What is Deloitte saying about that?
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Docume...
and a short analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--QS_UyW2SY
UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
81–90 of 349 posts
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm, then I wonder why rich nations have much higher per capita CO2 emissions than poor nations ( https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/climate-action/what-we-d... )?
You're not replying to a comment saying "poor people are the biggest contributors of CO2 emissions", you're replying to a comment saying "driving people into poverty is the biggest contributor of CO2" So the thing to look at isn't poor people's emissions, it's rich people's emissions, given that (relatively speaking, bc increasing money supply just decreases its worth) the richer rich people are, the more poor people…
> buying single-use goods over and over is cheaper short-term than buying something made to last
Do you have examples of these — single-use goods that are contributing to global warming and that poor people are buying over and over, more so than wealthier people — or in general, any empirical evidence that poor people are following this economic strategy, thereby contributing to global warming?
There's often a huge difference between what poor people actually do and think and what wealthier people believe poor people do and think.
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#83There is no chance of removing existing CO2 from Air to make any sort of difference. There is no chance of meaningfully reducing CO2 emissions, because outside of Nuclear (and hydro/geothermal but only if you have the geography for it) there is no alternative to replacing fossil fuels. At some point the public will realize the lie of solar/wind as a replacement. We lost 50 years of greatly reduced emissions had nucle…
> there is no alternative to replacing fossil fuels. At some point the public will realize the lie of solar/wind as a replacement.
What lie exactly? Scotland had produced enough to power itself twice on Wind alone. [1]
How is nuclear a better alternative than Wind or Hydro when
- Nuclear is extremely dangerous with toxic waste needing special storage facilities. Criminal & Environmental contamination risks.
- Disaster if the plant is to be damaged - Chernobyl / Fukushima / Ukraine-Russia war
- You need an external power source to kick-start a nuclear station on top of requiring uninterruptible power supply - Fossil Fuels
- You need a large water source for cooling, extracting, processing - Limited Resource
Thorium reactors are a dream away, nice but not feasible as of the moment.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/scotland-w...
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it a 'trick'? Building a wind turbine isn't shuffling emissions anywhere. Neither is solar. Or a more efficient boiler, or....
It's not replacing fossil fuels, merely freeing them for other uses. In fact it's even common now to build wind turbines around coal mines to produce power to extract coal... We must reduce our fossil fuel consumption in absolute numbers. So far we're merely adding more energy resources; that way political and corporate PR representative can make triumphal announces about how we're reducing the part of fossil in our…
"It's common" is not a statistic. At least in the US, coal use for power generation has dropped precipitously over the past 40 years. If whatever coal we do still extract is extracted using wind or solar, that seems like a net win (even if not a net positive, for the reason you mentioned).
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#85There is no chance of removing existing CO2 from Air to make any sort of difference. There is no chance of meaningfully reducing CO2 emissions, because outside of Nuclear (and hydro/geothermal but only if you have the geography for it) there is no alternative to replacing fossil fuels. At some point the public will realize the lie of solar/wind as a replacement. We lost 50 years of greatly reduced emissions had nucle…
You can build solar or wind plus some energy storage or long distance transmission to even it out for less than the price of nuclear and with income beginning quickly, not after 10 years. By the time nuclear projects started now complete, solar and wind will be mopping the floor with them ROI wise. Far from being a lie, we're in danger of them becoming the only game in town, for better or worse. Nuclear had so much potential, but we stopped investing and stopped innovating and it's unclear if it can ever catch up again. For our sakes, I hope so. More options are better.
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#86There is no chance of removing existing CO2 from Air to make any sort of difference. There is no chance of meaningfully reducing CO2 emissions, because outside of Nuclear (and hydro/geothermal but only if you have the geography for it) there is no alternative to replacing fossil fuels. At some point the public will realize the lie of solar/wind as a replacement. We lost 50 years of greatly reduced emissions had nucle…
To the German Green party, who indulges itself in blaming everyone but itself for all kinds of problems in the world, there is only one thing that is worse than global warming, and that is nuclear energy.
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#87I used to be really depressed about this sort of thing. It caused me to severely limit my lifestyle out of a desire to "do the right thing". I didn't own a car. Very low consumption and minimal waste (no takeaway food, coffee etc., very frugal, didn't use things like paper towels and napkins). I cycled and walked everywhere. Didn't go on holidays abroad or even very far away.
Then I looked around and noticed that everyone else was enjoying themselves at my expense. Worse, I was often a second-class citizen as my bicycle couldn't stand up to their cars.
So I said fuck it, bought a car, fly several times a year, use paper towels, drive to the air-conditioned gym so my body looks like it's useful, don't care about my waste as much. Can't beat 'em, join 'em. I still reckon I use and waste less than the average person (certainly less than the average American), though.
I can be happy with this because I'm not going to reproduce. I honestly don't care if humans die out a few generations after me. I used to care but I just don't think we are worth it any more.
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best way forward is to reject parts of the consensus Green approach. In particular, investment in nuclear, and a plan to augment wind+solar expansion with a large nuclear (and later fusion) buildout is the way to go. The rationale for this is that only by raising the living standard of the third world can the world’s population be stabilized without a major die-off (not to mention a reduced quality of life for ju…
other than the giant one staring at us 93 million miles away beaming massive amounts of energy directly at us all day, fusion reactors otherwise don't exist. Maybe not throw away all the other approaches until they do?
Solar and wind have many issues. Intermittency, the need for rare earths, and low energy density leading to ecological impact are some. It’s also under-recognized that as those technologies are built out beyond a few percent of global power, supply issues will likely lead to large cost increases and potential scarcity. Then there’s the waste/recycling problem, which is worse than nuclear.
I also was clear that fusion is a future solution.
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not a surprise, since co2 is an oxide, and therefore very stable in the athmosphere. It would take a huge amount of energy to remove it, There is an exothermic reaction that removes CO2 from the atmosphere, the formation of carbonates from weathering of silicate rocks. As this is naturally very slow, there is currently ongoing research into multiple different ways to speed it up.
That doesn't change anything. You need a huge amount of energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere because CO2 is a tiny constituent part of Air (~400ppm) - that means one has to move a million molecules of air across a collector (whatever that is) to remove 400 molecules of CO2. You can't do that without huge amounts of energy and a huge surface area for your collector ... on any human timescale.
Plants do. And they only need the sunlight they have where they grow.
Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not replying to a comment saying "poor people are the biggest contributors of CO2 emissions", you're replying to a comment saying "driving people into poverty is the biggest contributor of CO2" So the thing to look at isn't poor people's emissions, it's rich people's emissions, given that (relatively speaking, bc increasing money supply just decreases its worth) the richer rich people are, the more poor people…
> buying single-use goods over and over is cheaper short-term than buying something made to last Do you have examples of these — single-use goods that are contributing to global warming and that poor people are buying over and over, more so than wealthier people — or in general, any empirical evidence that poor people are following this economic strategy, thereby contributing to global warming? There's often a huge d…
I think you've misunderstood my position. You mention:
> that poor people are buying over and over, more so than wealthier people
Not only is this a line of argument I disagree with, I even explicitly said I disagreed with it in this part of the comment you are replying to:
>> I think the idea is that if more people were middle-class, we'd see consumers make better choices (personally, I don't see that happening without government intervention of some kind