Thanks for having me on the show Michael! A really fun and I think important conversation. Let's try to get your TH-cam views up so that more people can hear your work!
Thanks to Dr Rosemary Barnes for joining us on Cleaning Up this week. Check out her channel Engineering with Rosie for the full video explaining the benefits of vertical-axis and horizontal-axis wind turbines: th-cam.com/users/engineeringwithrosie
Very good podcast again, Michael. I really enjoyed this one. Rosie is amazing, and I hope someone will support her in writing the Philosophy of Engineering.
I follow Rosie's channel as well but this was an interesting take on both her own life and how she perceives the challenges the world's energy systems face. Well done!
Thank you for this great episode! I agree with Rosie that it is the scale-up from prototype to industrial scale production that is the hard part and there are the unsung heroes in engineering and for society, as without them we would not have all these brilliant progress. And we need to get governments to support this tough phase!
I'm sure there are difficulties for women getting jobs in engineering. I retired a few years back as a data network engineer. When interviewing with my line manager for a new engineer job we interviewed a young lady who looked as though she had just stepped off a modelling catwalk. My boss was dubious about her being suitable but I was in favour and won him over - and we employed a very competent engineer. I do confess to a smiley moment the first time I saw her with dirt on her face after working on a particularly mucky field job. 🙂
Totally agree with Rosie, having a different background than every other person in the room is a huge benefit. Having the courage to speak up and give that different point of view is the hard part.
Now there’s an idea. Question Time (UK political debating round table show on BBC) should from now on always have a qualified engineer on the panel to call out BS every time someone just makes some thing up.
Have to disagree Rosie. Rosie never in politics, really! Let's be clear about politics, yes, I agree that you do not see yourself being the leader of the Conservative Labour Finance Party or whatever brand someone comes up with, but you are clearly an agent of change and that change affects arguably every minute of our personal and community, societal lives. To accomplish that requires political thinking, policy thinking, persuasion, communication, quality of life effectiveness measuring, and so on. You, both of you actually, are up to your neck in politics and thank you for being there for all of us!
Excellent podcast, its great to get a better understanding the role engineering has in the energy transition. Also great practical advice, so encouraging for those who wiish to become engineers.
Delivery of business processes have an impact on life that is most often experienced after the fact and often only noted by delivery failures. This, I think, parallels.what you're saying about engineering's impact in achievement, even understanding, the impacts of delivery effectiveness in achievement of the goal.
not sure what to say but want to leave a comment for the algorithm I think it's very frustrating how blatantly politicians and influencers can claim and promote things that don't hold up to the kind of basic physical reality check that engineers do intuitively. I was recently told of a scheme to produce renewable energy by burning highly localized biomass waste, store it in battery containers and ship those over half of europe by rail to where electricity prices are high. I laughed loudly and said "that's never going to be economically viable". The reply I got was "In my long career I've learned that economics don't matter as long as you find an investor".
Keystone tower systems has solved the tower diameter problem. They custom cut sheet metal so they fit on regular truck beds and are then automatically welded together into conical shapes. I toured their Denver R&D prototype facility with the MIT club before Covid and they've since started manufacturing.
Absolutely spot on. Engineering is the answer. I work in the chemicals sector and we supply engineering companies with surface finishing coatings. Although not an engineer, I do get to see what those companies are doing and pick up a bit about how it works, what can be done and what is coming down the line. It’s all good, stuff is lined up and almost ready for market and the future looks very promising. The science is clear on climate change. Whether you want to do anything about it or just accept it and do nothing is a personal and political decision by individuals. Everyone is free to make their own assessment of whether we need to do anything or not. But, that does not change the science. The problem (or not if you are sceptical) is defined, and plenty of practical solutions have been worked out by scientists and engineers. I see that at work all the time. The only things needed are: - A will to change from an established methodology of deriving power to another. - A ditching of dogma by every side. Stop fighting for the sake of idealistic viewpoints and just get on with doing something. Prevaricating helps nobody. We can’t just stop using oil now, we can’t just swap to renewables today. But we can slide over in the years to come, tackling challenges in a timely manner as they come up. Rushing for the finish line helps no one if you trip over, and it pushes up costs, slowing everything down. Every percentage change towards alternatives to reducing CO2 emission is a step forward. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I get told it costs money to do ‘green’ projects. But those same people never accept that building coal, gas or nuclear power stations also costs money. They are not free! Look at Hinckley Point in the UK, a nuclear power station. Cost 9 billion. You can build a lot of solar wind and storage for 9 billion. But it gets worse. Costs are now projected to be at least 36 billion (guaranteed) and projected to be 45 billion - not by eco-loonies but by the builders themselves. We could have been completely self sufficient on renewables and storage with that money. And I do not mean lithium ion batteries either, there are other ways of storing energy other than as electricity. They can’t even tell us when this nuclear power station will be operational - sometime in the 2030s. So much for cheap, reliable, fast to build base load from nuclear. Hinckley is already a failed project because it will never have been worth the money and effort put into it. I actually support the role of nuclear in our energy future, l’m not against it, but there are times not to be a fanboy and we need to call a turd a turd. It’s not very far from where I live either and I have no problem with a nuclear power station being nearby - I am no nimby, but I am pragmatic. I have no doubt it will eventually be finished and will work fine, but wow, not a cost effective product. I can’t wait for it to be up and running so we can put the farce behind us and actually start getting some electricity from it. 😞
How long the transition takes is very important to climate outcomes. The temperature when net zero is achieved depends on the total emissions up to that point more than the date of net zero. A slow transition will result in a less hospitable climate for malenia.
£45 billion. The cost of micro hydro per kw capacity would be a fraction of this. But the Environment Agency is busy demolishing weirs. So destroying the possibility of micro hydro power.
@@aidanbyrne7043 It is important to move as quickly as possible, but it is hard to tackle the negative people. Look at electric cars. Most people didn’t care about them until they were told you won’t be able to buy a combustion car in a few years, that’s when the real hate started. You have to bring people with you and going too fast can alienate people who then try to slow the transition. Sometimes a slower route is actually faster 😉
Not to be too blunt but it sounds like you are in the PFAS coatings sector. While so many are talking about decarbonizing we have managed to fluorinate the planet - a grave ecological catastrophe.
@@Hhllbb2476 No PFAS in our products. The last one in our inventory was withdrawn several years ago and even then it was restricted to a highly regulated sub-industry and was used in tiny amounts. PFAS is being killed off everywhere, except where it cannot be replaced, and that’s a good thing. Forever chemicals may not be a 100% accurate name , but I think it gets the message across. Demand for safer and cleaner chemistry is rising and along with increasing pressure to destroy or recycle troublesome chemicals rather than dumping it I think we can all look forward to a brighter future. Same thing happened to nonylphenol ethoxylates, must 20 years ago now. We had to find alternatives to those and it was done.
