A 3°C world has no safe place • Hacker News Board

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#181

Post by goatlover » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #61

noasaservice wrote: post #27

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics…

Apparently, a reasonably sustainable level of CO2 production is about 3T per person per year. The average in the US is about 17.5T pp/yr. But ... 5.3T pp/yr of that amount is caused by the existing coal fired power plants in the USA. So one thing you could do is to write to your elected representatives to specifically petition for the abandonment of this form of power generation and its replacement with renewable sys…

Nuclear could have already replaced coal by now. Renewables need a lot of battery storage and transmission to scale up to not relying on coal any longer, since a majority of it is relying on the sun and wind.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#182

Post by ianai » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #147

fallingknife wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't even have serious bicycle or transit prioritization in our major urban areas. We don't have any concern for reducing our meat consumption. We don't have any concern for alternatives to airlines. Sorry, but this stuff is a joke. Population control and non carbon based energy sources are the only things that can really make an impact.

Cool, the low hanging fruit is a joke. Let's do nothing then, how about that.

I appreciate your perspective. I’ve always thought climate change should be a higher priority. The amount of resources for the meat industry alone should be enough to make some changes. But oil has insular forces making it a real curse to progress.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#183

Post by gpt5 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:31 PM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #35

dataflow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly both of them are small, and I think citing the degrees is just terrible messaging altogether. I think people would gladly accept & adapt to even a 5°F increase; I know I would. The problem is that doesn't capture anything about the local variation (and impacts like hurricanes, fires, etc.), and that even beyond that, we're absolutely destroying everything about our planet as we know it, and a single-degree c…

Try to sit in a bath of 36°C. You can sit there for hours. Now switch to a bath of 38°C. After a while you'll be sweaty, sluggish, tired, breath harder etc. They have this at the St. Gellert baths in Budapest: https://afar-production.imgix.net/uploads/images/post_images...

That's not a good analogy. Water transfers heat 24 times as fast as air.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#184

Post by TigeriusKirk » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:31 PM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #49

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished…

A solution that does not provide for greater energy consumption per capita over time is not a solution. It was never going to work out any other way.

If you want to make a difference, clean energy is the path to follow. That, and carbon capture so we don't spend the rest of our lives in a worsening situation.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#185

Post by ianai » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #49

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished…

Where do you have in mind? Just anywhere north enough?

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#186

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

garblegarble wrote: post #150

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, a reasonably sustainable level of CO2 production is about 3T per person per year. The average in the US is about 17.5T pp/yr. But ... 5.3T pp/yr of that amount is caused by the existing coal fired power plants in the USA. So one thing you could do is to write to your elected representatives to specifically petition for the abandonment of this form of power generation and its replacement with renewable sys…

I don't think those figures are right - 5.3T/7.5T would mean 70% of CO2 in the US is caused by coal-fired power plants. According to the EPA data for 2019 [1], power generation accounted for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, and 62% of that was fossil fuels ("mostly coal and natural gas") - so that means fossil fuels for electricity accounted for 16% of the greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA report shows transportation…

Just edited it. I missed the 1 from the 17.

My source was

http://www.ecocivilization.info/three-tons-carbon-dioxide-pe...

which I think is from about 2017 (and has several citations at the end).

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#187

Post by scoofy » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

nwiswell wrote: post #178

scoofy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living more efficiently obviously saves money . The absurdities of what's happening is literally the Sierra Club opposing density in San Francisco. The environmentalist are literally opposing density across California . Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Marin County, under the banner of "preservation," we're going to destroy the climate. I just, i cannot believe this is happening. They same people who would hand wash…

> I just, i cannot believe this is happening. This isn't hard to understand. The Sierra Club is made up of legitimate environmentalists, but they also care about their organization and their livelihoods, and many of the major donors to the Sierra Club are property owners in San Francisco (or Marin, or LA). Property values are obviously negatively impacted by development / densification, and so to avoid alienating don…

> and complete symbolism without substance on the left.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#188

Post by elihu » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

noasaservice wrote: post #27

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics…

Transportation and energy production make up a majority of CO2 emissions in the U.S. and probably most industrialized countries. As an individual person, you can get rid of gas-burning cars (perhaps replace with an EV if you need a car) and put solar panels on your roof if that's an option.

At the state and national level, though, a lot more could be done. Ground transportation could be fully electrified. (I think the quickest way to get there is not to wait for battery technology to get better but rather just electrify the major freeways so that cars and trucks can charge while they're moving, and people won't need huge, heavy, expensive batteries to get anywhere.)

We could also expand solar and wind investments. To even out power production and consumption, we could finance the construction of intercontinental high-voltage DC lines, so we can buy solar power from the Sahara in the middle of the night and sell to Europe or wherever in the daytime.

We could invest in battery manufacturing. Most U.S. made electric vehicles are basically luxury supercars that use expensive batteries that require large amounts of nickel and cobalt. What we need to get away from burning gas is mass-production of lithium iron phosphate cells (or whatever technology that replaces it) which have somewhat lower energy density but use cheaper, more readily available raw materials and are much safer and much more durable. This is the kind of technology we need to make cheap cars for ordinary middle-class people with low environmental footprint.

For that matter, it would be great if EV tax credits applied to conversions as well as new vehicles. Hardly anyone converts vehicles now because it's expensive and high-effort, but if there was a simple kit to convert, say, a semi-recent Honda Civic to electric that can be installed easily by a mechanic and doesn't require any custom fabrication, maybe we'd have a lot more people going that route. Especially if it was subsidized to the point where the out-of-pocket expense is low.

More nuclear plants might be a good thing too, but it's not absolutely essential.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#189

Post by bellyfullofbac » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

wait_a_minute wrote: post #64

lmilcin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait for all migrants from places that will be becoming uninhabitable.

When is this projected to happen, realistically? 100 years from now?

Drought -> Farmers unable to farm in Syrian countryside -> they move to the cities to try to earn money -> social and political instability -> civil war -> European refugee crisis

Also, 2010 Russian forest fires[1] -> grain prices went up -> food prices went up -> hunger for the poor in Middle East -> Arab Spring (ah, remember when Twitter was saving the world?) -> European refugee crisis

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/world/europe/06russia.htm...

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#190

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

garblegarble wrote: post #150

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, a reasonably sustainable level of CO2 production is about 3T per person per year. The average in the US is about 17.5T pp/yr. But ... 5.3T pp/yr of that amount is caused by the existing coal fired power plants in the USA. So one thing you could do is to write to your elected representatives to specifically petition for the abandonment of this form of power generation and its replacement with renewable sys…

I don't think those figures are right - 5.3T/7.5T would mean 70% of CO2 in the US is caused by coal-fired power plants. According to the EPA data for 2019 [1], power generation accounted for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, and 62% of that was fossil fuels ("mostly coal and natural gas") - so that means fossil fuels for electricity accounted for 16% of the greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA report shows transportation…

> The EPA report shows transportation as the largest source, at 29%

The reason I'm so struck by the coal-fired electricity production numbers are that this seems VASTLY easier to fix than the transportation numbers. Even if the latter would have more impact, I think we're still a long way from being able to dramatically affect that, whereas ramping up renewable electricity generation and ramping down fossil fuels seems like a (relatively) simple challenge.