gas-prices/#20184:United-...

If the US gasoline costs were even close to EU levels, (say, 2x what we pay), there'd be an inversion in household energy consumption economics (and it'd be the difference between 2% and 5% of household incomes). EVs wouldn't be just for tree-huggers. Buying from 100% clean electrical sources might be cheaper than "standard" sources.

The US has a large well-unified market with good transportation and local sources of fuel. That cuts costs.

Other places, like the EU, don't have all that. They also apply some really extreme taxes. Lack of punitive taxes isn't a subsidy. If the taxes are never imposed in the first place, it isn't even a tax credit.

The average gasoline tax in the US is $0.53 per gallon total, combining all taxes. Just the excise tax in Turkey is $4.32 per gallon!!! The average gasoline-specific tax in the 34 advanced economies is $2.62 per gallon, but then a VAT is applied on top of that.

The federal coal leasing program has been a frequent target for overpricing coal with some estimates at around a billion a year in benefit. There's also things like opening new areas for drilling in areas that are only profitable when subsidized (and then the subsidies come in), which is not a normal tax policy arrangement, at least not the kind your hairdresser has with the federal government.

The cost of "unions protecting their job" increases further as the alternatives get cheaper over time. So it's not sustainable in any way. Additionally, fossil fuels are usually subsidized the most in local areas where they are mined/extracted so states/regions with no such natural resources can be expected to move way faster in adopting new forms of energy production.

While the UMWA certainly has a vested interested in keeping coal mining jobs around, blaming unions for protectionism here is a little far down the value chain.

This is very true. I live in the DC area and the number of ridiculous "clean coal" ads plastered all over public transit and TV/radio here is insane.

Lobbyists will be the death of us all.

> If you make it so that wind, solar, and next generation nuclear power is cheaper than other alternatives and more desirable, the market will progressively switch.

Not necessarily... it depends on if it's actually cheaper, or just fake government-subsidized cheaper. Sure, you'll get companies milking government subsidies for all they are worth while they last, but if solar isn't actually cheaper than coal, "the market" isn't going to switch.

There’s also fake externalities-subsidized cheaper. Coal is incredibly expensive when you account for the environmental and health costs. But those costs aren’t borne by the people burning coal, so it doesn’t cause markets to switch away.

Yeah, you could factor in the healthcare cost linked to burning coal and ask coal industries to pay for some or all of it. Would change incentives a lot.

Spot on. In other industries, the entrenched, established incumbents' products are only viable because they are "fake government-subsidized cheaper" (ah ehm...looking at you, corn). I'd not be surprised to see this happening with fossil fuels here in the U.S. one day – maybe it already is?

> If you make it so that wind, solar, and next generation nuclear power is cheaper than other alternatives and more desirable, the market will progressively switch

Not necessarily.. in the UK I've lots of good ideas get ditched early on because they're allegedly "not a good fit", or "uneconomic". What I suspect that really means in many cases is that someone in government or their family has a vested interest in a technology that this would replace, and it gets ditched. As long as we have elected "representatives" like this, nothing will change.

The government is not the only one to make decisions. Companies, individuals, communities, towns, regions can also decide to build their own infrastructure. Hardly every country is completely centralized from top to bottom.

> Technological progress will solve any policy problem. If you make it so that wind, solar, and next generation nuclear power is cheaper than other alternatives and more desirable, the market will progressively switch.

Two problems.

First, progressive switching is slower than needed to even decelerate warming. The system already has enormous momentum and it cannot be arrested easily and with gentle measures.

Second, technological path dependency is extremely strong. Historically the kinds of jolts to move from one systemic technological optimum to another (eg steam-rail-telegram to oil-road-radio) have been enormous. Wars and depressions, mostly. It would be nice to avoid these.

> First, progressive switching is slower than needed to even decelerate warming

Since climate models are certainly not as accurate as we would like them to be, this is hard to say.

Second, progressive switching can be really, really fast. Look how fast people moved away from feature phones to smartphones. Complete conversion within a decade. Energy production carries more lag but still, progressive does not mean slow. When options are more attractive economically it will be a landslide.

