What these people fail to understand is that there IS a popular way to raise taxes: Tax very wealthy people a lot more and enforce the laws so wealthy people don't get away with avoiding taxes they should be paying.
Armstrong McKay, et al. 2022. "Exceeding 1.5 C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points." Science. vol. 377, no. 6611. September 9. pp. eabn7950. [science.org/doi/abs/10.112…]
Oct 21, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
You weren't listening carefully enough to Kieren Mayer's presentation. Slide 14 shows total life cycle emissions including manufacturing of equipment and discs for three modes of gaming.
The key is that USE PHASE dominates in most cases, so your statement about "massive hardware emissions" doesn't track with reality, although in some use cases embedded emissions can be consequential.
May 21, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Lead is terrible for humans, folks. Let's get rid of those pipes ASAP.
Also, many people don't know that lead is still allowed in aviation gasoline, because the FAA thinks "no safe alternative is currently available". faa.gov/news/fact_shee…
May 21, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
As one of the coauthors of a rebuttal to this nonsense article I can attest to the fact that this study by Mora et al. is widely cited even now.
Our rebuttal: Masanet, Eric, Arman Shehabi, Nuoa Lei, Harald Vranken, Jonathan Koomey, and Jens Malmodin. 2019. "Implausible projections overestimate near-term Bitcoin CO2 emissions." Nature Climate Change. vol. 9, no. 9. 2019/09/01. pp. 653-654. [doi.org/10.1038/s41558…]
May 20, 2021 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Setting a coal phase-out date (2030 or sooner for developed countries) is the most important single step most nations can take on climate. Of course it's not the only necessary step, but it's a big one.
This is another example of a critically important constraint on the supply side (it's not just about reducing demand).
Apr 28, 2021 • 7 tweets • 5 min read
@rustneversleepz That was a widely cited article but it wasn’t state of the art at the time. I emailed Socolow in 2009 to explain his mistake of saying keeping emissions constant was a reasonable goal which he said elsewhere also. Still have the email.
@rustneversleepz This was state of the art in 2003, from @KenCaldeira Caldeira, Ken, Atul K. Jain, and Martin I. Hoffert. 2003. "Climate Sensitivity Uncertainty and the Need for Energy Without CO2 Emission " Science. vol. 299, no. 5615. pp. 2052-2054. <sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab…>
Apr 28, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
OK, #energytwitter, I'm wondering if anyone has recent references giving data on embodied/embedded/manufacturing emissions for electronic devices of all types.
This is great, but it's 8 years old now: Teehan, Paul, and Milind Kandlikar. 2013. "Comparing Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Modern Computing and Electronics Products." Environmental Science & Technology. vol. 47, no. 9. 2013/05/07. pp. 3997-4003. doi.org/10.1021/es3030…
When you’re dealing with delusional people, rational arguments don’t work, and straight up mockery is the best option.
Apr 24, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Lyman is right here. Travel bans are an important part of pandemic response, and the more quickly they're implemented in a pandemic, the better off we'll be.
Of course, they are one part of a more comprehensive strategy that involves getting to zero transmission, extensive testing and tracing, masking, and eventually vaccines. Travel bans themselves won't do the job, but as part of a strategy to get to zero transmission, they work.
Apr 24, 2021 • 23 tweets • 6 min read
I want to add a subtle clarification to this thread, in which people try to answer the question on whether we should "let go of [1.5 C] as a policy goal".
Much has been made of the electricity used by Bitcoin, but the question of whether to use Bitcoin is not solely (or even primarily) a function of its electricity use. What problem does it solve? Does it offer advantages over conventional approaches to the same problem?
These same questions can and should be asked of blockchain more generally. What problem does it solve? Does it offer advantages over conventional approaches to the same problem?
Jan 19, 2021 • 23 tweets • 7 min read
Here's a thread documenting the epic incompetence of the Trump administration + the GOP in dealing with the pandemic. Some Democratic politicos deserve severe critiques also (Cuomo and DeBlasio being the poster children there) but a national problem requires a national response.
Remember, that for pandemics as well as for climate change, "Speed trumps perfection". Stop obsessing about "optimality". There is nothing optimal about responding to a pandemic or to climate change, just move as fast as you can.
The long lead times for vaccinating the entire population in many countries is an indication that policy makers aren't being nearly bold enough with their plans. Some of this is because of constraints in vaccine supply, but a lot of it is a failure of imagination.
Remember, that for pandemics as well as for climate change, "Speed trumps perfection". Stop obsessiong about "optimality". There is nothing optimal about responding to a pandemic or to climate change, just move as fast as you can.
Most GOP folks believe in the absurd caricature of Democrats that Fox and the right-wing entertainment complex feeds them. It's time for them to start listening to us.
This thread puts forth a different view, one with which I wholeheartedly agree. It's the GOP and Trumpists who need to do the work and show us they want to live in society with us.
It’s hard to take these complaints seriously when the GOP called moderate Joe Biden a socialist. The GOP will call ANY dem a socialist. Run better campaigns and figure out how to sidestep it.
I thought about this more overnight, then I saw this thread, which gets at an important point. To paraphrase something originally said about conservatism, centrism never fails, it is always failed.
I like to summarize Brandolini's law as "it takes ten times longer to debunk nonsense than to create nonsense". It describes a fundamental asymmetry related to misinformation. ordrespontane.blogspot.com/2014/07/brando…
Here's a corollary to that "law": It is a thousand times harder to debunk nonsense than it is to SPREAD nonsense, making the debunking process even tougher and more time dependent.
Nov 4, 2020 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
There is some truth to this analysis, in the following sense: Both sides see the election as existential. The asymmetry, though, is that only one side is correct. The Trumpist/GOP believes many false and delusional things, and we need to reckon with that problem.
It's not enough to talk about how both sides feel about things, we need to analyze what motivates both sides' feelings.
Oct 6, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I had some fun digging back into our archives. The existence of a huge offshore wind potential in UK has been known for many years. The recent technology cost improvements are spectacular and impressive, and they've enabled more rapid tapping of that resource than anticipated.
In our technical potential analysis for the EC5 (Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, and the UK) back in 1995 (!) we found that about 40% of total wind potential for those countries combined was in the UK offshore wind/coastal resource.
Oct 5, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
We need a balance between corporate and government power, but the scale has been tipped in favor of corporate power in the US for a very long time.
We need an honest debate about the role of government in a modern society. Anyone who says that government needs to be "small enough to be drowned in a bathtub" must be excluded from that conversation. They are not good faith participants.
