reading reports for the last years, surprising to me was to find out the huge changes in sea level in fairly short time spans. Not "geological time" like some distant multi-hundred thousand year units, but instead more like sixty thousand years ago.. that is not so many human generations..
secondly, overall, the profound beauty of living ecosystems will be reduced brutally in the coming age. Monotonous and harsh regions will replace large areas, with ecosystem die-offs -- maybe slightly analogous to coral reef death.
It has been two solid decades of science reports for me, probably many others. Certainly some appreciation is called for, for the hard work of a few boomer scientists who have seen this unfold, and are now basically facing "geezerhood" with the toothless and feeble reality of that, while the Earth systems continue to degenerate at such a pace.
No surprises here. We've known for years we're going to shoot beyond 2C with very high certainty.
Even if a miracle happened and we reached zero emissions today, the climate will keep warming at least for some more decades due to climate lag and feedbacks.
The most recent IPCC report (AR6) gives the "very likely" (90% probability) range for "equilibrium climate sensitivity" - the eventual effect on temperature of doubling CO2 - as between 2C and 5C. Current CO2 levels are less than double pre-industrial levels, so the "baked in" warming could well be less than 2C. Also note that reaching the equilibrium temperature takes more like centuries than decades, making the concept somewhat academic, since lots of other things will change over that time period.
Also note that 2C warming over pre-industrial temperatures would just take us back to about what the temperature was 8000 years ago, when conditions were good enough for agriculture and civilization to start.
Ah, the ol' earth has been as warm or warmer before claim. This is true - absolutely true, but it misses one critical, I daresay crucial, point: earth's climate has never changed this rapidly in the past few million years. It's the rate of temperature change that's the problem, not necessarily the actual temperature itself since, as you've pointed out, earth has had these temperatures before. Given time, the biosphere will respond positively. If not given sufficient time, as measured in geological time units, the biosphere responds poorly. That fact is the crux of the problem. Also, with regards to your claim that earth was warmer 8,000 ago, that's a bit nuanced. You should check out this article for more details. https://reason.com/2013/03/07/earths-average-temperature-low...
How sure are we about "never" beyond recent geological history? The impact that finished of the dinosaurs must have brought some pretty rapid changes without killing off the entire biosphere. My understanding is that the stressed parts of the biosphere collapsed pretty quickly within a few generations. But I might be wrong.
The last time the Earth was above 400ppm during the Pliocene era, when sea level was roughly 25 meters higher than today. That in itself is going to be catastrophic once the climate and the planet catch up, but there are far worse consequences and emissions are still growing.
Have you ever read about the Russian wildfires of 2010 which had a massive impact to global food prices which then triggered the Arab spring revolutions? That was a single event in a world below 400ppm but these heat waves are starting to occur with more frequency now and will have serious consequences.
The IPCC is an organization that functions with consensus and their data is awfully outdated. Their assessments generally underreport the consequences of climate change. Here's a paper from 2010 which analyzed this:
If we reached actual zero emissions for humans, the ocean absorbing CO2 from air would almost exactly balance the warming climate lag, IIRC. But you're right in a sense that in reality most likely we'd still be emitting CO2, balance it with the natural CO2 sinks and call that net-zero.
Of the amount of CO2 released each year by humans (~30gt), only about half persists in the atmosphere. The other half is re-absorbed by the biosphere.
This is based on estimated total biosphere emissions, estimated human emissions, and annual CO2 PPM increases. I did some math on that and wrote it up here if anyone wants to dig deeper: https://biotinker.dev/posts/climate1.html
In the case of the zero-emission miracle, atmospheric CO2 levels would start dropping at about the same rate they are currently climbing. As you mention, there is climate lag and feedbacks, but the "return to normal" would start fairly quickly.
I'm sorry but I think you're missing a lot in your assumptions.
For example, there are only rough estimates on how much methane is trapped in the permafrost. The first estimate I saw by Natalia Shakhova et al was 1400gt over a decade ago (so about 45 years of human emissions at the current rate). I found this recent MIT article which mentions 1500gt [1]. Let's not forget methane has a 25x more heat trapping capacity than CO2. Do the math on that. Also the permafrost is just one of many feedbacks.
Another point you're not considering is that the capacity of the biosphere to absorb carbon is being reduced. For example, the Amazon used to be considered a carbon sink but it is becoming a carbon source [2].
You're right about methane; that's much more difficult to find data on, though, especially with regard to how much would be released and at what point. But if those tipping points get hit, then nothing CO2 related will save us. Feedback loops here dying down I'll classify under the "hope they're included in the miracle that gave us zero carbon emissions" :)
I'm not convinced on your second point; I'll need to see more data. I read the paper you linked, it doesn't give hard numbers, so it's difficult to compare the net loss of carbon flux in the amazon, to gain of carbon flux in other areas that are getting net-reforested, such as the eastern United States. Examples of local areas flipping from sink to source, and others becoming larger sinks, don't paint a clear picture of the directionality of the whole system.
Maybe then we should consider not kneecapping our economy and driving people into poverty? The worst thing for the environment is poverty. I'm convinced most of the measures put in place to fight climate change have been a net negative to the environment, when you consider how much they are impoverishing people and thus driving more people to disregard environmental concerns for survival.
Canada is tripling its carbon tax meanwhile residents e.g. in Newfoundland are suffering extremely under the cost of fuel prices for heating their home, so much so that even liberal mps are voting to exempt home heating from the tripling of the carbon tax. So this argument definitely still valid in Canada, though I do agree that it is more valid is more developing countries.
The same politicians forcing insane "carbon taxes" are also putting in place immigration policies that bring in an absolutely massive number of people each year.
This, of course, drives up the demand for electricity, housing (including heating, as you mention), infrastructure, transportation (of goods and people), food, and so forth, all of which contribute to "carbon emissions".
The "green belts" that have been imposed by government around major cities just end up pushing urban sprawl farther out, beyond those belts. This, in turn, increases the time and energy spent commuting and travelling, which is usually done by car, since public transit in Canada is very limited and impractical, and the distances are quite far.
Thanks to significant and overbearing government bureaucracy and regulations, building high-rise residential buildings in the densest cities takes ages. The actual construction phase is very rapid compared to sorting out the bureaucratic details.
If these politicians really wanted to limit or cut "carbon emissions", the first thing they'd be doing is halting pretty much all immigration into Canada, to at least let the situation stabilize.
The societal 'culture' has changed so rapidly that you'd hear cries of racism, bigotry, ignorance, etc. if you even suggested slowing/stopping immigration to the current party in power.
I get we've got low birth rates. Maybe encourage the people that are here _now_ to procreate instead of forcing both care-givers to slave away all their hours to their employer instead of using the time for child-rearing?
I get that people don't want to work for low wages - maybe we can stop bringing
or severely limit the amount of immigrants for a bit (all avenues of immigration, education - and it's associated literal immigration mills and foreign housing investment schemes; refugees - that somehow are still refugees when crossing by land from USA into Canada, that are happier than ever to come to the country and make minimum wage because it's MUCH more than they made overseas - which they're now finding out is completely untenable in today's Canada, and some are even choosing to leave the country they immigrated to!)
I'm definitely _NOT_ claiming immigration as the sole cause of all our problems, but when Statistics Canada says a quarter of all people in Canada are immigrants or permanent residents, maybe we need to slow things down a bit for a little while to let things settle.
The weird looks I get for even suggesting bringing manufacturing back home so we can have western-made goods, with low-carbon manufacturing regulations just shows that people don't understand how hard we're getting fleeced for our money. Bring these things home, we can regulate, control, and promote cleaner manufacturing practices - or at least control industrial waste output instead of "pipe the waste chemicals into the river beside us, who cares!".
I really find it a big problem that we're putting "the climate" as a higher priority than the people that are living here, right now, suffering because of multiple factors - one of which is governmental mismanagement, along with inflationary monetary policies, the sudden removal of all economic activity with Russia (a whole separate issue).
I have no doubt in my mind that the Liberal MP who voted for exempting home heating from the carbon tax will be conveniently replaced during the next election cycle - given the current Liberal party culture of "follow us in lockstep or you're gone".
I also have no doubt in my mind that because the western world decided to lower domestic production of energy sources like natural gas and oil products that we're going to see a an unexpected amount of people dying from freezing to death in their homes. Canada, USA, or Europe.
Extremely frustrating that the Canadian government continues to insist raising carbon taxes on everybody during one of the most unstable economies, during the aftermath of a pandemic with harsh actions that wouldn't have needed to be so harsh if they didn't have a dilapidated healthcare system propped up by good feelings and government-sponsored marketing campaigns to "thank a nurse!"
I'd rather support someone who takes care of people _now_ instead of fear-mongering us to give up more of our money for "the future" - which we'll never see because we'll already be dead of old age anyways.
It seems so idealistic and faith-driven to me - just an excuse to take more of your money away from you with no meaningful return on your forced "investment".
Why do you think there is a dilapidated health care system today, if not due to the inaction of yesterday?
Why do you think we have inflation, housing crises and environmental catastrophe today, if not for the short sightedness and selfishness of those who came before us?
Your position appears to be one of self centered convenience, the exact same mindset that has prevented any solutions in the past.
You are literally proposing we do nothing because it will impact you. Well, at some point, we won't even have a choice: we will have our backs against the wall, with the costs of our inaction limiting our choices.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying - maybe I didn't articulate it properly.
We have all these things going on today because of the actions of governments over the past 10-20-30 years. I didn't cause the inflation, I didn't cause the housing crisis, and I certainly didn't cause the environmental catastrophes.
Why the government wants to clean up their messes with more of _my_ money has me flabbergasted.
For some reason, society has decided to put trust in governments to help us with climate change, when the very same governments put us into this situation in the first place.
The very same governments who said to trust them, while encouraging economic policies for decades that favor the rich and politically elite - insider trading, complete and total export of manufacturing to third-world countries, back-door deals...
The very same governments who said they'd take care of our health is the same government that let the medical system get administratively bloated without caring about front-line staff. Now there's country-wide shortages that likely won't be fixed for at least a decade, if not more while we try and encourage more people into medical fields.
The very same governments who said that we care about stopping inflation, but are peachy keen with sending billions upon billions of dollars overseas to a country that before a year ago, 90% of us couldn't find on a globe.
So many times the government has lied to the people - why would this time be any different?
Sure, the government relies on experts to make their policy changes - climate scientists, economists, doctors, etc. But do you think they'd ever follow an expert that suggests advice that is _not_ in the governments best interest? Better yet - do you not think that governments don't find experts that tell them what government wants to hear?
Far as I'm concerned, this climate tax stuff is all an excuse to extract more money out of the middle and lower classes. People who have literally no idea on how the climate works just parrot "i'm helping the planet!" while their wallets get emptier and emptier.
You can't enjoy the nice climate/life when you're penniless, starving, and working slave labor to make ends meet. But the rich and elite sure are on your dime!
>This argument might be valid in Brazil but definitely isn't in Canada.
I assure you many Canadians are getting ready to fire up ye olde wood stove this winter who wouldn't otherwise but are doing so thanks to motivation from energy prices.
You're not replying to a comment saying "poor people are the biggest contributors of CO2 emissions", you're replying to a comment saying "driving people into poverty is the biggest contributor of CO2"
So the thing to look at isn't poor people's emissions, it's rich people's emissions, given that (relatively speaking, bc increasing money supply just decreases its worth) the richer rich people are, the more poor people there are (or the poorer the poor people are). This is well-known, you can google and find tons of articles, but here's one from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211025-climate-how-to-m...
