Governments have a limited (although large) budget, and no incentive to spend it well[1]. You don't get promoted as a government administrator if you approve a Nobel-prize-winning grannt.
If you don't get rewarded for good work but may get punished for taking risks, you optimize for risk minimization, even if this means a lot of potentially-good work not getting done.
Nobody blames the FDA when millions of people die from the-medicine-hasn't-been-invented-yet-itis, everybody blames the FDA when ten or so people die from a side effect nobody saw. This impacts FDA policy.
This person has the best incentive there is in the world, the incentive to live. He didn't care whether the people getting his money correctly filled form 437-F, or whether they have the relevant paperwork that verifies their legitimacy in a way which can be described by legal rules.
[1] Incidentally, finance has (had?) the opposite problem. If your bonus is calculated as min(0, percentage * profit_generated), you will maximize risk, optimizing for bets that give you great returns most of the time, but wipe you out completely some of the time, as your losses are clamped to 0.
No we absolutely don't. The US hardly spends anything on research.
The entire yearly budget for the National Cancer Institute is $7 billion dollars. To put this in perspective, that's 3 days of funding the DoD. For cancer. That kills well over half a million Americans per year.
The takeaway is that we should invest in research rather than letting people die.
That's a great system. Like so many things, success comes down to implementation.
In California, for example, PG&E will charge you the maximum peak demand prices while simultaneously paying other states to take electricity during the solar duck curve.
I have an EV and am on a Time of Use rate plane here in SF. My lowest rates are between 12am and 3pm every day. I charge the car and run everything I can in terms of major appliance use between these hours (dishwasher scheduled to start at midnight or manually run early in the day, washer/dryer loads run in the morning). I am home during the day which makes this easier to do though. Another solution of course would be to bank your solar generation or low rate electricity into a set of batteries that you could draw from during peak times.
I don't think this is true, at least for Tesla, which has a very mature and wide range of chargers almost everywhere. AFAIK, Rivian can also use Tesla chargers now.
I live on the eastern coast of the US. I travel for work up and down the eastern seaboard. Sometimes I ride with a coworker who drives his Tesla. The experience turned me off of ever buying one.
Yes, chargers are everywhere here. But making multiple “stops” to charge that you wouldn’t otherwise make definitely isn’t saving any time.
The seats are horrid.
Watching the windshield wipers freak out over nothing is funny.
We can despise Musk as much as we want, but I leased a Tesla Model 3 for three years and it was the best car I've ever owned. I had zero issues, it was always charged, zero maintenance(other than topping off washer fluid), and for long trips, I usually rent a car anyway. I seriously considered buying a Model S once my lease ended, but thanks to Musk’s shenanigans, I’m waiting for a Rivian R2 or R3 instead.
And yes Teslas aren't for passengers but for drivers.
Less than half of US occupied residences have a carport or garage that they own. Many single family homes lack a garage, particularly in the northeast US. And many in apartments lack access to power even if they have a garage.
I said just slightly less than half. It’s about 49%
Above, I said the current level of the adoption of EVs in the US is 1% to 2%. That’s how many vehicles on the road today are EVs.
As I’m sure you know there’s multiple places to charge electric vehicles. You can charge them at home but when you’re on a long trip, you have to charge them somewhere else.
We need more infrastructure investment, both in public charging and in residential charging. The public charging infrastructure that exist today supports that 1 to 2% of vehicles that are currently EVs.
China is building clean energy for a good chunk of the world, including itself.
A better question may be: What is the US going to do to make up for its historical emissions? The US got wealthy by creating far more emissions than China, and all those historical emissions are now a problem for the rest of the world.
If people in the US try to turn climate action into a blame game, it will end very very poorly for the US.
The US can't even get countries to enter trade agreements anymore, because it's throwing around threats of large tariffs and annexation of others' lands. The world could drop the dollar as the reserve currency, something that was gradually happening but is now accelerating.
If the US starts trying to force other countries into climate action without taking into account its own contributions, the US will likely cut out of the global economy, and become far poorer as the rest of the world surpasses its wealth through vigorous trade.
The US was the sole remaining superpower, but has recently decided to only occupy a much weaker position with a mere "sphere of influence" and ceding leadership in other parts of the world to others. The US is signalling to allies in Europe that it will no longer lead, that the prior world is over and the US is bugging out, meaning Europe will gain far more influence.
