Study Says We've Already Built Too Many Power Plants, Cars To Meet Paris Climate Targets (technologyreview.com) 492
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: In 2010, scientists warned we'd already built enough carbon-dioxide-spewing infrastructure to push global temperatures up 1.3 degrees C, and stressed that the fossil-fuel system would only continue to expand unless "extraordinary efforts are undertaken to develop alternatives." In a sequel to that paper published in Nature today, researchers found we're now likely to sail well past 1.5C of warming, the aspirational limit set by the Paris climate accords, even if we don't build a single additional power plant, factory, vehicle, or home appliance. Moreover, if these components of the existing energy system operate for as long as they have historically, and we build all the new power facilities already planned, they'll emit about two thirds of the carbon dioxide necessary to crank up global temperatures by 2C.
If fractions of a degree don't sound that dramatic, consider that 1.5C of warming could already be enough to expose 14% of the global population to bouts of severe heat, melt nearly 2 million square miles (5 million square kilometers) of Arctic permafrost, and destroy more than 70% of the world's coral reefs. The hop from there to 2C may subject nearly three times as many people to heat waves, thaw nearly 40% more permafrost, and all but wipe out coral reefs, among other devastating effects, research finds. The basic conclusion here is, in some ways, striking. We've already built a system that will propel the planet into the dangerous terrain that scientists have warned for decades we must avoid. This means that building lots of renewables and adding lots of green jobs, the focus of much of the policy debate over climate, isn't going to get the job done.
If fractions of a degree don't sound that dramatic, consider that 1.5C of warming could already be enough to expose 14% of the global population to bouts of severe heat, melt nearly 2 million square miles (5 million square kilometers) of Arctic permafrost, and destroy more than 70% of the world's coral reefs. The hop from there to 2C may subject nearly three times as many people to heat waves, thaw nearly 40% more permafrost, and all but wipe out coral reefs, among other devastating effects, research finds. The basic conclusion here is, in some ways, striking. We've already built a system that will propel the planet into the dangerous terrain that scientists have warned for decades we must avoid. This means that building lots of renewables and adding lots of green jobs, the focus of much of the policy debate over climate, isn't going to get the job done.
Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Insightful)
Only one thing matters, the price. You gotta make non-carbon cheaper and more profitable than carbon. Then people will switch instantaneously.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Insightful)
It actually is. There is some catchup to do with regard to power storage capacity but absolutely renewables are the cheapest and most profitable. That's why investment in them is exploding about 50% year over year growth.
Fracking has absolutely destroyed America's most valuable long-term resource which is clean potable water, 1/20th of 1% of the water on Earth and shrinking every day. Fracking has decimated that resource at a cost of Trillions.
Socialized losses, unfortunately.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Insightful)
The big use of fresh water is growing food. Many places depend on ground water for farming and that ground water is running out.
Imagine the infrastructure to supply the mid-west with desalinated water. Now think of India doing the same.
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Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Informative)
India is indeed thinking of what it would take to do this
They are not thinking very hard. Indian ground water policy is astoundingly stupid and short-sighted.
They provide farmers with free electricity, so that the farmers can waste both power and water by leaving ground water pumps running 24/7. Much of the "free" water ends up draining into ditches as run-off, and farmers have no reason to care since it costs them nothing. Aquifers are being destroyed, electricity is being squandered, CO2 is spewed into the atmosphere, and tax dollars are diverted from programs that actually make sense, like prenatal nutrition and literacy.
Once idiotic subsidies like this are in-place, they are seen as "rights" and become politically impossible to curtail.
Problems with India's power sector [wikipedia.org] - See item #4.
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Many places depend on ground water for farming and that ground water is running out. Imagine the infrastructure to supply the mid-west with desalinated water.
With sufficient amounts of cheap enough energy this becomes a much smaller problem.
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Don't underestimate the challenge of transporting huge amounts of water over large distances, especially uphill.
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Water transports itself (figuratively) over long distances if you don't cut down all the trees between there and the ocean.
