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Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

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Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#61

Post by mistrial9 »

contemporary343 wrote: post #52

There is a potentially valid criticism here since this is ultimately about what the school (with its tremendous resources) is choosing to focus its efforts on. Stanford's previous global climate and energy project was famously funded by oil companies (though I suspect this was mostly a PR thing for them in previous decades), so this is not surprising. But should their priorities be those of the school? Also some inte…

reading tea-leaves -- there is a behind-the-scenes split on how to proceed, on several fronts. The EU and India proposed directly to include IPCC language about "transitioning to 100% non-fossil fuel" and the USA + friends cancelled that in committee. While lots of ordinary educated people support energy change, you can see from the rhetoric and the stalling that what that "change" is, is not agreed upon. Stanford University, with regular funding from the Oil and Gas giants, are in a position to effect the spin and secrecy around these very public changes.

For example in 2023, the long-term investment and planning to replace Soviet-era oil and gas infrastructure in the Baltics with USA led oil and gas infrastructure in the Baltics is not publicly discussed; plans for control of shipping channels in the Arctic Circle area are not publicly discussed in the USA; changes to the USA grid to accomodate plural energy sources are not publicly discussed. An oil and gas-funded institute at Stanford is in a position to affect all of those. Multiple former US State Department executive leaders are active at Stanford right now.

Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#62

Post by zamfi »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #58
zamfi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I think direct air capture (DAC) is as much “not the solution” as the next guy, but this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in climate change mitigation. Right now, DAC costs about $250-500/ton. The average passenger vehicle in the US emits 4.6 tons of CO2/year. You say it’s not cost-effective but you could literally charge every passenger vehicle user in the US $1-2000/year and use it for capture an…

> this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in climate change mitigation. This is not black-and-white thinking. He is pointing out that infeasible miracle cures are not the solution. We need to focus on realistic possibilities, not Elon-Musk jesustech.

No one thinks infeasible miracle cures are the solution, so he's doing much more than "pointing that out": he's making an argument about the infeasibility of carbon capture.

In particular, he's saying it's impossible to capture enough carbon at scale in a cost-effective manner, so therefore we should not even be looking at this option until we've exhausted the alternatives. But he's wrong: it's not impossible, it's merely expensive, and anyway we should be pursuing all possible remedies in parallel, not dismissing something as infeasible because someone's armchair analysis makes it look like a scam to them.

What we need are people trying both likely and unlikely solutions, not knee-jerk gatekeeping from randoms on the internet.

Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#63

Post by Jalad »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #55
philipkglass wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dog has been dirtying the kitchen floor for long enough already that we're also going to need that toothpick. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR6 fact sheet on carbon dioxide removal: "Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) refers to technologies, practices, and approaches that remove and durably store carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. CDR is required to achieve global and national targets of net zero CO2…

[flagged]

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#64

Post by stainablesteel »

godelski wrote: post #57

Can we stop the anti-sequestration movement? Let's just think about it for a second. How do we get to net zero if we account for lifetime emissions of energy sources? Even solar has lifetime emissions. You have to remove it from the atmosphere. (We'll ignore processes that can't be decarbonized, but that just adds to the problem) So what do we know? We know that forests are hard to plant and that their early lifecycl…

imo, as a global priority, reducing carbon seems like it should be a much lower priority compared to how hard its pushed.

incoming nuclear fusion would alleviate a ton of our carbon issues

if we use info from this wonderfully fleshed out cost-benefit analysis by bjorn lomborg i bet we could get the best of value out of our current fossil fuels while not impoverishing our children and grandchildren:

https://i.imgur.com/1vklbRo.png

Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#65

Post by algoatecorn »

rayiner wrote: post #27

Opposing nuclear was the first catastrophic mistake environmentalists made, causing them to be a net negative overall in terms of climate change. Opposing carbon capture will be the next (and possibly last) one. If you think climate change is a serious problem, then you need to put aside your moral beliefs and think like an engineer about solutions. There is no math that allows you to conserve/renewables your way to…

This is the most reasonable take. For some reason people in the West tend to ignore that 80% of the world is on the lower part of the exponential slope of progress, income, and demand for fossil fuel derived goods - and they are running up that slope at breakneck speed as a result of technological innovation.