The more that the US attacks others without providing any leadership, the less that the US will be able to take from the world. Up until recently, the US's position of massive economic strength was largely due to it's dominant position among nations and the goodwill that others had towards it. Turning the climate problem into a blame game on other countries would further weaken the US's position and options.
The US defines the terms of the vast majority of global trade agreements and there’s no indication that will ever change. Americans get it — global academia hates Trump and to some extent America itself. In a way it’s understandable because you all seem to believe in your “right” to pick winners and losers. The world doesn’t actually work that way.
Trump in his first term gave the Pacific over to China, who now defines terms over there. In his second term, Trump is cutting the US out of leadership in Europe, leading to growing economic trade agreements that exclude the US.
You seem to think these solid critiques about the inherent weakness of Trump are somehow mere partisanship, rather than the actual unwinding of US leadership around the world.
I'm not part of global academia, I'm just a consumer of news that is willing to listen to things outside of a partisan bubble. The world is shifting away from the US, to the US's detriment. We have an exceptionally weak president who acts like what a weak person imagines a strong person is like, and it's scaring off all our allies.
> In a way it’s understandable because you all seem to believe in your “right” to pick winners and losers. The world doesn’t actually work that way.
I do not know whatyou mean by this, you think I'm picking winners and losers? The US is picking winners and losers? Global academia is picking?Picking either antecedent does not allow me to find any meaning in your sentence.
If you think the world is shifting away from the United States, or that Trump isn’t having his way with virtually every trading partner on the map, then it seems you are falling victim to strong anti-US rhetoric. This rhetoric isn’t based in reality. The US leads the defense strategy of the entirety of Europe, and Europe has no other alternative. There may be some politicians that want to choose the US as “the loser”. But that’s just not really an option given the size of our economy and the size of our military.
TDS inspires people to blurt out the types of statements you’re making.
You throw around insults like "TDS," and try to say that a plain and calm stating of facts is "blurting," but is there even a single trading partner where Trump is having his way? He makes ridiculous demands, throws around tariffs, and at most he extracts a memorandum of understanding that maybe there will be a trade deal in the future. Trump promised something like 100 new trade deals last year in a matter of months, and long after the deadline where are the deals?
The clear facts are that the US has cheapened its word and made itself an embarrassment around the globe. China has completely dog walked Trump on tariffs and trade, devastating US farmers, and leading to far stronger ties between China and the rest of the world, not just with our former tight trading partner Canada, but with all the emerging economies around the world. The US is cutting itself out of the new economic order that is emerging from the energy transition to cheaper renewable energy, which will leave the US with sky-high energy prices while the rest of the world runs their economies cheaper, and with less inflation-inducing price shocks, on solar and grid storage.
I respond with these basic facts not because I think that you will believe anything, but because the obvious falsehoods that you are repeating should not stand unanswered by the reality that we can all see in the world.
> There may be some politicians that want to choose the US as “the loser”. But that’s just not really an option given the size of our economy and the size of our military.
The only politicians that wants to choose the US as the loser are those following the dictates of Trump, by weakening our gloabl position. The size of our economy and military are not enough of a draw to keep us as the leader through sheer domination. And in fact pretending that "domination" is what made the US strong is the exact sort of weak person's idea of a strong man. The US is handing away all its leadership and power by trying to force what it does not have the ability to force, trying to force what would instead be freely given! It's utter insane behavior of a nation, and indicates just how little the Trump administration understands of US power around the world. The US is not a mob boss, we are (were?) a leader that attracted support because we were a shining example of what a country could be. When we act like bullies we throw away all that power, because we can not fight the entire world with our military, and our economy is not nearly big enough to overcome bullying behavior.
Edit: an as for an example just this morning of how Trump is making the US weaker, the UK is not allowing the US to use bases for attacks on Iran, which is leading to other threats from Trump that further push the UK away and make the US weaker on the global stage. Nearly every single day the US is becoming weaker because of this sort of weak behavior.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/trump-chagos-is...
If the rest of the world wants to still have an industry once we finally decide to seriously use green technology, they should quickly catch up to China - if that's still possible.
While China is still very reliant on fossil-fuels, and particularly dirty coal, they're at the same time working on dominating the post-fossil age at astonishing speed. After they already dominate solar and batteries, they're working on doing the same for a number of other future green industries. They are already dominating future technologies like Green Methanol that most people in Europe or the US have never heard of.
Pretend China is 20 countries. Each country now has lower emissions than the US. Anyone can play that stupid game. Give up the games, think about solutions. China is working hard. Are we?
