No Netflix for me, and no luck on a quick search of torrents, but I'll keep my eye out for that show/series.

Many metrics to compare. Ecologically, that system sounds great for static locations with enough of an elevation gradient and reservoir areas to make it work. On the other hand it seems like the ecological damage done by constructing batteries, factories, and disposing of them is likely quite small compared to many other alternatives, particularly fossil fuels (which also have long-term scarcity concerns on top of plenty of other issues).

A major advantage of battery tech over hydro storage would be mobility. If the thing consuming energy doesn't sit in one place, hydro storage won't work. Another somewhat less significant advantage is the ability to install anywhere -- a battery farm recharged by mains and/or a solar/wind farm could be installed in places where hydro storage couldn't. And for one more item in favor of batteries, I'd wager that the land area footprint required for batteries is much smaller per kWH stored, although that might be wrong for extremely large reservoirs (ie. a hydroelectric dam, pretty much). But by the time you're getting to that large scale, the location requirements and ecological disruption are also much more extreme.

Anyway, I don't mean to pooh-pooh the idea of hydro storage -- it really does seem like a very good and ingenious idea where it would be applicable. But there's certainly room for improved battery tech, too. I don't think that we're going to get fully or even significantly weaned off of fossil fuels quite as fast as the video would have us hope for, either. Fossil fuels were the primary tool in our toolbox for a LONG time. And as the saying goes, since all we've had is that "hammer", we've started to think of everything as a nail.

Hadn't heard of that, but I get the concept. Cool idea.

Off the top of my head, I'm concerned about pump and generator efficiency. You're going to use some amount more energy to pump a volume of water up to the high basin than you will get back by gravity feeding it through generators. To be fair, efficiency is a problem with using and recharging chemical batteries as well, but the limited amount that I remember from college engineering courses tells me that efficiency in the electrical / solid state world tends to be more easily obtained than in the mechanical world.

And as another "to be fair", efficiency is a bigger concern for things like fossil fuels, where burning one unit of fuel produces a set amount of energy and you have to improve efficiency to get the most value out of that energy. With things like solar and wind being "free" energy when active but requiring storage for when the source is inactive (night / calm winds), efficiency still certainly matters, but not as much as with a scarce / non-renewable source of energy.

Anyway, I'd like to see concrete numbers comparing the utility and efficiency (in various metrics) of your hydro storage vs battery storage.

I would like to think "punch a nazi" isn't especially extreme though, certainly not extremely leftist. You can certainly pickup a large number of right leaning people who are on board for punching nazis.

It's other things from the left that I fear are needlessly driving away right leaning folks.

Calls for halting parts of the economy to save the world from catastrophic climate change, be that banning coal or oil or to a lesser extent carbon taxes. Instead taking the positive approach of promoting non-fossil fuels on the power grid and electric vehicles accomplishes more and doesn't directly attack the industry and livelihood of a large part of middle America.

Anything that amounts to calling it immoral to define a man as a human with a penis and a woman as a human with a vagina. How many voters do you really need to alienate over semantics?

Anything that amounts to demanding everybody accept and encourage your life choices, sexual or otherwise. The notion of judging one another based on our decisions and behaviours is a big deal to right leaning people, telling them that certain behaviours or choices are not only unquestionable but must be approved of is again pointless and needlessly drives away voters. There is common ground in love and let live, pushing beyond that to get back at the old guard is driving away potential allies at a time that can't be afforded.

Labelling any criticism of Islam as Islamaphobia. For that matter, use of pretty much all the morality-a-phobias should be done away with. Go back to demanding people live and let live without the requirement everyone embrace or endorse other people's decisions without being shouted down as immoral.

BLM

Refusing to allow rational discussion of statistically factual trends or differences between populations because it's racist or sexist. Those differences are a part of our reality and just demanding everyone put their heads in the sand drives many people unwilling to do so away. It also is damaging because many problems in society that we need to fix are informed by that data.

Since you agree that they're trying to influence the debate, is there any aspect of let's call it 'global warming scepticism' that you think is basically a lie perpetuated by the industry to make their argument more persuasive?

It's pretty easy for say, a fossil fuel company to pay (what is pocket change to to them) a PR company quietly to spread ideas that are misleading but sound convincing right?

Also where did Inconvenient Truth say the planet would be basically dead? I don't recall that at all.

Genuine question, do you think that the fossil fuel industry tries to influence the debate in their favour?

I'm asking regardless of whether global warming is true or not.

By Joel Clement July 19 at 4:10 PM

Joel Clement was director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the U.S. Interior Department until last week. He is now a senior adviser at the department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue.

I am not a member of the deep state. I am not big government.

I am a scientist, a policy expert, a civil servant and a worried citizen. Reluctantly, as of today, I am also a whistleblower on an administration that chooses silence over science.