Tech improvememt is certainly not linked to war. Look at all the tech progress we made in so many areas in the past 60 years without any major conflict happening. There is no rationale for progress to be dependent on conflict, at least it is not a model that explains anything anymore.

> Since climate models are certainly not as accurate as we would like them to be, this is hard to say.

They don't have to be very accurate at this point. Matter is conserved, including atmospheric CO2. It takes time to put in, it takes time to get out. Given that the only "out" right now is natural processes, it will take decades for CO2 to return to previous levels even if emissions dropped to zero instantly.

Underestimation of momentum is also true for capital-intensive shifts in dominant technology mixes. These shifts do not happen overnight; capital plant and equipment has substantial lags for decision time, financing, construction and onlining. These lags are going to vary by region, industry and technology. That adds substantially to overall reaction time under the just-let-it-ride scenario.

Misunderstanding the effects of accumulation is normal: http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/CroninGonzalezSterman061210....

Markets can and do dynamically adapt to circumstances, supply shocks, technological change so on. But they do not tend to overcome path dependency (we're all using QWERTY and standard gauge rail for no reason other than that's what locked in) and they do not have magical powers to ignore physics.

> we're all using QWERTY [...] for no reason other than that's what locked in

We are all using QWERTY because it's not bad. You could switch to anything else and it would not be so much better. It's a local maxima that is good enough and it happened for historical reasons.

Most people are not held down by the keyboard setting. They don't need to type faster, and if they did, they would need to think faster first - it's not the tool that is the bottleneck in this particular case.

> It's a local maxima that is good enough and it happened for historical reasons.

That's my exact point. It's textbook path dependency.

If we always waited for the technical progress to give something cheaper and better, we'd still be using leaded gasoline and CFCs everywhere.

Except we don't have time to wait for technological progress to catch up sufficiently to resolve the current policy problems.

When you do that, here's my little suggestion for a policy: a carbon duty.

It seems to me the biggest argument against doing something is that any action we take would be useless if country X doesn't do anything.

But with a carbon duty, this is much less of a difficult collective action problem. Impose a significant duty on products coming from countries which are not meeting some reasonable target for carbon emissions.

This still falls into the "country X doesn't do anything" trap.

If France imposes a carbon duty but Britain doesn't, British companies will have access to cheaper goods. British citizens will have greater purchasing power and British companies will have an economic advantage.

France might say, "Britain doesn't do anything about climate change" as they're supporting the carbon emissions in other countries by importing their goods.

This would still only work if enough countries banded together to enforce it that it became too difficult to grow an international company without access to carbon duty countries.

Yup, last year's Nobel winner in economics has suggested exactly that

https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/

sooo all other countries will pay for it while US will keep pumping oil and burning coal? With US leaving the Paris Accord? That sounds very strange.

I purposefully left out a bunch of details because then people start debating the details rather than the main point. So I used the very nebulous "meeting some reasonable target for carbon emissions".

If the country imposing the carbon duty isn't also meeting the "reasonable target" then the carbon duty becomes very hypocritical and ineffective at influencing other nations.

I also didn't say that it has to be the US imposing this carbon duty, I see it as most effective if it's a small group of countries working together to try and grow their action into a large group.

Soooo, we introduce a set of trade tariffs where imports are tax depending on the degree to which the exporting country has already imposed a carbon tax on manufacturer.

You are missing the point. Imposing tariffs is a way to force other countries to follow some rules. But if your own country doesn't follow those rules, what sense does it make? And that's the situation here, because the 3 largest CO2 producers are US, Russia and China, naturally, because they are biggest. But China actually invested heavily into solar and lowering their CO2, such as electric buses, while US left Paris Accord, rejected Green New Deal, started more oil drills and did a bunch of other things that actually increased their CO2 production. So if anyone should impose carbon duties, it's everyone else around US to force US to start following the rules.

I talking about the other countries. Import import duties reflecting the cost of the global pollution created by the manufacturer of the goods.

But CNN has spent the past month telling me that tariffs = bad. I guess they’re OK so long as they’re introduced for noble reasons?

I mean... yeah. Tariffs are bad for the economy. But if you're willing to slow down the economy for a good enough reason, then yes, it's okay.

