BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Arizona law creates a class of suspects

Michael Gerson. "A test of Arizona's political character." Washington Post. April 28, 2010: "This law creates a suspect class, based in part on ethnicity, considered guilty until they prove themselves innocent. It makes it harder for illegal immigrants to live without scrutiny -- but it also makes it harder for some American citizens to live without suspicion and humiliation. Americans are not accustomed to the command 'Your papers, please,' however politely delivered."
Land-intensive solar power incentivizes clearing land, ecosystems

Because the sun's rays are diffuse, solar panels must occupy substantial territory to generate any significant quantities of power. As a result, solar energy is land-intensive, and creates a pressure to clear land of trees and vegetation to make way for solar panels. Owners of solar panels on home rooftops may also have an incentive to cut-down trees that are blocking solar panels from the sun's rays. This is a significant ecological threat.
While sunlight is free, the technology for capturing it is expensive.

It is misleading to say that sunlight energy is free. The price of energy resources have always been determined by cost of extracting the energy and transforming it into a consumable form. Indeed, oil is "free" to those that discover it, but it is sold at a price related to the expense of extracting and refining the good. Solar energy is the same. The price of sun energy is found in the expense of the technology and other factors involved in extracting it and transforming it into a consumable form. It is not "free".
Solar energy requires too much land, damaging the environment

The sun light and its energy hit the earth's surface in a diffuse manner. In other words, not much sunlight hits a square meter on the earth's surface. In order to gather significant quantities of this energy, a large swath of territory must be covered by solar panels. This makes solar energy land-intensive, which creates pressures to clear lands of trees for solar panels. This can eliminate important carbon sinks and have a negative impact on global warming.
Fast growing solar industry can dramatically cut emissions now

The solar industry is competitive, bullish, and growing exponentially. BCC research believed it will grow from $13 billion currently to $32 billion in 2012. This means that solar energy is currently viable, and is replacing dirty forms of energy at an exponential pace now. This compares favorably to much more distant and uncertain forms of renewable energy. Why invest in these other renewables, when solar energy is ready to cut emissions exponentially starting now?
Solar panels must be cleaned where deposits obstruct the sun.

Deposits of varying kind can collect on solar panels and reduce the amount of sunlight that can be converted into energy. Heavy rain in some regions, for example, contain large amounts of calcium which can build up over time on solar panels into a white crust that can substantially obstruct the amount of light that enters the solar panel and that is converted into energy. This means that solar panels must be constantly cleaned, which is a hassle as well as costly.
Solar electric systems can be tied into electric grid

Kate Davidson. "Let the sun shine in ; The case for solar power heats up". Monitor. 2005 - "solar electric systems: They can be tied into the electric grid. That means that on cloudy days, when the panels aren't satisfying a home's demand, the house can receive backup electricity from a utility. And on sunny days, when a home is not using all the energy the panels are producing, the energy is dumped into the grid for other electric customers to use. The utility gives the homeowners credit for the excess energy by turning back their meters."
Many solar energy systems are now price competitive with coal

Josh Loposer. "Solar power will be cheaper than coal by 2020". 30 May 2008 - "Is it possible that solar power will be more cost effective than coal in 12 years? It seems like a pipe dream, but the US government along with huge investors like Goldman Sachs, Chevron, and Google seem to think it's a little better than just a distant possibility. Factoring in tax incentives, likely carbon-capping legislation, and rising natural gas prices, experts are estimating that the prices of coal and solar power will flip-flop by 2020."
Hybrid vehicle batteries are a burden to deal with

Kelly Cunningham. "The case against hybrid cars". Helium - "at the end of their lives, Escalades can be crushed, recycled and smelted into new products. The hybrid battery, having undergone such intense refinement, must be recycled properly by the manufacturer. The car is therefore very costly to dispose of in terms of resources and if people are lazy about doing so and the hybrids end up in junkyards, the potential toxicity to the disposal area is deadly. If the car only lasts 100,000 miles, then, how long before these noxious substances are improperly discarded in large quantities and begin to further destruct land and groundwater?"
Hybrid cars are simply a way for oil companies to maintain profits.

