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The whole idea of 100% renewables shows a lack of understanding of the costs involved or the feasibility of achieving it. Here is an article that explains the difficulties and highlights the questionable assumptions made in such plans.

If we want to significantly lower emissions a much more feasible plan is the Rocky Mountain Institute's Reinventing Fire.

You keep trying to side track the conversation.

Says he of the ever moving goalposts. Waaay back in this conversation, you said

So this is the version where they got it not to kill people? Funny, I would have put that feature in first.

You didn't say "better than humans" or any sort of comparison to humans. You effectively said, "It has to be perfect."

As soon as I pointed out how perfect is a ridiculous standard, considering humans aren't perfect, you started shifting those goalposts. Next it was, "why couldn't the system see something people can see?". What you've done is pick one situation where the system didn't work as intended, you ignored hundreds of the exact same situation, in the exact same part of the exact same road where it did, so I guess it makes sense for this to be an issue for you. Rational people don't do that. Only people with a serious agenda cherry pick like that and ignore all the evidence to the contrary.

In your last two sentences, you've finally gotten to a reasonable argument to have:

Human driving is very safe if you consider the 3.2 *trillion* miles driving in the US every year. Much safer than Autopilot would be if it were to drive everywhere and in all conditions like a human.

Now we're comparing rates of accidents between humans as a whole and autopilot as a whole. Bravo, this is actually meaningful, and what I was saying all along, albeit indirectly.

So lets have that discussion. There isn't a ton of research on this, but there is a little. AUTOMATED VEHICLE CRASH RATE COMPARISON USING NATURALISTIC DATA is from 2016 and finds that self driving cars are a lot safer. How Safe Are Self-Driving Cars? Waymo Proves They’re Pretty Darn Safeis from 2017 and summaries WayMo data, which you can argue is likely a bit biased towards Google. But even in the worst case scenario, they find self-driving cars an order of magnitude safer than human drivers.

In the NHSTA's report on the Tesla crash where it hit the semi-truck side-on and took off the top of the car, they interestingly don't find fault with Tesla. Just that they needed to be more specific on the limitations of autopilot. And buried in that report is a graph that shows auto-steer dropping the accident rate (airbag deployment) per million miles from 1.3 to 0.8 when it's enabled. I'm finding it hard to find non-fatality rates for the whole US, but in the couple of states I looked at, the accident rate seems to be between 1 and 3 for most types of roads.

If you've got more comprehensive and current research, I'd be very happy to see it. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a ton, but what's out there seems to strongly suggest that the current self-driving tech is at least as safe as the average driver, if not more safe, in most circumstances.

Take a look at a graph of coal production. Coal use grows at an exponential pace.

A quick search shows the graphs linked to below. Coal use is grows exponentially but only becomes significant around 1850. Coal production in the 18th C was minimal in comparison to that extracted and used in 1850, and close to insignificant to today.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/201...
http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-Fos...

The comparison to volcanos was not coal production in the year 2000 but coal production in the year 1850.

Coal production before 1850 was in the 30-50 million tons / year. Today it is 8,000 - 10,000 tons / year.

Coal production was approximately 0.003 of what it is today. So you can see that it is comparable to volcanic activity.

http://www.indexmundi.com/ener...

Well, isn't it great then that I used no falsehoods, but instead pointed out that; indeed, solar power and wind power is significantly less reliable than nuclear, hydro, and fossil power, for the many reasons indicated above. I am so glad that you have issues with falsehoods, such as this assertion above:

Nope. Turns out RE enhances reliability. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing... [rmi.org]

That somehow renewable energy is more reliable than the system we had before widescale deployment of RE.

Nope. Turns out RE enhances reliability. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing...

True. It also enhances both length and girth as well.

Nope. Turns out RE enhances reliability. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing...

This is nonsense. Don't have time to deconstruct the whole thing, but here is one example:

Or you mean staff training? You basically have some form of staff training for any power generation system out there (if you think that large scale solar and wind don't have some fairly steep training, you haven't been paying attention).

You obviously don't know much about the energy industry, or are being purposefully obtuse here. The amount of staff needed to run a nuclear plant vs. that needed for renewable resources is not even close. The complexity of the systems is also night and day, as is the requisite training.