So tariff's are a tool that can be used for good or bad? So, was the message the previous poster receiving that tariff's are bad, or that the current use of tariff's are bad? If it was the former, it disagrees with your message.

Wait is this place CNN or is it HN?

I'm not clear on how that factors in. The previous poster's point was that there was a push of the message that 'tariffs are bad' that seems to have some level of social acceptance, but now that there is a desired use of tariffs there seems to be a change in opinion.

That is overall a very weak standard of evidence, and taken by itself isn't worth much at all. But taken with other incidents in the past few years people might reach the conclusion that there is a great deal of double standards being used to measure certain politicians. This results in a comment said in passing that signals they feel that the current acceptance or lack thereof of tariffs is another case of that double standard.

Perhaps one could argue that such said in passing remarks are not acceptable for the level of discourse excepted by NH comments (though this risks becoming recursive).

Most recent proposal in the US -

Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/763

> But climate change has shifted from a technological problem to a policy problem.

There is no such thing as shifting from a "technological problem" to a "policy problem". Technology creates the landscape on which political choices are made. Where a problem cannot be solved due to political costs, technology can provide alternative solutions that are more politically tenable.

We may have a "cocktail of tech" ready for fighting climate change, but it's not of the right mix; it doesn't have the right political taste.

Getting Gates involved in politics? That's not without its own risks, and it may not be the best use of his time.

IMO, policy has a huge impact on technology. For example, if carbon was priced to include its climate change externality, the market would respond with solutions.

I'm not disputing that - if emissions were priced in, we wouldn't be anywhere near the mess we're in. Note however, that pricing carbon correctly is not a politically viable solution today. There are many reasons for that, and some of those reasons are addressable by technology. For instance, electrification of transport is a possible way of reducing carbon pricing's potential impact on costs of necessities and transportation - making the necessary political adjustment this much less bitter for people, and by extension politicians.

Politics is an art of endless trade-offs; technology plays a vital role in shaping those trade-offs.

Policy shapes technology and technology shapes policy.

Choosing which directions to focus research on rather than relying on happenstance or the market is policy.

Therefore it all comes down to policy.

It's a feedback loop all right, but some parts of it are easier to nudge than others. Policy tends to be fixed, as it's based on fixed characteristics of human brain and fixed phenomena like those explored in game theory. More effort put into politicking will not yield better results (EDIT: it might do some good; see downthread). Technology is mutable, in the sense that more effort (and money) put into it yields meaningful change, that can also shift policy.

Note that your argument right now boils down to "we need to invest more in right technology"; while the decision is political, it's literally the opposite of what people mean when they say something is a "political problem" and not a "technological problem".

"More effort put into politicking will not yield better results."

I disagree strongly. It's my belief that this attitude is a big part of the reason why we're not actually doing anything.

Depending on the poll and the degree of action requested, a small majority of Americans or a large minority supports climate change action. Policy action is very possible.

I still feel that investing in more political activity will achieve little, as that activity will get drowned in the noise. I'll think more about it though - I just recalled a good argument for your position: the NRA. From what I hear, the NRA is a small minority, but their success comes from being the only ones bothering to organize and push for their point of view.

Thank you!

Agreed that political activity is really really hard and often fruitless. But when it's important enough we still have to try.

> But when it's important enough we still have to try.

That I absolutely agree with.

Thank you for bearing with me and letting me figure out updates to my position on politics.

> Note however, that pricing carbon correctly is not a politically viable solution today.

Then this should be what all of us are focused on because the future of humanity is dependent on getting everyone on board with this.

Agreed. My point is, however, that while carbon pricing may be ultimately a political decision, technology has plenty of opportunities to make this decision easier and more likely to happen.

A country deciding to correctly price in environmental impact today would tank its economy on the spot. But availability of alternatives with lower emissions to various economical activities (e.g. electric cars as an alternative to ICE cars) allows that country to incentivize their use and offers opportunities to start pricing in emissions piece by piece.

The reasons why good solutions aren't implemented aren't always and only "because politicians are corrupt"; sometimes it's because they're impossible to push through (e.g. you'd lose election to someone who doesn't want to do this), and/or because going full-steam ahead risks social unrest and civil war, none of which will help climate.

