The World's Transition to Renewable Energies

[Fake Messiah]

Hey, I have a solution in which people can still keep their cars and planes and get off oil: synthetic ethanol. Now, I am not talking about that grown methanol but let's say people make solar thermal powerplants in Sahara where they use electricity to suck carbon from the air and take hydrogen from the water. Then they mix hydrogen and carbon and thus make ethanol that can run existing gasoline cars (with a little tweak), trucks and airplanes.

Otherwise, people should immediately stop flying, cut down on eating meat (like once a week), buy less, and stop using ocean freighters until they find a substitute for oil.

[The Grand Nudger]

People have the issue of range anxiety, mostly due to the perceived lack of public charging points 

Once upon a time there weren't enough gas stations for ice vehicles, too.  It took a national program with tendrils that still live to put stop and go's on every corner.

@Fake Messiah

None of those things you listed matters much to global warming, but it's certainly in the interest of the powers that be to give people substitutes for action. The whole damned world is buying into the greenwashing lie of private climate responsibility, lol. Individuals decisions do not matter. There's no other way to put this. It's like with recycling, where companies somehow made us feel responsible for their waste and now sell us recycling as a product...but don't actually recycle.

[A. Secular Human]

Hey, I have a solution in which people can still keep their cars and planes and get off oil: synthetic ethanol. Now, I am not talking about that grown methanol but let's say people make solar thermal powerplants in Sahara where they use electricity to suck carbon from the air and take hydrogen from the water. Then they mix hydrogen and carbon and thus make ethanol that can run existing gasoline cars (with a little tweak), trucks and airplanes.

Otherwise, people should immediately stop flying, cut down on eating meat (like once a week), buy less, and stop using ocean freighters until they find a substitute for oil.

Sahara?  Water?

[Modern Atheism]

 let's say people make solar thermal powerplants in Sahara where they use electricity to suck carbon from the air

Air is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. I don't see us being able to extract a lot of carbon from it

[The Grand Nudger]

Each ppm in the atmosphere accounts for approx 2.13 gigatons of carbon. In october of 2023, that was 422. 350 is what is considered safe. 165 gigatons of carbon to capture. We currently capture about 40 million tons a year. If every project were completed, or when..whatever we prefer, about 360 million tons per yer. The trouble with carbon capture and sequestration is a near and mid term one. We don't have the capacity and physically can't build out the capacity quick enough to make a dent in our lifetimes. Probably multiple lifetimes.

It's certainly a part of a much longer term plan to repair or at least maintain our climate - but the high costs, low utility, and long timetables mean that there could be much better ways to direct climate funding at present. It should also be noted that the majority of these ccs projects operate as an extension of the fossil fuel industry. No fossil fuel industry, ccs is suddenly less viable from an industrial development perspective.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

 let's say people make solar thermal powerplants in Sahara where they use electricity to suck carbon from the air

Air is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. I don't see us being able to extract a lot of carbon from it

You do realize that we’re currently pumping mind-boggling amounts of carbon into the air, right?

Extracting carbon from the atmosphere is pretty simple - trees do it all day, every day.

Boru

[MR. Macabre 666]

Hey, I have a solution in which people can still keep their cars and planes and get off oil: synthetic ethanol. Now, I am not talking about that grown methanol but let's say people make solar thermal powerplants in Sahara where they use electricity to suck carbon from the air and take hydrogen from the water. Then they mix hydrogen and carbon and thus make ethanol that can run existing gasoline cars (with a little tweak), trucks and airplanes.

Otherwise, people should immediately stop flying, cut down on eating meat (like once a week), buy less, and stop using ocean freighters until they find a substitute for oil.

Are you fucking serious? How are farmers going to raise their crops/livestock? What are all the trains, trucks, freighters, etc. supposed to use for fuel? Electric air liners? Electric cars are never going to replace the internal combustion engine, not now, or in the future. No one wants them, or can afford to buy one. We don't have the infrastructure, and probably
never will for this fantasy.
Fossil fuels are going to be around for several more decades, and coal for even longer, we have hundreds' of years worth under the US. 
The man-made climate emergency is a fucking lie.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Hey, I have a solution in which people can still keep their cars and planes and get off oil: synthetic ethanol. Now, I am not talking about that grown methanol but let's say people make solar thermal powerplants in Sahara where they use electricity to suck carbon from the air and take hydrogen from the water. Then they mix hydrogen and carbon and thus make ethanol that can run existing gasoline cars (with a little tweak), trucks and airplanes.

Otherwise, people should immediately stop flying, cut down on eating meat (like once a week), buy less, and stop using ocean freighters until they find a substitute for oil.

Are you fucking serious? How are farmers going to raise their crops/livestock? What are all the trains, trucks, freighters, etc. supposed to use for fuel? Electric air liners? Electric cars are never going to replace the internal combustion engine, not now, or in the future. No one wants them, or can afford to buy one. We don't have the infrastructure, and probably
never will for this fantasy.
Fossil fuels are going to be around for several more decades, and coal for even longer, we have hundreds' of years worth under the US. 
The man-made climate emergency is a fucking lie.

Well, something is going to replace the internal combustion engine, one way or another. Unless you want it to be shanks mares, investing - right fucking now - in alternative energy is a pretty good idea.

No, the climate crisis isn’t a lie. You’re so silly.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

There's enough ff under us to destroy ourselves long before it we burn it all up. Good questions, though.

We don't know how we'd grow our food. We can reduce our dependence on ff to some extent through integrated agriculture and even more through local agriculture..but the petrochem ag yields we currently fail to feed everyone with have some baseline consumption and that's probably the sort of thing we ought to account for in longer term plans - like projections for how much ccs we'll want, from earlier. Same with trains - already a great use of ff. I would also be greatly surprised to see ice machines replaced -in every use case- in the next century, let alone decades. Infrastructure is a big issue. Part of our reliance on ice cars, for example..comes down to how and where we've built our cities. We're going to need to rethink that.

These are all problems. They are problems because agw is not a hoax or conspiracy, but a fact. Because it is already costing us money - money that could have been spent deploying solutions. Because the further along we go the fewer viable solutions we have, and the less time we'd have to deploy them. This, to me, means that extra scrutiny on projects making environmental claims is warranted. It's serious business..in the literal sense..as in dollars and..so careful vetting would be justified even if we weren't in the midst of massive greenwashing and opportunistic environmental fraud - which we are.

[A. Secular Human]

 let's say people make solar thermal powerplants in Sahara where they use electricity to suck carbon from the air

Air is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. I don't see us being able to extract a lot of carbon from it

There are already constructions made exclusively to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

https://www.science.org/content/article/...rectly-air