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Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

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Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#381

Post by locknitpicker »

epistasis wrote: post #116
locknitpicker wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's incentive systems to promote climate action. This personal belief is grounded on an assumption that all mankind follows a neoliberal or even libertarian economic model. Back to reality, west Europe is firmly a social democracy where states impose behavior through law, regulation, and policy, which is topped by a federal system t…

My supposed "personal belief" is not normative it is descriptive. Misconstruing this as normative, and attributing it to a political belief, is your cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile where actual climate action is coming from. We must understand the world as it is, if we are to effectively change it to a better state.

> My supposed "personal belief" is not normative it is descriptive.

No, it is a expression of your personal and unsupported beliefs. Asserting that the whole world enforces a libertarian economical system is simply out of touch with reality. I mean, China alone is a totalitarian regimes that still manages it's economy through central planning.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#382

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

defrost wrote: post #378
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because all the stuff required to do that does not grow on trees. Which means it has its own externalities regarding mass flows, EROI, emissions. At present time it just means the externalities have been made into other peoples problems. Regarding mining, tailings, transport, production, and so on.

What tailings, what transport? Serious questions here ... I'm also curious about your actual experience in heavy mineral and energy industry, largest plant you've worked at, scale of operation, etc. (FWiW in fairness, I've worked a few decades in and around > half a billion tonne per annum mining and worked globally in geophysical mineral and energy exploration)

> I'm also curious about your actual experience in heavy mineral and energy industry, largest plant you've worked at, scale of operation, etc.

None actually, except from the financial side making that happen, lately. Very indirect, at that. And I'm uncomfortable disclosing more, because I don't want to be doxxed. Its all so cozy right now :-)

From longer times ago, very intensive personal studies about stuff like that, at least 'knowing' what a Sankey-diagram or its variations for 'Gesamtstoffmengenkreisläufe'/mass-flows is.

Changing my young and naive opinions in the light of understanding that, and what it means!

Which is less emissions over all sectors for nuclear, vs. everything else. With the exception of big geothermal, maybe. But we didn't do that big so far, and where we have tried, it produced unintended side-effects.

Which leaves the question of where to put that stuff, after it burned out and has been contaminated with afterglowing hotness for a while.

Why not in the Yilgan Craton?

How big do you think the required atmospheric CO2 extractors need to be? Which mass- and energy flows will they have to have? At which count? A few dozen, hundreds, thousands? Maybe more like a grid with about 200 miles distance between them? Including at sea?

I'd guess about 5000 of these 'Atmospheric Processors' would suffice. And the only sufficient fuel we have for that scale is nukkular.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#383

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

radu_floricica wrote: post #113

I'm mostly stopped feeling autistic since adolescence, but climate change is one of those times. It's obviously real, and it's also obvious that shuffling chairs in developing countries is rounding to zero effect. We're converting to cleaner energy anyways because of pollution and better economics, so the push for decarbonization in itself is... what do you call a rounding error when it's already rounding to zero? An…

I agree with your message overall, but this kind of, I dunno, martyrdom posturing ("But we're in a social climate where I don't even dare write down examples of what those more effective methods would be, because if you're not luddite enough you're the enemy.", "it's not socially acceptable to discuss alternatives to orthodoxy") is funny to see on HN. This is not Xitter or Reddit, no one is going to ban or attempt to dox you and get you fired for saying "We should seriously consider injecting reflective stuff into stratosphere" here. In fact, your message will likely even have a positive rating overall.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#384

Post by nkohari »

myaccountonhn wrote: post #296
nkohari wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments and industry are responsible. Personal consumption/waste is not the primary driver of climate change, no matter how much corporations tell us that using paper straws is the solution. It's tough to expect average people to take major action when corporations are essentially given carte blanche.

From the IPCC report, 2/3rds of all global emissions are directly tied to consumption.

Well, yeah. Corporations aren't just nefarious evil entities, dumping carbon into the atmosphere for no reason. They're doing it to sell goods. The problem is that a lot of the environmental costs for the manufacture and transport of those goods are externalized and go unpaid.

It's difficult to put the blame for that on the consumer, who has no visibility into manufacturing or logistics, and who has vanishingly-small options for not participating. Buying domestic goods is very difficult or impossible, and goods which are manufactured in more environmentally-safe ways are significantly more expensive (because the costs I mentioned earlier weren't externalized).

If a consumer is presented with two options, one that costs $X and has unknown environmental costs, and one that costs $2X and is marketed as being environmentally safe, the majority will choose the first. This is especially true as economic forces continue to squeeze average people.

Consumers absolutely participate in the problem, but the only process by which it could be corrected is regulation, and the only entity capable of that is the government. (Democracy being what it is, you can however place more blame at the feet of voters.)

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#385

Post by belorn »

allannienhuis wrote: post #293
tyre wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but there is zero shot at doing this versus energy and transportation. The major limiter of veganism is cultural. People love eating meat. It’s a major source of protein and calories, especially in developing countries. Americans are not going vegan, so it’s kind of silly, in my opinion, to focus on it as a solution. Compare to building nuclear energy or solar / wind + batteries. China, the US, Europe, and India…

Culture can be changed - we changed the attitude toward and prevalence of cigarette smoking in 2-3 generations, we could change other practices as well. Success doesn't need to mean 100% adoption - material changes in attitude toward meat consumption (luxury/celebration vs everyday) would make a material difference in the overall impact. And yes, some/many ranchers, butchers, etc would need to turn to some other indu…

Culture can be changed indeed, as can be seen in religion where branches has happened and whole demographics has gone and switched to different religions.

