A problem with all of the "lower carbon fossil fuel" solutions is that the companies best positioned to implement them have every economic incentive to keep burning stuff for as long as possible. So while moving completely from coal to natural gas could actually make a significant dent in carbon emissions, the folks who control that choice have zero economic interest in turning off the burners completely, and will fight to keep fossil modes of power production going forever. You can convert a coal plant to gas and keep making money. You can't convert a coal plant to a wind farm.penningtron wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2023 1:08 pm The last 4? 5? decades have had their version of X will slow down global warming/climate change: remember the push to convert everything to natural gas in the '90s, then it was bio diesel, etc. Even if those things would have helped, they were never widely adopted, and ignored the bigger issue that unless the Western-nized world drastically alters course, you can probably get used to those 130 degree summers, brown outs, and catastrophic storms every week.
You see this happening again with plastic. There is a huge movement within the chemical and petroleum industry right now to find more ways to dispose of plastic without landfilling, including by burning it to convert it into fuel and then burning it again. They see increasing plastic production as a lifeline from the coming loss of ICEs.
There's some form of atomic energy out there awaiting our discovery and sustainable use. Agreed that fission and steam probably ain't it.