GP is right. Enormous quantities of energy enable you to tackle enormous problems. Also, if you have more immediately available energy on-demand, you can accomplish more at the location needed.
Energy is the universal currency, everything else is there for the pushing around with it. (Also, it appears to be finite, unless we've badly misunderstood entropy. The word "renewables" irks me,
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Water transports itself (figuratively) over long distances if you don't cut down all the trees between there and the ocean.
how many acre feet does a tree transport ?
moving the water and produce is the problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
a significant part of eurasia is full of unused land and plenty of groundwater as well as surface fresh water. It's just not in a practical location vs. people who would need that land.
but saying that fossils aren't cheaper is kinda dishonest. sure, hydroelectric is cheaper,but come on, that's well beyond the point of it. if it was actually cheaper, would be having this discussion at all? it's not like companies just do stuff just to be evil for the f of it.
despite all the huff and puff and end of the world
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Coal consumption is declining in Germany and China.
https://www.cleanenergywire.or... [cleanenergywire.org]
I could google stats for other places, but the point is that lack of nuclear power does not necessarily result in more coal consumption.
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There's more than enough seawater int he oceans to provide humanity with clean, drinkable water for millennia.
So, you want to replace oil and gas pipelines with water pipelines?
You make no sense ...
Re: Let's not kid ourselves (Score:2)
If you need de-sal to grow basic crops, that's a huge loss.
This fucker's almost as abrasive as I but this is an extremely valid point.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:4, Insightful)
When renewables have to pay the write-off costs of their backup (and obviously they need backup) and increased transmission infrastructure they are not cheap. They are still fucking expensive, getting less so, but they have some way to go.
It's only the regulated energy market insulating renewable projects from those costs which make them profitable, it's just another way of giving them subsidy.
Re: Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Informative)
Did you know that coal power is subsidized?
Do people want to live closer to solar, wind or coal power plants? Maybe renewable energy reduces transmission costs because production can be located closer to customers.
Finally, on your point about backup energy sources. Tesla installed a multi-megawatt battery in Australia that more than pays for itself by leveling out energy production from coal, among other things: https://electrek.co/2018/01/23... [electrek.co]
So I'm going to guess that backup capacity is not going to bring wind power up to 3x its current price in order to make it comparable to coal. It might in fact make it even cheaper as demonstrated in Australia.
Coal power is dead. It's a market failure, a health failure and climate failure.
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Maybe renewable energy reduces transmission costs because production can be located closer to customers.
In the UK that's not really the case as onshore wind is pretty much dead due to changes in planning rules. But then you wouldn't get a new coal plant built either anywhere near people either, although a coal plant tends to be more geographically dense. In the UK even wind offshore is best in the North Sea, Scotland, and off Wales, which are the least densely populated areas.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:4, Interesting)
When renewables have to pay the write-off costs of their backup (and obviously they need backup) and increased transmission infrastructure they are not cheap. They are still fucking expensive, getting less so, but they have some way to go.
It's only the regulated energy market insulating renewable projects from those costs which make them profitable, it's just another way of giving them subsidy.
No subsidy for new wind, etc. in the UK, but it's still being planned. Onshore wind construction is down, but that's due to planning changes on the whole. If things were going to be mostly renewables you'd need to take into account backup sources, though, to have a fair cost, but that's not relevant with the current power mix which includes a lot of peaking plants which are already a sunk cost. At the point where backup and storage is required then the cost landscape may or may not have shifted.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Interesting)
It's only the regulated energy market insulating renewable projects from those costs
Renewables are not "insulated" from such costs. How the funk should that work? You have no clue about power markets and grids, why do you post?
When I run a power plant, regardless of what type, I have contract with my customers to deliver "such an amount" of power. If I can not deliver, for what ever reason, for what ever power plant type, I have to buy power from the reserve power market, ooops!! You did not know that? And I have to pay for the delivery of that power to the customer.