Is the other 20% going to look down from our place of wealth and abundance - built on fossil fuels and countless externalities - and tell them that they have to achieve wealth and abundance through other means? It's ridiculous.

Sorry Sub-Saharan African, we have found that meat consumption is bad and therefore you can't do what we did, even though increased demand is a natural tendency as incomes rise.

All that cheap and dirty energy we used to make our infrastructure and grow GDP? You can't do it that way either. We made a big oopsie and have decided you have to do it through renewables and sustainable practices only.

By the way, are you interested in financing for this solar array? It's ok if you don't have the cash on hand, we'll just hold your highest quality farm-land as collateral.

We have to find ways to sequester. And we have to find ways to live in a warmer climate. It's the most probable outcome.

Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#66

Post by anonymouskimmer »

geodel wrote: post #51
runarberg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of think the status of US schools is not very well known, or at least not consistently known: To summarize the situation. US education institutes are laying off hundreds of teachers, cancelling courses, cutting services, etc. across the board. If a teacher is hired, it is most likely for part-time, on lower wages, with fewer benefits. If a teacher is guaranteed tenure after x many years, chances are they will…

> US education institutes are laying off hundreds of teachers, cancelling courses, cutting services, etc This also does not make much sense when one sees this humongous growth in new courses, departments, degrees and academic positions in first place over last few decades. So many universities did not become 5 star resorts by just keeping strictly educational services.

An adjunct would teach more courses at a lower pay than a tenured faculty member.

Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#67

Post by SoftTalker »

zamfi wrote: post #28
myrmidon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly sceptical regarding ALL CO2 removal schemes that don't operate directly at a CO2 source, because I see absolutely NO WAY how they could ever be made cost effective: CO2 concentration in air is less than 1g/m^3, meaning that you would have to pump like 10000 m^3 of air through your apparatus just to remove the CO2 from a single car travelling ~100km. And this assumes 100% extraction efficiency which is not…

Look, I think direct air capture (DAC) is as much “not the solution” as the next guy, but this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in climate change mitigation. Right now, DAC costs about $250-500/ton. The average passenger vehicle in the US emits 4.6 tons of CO2/year. You say it’s not cost-effective but you could literally charge every passenger vehicle user in the US $1-2000/year and use it for capture an…

> you could literally charge every passenger vehicle user in the US $1-2000/year

Politically (and practically) infeasible. Most likely it would be done as a fuel tax, but it would need to be in the ballpark of $3/gallon which would be suicide for the politicans who impose it and unaffordable to many of the people who would be paying for it. A tax that can't be paid can't fund anything.

Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#68

Post by thfuran »

bell-cot wrote: post #9
warent wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is vague but it sounds like you're downplaying the seriousness of funding sources. This isn't a paranoid conspiracy or dramatic judgement. Companies really do pay for particular research results that benefit them. This has been going on at least since gasoline had lead in it.

What's the equivalent of "/s" for bitter cynicism?

You don't have to write anything, you just down a shot of the cheapest whiskey you can find.

Re: Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus

#69

Post by geodel »

runarberg wrote: post #59
geodel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US education institutes are laying off hundreds of teachers, cancelling courses, cutting services, etc This also does not make much sense when one sees this humongous growth in new courses, departments, degrees and academic positions in first place over last few decades. So many universities did not become 5 star resorts by just keeping strictly educational services.

I’m sure there is data to be found, and I’m actually curious about it my self. I don’t know where to begin looking for it though. But I’m open to be proven wrong. To be clear, I’m talking about the education system as a whole, not just prestige universities, but also community collages as well high schools and primary schools. Prestige universities like Stanford will always find funding to do what they want (e.g. fro…

I get your point. The way I see this growth of admins is side effect of giving what people wanted which is "world-class amenities, world class education, more nutrition options, more security, more healthcare, more activities, more courses, more entertainment options, more electives, more everything" . Individually every single item looks eminently reasonable and in aggregate it can give reasonable cover to universities to have admins to support all of this.
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