Why should should per-capita be most important? If country A keeps their population stable and emissions under control, but country B of the same starting population, keeps doubling their population and doubling their emissions, why should country A have an increasingly declined allowance of emissions when they were more responsible in keeping their total emissions down (by not having as many people)?
Because per capita is the only thing that makes sense.
If China were to split into 10 countries each emitting 10% of what they do now it'd be the exact same emissions, but according to you it would be much better.
Similarly if the EU would become one country, that country would be high up on the list, much higher than member countries now! Oh no!
Looking at per capita emissions is much more fair.
Individuals can of course make choices to reduce their emissions, Americans more than most since they're starting higher. Buy less new stuff, eat less meat, fly less, etc.
But policy is where real change needs to be made, and the effects of policy still scale with population in most cases.
If country B splits into countries C, D, E and F, all of which emit less than country A, has it found an effective way to reduce emissions? Should all countries adopt the Monaco lifestyle to defeat global warming? I guess if you want to find a fair way to measure administration of land you could emmisions per hectare or rainfall.
China's emissions were 10 billion tons CO2 in 2017 and have increased every single year to 12.29 billion tons CO2 in 2024. Meanwhile, US decreased from 5.22 to 4.9 in the same time
Yeah, and don't even get me started on historic emissions.
China has only produced significant CO2/capita in the last decade. The US and Europe are responsible for the accumulated GHG that have gotten us into the current mess. We blew nearly the entire CO2 "budget" for keeping us under 2C of warming, just by ourselves, so it's kinda odd to be pointing fingers at the foreigners who are just now halfway catching up to what we're emitting now.
But those historic emissions have also produced scientific and engineering progress that other developing nations got to piggyback off of for their development.
Aye, true, but we also then have a responsibility to produce scientific and engineering progress to get off of fossil fuels. And then to follow through, and get off fossil fuels.
China is bringing online a stupendous amount of renewables. They’ve blown through their own targets on solar energy deployments. With where batteries are headed I suspect their CO2 emissions will drop much faster than expected. Already they’ve hit peak coal and it’s on the way down
You can't really isolate China's emissions. They manufacture a huge proportion of the goods the rest of the world needs to operate. The green countries are essentially outsourcing their pollution to China.
Nothing? China is solving the problem on their own. They already make substantially less carbon per person that most of the west. If we want to be like China it's a simple proposition: be OK with Manhattan project level investments in power transmission from places that have lots of renewables to places that need renewables.
Climate is determined by total CO2 output, not per capita.
That’s a real problem, because China, and all the poor countries in Asia and Africa aren’t going to stop increasing their CO2 output per capita until they reach western standards of living.
Actually climate is determined by cumulative CO2 emitted. The US and Europe have emitted far more than China ever has.
As of today, solar and batteries are the cheapest source of electricity. All the "poor countries in Asia and Africa", except the ones that have oil and gas, will leapfrog straight to renewables. It just makes good sense, unless your politicians are paid off by the fossil fuel lobby.
Sounds like we should pioneer better low-emissions tech, then, and pass it along to them. We've got more expendable income and a better tech base from which to do that.
Except that they will stop. China has already stopped, because they’re bringing up renewables for new capacity. In 5, max 10 years it will be ludicrous to spin up a fossil fuel power plant. Solar power is already cheaper than coal and prices are dropping like a stone as China ramps production capacity / techniques/ process.
Edit: Ah ok an IP ban. I guess time to use a proxy. Moderation has rules. Censorship does not.
Censorship is bad dang mmmkay?
Editing again to post later cause you nuked replies for some reason:
Sorry I don't conduct in personal attacks. I think you're confused. Feel free to list whom I attacked and where.
No, censorship doesn't change definitions based on who uses it. Unless you want to pretend like you're not censoring. You seem to have convinced yourself that your censorship is a form of moderation, very sad. You're free to censor whom and what you want, it's your site. Don't pretend it's moderation though.
Your guidelines are meaningless if censorship is so heavy handed and moderation non-existant. It's hard to moderate. It's easy to censor.
Anyway you have curated, through censorship, a place where people are afraid to share valid opinions that break no guidelines (except those magical ones you can produce in order to censor). You can congratulate yourself on that if you want. You've got a ghost town, whether you like it or not.
An entire thwack of personal attacks, for starters. Not allowed here. I don't think that's so confusing.
> Censorship is bad dang mmmkay?
