netjiro

Becuase of the low density of renewables:

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_re...

[edit, better link]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0W1ZZYIV8o

Found some info from late 2018, but paywalled and incomplete, focusing on oil wells.

https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/30/measuring-crude-oils-ca...

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6405/851.summary

Older data from 2013 regarding tar sand production is much worse

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130219/oil-sands-mining...

Then, in the end, general refineries have ca 85% energy efficiency for petrol and diesel, discounting other factors.

?

Yes, but fossile carbon is out of the carbon cycle, stored underground until we dig it up? This is a fairly fundamental pillar in the discussion around environmental impact of GHG emissions?

Absolutely. But I already had the car, and it was later replaced due to old age and not due to distance driven. But the baseline metabolic burn of the 20min car ride should be taken into account, and was, since I was only comparing the extra meal I had to eat vs the extra gas I would have burned.

The total impact of the fossile fuel production chain is something I've been looking for, but not found any good numbers on yet.

I assume that petrol from saudi shallow wells is drastically different from canadian tar sand?

Anyone with reliable data on this?

I think you underestimate the fossile fuel expenditure from agriculture, transportation, wastage, etc.

But it is true that if I walk into a forest and eat a wild grown apple, that CO2 is then from and in the normal carbon cycle and not any added fossile carbon.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935130/

[2] https://foodprint.org/issues/agriculture-energy-consumption/

Perhaps it would be better if I clarified my statement as GHG-(CO2 equivalent)?

> perhaps sequester some

We need to sequester decades worth of output already, and soon, to avoid truly catastrophic effects within the next 100-200y. Just going neutral will not be enough.

> biking (8 g) or walking (0 g) [per mile]

This is simply wrong. It doesn't take into account the CO2 footprint of the person doing the biking or walking. Biking is more efficient than walking per km. Since anyone biking, running, walking would be eating more to cover the exercise this can have a significant footprint based on what their diet looks like. A running beef eater vs a running vegan looks very different.

I used to bike 65km/d round trip to work. Wonderful for my mind and body, but I had to eat at least one extra meal every day for the periods I was active, around 200-300g total.

Normally I would replenish with fried eggs and potatoes at a guesstimated 4x (CO2 equivalent mass ratio), which is (meh) reasonable? Giving around 13g/km footprint for biking (just from my food).

Assuming I would be eating lamb or beef at somewhere around 30x impact, that extra meal would give a biking footprint around 92g/km just from my food!

Correct my numbers or methods if you disagree.

[edit]: Comparison to my (tiny) car at the time burning 4.5l/100km, (2.3kg CO2 / litre petrol), the car would be around 103g/km, which is not much higher than me on a bicycle if I kept a shitty diet !!

Different plants have different behaviours. Some sequester carbon well in the ground, others have near zero long term sequestration value. Some of the best are algae and seaweed that are allowed to sink to the bottom when they die. Plants that grow in bogs behave similarly. Chestnut is one of the best long term carbon sequestering trees.

Missing a point here. GHG _over_time_ drastically adds more net energy to the earth system than is is used to create or capture them. This because they are opaque to infrared radiation that would otherwise be escaping from the earth system.

So, GHG net heating effect is proportional to the amount of heat escape they block for as long as they remain in the atmosphere.

That is horrible for the ocean. Acidification will be killing off whole ecosystems and lead to drastically lower carbon sequestration by our oceans. As well as other horrible problems for us humans, who are still quite dependent on functional living oceans.

Please provide numbers.

Numbers are important and should be discussed transparently. Lots of variation in guesstimates, fudging, simplifications, etc cloud the issue and give drastically different "good ways forward". So, please, correct my back-of-the-envelope estimate below:

E.g. from [1]: "Following the estimations of carbon stock including above ground biomass, the total stock in the studied chestnut forests could be ordered as follows: CF3 (105.8 t C ha-1) > CF1 (102.1 t C ha-1) > CF2 (76.3 t C ha-1). The pure chestnut forest CF3 characterized with the highest total carbon stock per hectare and only 20.6 % from it is accumulated in the aboveground tree biomass."

Chestnut is one of the best carbon sequestering forest options we have. Estimate (overly positively) that this capacity cycles over 100y. Fudge down the CO2 and CH4 release from decomposition. That gives ca 100 tC/ha over 100y, aka 1tC/(ha y) or 100tC/(km2 y).

