Rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory

The Fed is between a rock and hard place, but it would be nice if it started making sense. Plus, what we're going to need more of in the net-zero world, AI doing things, and kids getting smarter

Welcome back from the holidays everyone (but especially me)! Random Walk is chock full of goodies:

• RW is surprised to learn we’re going to need a lot a lot of things I’ve barely heard of to meet net-zero goals.

• It turns out that kids are in fact getting smarter, in at least one respect.

• AI is definitely doing things, and you can too!

• Big banks making money and what it looks like in data.

• Finally, the maddening Category Error that is driving us unnecessarily closer to the abyss.

Please enjoy. And also, subscribe, because that’s how I know to keep doing this. Every time you read without subscribing, somewhere a substack fairy loses its wings. Truth.

Scatterplots

Getting to net zero

Shell put out a neat report that attempts to back into the various technological and behavioral changes we’ll have to make in order to achieve “net zero” emissions goals. The net zero scenario—what Shell calls Sky 2050—anticipates a significantly different energy landscape than the current rate and pace of change would predict—what Shell calls Archipelagos.

Just a few standouts:

• Carbon Capture, which is basically something I’ve heard of but know nothing about, needs to speed up by a factor of 10 in less than 20 years. Likewise, “land under carbon management” needs to go from basically nothing to something like 2X the size of the USA):

• 4X solar module manufacturing and 15X solar capacity, 10x deployment rate of wind turbines, and 8X wind capacity (plus lots and lots of additional storage):

• Hydrogen must go from nothing to a fairly substantial something:

It’s good to have ambitious goals, that’s for sure.

Kids are getting smarter