151–160 of 356 posts
Somewhat clickbaity: The dramatic shift in its new “Energy Security Scenarios” is not explicitly acknowledged, but, as Carbon Brief’s analysis shows, is hidden in plain sight. So, no, they haven't admitted it at all.
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IMO What we're consistently failing to see is that necessity is the mother of invention. Mankind has summoned seemingly unfathomable ingenuity and effort in response to dire need. It seems it will be Gen Alpha/Beta who will have their "ww2 moment" but in response to existential threat from Environmental and second order societal collapse. Likely changes will include mass adoption of nuclear (potentially including Fus…
What happens when we can't find a solution. In a lot of ways we're lucky b/c every major problem that has come along we more or less have found a solution to. I suspect climate change may be a little different. Not sure if you saw the movie Up but the basic plot is an asteroid is going to crash into earth. They devise a mechanism to blow it up but it doesn't work and everyone dies. Not everyone is going to die from c…
One eye-opening fact I recently learned is that fossil fuel infrastructure being built today is expected to have a three-decade lifespan, after completion of its construction. So every time you hear about a new pipeline, drilling project, or refinery being built you know that the people sitting in the rooms authorizing billions of dollars being allocated to the project all believe it will safely be operating and prod…
can't understand the downvotes, may someone explain?
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.
If we can't reach 1.5°C then we should try to reach 1.6°C. If we can't reach that then 1.7°C. Ultimately: It doesn't matter whether we can reach 1.5°C, because everything we try helps making things better. And any carbon sequestation technology will only help significantly after drastic emission cuts, not as a replacement for it.: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x
Aiming for 1.5C, then missing it and then continuously failing on 1.6C, 1.7C, 1.8C etc. is akin to a fat person missing their goal of 200lbs, and then telling themselves in front of the mirror every extra 10lb - "I'm going to stop eating junk food today! No, really, this is the day!"
It's a cognitive failure to adequately process signals that the real physical world is sending to you. Or measurements that you take from the real world.
We _should_ be making things better, yes. But setting an arbitrary goal isn't helpful.
You know what would be helpful? Just giving ever person who's considering a solar project a much larger tax break than currently exists. Expand community solar programs for medium-size installations up to 2MW. Subsidize energy storage installations to complement that installed solar.
Anyone who's advocating for targeting an ambitious goal is missing the point completely. If that was helpful, why not just say we're targeting 0C?
In fact, let's target -1C and shoot extra energy into space. We might even discover some cool tech this way.
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IMO What we're consistently failing to see is that necessity is the mother of invention. Mankind has summoned seemingly unfathomable ingenuity and effort in response to dire need. It seems it will be Gen Alpha/Beta who will have their "ww2 moment" but in response to existential threat from Environmental and second order societal collapse. Likely changes will include mass adoption of nuclear (potentially including Fus…
What happens when we can't find a solution. In a lot of ways we're lucky b/c every major problem that has come along we more or less have found a solution to. I suspect climate change may be a little different. Not sure if you saw the movie Up but the basic plot is an asteroid is going to crash into earth. They devise a mechanism to blow it up but it doesn't work and everyone dies. Not everyone is going to die from c…
We go extinct or evolve. But that's always been true about every existential problem that humanity has faced before, including how to get food, clothe ourselves, not die in childbirth, on and on goes the list of things we've solved in the past.
I'm not saying we should recklessly exacerbate every scenario but we know that distributed problems are very difficult for humanity to solve without a present crisis (as ww2 was, and unfortunately 2050 is not present enough for typical human psychology) .
> life as we know it is fundamentally altered.
Yes. This has happened dozens of times, at an increasing pace across human history. Agriculture, Printing press, Germ Theory/Antibiotics, birth control + feminine hygiene products, Nuclear theory, Extra terrestrial travel, the internet, "AI" ... Each of them has unlocked an order of magnitude difference in human existence
I fully expect us to invent something in this case, and do not fear if we do not. Given enough dice rolls something is going to end humanity eventually.
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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 is longer than the time it has taken to evolve mammalian life. Assuming that no other intelligent species would ever evolve is pretty crazy, it's only taken us 200 million years. If that's an average, we could be looking at 1 to 3 other intelligent species developing on this planet alone.
Every other species today has had the same 4.2bn years.
In 4.2bn years, we’ve had one successful draw of a species with sufficient intelligence born into an environment with sufficient incentives to tackle this problem (that we know of).
Saying another 1 will happen in time to thwart the pending extinction event strikes me as an aggressive gamble, let alone 3.
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If we can't reach 1.5°C then we should try to reach 1.6°C. If we can't reach that then 1.7°C. Ultimately: It doesn't matter whether we can reach 1.5°C, because everything we try helps making things better. And any carbon sequestation technology will only help significantly after drastic emission cuts, not as a replacement for it.: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x
If we're already going to have to heavily adapt our living arrangements to account for extreme climate change, at what point does 0.1° not matter? 5.0° vs 5.1°? 10.0° vs 10.1°?
0.1 on average can mean huge spikes on some parts of the globe.
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Best reading recommendation would be to look at climate change projections from NOAA or similar organizations for where you live or want to live, assume those will be true within some +-, and then base your decisions off of that. There doesn't seem to be a substantial downside to getting it wrong if bad scenarios don't occur but if they do occur you'll want to have gotten it right. > People will always say "just use…
Right, but, to a large extent, Americans love the burbs and you are not going to be able to get them to vote for their demise, no matter how many benefits you can see .
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We have a solution to this problem, it's build more nuclear plants and electrify everything with nuclear and renewables. Unfortunately, we are shutting these plants down instead of building more of them.
"There are 53 nuclear reactors currently under construction around the world. Only two are in the United States" [0x3F800000] "The annual number of permanent nuclear reactor shutdowns fluctuated between 2005 and 2022. In the latter year, there were 4 shutdowns worldwide, of which three were in the United Kingdom (UK) and one in the United States (U.S.) "[0x40000000] [0x3F800000] https://spectrum.ieee.org/slow-steady-…
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If we can't reach 1.5°C then we should try to reach 1.6°C. If we can't reach that then 1.7°C. Ultimately: It doesn't matter whether we can reach 1.5°C, because everything we try helps making things better. And any carbon sequestation technology will only help significantly after drastic emission cuts, not as a replacement for it.: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x
Goals should be realistic. Aiming for 1.5C, then missing it and then continuously failing on 1.6C, 1.7C, 1.8C etc. is akin to a fat person missing their goal of 200lbs, and then telling themselves in front of the mirror every extra 10lb - "I'm going to stop eating junk food today! No, really, this is the day!" It's a cognitive failure to adequately process signals that the real physical world is sending to you. Or me…