Greta Thunberg

[ntg]

Yeah the silly things like infinite momentum engines or engines which have been around to run on water since 1898 are the silly conspiracy theories but you would have to be silly to not think big business buy up and shelve things purely cause they would hurt your current product sales and its cheaper to buy up the money saving tech and then release it decades later.

A design which saved 20% tyre wear would badly hurt the tyre industry and they would lose a significant proportion of their annual tyre sales. That is much more believable.

Why?

They could buy it and market it themselves as the flagship tire model, at a premium price, so they could balance out any losses on volume via the increased price premium. Let alone that they'd destroy the competition so they would gain market share that'd more than make up for lower sales volume due to higher durability of the product.

This just doesn't stack up as a business strategy. It's more likely that there were other technical/manufacturing/cost issues that made this not practical for mass production at the time.

 

[Nasher]

Patents kind of stop that. If a company patents something then everyone finds out it's possible, because patents are viewable by anyone (and I guess China would just make it anyway). If they don't patent it and try to hide it, someone else might discover it and patent it first. Or an employee jumps ship and leaks info etc.

Businesses are always trying to 1 up the competition so shelving and hiding things will only put them at a disadvantage.

 

[jpaul]

like coca-cola or other trade-secrets ? .. if you have proveable prior-art you can continue to make it without paying royalties to a patent holder

 

[Greebo]

Why?

They could buy it and market it themselves as the flagship tire model, at a premium price, so they could balance out any losses on volume via the increased price premium. Let alone that they'd destroy the competition so they would gain market share that'd more than make up for lower sales volume due to higher durability of the product.

This just doesn't stack up as a business strategy. It's more likely that there were other technical/manufacturing/cost issues that made this not practical for mass production at the time.

It does if your business is a tyre manufacturing company and you buy a design to be built on truck trailers. Not many businesses would branch out to a totally different sector to what they are involved in. It should have been sold to one of the big truck manufacturers if it really wanted to be developed and brought to market.

They only interest he got in buying it was from tyre manufacturers. It would seem surprising that they would want to take a punt with a million quid on a design for a sector they werent even in and a design which if they were successful and brought too market would slash up to19% of their annual sales on their core product.

 

[Angilion]

This. There have been lots of cases of technology which would save the environment but cost big business especially oil money and they buy them up and shelve them for ever or for a long time before releasing the technology in order to finally cash in on the idea.

WHen I was young a friend of my fathers had spent his life savings and mortgaged his house and had come up with an idea for steering on artic trucks which saved 19% tyre wear so would vastly reduce the number of tyres used each year. He had working prototypes and proof and just needed to put it into production but was skint. It was either Dunlop or Michelin who came and made him and multi million offer to buy up the rights which he took. They never did release the technology until many decades later once other manufacturers had started designing their trailers with similar systems.

That's one example. Can you provide any other exampls of these "lots of cases", preferably with some evidence?

 

[FoxEye]

It really doesn't matter what Greta or indeed climate scientists say about anything.

In general, people aren't listening.

I'm just watching an Aussie on TV say he doesn't think climate change is responsible, as record heatwaves and fires are burning around him. It's like a real-life "thisisfine.jpg".

People in Aus are mostly united in wanting to protect their hugely important coal mining industry. Anything that would jeapordise that is going to be dismissed as scare-mongering.

So whether climate change is real or causing extreme weather events (or not), it really doesn't matter. Until people start dying like flies most can't even bring themselves to consider the issue, if there are competing economic concerns.

In short, the climate loses to the economy every, single, time. Until we all die off.

That is why Greta is on a completely hopeless mission. Like her or not. Her combative approach is doomed to fail just like the gently-persuasion approach is doomed to fail.

There is no approach or argument that will trump economic interests. It's so plain to see.

 

[RxR]

The climate will get fixed for a good profit. There's high consumer demand and a capacity to pay. At least one well-funded us-uk consortium is determined to get the big prize first (it's been in the business press). They won't fail at it. I'm not concerned.