Electric cars do not use petroleum products. They are, therefore, a major threat to oil companies. For this reason, as is argued in the film "Who killed the electric car?", electric cars have been suppressed as an alternative form of transportation. This is why General Motor's EV1 was literally crushed out of existence. If governments and companies actually gave electric vehicles a chance (and possibly provided them with encouragement and subsidies), they would be entirely competitive in the market place.
Fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles are competitive in the markets

"The Pros and Cons of Hybrid Vehicles". Green Living Lifestyles. - "The most apparent benefit of the hybrid vehicle is its fuel-efficient operation. Sure, you still have to make your visits to the gas station, but the advantage is that you will do so less often. Because of the hybrid vehicle’s electric motor, the energy your hybrid produces is much cleaner. In addition, your hybrid will automatically shut off the gasoline engine during stops or when your car is idling. That is why these cars are so quiet when you park or are at a stoplight! The electric motor kicks in and saves some fuel from being used. Therefore, if you commute to work or are in traffic quite a bit, this feature will help save some money on gasoline."
Hybrid cars still burn gasoline and emit greenhouse gases

Hybrid cars still rely on gasoline as their primary form of propulsion. They have an electric motor (in addition to a gasoline engine), but this can only draw power, in various ways, from the gasoline engine. The hybrid only adds efficiency to the gasoline engine, instead of replacing it entirely. The hybrid car remains, therefore, a major emitter of greenhouse gases and a contributer to global warming. While it may contribute less to global warming, it still contributes significantly. If hybrids continue to be built in the coming decades, they will continue to contribute substantial to global warming into the middle of the century. This is unacceptable. At a time when we must respond decisively to global warming, investing in cars that continue to contribute negatively to global warming is the wrong course of action, particularly when 0-emission alternatives are available.
Higher gasoline prices favor fuel-efficient hybrids

Daniel Gross. "Blue-Collar PriusHybrid cars aren't just for smug yuppies anymore." Slate. 9 Apr. 2008 - "the rising cost of oil and the current recession, which started among subprime consumers and is steadily eating its way up the economic ladder, may combine to change the hybrid vehicle's image from a white-collar status symbol to a blue-collar money-saver."
Hydrogen cars combat global warming more aggressively than hybrids.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are 0-emission vehicles. They utilize only electricity to create hydrogen and/or hydrogen fuel-cells, which emits only water when used in a car. Hybrid vehicles, by comparison, still burn gasoline or diesel and emit greenhouse gases and contribute to global warming. Hydrogen vehicles are, therefore, a more aggressive response to the global warming crisis. Such aggressive measures are needed in the face of this crisis. Half-measures, such as hybrid vehicles, are less welcome.
Hybrids actually have more power than gasoline vehicles

Ed Hunt. "Why hybrid cars are here to stay". Christian Science Monitor. 4 Apr. 2002 - "the best-kept secret of hybrid-electric vehicles is that this technology can have performance advantages in addition to better mileage...The reason you never hear about hybrids winning Formula 1 races is because the international sanctioning body banned the technology. Hybrid cars would have had an unfair advantage on the track because the electric motors would have given them bursts of extra power."
"Power" of hybrids is senseless in the face of global warming.

