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Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

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Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To "simply run out of fossil fuels" is like that potentiometer you mention, it isn't like you run out all at once but you run out of the cheap ones first and it gets more expensive. I remember reading https://www.amazon.com/Hubberts-Peak-Impending-Shortage-Revi... in the early 2000s which was about the coming peak of conventional oil production and it turned out to be wrong in the sense that we knew in the 1970s that…

We're not going to run out of fossil fuels. We are going to start running out of habitable biosphere because of climate degradation. It's only a matter of time - likely a few years - before there's a significant wet-bulb heat catastrophe that kills a huge number of people. For example.

Amen!

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is beyond shameful how Westerners misallocate the blame for pollution, using misleading statistics. India has ~17% of the world's population. That it only produces 7% of global emissions means it is contributing far, far, far less than whatever country you possibly come from in relative terms, so at that point you are besmirching it solely for the crime of having a larger population than your country. China, while…

Climate change doesn't divvy impact based on per capita usage. And large countries and blocs like the US, China, EU, India, etc would survive in a world with significant climate crises. So the incentive to change doesn't exist. And this is why the world will burn.

Out of these two, only EU and US are showing reluctance to change quickly. Both China and India depend heavily on imported fossil fuels and for them solar is as much of a sovereignty issues as it is pollution, and then climate.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change doesn't divvy impact based on per capita usage. And large countries and blocs like the US, China, EU, India, etc would survive in a world with significant climate crises. So the incentive to change doesn't exist. And this is why the world will burn.

The Chinese government invested ~$1 trillion in clean energy in 2025, while the Chinese economy had a further ~$2 trillion in growth surrounding EVs, batteries, and solar. You talk about "no incentive to change", but things are actively changing. What more would you like China to do, in concrete terms? Stop manufacturing for the West, even though that will, as aforementioned, likely result in a net increase in emissi…

> I'm interested in hearing your proposal

I have no proposal because to a certain extent you are correct.

That said, investing trillions in GreenTech does nothing when China is still emitting 13 gigatons of CO2, and it takes the next 7 countries combined to reach that number. Additionally, India will likely end up emitting a similar amount as China within a decade as well.

Only the leadership of the US, China, and India can decide on a roadmap on how to reduce CO2 usage globally, and everything else is just rhetoric.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#94
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the growth of CO2 emissions is slowing, even though the global economy is growing and many more countries are industrialising and becoming wealthier (both proxies of CO2 emissions). So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made.

> So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made It's too little too late. India's CO2 emissions growth rate is around 4% [0], and India's economy is expected to grow at around 6-7% a year for at least the next decade. This means India's contribution alone will grow massively. And what about other large countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, etc who are also seeing massive expansions.…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BPqR9jy6C3U&is=PFRfRJ23MXSFnRV4

India is taking a shortcut so to say. If climate friendly energy becomes successful in India, it will bbee successful in other countries to. Currently the biggest threat is US forcing people to buy its venezualan and fracking oil.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made It's too little too late. India's CO2 emissions growth rate is around 4% [0], and India's economy is expected to grow at around 6-7% a year for at least the next decade. This means India's contribution alone will grow massively. And what about other large countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, etc who are also seeing massive expansions.…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BPqR9jy6C3U&is=PFRfRJ23MXSFnRV4 India is taking a shortcut so to say. If climate friendly energy becomes successful in India, it will bbee successful in other countries to. Currently the biggest threat is US forcing people to buy its venezualan and fracking oil.

If you prefer a text and graphs to a video take a look at https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/indias-electrotech-...

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#96
post #85

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So we are no longer worried about catastrophic or runaway climate change based on these revisions?

