Rethinking Climate Change: The path to 90% emissions reductions by 2035 | Hacker News Reader

Rethinking Climate Change: The path to 90% emissions reductions by 2035

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16 pointsbaron81612 comments

summary: We should massively overproduce renewable energy so that we store enough power for winter when solar underproduces.

Not sure there's any meaningful insight here.

The real solution that already exists and can solve climate change is nuclear power.

This is a very poor summary.

For example, one of the biggest impacts they suggest is from rewilding of areas that were previously used for animal agriculture because technical breakthroughs should allow "meat", "fish" and other animal derived products to be produced better and cheaper using lab processes, freeing up large amounts of land.

Agree or disagree, it's going to be a novel idea to many, it's literally called out in the video as the biggest impact and you didn't mention it in your summary at all.

I don't think that's a novel idea, nor does "rewilding" significantly improve CO2 capture.

While new growth of forests does temporarily capture CO2, forests become carbon neutral within a couple decades.

Also, growing meat AT SCALE, is still entirely theoretical - let alone assuming it will be cheaper.

Nuclear power has some very nice properties but the article is talking about 2035, not 2055. Solar and wind capacity are going online rapidly day by day and that can very easily be scaled up with far fewer approval dependencies. That doesn’t mean that nuclear isn’t worth considering as an alternative to wind/geothermal/hydro-power but we really need to remember that the window for a clean shift to a predominantly nuclear grid started closing in the 1980s.

> clean shift to a predominantly nuclear grid started closing in the 1980s.

Our nuclear future was toast by April 1979 because of an extremely unfortunate coincidence:

March 16, 1979: Premiere of the film The China Syndrome - the plot to which involves a near-miss at a nuclear power plant that could have "render[ed] an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania uninhabitable."

March 28, 1979: Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania has a major meltdown that destroys one of its two units and releases a small amount of radioactive material into the surrounding environment.

Yes - TMI could have been an outlier but once it shaped public sentiment with little counter argument it’s become increasingly hard to go back. Regardless of whether or not nuclear would be functionally useful, I don’t think it’s productive to talk about it without focusing on the “… and here’s how any of this will actually reach production” discussion after decades of plans stalling or being cancelled.

I don’t think everyone pushing it are motivated simply by its use as a distraction by the fossil fuel lobbyists but there’s definitely a tendency to focus on the engineering side rather than the hard but necessary approvals.

It's also important to remember that the Soviet Union actively supported the anti-nuclear movement in the US.

...also, none of the renewal energy proposals in the OP video are nearer to production. Indeed, most are still theoretical.

None of the proposals in the video can be achieved by 2035 either.

Indeed, probably the most realistic project to end CO2 emission in the US is still nuclear power - even with the 20 year delay (which we could cut in half if we had popular/political will).

The assertion that autonomous vehicles as a service would be readily available in the time frame required for action on climate change was pretty laughable as well.

Considering the projected impact of lab grown food, I'd hope there would be much more investment in developing that, even from governments. It seems like such a ripe economic opportunity that could have first mover advantages too. Establish yourself as a manufacturer of cheap, very high quality, and safe lab grown food and others might not be able to match that level of trust.

The document discussed in the video can be accessed here:

https://www.rethinkx.com/s/Rethinking-Implications.pdf

It's a very interesting thought that the technologies to reach 90% carbon emission reduction are within reach, since they already exist, but will require some readjustments to our lifestyle.

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