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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#311

Post by JoshTriplett »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #248
JoshTriplett wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, attempted bothsidesing rejected. By "some" I mean "some". Not everyone in politics treats truth as optional. Those who don't should be lauded.

Thinking this is "bothsidesing" is you contributing to the problem. The Democrats and Republicans have both abandoned scientific rigor on this topic. When either talks about it, it is almost purely an excuse to smuggle in unrelated policy objectives. A group of politicians can have strong disagreements where none has a grasp on reality. That is where we are with climate change. It is one of the reasons I stopped work…

I am not suggesting that all politicians on one side are good. I am suggesting that ignoring truth and reality as things that matter is a trait with very strong correlations with political party, and shouldn't be generically chalked up to "politicians" in general.

As Asimov said: "When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#312

Post by jacquesm »

aydyn wrote: post #307
jacquesm wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes perfect sense to look at energy + container subsystems.

It doesn't make sense to look at that in a vacuum. Energy transport over wire via electricity is much "denser" than transport via liquid or gas. "It depends" is the correct answer, but the equation is shifting quickly towards solar + electricity.

You're the one looking at it in a vacuum. Engineering is all about looking at it in context and the main context where density of energy is important is in vehicles of all shapes and sizes. That's where the rubber quite literally meets the road. You can then theorize about what the 'weight' of the electrical energy is but it is pointless: the weight of container dwarfs the weight of the energy carriers (effectively the electrons) themselves. In the case of fossil fuels the ratio is more balanced, the container will weigh a couple of kilos and the fuel will way a bit more (say 10:1 or 20:1). So to compare the one with the other we weigh the batteries and ignore the electrons and we then compare that with the fuel because that is the dominant factor.

Solar + electricity are not directly suitable for powering electric vehicles, that's where the batteries come in.

Comparing apples (transport of electricity via wires) with oranges (transport of energy via liquid or gas) misses the elephant in the room: you are not going to be able to use those electrons without a suitable temporary storage medium unless you plan on carrying a very long and impractical extension cord behind your now very light EV.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#313

Post by netsharc »

akramachamarei wrote: post #205
netsharc wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear and egoism is probably causing the rise of the far-right, fear of not having enough, and egoism of "Why do I have to share?" (and being dumb enough to believe "make it great again" lies). And then the idiotic "center" who doesn't want to lose voters start moving to the right. With the decaying planet less capable of producing food, there'll be less, and there'll be more of that scarcity mindset (although do we e…

Ever admitting the positives of autocrats for their apparent efficiency disqualifies surrounding suppositions. And that's not an ad hominen, that's just Bayesian.

Ok Smartypants, jog on...

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#314

Post by adolph »

Carrok wrote: post #54
adolph wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to be a debbie-downer but the composting process is also a source of greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9933540/

From your source: > Effective pile management and aeration are key to minimizing CH4 emissions. So it sounds like a correctly managed pile is not a problem. Also, I have a hard time believing my composting in my backyard is in any way worse than my sending the same food scraps to a landfill.

Thats great that you can correctly manage a compost pile. That level of conscientiousness is a quality that doesn't seem common across the population.

A positive thing about a landfill is that it can take advantage of centralization by capturing biogas created by the large quantities of biodegradable material deposited.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03603...

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#315

Post by beloch »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

Corporations do whatever is in their financial interest, provided it is legal. They're neither good or evil. (If they were DnD characters their alignment would be "lawful greedy".) What is legal is determined by governments, who are elected by individuals like you.

This is why people need to be reminded of the impact and causes of climate change. You can't just say, "Oil corporations are evil" and absolve yourself of responsibility. That's how nothing gets done. Corporations are not going to stop being "evil" of their own accord. They're going to obey the laws and regulations set forth by the governments they operate under.

