Climate Action and the Elephant in the Room

[bilby]

The existing productivity has come at the cost of lots of jobs, and I made it clear in my statement that I said additional productivity will come at the cost of lots more jobs. We can all be replaced. No doubts there. But unless we manage a nation without 0 employment, that'd be an issue.

We were shortening the workweek steadily from the beginning of the industrial revolution until about 1940. Since then we've been stalled at the 40-hour week. No good reason we couldn't resume shortening it.

Heat pumps are a good idea, yes, and underutilized; but you can make carbon-neutral gasoline and heating oil and cooking gas from atmospheric CO2 and nuclear power.

Carbon neutral or carbon free? And how are we capturing that CO2?

Carbon neutral -- it's normal CH4, etc., just not made from dead dinosaurs. The carbon goes into the atmosphere when the fuel is used and comes out when it's recycled. Scientific American had an article on the technology several years ago. IIRC, we'd blow air through some chemical powder that reacts with CO2; when it's absorbed as much CO2 as it can, you heat it up and it emits CO, which we can use as a feedstock to make all sorts of things we normally make from petroleum. They calculated we could stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels by doing this on a scale about the same as the world-wide car industry, and pay for it all with a world-wide 25-cent a gallon carbon tax, assuming we have carbon-free electricity generation.

Los Alamos National Laboratory published a concept paper for making synthetic alcohol and hydrocarbon fuels from atmospheric CO₂ back in 2007:

https://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom.pdf

The CO₂ can be extracted from the atmosphere by the cooling water for the nuclear power plant that powers the process, as that CO₂ is dissolved from the air into the water, as it passes through the cooling towers. It's scrubbed from the water using Potassium Carbonate, and then recovered electrolytically, with hydrogen as a byproduct. This hydrogen then provides up to a third of the hydrogen feedstock for the later stages of synfuel production.

It's likely that this and similar processes could significantly impact efficiency, and thereby somewhat reduce that 25c/gal figure required to make the whole carbon neutral process viable.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The existing productivity has come at the cost of lots of jobs, and I made it clear in my statement that I said additional productivity will come at the cost of lots more jobs. We can all be replaced. No doubts there. But unless we manage a nation without 0 employment, that'd be an issue.

We were shortening the workweek steadily from the beginning of the industrial revolution until about 1940. Since then we've been stalled at the 40-hour week. No good reason we couldn't resume shortening it.

Heat pumps are a good idea, yes, and underutilized; but you can make carbon-neutral gasoline and heating oil and cooking gas from atmospheric CO2 and nuclear power.

Carbon neutral or carbon free? And how are we capturing that CO2?

Carbon neutral -- it's normal CH4, etc., just not made from dead dinosaurs. The carbon goes into the atmosphere when the fuel is used and comes out when it's recycled. Scientific American had an article on the technology several years ago. IIRC, we'd blow air through some chemical powder that reacts with CO2; when it's absorbed as much CO2 as it can, you heat it up and it emits CO, which we can use as a feedstock to make all sorts of things we normally make from petroleum. They calculated we could stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels by doing this on a scale about the same as the world-wide car industry, and pay for it all with a world-wide 25-cent a gallon carbon tax, assuming we have carbon-free electricity generation.

Yeah, seeing red flags abound there.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think we are running out of productivity increases, without cutting deeply into employment. We've become so productive, we can't get anything done. Corporate consolidation has been an issue with a slown down ability to manage growth. Below that, we have seen employment issues with employee availability causing shortages here and there, like construction.

Disagree--productivity is increased by improved tools. That's where most productivity growth ultimately comes from.

They can be environmentalists and be wrong. The faux environmentalists are those railing against Wind Mills because they pretend to give a fuck about birds.

The problem with nuclear, and there are a lot, is that it isn't a magic bullet. It only addresses power production. Even if we had 100% nuclear tomorrow, we still will take a long time to adapt to a much higher percentage of electricity based energy use at home. We need northern US heat pumps. We need to figure out how to manage tens of millions of electric car batteries for "recycling". And we need to drag millions of Americans into the 22nd century, who are still pissing their pants over wanting to use lightbulbs that use four times the energy to produce the same amount of light!

An awful lot of "environmentalists" believe only small is good. Never mind that small is incompatible with supporting the Earth's population. And they ignore the big stuff that's off stage. House self-powered with solar panels = small = good. Never mind the ginormous factory that produces those solar panels. (Production of such stuff requires cleanliness incompatible with human contact and chemicals very unsuited for human exposure. Thus it's 100% automated and that means it can only be sanely done at a very large scale.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Carbon neutral -- it's normal CH4, etc., just not made from dead dinosaurs. The carbon goes into the atmosphere when the fuel is used and comes out when it's recycled. Scientific American had an article on the technology several years ago. IIRC, we'd blow air through some chemical powder that reacts with CO2; when it's absorbed as much CO2 as it can, you heat it up and it emits CO, which we can use as a feedstock to make all sorts of things we normally make from petroleum. They calculated we could stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels by doing this on a scale about the same as the world-wide car industry, and pay for it all with a world-wide 25-cent a gallon carbon tax, assuming we have carbon-free electricity generation.

