81–90 of 141 posts
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…
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.
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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 universit…
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…
If there is some sort of breakthrough, then that's fantastic!
I think there are other geoengineering techniques that environmentalists are against such as seeding with sulphur dioxide or trying to create a shade preventing sun rays from reaching earth, but the argument against carbon capture is only that it doesn't yet exist.
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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?
Personally, I donate to my old dorm’s social/making stuff fund, the students get way more out of those dollars a lot further than I do, and I always appreciated that we had that budget.
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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?
The students, in large part, pay for the educational piece (alongside funding) but significant funding is needed for advancing the world's knowledge.
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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.
But it's a mistake to consider a tax as something we can't afford because we are already incurring this tax bill by emitting the carbon in the first place. Whether we pay now to reduce the carbon or later to reduce the carbon and mitigate impacts, we will all be paying.
And I agree: imposing this tax today as a flat "usage" tax would be political suicide, but we have many levers that are far more equitable -- tax-and-dividend programs in particular have a lot of history.
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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I would like to see the research, which is what the article is about." The article is about how big oil changed Standford's research focus. And their interest is simply to leave everything as it is and stall any further oil limitations, so they can profit, like they used to, without having to fundamentally change. But yes, they are totally free to fund research that is in their interest and if they happen to find a…
Different areas have different power availability from different sources at different times of the year. We have limited capacity to move and store that energy. If the price of re-extracting released carbon is baked into into burning fossil fuels, then carbon capture will only be viable in places where energy is cheap, such as places with good conditions for solar, wind or hydro. The economic viability of carbon capt…
Totally agree. No dogmatic framework is helpful, that opposes solutions out of principle. I hope I am not doing that.
It is just, that ressources are limited.
Any solar, wind or water plant, that connects to the grid is helping. Likely also every nuclear reactor.
But the carbon capture solution I see not really helping, as long as coal plants are being build and are proposed by the exact kind of people, who said before that it is all not so bad and economy growth is always more important.
" So don't let them lead you think that carbon capture isn't an important part of the solution that is being developed by people who care deeply and climate change."
With what I know, I sadly really don't see it as part of the solution, but part of the distraction, part of the problem.
In germany the car lobby recently achieved, that the ban on new ICE cars in 2035 was in effect negated, because cars with E-Fuels should obviously excempt. Except that cars that can run with E-Fuels can also run with normal fuels and E-Fuels make no sense economically, so they already demanded for massive state subventioning of the concept. Spend lots of energy to generate a bit of fuel to continue the big roar of their loud engines. So all just fake. And those are the exact same people who lobby for the concept of carbon capture. Lot's of politicial "activism" to effectivly change nothing, except on paper.
So to repeat myself, I am not against carbon sequestering by principle.
I just think focussing on it now is just distracting from the real solutions needed now.
Once we stopped the last coal plant - then we can talk about spending surplus energy to capture existing CO2. Not before. And it is still a long way to get there.
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.
A poor country deriving energy from a nuclear power plant means that carbon isn’t being emitted for energy production over the lifetime of that nuclear plant.
Despite all the hype, no renewable technology has been able to supply a growing electrical demand anywhere in the world. Every example is small, isolated or limited in time. Renewables will eventually get there but there are countless other things we must solve before that day comes.
Meanwhile, the argument of cost is trotted out without ever considering the full impacts of climate change on the flip side.