The reason for the decrease in smoking is still being researched and debate, but the main arguments that I have seen is the main role of smoking as social stress relief and as such it has been replaced by other addictions like opium use (mobile phone use, social media, and games has also been argued).

If we consider food culture to be malleable, we definitely should move to aquaculture as a main source of nutrients. Farms on land compete with forests and human activity, and land based farms uses artificial fertilizers (derived from natural gas) and massive amount of fresh water. Shellfish, invertebrates, and seaweed can provide both protein and calories, and has the lowest environmental impact of anything we eat today and can even have a positive environmental impact if farmed correctly. Changing farming from doing harm to doing good would have massive impact, and all it takes is a cultural change.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#386

Post by belorn »

epistasis wrote: post #356
tcfhgj wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) renewable energy is only a part of climate action, it's not sufficient - renewable energy being cheap alone doesn't help a bit if you don't keep fossil fuel in the ground 2) not technology aligned societies incentive systems, but politics which a) incentivized producing electricity by renewable methods and punishing electricity produced by fossil fuels, which again encouraged research which in return made renewabl…

Renewable energy and replacing carbon emitting industrial chemistry with carbon neutral processes are the sum entirely of climate action. There might be a tiny bit of nuclear built, but we don't have the capability to build enough to make a dent in the time scale we need to, and nuclear is far more expensive than solar plus batteries, so the profit motive means solar wind and batteries will win. The people that built…

Solar and batteries are great for any region where solar production align with electricity consumption and where the battery solves the issue of night time.

Wind is great to reduce fossil consumption to around 50% in regions where the conditions of solar is not great. After 50% the cost increase significantly as overproduction competes with existing investments and prices drops below zero (see Denmark as an example). Batteries is also prohibitively expensive to cover months of poor production, which is why regions that heavily invest into wind also construct thermal power plants for equal capacity that burn carbon rich fuel for electricity and heat (see all of central/northern Europe). Regions with colder climates also has inverse consumption behavior than warmer climates, which mean that solar produce the least when consumption is highest. This is where nuclear can be economical viable, but only if we discontinue building more thermal power plants that burn cheap fuel. EU voting to have natural gas defined as "green" demonstrate this perfectly well, as well as the complete lack of any political party advocating to building battery as the solution for low wind production.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#387

Post by customguy »

epistasis wrote: post #27
ThrowawayIP wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology-will-save-us mentality is part of the reason we are here. We live in a society that doesn't do anything unless it makes money for some set of decrepit old men. We had the means to avoid this (strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition) but people made money doing the opposite. And more people made money sabotaging solar+battery pricing in the US. So…

No it isn't, the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense. Run the numbers. "Strict vegan diets" is the attitude of US activists telling the developing world that they need to change their behavior before the US activist is willing to accept driving less or adopting dense urban infill housing. "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's…

> the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense

Yeah, where did you get it from? They said "strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition" Would you also have said "the idea that energy transition and ground based mass transit would have stopped climate change is just nonsense", too?

Only to then go on to talk about "the reality of human society", as so often with these top response to the top comment. It's the sophistry two-step.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#388

Post by breezybottom »

epistasis wrote: post #367
breezybottom wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another sweeping claim that doesn't actually say anything. How is it the "exact opposite"?

I was very specific in the failings of Sunrise and XR and they contrast greatly with efforts like energy star or the Paris accords, and their members would say they same thing in that they tried something very different. My comments have been very specific, but you can't manage more than a sentence. Further, you have not even engaged with a single one of my words or statements.

You haven't made any specific claims to engage with, just vague polemics.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#389

Post by adrr »

jltsiren wrote: post #310
rfgplk wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~99% of the cost is due to red-tape regulations. It's so obscene that they require certified backup genererators for the backup generators and 3-4 layers of fail safes. Then you need to wait YEARS to get all the permits and licenses. Oh and if you get preapproval for a componant (say the generators) but too much time has passed from installation until you actually are ready to go, you need to go through the process a…

Nuclear power plants are ultimately not that different from coal power plants. Typical estimates for the capital costs of coal power are ~$4000/kW, which can be used as a lower bound for the costs of nuclear power. The costs are high, because construction industry has suffered from poor productivity growth for decades. Renewables are getting cheaper, because they rely more on mass-produced stuff and less on hiring pe…

Also Uranium has 3.5x in price over the last 6 years and will continue to go up. its a really rare element/isotope.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#390

Post by bakies »

beloch wrote: post #353
bakies wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data centers seem tangential to any real problem. The grid should be converting to green energy and regulation that says datacenters must also be power stations is backwards.

A gigawatt is a gigawatt. If you need a gigawatt, you pay for the generation and infrastructure to provide it, whether you're a million people or a single data-centre. The jursidictions that require data-centres to provide their own generation and electrical infrastructure are completely within their rights.

A gigawatt is a gigawatt. Power stations are more efficient the bigger they are. Put data centers in industrial zoning so the infrastructure for both power and water is already there. It's so obvious. Leave the power generating to the power companies. Yes, obviously again, the datacenters should pay for their gigawatts and solar on the roof will help keep the bill down. Why would this specific industry be required to run their own generators?
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