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Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

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Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, we do not have "plenty" of lithium. There's not enough lithium in the world to put in all the batteries for all the EVs we'll need to replace ICE vehicles. This is entirely orthogonal to the fact that recycling lithium ion batteries is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous in the case of any type of mishap. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...

Lithium is 0.002% of the Earth's crust. The Earth's crust weighs 2.77 * 10^22 kg. Each car needs about 30kg of lithium. Therefore we have enough lithium for about 2*10^15 cars.

Yes, we're going to liquify the earth's crust and efficiently extract all the lithium...

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We get there by a (very likely) short-term increase in current energy production Right. But right now we're incentivizing the opposite. We're telling fossil fuel companies we don't need them anymore long before we've actually figured out a way to live without them. Do you see the problem yet?

The only signal that matters is the price signal. At $80/bbl, fossil fuel companies are getting a very strong signal that they're needed.

Sorry, no. $80/bbl is a temporary price and not sufficient to drive infrastructure investments which take upwards of 3 decades to pay back(i.e. refineries). You can't expect private companies to invest in these things when states like CA are talking about banning the sale of IC cars in a decade.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, but that takes energy. You have to have sufficient green energy to produce it and how do you get to the place where you have sufficient energy? Currently, that means you burn massive amounts of dirty energy to make the transition over, what, decades? Your comment is well intended but it is the same sort of 'one day it will be perfect' thinking that glosses over the messy transition that actually needs to ta…

Most uses of fossil fuels these days are for fuel, not petrochemicals. The energy needed to get to petrochemicals (and the fraction of carbon currently coming from fossil fuels to get to petrochemicals) are relatively modest.

Citation needed. Sorry but it takes, more or less, as much energy as that which is stored within the chemical bonds of a petrochemical to make that chemical from raw materials. Also, what? Your comment doesn't seem to fit into the context of our discussion. Where is the energy and raw materials to produce the green energy materials going to come from?

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sold that this would happen. It seems to me the plan in the US is to add green energy, and then slowly replace the dirty energy with more green. I admit I am ignorant of the plans of other nations, but from where I am sitting I don't see any reason to believe there will ever be a reduction in available energy.

Well, that can't be "rapid". TFA is about a "rapid" transition. I'm saying that's just politically infeasible unless you define "rapid" as "as fast as we can without impoverishing people" or unless you define it as "damn the consequences, just do it". That's pretty obviously true. If you take the first alternative, however, you have to consider how long these touted savings will take to materialize and the opportunit…

Also, all these savings have to be premised on "climate change will cost something comparable", but so far all we have is models that encode the scare function and whose predictions have been consistently failing since their inception. I.e., the savings are probably not real, but the costs of the transition needed to obtain those savings are real.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that can't be "rapid". TFA is about a "rapid" transition. I'm saying that's just politically infeasible unless you define "rapid" as "as fast as we can without impoverishing people" or unless you define it as "damn the consequences, just do it". That's pretty obviously true. If you take the first alternative, however, you have to consider how long these touted savings will take to materialize and the opportunit…

Also, all these savings have to be premised on "climate change will cost something comparable", but so far all we have is models that encode the scare function and whose predictions have been consistently failing since their inception. I.e., the savings are probably not real, but the costs of the transition needed to obtain those savings are real.

My understanding is that the predictions have been reasonably accurate. It's just that they have been saying for 50 years that things will be a disaster for us in 50-100 years and people who did not notice any problem after 20 years have declared that all the predictions were false.

But recent scientific papers that do a meta-analysis of past scientific papers have found that the original predictions got pretty good by about 1970, accurately predicting the change we have subsequently observed.

See here: "Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming" https://www.science.org/content/article/even-50-year-old-cli...

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, all these savings have to be premised on "climate change will cost something comparable", but so far all we have is models that encode the scare function and whose predictions have been consistently failing since their inception. I.e., the savings are probably not real, but the costs of the transition needed to obtain those savings are real.

My understanding is that the predictions have been reasonably accurate. It's just that they have been saying for 50 years that things will be a disaster for us in 50-100 years and people who did not notice any problem after 20 years have declared that all the predictions were false. But recent scientific papers that do a meta-analysis of past scientific papers have found that the original predictions got pretty good…

They have have not been accurate in the least. I remember when they predicted ridiculous warming of like 7C/century. I remember when they failed to predict the Pause.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the predictions have been reasonably accurate. It's just that they have been saying for 50 years that things will be a disaster for us in 50-100 years and people who did not notice any problem after 20 years have declared that all the predictions were false. But recent scientific papers that do a meta-analysis of past scientific papers have found that the original predictions got pretty good…

They have have not been accurate in the least. I remember when they predicted ridiculous warming of like 7C/century. I remember when they failed to predict the Pause.

According to the article, of the 17 scientific papers they studied from 1970 to 2001, 10 of them were completely accurate and the other 7 were only slightly off, but that error was due to the fact that human emissions did not follow the predicted patterns - when correcting for actual emissions using the original calculations, those models were accurate too.

Are you remembering scientific research papers? Or TV news reporting that claims to cover what the scientists are saying? Because the news often lies about science, but that’s not the scientists fault.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aluminium production, desalination, and more

Eventually synthetic fuel will become economically viable.

Eventually is right now.

Hydrogen and ammonia electrolyzers are being built by the tens of megawatts as we speak. Presently for chemical synthesis, but use in fuel cells or turbines is not far behind.

Simple synthetic hydrocarbons follow soon after that.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have have not been accurate in the least. I remember when they predicted ridiculous warming of like 7C/century. I remember when they failed to predict the Pause.

According to the article, of the 17 scientific papers they studied from 1970 to 2001, 10 of them were completely accurate and the other 7 were only slightly off, but that error was due to the fact that human emissions did not follow the predicted patterns - when correcting for actual emissions using the original calculations, those models were accurate too. Are you remembering scientific research papers? Or TV news r…

I'm referring to the various IPCC reports from the 00s and teens. They have wildly wrong models.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the OP, by "just asking questions", is engaging in an enormous time imbalance. It's a standard tactic of skeptics. Ask a simple question. Takes only a minute or two. But the answer turns out to not be so simple, and requires much time in composing an answer. And of course the answer also invokes concepts, terms, models, research, etc that themselves are not simple, and so the questioner asks anoth…

Have you given consideration to what you have written? You slyly abuse the English language by referring to me as a skeptic, yet then you proceed to brandish me as malicious. If the answers are '[so easily googled]', why haven't you provided any reference, or better still answered the questions posed?; (instead making yourself a considerable effort to publicly slander me as a timewaster, whilst my posts are censored)…

Google "climate change". Google "green energy". Google "decarbonization". Read up on them at Wikipedia. In the time you wasted typing up complaints, you could have become informed.

Wasting your own time is foolish. Wasting others' time is an offense.

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