Nearly seven years ago, I came to work for the Interior Department, where, among other things, I’ve helped endangered communities in Alaska prepare for and adapt to a changing climate. But on June 15, I was one of about 50 senior department employees who received letters informing us of involuntary reassignments. Citing a need to “improve talent development, mission delivery and collaboration,” the letter informed me that I was reassigned to an unrelated job in the accounting office that collects royalty checks from fossil fuel companies.

Excellent. But, I have a reaction to your (Green's?) text in the description.

1. Nostalgia is a motivator. But I think it tends to be a *strong* motivator only of individuals, not of collective societies. If Trump has nostalgia for fossil fuels (personally I think his motivations lie elsewhere), the good news is that that nostalgia won't be very contagious to American citizens. At least not for long.

People like Elon Musk / Tesla are making it clear that electric and renewables are the sexy high-tech future. That appeal to our vanity will be much more effective as a "carrot" motivation, as compared to a "stick" with carbon taxes etc.


2. This essentially boils down to an industrial version of Isolationism. Trump represents a bigger push in that direction by far compared to being motivated by nostalgia. BUT, I think that trying to explain that resistance in him and others purely through that anti-globalization lens misses some things.

Just as nostalgia is a better motivator for individuals than societies, altruism (if you believe it can exist) functions the same way. And that's 90% of what the Paris Accords are: altruism.

On paper, it makes sense for us as individuals in the US to acknowledge that we got a disproportionate level of advancement out of fossil fuel usage through our history. As individuals, we can see the undeniable truth in that. But ask us to act -- collectively -- on that and watch as our collective altruistic tendencies are drastically reduced compared to the sum of our individual altruistic tendencies.

That's not really evil, that's just human nature. But it is precisely the reason that I feel that encouraging people like Elon Musk is by far the superior way to lead us into the future. Tesla makes cars that are better than competing ICE vehicles for many/most use-cases. And not "better" in the sense that our individual sense of altruism gets triggered to reward our brain's pleasure center because we've prevented some Pacific islander's house from getting wiped out in a sea level rise by buying one. No, better in real, measurable criteria: less expensive to operate, better performance / top speed / acceleration, features ... potentially even panty-dropping sexiness. That shit can motivate us as a collective society much more reliably than altruism.

And that's why I think it is more important to encourage the Elon Musks of the future than it is to get TOO overly concerned about the Donald Trumps of the present. Although admittedly, there's certainly ways to try to do both.

What are you talking about? The people who argued that tobacco was safe are the exact same people that now argue climate change isn't real, isn't caused by humans. They are in the small minority of scientists that say it isn't happening, and they can all be ignored as they aren't climate scientists. When it comes to discussions on climate, you only pay attention to what research comes from those who's job it is to study it. If you had 90 brain surgeons saying to remove a tumor from your brain, but a podiatrist said, don't worry, you wouldn't listen to the podiatrist. Science is the same. Now among those climate scientists you have a 97% consensus that the primary cause in the uptick (uptick being a keyword, as it is not from baseline, but up from the expected natural rise, and that uptick is HUGE) in the undeniable warming of the planet, is caused by humans burning fossil fuels. There is no denying that climate change is real, there's no denying it is primarily caused by humans, there's no denying it will have a huge impact on billions of people. It is the idiot who doesn't believe that it is real.

Now I'd agree that some of the comments may seem extreme, and said suggestions may not be the best. That is an argument best left for a show like Utopia, a rather great show that sadly didn't make it to a second season. However, there a billions of lives at risk if we don't act soon on halting climate change. Perhaps not billions of lives conservatives care about, as they are poor, third and second world lives, but lives none the less. Droughts will get worse, deserts will expand, hurricanes will increase, tornadoes will increase, hotter hots, and colder colds, there are a ton of changes coming that will make it harder on the poorest of people, people who can't adapt as quickly as the top few percent in the US.

Should people have concern about wars, and the conservative powers that be that love them? Yes, and those issues have been raised by many scientists, especially the big name ones who appear on TV. However, you can't ignore the wars that will start if we don't fight climate change either. Resources will become scarce, and this will cause conflicts that may eventually embroil the US, a concern that the US military has over climate change... this may be why conservatives ignore it, because nothing makes conservatives more happy than murdering people via war. You want to stop war, then stooping climate change has to be a huge priority.

Despite the wars, we are still at the most peaceful time in all history. Yes, we need to do more. Moving off fossil fuels alone would stop a lot of the wars, as that's why the US has an interest in the region. If we could stop giving a fuck about oil, and the US oil market, then we'd have less reason to pick a side on which form of Islam is best for US interests... which of course is why the US was targeted in the first place (that, and our unwavering support of Israel's illegal actions).