Hybrids may have good "power" and performance. Yet, this should not be seen as a significant advantage over such alternatives as electric and hydrogen vehicles (and, it's debatable whether hybrids actually have superior performance to the main alternatives). If, for the sake of argument, we were to allow that hybrids have superior performance, the question is whether we should give this argument any weight? No. The moral priority at this time is to combat global warming, not uphold the showy, unecessary, and even more wasteful power/performance of hybrid/gasoline vehicles. Fighting global warming, not performance, is the clear moral priority in modern times.
Hybrids are more complicated, which has has costs

"Hybrid Cars -- Pros and Cons". Physorg. - "All this new technology comes at a price: a hybrid car is complex and expensive. It has two motors and all the ancillary systems to manage them plus a heavy battery and a regeneration system used to produce electricity during breaking. All of these systems must work together, adding complexity. While cars and, just as importantly, the computers that control them, have become more reliable, they still suffer from failures. So owners of hybrids can expect more time in the shop and larger repair bills."
Hybrid vehicle owners unlikely to replace batteries

"The Pros and Cons of Hybrid Vehicles". Green Living Lifestyles. - "Despite rumours to the contrary, hybrid owners will most likely never have to replace the expensive battery in their vehicles. The reason is that the warranties for hybrids last a long time, usually 100,000 miles or ten years, whichever comes first. How many people actually keep their cars for that long? Most likely, the hybrid will be traded in for a newer model a few years down the road."
Manufacturing hybrids releases comparatively more greenhouse gases

Kelly Cunningham. "The Case Against Hybrid Cars" - "To understand the hybrid, truly, you must observe it's manufacture from start to finish. To make the massive battery found in the typical hybrid, nickel must be smelted- the fumes and byproducts and waste produced in the initial smelt is massive. The area in Ontario where the initial smelting for the Toyota Prius batteries occurs has become barren and scarred and lifeless in the less than two decades that the smelting plant has been situated there...Just the shipping involved in the early life of a hybrid battery is horribly pollutive- oil-powered ships, cargo planes and deisel trucks all over the world constantly run, devoted to the task of making more ecologically sound vehicles."
Hybrid batteries and cars are built to last only 100,000 miles

This is a very small number of miles compared to ordinary gasoline vehicles, which last around 300,000 miles. This means that one individual would have to purchase three hybrids to obtain the same length of life of a regular gasoline vehicle. This is three-times the cost for the same value. And, even if owners don't want to keep a car for over 100,000 miles, the net effect to the economy is that hybrids live one-third as long and are nearly three times as costly to individuals and the economy.
New hybrid car batteries are much safer for the environment

Today most Hybrid car batteries are one of two types: (1) nickel metal hydride, or (2) lithium ion; both are regarded as more environmentally friendly than lead-based batteries (which constitute the bulk of car batteries today). "Jim Kliesch, author of the 'Green Book: The Environmental Guide to Cars and Trucks' told HybridCars.com, 'There are many types of batteries. Some are far more toxic than others. While batteries like lead acid or nickel cadmium are incredibly bad for the environment, the toxicity levels and environmental impact of nickel metal hydride batteries—the type currently used in hybrids—are much lower.'"[2].
Capturing/transporting/storing billiions of tons of C02 is not feasible

Rainforest Action Network, an environmental non-profit organization, stated the following in a fact sheet on its website titled "The Dirty Truth about Clean Coal," available at www.ran.org (accessed Sep. 17, 2009): "Proposals for carbon storage locations include underground depleted oil and gas fields, unmineable coal seams, and even in our oceans. Underground storage of the 1.9 billion tons of C02 waste produced annually by U.S. coal plants is hugely problematic and likely impossible."
Burning biofuels and burying emissions can lower atmospheric C02

David Biello. "All-out geoengineering still would not stop sea level rise." Scientific American. August 23rd, 2010: "Perhaps the only way to reduce warming enough to minimize the rise of the oceans is an all-out effort that also includes burning biomass as fuel (either to replace coal or gasoline or both) and pairing it with CO2 capture and storage. Together, they could suck down greenhouse gas levels by 180 ppm—more than enough to bring us below pre-industrial levels. As a result, sea level rise is held to just 10 centimers by 2100, according to the author's modeling."
Ocean sequestration of carbon has negative effects.

