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Europe's fires are just the start

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Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#201
post #33
post #4

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…

Even if we stopped emissions today, Earth will keep warming up for a couple of decades. We’re not at equilibrium temperature for the current CO2 levels.

I wonder what would happen if there was one of those large volcanic eruptions.

There’s been a few over the last few hundred years. If there’s dust and haze it might be a respite, apart from famines due to poor harvests.

I guess we’ll find out should it happen.

We’re in a more precarious state, and these random natural events could be very tricky.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#202
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables. Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries…

> should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account Obviously, each individual should have a right to emit a certain amount of GHGs independently from the size of the country he happens to be born in. So the correct list is this (2024 data [1]). Quite surprising in places (e.g. the position of the UK, Australians emitting GHGs at the level of a petro-state, and Canadians too,…

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Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#203
post #84
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables. Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries…

The reason Germany gets singled out is because it was a massive policy misstep and highlights the shortsightedness of the environmental movement. It seems that they have changed their tune about it nuclear - but their entrenched efforts (and concerns in the 80s) killed the last 40 years of nuclear power - arguably inflaming our current CO2 crises by opening the doors wide open for Oil and Gas to fill the void. In Ger…

Unlike the states, Germany is densely populated and does not have vast uninhabited areas. Where do you suggest should they store their nuclear waste? Germany has been looking for an appropriate place for the last 50(!) years and does not expect to come to a conclusion any time soon:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-scrap-deadline-...

In the mean time, they're keeping they're using the sites of their former nuclear power plants as temporary storage locations for the nuclear waste produced while the plants were still running.

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/What-now-for-Germany-s-re...

On top of all that, there's new challenges like this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/urban-infrastructure/energy-infras...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nuclear is proportionally expensive for one because we build a lot less and lose insititional knowledge and manufacturing capacity. Secondly because of ridiculous legislation and europes extreme ability to fuck with it politically. Thirdly because we don't count the gas plant to cover the intermitency of the renewables as part of the cost and if they'd take those out they'd find they run out of options for the cheap…

- nuclear increased in price over the period France built a lot of them. China is not currently experiencing cost price reduction in nuclear. Maybe we'd experience scale reductions in cost if we were to build at a much larger scale than that, but given that the world is already spending hundreds of billions just to build a handful of plants....

- nuclear also needs gas plants to handle peaking demands

> I still remember repeatedly getting that Lazard LCOE report thrown at me by germans with absolutely fantasy numbers for storage

Which one was that? Lazard has always consistently overestimated the cost of solar and solar+storage.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#205
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we stopped emissions today, Earth will keep warming up for a couple of decades. We’re not at equilibrium temperature for the current CO2 levels.

One not very well known fact is that even if we stop emissions today, the elevated CO₂ levels will remain for many centuries. They way I think/hope we can fix this is two parts: 1. The only way I think you can get rid of the excess CO₂ at scale is to permanently sequester it underground. The oil/gas industry can cheaply deposit huge amounts of gas there. The unsolved problem is extracting enough CO₂ from the atmosphe…

Best would be to capture CO2, and then solidify the carbon to a compact stable stable state by taking away the oxygen. Then we have a highly concentrated pure carbon form that we can just bury underground. Or add some hydrogen and get this liquid state that we can pump back into those empty underground reservoirs. But maybe we should stop taking it out in the first place...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#206
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

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…

The politicians in Germany went to great length to promote natural gas as the green technology to be combined with renewables, a strategy they succeed in the European Parliament and still seem to follow even when the fires roams and the pipelines get blown up. There is no seasonal grid battery storage in central and northern Europe, and outside of a few hundred household sized experiment, no grid storage is being built.

Looking at the platforms of political parties who oppose nuclear in a nearby country like Sweden, all of them highlight how thermal power plants are necessary to support further expansion of renewable energy, and those thermal power plants burn some form of fossil fuels. This include the Swedish green party.

What EU need is a ban on fossil fuels in the energy grid. Without that natural gas there is no need to buy gas from current war zones and their participants, and it would significantly decrease emissions. As long as people who oppose nuclear also agree to stop using thermal power plants, same as with the ban on ICE cars that will come into action in a few years, then the discussion of nuclear vs renewables + battery will be a fair one with everyone playing by the same rules.

Naturally in the south part of EU there is little reason to use nuclear plants. Energy demand correlates with solar production, and the need for seasonal storage is minimal. Sadly the same can not be said about central and northern Europe where wind speeds are the current dominant factor when it come to supply of energy, but seasons dictate demand. The size of storage needed for a harsh winter is magnitudes more expensive currently than reducing the need through nuclear, but that will never be tested since what countries there are actually building right now are more thermal power plants to address the issue of low supply during periods of low energy production from wind.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#207
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we stopped emissions today, Earth will keep warming up for a couple of decades. We’re not at equilibrium temperature for the current CO2 levels.

One not very well known fact is that even if we stop emissions today, the elevated CO₂ levels will remain for many centuries. They way I think/hope we can fix this is two parts: 1. The only way I think you can get rid of the excess CO₂ at scale is to permanently sequester it underground. The oil/gas industry can cheaply deposit huge amounts of gas there. The unsolved problem is extracting enough CO₂ from the atmosphe…

> It sounds scary, but is actually safe

Posted by the account, BurningFrog. You can't make this shit up.

Forgive me if I do not take "making sunsets" as a credible source of information.

There's a body of research that covers existential risks associated with sai and srm:

- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00163...

- https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.338...

- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF00...

Further from an actual credible source:

https://www.unep.org/resources/report/Solar-Radiation-Modifi...

> While there is a growing body of literature and advanced modelling on the topic, which has been developing for many years, there is very little evidence or research on the risks and impacts of SRM. The report outlines these limitations in the evidence base. UNEP is concerned that while the scientific literature shows that SRM, and stratospheric aerosol injection specifically, can cool the globe, there is a dearth of data on the risks and impacts. For technologies that can alter the chemistry of the stratosphere, the world needs much more information to support decision-making.

No, it is not "safe" by any measure.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#208
post #7
post #4

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…

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

This is just trolling. So. Boring.

Something can be urgent while no one is doing anything about it. Would not be the first time. That point would be the first of many incoherences in you comment.

I don’t debate that there is urgency, that so much more should be done, etc. but your comment really isn’t helping.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#209
post #97

People are truly having a climate change discussion fatigue. They hear all the time from politicians, celebrities, influencers, etc. that they should stop eating meat, should not drive non-electric vehicles, should not use AC, reduce consumption, and all other bullshit while the people preaching those have started wars that emit billions of tons of carbon, travel on their private planes to climate change summits, tak…

Well climate change is happening whether wealthy people are hypocrites or not. Also there a lot of people in very poor countries (india, south east asia, africa) that are already feeling the effects and need to worry about it a lot. I would actually say rich people can afford the most to not worry about climate change, because they can stave off the effects better than poor people (moving to colder climates, building…

I think you missed the point of the parent comment. It wasn’t about rich people.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#210
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They must be regularly cleaned People keep reiterating this probably because Trump keeps reiterating but it just sounds ridiculous. How do you clean forests? The debris is part of the forest, not all areas of a forest are easily accessible or feasible to transport debis out of there. A dead tree is actually an ecosystem of fungi and insects. Cleaning it may make it more fire prone as broken sticks and leaves shield…

Prescribed burns are a good way to clean forests! Burn the debris every 10-20 years rather than let it accumulate and become unstoppable disaster fires once a century. This tends to be very hard hard to do in a democratic system though. People really don't like their forests burning.

I find it ironic to discuss how burning forests is going to help fight the consequences of… too much CO2?
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