And to make that work, I have to pay already at the moment the contract is signed. Because at that point I have to provide a reserve power delivery contract/insurance. That means for every MW I produce and deliver I have to pay a small fee to a reserve power company/plant to keep the plant idle/ready, and if I actually need that power, I have to pay a hefty fee for using it.
You can not make a power delivery contract in Europe without having a reserve power contract. REGARDLESS WHAT YOUR POWER PLANTS TECHNOLOGY IS!!
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When you consider an electricity grid as a whole then "backup" is not a relevant term. You just need sufficient power available from a diverse selection of power sources. Renewable energy suppliers do not themselves build any so called "backup" power generation.
For example, the UK has some interconnect power cables capable of 1 or 2 GW with other countries. The capacity of these interconnect cables are slowly being increased over time, I agree that this is expensive but not impossible. These cables can allo
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Most people vastly over-estimate the amount of storage that renewables need. The idea that the whole country is going to run on battery power for weeks on end is a joke.
Storage is mainly needed for smoothing output, not some kind of giant UPS. Instead, we just need more renewable capacity. With enough capacity distributed over a wide area there is always enough energy available. For example, conservative estimates put the amount of offshore wind in the UK at 20x what is required, with 24/7/365 coverage.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Informative)
Renewables have come way down in price, but for around the clock reliable power, coal and gas are cheaper, and WAY more new coal plants are coming on line every year than wind or solar.
Remember that North America and Europe are irrelevant. The battle against climate change is happening in India, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. That is where nearly all the growth in emissions is happening.
If your "solution" is not cost effective in a village in Tamil Nadu, then it is not going to help.
Much of the solution is not cleaner generation, but cleaner consumption. For instance, more efficient air conditioners would make a HUGE difference. More than a million ACs per day are installed in South & SouthEast Asia, and most of them are crappy inefficient window units.
We should have an X-Prize for a better AC. Even if we spent $10B on research for a 10% improvement, it would be worth it many times over.
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Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Interesting)
More than a million ACs per day are installed in South & SouthEast Asia, and most of them are crappy inefficient window units. ... so many people don't live there ...
Unlikely. that would be 300 million per year and in ten years 3 billion
Re: ChrisMaple, the local shit factory. (Score:3, Informative)
I have no idea who he is or who you are, but citing two political activist sites as if they were reliable sources of unbiased information only throws away your credibility. Oh, and so does all the swearing.
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If it's cheaper, why charge more?
Because you are then funding expansion of it at a rate faster than organic growth based on profits excluding the extra 8% would permit.
Re: Let's not kid ourselves (Score:2, Insightful)
It easily could be. The problem is the the same people who whine about global cooling or global warming or climate change or climate emergency or whatever they're calling it these days are the same ones who scream about awful nuclear power is and how awful hydro power is. Then they push infeasible wind and solar options that will likely never work sufficiently well.
Maybe it's time just to ignore such people. They will never be happy with any feasible solution. There really isn't that many of them, either. T
Re:Nuclear = socialism. Green = Capitalist growth (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone building a solar plant doesn't have to pay for the externalities of the poisoning of rivers, or the mining of Rare Earths in China, or the deaths of plant workers that work below minimum wage to manufacture their "green" technology.
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The free government insurance scheme for nuclear is pretty socialist. There are a lot of externalities that the government takes on for nuclear, not least because the government wants nuclear to exist for military purposes.
Re:Nuclear = socialism. Green = Capitalist growth (Score:4, Interesting)
> How is nuclear power socialism?
In the US all insurance for nuclear reactors is socialized, provided through the US federal government.
This is why we still have light water reactors instead of integral fast reactors.
Insurance provides the crucial mechanism of mediating the gap between price and risk. Socializing insurance means there is no profit mechanism for an insurance company to avoid risk, so we have a huge market distortion.
The #1 action to be taken to decrease human CO2 output is to discontinue socialized nuclear insurance. The best way to clean up the existing nuclear waste is with fast breeder reactors and ONLY cleaning up the current waste problem will, as a side effect, provide enough electric power for 5x the current worldwide demand for two centuries. By displacing oil, worldwide energy warfare becomes less palatable.
