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What the report finds is that Biden held on to 94% of the people who said they would support him before the debate. For Trump, 86% of people who said they would support him before the debate said they would do so after the debate. “What we see is that there is some churn –– maybe 10 percent or so of people change what they answer –– but that the net result is not a movement away from Biden,” Lazer says. “If anything, it seems that Biden is holding on to his people somewhat better than Trump.” https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/07/09/biden-debate-performance-voter-preferences/ It would seem that Trump’s performance hurt him slightly more, but you wouldn’t know that if you heard certain discussions.

+1. One of the few biofuel ideas that might be cost-effective and not withdraw arable land from food production or lead to toxic algae blooms in (e.g.) the Gulf of Mexico. (a pleasing irony there - vats of algae preventing mats of algae)

Farmers producing (more profitable) biofuels don't produce food. Crop acreage is fixed. This raises the price of food for people. Biofuel can be produced by (GMO or not) algae or microorganisms, directly from CO2 and H2O with sufficient solar energy.

Well…I guess there’s no snowballs where he’s going… Too soon?

Ethanol has problems, mostly because it involves hideous amounts of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides. Also, any cornfields that aren't producing food to eat means there are people somewhere down the line who die from starvation. We've tracked this for years. Ethanol isn't magic.

Yes I think we all got that it was sarcastic. What was stupid was that your sarcasm was seemingly intended to ridicule the practicality of non-fossil fuel energy sources. Casting doubt on the viability of these has been one of your themes ever since you showed up here. A number of us have tried to set you straight about that, but it seems to be an uphill struggle. On your battery question, yes battery storage is already done commercially and I have already commented on further battery developments. Other forms of storage of intermittent energy production include hydroelectric (pumped) storage and thermal storage - a sort of battery for storing heat, using the latent heat released when a substance changes phase. Here is one example I found at random on the internet:https://sunamp.com/en-gb/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Thermino-Brochure-Digital-Artwork_Low_Res_aad-uk-th-br-v1.pdf On your question about how we should ideally move forward, I agree with others here that a "master plan" in detail may not be a sensible approach, partly due to the vicissitudes of politics and partly because the pace and direction of invention and commercialisation, in a free-market economy, is such that any plan would be quite likely to be overtaken by developments that were not foreseen when it was devised. However the elements that a government should pursue, as vigorously as public opinion will permit, must obviously include both incentives and support for more efficient use of energy (public transport, insulation, fuel economy, waste heat re-use) and incentives and support for moving away from fossil fuel based energy. The forms those incentives take, or should take, in practice vary from country to country. I'll give you one example. One absurdity in the UK is that electricity bills include a surcharge to help fund the development of the network to accommodate the shift to renewables. However gas bills do not, as gas uses a legacy network that is not being developed. It should be the other way round, so that legacy fossil fuel use funds the shift to renewables. That would make gas more expensive and electricity cheaper which would also be an incentive to shift over. But politically this is dynamite, as most people heat their houses with gas and for poor people, increasing their gas bills too much could make them unable to afford to heat them in winter, given that these people are the least able to invest in a new, electricity based, heating system. So this kind of thing has to be handled, politically, with kid gloves, even though the science is obvious.

I think energy technologies and what they can do are still in flux; the last thing we want is an inflexible plan that cannot take advantage of ongoing developments as they emerge. I think we need commitment to the goal of decarbonizing more than we need a detailed plan of how to get there; the planning is for the next few steps, not the final steps and must include support for clean energy R&D, on the basis that we can still do things better. When mainstream politics chose Doubt, Deny and Delay as response - with handing the issue to Environmentalists in "you care so much, you fix it" style - in order to NOT address it (as well as reinforce framing of the issue as driven by extremist fringe politics rather than about climate science and climate policy as about responsibility and accountability), no such plan (which likely would have had nuclear as the headline act) was possible. It is considered intolerable if any climate action or decarbonizing reduces profitability for fossil fuel investors, let alone requires any society wide reduction in spending power or actual sacrifice. Our forebears who faced great dangers and challenges with bravery and willing sacrifice would be ashamed.

After a stroke, he died today. Good riddance to his bad governance

No, but we can use fuels from corn to power jet planes, or even, steam locomotives, however. WOOD COULD STILL BE BURNED IN STEAM LOCOMOTIVES. People still burn wood inside homes for wintertime heat. Coal is a finite resource unlike wood harvested from trees. Corn crops are also renewable. I'm not trying to mock any form of energy. I'm trying to find a practical approach to the issues. People should be practical about things. The best energy bets for the future might be: solar, wind, waterpower (hydroelectric) and biofuels in no particular order. Biological energy is still employed to some extent: animals as horses, mules, humans, dogs and oxen are still used to do work: manual labor. That is the whole point of energy in the first place, to accomplish work. PS - Please don't forget the ocean which covers 70% of our planet! The sea's waves are rich with future kilowatt-hour possibilities! The ocean is the last frontier on earth for clean energy.