The Rocky Mountain Institute has a plan to drastically reduce carbon use by 2050 that doesn't rely on more nuclear. Whether that plan will work as outlined is debatable, but to a priori state only nuclear can do it is shortsighted.

A big advantage of decentralization is that mass disruption is hard to pull off. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing...

And on August 10, 1996, a failure of one high-voltage power line caused a cascade failure that took out power to seven western US states, two Canadian provinces, and parts of Baja California. People think that to have a big effect an attacker would need to take out a lot of points, but a small number of strategic hits, perhaps as small as one, can do a very disproportionate amount of damage.

A big advantage of decentralization is that mass disruption is hard to pull off. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing...

The Rocky Mountain Institute has a plan to be well on the way to kicking the fossil fuels habit by 2050 and actually saving money over the status quo. It does still have 25% of electricity being generated by natural gas by 2050, with energy efficiency playing a key role, and renewables/batteries making up rest. The plan eliminates gasoline/diesel from transportation via electric vehicles, while heavy trucks and planes would use hydrogen or biofuels.

That plan may or may not be viable, but the efficiency gains that are available to industry, offices, and homes is vast and should not be discounted.

Well this plan from the Rocky Mountain Institute doesn't agree:

In 2010, the United States (excluding non-combustion uses as raw materials) used 93 quadrillion BTU of primary energy, four-fifths of it fossil fuels. Official projections show this growing to 117 quads in 2050. But delivering those same services with less energy, more productively used, could shrink 2050 usage to 71 quads, eliminate the need for oil, coal, nuclear energy, and one-third of the natural gas, and save $5 trillion in net-present-valued cost. As a better-than-free byproduct of efficient use and a continued shift to renewable supplies, fossil carbon emissions would also shrink by 82–86% below their 2000 levels despite the assumed 2.58-fold bigger economy than in 2010.

Natural gas saved through more-efficient buildings and factories could be reallocated to cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient combined-heat-and-power in industry (though we conservatively assume none in buildings), to displacing oil and coal in buildings and factories, and optionally to fueling trucks. America’s energy supply in 2050 would end up roughly three-fourths renewable and one-fourth natural gas (the same fraction as in 2010, but of a smaller total—one-fourth less primary energy and one-third less delivered energy). The remaining gas use, which is probably conservatively high, could phase out over a few decades after 2050. Meanwhile, the United States could take advantage of new shale-gas resources if their many uncertainties turned out well, but not be caught short if they didn’t. Biomass would supply about six times more energy in 2050 than in 2010—two-thirds from waste streams (chiefly in industry) and one-third from cellulosic and algal feedstocks whose production wouldn’t interfere with food production nor harm soil or climate. Liquid biofuels needed for transportation would be equivalent to less than one-sixth today’s total U.S. oil consumption.

I would look at alternatives to having a "lawn" in the first place. In almost any climate, there are a lot more productive ways to use your land than raising an eternal crop of stuff you just cut and throw away. Put that surface area to work, harvesting solar energy in some way, even if it's nothing more than composting your grass clippings to feed a backyard garden.

Also, look into "integrative" housing design, which means a more holistic approach based on first principles, rather than tweaking the status-quo with than latest gizmos. For example, if you spend enough on insulation, you might not need a heater in winter, and end up with a lower total capital cost. Or by including a water feature, combined with appropriate shading and ventilation, you could reduce your summer A/C bills by 90 percent, and thus save a bundle on the A/C capacity to install. There are lots of people preaching this sort of thing, but the most prominent voice among them is probably Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

As for your lawn look into permaculture. There's a ton of stuff on YouTube about this, and numerous blogs, groups, etc... Basically, you can set up your yard to be a "food forest" that naturally produces food, year round, at no cost and with very little maintenance. Checking out this trend will be very worth your time.

What really needs to happen is to remove all gov't subsidies across the board. Indeed this is what alt-energy maven Avory Lovins has been preaching for years, because he knows that without subsidies the fossil fuels can't compete with renewables. We are already near the tipping point where even the massive fossil fuel subsidies won't be enough to prop them up. The switch to renewables is just a matter of time. The only unknowns are how long it will take and how painful it will be.

