I fondly remember the days when rising sea levels, "sometime in 2100 or whenever" was the main climate-related thing. That was nice. Back then, the idea of tipping points was the realm of wild-eyed doomers that no one took seriously. Heat domes? Wildfires? Ocean death? Mass migration? Just science fiction.
If there's enough excess capacity of clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, that it can be converted into portable fuel . . . why hydrogen?
Its hard to contain, embrittles everything it touches, in gaseous form its density is low so its tanks need to be huge but in liquid form it needs to be kept unreasonably cold and is still low density and requires oversize fuel tanks, and its explosive when it mixes with air - not just flammable, but explosive.
Why not use that clean energy to pull CO2 out of the air and use it to build new hydrocarbon liquid fuels that are compatible with existing infrastructure?
Totally, if you need it use the century old, high density, well understood fuel, it's just good engineering. Doesn't need to be carbon negative. Even rockets are using methane these days...
There are probably use cases for hydrogen, but they're likely large installations, either fixed or trains / ships. Toyota spent a decade trying to make it smaller and failed.
It could be a little carbon negative, in the way planting trees is a little carbon negative.
Sourcing carbon from atmosphere and hydrogen from water to make liquid fuel would pull carbon out of the air and put it into your gas tank.
Methane is easier to work with than hydrogen, but it still needs to be kept colder than what's practical. If it turns out that propane is much cheaper to make from (renewable energy + atmosphere + water), relative to the cost of making liquids like diesel, kerosene, or gasoline, then propane might be a winning choice for renewable transportation fuel.
If you want to dig deeper on how the company Fervo works, the CEO did an interview with David Roberts of Volts last year which was pretty interesting. This stuff isn't hypothetical, it's working right now, and apparently it's profitable. I know huge portions of electricity demand can be addressed through wind and solar, perhaps at lower cost than enhanced geothermal for now, but the ability of enhanced geothermal to keep producing energy when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine is really key.
TBH, it would be really funny and poetic to coopt the phrase "drill baby, drill" to mean something completely different. I hope the Internet makes that happen.
Yep, there were, for example, a mayor in Jonzac who made geo thermal for the whole village sometimes in the eighties (IIRC), it still runs today and I think all heat is just free.
Considering the utilities refuse to take responsibility for the fires they cause and also refuse to prevent those fires by maintaining their equipment... fuck 'em.
It's time for either regulation or state-owned utilities. Corporations have proven they aren't able to safely provide utility services.
This is likely to become an issue with climate modeling as well, as interested parties attempt to poison the discourse with fake analysis and phony effects models. Perhaps, with the banks, the Fed should require the use of open, peer-reviewed models and reject the use of any closed-source model.
This is an argument I’ve been pitching in the Australian context for some 20 years now - we should have been world leaders in solar technology, to the extent that by now we should have massive solar farms across the North of Australia in order to export clean, green energy up to Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and other near-neighbours. We could have created a whole new industry of both research and advanced manufacturing, and if we’d nationally sequester our resources correctly we could be doing every step of the way - dig out the minerals, refine them, manufacture them into panels, export those panels - all the while generating very low cost energy and exporting it for profit as well! Not to mention so many new jobs!
Even once you take away all of the obvious arguments for climate change action (environmental, ethical, prevention of future disasters etc.) there was always going to be a strong financial incentive in a capitalistic market to move to technology that has the lowest input cost to generate energy, which just so happens to be renewables. It just baffles me that so many politicians crucified themselves on the altar of coal when they could’ve been remembered for ushering in simultaneous economic benefit and environmental benefit, with a long term impact of lowered inflation through cheaper power bills, but that’s what the minerals lobby in this country has managed to achieve. What a disgrace.
Good to see a world leader using the economic arguments in addition to the other more obvious ones.
Never happening, but even if it was wouldn't the correct charge be criminal negligence? It's not like the companies killed those people in a calculated, pre-meditated way. They're "just" externalities.
Isn't this what manslaughter is for, if you want the conviction ? I get why mens rea may not apply here, but bringing it into question may make it viable next time, which would be worthy (or likely I don't understand law well enough).
I'm not a lawyer, first of all! I'm not very knowledgeable either.
Mens rea, as far as I understand it, definitely doesn't apply here. Bringing it into question undermines the case if you're trying to build a conviction around it. Better to have a wide variety of provable smaller claims than one big ticket item you're doomed to fail, as far as I understand it.
More than just climate. Huge infrastructure acts that are helping rebuild our our states. Helping us add stuff like protected bike lanes, too. Capping prescription costs, which is huge.
Massive investments in our economy and R&D, something we have been sorely lacking.
Some queer rights and even some small but humanizing stuff, like letting bi and gay men donate blood like the rest of humanity, and making the bar safer for everyone.
In addition to all the other stuff, like stopping the pandemic, pulling the economy out of a nosedive under Trump, reversing schedule F (think Trump's version of Order 66) for federal employees who actually keep the lights on and the country going between multiple presidents, forgiving tons of student loans, and curtailing the damage from abortion being revoked where he can.
Not to mention his accomplishments on background checks for guns, pardoning federal Marijuana offenses, and slapping the dogshit out of Russia via our friends and allies. ❤️
Edit: Damn, there's actually a list of accomplishments. He's done a lot of good shit even if he's kind of a bad public speaker.
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
Hot