Will wind and solar will be sufficient to replace all the gas with heat pumps, and keep them running every day in the winter? I would also be hesitant to give up gas heat, without understanding where the replacement electricity will coming from. "Demand response" means that the rich stay warm, while industry migrates to countries with better price stability... or continued CO₂ emission to avoid those outcomes.

[–] notapantsday@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your second paragraph could be summed up as: we chose the destination years ago, so there’s no point changing course.

Which makes perfect sense when you consider that there's a deadline, we've gone a very long way in one direction and going all the way back to take another route would guarantee missing that deadline.

It's like you're taking your ship from China to Rotterdam, you're past the Suez canal, in the Mediterranean and now you decide to turn around and go around Africa after all. It really would be idiotic.

[–] p1mrx@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s like you’re taking your ship from China to Rotterdam, you’re past the Suez canal, in the Mediterranean and now you decide to turn around and go around Africa after all. It really would be idiotic.

That decision wouldn't be idiotic if I actually wanted to go to Africa. It takes even longer to turn around from Rotterdam.

[–] notapantsday@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In my example, 'Rotterdam' is supposed to be the ultimate destination, so it would be equivalent to 'carbon neutrality'. Changing the destination to 'Africa' would be the equivalent to just building nuclear power plants for the sake of it, regardless of whether they help us reach carbon neutrality.

[–] p1mrx@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the ultimate destination should be carbon neutrality while maintaining a strong industrial base and high standard of living for everyone in the world. Humanity needs to engineer an energy surplus to undo the damage we've done, and when one of the richest countries is planning for "demand response", that doesn't really inspire much confidence.

[–] notapantsday@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Demand response just means making use of energy surplus. And we'll have lots of that during spring and summer in the northern hemisphere. Running carbon capture machines only when there's a surplus is a perfect example of demand response.