The poorer you are, the less you can individually consume, and the more you must go for things that are cheap at the expense of other things (e.g. buying single-use goods over and over is cheaper short-term than buying something made to last). I think the idea is that if more people were middle-class, we'd see consumers make better choices (personally, I don't see that happening without government intervention of some kind, but that could hurt poor people even more if it happened before poor people got more money to afford more eco-friendly choices). And on the opposite side of the spectrum, if rich people weren't quite as rich, they wouldn't consume quite as much in excess, and would lead to less emissions.
Imagine if everyone made a little more money, except for rich people who made considerably more money. Prices would go up and pretty much everyone would struggle to consume as much (or, consume things of as high quality, or perhaps as eco-friendly), but rich people wouldn't really see much of a change in their spending power, since there's few of them and they're making considerably more. I'd argue that idea counters your argument.
> buying single-use goods over and over is cheaper short-term than buying something made to last
Do you have examples of these — single-use goods that are contributing to global warming and that poor people are buying over and over, more so than wealthier people — or in general, any empirical evidence that poor people are following this economic strategy, thereby contributing to global warming?
There's often a huge difference between what poor people actually do and think and what wealthier people believe poor people do and think.
I think you've misunderstood my position. You mention:
> that poor people are buying over and over, more so than wealthier people
Not only is this a line of argument I disagree with, I even explicitly said I disagreed with it in this part of the comment you are replying to:
>> I think the idea is that if more people were middle-class, we'd see consumers make better choices (personally, I don't see that happening without government intervention of some kind
You said: "The poorer you are, the less you can individually consume, and the more you must go for things that are cheap at the expense of other things (e.g. buying single-use goods over and over is cheaper short-term than buying something made to last)." I disagree that the part in parentheses follows logically from the part outside the parentheses, and I disagree that the part in parentheses necessarily represents the economic strategy of poor people. So, I'm not sure what your view is on that, or what exactly you intended with that sentence.
> I disagree that the part in parentheses follows logically from the part outside the parentheses
Me too, it does not! It's the reverse, the part in parentheses is what causes the larger part. Say I want water. A case of water bottles is a lot "cheaper short-term" than a single, reusable, water bottle. That's an example of the parenthetical, I'm sure you can think of many more. Now, look at how it connects to the part of the sentence outside of the parenthetical, and directly before it: "the more you must go for things that are cheap at the expense of other things"
So for example, if I were poor enough, I'd buy cases of water instead of a water bottle, EVEN IF I knew the single use water bottle was better for the environment and a better choice long-term! Note that I do NOT assert that most or even many poor people, given more money, would switch to reusable water bottles on their own (hence the "government intervention" bit). If you're confused by the first half of that sentence, think of it this way: if I have $10 and you have $1000, which of us can buy more plastic?
> I disagree that the part in parentheses necessarily represents the economic strategy of poor people
This really isn't about poor people being the most environmentally conscious or the least environmentally conscious. It's about "this box of pads costs the cheapest so I'll buy it". Even if you imagine a tree-hugging poor person looking at a diva cup thinking "this is cheaper long-term and it's better for the environment", if they don't have the money for it, or if spending that money means not eating for quite a while, then they're not going to buy it.
> A case of water bottles is a lot "cheaper short-term" than a single, reusable, water bottle.
Uh... no? What size case are you talking about? Water bottles can be super cheap.
> So for example, if I were poor enough, I'd buy cases of water instead of a water bottle, EVEN IF I knew the single use water bottle was better for the environment and a better choice long-term!
I disagree. This seems to be based on pure speculation and projection.
> It's about "this box of pads costs the cheapest so I'll buy it".
You seem to be imagining that poor people can't do any long-term economic planning in their own lives, which is false. As if they're somehow trapped in irrational, short-term, self-defeating thinking.
Poor people can plan. They can budget. They can put off purchases. (They can also drink tap water, except in Flint, Michigan.) We're not talking about a homeless person with a few dollars to their name, who wouldn't be buying cases of water anyway, because there would be nowhere to put a case of water.
In any case, how much do you think water containers are contributing to global warming? This is why I asked for examples. The topic here is the 1.5C threshold.
I used to go to college. Nobody would spend $5 on a typical case of 24 average water bottles, that was way too much. $3 was more like it. A single reusable water bottle though? Even a cheap plastic one could run you $10, I'm sure you could find one for like $7 but the point stands. Convincing my friends to get a water filter was easy when looking at the money long-term, because they had the money short-term to cover it. If they didn't have the money short-term to get the filter and the bottle though, then they wouldn't have. It's as simple as that.
>> So for example, if I were poor enough, I'd buy cases of water instead of a water bottle, EVEN IF I knew the single use water bottle was better for the environment and a better choice long-term!
> I disagree. This seems to be based on pure speculation and projection.
No, it's based on not having enough money. I guess water bottles are a worse example here, you're right, I've done a bad job of making this point here. See my other paragraph for a better job. Here's a more specific example: a homeless person with $10 goes to a store charging $5 for a box of pads and $40 for a diva cup. They will not buy a diva cup. It's that simple. They'll get their pads. "They won't buy a pad at all" people have needs, maybe some won't but this is a matter many wouldn't compromise on. "They will save" what will they save, pennies? Trust me, this is not a winning argument, there are mathematical boundaries you can't cross, and there's also the fact that if you're optimizing so hard on the diva cup, you aren't optimizing as hard (if at all) on something else.
> You seem to be imagining that poor people can't do any long-term economic planning in their own lives, which is false. As if they're somehow trapped in irrational, short-term, self-defeating thinking.
You're looking at a poor person who has the money to save. I'm looking at a poor person who doesn't. My point wasn't about smarts, this is about basic human needs and a lack of money.
It's true that with more money, you can spend it on more green things. I won't disagree with you there - it was actually the central point that started all of this! And we were agreeing that just because they can doesn't mean they will! That poor people are not somehow magically much more eco-friendly, if only they were given more money. They're not some monolith.
> We're not talking about a homeless person with a few dollars to their name, who wouldn't be buying cases of water anyway, because there would be nowhere to put a case of water.
Very good point, my diva cup argument is a much better one than the water bottle one.
>> A case of water bottles [...]. That's an example of the parenthetical, I'm sure you can think of many more
>> [...] pads [...] diva cup
> how much do you think water containers are contributing to global warming
As I hope you can see from my own words, not very much. I'm providing specific examples of a generality. I can do more at other economic levels if you want. How about "how much does a cheap ICE car cost vs a cheap EV"? Of course, keep in mind the idea I have that people aren't all investing the most resources possible into eco-friendliness, as well as how eco-friendliness exists in many dimensions, so if you're saving for the EV it's harder to be saving for other eco-friendly things, the difficulty in finding a cheap used EV nearby, dealing with debts, etc. - and yes, I do think we can construct a lot of scenarios where a person choosing ICE vs EV can afford the EV, but I think we can also see how it can be quite burdensome on average, and that with more money, the person in question could afford to get to and buy a used EV (but again, I'm not saying they necessarily will! Or even that poor people put into this scenario are more likely to choose the EV over a more expensive ICE car, or something else entirely)
College students are your example of poor people? I can see why we're having trouble here.
Poor people can't afford to go to college, unless they have a full-ride scholarship or massive student loans (which they'll have to pay back later). The cost of water bottles is quite irrelevant here, when college is vastly more expensive than water.
> a homeless person with $10 goes to a store
Are we now going to blame global warming on... the homeless? (Going back to the OP: "The worst thing for the environment is poverty.")
Anyway, the homeless are only a subset of the poor.
It should also be said that homelessness is not a result of "kneecapping our economy" (OP) but rather our Darwinistic social policy that allows people to fall through the cracks. We have homelessness even in the "best" of economic times, and often in the wealthiest of places (SF, NYC).
> You're looking at a poor person who has the money to save. I'm looking at a poor person who doesn't.
I'm looking at low income people. Mainly, the working poor. People who have an income, and also expenses, but who are not destitute and begging for spare change on the street. It is possible for low income people to budget over the long term, i.e., monthy, yearly, etc.
> How about "how much does a cheap ICE car cost vs a cheap EV"?
Well, public transportation would be the most environmentally friendly option, and also the cheapest.
You'll usually have a harder time convincing a wealthier person to take public transportation than a poor person.
You've repeatedly made leaps between what I've said and horrible arguments I never made, and you've never, not even once, admitted to a single good point being made by me - if I retort something, it's never "my b", always "no, let me twist your words, maybe pretend your argument was this strawman". And recently, straight up ad-hominem.
Isn't it common sense that the wealthy are the ones who produce / emit the most CO2? Maybe I'm missing the point here, but I can't understand how poverty is the worst thing for the environment seeing that it restricts consumption.
Poor people care less for the environment than wealthier people, as a general rule. So if you push more people into poverty you get a population that will care about environmental concerns less. E.g. they will overharvest fish populations, or care less about other environmental pollution because their primary concern is getting food on their table and surviving. It's like maslow's heirarchy of needs. People generally need to look after their own and their family's survival first before they look at the survival of the environment.
> Poor people care less for the environment than wealthier people, as a general rule.
If you're going to make up a rule then you need to actually substantiate your rule. Because considering I came from a family of fishermen (per your fish population quote) that was also in deep poverty I can tell you we specifically cared quite a bit about the environment; because ensuring that fish stocks didn't deplete is kind of a big deal for business.
I wish humanity could discard narrow-minded nationalist/short-sighted capitalist tendencies and unite against this threat. Imagine a climate pact between the US, EU, China and India where each society placed a similar focus on pivoting to renewables and developing reliable fusion energy as the Allies devoted to winning ww2 and developing atomic weaponry. Amusingly, the end of our dependency would also resolve many geopolitical concerns. However, governments across the globe are run by people who lack the proper morals or intelligence to see what needs to be done.
> So we should just put you in charge and then you'll sort it out?
Have you considered this is exactly the kind of narrow-mindedness they're probably talking about? If I had written the parent post, that's what I would mean by that. This simple-minded paranoia that any proposal from anyone else is secretly an evil plot to take over the world is ridiculous.
> focus on pivoting to renewables and developing reliable fusion energy...
You know that this would be accomplished through capitalism right?
The more we rail against capitalism and free markets (which every successful country from Denmark to Australia uses) the less likely we'll ever be to solve any problems.
The market is an unwieldy force that can be generally shaped in a direction by the people (purchasing decisions, sacrificing convenience) and the government (regulation, law, market fairness) to massively solve problems through innovation, technology, and other means. Ignoring the market, or restricting its capabilities leaves us with little to no tools to combat problems.
The much greater problem than "capitalist tendencies" is solving for people who absolutely refuse to modify their lifestyles (I must have my SUV and drive it comfortably and quickly to Costco on the 5 lane highway) to which market forces simply respond to, and who deny that humans are having a substantial effect on the global climate and would rather elect charlatans than people of substance.
On the other hand, we're trapped in a prisoner's dilemma with the very countries you mention.
It's a very bad situation we face, but I find that blaming capitalism or markets for failures of government to be counter-productive and in some ways actively hostile to working on addressing climate change.
I actually think capitalism and free markets are the most viable solution. The problem is "short-sighted" capitalism that focuses on quarterly "hand to mouth" profits as opposed to people seeing the long-term business opportunities that lie in pivoting to renewables. As much as I detest Elon Musk, I think making the eco-friendly option cool and desirable for reasons beyond environmental impact is one of the best ways to encourage growth towards a more eco-friendly society.
BEVs aren't the eco-friendly option. Density, biking, walking, and mass transit are. Those still aren't "cool." Musk made a feel-good option profitable for himself. And don't even get me started on rocket fuel.
I really can't find any substance in this argument. You're just saying "capitalism isn't the problem, it's the solution!" without offering anything that would convince someone who doesn't already believe that.
Capitalism only responds to market prices, and right now the true cost of carbon is not priced in. This is where government can help.
We should have a large, painful, but revenue neutral carbon tax that replaces income tax. Then you sit back and watch as people cut their carbon emissions to 'dodge taxes', exactly as designed.
