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Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

latimes.com

101–110 of 140 posts

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#101

Treating alternative energy and PHEVs/EVs as a core national security concern should have started in the early 2000s. Yes, the PV revolution hadn't happened yet, but the hybrid auto was released in 1998 or so, and a PHEV is a natural extension to that. I'm weak on recollection as to when PV and wind started their big price plummet, but it was certainly in the 2010s. It's still not too late for ... everyone. In partic…

The PV revolution has happened. Most countries with significant energy grids get most of their energy from PV during the daytime. Some even get 50% of their yearly energy from PV.

Do I see every single building covered in residential solar? Can I install grid independent solar in a typical house for under $5,000 or maybe $2,000? Because I think that's what's on the horizon still.

Solar has yet to incorporate likely a fundamental cost drop from perovskites, silicon perovskite multi junction, and fundamental advances in sodium ion battery storage.

And every time you bring up solar wind taking over the majority of a grid, you get the pro-nuclear people ringing their hands over grid stability and the like. I do think of a little bit is that overblown but there's definitely a large structural cost to grid adaptation and issues with industrial power using current battery storage and PV wind economics, especially when you start talking about everybody having a phev or an EV charging.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#102

> “The mere fact that the conference is happening is already a success,” said Claudio Angelo, senior policy adviser at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, a network of environmental, civil society and academic groups The bar has been set so low that talking about it is seen as success now. Sometimes I think the only way we'll really make meaningful progress is if we simply run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we're just…

Unfortunately the crisis will get much, much worse before ordinary people go "Wait, so, we're all going to die? How do we prevent that?" and the idea that it's too late isn't compatible with their model of the world so they will reach for increasingly crude "solutions" to what they have belatedly realised is a dire situation. It might I suppose be fun to catalogue, what are the priorities? Do we kill all the poor peo…

Care to put any dates to your doomerisms? Can I take the other side of the bet?

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#103
post #29

Treating alternative energy and PHEVs/EVs as a core national security concern should have started in the early 2000s. Yes, the PV revolution hadn't happened yet, but the hybrid auto was released in 1998 or so, and a PHEV is a natural extension to that. I'm weak on recollection as to when PV and wind started their big price plummet, but it was certainly in the 2010s. It's still not too late for ... everyone. In partic…

> In particular, I think PHEVs should be an regulated requirement for all consumer (and probably semis, why aren't they hybrids yet just so they can have better acceleration/torque and regen braking) vehicles in ten years, with a 10-year decreasing subsidy for PHEV and a 10-year increasing penalty for car registration and new car purchases of pure ICE. That's the actual plan for Europe. They are planning to start ICE…

I think if Bush had not won the 2000 election, we would be in a fundamentally different electrification of transportation situation.

Of course that's speculation, and crying overspilled milk

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#104
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are a very unimportant part of changing to clean energy. The most important part is the generation. Making specific types of cars required right now is VERY premature, and will just cause backlash. Let's focus on just one (main) thing: Clean generation of electricity. The rest will come in due course.

EVs are 3 to 4 times more efficient than ICE vehicles. So just converting to EVs is a huge efficiency gain. In fact, if we electrified industrial and transportation using existing technology we could reduce energy demand by up to 40%. And as you recommended, power generation from solar (where/when feasible) removes the need for ongoing fossil fuel purchases.

That 40% number is impossible. First of all transportation is 30% of energy, which already makes 40% impossible, second if it's 4 times more efficient then it would still use 8% to 10% of energy, making your actual savings 20% of energy at the MOST.

But your 3 to 4 times number is also not real, because the actual number is 2 to 3 - and that's measured at the outlet, if you measure starting from primary power generation they are about 2 times as efficient, not 4.

So I stand by what I said: Electric vehicles are not what matters for clean energy, what matters is power generation.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change doesn't divvy impact based on per capita usage. And large countries and blocs like the US, China, EU, India, etc would survive in a world with significant climate crises. So the incentive to change doesn't exist. And this is why the world will burn.