 

[VincentHanna]

It really doesn't matter what Greta or indeed climate scientists say about anything.

In general, people aren't listening.

I'm just watching an Aussie on TV say he doesn't think climate change is responsible, as record heatwaves and fires are burning around him. It's like a real-life "thisisfine.jpg".

People in Aus are mostly united in wanting to protect their hugely important coal mining industry. Anything that would jeapordise that is going to be dismissed as scare-mongering.

So whether climate change is real or causing extreme weather events (or not), it really doesn't matter. Until people start dying like flies most can't even bring themselves to consider the issue, if there are competing economic concerns.

In short, the climate loses to the economy every, single, time. Until we all die off.

That is why Greta is on a completely hopeless mission. Like her or not. Her combative approach is doomed to fail just like the gently-persuasion approach is doomed to fail.

There is no approach or argument that will trump economic interests. It's so plain to see.

Yep, my uncle, who lives in Australia has been posting conspiracy theories that liberals are deliberately starting fires funded by George Soros to try and make climate change seem like a real thing.

Utterly bizzare

 

[Rroff]

The climate will get fixed for a good profit. There's high consumer demand and a capacity to pay. At least one well-funded us-uk consortium is determined to get the big prize first. They won't fail at it. I'm not concerned.

Depends whose maths is right - if the form of data pushed by some of the leading names publicly is correct then it is too late for anything but radical, fundamental way of life altering, action due to the runaway effect - if they are right no amount of "getting the ball rolling", etc. will have material impact.

Personally I don't believe they are right (though not discounting it as a possibility) but that is another story.

 

[RxR]

Sky-based geo-engineering it is, if I recall correctly, to take carbon out of the atmosphere using a leaching agent.

Though apparently the next 10 years of increasing warming is locked in, no matter what we do, according to much published in Nature (Climate and Environment).

 

[Orionaut]

Sky-based geo-engineering it is, if I recall correctly, to take carbon out of the atmosphere using a leaching agent.

Though apparently the next 10 years of increasing warming is locked in, no matter what we do, according to much published in Nature (Climate and Environment).

Another option (Copy/Paste from another forum)

Solution to this problem is simple -- go nuclear. Not only to reduce CO2 level, but even more because of cheap desalination. Desertification and irrigation are too often overlooked as mechanisms for rising of sea levels, but the math is simple: you lower the water table and levels of inner seas (Aral, Caspian), you rise the level of the world ocean.

Each square meter of land holds about 50t of underground water, meaning that turning of a million of km2 of deserts into pastureland drops the sea level by about 15cm.

At about 1m of irrigation, it's 1e12 tonnes p.a. for 50y. Advanced reverse osmosis uses only about 1.5 kWh or some 5 MJ per tonne of water. So it's 5e18 J p.a. or about 150 GW. It's huge, but feasible, and the value of reclaimed land is in $T range, while 150 GWe of nuke power cost less than $500B.

These calculations are very, ve-ery approximate of course, but they at least prove that the scheme makes at least order-of-magnitude sense. The process of inundation could be not only stopped but reversed.

This could not only mitigate sea level rise issues, but also other aspects of a warming climate (regardless of whether such warming is anthropogenic or not)

 

[Threepwood]

^^ could the same not be done with excess renewable energy for some reason?

 

[Grim5]

How dare you take my seat!

 

[Angilion]

^^ could the same not be done with excess renewable energy for some reason?

Theoretically, but nuclear is reliable and controllable and renewables are neither even assuming you can generate an excess. Also, the environmental impact required to generate that excess would be vastly higher with renewables and the risk to life would be far higher. The only really large scale renewable electricity generation is hydro, which devastates large areas, destroys entire ecosystems, can ruin whole countries and/or cause wars and which has many times the death per unit generated than nuclear even just directly, i.e. not including deaths in any conflict caused by it.

The treatment of nuclear power is bizarrely disproportionate to its risks.

