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Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

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Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#181

Post by manfredo »

breakfastduck wrote: post #89
just_steve_h wrote: post #70

The biggest takeaway here for me is that we collectively achieved something previously considered impossible: by making different behavioral choices, as a species, we achieved the largest cut in CO2 emissions in 75 years. It's tragic that only the threat of a deadly disease could compel such a change, but perhaps we may find other levers to help us achieve such widespread beneficial changes in the future?

All it does it prove how fruitless the prevention of climate change is. A total shutdown of the entire world economy on an unprecedented scale still doesn't track enough to prevent climate change. If that isn't a clear indicator of how severe the situation is then I don't know what else is.

Adoption of nuclear power akin to France, and electrification of transportation (both road and rail) solves most of it.

There's some additional work for things like replacing steam reformation with electrolysis or thermochemical hydrogen production. Decarbonization of air and sea transportation presents a bigger challenge but it's not unsolvable.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#182

Post by roenxi »

rmk wrote: post #177
roenxi wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guessed. Lets say they wait one generation then just say "nah, we're not paying. Just ignore that debt". Who loses? Did the losers deserve to win? These are tricky questions. There isn't a reason to think that the US taxpayer is going to pay back their debts (in real terms). The numbers have gotten large enough relative to GDP that they aren't realistically going to honour those promises. It may get ugly, but tha…

As I have argued elsewhere in this thread, default or monetizing the debt has consequences, including permanently higher borrowing costs that will exact a heavy price from future generations if they choose to go those routes. That's what history teaches us. The biggest loser will be the (US) general public, because it holds the majority of the debt. Foreign adversaries (such as China) hold a much lower percentage of…

> ...including permanently higher borrowing costs that will exact a heavy price from future generations ...

Seems unlikely. Nobody makes reference to poor behaviour by someone's father's father when deciding to lend.

And it is already embarrassingly obvious that the US isn't actually going to pay their debts back. The people taking on the loans at the moment have hopefully accounted for that.

Is all this debt bad? Yes. Will it affect the prospects of future generations? Only if it spirals into a war and something spills over into the physical world destructively.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#183

Post by csnover »

jessaustin wrote: post #119
hammock wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates wants to test an artificial nuclear winter... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7350713/Bill...

Albedo modification is the obvious response to the situation. Of course testing should start small, but the idea that 2 kg of material in one location could lead to a runaway deep-freeze earth situation is not plausible. Those global warming enthusiasts who oppose this research seem more interested in political implications than in actually reducing warming.

> Those global warming enthusiasts who oppose this research seem more interested in political implications than in actually reducing warming.

There are serious and legitimate concerns about albedo modification research which have nothing to do with politics. I don’t think that anyone in the field is concerned that this small-scale experiment will lead to global catastrophe, but it’s a stepping stone to something which could lead to those bad outcomes—and it’s not clear that a small test like this would be able to answer the most important questions that we’d need answered before actually embarking on a global albedo modification programme.

Of the various issues already covered by the Daily Mail story, one thing it doesn’t really talk about is that albedo modification requires a functioning human civilisation capable of injecting aerosols to the atmosphere to exist, without ever stopping, for thousands of years. A single disruption could cause up to 0.7°C of warming in one year[0].

About the only case in which something like this makes sense is if we’ve solved the emissions problem, but a bit too late, so only need a bridge for a few decades while we are actively pulling CO2 from the atmosphere.

If you want to learn more, away from the sensationalism of the Daily Mail, the podcast Brave New Planet had an episode about this last October[1], which is where most of my current knowledge comes from.

[0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/045...

[1] https://www.bravenewplanet.org/episodes/a-radical-approach-c...

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#184

Post by oliv__ »

lcamach84 wrote: post #154

This proves that we need a system change. Covid made that, we change from a system with the objective of producing stuff to a system with the goal of saving lives. People of HN should take a look of the clube of rome book "limits of growth". GND will not save us beacause it will demand energy and resources to swap all the infraestructure. At most developed countries will shift their enviromental cost to the poor ones

Let me know how your life is going when every business around you has shut down.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#185

Post by nostrademons »

imtringued wrote: post #171
nostrademons wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular prediction: we're going to solve global warming by the 22nd century, but we're going to "solve" it with nuclear winter and the destruction of 80-90% of humanity. Once we're down to a billion people or so and most of what passes for advanced civilization has been destroyed, carbon emissions and warming won't be a problem.

That's a very stupid solution when you consider how much money you could make from reducing CO2 emissions. People just have to stop have an intensive desire to harm themselves. That is all. The idea that you can gain anything from denying climate change and skip out on preventative measures is just wrong. The economics alone tell you that this is a losing play and I am not even talking about the impact on the climate…

I'd agree that it's a stupid solution. I don't want 80% of humanity to die, particularly since when you do out the math on resource usage and projected population peaks, there's a good chance that everybody could live just fine.

But I've spent a good deal of time studying game theory and situations where the behavior of the whole is significantly dumber than the behavior of each individual actor, because the individual actors' interests are not aligned. I think global warming is going to be one of those. Sure, if we could come to a rational collective-action agreement, we could solve it. The history of collective-action as a solution is pretty dismal.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#186

Post by jedberg »

retzkek wrote: post #149
jedberg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two young kids. There is no such thing as "lounging". :)

Pretend I'm naïve (better yet don't pretend): can't you set some boundaries? If you need to get out of the house why not go for a walk? Is it because doing something for/by yourself is seen as selfish (even by yourself), while before the commute was imposed by your job, so you could enjoy that alone time guilt-free?