Don't excise taxes in Europe on gasoline kind of count as taxing carbon? They are doing okay. Not great, but okay.

Kind of. I know only a bit about Polish excise taxes, and I don't think the taxes on petrol and LPG were introduced due to climate concerns. Taxing other fuels used for electricity generation and heating dates back to XIX century, way before anyone thought about the impact on climate.

Here's a breakdown of Polish fuel prices as of 2016:

https://www.bankier.pl/wiadomosc/Co-sklada-sie-na-cene-paliw...

TL;DR: price breakdown for Pb 95 gasoline: 39% net refinery price, 37% excise tax, 3% road tax, 19% VAT, 2% seller's margin. A carbon tax could presumably take the place of excise tax, but given that it's a big part of country's tax income, I think it'll have to be added on top.

As for acceptance, I'm somewhat surprised we don't have our own "yellow vests" - ask any Polish driver about gasoline prices, and you'll hear an angry rant about how expensive it is; mention a carbon tax, and they'll scream at you that >50% of the price is already taxes.

I figured that the main point of a carbon tax is to make it more expensive, so people would use less of it. And I think those Polish drivers are right. People would not accept a carbon tax on top of excise taxes on gasoline. In Estonia the 44.1% of the final price of gasoline was excise taxes and another 20% of it was VAT. 64.37% of the final price was purely tax.[0]

The story is very similar in all the other European countries as well. Countries that have a GDP per capita 2 to 3 times lower than the US are paying more for gasoline.

[0] https://infogram.com/kutusehinnad-1h0r6r83kyxl4ek

>Then this should be what all of us are focused on because the future of humanity is dependent on getting everyone on board with this.

How about we make so much technological progress that removes our reliance on cheap carbon emissions that we can tax carbon emissions without affecting people very much therefore removing the need to get everyone on board.

Agreed.

If technology gets to the point where the cost of dealing with carbon is on the same order as municipal water and sewer it won't be a political problem.

The policy problem is that there is a large chunk of people who don't even think there is a problem. How is that going to be solved with a different "mix" of tech?

The different mix of tech will make it cheap/easy enough to do the "right thing" from a carbon perspective that few will do anything else.

I could burn my trash but my taxes pay the city to pay a company to come around once a week and collect a barrel from my house so why bother.

I drive ICE cars because in terms of results per dollar they're an obviously better deal than anything with lithium batteries. When it's no longer the economically obvious choice to drive ICE cars I'll stop doing it but not before then.

> When it's no longer the economically obvious choice to drive ICE cars I'll stop doing it but not before then.

Note that this may happen with policy alone. Many countries and cities around the world are now heavily subsidizing electric cars, through things like tax breaks and waiving parking fees. This is only possible because electric cars are an available option.

How does people having the right opinion change anything? I live in an extremely liberal city, and I still see people driving almost everywhere. They’re not all driving Teslas or even Priuses either.

Sadly, the people you are referring to won’t change until they feel the pain. And possibly not even then.

> but it's not of the right mix; it doesn't have the right political taste.

What's that have to do with the technology?

I described it above. Technology offers options for policy.

Our climate-solving cocktail of 20 years ago involved things like drastic reduction of car use in favour of mass transit, and mass deployment of nuclear power to replace fossil fuel plants. We would be in much better shape today if that was done, but that set of solutions was (and still is) politically untenable - so technologists had (and still have) to invent different solutions, that are easier for politicians to implement.

I've generally found Bill Gates to be actively unhelpful to this end. Even in this blog he sounds very negative that nothing can be done unless all the companies he personally invests in come up with something.

In reality, if there was the political will to roll out existing solutions we'd all be richer, healthier and happier, but another bunch of rich and powerful guys would prefer that their investments paid off.

We probably wouldn't be richer. Any solution is likely less efficient economically than what we currently have and thus we'd be poorer. We might be healthier, but even that is a tough sell considering that any realistic solution will impact the poor much more than the rich. Even if you offered universal healthcare economic difficulty would still impact poor people's health, because your health depends on factors like food as well.

This is why there's little political will to do something about climate change. It will mostly come at the expense of poor people, because climate change is a consumption problem and the poor, as a collective, consume more than the rich.