So what you're saying is that we should tax carbon so that it correctly reflects the externalities and let the market sort it out from there?
Because currently capitalism has no interest in emissions because they don't cost anything. But that is a failure of capitalism, or at least our current incarnation of it. And it needs fixing to be part of the solution. You could blame government for not fixing the flaw, but the flaw is in capitalism none the less.
> So what you're saying is that we should tax carbon so that it correctly reflects the externalities and let the market sort it out from there?
I think carbon pricing is a great idea from what I've learned about it. Though, I disagree with you that the lack of carbon pricing is the fault of capitalism and I feel like you are kind of making that argument by saying that emissions don't cost anything so how would a market account for something with no price? I place that blame solely on governments for that.
1. I wouldn't say that capitalism, at its core is a government construct.
2.capitalism is about valuing things to allow / encourage efficient allocation.
There is a cost to pumping co2 into the atmosphere. Capitalism doesn't take that into account. And as that is what it should be doing, failing to do so is a failure of capitalism.
Now the government could (and should) step in to fix that failure. Their failure to step in is a different failure, the root failure is with capitalism, the governments failure is a failure to step in and fix it.
It's like if my house catches on fire and the fire service turns up without any hoses. That is a failure of the fire service. If this becomes a widespread problem and the fire service shows it isn't capable of fixing itself then the govt should step in to fix it. But any failure by the govt to step in is a failure of oversight not of failing to put my fire out.
I don't know what you mean by construct, but capitalism is an economic system that is regulated and enabled by the government because in order to own private property either you have to defend it yourself or you have the government set rules and act as the enforcement mechanism. Capitalism is one type of economic system that operates with the blessing of the government but there are others. Soviet Russia is an example of a different type of economic system. Capitalism couldn't flourish there because the government decided to not allow it to exist.
> capitalism is about valuing things to allow / encourage efficient allocation.
I think you are confusing a market pricing mechanic which is a feature of capitalism with the core tenet of capitalism which is the existence of the private ownership of the means of production.
> There is a cost to pumping co2 into the atmosphere. Capitalism doesn't take that into account. And as that is what it should be doing, failing to do so is a failure of capitalism.
For me the blame will always go to the government (and people) for failure to regulate because a market in a capitalist economy cannot value something that isn't being bought or sold. You point this out yourself by saying "capitalism is about valuing things...". The value is either 0 (until global warming starts getting nasty) or undiscovered. Nobody is buying or selling carbon (so far), so there's nothing for market economies to do with it. That's part of why a carbon tax in my mind seems like a great idea because we can introduce a pricing mechanic into a market economy and then allow efficient allocation of resources.
Capitalism is not a clear cut binary of "public/private." This is not an essential element of this system, as you have capitalist apparatuses acting in totalitarian/communist states, such as state owned beer companies in China that still act as capitalist entities, i.e. they are invested in in expectations to grow the profits from this company. It is actually speculated by theorists like Althusser that the private/public dynamic doesn't even exist. Maybe you are talking about the definition accepted by market exchange semantics, where anyone can gamble on a company vs. only a specific number of people/one person gambles on it.
I agree that it is not necessarily clear cut, and your example is a good one but we have to start somewhere and I'm not sure that this is material to the conversation at hand anyway except that if the corporations are state-owned then it's just even more the government's fault that they're polluting.
Of course new configurations of so-called private and public entities can and will occur and it's more of a shades of gray kind of thing. But to the extent that they become closer to the government (like US defense contractors for example which are publicly traded entities which are privately owned) it just, as in the case with China, becomes more of the government's fault that they're allowed to pollute.
In my mind there's no way to escape that the fault of climate change rests squarely on the shoulders of the government and the people. People just don't want to look in the mirror or accept responsibility so it's easy to blame everything on ephemeral billionaires and corporations and then nothing gets done because we can just complain instead of no longer flying, or having to use paper straws or whatever pisses people off these days.
Well, I agree that it's people's fault. But "the government" is also an ephemeral entity, as you put it. It is not a monolith, but a sometimes loosely connected collection of organs of power and ideology. Is the president "government?" Are teachers or cops who are government employees "government?" Are the contractors, or air force pilots "government?" If so, how could all these individuals collectively be held responsible for pollution? The discussion on what government actually is is completely outside the scope here, but the lines between whatever government is and capitalist urges, goals and methodologies are usually blurred. Louis Althusser mentioned above explained that state power cannot be had, it can only be used. And it is used in liberal democracies by capitalist agents, just as in totalitarian states by totalitarian agents. But always there is a coalescence of ideologies and apparatuses.
I think you're trying to have your cake and eat it too here where you are tossing up government and government employees as ephemeral but not giving the same consideration to corporate entities. Is a janitor at Exxon Mobile responsible for climate change? How long do they have to work there before they're at fault? A day? A year? If they're not at fault and it's just the executives, why would we also not place the same blame at the feet of government leadership?
My main issue here is that I don't believe blaming "billionaires" or "corporations" actually helps address climate change. Regulation and reduction of personal consumption does, but since we have been unable to regulate and we refuse to reduce personal consumption, we instead lay blame at the feet of corporations who get confused. Do you want to fly or not? You say no but you keep buying tickets. Funny enough I think out of all three of these entities, corporations are doing the most to address climate change, typically in spite of what people demand.
I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) Nor did I not blame any janitors, as they are not usually capitalists. They usually do not have any capital, nor do they make any decision on how to increase profits, etc. And besides, this is a false analogy - janitors that work at office buildings are different from government employees, such as teachers who disseminate state ideology and cops who enforce state laws with threat of violence.
What you're saying is capitalist entities are blameless because there is no moral obligation for them to stop polluting, and as long as someone pays them and consumes their products/services this is ok. This falls completely within theory - as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates.
> I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :)
But as you know I’m not speaking about you specifically so your preferences are irrelevant at the individual level here. Most people want to fly and so they demand corporations serve their need.
> janitors
Eh they just disseminate corporate ideology so no difference there. Does the janitor that works for the government not disseminate ideology?
> as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates.
If you deprive capital of agency such that it has no moral or social obligations the idea that it subjugates anything doesn’t make sense either. It’s a force so you have to treat it like one. Do rocks, and air, and grass subjugate society too? If not, well. If so, then I’m not going to be outraged by that because it’s just physics.
This hospitality toward capitalism results in no progress toward climate change because even if you sat down one day and made the case that climate change is 100% attributable to corporate actions you’d still have to regulate them and keep a capitalist system and so the failure of regulation would continue to rest with the government.
>I think you are confusing a market pricing mechanic which is a feature of capitalism with the core tenet of capitalism which is the existence of the private ownership of the means of production.
Well you could argue that one means nothing without the other. But anyway, what bearing does private ownership have this context? I accept I used loose words but in this context the relevant part of capitalism is its pricing mechanism. So no I'm not confusing the 2.
If I buy a piece of a company, or land or whatever the government has no hand in deciding that value. Sure government policy could impact the value but if the government didn't have anything to do with it, it would have value, if the government is deciding the value it probably isn't capitalism (yes i know there are counter examples in 'capitalist' societies) .
What is the market value of not releasing a kg of co2? Yes people will pay to have trees planted, but who's going to pay Amazon to electrify its fleet to not emit co2? A kg of not co2 is worthless under capitalism, which isn't reflective of its value. That is a failure of capitalism. The fact that we are discussing having the govt step in to correct that failure doesn't negate the failure. A carbon tax (note taxes aren't inherent to capitalism) or carbon trading scheme will be synthetic govt constructs. Sure they harness capitalism and capitalistic mechanisms to work, but capitalism can't/hasn't got there on its own.
Part of the reason I mention the private ownership of the means of production here is because you wouldn't get very far suggesting that people shouldn't be able to start businesses or give money to startups or anything like that. That's what capitalism is. I don't recall how we got onto that tangent (sorry).
But I think as I'm reading your comment again we get back to this core idea of "responsibility" or perhaps expectations. I do not have an expectation for a capitalist market to price something that nobody is buying or selling.
To your point, I don't think capitalism has gotten there on its own. But the fault does not lie with corporations and this economic model, but in our failure to mitigate its flaws through regulation. Emissions are strictly a regulatory problem that needs to be addressed and if you continue to blame corporations and capitalism you'll just never make any progress on climate change. In my mind it's just a crutch people use to avoid changing their lifestyle or demanding that their government take action. It's much easier to just blame corporations for anything bad instead of reducing consumption. Certainly they bare responsibility and need to be contributors and all, but we need to change our government and our own habits too. A model where you buy Ford F-150 trucks, then protest outside of a Ford factory for selling you the truck is simply not a model that will address climate change.
Baudrillard wrote a while ago that "capital has never been linked by a contract to the society it dominates." It follows no social contract and is not at any moral obligation. He goes on to explain that asking it to follow some rules is laughable and absurd.
> similar focus … as the allies devoted to winning ww2
Given a choice between diverting attention & resources to alleviate a 1943 famine in Bengal and keeping transport ships available for the war, Britain chose to allow the famine. As a result, an estimated 2.1 to 3.8 million Bengalis perished.
If you want people to take your vision seriously enough to follow it, you’ll need to engage seriously with the horrors of what you praise. Please consider reading the book Slaughterhouse Five.
Governments across the globe are run by people whom I hope remember to be humble about their intelligence and moral wisdom.
The problem is not capitalists or communists or whateverists. The problem is sociopaths in power. Until we, collectively as a humanity, won't start regularly vetting people in power for the mental disorders, of all types - genetic, old age, chemically induced, regular mental illnesses etc. we will continue to suffer. And political compass of they day won't matter at all.
> Until we, collectively as a humanity, won't start regularly vetting people in power for the mental disorders, of all types - genetic, old age, chemically induced, regular mental illnesses etc.
Who decides what a mental illness is? .... and back to Square One.
Sure, it's a super hard societal problem. But I guess step one would be publicly talk about it (in a serious way). Like invite doctors with that specialty to the talk shows and discuss who can be mentally ill, what can be consequences of this or that specific diagnose etc.
When the problem can only be solved with global governance and the "proper morals and intelligence", I think it is worth questioning the premises.
How much more apocalyptic fear mongering do we need to rationalize increased governance? When is enough enough?
Cold war, drug war, war on terror, financial meltdown, pandemic emergency powers, nuclear apocalypse and of course climate doom. All used to rationalize further erosion of personal autonomy.
Is no one else burnt out on the constant doom mongering from our betters? Is it because I lack the proper morals and intelligence that I feel skeptical?
Capitalism discounts the present value of far-off catastrophes. This is for good reason: if WWIII breaks out tomorrow, climate change will be a far lesser concern for humanity (and indeed, WWIII may even solve the CO2 emission problem for us!) If we've learned anything since 2020, it pure hubris to claim we know what the future holds.
When beachfront condos in Miami start flooding, the practical, obvious, cost-effective solutions to the problem (i.e. geoengineering) will look a lot more appealing.
Not a surprise, since co2 is an oxide, and therefore very stable in the athmosphere. It would take a huge amount of energy to remove it, and we don't even stop putting it in there.
Janvici had a nice way to put it: the 1.5C are already signed for, which means we won't ever see the climate of today again in the next 5000 years.
> Not a surprise, since co2 is an oxide, and therefore very stable in the athmosphere. It would take a huge amount of energy to remove it,
There is an exothermic reaction that removes CO2 from the atmosphere, the formation of carbonates from weathering of silicate rocks. As this is naturally very slow, there is currently ongoing research into multiple different ways to speed it up.
That doesn't change anything. You need a huge amount of energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere because CO2 is a tiny constituent part of Air (~400ppm) - that means one has to move a million molecules of air across a collector (whatever that is) to remove 400 molecules of CO2. You can't do that without huge amounts of energy and a huge surface area for your collector ... on any human timescale.