Globally we have ca 35GtCO2 or 10GtC carbon emission per year. Current forests store about 15% of that, but we are currently loosing forests at a rapid rate, and we need to not only reach neutral but also sink the 100y or so of spewing we've already fucked up. So let's keep the number at 10GtC/y.

10GtC/y would then require 100E6km2 of NEW perfect assumption chestnut forest.

We have ca 500E6km2 of total land surface on earth. That means we need to set aside 20% of all land on earth for our NEW chestnut forest. But we don't have that much land that can sustain something like this. Forest grows less well outside of humid temperate to tropical regions. E.g. Antarctica, Sahara, the steppes, boreal forest regions, etc. E.g: All agricultural land, both fields and grazing, is 11% of total land area but over one third of all culturable land, the rest of which is already mostly forest. Even if we covered all growth-possible land area that is not already forest we simply don't have enough land. And we would be out of farmland.

Based on this back of envelope calculation tree planting is not a viable solution. It's a good step in the right direction, but nothing to get the crowds overly excited about.

Instead, e.g. azolla is around 15x more potent as sequestering growth stock than forests, and it grows floating on water. Genetically engineering azolla to grow fast in higher salinity would be a better way to combat climate change. We have plenty of ocean surface area. There will be downsides to such a solution, but compare with other solutions or the horrors of what will be if we don't act...

And I'm sure someone can cook up some gm-franken-algae that is even more potent.

My point, if any, is to make sure to actually run the numbers. Get different estimates then pay skilled scientists to get better estimates. Discuss the numbers, assumptions, simplifications. Don't get the general population stuck on low worth paths when they could start fighting for more valuable ones.

And I don't propose "stop planting trees". I argue that planting trees is a good thing, but only a minor item that is overshadowing more valuable options in the general debate. We need to get people to start facing reality to the point where they can start thinking about compromises. There is no "solution" that don't require drastic changes in how we use our land and live our lives.

Side note: nuclear is the only short term low land-usage footprint solution I can see, and drastic genetic manipulation biomass or vast nuclear powered direct capture are the only long term solutions I can guesstimate. Anyone that can show me interesting alternatives?

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285516686_Carbon_st...

For me, personally, the extended coastal region is all about the nature access. Without gear I have several months of great water for swimming, diving, sailing, etc. With a thin suit it's six months. Then it's the beautiful forests, allemansrätten in Sweden, low traffic, friendly atmosphere, etc.

From Sognefjord in the north to Kungsbacka in the south it's generally easy to choose the kind of weather you want, depending on how much work you have to get done :)

Society in the region is great, friendly people, internet coverage is good, industry is strong, education is very good.

But for winter I prefer Switzerland.

Scandinavian west coast may-sep (Sognefjord to Kungsbacka).

Zürich/Zug/Vaduz oct-apr.

Utrecht for the crowd, Tokyo for the food.

Want to try: Auckland, Singapore, Vancouver.

> Funds which they will use to drive massive amounts of additional R&D to make even better treatments at lower costs.

This is a _myth_

Big Pharma is an insanely inefficient structure for turning money into useful R&D results.

Big Pharma often spends on the order of 25-30% on marketing, vs 15% on R&D. From societal standpoint this is horribly inefficient considering that most medical costs are paid for communal money via taxes and/or insurance programs.

R&D should be paid by government funds. Testing should be transparent and open. Production should be done by private companies. This would be a significantly more efficient use of our money. It would also align R&D expenditures much better with actual costs to society for medical issues.

Or, wind -> electricity -> heat pump (1:5) -> lots of heat?

Meh. The largest single radiation source in most peoples' everyday environment are probably the ubiquitous H.sapiens ambulating all around them, emitting in excess of 100W per unit at around 12 micron wavelength.

The things people are afraid of. Makes me sad.

Partially anecdotal:

The problem with hiring is from what I've seen not due to ageing population. Instead, due to very protective employment regulation employers in Sweden are absurdly slow and picky when hiring. Resulting in a very large temp staffing sector. They are also surprisingly conservative in expectations.

Contrasting anecdotal rant:

In 2014-2018 I was trying to help a Swedish company get a tech dev project going. They needed to bring in about five experts. For years this project was delayed until it was no longer relevant, because they had a pointlessly limited view on who they needed to hire, at what cost and under which structure. They would not accept a 15% salary increase above their opinion of the norm, and neither a distributed project nor a collaborative partner network construct. This loss of opportunity was huge for them.