I think your facts are upside down. The externality of climate change and other pollution is what takes us away from efficiency.

But even ignoring that, to give just a couple of concrete examples: shutting down coal-fired power stations in America would save Americans billions just in the cost of electricity. That's completely ignoring pollution and climate change. Yet there's a lobby fighting to stop that. Do you really think that's because they're worried about poor people?

Every single projection suggests that electric cars will be cheaper than their ICE counterparts due to their massively higher efficiency, again even if you ignore local and global pollution. Yet there's an organised lobby fighting against that move. Is this because they're worried about poor people?

>But even ignoring that, to give just a couple of concrete examples: shutting down coal-fired power stations in America would save Americans billions just in the cost of electricity. That's completely ignoring pollution and climate change.

And they are shutting down, because they are becoming economically unviable. Natural gas seems to be much more efficient, but both of these have a significant impact on climate change.

>Every single projection suggests that electric cars will be cheaper than their ICE counterparts due to their massively higher efficiency, again even if you ignore local and global pollution. Yet there's an organised lobby fighting against that move. Is this because they're worried about poor people?

It's not about being worried about poor people. It's about being worried about getting votes. If you're the person that doubles the prices, then you're going to be unpopular in the future.

Aside from that, electric cars are projected to be cheaper, but they are not yet cheaper. Electric cars can't even fulfill the same needs that a normal car does. Say you live in an apartment, like many poor people do. They can't charge their car overnight. Not only that, it takes a lot longer to charge it at a charging station. The car also doesn't have the same range.

Also, keep in mind that electric cars will only matter if those coal plants that are replaced by nuclear or some renewable. Otherwise it matters little. Yes, it reduces the impact, but we need more than just the reduction of the impact.

Policy is messy and subject to differing values. Bill Gates would do worse getting into policy. He would turn off people who currently like what he is doing because his moral values are different from theirs. I don't even need to know anything about Bill Gate's moral values state this.

Climate change is a losing battle from a policy perspective; most citizens don't care and elected officials are actively hostile to any policy changes that would make a difference. IMO, Bill Gates should avoid trying to deal in policy and continue to effect change through mediums that sidestep wrangling with policy.

We need both better policy and better tech, right? As Bill's article points out, energy technology is by no means mature. There are huge improvements to be made in production, storage, and transmission. Could it be that policy requires and will respond to innovation?

Policymakers need to consider not just today's "cocktail of existing tech," but upcoming technologies. My perhaps naive hope is that strong investment in tech will convince policymakers that reducing civilization's GHG emissions toward zero is becoming ever more feasible, desirable, and profitable (for some people).

Disclaimer: I don't work in the climate sector, though I'd like to one day.

You are correct that this is a social, economic and political problem. Nothing new needs to be invented.

However, tech solutions can help build the necessary public demand and political will. This is the software side that people here will find more familiar than heavy engineering.

It's not just Gates that can help. We all can do something as tech pros. Join the team here: https://climateaction.tech/

to paraphrase Indian activist and writer Arundhati Roy:

> if Bill Gates were a shoemaker, he would solve the worlds problems with shoes

> We can solve climate change with a cocktail of existing tech

No. We cannot. We most definitely cannot.

It seems that everyone commenting on this subject on HN is working off preconceived notions or decade+ old information. We know better now. And the picture isn't pretty. And, no, you can cover this planet with solar panels and wind farms and you are NOT going to reverse things at all, in fact, atmospheric CO2 concentration will continue to rise exponentially.

This is surprising to me because the HN audience is --at least this is my perception-- supposed to be technically sophisticated and striving to be up to date with research and technology. None of the comments I have read so far on this subject in this thread and older ones showcase an understanding of what we know now.

I have written about this in the past. I just wrote about it again on this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19922099

If you don't read what I wrote, I beg you to at least read this paper. The conclusion, paraphrasing, is: Even if we deployed the most optimal forms of all renewable energy sources globally, atmospheric CO2 concentration would continue to increase exponentially.

https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

Read it. It will open your eyes to reality. It was done by Google Research and they were brave enough to publish their conclusion, even when it collided with their preconceived notions on the subject.

