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Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

thetyee.ca

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Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#11

Post by Gladdyu »

mdorazio wrote: post #10
irq11 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not the demand curve. That’s the increase in demand curve. The increase in fossil fuel demand, however “lumpy”, is more than current total renewable output. (Who is downvoting? this is a statement of fact, from the article.)

Good point, but I don't see why that matters. Exponential output increase will overcome linear demand increase in pretty short order.

Unfortunately true exponential growth of a physical system cannot exist - it'll always be some sort of logistic model that looks exponential near x=0.

Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#12

Post by wpasc »

goatlover wrote: post #4
mdorazio wrote: post #2

Lots of assumptions baked in here. Chief among them is that renewables deployment will continue to be slower than new energy demand. If you look at the charts, this is pretty unlikely since the renewables trend is a consistent exponential increase year over year while the demand curve is very lumpy and mostly linear when averaged. Next is the assumption that renewables have to be deployed at grid scale, with the mate…

However, the developing locations have the much larger populations.

But as they are still developing (with less lock in/sunk costs) perhaps they will be able to avoid some really poor emissions pitfalls and move into renewables more easily when the economics make more sense

Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#13

Post by soperj »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #7

There's an interesting point here on the resource intensiveness of creating 'renewable' energy itself (ie. windmill costs). I share the authors concern here that doing the exact same thing we're doing now but handwave electric is not going to get us to where we're going to need to be. We need to be smarter about how we use energy and our resources and use less. For example shifting our entire automobile based transpo…

Even if people used electric bikes instead of electric cars, it's way more impactful on lowering CO2, and still creates a better land use proposition (ie: less need for parking, less need for roads, less traffic jams, things can be closer together which leads to less need to go as far for people who aren't using electric bikes)

Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#14

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

mdorazio wrote: post #10
irq11 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not the demand curve. That’s the increase in demand curve. The increase in fossil fuel demand, however “lumpy”, is more than current total renewable output. (Who is downvoting? this is a statement of fact, from the article.)

Good point, but I don't see why that matters. Exponential output increase will overcome linear demand increase in pretty short order.

If it is exponential. There are a lot of curves that look exponential at the base of the curve and then turns out not to be exponential

Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#16

Post by cm2187 »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #8
saagarjha wrote: post #3

> The modern world is deeply addicted to fossil fuels and green energy is no substitute. Am I wrong? Maybe not, but what would you suggest we do otherwise?

Click to the next article: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-Realis...

...where he effectively advocates to curb economic and population growth. Even if it was desirable, which it is not, it is never going to happen.

For the sort of order of magnitude of decarbonisation that is required to meet the climate change requirement, not only to provide the current energy but future growth too, there isn't really any realistic solution other than nuclear energy.

Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#17

Post by duahncjak »

I think solutions to climate change that require global coordination are doomed to failure. When things start getting rough it’s going to be some entity independently pursuing a geoengineering solution, with whatever risk that entails. It’s not the best approach, but it’s something that someone can impose on the whole world without conquering them and shutting down their coal plans.

Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#18

Post by chrisco255 »

When the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation flip negative, and the deep, multi-decade solar minimum we are about to enter kicks in (it already has begun), we will see temps lower globally (and especially in the northern hemisphere). But of course, with this, we will be dealing with a set of problems much more difficult than warming. Warming is good for crops and humanity. Cold temperatures, shortened growing seasons, and the like are much more difficult to deal with.

Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#19

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

We are going to need technology that will pull CO2 from the atmosphere. Yes, doing that is very energy intensive, but we have tech like nuclear power that could power such a process.

People want to have their lifestyle and telling people in developing countries that they can never have the Western lifestyle and telling people in developed countries that they have to reduce their lifestyle are simply untenable politically.

We should be focusing on climate change mitigation.

Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist

#20

Post by [deleted] »

mdorazio wrote: post #2

Lots of assumptions baked in here. Chief among them is that renewables deployment will continue to be slower than new energy demand. If you look at the charts, this is pretty unlikely since the renewables trend is a consistent exponential increase year over year while the demand curve is very lumpy and mostly linear when averaged. Next is the assumption that renewables have to be deployed at grid scale, with the mate…

[deleted]
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