What makes you think it would be significantly easier to filter out the carbolic acid from the ocean? The same difficulties apply, and water is much more viscous than air.
Not practically. We are talking about huge scales, such that the industrial production, transport, etc., would be as much of an environmental disaster as what it's trying to solve.
Oh man. Somebody always gets a way to make problems out of the entropy of diffusion. It increases with the log of the concentration, so whatever problem you estimate to happen, it can be worked around.
On the case of silicates, a trivial work around is to just spread them around and let the same diffusion bring the CO2 into them.
The best way forward is to reject parts of the consensus Green approach. In particular, investment in nuclear, and a plan to augment wind+solar expansion with a large nuclear (and later fusion) buildout is the way to go.
The rationale for this is that only by raising the living standard of the third world can the world’s population be stabilized without a major die-off (not to mention a reduced quality of life for just about everyone going forward). Further, only with massive amounts of clean energy can we clean up the ecosphere and effectively fight atmospheric CO2 buildup as needed.
There are plenty of resources on Earth if they’re managed well. Only with plentiful energy can we afford to have treat the Earth as the precious resource it is - as we begin to inhabit the rest of the Solar System!
other than the giant one staring at us 93 million miles away beaming massive amounts of energy directly at us all day, fusion reactors otherwise don't exist. Maybe not throw away all the other approaches until they do?
Solar and wind have many issues. Intermittency, the need for rare earths, and low energy density leading to ecological impact are some. It’s also under-recognized that as those technologies are built out beyond a few percent of global power, supply issues will likely lead to large cost increases and potential scarcity. Then there’s the waste/recycling problem, which is worse than nuclear.
I also was clear that fusion is a future solution.
so your argument is "go nuclear, problem solved" ? I'm all for adding nuclear at this point but I dont know that the research supports the notion that an "all in for nuclear, done" approach would be effective.
Go all in on everything. The investments required are a joke from what I can tell.
Make the state more efficient (probably by allowing more things to be handled by private entities), and voila, there's much more than what you need.
Germany's investments into e.g. wind energy topped out at €10bn/yr. The federal budget is €500bn/yr, add to that the state, county and community budgets and it's €830bn. Even if you paid for it by tax money only, it's not a budget issue. Neither would nuclear be.
Please stop. The raw materials for any type of nuclear reactor are vastly scarcer than renewables.
Iron flow batteries exist at grid scale for $200/kWh (enough to beat nuclear total system cost where 90% of people live with higher uptime) and dropping.
Copper metallized PV uses a manageable amount of copper and nickel (100s of kgs per MW net) and less silver than the control rods in a fission reactor. The dopants are measured in mg per MW and the rest is fancy sand. Inverters tend to be GaAs, but the amount is minimal and they don't need high performance power electronics to outperform nuclear.
Multi megawatt wind turbines with no copper windings and no permanent magnets exist at commercial scale, and all Aluminum cabling is ready as a dropin replacement as soon as the few dollars per MWh maintenance burden can he justified. Concrete and steel per MW is still significantly higher for wind, but a mix is approaching parity.
> also was clear that fusion is a future solution.
It really isn't. Helion is a moonshot that might work (but requires large amounts of rare metals for exotic superconductors). Anything thermal will be 10s of times more expensive and more materials than fission.
To add to this, for people suggesting that renewables are sufficient and that we should abandon nuclear for some reason or another, this report does a good job of motivating nuclear as a critical part of the solution: https://energy.mit.edu/research/future-nuclear-energy-carbon...
Even when nuclear power was enthusiastically embraced as the future it suffered from cost overruns, hidden and underestimated lifecycle costs, security problems such the possibility of a worse Chernobyl event as a result of an ongoing war, nuclear proliferation enablement, etc.
Blaming the resulting skepticism about nuclear on the "Green approach" is backwards: Fix the things that made nuclear expensive first. Demonstrate that the lifecycle works, from mining to waste handling. Show it costs less than putting the same capital into renewables and can come online in time to be relevant.
>Even when nuclear power was enthusiastically embraced as the future it suffered from cost overruns, hidden and underestimated lifecycle costs, security problems such the possibility of a worse Chernobyl event as a result of an ongoing war, nuclear proliferation enablement, etc.
And here we are on an oil-based energy economy suffering from cost overruns, hidden and underestimated lifecycle costs, security problems such the possibility of a worse Chernobyl event as a result of an ongoing war, nuclear proliferation enablement, etc.
I would gladly change the source of the energy as the effects seem to be the same besides atmospheric emissions.
Capital investment is fungible. If investing in renewables delivers more power to the grid sooner, then that is the optimal path to freedom from dependency on fossil fuels.
> The rationale for this is that only by raising the living standard of the third world can the world’s population be stabilized without a major die-off
I don't see how pumping billions of tonnes of heavy metal tainted sulfuric acid into the ground water of Namibia and Niger for Uranium royalties that are lower than the cost of cleanup and then putting them into debt they can't service for power stations that can only be fueled by their colonizers' nuclear weapons programs is related to increasing their standard of living.
Especially when the fuel source can only service the US primary energy for under a decade.
No, they hinder the goal because they will never provide more than a tiny fraction of the needed energy and building one would tie up immense amounts of resources that could electrify many more households and cause permanent outflows for interest on debt that can never be paid off and fuel that they are not allowed to make.
I have an idea for a program where I pour lead onto your food and loan you $100k but you can only spend it on preordering a sports car I sell that doesn't work on unpaved roads for $150k which can only be charged at chargers I own and if you do anything I don't like ever I'll just ban you from using my cars altogether. It won't explode iff you keep up with perfect maintenance and I'll be removing all of the chargers in 2060 (or 2050 if I get lots of orders). It may arrive any time between 2028 and 2040 or maybe I'll just cancel the order (but you still have to pay back the loan).
The alternative is you buy a LEV that charges itself if you use it less than 30 miles a day, can accept any charger and costs $30k but you have to find a loan yourself. It might fail to charge up to 20% of the time with a few days' notice if you don't buy the $50k deluxe package.
Then ban polluting lithium mining methods along with ISL uranium mining anywhere near an aquifer, open tailings ponds, anything to do with coal, and anything else with uncaptured externalities. Please and thankyou.
Storage and renewables can be achieved in a much more scalable, cheap, and less resource intensive way than nuclear without anything more scarce than chlorine (although rarer elements in manageable quantities make them more robust and even cheaper for now).
Yeah, that the key problem - all current "green" or "zero" tech is simply a trick, with shuffling emissions to other countries, selling-buying quotas, maybe reducing emissions a little in the best case. Until we have a working industrial scale CO2 sequestration factories we are essentially doing nothing, or close to nothing.
I don't think solar panels or windmills are a trick, but I think OP was referring to "net zero" initiatives, which are not much more than accounting scams. Most carbon credits, if even verifiable, don't involve reductions but rather promises to not cut down existing forests for X years. Western countries are trying to do what they do best: buy their way out of a problem that takes actual effort.
It's not replacing fossil fuels, merely freeing them for other uses. In fact it's even common now to build wind turbines around coal mines to produce power to extract coal...
We must reduce our fossil fuel consumption in absolute numbers. So far we're merely adding more energy resources; that way political and corporate PR representative can make triumphal announces about how we're reducing the part of fossil in our energy mix... But we need to reduce our fossil use overall, and REALLY REALLY FAST.
"It's common" is not a statistic. At least in the US, coal use for power generation has dropped precipitously over the past 40 years. If whatever coal we do still extract is extracted using wind or solar, that seems like a net win (even if not a net positive, for the reason you mentioned).
But we need a net positive. We must stop pumping CO2 in the atmosphere, and we're merely pumping it a slightly slower rate, and the quantity still goes up.
The US has replaced lots of coal with gas, and that's most of the reduction. But we're not gonna make it this way. Remember: we're heading towards +2.5°C in 2100, but northern continents heat much faster than the average (oceans are cooler and represent 70% of Earth's surface): it could be from +4 and up to +6°C in Canada, Europe, etc. The situation is going to be absolutely catastrophic much sooner than 2100. Arguably we may have catastrophic, repeated crop failures this decade for instance.
I'll link a page with a chart on it, the web page relies on Javascript to actually render charts, the chart we care about here is "Electricity generation mix by quarter and fuel source".
Now, on the left is 1998, on the right is this year. There are a few noteworthy differences
1. The UK actually produces less electricity, partly from efficiencies and partly de-industrialisation in some areas.
2. Coal went from over 30 TWh in 1998 to 2.24 TWh today. Are we instead burning that coal in homes? Nope. Steam locomotives? A handful of quaint examples. Coal mining largely stopped in the UK.
3. Gas went from almost 30 TWh in 1998 to slightly less today. We are still burning gas to heat homes and businesses but I doubt it's more than in 1998.
4. Wind and solar went from negligible to almost 25 TWh today. It's about a third of today's electricity generation.
I don't see a way to read this which doesn't have us significantly replacing fossil fuels. Those coal mines are shut. Does the UK still have petrol stations and gas boilers? Yes, but it doesn't have many more of them than in 1998. That displacement shown is a real improvement.
UK has massively de-industrialised, as has most of Europe (but Germany). However global industrial production, energy consumption in general and fossil fuels in particular all enormously increased since 1998.
Global numbers are all that counts, climate-wise. Plus I'm pretty sure that including imported emissions would annihilate (or even worsen) the apparent reduction for countries such as UK, France, etc.
> If I go on a diet and lose weight, is that also a trick because the average weight of the population goes up?
The keyword here is "imported emissions". When you reduce your consumption because you're closing a factory to import the same stuff made in worse (environmental, social) conditions elsewhere, the gain is only apparent.
So following your analogy, if what you're after is the global population health, if you lose weight but everyone else gains more than what you lost, than the result is indeed a net loss overall.
I admittedly haven't looked very hard, but the current push towards overall reduction and renewable sources (solar, wind) and long-timescale sources (nuclear) feels like much less of a trick than CO2 sequestration. Last time I checked, most sequestration efforts involve some kind of logistical sleight of hand (like ignoring the energy required to crush and spread out rocks, or the fact that most seedlings don't grow into mature trees).
The title is somewhat out of context, the abstract says "the international community is falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place". So it's not saying we can't do it, it's saying we're failing and take action.
(Not to downplay it at all, we really need to get things happening right now on the policy decisions level)
Neal Stephenson's most recent novel, Termination shock describes a near-future world where climate change's effects are becoming more visible and obvious. Without spoiling too much, it explores the politics of aerosol (sulpher) injection into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the planet.
I'm going to have to read that book, because that's exactly the path we're going down. Without geoengineering, we're looking at a world probably ~ 4c warmer by 2100, and when developed nations start feeling real pain, I guarantee you this will be tried.
I started reading that book but was disappointed. I live in central Texas, and I didn't recognize the picture he painted. Yeah, it's hot and often terrible, but his terrible didn't ring true and took me out of the novel. E.g, Waco as a big forest and fire ants eating electrical wires (that's crazy ants that do that).
> This analysis finds that new efforts to cut carbon would see global emissions fall by less than 1% by 2030, when according to scientists, reductions of 45% are needed to keep 1.5C in play.
I'm reminded of that scene in Dumb & Dumber when Mary has just told Lloyd his chances of ending up with her are one in a million:
Fighting climate change is, and probably always has been, a losing battle. The upside is that one of the remedies to the problems caused by climate upheaval is greater energy independence - which naturally steers us towards renewables. So, we might eventually end up with a net zero carbon economy anyway - but it'll be because of a desire for local stability, rather than to help save poor people in the developing world from environmental collapse.
The fact it is a "losing battle" for the next centuries has consequences. But not all of those consequences is despairing. Even if geoengineering is the only possible, yet dangerous and uncertain, way to make a dent in our CO2 "credit card debt" we still need aggressive investment in CO2 reduction. Continuing to bear down on the causes of anthropogenic climate change is the most effective way to reduce risk from geoengineering.