The Chinese government invested ~$1 trillion in clean energy in 2025, while the Chinese economy had a further ~$2 trillion in growth surrounding EVs, batteries, and solar. You talk about "no incentive to change", but things are actively changing. What more would you like China to do, in concrete terms? Stop manufacturing for the West, even though that will, as aforementioned, likely result in a net increase in emissi…

Personaly I would like to see China invest less in renewables and more in nuclear power. If France could replace its coal power plants with nuclear power plants in 1970s, 1980s then China should be capable to do it.

China endured famines for centuries, introduction of nitrogen fertilizers helped to solve this problem.

"The meeting of Mao Zedong and Nixon in 1972 changed drastically the fundamental relation between China and USA. In 1973 China contracted importation of 13 large-scale ammonia plants with 330,000 t/y capacity and urea plants with 500-600,000 t/y capacity with the companies of USA, Japan and Europe."

https://kagakushi.org/iwhc2015/papers/21.MineTakeshi.pdf

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#106

> “The mere fact that the conference is happening is already a success,” said Claudio Angelo, senior policy adviser at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, a network of environmental, civil society and academic groups The bar has been set so low that talking about it is seen as success now. Sometimes I think the only way we'll really make meaningful progress is if we simply run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we're just…

If the world is to stay within a range of carbon emissions that avoids catastrophic global warming, 80 percent of the fossil fuel industry’s reserves must remain unused in the ground.

If we "run out" we'll have done ourselves terrific injury.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#107
post #78
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much coal . There is at least 130 years worth at current consumption levels. And despite what everyone says about renewables and green energy and etc, world use still hit a high in 2024. We aren't going to run out of (coal at least) for a long time--and usage is still going up!

But coal's essential as a backup in case of a dead (civilizational) restart.

That seems to be based on the assumption that coal is easily accessible. I'm not sure that's true.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#108
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we are no longer worried about catastrophic or runaway climate change based on these revisions?

That’s tough to say. Weather systems are difficult to model. We have minimal understanding of the causes or inputs that control the very long climate cycles. Like we know that some day thousands of years from now we’ll have another unstoppable glacial period. We’ll also have a period free of polar ice. Those are cyclical and independent of CO2. We cannot stop either. We live in a very precious time. I also think we s…

So the climate scientists of every government are lying? The calculations about how much heat is trapped by different CO2 amounts, bunk?

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#109

> “The mere fact that the conference is happening is already a success,” said Claudio Angelo, senior policy adviser at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, a network of environmental, civil society and academic groups The bar has been set so low that talking about it is seen as success now. Sometimes I think the only way we'll really make meaningful progress is if we simply run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we're just…

Unfortunately the crisis will get much, much worse before ordinary people go "Wait, so, we're all going to die? How do we prevent that?" and the idea that it's too late isn't compatible with their model of the world so they will reach for increasingly crude "solutions" to what they have belatedly realised is a dire situation. It might I suppose be fun to catalogue, what are the priorities? Do we kill all the poor peo…

My naive understanding is that climate change poses no real risk of human extinction, or even anything approaching it, at least not for centuries or longer. Which isn’t to say that the high cost of climate change is something we should shrug and just pay, especially because it will fall on the poorest.

But c’mon now, you’re being wildly overdramatic, and that doesn’t actually help our ability to deal with the threat.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is beyond shameful how Westerners misallocate the blame for pollution, using misleading statistics. India has ~17% of the world's population. That it only produces 7% of global emissions means it is contributing far, far, far less than whatever country you possibly come from in relative terms, so at that point you are besmirching it solely for the crime of having a larger population than your country. China, while…

Climate change doesn't divvy impact based on per capita usage. And large countries and blocs like the US, China, EU, India, etc would survive in a world with significant climate crises. So the incentive to change doesn't exist. And this is why the world will burn.

Climate change is the result of aggregate human actions. What we contribute per human is exactly the metric to use.
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