And, every effort put into nuclear power soaks up funds that could cut carbon emissions faster and deeper by other means. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

Nuclear power has too high an opportunity cost and so slows climate response in addition to laying these booby traps all over the place. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

Wrongly so however. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

New wind PPAs are going for 2.5 cents per kWh, http://www.greentechmedia.com/... new nuclear PPA's are going for 15.5 cents per kWh. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C... Looks like you've got you numbers wrong. You can get six times more wind power and have it delivered much sooner for the same cost so there is a large opportunity cost for nuclear power.

Actually, the opportunity cost of nuclear power delays climate mitigation. It's the wrong choice. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

Do you mean this BMW? http://www.rmi.org/winter_2014...

The book "Reinventing Fire" by Amory Lovins goes into detail in how to make the grid less vulnerable to inclement weather (including space weather). "Finally, letting distributed generators compete and interconnect fairly could nearly eliminate blackout risks by organizing the grid into local “microgrids” that normally interconnect but can stand alone at need (“islanding”). This resilient future, already demonstrated in about 20 experiments worldwide... " http://www.rmi.org/electricity

You forget that all Gen III is behind schedule and has huge cost overruns. And there is not enough uranium to replace coal. No hope there. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

Old guys don't keep up I guess. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

You have no complaint
You are what your are and you ain't what you ain't
So listen up Buster, and listen up good
Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

I think the point is, you can get those shapes with less weight. I think also that the cost comes down with scale, and much of the savings comes from improved performance. http://www.rmi.org/winter_2014...

Carbon fiber rims are common on bicycles and motorcycles now are are getting used on autos more frequently. Carbon fiber roofs seem to be popular in new car models as well. http://www.plasticsnews.com/ar...

Long history of self published, non peer reviewed publications... http://www.rmi.org/

Fixed that for you. None of these publication should be taken seriously since they are not published in a reputable, peer reviewed or even scientific journal.

You can see why nuclear power can't compete: http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

Actually, he has that covered. His preferred system is a bit overbuilt to cut reliance on transmission. You'd enjoy his book "Reinventing Fire" available through most libraries. http://www.rmi.org/

Long history of publications... http://www.rmi.org/ [rmi.org]

There are some real gems in there, among them:

* Urgent Memo to Biotech Pioneers: Life is More Than a DNA Sequence
* Unpublished letter to the Economist (note the use of 'begs the question')
* Applied Hope
* Hypercars, Hydrogen, and the Automotive Transition
* Roadmap for Natural Capitalism

Literally, a guy named Lovins writes papers about applied hope. Great.

Long history of publications... http://www.rmi.org/ [rmi.org]

There are some real gems in there, among them:

* Urgent Memo to Biotech Pioneers: Life is More Than a DNA Sequence
* Unpublished letter to the Economist (note the use of 'begs the question')
* Applied Hope
* Hypercars, Hydrogen, and the Automotive Transition
* Roadmap for Natural Capitalism

Literally, a guy named Lovins writes papers about applied hope. Great.

Long history of publications... http://www.rmi.org/ [rmi.org]

There are some real gems in there, among them:

* Urgent Memo to Biotech Pioneers: Life is More Than a DNA Sequence
* Unpublished letter to the Economist (note the use of 'begs the question')
* Applied Hope
* Hypercars, Hydrogen, and the Automotive Transition
* Roadmap for Natural Capitalism

Literally, a guy named Lovins writes papers about applied hope. Great.

Long history of publications... http://www.rmi.org/ [rmi.org]

There are some real gems in there, among them:

* Urgent Memo to Biotech Pioneers: Life is More Than a DNA Sequence
* Unpublished letter to the Economist (note the use of 'begs the question')
* Applied Hope
* Hypercars, Hydrogen, and the Automotive Transition
* Roadmap for Natural Capitalism

Literally, a guy named Lovins writes papers about applied hope. Great.

Long history of publications... http://www.rmi.org/ [rmi.org]

There are some real gems in there, among them:

* Urgent Memo to Biotech Pioneers: Life is More Than a DNA Sequence
* Unpublished letter to the Economist (note the use of 'begs the question')
* Applied Hope
* Hypercars, Hydrogen, and the Automotive Transition
* Roadmap for Natural Capitalism

Literally, a guy named Lovins writes papers about applied hope. Great.

Long history of publications... http://www.rmi.org/ [rmi.org]

There are some real gems in there, among them:

* Urgent Memo to Biotech Pioneers: Life is More Than a DNA Sequence
* Unpublished letter to the Economist (note the use of 'begs the question')
* Applied Hope
* Hypercars, Hydrogen, and the Automotive Transition
* Roadmap for Natural Capitalism

Literally, a guy named Lovins writes papers about applied hope. Great.

