P.S.: I'm quite skeptical about sequestration of CO2. I don't think it will work, and if it does work, I think it will be too expensive to use. The BEST form of sequestration is to grow forests, turn them into paper, and print books on them, with chemically treated paper so it won't decay. This doesn't add in exogenous energy costs, and storage is not a major issue. If it is, just build more libraries...and fund them to retain books. Burying CO2 can expect to have undetected leakages over a period of time, and to add significantly to the cost of generating energy. To me it looks like a boondoggle created to justify continuing to burn coal.
Carbon capture plants will require 25–40% more coal to produce the same amount of electricity compared to blithely-dump-CO2-into-the-air plants.That would tighten up the competition with wind and solar, but not make it "too expensive to use". CO2 leaking from storage remains a legitimate concern.
As for growing forests, I like the idea of turning them into buildings.
If you don't use soap ever, you probably are human contact free too... although what did they use before soap was made?
Ancient Romans used olive oil.
I can't be replaced because I write fiction for a living. In English. I can write up to 12,000 words a day.
An AI capable of writing fiction that people would buy and read may well be less than 30 years away. Once it happens even James Patterson will play John Henry to the indefatigable writing automaton.
and what if it was paid for by using bitcoin...
now i think this post has all the magic words to make it a successful slashertisment.
Not all of the magic words. "What if the next presidential limo was a 3D-printed Tesla paid for with bitcoin?" Now we're getting there.
Here's an idea: eliminate ALL subsidies, across the board. Let fossil fuels and renewables duke it out on a truly level playing field. Speaking as a "green energy" advocate, I would welcome this challenge.
Fossil fuels, having been subsidized for many decades longer, have a huge head start. Also, you will never get agreement on what constitutes a subsidy; in my view the absence of a carbon tax and much of the cost of maintaining the U.S. naval presence in the Middle East should count.
Kind of a side rant, but I'm not sure what the ultimate purpose of preventing man-made global warming is supposed to be. The best argument I've heard is to prevent the loss of landmass to rising sea water, but that's already going to happen anyways (less than 100k years ago Los Angeles was under water, and no matter what we do it will one day again be under water.) Higher global temperatures have historically resulted in more arable land rather than simple increased droughts. If you want more physical landmass, then you'll need to drop the climate to ice age levels where biodiversity actually tends to suffer. During the age of dinosaurs, the carbon dioxidie PPM was 18 times higher than it is now, biodiversity was at one of its peaks, the overall climate was 8C warmer, and plantlife was more abundant than ever. In other words, history has shown that a warmer planet is literally a more green one.
So what kind of disaster is anti-climate change supposed to avert again?
The rate of change is a potential problem. How many million years did it take after the dinosaurs for 8C of cooling? The ocean rising at a rate that puts LA back underwater in 100,000 years wouldn't cause much trouble, but what if every coastal city needs to fight off the sea Dutch-style within just 100 years? Hundreds of millions of people could be displaced, with widespread social, economic, and political effects.
And a humanoid robot can go where we go, which is useful in places where they work alongside us or share our environment (think: stairs!).
Instead of robots that can use stairs, I just deploy robo-servants on each floor. I also have a specialized robot, named "Otis", for moving things between floors.
It isn't unkonwn for wind and solar power generation to have a higher "carbon footprint" than regular fossil fuel plants.
citation needed
Everything I read is about is science looking for evidence that it's happening and man made. I don't read much of anything about science looking for evidence that it either isn't happening or isn't caused by man.
When looking at changes in the ranges that various plants and animals inhabit, that could be evidence for or against.
When looking at changes in glaciers or sea ice, that could be evidence for or against.
When measuring temperatures of the atmosphere and oceans, that could be evidence for or against.
The majority of the evidence says that global warming is happening, and that human activities do play a role. "Global warming is happening" and "human activities contribute to warming" are pretty much settled science. This doesn't mean "accepted as unquestionable truth" but that profound contradictory evidence would need to be found.
How much warming will happen, how quickly, and what the consequences will be are matters of less certainty. Unfortunately the lesser certainty occurs precisely where answers are needed in order to make socio-political decisions regarding what steps, if any, should be taken to limit global warming and mitigate its effects. People who insist that warming cannot possibly be happening or that human activity cannot possibly be a significant cause are equally unhelpful as those who insist that "the science is settled" and drastic measures must be taken immediately without regard to the non-climatic consequences.
I think there's a world market for about five computers. -- attr. Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board, IBM), 1943