US nuclear regulatory bureaucrats are humanity's greatest enemy. Only the people selling bombs to drop on innocents in far-off lands profit from their actions.
Re:Nuclear = socialism. Green = Capitalist growth (Score:4, Insightful)
Without carbon taxes and regulated markets forcing renewables on power companies they can't as of yet compete, except large scale hydro. That's why renewables increase electricity prices where ever they are used.
Which is not to say we shouldn't subsidize it, but stop fucking lying or being naive about the economic cost.
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The externalities of fossil fuel have ephemeral long term costs which require things like carbon taxes to actually translate into immediate ones.
Renewables always have immediate hard dollar costs ... that's why it always make your electricity more expensive for the moment.
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Oops, i guess I should have said ethereal.
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Including the construction and maintenance of the fossil fuel plants which are required to provide backup? Including the extra grid infrastructure to connect and balance both?
Economically a PV/wind project should be seen as a package deal with their backup/transmission infrastructure, yet on the the regulated markets they generally are not. Regulation allows them to externalize those costs to the power companies and ultimately us. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, if we're honest about it.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Insightful)
This is very easy to achieve, actually - you have to include all external costs of the fossil energy. You'll be surprised how expensive it will become. Even the US citizens will run away from it and recycle the gas guzzlers and airconditioning.
Re: Let's not kid ourselves (Score:2, Insightful)
If you do the same for solar or wind power, it turns out they aren't so "green" after all. It takes a lot of energy to extract the raw materials used in their construction. It takes a lot of energy to transport those materials huge distances. It takes a lot of energy to process them into something usable. It takes even more energy to convert them into solar or wind power generation equipment.
Some will claim that eventually all of this energy could be generated by solar or wind. Yet this is highly doubtful c
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it turns out they aren't so "green" after all.
[citation needed], preferably independent, peer-reviewed analysis that makes it possible to compare options. All research that I have seen points to conclusion exactly opposite to the fossil fuel shills on /. and their ignorant followers.
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Which one, "green is expensive because of the high cost of silicon"? Or GP's implicit assumption that extraction, processing and transportation of fossil fuels is cost and resource free?
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may have subsidies, they aren't necessary.
Really?
The infrastructure will still be built and operated profitably if there are no subsidies.
And what will the profits be in this case? What if all external costs are also included? Will there be any?
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Even if you're not seeing the subsidies, they're being subsidized. The Chinese government is intentionally driving prices below cost so they can put competition out of business and dominate the industry. "Cheap" solar is only cheap because it's being done on the backs of the Chinese people and being subsidized by a communist regime.
In Europe most wind turbines that I am aware of are built in Europe. You might be able to make some argument over imported steel, perhaps, but the wind farms are being built, even without subsidy. And for solar, not all the production of panels for large-scale installation is from China, more for domestic installations.
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Given how solar and wind generation infrastructure needs absolutely massive subsidies in order to be built and operated,.
Used to require. Not any longer.
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Used to require. Not any longer.
Still requires. In Canada, wind and solar are insanely expensive compared to well...anything else. They don't make money unless FiT offsets the costs. In the US it varies by region but in general it's true as well. Again FiT is the only offset to these costs. More expensive energy means everything else costs more money as well, in turn it's a great driver for inflation and making sure that people who are at or below the poverty line get screwed.
It's the same bullshit with carbon taxes, they're inherently
Re: Let's not kid ourselves (Score:5, Funny)
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Some will claim that eventually all of this energy could be generated by solar or wind.
Q: "Why doesnt the solar panel manufacturer use solar panels to power their factories?"
A: "Too expensive"
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Re: Let's not kid ourselves (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, the correct answer is: they draw power from the grid.
Because: they are a solar panel manufactor, not power company.