In fact, this is not needed, just as storage does not seem to be needed. More transmission, yes, but conventional HVDC will do the job. http://www.rmi.org/

Read his book and you'll find you are incorrect. http://www.rmi.org/

Long history of publications... http://www.rmi.org/

Doing you homework is what makes you an expert. Pretty clearly, Lovins has done his as you would know if you had done yours. http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-pre...

This idea has the lowest overall cost of four possible scenarios to cut carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2050. So, invest in storage if you like. But it is unclear you'll have customers.

Except that this would be a way to lose the war, not win it. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C... And, when nuclear builds were common, factor of three overruns were common as well.

It you are interested in cost, read "Reinventing Fire" Renewables with transmission are the least cost system. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing...

Owing to the high opportunity cost of nuclear power, it more likely interfered with preventing even more deaths. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

A portion was left out of the summary. It is by mid-century that we'd see a big change over it the type of generation, not in 15 years. For the US, a renewable heavy, carbon capture heavy and nuclear heavy scenario were looked at. The energy security heavy scenario developed in "Reinventing Fire" by Amory Lovins was not explored. http://www.rmi.org/electricity

Now, that is a good question. Read "Reinventing Fire" http://www.rmi.org/reinventing... You'll find that things are looking quite bright.

You've made some assumptions that demonstrate why you fall in love with broken technology. You take things uncritically. You assume I oppose nuclear power just because I am clear eyed about your favorite junk reactor. In fact. I'm a big supporter of fusion regardless of it lack of commercial potential and I think that naval propulsion reactors are hard to beat in their mission. Commercial nuclear power is a dog owing to cost, safety and waste disposal problems. It is also promoting nuclear arms proliferation, just the opposite of the intent of atoms for peace, since it is providing cover for uranium enrichment and plutonium production. And, rather obviously, leaving all that nuclear waste out is going to lead to a terrorist incident. Your blind passion is actually quite dangerous.

The cost of nuclear power makes it very nonbeneficial right now. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C... Regarding waste, we don't know what to do with it, so we don't have a handle on the additional cost.

The book "Reinventing Fire" looks at both technologies. It gives electric the headstart but sees fuel cells as catching up in about 15 years or so. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing...

why hasn't anyone proposed this mysterious solution if it fixed the problem that "easily", with "barely any significant change in our style of life"?

Someone has proposed a solution. Actually, more than one solution.

The first video is Amory Lovins giving his presentation Reinventing Fire. This is a detailed plan for eliminating all fossil fuel emissions by 2050 for no greater cost than business as usual.

The second video is Allan Savory showing how to sequester vast amounts of CO2 by reversing desertification with managed grazing of livestock.

Both of these solutions are already happening in many places, it's just not common knowledge yet.

Nuclear power is the slowpoke when it comes to scaling owing to its high cost: http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

RCP2.6 can't be accomplished with nuclear power: http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C... The question, which you have misunderstood, was about subsidies. Coal is heavily subsidized in terms health costs of sulfur, mercury and particulate pollution. Natural gas is not. Is there a carbon subsidy? In the sense that we are suffering dangerous climate change now, there is. We are making extra payouts for crop insurance and flood insurance for example. But, when it comes to disposal, there is no need since cutting emissions also cuts the concentration below the dangerous threshold. So, there is no disposal subsidy.

As a renewable energy solution, storage of this type seems like it is required, but, in fact, transmission can get us to 80% renewable without a big investment in storage. Thus, these batteries seem like what would be needed to get 100%. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing...

I concur with the suggestion for Bill Joy's article. It is well worth reading, and reconsidering over and over as time goes on. Recognizing our fallibilities is important -- and thinking about whether to proceed, and if there will be a way out of what we do is worthy of discussion. We are always prone to thinking we understand it all, or at least enough. On the same lines of 'a cautionary tale' (apologies to Maurice Sendak), please consider Amory Lovins' "How No to Parachute More Cats'. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...

A good place to start is "Reinventing Fire" http://www.rmi.org/reinventing... Looks like utility scale renewables are the lowest cost approach to eliminating carbon emissions. Opportunity cost is important because, when it is high, progress is slower owing to slower deployment of the less costly option.