Yes. But as that gets rolled out and implemented, assume that the richer organizations would be able to get those ACs installed faster and earlier.

Isn’t that also true of the word “mathematics” as well?

that 20000-30000 premium over ICEs

What currency are you using for this comparison? Definitely not USD.

A Tesla Model 3 runs for about $40k. A Camry runs for about $35k. Or if we want to go down market a Nissan Leaf is about $30k and probably comparable to a $25k Sentra.

Similar trim levels of vehicles offered as both EV and gasoline powered show minimal difference. Compare the Ford F-150 Lariat in both the gasoline ($75k) and the EV versions ($79k). Or the new Lexus ES, where the EV ($49k) is actually cheaper than the hybrid ($51k).

And if you go into the used market, EVs are starting to hit that market in real numbers, too. Plenty of options for under $20,000, and a handful of options for under $10,000.

Cars are expensive. EVs generally are close to that already expensive price.

The article talks about mass producing the enzymes themselves, not the life forms that produce the enzymes. It’s a key distinction.

Plus these organisms already live on this earth. They can’t outcompete other life on the surface, in less harsh conditions.

It sounds like you have no idea the magnitudes involved, or the timelines. You’re talking about something that took place over a period of 400 million years and whose effects (the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere and our oceans) remain. There’s no chance that geoengineering would change the oxygen levels to anything we can’t handle, and if it starts to head down that direction we can easily handle it (just stop the processes that would sequester carbon).

It’s like being worried that your air conditioning is going to freeze your pipes in the house, in the middle of summer.

If we can get atmospheric CO2 back down to where it was 100 years ago that would be an amazing problem to have.

Read the article. They’re hoping to mass manufacture the enzymes involved, which have the following advantages over carbon capture through plant life:

• Can work in much harsher environments, with higher operating temperatures, pressures, and acidity.
• Captures the carbon in calcium carbonate, which is more stable in retaining the carbon compared to decomposing plant matter.
• Works much faster than plants do

The trouble with cow farts is the methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas that eventually turns back into CO2 in the atmosphere anyway. Concentrated methane sources tend to either be captured for use as fuel, or flared with a burning flame to reduce the greenhouse effect (at which point carbon sequestering might work). Less concentrated sources, like livestock farts, can’t really be dealr with in the same way.

That…sounds like they’re not actually sleeping those hours.

I take your point, but I also think that all the other stuff can improve, too. Fertilizer use peaked in the US in 2013, and better land use practices are trying to use less water and less fertilizer and allow less erosion.

None of this is by any means guaranteed to get better, but it’s also not inevitable that it will get worse. The work needs to be done.

Your thesis doesn’t match up with this chart:

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

We’re working to decarbonize the highest categories on that list, with rapid adoption of solar/wind, some potential for more nuclear and geothermal in the medium term, and maybe even fusion in the long term.

Then, while decarbonizing electricity, we’re electrifying heating for homes, water, cooking, and we’re electrifying transportation.

US carbon emissions per capita peaked in the 70’s, and peaked as a whole in the 2000’s. US carbon emissions per capita still greatly exceed those of other rich nations.

It’s very much possible to have modern first world living standards, even with significant reductions in our resource use and net emissions. We just need to line up the incentives (aka pricing) with what is good for the Earth. And we’re already doing that in many of the heaviest polluting sectors.

We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term.

That’s not necessarily true. How much of our overall greenhouse emissions come from which sector?

From this chart, decarbonizing electricity and transport will go a long, long way, and decarbonizing manufacturing and construction could also give some room to reduce overall emissions by more than the entire agricultural sector produces.

And it’s not just some kind of pipe dream. We’re doing real work at decarbonizing electricity, heat, transport, shipping, construction, etc., as the prices of low or zero emissions options start to outcompete the higher emission options for many applications.

Plus if the data center boom crashes as a bubble, a lot of the infrastructure investment into increasing energy production and distribution with both high carbon and low carbon sources will at least have financed a lot of low carbon energy and the potential for curtailing the least carbon efficient generation methods.

