I don't know if the "war against" theme fits here. There is no enemy but ourselves.
How many times have we fought wars not against ourselves?
The world is losing the war against climate change
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Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#82If 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 don't think any amount of innovation can have close to the impact of de-tabooing nuclear energy for the next few decades.
Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
War on cancer has been...not completely a fail? Certainly made harder by profiteering, but, y'know. Also, I find "War on poverty" hilarious. Like a country saying it's "making crime illegal".
The war on cancer is a total fail in my book. They surrendered when they started calling it "many diseases", meaning there will never be a "cure for cancer" by definition.
Huh? You consider it a fail because we learned that there are many different kinds of Cancers? Yes a "one magic pill" option will probably never exist, but we can chip away at all forms of Cancer until they all have a cure.
But realistically, this is not a war I think we can win in my lifetime. It's much bigger than people may have originally thought.
Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#84If 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've been looking into carbon capture recently because it's going to be vital to slowing down the warming (and buying us another 50 years for the transition). What surprised me is that I can cover double my two-car-owning European family's carbon footprint via planting trees in the UK at an annual cost of around $400. It'll cost half that to do the same in a developing country. We need a global carbon tax and we need…
Could you point us to any good resources you've come across?
Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#85If 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…
Is chemical/plastic production really a source of emissions? After all, oil is used in the production of plastic because plastic has a bunch of carbon in it.
Yes, it is. The chain of industrial processes that converts oil to plastics are energy intensive, and the chemical processes involved often have direct emissions as well. Not to mention the emissions from extracting, refining, and transporting the oil in the first place.
Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#86Legitimate 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?
We've lost the war when everyone is dead.
Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
War on cancer has been...not completely a fail? Certainly made harder by profiteering, but, y'know. Also, I find "War on poverty" hilarious. Like a country saying it's "making crime illegal".
The war on cancer is a total fail in my book. They surrendered when they started calling it "many diseases", meaning there will never be a "cure for cancer" by definition.
Well, I don't think they just started calling it that for no reason. The fact that they they now know more means they are marking progress, even if it makes it harder to declare victory.
The way I read it is that they were so far from a cure that they didn't even know what they were trying to achieve.
Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is petroleum for chemistry and plastics a GHG source? It seems like the carbon involved stays out of the atmosphere.
"Plastics emit GHG as they degrade": https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/plastics-emit-gre...
Obviously plastics emit GHG as they degrade.
If you burn the plastic now, you get all the CO2 now.
Some plastic last for hundreds of years, so the same amount of CO2 will be released more slowly. An optimistic view is that half of the "CO2" will be trapped for a few additional hundred of years.
A slightly more interesting part is that a part of the emission is methane (that is like 100x worse than CO2), but the article says that the level of methane emission is insignificant anyway.
Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#89Is there even a "war" against climate change? If there is, it's barely gotten started. For the most part, politicians are at best apathetic and at worst, actively hostile to the idea of "fighting" such a war.
The politicians largely reflect the people they govern. I don't think we can expect much better from them as compared to the general population...not to mention of course the vested interests and lobbying capability of corporations. And again corporations have shareholders, employees, etc...
Re: The world is losing the war against climate change
#90If 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…
Is chemical/plastic production really a source of emissions? After all, oil is used in the production of plastic because plastic has a bunch of carbon in it.
Plastics reactors themselves don't really do much (if tuned properly, most aren't because it's cheaper), the emissions are mostly from the refinery processes before it. You can't make plastics from raw oil.
Obviously running these still requires a lot of power for heating, cooling and so on. Large-scale extruders for producing the plastic pellets everyone uses for e.g. injection moulding require a fair bit of electricity as well (think dozens of MW per screw pair / channel).