So much Dunning Kruger in the discussions about nuclear energy again. What a feast!
Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
251–260 of 271 posts
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#252Earlier 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…
> Most economies are aiming for net zero by 2050.
We emitted what the eartg can absorb (3Gteq) back in 1990. Since then, emissions trippled.
Net zero is not enough, there is still a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, so the temperature will reach +3°C.
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be saying that energy growth should be what we're aiming for, not GDP growth? That consuming energy in and of itself is a positive good?
I'm saying that GDP used to measure energy growth. Now it has decoupled. That brings GDP in to question, not energy growth. We know consuming energy leads to higher living standards. It is now quite possible for GDP to rise and living standards to fall - that used to be an impossible scenario when it was a measure of fossil fuel use.
Ok, you've confirmed to me you don't know what you're talking about.
Living standards may be correlated with energy consumption, in a narrow sense, in some cases, but we don't consume energy, we consume things we can produce with energy. If we do that more efficiently, then our living standard increases even as our energy use decreases.
You seem to be saying a 60W incandescent bulb indicates a higher standard of living than a 10W LED bulb -- even though the latter produces more light. You seem to think a house with less insulation indicates a higher standard of living than one with more insulation, since the former requires more energy use. And on and on.
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm saying that GDP used to measure energy growth. Now it has decoupled. That brings GDP in to question, not energy growth. We know consuming energy leads to higher living standards. It is now quite possible for GDP to rise and living standards to fall - that used to be an impossible scenario when it was a measure of fossil fuel use.
Ok, you've confirmed to me you don't know what you're talking about. Living standards may be correlated with energy consumption, in a narrow sense, in some cases, but we don't consume energy, we consume things we can produce with energy. If we do that more efficiently, then our living standard increases even as our energy use decreases. You seem to be saying a 60W incandescent bulb indicates a higher standard of livi…
You've made two mistakes in your reasoning. One is explained as Jevon's paradox [0]. If there is a move from 60W light-bulbs to 10W then people usually end up finding a new use for the 50W. It would be unusual for them to use less energy overall - indeed, as they get more productive they could end up demanding more energy (if it made sense to win X kW for Y production, it often makes sense to win X++ kW for Y++++ production). Ditto home insulation. If less energy needs to go to warming a home, more can go to fabricating goods to put in the home. Energy use wouldn't decrease, it'd hold steady.
The other mistake you've made is, those changes won't cause GDP to go up. The 10W LED probably costs the same/less than the 60W one, and the insulation causes reduced spending too. That is one of the arguments I sometimes trot out to explain that GDP isn't a useful measure if it is divorced from energy.
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon–Ehrlich_wager
Common sense. Just a single earth and all. Your example is concerned with a single forecast. If we started asteroid mining, we would obviously increase earth's resources. Otherwise, resources on earth are limited.
"Common sense is neither common nor sense"
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/2011...
> single forecast.
Nope, it was a bundle of forecasts that the participants, including the one who had your position, considered representative.
Of course your position happens to be based on...nothing. Except the idea that the earth is not infinite. Well guess what, the lifespan of the solar system is also not infinite. So that's a wash.
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might be generating 120% but what happens if everybody installs? Do you have storage installed to smooth out the dead hours? Unfortunately the answer is that you need days of storage for solar and wind to be anywhere near 100% of the energy mix. The cost of that is astronomical.
A comment like this comes up in every discussion of renewables and needs to die. We don't need separate stationery storage, enormous storage capacity will be free as car batteries. EVs will have 17 times the battery capacity of stationary storage systems by 2030 [1]. By the time we completely transition to EVs, it will be 100s of times of storage. All this storage capacity is available at zero cost, people buy cars a…
>On a road trip
>Stop for lunch, plug in car to recharge
>Cloud passes in front of sun
>Grid empties car
People won't want to put their plans at the mercy of a fluctuating grid. There will never be a time when people are happy to plug in their car and come back to find it empty, electricity spot price be damned. It's my car, not your grid storage system.
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#257Unfortunately, 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…
In terms of direct thermal heating from waste heat, we are almost precisely where we were when global warming was first raised as a problem.
Climate change is just the first of many problems, and claiming that consuming more makes life better is the same logic as finding a starving man, seeing him improve with three square meals, and then concluding everyone should have a gallon a second of saturated sugar syrup pumped directly into their gut.
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are, as a sibling comment demonstrates, deluded, after decades of being maliciously lied to by 'environmental' movements with ties to the fossil industry. Anyone against nuclear is a shill for petrochemical power, there are no exceptions. There are the deluded and the liars, that's it.
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…
1) I don't believe this for a moment, not when you include capacity factor and storage requirements for renewables to actually compete with on-demand power. What do you do when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow? How long can your storage solution sustain that? If it's anything less than "infinity", it's inferior to nuclear.
2) This is just trying to spin reliability as a disadvantage. You can throttle nuclear just fine. Overbuilding in order to have "peaker" nuclear plants is perfectly viable - France's grid does so. Pointing out the difficulties of integrating with flighty, unreliable renewables is a point against renewables, not nuclear - you are failing to account for grid storage, then complaining that nuclear is a poor grid storage solution. Well, yeah!
3) The safety record of nuclear vastly exceeds any other power generation technology, even if you factor in Chernobyl. We are making the perfect the enemy of the good. I daresay that India could weather a nuclear incident or two and still come out ahead of the 2 million people who die yearly there from air pollution, in large part from burning fossil fuels.
4) This just point 1 repeated, and again, you ignore grid storage. True, you can throw up PV or wind quickly enough, but it won't solve your energy problem. People were complaining about how slow it is to construct nuclear plants decades ago. If we'd ignored them and started building, we'd be in a much better situation now. The best time to build a nuclear plant is 20 years ago; the second best time is now.
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Most economies are aiming for net zero by 2050. We emitted what the eartg can absorb (3Gteq) back in 1990. Since then, emissions trippled. Net zero is not enough, there is still a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, so the temperature will reach +3°C.
Net Zero by 2050 and peaking global emissions before 2030 should be enough to meet the 1.5C target according to the IPCC.
Assuming we follow that plan and don't hit any tipping points, we should stay under 3C, but yeah it's possible.
Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ahaha, good old "if you don't drive a gas guzzler you're a vegan poof". Auto marketing departments are really worth their salt. >building nuclear reactors in their backyard If only!
> Ahaha, good old "if you don't drive a gas guzzler you're a vegan poof". Auto marketing departments are really worth their salt. Yeah, good old "ignore the argument and insult the argumenter" ad hominem style of arguing - very useful for fueling your self-righteousness and "I'm right, you're wrong" style of thinking. Good pointless talk! Hope to have one again soon.
It's obvious that there is plenty of unsustainable activity going on today; I've given three concrete examples. This is reality: it is simply not long term sustainable to go on living with such waste as we do even today, let alone if everybody consumed like an American (many × over the world average, depending on if you look at energy, emissions, resources). So it's obvious that we both can and need to become more efficient: reduce waste, use more renewable energy, build lasting products instead of single-use, etc.
Your answer to this is "the only way to reduce resource use is population culling, the global elite wants to enact reproductive control" x))
But one thing we agree with, this conversation is utterly pointless!