211–220 of 366 posts
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People could vote for candidates who care. They just don't.
Nobody cares enough, they all like the status quo, unless you want to vote for insane royalists &co
There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now , because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get…
As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.
If you purely think about the climate and don’t care for things like fair resource distribution, forget about the Germans.
Update: Actually if every country with a per capita higher emissions than Germany would drop to German standards we would reduce co2 emissions by 25%.
That sounds like a goal, sind this is even possible without nuclear power, it should be easy for the is and china, who could throw it into the mix.
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First, we have to accept the facts: * CO2 emissions are screwing the climate, and CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels. We need to stop using fossil fuels. * Our way of life depends on fossil fuels. In some cases it's obvious (we transport food in trucks that need oil), but it's too easy to believe that we may replace that with electricity. It's a lot more complicated than that: everything depends on petrochemical pr…
> we will have to do a lot less with a lot less. What do you mean by this?
We will have less energy, therefore less globalisation, fewer machines, fewer resources, whether we want it or not. We won't be able to keep producing as much as we do now.
So we will have less, and we will produce less. The game is to find a way to do it without collapsing entirely. And the longer we wait, the harder it will get (because the climate will get worse and there will be less and less available fossil fuels to help the transition).
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> should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account Obviously, each individual should have a right to emit a certain amount of GHGs independently from the size of the country he happens to be born in. So the correct list is this (2024 data [1]). Quite surprising in places (e.g. the position of the UK, Australians emitting GHGs at the level of a petro-state, and Canadians too,…
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As for China, an average Chinese citizen is already contributing 40% less than his average US counterpart to global emissions- do you think we should ask them to make a bigger effort because China has more people? In that case, do you think that simply splitting China in two political entities each with half the population would solve the problem of their emissions?
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Even if we stopped emissions today, Earth will keep warming up for a couple of decades. We’re not at equilibrium temperature for the current CO2 levels.
One not very well known fact is that even if we stop emissions today, the elevated CO₂ levels will remain for many centuries. They way I think/hope we can fix this is two parts: 1. The only way I think you can get rid of the excess CO₂ at scale is to permanently sequester it underground. The oil/gas industry can cheaply deposit huge amounts of gas there. The unsolved problem is extracting enough CO₂ from the atmosphe…
You answered it yourself: it's not possible to get rid of the excess CO2. Think about conservation of energy: we extracted energy by burning stuff and producing CO2. We cannot revert that with less energy than we extracted from doing it in the first place.
> It sounds scary, but is actually safe
Famous last words.
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There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.
Hydro is renewable, can deal with peaks and not directly dependent on weather. Use its power down when in need of electricity. Bring water up hill when too much electricity is available.
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This gets repeated again and again. They are not in conflict with each other - both need to be done in tandem. It is not a this or that strategy - it is an all of the above strategy. Nuclear is critical for long term generating power. Batteries and solar are good not able to maintain the same level of power quality and duration though are definitely incredibly important.
Nuclear is a high-capex source of electricity. It doesn’t do well economically in a grid where power if essentially free on sunny or windy days but you need a lot of backup power for a few hundred hours per year.
Well, economy is fossil fuels. In the world after fossil fuels, we may have to redefine what "economy" means.
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If we assume that the forests will regrow to their former strength then the fires are indeed not all the consequential. The trees release the stored CO2 when they burn, and new plants will take up an equivalent amount of CO2 again when they grow. The CO2 sequestered in a forest is more or less just the biomass in it (some is in the soil, but not that much) But if climate change leads to permanently losing those fores…
If we figured out how to store chopped down trees somewhere where the wood doesn't break down, that would be a really effective way to get CO2 out of the air! Easier said than done, of course. Sinking millions of trees to the bottom of the ocean might be the most practical way.
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Even if we stopped emissions today, Earth will keep warming up for a couple of decades. We’re not at equilibrium temperature for the current CO2 levels.
One not very well known fact is that even if we stop emissions today, the elevated CO₂ levels will remain for many centuries. They way I think/hope we can fix this is two parts: 1. The only way I think you can get rid of the excess CO₂ at scale is to permanently sequester it underground. The oil/gas industry can cheaply deposit huge amounts of gas there. The unsolved problem is extracting enough CO₂ from the atmosphe…
The bigger unsolved problem is how to get this paid for.
People are truly having a climate change discussion fatigue. They hear all the time from politicians, celebrities, influencers, etc. that they should stop eating meat, should not drive non-electric vehicles, should not use AC, reduce consumption, and all other bullshit while the people preaching those have started wars that emit billions of tons of carbon, travel on their private planes to climate change summits, tak…