It's really not about boundaries. It's about efficiency. If I'm at home, there's always something I can be doing more "valuable" than podcasts. Working, playing with the kids, helping with chores, etc.

When I'm driving, there's nothing I can do otherwise, other than audio. Which means either podcasts or phone calls with family or friends.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#187

Post by 29athrowaway »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #178
rmk wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did not simply make "behavioral choices". Whole swathes of humanity were ordered indoors! It was achieved at untold cost (actually, much greater than the trillions of dollars that have been given away already by governments) that will be paid by generations to come. Only people who were lucky to hold a job that wasn't affected made a conscious decision to cut down. I am willing to bet that come 2022 or so, emissio…

> It was achieved at untold cost This is just evidence of what we already know: our current society is unsustainable. > will be paid by generations to come I think you're pretty optimistic about how the future will develop given that we have not only just demonstrated our society is unsustainable, but that we are not capable of making serious progress towards a sustainable society. Large portions of are planet are so…

In ecological terms, we are an invasive species without a predator multiplying exponentially.

We either accept reality and live and adapt to the limits imposed by nature or prepare to live in permanent war for resources.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#188

Post by rayiner »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #180
rayiner wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, climate change has costs that we can estimate and base our decisions on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch... The foregone economic activity in just one year of lockdowns in the US is a significant fraction of cumulative worldwide damages anticipated from climate change through 2050.

I have never read any serious research that proposes what you are proposing: that climate mitigation is going to cost more than the consequences of failing to mitigate it. We're on the path to a 4C world by something like 2100. An increase by that much might possibly wipe out the species. If it fall short of that forecast the damage will be far greater. Not to mention that pandemic shares the same root cause as clima…

> We're on the path to a 4C world by something like 2100. An increase by that much might possibly wipe out the species.

That is absolutely not what scientists and economists are predicting. An RCP 8.5 scenario (which is considered on the worse side of what's likely in a "do nothing" world) is expected to knock 6.7-14.3% of US GDP by 2100: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019102... (p. 7). That would be about half as bad as the COVID lockdowns (but permanent): https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/us-gdp-q2-2020-first-reading....

Note that's a 14.3% hit compared to what GDP would be in 2100. That's a big impact. It's equivalent to going from 3% annual GDP growth between then and now to 2.7% annual GDP growth.

Now, the numbers hide some really terrible costs. The Florida and Gulf coast will become uninhabitable, destroying half the economy in those areas. To put it into perspective the 2018 California wildfires cost 0.75% of GDP. So this is like 20 times worse. It's bad! But it's not an "untold cost." It's not an outcome worth spending any amount to avoid.

Scientists don't think mitigation will cost more than the damages from climate change, because scientists aren't proposing to mitigate climate change by shutting down the economy the way we did during the COIVD lockdown. That's an insanely inefficient way to achieve mitigation. I mentioned the economic loss from COVID lockdown not to suggest that is actually how we would reduce emissions, but to put into perspective what the expected costs of climate change are.

Saying that climate change will have "untold cost" is problematic because it makes you believe that mitigation strategies that will have massive costs will be justified to avoid climate change damages. It's worth the U.S. spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on climate-change mitigation. The EU is planning on spending 260 billion euro annually by 2030. That's roughly the scale of Biden's plan.

But the "World War II-style" mobilization of the economy that Green New Deal advocates want will hurt economic growth by more than climate change will. If we go from 3% annual GDP growth to 2% annually we'll shoot ourselves in the foot.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#189

Post by runarberg »

rayiner wrote: post #165
bamboozled wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whole swathes of humanity were ordered indoors! It was achieved at untold cost Climate change has untold cost too, so what you’re saying doesn’t have much weight.

No, climate change has costs that we can estimate and base our decisions on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch... The foregone economic activity in just one year of lockdowns in the US is a significant fraction of cumulative worldwide damages anticipated from climate change through 2050.

So loosing a large part of Bangladesh to the sea by 2050 and then loosing more to the sea by 2051, and even more by 2052, etc. with no hope of recovering... displacing therein tens to hundreds of millions of people that will need new homes, and new infrastructure that is requiring housing, feeding and transporting those people is going to cost less then then a year and a half of pandemic?

I would love to see your calculations for this.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#190

Post by missedthecue »

nostrademons wrote: post #167
missedthecue wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize how cheap sea walls are? The Dutch were building them 800 years ago with medieval technology and resources.

My threat model for global warming is different from most people's (hence "unpopular prediction"). I think sea-level rise is going to be a non-event: the worst models predict about 18 inches over a century, which is less than tidal variation in most places. Changing weather and vegetation patterns is going to be a big event. We're going to see some previously fertile areas (Mesopotamia, Northern Europe, sub-Saharan A…

But I think what's overlooked is that these changes will happen over a long period of time. 20, 50, 100 years. We will grow different crops 100 years hence, but we were growing different crops 100 years ago. There will be lots of immigration over the next 100 years, but there's been a lot of immigration over the past 100 years, including in my family and likely in yours.

I think the costs of a changing climate are real, but I think the benefits are too often overlooked. For instance, most landmass on earth is not at the equator, but it's in the northern hemisphere. Much of it is uninhabitable at present but will become habitable as the climate changes. Canada, Sweden, Finland, and others will become more than 100km tall. A lot of Russia, and Northern Europe, as well as Mongolia and South America will become more habitable. Further, according to Lancet, very cold weather kills more people than very hot weather, so as winters become more mild and summers become hotter, the net effect will be fewer deaths.

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