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Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

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Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#861

Post by chris_va »

(disclaimer, I work in a Climate&Energy group)

- There are a number of technical solutions for climate change.

- There are a number of technical entrepreneurs who would love to implement those solutions.

... there is no market to pay for it.

I will echo other folks in this thread in calling for a carbon tax (or Carbon Dividend, possibly the most politically feasible option) to create such a market. Please call your representative! The number of people that have asked me how they can help, but haven't called their representative is driving me crazy!

Such legislation is not intrinsically complicated. If we can just get that passed, I would go to bed at night knowing that the majority of the problem is basically solved.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#862

Post by ttul »

merpnderp wrote: post #720

If anyone actually believed it was "code red for humanity" they'd be pushing nuclear power. There is zero chance of moving off carbon energy sources without causing catastrophic mayhem, unless we use massive amounts of nuclear. For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind ca…

While it's true that the state has to backstop the externalities of nuclear through insurance guarantees, the obvious and present externalities of carbon burning massively outweigh these guarantees. The state picks up a huge ROI by covering nuclear risks while taxing the living shit out of carbon pollution.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#863

Post by jjoonathan »

slashdev wrote: post #855
merpnderp wrote: post #720

If anyone actually believed it was "code red for humanity" they'd be pushing nuclear power. There is zero chance of moving off carbon energy sources without causing catastrophic mayhem, unless we use massive amounts of nuclear. For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind ca…

To me this makes so much sense. But when you look at the costs involved it's far cheaper and less risky to deploy 2x in renewables and a bunch of energy storage plus some gas plants and long distance transmission. New innovations in nuclear maybe have a chance to change this, but renewables are still getting cheaper so even if they succeed they must still beat the moving target. In another world where we had embraced…

Nuclear is able to compete on merit and has been forever, but we chose to create a legal environment in which one or two dedicated NIMBYs could stall a project indefinitely. That's the entire reason why "the economics aren't there." We aren't talking about costs of building a reactor or risk of it melting down, we're talking about the cost and risk of 1001 strategically sequential ground squirrel environmental impact studies pushing the project duration out to infinity. Allowing this is a political choice, not an evaluation of the technology.

I tend to agree with you that the ship has sailed, though. If we had just kept building at the same pace as 40 years ago (linear extrapolation, not exponential) then we'd recently have celebrated the completion of a zero-emission grid. Unfortunately, we chose to pump the atmosphere full of CO2 instead. Ugh.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#864

Post by jimworm »

lucb1e wrote: post #440
Cycl0ps wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about it myself and the best answer that comes to mind is clear-cutting entire forests, tossing that biomass down a mineshaft, and replanting to start the process over again. All this talk of planting trees removes atmospheric carbon, but until it's out of the system entirely we're one forest fire away from wiping out decades of carbon removal.

You might be interested to learn of Climeworks if you're looking for a more reliable way to remove emissions than planting trees (which is, indeed, mostly not really working as well as too slow).

This looks a lot like what I was thinking of. They don't provide much information about their extracting filter, but after the CO2 is extracted it is compressed into water creating carbonic acid, then injected it into a suitable basalt formation with an impermeable cap so that carbonate salts could form[1]. They claim all the injected CO2 could become carbonates in under 10 years[2].

If this works like they say, then it's cause for hope.

[1] https://www.carbfix.com/how-it-works

[2] https://climeworks.com/co2-storage-solutions

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#865

Post by tejohnso »

laristine wrote: post #845
intrasight wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economists have been saying this for years. Really it's the only way to let market forces decide. Make it a publicly listed company that collects the tax, and distribute dividends equally to all citizens. Such things should be possible with digital currencies.

That _publicly listed company_ sounds like... the government.

And the digital currency sounds like fiat direct deposit :)

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#866

Post by ttul »

habosa wrote: post #621

Just. Tax. It. We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let's use the same systems to fix this (or at least slow things down). As an individual my largest carbon impact is air travel. I like to go places, it's one of the main things I work to afford. Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon em…

Taxation of carbon totally works. British Columbia has a $50/tonne tax, which increases the cost of unleaded gas by about CAD $0.996/L and natural gas by $0.0882/m^3 [1]

Revenue from the tax goes into the government's general revenue, which allows BC to have among the lowest rate of income tax of any province in Canada. Meanwhile, BC has the highest rate of electrical vehicle purchasing in North America [2]. One study showed that employment increased by 0.74% as a result of the carbon tax [3]. Finally, research shows that the tax is highly progressive, having a smaller impact on poor households than rich ones [4].

