Big oil helped shape Stanford’s latest climate-research focus • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by polishdude20 » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:09 PM UTC

lisasays wrote: post #44

bell-cot wrote: post #3

Ever-growing armies of ever-better-paid administrators aren't going to magically pay for themselves. And a university won't be atop America's merciless academic pecking order for long if it's burdened with scruples about funding sources.

As cynical as we can count on these people to be - they're also smart enough to recognize that continually whoring themselves out to the highest bidder can, apart from undermining Stanford's integrity (which they obviously don't care about), also be detrimental to their bottom line in the longer run. In fact this seems to be the only way they eventually learn: In response, more than 800 people affiliated with the uni…

I find the notion donating to your alma mater kind of odd. You don't donate money to the local McDonald's that made a burger for you do you? I mean, you could but that's not something that's regularly done.

The service was provided and paid for and now there's some expectation to give more money after the fact?

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

#72

Post by runarberg » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:25 PM UTC

stainablesteel wrote: post #64

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.co…

If we don’t reduce carbon emissions—heck if we don’t stop carbon emissions—there will be no future for our children and grandchildren to either prosper or impoverish in. Not reducing carbon means we are all going to die. The earth will heat 4-5 degrees. Human societies will not function as we know them today, governments will break down, wars will be fought, famines will linger. However much money fossil fuel gives us today will have no effect on that future, as we will all be dead.

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

#73

Post by godelski » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:35 PM UTC

stainablesteel wrote: post #64

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.co…

> reducing carbon seems like it should be a much lower priority compared to how hard its pushed

I'm not sure what you mean. The last 50 years (and even 5) have been far more bark than bite.

> incoming nuclear fusion would alleviate a ton of our carbon issues

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I worked on nuclear in a previous career and still have friends there, including fusion (including the big labs). Being bullish, fusion net gain is still 10 years away. It'll take decades to add to the energy portfolio after that. The case for fusion is worse than the case for fission. We should work on both, but we can't hold out for future technologies (we can say the same about storage). We needed to act decades ago, pushing it off by a few more decades is not going to solve the issue, it is repeating the same mistakes.

> fleshed out cost-benefit analysis

I wouldn't trust any of these. Zero of them. You need to have a pretty good understanding of these systems (highly complex) to even understand if the analyses are good. Every single one has a bias and is highly politicized. The more politicized a topic is, the higher level of expertise you need to understand who is telling the truth (politicization adds large amounts of noise).

> Bjorn Lomborg

Who is a political scientist. He isn't a climate scientist, nor even a scientist. Here's a rather well known scientist, Stefan Rahmstorf (studies physics of oceans) discussing Bjorn[0]. You can check Bjorn's scholar page[1] to even verify that he's not doing actual science bust just writing opinions with no supporting evidence. Please stop supporting hacks.

[0] https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/08/bjorn...

[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=HUMF5c0AAAAJ

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

#74

Post by fallingfrog » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

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…

Let me play devils advocate though. Right now nuclear provides 10% of the world’s power. Now since it was first deployed in the 70’s there have been at least 3 major accidents I can think of: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3 mile island. So that’s one every 15 years, roughly.

The naive math behind that suggests that if we were to increase the number of power plants by a factor of 10 to supply all the world’s power, we should expect the rate of accidents to increase proportionally. So that’s a Fukushima somewhere in the world every 1.5 years or 18 months. And a bad one of those accidents could spread radiation across an entire continent.

Changes the risk/reward calculation, doesn’t it?

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

#75

Post by olddustytrail » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

algoatecorn wrote: post #65

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 countl…

And who exactly are going to be paying for these ruinously expensive nuclear power stations for the poorer countries? Is it you and rayiner? Or perhaps you want your government to fund it through increased taxes on you?

I'm sure you wouldn't want the poor countries to pay for it themselves.

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

#76

Post by machina_ex_deus » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:44 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #74

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…

Let me play devils advocate though. Right now nuclear provides 10% of the world’s power. Now since it was first deployed in the 70’s there have been at least 3 major accidents I can think of: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3 mile island. So that’s one every 15 years, roughly. The naive math behind that suggests that if we were to increase the number of power plants by a factor of 10 to supply all the world’s power, we sho…

Now do the same calculation for passenger aviation.

