Volts

In short, this is probably because climate economic modeling has traditionally focused on estimating more knowable, quantifiable impacts, and acknowledging but not including potential (maybe even probable!) impacts that are too difficult to model based on current knowledge.
Tail risk is a big area that has traditionally not been modeled well leading to a very likely underestimate to the social cost of carbon (SCC):
https://www.volts.wtf/p/economists-have-quantified-the-economic

Here’s a historical overview of the situation with some links to the latest research:
https://impactlab.org/research-area/social-cost/

It’s not just tail risk, even things like geopolitical instability and crop failure were often not historically included… you can see why the headline statement seems to conflict with intuition, and it’s because of the narrow view taken on the impact of the fossil fuel scenario on GDP.

There is one more important element, and that is the distinction between economic activity (which GDP measures) and economic welfare. Natural disasters often don’t have much of an impact on GDP in part because the rebuilding activity counts in GDP. But it’s obvious to see why a future where we are spending an increasingly larger share of our effort to mitigate and rebuild losses is a much worse one. So GDP may not be the best measure here:
https://www.economy.com/economicview/analysis/296804/How-Natural-Disasters-Affect-US-GDP

> I guess Im more skeptical, especially when this is coming from a single purpose advocacy group

I agree it's unlikely you'll just have solar + batteries used just for LV. However, taking a look at the adoption of storage in California and Texas, I think it's safe to assume an upwards trajectory for solar + batteries [1].

I didn't know much about Nevada's electricity generation, but based on current data [1] there are enough alternative sources to support a sizeable increase in solar generation.

Still, I don't know how much solar will be deployed and I hope nuclear does drop in price in order to speed up the energy transistion. It's exciting to see so many great technological leaps in our lifetimes.

Finally, a shout out to geothermal, which looks very promising. I recommend listening to "Catching up with enhanced geothermal " - https://www.volts.wtf/p/catching-up-with-enhanced-geothermal.

1. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2025-09-14

2. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/0?agg=2,0,1&fuel=vvvvu&geo=00000000002&sec=008&linechart=ELEC.GEN.ALL-NV-98.Q~ELEC.GEN.COW-NV-98.Q~ELEC.GEN.NG-NV-98.Q~ELEC.GEN.HYC-NV-98.Q~ELEC.GEN.SUN-NV-98.Q~ELEC.GEN.WND-NV-98.Q~~ELEC.GEN.GEO-NV-98.Q&columnchart=ELEC.GEN.ALL-NV-98.Q&map=ELEC.GEN.ALL-NV-98.Q&freq=Q&chartindexed=0&ctype=linechart&ltype=pin&rtype=s&pin=ELEC.GEN.NG-WI-99.Q&rse=0&maptype=0

Republicans.

https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-right-wing-groups-behind-renewable

With regards to your crazy rich people comment: Yes, there’s a crazy rich person (Connie Ehrlich) in northern Indiana who is attempting to stall the Mammoth Solar installation because it doesn’t align with her values and beliefs. As of this comment, Connie has posted on her Facebook group a slew of elected positions open that her 1.1k followers should consider running for.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/350548792612785/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/30/its-got-nasty-the-battle-to-build-the-uss-biggest-solar-power-farm

Now, these parts of rural America are shrinking and dying anyway, so it’s hard to say if this is going to have a material impact if you can route around the ignorance with policy at the state level and siting the projects in more favorable jurisdictions until these folks age out.

It's definitely impressive. However, natural gas outages do happen. For example Winter Storm Uri in Texas led to gas outages.

Sadly, the outages and possible the loss of life connected to it could have been prevented if the gas companies hadn't fought back against stricter weatherization rules[^0].

> they made recommendations to the Railroad Commission to implement weatherization rules on the natural gas supply chain because there had been water coming up from the formations — it's called produced water, it's naturally occurring — and it was freezing at the top of the wellheads and restricting gas flow both at the wellheads and in pipelines.

And yes, the Railroad Commission is not in charge of trains, but oil and gas in Texas.

[^0]: https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-deal-with-the-texas-railroad

> essentially a bond return

You reminded me: David Roberts' often states that a hurdle for electrification and decarbonization projects is connecting them to "slow capital". Stuff like residential, community, solar, battery, heat pumps, appliances, ground source heat, yadda yadda.

I gather that there's plenty of "slow capital" perfectly happy with low risk long term modest returns. But these projects are too small to be worth the effort. Probably something about transaction costs.

My impression is there's an opportunity to bundle up these projects for the larger/largest investors. Biden's IRA created a "green bank" (RIP); maybe that was its intended function.

You're smart about money and finance, so you can probably explain what Roberts is talking about (to noobs like me).

https://volts.wtf

People have proposed approaches to increasing the earth's albedo (and thus reflecting more sunlight) without launching material into the atmosphere.

Best known is probably the idea of painting roads and rooftops white.

Another interesting approach: setting up very light-weight (thin plastic?) mirrors in large quantities in farmer's fields. Farmers have incentive to do this in areas that are getting hotter and where crops may already grow better with some partial shade than in full sun. Spacing mirrors on posts in fields can provide this.

This is being proposed by Ye Tao, an MIT Chemistry PhD who has pivoted to this project. Discussed on Dave Robert's Volts podcast [0].

[0] https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-dr-ye-tao-on-a-grand#details