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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

#201

Post by cm2187 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #159
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A week's supply of biofuels, given our current energy use of 101 quadrillion BTU/year, and assuming 100% efficiency, is 2 quadrillion BTU. At the peak of our production, we produced around 0.2 quadrillion BTU worth of biodiesel. This means that a week's supply of biofuels is around 10 years of production. We produce around ten times as many gallons of ethanol as biodiesel. It has about half as many BTUs, which impl…

> Because we do whatever costs less. Nuclear plants are expensive. On the other hand, so is storage. It's not actually clear which one is going to cost less in the long term, Right. It's really worth asking why exactly nuclear plants are so expensive to build, and why they were so much cheaper in the past. The plants that French built in the 70s and 80s were produce much cheaper electricity than fossils and renewable…

My understanding from listening to conferences and podcasts is that it is a combination of a lack of mass production (every new reactor is rare and apart, France had economies of scale by building the same design all over the country), unnecessarily tight and ever changing regulations (having to change a design in the middle of construction is always going to derail a project) and lack of private financing (given the upfront nature of the investment with no positive cash flow for 10 years).

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

#202

Post by cm2187 »

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.

Tell that to someone stuck in a lift because of a power cut 1000km from where it blows.

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

#203

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

Humans will adapt because we have no choice.

Argumentum ad consequentiam.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...

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

#204

Post by dredmorbius »

tiborsaas wrote: post #84

He forgot one alternative besides fission: fusion! And I'm not talking about Iter, that's probably still decades away, but much smaller sized portable fusion generators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion... The smaller scale might simplify things. Borrowing from the analogy in the article, fusion is a magnetic field management problem.

Bets based on advanced technology not presently in at least the practical demonstration phase are ... highly unlikely.

Fortunately in the case of solar, we're already in the active commercial use phase, and there is a long-term declining cost trend. Whether that's sufficient remains to be seen, but it's promising.

Nuclear has tended to become more expensive over time, as consequences of utilisation become more apparent.

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

#205

Post by dredmorbius »

Invictus0 wrote: post #118
journalctl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Condoms are cheaper than bullets.

Ignoring the ridiculous notion of killing people to stop population growth, that isn't true at all, especially if you consider that it takes one bullet to kill someone and thousands of condoms to prevent the birth of a child.

Bullets carry significant externalities.

How many of today's regional conflicts can be traced back to mass atrocities?

Birth control doesn't create survivors perpetuating rage based on past martyrs. Even if the immediate efficacy approaches your suggested value. In truth, it's almost certainly closer to 100s.

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

#206

Post by gxon »

cyrksoft wrote: post #36
casefields wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So is the possible catastrophic collapse of civilization.

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

#207

Post by AstralStorm »

ofrzeta wrote: post #188
Scaevolus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hydropower is actually not so nice when you take into account that it's the reason that many fish species are on the brink of extinction. That's in Europe at least but it seems that it's also a problem in the US, see https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvm7vq/power-plants-are-b...

It will also start to have problems as temperature further increases, requiring fully closed storage systems rather than current use of rivers and aquifers.

That changes economics a lot.

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

#208

Post by AstralStorm »

40four wrote: post #168
greglindahl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The article directly addressed this point & why it is a wash, at best. New demand every year is at parity or maybe outpacing the new production of wind & solar. Not to mention the huge amounts of glass, plastic, concrete (which by the way, we are apporoaching a shortage of suitable sand for making it), and rare earth metals required to build wind & solar infrastructure. Dont get me wrong, I'm with you. I want to beat…

It's fixable by concentrated arcologies, central heating and further electric plus hub and spoke transit and transport systems.

But social change for energy efficiency is slow. Especially if you cannot convince the majority that it matters. Not easy to fix air travel either.

Metals, glass and concrete are easy enough to make (the shortages of sand are mostly driven by economics of mining and not availability), the rare earths and batteries are the hard part.

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

#209

Post by dredmorbius »

tptacek wrote: post #182
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 think at the point where we're reading straight-faced advocacy of the One-Child Policy we've left the realm of curiosity-driven discussion and mired ourselves in provocation for its own sake. That's no good, and we shouldn't be taking comments like that seriously.

OCPF has had painfully apparent personal and social consequences. But we're also not seeing what the alternative would have led to.

If China's population had continued growing at the rates seen ~1962 - 1968, then eyeballing, its present population would be on the order of 1.8 billion, some 300 million greater than today. Whether or not that would be sustainable, or whether it would have resulted in events that would make the Great Chinese Famine or various 20th century Chinese political disruptions look like a brief fast or student rally, we simply cannot say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#/media/File%3...

Regional (and global) population trends ~1955 - 1965 were terrifying, and reading contemporaneous analysis of the period is sobering. That's mostly associated with left-wing environmentalists now, but in fact was a largely mainstream view.

China's population growth rate fell. The present population of 1.43 billions is over twice that of the time of the Great Famine, and is well fed (though with significant food imports from the US and Africa). China's current food production practices pose a significant global epidemic threat as a reservoir and evolutionary pool for influenza. (Have you had your flu shot yet?)

It's not a system I've had to live with. There's some comparision looking at India, which has seen less effective population control practices. Though the total populations of both countries are now equivalent, India started with a much lower population.

Via Wolfram Alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+china+vs...

Or 1950 - 2100 (projected): http://statisticstimes.com/population/image/world/india-chin...

Fertility rates: http://statisticstimes.com/population/image/world/india-chin...

The trade-offs and choices are not easy. A challenge as you approach environmental limits (or any other constraints) is that your options become increasingly few.

Or, as a corollary, if you want to preserve freedoms, stay well inside your possiblity frontiers.

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

#210

Post by tiborsaas »

dredmorbius wrote: post #204
tiborsaas wrote: post #84

He forgot one alternative besides fission: fusion! And I'm not talking about Iter, that's probably still decades away, but much smaller sized portable fusion generators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion... The smaller scale might simplify things. Borrowing from the analogy in the article, fusion is a magnetic field management problem.

Bets based on advanced technology not presently in at least the practical demonstration phase are ... highly unlikely. Fortunately in the case of solar, we're already in the active commercial use phase, and there is a long-term declining cost trend. Whether that's sufficient remains to be seen, but it's promising. Nuclear has tended to become more expensive over time, as consequences of utilisation become more appare…

I agree that it's probably on the verge of Sci-fi, but one can dream :)

I'm not sure we should care about costs now. It sounds really lame on the long run to say to past generations that "we could have changed things, but it wasn't cost effective, anyways good luck rebooting the Golf stream and stuff"

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