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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher@kevinjkircher.com |
1437 followers 1162 following 2318 posts
Engineering prof (mechanical + electrical) at a big state school. Energy, climate, buildings, power grid, control, optimization, data science. He/him. kevinjkircher.com/ Email: my last name at purdue dot edu
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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I'll look into it, thanks. I know the "optimize sequentially" approach is well studied in the multiobjective optimization community. Need to read more to better understand applications to climate.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Right, "NPV > 0?" for example. Not rigorously supported, but it seems like most decisions in climate mitigation planning are, or can be reduced to, "A vs B." Where B could sometimes just be business as usual.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Sounds like a good invention 😉
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Right. That's a strong modeling assumption. Many people I think agree with it, but not all people. The assumption that every human life is worth $12 million is also very strong, and feels to me harder to justify in a way that many or most people would understand and agree with.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Maybe I didn't explain it very well. I'd suggest optimizing first for lives, then among the set of lives-optimal pathways, optimize again for health. Repeat for each objective, with the next most important objective breaking ties in the current one. Does that make sense?
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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You're good :) We're all friends here!
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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That said, I think it's a more reasonable approach, easier to justify and explain. I also think it could uncover mitigation strategies that are underappreciated today. Hopefully someone can point me to really good existing work in this vein, or will do some and tell me about it!
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Doing this work would be somewhat tougher than the "assign prices and convert to one performance metric" approach. Technology costs are *fairly* well known, at least for now and the near future, but it's harder to pin down how many people a technology would kill or sicken.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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In my mind, it makes a lot more sense - there's a clear ranking of priorities. Almost everyone would agree that saving lives is more important than saving money, for example. I'm really interested to see what a least-death climate mitigation pathway looks like.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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This isn't my primary research area - I mostly develop software to better operate heating/cooling equipment, EVs, batteries, etc. - so I'm not as familiar with the literature as many others are. But I've seen very few papers that take this alternative, "rank then sequentially optimize" approach.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Another approach is to rank the competing objectives by importance, then compare or optimize pathways sequentially, from most to least important. For example: First save as many lives as possible, then avoid as many person-years of illness as possible, then save as much money as possible.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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This is a very common move, but it's sorta bonkers. "How many job creations is a human life worth?" is just a weird-ass question to ask, yet researchers implicitly answer it all the time. The answers are of course totally subjective, but rarely discussed in much depth.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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The conversion process involves assigning prices to the various non-monetary objectives. Creating 1 job is worth $X, avoiding 1 year of serious illness for 1 person is worth $Y, and so on. They usually value 1 human life at about $12 million.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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To deal with this issue, modelers usually convert all the various objectives to a single performance metric. Almost always, that metric is money.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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It's hard to compare or optimize pathways when there are so many different, and often competing, goals. One pathway might cost less but sicken and kill more people. Another might cost a lot but also create a ton of jobs. And so on.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Warning: Wonky 🧵 on vague energy/climate modeling ideas. Many papers I read in this field aim to compare climate mitigation scenarios or optimize mitigation pathways. The modeled transitions have lots of impacts: ⬆️ or ⬇️ deaths, illnesses, jobs, money, and so on.
2 replies 3 reposts 9 likes
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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On the other hand, Duquesne Incline!
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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The article calls out a few states that do scale registration fees with vehicle weight. It's not widespread, and the fees cited are modest, but they're a good start. More effective to regulate manufactures, I'd imagine.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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It's a great piece.
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Maya🚂🚃🚄🚅🚆🚇🚈🚉🚊🚝🚞🚋🚌🚎
@trains.bsky.social
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the real way to fight climate change is public transit and bikeable/walkable cities. not cars made for individuals that are still expensive consumer products at the end of the day
3 replies 22 reposts 110 likes
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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The solution to increased car-crash deaths from EV adoption is not "don't switch to EVs," it's smaller, lighter EVs; safer streets, especially for people on foot and active transit; and fewer cars in general -- denser neighborhoods, better infrastructure for active transit and public transit.
4 replies 9 reposts 38 likes
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Electric vehicles can save lives by polluting the climate less than fossil-fueled vehicles in most places. Yet EVs are much heavier and accelerate faster, so are more dangerous in crashes. @costasamaras.bsky.social argues that increased car-crash deaths could be on par with lives saved via climate.
2 replies 7 reposts 35 likes
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isaac
@sevier.io
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Always amusing to see where “climate” separates from “justice” for some people. We’re living through multiple genocides, global fascist power grabs, extreme mass inequality, and blowing through every planetary limit “red line” but I’m sure ignoring 3 of 4 of those will go fine for you.
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Costa Samaras
@costasamaras.bsky.social
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Read this great thread below. We can build a climate community on Bluesky. Here’s a starter pack for folks to follow some people who work on climate. go.bsky.app/Aa1sErQ
4 replies 46 reposts 89 likes
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United Farm Workers
@ufw.bsky.social
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Today, the federal government put itself on the right side of history by seeking, for the 1st time, to establish the precedent that every worker in America has the right to shade, water & rest while working in temps that could kill them. -UFW President Teresa Romero
www.politico.com/news/2024/07...
12 replies 350 reposts 912 likes
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Ketan Joshi
@ketanjoshi.co
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Back in the early to mid 2010s there was this view that you should gently convince right wingers to believe in climate science and my response was always: "a right wing that believes the science is scarier than one that denies it"
WELP HERE WE ARE
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
9 replies 40 reposts 117 likes
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Aaron Huertas
@aaronhuertas.bsky.social
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On Earth 2, we're running a political science experiment where elite media outlets attempt to hound a convicted felon out of running for president while wildly speculating about an RNC open convention fantasy draft.