Such pathways require global cooperation and will fail unless all major nations are on board. In particular, Russia is making no effort, and has no incentive or motivation to make any effort due to their vast tundra landscape. Step 1 is to get Russia on board by some means, without Russia any of these goals are senseless.
This is an absurd take... Russia emits 4.65% of world output and has been decreasing last year the most out of the top 10 [0]. Could you base your arguments? I'd like to understand where this is coming from.
More generally, if Russia (or any party) has incentive, means, motivation to create climate change, do not be surprised if they actively work to make it happen. Russia can literally light things on fire and come out way ahead.
If your solution involves Russia getting on board then you've already failed. Russia is actually encouraging climate change because it opens up more shipping in the arctic circle. This is to illustrate that in the short term climate change leads to winners and losers. In the long term we probably all lose, but we're not known for our long term thinking.
Not sure why it is downvoted, but Russia is massively on the benefiting side of global warming. It reduces the amount of useless land, and massively increases crops yields throughout its territory.
Geopolitically, it benefits from additional pressure on Europe to accommodate the migrations caused by climate change, and all the instability it causes.
I'm sorry, but Russia, just like Canada, will not have increased crop yields from warming. It will (and does) have massive forest fires, drought, and erratic winters which swing from warm/hot to extreme cold within days.
You know what is even worse for farmers than a cold climate? An unpredictable one. It's damn hard to pull a profit farming if you can't rely on any kind of 'normal' growing conditions from year to year.
An increase in mean temperature isn't a neat and tidy "oh, we'll just move north"; it's on the whole an increase in variance.
I'm seeing it happen here in Canada, and I'm certain we'll see it in Siberia as well.
In the end, petro-regimes like Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Alberta, whatever... they'll become more and more paranoid and erratic and dysfunctional as the broader crisis around 'energy' deepens. We're right now seeing our first war triggered by a cornered petro-regime on the cusp of climate catastrophe. I suspect we'll see more.
I'm not convinced Russia would get much benefit from from warmer tundra.
It takes more than a change in temperature to make land useful. I don't think recently-defrosted tundra is going to suddenly be profitable farmland. You need the right soil type, weather, irrigation, transport links, workers, energy sources, etc.
We have a lot of experience in the global system of cajoling outlier countries into a common agreement, it's just stick and carrot. Diplomacy, negotiations over interests, trade deals, etc.
> "Into the classrooms, into the boardrooms, into the voting booth, over the dinner table. We cannot let go of climate change."
I wonder if this is the right approach. It certainly is the approach we have been following for years. But I think that has just lead to empathy fatigue.
I'm not sure it's appropriate to call it an "approach". These are just the things a human does when they care about a society-scale issue that seems important. Yes, there surely may be a reason to modify this attitude as part of a strategy based on a somewhat pessimistic/realistic view of human psychology, but that modification is probably not a realistic goal.
That's pretty uncharitable, and really only makes sense as a criticism if you think the proponents don't really believe this is a critical, concrete issue for society (i.e. if you think they are just being political, or ignorant).
> really only makes sense as a criticism if you think the proponents don't really believe
People who push religion often believe in it though. The question isn't whether one believes it, but whether one is dogmatic about it. The closed mindedness towards new ideas is what makes this sound like religion.
That's what the article says. We aren't doing enough to limit global warming to just 1.5c. we could do more a possibly limit warming to 1.5c but it becomes an ever greater challenge the longer we leave it.
At some point we have to stop talking about the 1.5° number as if it were anything but a ludicrous pipedream by now. Even ten years ago it was an entirely hypothetical "if the entire global economic system magically turned around overnight then it might be possible". Now it's "if we had a literal time machine and could go back and magically turn around the global economy overnight".
A goal we can actually achieve results in the collapse of civilization. But that doesn't sell well. Not many want to take that for granted.
Any better consequence than that requires very significant changes from BAU and so lots of short term pain. Especially for the wealthy. And so we're back to impossible.
> A goal we can actually achieve results in the collapse of civilization.
I don't think so, that's a bit dramatic. Some areas will be destroyed. Some will be much less livable. Some will be ok. Some will be better off, think Siberia or Canada. Especially in the northern hemisphere that has more land in the higher latitudes.
Besides the destruction of viable cities especially on coasts a big problem is the mass migration that this will cause. It's a huge problem for sure. But civilisation-ending? I don't think so.
I suppose so. But no more dramatic than the collapse of many previous civilizations. It's not an unheard of occurrence. Especially when faced with sudden loss of habitat.
> Some areas will be destroyed...destruction of viable cities...mass migration...
So you think that's all going to happen, and then what...somehow the climate system is going to return to a habitable, stable state? We're in the midst of abrupt and irreversible climate change, with tipping points triggering further tipping points.
And even if somehow the climate system stabilizes, we'd already be well on the way to collapse of civilization, and we'd have to deal with all of this social upheaval and habitat destruction in a sane, non-destructive manner. I think that history, climate projections, and known human behaviour are all pushing the odds toward civilization collapse, and possibly another extinction in the genus Homo.
Well surely that's more motivation to meet the current target. Except even though we're all feeling the consequences we're still not really doing enough.
Let's be perfectly clear: the projection you are citing is on the extreme end of a spectrum. Other projections differ. Per the (non-headline) part of the article:
> The estimate stands in sharp contrast to optimistic forecasts published last week that suggested heating could be held to 1.9C or 1.8C, thanks to commitments announced at the talks, now in their second week and scheduled to end this weekend.
> Those estimates were based on long-term goals set out by countries including India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, which is aiming for net zero emissions by 2070.
> By contrast, the sobering assessment of a rise of 2.4C from Climate Action Tracker (CAT), the world’s most respected climate analysis coalition, was based on countries’ short-term goals for the next decade.
It's worth pointing out that the "world's most respected climate analysis coalition" bit is some rather blatant editorializing. There's simply no way that's an objective fact (what did they do, survey the entire world?) Even if there were a way to defend such a statement, it's little more than an appeal to authority, to try to get you to believe this estimate, versus other estimates.
After the past three years and watching their coverage of Covid (an area of science I know well, and in which I read the primary literature), I give zero credibility to the Guardian as a source of objective information. They routinely play these kinds of rhetorical and selective-reporting games to play up the most extreme angle for any story.
It's sad, but we've gotten to the point where you simply cannot trust major news organizations to report on science without ridiculous levels of clickbait spin.
We're not going to hit the targets, not even close. The models are trending worse than expected. As someone that has spent some time on this topic in my lifetime, all I can do is thank fate that I'm likely to be dead from natural causes around 2050.
Maybe the Guardian is bad (and I disagree with your opinion of them, I think they are generally reliable) but in this case, they are correct.
> Let's be perfectly clear: the projection you are citing is on the extreme end of a spectrum.
It's worth pointing out that "on the extreme end of a spectrum" is some rather blatant editorializing. There is simply no way that's an objective fact.
> After the past three years and watching their coverage of Covid (an area of science I know well, and in which I read the primary literature)
That's little more than an appeal to authority, to try to get us to believe your opinion, rather than highly-respected international organisations.
> I give zero credibility to the Guardian as a source of objective information.
The Guardian is not perfect, but generally gets the science pretty much right most of the time - at least compared to other news organisations. Saying it has "zero credibility" is hyperbole that rather reveals your biases.
Would you like to cite some projections you think are more accurate?
My interpretation of the "spectrum" comment was that, out of a number of predictions by different papers, the one cited is on the outer ranges of given values. That seems like an objective statement by itself.
> The Guardian is not perfect, but generally gets the science pretty much right most of the time - at least compared to other news organisations.
That caveat is a really low threshold, think of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect and "wet pavements cause rain" level of wrongness in the things other news orgs report.
> It's worth pointing out that "on the extreme end of a spectrum" is some rather blatant editorializing. There is simply no way that's an objective fact.
It's a fact reported by the very same article (but buried). I didn't make it up.
> Would you like to cite some projections you think are more accurate?
All projections are theoretical, but one needs only go to the IPCC to see that the range of reputable predictions varies:
Most recent IPCC commentary on predictions to underscore that current estimates land in a range, and that the Guardian-cited source is definitely not in the middle of it:
> Most recent IPCC commentary on predictions to underscore that current estimates land in a range, and that the Guardian-cited source is not in the middle of it
Could you quote which part you are referring to?
If you look at the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, it predicts for Shared Socioeconomic Pathway SSP2-4.5 (the middle of the options presented, "CO2 emissions around current levels until 2050, then falling but not reaching net zero by 2100") warming of 2.7C by 2100.
2.9C is absolutely an extreme prediction. The figure I linked is from the IPCC SR15 (source was in the comment). Digging through the sixth assessment report, there's this:
You can see that 5/8 of the projections fall below 2.5C, and 4/8 fall below 2C. The predictions that rise above 2.5C are the three most extreme categories of the report. There's simply no way to claim that a prediction of 2.9C is not "extreme". SSP2-4.5 is in category C6, which is the top 50% of all predictions.
Moreover, from the report describing the "categories":
> Around half of all modelled global emission scenarios assume cost-effective approaches that rely on least-cost emission abatement options globally. The other half look at existing policies and regionally and sectorally differentiated actions
So you're talking about a distribution of predictions where half assume little/no changes over current circumstances.
The problem with all of these scenario "categories" is that they're bucketed by maximum predicted temperature, so it all becomes a game of begging the question: if you choose to emphasize "category C7" from the IPCC report, it means only that you prefer to believe a scenario where warming tops out at 4C (literally the definition of C7).
Scenarios that make wildly different assumptions are grouped together, and it's impossible to know which ones are likely, and difficult to know which ones reflect current planned mitigations, etc. But this does show clearly the range of possible predicted outcomes -- if some newspaper comes along and tells you that "experts" are "predicting" a rise of 4C, you can know that they're on the tail of the distribution of reasonable predictions.
Edit: found the description of SSP2-4.5 (table SPM.2, here [1]). It assumes that we never hit net zero CO2 production, and that GHG emissions continue on their current path through 2050 with only minimal mitigatons. Is this realistic? Who knows. But it's certainly not the stated plan.
Given that the IPCC projections have been consistently conservative, and have been revised upward repeatedly, i personally do not consider 2.9 an extreme value.
>It assumes that we never hit net zero CO2 production, and that GHG emissions continue on their current path through 2050 with only minimal mitigatons
You mean...the path we are basically on, and have been on, since decades despite knowing the consequences? "Not the stated plan" is doing a lot of lifting here.
> ...was based on countries’ short-term goals for the next decade
What else though? There is no "long-term" for politicians that have to face another election in less than 4 years.
"This will happen in 10+ years" is just a thinly-veiled "We aren't going to do it.".
If we can't get any short term commitments and hold people accountable for it, nothing substantial will get done.
Look at the New Green Deal proposed by some Democrats in 2019. It was a non-binding resolution. An attempt to give the US congress a long-term vision.
There wasn't an attempt to compromise. Every Republican Representative could have attempted an amendment to temper language they didn't like. There could have been a debate on the merits of the resolution.
It was turned into a hit piece so every time AOC is mentioned in social media some smarmy user pops up and screeches about hamburgers or cow flatulence.
How I see this unfolding, at the very least, is full-on militarization of the youth (mass protest, boycott, and terrorism) when they see that no one is doing anything substantive to solve the problem. You can already see quasi-violent climate change protests in the EU/UK.
They will organize via TikTok, or whatever social media dujour, and stop life as we know it.
It’s sad, but we will simply never get past the point of rearranging the furniture while we argue about the accuracy of estimates of the iceberg’s size.
Why is this the font of your passion, rather than the desperate situation of our planet?
