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Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

This is a really nice article, in that its long and provides a good example of knowing everything yet nothing.

Setting aside individual problems with it, this is because it suffers from a broad and blindingly obvious problem: investment is occurring in this area b/c it will be absolutely politically unpalatable in 20 years to still be emitting CO2.

A long analysis showing lithium is more expensive than just using gas is unnecessary, and not even wrong when its used to prove VCs are dumb or whatever.

Things are going to get that bad. Mark my words. It's like how it was obvious COVID was going to be a pandemic after January 2020. You could derive it from basic #s.

They're not looking to be cheaper-than.

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Sulfur Hexafluoride and Nitrogen Trifluoride proliferate under a CO2 minimization regime. Nobody is arguing with Arrhenius proofs.

Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential (GWP) of 17,200 over a 100-year period, meaning it's 17,200 times more effective than carbon dioxide (CO2) in trapping heat in the atmosphere. This GWP value is used to calculate the CO2 equivalent of NF3 emissions.

Who said CO2?

Who came up with the idea that someones arguing with Arrhenius proofs?

What does our proof showing the existence of other greenhouse gases help us with?

Does any of this shed any light on whether it will be politically palatable to be doing fossil fuels i 20 years?

What's wrong with CO2? It's not a serious issue, it's just an easy proxy for real environmental damage, focusing on CO2 simplifies complex issues like deforestation, pollution, resource depletion, and actual toxic emissions from the rest of the world. The idea is we're going to implement another tax on the plebs to drive a carbon economy and that will compensate for the damage the elites and 3rd worlders are doing. Then on top of that all the other inherent taxes like lithium batteries, transmission, windmill subsidies, solar recycling, and so on. And of course, this has to be done on the back of the most productive people in society because who else is going to do it.

I honestly don't know what's going on here.

I don't know how "we collectively de-fossil fuel and some prices may go up who knows, science!" becomes "damage by elites and 3rd worlders" and "tax" becomes "lithium batteries" "transmission" "windmill subsidies" "solar recycling", and given all that, how it's being done on the backs of the most productive in society (is this a fancy way of saying: people who buy things will buy things with batteries?)

If the idea is strictly "What's wrong with CO2"...who said CO2? :)

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