Build renewable generation to stop releasing GHGs - this technology is affordable, ready and is likely in the medium term to be alot cheaper than running the old plants. Its no where near necessary to "cover this planet with solar panels and wind farms" that is "decade+ old" mis-information.

Large scale aforestation can take a great deal of CO2 out of atmosphere and simultaneously help endangered and degraded wildlife, and help people visit and work within biophilic surroundings. Large scale afforestation is advised by the IPCC.

Geoengineering may well be necessary, we will see as things turn out but strong technological knowledge exists for this also. Ocean seeding, atmospheric aerosols, - langrange point "sun shade" construction... these possibilities should be researched and may need to be implemented at scale, but as IPCC advises they are secondary to reducing emissions - which we DO have the technology ready and improving still.

I dont regard that 2014 article you linked as representing reality well, its a five year old editorialisation - a magazine conversation piece not a sober or reviewed analysis. Since 2014 cost of wind and solar have dropped, almost in half.

> Build renewable generation to stop releasing GHGs

No. Because building renewable generation will produce more GHG's than you are going to "stop producing". Manufacturing isn't a clean process, particularly when you consider that most of the "build renewable generation" will more than likely happen in China, the worst possible locale in terms of GHG generation.

Reforestation is, without a doubt, important. However, a sense of scale is important here. You need somewhere over ONE TRILLION trees in order to counter the effects of ten years of CO2 emissions. This, BTW, assumes we plant trees everywhere possible on earth. The research comes from ETH Zurich.

I don't think you took the time to read the article I posted. This isn't some lightweight magazine conversation maker. This was written by people who came into the project KNOWING that renewable energy sources were the solution and wanted to show the world this to be the case. Instead they discovered they were wrong. If you think this has no merit I would suggest contacting the researchers to explain how you are right and they are wrong.

The hubris here is to pretend that we can magically change the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 reduction from a historical (800,000 years of data) rate of 100 ppm per 50,000 years to 100 ppm in 50 or even 100 years. That is preposterous at best.

The kind of energy and resources that would be necessary to achieve this rate of change acceleration as well as the waste product that massive undertaking would produce is far more likely to kill us all than "save the planet".

This does NOT mean we should not deploy clean energy or engage in aggressive reforestation. Not at all. What it means is that we need to stop lying about why we are doing it. We are not going to make even a dent on atmospheric CO2 accumulation through any of these means. Not possible.

Here's the question nobody ever wants to answer:

Without humanity on this planet (at our current scale) and all of our technology (power plants, transportation, etc.) it took the planet some 50,000 years to reduce CO2 by 100 ppm. We have highly accurate data on this going back 800,000 years.

Compare these two scenarios:

1- No humanity. No factories, power plants, planes, trains, automobiles, ships, deforestation, etc. Without ANY of that in place it took an average of 50,000 years to drop 100 ppm.

3- Humanity in full force. Factories, power plants, planes, trains, automobiles, ships, deforestation, etc. And all we do is switch to "clean" energy and do some reforestation (say, 25% of what was los). And THAT is going to change the rate of reduction from 50,000 years to 50 years for 100 ppm?

How?

In the one case we do not even exist. In the other we make token improvements to how clean we might be. How is that magically going to save the planet in 50 years, or 100, or even 1,000?

You see, it's fine to talk about generalizations: Renewable energy, reforestation, geoengineering. Good stuff. And yet nobody stops to explain how that stuff is going to, not only do better, but actually reverse the trend when compared to a scenario where the entirety of humanity does not exist on this planet.

It's like an alcoholic switching to three bottles per day to just two. Valiant effort, but pointless.

That is the inconvenient truth, isn't it?

> building renewable generation will produce more GHG's than you are going to "stop producing". Manufacturing isn't a clean process

Production of renewables certainly does not produce more GHGs than are saved. You must be following poor articles and sources of advice on the matter if you believe this. The matter is well studied and documented. If you wish to get really emphatically critical about these matters in general, you need to respect or at least deal with the IPCCs research and policy advice. It is folly to write passionately about renewable energy tech otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...

Brother, all you have to do is load a few container ships with solar panels headed to the US and Europe from China and your panels have now produced more CO2 than you will ever save. Bunker fuel is horrific stuff.

