These people drive me crazy. While I have absolutely no doubt in the validity of anthropogenic climate change and believe we should wholeheartedly champion renewable energy, we cannot “stop oil” without going back to the Stone Age.
Even worse, just “stopping” oil would mean the deaths of billions of people from famine as oil is needed to produce and transport fertilize, run tractors…etc.
Their antics are little more than performance art, virtue-signalling: a waste of time.
Our efforts should be focused on accelerating progress and growth, but this is a something that does work. We have already traversed several energy revolutions, from wood—>coal—>oil—>gas, each step on that energy ladder was 1) more efficient and 2) produced fewer pollutants and 3) released less CO2: https://www.lianeon.org/p/how-growth-can-protect-the-environment
We are already on the right path, CO2 emissions are falling in wealthy countries, we just need more countries to be wealthy!
100% 🤝 we need a robust energy mix of fission, fusion and renewables in order the slowly and efficiently phase out fossil fuels. And in order to do that, we need MORE growth. MORE innovation.
After traveling through France recently, they have fully embraced smaller fission plants. Windmills placed well out in farmers fields, and some solar on houses. Probably not as much solar as one sees in the USA. The US and the world for that matter, will need all of these sources, combined with a much upgraded grid to meet the energy needs of the future. Great article
“it would be logical to assume that life would return to the way it was before the use of fossil fuels. Namely: worse than it is now for everyone involved.”
I think the world has fundamentally changed forever now that we have advanced solar, nuclear, wind, and energy storage technologies. It’s possible we forget how to build them but that seems exceedingly unlikely given the growing amount of silicon memory and compute. It appears we have an indefinite supply of useful energy from the sun, nuclear and geothermal, which I think makes something like the Great Depression extremely unlikely going forward.
It was wise of us to burn oil to get to this point. Putting hydrocarbons from underground into the atmosphere, getting us huge cities and advanced technologies, but running a risky experiment with the atmosphere. Now we have cost competitive renewables, solar, wind, nuclear. it would be wise to properly price the burning of hydrocarbons with a carbon tax. This would make renewables even more competitive. Putting ALL of the oil and gas into the sky would be dumb and unnecessary.
To the point about AI, i agree, after data and chips, energy is the limiting factor. I think Tesla is in an extremely interesting position with advanced ai chips in millions of vehicles that are often idle and can be powered by a decentralized solar/wind setup. So far as I know, they are the only company with advanced ai software, robotics, mass manufacturing and energy expertise. Let’s see what they do with it.
Def one of the most interesting times to be alive. Glad your covering these developments 🤜🏼🤛🏼
It is not easy to conduct analyzes like these. You have to go in depth - really in depth - of what you read, fully understand the reasons, strengths and weaknesses, and propose a well-reasoned perspective that is rational, that does not misinterpret the sources and perspectives that you wants to challenge and which, naturally, is not contradictory to the evidence and what can be deduced from the data. I think that this issue, in addition to being very interesting, is also an excellent read from the point of view of the 'methodology' and the reasoning behind it. Furthermore, from a content point of view, I appreciated the passage 'The ideas proposed by Jennifer Szalai are dangerous, but that doesn't mean they don't have the right to be articulated'. The importance of challenging various elements in detail and digging deeply even into proposals that often seem unreasonable to us is often underestimated, but it needs to be discussed as you rightly specified.
Thank you Riccardo, I very much appreciate the complements. And you are entirely right. When discussing something that is nothing more or less than proposals on what direction humanity should go next, all perspectives should be welcome in the marketplace of ideas to be rigorously examined and tested for validity 👏🏼
Great points Chris! I’d incentivize all of the energy forms before eventually instituting a carbon tax (one has to only look to California as to why) since only the wealthy will be able to afford EV cars at first and a carbon tax will disproportionately affect poorer people, but once we have a robust energy mix it will be needed to phase out fossil fuel use for sure 🤝
These people drive me crazy. While I have absolutely no doubt in the validity of anthropogenic climate change and believe we should wholeheartedly champion renewable energy, we cannot “stop oil” without going back to the Stone Age.
