Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity' • Hacker News Board

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

#961

Post by poorjohnmacafee » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #75

poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #47

> But there is new hope that deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases could stabilise rising temperatures. How is this possible when you have water vapor in a positive feedback loop, which is a far more potent, prevalent ghg that increases with any rise in temperature. "Water vapor reduction" has to be part of the message at this stage, not just carbon reduction.

I don't really see how this is possible for humanity at a scale that affects global warming. Most water vapour by far is generated by nature itself. We couldn't make a dent in that. The CO2 is what upset the balance and we are by far the biggest contributor there so it makes sense to address that.

The point is reversing the CO2 does not reverse all that proportionally much larger increase in water vapor... eg. we have no choice but to address water vapor as well as CO2 if we want to have any chance in fixing global warming.

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

#962

Post by laverya » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 3:24 AM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #836

mywittyname wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power can be fast to build. It would need to be constructed in volume, with immutable designs. Right now, America builds so few nuclear plants that they are essentially all one-off designs. Mass production is key here. Vis-à-vis costs, the government can poof into existence trillions of dollars with no ill effects. Cost is an easily overcome obstacle. If a mandate came down to produce 1000 new nuclear reactor…

Nuclear power could have been fast to build if we had kept building it. We did not, and most of the people who knew how to do it are now retired or dead. Because nuclear power had no future for decades, few young people chose to make a career in it. The workforce needed for designing, building, and operating nuclear power at scale no longer exists and cannot be trained quickly enough. That alone would take 10+ years,…

And thus, we will spend the next 10 years playing around with building piddling amounts of renewable power generation and storage instead of actually having a solution in 20 years.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

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

#963

Post by aero-glide2 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 3:42 AM UTC

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…

But airlines by itself is only responsible for 2.3% of global emissions.

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

#964

Post by krasi0 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

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…

Let's not forget that there are many regions in the world (say in the middle East or Africa) where the situation is constantly volatile to put it mildly and where a nuclear power plant would be impossible to be secured properly against insurgency.

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

#965

Post by ropable » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

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…

Nuclear is an especially sensible option in my country (Australia) IMO; we have an abundance of uranium ore, a geologically stable continent, a high-quality interconnected electrical grid (over most of the population), and a reliable political/governance environment. It would be an enormous improvement over our current reliance on coal-fired generation for base loads.

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

#966

Post by 8eye » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 6:36 AM UTC

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…

hard pass on that, way too many issues in disaster zones. also, not good for you at all if it gets anywhere near people

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

#967

Post by elproxy » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 6:58 AM UTC

ptkd wrote: post #740

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…

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…

Yes it's slow to build today, though it hasn't always been the case: France once built 56 reactors over 15 years [0]. Yes it's expensive, but once again, this isn't a feature of Nuclear power, but one of the capitalist (or at the very least neoliberal) system it is built into: 60% of the Hinkley point C costs are due to the mode of financing (not 100% public) [1]. The real question is not whether this or that type of electricity generation is better (although it's also an important question), but rather how we can completely redesign our socio-economic system to quickly wean ourselves off of fossil fuels (hint: global logistics are far from electrified), reduce emissions from the agricultural sector (we do need to eat), etc.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme... [1] https://www.nao.org.uk/report/hinkley-point-c/

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

#968

Post by elproxy » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

matkoniecz wrote: post #898

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…

If people believed that global warning is an extinction threat for humanity / code red / critically important... Then waiving almost all regulations on nuclear power and accepting some meltdowns would be reasonable. And also waiving nearly all regulations on solar power, wind power, massive construction of hydropower etc.

It isn't all about electricity generation: how areagriculture, land use, global logistics (to a good extent) affected by electricity generation ?

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

#969

Post by elproxy » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #827

h1fra wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree Nuclear is the most probable solution it's not easy to build and fuel is very sparse. France who is leading the way is 100% depend on other countries, I'm not sure it will play well in the coming years > 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. And the second issue is to focus on electricity production, while there is a ton a other things cr…

> You won't save the planet if you still have thousands of ships on the sea and planes in the air Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution, though maybe 5% of global greenhouse effect (due to the high altitudes airplanes operate at). Textile production, indeed, contributes more to climate change than aviation and maritime shipping combined [1]. However, with abundant electricity you can switch many transp…

> Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution Whataboutism, one of the identified discourses of climate delay [0]. Besides, the proportion of radiative forcing (what actually matters) caused by aviation is more than twice that [1].

[0]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit... [1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223102...

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

#970

Post by elproxy » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #760

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…

Nuclear power can be fast to build. It would need to be constructed in volume, with immutable designs. Right now, America builds so few nuclear plants that they are essentially all one-off designs. Mass production is key here. Vis-à-vis costs, the government can poof into existence trillions of dollars with no ill effects. Cost is an easily overcome obstacle. If a mandate came down to produce 1000 new nuclear reactor…

Beyond the fact that electricity-generation is once again only part of our emissions issue, there's about ~450 reactors worldwide and the uranium ore reserves give us around ~120 years of operation on current 3rd (/3+) gen reactors (short of having fast neutron reactors basically). Having 1000 in the US (or rather 900 more or 3 times as many globally) would have brought that deadline closer by the inverse ratio, and we'd likely already have tensions on nuclear fuel sourcing. Agree with you on the role of government spending though, but there also needs to be a radical paradigm shift in how we view the economy and what needs to happen in each sector (not just within energy in fact).