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Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

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Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#121

Post by hnarn »

volemo wrote: post #41
RuggedPineapple wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know which one you mean, as I'm sure we all do, but it always amuses me that we refer to her as just 'Cleopatra' because... basically every queen of Egypt in that dynasty was named Cleopatra. They named the vast majority of the boys Ptolemy and the girls Cleopatra. Her mother's name is Cleopatra V Tryphaena. Her daughters name is Cleopatra Selene II. Her Fathers name is Ptolemy XII, she has brothers named Ptolemy X…

Sure, there were many a Cleopatra, but only one was the Cleopatra. :D

Much like there wasn't one "Caesar", since it's a title (still kicking in Proto-West Germanic derivatives branching off "kaisar"), but many "normal" people (not history nerds) would still use only the title to refer to Gaius Julius Caesar.

Also fun fact -- if you're a history nerd -- "Julius Caesar" is almost equally nonsensical to just "Caesar" since "Julius" is not his name, but refers to his family ("gens"). The first Caesar from that family, that we know of at least, was Sextus Julius Caesar in around 200 BC, 300 years before Gaius Julius Caesar was born.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#122

Post by gruez »

rcbdev wrote: post #58
boppo1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>illegal is for countries You can be the first to go fight those wars. There's no 'illegal for countries'.

For the sake of brevity, read "countries" as "ministries of energy in countries" or "relevant public or privatized equivalents of ministries of energy in countries" - there's many modes of governance when it comes to this. A good example of "illegal for countries" in this sense would be if the EU made their member countries adopt jurisprudence in this matter through implementation via their own respective national la…

> For the sake of brevity, read "countries" as "ministries of energy in countries" or "relevant public or privatized equivalents of ministries of energy in countries" - there's many modes of governance when it comes to this. A good example of "illegal for countries" in this sense would be if the EU made their member countries adopt jurisprudence in this matter through implementation via their own respective national laws.

What do you do if some countries don't want to play ball, and they turn out to be the biggest emitters?

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#123

Post by FrustratedMonky »

chimprich wrote: post #113
dougmwne wrote: post #52

I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip…

> We will just have to deal with the consequences while we try to innovative our way out of this mess. We've already innovated our way out of this mess. We have all the technology available now to decarbonise the economy (well, mostly; we're still a bit limited in a few areas; but we can get a lot of the way there). Covid is a good example. In most of the liberal democracies people accepted the restrictions their gov…

"We have all the technology available now to decarbonise the economy (well, mostly; we're still a bit limited in a few areas; but we can get a lot of the way there)."

Then why can't we?

The answer is that it would take some Government mandates, and we are back to the original post, that if the Government mandates anything, it will hurt some sector, and then there is popular uprising. At least in US, 50% of country is ready to go to war anytime someone sneezes and merely forgets to say 'bless you'.

How do you fight climate change, even if technology is available, if 50% of the country literally believes in a real physical hell (not just a concept), and that the other side are demons here to steal the blood of their children. How does the committee organize rolling out a technology when half is praying and citing versus and that is the starting point for any technology roll out plan.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#124

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

dougmwne wrote: post #52

I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip…

I think your take is giving much too much credit for "governments wanting to do the right thing" if it weren't only for those pesky populists.

Take your China example. The issue wasn't just that the government wanted to control Covid and the people pushed back. The issue was that their zero-Covid policy was extremely stupid. I kept thinking "Umm, what do they think is going to happen when they eventually open back up - of course Covid is going to ravage through the populace." And that's exactly what happened. The policy did extremely little to actually save lives in the end compared to much less restrictive policies elsewhere.

So I'm actually less pessimistic about the case for the energy transition. I do think it's particularly unfortunate that our tribal politics has led to people lining up behind "drill baby drill" even if there is no economic basis to do so. But I do think since we know the transition is possible without draconian cutbacks in standard of living that governments can help craft effective incentives to make the change more quickly.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#125

Post by Symmetry »

bko wrote: post #116
konschubert wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that degrowth is not a politically viable path to saving the climate. Additionally, it is not effective unless you want to return to pre-industrial society. What works is: Changing the source of the energy we consume. Solar is the cheapest source of energy now. Wind is good in some areas. Nuclear can be useful too. The amazing thing is that solar is so cheap now, there is basically no way stopping it. W…

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if solar is cheaper, why isn't it the dominant energy source today? Seems like a win win, people get cheaper energy all without force. Generally the market chooses the best product, which is why we replaced horses crapping all over our cities with cars. It wasn't legislation or some global consortium of governments that phased out the horse, it was a better product. What am I m…

Here in the northeastern US, the permitting process for adding new power plants to the grid is long and cumbersome in a way that is usually the long pole in adding new generation to the grid when the new generation is as quick to put up as solar. We have more solar power in the process of getting approval than we currently have installed.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#126

Post by GuB-42 »

I find it surprising that the 1896 answer of warming estimates closely match modern estimates.

