by johnny313 on 4/25/22, 9:14 PM with 25 comments
by tuatoru on 4/25/22, 10:01 PM
Smil steadfastly rejected the (almost continuous!) politicizing attempts and dissed the virtue signalling. Well done.
(Reporter: "I eat less meat [...]; I'm [...] looking at solar panels and heat pumps." Smil: "There is nothing wrong with the heat pump, but proper insulation, that's much better in the long run. ... People will stop eating meat, then fly for a vacation in Toscana.")
by blippage on 4/26/22, 6:28 PM
Economics considerations are important, you can't just gloss over them. For example, just the other day, my dad was telling me of someone he knew who spent £25k on a heat pump. It makes for great feels, and you get to go to bed at night with the warm fuzzies, but there is no discussion of things like payback period. One doesn't need to be a genius to understand the concept of payback period, but even this simple analysis is overlooked. And things like payback and Return On Investment are important to determining whether something is viable. And it's by no means clear in my mind that these costly solutions and all the materials they involve are actually better environmentally than existing solutions.
It's like when people propose something like hydroelectric schemes. From what I've been given to understand, these are proven to be viable. But whenever such a scheme is proposed, groups pop up saying that it will harm some ecosystem. Will it harm an ecosystem? Probably, yes. But every time anyone takes a dump their having a deleterious effect on the environment, so I am expecting a more nuanced argument than that.
My point is not that I am advocating for against hydroelectric schemes per se. My point is that "how dare you" doesn't lead to intelligent decision-making.
by dr_dshiv on 4/26/22, 2:38 PM
I agree with all that except the conclusion. I don’t think we need to be so dour. The world is moving incredibly fast. China installed more wind energy last year than the entire world installed in the past 5 years. Dubai is on track to be 100% solar powered by 2050. We have solutions like stratospheric sulfur injections that we don’t want to use, but could if the permafrost starts melting. The world is not all doom. I love his anti-politics politics, though.
by goatsneez on 4/26/22, 9:33 AM
One take away point I would highlight for myself from the interview is the reinforcement: ".... this is a totally unprecedented problem, and people don’t realize how difficult it will be to deal with. " This is (speaking from Germany's point of view) the entrapped high-school and elementary school activism equipped with political slogans are hands down the worse possible way to go about thinking/acting about the said problem. Rather create math-physics-engineering centered curricula (or its elements) where physical/natural reality of being is the central philosophy so kids are less concerned with politics and become practical, competent agents of change which ever way it will turn out to be. Why a 10 year old kids has to know G. Thu. school activism while not having the slightest idea of physical reality of modern civilization, not to speak of actual useful things like units, scales, and degrees of the problem -- adapted to their level).
by lotsofpulp on 4/25/22, 10:16 PM
The solution has always been to make gas $20 per gallon or $30 per gallon or whatever it needs to be to force people to use dense housing and public transit or cycling/walking.
Problem is not all the countries are going to do it, especially the ones who have not been living the high life for the past 60 years, so it is politically dead in the water. And hence you end up with exaggerated promises and delusional pop science, stuff that is politically palatable.
by mc32 on 4/26/22, 12:26 AM
People will end up in ruin if they follow their favorite celebrities to provide them compass on anything important. But this is what we have these days.
by jwozn on 4/26/22, 7:33 AM
by truculent on 4/26/22, 1:57 PM
by ZeroGravitas on 4/27/22, 12:22 AM
https://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/36.EVs_.pd...
> The last thing we need is to push for the rapid introduction of a source of demand that would summon even more fossil-fuel- based electricity generation.
> And even if EVs all ran on renewable sources of electricity, greenhouse gases would still be emitted during the produc- tion of cement and steel for hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and photovoltaic panels, and of course during the manufacture of the cars themselves.
I keep hearing how he's an energy genius but it all feels like when Jordan Peterson was being hyped as an intellectual.
In this interview he can't decide if it's a big catastrophe that we can't avoid or a hoax, while also proposing simple solutions that would have worked if people did them two decades ago. Here's rhetorically all over the place.
by timcavel on 4/25/22, 11:50 PM
by Woodi on 4/26/22, 5:15 AM
Seriously ? Activists ? Like people do political/etc influence for living ? :> Man, they do whatever someone pays them to do ! Banning that "occupation" would bring something realism... Also un-dumbing academy peoples and system would help. Criminalizing intentional failing-up/into corporations by experts/gov-representatives/elected officials ?
CO^2 ? What about O^2 ? I hear many times stories about water into ankles and you could catch fishes with bare hands. Few decades ago, of course. Now lakes are empty. Just yesterday I hear that there is no oxygen in water so water is dead for living creatures. But no... Lets imagine next tax and do nothing else !
Since ancient times cities was surrounded by fields to grow food "just-on location" and now cities are mega-dead-by-hunger-traps.
You see to live you just need to eat, drink and breath. Agriculture needs to be again main occupation of planet Earth population - you need to explode into pieces that mega-agriculture and idio-subsidio-industry. Less fuel will be consumed by idividual humans working in near-house gardens :) You do not need to have oranges and bananas from other side of the equator to be cheaper then potatos and carrots grown behind everybody windows...
And instantly cut 70% of paperwork (or worse: computerized) needed for anything ! Yes, fucking ANYTHING !! Let mass fired goverment and controling agencies workers be the first wave of New Agriculture.