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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

#131

Post by seanwilson »

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 are going to need technology that will pull CO2 from the atmosphere. Yes, doing that is very energy intensive

Wouldn't you need even more energy to pull it in that it took to release it? So to undo 10 years worth of global emissions, you'd need more energy than was generated worldwide over those 10 years? Sounds impossible.

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

#132

Post by Invictus0 »

ronilan wrote: post #85
tpolzer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many people live on this planet is not a matter of personal preference. Neither individual nor collective. I thought that was obvious.

There are multiple people alive today that could decrease the global population by hundreds of millions without having to even put their shoes on.

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by marmada »

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.

Why is that scary? If the rules are applied impartially, I don't see an issue.

The need to save the planet is more important than a person's desire to have kids.

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

#136

Post by noobermin »

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.

A little dismissive when you have a whole article here making the other argument.

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

#139

Post by Sanzig »

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....

Nothing is entirely safe. The fact is, even accounting for Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear energy is one of the safest ways to generate power we know of on a deaths-per-TWh metric: https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy

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

#140

Post by rhino369 »

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?

>This worldview implies abandoning all coastal cities and several entire countries, correct?

Over hundreds of years, yes. Some of the biggest cities in the world didn't exist 200 years ago or were small villages.

I lived on land that was under Lake Michigan 100 years ago.

It'll change the world for sure, but that won't kill us off. The change is too slow.

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