1 replies 14 reposts 41 likes
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Prof. Farhana Sultana
@farhana.bsky.social
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🚨My book is online!🚨 "Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice" This was a journey & labor of love to clarify what climate coloniality is & how to decolonize climate justice. Thanks to many for their support! Details below.🧵
4 replies 39 reposts 97 likes
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Right! How many hours per week can you freely choose to spend however you want, with no short- or long-term risk to you or your family of losing access to basic human rights like housing, food, health care? The answer for almost all non-rich Americans is awfully low compared to many countries.
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Justin Mikulka
@justinmikulka.bsky.social
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We are poised to make the same mistakes with carbon capture storage that we made with fracking. Did you know they are passing laws in states to exempt oil and gas companies from future liability for injected CO2?
5 replies 16 reposts 28 likes
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Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Blade Wielding Bisexual (Lordean arc)
@shengokai.bsky.social
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Over at the Bad Place, I made a tradition of posting Douglass' "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth of July," and I intend to carry on that tradition here. Since most versions you read in classes or in textbooks have parts omitted, the link below has the full text of the speech.
14 replies 611 reposts 1322 likes
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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By 2030, less than one-third of harvested global cropland will produce food for direct human consumption. Pretty wild.
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Dave Levitan
@davelevitan.bsky.social
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I have no idea the best path re Biden but I do know a solid week straight of “Biden Old” and “Rich Dems Worried” above-the-fold stories are *obscene* in the face of SCOTUS using the Constitution to wipe their asses purely in the service of reinstating a felon rapist as president. Crazy-making shit.
46 replies 833 reposts 2969 likes
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Dr. Lucky Tran
@luckytran.bsky.social
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Due to the fireworks, New York City's air quality is the worst in the world tonight.
When AQI is low, it's a good idea to wear a mask to protect your health.
But this could soon be a crime, as one of the mask ban bills prohibits masks at "lawful assemblies."
#NoNYMaskBan
5 replies 132 reposts 287 likes
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Ketan Joshi
@ketanjoshi.co
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Turns out anti greenwashing regulations work!
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Steve Silberman
@stevesilberman.bsky.social
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The best postscripts to an invitation I've ever seen. [via Scott Ruplin]
26 replies 368 reposts 1669 likes
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Kelly Hereid
@kellyhereid.bsky.social
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In the early Twitter days science types would show up and post when they had a new paper. Wonderful! But real talk y'all: papers take ages to write. So, post about other people's stuff! You read a paper and it was cool! Or you had a question! Or it tied to this other thing! Tag the authors!
10 replies 49 reposts 141 likes
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ryan cooper
@ryanlcooper.com
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"Lawsuits are slow, they are complicated, they are often decided on arbitrary technicalities or total nonsense, and being so costly they are hideously biased toward the rich and well-connected." prospect.org/justice/amer...
12 replies 165 reposts 682 likes
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Carbon intensity is not a great metric - physics cares about absolute emissions, not intensity - but even by this metric big tech is doing pretty badly.
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Dr. SkySkull
@drskyskull.bsky.social
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Thinking also of the 1948 Donora smog that killed 20 people outright and made thousands sick. One of the reasons the clean air movement started. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Do...
3 replies 12 reposts 20 likes
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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"In 2023, Google’s carbon intensity climbed to 11.4 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per million dollars of revenue. That’s up 101% since 2019, and up nearly 25% since 2022." Microsoft's "increased by 20% since 2022."
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Jan Rosenow
@janrosenow.bsky.social
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Myths around heat pumps are widespread.
Not because they are true but because they are deliberately spread by bad faith actors.
Thanks to the Economist for this article and for quoting my @carbonbrief.org heat pump myth buster.
www.economist.com/europe/2024/...
5 replies 58 reposts 151 likes
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Ketan Joshi
@ketanjoshi.co
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Every single year has been worse than the last, when it comes to the completely obscene energy greed of Bitcoin mining.
Probably a decent chance it ends up causing more harm through this than machine learning training / inference ever will...
ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci
3 replies 18 reposts 41 likes
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professional agitatormama
@pnutsmama.bsky.social
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I learned as an adult why so many public housing projects were built near the (any) water in NYC- because waterfront property value was terrible, the pollution and toxins so bad no one wanted to live or work there. now, of course, that’s very different.
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Simon Donner
@simondonner.bsky.social
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Hurricanes are heat engines powered by warm ocean surface. Beryl's strength is a direct consequence of that extreme warmth in the Atlantic Ocean. It is also giving me night sweats... we did an analysis almost 20 years ago that warned climate change is making this exact type of event more common 🧵
1 replies 6 reposts 22 likes
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Common issues in tight homes after great energy retrofits! Interesting question about the "money on the table," as it were. Might sketch out some napkin math on it :)
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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And another reason to reform the federal courts that the right wing has so thoroughly corrupted.
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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We don't yet have an ERV in our test house, but I'll think about getting one and tinkering. If you want, we could also set up a video call with one of my students and talk about what a DIY approach in your home might entail. No pressure, obviously!
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Prof. Kevin J. Kircher
@kevinjkircher.com
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Definitely. It's a constant struggle, always evolving.
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Jennifer R. Povey
@ninjafingers.bsky.social
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This didn't just look bad. 4,000 deaths. 100,000 people sickened. Estimates of between 10,000 and 12,000 unreported or delayed deaths. London is particularly vulnerable to this kind of thing because of weather patterns. So is LA. June Gloom could turn into *this*.
0 replies 1 reposts 9 likes