I wonder how many nuclear bombs it would take to raise global temperature by an average of 1.2C? I'm sure a physicist could tell you, but I bet the number would be best expressed in exponential notation at least.
And if we were setting off that many bombs every day, I bet people would be a bit concerned.
What are they supposed to do? They said they don't trust the guardian for scientific news because they have read the actual scientific literature and noticed that the guardian engages in clickbait and hyperbole. They seem to understand the situation, they just don't like this particular outlet because in their experience it doesn't do a good job. Should they be typing in all caps about how we're all going to die instead?
Like it or not, a lot of people have lost trust in mainstream media outlets because they have seen said outlets engage in hyperbolic clickbait bullshit.
I feel much of the mourning of lost trust in media comes down to crocodile tears (“concern trolling” - though I don’t cast that label on any comment here). The well meant and often needed pedantry of the informed serves the disingenuous demagogue readily. And the informed themselves are often distracted from a moral urgency by ambiguity.
Ambiguity is kin to science but alien to modern and popular modes of ethical judgement. This failure of critical moral thinking is the crux of media’s challenge when reporting on climate change. I don’t believe the hoi polloi distrust journalists because they too are current with the latest studies.
In our present crises, there seems to me a choice between hyperbole and bikeshedding. The latter suits the present powers, the former all the possibility of a future.
> I feel much of the mourning of lost trust in media comes down to crocodile tears
In other words, anyone who questions a media narrative -- however obviously thoughtless or ridiculous -- is "concern trolling", and therefore worth dismissing.
> In our present crises, there seems to me a choice between hyperbole and bikeshedding.
We have to stop this black and white thinking. There's absolutely a wide area of reasonable disagreement possible here: we can agree that climate is a problem, but disagree on the costs / benefit tradeoffs of any proposed solution. Science and policy are two very different things, but one side of the political spectrum seems devoted to turning "science" into a political bludgeon for their preferred policies.
If you'd stop short of returning humanity to the stone age to stop climate change, then you, too, believe in reasonable tradeoffs. You can be a scientist and hold both things in your head at the same time.
The justification I would give: to get ourselves out of this pickle, it is plausible that we will require skilled thinking. Therefore, pursuing good thinking would make sense, and a component of that would be identifying bad thinking (as demonstration, and also perhaps as something to add to the "To Fix" list).
I continue to believe that the physical science is well beyond "good enough" and that humanity should now be investing in metaphysical inquiry (psychology, sociology, etc), as getting humans coordinated and pulling all in the same direction would be beneficial to sorting this mess and others out.
> "It's sad, but we've gotten to the point where you simply cannot trust major news organizations to report on science without ridiculous levels of clickbait spin."
news may have waxed and waned on reputability but it's never really been highly reputable. we had a blip from the 70s-90s where it was contextually limited enough that our national narrative was fairly aligned and unchallenged. but that exposed the natural weakness of monoliths, which provided an opening to folks like murdoch to exploit, followed by the explosion of social media, which increased noise several-fold while increasing signal much less than that.
there is no shortcut to thinking for yourself. that's a civic responsibility as much as an individual one. folks need to dig past the veneer presented to examine the veracity and credibility of the narrative presented.
when it comes to climate change, mediopolitical narrative imposes too much bullshit and religious fervor for most of us to make real sense of it, and that's why we mostly shortcut to tribal affiliation as a proxy for what we should think/believe.
personally, i think we should focus on (air, water, land) pollution first and foremost, as that is concretely a problem yesterday, today, and tomorrow, starting with reducing coal worldwide. strategically, that has the advantage of narrowing our focus (less bullshit and influence potential), doing something that materially helps us now, and potentially does something to help the far off climate future.
Science reporting could be skewed on some issues in the old days (floridation, marijuana) but it was rarely as hasty and sloppy as it gets now, frequently. The business model and technology then didn't support the same volume of publication, but it supported reporters well enough to allow them more time to investigate and write.
Headline writing was another matter back then, though. It was bad; just some dude trying to fit the space under time pressure because the ads were carefully planned, then the articles were quickly chopped to fit around them. Truncated headlines often reversed the meaning of the story or just went off the rails.
Making a press release saying that you are going to do something in 20 years is not a strong indication that you will actually do that thing. Unless a government is taking substantial short-term action that is consistent with that goal, then we should skeptical of those goals, and not put too much weight on projections based on them.
1.5° C Was the goal of the Paris Agreement and is important because it's (somewhat arbitrarily somewhat backed by models) the point where we go from bad but not disastrous to we're going to have serious climate impacts.
Thank god the world is warming. This means a greener world, with more food for everyone. We are just coming out of an ice age; it would be muuuch more worrying if global temperatures were getting colder. Cold periods climatically tend to be associated with famine and war.
There is no chance of removing existing CO2 from Air to make any sort of difference.
There is no chance of meaningfully reducing CO2 emissions, because outside of Nuclear (and hydro/geothermal but only if you have the geography for it) there is no alternative to replacing fossil fuels. At some point the public will realize the lie of solar/wind as a replacement. We lost 50 years of greatly reduced emissions had nuclear power continued to be rolled out at the same rate as it did in the 60s/70s.
There is possibility of geoengineering (e.g. emitting some sort of sun-light reflecting gas into the atmosphere to cool the climate) but that suffers from a potential "law of unintended consequences".
It seems like we're going to have to deal with it.
>What lie exactly? Scotland is producing enough to power Scotland twice itself on Wind alone.
No they aren't. This is at best misleading, at worst, a blatant lie.
What is happening is that on days with strong winds, they are overproducing wind energy but ONLY at certain times of the day. When they overproduce this energy, they cannot store it for later (because there is no battery technology today, or in the near-to-mid future that is able to store that amount of energy), and they cannot give it away, so they lose it.
This kind of headline is very very common. This is how the public is continually lied to and thinks that wind/solar is just around the corner. It isn't. It's never going to be.
>Nuclear is extremely dangerous with toxic waste needing special storage facilities. Destruction if the plant is to melt-down. (chernobyl)? You need an external power source to power a nuclear plant. Nuclear also requires uninterruptible power.
If you don't like nuclear ... fine, but there is nothing else. So now what?
>Thorium reactors are a dream away, nice but not feasible as of the moment.
Agreed. Also Fusion is a pipe-dream at this point in time. So now what?
> Manufacturing, refining, and AI improvements are going to reduce the price of batteries by another 90%
This is a pipe dream. Battery demand will be astronomical for decades to come. That means ramping up supply and prioritising deployment via price signals.
> it is the demand for batteries that will make them cheap
This isn’t how supply and demand work. Demand can induce scale efficiencies in production, which lowers costs. That’s what’s happening in your link, which tracks through 2018.
In 2019, electric car sales shares rose globally and non-linearly [1]. We persist on that path. As a result, battery costs are spiking [2][3].
It is exactly how supply and demand works, lithium refiners are making huge profits, which causes more investment in refining capabilities which unlocks larger economies of scale.
If you don't understand this please just circle back to this thread in 5 years, and I can show you what actually happened.
Replacing the most expensive form of power plant (and mind you, only the most expensive ones out of that class) at a quantity much lower than is needed to actually replace them, with serious supply constraints.
Batteries today are replacing peaker plants that run on things like refined gasoline, which are extremely expensive to run.
Battery + renewable is still not anywhere near cost competitive with base load plants, which is the honest comparison to make.
That is incorrect, "The International Energy Agency recently predicted that solar power would become “the cheapest source of electricity in history,” and a report by Carbon Tracker found that 90 percent of the global population lives in places where new renewable power would be cheaper than new dirty power. " https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/clim...
Power demand is inelastic. What these agencies say about power prices is true if you don't factor in the fact that wind isn't always blowing and the sun isn't always shining. When wind and solar can produce power, they can produce it very cheaply. 1 watt of solar power is very expensive to produce from starlight, and so is 1 watt of wind power on a calm day.
The price of the batteries and/or overbuilt capacity has to be factored in to the price of renewable energy if you want to run the grid 100% on renewables. If you don't want batteries, and instead want a global grid, the cost of transport has to be factored in. Either proposition makes renewable energy extremely expensive for providing base load power, not to mention currently impossible.
Currently, we need something like 10-100 TWh of batteries for grid stabilization in just the US. Taking a high estimate of 1 TWh this year, that would be 10-100 years of the entire current global lithium ion battery production (not including the fact that those batteries are going to depreciate over 5-10 years). Pumped storage and other (weirder) energy storage methods also can't scale up enough to get anywhere near this demand.
> What lie exactly? Scotland had produced enough to power itself twice on Wind alone.
Doesn't say much for a variety of reasons:
- Even in Scotland, there's loads of days where there's "no wind" - on those days electricity has to be generated by gas or other means. So practically speaking as wind cannot be guaranteed it is impossible for Scotland to not generate carbon, via wind alone.
- As usual for breathless wind articles, completely fails to account for heating - which in Scotland makes up the bulk of domestic energy consumption and most homes are heated by gas combi boilers.
- Also as usual, neglects transport - another huge proportion of energy consumption
- Scotland is a best case scenario - it is very windy relative to other countries. It doesn't have a huge population. And as part of the UK national grid it makes sense to build a lot of wind capacity within Scotland. But then looking at statistics for Scotland in isolation doesn't really make sense - it should be done at a UK national grid level rather than trying to gerrymander things.
Wind is fine for reducing gas consumption when it happens to be windy. But if you really want to tackle climate change, you need to tackle having a need for gas consumption at all, and wind won't do it.
You can build solar or wind plus some energy storage or long distance transmission to even it out for less than the price of nuclear and with income beginning quickly, not after 10 years. By the time nuclear projects started now complete, solar and wind will be mopping the floor with them ROI wise. Far from being a lie, we're in danger of them becoming the only game in town, for better or worse. Nuclear had so much potential, but we stopped investing and stopped innovating and it's unclear if it can ever catch up again. For our sakes, I hope so. More options are better.
As long as you build 5-10x redundancy for solar/wind I don't see it, solar and wind are all over the place between the peak and valley outputs. Unless we find a "battery" storage technology that can smooth it out over say a couple of weeks, I don't think countries are going to go for it as the only grid power source. We have nuclear now, and climate change is a huge deal to solve, possibly end of human civilization huge. Note I didn't say solar and wind wouldn't be part of the mix,but as the sole source, it's not going to happen with a 10X or better leap in battery technology (energy density)
Where does your 5x-10x number come from? I sense that it's a guess, but the cool thing about stats is that we can actually find a redundancy ratio for a given probability of shortage.
You are confusing efficiency with some other metrics. Solar is 20%, but there is no point comparing it to efficiency of gas or nuclear - it's apples to oranges.
So what that 20% means in case of solar? Utilisation factor also doesn’t make sense - what matters is how many GWh you van get per dollar of installation, but you don’t measure this in %.
>By the time nuclear projects started now complete, solar and wind will be mopping the floor with them ROI wise.
Yes, it will take decades to restart large scale nuclear projects. So we lost more than 50 years.
With Solar/Wind it's not a question of cost or ROI. Solar/wind, as an intermittent and diffuse energy source, CANNOT power a modern economy. It needs base-load.
To be very honest, I feel like the car culture in the US gives every household a potential large battery to sustain their house with. In a future where every car is an EV, every American house has two giant batteries, if not more, hooked up to it all night.
A) How much electricity do you think is consumed at night? ( US average daily consumption is 30 KWh)
B) How much electricity do you think can be stored in a car battery? (Tesla batteries are >= 50 KWh )
C) What happens to existing sources of renewable power that will continue to operate at night? ( They can still provide a baseload that accounts for any shortfalls )
Modern Teslas can store double the daily usage of a US average household. And that's assuming you have literally zero generation at night (hydro / nuclear / geothermal / pumped storage ).