10% engineering. 90% politics. In many respects, the engineering is the straight forward part. Given we have most of tech we need. Also, there's a good chance we're going to trigger tipping points before we get the political will to do something about it. When you look at it that way, proportionate action looks very different. Revolution is coming whether the centrists dad likes it or not.
Hi Rosie and Michael, one more comment...Scott Adams (Dilbert author) said this is a recent podcast: ………. and we act like engineers don't exist or something - like I think engineers are the most ignored group of people in in society because they have the most value to add because of the thinking part they can think they're really clear thinkers and we ignore them like they don't count when we talk about political stuff you should pay attention to the engineers…
Of course us engineers will have answers. But the public won't like them. First there is a cost to sorting the "tragedy of the commons". Then there are the side effects. And then there is the fact that we will have to: consume less, waste less, travel less, and those are not really engineering, unless you count re-engineering culture, politics and the natural trendency (sic) of humans to put the blame on "him over there".
There is a whole host of mutual benefits to be gained through regenerative agriculture. Gabe brown from N. Dakota is an education and then some. Carbon Cowboys on you tube is really eye-opening. A recent set of on farm data collection and analysis has been completed through the documentary Roots So Deep. The synergies are just brilliant. A real approach to the future for us all.
'Climate change is an engineering problem' - I think CC is significantly a management/government problem. Reducing waste will be most of the ultimate solution. Good design at the city level can achieve a lot eg shift from wasteful ugly expensive Detroit to clean pleasant Delft. Its not the engineers that are blocking this.
Rosie, make your book title, The Philosophy and POLITICS of Engineering . . . Structure the approach to marry engineering to our democratic processes and values. This is “politics” at its basic level, defining in the simplest terms of “process” and “substance” ie - - Politics is the art of the possible…and - Politics is the allocation of values. This duality enables us to give practical, tangible social meaning to technological-scientific concepts we encounter, on the one hand, and philosophical concepts we discover on the other - usually “hit or miss”along the bumpy timeline of our lives. One political leader in the ’30s chose an engineering approach as part of his goal of politically unifying a poor agrarian South & a rich industrial North. Thus rural electrification was married to the large Congressional majority, with the resulting dams we can plainly see on maps today. Another political leader in the ‘30s, wanting to make his country great again, after impoverishment imposed on it following WW I, saw his solution in aggression against poor countries to the East - conquering them & engineering an ‘emptying’ of them to take the “living space” needed to enrich & expand his country. An earlier leader, desirous of expanding textile markets, charged its Commodore Perry with forcefully opening up feudal Japan to international trade in 1853-54. The treaty imposed on it, after free kinetic gunboat demos in Tokyo Bay, triggered its rapid transition to an industrial empire & a half-century of brutal aggression against its neighbors. Two instances of blowback from Perry’s ‘success’ illustrate the essential governing role of politics over technology - - Japan attacked & defeated the Russian Empire in 1905, obliterating its navy & ending its global imperial reach. Later that year, the 1st of three Russian revolutions occurred. Russia was an ally of Britain & France before WW I, but its weakened navy was unable to form a counter-weight to the German navy - a big factor in Germany deciding to start the war. - Four score & seven years after Commodore Perry’s 1854 gunboat diplomacy, the Empire of Japan attacked the US possessions of the Philippines & Hawaii. Philosophy alone will not channel technology into ethical, useful endeavors. Only democratic political action has a chance of doing that.
@@MLiebreich Adrian Newey: "the creative goal is not to create the perfect design, it is to create a design which has the maximum amount of development potential."
I really appreciate what Rosie does and her opinions. But apologies, as an engineer, I think it is more important to acknowledge the biggest challenge ahead of us is political and sociological. We're not going to solve climate change with technology.
I will say that cost of electricity production could be lower if land use was considered. Highway could be covered by solar panels and protect the highway from the heat and snow
Appreciate the discussion, and I have benefitted a lot from Rosie's channel. I would challenge the assertion that Climate Challenge is an Engineering Challenge and I do hold an electrical engineering degree. We created the Climate Crisis by assuming that engineering and technology wasn't trading productivity and quality of life for the destruction of the planet. So let us not assume that one tech must and will be replaced by another (advancement) tech that will fix the problem. Instead lets have some humility as engineers (always lacking) and understand that many of our proposed tech solutions are also unsustainable. Here's a test to have for introspection as an engineer: Will my proposed tech solution scale to be usable by everyone, or is it really only a choice made to backfill something we know we need to stand down in our developed, emissions intensive country? Will my proposed solution be sustainable for thousands of years, or am I just repeating the same mistake as those who proposed whale oil (which probably looked like renewable energy to them, right?), fossil fuels, nuclear, etc? Are the resources needed for my tech finite, and if so, aren't I still proposing a solution with very short timeline that will force a new engineering dilemma in the near future? Most arguments I've heard for a circular economy ignores finite recyclability and still relies on incredibly energy intensive industrial processes. I'd suggest that most technocrats are still failing miserably at having a very long view when they suggest that we've got great sustainable solutions. Here's a key example. Policy leaders (CARB in California) have labeled EV cars/SUVs/pickups as zero emissions, because they have no tailpipe. And engineers have taken up the challenge of reinventing full sized vehicles that parallel current inefficient and emissions intensive (to build) vehicles. So we're in a culture war, expending political capital to make an insufficient transportation revision. EVs Life Cycle Assessment clearly shows that fulll sized EVs are not compatible at all with zero emissions. Volvo, Polestar, BMW, Rivian have published their LCAs and they clearly show it's not a viable tech under zero emissions, PERIOD. I say that as a lifelong automobile zealot, electrical engineer, and a person who wanted desperately for EVs to be a sustainable solutions. But we're ignoring the clear signs that electric shared public transit (pantograph trains, specifically) and Active Transportation and micromobility are the only transportation tech that DOES come close to scaling and sustaining for 1000s of years. Bicycles and trains are 125 year old technologies, and yet they aren't sexy enough or market driven, so we're missing them as the key to truly sustainable transportation, and engineers who should not only know better, but have the toolset and understanding to do the math, are ignoring this paradox. In this case engineering challenges are in how do we sustainably build rail lines or bicycles. But it would be wrong to misstate that transportation transition as an engineering challenge, instead of a human condition and mindset change challenge. Mode shifting our transportation is actually the only viable pathway, but we have more engineers participating far more in EV cars, EV car plant refinement, unsustainable battery tech, VTOL BS, humanoid robotics, and even rocketry. Engineers have a responsibility to use their abilities to NOT design unsustainable tech solution, and the those solutions cannot be short term only.
Hi Rosie and Michael, Love it! Do you know Dr Janis Birkland, author of books on Positive Development & Design (my hero!), Would be great if you interviewed her (she lives in Victoria (Oz)). Some quote of hers that relate to your discussion: .......The sustainability crisis is a whole-system problem, requiring the redesign of development, yet circuitous arguments over policy plans persist. This is partly because design has been marginalized in the culture.... .......Sustainability is a biophysical design problem.... .......Built environment design can leverage biophysical sustainability without waiting for social change or institutional reform.... .......Design has traditionally been regarded as a subset of decision making: merely a means of implementing decisions, plans or policies in physical form.... In my words, Janis has dissected, in the most rigorous fashion the mechanics of contemporary human civilization, both at the physical and institutional/regulatory levels, and showed how these can all be designed to create "Positive Development"....so not just ordering temporal affairs for the least ecological offense, but for expanding ecological outcomes beyond modern industrial era levels. (disclosure, I am a book reviewer for her).