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The lower limits on natural resource use for PV are really low. At the end of the day a stack only needs to be 10s of microns thick and when you increase voltages to medium voltage DC ASAP the metal needed to distribute the generated electricity isn't all that relevant either.
Assuming technological civilization survives for a few more decades, which I'm not optimistic about, I predict PV systems where PV just comes on huge rolls. You roll it out across minimally prepared deserts with just vegetation and the
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That is just a bad excuse for not doing *your part* to fix the problem.
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China is responsible for the majority of the world's emissions and nothing the US does will change that.
And USA is second biggest emitter, and was for decade the worlds leading emitter. So yes, it will change a damn lot if the US are dropping to zero.
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I am all for the "rich west" to pay for the removal of the emissions that they created (which is like 75% of all extra CO2) and keep creating. And for the 3rd world to pay for the emissions they have/are creating, except for those on behalf of the "rich west", which should be split according to usage.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason people suffer is the same reason much of the world is starving to death even though we produce a surplus of food that could feed it several times over. It's because other countries are dysfunctional, they have dysfunctional governing systems, and greedy dictators and leaders that steal from the people. Global warming isn't the reason the third world is suffering. Greed is. And no amount of money, or solutions for Climate Change will fix that. It's the same as it has always been for thousands of years of human history.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves (Score:4, Interesting)
We don't have a shortage of energy. We have a shortage of extremely cheap energy, something that western countries have in general had for the last 100 years and improved welfare of society in general. I'm not sure if you can really say a good fraction would give up their fortunes, because many of those same people were protesting people like Norman Borlaug for his actions and creating the green revolution in the first place. And happily support various non-factory farming methods to increase the food supply.
The reason people suffer is the same reason much of the world is starving to death even though we produce a surplus of food that could feed it several times over ... And no amount of money, or solutions for Climate Change will fix that. It's the same as it has always been for thousands of years of human history.
Let's be realistic here, because even when us rich western countries go to give food to those people on the verge of starvation you have environmentalist groups lining up and screeching that it's poison, or it's there to make you sterile or other bullshit. So it simply sits there, in the containers, rotting. While retards who feel guilty of their lifestyle can pat themselves on the back and think they've done some good, instead of condemning 10k-30k people to starving to death.
But let's toss something else in there, we could actually fix those countries. Of course those same people would screech 'colonialism' or some other bullshit type of thing. But I hear that after African countries were screeching Europeans and Americans out, and China started rolling in and simply ass-raping everything in sight. There's suddenly a lot of calls for Europeans and Americans to come back and save them from the Chinese.
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80 degrees is an oven temperature, not a room temperature, why would you sleep in an oven?
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Then people will switch instantaneously.
It is cheaper and more profitable. But that doesn't account for sunk costs. It's more profitable to be driving a prius today but if you bought a fuel efficient car 5 years ago you are unlikely to sell the car and buy a new one.
We are seeing that with coal plants closing on a small scale but it's still not so incredibly profitable that it makes sense to just close up shop on existing plants.
IF you believe in fairy tales like invisible hand (Score:5, Interesting)
Only one thing matters, the price. You gotta make non-carbon cheaper and more profitable than carbon. Then people will switch instantaneously.
That makes sense only if one believes in the magically invisible hand of the market WHILE ignoring existence of corruption, lobbying and government subsidies.
Solar has crossed into hydro and geothermal numbers a while back.
Wholesale, prices of solar panels were already around 0.4$ per Watt last year. [pv-magazine.com]
For large-scale projects price of a kilowatt/hour is down to around 0.1$... going down to 0.03$... Which is hydro-power and geothermal numbers.
I.e. Cheaper than fossil fuels.
But despite green tech overtaking fossil fuels [unfccc.int] - there's still a whole lot of money in dirty fuels for bribes and lobbying.
After all, we're living in a world where you can buy yourself a president if you let him suck you off. [youtu.be]
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Don't want to be alarmist, but we should be really worried about positive feedback loops, such as thawing permafrost (on the scale of Siberia) releasing even more CO2 to the atmosphere in an uncontrolled cycle.
