Opinion
Mechanical solar tracking systems became economically obsolete in 2016
“Economically speaking we should have deleted trackers in 2016, right? Like the trackers are the systems that move the panels around. Obviously we're still in 2025 installing trackers.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Oct 2030
Handmer: Desalinated water can be produced for $99 per acre-foot
“So I believe that it should be possible to produce water, desalinated water, for 99 bucks an acre foot, which would be transformational, right?”
Prediction Open · timeframe Oct 2030
Handmer predicts China will beat the United States to the Moon
“Relax the outer space treaty in 2017 with the outer space, so the Artemis Accords, so we can go and kind of make a land grab on the moon, and then it turns out China's going to get there first.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Oct 2030
Handmer predicts Hyperloop will never happen
“Is Hyperloop ever gonna happen?
[79] Casey Handmer: No.
[80] Casey Handmer: I think I can safely say that now.”
Insight
Synthesizing natural gas from air and water is now financially viable
“The solar has gotten so cheap that you can actually kind of do the reverse process, and it makes financial sense, increasingly so over time.”
Assertion Supported
Synthetic fuel production is 100 times more land-efficient than biological photosynthesis
“Plants are great. Even this plastic one here but their net throughput efficiency is about a hundred times lower than a synthetic process like the one we're using in terms of like, Area of land into reduced carbon fuel.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Long-range aviation, shipping, and chemicals will remain hydrocarbon-based for decades
“Fast aircraft, big aircraft, long, long range aircraft, hydrocarbons. Probably long range shipping would stay that way. Like LNG, it's just so cheap. It's gonna stay that way for a long time. Paints are gonna stay hydrocarbon based. Chemicals, pesticides, herb…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Oct 2030
AI data centers will inevitably scale on solar and batteries, not nuclear
“It seems pretty clear to me, I think two years ago, I've got a blog post on this saying that, like, we're going to have to go to solar and batteries for AI data centers at scale and back then everyone was still talking about, like, oh, we're going to build SMR…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Handmer: Solar panel manufacturing costs will fall to four cents a watt
“They could probably see line of sight to, like, another two extra action in cost. So we go from eight cents a watt down to four cents a watt.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The laws of physics allow solar panels to become 10 times cheaper
“The limit of physics on how cheap a solar panel can be is, like, at least 10 times cheaper than it currently is.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2035
China's electrification will end its dependence on Strait of Malacca oil
“Do you think by 2035 China is still going to be as dependent on oil through the Strait of Malacca? I don't. At the rate that they're deploying right now, they could cut off that supply if they needed to.”
Opinion
Handmer: By-right permitting on private and BLM land would best accelerate solar
“The single biggest intervention you could allow is by right development of solar panels on private land and ideally even like BLM land would be great.”
Opinion
Handmer: The idea the US is intrinsically uncompetitive in manufacturing is crap
“This whole idea, like, comparative advantage, that the United States should just be intrinsically bad, or, like, uncompetitive at certain kinds of things, is crap. Like, this has every advantage it could possibly want.”
Insight
Crazy but repeatedly successful decisions imply a superior model of reality
“If I see someone who is pretty successful do a series of crazy things over and over again, and yet they work out every single time, either they have root access, To the simulation. Or their model of reality is better than mine in some key way that I don't unde…”
Assertion Partly supported
SpaceX controls approximately 95% of the global space launch market
“In the space sector, at least, it's quite astounding the extent to which SpaceX is dominant. Right. This is not the case that, like, Apple has, what, 2030, 40% market share in smartphones, and Pixel has 10%, and Huawei and so on has a, this is like, SpaceX has…”
Assertion Supported
US car seat mandates save 58 lives but avert 10,000 births annually
“Something like 58 children's lives are saved in the United States every year by statistically by car seats, and something like 10,000 births are averted by families who cannot afford to upgrade their cars”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Handmer: AI Wealth Unlikely to Relieve Aging Populations Globally
“So it is certainly the case that AI seems likely to produce enormous additional wealth. Whether that wealth will find its way to alleviating the tax burden on the working class in, you know, the 200 countries on earth that don't have their own AI industry, see…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Spending $20 billion on desalination could double the Colorado River flow
“If you spent twenty billion dollars on desalination, you could literally double the flow of the Colorado. So why? Five million acre feet.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Operating 737s is cheaper and faster than building high-speed rail
“How many seven three sevens could you build and operate for 30 years for that much money? And it turns out you could move more people more quickly that way than with the Hyperloop.”
Disclosure
Handmer: Terraform Is Building Machines to Make Natural Gas from Solar
“Terraform is building a machine that connects to Standard quantitized solar array and produces natural gas.”
Assertion Supported
If a region can grow food, it can synthesize its own fuel
“Everywhere pretty much that people live has enough sun that you can make, you know, can grow enough food to survive. And if you can grow enough food to survive, you can synthesize enough fuel to run your modern industrial economy.”
Opinion
Handmer: Taxing aviation fuel is regressive and hurts marginal travelers
“That's actually super, like, regressive because people like you and I will still be able to afford to fly. We're not super price sensitive when it comes to, you know, flying, flying United, but actually it's the people on the margin who could, you know, it mak…”
Insight
Handmer: Most people should avoid founding hardware startups
“Well, I mean, people in general, maybe you shouldn't start hardware companies. It's kind of cursed in a way, but if you have the right skill set and the right mindset and you're determined to just do the most ambitious thing you could possibly achieve, you sho…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Handmer: Natural gas prices will rise significantly as US exports expand
“Now, I think that as our export capacity to Europe increases and our fields continue to deplete and so on, we're going to see that price rise quite a bit, but probably not next year.”
Casey Handmer