251–260 of 349 posts
It really is starting to feel like the fringe of the environmental movement have really been the bad guys all along. Blocking nuclear starting in the 70s, focusing only on recycling in the 80s and 90s (consumption doesn't matter as long as something could be recycled), blocking natural gas/oil in favor of coal in the 90s-2000s, blocking wind farms ("think of the birds!!"), batteries, and solar panels (too many chemic…
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It’s sad, but we will simply never get past the point of rearranging the furniture while we argue about the accuracy of estimates of the iceberg’s size. Why is this the font of your passion, rather than the desperate situation of our planet?
Indeed, why bother with ensuring our predictions are reasonable at all? Let's just assume the absolute worst, all the time. If we stop being objective and surrender ourselves to emotion and panic, then it stops being science, and all authority is lost.
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> It's worth pointing out that "on the extreme end of a spectrum" is some rather blatant editorializing. There is simply no way that's an objective fact. It's a fact reported by the very same article (but buried). I didn't make it up. > Would you like to cite some projections you think are more accurate? All projections are theoretical, but one needs only go to the IPCC to see that the range of reputable predictions…
> Most recent IPCC commentary on predictions to underscore that current estimates land in a range, and that the Guardian-cited source is not in the middle of it Could you quote which part you are referring to? If you look at the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, it predicts for Shared Socioeconomic Pathway SSP2-4.5 (the middle of the options presented, "CO2 emissions around current levels until 2050, then falling but not…
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/static/4d357606f10734acb3...
You can see that 5/8 of the projections fall below 2.5C, and 4/8 fall below 2C. The predictions that rise above 2.5C are the three most extreme categories of the report. There's simply no way to claim that a prediction of 2.9C is not "extreme". SSP2-4.5 is in category C6, which is the top 50% of all predictions.
Moreover, from the report describing the "categories":
> Around half of all modelled global emission scenarios assume cost-effective approaches that rely on least-cost emission abatement options globally. The other half look at existing policies and regionally and sectorally differentiated actions
So you're talking about a distribution of predictions where half assume little/no changes over current circumstances.
The problem with all of these scenario "categories" is that they're bucketed by maximum predicted temperature, so it all becomes a game of begging the question: if you choose to emphasize "category C7" from the IPCC report, it means only that you prefer to believe a scenario where warming tops out at 4C (literally the definition of C7).
Scenarios that make wildly different assumptions are grouped together, and it's impossible to know which ones are likely, and difficult to know which ones reflect current planned mitigations, etc. But this does show clearly the range of possible predicted outcomes -- if some newspaper comes along and tells you that "experts" are "predicting" a rise of 4C, you can know that they're on the tail of the distribution of reasonable predictions.
Edit: found the description of SSP2-4.5 (table SPM.2, here [1]). It assumes that we never hit net zero CO2 production, and that GHG emissions continue on their current path through 2050 with only minimal mitigatons. Is this realistic? Who knows. But it's certainly not the stated plan.
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
I 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 eve…
I’m still on the side of cyclists. I don’t think I’d be able to stand a lifestyle where I’m surrounded by people in denial. I have a child but I don’t think I’ll raise her in the belief that only a comfortable life is one worth living. I’m also wondering by who childless people expect to be taken care of when they get older, if not by their children in a broad sense?
I think about giving up around 30 almost every day, but am scared I won’t have the courage to do so. More realistically I see my end in the cold on a street saying random things out loud while someone walks by feeling a mixture of discomfort, annoyance and guilt.
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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…
It’s sad, but we will simply never get past the point of rearranging the furniture while we argue about the accuracy of estimates of the iceberg’s size. Why is this the font of your passion, rather than the desperate situation of our planet?
I continue to believe that the physical science is well beyond "good enough" and that humanity should now be investing in metaphysical inquiry (psychology, sociology, etc), as getting humans coordinated and pulling all in the same direction would be beneficial to sorting this mess and others out.
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Not sure why it is downvoted, but Russia is massively on the benefiting side of global warming. It reduces the amount of useless land, and massively increases crops yields throughout its territory. Geopolitically, it benefits from additional pressure on Europe to accommodate the migrations caused by climate change, and all the instability it causes.
I'm sorry, but Russia, just like Canada, will not have increased crop yields from warming. It will (and does) have massive forest fires, drought, and erratic winters which swing from warm/hot to extreme cold within days. You know what is even worse for farmers than a cold climate? An unpredictable one. It's damn hard to pull a profit farming if you can't rely on any kind of 'normal' growing conditions from year to ye…
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If your solution involves Russia getting on board then you've already failed. Russia is actually encouraging climate change because it opens up more shipping in the arctic circle. This is to illustrate that in the short term climate change leads to winners and losers. In the long term we probably all lose, but we're not known for our long term thinking.
Not sure why it is downvoted, but Russia is massively on the benefiting side of global warming. It reduces the amount of useless land, and massively increases crops yields throughout its territory. Geopolitically, it benefits from additional pressure on Europe to accommodate the migrations caused by climate change, and all the instability it causes.
It takes more than a change in temperature to make land useful. I don't think recently-defrosted tundra is going to suddenly be profitable farmland. You need the right soil type, weather, irrigation, transport links, workers, energy sources, etc.
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Still too expensive by at least 10x.
No, batteries are already replacing peaker plants at TODAY'S costs https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-syste...
Batteries today are replacing peaker plants that run on things like refined gasoline, which are extremely expensive to run.
Battery + renewable is still not anywhere near cost competitive with base load plants, which is the honest comparison to make.
We are too politically polarized to solve problems in this class, which requires political unity because of the scale, cost, and speed requirements. All of our major political forces play games, constantly make moves in bad faith, talk out of both sides of their mouths publicly vs privately, so we are screwed. The reality is that IF climate change science were a big hoax (sadly, it's not) there WOULD be a team using…
However, this tends to be unpopular as while people are very interested in the flaws in the thinking of their outgroup members, they tend to be very uninterested in their own or their ingroup members.
It's a tough problem, but not even trying to do anything about it doesn't seem like a recipe for success.
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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.