Without taking immediate measures, the environment that is able to support human civilization might be doomed.
Sceptics and deniers say otherwise. But to those I say: practically all climate scientists agree that this is happening. Do we really want to take the risk of them being wrong? Can we afford t
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Look at a map of the world some time. See the blue parts? That's water. There's more than enough to supply a trillion people with drinking water for a billion years. All you would need is some kind of powerful, nearly-unlimited source of energy. Oh wait: We invented that in the 1950s, decades before most people here was in diapers. And yet it seems like you, and other folks with a tired and outdated Malthusian lens on t
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We invented that in the 1950s
What is the reason we aren't using it ? And why do you think this reason is going to change ?
See the blue parts? That's water.
We have many more challenges than just water. But even if we could desalinate it, how are you getting it to where it's needed ?
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Nuclear is so expensive because the environmentalists have made it so. It takes a decade to permit any new construction and that's because every step of the way is fought in the courts. Cut out those delays. Fight a couple safe designs through the permitting process to permit the designs then allow those permitted
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how are you getting it to where it's needed ?
Old fashioned of course. He puts it into plastic bottles, and puts the bottles on a truck. That was so easy again!
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Oh wait: We invented that in the 1950s, decades before most people here was in diapers.
All the places which have access to the ocean have either enough wind or enough sun or both to not need a nuclear plant.
You sound like Blindseers alter ego, are you sure you are not his evil twin?
Photosynthesis is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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Photosynthesis peaks at 25C and drops essentially to zero for all plants we farm at 40C
What temperature is that in American?
Re:Photosynthesis is the problem (Score:4, Funny)
Photosynthesis peaks at 25C and drops essentially to zero for all plants we farm at 40C
What temperature is that in American?
[alien metallic voice]: that is 77F or 104 F in your earth degrees.
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That's bullshit. I live in Arizona and right now the average temperature outside is 100F (38C) -- the only time it drops below 100F is after the sun goes down and it's dark outside.
Things are growing just fine. I've got watermelons visibly gaining heft each and every day. Pomegranates, figs, peaches, broccoli, tomatoes, cantaloupes, grapes, etc... It's all going good. If you can't get your farm to grow at 40C, you're doing something wrong...
Two things you need to be able to grow in a hot climate like Arizon
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Things are growing just fine. I've got watermelons visibly gaining heft each and every day.
"just fine" is not a very accurate number, is it ? If you want to claim bullshit, you need to present exact yield numbers from professional growers.
I plant many of my crops under big trees in the summer and they perform better than crops planted under full sun with no shade trees.
Not sure if farmers will be happy with a bunch of trees in their corn fields.
Re: Photosynthesis is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Lots of plants love 40C weather and above. I used to grow tomatoes in this environment in California, they would grow 12' tall, and produce substantially more fruit than tomato plants I'd grown on the East Coast.
All this assumes you have the water to grow them. California agriculture is to a large degree fed water from aquifers laid down during the last ice age. These aquifers are today not being replenished at anything like the rate they are being consumed.
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If you know where to look and happen to be there at the right times of the year, you'll find strawberries, raspberries, huckleberries, etc growing in the wild, with NOBODY around to water or fertilize those plants. Everything naturally grows better in the forest. The forest drops leaves and chunks of wood for composting
It's only a cycle because animals eat the berries and poop in the park. If you would harvest all the berries, and feed them to people in LA, you would break the cycle, and have a net nutrient extraction from the soil.
Also, yield is not high enough to feed the world at current population without fertilizers.
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Sounds like a load of shit to me. All those nutrients aren't just magically disappearing
They are magically disappearing right now. Plenty of them are washed down through drainage and river transport, and human waste is washed down the sewer.
Sure, it may be possible to recapture the nutrients from sewage, but at what cost ?
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What people don't want to say is the opposite could happen.
Climate warming opens up huge swaths of land, much of it with lots of water. In fact, it could even end up as a net positive.