See, that’s the problem, the cult of renewables loves to ignore reality. You have to look at the entire supply and distribution chain as well as installation, support and maintenance.

Again, that’s not to say solar isn’t useful —I installed 13 kW at my house— it just isn’t going to save the world.

Sure shipping diesel is bad, but have you made that calculation? Where does the idea come from? You believe the IPCC ignore/hide transportation and other factors from the EROI calculcations to the degree they are essentially fictitious?

Here[1] someone answers a question says their container ship, the "M V Dubai Crown" consumed 45 metric tonnes of fuel a day sailing:

It can carry about 50 thousand tonnes of cargo (thats its "deadweight tonnage" figure [2]).

Container ship travel time from Huagzu to New york: 30 days [3]

So, 45 * 30 = 1350 metric tonnes of oil - for the shipping of say 30,000 tonnes of solar panels from China to US.

Thats 30k/1.35k = 22 tonnes of panels per tonne of oil.

Or 22 kilos of panels per kilo of oil.

A spend of _1 kilo_ of oil, at legacy shipping efficiency (see also [4]) to ship _22 kilos_ of panels.

So... a residential solar panel weights about 40 pounds - say 20 kilos [5]

That's about 1 kilo of shipping oil per PANEL.

_You_ are professing the argument of cult - something sounds wise so say it, no workings, no references. _You_ are led a merry dance on a wisecrack. But its even not merry, its nihilistic - you've got your panels anyway right, ready for the inevitable doom. Pull your socks up brother.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-fuel-does-a-medium-sized-bulk...

[2] https://www.gjenvick.com/OceanTravel/ShipTonnage/1932-06-28-...

[3] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-cargo-ship...

[4] https://www.oilandgaspeople.com/news/18194/maersk-takes-tang...

[5] https://news.energysage.com/average-solar-panel-size-weight/

Your numbers are wrong. Typical for “google search expertise”. I devoted a full year to understanding the containership business under consulting contract for an energy company. If you think you can bounce around a few links and understand any subject at all to the depth necessary to reach useful conclusions you are sorely mistaken.

Just answer one question:

Without humanity on the planet it would take about 50,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to come down 100 ppm. No humans at all. No factories. No cars. No planes. No ships. Nothing we ever made.

How is it that making a few insignificant changes (remember, we are talking planetary scale) will in any way do BETTER than 50,000 years for a 100 ppm drop?

You are fond of quick numbers. Go figure that out. How do you produce results at a planetary scale at a rate one THOUSAND TIMES FASTER than the historical average for at least the last 800,000 years?

Someone has to answer that basic science question before starting to wave hands around and name-drop technologies that might sound impressive but, at the end of the day, do nothing.

No humans: 50,000 years; 100 ppm drop.

With seven billion humans and our toys: 50 years; 100 ppm?

OK. How? You would need more energy and resources than the planet has available. In other words, you would destroy the planet in the process.

If you believe the calculation to be incorrect you owe it to yourself to identify the error. It should take much less time for you to do that than it took me to compile and reference the calculation for _you_.

The IPCC has compiled known options for getting CO2 down, including aforestation. Its not revealing to focus on the relative rate of change - we increased CO2 at an unprecedented rate, if you would read the IPCC reports or articles concerning the subject with a basic level of regard, you could learn it is in fact possible to also decrease at an unprecedented rate.

> And, no, you can cover this planet with solar panels and wind farms and you are NOT going to reverse things at all...

In fact, if you do nothing to reverse it, it won't reverse. If all you do is stop increasing the problem, the most you'll get is to make it not grow.

If you use some of that solar energy to convert CO2 into coal, you may start to reduce it.

> ...in fact, atmospheric CO2 concentration will continue to rise exponentially.

And this is ridiculous. For a start, there isn't much room for the CO2 concentration to keep rising exponentially no matter what we do. If we aren't past peak fossil fuels (coal and gas did/will peak later than oil), we are so near it that there isn't much room for increase.

But the real reason it's ridiculous is that if we cover the entire world in photovoltaics (figuratively, I imagine), we will certainly stop nearly all emissions. Jevon's paradox or whatever, fossil fuels can't compete economically with PV that is already paid for.

