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Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

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Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#851

Post by xkjkls »

h1fra wrote: post #821
merpnderp wrote: post #720

If anyone actually believed it was "code red for humanity" they'd be pushing nuclear power. There is zero chance of moving off carbon energy sources without causing catastrophic mayhem, unless we use massive amounts of nuclear. For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind ca…

While I agree Nuclear is the most probable solution it's not easy to build and fuel is very sparse. France who is leading the way is 100% depend on other countries, I'm not sure it will play well in the coming years > 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. And the second issue is to focus on electricity production, while there is a ton a other things cr…

Third is the political problem. The international community has some tight limitations on who can refine Uranium. That's reasonable in a lot of ways as an effort to limit nuclear proliferation, but countries don't exactly like being put in the position that they can produce nuclear energy but only if 100% of their supply chain is outsourced to current Western powers.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#852

Post by xkjkls »

habosa wrote: post #621

Just. Tax. It. We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let's use the same systems to fix this (or at least slow things down). As an individual my largest carbon impact is air travel. I like to go places, it's one of the main things I work to afford. Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon em…

Taxing it is still pretty hard to do. It's often hard to know exact emissions or what to test. I agree its probably an easier solution, but the accounting of "who is actually producing the carbon" is incredibly complicated, and will become more incredibly complicated as soon as literally billions of dollars are at stake.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#853

Post by xkjkls »

ip26 wrote: post #833
3pt14159 wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying this for years, but I finally get why "Just. Tax. It." doesn't work. The voters. They turn out in droves when it comes to taxes on something as visible as the price they pay at the pump or when it comes to the oil patch in Alberta. It's politically easier to create import duties or to go into debt and subsidize things. The level of taxation we need to stop a complete catastrophe is higher than people…

It seems like you could make it popular with a carbon dividend to every citizen. If you use less carbon than average, by god you make money ! But most times the tax is proposed, special interests on the left insist the revenue must be spent on & sink the whole effort.

lol the nba lottery tax but for carbon

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#854

Post by godshatter »

nosianu wrote: post #201
rich_sasha wrote: post #170

It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc). For that if for no other reason, I’d rather if consumer prices included an explicit CO2 tax. The here can be a rebate for poorer people, or personal allowance, whatever, but there would be a fixed yardstic…

> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production Not really. For some reason the actually quite simple problem is needlessly complicated in the discussions. Stop digging up ANY carbon from below ground where it was safely buried. Any carbon above ground is part of the cycle that includes atmospheric CO2. You need huge effort to change how much of it is in CO2 form at any time while still ha…

OK, stop digging up any carbon from below ground, but let's do it slowly. Turn off all the oil extractors and coal mining equipment tomorrow and I'm guessing we'd have at best a month before chaos erupts in the streets. One ransomware attack caused panic buying and chaos on the east coast for a few days. I'd argue that we need some oil production, for plastic if nothing else. But on a much smaller scale than how we use it now.

You'd have to get this done globally, though. It doesn't matter if one country stops if others double down. It would be best to be done in concert with the other oil extracting countries so that prices wouldn't destabilize. This is probably what climate agreements should target rather than reducing consumption.

Oil isn't extracted from the ground because people like it's color or something, it's what runs our industrial civilization presently. And I don't want to start looking for a piece of land in the mountains tomorrow that I can defend and start ammo-ing up because we suddenly decided oil wasn't going to be extracted anymore :)

I do like the idea of looking at the problem at it's source, quite literally. Turn that tap off in a way that doesn't cause massive instability and the carbon in the atmosphere will eventually take care of itself. It's a perspective I never thought to look at the problem from. Not sure why, it seems obvious in retrospect.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#855

Post by slashdev »

merpnderp wrote: post #720

If anyone actually believed it was "code red for humanity" they'd be pushing nuclear power. There is zero chance of moving off carbon energy sources without causing catastrophic mayhem, unless we use massive amounts of nuclear. For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind ca…

To me this makes so much sense. But when you look at the costs involved it's far cheaper and less risky to deploy 2x in renewables and a bunch of energy storage plus some gas plants and long distance transmission.

New innovations in nuclear maybe have a chance to change this, but renewables are still getting cheaper so even if they succeed they must still beat the moving target.

