Arctic sea ice extent during the 2016 minimum on September 10, shown outlined by the average sea ice extent between 1981 and 2010.
It’s not hard to cook our planet. All you have to do is stop thinking too hard, and repeat the same mistakes over and over. The ten best errors to keep committing are:
1. Underestimate the power of invention, and think of the future as a mere continuation of the past. Ignore how we are continuously reshaping the world around us, for better and for worse. In truth, we are always coming up with new ways to obtain and to use energy. Fracking is the most obvious. Walking drill rigs yet another. Bitcoin consumes as much electricity as all of Denmark. But invention also works on the prevention side - we can come up with new ways to make carbon-free electricity, including cheaper solar cells, better batteries, and reactors fueled by spent fuel left over from today’s reactors.
2. Stop investing in research and development. Follow the Duell principle, after Charles H. Duell, the Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, who in 1899 was reputed to have said that everything worth inventing had already been invented. If entrepreneurs want to fool around with new ideas with a start-up based in a vacant garage, that’s their business - government has no role in making the world a better place. From jet engines to computer chips to the Internet, many of the most important developments of the last few decades had their origins in government-sponsored research, and this will be true in the future, whether it’s our government, or the government of a competing country like China.
3. Look through the wrong end of the telescope. Hyper-focus on one or two shiny new technologies. Reject any failure as unacceptable, and reject the idea that success of the portfolio will require occasionally going down some blind alleys. In science and technology, the road to success is clear only in the rear-view mirror. And many problems are solved because bold thinkers pursued multiple avenues, only some of which turn out to be helpful.
Climate Change is seriously affecting glaciers, even in the Antarctic. Shown here is Conca overlooking a crevasse on the Lacroix Glacier, Taylor Valley, Antarctica.
4. Focus on isolated progress and not on the broader problem. The price of wind and solar are falling. Never mind that they are still producing electricity at prices that don’t compete with natural gas. Never mind that expansion of renewables is driven largely by non-market forces, namely subsidies and state-level quotas. Keep insisting on the mantra that if nature follows its course, solar and wind will replace all the carbon-emitting sources. Energy is a multi-billion-dollar business; government can influence decisions at the margins, but if we mistake that for market success, we get a distorted picture of the world.
5. Pay no attention to the total value of the energy produced. In California, mid-day sun in low demand periods often produces market surpluses that push prices to zero or below; the electricity is literally of no value. Wind does the same in mild nights in the Midwest. Keep focused on the falling price of the hardware, not the falling value of the product. There are limits to how much intermittent energy the system can successfully integrate and those limits are economic as well as logistic.
6. Don’t think too hard about the seasonal variations in wind and sun. The problem isn’t just using mid-day sunshine to run the coffee maker before dawn the next morning - it’s using March winds to run the air conditioner in August.
7. Insist that there is a silver bullet if we try hard enough. Or that if a technology can’t meet all needs, it has no value. If you write off a technology solution because it won’t solve the entire problem, that doesn’t excuse you from offering a solution to any portion of the problem.
8. Stick to ideology, it’s so much purer and more satisfying than math. Keep thinking that a ton of carbon dioxide reduction from wind or sun means more to the climate than a ton saved by a nuclear reactor. Keep thinking that every photon of radiation could kill you and that man-made radiation is different than natural radiation – not! The numbers matter. Reality matters. Unlike many parts of society where what you believe actually counts, ignoring reality has grave consequences in nature. Societies have fallen because of it. Science and math are hard, so it’s up to the public and decision-makers to trust the scientists and experts that have devoted their lives to these subjects.
9. Have faith that wind and sun are inexhaustible. Ignore that some of the rare materials used to make panels and turbines and batteries are quite exhaustible. Oddly, nuclear is never called ‘renewable’ even though there is an infinite amount in seawater that can be extracted economically, and reactors that can make more fuel than they consume.
10. Think of mid-century as a very long way off, too far out to bother with. And reject the concept that a carbon dioxide diet is a long-term proposition. The sooner we start, the better. Most technologies take years to incubate, develop, optimize and deploy.
We just don’t have time to keep making these mistakes.
Hurricane Alex, shown here in January 2016, was the first Atlantic hurricane to form in the month of January since 1938, and just the second since 1851.