Building a modern zero carbon economy based on renewable energies is not only possible but also close to cost competitive to the nuclear-intensive alternative [1]:
>>> Regarding the evolution of technology costs, under the baseline scenario, the cost difference between the M23 (renewable only) and N2 (old and new nuclear + renewable) scenarios is close to 10 billion euros a year (0.3% of France's GDP).
This is a quote from France's mostly nuclear based electric grid agency.
Losing 0.3% of GDP but avoiding any inherent social, environmental and economical risk associated with nuclear does not look bad to me.
>Building a modern zero carbon economy based on renewable energies is not only possible but also close to cost competitive to the nuclear-intensive alternative [1]:
Oh yeah? Point me at an example.
This is not a question of ROI. Wind/Solar could be free and still could not power a modern economy. There are no economies of any significant size (say, larger than a mid-size city) that are powered by wind/solar. There are no economies that have plans in the near-to-mid term to be powered by wind/solar. Why was Germany, up until recently, investing billions to ship Russian gas for decades if wind/solar is just around the corner?
You can achieve that steady grid by over-building wind+solar, interconnecting larger areas of grid, as that naturally smooths out the variability as the system gets larger and more diverse, and adding storage. Storage is not quite there yet, cost efficiency wise, but it's less of a stretch to believe it can get there, than it is to believe nuclear can be made cost competitive.
You do the very same things that electric grids has been successfully doing for the last 40 years:
- Exchange electricity with other network on national and international level to balance out the load.
- Modulate big industrial loads. It's standard practice in many countries to have fine-grained tariffs for large consumers that are willing to adapt to fluctuating energy availability and prices.
- Modulate residential consumer loads around house and water heating. Many countries have been doing day/night tariffs for decades and people store energy as heat using boilers and storage heaters.
- Store energy using pumped hydro & similar
And now we can also start modulating consumer loads more precisely using smart appliances and charging EVs at the best time of the day.
Also, despite the FUD around wind/solar the reality is that:
- currently most countries have excess energy during the night rather than not enough. In general, using more solar would help rather that create a problem!
- solar+wind combined are not going to drop down to 30% for a whole day or week in a whole continent, only on a local level. You can find detailed statistics online.
- solar is very cheap and can be overscaled to compensate for low production times
- many industrial loads can be made more flexible if that means cheaper electricity on average
Isn’t the base load required a fraction of our current coal/gas usage? Let’s get there first before complaining about solar/wind. (Though I’m also fully in support of more nuclear too)
To the German Green party, who indulges itself in blaming everyone but itself for all kinds of problems in the world, there is only one thing that is worse than global warming, and that is nuclear energy.
Geoengineering is starting to seem like less of a "possibility" and more of a necessity, because self-sustaining methane emission loops seem to have been unlocked in the artic and tropics.
So even if we were to magically stop the emission of new carbon, Earth will likely just keep heating up.
And yes, it's hard to prove that runaway warming is happening (data is noisy, and the time is short), but the burden of proof imho has shifted to the other side.
There is a known mechanism of action for runaway warming, data that fits runaway warming, and no known mechanism of action for natural dampening of that warming. The question at this point seems to be "why woudlnt' runaway warming happen"?
> There is no chance of meaningfully reducing CO2 emissions, because outside of Nuclear (and hydro/geothermal but only if you have the geography for it) there is no alternative to replacing fossil fuels. At some point the public will realize the lie of solar/wind as a replacement. We lost 50 years of greatly reduced emissions had nuclear power continued to be rolled out at the same rate as it did in the 60s/70s.
25% of electricity in the US was produced with renewables this year, more than both coal and nuclear [1]. There is roughly 1TW of renewables in interconnection queues [2], and 400GW of energy storage. The cost of renewables is expected to decline to less than half a cent per kwh due to the Inflation Reduction Act [4]. Tesla's Megafactory (to manufacture 40 GWh of Megapacks per year) is getting ready to begin production [5].
It can be difficult to understand the curve of the hockey stick when you're at the growth inflection point. In no uncertain terms, we are at the inflection point.
> There is no chance of removing existing CO2 from Air to make any sort of difference.
What was the cost delta between sequencing the human genome in 2003 versus today? (About ~$1B) Yeah, it is going to be very energy intensive to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it. It's a good thing enough sunlight falls on the Earth every 2 minutes to meet humanity's energy needs for the year, because we need enough clean energy to electrify everything, to account for growth into the future until the human population peaks, as well as to pay back all of the carbon emitted during industrialization.
I'll plug YC's Charge Robotics here (automating solar panel installs with robotics), as it seems like the polite thing to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30780455 ("Launch HN: Charge Robotics (YC S21) - Robots that build solar farms")
[4] https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/15/credit-suisse-predicts-... ("Credit Suisse says the Inflation Reduction Act will have such a tremendous impact on renewable energy that the US may see the levelized cost of electricity from renewable sources fall to less than 1 cent per kWh hour by 2025 after factoring in all tax and production credits.")
> 25% of electricity in the US was produced with renewables this year, more than both coal and nuclear [1].
That number includes hydro, and doesn't communicate the distribution of the generation, which is concentrated in the plains. Wind and solar are only ~16% of total, with the bulk being wind:
> For the six-month period to June 30, electrical generation by wind increased by 24.67% and provided 11.55% of total electrical generation. Meanwhile, solar sources grew by 27.72% and provided 4.94% of US electrical output.
It's also incredibly regional, with the least-dense parts of the US having the highest overall percentages. From the EIA report that link is based on [1]:
> The Southwest Power Pool (SPP) region has had the most growth in the renewable share of electricity generation over the past decade, largely due to wind generation. In 2013, 13% of the region’s electricity generation came from renewables. That share increased to 40% in 2021, and we expect it to rise to 44% in 2022.
> The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, has also increased its renewable share, from 10% in 2013 to 32% in 2022. ERCOT is the only electricity market region where the renewable electricity share has transitioned from less than the U.S. average to more than the U.S. average from 2013 to present. Both SPP and ERCOT have added substantial generating capacity from wind turbines
So that's good, but it's a very different story than the top-line numbers suggest. If we're going to get to high levels of non-fossil electricity in the (far) more densely populated east and southeast, wind isn't going to do the job.
Yes, I pulled the numbers from the link you cited. I'm just saying that the nuance here matters a lot, and isn't captured by the headline number.
Barring some dramatic change in technology, we'll probably max out wind generation in the western US in the next decade or two, and it isn't a good solution for the most densely populated parts of the US. Solar isn't growing nearly as quickly (and of course, has the base load problem).
By the time we're in a position to 'pay back' the emitted CO2 we have to be well beyond CO2 neutral energy. Otherwise it's easier to just offset our existing fossil uses instead of reclamation. We'll have to have a huge surplus of say 10x our energy use right now because reclaiming at any decent speed will cost huge amounts of energy.
At that point most of the climate change will have already happened and we'll have dealt with the results for better or worse. If we're to try and reverse it at that point it would result in yet another climate change from the state we'll be in then. People will have settled in the new conditions and I doubt they'll really want it changed back at that point.
Especially because most disruptive extreme weather will occur during the changes. Not before and after.
It's not as if the pre-industrial climate is some kind of ideal for the world. The world has no natural stable state. Climate change is totally normal, the problem is with the speed with which it happens now which is tens or hundreds of times faster than what is normal.
However this goes for the way back as well. By the time we have the extreme amount of free energy we'll need to revert climate change, the reversion itself will cause its own disruption.
In other words we have to go all in on prevention.. Trying to fix it afterwards is going to make things worse.
> By the time we're in a position to 'pay back' the emitted CO2 we have to be well beyond CO2 neutral energy.
That certainty is not warranted.
Solar does seem much easier to generate than to store. It's uncertain how mobile usage will evolve on the short term. We have a lot of capital dependent on fossil fuels that won't be deprecated immediately. And finally, it's not clear if we can't do carbon capture at a loss before renewables win the market for generation.
Or, in conclusion, we should make a new global climate conference, with targets for capture. There is no reason for waiting the energy market to fully convert before doing it.
> Solar does seem much easier to generate than to store. It's uncertain how mobile usage will evolve on the short term.
A lot of mobility tech is speeding up rapidly. Countries are banning fossil fuel cars a lot sooner. And even if we store solar power at a loss, we're still storing it. It's still displacing fossil.
> We have a lot of capital dependent on fossil fuels that won't be deprecated immediately.
Really, this is the kind of excuse that keeps us from moving on. If we can't even deprecate some fossil fuel investments that have been made in the full knowledge of the problem, we really have no chance of fixing this. There is absolutely no reason such concerns should carry any weight. The sacrifices we need to make to solve this are way beyond that.
> And finally, it's not clear if we can't do carbon capture at a loss before renewables win the market for generation.
> Or, in conclusion, we should make a new global climate conference, with targets for capture. There is no reason for waiting the energy market to fully convert before doing it.
I really don't think it's viable at any scale. To make a dent in the CO2 levels, we not only need a tremendous amount of energy to perform the reclamation. We also have to mine the earth for the raw materials for all this machinery. Ship it to a place that's suitable. Construct and maintain it all, and its energy generation equipment. All things that are not climate neutral and also have negative impacts on the environment in many other ways (mining of the materials etc). And all the resources we commit to it can't be used to displace fossil fuel technologies.
Not emitting the CO2 we're going to capture evades all these issues.
I just don't see this being viable at the scale we need it to really make a dent. I view it mainly as a procrastination excuse, and a way to monetise the problem for some tech entrepreneurs. It makes the immediate problem less urgent if you think you can fix it later.
> Global carbon emissions from energy will peak in 2025 thanks to massively increased government spending on clean fuels in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to analysis by the world’s leading energy organisation.
> The International Energy Agency (IEA) said that government spending on clean energy in response to the crisis would mark a “historic turning point” in the transition away from fossil fuels, in its annual report on global energy.
> The invasion of Ukraine has prompted an energy crisis around the world, with global gas prices initially surging. The crisis has caused steep inflation that has made households poorer around the world.
> Governments have been scrambling to find other sources of energy. Some analysts have questioned whether fears over energy security could lead to the use of fossil fuels for longer, slowing the world’s race to net zero carbon emissions. Some countries – including the US and the UK under previous prime minister Liz Truss – have pledged to encourage fossil fuel extraction to try to ease prices.
Nuclear is just a scapegoat. If it was easy or cheap, the free market would have done its magic. All manufacturing would already be done in a country with unlimited free and clean energy, even if other countries had issues with it. Plant costs, operation, safety, waste management, and non-proliferation are real hard problems. It's just lazy and wishful thinking that there's a deus ex machina if some people would just get over their irrational fears of radioactivity. It is only an easy way of saying "the so-called environmentalists caused global warming" by groups of people that have made no policy efforts, no investment, and have no actual industry expertise.
The surest solution to the problem is to keep using fossil fuels. That will lead to a desertification of the tropics, acidification of the oceans, and the death of about 5 billion people. Eventually, over the next 5-10,000 years, maybe 1-2 billion humans can sustain themselves on Earth near the poles and they won't have the opportunity re-industrialize on mined hydrocarbons because we'll have used up all of it.
Nuclear tech is dual use so it is strongly controlled. That's what makes it impossible for, say, Sudan to become some energy+manufacturing powerhouse in the way you're talking.
If you try to start a civil nuclear program and America finds out, America will kill your program. And America will find out.
China or Russia would be entirely powered by nuclear and would be the world's leading industrial nations if it were as easy as proponents suggest. China is the world's leading industrial nation, but their national energy production from nuclear is a quarter of the US's (5% vs 19%). India has a quarter of global reserves of thorium and doesn't have a single commercial thorium reactor.