Back then:

- They didn't have electronics, radio was barely being discovered

- They didn't have airplanes, they just discovered the upper atmosphere, with the very first weather balloons

- They knew about atoms, the periodic table was 30 years old, but nucleus wasn't discovered yet

Climate science is a notoriously difficult topic, with countless feedbacks, positive and negative. Nowadays, we run simulations on supercomputers based on satellite data, decades of precise historical data, geological data, etc... They didn't have that at the time.

Maybe he got the precise value by chance. Sometimes it happens. For example it is said that Eratosthenes (240 BC) calculated the Earth circumference with great accuracy (<1%) and no one managed to get a better estimate until modern times. In fact, many later estimates were off by more than 10%. The technology available at the time wasn't capable of such accuracy, but by chance, it turned out to be spot on (but they didn't know it was).

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#127

Post by tonyarkles »

ta1243 wrote: post #109
beretguy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear can be useful too. I wouldn’t call it just useful. As far as I understand it’s the best realistic shot we’ve got.

Why not solar, wind and storage? To decarbonise transport storage needs to massively increase. There are 30 million cars in the UK, that alone is 3TWh of storage, which isn't far off a day's total energy use. If we can make 3TWh then it's reasonable that we can make 2 or 3 times that much. It won't be financially viable to operate a nuclear plant for the few days a year that the wind and solar and storage and imports…

Last time I worked the numbers on nuclear vs storage, I came up with… for the same amount of money and for the same amount of generation capacity, battery storage could provide about 4 hours of electricity before needing to recharge while nuclear could provide about 24 months without needing to shut down for a few days for a fuel change.

Pumped hydro storage was better, if you have the water resources and elevation change nearby. Lots of places don’t.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#128

Post by cs702 »

As this brilliant cartoon points out, we've had 128 years of warnings about human-induced climate change, and over all those years, humanity did not change course.

That's because warnings and exhortations rarely accomplish anything.

Things tend to change only after there's no other choice, i.e., when there's a crisis.

There's an insightful quote from Milton Friedman on this:

"Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."[a]

I disagree with Friedman on many things, but on this, I think he was right.

It is only now, when we find outselves in the early stages of crisis (unprecedented heat waves, perpetual giant fires, etc.), that the work of all those scientists and engineers who have been documenting, predicting, and warning about climate change for the past 128 years is finally being put to good practical use.

Hopefully it's not too late.

---

[a] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/110844-only-a-crisis---actu...

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#129

Post by bibelo »

ejb999 wrote: post #100
unglaublich wrote: post #88

And people keep wondering why climate protesters are not asking things "nicely" anymore, and resort to blocking traffic and defacing paintings. They tried the nice way... they tried for many decades.

yea, because destroying famous works of art and blocking traffic, really helps bring people over to your side....

suggest other options

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#130

Post by enqk »

bko wrote: post #116
konschubert wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that degrowth is not a politically viable path to saving the climate. Additionally, it is not effective unless you want to return to pre-industrial society. What works is: Changing the source of the energy we consume. Solar is the cheapest source of energy now. Wind is good in some areas. Nuclear can be useful too. The amazing thing is that solar is so cheap now, there is basically no way stopping it. W…

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if solar is cheaper, why isn't it the dominant energy source today? Seems like a win win, people get cheaper energy all without force. Generally the market chooses the best product, which is why we replaced horses crapping all over our cities with cars. It wasn't legislation or some global consortium of governments that phased out the horse, it was a better product. What am I m…

Because money is the wrong thing to use for decision making, we should be tallying resources and energy expenditure. Money is an imperfect proxy for something akin to human labour and related activity, and does not encode information about physical resources being used
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