I think you have to look at the actual orders of magnitude difference in raising the temperature of water versus air. The Arizona story you linked is about a study that found up to +4°F (+2.2°C) temperatures in air.

The same amount of heat, spread across the same volume of water moving at the same speeds, would only raise that water by 1/830 as much, for a +0.0048°F (+0.0027°C) 1/3300 as much, for a +0.0012°F/+0.00067°C temperature change across the same area/volume.

(I got to 830 by taking the specific heat of dry air of approx 1 J/g K at room temperature and regular atmospheric pressure and 1.22 kg/m^3, versus water’s 4.184 J/g K and 1000 kg/m^3).

(Edit: I fucked my math. Water has approximately 3300 times the heat capacity as air, per unit volume, and I just looked it up directly).

The higher conductivity of water might be offset by the higher convection potential of air (because air responds to temperature changes with differences in density/pressure, which creates wind in itself), so that the heat will spread through either medium relatively quickly and therefore dissipate very quickly with distance to the source.

I just don’t see a world where a data center raises the water by even 1°C, even locally.

The plants on the lakes so monitor the water temp so they don’t affect the ecosystem during the warmer seasons still.

Yeah, but look at the magnitudes of the heat units involved. Modern nuclear plants generate 0.6-4.5 GW at around 30% thermal efficiency (so they generate between 2-15GW of heat). These underwater data centers are looking at 25 MW (0.025 GW) while surrounded by water in 5 of the 6 3-dimensional directions.

There is some risk to local ecosystems, but we’re literally talking 2 or more orders of magnitude difference compared to nuclear plants or other thermal plants.

But that’s true no matter where you put the data center. If you have to dump the waste heat somewhere, the high density and specific heat of water is a better heatsink than the air around us.

This page says the ocean is about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallons, which is about 1.3 x 10^21 liters, and each liter is a kg of water (yeah, yeah, the dissolved salt adds some mass but I don’t think it adds sufficient thermal mass to make a difference). It takes 4.184 kilojoules to raise 1kg of liquid water 1°C, and 1 joule is 2.778 x 10^-4 wh.

So that’s 1.55 x 10^18 watt hours, or 1,550,000 TWh.

Global electricity consumption is about 30,000 TWh per year, so if you use the entire world’s electricity consumption for 51 years you’d raise the oceans’ temperature by 1°C.

Or if you take global data center power capacity of about 125 GW, and ran them at full power 24/7, you’d be producing about 10.8 TWh per day or 3944 TWh per year. It’d take about 393 years of the world’s data centers to raise the ocean by 1°C.

Just goes to show that much more of the energy heating up our world and our oceans is coming from the sun heating up the planet and the planet failing to radiate it out past our greenhouse blanket, not from the actual heating of our atmosphere from our own energy sources.

So what makes you think the people eating these things are only eating them for health reasons?

Taste: it’s actually really hard to taste just as good as normal meat, as meat is not only meat but also fat, tissue and blood.

One thing I’d push back on is the idea that meat has one single flavor. It’s entirely possible that we’ll be able to replicate many different types of sausages and meatballs and ground meats, things like imitation crab or meatloaf or chicken nuggets, while still struggling to mimic whole muscle cuts. Or it may be easy to mimic certain types of flavors like meat-based soups and sauces, or poached/braised meats, while not quite getting there on grilled or roasted meats.

Meanwhile, I can also see a world where lab-grown meat is cost competitive with more expensive meats, like beef or lamb or lobster, while not being able to compete with cheaper meats like chicken.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing substitution. Sometimes imperfect substitutes can partially replace something and reduce overall demand while the original item still remains available in smaller volumes.

a weird path to take

Is the idea of eating food for enjoyment so foreign to you that you wouldn’t understand why we eat foods for reasons other than absolute minimum nutritional needs?

This is actually one of the principles that is causing building codes to start accommodating load bearing timber in tall buildings. Even though wood is combustible, wood beams that are thick enough can withstand fire for long periods of time. They’re still working out what the different tests and standards should be, but some jurisdictions have approved timber skyscrapers.