The problem is .. well, it sucks to live in hell. Sorting out population migrations is going to be interesting.
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Climate warming opens up huge swaths of land, much of it with lots of water. In fact, it could even end up as a net positive.
Swamp lands with low amounts of sun are not very good for growing crops.
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If they were formerly frozen, then they become huge carbon emitters from all the plant material that has collected but not decayed.
Re:Photosynthesis is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Photosynthesis is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely we'll have to move a few docks and reinforce sea walls in areas prone to erosion.
That's very expensive.
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The costs of mitigating climate change are INSIGNIFICANT next to the costs of ignoring it. Severe weather brought on by climate change is already costing just the United States hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Do you skip changing the oil in you car because oil and filters "cost too much"? Same reasoning on a smaller scale.
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Who grows crops in coastal areas?
Places where the fertlle land is near the coast on in low lying areas close by like Bangladesh. Or the UK (parts of Norfolk, Lincolnshire). Or The Netherlands. Or indeed, many other places.
Re:Photosynthesis is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Even the most dire predictions for climate change predict a 1-4ft. rise in sea levels in the next 100 years. Most of the East Coast sees 10-20ft. swells on a regular basis. I find it hard to believe that "huge swaths of land" will be consumed. More likely we'll have to move a few docks and reinforce sea walls in areas prone to erosion. And then life will continue on as usual, as if literally nothing happened.
See for yourself:
https://coast.noaa.gov/digital... [noaa.gov]
Just press 'Launch' and have fun. Seems like most of the damage will occur on the east coast south of Norfolk. Pay particular attention to Florida Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. y'know, the red states.
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Seems like most of the damage will occur on the east coast south of Norfolk. Pay particular attention to Florida Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. y'know, the red states.
You must have linked to the wrong version -- I see huge swaths of residential parts of New Jersey, Long Island, and even Manhattan getting wiped out, as opposed to primarily farm/swampland in TX/LA/MS.
Cool political rant, tho.
That is probably because you have politically activated selective eyesight. There will be land losses around the Chesapeake bay, but they are dwarfed by the land losses in the red states south of Norfolk. The Carolinas, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana stand to lose the most. Maybe if you guys pray hard enough your god will put up a force field to hold back the waters ... or maybe raise the continent by a few feet?
Welp that's it then, time to throw in the towel (Score:2)
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Which study? Study what and what's the cope of the study?
TFS contains link to study. If you're interested in details, why not start by reading it ?
Yeah (Score:2)
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let's import people from high birth rate countries so we can fix that "problem"!
More of those dirty Swedes? The last thing we need.
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If 'humanity survives' is your only criterium, then most things are not worth worrying about.
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Because climate has become intertwined with politics and eco-religion. Some people want to solve the problem but others want to punish the guilty more than they want to fix the problems.
If people *really* cared, they would cancel the >$100B cleanup at Hanford and have the DOE spend the money on new energy sources.
I don't know about thorium specifically - it may have stability issues unless accelerator driven subcritical (ADS) is used, and that is why India is working hard on that technology.
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You should argument against a finding by doing better science, not attack the people behind it. Personal attacks is the recourse of the person who is out of arguments.
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FTFY: BUT, if you're worried about CO2 and _NOT_ a supporter of nuclear^H^H^H^H^H^H^H renewable power, then you're either insane or you hate people.
I don't care if you support nuclear power, as long as you build them far enough away from Germany and Thailand. But I care if you ditch renewables which are in all respects far superior to nuclear power.
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Professing to be an expert on climate change is much like having a young child stand on a beach and then asking them "where do the waves come from?"
The climate change experts have a lot of science to back up their claims, and I have never seen anything approaching a reasonable argument against it. On the other hand, there are lots of outsiders who do not understand climate science. Are you sure it isn't you who is the young child here?
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Professing to be an expert on climate change is much like having a young child stand on a beach and then asking them "where do the waves come from?"
“Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”
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