During the same time I was staffing, running, and completing two projects in Switzerland, total of 25ppl. No issues, quick handling, excellent outcome. The Swiss investors understood that it's ok to run a project distributed across five countries and pay an extra 20-50% if it's difficult to find good people locally in a given field. Skill and speed is more important than location, cost, surname, language[2], etc.

This is not the only such situation I've come across in Sweden. I work as an R&D consultant specialised in setting up and running distributed collaborative high risk tech projects. Despite being a native Swede it's easier for me to run projects in Switzerland than in Sweden. Kind of sad.

For your second point:

For skilled immigrants (stem university degree) the situation is quite good.

From what I've heard, 2nd-3rd generation immigrants and onward tend to outperform the "native" population. This may change in Sweden after the large influx of unskilled refugees in the last 20-30 years, vs the predominantly work based immigration of 1950-1980s.

Statistically [1]: Sweden has one of the highest gaps in unemployment between European and non-European unskilled immigrants. If you're uneducated you _really_ should migrate to somewhere else if you _ever_ want to get a job.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/graph/png/Immigrat...

2: as long as they know English well enough :)

Law (1949:345) "rätten till arbetstagares uppfinningar"

It essentially specifies that the employer owns, but must pay a token cost for, "inventions" by an employee outside of his normal employment field and duties.

When you get hired you should _always_ make sure this is stricken by your contract.

> If I'm forced to sign it I will request a new contract without that section in it. Because even before I had my own business I was writing open source code for open source projects that we use and rely on. So it's impossible for my employer to own that code.

You need to _include_ a section that effectively negates 1949:345. Otherwise that law applies if nothing else is stated in the contract.

It's easy to grow fast while borrowing heavily, and that should be taken into account when looking at growth curves for various economic regions. Oil prices have also dropped from around $100 to $60 iirc.

2008-2018: total US debt (government, corporate, household, non-profit orgs) increased almost 9% from ca $68.1T to $74.1T, if you trust the numbers (https://www.nwcapitalsolutions.com/project/us-deleveraging-a...)

> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now

Key here is rate of change, and what humans can survive. We are changing the climate many many times faster than ever before. Nature does not have the time to adapt. And the wars, famines and mass displacements coming from ecosystem collapse is like nothing we've seen in human history. Think we have a problem with a few million migrants? Try a billion or two!

P-T Extinction event "The Great Dying" took on the order of 100 000 years to elevate CO2 and still killed off 96% of marine species and 70% of land vertebrates. The largest mass extinction ever(?) We're going strong in that direction over a few hundred years.

And a very hot earth will have large areas that are not survivable by humans, by traditional crops and food animals, and so on. Storms and floods massively more powerful than we see today.

Frankly, how can you not be afraid of that future? It's very likely your descendants won't survive it.

Hmm. Around 15 years ago the $100M "gotland" submarines sank the $6B carriers multiple times without detection during war games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland-class_submarine

As those kinds of subs are available to more and more countries you can't always "park" a carrier group without risk.

E.g. you change the other part of the battery. "Air breathing" LiO batteries could reach energy densities in the ballpark of other chemical fuels. I think lab demo cells are around 5MJ/kg nowadays. Traditional chemical fuels have high energy density because we don't include the oxidizer, since it's readily available in the air. Any time you stuff a lot of potential energy into a small space with a low threshold for release you're making something dangerous...

Well made point, and I could be wrong. I assume you refer to the automation inroads into accounting, legal, organisation tracking (lower management) etc. I personally see those as specific low hanging fruit since they are highly rule based.

But soon we will reach strong automation on diverse simple manual labour, transportation, stocking/handling, etc. Even if automation just manages to handle 90% of everyday tasks it will crash enormous employment numbers, far beyond what we see today in accounting, legal, etc.

The important point to be made is that the "simpler" tasks will be automated early, pushing human required labour to generally be smarter and better educated.

There are only so many people for any required value of "smart". The historical human computers in the article required less education and base intelligence than the mathematicians that are employed today.*

Sooner or later a significant segment of the population will simply not be able to train to most tasks that still require human labour. And slowly (or quickly) that bar will rise. When I hire and train people I simply need a certain baseline mental capacity, otherwise they will never get good enough to keep, no matter how long they train.

*) Note though that this does not mean they necessarily were less intelligent than the modern work force.