That's not how disasters work. They aren't independent variables, when they happen, you learn and change the way things work to prevent them from happening again.

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

#77

Post by majormajor » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:50 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #74

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…

Let me play devils advocate though. Right now nuclear provides 10% of the world’s power. Now since it was first deployed in the 70’s there have been at least 3 major accidents I can think of: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3 mile island. So that’s one every 15 years, roughly. The naive math behind that suggests that if we were to increase the number of power plants by a factor of 10 to supply all the world’s power, we sho…

The odds definitely aren't that straightforward.

Experiments and development in the 1950s. First commercial plant in 58.

Further growth in 60s and 70s. Including deadly accidents like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 in 1961 - protests grew in 60s and 70s too.

Three Mile Island 1979.

Chernobyl 1986.

Fukushima 2011.

That 25-year gap between Chernobyl and Fukushima - and the extraordinary circumstances causing Fukushima vs the previous incidents - suggests that safety improved A LOT over the 60-odd years between 1958 and now.

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

#78

Post by chrisbrandow » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:56 PM UTC

polishdude20 wrote: post #71

lisasays wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As cynical as we can count on these people to be - they're also smart enough to recognize that continually whoring themselves out to the highest bidder can, apart from undermining Stanford's integrity (which they obviously don't care about), also be detrimental to their bottom line in the longer run. In fact this seems to be the only way they eventually learn: In response, more than 800 people affiliated with the uni…

I find the notion donating to your alma mater kind of odd. You don't donate money to the local McDonald's that made a burger for you do you? I mean, you could but that's not something that's regularly done. The service was provided and paid for and now there's some expectation to give more money after the fact?

In reality people also build relationships and emotional attachments. It’s also somewhat more mission driven, via research, medical centers, etc.

Those are reasons, whether they're good or not depends on perspective.

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

#79

Post by CamperBob2 » Fri, May 05, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #74

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…

Let me play devils advocate though. Right now nuclear provides 10% of the world’s power. Now since it was first deployed in the 70’s there have been at least 3 major accidents I can think of: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3 mile island. So that’s one every 15 years, roughly. The naive math behind that suggests that if we were to increase the number of power plants by a factor of 10 to supply all the world’s power, we sho…

3 Mile Island: No one died, nothing of any significance happened. Clickbait from an era before clickbait was a thing.

Chernobyl: Irresponsible operation of obsolete, inherently-hazardous Soviet-era design. Not something that can ever happen again if some relatively-simple lessons are followed.

Fukushima: Irresponsible maintenance of plant operating well beyond its intended lifespan, which was irresponsibly constructed in a tsunami-prone seismic zone. This type of accident can and probably will happen again, precisely because of moratoriums on new plant construction.

One risk you didn't list but probably should have is reckless military attacks waged against installations such as Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine. It's hard to safeguard a nuclear plant against a barbarian invasion. It may make sense to operate such plants under UN auspices, or otherwise guarantee their safety through multinational treaties with real enforcement behind them.

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

#80

Post by rayiner » Fri, May 05, 2023, 8:01 PM UTC

olddustytrail wrote: post #75

algoatecorn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countl…

And who exactly are going to be paying for these ruinously expensive nuclear power stations for the poorer countries? Is it you and rayiner? Or perhaps you want your government to fund it through increased taxes on you? I'm sure you wouldn't want the poor countries to pay for it themselves.

The point is that if everyone in the developed world had built more nuclear in the 1960s like France did, we wouldn’t be in such a dire situation now.

France’s CO2 emissions per capita are right around the world average. That means the rest of the developed world had done the same way as France half a century ago, we would have room to bring the whole developing world up to the same level as France while still being at the same overall CO2 output as today. And we wouldn’t have had all that extra CO2 for 60 years, giving us much more runway for the developed world to go to net zero while the developing world continues to develop.