That’s tough to say. Weather systems are difficult to model. We have minimal understanding of the causes or inputs that control the very long climate cycles. Like we know that some day thousands of years from now we’ll have another unstoppable glacial period. We’ll also have a period free of polar ice. Those are cyclical and independent of CO2. We cannot stop either. We live in a very precious time. I also think we s…

[deleted]

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#97
post #48
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not long ago this was linked to coal and cancer. And even higher rates of cancer and lung disease correlated with higher standards of living. Should we start advocating for the return to coal? Maybe transplanting cancers to cause better prosperity? > "Exiting" fossil fuels means either nothing, or it means impoverishing your people. Utter bullshit. Exiting fossil fuels means prosperity for the people in the near futu…

Aren't the former coal-mining regions badly impoverished today because we dramatically cut back our usage of their primary economic product? I'm not sure that supports your point. I don't think they are stagnating and decaying because they want to keep mining coal specifically, it's just that the coal miners and their next generation don't have any capital to found cool innovative startups, and not enough people with…

It absolutely supports my point. Countries and regions that stopped using or depending on coal early are now doing better than regions that are still clinging to it.

Yes, in the past coal was useful, and having access to coal was linked to prosperity. Oil is associated with prosperity now. But the writing is on the wall for oil.

And speaking of the current meeting, I don't know a single example of a country that decided to buck the trend and got rich by selling coal when the world started switching to oil/gas.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#98
post #74
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the growth of CO2 emissions is slowing, even though the global economy is growing and many more countries are industrialising and becoming wealthier (both proxies of CO2 emissions). So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made.

Usage going up is not progress.

Emissions rate of increase slowing is progress in the same way that taking your foot off the gas pedal is progress towards coming to a stop.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#99
post #66
post #32

Interesting that Colombia is currently powering more than 70% of their electrical consumption on hydropower. They currently have about 65 TWh of hydropower capacity; the total feasible generation potential is around 200 TWh. Makes then an interesting country to host such talks.

Most of South America has worked like this for decades. Hydropower is king even in Venezuela. It's altruistic on their part, but it may have reduced their long-term economic growth. Viewed in terms of GDP per capita, South America is a laggard. But if you change the denominator and look at GDP per kWh (energy intensity) they are surprisingly close to the rich world. There is a hidden upside to all this hydro: it coul…

Do you have a source for GDP/kWh? Last time I was curious I dumped some raw stats (copied from wikipedia) into excel and venezuela was among the bottom three. I recall being surprised that there wasn't any strong correlation between GDP/kWh and any other obvious metric like technological development, population, land size, climate, etc.

Re: Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

#100
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people were saying that things were not as dire as they claimed. I’m glad they revised but you had silly people gluing themselves to thoroughfares (cars stuck in traffic waste more energy) and vandalizing what some people consider precious art and or national patrimony in the name of climate change thinking that those most dire predictions were indeed correct and we were all headed to hell in a hand basket.

So we are no longer worried about catastrophic or runaway climate change based on these revisions?

> So we are no longer worried about catastrophic or runaway climate change based on these revisions?

Don't listen to mc32, they're intentionally confusing the issue. This is the paper they're presumably referencing from last month[1].

The IPCC reports are based on a number of carbon emissions scenarios based on how the world acts: how do countries coordinate, what are the mixes of new electricity generation that come online, how are old fossil fuel plants shut down, what cars are sold, etc. In their reports they simulate multiple scenarios to show what could happen depending on the choices made, since you can't really simulate policy decisions (like presidents paying companies billions to shut down wind projects), wars (ahem), and economic changes.

There were five main scenarios in the IPCC sixth report, from very low to very high GHG emissions.

What was "walked back" is not about climate simulation or feedback loops, but they've retired the very high emissions scenario they developed in the mid 2010s of a world that went all in on heavy economic growth all powered by fossil fuels and little effort toward electrification or decarbonization.

Basically based on renewable energy prices in the years since, electrification, etc, it's just not plausible that the world will grow in that way, so it's no longer worth trying to do simulations based on it.

Note that this was literally called the "very high emissions scenario" in the report, and that's there's still a "high" emissions scenario that will be included in the seventh IPCC report as an upper bound of plausible emissions. A couple of economic models already estimated that we'll likely emit less carbon than the new upper bound high emissions scenario, the same as it was for the very high scenario in the sixth report. Like then, though, it's still worth simulating because it is at least still plausible, and you never know how things will develop sociopolitically (this paper proposes six scenarios from very low to high and a new "high to low" scenario, see section 2.3) .

[1] https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/19/2627/2026/

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