Comments on: Commenters on this blog — and a joke — explain things better than I do!

By: ari2525

ari2525 — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:21:11 +0000

Very funny jokes Thanks for sharing this funny jokes!!

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:39:03 +0000

Joe,

Thanks for the link – at least I see where you are coming from now. I am also clear that I fundamentally disagree with your train of thought, assumptions and projected solution.

You start the article with a long description of the problem, then link it to the solution with this:

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So we must sharply reduce emissions even as the population keeps growing, and do it in a way that increases, rather than hinders, economic development, particularly in undeveloped nations already wracked by poverty, disease, dirty water, hunger and other scourges.
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Err… no. It sounds harsh, but the planet will not be able to support a fraction of its current population on a sustainable basis if they successfully aspire to US living standards. Bush said “the American way of life is not negotiable”. He was wrong. Nature does not negotiate and if you step over her limits will take swift action. This is already happening.

If we were not all so close to it we would see that the only goal worth chasing is the global setting of hard and reducing limits on fossil fuel extraction. If that goal cannot be agreed then nothing else much matters. Best of all, such limits would be very simple to negotiate and easy to monitor, unlike all the complex carbon tax, carbon market, cap-and-trade and other mechanisms that are bounced around.

Technological progress allied to better healthcare, ever-increasing economic growth and an ever-expanding population is what got us to where we are at now. How can you possible advocate more of the same? The emphasis is quite wrong.

By: Paul K

Paul K — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:48:21 +0000

I don’t think it’s an either or situation. Reading John Mashey’s comments, it is clear that breakthrough R & D is a whole other world funded in a way that has little or no impact on applying current technology. R&D is not competing with venture capital. They play in different leagues. In the applying technology league, the only thing holding it back is the high initial cost versus long term benefits.

By: Michael Hoexter

Michael Hoexter — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:29:01 +0000

Paul,
I will take the liberty of answering your question of Joe: accelerating the deployment of existing and prototype stage clean technologies is not the same thing as more R&D. R&D implies that pre-prototype ideas and un-built ideas are the focus. Commercialization of existing technologies will yield benefits in the next 5 to 10 years while we don’t know when R&D will yield benefits….that’s waiting for the breakthrough

R&D is a good idea but it is not a substitute for accelerated commercialization of existing clean technologies. There’s no reason we can’t do both.

By: Paul K

Paul K — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:34:03 +0000

Robert,
You see that there is no benign authority to impose a climate solution. Individual governments take years to implement anything with often unintended results. If we rely on a government, even one that had J. Romm in charge, we are the ultimate delayers. Oddly, most people reading this do think success can and must be had. I agree climateprogress often strays far from the path. The core strategy article Joe wrote for Salon really is a good summary even though it lies about John McCain. You may notice among the many paragraphs predicting the end of creation percentages of necessary emission reductions reached by raising the price of carbon plus alternatives and efficiency incentives. Joe’s strategy relies on the widespread application of at the moment overly expensive and/or not quite ready for the mass market technology. The regulatory and cap & trade regimes attempt to make alternative competitive by artificially raising the price of carbon energy. The thought is that the U.S. economy can absorb and even prosper from these higher costs, but in the near term it could be very rough on below medium income families.

Joe.
Imagine my surprise when I read this in your Salon article:”we must accelerate the development and introduction of the next generation of clean technologies, which can ultimately take global emissions as low as possible by century’s end.” Sounds like you are also looking for a Breakthrough.

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:32:07 +0000

Thanks, Joe.

regarding breakthroughs:

Bell Labs, at its height, was one of the greatest industrial R&D labs in the world, with a time-span as far as 20-years ahead, and deployment expectations of 40. It’s hard to think of one that has produced more real breakthroughs over many decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs

But there was a rule:

Never *schedule* breakthroughs.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:09:16 +0000

Robert — “Rigged” is a loaded word. But yes we need a price for serious carbon. That is by far the most important thing — an aggressive clean tech deployment is the second most important thing. A price is not, however, the most important thing to the Breakthrough Institute. So that is where I’m coming from.

You must be a very new reader. I think my position on targets and how to reach them are more clearly stated than most people who write on this (let me know if you can find Pielke’s or Breakthrough’s — I can’t). I have spelled the solutions more than most — buy my book! But I am working on spelling them out in more detail on the blog over the next few months.

I don’t waste time point scoring. If I do a post, it is because I think it is important topic to understand for people who want to be ahead of the curve. I was actually asked by a bunch of people I respect to debunk Pielke. I also think the issue of tech deployment versus technology breakthrough has become one of the central climate issues.

This is a good place to start if you want to know my core strategy for this country:
http://www.salon.com/ news/ feature/ 2008/ 03/ 15/ obama_clinton_global_warming/

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:33:37 +0000

Joe, The more I read your blog the less clear I am about where you are coming from. Your really do not make your proposed stragegies at all obvious and most of your recent posts seem to be little more than point-scoring playground politics.

In my view, for fossil fuel use to be reduced and eventually phased out the market has to be “rigged” so that the external costs are internalised. Do you agree?

Everything else would follow from this simple starting point.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:44:37 +0000

John -- I will do something on R&D. I have a lot on my plate for the next week. But after that, I'll update my "breakthrough myth" post.

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:29:45 +0000

A lot of calls for R&D are from people who don’t have the foggiest idea about:

- Pure research, applied research,exploratory development, development, pilot, scaleup, deployment [or pick your favorite labels], i.e., Progressive Commitment in R&D.

- R&D portfolio management in general, including numbers of projects, investment patterns, selection for further funding, roles of government versus existing companies versus VC+startups, universities.

- Typical time frames required, including conversion times for various kinds of installed bases of infrastructure, vehcicles?

Joe: how about a tutorial on this for people, with examples from the energy/efficiency turf?

[There are numerous parallels with computing, but some of the time constants are rather different, and there are less battles with Laws of Thermodynamics. Performance tuning of microprocessor design in particular is similar to the:
10% here
1% here
2% there
....
thing where there's no one silver bullet to be had, just a lot of effects that add up.]