In the 19 th century there were plenty of famous engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel, George Stephenson, Thomas Telford ect but I don't think there are many in the 21 st century.
In Bertold Brecht's play about Galileo Galilei there's a quote about scientists/engineers running the danger of simply being "a race of inventive dwarves" in the hand of rulers. So do not underestimate the power of political leadership which may dictate what scientists and engineers use their brains for. Trump ante portas...
Michael said he was attending Cambridge University 40 years ago and took no computer programming courses-- Really!? I attended a community college in Minnesota and took my first programming course in the fall of 1983, which is 40 years + 2 semesters ago. By Christmas of 1983, writing programs was a small part of my job.
Energy Storage based a Synthetic Closed Carbon Cycle is probably the best option for solving the dunkelflaute problem in most instances, unless you have hydro resources like Norway or possibly solar like Australia or N Africa
Michael I thought rain drop power had died. The capacity factor of rain is about 1:300,000,000 ~1m of rain per year @ 10m/s ! For UK you need about 1Km² of rain harvesting per home, rain energy is ≈12Wh/m²tyr @ 100%
Hello fellow critical thinkers. Where are our interpersonal energies best spent to cost-effectively guide societies’ paths? On the whole, are the politicians those that provide greatest leverage on societal direction? I am concerned with the thread of engineers versus scientists as a conflict. For instance, as for engineers not being trusted, scientists are not either. Engineers not being taken by society seriously? Then why do engineering jobs pay more than science jobs on the whole? As an environmental scientist & engineer, who has spent my career to rectify the fossil fuel abuses of my ancestors, I am pained to hear the laments of engineers versus scientists. The fundamental grist in guiding along better paths lays in language…how does one relay a concept, idea, mechanism, or optimal solution when those hearing the words don’t understand the words? As you both pointed out, achieving understanding by all those involved is ideal. I strive for understanding on this topic anytime the opportunity arises as I may never get audience with a politician, CEO, or social media maven. Thanks for poking at hydrogen rationales. Hydrogen is quite the SQUIRREL! To the crux of the biscuit in this content’s fundamental intent…The building of nuclear weapons was overcoming the engineering difficulties, the science was known long before the construction of Little Boy.
On a German national TV news program the host used the term "conspiracy tales" (Erzaehlungen). Could be a new editorial policy to erase the false nimbus the word 'theory' carries. Please propagate! "conspiracy tales"
It might just be an impression (no hardcore stats here), but it probably does not help when a lot of climate change scepticism or “renewables/EVs/heatpumps/green tech don’t/won’t/will never work” rhetorics are very often pushed on social media not by scientists but by engineers (chemical, mechanical, electrical, etc). From people whose job is to find solutions being told that the ones currently being developed at scale worldwide “will never work” is a bit odd.😅
Yes, there is an issue that the fossil fuel and ICE-auto industries have creamed off and captured such a large proportion of engineering talent in the past. But that has ended. The smart young engineering talent has been going into clean energy, EVs, digital, biotechnology and other transition sectors for a decade. The old fossil engineers will be around for a while, but receding into the rear-view mirror with every passing year. Meanwhile the evidence is mounting that they are embarrassingly wrong to say the fossil or 100% nuclear ways are the only ways.
As far as what to do about promoting a Philosophy of Engineering goes, I think you might get more mileage out of "engineering stories" (where your hero's path to The Adequate Solution is beset by engineering problems that do things like, for instance, spoiling the happy ending that was looking possible with The New Battery - concrete things in other words - simplified tellings of the progress of some real or reasonably realistic project, rather than abstractions) than you'd get by setting up an academic Barrier Discipline with Capital Letters in its Name, like "Philosophy of Engineering" - required course among the other obstacles. People might listen to your stories (and if they don't, well you need to do some "project management" to produce something more effective next time round).
I suspect that this will be an unpopular opinion but arguably we've been deluding ourselves for 30-40 years by believing it's principally an engineering problem.
@@mowensmd You can't separate the two. It is political and human nature to glom onto shiny pseudo-solutions, rather than figure out the most viable engineering solution set and then project manage towards implementing it.
@@MLiebreich that's an interesting point which I don't disagree with. My point was more subtle. Engineers tend to think climate challenge is centrally an engineering problem. Economists often think it's primarily about market (re)design and overcoming market failures impeding low/zero carbon solutions. Other social scientists may contend that addressing the climate challenge primarily involves creating social institutions that overcome human tendencies towards short-termism (and "discounting" the future). Anthropologists might in contrast contend that culture is most important and that addressing the climate challenge is primarily about fostering new behaviours and social practices and somehow phasing out carbon-intensive behaviours. Political scientists might contend that power relations are central to the climate challenge and argue that solving this challenge centrally involves understanding and overcoming the power of the fossil fuel industry. I could go on but hopefully by now the basic point is made. We need multiple lenses to properly understand and effectively address the climate challenge. Privileging one as the most important would seem to be a pathway to not solving the problem. Additionally, people with formal training in a given discipline (e.g. engineering) need to understand how this shapes their understanding of a problem and perceived (or preferred) solutions.
Anyone who expects to get results has a primary philosophy of bias to science and Engineering. Thermodynamics is everything, modulation cause-effect mechanism coherence-cohesion of relative-timing resonance information In-form-ation substantiation holographic positioning nucleation. Then there's political b-s to disembowel and clean up general education, Engineers keep working on the perceived problems until they have appropriate results.
We are going to have to do geoengineering. Solar Radiation Management looks the most practical and rapidly deployable. Net zero is part of the solution, but is just going to be too slow to implement, to avoid tipping points. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection can be done using just 30 re-purposed military jets to stabilise the entire global temperature. It s astonishing the level of sensitivity to relatively tiny quantities of aerosol. Do the calculations, and be amazed!
Liebreich says the problem is that we're told to follow the science, but not the engineering. His apparent assumption is that the science is substantially correct, but the role of engineering in implementing this science is ignored. However, his assumption is false. In 1994 an international agreement (UNFCCC) stipulated SAFE GHG CONCENTRATIONS. A year later the IPCC, in its second assessment report, unilaterally changed this to reduced emissions, which allowed concentrations to continue rising. Because CO2 concentrations were already unsafe at the time (360 ppm vs. 350 ppm), THIS "SCIENCE" IS FUNDAMENTALLY FALSE. Using engineering to implement this false approach, even with someone as brilliant at Dr. Barnes, is an ecocidal proposition. Yes, engineering is critically important to solve the climate crisis, but this must be applied to scientifically valid policies. I propose optimized aerosol releases, minimized GHG releases, and SRM as required for a survivable global temperature. Dr. Barnes?