Before you tag something as ridiculous it would be a good idea to read and think a bit in order to at least understand the subject.

This is the problem. This thing has become a religion. Which means at least two things. First, everyone believes the “truth” blindly. Second, dialogue is impossible.

I don't disagree that he should do that, but given how deep in the pockets of industry our government currently is, it may be that the only feasible solution is an economic one. They won't listen to people, but they will listen to money.

If technology becomes good enough, the policy problem is irelevant.

Once solar and wind, without any subsidies, are cheaper than coal, then societies will switch purely out of self interest.

No prisoner's dillema solution needed.

> Once solar and wind, without any subsidies, are cheaper than coal, then societies will switch purely out of self interest.

If coal prices included the negative externalities costs - in other words, if we charged coal companies for dumping their trash into our collective air instead of subsidizing them by letting them do it for free - it would greatly change the price comparison. Then the market would likely do the rest.

Lets all tweet this comment at tag him + journalists

>The rest of us can't, so you have to.

But if you use your resources in ways that do not align with the view that climate change is a problem, such as using a private jet when riding on a commercial will produce far less greenhouse gas for the trip, we will remember it when you push policies that tell if not dictate to us how we should be using our own resources in our own lives.

You know, life doesn't have to be an ideological death march. Let's focus on moral improvement instead of moral purity. Large scale incrementalism has wrought massive positive change for humanity. Whereas the large scale pursuit of purity brought about the disasters of the 20th century.

It’s difficult to see how asking somebody who is beating the climate change drum to toe their own line is sending them on an ideological death march. The hypocrisy displayed when these folks run around in their private jets while screaming about ice caps and carbon is a textbook example of the “fine for me but not for thee” attitude of the elites that many plebes find insufferable.

The issue is simpler than ideological purism at large scale. If you ask someone make sacrifices that the one asking isn't making, no one should be surprised when there is resistance to making the changes and the motivations of the one asking are called into question.

This. I've been in the climate movement for some 15 years. Our basic stance has been, "We have the technology; we just need the political will."

There are many groups that you can become involved in. If you're a pro-market-solution type, the Citizens Climate Climate Lobby has been around ten years, and it currently has a bill in Congress that has bipartisan support (ahem, one Republican congressman): The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (http://energyinnovationact.org/). With this plan, all the revenue from a carbon tax is directly returned to citizens as a yearly check--no enlargement of the state.

Carbon pricing (which can come in the form of a tax or cap and trade) is the single most effective mechanism to address climate change. The idea is to internalize the _real_ costs of climate change into the price we actually pay--ramping up the price on carbon over time until it is prohibitively expensive to use fossil-fuel-expensive products, and incentivizing the economy to adapt. That fundamental price signal, where renewable energy becomes cheaper relative to fossil fuels (and similarly less fossil fuel-intensive goods are cheaper relative to fossil-fuel-expensive ones) reverberates throughout the economy.

If you're skeptical of Republicans ever coming to the light, even when they have pro market solutions like the one above to choose from, the Green New Deal is the way to go. Like Obamacare, it will require a progressive majority to push through. Frankly, this is where I'm at, after spending the better part of 5 years trying to get conservatives to take action. I've seen the general conservative position shift from "its not happening" to "it's not human-caused" to "who cares? it'll be great for the economy." I am skeptical of Republicans both a) taking action at all, and b) taking action at the scale REQUIRED to address climate change (i.e., a high price on carbon that is not meddled with by oil baron lobbies).

If the Green New Deal is really the only alternative, then we can pretty much say that the US will do absolutely nothing about climate change. That proposal was drenched in equity policy that people find unacceptable.

We don't quite have the technology. Battery swaps didn't work out, and recharging an electric car is so slow that they only work for homeowners with private garages and fairly short commutes, so no apartments and no ride sharing.

What was the problem with battery swaps? I’ve always thought that that is about the only way to make EVs viable.

Not clear. They had one pilot station positioned for SF/LA road trips by appointment (which doesn't solve the apartment problem at all) and then closed it over low demand.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15339770/switcheroo-is-te...

I’ve been reading the book “Oil’s Deep State” about the oil lobby in Alberta and what it says makes me pretty much in your camp

I second this.