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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

#101

Post by julienb_sea »

graeme wrote: post #79
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?

Yes, my expectation is that we will build habitats which withstand sea level rise and temperature fluctuations, and abandon habitats which cannot be retrofitted to withstand present conditions.

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

#102

Post by EGreg »

NUCLEAR REACTORS will be needed soon to desalinate water. May as well learn to build them safely! Especially don’t make them giant targets for terrorists and hackers.

BUT ALSO we need to end factory farming and transition the vast majority of cars to electric. The main reason they are still locked exclusively into hydrocarbons is the massive subsidies the US government has given to fossil fuels. Otherwise we could have had great battery tech 30 years ago after Suez Crisis and OPEC would jolt markets awake and people would clamor for alternatives.

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

#103

Post by xyzzyz »

ggm wrote: post #67
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?

Have you actually found a confirmed reliable meteorology backed statement on a continent-wide, windless week? Compared to e.g. the current likelihood of catastrophic failure of parts of the net, Aurora effects on powerlines, Ice, Fire.. you're floating a strawman which has never been floated as a serious risk analysis: there isn't a single US distribution network, it is not a single integral thing, parts fail all the…

Of course it will provide some output. The issue here is that if you want the diminished power output in winter to cover the energy use in winter, you need to either store the summer energy in some way, or overbuild by adding additional generation capacity, so that in summer you have some good multiple generating capacity of what you actually need, especially if you account for transmission losses, which are 2/3rds of current electricity generation. The result is that the spot price of energy in summer will be extremely low, and so the capital costs of building solar panels will have to be recovered by selling winter energy, precisely when solar panels generate least power. This will push the cost of electricity from renewables through the roof: right now they are quite competitive, because they can sell it for good price in summer.

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

#104

Post by pdonis »

tpolzer wrote: post #72
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.

> Which of these do you prefer

Neither. You, like the author of these articles, left out the third choice:

- Continue to improve technology so it can continue to supply increasing real wealth with a smaller ecological footprint.

This has already been happening for pretty much the entire history of technology. The computers we are using to have this conversation consume orders of magnitude less power for orders of magnitude more computing operations than the ones people used to have similar conversations a couple of decades ago. The cars we drive are much more efficient and emit much less. The widespread availability of telecommunications and the Internet reduces the need for people to physically go somewhere in order to get something done.

People can adapt to change if they are given the tools.

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

#105

Post by yifanl »

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

I dont accept this line of thinking, we cant hand wave away hard problems just because we've solved hard problems in a pinch before.

This sounds like a tautology, but we solved hard problems by solving them, not by believing we'd solve them.

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

#106

Post by abathur »

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

It seems like you may be misinterpreting what "family planning" means.

"Family planning", as it's commonly understood, is an umbrella term for how normal, everyday people avoid having children when they don't want to have them.

When toxik responded to your question "Who will decide who lives? Or who has kids and a family?" with "Probably just family planning. Nobody needs to die to save the earth", they are suggesting that humans will continue to practice (as we have for millennia) techniques that reduce the number of unplanned children we have.

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

#107

Post by Franciscouzo »

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…

Providing free birth control to ALL people on earth would be a good start.

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

#108

Post by uoaei »

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…

Breaking ground today, a nuclear reactor will be operational after about 10 years.

In that time, other forms of energy generation (with no major lasting effects following catastrophic failure) and storage are getting cheaper, and if that happens at a sufficiently fast (e.g. half-life (heh) of price of a few years) than fission reactors will be priced out before they even start running.

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

#109

Post by vkou »

hanniabu wrote: post #93
juped wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fission is safe. Fission many decades ago.

Yes, entirely safe, that's why nobody is living in Chernobyl and they're using robots to enter Fukashima. Totally safe....

Hydro power generation has killed over a hundred thousand people, yet we are still building, and using hydro dams.

Nuclear is safe compared to the alternatives.

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

#110

Post by 8bitsrule »

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…

> we need to increase electricity generation by an integer factor

As in India, which is nearly finished building from ~ 40GW to 170GW of renewable energy. And you skip past the powers of conservation. We don't need more power, we need less CO2.

> capable of scaling ... nuclear fission

The CO2 problem needs to be addressed promptly, and efficiently. Renewables build -much- more quickly, and the immediate cost of hundreds of nukes would finance thousands of green installs. (Waste aside.) Sunlight and wind are the result of the Sun's NF ... it eats the waste problem.

> I don't see any possibility.

Oh it's possible. What you 'see' as irrational politics I see as just as rational as the CO2 evidence. And the rational response is to vote out all of those who stand in the way of prompt and efficient.

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