I used to be really depressed about this sort of thing. It caused me to severely limit my lifestyle out of a desire to "do the right thing". I didn't own a car. Very low consumption and minimal waste (no takeaway food, coffee etc., very frugal, didn't use things like paper towels and napkins). I cycled and walked everywhere. Didn't go on holidays abroad or even very far away.
Then I looked around and noticed that everyone else was enjoying themselves at my expense. Worse, I was often a second-class citizen as my bicycle couldn't stand up to their cars.
So I said fuck it, bought a car, fly several times a year, use paper towels, drive to the air-conditioned gym so my body looks like it's useful, don't care about my waste as much. Can't beat 'em, join 'em. I still reckon I use and waste less than the average person (certainly less than the average American), though.
I can be happy with this because I'm not going to reproduce. I honestly don't care if humans die out a few generations after me. I used to care but I just don't think we are worth it any more.
I’m still on the side of cyclists. I don’t think I’d be able to stand a lifestyle where I’m surrounded by people in denial. I have a child but I don’t think I’ll raise her in the belief that only a comfortable life is one worth living.
I’m also wondering by who childless people expect to be taken care of when they get older, if not by their children in a broad sense?
None of us know what the future holds. You might very well have nobody to care for you either. Your children are free agents and might move to the other side of the world or might simply not care about you. Like me you'll probably choose not to overly concern yourself with this.
Well, I feel responsible for those who need to get cared for. I take care of my parents and I’ll do more so in the future. Many people have cared for me when I was in need. I believe there’s a good chance that my children, as free agents, will choose to take care for me when I need it.
Your comment annoyed me so I started typing a response but then I remembered that you might be a real person with debt who worries about a sick relative, so it’s just not that big a deal.
I think about giving up around 30 almost every day, but am scared I won’t have the courage to do so. More realistically I see my end in the cold on a street saying random things out loud while someone walks by feeling a mixture of discomfort, annoyance and guilt.
Hey, this second paragraph is really dark. I don't really know how to say it right but I wish you something better, more comfortable, more exciting, and guilt-free.
It sounds like you're bitter because you think having all people take personal responsibility for their own actions is the only solution, and you don't see people doing that. I used to feel similarly.
But I think the real problem is not the moral failings of individuals; I think the real problem is that we've collectively built a system that rewards people for doing the wrong thing. If we can collectively decide to fix the system to reward better behavior, then everyone wins. This is still a tremendously difficult undertaking, but it at least feels possible to me.
So nowadays I try to spend my efforts pushing for systemic change instead of worrying about how much plastic I used today or whatever. In some cases this still boils down to individual action, like when I bought my first EV, but in that case I didn't buy it to try to cut down my own emissions, I bought it to try to help fund EV R&D, raise awareness of EVs, and help companies scale up manufacturing and whatnot.
Not only does working for systemic change give me more hope, it's also more personally satisfying to feel like part of a broader movement to build a better world, rather than feeling like I'm just one tiny drop in a bucket of individuals trying to limit their own damage.
I definitely do not think people taking personal responsibility is the solution. Quite the opposite. I believe the only way it top-down enforcement of cutbacks for everyone. A giant reset button. I simply don't think we have the ability to do that. COVID was a nice try but we couldn't resist going back to "normal".
Buying an EV is a no-op that makes people feel good for sacrificing nothing. You need to get a bicycle instead.
I like the idea of a system that rewards people for doing the right thing. I'd like it even more if such a system existed.
The fact that others are kicking an old lady to death doesn't mean you should join them. Do what you think is right even if it doesn't change anything. Avoiding flights isn't a big price to pay.
This is exactly why voluntary individual action tends to be really ineffective at stuff like this, absent massive cultural support (e.g. consistent, widespread shaming and shunning those who defect). It's one of the main reasons government is, in fact, useful—it can be impossible to get out of these kinds of holes even when a large majority want to, without someone to make everybody play by the rules.
The core problem is exactly what you noticed: that you can be personally paying, in relative terms, a large cost, while having no meaningful effect, and while others are choosing not to pay that cost and doing much better than you. When the world where you defect is functionally indistinguishable from the one in which you stick with it aside from that you'd be happier in the former, it's hard to justify continuing.
The correct format is 1.5 K and in my opinion is unambiguous written that way. 1.5k is definitely 1,500 while 1.5K in the middle is ambiguous and depends on context.
We are too politically polarized to solve problems in this class, which requires political unity because of the scale, cost, and speed requirements.
All of our major political forces play games, constantly make moves in bad faith, talk out of both sides of their mouths publicly vs privately, so we are screwed.
The reality is that IF climate change science were a big hoax (sadly, it's not) there WOULD be a team using it for political games, so there will always be a large class of people who believe that's what's going on.
Maybe if we didn't spend decades politicizing every microscopic issue including in science, technology, and medicine, we could have policy makers advocate for positions based on science and everyone would trust it. That's not the world we live in and unfortunately, it looks like we never will.
I think you're editorializing it in a way that is making it far more politically neutral or "pox on both your houses" than it actually is. It's not about warring world views. It's just about money.
The simple reality is: almost all wealth on the planet is tied up with fossil fuels.
This being the case, the more wealthy you are, the more "polarized" in a certain direction you will be.
Might makes right. Or at least attempts to make right. And right now, "might" = "money" = "capital" = "energy"
There's a lot of not wealthy people who are polarized in that direction as well though. It's not simply a matter of sending a few oligarchs to the gillotine. In the short run, basically everyone in North America and Europe benefit from out destruction of the climate, and most people in other countries too.
To put it another way, the people who control the oil supply aren't simply wealthy because they pillaged and stole a bunch of people's stuff. The product they supply is extremely convenient and popular. You'd probably have an easier time fixing a world where everyone's a methhead than fixing the current problem.
I don't disagree with your central point. Though I think there is room to quibble about the definition of "pillage and stole" given that the cornerstone of this whole structure is control over physical lands, physical lands to which troops and violence have definitely been deployed.
Almost all of us are tied into this circuit in some way and "most of us" (in the west) short-term benefit from the continuance of the status quo energy economy and its growth. But what I would say is this: at the end the rich and powerful will continue to be able to buy fresh water and air and arable land and stable neighbourhoods with armed guards and fences. The rest of us will not be so lucky.
It's much more simple than that - vast majority of the world has become rich or richer by using more energy (almost a tautology), and vast majority of energy is produced from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are still for the most part the simplest, technologically, energy source with the fastest payoff.
To get the world even to European per-capita energy usage levels, current energy production would have to be expanded 3x [1] You just have to convince a few billion and their leaders that they should remain in relative poverty for a few more decades, waiting for solar/wind/nuclear to ramp up to several times the entire current energy production. Heck, the energy production needs to expand just to bring everyone to Chinese levels, and then you would not only need to set a forever-ceiling for the above billions, but also convince a billion or so Americans/Europeans/... to become poor.
If you can't convince people to stay or become poor voluntarily, they are going to need energy. Surprise, some people are eager to sell them this energy. But it's the demand that drives the supply.
> Maybe if we didn't spend decades politicizing every microscopic issue including in science, technology, and medicine, we could have policy makers advocate for positions based on science and everyone would trust it.
`we` isn't the common people. It's a very concerted effort to keep the status quo [1].
I think one solution that could plausibly work is an initiative to improve people's thinking abilities in general.
However, this tends to be unpopular as while people are very interested in the flaws in the thinking of their outgroup members, they tend to be very uninterested in their own or their ingroup members.
It's a tough problem, but not even trying to do anything about it doesn't seem like a recipe for success.
I don't think it's fair to blame "we". It's fair to blame very powerful interests that control media and politics. "We" are a product of the information that we receive, and so many people receive bad information that is paid and influenced by people who value money over preserving life on this planet.
So, this challenge asks for rapid transformations of society.
The unfortunate thing is, we've shown that we can change behavior rapidly, but only if we think we think we're personally in danger, and we'll only willingly keep that transformation for a little while. Carbon emissions dropped in 2020, but it took people actually being scared into staying in their homes, and stopping whole sectors of the economy. What if the most effective climate plan is a long, deep, global depression? In addition to curbing emissions, high unemployment would reanimate the "green new deal" concept. The bad news is climate and geopolitical instability might just give us what we need.
That this is news reflects only the reluctance of much of world leadership to acknowledge it. Anybody paying attention has known for over a decade that a +1.5C limit is out of reach.
The question the world faces now is whether the 3C rise we're actually going to get is enough to trigger non-human forcing through various feedback loops dumping carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2 and CH4, to require runaway warming as the future.
> "We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over," said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, who produced the study.
> "Only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster," she said.
I don't see that happening, and my guess is neither do they. Plan C needs to be a massive geoengineering project that would have seemed crazy even ten years ago, may worry some people as irresponsible even now. The nightmare scenario is that we can't even do that in time, because we're too busy arguing about it.
Yeah, we took one major fossil fuel producing country out of part of the global economy and look at the pain that caused in "the West". This kind of drastic, quick climate action would have even stronger effects on the energy markets in the short term, though the higher prices would also encourage faster renewable deployment so the damage would at least be tempered after some time (years, probably).
Of course the alternative that skips the trashing-the-economy part is more and larger government spending on renewable deployment to achieve a switchover on a similar timescale, but that's super-unpopular for a lot of voters.
Climate change seems to me to be the "gotcha" of liberal democracy. The timescales involved in democracy are so short that there's little incentive to do the things that would improve the situation, since the pain is felt now vs the (greater) pain in the future of climate change.
There was no credible pathway to 1.5 when it was established at COP 21 in 2015.
And previous to 1.5, the big number was 1.0.
It'll be interesting if the mass media push changes the focus again and starts popularizing 2.0C. Or maybe they'll move the baseline up again at the next COP. What a farce.
It really is starting to feel like the fringe of the environmental movement have really been the bad guys all along. Blocking nuclear starting in the 70s, focusing only on recycling in the 80s and 90s (consumption doesn't matter as long as something could be recycled), blocking natural gas/oil in favor of coal in the 90s-2000s, blocking wind farms ("think of the birds!!"), batteries, and solar panels (too many chemicals/can't be recycled) in the 2010s, and now pushing the plastic straws will kill us all narrative in the 2020s (at the direct expense of the climate narrative).
I'm being a bit hyperbolic here, but only a little bit. It's a decades long story of not seeing the forest for the trees and focusing on minor environmental impacts rather than the big climate issue staring us down. Like, this is exactly the strategy I'd take if my goal were to create as much warming as possible without anyone catching on...
Admitting that the decision to continue petroleum production is a cost benefit analysis and we still derive significant benefits from it is a conversation that much more than just the fringe environmentalists are unwilling to have. Had we been able to have these discussions earlier, we would have started working on carbon capture with much more credible allocations sooner.
Ah yes. All those PR campaigns that are directly and provably from the fossil fuel and plastic industries are definitely from people who have been saying we should stop using fossil fuels, invest in renewables, and reduce consumption for sixty years whilst being completely ignored.
I wish someone calculated with some certainty how much the lifestyles in different countries would have to change if the world just had to drop production that emits excess gases. I bet that would show that there's no way people modify their habits for this, especially in the ‘first world’.
(As for myself, I'm living on less that 400 bucks a month, including rent, use transport once a month; and most energy I use is probably for central heating in the winter and for pumping water—otherwise it's the fridge and boiling water for tea. But idk about the ‘footprint’, probably still not good.)
Please, continue to add past the 14,200 new temperature reading stations in mostly the exclusively US urban/metro areas since 1973.
It is important to stack the average by the virtue of its urban heat (over the cooler but carbon-tax-infused countrysides) and be able to note its mostly upward climate-change trend.
And we won't bother with illusive matrix math in smoothing out the newer stations because we got the eLusive hockey stick trend going now (which started in 1973).
Let's not ignore these 14,200+ new temp. stations because all data are valid.
The main threats would be near-term coral reef die-offs and ice sheet collapses.
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