In another world where we had embraced nuclear long ago and kept innovating it would have made so much sense. It still will be a part of the solution, but the economics really aren't there and the private sector isn't dumb. Markets will allocate capital according to risks and returns and nuclear will continue to be overlooked until it can compete.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#856

Post by Ajedi32 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #641
habosa wrote: post #621

Just. Tax. It. We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let's use the same systems to fix this (or at least slow things down). As an individual my largest carbon impact is air travel. I like to go places, it's one of the main things I work to afford. Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon em…

I've been saying this for years, but I finally get why "Just. Tax. It." doesn't work. The voters. They turn out in droves when it comes to taxes on something as visible as the price they pay at the pump or when it comes to the oil patch in Alberta. It's politically easier to create import duties or to go into debt and subsidize things. The level of taxation we need to stop a complete catastrophe is higher than people…

That's a fundamental problem with any regulatory measure intended to reduce carbon emissions. Cheap energy is good for the economy. Fossil fuels are cheap. Any attempt to reduce the use of fossil fuels is going to hurt voters in the short term no matter how you package it.

Sure, you can try to be sneaky about it, implementing policies that only indirectly impact fossil fuels and hoping the voters don't notice you're the one to blame for the rising price of energy. Or you can be honest, bite the bullet, and try to convince the public a carbon tax is necessary to avoid something even worse down the line. Either way you're fighting an uphill battle.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#857

Post by drusepth »

whymauri wrote: post #824
bradleyjg wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ordinary people are tasked with saving the planet I can’t read minds, but my sense is that much of what individuals are asked to do is knowingly conservation theater. If you want to put a positive spin on that, you can say it makes them feel more committed to supporting the regulatory changes necessary by building a sense of shared sacrifice. The cynical version writes itself.

My house recently started vigorously composting. I can't help but wonder how many centuries of daily composting we would need to offset the climate impact of the plastic composting bin, composable bags, and composting infrastructure. Feels good, but no impact. Sigh.

Yeah, I don't know if it's true (which is a separate problem in itself!), but I was always taught in school _not_ to recycle because the infrastructure around consumer recycling (outside of large cities) did significantly more harm than good.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#858

Post by menesss »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #279
rich_sasha wrote: post #170

It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc). For that if for no other reason, I’d rather if consumer prices included an explicit CO2 tax. The here can be a rebate for poorer people, or personal allowance, whatever, but there would be a fixed yardstic…

The most impactful thing you can do as an individual is devote yourself to improving clean energy resources and carbon sequestration technologies. If you're here there's a good chance you have the ability to help engineer these techs. That's going have way, way more impact than riding your bicycle.

Do you have any suggestions on how to get started on this?

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#859

Post by ihuk »

beachy wrote: post #813
ihuk wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would that money go though? Do you honestly believe that given enough money politicians can come up with a viable solution for climate change? Mind you those are the same people who want to end privacy on the Internet[1]. Same people who came up with European Union’s biofuel mandate which caused deforestation of Indonesia for palm-oil plantations. Across the pond, it's the same people that subsidized ethanol fu…

> Where would that money go though? It doesn't really matter. Even if the tax revenue was piled up and set on fire, the planet would still be better off for it

I might be too cynical but what's most likely to happen is that corporations will find a way to avoid paying the tax and it will hurt people who struggle the most already.

For example, in EU car manufacturers have to keep average CO2 emissions of new car sales below 95 g/km. VW buys a large amount (I believe it was around 37%) of their ID.3 electric car to reduce the average emissions of their newly sold cars.

So what you suggest is we take money from poor people and burn it. I fail to see how that will help.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#860

Post by dakna »

voldacar wrote: post #848
ptkd wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this take a lot, and it’s kind of misinformed. The primary drawbacks of nuclear are: 1) incredible slow to build. A typical plant takes ~20 years from decision to productionized 2) extremely expensive, with a massively frontloaded cost. By contrast, solar and wind are fast to install and now cheaper. > wind power can be zero at some parts of the day There are a few solutions to this actually. First, having a mo…

>A typical plant takes ~20 years from decision to productionized If this were truly "code red" and people really believed that, we would find a way to push the bureaucrats out of the way and build nuclear capacity way sooner than 20 yrs. Humans can do amazing things under dire stress. This is not happening, so I will assume "code red" is hyperbole, something that the IPCC is not entirely known to shun.

> people really believed that

> we would find a way to

In this case "people" and "we" just doesn't refer to the same cohort.

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