Nysnø Klimainvesteringer
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2019–2024
52:11 · 38K views · Jun 17, 2019
Vaclav Smil's talk on historic energy transitions and what they imply for climate investment. He argues that transitions are slow, technology improves gradually, and only absolute cuts in energy use would truly work.
Frequently linked as a sobering, data-grounded counterpoint to techno-optimism about decarbonization and green growth.
15 comments from Hacker News
> the ability to dramatically reduce world hunger is a direct consequence of humans' capacity to improve crop yields such as rice and corn through breeding and engineering. Not through "breeding and engineering", through artificial nitrogen fertilizer. We have been turning oil into people . > prevented the starvation of millions of people. That delayed the starvation of millions of people and now we are facing the prospect of the starvation of billions of people. FWIW, I do applauded Maddie and her team, and I wish them luck and hope they succeed. But the only way we are going to avert disaster is to stop taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air. That's it. Here's a fascinating talk by Václav Smil at the Driva Climate Investment Meeting in 2019, where he makes the point better than I ever could: this video - - - - edit: i'm rate limited at the moment. Replying to HWR_14 below Dwarf wheat was generated through selective breeding, same as the last N-thousand years. And it was only necessary due to the defects of using artificial nitrogen fertilizer: > Taller wheat grasses better compete for sunlight, but tend to collapse under the weight of the extra grain—a trait called lodging—from the rapid growth spurts induced by nitrogen fertilizer Borlaug used in the poor soil. To prevent this, he bred wheat to favor shorter, stronger stalks that could better support larger seed heads. [LINK] Anyway, my point isn't that science doesn't work or isn't good, it's that engine
> the degrowth position is that people are inevitably going to lead worse lives than at present, but that we can choose between things getting kind of bad, by systematically pursuing degrowth, and things getting apocalyptically bad, which is what will happen if we continue pursuing growth I can't speak for others who advocate for degrowth, but that seems about right to me, with the caveat that I believe ecologically harmonious lifestyles would be more fun and fulfilling than what we have now. The challenge is to return to harmony with Nature while still enjoying the benefits of science and technology. - - - - > fourth, the most urgent environmental problem for human quality of life is global warming, and atmospheric carbon capture is necessary to solve it, a measure which will almost certainly require vast expansion of human energy exploitation and therefore economic growth (because you can have growth without increased resource exploitation, but probably not vastly increased resource exploitation without growth) Václav Smil has me convinced that atmospheric carbon capture on a scale great enough to counter-act our continued fossil fuel use is a pipe dream, pretty much for the reason you say: it takes too much energy to sequester the carbon. Here he is at Driva Climate Investment Meeting in 2019. It's a great lecture IMO, and he starts bagging on carbon capture around minute 39: this video
Here's a fascinating talk by Václav Smil at the Driva Climate Investment Meeting in 2019: this video Bill Gates calls him "one of my favorite thinkers" and reviews his recent book "Growth": > Vaclav Smil ... reaches the ... conclusion: Earth is fragile and “before it is too late, we should embark in earnest on the most fundamental existential [task] of making any future growth compatible with the long-term preservation of the only biosphere we have.” [LINK]
On the other hand 1/2 of world looks more or less the same - rural Africa, india, china... If you believe we are highly adaptable and new technologies will 'save us' somehow check this presentation : this video ...it's eye opening
Small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated into regenerative agriculture. (This is different from large-scale industrial ethanol production.) You grow e.g. sugar beets, convert them to alcohol and some byproducts (that go back into the farm as feed and fertilizer), use the alcohol in generators and vehicles. You're operating within your solar budget, the atoms that make up the alcohol came from water and air so all your nutrients and trace minerals stay on the farm and the fuel is carbon-neutral (all the carbon released when you burn the fuel originally came from the air in the form of carbon dioxide, not from underground fossilized carbon), and it can be done with simple off-the-shelf tech that has been around for literally thousands of years. You don't have to scrap your ICE cars and trucks, you can modify them to work with alcohol as fuel (some cars it's a software mod!) and the exhaust is not poisonous. - - - - Here's a video of Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019 giving a talk called "Investing in a changing climate – what we can learn from historic energy transitions". this video The presentation is IMO very interesting, and the conclusion is sobering: "Only absolute cuts in energy use would work." ( this video ) We use too much power. And when I say "we" I mean mostly the USA but the rest of the world is ramping up rapidly. Unless there's a miracle (like clean fusion generators that kids can make in the garage out of chicken wire, tires, and ducktape) th