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Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

resilience.org

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Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#91

Post by pfisch »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #61
pfisch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Critics of coercive measures targeting private planes point out that a ban would only reduce carbon emissions by 0.2%, based on study of the direct cost of private jets alone." https://flybitlux.com/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-a-priv... Just admit you're not really intending to "do your part" at all. You just intend to whataboutism everyone else for the forseeable future.

0.2% of all emissions sounds like a disproportionately big win. Like the entire emissions of small country. That's a low hanging fruit. Let's do it!

It is low hanging fruit to get every country in the world to agree to outlaw private jet travel!? How ridiculous.

The US can't even pass basic legislation to stop schools from getting shot up once a week, but this is low hanging fruit??? Ok...

Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#92

Post by Cthulhu_ »

slashdev wrote: post #3

I’m not sure what’s the point of focusing on 1.5C anymore. I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear that we’re going to double that at least. Barring any miracle in carbon sequestration technology anyway. I hope we get a miracle.

There won't be a miracle. The best and most scalable carbon sequestration is still growing trees without them rotting, but that takes generations to have an effect, assuming overproduction of CO2 stops right away.

But at this point we've passed the point of no return; probably years ago, with permafrost, ice caps and glaciers melting and all the effects that has. I don't think any CO2 measures now will help anymore.

Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#93

Post by davidw »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #68
davidw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city where I live is considering a tree ordinance, driven by some local NIMBYs. I did some rough numbers based on things I found around the internet and: One year of carbon sequestration from a mature tree == 1 or 2 days of commuting to the city 20 miles away that many people who are priced out of this town drive back and forth from. Trees are great, and most places should plant more street trees. But if you pres…

There is no single silver bullet, but if you combine tree planting with nuclear / renewable power with remote work with electric vehicles ... eventually it starts to add up. Shooting down solutions because they aren't the entire solution will mean we never make any progress.

Sure; I wasn't saying don't plant trees (street trees provide all kinds of benefits: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/tag/street+trees ), just that transportation and how we build our cities are so critical. I did not realize the huge, orders of magnitude disconnect between exactly how much CO2 driving puts out and trees sequester.

In other unfortunate news:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/25/gm-bolt-ev-production-to-end...

GM ending production of the Chevy Bolt in favor of bigger, heavier, deadlier, less efficient EV's.

Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#94

Post by jaggederest »

BossingAround wrote: post #41
hkt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon sequestration is trivial: we rewild destroyed ecosystems. We don't need to die waiting for Elon. I await my downvotes.

If we planted trees on every square meter outside of current cities (and let them grow without disturbing them), would that make a dent in carbon sequestration? Serious question. Planting trees and re-growing ecosystems seems like a simple, straightforward solution, but I feel like it's a red herring.

Afforestation pretty much linearly absorbs carbon based on the size of the area you cover with trees, as a percentage of current forest area.

So if we doubled the size and carbon trapping of all the forests on earth, yes, it would make a big dent (solve the problem entirely, maybe). But that's unrealistic, because forests currently cover 30% of the land area of the planet, so we're practically never going to get to 60% forest coverage. It would involve giving up important things like farming.

It's not entirely a red herring, it will undoubtedly be a big part of climate change mitigation, but the first and most important step is to stop pumping oil out of the ground and burning it, like the article.

Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#95

Post by Ekaros »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #61
pfisch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Critics of coercive measures targeting private planes point out that a ban would only reduce carbon emissions by 0.2%, based on study of the direct cost of private jets alone." https://flybitlux.com/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-a-priv... Just admit you're not really intending to "do your part" at all. You just intend to whataboutism everyone else for the forseeable future.

0.2% of all emissions sounds like a disproportionately big win. Like the entire emissions of small country. That's a low hanging fruit. Let's do it!

I wonder if that also affects less than 0.2% of global population...

Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#96

Post by scythe »

slashdev wrote: post #3

I’m not sure what’s the point of focusing on 1.5C anymore. I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear that we’re going to double that at least. Barring any miracle in carbon sequestration technology anyway. I hope we get a miracle.

This is going to sound kind of cynical, but the primary mechanism of democratic — popular — feedback, in most countries around the world, is embarrassment. In the West, embarrassment means you lose elections; in less democratic countries, it may mean you get forced from power by other means.

So the optimal climate target should maximize the utility of this embarrassment. It should not be too achievable, or countries will slack off, but it should not be obviously impossible, or that will be an excuse to give up. The carrot must always dangle just far enough in front of the horse.

The point of 1.5 C as a target isn't that we meet it, but that we try to. If we could meet the target, we'd do even worse, and say "close enough", but that's no good.

Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#97

Post by afavour »

whimsicalism wrote: post #77
afavour wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear: you’re saying we shouldn’t believe any science at all because a snap reaction to an emerging pandemic turned out to be excessive?

Turned out to be excessive? The countries that were actually successful averted the deaths of millions of their own citizens.

I've given up debating this with the COVID skeptic folks because it's impossible to definitively prove exactly what would have happened without lockdowns. Instead my general argument is that it was a situation where a great deal was unknown, if with the benefit of hindsight we learn that we overreacted that doesn't mean the original choice was the wrong one. We worked with the evidence we had available at the time and we played it safe. Playing it safe seems sensible to me.

Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#98

Post by whimsicalism »

pseg134 wrote: post #70
whimsicalism wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me to be incredibly arrogant to be reasoning starting from humanity as saviors of life in 500 million years. And to say that that somehow means that the eco-movements (many of which are focused on the keeping us alive for the next few thousand years) are flawed seems wrong. The focus put on silly Greenpeace actions and fights about nuclear in the media is part of a somewhat intentional strategy to paint a…

Well if someone other than humanity wants to step up and save life I’m sure we would be okay with it but my dog still spends his time licking himself and my houseplants are not especially active so I think it’s up to us.

500 million years and your dog will be the ancestor of Dog Richard Feynman.

Re: Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth

#99

Post by dublinben »

jdshupe wrote: post #12

Does anyone have recommendations for good reading on this subject? What this means for combustion engines as a whole? I am trying to imagine where the push for clean energy will lead. I am fully on team green but I think the switch happened too late. I feel like there is a future where you have a large percent of the population (at least in the US) where EVs are too expensive to afford the monthly payment/up front pa…

You’re right that EVs are not enough to solve this. We also need to significantly reduce the amount of traveling in all cars, electric or not.

The good news is that there are fast and cheap solutions that cities can implement nearly overnight. Cities like Paris showed in recent years that “pop-up” bike lanes can be installed very quickly, and significantly increase travel by bicycle.

Many cities also have a bus system, which would also be positively transformed with just painting some bus lanes on existing roads.

The short term fixes support the longer term changes (enabling walkable communities, allowing more efficient compact housing, etc.) that we also need to be adopting as fast as possible.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/10/13/cycling-through-covid...

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