Love your work. Rooftop PV and BVs are the only economic possibility. My thoughts from the warm latitudes of Australia. After decades in CivEng construction contracting tendering and running projects. No fossil fueled CO2 emissions worldwide Australia climate is warming, droughts, national fires, and flooding rains increasing. Desertification. So, Energy Technology options Expand clean electricity from 10% to 100% Australia national grid is fragile and 1million km. Fragile because it is extremely expensive in time and resources and finance. Maximum customers at minimum total cost. Costs are $1million to $10million km. Total cost $TRILLIONS and 2decades. Expand 10 times is impossible $TRILLIONS And impossible decades and resources. Nuclear promoters acknowledge grid cost constraints and only promote replacement with 247 cashflow from customers. 247 cashflow is absolutely critical economics. $hr and $kWh. Distant renewables ignore grid constraints. And has grid costs limits. $kWh. Customers combining dirt cheap rooftop PV and BVs oversized battery parked 23hrs every day with FREE daily storage, and free supply all night long have a huge advantage. Tax-free savings. No grid electricity savings $2,000 No imported petroleum savings $3,000 a vehicle No gas heating and cooking and hotwater saving $2,000 Rooftop shaded by PV panels in heat of the day. NO NEW GRID costs $ trillions?? NO NEW GRID GENERATOR costs $ billions?? Grid owners have a $TRILLIONS infrastructure investment. Grid owners need cashflow 247. Grid owners need millions and millions and millions of customers cash. Grid owners can partner with the millions of customers and be their backup if a customer's system fails. Grid owners can take customer's over self generation as dirt cheap feed-in. Grid owners can now supply heavy industrial customers moving away from fossil fuels. The existing national electric grid owners cashflow can be protected. ROI, return on investment, maintained and expanded to full 247. Maximum capacity. The grid investment can be protected. The original customers can remain grid connected. Government costs can be zero. Government risk can be zero. Government disaster risk. Nuclear is economically impossible because it must have a grid. And expand the grid Nuclear electricity is 5cents kWh. Grid electricity is 50cents kWh to the customers. The sunniest continent on the planet cannot do rooftop PV is BS. Nuclear grid electricity to save the world climate is BS. Nuclear grid electricity industries and no exploding budgets for military defence is BS. Grid expansion with more raw materials and fossil fueled machinery and heavy industry and massive financing for decades and decades is BS. Government military risk contained worldwide. Australia is buying 6 AUKUS USA nuclear submarines and massive weapons systems. Would Australia need to buy more if the world's clean electricity is nuclear electricity 🤔? 80% of the world's population live in dictatorships and 80% of the world's population live in dictatorships. Democracies are strong and removed their dictators. Dictatorships are dangerous.
This is 100% a FINANCIAL PROBLEM. I’ve come up with 3 successful innovations which help the climate. The first: transportation in cities. 1100 miles per gallon equivalent. Not a typo. Independently Verified by 3 other masters and professional engineers. And as a side effect makes traffic congestion obsolete. 7 Grant applications and $0 awarded. 2nd beef ranching without any emissions at all. Side effects are 24/7 power and more food per acre. One grant application $0. 3rd Astro engineering for climate. Create a cloud of dust from mining asteroids such that it creates a sun shade blocking 2% of sunlight. Also can manipulate shade such that the polar regions can be refrozen. This is 100% not an engineering problem. I’m only one engineer and I have solved these challenges with little engineering difficulty. 100% of my difficulties is in securing financing just to create prototypes that can’t be disproven ad hominem.
It’s a raw materials challenge Michael just as much or more as its technical challenge. The cost of capital is not going down anytime soon and that is a yet further hurdle. Don’t hold your breath Michael for the new world sought
What has engineering given us? The modern world with all its wonders to be sure. But also nuclear weapons and the Haber process, which allowed a tripling of population, and with it a tripling of the rate of our plundering the world's biota, land, and watery realms. Engineering also gave us the ability to suck millions of years of fossilized energy out of the ground, thus inducing the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere whose many dire consequences (only one of which is global warming) are only now coming home to roost. Technology will perhaps be the doom of our species as it has already been for many others. Perhaps in future, if we are to survive at all, a less technological life must be resumed. The idea that engineering can save us from every crisis it generates is only wishful thinking. A proper philosophy of engineering would cover these topics, but I doubt that Rosie's imagined book would do so, given the blindness exhibited in this youtube. She is much younger than me. Whether engineering prevails in securing a marvelous future, or seals our doom, will be known to her in ways that will not be revealed to me. I hope she is correct in her unfounded optimism.
You made the assumption that addressing climate change is a fundamental engineering science because you cannot imagine doing with less. This is like an alcoholic wanting to avoid the dangers of alcohol without drinking less. Yes, it would be nice if this dream of having the best of both worlds would just always exist.........
No, anthropogenic climate change is a real problem, that is increasingly negatively impacting all contempory life on the planet. Politics only has a role in making decsions to resolve the problem. Unfortunately there are people like you opposing the problem solving. So in fact YOU are the problem!
This technological lot are just deniers in disguise. They just want to keep business as usual going. Can’t deny it anymore, let’s start arguing that we who caused it are the best people to solve it.😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Misattribution is/are the default problems for Engineering, because it's basically the reiterative Disproof Methodology made manifest in re-evolution circularity of metastability, ..with safety factors to cover probabilistic variables. Engineers have no escape if they fool themselves with the old banking/insurance blame/excuse shifting of, "god did/said it" and/or "the devil made me do it". Unity-connection duality in /of the flash-fractal Multiverse is self-defining Actuality of log-antilog Condensates.
Thanks for having me on the show Michael! A really fun and I think important conversation. Let's try to get your TH-cam views up so that more people can hear your work!
Absolutely, and thanks so much for joining me. I really enjoyed the chat, and do hope it gets some good exposure!
Good to hear your thoughts, as always.
A wicked joining of two worlds that I so much enjoy - “Cleaning up” and “Engineering with Rosie.” Thanks so much for making this happen. A real treat.
Dr. Rosie is a POWER House!
Big fan of Rosie
Thanks to Dr Rosemary Barnes for joining us on Cleaning Up this week. Check out her channel Engineering with Rosie for the full video explaining the benefits of vertical-axis and horizontal-axis wind turbines: th-cam.com/users/engineeringwithrosie
Very good podcast again, Michael. I really enjoyed this one. Rosie is amazing, and I hope someone will support her in writing the Philosophy of Engineering.
Two of my favouring clean energy transition thinkers and communicators in one place - excellent discussion. Thank you both.
I follow Rosie's channel as well but this was an interesting take on both her own life and how she perceives the challenges the world's energy systems face. Well done!
Thank you for this great episode! I agree with Rosie that it is the scale-up from prototype to industrial scale production that is the hard part and there are the unsung heroes in engineering and for society, as without them we would not have all these brilliant progress. And we need to get governments to support this tough phase!
