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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

#71

Post by journalctl »

cyrksoft wrote: post #45
toxik wrote: 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

Education and birth control go a long way. Millions of people still don’t have access to either of those things. Some people don’t even realize you don’t have to have kids if you don’t want to. Some people are forced into it over and over again.

If it ever gets to a point where perhaps more coercive measures are needed, it’s probably too late. But it will be interesting to see how the Overton window moves when there’s suddenly no food left...

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

#72

Post by tpolzer »

ronilan wrote: post #47

In part two is an 11 steps plan: 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. Another anti-humanist Malthusian loony. It’s probably the effect of Vancouver’s dump weather. Ignore.

It has nothing to do with being a "Malthusian loony".

Which of these do you prefer:

- >10 billion people living on this planet, depleting resources so that inequality levels will rise while total (real) wealth will decline.

- A lot less people than now living on this planet in a way that we can actually permanently get close to the current western standard of living for ~all of them.

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

#73

Post by graeme »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #19

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…

> We should be focusing on climate change mitigation.

I've never heard a convincing case for this that accepted that warming will keep going and going unless we stop emitting.

Mitigation in that event will be something like "abandon all historical coastal cities and keep building new port infrastructure every couple decades".

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

#74

Post by XorNot »

cyrksoft wrote: post #65
XorNot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the human population were limited to one-child per couple for a few decades, then everyone can have a family, and the population still declines. This is happening naturally in a lot of countries already: > According to projections of the population with the current fertility rate, over 65s will account for 40% of the population by 2060,[10][11] and the total population will fall by a third from 128 million in 2010…

I know population will decline, but not as a policy. If it happens naturally then it's perfectly ok. The fact that politicians get to decide how many kids or even if you can have kids is a scary thought.

People have the worst imagination.

Simply removing a tax break at child number 2 would have a substantial impact.

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

#75

Post by guelo »

smoll wrote: post #27
jandrewrogers wrote: post #22

The 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…

But necessity is the mother of invention, so we will probably invent a viable nuclear fission-based energy solution at the 11th hour, probably by someone who also helped cause the death of countless people through their earlier work[0]. I know this sounds absurdly far-fetched, but it’s pretty much par for the course for us humans. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber

The 11th hour came and went and we didn't notice because it takes decades for the planetary system to react to the pollution.

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

#76

Post by journalctl »

usrusr wrote: post #63
cyrksoft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But is cancer-like growth until host EOL less insane? A starting point would be to just stop treating big-family parents like heros. "You're not exactly doing me a favor by spreading your genes like that"

People hate to admit it, but having a child is the most carbon-intensive thing you can do. Unfortunately, it’s a tragedy of the commons. Enough people act in their own self-interest to the detriment of everyone. This is uncharted territory for humanity, and I’m afraid we’re not yet up to the task of tackling it. I mean, in a world with scarce food, water, and arable land, yeah, bringing another resource-intensive human being into it starts to have more immediate consequences. I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable. It’s going to be an issue whether we like it or not.

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

#77

Post by vkou »

greglindahl wrote: post #32
jandrewrogers wrote: post #22

The 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.

Solar and wind are scaling quickly. But do you know what is scaling even quicker?

Natural gas. The year-over-year growth in natural gas deployment is greater than the entire historic deployment of solar power. Let that sink in.

I'll be optimistic when the total fossil fuel footprint stops growing. Hell, I'll be optimistic when it stops growing exponentially. We aren't there. We aren't anywhere near there. We don't have the foggiest plan of how we will get there. Germany killed its coal power industry, and transitioned right into burning Russian natural gas.

And this is just in electrical generation. Electrical generation is only 20% of our overall energy usage. In order to transition the rest of our society to green energy, we'd have to triple our overall electricity production.

Solar and wind deployments aren't even able to keep up with increased demand in electricity growth. How you expect them to triple our overall electricity generation capacity anytime soon is beyond me.

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

#78

Post by journalctl »

yters wrote: post #39
cyrksoft wrote: post #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 a…

I propose all recommending population reduction lead by example starting with themselves.

Condoms are cheaper than bullets.

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

#79

Post by graeme »

julienb_sea wrote: post #42

The effects of climate change will play play out across many localized areas. Some will be dramatically more impacted than others. The impacts will require remediation solutions, some difficult and expensive. Millions will be displaced and affected, and complex engineering challenges will arise. This will not end humanity. The apocalypse is not coming. Humans will adapt because we have no choice. Engineering a soluti…

This worldview implies abandoning all coastal cities and several entire countries, correct? Sea level rise alone requires that, to say nothing of other effects.

And then there's higher wet bulb temperatures in heat waves. With enough warming, that should render a large chunk of the planet effectively uninhabitable without AC.

Do you accept these consequences when you make such claims?

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

#80

Post by heavyset_go »

eranimo wrote: post #59
xyzzyz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are the transmission power losses over large stretches of land?
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