Fwd: NOAC Colleagues - Climate Lab Videos

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Dear Colleagues,

I thought the following very specific and well-articulated summary by Larry Busk in a forthcoming paper "Confronting Mises in a warming world: the calculation debate and climate change" to be published in the Review of Radical Political Economics of points made by Brett Chrisotphers in his 2024 book: The price is wrong: Why capitalism will never solve the climate crisis, may be of interest in relation to 9/3 NOAC meeting discussion (including my comments - including my own rambling and probably not very helpful comments - on Glenn's work, might be of interest.

I'm not sure about "central planning" - but certainly massive public infrastructure investments as in a global direct current grid that Mike and others has been advocating - and other forms of large scale transfer of funding from rich to poor nations and individuals as I and many others have been advocating, are essential to the rapid development of a global sustainable economy - reminiscent of the "socialist" policies that built the post-war middle classes in the US and (much more so) in Europe and Japan, and made "capitalism work" pretty well for a while until capitalists took over the state (in the US anyway) and proceeding to destroy the middle class and now democracy (my riff!).

Here's the excerpt the Busk forthcoming paper:

5. The Criterion Problem Revisited

Energy production will be one of the cardinal arenas in the transition to a sustainable economy. The Price is Wrong, by Christophers (2024), is a landmark study in the relationship between this sector and the capitalist market. Mainstream economic thinking, he points out, led us to believe that renewable energy (e.g., solar and wind) would displace fossil fuels when technological developments allow the former to become less expensive than the latter. Although clean energy is now demonstrably cheaper than dirty energy, it nevertheless requires massive subsidies to compete. Even still, it is not doing well, as fossils fuels still command a dominant market share and still supply most of the world’s energy. Solar and wind energy are likewise more efficient than coal and oil in terms of levelized cost of electricity (LCOE; energy output relative to lifetime construction and maintenance costs). Nevertheless, major firms like Exxon and Shell have quietly dropped most of their investments in solar and wind infrastructure—although, interestingly, they power their own overheads using renewable sources (because they are cheaper) (Malm and Carton 2024: 198). If flow electricity is less expensive and more efficient than stock electricity, why does the energy system remain overwhelmingly fossilized?

The answer, Christophers argues, is straightforward: Solar and wind energy are less profitable than coal, oil, and gas. Several factors contribute to this. First, solar and wind power are unpredictable; it is difficult to know for sure when the wind will blow and when the sun will shine. While this problem can be addressed from a technical vantage by grid integration and improved storing/battery technology, it is devastating in terms of market bidding, which requires estimation of how much energy a given firm can supply in the near future (Christophers 2024: 62, 166–67, 174–78). Overshooting can be just as devastating as underestimating: Solar and wind farms often produce far more energy than they can sell at a given price at a given time, forcing them to simply waste the product—and request subsidies for the lost returns (Christophers 2024: 207–10).

Another problem is competition. Fossil fuels are location-specific and therefore have high barriers to entry, with a small handful of firms already controlling the relevant resources. Solar and wind power, however, are “free gifts of nature” and can in principle be harnessed, with only minor limits on location, by anyone. This situation leads to a proliferation of competing firms, which drives down prices, which drives down profits (Christophers 2024: 75, 201–03, 214).

Conversely, solar and wind infrastructure is highly capital intensive in terms of upfront costs, even if the LCOE is cheaper in the long run; once a wind farm is built, operational costs are functionally zero, but construction is demanding in terms of energy, time, and material. This puts renewable energy at a disadvantage from an investment standpoint. Investors do not care about LCOE, but about maximum possible short-term gains (Christophers 2024: 76, 141, 156). High initial cost and long-term price volatility is a disaster from the point of view of finance. The transition to renewable energy, Christophers (2024: 361) observes, seems to face insurmountable difficulties— “at least if one takes as read the necessity of profit making.”

Beyond speaking to Mises’s inconsistencies regarding efficiency and consumer sovereignty, this example also signals an answer to the criterion problem. Market competition and private entrepreneurship, Christophers argues, are ill equipped to facilitate a transition to renewable energy. All of the difficulties just elaborated on become irrelevant, however, in a nationalized, centrally planned system (Christophers 2024: 295, 371–375). Crucially, the problem Mises identifies as the fatal flaw in socialist calculation—the lack of a performance evaluation metric—ceases to apply. Under actually existing capitalism, the criterion of profitability allows for and even encourages ecologically unsustainable production practices and warming of 3°C or more by century’s end. This is evident from electricity to plastic and from ghost flights to artificial obsolescence. Against the background of ecological collapse, however, a criterion for effective planning becomes legible: rapid decarbonization and the safeguarding of planetary boundaries."