I'm sure there are difficulties for women getting jobs in engineering. I retired a few years back as a data network engineer. When interviewing with my line manager for a new engineer job we interviewed a young lady who looked as though she had just stepped off a modelling catwalk. My boss was dubious about her being suitable but I was in favour and won him over - and we employed a very competent engineer. I do confess to a smiley moment the first time I saw her with dirt on her face after working on a particularly mucky field job. 🙂
Totally agree with Rosie, having a different background than every other person in the room is a huge benefit. Having the courage to speak up and give that different point of view is the hard part.
Great chat !! Great to see Rosie getting more exposure
Now there’s an idea. Question Time (UK political debating round table show on BBC) should from now on always have a qualified engineer on the panel to call out BS every time someone just makes some thing up.
I will wait by the phone. Would love the invitation.
Have to disagree Rosie. Rosie never in politics, really! Let's be clear about politics, yes, I agree that you do not see yourself being the leader of the Conservative Labour Finance Party or whatever brand someone comes up with, but you are clearly an agent of change and that change affects arguably every minute of our personal and community, societal lives. To accomplish that requires political thinking, policy thinking, persuasion, communication, quality of life effectiveness measuring, and so on. You, both of you actually, are up to your neck in politics and thank you for being there for all of us!
Excellent podcast, its great to get a better understanding the role engineering has in the energy transition. Also great practical advice, so encouraging for those who wiish to become engineers.
Brilliant episode
What a great guest! Thank you.
Delivery of business processes have an impact on life that is most often experienced after the fact and often only noted by delivery failures. This, I think, parallels.what you're saying about engineering's impact in achievement, even understanding, the impacts of delivery effectiveness in achievement of the goal.
not sure what to say but want to leave a comment for the algorithm
I think it's very frustrating how blatantly politicians and influencers can claim and promote things that don't hold up to the kind of basic physical reality check that engineers do intuitively.
I was recently told of a scheme to produce renewable energy by burning highly localized biomass waste, store it in battery containers and ship those over half of europe by rail to where electricity prices are high. I laughed loudly and said "that's never going to be economically viable". The reply I got was "In my long career I've learned that economics don't matter as long as you find an investor".
Keystone tower systems has solved the tower diameter problem. They custom cut sheet metal so they fit on regular truck beds and are then automatically welded together into conical shapes. I toured their Denver R&D prototype facility with the MIT club before Covid and they've since started manufacturing.
Absolutely spot on. Engineering is the answer.
I work in the chemicals sector and we supply engineering companies with surface finishing coatings. Although not an engineer, I do get to see what those companies are doing and pick up a bit about how it works, what can be done and what is coming down the line. It’s all good, stuff is lined up and almost ready for market and the future looks very promising.
The science is clear on climate change. Whether you want to do anything about it or just accept it and do nothing is a personal and political decision by individuals. Everyone is free to make their own assessment of whether we need to do anything or not. But, that does not change the science.
The problem (or not if you are sceptical) is defined, and plenty of practical solutions have been worked out by scientists and engineers. I see that at work all the time. The only things needed are:
- A will to change from an established methodology of deriving power to another.
- A ditching of dogma by every side. Stop fighting for the sake of idealistic viewpoints and just get on with doing something. Prevaricating helps nobody. We can’t just stop using oil now, we can’t just swap to renewables today. But we can slide over in the years to come, tackling challenges in a timely manner as they come up. Rushing for the finish line helps no one if you trip over, and it pushes up costs, slowing everything down. Every percentage change towards alternatives to reducing CO2 emission is a step forward. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
I get told it costs money to do ‘green’ projects. But those same people never accept that building coal, gas or nuclear power stations also costs money. They are not free!
Look at Hinckley Point in the UK, a nuclear power station. Cost 9 billion. You can build a lot of solar wind and storage for 9 billion. But it gets worse. Costs are now projected to be at least 36 billion (guaranteed) and projected to be 45 billion - not by eco-loonies but by the builders themselves. We could have been completely self sufficient on renewables and storage with that money. And I do not mean lithium ion batteries either, there are other ways of storing energy other than as electricity. They can’t even tell us when this nuclear power station will be operational - sometime in the 2030s. So much for cheap, reliable, fast to build base load from nuclear. Hinckley is already a failed project because it will never have been worth the money and effort put into it. I actually support the role of nuclear in our energy future, l’m not against it, but there are times not to be a fanboy and we need to call a turd a turd. It’s not very far from where I live either and I have no problem with a nuclear power station being nearby - I am no nimby, but I am pragmatic. I have no doubt it will eventually be finished and will work fine, but wow, not a cost effective product. I can’t wait for it to be up and running so we can put the farce behind us and actually start getting some electricity from it. 😞
How long the transition takes is very important to climate outcomes. The temperature when net zero is achieved depends on the total emissions up to that point more than the date of net zero. A slow transition will result in a less hospitable climate for malenia.
£45 billion. The cost of micro hydro per kw capacity would be a fraction of this. But the Environment Agency is busy demolishing weirs. So destroying the possibility of micro hydro power.
@@aidanbyrne7043 It is important to move as quickly as possible, but it is hard to tackle the negative people. Look at electric cars. Most people didn’t care about them until they were told you won’t be able to buy a combustion car in a few years, that’s when the real hate started. You have to bring people with you and going too fast can alienate people who then try to slow the transition.
Sometimes a slower route is actually faster 😉
Not to be too blunt but it sounds like you are in the PFAS coatings sector. While so many are talking about decarbonizing we have managed to fluorinate the planet - a grave ecological catastrophe.
@@Hhllbb2476 No PFAS in our products. The last one in our inventory was withdrawn several years ago and even then it was restricted to a highly regulated sub-industry and was used in tiny amounts.
PFAS is being killed off everywhere, except where it cannot be replaced, and that’s a good thing. Forever chemicals may not be a 100% accurate name , but I think it gets the message across.
Demand for safer and cleaner chemistry is rising and along with increasing pressure to destroy or recycle troublesome chemicals rather than dumping it I think we can all look forward to a brighter future. Same thing happened to nonylphenol ethoxylates, must 20 years ago now. We had to find alternatives to those and it was done.
Rosie is a gem. Bravo
Yay Rosie.
10% engineering. 90% politics.
In many respects, the engineering is the straight forward part. Given we have most of tech we need.
Also, there's a good chance we're going to trigger tipping points before we get the political will to do something about it. When you look at it that way, proportionate action looks very different. Revolution is coming whether the centrists dad likes it or not.
The climate has changed, keep up the good work.
Very engaging.
"Strategic deception" is the purpose of the Australian nuclear policy proposal.