Even worse, just “stopping” oil would mean the deaths of billions of people from famine as oil is needed to produce and transport fertilize, run tractors…etc.
Their antics are little more than performance art, virtue-signalling: a waste of time.
Our efforts should be focused on accelerating progress and growth, but this is a something that does work. We have already traversed several energy revolutions, from wood—>coal—>oil—>gas, each step on that energy ladder was 1) more efficient and 2) produced fewer pollutants and 3) released less CO2: https://www.lianeon.org/p/how-growth-can-protect-the-environment
We are already on the right path, CO2 emissions are falling in wealthy countries, we just need more countries to be wealthy!
100% 🤝 we need a robust energy mix of fission, fusion and renewables in order the slowly and efficiently phase out fossil fuels. And in order to do that, we need MORE growth. MORE innovation.
We need more intelligent looks at the incredible advancements of nuclear over the decades and stop fueling the fear!
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/nuclear-meltdown
💯 agree
After traveling through France recently, they have fully embraced smaller fission plants. Windmills placed well out in farmers fields, and some solar on houses. Probably not as much solar as one sees in the USA. The US and the world for that matter, will need all of these sources, combined with a much upgraded grid to meet the energy needs of the future. Great article
A robust energy mix is what’s needed! 🤝
“it would be logical to assume that life would return to the way it was before the use of fossil fuels. Namely: worse than it is now for everyone involved.”
I think the world has fundamentally changed forever now that we have advanced solar, nuclear, wind, and energy storage technologies. It’s possible we forget how to build them but that seems exceedingly unlikely given the growing amount of silicon memory and compute. It appears we have an indefinite supply of useful energy from the sun, nuclear and geothermal, which I think makes something like the Great Depression extremely unlikely going forward.
It was wise of us to burn oil to get to this point. Putting hydrocarbons from underground into the atmosphere, getting us huge cities and advanced technologies, but running a risky experiment with the atmosphere. Now we have cost competitive renewables, solar, wind, nuclear. it would be wise to properly price the burning of hydrocarbons with a carbon tax. This would make renewables even more competitive. Putting ALL of the oil and gas into the sky would be dumb and unnecessary.
To the point about AI, i agree, after data and chips, energy is the limiting factor. I think Tesla is in an extremely interesting position with advanced ai chips in millions of vehicles that are often idle and can be powered by a decentralized solar/wind setup. So far as I know, they are the only company with advanced ai software, robotics, mass manufacturing and energy expertise. Let’s see what they do with it.
Def one of the most interesting times to be alive. Glad your covering these developments 🤜🏼🤛🏼
It is not easy to conduct analyzes like these. You have to go in depth - really in depth - of what you read, fully understand the reasons, strengths and weaknesses, and propose a well-reasoned perspective that is rational, that does not misinterpret the sources and perspectives that you wants to challenge and which, naturally, is not contradictory to the evidence and what can be deduced from the data. I think that this issue, in addition to being very interesting, is also an excellent read from the point of view of the 'methodology' and the reasoning behind it. Furthermore, from a content point of view, I appreciated the passage 'The ideas proposed by Jennifer Szalai are dangerous, but that doesn't mean they don't have the right to be articulated'. The importance of challenging various elements in detail and digging deeply even into proposals that often seem unreasonable to us is often underestimated, but it needs to be discussed as you rightly specified.
Thank you Riccardo, I very much appreciate the complements. And you are entirely right. When discussing something that is nothing more or less than proposals on what direction humanity should go next, all perspectives should be welcome in the marketplace of ideas to be rigorously examined and tested for validity 👏🏼
Great points Chris! I’d incentivize all of the energy forms before eventually instituting a carbon tax (one has to only look to California as to why) since only the wealthy will be able to afford EV cars at first and a carbon tax will disproportionately affect poorer people, but once we have a robust energy mix it will be needed to phase out fossil fuel use for sure 🤝