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The world is losing the war against climate change

economist.com

11–20 of 325 posts

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#11
post #2

Legitimate question: will there be a point where we speak about this war in the past tense, as in `The world lost the war against climate change'? How do we determine that turning point?

History is written by the victors.

However, we already lost it - in a very real sense - because we failed to convince enough humans that it's important, that they ought to demand tougher legislation, policies, treaties, mandates, cleaner air, better waste management, more energy efficiency, instant order of nuclear and renewable plants to phase out CO2 producing energy sources as soon as possible, etc.

We should be building 20km long hydro T-s, electrifying more and more railways, capturing as much emission as we can (chemical plants, big freighter ships, etc.)

Instead we are building walls on borders, blabbering about secession, killing/jailing/maiming/kidnapping/torturing each other in an organized fashion all around the planet.

We're simply late to efficiently manage a lot of things.

But humanity is very likely to survive, so in that sense as long as someone can ask that question we don't have to use past tense.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#12
If you look at global power sector emissions from 1998 to 2018, you'll see that while we have dramatically improved upon the energy intensity (energy/capita) and even are making improvements on carbon intensity (carbon/capita), but the sad reality is this: we are still using around 35% coal power in 2018, the same as we did in 1998.

And the power sector is the easiest sector to decarbonize, by the way. If you look at electric vehicles, even if we had the most rapid, insane ramp-up that's beyond even Elon's crazy predictions, we'd still have massive fossil fuel use for non vehicle uses of petroleum for chemical industries, airplanes, plastic production, and for the numerous numbers of legacy cars that will be leftover that are not EV.

We need massive innovation across all our uses of fossil fuel. We can not rest on our laurels, saying PV and wind are so cheap now. They are still around 4% of total energy consumption, and when you factor in the decline of nuclear and relative decline of hydropower in the ever-increasing industrial energy base, we see that fossil fuels are basically the same % of our energy mix as they were before 2000.

For an energy realist, I recommend checking out Vaclav Smil, who has long been predicting 21st century as the century of natural gas, and who has been skeptical of renewables taking over instantly. It will take us until the 22nd century to truly decarbonize, and by then the seas will have risen over Miami and Shanghai on a regular basis.

It's a truly scary future. Get innovating, in your personal lives and in your professional careers, everyone!

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#13
post #2

Legitimate question: will there be a point where we speak about this war in the past tense, as in `The world lost the war against climate change'? How do we determine that turning point?

I wonder if future generations will think people were even serious about solving the problem. In this respect the war was lost long ago.

The vast majority of people who believe climate change will have large negative consequences make no major changes to their lifestyles. As someone who rides bike for transportation largely to save money and stay in shape (I think climate change is a lost cause), the environmental crowd seems to think I am doing something saint-like. But it really isn't anywhere near as difficult as they believe. They rarely adopt cycling to work, and at least part of the reason why seems to me that their environmentalism is not entirely sincere. This is speculation, but I think most people stop at signalling that climate change is bad. They rarely take effective action.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#15
post #2

Legitimate question: will there be a point where we speak about this war in the past tense, as in `The world lost the war against climate change'? How do we determine that turning point?

Look up "wet bulb temperature".

ELI5: if the temperature of a wet thermometer(which would normally be colder due to evaporation) in a given place goes over around 31C this area becomes uninhabitable for almost all mammals.

Burning all the known fossil fuels would be enough to make it so for some places on earth, but the big unknown is what about the other sources of GHG's like thawing permafrost or clathrates lying under the sea?

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#16
We should switch to a carbon/anti pollution based crypto currency that is mined in a earth friendly way. All goods and transports and all other pollution is such a system should be accounted for.

As it now with the current economic system it is too easy to offset the cost on somebody else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#17

is there a proof somewhere that these wild fires are linked to climate change? For example the really bad one in Greece happened because someone decided to burn some wood. (I'm convinced that climate change is real and we're responsible)

I'll see if I can get some citations later -- but the general idea of wildfires and climate change is that climate change has caused more intense periods of drought in ares that haven't experienced those sorts of conditions before.

As such - when wildfires start (regardless of origin of the fire), they tend to spread more rapidly and more intensely.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#18
post #14
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly the same because at some point climate change will make the planet uninhabitable.

How? What does that mean? Habitability is not a binary thing.

Actually, it is. For most mammals a temperature over around 31C at 100% humidity is lethal after no more than six hours of exposure.

Go beyond that and everyone dies.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#19

If you look at global power sector emissions from 1998 to 2018, you'll see that while we have dramatically improved upon the energy intensity (energy/capita) and even are making improvements on carbon intensity (carbon/capita), but the sad reality is this: we are still using around 35% coal power in 2018, the same as we did in 1998. And the power sector is the easiest sector to decarbonize, by the way. If you look at…

i dont understand. you completely omit laws in your suggested solution. we need to pass laws that prevent businesses from fucking everything up worse than they already have. you can innovate all you want, but i think you should also not elect people who are fucking STUPID about climate change.
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