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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

#231

Post by dredmorbius »

yters wrote: post #227
dredmorbius wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wars lead to even greater population reduction. However, once one baby sneaks past the birth control, then you have to start all over again with that new person to teach them to not create yet more babies. War and vengeance is a viral population reduction method.

Disease and famine are historically far more effective.

In the 20th century, the Spanish Influenza Pandemic killed more people than WWI. And WWII. Combined.

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

#232

Post by dredmorbius »

carapace wrote: post #226
dredmorbius wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"RFC'ing"?

Sorry, "Request for Comments": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments

Right, that was a chief possible match, though a somewhat odd comparison in my opinion.

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

#233

Post by dredmorbius »

KG_5 wrote: post #138

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA

That's actually a really good presentation.

Adding a title and description would have helped tremendously though.

Paraphrasing lightly from the intro:

"I decided to talk on something which is not generally studied, the link between economics and physics. The conclusion I will lead you to is that when you put physics in economics, you end up with results which are not easy to sell in an election.... The UN tells us that we can have everything at once in their development goals.... The short answer is no, we can't, so we can all go out and have a beer."

1h28m runtime. Hold that beer.

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

#234

Post by AstralStorm »

ggm wrote: post #172
xyzzyz wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't seem to understand either pumped-hydro, No, you don't seem to understand pumped-hydro. The largest pumped-hydro plant in the US, the Bath County Pumped Storage Station, can store enough energy to satisfy US energy use for 250 milliseconds. Yes, milliseconds . Suppose you want to have enough pumped-hydro to store US energy use for, say, 1 hour. There are 3600 seconds in an hour. You need ~15 000 pumped hyd…

Lets just review. You continue to ignore that there is no single weather system US continent wide, demanding an ability to simultaneously manage electricity supply from storage in one instance. You insist I "do the math" but your premises has twice to your own admission had fundamental flaws in the source data and in the maths. You really want me to "put up my numbers" ? I think you're trolling. There is no compellin…

There is no US wide electrical network that can actually survive big failures, much less one that would allow reliably sending power from renewables across the continent.

These actually are insurmountable problems. Even just taking the time to deploy the required capacity wiggle allowing a generous 5% compound speed scaling gets us to required capacity in 50 years of constantly building renewables. For just the USA. And this ignores the expansion of the grid, attempts to actually secure best land for the deployments and so on.

A great solar system has peak 300 W/m^2 efficiency or thereabouts. You need 1400 W per capita on average, which means with generous 140 W/m^2 about 10m^2 of solar power per person plus support wiring and storage. Wind requires 20+m height and big rotors to match this average, making it require some 100 m^2 per. Neither completely infeasible, but the millions of square km to cover should show the magnitude of the task.

Hardcore California plans envision 60% renewable at 2030. This means at increased growth rate of still 2 billion tons. Essentially at the high endgrowth of renewables the 20 years would match last 10.

Conservative climate predictions at this level of CO2 equivalent give over 5 C increase!

It is too slow. Way too slow.

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

#235

Post by yters »

dredmorbius wrote: post #231
yters wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars lead to even greater population reduction. However, once one baby sneaks past the birth control, then you have to start all over again with that new person to teach them to not create yet more babies. War and vengeance is a viral population reduction method.

Disease and famine are historically far more effective. In the 20th century, the Spanish Influenza Pandemic killed more people than WWI. And WWII. Combined.

Literally viral population reduction.

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

#236

Post by harryh »

0xffff2 wrote: post #228
harryh wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your personal values are eccentric and not representative of the norm.

I'll grant you that. I don't think it changes the argument at all . The government should not treat any right specially compared to any other, and it's the long standing practice of the government to regulate and place limits on rights.

The government should not treat any right specially compared to any other

Of course it should. Taking off my shoes when I go through airport security is a pain in the ass but, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively minor inconvenience.

Telling me that I'm not allowed to have a child is a fundamental restriction on my humanity.

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

#237

Post by lcall »

The events around climate change have been predicted in the scriptures for a long time (ice melting, storms, quakes, waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds, fires/smoke, and other significant catastrophic events--not just the usual levels of them). We need not be surprised, but we really can be OK.

I do appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. It seems to me we are not competent enough to solve such things when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.

(More details on these thoughts at http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html , a simple site w/o javascript).

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

#238

Post by dredmorbius »

yters wrote: post #235
dredmorbius wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disease and famine are historically far more effective. In the 20th century, the Spanish Influenza Pandemic killed more people than WWI. And WWII. Combined.

Literally viral population reduction.

If you're interested in the topic, I strongly recommend Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome, discussing co-evolution of urbanisation, extended trade and commerce networks, and epidemic disease.

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

#239

Post by imtringued »

cm2187 wrote: post #16
Tiktaalik wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Click to the next article: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-Realis...

...where he effectively advocates to curb economic and population growth. Even if it was desirable, which it is not, it is never going to happen. For the sort of order of magnitude of decarbonisation that is required to meet the climate change requirement, not only to provide the current energy but future growth too, there isn't really any realistic solution other than nuclear energy.

Actually this is a very generous interpretation. If people aren't willing to compromise and instead simply accept the death of their offspring then the outcome will eventually be the death of their offspring.

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

#240

Post by dwd »

dredmorbius wrote: post #211
dwd wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there are no realists in a position to really affect Government investment. Why is every nation not committing an investment on the scale of the Apollo/Manhattan Projects? Politically it should be sell-able as a near-term investment (jobs) and future prosperity (cheaper renewable energy). Governments should be putting billions into fusion, wave/tidal generation (nothing should be too expensive), upgradi…

Funding aside, the Manhattan & Apollo projects were (by comparison) simple, with clear objectives, and a compelling rationalisation. Manhattan needed to build a vialbe, air-transportable, nuclear bomb. It arrived at two independent designs, both effective to task, and succeeded in assimilating materials for at least several more weapons (on the order of 6 IIRC), over the course of WWII. The rationalisation was both d…

Sorry, but ITER is far from a "total system"; just a proof of concept for controlling the plasma for a short period of time. They're not even going to convert the heat to electricity. The more you read about it, it's quite disheartening as far as how low they've set the bar for success, and how much work there will still need to be done after that. It's no "moonshot".

http://www.jt60sa.org/b/FAQ/EE2.htm

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