Hi Rosie and Michael, one more comment...Scott Adams (Dilbert author) said this is a recent podcast: ………. and we act like engineers don't exist or something - like I think engineers are the most ignored group of people in in society because they have the most value to add because of the thinking part they can think they're really clear thinkers and we ignore them like they don't count when we talk about political stuff you should pay attention to the engineers…
Of course us engineers will have answers. But the public won't like them. First there is a cost to sorting the "tragedy of the commons". Then there are the side effects. And then there is the fact that we will have to: consume less, waste less, travel less, and those are not really engineering, unless you count re-engineering culture, politics and the natural trendency (sic) of humans to put the blame on "him over there".
love it
There is a whole host of mutual benefits to be gained through regenerative agriculture. Gabe brown from N. Dakota is an education and then some. Carbon Cowboys on you tube is really eye-opening. A recent set of on farm data collection and analysis has been completed through the documentary Roots So Deep.
The synergies are just brilliant. A real approach to the future for us all.
a gem of a conversation! A good 101 in purpose and fun of engineering for all sexes and ages.
'Climate change is an engineering problem' - I think CC is significantly a management/government problem. Reducing waste will be most of the ultimate solution. Good design at the city level can achieve a lot eg shift from wasteful ugly expensive Detroit to clean pleasant Delft. Its not the engineers that are blocking this.
Rosie, make your book title, The Philosophy and POLITICS of Engineering . . . Structure the approach to marry engineering to our democratic processes and values.
This is “politics” at its basic level, defining in the simplest terms of “process” and “substance” ie -
- Politics is the art of the possible…and
- Politics is the allocation of values.
This duality enables us to give practical, tangible social meaning to technological-scientific concepts we encounter, on the one hand, and philosophical concepts we discover on the other - usually “hit or miss”along the bumpy timeline of our lives.
One political leader in the ’30s chose an engineering approach as part of his goal of politically unifying a poor agrarian South & a rich industrial North. Thus rural electrification was married to the large Congressional majority, with the resulting dams we can plainly see on maps today.
Another political leader in the ‘30s, wanting to make his country great again, after impoverishment imposed on it following WW I, saw his solution in aggression against poor countries to the East - conquering them & engineering an ‘emptying’ of them to take the “living space” needed to enrich & expand his country.
An earlier leader, desirous of expanding textile markets, charged its Commodore Perry with forcefully opening up feudal Japan to international trade in 1853-54. The treaty imposed on it, after free kinetic gunboat demos in Tokyo Bay, triggered its rapid transition to an industrial empire & a half-century of brutal aggression against its neighbors.
Two instances of blowback from Perry’s ‘success’ illustrate the essential governing role of politics over technology -
- Japan attacked & defeated the Russian Empire in 1905, obliterating its navy & ending its global imperial reach. Later that year, the 1st of three Russian revolutions occurred. Russia was an ally of Britain & France before WW I, but its weakened navy was unable to form a counter-weight to the German navy - a big factor in Germany deciding to start the war.
- Four score & seven years after Commodore Perry’s 1854 gunboat diplomacy, the Empire of Japan attacked the US possessions of the Philippines & Hawaii.
Philosophy alone will not channel technology into ethical, useful endeavors. Only democratic political action has a chance of doing that.
29:14 Anyone know the source for this quote? It's a good quote, but when I search it, this podcast is all I find.
I can't find the exact quote right now. I may have translated it from a German auto website. But it is brilliant isn't it!
@@MLiebreich Adrian Newey: "the creative goal is not to create the perfect design, it is to create a design which has the maximum amount of development potential."
I really appreciate what Rosie does and her opinions. But apologies, as an engineer, I think it is more important to acknowledge the biggest challenge ahead of us is political and sociological. We're not going to solve climate change with technology.
I will say that cost of electricity production could be lower if land use was considered. Highway could be covered by solar panels and protect the highway from the heat and snow
Appreciate the discussion, and I have benefitted a lot from Rosie's channel. I would challenge the assertion that Climate Challenge is an Engineering Challenge and I do hold an electrical engineering degree. We created the Climate Crisis by assuming that engineering and technology wasn't trading productivity and quality of life for the destruction of the planet. So let us not assume that one tech must and will be replaced by another (advancement) tech that will fix the problem. Instead lets have some humility as engineers (always lacking) and understand that many of our proposed tech solutions are also unsustainable.
Here's a test to have for introspection as an engineer: Will my proposed tech solution scale to be usable by everyone, or is it really only a choice made to backfill something we know we need to stand down in our developed, emissions intensive country? Will my proposed solution be sustainable for thousands of years, or am I just repeating the same mistake as those who proposed whale oil (which probably looked like renewable energy to them, right?), fossil fuels, nuclear, etc? Are the resources needed for my tech finite, and if so, aren't I still proposing a solution with very short timeline that will force a new engineering dilemma in the near future? Most arguments I've heard for a circular economy ignores finite recyclability and still relies on incredibly energy intensive industrial processes. I'd suggest that most technocrats are still failing miserably at having a very long view when they suggest that we've got great sustainable solutions.
Here's a key example. Policy leaders (CARB in California) have labeled EV cars/SUVs/pickups as zero emissions, because they have no tailpipe. And engineers have taken up the challenge of reinventing full sized vehicles that parallel current inefficient and emissions intensive (to build) vehicles. So we're in a culture war, expending political capital to make an insufficient transportation revision. EVs Life Cycle Assessment clearly shows that fulll sized EVs are not compatible at all with zero emissions. Volvo, Polestar, BMW, Rivian have published their LCAs and they clearly show it's not a viable tech under zero emissions, PERIOD. I say that as a lifelong automobile zealot, electrical engineer, and a person who wanted desperately for EVs to be a sustainable solutions. But we're ignoring the clear signs that electric shared public transit (pantograph trains, specifically) and Active Transportation and micromobility are the only transportation tech that DOES come close to scaling and sustaining for 1000s of years. Bicycles and trains are 125 year old technologies, and yet they aren't sexy enough or market driven, so we're missing them as the key to truly sustainable transportation, and engineers who should not only know better, but have the toolset and understanding to do the math, are ignoring this paradox. In this case engineering challenges are in how do we sustainably build rail lines or bicycles. But it would be wrong to misstate that transportation transition as an engineering challenge, instead of a human condition and mindset change challenge. Mode shifting our transportation is actually the only viable pathway, but we have more engineers participating far more in EV cars, EV car plant refinement, unsustainable battery tech, VTOL BS, humanoid robotics, and even rocketry. Engineers have a responsibility to use their abilities to NOT design unsustainable tech solution, and the those solutions cannot be short term only.
Hi Rosie and Michael, Love it! Do you know Dr Janis Birkland, author of books on Positive Development & Design (my hero!), Would be great if you interviewed her (she lives in Victoria (Oz)). Some quote of hers that relate to your discussion:
.......The sustainability crisis is a whole-system problem, requiring the redesign of development, yet circuitous arguments over policy plans persist. This is partly because design has been marginalized in the culture....
.......Sustainability is a biophysical design problem....
.......Built environment design can leverage biophysical sustainability without waiting for social change or institutional reform....
