Yeah :) . They can't see those machines using electricity instead of diesels, they can't see steel making without atmospheric pollution, and same goes for cement.

I guess some people have hard times adjusting to some novelties. Their arguments don't stand, and they don't see that.

I was tremendously surprised recently by some of the clever work on making cement without CO2 emissions, starting exactly 60 minutes into this talk:

https://youtu.be/E76q-9q7ZDg

Standard hydrolysis for making (green) hydrogen from water using electricity also creates excellent chemistry for the cement process.

We must anticipate an era where there are periods of zero-marginal-cost energy so plentiful we can't use it all, followed by periods of undersupply. Storing electrical energy in hydrogen may seem completelt uneconomical right now, but combining that process with cement production could result in fantastic efficiency of process. We are going to need carbon-neutral cement somehow, and if we get hydrogen with it, and CO2 feedstock for other purposes, we may be in a really good position for all sorts of processes.

Industrial processes have been under examined as we try to become carbon neutral. That means that there's tremendous opportunity, not that it's impossible. Humans are clever when we are allowed to be, we just haven't put much innovative thought into our industrial processes in a long time, much less resigned then from the ground up!

There was a commercial for the Nissan Leaf about gas-powered everything: https://youtu.be/Nn__9hLJKAk

No, the author is just saying we're still a long ways away from the true final goal of using no fossil fuels.

It's not a bullshit purity test at all. It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'. In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all.

There is a strong 'abundance' bias implicit in articles by people like Ramez Naam, who push so strongly for green energy production because they don't want to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of energy consumption. People like Naam still categorically hang onto a growth narrative so they tend to neglect the downsides of the solutions they provide.

> In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all.

This is just FUD, unless you actually have numbers that show CO2 emissions are higher over the lifetime of a solar panel compared to a coal power plant.

> don't want to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of energy consumption.

Forcing everybody into poverty is not a viable alternative.

> It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'.

Ignored by whom? You?

In fact, embedded energy is a huge consideration in the evaluation of green technologies.

It’s a depressingly common reality that “nobody has considered” is effectively equivalent to “I haven’t considered” on the internet.

The idea that solar panels might not be more efficient than burning coal is not an opinion held by someone who has done any level of research on the subject at all.

> It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'.

Hey just because you haven't thought of them doesn't mean other people with much more knowledge and experience on the subject haven't.