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Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

bbc.com

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Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#31

Post by DanBC »

danieltillett wrote: post #27
plorg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious difference is that a human on a bicycle is moving on the order of 10 times less mass than a human in a car. Like my sibling post notes, it could be different for, e.g, a motorcycle, but a cyclist also produces about 0% of the SOx, NOx, or particulate emmissions of those vehicles, whichever is a somewhat different conversation.

Well those particulates and gases are still produced in the production and transport of food. If you eat more food then more will have to be grown and transported.

How many calories do you think two hours of cycling uses?

It's not much, and it's comfortably within what most people are eating already.

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#32

Post by zaarn »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #7

Britain has just approved restarting fracking. Germany wants to demolish ancient forest to mine more lignite for power stations. The US wants to save the coal mining industry. The North West passage is almost ice free in summer. Australia's coal exports are booming. IPCC thinks it will need 2.5% of global GDP for 20 years to fix. Act now? It still doesn't seem like any of the world's electable politicians even believ…

>Germany wants to demolish ancient forest to mine more lignite for power stations.

It isn't Germany, the RWE corporation wants this because in the near future they will loose the ability to mine coal in that area, so they'll happily pay off politicians and raze the forest to get at whatever coal is down there until the time's up.

The easy and most efficient solution to all these problems it to outlaw oil and coal now. It would cause all kinds of auxiliary damage but it would likely be cheaper than continuing down the current path.

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#33

Post by danieltillett »

DanBC wrote: post #31
danieltillett wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well those particulates and gases are still produced in the production and transport of food. If you eat more food then more will have to be grown and transported.

How many calories do you think two hours of cycling uses? It's not much, and it's comfortably within what most people are eating already.

Maybe, but without some good data it is hard to say. I do know that us sloth-like generation eat far less than our ancestors.

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#34

Post by singularity2001 »

danieltillett wrote: post #12
btrettel wrote: post #6

I was reading a blog post about problems in academia which said the following in the first paragraph: > There’s a narrative I find kind of troubling, but that unfortunately seems to be growing more common in science. The core idea is that the mere existence of perverse incentives is a valid and sufficient reason to knowingly behave in an antisocial way, just as long as one first acknowledges the existence of those pe…

Does anyone know how much carbon is released to grow the extra food that you use cycling verses what you would use driving? Food production is very energy intensive and the human body very inefficient. You can’t effect the amount of carbon released by adopting a low carbon lifestyle when the price of fossil fuels is above the cost of production. All reducing demand at the margin does is lower the marginal price causi…

> the human body very inefficient

the human brain uses 20 watts and has more computational power than the best supercomputer, so you should be careful.

how far does a car go with 1 yogurt?

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#35

Post by kapauldo »

It's not "we" and "us", it's half of us. Half of us half this lethal combination of confidence and ignorance. In America it's the Republicans. People just have this sick notion of what is true, they ignore science and scientists and listen to talk radio hosts and fox news and then they dig in. There is not a consensus that any problem exists.

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#36

Post by AstralStorm »

danieltillett wrote: post #33
DanBC wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many calories do you think two hours of cycling uses? It's not much, and it's comfortably within what most people are eating already.

Maybe, but without some good data it is hard to say. I do know that us sloth-like generation eat far less than our ancestors.

The extra movement that increases the resting metabolic rate would cost about 500 kcal combined with the load. Estimating for an hour of cycling daily.

This means about one extra meal to match which would actually cut into waste if it is done smart. Or perhaps you do not even have to adjust anything. (obesity is a thing)

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#37

Post by AstralStorm »

singularity2001 wrote: post #34
danieltillett wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know how much carbon is released to grow the extra food that you use cycling verses what you would use driving? Food production is very energy intensive and the human body very inefficient. You can’t effect the amount of carbon released by adopting a low carbon lifestyle when the price of fossil fuels is above the cost of production. All reducing demand at the margin does is lower the marginal price causi…

> the human body very inefficient the human brain uses 20 watts and has more computational power than the best supercomputer, so you should be careful. how far does a car go with 1 yogurt?

Suppose it is a sweet yogurt and has 300 kcal in a package (1 kcal/ml) and we use bioethanol in a car, it is a match 1:1. Ignoring conversion losses and metabolism, a car taking 6l/100km and a trained human on foot would go some 12 km on this. (human on a bicycle is comparable to a specially designed ecocar)

A fully manned car (5 persons) or a loaded truck wins by a good margin even over a tandem or cargo bike. A bus or truck even more so.

The main difference is in initial material costs, refining metals is expensive. The problem remains how to cleanly burn and source bioethanol.

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#38

Post by AstralStorm »

camgunz wrote: post #21
jamesgagan wrote: post #14

Stop eating animals. Governments are slow to act, but switching to a plant based diet is something you can do right now.

I admit to being tired of this vague moralizing. We're in this mess because of corrupt energy industries and fucked up factory farming on a global scale, not because I like chicken nuggets. There is absolutely zero chance that we avoid global warming because enough people voluntarily switched to a vegetarian diet. It's a non-solution, just like everyone biking, turning their a/c to 85 and heaters to 60, etc etc. It w…

The easiest thing we could do immediately is to produce fermented 100% bioethanol (petrol), retune cars, trucks and ships to burn it clean. (aircraft need more caloric fuel) This only solves emissions and not completely.

Electric powered by uranium and renewables solves more and is also immediately feasible though expensive to build infrastructure for battery handling.

Second thing would be to disperse industry and farming more evenly so that we do not have to transport food long distances. Remove energy intensive packaging (cans and bottles - use dispensers or foil), replace lighting with most efficient available. Switch manufacturing to as much on demand as possible.

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#39

Post by AstralStorm »

malloryerik wrote: post #30
camgunz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit to being tired of this vague moralizing. We're in this mess because of corrupt energy industries and fucked up factory farming on a global scale, not because I like chicken nuggets. There is absolutely zero chance that we avoid global warming because enough people voluntarily switched to a vegetarian diet. It's a non-solution, just like everyone biking, turning their a/c to 85 and heaters to 60, etc etc. It w…

Shrill messages can and do backfire, but I think there might be a point to add. If we go vegetarian, as an example, we're likely promoting new vegetarian industries which then can create real alternatives for wider and wider groups of people. For example if people start a craze for foods made from kelp and it spreads, then it can become a part of larger government-arranged action. The same is true for alternative ene…

These industries would come in at a cost to existing ones, essentially zero sum on jobs.

Consumers do not have enough pressure and tend to go for cheaper option rather than cleaner. And for avoiding imagined concentrated fears rather than diffuse long term loss. Which is why we're in the current predicament.

Re: Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

#40

Post by AstralStorm »

craftyguy wrote: post #3
NegativeLatency wrote: post #2

It’s really disappointing that the political systems we have don’t encourage long term stewardship of our resources. I don’t see any kind of reform happening in the US until negative consequences are felt by a significant chunk of the population.

Yup. There's just no way us humans are going to 'act now'. Any response at a global (and, in the US, national and state) level will be 100% reactive, and 0% proactive. Since there are still people arguing over the cause, I'm starting to think it might be more productive to move the conversation from trying to be proactive (which requires everyone to agree on the cause) to reactive (which does not). In other words, st…

The main outcomes would be localized famines, general food shortage, freshwater shortage, increased heat, mass migrations, some flooding.

What do you think we can do about those antecedents we're not doing right now? (not argumentative, maybe I'm missing something)

We will have to deal with the source of the problem sooner or later; given enough trapped heat most of the planet will turn into deserts.

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