It's one of those words that mean different things depending on how people want to use it. I wouldn't personally use that word as opposed to moderation, curation, etc., but then I would say that wouldn't I. In any case, HN isn't an anything-goes site and never has been. If we didn't do some version of moderation/curation/censorship/befugioning, it would be an entirely different place. Probably not one even you would enjoy—I don't suppose you like ghost towns or scorched earth any more than the rest of us.
No, censorship doesn't change definitions based on who uses it. Unless you want to pretend like you're not censoring. You seem to have convinced yourself that your censorship is a form of moderation, very sad. You're free to censor whom and what you want, it's your site. Don't pretend it's moderation though.
Your guidelines are meaningless if censorship is so heavy handed and moderation non-existant. It's hard to moderate. It's easy to censor.
Anyway you have curated, through censorship, a place where people are afraid to share valid opinions that break no guidelines (except those magical ones you can produce in order to censor). You can congratulate yourself on that if you want. You've got a ghost town, whether you like it or not.
Unfortunately, I can imagine the ignorant Americans who don’t realize that all those poor people want SUVs too. You know who doesn’t talk about climate change? Anybody in my family in Bangladesh. They want to live like Americans.
The plan was always to put economic pressure on China to catch up to the rest of the developed world, but we can't exactly tell someone else to stop crapping their pants while we are still crapping our pants.
2030 is just around the corner. China has pledged to cap their CO2 emissions at 2030 levels. If they're trying to meet this goal, it would explain the thousands of new coal-fired plants they're building right now.
The same China that, added more new solar capacity in 2024 than the US currently has total? And is currently at 36% of its total energy use from renewable sources compared to the US's 23%? And has ~32GW of nuclear plants in construction compared to the US's 2.5GW?
PRC solar power production last year conservatively will diplace ~45 billion barrels of oil, or 10%-20% more than total global consumption per year. It's just retarded eco accounting that attributes emissions to renewable manufacturers while fossil exporters don't get any penalties for extracting emissions.
Every year of PRC solar prevents doubling of oil, basically they're like the only significant country whose net contribution is negative for how much carbon sinks they manufacture. So the answer for US+co is obviously stop exporting oil and lng, and start exporting renewables.
Among other objectives, NASA's 1958 mission statement includes conducting aeronautical and space activities of the US for "the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space".
So: atmospheric climate science directly falls under NASA's responsibilities.
Ahh, the elon bois. This form of internet brain damage gives me a good LOL almost everyday 8-)
My old comment on the subject:
"If you want to know what it'll be like living on Mars, bury a cargo container in your back yard, and live in it for a year."
If you run out of something, you'll certainly be closer to the grocery store.
This form of 12 year old pubescent boy SciFi fantasy, taking priority over the many actual problems that need to be solved in the world today, is a poster child for the phenomenon of "the idiot wealthy".
Not everyone participating in the phenomenon are part of the idiot wealthy, most of them aren't rich.
Almost everything? Most money for fundamental atmospheric research flows through NASA. People always forget that only half of NASA's budget is for rocketry and human space flight, and the other half is science.
How many hours have you spent with the latest Tesla FSD in congested neighborhoods or unprotected left turns at sunset? It may be "good," but it's not even remotely close to the current Waymo experience, especially when it comes to abnormal situations. I am continually blown away by how Waymo behaves (spent 3 hours in them this past week). I'm rooting for Tesla, but it is nowhere near Waymo as of today.
I remember backpacking in Asia I kept a DSL bootable USB with me. When I'd visit a net cafe I'd simply boot into my DSL environment and bypass the entire windows PC (which was full of spyware and password stealing programs).
It worked great back then, I'm sure it works even better now.
I've spoken to people about starting a Tesla EV battery replacement business here. Battery replacement on a Tesla is a pretty simple process that can be done by one person in about 4 hours.
The problem is that it's still really hard to get your hands on salvage Tesla batteries. Enthusiasts and hackers snatch them up quickly and the used price is not very competitive with a new EV replacement from Tesla.
What makes it a bad deal to own an EV is also coincidentally a great reason to buy one: they're getting cheap, fast.
I bought a used 2023 Model Y for about $36k (only 15k miles) it even came with upgrades like acceleration boost and an extra (unusable) back seat. This particular model was about $52k new in 2023.
I can't believe how much car I bought for my money. Autosteer is fantastic (FSD needs work). Early morning drive to the airport and the car was driving itself while I ate my breakfast and drank my coffee.
The takeaway here is getting money into the hands of smarter and more motivated people.
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