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Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

bloomberg.com

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Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#111

Post by albumen »

prmoustache wrote: post #41
bryanlarsen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global hydrocarbon consumption is down on a per capita basis. And that's despite the fact that renewable energy and electric vehicles had a negligible share. It's only the last year or two that renewable energy's share has become non-negligible. The EV transition is lagging the renewable energy transition, but it's happening too. EV's now have a non-negligible share of new vehicle sales, but since it takes ~20 years…

> EV's now have a non-negligible share of new vehicle sales, In only a few third world countries.

Incorrect. Ireland: "In the opening four months of the year, electric cars took a 17% share of new car sales, up from 13% the previous year "

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#112

Post by corethree »

digitalsushi wrote: post #60
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #30

I try to remain positive, but climate change is the one area where I have pretty much lost hope. People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change. Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim.

I would rather die than be slightly uncomfortable. The above is my mockery of how I expect we will in 40 years

If I'm going to die anyway why not be comfortable before I die?

If I change my own behavior but everyone doesn't then my actions are negligible.

Rationally my best course of action is to not change.

Remember it is each individual acting extremely rationally and logically that in the end contributes to global warming in aggregate. That is why it's so hard to reverse this. The tragedy of the commons.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#113

Post by nancyhn »

sobkas wrote: post #67

Then there should be consequences for destroying environment and making earth inhabitable for humans. Oil industry knew that burning fossil fuels will lead to global warming. Plastic industry knew that recycling is a total sham, and most of it will at best end up on a landfill at worts everywhere including our food. They knew but then they lied to us to make more profits. Maybe we should take that ill gotten profits…

Why do fewer climate related deaths; down 98% the past century

and a more green planet than a century ago

and far fewer people in poverty

all lead you to believe it's becoming uninhabitable?

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#114

Post by 4ggr0 »

trashtester wrote: post #98
civilized wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think developed nations collectively bought into fossil fuel-driven civilization, so it seems like scapegoating to lay all the blame at the feet of the producers. But like you say, it is appropriate to blame the producers for hiding what they knew about the greenhouse effect and well-funded lobbying and propaganda campaigns to deny and minimize it.

If the world stopped consuming fossil fuels today, overpopulation would no longer be an issue in about a year or two. Because 90% of the population would die.

Well you don't have to stop in a matter of one day, because that's impossible and unrealistic anyways, but we could at least finally start with reducing our consumption, with the goal to land as close as possible to 0 as soon as possible.

Then again, we missed the window to stop long ago. So why bother anyways, right?

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#115

Post by trashtester »

lukeschlather wrote: post #81
ff317 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we'll never stop extracting oil in the foreseeable future, we'll just be doing a lot less of it. There will always be corner cases where diesel or other oil derivatives (or NG) are the /only/ reasonable option for fuel. Think generators for an antarctic station that can only use solar in certain months and wind isn't enough (or reliable enough)). Even if efficient electric commercial aviation at scale ever ha…

Electricity is probably going to be an order of magnitude (or more) cheaper in 20 years, at least for bulk purchase in most fixed locations (not Antarctic winter.) The assumption that oil extraction is worthwhile is based on it being the cheapest way to get a unit of power. But if power is 1/10th what it costs now it is economical to do some process that has absurdly bad efficiency (10:1, even 100:1) to translate pow…

I don't see any way electricity could fall anywhere near that much in 20 years. For that to happen, we either need a revolutionary decrease in the price of nuclear power, a radical improvement in the price of dependable renewable energy (probably involving a lot of batteries) or some hard AI takeoff that makes EVERYTHING cheaper.

Keep in mind that most countries are trying to electrify most parts of the economy, so we not only need to decarbonize the current electrical supply, but possibly 2-3 times that, if we are to replace NG for heating, steel and chemical industries, fertilizers and so on.

Keep in mind that even if the technology for producing windmills and batteries go down a lot, we still need a lot of new mining capacity to even have enough raw materials to produce those items. That alone could take 10-15 years to build out.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#118

Post by konschubert »

Aachen wrote: post #93
BLanen wrote: post #49

Good. Any implementation of carbon offsetting is a sham anyway and Shell's plan didn't even offset its product's emmision but only its own business process(because offsetting the emissions of the products would be many times more costly than the product itself)

Even if it's mostly a sham, that's better than nothing

No, it’s worse. It takes money and focus away from things that work.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#119

Post by axioms_End »

trashtester wrote: post #104
tw04 wrote: post #7

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years and the previous CEO was preparing their defense of "don't punish us for the s…

> Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years I think a lot of people feel that. Personally, I think we may more or less have forgotten about "Global Warming" in 20 years, just like we forgot about the "Ozone Layer" or "Acid Rain". If AI continues at anything resembling the current pace for another decade or two , there may be so much disruption, that Global Warming seems…

Small difference: we banned chemicals responsible for ozon layer disruption, similar situation with acid rain (talking about 1st world with rain). So it's not like we forgotten, more like it's a non-issue now. Global warming is only going to get worse.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#120

Post by hkt »

robnado wrote: post #56
IKantRead wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe that included in "only action" is: keep fossil fuels in the ground. The idea that we can only mitigate is insane. Yes we've already signed up for a lot of pain as a civilization, but as long we keep burning fossil fuels we are looking at an increasingly worse future. It's not like a smoker who has gotten lung cancer, where the best we can do is try to ease the pain, and more smoking won't really matter.…

We can slow down the use of fossil fuels, but as long as we are 8 billion people on the planet and we find no better way to produce ammonia, steel, concrete and plastics, we will keep needing huge amounts of fossil fuels. Personally, I feel that the solution is to gradually raise the tax rate on fossil fuels in order to disincentives their use and incentivize the production of alternatives. We've done this for cigare…

Steel and concrete aren't necessary for the most part: other materials that don't emit (or even actively sequester) carbon are available and have been for a long, long time. It doesn't even preclude building densely either: just look at cross laminated timber.
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