.......Design has traditionally been regarded as a subset of decision making: merely a means of implementing decisions, plans or policies in physical form....
In my words, Janis has dissected, in the most rigorous fashion the mechanics of contemporary human civilization, both at the physical and institutional/regulatory levels, and showed how these can all be designed to create "Positive Development"....so not just ordering temporal affairs for the least ecological offense, but for expanding ecological outcomes beyond modern industrial era levels. (disclosure, I am a book reviewer for her).
In the 19 th century there were plenty of famous engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel, George Stephenson, Thomas Telford ect but I don't think there are many in the 21 st century.
Loads of famous bankers though for some reason, along with overblown bubble economies. Oops progress 😢
Liebreich : Design with maximum amount of development potential = Open Source car! (OSCAR)
In Bertold Brecht's play about Galileo Galilei there's a quote about scientists/engineers running the danger of simply being "a race of inventive dwarves" in the hand of rulers. So do not underestimate the power of political leadership which may dictate what scientists and engineers use their brains for. Trump ante portas...
Michael said he was attending Cambridge University 40 years ago and took no computer programming courses-- Really!?
I attended a community college in Minnesota and took my first programming course in the fall of 1983, which is 40 years + 2 semesters ago. By Christmas of 1983, writing programs was a small part of my job.
Engineers HLVS✊ ML, when is the London Mayor Campaign launching?
Good question! I trust you are well my friend.
Energy Storage based a Synthetic Closed Carbon Cycle is probably the best option for solving the dunkelflaute problem in most instances, unless you have hydro resources like Norway or possibly solar like Australia or N Africa
Where the wind is blowing and the power is not needed the electricity could be making h2.
Michael
I thought rain drop power had died.
The capacity factor of rain is about 1:300,000,000
~1m of rain per year @ 10m/s !
For UK you need about 1Km² of rain harvesting per home, rain energy is ≈12Wh/m²tyr @ 100%
The Coalition put the ban in place.
Hello fellow critical thinkers. Where are our interpersonal energies best spent to cost-effectively guide societies’ paths? On the whole, are the politicians those that provide greatest leverage on societal direction?
I am concerned with the thread of engineers versus scientists as a conflict. For instance, as for engineers not being trusted, scientists are not either. Engineers not being taken by society seriously? Then why do engineering jobs pay more than science jobs on the whole? As an environmental scientist & engineer, who has spent my career to rectify the fossil fuel abuses of my ancestors, I am pained to hear the laments of engineers versus scientists.
The fundamental grist in guiding along better paths lays in language…how does one relay a concept, idea, mechanism, or optimal solution when those hearing the words don’t understand the words? As you both pointed out, achieving understanding by all those involved is ideal. I strive for understanding on this topic anytime the opportunity arises as I may never get audience with a politician, CEO, or social media maven.
Thanks for poking at hydrogen rationales. Hydrogen is quite the SQUIRREL!
To the crux of the biscuit in this content’s fundamental intent…The building of nuclear weapons was overcoming the engineering difficulties, the science was known long before the construction of Little Boy.
On a German national TV news program the host used the term "conspiracy tales" (Erzaehlungen). Could be a new editorial policy to erase the false nimbus the word 'theory' carries. Please propagate! "conspiracy tales"
Meccano surely.
It might just be an impression (no hardcore stats here), but it probably does not help when a lot of climate change scepticism or “renewables/EVs/heatpumps/green tech don’t/won’t/will never work” rhetorics are very often pushed on social media not by scientists but by engineers (chemical, mechanical, electrical, etc).
From people whose job is to find solutions being told that the ones currently being developed at scale worldwide “will never work” is a bit odd.😅
Yes, there is an issue that the fossil fuel and ICE-auto industries have creamed off and captured such a large proportion of engineering talent in the past.
But that has ended. The smart young engineering talent has been going into clean energy, EVs, digital, biotechnology and other transition sectors for a decade.
The old fossil engineers will be around for a while, but receding into the rear-view mirror with every passing year. Meanwhile the evidence is mounting that they are embarrassingly wrong to say the fossil or 100% nuclear ways are the only ways.
@@MLiebreich reassuring to read that. 👍🏻
As far as what to do about promoting a Philosophy of Engineering goes, I think you might get more mileage out of "engineering stories" (where your hero's path to The Adequate Solution is beset by engineering problems that do things like, for instance, spoiling the happy ending that was looking possible with The New Battery - concrete things in other words - simplified tellings of the progress of some real or reasonably realistic project, rather than abstractions) than you'd get by setting up an academic Barrier Discipline with Capital Letters in its Name, like "Philosophy of Engineering" - required course among the other obstacles.
People might listen to your stories (and if they don't, well you need to do some "project management" to produce something more effective next time round).
I suspect that this will be an unpopular opinion but arguably we've been deluding ourselves for 30-40 years by believing it's principally an engineering problem.
Correct. The problem is political and human nature.
@@mowensmd You can't separate the two. It is political and human nature to glom onto shiny pseudo-solutions, rather than figure out the most viable engineering solution set and then project manage towards implementing it.
@@MLiebreich that's an interesting point which I don't disagree with.
My point was more subtle. Engineers tend to think climate challenge is centrally an engineering problem. Economists often think it's primarily about market (re)design and overcoming market failures impeding low/zero carbon solutions. Other social scientists may contend that addressing the climate challenge primarily involves creating social institutions that overcome human tendencies towards short-termism (and "discounting" the future). Anthropologists might in contrast contend that culture is most important and that addressing the climate challenge is primarily about fostering new behaviours and social practices and somehow phasing out carbon-intensive behaviours. Political scientists might contend that power relations are central to the climate challenge and argue that solving this challenge centrally involves understanding and overcoming the power of the fossil fuel industry. I could go on but hopefully by now the basic point is made.
We need multiple lenses to properly understand and effectively address the climate challenge. Privileging one as the most important would seem to be a pathway to not solving the problem.
Additionally, people with formal training in a given discipline (e.g. engineering) need to understand how this shapes their understanding of a problem and perceived (or preferred) solutions.
Anyone who expects to get results has a primary philosophy of bias to science and Engineering.
Thermodynamics is everything, modulation cause-effect mechanism coherence-cohesion of relative-timing resonance information In-form-ation substantiation holographic positioning nucleation.
Then there's political b-s to disembowel and clean up general education, Engineers keep working on the perceived problems until they have appropriate results.
We are going to have to do geoengineering. Solar Radiation Management looks the most practical and rapidly deployable. Net zero is part of the solution, but is just going to be too slow to implement, to avoid tipping points. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection can be done using just 30 re-purposed military jets to stabilise the entire global temperature. It s astonishing the level of sensitivity to relatively tiny quantities of aerosol. Do the calculations, and be amazed!
Liebreich says the problem is that we're told to follow the science, but not the engineering. His apparent assumption is that the science is substantially correct, but the role of engineering in implementing this science is ignored.
