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UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#111

Post by Schroedingersat »

ElectronCharge wrote: post #49
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #9

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, and we don't even stop putting it in there. Janvici had a nice way to put it: the 1.5C are already signed for, which means we won't ever see the climate of today again in the next 5000 years.

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…

> 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

I don't see how pumping billions of tonnes of heavy metal tainted sulfuric acid into the ground water of Namibia and Niger for Uranium royalties that are lower than the cost of cleanup and then putting them into debt they can't service for power stations that can only be fueled by their colonizers' nuclear weapons programs is related to increasing their standard of living.

Especially when the fuel source can only service the US primary energy for under a decade.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#112

Post by boringg »

tuvi13 wrote: post #81

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

Why would you ever use Deloitte as an example for something as a public good?

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#113

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gitfan86 wrote: post #102
macspoofing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What lie exactly? Scotland is producing enough to power Scotland twice itself on Wind alone. No they aren't. This is at best misleading, at worst, a blatant lie. What is happening is that on days with strong winds, they are overproducing wind energy but ONLY at certain times of the day. When they overproduce this energy, they cannot store it for later (because there is no battery technology today, or in the near-to-…

Manufacturing, refining, and AI improvements are going to reduce the price of batteries by another 90%

> Manufacturing, refining, and AI improvements are going to reduce the price of batteries by another 90%

This is a pipe dream. Battery demand will be astronomical for decades to come. That means ramping up supply and prioritising deployment via price signals.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#114

Post by HPsquared »

gitfan86 wrote: post #102
macspoofing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What lie exactly? Scotland is producing enough to power Scotland twice itself on Wind alone. No they aren't. This is at best misleading, at worst, a blatant lie. What is happening is that on days with strong winds, they are overproducing wind energy but ONLY at certain times of the day. When they overproduce this energy, they cannot store it for later (because there is no battery technology today, or in the near-to-…

Manufacturing, refining, and AI improvements are going to reduce the price of batteries by another 90%

How would things look if batteries were 90% cheaper?

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#115

Post by undersuit »

Zigurd wrote: post #62
ElectronCharge wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

Even when nuclear power was enthusiastically embraced as the future it suffered from cost overruns, hidden and underestimated lifecycle costs, security problems such the possibility of a worse Chernobyl event as a result of an ongoing war, nuclear proliferation enablement, etc. Blaming the resulting skepticism about nuclear on the "Green approach" is backwards: Fix the things that made nuclear expensive first. Demons…

>Even when nuclear power was enthusiastically embraced as the future it suffered from cost overruns, hidden and underestimated lifecycle costs, security problems such the possibility of a worse Chernobyl event as a result of an ongoing war, nuclear proliferation enablement, etc.

And here we are on an oil-based energy economy suffering from cost overruns, hidden and underestimated lifecycle costs, security problems such the possibility of a worse Chernobyl event as a result of an ongoing war, nuclear proliferation enablement, etc.

I would gladly change the source of the energy as the effects seem to be the same besides atmospheric emissions.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#117

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #111
ElectronCharge wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

> 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 I don't see how pumping billions of tonnes of heavy metal tainted sulfuric acid into the ground water of Namibia and Niger for Uranium royalties that are lower than the cost of cleanup and then putting them into debt they can't service for power stations that can onl…

You don’t see how electrification increases living standards [1]?

[1] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.34.1.122

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#118

Post by VancouverMan »

canadiantim wrote: post #33
pjc50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument might be valid in Brazil but definitely isn't in Canada.

Canada is tripling its carbon tax meanwhile residents e.g. in Newfoundland are suffering extremely under the cost of fuel prices for heating their home, so much so that even liberal mps are voting to exempt home heating from the tripling of the carbon tax. So this argument definitely still valid in Canada, though I do agree that it is more valid is more developing countries.

It's such a convoluted situation in Canada.

The same politicians forcing insane "carbon taxes" are also putting in place immigration policies that bring in an absolutely massive number of people each year.

This, of course, drives up the demand for electricity, housing (including heating, as you mention), infrastructure, transportation (of goods and people), food, and so forth, all of which contribute to "carbon emissions".

The "green belts" that have been imposed by government around major cities just end up pushing urban sprawl farther out, beyond those belts. This, in turn, increases the time and energy spent commuting and travelling, which is usually done by car, since public transit in Canada is very limited and impractical, and the distances are quite far.

Thanks to significant and overbearing government bureaucracy and regulations, building high-rise residential buildings in the densest cities takes ages. The actual construction phase is very rapid compared to sorting out the bureaucratic details.

If these politicians really wanted to limit or cut "carbon emissions", the first thing they'd be doing is halting pretty much all immigration into Canada, to at least let the situation stabilize.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#119

Post by toomuchtodo »

macspoofing wrote: post #70

There 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 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 nuclear power continued to be rolled out at the same rate as it did in the 60s/70s.

25% of electricity in the US was produced with renewables this year, more than both coal and nuclear [1]. There is roughly 1TW of renewables in interconnection queues [2], and 400GW of energy storage. The cost of renewables is expected to decline to less than half a cent per kwh due to the Inflation Reduction Act [4]. Tesla's Megafactory (to manufacture 40 GWh of Megapacks per year) is getting ready to begin production [5].

It can be difficult to understand the curve of the hockey stick when you're at the growth inflection point. In no uncertain terms, we are at the inflection point.

> There is no chance of removing existing CO2 from Air to make any sort of difference.

What was the cost delta between sequencing the human genome in 2003 versus today? (About ~$1B) Yeah, it is going to be very energy intensive to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it. It's a good thing enough sunlight falls on the Earth every 2 minutes to meet humanity's energy needs for the year, because we need enough clean energy to electrify everything, to account for growth into the future until the human population peaks, as well as to pay back all of the carbon emitted during industrialization.

I'll plug YC's Charge Robotics here (automating solar panel installs with robotics), as it seems like the polite thing to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30780455 ("Launch HN: Charge Robotics (YC S21) - Robots that build solar farms")

[1] https://electrek.co/2022/08/25/us-renewables-first-half-2022... ("Renewables provided over 25% of total US electrical generation in first half of 2022")

[2] https://www.pv-tech.org/nearly-1tw-of-renewables-in-us-inter... ("Nearly 1TW of renewables in US interconnection queues as wait times continue to grow")

[3] https://www.energy-storage.news/estimated-427gw-of-energy-st... ("Estimated 427GW of energy storage in US interconnection queues alongside nearly 1TW of renewables")

[4] https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/15/credit-suisse-predicts-... ("Credit Suisse says the Inflation Reduction Act will have such a tremendous impact on renewable energy that the US may see the levelized cost of electricity from renewable sources fall to less than 1 cent per kWh hour by 2025 after factoring in all tax and production credits.")

[5] https://electrek.co/2022/10/26/tesla-unveils-megafactory-bat... ("Tesla unveils its Megafactory as battery production ramps up")

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#120

Post by abyssin »

tomtomistaken wrote: post #103
blueflow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants do. And they only need the sunlight they have where they grow.

I think that’s the “huge surface” op is talking about.

And we’re busy decreasing the surface of woodlands on the planet.
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