Arctic sea ice extent during the 2016 minimum on September 10, shown outlined by the average sea ice extent between 1981 and 2010.
It’s not hard to cook our planet. All you have to do is stop thinking too hard, and repeat the same mistakes over and over. The ten best errors to keep committing are:
1. Underestimate the power of invention, and think of the future as a mere continuation of the past. Ignore how we are continuously reshaping the world around us, for better and for worse. In truth, we are always coming up with new ways to obtain and to use energy. Fracking is the most obvious. Walking drill rigs yet another. Bitcoin consumes as much electricity as all of Denmark. But invention also works on the prevention side - we can come up with new ways to make carbon-free electricity, including cheaper solar cells, better batteries, and reactors fueled by spent fuel left over from today’s reactors.
2. Stop investing in research and development. Follow the Duell principle, after Charles H. Duell, the Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, who in 1899 was reputed to have said that everything worth inventing had already been invented. If entrepreneurs want to fool around with new ideas with a start-up based in a vacant garage, that’s their business - government has no role in making the world a better place. From jet engines to computer chips to the Internet, many of the most important developments of the last few decades had their origins in government-sponsored research, and this will be true in the future, whether it’s our government, or the government of a competing country like China.
3. Look through the wrong end of the telescope. Hyper-focus on one or two shiny new technologies. Reject any failure as unacceptable, and reject the idea that success of the portfolio will require occasionally going down some blind alleys. In science and technology, the road to success is clear only in the rear-view mirror. And many problems are solved because bold thinkers pursued multiple avenues, only some of which turn out to be helpful.
Climate Change is seriously affecting glaciers, even in the Antarctic. Shown here is Conca overlooking a crevasse on the Lacroix Glacier, Taylor Valley, Antarctica.
4. Focus on isolated progress and not on the broader problem. The price of wind and solar are falling. Never mind that they are still producing electricity at prices that don’t compete with natural gas. Never mind that expansion of renewables is driven largely by non-market forces, namely subsidies and state-level quotas. Keep insisting on the mantra that if nature follows its course, solar and wind will replace all the carbon-emitting sources. Energy is a multi-billion-dollar business; government can influence decisions at the margins, but if we mistake that for market success, we get a distorted picture of the world.
5. Pay no attention to the total value of the energy produced. In California, mid-day sun in low demand periods often produces market surpluses that push prices to zero or below; the electricity is literally of no value. Wind does the same in mild nights in the Midwest. Keep focused on the falling price of the hardware, not the falling value of the product. There are limits to how much intermittent energy the system can successfully integrate and those limits are economic as well as logistic.
6. Don’t think too hard about the seasonal variations in wind and sun. The problem isn’t just using mid-day sunshine to run the coffee maker before dawn the next morning - it’s using March winds to run the air conditioner in August.
7. Insist that there is a silver bullet if we try hard enough. Or that if a technology can’t meet all needs, it has no value. If you write off a technology solution because it won’t solve the entire problem, that doesn’t excuse you from offering a solution to any portion of the problem.
8. Stick to ideology, it’s so much purer and more satisfying than math. Keep thinking that a ton of carbon dioxide reduction from wind or sun means more to the climate than a ton saved by a nuclear reactor. Keep thinking that every photon of radiation could kill you and that man-made radiation is different than natural radiation – not! The numbers matter. Reality matters. Unlike many parts of society where what you believe actually counts, ignoring reality has grave consequences in nature. Societies have fallen because of it. Science and math are hard, so it’s up to the public and decision-makers to trust the scientists and experts that have devoted their lives to these subjects.
9. Have faith that wind and sun are inexhaustible. Ignore that some of the rare materials used to make panels and turbines and batteries are quite exhaustible. Oddly, nuclear is never called ‘renewable’ even though there is an infinite amount in seawater that can be extracted economically, and reactors that can make more fuel than they consume.
10. Think of mid-century as a very long way off, too far out to bother with. And reject the concept that a carbon dioxide diet is a long-term proposition. The sooner we start, the better. Most technologies take years to incubate, develop, optimize and deploy.
We just don’t have time to keep making these mistakes.
Hurricane Alex, shown here in January 2016, was the first Atlantic hurricane to form in the month of January since 1938, and just the second since 1851.
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