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

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

#121

Post by triceratops »

senordevnyc wrote: post #109
tialaramex wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are fates nowhere near extinction that would still mean massive human suffering.

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

#122

Post by peterashford »

senordevnyc wrote: post #109
tialaramex wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We've had deaths due to climate related storms in NZ now, and we haven't been hit anywhere near as hard as, say, Pakistan who had 1/3 of their country flooded in one go. And it's getting worse. That may not be human extinction but its definitely plausible that mass casualty events are possible

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

#123

Post by hatthew »

scythe wrote: post #116
hatthew wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for GDP/kWh? Last time I was curious I dumped some raw stats (copied from wikipedia) into excel and venezuela was among the bottom three. I recall being surprised that there wasn't any strong correlation between GDP/kWh and any other obvious metric like technological development, population, land size, climate, etc.

It's on Wikipedia, sorted backwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_in... Venezuela is an unusual case because their economy has been a disaster for the last half decade. And I agree that the data aren't so straightforward.

Yeah looks like Venezuela is definitely an outlier in south america. French Guiana is also a big outlier in the other direction.

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

#124

Post by xp84 »

jmyeet wrote: post #56
xp84 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "No One Goes to War Over a Solar Panel" Doesn't China have most of the exotic rare earths and stuff that you need in order to build solar panels and systems? I am not anti-solar, but I also don't think China is some guaranteed-friendly party that the whole world can trust not to wield their power once they have it. I assume anyone who doesn't immediately recognize their planned takeover of Taiwan next year will hav…

As another commenter put it, a solar panel is a drill bit not oil. What's the alternative here? Are you arguing we maintaint the dependence on fossil fuels, which can be switched off any day, because of some hypothetical future where China might stop selling "drill bits" (that last 30 years)? That's why this argument is so silly. As for rare earths, they aren't as rare as the suppliers would seem to suggest. The diff…

I'm not arguing against solar or pro-oil in any way. I meant only to point out that imagining an all-PV future as eliminating conflict over resources would be a mistake.

And I was corrected about how much we need China for solar panels - though with them being a hugely dominant current producer of the panels themselves, I still think they have moderate leverage. But indeed limited if other countries theoretically can build out a PV industry without China's blessing.

And I'd like to acknowledge the 'drill bit' metaphor. Would still be painful to not be able to replace solar panels that are constantly aging out, but not nearly as painful as losing a portion of oil or gas supply has been lately.

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

#125

Post by adrianN »

sofixa wrote: post #52
leonidasrup wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no progress in CO2 reduction, we are still emiting more CO2 each year. " Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes increased by +0.7% within 2025." https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-026-00780-4

But the growth of CO2 emissions is slowing, even though the global economy is growing and many more countries are industrialising and becoming wealthier (both proxies of CO2 emissions). So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made.

It is a bit sad that we have to celebrate bending the third derivative of the relevant metric in the right direction after like fifty years of talks.

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

#126

Post by thefunkychook »

PaulHoule wrote: post #91
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not going to run out of fossil fuels. We are going to start running out of habitable biosphere because of climate degradation. It's only a matter of time - likely a few years - before there's a significant wet-bulb heat catastrophe that kills a huge number of people. For example.

Amen!

Just to be clear... Are you saying "amen" to not running out of fossil fuels, or to the possibility of a large number of people dying from heat stress, or both?

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

#127

Post by leonidasrup »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #101
tardedmeme wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ov…

Utility scale ground mounted solar is cheaper than residential solar (often 50% less per watt).

Residential PV for $5,000 is too expensive for many people in many countries, Pakistan is doing it for much less. Large scale battery storage is too expensive for most countries.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/17/pakistan...

Realistically we can expect 2-3x improvement in solar cell efficiency in coming decades, not much more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-cell_efficiency

Pro-solar people like to point out that LCOE of solar is lowest of all forms of electricity generation. At the same time they ignore the increased costs for grid upgrades and grid stabilization (short term stabilization - grid inertia, voltage stabilization, frequency stabilization) (long term stabilization - backup gas/coal power plants). If don't invest enough in grid stabilization and your country has grid that is not connected to other countries, you can get a blackout like in Spain.

On the other hand, blackouts or load shedding are much more common in developing countries and have large economic impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Pakistan_blackout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Pakistan_blackout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Pakistan_blackout

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58733193

"The costs associated with load shedding have led to an annual GDP reduction of 1 to 1.3% since 2007, with daily economic losses estimated between $85 million and $230 million for the country."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis

Just like pro-solar people have their favorite future solar improvements: perovskites, multi junction, battery storage, long term energy storage, etc. Pro-nuclear people have their favorite future nuclear improvements: small modular reactors, ship mounted reactor, generation 4 reactors, breeder reactors recycling nuclear waste.

I say put a carbon tax on all countries (including China, India, US) on all forms of emissions (including mining, refining, manufacturing, transportation, shipping) and let the cheapest technology win.

I would love to see how the industry of China would evolve if China had the same carbon tax as Europe. The same applies to India, US.

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3307482/c...

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

#128

Post by card_zero »

peterashford wrote: post #110
alephnerd wrote: post #76

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.

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

Or is it the result of government policies? Then we should look to the governments in control of the biggest portions.

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

#129

Post by leonidasrup »

alphabeta3r56 wrote: post #94
alephnerd wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made It's too little too late. India's CO2 emissions growth rate is around 4% [0], and India's economy is expected to grow at around 6-7% a year for at least the next decade. This means India's contribution alone will grow massively. And what about other large countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, etc who are also seeing massive expansions.…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BPqR9jy6C3U&is=PFRfRJ23MXSFnRV4 India is taking a shortcut so to say. If climate friendly energy becomes successful in India, it will bbee successful in other countries to. Currently the biggest threat is US forcing people to buy its venezualan and fracking oil.

Nice video but doesn't estimate when India will reach peak CO2 emission, doesn't estimate when India will reach net zero.

Chinese burning of coal for electric power generation decreased, but total coal consumption has increased. In China, coal use is shifting from power production to synthetic fuels and chemicals made from coal, the carbon from synthetic fuels will be emitted as CO2. Will this shift happen also in India?

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chines...

China is still building new coal power plants, they will be probably used as backup for solar.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-coal-five-year-plan

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

#130

Post by red-iron-pine »

bluGill wrote: post #55
busterarm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ethanol is quite a useful thing to have though, as a multi-season stable store of energy. Am I missing something? Ethanol is hydrophilic and hygroscopic. In concentrations used as a fuel (e.g., E85), it acts like a desiccant and spoils quickly. In a closed system this ends up with phase separation and the freed water causes engine corrosion. I'm not sure we want people running a still or molecular sieve in their ho…

> In concentrations used as a fuel (e.g., E85), it acts like a desiccant and spoils quickly Citation needed. (hint you won't find one because it isn't true). Be careful here - this myth has been repeated enough that a search will find plenty of claims that don't check out. High concentration alcohol doesn't spoil. Even lower concentrations don't spoil, but they mix with poor quality gas that does spoil. Well when you…

nah, it loves to absorb water out of the ambient air.

ethanol that is distilled forms an azeotrope has a hard time getting past 98% on its own. even if you used advanced techniques and additives, it has a strongly hygroscopic nature, meaning it actively attracts and absorbs water vapor directly from the air.

in other words, it will do everything it can to get back to 98%.

to keep ethanol above 98%, you need airtight seals or "molecular sieves" (zeolite beads) inside the tank to constantly "bead up" and trap any incoming water molecules.

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