Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 349 posts

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

#211

Post by raphaelj »

macspoofing wrote: post #101
eloff wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

>By the time nuclear projects started now complete, solar and wind will be mopping the floor with them ROI wise. Yes, it will take decades to restart large scale nuclear projects. So we lost more than 50 years. With Solar/Wind it's not a question of cost or ROI. Solar/wind, as an intermittent and diffuse energy source, CANNOT power a modern economy. It needs base-load.

Building a modern zero carbon economy based on renewable energies is not only possible but also close to cost competitive to the nuclear-intensive alternative [1]:

>>> Regarding the evolution of technology costs, under the baseline scenario, the cost difference between the M23 (renewable only) and N2 (old and new nuclear + renewable) scenarios is close to 10 billion euros a year (0.3% of France's GDP).

This is a quote from France's mostly nuclear based electric grid agency.

Losing 0.3% of GDP but avoiding any inherent social, environmental and economical risk associated with nuclear does not look bad to me.

[1] https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20p...

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

#212

Post by carpenecopinum »

timr wrote: post #137
Yizahi wrote: post #45

1.5*C ? What kind of fictional reality are living in? We are way past 2.4*C projection and are actually on track for 2.9*C or so. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/cop26-se...

Let's be perfectly clear: the projection you are citing is on the extreme end of a spectrum. Other projections differ. Per the (non-headline) part of the article: > The estimate stands in sharp contrast to optimistic forecasts published last week that suggested heating could be held to 1.9C or 1.8C, thanks to commitments announced at the talks, now in their second week and scheduled to end this weekend. > Those estim…

> ...was based on countries’ short-term goals for the next decade

What else though? There is no "long-term" for politicians that have to face another election in less than 4 years.

"This will happen in 10+ years" is just a thinly-veiled "We aren't going to do it.". If we can't get any short term commitments and hold people accountable for it, nothing substantial will get done.

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

#213

Post by tejohnso »

There was no credible pathway to 1.5 when it was established at COP 21 in 2015.

And previous to 1.5, the big number was 1.0.

It'll be interesting if the mass media push changes the focus again and starts popularizing 2.0C. Or maybe they'll move the baseline up again at the next COP. What a farce.

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

#214

Post by otikik »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #141
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…

Nuclear is just a scapegoat. If it was easy or cheap, the free market would have done its magic. All manufacturing would already be done in a country with unlimited free and clean energy, even if other countries had issues with it. Plant costs, operation, safety, waste management, and non-proliferation are real hard problems. It's just lazy and wishful thinking that there's a deus ex machina if some people would just…

The market that exists is not free.

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

#215

Post by mjhay »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #200
macspoofing wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do we talk about removing CO2 from the atmosphere but not trying to pull it out of the ocean?

What makes you think it would be significantly easier to filter out the carbolic acid from the ocean? The same difficulties apply, and water is much more viscous than air.

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

#216

Post by yamtaddle »

karaterobot wrote: post #183

> "We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over," said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, who produced the study. > "Only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster," she said. I don't see that happening, and my guess is neither do they. Plan C needs to be a massive geoengineering project that would have seemed crazy…

Yeah, we took one major fossil fuel producing country out of part of the global economy and look at the pain that caused in "the West". This kind of drastic, quick climate action would have even stronger effects on the energy markets in the short term, though the higher prices would also encourage faster renewable deployment so the damage would at least be tempered after some time (years, probably).

Of course the alternative that skips the trashing-the-economy part is more and larger government spending on renewable deployment to achieve a switchover on a similar timescale, but that's super-unpopular for a lot of voters.

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

#217

Post by mjhay »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #98
macspoofing wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The mass of air that moves past the existing fleet of wind turbines in a year is roughly a fifth of the mass of the atmosphere. It is a civilisation sized project that will take a lifetime, but it is achievable.

Or we could just stop burning coal.

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

#218

Post by [deleted] »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #205
toomuchtodo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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%…

By the time we're in a position to 'pay back' the emitted CO2 we have to be well beyond CO2 neutral energy. Otherwise it's easier to just offset our existing fossil uses instead of reclamation. We'll have to have a huge surplus of say 10x our energy use right now because reclaiming at any decent speed will cost huge amounts of energy. At that point most of the climate change will have already happened and we'll have…

[deleted]

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

#219

Post by lazyasciiart »

rowanG077 wrote: post #204
abyssin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Huh I thought the world has more trees now then ever before.

I don’t know, but they could both be true. How many 5yo pine trees does it take to equal the surface area of one giant redwood?

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

#220

Post by SnowHill9902 »

mellosouls wrote: post #165
tialaramex wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a technical forum, you can just write K. The degrees Celsius are deliberately the same size as the Kelvin unit, but you don't need (and shouldn't write) degrees for an absolute system. We're fucked because 1.5K was already a lot, and there's still barely enough political will to avoid 3K. It is going to get bad.

Nobody's gonna believe 1.5 thousand, and plenty would read it that way. Nobody outside some science niches (technical or not) uses K for temperature.

The correct format is 1.5 K and in my opinion is unambiguous written that way. 1.5k is definitely 1,500 while 1.5K in the middle is ambiguous and depends on context.
Post reply on HN