[1] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/taxes/sales-taxes/publicat...

[2] https://vancouversun.com/opinion/mark-zacharias-and-ian-nevi...

[3] https://contacts.ucalgary.ca/info/econ/files/info/unitis/pub...

[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09287...

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#867

Post by [deleted] »

frankbreetz wrote: post #723
rebuilder wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, just taxing CO2 emissions doesn't let you control who gets hit by the price increases. It could very well lead to increases in food and transportation costs that would be disproportionately burdensome to the poorest part of the population. Raising the cost of those items is politically very unpopular since it tends to cause unrest. So I think what we'll get instead is some complex system of first taxi…

If you use carbon tax to fund ubi, it will only hit above average emitters, who will be incentivised to emit less.

[deleted]

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#868

Post by juanuys »

merpnderp wrote: post #720

If anyone actually believed it was "code red for humanity" they'd be pushing nuclear power. There is zero chance of moving off carbon energy sources without causing catastrophic mayhem, unless we use massive amounts of nuclear. For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind ca…

Wasn't Bill Gates going to build a new type of reactor [0] before Trump became president and shut down US/China collaboration [1]?

It seems there's some movement from Mr. Gates around nuclear again, but not sure if the Natrium stuff is the same as the TWR (travelling wave reactor) of 5 years ago. [2]

0. https://www.terrapower.com/

1. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a25728221/te...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/bill-gates-w...

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#869

Post by mikelward »

biztos wrote: post #814
ptkd wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this take a lot, and it’s kind of misinformed. The primary drawbacks of nuclear are: 1) incredible slow to build. A typical plant takes ~20 years from decision to productionized 2) extremely expensive, with a massively frontloaded cost. By contrast, solar and wind are fast to install and now cheaper. > wind power can be zero at some parts of the day There are a few solutions to this actually. First, having a mo…

> long-duration battery solutions This isn't practical everywhere, but on the island of El Hierro (Canary Islands) there is a wind-and-battery solution in the form of a wind-pumped hydro-electric station. In effect there is a big pool of water acting as a battery and the wind turbine "charges" it. When I ran across it on a trip to the island I was really impressed. Very original solution! https://www.researchgate.net…

I first heard about pumped hydro back in 2007.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/grist.org/article/monbiot-we-ca... https://books.google.com/books?id=vsPYv7jm-34C

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#870

Post by nonbirithm »

h4kor wrote: post #92

We are running head first into the Great Filter.

This is why I think escaping from a ruined Earth is fruitless if the tendency to grow and consume everything in sight is baked into our genes. We'd just ruin Mars, too.

We can't seem to escape from our own deeply ingrained instincts, only transplant them to every inch of untouched soil we can reach. I tend to see the overwhelming evolutionary success of humans as similar to a virus that is too powerful and kills the host.

My belief is that we will have to suffer the consequences first before the death instinct is ingrained politically and socially in every person in power who contributes to the destruction of Earth. We can continue feeling fine doing what we are doing right now because not enough people have died off yet to make the drastic changes worth it. Societies will be forced to become places where optimism is extinguished in favor of pragmatism. They will only become those places because the scale of death and destruction will cross an unwritten threshold that needed to be crossed first before that change in mindset could take place.

I believe this opportunity to save the Earth that's being proposed right now will not happen because no amount of hypotheticals or climate science fiction that warns of this will be heeded, because they have to remain just that by their own nature - hypothetical, instead of actual, lived human history. That includes what I am writing right now. Our imagination is an innovative evolutionary advantage, but it has ultimately failed us. Our instincts for growth have won out against any scenario of global collapse and catastrophe and heartbreak we can think of. That is just our nature as a species, and it is a sad thing to consider, but as a result, pretty soon everyone will have to hope that they're not going to be one of the billions of people that will soon die off from climate-driven warfare or famine or any other catastrophe that's about take place. But after the dust settles, we will gain the one precious, irrevocable thing whose absence is preventing us from taking action right now - history.

At that point, if we still don't have a better way of thinking of the environmental issues figured out, then I would consider our curious experiment in biological fitness finished, once and for all.

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