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I'd argue that the decreased usage of oil has -to some degree- already started, e.g. Chinas crude imports have dropped the last two years in a row and yet they're still adding ever more EVs at a spectacular rate. There's practically no way but down for those numbers. It's mostly similar for the EU, though they're not as aggressive re EVs.

With PV being the absolutely cheapest form to get energy in most regions of the world already or soon-ish (and even highly useful electric energy at that), I fully expect our capital machines to pour ever more resources into its deployment. This will go on until we have plastered some percentage of the earths surface with PV, there's fundamentally no real constraint to doing so.

Along the way, over the next 10-30 years we will have replaced most major fossil burning things - the only way you will be able to compete with PV power is if you're sitting right on top of a gas field in a location with little sunlight and no grid connection.

Incidentally, with ever-falling battery storage costs, I'd assume the need for large interconnect buildout to be diminishing, but there's lots of inertia in that system so societies might end up with some underused assets. Still better than all the stranded assets I suppose, but still.

Isn’t that argument somewhat strange or dishonest? To paraphrase you: I‘d rather have naked shorting and the associated manipulation and problems with it than better price discovery for stockholders. In your example, the stockholder isn’t protected either, only an equity firm derives profit from this information. In a more ideal world the stockholders themselves would do this due diligence, which is something that already happens. Also there’s differences between shorting and naked shorting. I could well imagine allowing fully hedged shorting and outlawing naked shorting. Especially considering the issue of fail to deliver, that’s just absurd with our technology.

So let's pick this apart:

- "The authoritarian infrastructure will be built"

I'd argue it already has been built, by Google, NSA et al. Also, I fail to see why these "high levels of government regulation" would be bad, since we've tried the alternative and it obviously doesn't work..

- "The Green New Deal has turned into a jobs program."

I'm no american, but has this been put into law already?

- "the Soviet Union was immensely energy inefficient and polluting"

I do hear that from time to time but no one can provide any sources for this claim. Can you? Not planning on protecting the ol' USSR, but still seems insincere to just throw this around without attribution.

- "Increasing middle class prosperity is inherently incompatible with reducing carbon output."

That's a pretty flat statement. Why would this be so?

- "the Global Climate Strike platform categorically rejects market mechanisms to address climate change."

We tried this, it hasn't worked (so far). Why should we continue with this measure instead of other approaches?

- "Carbon capture and cheap nuclear power"

both of which do not exist. See my comment about LCOE and the link below for cheap nuclear power. With regards to carbon capture, we have some pilot plants but this technology (or rather mix of technologies) is nowhere near ready for the massive scale of deployment we'd need already. That's why the focus is on political solutions imo.

Oops, my calculation was way off (missed a kilo-prefix somewhere), we'd need to cut and store about the entire rainforest per year. So, this is obviously not possible as an all-around solution but might help with some Gigatonnes..

Optimistic perhaps, but maybe not impossible ;)

I've done some further googling and found some studies on the topic, though on-land: https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0... and some more from a presentation https://www.feem.it/m/events_pages/20167111127315Zeng_presen...

Though the question still remains how securely the CO2 would be stored under the ocean. Maybe with a large enough layer of rock on top it would suffice.. I suppose it's high time we started field trials on all these approaches.

My own back-of-napkin calc says that we'd need to cut about .1 to .2 % of tropical rainforests per year and remove them from the carbon cycle, not sure if that's right.

Hi, do you have some source or paper on this approach? I don’t mean to dispute this but have never heard of it before and a quick query didn’t turn up any results, rather the opposite (decay processes happening on the sea floor, not sure whether / or in what amounts those release co2 again).

Have you read the article?

"Aluminum, discovered in minute quantities in a lab in the eighteen-twenties, was hailed as a wonder substance, with qualities never before seen in a metal: it was lightweight, shiny, resistant to rust, and highly conductive. It could be derived from clay (at first, it was called “silver from clay”), and the idea that a valuable substance was produced from a common one lent it a quality of alchemy. In the eighteen-fifties, a French chemist devised a method for making a few grams at a time, and aluminum was quickly adopted for use in expensive jewelry. Three decades later, a new process, using electricity, allowed industrial production, and the price plummeted."

There are plenty already, by all sorts of players. However the issue is search - which is probably one major aspect of the "friction" mentioned in the parent post: 1. Patents are often not exactly written to easily give their secrets (I would say there are specific forms of patent legalese). 2. You need (costly) experts to look at potential offers.

In addition, there are more disincentives to "easy" IP transactions: 1. Even when you've found a matching patent it doesn't mean that you can just pop out a product. Most of the actual work is still ahead of you. 2. Pricing and contract negotiation is rather difficult and costs as well. 3. The existing marketplaces are mostly rather small with the largest having maybe 20-30k offers. Just not enough to impact the myriads of problems available...

Still interested? Just reply, maybe I can help.

Thorium 14 years ago

One of you talks about absolute numbers, the other about % change. I don't have any numbers easily at hand but you might both be correct.

I guess we'll have to see how this holds up: Usually the problems arise not from one's own folder structure (most people know their way around what they've created) but when working together in someone else's structure. Does this approach solve that problem?

So maybe they've filed the application but have not received the patent/disclosed the invention yet? In the US, you have to prove that you were the first to invent something, not the first to file something (as in Europe), so the secrecy would make some sense...