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Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

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Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#191

Post by jeffbee »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #69

Isn't Hacker News the home of "software eats the world"? That's a massive part of the de-correlation of economic growth and emissions. Except for AI training and proof of work, software is a low carbon activity. And it's massively cumulative -- it's not consumed, the software produced 20 years ago still has value. Some other examples: would anybody deny the iPhone 12 is better than the iPhone 11? It's smaller and pre…

AI training does not use a lot of energy. It is estimated that GPT-3 needed about 1GW-h. A 747-400 aircraft uses 120MW of primary power while cruising (10 tonnes of Jet A per hour). Every time an aircraft flies between Atlanta and London, it uses more energy than was used to train GPT-3. Every single time.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#192

Post by gandalfian »

Whats remarkable in the UK is how the huge rise in fossil fuel prices has suddenly revealed how many business's are basically converting fossil fuels into goods and services. I mean people understood that putting petrol in the car is fossil fuels but buying a pint in the pub? But suddenly the pubs, and a host of other business's are saying that without the cheap energy their business isn't viable. It's all rather a wake up call.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#193

Post by eloff »

tsimionescu wrote: post #139
eloff wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Quite easily, the materials are common. They require energy to process and ship, but that does not have to come from fossil fuels. I'm confident we'll get there. There will be lots of mitigating the damage from climate change, because that train wreck is still in motion. But we will mostly decarbonize our economies by the end of this century.

> But we will mostly decarbonize our economies by the end of this century. Unfortunately unless we completely decarbonize by the middle of the century, we'll reach catastrophic levels of global warming (>3 degrees warming, likely leading to the polar ice caps melting and significant ocean level rises, especially at the equator).

I think three degrees of warming is unavoidable at this point. The massive coordination and effort it would take to avoid that seems like wishful thinking at best. I still hope I'm pleasantly surprised here, but I'm skeptical.

It's going to come down to mitigating, and that might mean different things in different places.

I think there will be some amount of geo-engineering to cool the poles and avoid some of the sea level rise and permafrost melting. There will also be some active carbon removal, but we also will not reach zero emissions either. That may mostly balance out, or reach "net zero".

There will also likely be a slow migration away from low lying coastal areas, as well as seawall construction.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#194

Post by imtringued »

collyw wrote: post #43
lettergram wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, even if economic activity was fully decoupled from emissions, Earth's environmental problems would remain overwhelming. Biodiversity loss, deforestation, aquifer depletion, desertification, etc. are just as concerning for most people here as rising global temperatures. The issue I take with the “Global warming” crowd is that there’s a lot inaccurate predictions (nearly all of them thus far) and the evide…

It amazes me that climate activists never seem to push for nuclear, the most obvious solution.

The nuclear power I push for is still in development. It amazes me that you push for bad and unsafe designs combined with bad economics and management practices.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#195

Post by intrasight »

lettergram wrote: post #160
myrmidon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. And I used to be strong nuclear proponent until 2015 or so. Nuclear power is no longer a viable pathway for a government to throw tax dollars at, and there are multiple reasons: 1) Nuclear power is not cost effective: Even right now, nuclear power is more expensive (LCOE) than solar or wind. 2) Nuclear power costs explode if the capacity factor of your plants decreases: Meaning that they are basi…

Have you ever been involved with building or maintaining a nuclear plant? I have family members who built plants back in the 80's and some still maintain them. They claim the main issue has to do with government regulation(s) and unions. I can dive into it further, but effectively the regulation(s) required inspection on ever weld a welder would make. This meant you needed two welders on site, one making a weld and o…

>the main issue has to do with government regulation(s)

You can't have it both ways - but of course they want to.

The Price-Anderson Nuclear Indemnity Act shifts the risk of nuclear accidents onto the tax payers. In return, the industry accepts regulations. Tell the nuclear industry that we're taking away your insurance caps and they'll say "we can't stay in business".