However, his assumption is false. In 1994 an international agreement (UNFCCC) stipulated SAFE GHG CONCENTRATIONS. A year later the IPCC, in its second assessment report, unilaterally changed this to reduced emissions, which allowed concentrations to continue rising.
Because CO2 concentrations were already unsafe at the time (360 ppm vs. 350 ppm), THIS "SCIENCE" IS FUNDAMENTALLY FALSE. Using engineering to implement this false approach, even with someone as brilliant at Dr. Barnes, is an ecocidal proposition.
Yes, engineering is critically important to solve the climate crisis, but this must be applied to scientifically valid policies. I propose optimized aerosol releases, minimized GHG releases, and SRM as required for a survivable global temperature. Dr. Barnes?
Love your work.
Rooftop PV and BVs are the only economic possibility.
My thoughts from the warm latitudes of Australia.
After decades in CivEng construction contracting tendering and running projects.
No fossil fueled CO2 emissions worldwide
Australia climate is warming, droughts, national fires, and flooding rains increasing.
Desertification.
So, Energy Technology options
Expand clean electricity from 10% to 100%
Australia national grid is fragile and 1million km.
Fragile because it is extremely expensive in time and resources and finance.
Maximum customers at minimum total cost.
Costs are $1million to $10million km.
Total cost $TRILLIONS and 2decades.
Expand 10 times is impossible $TRILLIONS
And impossible decades and resources.
Nuclear promoters acknowledge grid cost constraints and only promote replacement with 247 cashflow from customers.
247 cashflow is absolutely critical economics.
$hr and $kWh.
Distant renewables ignore grid constraints.
And has grid costs limits. $kWh.
Customers combining dirt cheap rooftop PV and BVs oversized battery parked 23hrs every day with FREE daily storage, and free supply all night long have a huge advantage.
Tax-free savings.
No grid electricity savings $2,000
No imported petroleum savings $3,000 a vehicle
No gas heating and cooking and hotwater saving $2,000
Rooftop shaded by PV panels in heat of the day.
NO NEW GRID costs $ trillions??
NO NEW GRID GENERATOR costs $ billions??
Grid owners have a $TRILLIONS infrastructure investment.
Grid owners need cashflow 247.
Grid owners need millions and millions and millions of customers cash.
Grid owners can partner with the millions of customers and be their backup if a customer's system fails.
Grid owners can take customer's over self generation as dirt cheap feed-in.
Grid owners can now supply heavy industrial customers moving away from fossil fuels.
The existing national electric grid owners cashflow can be protected.
ROI, return on investment, maintained and expanded to full 247. Maximum capacity.
The grid investment can be protected.
The original customers can remain grid connected.
Government costs can be zero.
Government risk can be zero.
Government disaster risk.
Nuclear is economically impossible because it must have a grid. And expand the grid
Nuclear electricity is 5cents kWh.
Grid electricity is 50cents kWh to the customers.
The sunniest continent on the planet cannot do rooftop PV is BS.
Nuclear grid electricity to save the world climate is BS.
Nuclear grid electricity industries and no exploding budgets for military defence is BS.
Grid expansion with more raw materials and fossil fueled machinery and heavy industry and massive financing for decades and decades is BS.
Government military risk contained worldwide.
Australia is buying 6 AUKUS USA nuclear submarines and massive weapons systems.
Would Australia need to buy more if the world's clean electricity is nuclear electricity 🤔?
80% of the world's population live in dictatorships and 80% of the world's population live in dictatorships.
Democracies are strong and removed their dictators.
Dictatorships are dangerous.
This is 100% a FINANCIAL PROBLEM.
I’ve come up with 3 successful innovations which help the climate.
The first: transportation in cities. 1100 miles per gallon equivalent. Not a typo. Independently Verified by 3 other masters and professional engineers. And as a side effect makes traffic congestion obsolete.
7 Grant applications and $0 awarded.
2nd beef ranching without any emissions at all. Side effects are 24/7 power and more food per acre. One grant application $0.
3rd Astro engineering for climate. Create a cloud of dust from mining asteroids such that it creates a sun shade blocking 2% of sunlight. Also can manipulate shade such that the polar regions can be refrozen.
This is 100% not an engineering problem. I’m only one engineer and I have solved these challenges with little engineering difficulty. 100% of my difficulties is in securing financing just to create prototypes that can’t be disproven ad hominem.
It’s a raw materials challenge Michael just as much or more as its technical challenge. The cost of capital is not going down anytime soon and that is a yet further hurdle. Don’t hold your breath Michael for the new world sought
What has engineering given us? The modern world with all its wonders to be sure. But also nuclear weapons and the Haber process, which allowed a tripling of population, and with it a tripling of the rate of our plundering the world's biota, land, and watery realms. Engineering also gave us the ability to suck millions of years of fossilized energy out of the ground, thus inducing the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere whose many dire consequences (only one of which is global warming) are only now coming home to roost. Technology will perhaps be the doom of our species as it has already been for many others. Perhaps in future, if we are to survive at all, a less technological life must be resumed. The idea that engineering can save us from every crisis it generates is only wishful thinking. A proper philosophy of engineering would cover these topics, but I doubt that Rosie's imagined book would do so, given the blindness exhibited in this youtube. She is much younger than me. Whether engineering prevails in securing a marvelous future, or seals our doom, will be known to her in ways that will not be revealed to me. I hope she is correct in her unfounded optimism.
I am sad that you deleted my post only because I was bringing good points contrary to what is promoted in your video.
You made the assumption that addressing climate change is a fundamental engineering science because you cannot imagine doing with less. This is like an alcoholic wanting to avoid the dangers of alcohol without drinking less. Yes, it would be nice if this dream of having the best of both worlds would just always exist.........
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a bit more complex than your summary at around 50 minutes in.
Please don't explain anything to me, I am a world expert on Dunning Kruger Syndrome.
Engineers, and anyone with logical thinking. Not nutty activists who glue themselves to roads and buildings.
Stopped at 0.39. "Delivering the same benefits".
Climate change is a political problem. Engineering will follow.
No, anthropogenic climate change is a real problem, that is increasingly negatively impacting all contempory life on the planet.
Politics only has a role in making decsions to resolve the problem. Unfortunately there are people like you opposing the problem solving. So in fact YOU are the problem!
This technological lot are just deniers in disguise. They just want to keep business as usual going. Can’t deny it anymore, let’s start arguing that we who caused it are the best people to solve it.😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Misattribution is/are the default problems for Engineering, because it's basically the reiterative Disproof Methodology made manifest in re-evolution circularity of metastability, ..with safety factors to cover probabilistic variables. Engineers have no escape if they fool themselves with the old banking/insurance blame/excuse shifting of, "god did/said it" and/or "the devil made me do it".
Unity-connection duality in /of the flash-fractal Multiverse is self-defining Actuality of log-antilog Condensates.
This better not be propaganda, If you're being paid, it's obviously propaganda. SHOW
Me your shoes, if they're Faragamos I'm out of here.
It's spelled Ferragamo. Please get the name of my sponsors right.