Americans elected a president who openly campaigned on bringing back coal and said, "Drill baby drill!". Oil executives made campaign donations but, ultimately, this is the fault of Americans. They're not educated enough and they tolerate too much money in their politics. Scapegoating oil companies does nothing to solve these problems.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#316

Post by tech_ken »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

I hear what you're saying but also have lately felt a lot of frustration with this framing. I definitely agree that large corporations share an outsized portion of the blame; they have misled and misdirected us past the brink of crisis in pursuit of profit. And as you point out, one of the special cruelties of their system is that it prearranges individual consumer options so that we have the illusion of choice, but ultimately wind up complicit no matter what we choose. Thus its incumbent on us (collectively) to make a decision that's not on the menu we've been handed. But (critically) its still going to be individuals making that choice. It's not enough to merely topple Big Oil at a social scale, we will also have to give up our F-450s and sprawling SFH tracts with four car garages. It's not necessarily fair, and it's not necessarily our fault, but it's still our responsibility (because it's ultimately our future that's at risk).

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#317

Post by Animats »

krashidov wrote: post #292
Animats wrote: post #246

The CO2 graph over decades is painfully clear.[1] From 321ppm in 1970 to 428ppm in mid-2005, measured in Hawaii atop Mauna Loa, far from any major CO2 sources. Everything else is noisy and statistical, but the CO2 measurement increases very steadily. [1] https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

Yes, and the scary thing is that soon the atmospheric carbon PPM will be high enough to start affecting how we think, act, and feel on a day to day basis.

Surprisingly, no. Humans adapt to higher CO2 concentrations over a period of days to weeks. Submarines run as high as 5000ppm, which is way above normal atmospheric concentration.[1] Many indoor environments are above 1000ppm.

This seems to be like high altitude adaptation. It's going back and forth between concentrations that causes problems at moderate concentrations. The adaptation doesn't happen.

[1] https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/11170/chapter/5#51

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#318

Post by _kulang »

I think the answer to this is ultimately economic, and that people will only change their habits when it comes down to what costs them money. Naturally this is because culturally, we have defined our life in this way, and those who value money benefit from the existing culture.

People who treat money as the only resource they need to navigate life stand to lose when things get expensive, but stand to lose even more when other forms of resource (energy, family connections, community) are needed.

As an extension of this I think extreme wealth inequality won’t ever be solved by a more equal distribution of money, and only can be solved by a devaluing of money as compared to other resources and thus a reduction in the power that money has. It’s not surprising then that billionaires end up spending their money on what gives them more control rather than what is a sensible monetary decision, like Musk purchasing Twitter.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#319

Post by yoyohello13 »

goatlover wrote: post #228
mym1990 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are a planet of 8 billion people, interest will vary widely. Expecting everyone to swarm on the same issue at the same time is simply not how humanity has worked in the past. Innovation often happens because many people go different directions, testing what works and what doesn't. Getting AI to play SimCity may be a stepping stone to real life urban planning, or it may be nothing, who knows?

Humanity in the past has acted to eradicate Polio through global vaccinations, fix the Y2K computer bug, allow the Ozone hole to repair by banning CFCs, form a United Nations to prevent WW3 among other things.

That’s true. WTF happened to those competent people?

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#320

Post by tavavex »

jacquesm wrote: post #294
tavavex wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The energy density of fossil fuels is very high (about 50x higher than that of lithium ion batteries) That doesn't make sense. Batteries are an energy container, they're not energy itself. How can it be compared to a fuel? The direct counterpart to oil or coal is wind or solar radiation itself, batteries are used to amortize the supply and store an excess for emergency use, but otherwise those types of energy just…

It makes perfect sense to look at energy + container subsystems.

Why? In the context of the electrical grid, has the amount of storage you can have in the backburner ever been a choke point? If anything, fossil fuel power plants have the very same batteries to buffer some energy. But for the vast majority of power consumers that can just exist on the grid, power storage is nearly irrelevant because it can go directly from producer to consumer. Even in places where storage is relevant (anything that can't be tethered to the grid, like vehicles) the equation is different because the infrastructure you need to convert fuel to power (engines vs electric motors) don't weigh the same. Yes, even with that, pure electricity still falls behind somewhat, but it's getting better. And I was mainly talking about the power grid anyway, with how universal and important it is. Fossil fuel straight up loses in that sector, like what I said before, so replacing it is an easy choice... and yet we don't do that.
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