> It's been an issue in some fields though - renewable energy development in the USA is lagging far behind China because China invested a lot of money in R & D in the sector, resulting in engineering victories like mastering monocrystalline silicon ingot production at scale.
The US is so busy with two political parties trying to destroy each other that we can't even build a train. And we are going to save the planet? Have we gone insane?
> Also, there are dozens of practical studies pointing to the ability to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix while maintaining and expanding overall energy production on a global basis.
Reducing and, on a very long time scale, eliminating fossil fuel usage is a worthy objective. Nothing wrong with that. However, pretending that this is going to save the planet is just fantasy. It isn't. Not even close. We can't control things at a planetary scale (other than make things worse).
Destroying an economy in support of something that is, at best, laughable, isn't good for anyone other than those using it to make money and gain power.
I don't think we could build a train regardless. And the CA HSR program was idiotic from the start, based on basically fraudulent premises of potential ridership.
> I don't think we could build a train regardless. And the CA HSR program was idiotic from the start, based on basically fraudulent premises of potential ridership.
Absolutely true on both points. The math supporting the justification for this train is a complete falsehood. Something that lends further support to what I was saying in my other comment about researchers not daring go outside the politically and economically favored narratives. Imagine someone daring to prove the CA high speed train was stupid beyond any doubt. Their professional life would be over instantly. And for what?
The point I was trying to make is that we actually have people talking about saving the planet in a few decades --a planetary scale problem-- when we can't build a train and we can't even control fires.
Have we actually gone insane or are people so numb to this stuff that they just checkbox everything and let it happen?
Maybe it is a matter of education. When a large number of the population needs an app to calculate tip at the restaurant, how could they possibly be equipped to critically evaluate anything? An uneducated population is far easier to control than one with real critical thinking chops.
If the planet actually needs saving, then inability to do so isn't any sort of comfort.
There are actually plenty of examples of environmental protection that were smashing successes, so I don't see why pessimism is warranted. The Clean Air Act returned value some 40 times its cost. The Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances was a huge win. SOx control in the US came in a factor of 6 cheaper than had been warned.
This is very different. I am not being a pessimist at all. Just being brutally realistic.
People are talking about "saving the planet" (in quotes because I think it is a ridiculous statement) in 20, 50 or 100 years.
If humanity ceased to exist on this planet. If we all evaporated tomorrow, it would take 100K years for a 100ppm drop in CO2 levels.
How the hell is installing solar panels or driving electric cars going to make that happen a THOUSAND times faster.
It's like claiming we can safely stop a semi truck in 0.5 feet (roughly the width of your hand) from 65 miles per hour (normal braking distance from that speed is about 500 feet) without killing everything in it, in close proximity, causing massive destruction and using unimaginable amounts of power and energy.
In other words, nice sci-fi fantasy, and that's all it is. Can't be done.
I know of one paper that set out to prove renewables could solve the problem. The researchers were stunned to learn they were wrong. I commend them for printing their conclusion. To paraphrase, they said something like this: Even if we deploy the most optimal forms of renewable energy world wide, forms that have yet to be invented, the best of solar, wind and more, not only is atmospheric CO2 concentration not going to decrease, it will continue to grow.
If you look at a chart of the annual contributions of CO2 by country it is easy to see how this works. I posted a link in a prior comment. You could erase the entire US and China from this planet and atmospheric CO2 concentration will not drop any faster than 100ppm in 100K years. That's reality.
The US is so busy with two political parties trying to destroy each other that we can't even build a train. And we are going to save the planet? Have we gone insane?
> Also, there are dozens of practical studies pointing to the ability to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix while maintaining and expanding overall energy production on a global basis.
Reducing and, on a very long time scale, eliminating fossil fuel usage is a worthy objective. Nothing wrong with that. However, pretending that this is going to save the planet is just fantasy. It isn't. Not even close. We can't control things at a planetary scale (other than make things worse).
Destroying an economy in support of something that is, at best, laughable, isn't good for anyone other than those using it to make money and gain power.