He’s not wrong. If governments were to deliberately starve their economies of fossil fuels on the scale we need you’d see the same response as in Chile or France except much bigger and more violent- the government that does that, collapses within a fortnight.
Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
31–40 of 241 posts
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#32The crux of the matter is that we need to drive thermodynamics backward at planetary scale. This is a fancy way of saying that we need to increase electricity generation by an integer factor beyond current global demand without producing net CO2. The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this that don't rely on burning carbon is extremely short: nuclear fission. I don't see any possibility of the re…
> The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this
... solar and wind are scaling much better than every prediction, for many years now, yet somehow that's not good enough for the people who claim to be realists. Odd.
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#33When 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 tempe…
Appreciate the unpopular "opinion". The world oscillates. It has so for a long, long time. We should stop polluting not with some agenda to think we'll have an effect on global temperature, but to stop poisoning ourselves.
Daily reminder that CO2 is not a pollutant. And that its effects on "warming" are minuscule compared to the effects of plain water vapor.
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#34The crux of the matter is that we need to drive thermodynamics backward at planetary scale. This is a fancy way of saying that we need to increase electricity generation by an integer factor beyond current global demand without producing net CO2. The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this that don't rely on burning carbon is extremely short: nuclear fission. I don't see any possibility of the re…
> The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this ... solar and wind are scaling much better than every prediction, for many years now, yet somehow that's not good enough for the people who claim to be realists. Odd.
You still need baseload power plants, and the economics of battery-based storage plants aren't there yet.
Hydropower is a nice solution, but highly geography-dependent. China is attacking this problem by investing heavily in ultra-long-range HVDC power transmission from dams in the west to cities on the east.
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#35"11. A global population strategy to enable a smooth descent to the two to three billion that could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical means of nature."
Part 2: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-Realis...
This is highly disturbing. With the 11,000 scientist warning the other day they proposed something similar. I find it very worrying. Who will decide who lives? Or who has kids and a family? This will not end well...
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#36> 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?
His only specific measure is this: “A global population strategy to enable a smooth descent to the two to three billion that could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical means of nature.“ Same ‘ole Club of Rome, population control policies.
Highly disturbing.
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#37Lots 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…
This is also not true - solar + battery is a perfect use case for distributed deployment
This is simply not feasible. Do the math. To store 3 days worth of current US energy use, you need to build $50 trillion worth of batteries. If you assume that the battery installation lifetime is 20 years, and amortize it over that period, you’re looking at over 10% of US GDP spent just on building and installing the batteries. Seriously, do the math.
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Problem is, no one wants to pay for nuclear energy. The late T Boone Pickens saw the writing on the wall for carbon based energy, and he had his team of investment experts look around and experiment with different solutions for over a decade to see which solutions provided the best investment opportunities. In the end, even T Boone Pickens, one of the most notoriously ultra conservative men ever, was throwing nearly all of his new investment into wind farms.
Government needs to put its fingers on the scale until men and organizations with billions to invest can run the numbers on nuclear and have it be more profitable than slapping up windmills. We're not gonna entice the money guys we need to entice with opportunities that are less profitable, involve more tech risk, and have a longer time period to first revenue.
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#39"11. A global population strategy to enable a smooth descent to the two to three billion that could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical means of nature." Part 2: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-Realis... This is highly disturbing. With the 11,000 scientist warning the other day they proposed something similar. I find it very worrying. Who will decide who lives? Or who has kids a…
I propose all recommending population reduction lead by example starting with themselves.
Re: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
#40The crux of the matter is that we need to drive thermodynamics backward at planetary scale. This is a fancy way of saying that we need to increase electricity generation by an integer factor beyond current global demand without producing net CO2. The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this that don't rely on burning carbon is extremely short: nuclear fission. I don't see any possibility of the re…
> The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this ... solar and wind are scaling much better than every prediction, for many years now, yet somehow that's not good enough for the people who claim to be realists. Odd.
When it's sunny and windy. Thus far we don't have a large scale way to take sunny and windy day energy and store it for less sunny and windy days (or even to transfer it from sunny and windy locations across thousands of miles to non-sunny/windy places).
EDIT: I'd appreciate knowing where I'm wrong.