Also, it's not like anyone has said climate change should be our only concern. As I already said, all the wars has been brought up many times, as has the conservatives love of giving weapons to those most responsible for the 9/11 attacks, while blaming others for stuff they never did. And, as I've said, those concerns have been repeated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and others who appear on TV, and are well known with the public. Other issues that many scientists in the public eye have been brought up beyond wars: the potential for global pandemics; the idiots not getting vaccinations for their children, for unfounded fears that were proven false; the need for clean drinking water in poor regions; the lack of concern for real science education, and many many other subjects are brought to the public's attention via their social channels, books, talks, or other means. When they are on TV, that is the subject the media pretends there's a debate about though, so if the media at large is all that one pays attention to, then yes, that would seem to be the only subject of concern. The TLDR of this is that they have brought up many concerns beyond just climate change, blame the media for not spreading their other concerns.

"If you think that fossil fuels aren't harming the environment, why don't you go kill yourself."

Well, that escalated quickly.

*promote

That is most unfortunate, and a waste of a great technology that isn't a solution to an energy shortage, but could be one part of a solution.
My systems have saved me about $3-400 a month because I pre-heat my hot tub and hot water heater with hot water solar instead of electricity (which was insanely costly). We have the same issues with selling at >.10 and buying back at >.30, and maximum production/selling limits too, so it's better to use your power as you make it....but we also have a plan where our produced power is used first to erase our purchased power at a 1:1 ratio (based on 3 times of day/rates) so on that plan I never pay the highest rates and never sell at the low rate, because I don't make enough power to have a net surplus, so I don't sell. It's not perfect, but it's acceptable. I just wish they would implement some storage methods like I described and make solar farms more beneficial and allow/incentivize home users to produce more than they use.
True enough, just lots of panels isn't a way to get off fossil fuels.

Public Transportation. GOOD public transportation is what I always think of when I read all this amazement at self driving cars.

We need to reduce materials going into personal transportation and reduce fossil fuel use.

This is cool. And we need more public transportation, and not toys for rich folks.

TLDW version:

Of the CO2 pumped in to our atmosphere every year, human emissions only make up 3-4% of the total. Natural CO2 emissions globally DO greatly dwarf our burning of fossil fuels and other activities. This is an entirely undisputed fact, and is universally accepted and agreed upon.

As for global greenhouse effect, the CO2 remaining in the atmosphere contributes between 10-30% of the energy being trapped depending on how you count it. This is again an entirely undisputed fact, universally accepted and agreed upon.

Yes, CO2 is a small(ish) part of the global greenhouse effect, and yes, humans only add an extra 3% per year to existing natural emissions. That 3% can add up if it doesn't leave the atmosphere and builds up year over year. We have measured for it, and see that is in fact happening. We have measured the resulting warming and energy inputs and it is in fact warming.

If people want to observe those fractions of fractions stretch out error bars on analysis and projections, that's more fair. Your error bars get magnified a couple times along the way. Most of the time good scientists take that into account, although some have certainly been much less rigorous when speaking publicly than when publishing(Yes, I'm looking at you James Hansen).

Sometimes I feel like I live on a different planet to other people. People keep telling me 'that's what men do' but I'm a man and that's not what I've ever done. But I'm not going to bang on and on about Trump, it's all been said before.

Because I'm so used to the kind of trash Trump comes out with, what shocked me from this video is that Oliver would suggest Clinton is the end point of a century old quest for female equality. She is from a powerful, rich family with connections and funding from some of the shadiest, rapacious industries/organisations in the world. Her victory wouldn't be a triumph for women, it would be a triumph for money and the elite ruling classes.

A triumph for women would be a rise to status based on merit and hard work, battling oppression every step of the way to change opinions and break new ground for anyone who follows. The success of Hillary's career mirrored Bill's and as his power and wealth increased so did her's.

What does this say? Work hard and you can overcome the prejudices of a male dominated society? No - it says if you're from the right family and know the right people, you can be president. Called Bush or Clinton? You're in with a shot. Hillary winning doesn't change the game, it doesn't pioneer a new path for females.

It is bullshit and it riles me because it's a manipulation of virtue. Hey everyone, vote for our FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT, what an amazing and equal country we are, you're sexist if you don't want it! This has been a centuries long struggle but finally a strong enough woman has achieved what no other woman could do, it's time to recognise her strength of character! FUCK OFF. There have been millions of women more qualified and appropriate than her who never got even a sniff of a chance because they didn't anchor themselves to the right man, they weren't born into a particular family and spent childhood holidays with the sons and daughters of fossil fuel barons, investment companies, etc. The system is biased and wrong and Hillary winning only confirms that.

Most of the population of the world is still impoverished by a lack of access to electric power, motor transport, manufactured goods, chemical fertilizers ... Stuff you undoubtedly take for granted. Climate change is a gigantic distraction and a power grab, and focusing on it will result in many poor people remaining poor.

There are real problems to deal with, for one, fossil fuels really are present only in limited supply, and we'll have to somehow stop using them eventually. Climate hysteria does not help.

If you're serious about the evil fossil fuel industry, boycott fossil fuels. Go ahead, show us how it's done.