Best,

Ron

On Tue, Sep 2, 2025 at 5:03 AM Clive Elsworth <Cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk> wrote:

All

Everyone is invited to our fortnightly NOAC meetings.

NOAC = Nature-based Ocean and Atmospheric Cooling.

The next meeting recording will be uploaded as Unlisted.

Those arriving at the start can suggest topics for discussion. For example, you could:

·        ask a technical question,

challenge an assumption,
present something,
express an opinion,
highlight an article or video,
make an announcement,
suggest a plan,
etc.

We speak for 90 mins.

The next NOAC meeting is: Monday 15th Sep (Aus: Tue 16th)

• 1pm PDT (USA)

• 4pm EDT (USA, Chile)

• 9pm BST (UK)

• 10pm CEST (France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Finland)

• 6am Tue AEST (Australia)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82585629865?pwd=3a5OcyUvHwPhiUO44Eq06caFvWbhia.1
Meeting ID: 825 8562 9865
Passcode: 236158

Last Meeting: 1^st Sep 2025 – Public YouTube Upload

Agenda

Clive – What is NOAC, Types of people, Important things we’ve learned

Glenn - Video: Announcing The Climate Lab!

Jon C – MEER, startling insight – reflectivity makes much more difference than emissivity.

Greg S – Consensus of opinion on Ocean Iron Fertilization – capacity of CO2 sequestration.

Robert T – Introduce Talk on marine nanobubbles by Sev C

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy1Kz5tA2j4&t=1128s

Please share this link (not the email) with anyone, including on social media and websites.

Also, see Transcript file attached.

Chat

21:42:58      From Ron Baiman : This paper recently flagged by Mike MacCracken may be of interest in reference to Glenn’s approach: Here is the link to "In tech we trust: A history of technophilia in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) climate mitigation expertise": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629625003615

21:43:58       From Ron Baiman : Hi Nadia! Good to see you!

21:50:56       From Nadia Kock : Thank you! Its good to be here 🙂

21:52:34         From Nadia Kock : Politics is important for novel technologies, because they need government support to get to where the market can adopt.

21:54:02         From herbertsimmens : Everything is politics - or more accurately political economy - but alas political economy has all but disappeared with the siloization of political science and economics

21:54:30       From herbertsimmens : What Ron is saying….

22:01:06       From Nadia Kock : Thank you Glenn

22:02:58       From Bru Pearce : Thanks Glenn, happy to have a chat some time please check out www.envisionation.org keen tobe collaborative

22:08:26         From Glenn weinreb : This is a draft of the script for future climate lab videos: https://www.ma2life.org/g/draft/MIT_Climate_Solutions_Videos_SCRIPT.pdf

This is a business plan for a new laboratory: https://www.ma2life.org/g/Decarbonization_Lab_Biz_Plan.pdf

Published Videos:

Video #1) Announcing The Climate Laboratory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jB_xUTAGTE

Video #2) Tackling Climate with More R&D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IoAzcR5W-Y

Glenn's Contact Information: Glenn....@AspenCore.com

22:23:22       From Iron concentrations : link to YouTube video on reflective cooling power of various materials     https://youtu.be/CtNp_SLvfac?si=rdsY22RY3BTRZSjT

22:24:14       From Herb Simmens : To Glenn, To follow up on my earlier comment I advocate for what I dubbed ‘translational mitigation” in my book (mitigation being defined broadly to include cooling) similar to the concept of translational medicine that focuses on bringing innovations from Bench to Bedside. We need something similar in climate - and your lab could perform that function effectively if and only if you also integrate political economy into everything you research rather than attempting to exclude it…

Contact Details and Past Meetings

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NOAC website: https://noac.info/Home.aspx

Prev Meeting: 18^th Aug 2025 – Unlisted YouTube Upload

Agenda

Robert T – London protocol and OIF (Ocean Iron Fertilization)

Chris V – US is going back to prior climate assessments

Sev – Is the Montreal protocol a model for an Albedo accord?

Hugo – AI and climate

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk6m0delWE8&t=602s

Feel free to share this link and email with trusted friends and colleagues, but please do not post on social media or websites.

Send us new people: Who else should be invited?

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Clive Elsworth

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Addressing the Urgent Need for Direct Climate Cooling: Rationale and Options

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