The environmental effects of oceanic storage are generally negative, and poorly understood. Large concentrations of CO2 kills ocean organisms, but another problem is that dissolved CO2 would eventually equilibrate with the atmosphere, so the storage would not be permanent. Also, as part of the CO2 reacts with the water to form carbonic acid, H2CO3, the acidity of the ocean water increases. The resulting environmental effects on benthic life forms of the bathypelagic, abyssopelagic and hadopelagic zones are poorly understood. Even though life appears to be rather sparse in the deep ocean basins, energy and chemical effects in these deep basins could have far reaching implications. Much more work is needed here to define the extent of the potential problems.
Renewables better than CCS and dealing with carbon waste

Peter Montague, PhD Executive Director of the Environmental Research Foundation. "Carbon Sequestration: What's the Point?" December 1, 2008: "The ideal solution [to global climate change] would be to stop making waste CO2 by phasing out fossil fuels and getting our energy from solar power in all its forms (direct sunlight, wind, and hydro dams). We know how to do this today... Every engineer knows that avoiding waste is far better than managing waste. So CCS is fundamentally bad design."
Taxpayers would be on hook for CCS leaks

Rainforest Action Network, an environmental non-profit organization, stated the following in a fact sheet on its website titled "The Dirty Truth about Clean Coal," available at www.ran.org (accessed Sep. 17, 2009): "Who pays if sequestered carbon leaks and causes fatalities or other damages? Even proponents of CCS have said the technology won't go ahead unless the federal government assumes full liability. If that happens, our tax dollars would be spent protecting utility companies from bearing both the risk and the cost of coal."
CCS delays inevitable transition to clean energy

Peter Montague, PhD Executive Director of the Environmental Research Foundation. "Carbon Sequestration: What's the Point?" December 1, 2008: "Sooner or later we're going to run out of fossil fuels - all of them - so eventually we have to adopt solar power. CCS just delays the inevitable - a huge waste of time and money. We should skip CCS and go solar today."[6]
Carbon capture and storage cannot scale cost-effectivley

"Carbon Capture Research." Department of Energy: "Existing capture technologies, however, are not cost-effective when considered in the context of sequestering CO2 from power plants. Most power plants and other large point sources use air-fired combustors, a process that exhausts CO2 diluted with nitrogen. Flue gas from coal-fired power plants contains 10-12 percent CO2 by volume, while flue gas from natural gas combined cycle plants contains only 3-6 percent CO2. For effective carbon sequestration, the CO2 in these exhaust gases must be separated and concentrated. The cost of CO2 capture using current technology, however, is on the order of $150 per ton of carbon - much too high for carbon emissions reduction applications. Analysis performed by SFA Pacific, Inc. indicates that adding existing technologies for CO2 capture to an electricity generation process could increase the cost of electricity by 2.5 cents to 4 cents/kWh depending on the type of process."
Climate change is best solved by energy efficiency, not CCS

Vaclav Smil, PhD, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba, stated the following in his May 2006 statement "Energy at the Crossroads," during the Conference on Scientific Challenges for Energy Research in Paris, available at www.home.cc.umanitoba.ca: "The obvious question is why it should be even attempted given the fact that a 10% reduction in CO2 emissions could be achieved by several more rational, mature and readily available adjustments... [T]technical fixes cannot provide a lasting resolution. History shows that energy demand keeps growing even in the most energy-saturated affluent societies: encouraging worldwide diffusion of this trend (new China, and then India, aspiring to replicate the US) and trying to fill the supply through scientific and engineering ingenuity is not a formula compatible with maintaining a viable biosphere. Obviously, poor countries need more energy; but the rich ones should, sooner, rather than later, think about engineering rational reductions in energy use. All economies are just subsystems of the biosphere and the first law of ecology is that no trees grow to heaven. If we are not going to engineer thoughtful, gradual reductions, we run a considerable risk that the biosphere may do the scaling-down for us in a much less desirable (if not catastrophic) manner."
Carbon capture and sequestration is one part of larger climate fight