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#196

Post by eloff »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #170
tsimionescu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But we will mostly decarbonize our economies by the end of this century. Unfortunately unless we completely decarbonize by the middle of the century, we'll reach catastrophic levels of global warming (>3 degrees warming, likely leading to the polar ice caps melting and significant ocean level rises, especially at the equator).

Most economies are aiming for net zero by 2050. A goal, which it is now clear, that would have been absolutely trivial to meet while making a solid profit on the deal, if we'd just started earlier, like when the problem became widely known four decades ago. But we didn't. So we can probably still do it, and we can probably still come out richer, but some people are still trying to slow it down so they can profit from…

The only possible solution four decades ago was nuclear, and even then it was only a partial solution, and which people oppose for illogical reasons. The story now is much more hopeful. I also hope nuclear can be a part of it, but I think battery advances are more likely to beat it to the starting line.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#197

Post by harimau777 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #141
geysersam wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to. The alternative is destroying the earth even more. And overall, the lifetime environmental impact of solar panels is much lower than producing the same energy using fossile fuels.

There is also the option of winding down energy consumption - we produce so much useless crap for no particular reason anyway.

I think that would need to go hand in hand with social change to allow people greater quality of life outside of consumerism (e.g. greater economic stability, autonomy, home ownership, access to education, etc.).

Right now it seems that the social contract is "give up your autonomy and stability to capitalism and in return you get to consume lots of stuff". If we remove the "consume lots of stuff" part of the equation, then I doubt people would be happy with the "give up your autonomy and stability" part.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#198

Post by treis »

diordiderot wrote: post #178
w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention nuclear waste, which is still an unresolved issue at current level of nuclear energy production.

This is just false. Annual nuclear wast in the US in volume is "roughly equivalent to less than half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool." With more modern plants you could recycle that material and cut it down to a fifth the size. Its a political problem, forced by dishonest actors

>still an unresolved issue

>This is just false

>Its a political problem

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#199

Post by erlich »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #18

Unfortunately, a lot of climate activists’ primary goal is not stopping climate change but rather advocating for degrowth. They are thus vehemently opposed to any solutions that don’t involve massive reductions in consumption. This is not only politically untenable (it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions) but also alienates the majority of people from the cause, who might ot…

> degrowth / massive reductions in consumption

Although it can appear a bit disingenuous for activists to disguise their primary goal...their primary goal can be valid if taken from their perspective...

Population will be 10bn by 2100.

Then there's 2200, 2300, 2400, etc.

The need for degrowth does seem inevitable eventually does it not?

From a middle-class perspective: everything is about ambition, climbing the corporate ladder, wealth building, and then hoping for your children to exceed you in these aspects also. Addiction to growth. Many of these people are not okay with being a high achievers and not being rewarded for it - i.e. capitalism.

Activists are usually lower income with fixed horizons/needs of income/status/lifestyle.

So it's easier for them to identify with the average global citizen...who is already very poor.

- 3bn live on - median world income = 850USD

- avg world income = 7000USD

The activists are identifying as "world citizens", whereas Westerners identify with their income bracket in their wealthy country of choice.

> cheap GHG emission-free energy.

The reality is that even if climate change is resolved, there will still be a push for degrowth until the end of time...unless we find a new planet to inhabit.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#200

Post by bombcar »

andsoitis wrote: post #147
mellavora wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing that a problem with solar is that it doesn't work at night. So I can see that as a (solvable) problem for industry, but for personal life? This idea that you need to have your lights on all night is rather recent. For a very very long time people survived by following the natural rythms of daylight. Some people even think this is healthier, and suggest special apps to adjust screen brightness to follow…

> This idea that you need to have your lights on all night is rather recent. For a very very long time people survived by following the natural rythms of daylight. People have used fire, candles for a very very long time to provide light at night.

Lighting is a very small fraction of our energy usage (about 5%): https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3

If we built our houses right, we could drastically shift energy usage requirements for heating and cooling to daylight hours (utilizing thermal mass storage like https://www.steffes.com/ets/ )

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