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Harald Desing, is a scientist at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. Area of Expertise: Circular economy, Resource efficiency, Mechanical engineering, Energy systems, Energy transitions, Product development, Material technology and manufacturing, Planetary boundaries, Life cycle assessment, Life cycle thinking, Material flow analysis
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Harald Desing, is a scientist at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. Area of Expertise: Circular economy, Resource efficiency, Mechanical engineering, Energy systems, Energy transitions, Product development, Material technology and manufacturing, Planetary boundaries, Life cycle assessment, Life cycle thinking, Material flow analysis
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| Harald Desing, is a scientist at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. Area of Expertise: Circular economy, Resource efficiency, Mechanical engineering, Energy systems, Energy transitions, Product development, Material technology and manufacturing, Planetary boundaries, Life cycle assessment, Life cycle thinking, Material flow analysis |
Neither lag nor volume nor internet drop outs stop this stream. Another great stream, despite the challenges and in some ways makes it a bit more entertaining
😂 I will get my audio better next week. Sure hard eliminating the clipping and having volume high enough.
@Ty Keynes Yeh the setup is not that elaborate but missing pieces spoil the result.
I think Dan's woes made for the largest entertainment value this week. Surreal stuff to hear his voice while his face was doing something else entirely.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell I told before we went on I was going to give him a hard time about it to provide some additional entertainment. He was a good sport about it.
@Ty Keynes I dunno. It has a cult like appeal to me. The Man Who Speak From His Mind. 🙂
On the issue of transition, I have a fairly bleak outlook because the people influencing policy. The Koch Network and the like are the principal funders of science denial and people like Nordhaus. In a very significant way they've blinded themselves for financial gain and from ideological delusion. That delusion will kill hundreds of millions if not billions, far more than all the despots of the last century combined, not insignificantly because they think science is just part of leftist academia they must end to 'save civilization'.
Additionally we are being distracted by tech worship. It is largely a diversion. I am firmly in the camp that local action is what remains to the people. PBS had a recent piece on how Bangladesh is adapting to climate change. The most remarkable aspect is how rural folk are changing their way of life to deal with flooding by taking to living on boats and growing floating gardens. In addition people themselves spread flood warnings from and post basic water level data to the gov. A single family member may have a cell phone and they do a sophisticated job saving themselves.
As for the 'advanced' West, car-free urban design for the US is achievable at the local/county and state level. We need to do it anyway because suburbia is financially insolvent; as a matter productivity at the municipal level it doesn't even break even.
the situation for SE Asia / India and China is pretty damn scary btw, i have a video on that topic.
I agree with pretty much everything you said here, good insights as always my friend!
Very interesting question posed by Harald and the pushback from Steve made for an excellent debate. Good show.
I agree, I might add it was a very respectful debate, that is rare anywhere on the internet.
Is Leontief (channeling Quesnay) with his Input-Output model the most important economist of the 20th century?
Randall says “why are we mining atoms when we could be splitting them?”
As much as I hope humanity can somehow change the ecological disaster it has created for itself, we still live in a capital based economic system that disregards externalities for short term profits and without fundamentally changing that, nothing will change for the better. One would think – in a rational world – the survival of our species would be incentive enough, unfortunately this is not the case.
Humanity, in my opinion, is a very young and naive species and this is our "now or never moment!" It's anyone's guess what will happen but as we speak the US is gearing up to provoke further wars – possibly WW3 and a nuclear war – and war only excelerates the climate disaster we are facing. (For instance the US blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline!)
It seems as though the only solution to environmental collapse for the ruling class is nuclear war. Well…that will certainly end our concern over the matter for it will destroy the climate and starve our species at a much faster rate. I'm sad to say, what may be possible – at our current stage of development – may not be probable and all signs seem to be pointing to self-extinction.
I hope I am wrong. Thank you for the wonderful show gentlemen.
Indeed humanity isn't acting wisely; we are not really a wise man (homo sapiens) but only a clever man. But cleverness can be used for self distruction and we are just about to make it happen. Not just the threat of a nuclear war, climate catastrophe and biosphere annihilation; we alse invent artificial intelligence (and somehow strangely celebrate it), toxic chemicals we put in all our products and engineered food which makes us sick…
But instead of putting our heads in the sand, I'm hopeful that we can escape this predicament (anyway, it is our only chance!). I think we should explore what is physically possible and then have a discussion on how this could be achieved. Our ambitions should be oriented towards what is physically possible (and ecologically necessary), rather than be limited by current economic thinking.
Small modular nuclear reactors especially thorium reactors have to be considered. Thorium salt reactors are a 1950s technology ignored bcs it does produce waste uranium suitable for bombs. But even conventional reactors scaled down and modularised to be made in factories has some prototypes even pilots ready to go. You are not serious about existential climate changes if you will not even reconsider nuclear. Check out Doomberg for a serious but different to you, energy modeler to keep you sharp.
Do you think these modular nuclear reactors could be scaled to a global level?