there is also a cool side effect: maybe the world domination game shifts from oil to innovation
Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
11–20 of 102 posts
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens when the budget runs out?
Shit goes south with no way to recover?
As far as I understand it, it not a binary "we are fucked" / "we are unfucked" if you are talking globally, or even large nations like the US, EU, Russia, China, etc.
It's a gradient. The more CO2, the warmer earth gets.
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#13I cannot upvote this enough. We have a strict budget left for carbon emissions. It's not an exam in the future that we are currently studying for to pass. But thinking in budget terms also means talking about budgeting/rationing but I guess it needs to become really bad before we even dare to touch that...
What happens when the budget runs out?
- No way back from spiraling climate change
- Positive feedback loops of melting ice -> lower albedo -> more energy absorbed from the sun -> more ice melts
- Unstoppable acidification of oceans and death of vasts amounts of sea life
- Disruption of thermohaline ocean currents, disrupting weather everywhere with little time for nature to adapt, leading to mass extinctions
- Areas where we currently grow most food will quickly become impossible to farm
Basically the point is that the "budget" is how much we can pump and still go back and fix.
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#14The main action advocated by the author here is to increase efficiency (in insulation, appliances, food production, transportation) as a means to curb CO2 emissions and slow climate change - all very important. Lately I've been reading Saul Griffith's book "Electrify" which proposes a different tack - "simply" electrify all energy usage and let people maintain their current lifestyles exactly. Interestingly, doing so would reduce total US energy consumption[0] to about half its current levels while still allowing big trucks and air conditioning and fun energy-intensive things. A lot of that energy reduction comes from a) the higher intrinsic efficiencies of electrical machines and generation compared to heat engines and b) no longer needing energy to run fossil fuel exploration, extraction, and refining processes.
Griffith is also careful to note that climate solutions are "yes ands", so we should increase efficiencies as much as we can in addition to electrifying as much as we can (and also pursuing ambitious strategies like fusion and CCS). Definitely make a great case of rolling out existing solutions like solar and wind in a big way to bring down carbon emissions really quickly.
[0] - the book focuses only on the US, but results could be similar in countries with similar economies.
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#15Yes there are a lot of ways to reduced emissions. We should also do now the ones that are already available right now (like home insulation).
On the same line though decommissioning nuclear plants in Europe was always a bad move. Italy abandoned nuclear with a referendum 1987 just after Chernobyll and again voted against nuclear in 2011. Italy then buys nuclear energy from France and gas from Russia. This is just putting the head in sand and moving the problems out of sight. Germany is/was about to make the same mistake. Nuclear is a far from perfect solution available now which is beeing replaced for the hope of a much better solution much later on. We are not sure we'll get the much better solutions down the line. We should make all the green(ish) bets we can.
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shit goes south with no way to recover?
As far as I understand it, it not a binary "we are fucked" / "we are unfucked" if you are talking globally, or even large nations like the US, EU, Russia, China, etc. It's a gradient. The more CO2, the warmer earth gets.
It's not just that. There are critical mass effects where, after a certain level, positive feedback loops will cascade to all systems. There's definitely a point where we're fucked and won't be able to unfuck ourselves.
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#17I am all in to be a good custodian of the world.
But I am tired of the insipid, agitated state, screaming and pushing fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
When I was a young man, I was told the world will freeze, and within five years we will all die. (Good times for fur trade!)
Then, the ozone layer will be gone, and within five years we will all die. (SPF 5000 anyone?)
Suddenly in the early '80s it flipped to the world is warming, and within five years we will all die.
More recently, it just 'climate change' because the FUD has been so rapidly changed, and within five years we will all die.
No one is denying that the climate changes. What people are tired of and denying is the FUD.
Every single generation thinks all previous generations where idiots; but we, WE know it much better and are smarter then all!
Wait till next generation, and see what they tell about us.
(Edit: Reference to an article with news clippings of the above https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca... ) edit2: let the down voting begin!
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I understand it, it not a binary "we are fucked" / "we are unfucked" if you are talking globally, or even large nations like the US, EU, Russia, China, etc. It's a gradient. The more CO2, the warmer earth gets.
It's not just that. There are critical mass effects where, after a certain level, positive feedback loops will cascade to all systems. There's definitely a point where we're fucked and won't be able to unfuck ourselves.
I'm far from an expert on climate. But my understanding when I looked into these issues ~8 years ago for a class, was that massive positive feedback loop stuff was not really accepted by the mainstream of scientists.
Of course there are positive feedback components, but there are negative ones too. And stuff like clathrate gun, etc., can't be found in the IPCC reports.
The 2 degree goal is more or less arbitrary. edit: by that I mean 1.9 isn't much better than 2.1--not that 2.1 is no big deal
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shit goes south with no way to recover?
As far as I understand it, it not a binary "we are fucked" / "we are unfucked" if you are talking globally, or even large nations like the US, EU, Russia, China, etc. It's a gradient. The more CO2, the warmer earth gets.
Yes and no, it's not a linear gradient, there are points on the gradient where things get exponentially worse, and everything rapidly accelerates, like a runaway diesel engine.
We can go from "Livable with adaptation" to "millions displaced from unlivable catastrophes and conditions" by hitting some of those milestones.
Re: Climate change won’t wait for future innovation – we need action now
#20I'm hoping we get some new green movement soon that is much more pragmatic about how we can actually reduce reliance on hydrocarbons. Nuclear, and more natural gas are the answer, at least transitionally. Oh, and also I'd like to see green movements taking less Russian money... "People think Europe depends on Russia for energy because it lacks its own, but 15 years ago Europe exported more natural gas than Russia doe…
Agree on nuclear, but natural gas isn't necessarily better than coal after accounting for methane leaks. The industry has lobbied hard against any requirements to monitor or mitigate those leaks.