Interesting! I didn't realize we had carbon capture that efficient. Can you point me towards more info about it?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Carbon neutral -- it's normal CH4, etc., just not made from dead dinosaurs. The carbon goes into the atmosphere when the fuel is used and comes out when it's recycled. Scientific American had an article on the technology several years ago. IIRC, we'd blow air through some chemical powder that reacts with CO2; when it's absorbed as much CO2 as it can, you heat it up and it emits CO, which we can use as a feedstock to make all sorts of things we normally make from petroleum. They calculated we could stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels by doing this on a scale about the same as the world-wide car industry, and pay for it all with a world-wide 25-cent a gallon carbon tax, assuming we have carbon-free electricity generation.

Interesting! I didn't realize we had carbon capture that efficient. Can you point me towards more info about it?

Or maybe actual full scale examples. Those claims carry so many asterisks.

 

[bilby]

Disagree--productivity is increased by improved tools. That's where most productivity growth ultimately comes from.

The problem being how to avoid a stratification of society between a handful of wealthy owners of those tools, and the bulk of people who can't afford to own them, and no longer have access to productive work, and therefore no longer have any means of getting money and as a result have significantly curtailed participation as consumers.

There must be a redistribution of wealth from the owners of those tools and factories, to the people who they want to purchase the cheap products that those tools and factories generate. Whether that implies a far shorter working week, or a direct transfer (eg via a universal basic income, or via generous unemployment benefits), it's unavoidable that something has to change from the pre-technological idea that every ordinary person who wants money, must do equivalently productive work.

Society needs to get used to a new class of freeloaders, who can join with the existing classes of freeloaders with whom we have already learned to live (children, the elderly, the sick and infirm, the generationally wealthy, etc.

 

[Bomb#20]

Interesting! I didn't realize we had carbon capture that efficient. Can you point me towards more info about it?

I can't find the original article I read, but Google turns up several articles about similar technology. These guys built a pilot plant...

A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere

First direct air capture paper for which all major components are either drawn from well-established commercial heritage or described in sufficient detail to allow assessment by third parties. Includes energy and materials balances, commercial engineering cost breakdown, and pilot plant data...

www.cell.com

 

[ZiprHead]

There's also  Carbon farming.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Disagree--productivity is increased by improved tools. That's where most productivity growth ultimately comes from.

The problem being how to avoid a stratification of society between a handful of wealthy owners of those tools, and the bulk of people who can't afford to own them, and no longer have access to productive work, and therefore no longer have any means of getting money and as a result have significantly curtailed participation as consumers.

There must be a redistribution of wealth from the owners of those tools and factories, to the people who they want to purchase the cheap products that those tools and factories generate. Whether that implies a far shorter working week, or a direct transfer (eg via a universal basic income, or via generous unemployment benefits), it's unavoidable that something has to change from the pre-technological idea that every ordinary person who wants money, must do equivalently productive work.

Society needs to get used to a new class of freeloaders, who can join with the existing classes of freeloaders with whom we have already learned to live (children, the elderly, the sick and infirm, the generationally wealthy, etc.

Except you're assuming handful of owners when that's not the case. Most of those manufacturers aren't just one owner, they're owned by a lot of people including a lot of pension funds.

 

[bilby]

Disagree--productivity is increased by improved tools. That's where most productivity growth ultimately comes from.

The problem being how to avoid a stratification of society between a handful of wealthy owners of those tools, and the bulk of people who can't afford to own them, and no longer have access to productive work, and therefore no longer have any means of getting money and as a result have significantly curtailed participation as consumers.

There must be a redistribution of wealth from the owners of those tools and factories, to the people who they want to purchase the cheap products that those tools and factories generate. Whether that implies a far shorter working week, or a direct transfer (eg via a universal basic income, or via generous unemployment benefits), it's unavoidable that something has to change from the pre-technological idea that every ordinary person who wants money, must do equivalently productive work.

Society needs to get used to a new class of freeloaders, who can join with the existing classes of freeloaders with whom we have already learned to live (children, the elderly, the sick and infirm, the generationally wealthy, etc.

Except you're assuming handful of owners when that's not the case. Most of those manufacturers aren't just one owner, they're owned by a lot of people including a lot of pension funds.

That's lovely.

But what happens to people who are too young to collect a pension, and/or too poor to accumulate a portfolio of investments?

The 41% of Americans who own no shares (and the 75% of Americans from households with incomes below $40,000 [source]) need some form of income. They can't afford to buy into capital ownership, and they increasingly can't get work, because the capital equipment they can't afford is undercutting them.

If society doesn't provide for those people, they'll just take stuff from society anyway. Theft is the default wealth redistribution methodology, and about the least efficient. Society needs to ensure that its not the most attractive option, and certainly not the only option.

And of course, the number of people whose share and investment portfolios bring in enough money to live comfortably on, without any other income, is indeed a handful; Most of the money is in a pitifully small number of (wealthy) hands.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But what happens to people who are too young to collect a pension, and/or too poor to accumulate a portfolio of investments?

The 41% of Americans who own no shares (and the 75% of Americans from households with incomes below $40,000 [source]) need some form of income. They can't afford to buy into capital ownership, and they increasingly can't get work, because the capital equipment they can't afford is undercutting them.

If society doesn't provide for those people, they'll just take stuff from society anyway. Theft is the default wealth redistribution methodology, and about the least efficient. Society needs to ensure that its not the most attractive option, and certainly not the only option.

And of course, the number of people whose share and investment portfolios bring in enough money to live comfortably on, without any other income, is indeed a handful; Most of the money is in a pitifully small number of (wealthy) hands.

We aren't to the point they can't get work, other than in countries that protect their workers right out of a job at all.