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We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

aljazeera.com

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Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#21

Post by korroziya »

From the article:

"The supposed energy transition that has been undertaken has seen renewable energy production expanded, but there has been no indication that oil and gas are being substituted and ultimately phased out."

That's not going to happen for another 27 years at least. I've said it before: Most people (including those who post here) are staggeringly illiterate when it comes to energy. Hydrocarbons store an immense amount of energy in a small, portable, cheap form. You can't just replace it in a year.

And even if you COULD, oil and gas are used for more than fuel and power. Natgas is a major feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer. You cannot replace it with solar panels. Then there's the laundry list of byproducts like plastics and other materials made from oil and gas feedstocks which are essential for the modern world to function -also not able to be substituted by wind and sunlight.

Funny how they never mention this at Vox, Mother Jones, or other progressive-leaning publications.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#22

Post by floodle »

collyw wrote: post #12
t43562 wrote: post #5

Climate change has only one priority: stop releasing carbon into the atmosphere. We're all dead if we don't and we cannot afford to add one tiny extra burden onto that monumental task. Sorry. The alternative is death for us all and no chance of any justice ever.

Models. Prediction with no long term history of being correct. It's a doomsday cult. I would recommend going back to watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and see how many of the catastrophic predictions have come true.

This is a false dichotomy.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#23

Post by [deleted] »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #14
collyw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Models. Prediction with no long term history of being correct. It's a doomsday cult. I would recommend going back to watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and see how many of the catastrophic predictions have come true.

Exxon mobile scientists predicted all this in the 1970s with pretty good accuracy: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994

[deleted]

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#25

Post by version_five »

spchampion2 wrote: post #7

> But this fallacy has been repeatedly exposed. For one, the organisations that are supposed to certify that indeed enough tree-planting has taken place do not have the tools to verify that the declared emissions will definitely be absorbed. Another problem is that many offsetting activities do not actually offset anything. > A recent investigation into the world’s largest carbon standard found that 94 percent of its…

This is true for a lot of corporate training as well, in particular for compliance stuff. It's all bullshit to check a box. Whoever's paying for it wants to spend as little as possible, nobody cares what the content is or whether its actually learned, it's just about transferring liability. It's these silly regulatory constructs that are too detached from reality (like offsets) that give rise to this brand of bullshit

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#26

Post by kibwen »

InitialLastName wrote: post #18

It's worth keeping in mind that Al Jazeera (as the state-funded news outlet of an extremely wealthy state that is built entirely and existentially on the sales of oil) may not be unbiased on this particular analysis.

It appears to be decrying the ongoing sale of oil:

"The supposed energy transition that has been undertaken has seen renewable energy production expanded, but there has been no indication that oil and gas are being substituted and ultimately phased out."

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#27

Post by willnonya »

t43562 wrote: post #5

Climate change has only one priority: stop releasing carbon into the atmosphere. We're all dead if we don't and we cannot afford to add one tiny extra burden onto that monumental task. Sorry. The alternative is death for us all and no chance of any justice ever.

This comes across as histrionics based on misinterpreting the worst case predictions to drive yet more unfounded FUD.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#29

Post by canadiantim »

T-zex wrote: post #15

"Net zero" and "carbon offsetting" are greatest hypocrisy catalyzers invented by greedy corporate sociopaths.

Net zero without carbon offsetting would, of course, be the end of all animal life on earth (animals exhaust CO2). So the only way to net zero is through carbon offsetting.

The tragedy though is that companies pretend to be climate warriors on one hand but with the other hand they're being the worst sort of environmental pollutants. These days it's all okay if you're destroying the environment so long as you're offsetting your CO2

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#30

Post by savingsPossible »

mrleinad wrote: post #17

"Fossil Future" is an interesting book on this topic that argues we need to use more fossil fuels instead of less. And it makes me kind of agree with the author, since I learnt that solar and wind only makes sense to use where it can offset the carbon footprint that it created when it was manufactured. I totally vote for nuclear, and I hope that it picks up, but we'll need fossil fuels for multiple industries anyway…

> We can go green, but we can't go green and have everyone maintain their living standards at the same time we also grow and perform R&D on multiple areas.

I would hope (at least at a physics level, politics would be hard, of course) that cutting down on yatchs and maybe flights might be enough... (i.e.: only cutting for the 1% or maybe 5%)

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