101–110 of 365 posts
Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt.
Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it).
It's going to get worse before it gets better sadly.
As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now, this is the new normal, and it'll only get worse
> As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, The "people in charge" as well as the "climate experts" are generally aligned on the climate crisis, but everyone has been surprised by unexpected acceleration and the very sudden swings. Put differently, you can predict and act, according to the trend, but the…
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There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.
But nuclear also can't deal with peaks.
Nuclear is great for base load, not great for peaks
Our current situation is we are building tons of renewables and storage but still burning tons of fossil fuels because they cannot replace the base load very effectively. Nuclear replaces the carbon part of the equation
As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now, this is the new normal, and it'll only get worse
The oil companies in the 1970s for one:
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> We need to act now. What does this look like, precisely, in practice?
The people here maintain a list of things: https://drawdown.org/explorer Chiefly we need to replace fossil fuels with electricity from carbon free sources and electrify transportation, heating, and industry.
That's happening. For instance, China now generates less than half its energy from coal for the first time, as reported earlier today: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less...
There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now , because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get…
And aside the greenhouse effect, we're also using more power than we've ever used before, building 10Msqft boxes that ultimately turn electricity into heat. We could go all-solar and we'd still be warming our environment.
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This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…
There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.
Use its power down when in need of electricity. Bring water up hill when too much electricity is available.
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This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…
I wonder how much battery you could install in a typical nuclear site. Maybe even stacked; if we make an apples-to-apples comparison in materials and say we can use the same amount of concrete and metal, could probably have several levels of batteries. Except no water needed, and no waste risks.
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This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…
Of course it would, but there's less profit for capitalists to make with distributed sovereign renewable energy. 30 years ago the answer was nuclear. Not today, it's just a distraction to try to keep us burning dead dinosaurs for longer.
To put it another way, I could flip your statement on its head: Renewables are just a distraction to try to keep us burning dead dinosaurs for longer instead of building durable nuclear power capacity.
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Agreed that the people in charge do nothing and don't understand the problem. However, the people in charge (e.g. in France) are elected by the people, and therefore represent it. Do you think that the far-right will care more about the climate crisis? The French people is likely to elect them next year. It's too easy to vote for people who don't give a shit about the climate crisis, and then blame them. > either way…
> We need to act now. What does this look like, precisely, in practice?
* CO2 emissions are screwing the climate, and CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels. We need to stop using fossil fuels.
* Our way of life depends on fossil fuels. In some cases it's obvious (we transport food in trucks that need oil), but it's too easy to believe that we may replace that with electricity. It's a lot more complicated than that: everything depends on petrochemical products. How do you transport food without plastics? How do you build electronics without petrochemical products (the PCBs need them, for one)? Without electronics, how do you manage solar panels?
* We don't necessarily have to go back to the Middle-Age: first we probably couldn't: we are way too many for that, and second we know a lot more than they did.
But overall, we will have to do a lot less with a lot less. We have to think about what's fundamental, and how we want to preserve it. I'm not saying "choose between a new game console or a new smartphone every two years instead of having both". I'm saying "do you want to preserve some nature? Produce enough food for everybody? Keep some kind of democratic system?".
Of course, it's too much, we cannot do everything that we need, and we won't be able to preserve everything that we want. We need to accept it and start prioritising.
Overall, I would say that a good first step would be to get informed about how bad it is. There are enough books and resources about that. The people need to be informed in order to elect informed people. Too many don't give a shit, spend their free time on TikTok and then blame the ruling class.