Yes. The actual technology will all pretty much depend on engineering.
I am not sure what we have done so far looks all that promising. But, we will have to see.
Part of the problem is that politicians are promising far too much. And that a lot of people have already decided on "solutions" and want to get stinking rich, even if the solutions fail.
Indeed. One of the reasons that engineering, which is a fundamental to solving the 'transition' problem, gets too often forgotten by the media and political class is they don't what it is, and they conflate 'science' with engineering. Hence 'scientists' get appointed to blue ribbon panels to solve what are actually engineering problems, and hence the proposed solutions are often sub-optimal.
Yes. I am a scientist whose work sort of straddles the fields of math, science and engineering. I work with plenty of engineers. I even was an engineering major when I first started college (Mechanical Engineering, which I still have a fondness for, although my work is closer to Information Theory and Signal processing in EE now). My father was a very proud engineer (Mining Engineering, but then he migrated to Chemical Engineering). Engineering is a very serious and highly respected discipline, but the public does not really understand it that well, and the nuances. So, there is a lot of confusion.
As someone who has done extensive work in nuclear nonproliferation on different fronts, leading to actual concrete steps, and also climate change science, from both the modeling and the data analysis perspectives, I think I should weigh in a bit.
I think modern advancements in nuclear energy might very well be hinting at safer nuclear power sources.
I am somewhat skeptical of anthropogenic climate change, although I am open to the concept as we document more of the feedback processes in the climate.
The earth sciences need to find more and new funding justifications so they are not held captive by the lunatic fringes and subject to political winds. In the long run (speaking centuries or even millennia), humans should want to understand the planet they live on for lots of reasons. Large scale geo-engineering projects are somewhat risky if we do not understand the systems better. Oil might be a limited resource that needs to be replaced. If humans aspire to terraforming other planets or moons, they need a much firmer understanding of the processes. Do humans want to climb further up the Kardashev scale or not?
Another way that the earth sciences hamstring themselves is an almost universal disdain for tool creation. But tool creation leads to applications, which is why physics and other areas of science are better funded. So...
Intermittent renewable energy generation which is usually located far from demand centers, while clean, cannot possibly power America. Only nuclear generation can. We should be using the sites of current coal fired power stations which have in place transmission and cooling infrastructure and are close to locations where energy is needed to build new nuclear capacity. As noted in the article, Democrats largely reject new nuclear power plants.
Secondly, we are not on track to reduce carbon emissions adequately to halt disastrous climate change. At this stage of the problem only geoengineering can save humanity. Republicans largely reject geoengineering and because they believe in crazy conspiracy theories refuse to support even research into how it might help.
With both parties standing in the way of necessary solutions to the looming climate disaster we are clearly fucked.
Heartening to see nobody that claims the title of "Climate Economist" involved. I completely agree that Robert Pindyck is the best climate economist. He's the leader of eviscerating criticism of "climate economics" models. Robert just scratched the surface though. Beneath the surface of the climate economics mud is more mud.
My opinion is that "climate economics" was specifically developed by William Nordhaus to be a fraud. There is no other explanation for the kinds of outrageous codswallop found in Nordhaus' work.
Really read this 500 word letter to PNAS that was all we were allowed to print. We wrote and submitted two papers of detailed original criticism totaling ~25,000 words. One to Royal Society and one to PNAS. Both were stonewalled by the "Climate Economics" cabal. The reviews were blithering babble.
William Nordhaus chose his acolytes well. These 5th rate minds who deliberately eschew understanding of climate science, physics, and logic are competent at one thing. They fight for themselves to maintain dominance and shut out any challengers. They guard their ability to blackball to keep their salaries and positions. They publish learned drivel.
Their job is to occupy the critical ground in economics Nordhaus named "Climate Economics" so that when legislators ask about costs, the answer is the h*rsesh*t Nordhaus created. And this favors coal, oil, and gas. William Nordhaus' work is the fossil fuel baron's weapon against Hansen's testimony to Congress all those years ago, testimony those fossil fuel barons knew was true. Nordhaus appears to have volunteered his services, I believe, correctly surmising they would make powerful patrons.
I'll say it. I believe William Nordhaus is a sociopath based on the evidence. The corpus of "Climate Economics" must be thrown out, and the acolytes who grew fat in their sinecures removed, root and branch, from the academy. They are a cancer in the academy, a crew whose mission is to betray the trust that the public places on the academy. A field created as a lie manned by those who exchange the pursuit of truth with courage for toeing a party line.
It would have been more interesting to me if the panel had included someone who had argued competently the risks of spreading nuclear tech and hence facilitating nuclear weapons proliferation, which is destabilizing and dangerous. That the topic of weapons didn't come up suggests a significant over sight of the organizers, moderator, panelists, or some combination of them all.
Imagine having access to infinite cheap energy and then purposefully putting up every road block possible to implementing it.
Kinda like having the ability to have unlimited cheap hooch, but making it illegal so the price will skyrocket.
