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

thetyee.ca

51–60 of 241 posts

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

#51

"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…

Humanity will end some day.

FYI before we were born we didn’t have much say in the shape of the world and then were shaped to agree with it.

That’s how it works.

If such a social policy does come into effect we’ll be long dead and have no say. Not so much a thing to worry about.

Our concern on Earth is our own behavior, and I don’t mean to come off as pious, but we have no control over 50 years from except by changing our behavior now.

Write ups like this, proposing entirely untenable political positions are worth as much East German currency, and unlike East German currency, broadly distributed making any individual one repetitive.

Life is the leading cause of death. It ends badly for all us :shrug:

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

#52
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> To store 3 days worth of current US energy use, There is absolutely no need, of any kind, to store 3 days of US energy use. It's a complete strawman.

So where do we get energy from in case we get a windless week in winter, if not fossil fuels or nuclear?

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

#54
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably just family planning. Nobody needs to die to save the earth, well, not execution at least

Family planning how? Who will decide who can have children and who can't? Governments? A global one child policy? That's insane

Is it insane to alter social norms to save the species as a whole or let people drive it off the cliff by treating a uterus like a clown car?

We’re so far away from having to debate this as realistic thing politically right now, the discourse is an exercise in fear mongering.

Plenty to be freaked out about before next month is passed.

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

#55
post #37
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…

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.…

What you've just demonstrated is that it is feasible if we devote 10% of our resources to it.

Humans have run civilisations with 80% of the effort dedicated to gathering agricultural produce. 10% devoted to energy storage is workable. I don't like the idea but it is clearly doable.

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

#56
point 11 on part 2: a smooth transition of the global population to 2-3B.

Over how long a time-frame does Dr.Rees expect this to happen? Thanos only killed half the population. Mao only starved ~40M/50M.

He has no imagination for what could be with all the will and imagination of a generation faced with dire results and instead draws bleak resolutions that sound like the aftermath of a WW3.

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

#57
post #55
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

What you've just demonstrated is that it is feasible if we devote 10% of our resources to it. Humans have run civilisations with 80% of the effort dedicated to gathering agricultural produce. 10% devoted to energy storage is workable. I don't like the idea but it is clearly doable.

It is doable, but clearly makes no sense when we can just build nuclear plants instead for tenth of the price.

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

#58

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 politic…

Then support Andrew Yang, who, I believe, recognizes this as an important element to fighting climate change.

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

#59
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To store 3 days worth of current US energy use, There is absolutely no need, of any kind, to store 3 days of US energy use. It's a complete strawman.

So where do we get energy from in case we get a windless week in winter, if not fossil fuels or nuclear?

The wind is always blowing somewhere.
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