121–130 of 160 posts
As an insurance policy, where would be the best places to live or buy land now given forecasted trends? I’m primarily thinking of the US, but interested any idea (well, maybe not Siberia…)
There's been lots of people in the past suggesting that Canada would be a good place to be in as the planet warmed. NOPE!
I've been in that part of BC where the fires are happening. It's the dry region beyond the Rocky Mountains. Clouds coming in from the Pacific Ocean rain themselves out when the wind forces them rise above the mountains. So the other side of the mountains range gets very little rain. Grass is dried yellow in the summer. Easy for fires to start.
You mean the coastal mountains, right? Beyond the Rockies is Alberta. Generally the grass goes yellow here in the summer, even right on the coastline in Vancouver Island and up the sunshine coast.
As an insurance policy, where would be the best places to live or buy land now given forecasted trends? I’m primarily thinking of the US, but interested any idea (well, maybe not Siberia…)
Ultimately, anywhere that is relatively wet and/or not located in a forest is probably decently safe from forest fires. In terms of safety from heat waves, there are a few good hedges: a very well insulated house, ideally with some sort of reflective roof. A backup battery system that allows you to run independently in the case of a grid failure. Solar panels that work when the grid is off, which have excess capacity…
It didn't get much publicity, but last weekend there was an F4 tornado that destroyed a number of villages in the Czech Republic:
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Go further. How many batteries would it take to supply stable energy for the entire/majority of U.S. grids (and how long will those panels/batteries last)? How much energy will be produced relative to the number of solar panels that need to be installed? Is land conservation taken out of the equation in favor of panel installation? This line of questioning was my "mind blow." It turns out, there are technological sol…
Everything humans build is accused of being an "aesthetic nightmare". Houses, roads, farms, feed lots, cities, etc. This is not a good argument against building important infrastructure.
Don't forget about the turtles, too: https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/environm...
It's not a question of morality, but of mathematics. Can we sustainably and consistently produce enough energy using those methods long-term?
If the answer is "no," fooling ourselves into believing it's "yes" for the sake of ego/emotional pacification is setting us up for failure. I do believe the answer may be yes eventually, but on the current doomer timeline (always shifting but afaik the current doomsday is in ~12 years), the answer will remain "no."
Edit: rough solar panel efficiency stats https://archive.ph/Vh1Qj
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Ultimately, anywhere that is relatively wet and/or not located in a forest is probably decently safe from forest fires. In terms of safety from heat waves, there are a few good hedges: a very well insulated house, ideally with some sort of reflective roof. A backup battery system that allows you to run independently in the case of a grid failure. Solar panels that work when the grid is off, which have excess capacity…
I think it's worth remembering that climate change isn't just heat waves. The same will also protect you well from cold spells, but you should build a home that fairs well with other extreme weather too. It didn't get much publicity, but last weekend there was an F4 tornado that destroyed a number of villages in the Czech Republic: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57605651
For one, the population of all of B.C. is just a smidge over 5 million, or less than the SF Bay Area, which can strain emergency response and stability services if the active personnel is low to begin with.
Secondly, B.C. is much less developed inland than the other west coast states, so many fires will be difficult if not impossible to reach by anything but air travel.
Also, B.C. is HUGE, larger than the west coast states combined. Lot of ground to cover, lot of fuel for the fires.
Canada doesn’t have a lot of great options here. Building infrastructure to respond to events would be prohibitively expensive, given the land area to cover.
The least good option may likely be clear cuts on a massive scale to prevent fires from spreading too much. Current environmental legislation reflects the mood of places like California, where a knee jerk reaction to previous eras of logging has resulted in a “let it grow” mentality, which looks good on paper but only makes more fuel as far as the next fire is concerned. That being said, the costs may end up outweighing the benefits and Canada may end up finding ways to export an awful lot of lumber in the coming years.
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Meanwhile some EU nations are opposing the classification of nuclear energy as green for ESG purposes.. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-four-others-...
This is even more hilarious: Germany oppose nuclear, which is the greenest energy source in terme of emissions, but managed to get funding to use "green" gas: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_...
Nuclear is very slow to (up|down)cycle. It's very good at putting out a constant rate of power. Pretty cheap power, once it's operational and when conviently ignoring all externalities. However, having boatloads of cheap nuclear on the grid, means that there isn't much room for renewables at the same time. Which means they're often seen as a poor investment. Which means not much capacity gets added. You get the idea.
What the greens want, is as much renewables on the grid as possible, as quickly as possible. You can't use nuclear as backup for intermittent renewables (clouds, lack of wind, etc) because it's too slow. That's why the gas peaker plants are a thing.
Is this an ideal situation? No, of course not. Everything about the energy mix on the grid is a compromise. But it's slowly moving towards a situation where renewables become an attractive investment, which will hopefully lead to more green power.
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Not OP, but I can address this. Leading by example does not compel anyone to act, it works the same way that nuclear treaties do not reduce nuclear arms. But we still have treaties and we have had no nuclear war in the last 70 years. Leading by example is necessary but not sufficient for carbon reduction. But it removes accusations of hypocrisy when talking about solutions, which makes discussions much more productiv…
> China does have climate policy and it’s and issue that they do not ignore. They plant trees at the interface of deserts to prevent their expansion, they produce 80% of the worlds solar panels. China is the world's leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over double the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. Sounds like you are avoiding the core question su…
Do you want to be the person to tell 1 billion Chinese that, no, they can't buy a fridge?
China and India aren't vomiting greenhouse gases just to screw the rest of the world. They're doing it to feed their people and enable them to live their lives.
As an insurance policy, where would be the best places to live or buy land now given forecasted trends? I’m primarily thinking of the US, but interested any idea (well, maybe not Siberia…)
Germany. Seriously, I don't know of any other country with such a combination of industry, education, social security, and absence of natural disasters as well as poisonous animals.
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Not OP, but I can address this. Leading by example does not compel anyone to act, it works the same way that nuclear treaties do not reduce nuclear arms. But we still have treaties and we have had no nuclear war in the last 70 years. Leading by example is necessary but not sufficient for carbon reduction. But it removes accusations of hypocrisy when talking about solutions, which makes discussions much more productiv…
> China does have climate policy and it’s and issue that they do not ignore. They plant trees at the interface of deserts to prevent their expansion, they produce 80% of the worlds solar panels. China is the world's leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over double the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. Sounds like you are avoiding the core question su…
Fine, I'll bite. Presume for a second that the partitioning of India didn't end with Pakistan and Bangladesh, but that the entire sub-continent split into 15 odd countries each with the population of Mexico.
Would you still be demanding that just these 15 countries carry the disproportionate burden of solving climate change?
You wouldn't, because is would be painfully, obviously dumb to ignore other similar sized groups of countries (Europe, SE asia, etc.)
India and China obviously emit more, because they are - uniquely - single countries with continent sized populations.
They don't suddenly earn some moral burden for that in an atmosphere that is without borders.