Cui bono?
Interesting. My only comments is you are missing one discipline, upon which the actual answers entirely depend - engineering.
Yes. The actual technology will all pretty much depend on engineering.
I am not sure what we have done so far looks all that promising. But, we will have to see.
Part of the problem is that politicians are promising far too much. And that a lot of people have already decided on "solutions" and want to get stinking rich, even if the solutions fail.
Indeed. One of the reasons that engineering, which is a fundamental to solving the 'transition' problem, gets too often forgotten by the media and political class is they don't what it is, and they conflate 'science' with engineering. Hence 'scientists' get appointed to blue ribbon panels to solve what are actually engineering problems, and hence the proposed solutions are often sub-optimal.
Yes. I am a scientist whose work sort of straddles the fields of math, science and engineering. I work with plenty of engineers. I even was an engineering major when I first started college (Mechanical Engineering, which I still have a fondness for, although my work is closer to Information Theory and Signal processing in EE now). My father was a very proud engineer (Mining Engineering, but then he migrated to Chemical Engineering). Engineering is a very serious and highly respected discipline, but the public does not really understand it that well, and the nuances. So, there is a lot of confusion.
As someone who has done extensive work in nuclear nonproliferation on different fronts, leading to actual concrete steps, and also climate change science, from both the modeling and the data analysis perspectives, I think I should weigh in a bit.
I think modern advancements in nuclear energy might very well be hinting at safer nuclear power sources.
I am somewhat skeptical of anthropogenic climate change, although I am open to the concept as we document more of the feedback processes in the climate.
The earth sciences need to find more and new funding justifications so they are not held captive by the lunatic fringes and subject to political winds. In the long run (speaking centuries or even millennia), humans should want to understand the planet they live on for lots of reasons. Large scale geo-engineering projects are somewhat risky if we do not understand the systems better. Oil might be a limited resource that needs to be replaced. If humans aspire to terraforming other planets or moons, they need a much firmer understanding of the processes. Do humans want to climb further up the Kardashev scale or not?
Another way that the earth sciences hamstring themselves is an almost universal disdain for tool creation. But tool creation leads to applications, which is why physics and other areas of science are better funded. So...
Intermittent renewable energy generation which is usually located far from demand centers, while clean, cannot possibly power America. Only nuclear generation can. We should be using the sites of current coal fired power stations which have in place transmission and cooling infrastructure and are close to locations where energy is needed to build new nuclear capacity. As noted in the article, Democrats largely reject new nuclear power plants.
Secondly, we are not on track to reduce carbon emissions adequately to halt disastrous climate change. At this stage of the problem only geoengineering can save humanity. Republicans largely reject geoengineering and because they believe in crazy conspiracy theories refuse to support even research into how it might help.
With both parties standing in the way of necessary solutions to the looming climate disaster we are clearly fucked.
Heartening to see nobody that claims the title of "Climate Economist" involved. I completely agree that Robert Pindyck is the best climate economist. He's the leader of eviscerating criticism of "climate economics" models. Robert just scratched the surface though. Beneath the surface of the climate economics mud is more mud.
My opinion is that "climate economics" was specifically developed by William Nordhaus to be a fraud. There is no other explanation for the kinds of outrageous codswallop found in Nordhaus' work.
See: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2117308119
Really read this 500 word letter to PNAS that was all we were allowed to print. We wrote and submitted two papers of detailed original criticism totaling ~25,000 words. One to Royal Society and one to PNAS. Both were stonewalled by the "Climate Economics" cabal. The reviews were blithering babble.
William Nordhaus chose his acolytes well. These 5th rate minds who deliberately eschew understanding of climate science, physics, and logic are competent at one thing. They fight for themselves to maintain dominance and shut out any challengers. They guard their ability to blackball to keep their salaries and positions. They publish learned drivel.
Their job is to occupy the critical ground in economics Nordhaus named "Climate Economics" so that when legislators ask about costs, the answer is the h*rsesh*t Nordhaus created. And this favors coal, oil, and gas. William Nordhaus' work is the fossil fuel baron's weapon against Hansen's testimony to Congress all those years ago, testimony those fossil fuel barons knew was true. Nordhaus appears to have volunteered his services, I believe, correctly surmising they would make powerful patrons.
I'll say it. I believe William Nordhaus is a sociopath based on the evidence. The corpus of "Climate Economics" must be thrown out, and the acolytes who grew fat in their sinecures removed, root and branch, from the academy. They are a cancer in the academy, a crew whose mission is to betray the trust that the public places on the academy. A field created as a lie manned by those who exchange the pursuit of truth with courage for toeing a party line.
Thanks to MFSA for bringing the issues to light!
It would have been more interesting to me if the panel had included someone who had argued competently the risks of spreading nuclear tech and hence facilitating nuclear weapons proliferation, which is destabilizing and dangerous. That the topic of weapons didn't come up suggests a significant over sight of the organizers, moderator, panelists, or some combination of them all.