Fukushima Daiichi: Death toll somewhere between 0 and 130 people. There are no deaths definitely attributed to it. Not a single one. Any death toll is an estimate of possible increased cancer risk, maybe. Although probably not, since the exposure to ionising radiation was very low.

Result: OMG OMG OMG NUKE DEATH MAKE IT STOP! Global use of nuclear power plummets, which forces the use of other far more dangerous forms of electricity generation. Many more people suffer and die as a result of not using nuclear power.

Banqiao: Death toll around 171,000 people. No, that is not a typo. Also 11 million people made homeless.

Result: Nothing. Hydro is renewable, so it must be safe and fluffy-wonderful-natural. No need to worry at all.


Even if you include high end estimates of deaths for every nuclear accident ever, even if you include things that can't possibly happen with modern nuclear power stations, nuclear fission is still the safest form of electricity generation we have and will almost certainly remain so until we get practical nuclear fusion.

 

[Threepwood]

renewables are neither even assuming you can generate an excess.

It doesn't really matter individually, but that is the great thing about having a grid.. The wind may not be blowing over one wind farm, but it is blowing at another wind farm... Put them all together and the grid has a current power level. And that is just from one form of renewable energy.

Renewables already supply an excess of power at certain times, just like nuclear does, so if what was proposed with desalination of water was done... I'm sure it could be done with any excess power, whether it be from renewables or nuclear.

 

[Threepwood]

Also, as for Fukushima, the fallout that is coming from that is mainly going into the ocean, where it is obviously doing most harm to life there. Which ultimately effects us too, as we are one big system, not just humans in isolation to everything else.

 

[Angilion]

It doesn't really matter individually, but that is the great thing about having a grid.. The wind may not be blowing over one wind farm, but it is blowing at another wind farm... Put them all together and the grid has a current power level. And that is just from one form of renewable energy.

That's potentially workable as long as you have a very large grid, large enough to cover different weather systems. In many places, that would require an unusual level of international co-operation. Regardless of whether it's national or international, it's a lot of distance and a lot of transmission, which of course increases transmission wastage.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but to claim that it doesn't really matter if you can neither control nor rely on your electricity generation is at best highly optimistic and at worst just plain wrong.

Renewables already supply an excess of power at certain times, just like nuclear does, so if what was proposed with desalination of water was done... I'm sure it could be done with any excess power, whether it be from renewables or nuclear.

Could be, yes. But why use a setup that's more dangerous, more difficult to implement, more wasteful and has a higher environmental impact?

I'm not advocating using only nuclear. There isn't a single solution that's best suited to using as the sole method. Not yet, anyway. Fusion might well fit that description if it can ever be made to work in a practical way. But for now I think a mix of methods is a better approach.

 

[Angilion]

Also, as for Fukushima, the fallout that is coming from that is mainly going into the ocean, where it is obviously doing most harm to life there. Which ultimately effects us too, as we are one big system, not just humans in isolation to everything else.

Only if you eat some types of fish and only if they were caught in the immediate surroundings of the power station.

 

[Threepwood]

I'm not sure what you are talking about with the 1st couple of paragraphs as electric grids already exist, and are already taking power from renewables, which already supply surplus power when total input is greater than total output? Renwables are already a part of excess energy creation, alongside nuclear too.

I'm not advocating using only nuclear

Nor am I advocating only renewables. There are some places it really suits though, Scotland for example produced twice its domestic energy need from renewables in the 1st half of this year. There is a problem with storing excess energy, just as there is with nuclear, so yeah...

Surely there is enough sunlight in enough places of Australia for example where the impact on wildlife is minimal enough to harness enough of it to not have to fire up coal stations etc, seems sensible no?

 

[jpaul]

Fusion reactor ? seems to be Mr Bezos's bag - so Amazon as the worlds energy supplier ... I'll have to finally buy a prime subscription
https://interestingengineering.com/bezos-backed-fusion-energy-startup-raises-100-million
if the chinese don't get there first ... even if we don't trust their other reactor designs for uk soil.