George Monbiot, Visiting Professor of Planning at Oxford Brookes University, wrote in his 2007 book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning: "The difficulties I have encountered with investigating the other [low-carbon] technologies have persuaded me that carbon capture and storage - while it cannot provide the whole answer - can and must be one of the means we use to make low-carbon electricity."
Sequestered C02 can be injected into reservoirs to recover oil

CO2 is sometimes injected into declining oil fields to increase oil recovery. Approximately 30 to 50 million metric tonnes of CO2 are injected annually in the United States into declining oil fields.[16] This option is attractive because the geology of hydrocarbon reservoirs is generally well understood and storage costs may be partly offset by the sale of additional oil that is recovered. Disadvantages of old oil fields are their geographic distribution and their limited capacity, as well as that the subsequent burning of the additional oil so recovered will offset much or all of the reduction in CO2 emissions.
CCS requires significant energy; is inefficient

Robert Bryce. "A bad bet on Carbon." New York Times. May 12, 2010: "Let’s take the first problem. Capturing carbon dioxide from the flue gas of a coal-fired electric generation plant is an energy-intensive process. Analysts estimate that capturing the carbon dioxide cuts the output of a typical plant by as much as 28 percent. Given that the global energy sector is already straining to meet booming demand for electricity, it’s hard to believe that the United States, or any other country that relies on coal-fired generation, will agree to reduce the output of its coal-fired plants by almost a third in order to attempt carbon capture and sequestration."
CCS is less cost-effective than renewable energy

"No, we don't need CCS." RSC: "To better understand the relative importance of the cost of CCS and its effectiveness in avoiding CO2 emissions, we performed a comparison of carbon avoidance via CCS and using alternative energy technologies. ... Considering ratios All three alternative energy technologies considered were found to be much more cost-efficient than CCS at avoiding CO2. The carbon avoidance ratio (ie the CO2 amount avoided by a $5.1 trillion investment in alternative energy over 100 GtCO2) was determined for each technology using CCS as a base case. Wind, nuclear and geothermal power had CO2 avoidance ratios of 1.9, 4.3, and 4.5, respectively. In order for CCS to be competitive with wind and nuclear, the cost of CCS must be improved to $26/tCO2 and $12/tCO2, respectively. In addition to better CO2 avoidance on a per-dollar basis, alternative energy technologies also resulted in revenue, while CCS has no significant revenue. Wind, nuclear, and geothermal power were estimated to result in revenues of $9 trillion, $22 trillion, and $31 trillion, respectively, for a $5.1 trillion investment over 50 years. Our results show that, with current technology, CCS is less effective than alternative energy in avoiding CO2 emissions. We can most effectively address this issue by pursuing virtual CCS, including investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, nuclear energy, and biofuels until research in CCS (which also faces significant thermodynamic issues4) makes it competitive with alternative energy."
Risks of stored C02 leaking is very low

John Deutch, PhD, Institute Professor of the Department of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Ernest J. Moniz, PhD, Director of Energy Studies at the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stated in their 2007 study, "The Future of Coal: Options for a Carbon-Constrained World," available at www.web.mit.edu: "A number of geological reservoirs appear to have the potential to store many 100's – 1000's of gigatons of CO2. The most promising reservoirs are porous and permeable rock bodies, generally at depths, roughly 1 km, at pressures and temperatures where CO2 would be in a supercritical phase. Once in the pore, over a period of tens to hundreds of years, the CO2 will dissolve into other pore fluids, including hydrocarbon species (oil and gas) or brines, where the CO2 is fixed indefinitely, unless other processes intervene. Over longer time scales (hundreds to thousands of years) the dissolved CO2 may react with minerals in the rock volume to precipitate the CO2 as new carbonate minerals... [I]t is very likely that the fraction of stored CO2 will be greater than 99% over 100 years, and likely that the fraction of stored CO2 will exceed 99% for 1000 years... Our overall judgment is that the prospect for geological CO2 sequestration is excellent. We base this judgment on 30 years of injection experience and the ability of the earth's crust to trap CO2... The DOE should launch a program to develop and deploy large-scale sequestration demonstration projects."